Latest / Sober Readings / Impatient? Try Levitating
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- Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Wednesday, the 10th of June. My name is Scott, and I am glad you are here joining me. Let's begin today with the serenity prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. From Daily Reflections for June 10. Impatient, try levitating. We reacted more strongly to frustrations than normal people. That's a line from As Bill Sees It, page one one. Impatience with other people is one of my principal failings. Following a slow car in a no-passing lane, or waiting in a restaurant for the check, drives me to distraction. Before I give God a chance to slow me down, I explode. And that's what I call being quicker than God. That repeated experience gave me an idea. I thought if I could look down on these events from God's point of view, I might better control my feelings and behavior. I tried it, and when I encountered the next slow driver, I levitated and looked down on the other car and upon myself. I saw an elderly couple driving alone, happily chatting about their grandchildren. They were followed by me, bug-eyed and red-of-face, who had no time schedule to meet anyway. I look so silly that I dropped back into reality and slowed down. Seeing things from God's angle of vision can be very relaxing. From twenty four hours june tenth AA Thought for the Day If a man has some moral, religious, or spiritual training, he's a better prospect for AA. When he reaches the bottom, at this crucial moment when he is thoroughly licked, he turns instinctively to whatever decency is left in him. He calls upon whatever reserves of morality and faith are left deep down in his heart. Have I had this spiritual experience? The meditation for the day. The world wonders when it sees the man who can so unexpectedly draw large and unexpected sums of money from his bank for some emergency. But what the world has not seen are the countless small sums paid into that bank, earned by faithful works over a long time. And so is the bank of the spirit. The world sees the man of faith make a sudden demand on God's stores of power, and the demand is met. The world does not see what the man has been putting in, in thanks and praise, in prayer and communion, in small good deeds done faithfully, steadily over the years. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may keep making deposits in God's bank. I pray that in my hour of need I may call upon these. Today's Daily Meditation from Touchstones. We learn more by seeing someone play good tennis than by reading a book about how to play good tennis. That's from W. Timothy Galwee. In our program, we learn from each other. Most of us would rather have thought our problems through on our own or read about them without having to ask for help. Recovery requires us to break this old habit. We can no longer say at a meeting, I had some problems this week, but I've worked them out now. Or I know what I have to do. The change for us is to ask for help from other men in this program. We need to say, What do you think about my problem? Or would you be willing to talk to me for a while? Having a sponsor is an important way of getting to know how another person applies the program to their life. We need to select a sponsor we admire, who has learned the steps well and who truly lives them. Then we need to spend time with our sponsor outside of meetings, perhaps while drinking a cup of coffee or going for a walk. By associating with others who are diligent about recovery, we will learn more than we could any other way. Today I will make personal contact with others in this program. And the final reading for today is from As Bill Sees It. We're gonna read from page 295. Praying Rightly. We thought we had been deeply serious about religious practices. However, upon honest appraisal, we found that we had been most superficial. Or sometimes going to extremes, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had also mistaken this for true religious feelings. In both cases we had been asking something for nothing. We had not prayed rightly. We had always said grant me my wishes instead of thy will be done. The love of God and man we understood not at all. Therefore we remained self deceived, and so incapable of receiving enough grace to restore us to sanity. And that's from the twelve and twelve page thirty two. And that's it for today's readings. Did you notice that I snuck an extra reading in there? That's the second day in a row that I've read as Bill sees it and the meditation from Touchstones. I hope you really enjoy that because I do, and I think I'm gonna make it a daily habit now. Speaking of daily habits, if we go back to the 24 hours book, the meditation for the day, it talks about daily habits. It talks about making small deposits which add up over time. And I can totally relate to that because When I think about spiritual fitness, I also think about physical fitness. And if I wanna get in good physical fitness, in good physical shape, I'm not gonna run once a week and think that I'm good, right? I'm gonna have to run or go to the gym or exercise. Often, consistency is key. And spiritual fitness is the exact same thing for me. I can't expect to get on my knees in the morning and say my prayers and even do a meditation and then go about my day Living in a way that's completely contrary to what I just prayed for. Step eleven says, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. For me, all of that is a daily practice. The key word in that step is improve. It doesn't say perfect, it says improve, and improve takes time, it takes consistency. And so that's what I do on a daily basis is practice step eleven through prayer and meditation, so that when I really need God's help, when I need to rely on my spiritual fitness, I know that I'm ready. Well, that's it for today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you for listening, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the show, and if you did, do me a big favor and click that like button and share this episode with someone that you think might need it. Also, if you'd like to be a guest on Sober Readings, I'd love to have you. Just send me an email at soberreadingswithscott at gmail.com and we can make that happen. And if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, just go to soberreadings.com and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. And remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.