More Recovery Readings - November

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November 16

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
One is forever throwing away substance for shadows. --Jennie Jerome Churchill
Sometimes we trade possessions with our friends. Maybe we want to add to our collection, or perhaps we just do it to get someone to like us. But if we try to buy friendship, we'll be sad later when we realize we've lost a prized possession and not gained a friend.
Our friendships come when we least expect them, often with people who have something in common with us. They will not be friendships we have to buy, but relationships to treasure and have for years. These friendships will teach us to respect ourselves and our friends.
Am I making good friends, or bad trades?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
A wise man never loses anything if he have himself. --Montaigne
As recovering men, perhaps we have learned more fully what it means to have ourselves because we know the extremes of losing ourselves. In the past we weren't honest with others, or ourselves we didn't have our self-respect, and our compulsive actions violated our values. In that condition, we were incapable of believing in ourselves or of standing up for ourselves. Some of us felt like phonies or nobodies.
In this program we pray for wisdom, and it comes to us as we take possession of ourselves. We develop a better match between our inner feelings and our outer actions. We become willing to make choices, and we are able to take a stand based on our personal feelings and hunches. The things we possess like our gadgets, our cars, or our audio equipment are just temporary. Our integrity, our selves, can never be taken from us.
Today, I am grateful for the growing feeling within that who I am and what I believe is acceptable to me.


You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Rigidity is prevented most of the time as love and compassion mesh us into tolerant human beings. --Kaethe S. Crawford
Looking outward with love, offering it freely to our friends and family, makes fluid, flowing, and fertile our existence. Each expression of love engenders more love, keeping tender our ties to one another, encouraging more ties.
The more flexible our lives, the more easily we'll be attracted to an unexpected opportunity. And flexibility is fostered by a loving posture. As we approach the world, so it greets us. We are not mere recipients of life's trials and tribulations. We find what our eyes are wanting to see. When our focus is rigid and narrow, so are our opportunities.
The Steps are leading us to be freer with our love, more tolerant in our expectations. The level of our compassion, fully felt and fully expressed, is the measure of our emotional health. Rigid attitudes, rigid behavior, rigid expectations of others recede as the level of our emotional health rises. Our approach to life changes and so do the results we meet.
I will love others. It's my only assignment in life, and it guarantees the security I crave.


You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
The Victim Trap
The belief that life has to be hard and difficult in the belief that makes a martyr.
We can change our negative beliefs about life, and whether we have the power to stop our pain and take care of ourselves.
We aren't helpless. We can solve our problems. We do have power - not to change or control others, but to solve the problems that are ours to solve.
Using each problem that comes our way to "prove" that life is hard and we are helpless - this is codependency. It's the victim trap.
Life does not have to be difficult. In fact, it can be smooth. Life is good. We don't have to "awfulize" it, or ourselves. We don't have to live on the underside.
We do have power, more power than we know, even in the difficult times. And the difficult times don't prove life is bad; they are part of the ups and downs of life; often, they work out for the best.
We can change our attitude; we can change ourselves; sometimes, we can change our circumstances.
Life is challenging. Sometimes, there's more pain than we asked for; sometimes, there's more joy than we imagined.
It's all part of the package, and the package is good.
We are not victims of life. We can learn to remove ourselves as victims of life. By letting go of our belief that life has to be hard and difficult, we make our life much easier.
Today, God, help me let go of my belief that life is so hard, so awful, or so difficult. Help me replace that belief with a healthier, more realistic view.


Today I know that it does not matter if I cannot see the end of the road. I have absolute faith and trust that I am walking in the right direction and that I am being guided along the way. --Ruth Fishel

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Journey to the Heart

It’s Safe to Open Your Heart

You don’t have to be so afraid to love. You don’t have to fear losing your soul. You learned that lesson. It’s in the past. That doesn’t mean that people won’t try to control or manipulate you. Doesn’t mean that at times, you won’t try to control or manipulate them. Doesn’t mean that people with problems, agendas, addictions, and issues won’t sometimes come into your life. They may.

But the lessons of the past are yours, yours to keep. It may take you a moment to remember, but you will. Be gentle with yourself. Open up slowly, carefully, as you’re able.

It’s not that life and people are different, although how we see life and view people probably has changed. We’re different. We’ve learned about our powers. We’ve learned to take care of ourselves. We’ve learned how capable we really are.

Don’t be so afraid to love. Now it’s time to learn about the powers of the heart.

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More Language Of Letting Go

Be persistent

Earlier in this book, I talked about little drops of rain, over the years, could wear pockets and indentations into stones. I used this as an analogy to demonstrate how negative influences could wear away our resolve.

It goes both ways.

When I was first in recovery, one of the treatment center staff gave me one good quality about myself when I couldn’t see or find anything about myself to like.

“You’re persistent,” he said.

“Yes,” I thought. “You’re right. I am.”

I also thought if I took one-half the energy I used doing destructive things and channeled it into doing positive activities, there wouldn’t be anything in the world I couldn’t do.

Most of us are persistent. We persistently dwell. We have persistently tried to change what we cannot, usually a circumstance or someone else’s behavior. Take that energy, that persistence, that deoermination, that almost obsessive resolve, and persevere with the things you can do.

Don’t push.

Let go of concern about the seemingly impossible tasks in your life. Softly, steadily, like the rain, let your kind spirit naturally remove the obstacles in your path.

Life is better when we flow.

But sometimes it takes persistent flow to change the things we can.

Enough water, persistently applied, can be more powerful than rock.

God, grant me the courage to persevere and the strength to persist.

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You are reading from the book Food for Thought.

Alive to Truth

Being alive to truth requires being in touch with ourselves and with our Higher Power. It requires that we value spiritual truth more than material things. We come to realize that the insights and emotional growth we gain through this program are more valuable than the things we used to think we had to have.

Being alive to truth involves living each present moment. If we are obsessed with the past or preoccupied with the future, we will miss the truth of now. Today we can be who we are and give of our best in whatever situation we find ourselves.

Our Higher Power promises that if we ask for truth, we shall receive it. It will be found when we seek it more than status, money, or physical comfort. When we are alive to truth, we are open to the source of Power, which will never let us down.

Today, I will be alive to truth.

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Leaving a Positive Footprint
Blessing Space

by Madisyn Taylor

We can bless each space we enter leaving a sweet energetic footprint behind.


Physical space acts like a sponge, absorbing the radiant of all who pass through it. And, more likely than not, the spaces we move through each day have seen many people come and go. We have no way of knowing whether the energy footprints left behind by those who preceded us will invigorate us or drain us. Yet we can control the energy footprint we leave behind for others. In blessing each space we enter, we orchestrate a subtle energy shift that affects not only our own experiences in that space but also the experiences of the individuals who will enter the space after us. While we may never see the effects our blessing has had, we can take comfort in the fact that we have provided grace for those that follow after us.

When you bless a room or an entire building, you leave a powerful message of love and light for all those who will come after you. Your blessings thus have myriad effects on the environments through which you pass. Old, stagnant energy is cleared, creating a vacuum into which fresh and invigorating energy can freely flow. The space is thus rendered harmonious and nourishing, and it becomes a hub from which positive feelings are transmitted. Intent is the key component of the blessings you leave in your physical wake. If your intent involves using your own consciousness as a tool for selflessly spreading grace, your blessings will never go awry. Whether you feel more comfortable performing a solo blessing or prefer to call upon your spirit guides for assistance, visualize each space you enter becoming free of toxins, chaos, and negativity as you speak your blessing. Then imagine the resultant emptiness being replaced by pure, healing white light and loving energy. Even a quic! k mindful thought of love can bless a space.

This type of blessing is cumulative and will grow each time you bestow it. Try blessing every home, business, and office you visit for an entire week and observing the effects of your goodwill. Your affirmative energy footprint will help brighten your day as you contemplate your blessing’s future impact on your siblings in humanity and your environment. Published with permission from Daily OM

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A Day At A Time
November 16

Reflection For The Day

We sometimes hear humility defined as the state of being “teachable.” In that sense, most of us in The Program who are able to stay free of active addiction have acquired at least a smattering of humility, or we never would have learned to stay away from the first drink, the first tranquilizer, the first “side bet,” and similar destructive acts for those of us who are powerless over our respective addictions. Do I see increasing humility as a pathway to continuing improvements?

Today I Pray

Now that I have made a start at developing humility, may I keep it up. May I open my self to the will of God and the suggestions of my friends in the group. May I remain teachable, confrontable, receptive and conscious that I must stay that way in order to be healthy.

Today I Will Remember

To remain confrontable.

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One More Day

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.
– Jim Bishop

Perhaps we spend too much time looking into mirrors and being critical of what we see. There is no stage in life when we are wholly contented with what we see, but as we mature we gradually recognize that our lives are multidimensional. Now we know that there will be periods of time when we are more pensive, more introspective — and times when life will just roll along, with no concern from us.

Acceptance of our appearance gives us the time and energy to work on our inner selves. We look to the future by trying to prepare, and we live in the present by understanding that what we look like is not of important as what we do.

Today, I will decide which changes can give me and others the most joy.