A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
It is hard for many of us to learn to admit the wrongs we do. We have followed lifestyles that led us away from recognizing our true feelings. Remnants of this blindness continue into our recovery. In this quiet time we can deepen and nourish a relationship with ourselves. Facing our disapproval and admitting it lead us to comfort and self-respect. Right now we can ask ourselves, "What messages do 1 receive from myself? What is my Higher Power telling me? Do I sense some gut feeling? Am I true to my relationships with loved ones? Have I been open to the feelings of my spouse. Of my friends? Of my boss? Do I owe anyone an apology which I can promptly make?"
Some of us indulge in worry, fear, and anger beyond a useful or meaningful point. What can we do about these excesses of feeling? First, we admit them to ourselves and to others. Then, we trust our Higher Power for the outcome, and they will fall away.
Today, I will nourish a relationship with myself by facing my own disapproval and growing toward greater comfort.
As with expeditions into the wilds when we have endured storms and rapids, cold and sleet, and sometimes lack of food, it is ultimately the good things we remember, not the bad.
In our daily lives we often take a very short perspective. We see what is worrisome today, what is pressing hardest, or what is most frightening or confusing. Eventually, we may look back and have a totally different idea about what was truly important on this day.
Let us take a moment now to remember what does endure, what we value most, what counts in the long run. For a brief quiet time we can let go of all the anxieties of this moment. During these few quiet moments, we will identify our tensions and then place them totally into the hands of our Higher Power. This is our time to let go of our worries and be refreshed. It will provide a background of serenity for our day.
Today, help me remember this corner of serenity as I meet the tasks and activities on my path.
Our job gives most of us a clear role.... Although we may feel relatively lost at home, we know who we are and what to do at work.
Most men have become well adapted to the workaday world. Even if our jobs seem like drudgery, they provide us with a place and a routine, which define us. Many of us have welcomed the end of a weekend or a vacation because we could go back to our jobs and definite roles. This situation has many drawbacks. For one thing, if we are out of work, we may feel adrift. Furthermore, if we have defined ourselves only as breadwinners, we have probably missed the benefits of closeness in our families. Some of us have even said, "I feel like I'm nothing but a meal ticket."
A good job does have value, but we can also grow by giving more of ourselves in our less clear roles at home. It is healing to just "hang around" with our families and friends and to simply let relationships develop. The personal, familiar relationships that don't depend on jobs and roles let us be comfortably human.
I am thankful for the humanizing effect of my relationships at home.
The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing?
As we examine our personal answers to these simple questions, we find profound truths about ourselves. We may have been born in more places than the place of our biological birth. Some of us might say, "I truly was born the day I first felt the nurturing love of another person in my life," or "My life began on the day I stood up to my father." Most of us began new lives when we walked into our first meeting to begin recovery.
If we think about where our home is or where we are going and what we are doing as spiritual questions, we may find some comforting answers. Perhaps the place where we find rest, peace, and comfort is our home. That may be in a moment of meditation rather than in a physical place. If we are headed toward a manhood of self-respect, the problems of today are only challenges along the way. As we simplify our lives and let the truth be on the surface, we find profound meaning.
Today, I will keep my attention on the basics in my life.
If the only prayer you say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
"An attitude of gratitude," we sometimes hear, will help us on our path. There certainly are enough things for us to worry about, grieve over, and complain about. They have their place. But as we mature and no longer use addictive escapes, we learn that joy can exist side by side with grief. Gratitude is a tonic for our self-pity. Saying "thank you" actually opens us to receive more of life's blessings, which sit there waiting for us to notice.
In a pleasant moment we can look around and say, "Aren't we lucky!" That's a kind of prayer, and it connects us with our Higher Power. No matter how painful or worrisome a day may be, we can be thankful for our growth. Gratitude is so simple we sometimes dismiss it while looking for a more complicated answer in our lives. We can say "thank you" for all the simple things like trees, cool air, food, and love between people. It is a risk to be so grateful. Who will be in control? Perhaps God.
God, thank you for all that comes to me without my efforts.
It's the awareness, the full experience... of how you are stuck, that makes you recover.
When we become aware of how far off our path we have strayed, when we see how cold and hard we were to someone we love, when we are no longer blind to our blindness - then we are touched by painful feelings. We feel guilty about the harm we caused. We grieve the lost moments and lost opportunities. We may feel angry with ourselves for our stubbornness. But even with our pain, we are worlds away from that blindness.
This new awareness is a spiritual place. It brings us back into contact with our Higher Power and makes us available to the words of wisdom and concern of others. It reminds us that no man can walk this path on his own power. We all must remain open and in contact with the healing relationships around us.
I pray for awareness today as my doorway to spiritual healing.
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.
Most of us have struggled with our self-esteem. We believed if we felt better about ourselves we could change some of our behavior. In recovery we found the reverse to be true. First our behavior changed, then our self-esteem improved.
Only after we stop doing things we don't respect can we hear and accept the goodwill of others around us. Then we see our value as men because we are upholding strong self-images by our actions. This is not easy to do. As we learn, we continue to say no to weak behaviors, and we are released to feel greater dignity.
Saying no to my negative behavior today will improve my self-respect.
We shall not cease from exploration.
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
Our spiritual path is like a search leading home. We carry within us a yearning for the ideal, the perfect acceptance and love from our fathers and mothers. We long for fulfillment of our dreams, we long to feel strong and capable, and we want to understand, to truly come into our own.
As we peel back the layers of our defenses, we find what we knew all along. On a deep level, we knew no man could be totally self-sufficient. Now we are coming back to it as if it's brand new. The best images of our parents' love and acceptance of us are what we return to as models for how we can be. It is true we can never go home again. Yet our spiritual journey mysteriously leads us back to explore what we knew deeply all along.
I will make peace with my past and explore the deeper knowledge I've always held within me.
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.
It is useful for us to reflect on our heroes for a time. Who do we greatly admire? Are they men or women? Are they closely involved in our lives, or are they distant and beyond our ability to reach on a personal level? Can we feel hopeful and open enough about life to have heroes?
Our heroes inspire us to find the new edges of our growth. We see in another man or woman the qualities and values we admire. We find our own best parts, perhaps partly hidden or undeveloped, in the people we hold as heroes. For example, if we admire a television personality, we can learn about our own values by asking what we admire in him or her. If we admire a friend, we may see a trait we hold dear in ourselves. As we grow and change, our heroes are replaced by others who fit our maturing values.
As I think about people I admire, I learn about myself from them.
For the trouble is that we are self-centered, and no effort of the self can remove the self from the centre of its own endeavor.
This quagmire of troubles we men were caught in came, in part, from our best efforts to be self-sufficient. The harder we worked to provide our own cures, to control others in our lives, or to control ourselves, the more we fixed our attention upon ourselves. We could not see that the answers we were using were actually part of the problem, not the solution. Even today we may be partially caught in the folly of this thinking. Whenever we think we see our problems and the answers clearly but don't open our incomplete selves to the wisdom of others, we are in danger of intensifying our self-focus. When we have a pattern of telling our fellow members the completed stories of our pain only when our pain has passed, we are maintaining our self-centered system. We can't lift ourselves out of our self-centeredness. We can only turn it over to our Higher Power and allow ourselves to be released. I am grateful for the healing, which comes when I stop being so self-centered in my efforts.
The most important function of art and science is to awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive.
There is no need to be concerned about a conflict between science and the spiritual life. People have turned to the spiritual in many ways since the beginning of humanity. Some are tribal and primitive, some very emotional, some focused on ideas and philosophy, some centered on tradition. Perhaps in the very center of our humanness is a spiritual compass. When we disown that orientation, do we lose some of our humanness? This program did not invent the spiritual outlook. It only tells us recovery will come through awakening of the spiritual within us.
We are on an exploration. We give ourselves over to it and only discover where our awakening will lead as it unfolds. The Steps tell us to engage with the God of our understanding, to develop a relationship of trust, total openness and humility, and to improve the contact. As the center of our humanness is restored, we come alive and our daily tasks take on new meaning.
May I be awakened again to that cosmic feeling we all inherit.
Archie Bunker: What's wrong with revenge? That's a perfect way to get even.
When we are locked within negative, hostile thinking patterns, we go around in mental circles. What seems perfectly rational to us at the time looks misguided and blind when we look back. Carrying a grudge or a desire to get even with someone is a cancer inside us. It belittles us and holds back our spirit.
We break through our mental circles by revealing our anger to others. We talk with other recovering men and let them know the details of our resentments. We listen to their experiences and apply them in our program. As long as we keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves, we only recycle the same thinking system. When we take the risk and talk to friends, we build bridges that bring in new ideas.
I will not harbor my resentments within myself. I will talk with a trusted friend so I can learn to let them go.
I always entertain great hopes.
In our honest journey, we must admit life is often difficult and painful. But these facts do not describe all of life, and they do not determine how we respond. The sun rises warm and bright after a cold and dark night. The open, generous smile of a small child reaches into the soft part of us all. To be strong and hardy men on this spiritual path, we must be truthful about the pain and unfairness in life while holding firmly to a belief in all the generous possibilities.
Surrendering to despair, we trade the uncertainty of options for the certainty of gloom. Then we might say, "At least I'm never disappointed this way." Life isn't filled only with difficulty and pain. It is also filled with people whose dignity and spirit rise above their circumstances. There are situations when great sacrifice or love and wisdom turn a problem into an opportunity and strength. If we look at what has happened in our own lives and in those of others, we have ample reason to hope.
My own experience in recovery gives me great hope in what can be.
You cannot devalue the body and value the soul - or value anything else. The isolation of the body sets it into direct conflict with everything else in creation.
Our bodies are part of creation as much as trees, lakes, mountains, flowers, and animals. Part of our growth into full manhood is treating ourselves respectfully. It is a spiritual practice to be fully accepting, active, and alive physically.
We can no longer be content to be only spectator sportsmen in front of the televisIon set. We need to get our own muscles moving. What we take in as food expresses the level of respect we feel for ourselves. Our sexual expressions reflect the value we feel for our own bodies and our partners'. Our spiritual feelings become part of all the basic details of our lives.
Today, I stand in God's creation as a physical body. My spiritual experience includes all the ways I care for and accept my body.
A wise man never loses anything if he have himself.
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.
To wait for moments or places where no pain exists, no separation is felt and where all human restlessness has turned into inner peace is waiting for a dream world.
Anytime we do a spot check on our anxiety or personal restlessness we will probably find some. As long as we are aware and alive we can expect to have some discomfort, some fear of loss, some doubt. Our program does not totally rid us of these pains. Perhaps our old ways sought absolute peace or escape through abuse of chemicals or food or gambling or sex, but the serenity we seek in our recovery comes through honesty with ourselves and acceptance of the incompleteness of our lives.
When we make room for the pain in our lives, we allow the river of our emotions to flow. It will carry us along to other feelings like happiness and peace. Conflicting feelings can exist side by side in our lives, and when we try to control true feelings of restlessness or pain, we dam the flow of emotions and block the pleasant ones as well as the difficult ones.
I am moving to a real world where I know and accept my feelings.
No one can get rid of the spirit of judgment by an effort of the will.
In the past, we applied our wills and tried to bring about the changes we wanted. We may still unconsciously try to create self-improvement by an effort of will. But, as long as we do that, we continue the same circles of frustration and defeat we knew before recovery. The way to growth is in directions we cannot fully imagine for ourselves. We can become ready for change and then pray for help. The man who simply became ready to have God remove his judgmental attitudes was surprised to find God's answer was to make him more trusting of others and less judgmental of himself.
The wonders of recovery are miracles because we tried before and couldn't recover by ourselves. Miracles are surprises that come upon us because God's will for us is more creative and far reaching in its renewal than anything we can think of.
Today, I pray that I may know the will of God and forgo my limited willfulness.
All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
We are getting to know ourselves each day. We have learned some very important things about ourselves since the day we started our recovery. Most of us began learning by admitting our addiction or codependency. We saw how loyal we had become to a substance or a behavior. What seemed normal to us was actually distorted and unhealthy living. We didn't understand why we felt so confused and upset. Perhaps we didn't know what we were running to, or from.
Until we were faced with our powerlessness we couldn't know ourselves. We could not feel our void or pain until we had relinquished our old ways. We now can see our motives more clearly. When we have come face to face with ourselves, surrendered and stopped running, nothing else ever need be so frightening again.
I will let myself know where I am going today.
An ideal is a man's portrait of his better self.
When in training for athletics, we use a daily routine to reach a peak condition. We stretch; lift weights, run, and do special conditioning to develop our bodies and skills for that big day of competition. It's hard work. Sometimes we hate it, but at other times we do it just because it feels so good. Then when the day of competition comes, we can depend on that practice. At a crucial moment there's not time to think about how we will respond. We just do it the way we learned and use our physical ability to carry us through.
In this program we go to our meetings, we work the Steps on a personal level, we develop a relationship with our Higher Power, and we keep in touch with our sponsor. Some days we may wonder if it's worthwhile, but most of the time the process is full and rewarding in itself. We make progress toward the ideal although we never achieve perfection. When the challenges or threats to our sobriety come, we have our conditioning within the program to carry us through.
In this day ahead I will remember that I am building myself to peak condition. I will be faithful to my "training program."
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
It does little good to complain about our wives or parents or lovers. We only accentuate our role as victims when we say, "I would be happier if she were different." "If he would just get off my back, I would act better." We each have a side, which is loyal to the victim within. Some of us take comfort in acting helpless and being taken care of; some of us relish the power of being catered to; some of us wallow in self-pity. These patterns of thought retard our recovery and put a drag on our relationships. When we decide that we aren't willing to live this way any longer, we are ready to assert our independence.
Real emancipation can't come at someone else's initiative or as a gift. It can only begin from within, by saying, "I will take my independence." Then we begin to be responsible men because we own it on the inside.
Today, I will not wait for others to set me free. I will do what is within my own power to be a free man.
Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation.
In our struggles with self-hate and guilt, we may have thought we were humble - or perhaps even too humble. But self-abasement, which often alternates with feelings of superiority, is not the spiritual quality of humility that we strive for in our program.
With humility, we respect ourselves and our place in the universe. Humility is having ourselves in perspective, knowing we are connected to the whole world, accepting how small and powerless we are, and accepting the power and responsibility we have. With this spiritual feeling comes a sense of awe for the world we live in and a feeling of gratitude for the life we've been given.
The humility I feel today goes hand in hand with my self-respect and gratefulness for being part of life.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.
Silence does not draw attention to itself. It is the ultimate in letting go and letting be. It is the opposite of the great dramatic event, so we easily forget silence is a basic means by which we grow. We live in a "can do" society that applauds a man of action who gets a job done. Perhaps we learned to think that being alone in silence is empty time with nothing happening.
In truth, some great things happen only by decisive action, but other great things happen only when we get ourselves out of the way and simply allow them to occur. It would be foolish to believe only in action and miss the benefits that come from quiet moments. When we withdraw from the hubbub of the world around us and quiet our minds, we are making room for great things to fashion themselves together.
Today, I will remember the importance of silence in my growth. I will set aside some of my busyness and be still.
Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
As we live our very busy lives we might say, "How full and rich my life is!" But are we stopping long enough to look, to take in experiences, digest them, and grow from them? Or is our attention always focused upon the next event? Are we running from one thing to another, never truly being present in the current moment?
For spiritual deepening, many of us men do not need to enrich the events in our lives as much as we need to simplify and quiet ourselves. We need to slow down and look at what is here. At a banquet, we might appreciate a few fine foods served in a tranquil atmosphere more fully than a lavish variety served in a frenzied atmosphere. For today, we are not able to stop the hectic pace of the world, but we can slow ourselves down and notice and reflect upon our experiences. Then they will have meaning and value for us.
Today, I will slow down. I will notice what my experiences are and give myself time to look.
If the Great Spirit wanted men to stay in one place He would make the world stand still; but He made it to always change, so birds and animals can move and always have green grass and ripe berries, sunlight to work and play, and night to sleep.
The American Indian's spiritual knowledge teaches that God has a rhythm and a benevolent purpose for the earth. How we relate to the changes, which overtake us, is central to our spiritual lives. With our overdeveloped will, we still fight change in many ways. We fight the aging of our bodies by oversensitivity to our thinning hair and increasing grayness. We refuse to accept the end of summer by pouting and getting depressed about the cold. We try to hasten the time when our children are more independent and then hold them back when they get there. Peace comes with trusting the Great Spirit to bring changes in their natural progression. The extent of our willfulness affects our serenity - but not the progress of change.
God, help me accept the changes in my life.
The main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human.
The "shoulds" of our lives can be found all around us. We should wear our seat belts. We should not cry. We should go to our meetings. These "shoulds" usually serve as good guides for us, but they can intrude upon us. If we give them power, they only condemn us and give no useful help. At times we jump toward the "should" because we don't have the courage to live with the insecurity of being human.
If someone at work gets an unfair shake, it takes courage to speak up and say what we think. We may have an impulse to reach out to a stranger, but it takes courage to do it. When an inner feeling emerges from our honesty, fear may prompt us to avoid it, and we need to call on our courage. That is how we fulfill the uniqueness of each of us.
I am alive as a man and a human being. I will not shy away from opportunities to express my humanity.
The struggle of the male to learn to listen to and respect his own intuitive, inner promptings is the greatest challenge of all. His ... conditioning has been so powerful that it has all but destroyed his ability to be self-aware.
Men strive to be successful with mechanical, physical, and powerful things. Some of us have succeeded in those supposedly "male" ways and others haven't. But whether we have or not, most of us have poured our energies into those directions and neglected the other way of being strong men. We may not have learned how to be gentle and helpful fathers, sensitive lovers, or men in tune with our own spirits and feelings. Many of us never learned to recognize what we feel.
Perhaps we were taught to stand up for ourselves. But have we learned to stand up for our right to have feelings? Do we stand up for our right to be learners and to make mistakes? Do we stand up for our right to be aware and to be the men we find ourselves to be, rather than what others tell us we should be?
I will become more aware of my inner-self as a growing man on this uncharted journey.
Much as I long to be out of here, I don't believe a single day has been wasted. What will come out of my time here it is too early to say. But something is bound to come out of it.
These words, written by a man imprisoned for standing up against the Nazis, speak to us today about our own lives. We too long for release, and we cannot see where things will lead us. His spirituality is heroic; it inspires us. We do not know just where our lives will lead or what the outcome will be. But we can know our lives are taking us in the right direction. We make our choices today and stand up with all our energy for the honesty and dignity, which this program provides.
We choose to trust life. In each tiny detail of this day we move forward, asserting our faith and seeking to know and do the will of a Power greater than ourselves.
I will open myself to the will of my Higher Power as I move forward on the path, living with my unrevealed future.
I, God, am your playmate! I will lead the child in you in wonderful ways for I have chosen you.
Our relationship with our Higher Power is not all solemnness. Facing the pains and guilts and grief's of our codependent relationships and our addictions might lead us to think recovery is only serious business. Not so!
This program liberates us from the heaviness by facing it. We are not meant to stay stuck there. Recovery teaches us to enjoy life. Our Creator has concocted a world of many pleasures and delights to play in. As we progress in our recovery we learn to let our hair down and play. Some of us have become more able to enjoy good-natured roughhousing with our children. Maybe we have become more free to joke and banter with friends. Our spiritual lives grow with good-natured fun.
I am grateful for the child who still lives in me. He keeps alive my delight in the world.
Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.
We owe our brothers and sisters in this program our honest feedback. And we need the same honesty from them. There are times in meetings when it would be easiest to give someone sympathy and privately mutter to ourselves, "He isn't facing the bitter truth." That sympathy avoids a confrontation, but it doesn't give the healing medicine of honesty. In the same way, we may long, at times, for someone to give us warm strokes, and what they give instead is a bitter pill.
The most important thing we have to give one another is the truth of what we see and hear. We don't have to tell them what to do. We don't have to have all the right answers. But we do have the obligation to speak up about how things look to us. And we need to listen without defensiveness when others are honest with us.
Today, I will say what I see and hear. I will listen to other people's honesty with me.
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
We may have spiritual experiences in our daily lives that we don't think of as spiritual. For many of us, music lifts us from the practical and mundane circumstances of our lives into communion with the universe. One man may like to listen to country music on the radio, another one might play the piano, and another may go to rock concerts. For each of us, music is a different world from the reasonable, hard data, task-oriented world we usually live in. Music touches our feelings and speaks to us in a special language. It brings us back to special times in the past, perhaps recalls a night of fun and excitement or a person we shared a song with. Music lifts our spirits and opens us to deeper feelings we weren't in touch with. Many of us meet our Higher Power through the music we love.
Today, I will make room for the restorative powers of music in my life.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
