LOOKING WITHIN

  

Good Morning!!!

 

God grant me the Serenity

to accept the things

I cannot change;

Courage to change

the things I can;

and Wisdom

to know the difference.

Thy will, not mine, be done.

 

*~*~*~*~*^Daily Reflections^*~*~*~*~*

 

April 1, 2024

 

LOOKING WITHIN

 

A.A. Made a searching and fearless

moral inventory of ourselves.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 42

 

Step Four is the vigorous and painstaking effort to discover

what the liabilities in each of us have been and are.

I want to find exactly how, when, and where

my natural desires have warped me.

I wish to look squarely at the unhappiness

this has caused others and myself.

By discovering what my emotional deformities are,

I can move toward their correction.

Without a willing and persistent effort to do this,

there can be little sobriety or contentment for me.

To resolve ambivalent feelings,

I need to feel a strong and helpful sense of myself.

Such an awareness doesn’t happen overnight,

and no one’s self-awareness is permanent.

Everyone has the capacity for growth,

and for self-awareness,

through an honest encounter with reality.

When I don’t avoid issues but meet them directly,

always trying to resolve them,

they become fewer and fewer.

 

****************************************************

Give Thanks

 

Though I still find it difficult to accept

today's pain and anxiety

 with any great degree of serenity-

-as those more advanced in the spiritual life

 seem able to do—

I can give thanks for present pain nevertheless.

I find the willingness to do this

by contemplating the lessons learned

 from past suffering—

lessons which have led to the blessings I now enjoy.

I can remember how the agonies of alcoholism,

the pain of rebellion and thwarted pride,

have often led me to God's grace,

and so, to a new freedom.

Grapevine, March 1962

 

**********

"Alcohol gave me wings

and then slowly took away my sky."

 

********************

Grapevine quote of the day

 

"From the moment I pulled open the doors to my very first meeting, I felt something different; something good was going to happen. Those doors, which at the time I believed to be the heaviest ever made, allowed me to walk into a new way of life."

New York, N.Y., January 2006

From: "Attitude Adjustment"

Beginner's Book: Getting and Staying Sober in AA

 

*****************************************************

The Indispensable Man

 

Sometime when you're feeling important;

Sometime when your ego's in bloom;

Sometime when you take it for granted,

You're the best qualified in the room:

Sometime when you feel that you’re going,

Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions,

And see how they humble your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that's remaining,

Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,

You may stir up the water galore,

But stop, and you'll find that in no time,

It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example,

Is to do just the best that you can,

Be proud of yourself but remember,

There's no indispensable man.

Saxon White Kessinger

 

***************************************************

It is always a mistake

not to close one's eyes,

whether to forgive

 or to look better into oneself.

—Maurice Maeterlinck