Latest / Sober Readings / Lightening The Burden
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings, everyone. My name is Scott. Thanks for joining me today for reading some positive sober literature. Let's begin today's episode with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections: Lightening the Burden. Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worthwhile to us now. The dark past is the key to life and happiness for others. And that's on page one hundred and two four of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Since I have been sober, I have been healed of many pains, deceiving my partner, deserting my best friend, and spoiling my mother's hopes for my life. In each case, someone in the program told me of a similar problem, and I was able to share what happened to me. When my story was told, both of us got up with lighter hearts. Today's reading from twenty four hours a day, august twenty eighth, AA thought for the day. We must continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We should grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter, it should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We must not rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. So ask yourself today, Am I checking my spiritual condition daily? Meditation for the day. Happiness cannot be sought directly. It is a byproduct of love and service. Service is a law of our being. With love in your heart, there is always some service to other people. A life of power and joy and satisfaction is built on love and service. Persons who hate or are selfish are going against the law of their own being. They are cutting themselves off. From God and other people. Little acts of love and encouragement, of service and help, erase the rough places of life and help to make the path smooth. If we do these things, we cannot help having our share of happiness. And today's prayer for the day. Today's reading from Day by Day. Daily meditations for recovering addicts. Maintaining conscious contact. At meetings, it's fairly easy to be in touch with our higher power, but it's the rest of the time that's most important. Time when we face our problems on our own. It helps if we can work the program throughout the day to keep in conscious contact with our higher power. Many of us use the Serenity Prayer. Others use personal prayers, meditate, Or set aside quiet moments during the day. Do I have a way to access my higher power? Higher power, help me to make the time to maintain conscious contact with you. Today I will improve my conscious contact with my higher power by and you fill in the blank. And for today's final reading, I'm gonna read a short story out of Came to Believe, which is normally designated for my Sunday episodes. But this morning at my morning meeting, we read this in the book, and it was so powerful, I just had to share it with all of you. So this is from Came to Believe, and this is from the little book, the smaller-sized book, which is page one zero one. And I know that there's a larger print book and it's on a different page. But on the smaller print book, it's page one zero one. It's titled I Must Learn, and it's from the Spiritual Progress chapter. Many in our fellowship express our three stages of learning and growth this way. I came, I came to, I came to believe. In my case, it was about three years before the third stage began. Over the years since, I believe I have experienced a gradual strengthening and growth of frequency in my communication with God as I understand him. Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him. Paul Eldridge wrote. That is the way the spiritual side of the AA program appears to me. I'm in trouble if I attempt to parse it. I don't attempt to understand it. These random notes represent the best I can do to put it into words. Cardinal Newman said, It is thy very energy of thought which keeps thee from thy God. So it was with me, I think. The saying let go and let God must have been written just for me. For me, God is that still, quiet voice I hear so many times each day saying, Roy, that wasn't good enough. I live alone, and once I was lonely, but now I can enjoy the rewards that come only in moments of solitude. I often protest against things that I look on as limitations and obstructions, but these could be the very things I need most. For what I call hindrances, obstacles, or discouragements, I Are probably God's opportunities. As I try to grow in this AA program, I must occasionally remember when, but not in order to brood about the past. AA taught me how to deal with it, how to put it in its proper place and perspective. I believe that I must learn, that I must let God teach me, that the only way to get rid of my past is to get a future out of it. God will waste nothing. Now that I am sober and have tried to turn my will and life over to the care of God, I believe that the greatest gift I can bestow upon the world or upon any one group of persons or upon any person in the world is my own self. I think God gave each of us a unique personality, so that we in turn might give it to others. Now I can give it with joy in life, warm, friendly, happy, sober. I believe that God made us all different for another reason. I am convinced that there is some one thing that I can do better than anyone else in the world. God thinks so, and He wants me to do it. Through the twelve steps, a good many AA members have found out what their assigned chores on earth are, and they are doing them. Thus, the twelve steps must continue to be more compelling to me and more binding on me than anything else that I encounter in life. For only through working on these steps can I get closer and closer to finding out God's intent for me. Perhaps God thinks that a very modest task in my community is all that I am capable of. But it is there. It is real. And so with the help of my friends in AA, I must search out what that task is. Then, with their help, I must do it. And that comes from Toronto, Ontario. And that is a powerful story right there. It comes from the book Came to Believe, Chapter 9, Spiritual Progress, and it's titled I Must Learn. And I really wanted to share that with you because it really made a impression on me this morning when I heard it or when we read it at our meeting. The quote, It is thy very energy of thought which keeps thee from thy God, suggests that sometimes the greatest barrier between us and a higher power is our own mind. In sobriety, I can easily become trapped in constant thinking, analyzing everything, worrying about tomorrow, replaying yesterday, questioning whether I'm doing enough or trying to control things that were never mine to control. The harder my mind works to figure everything out, the further I can drift from the peace and guidance I'm searching for. Recovery has taught me that faith sometimes requires me to stop wrestling with every thought. and simply become quiet enough to listen. Prayer, meditation, meetings, and helping another alcoholic get me out of my own head and remind me that I don't have to understand everything in order to trust. Sometimes God isn't distant from me at all. Sometimes the noise of my own thinking simply makes it difficult for me to recognize that He is already there. I heard a question a long time ago in Sobriety, and it was How far away from the present are my thoughts taking me? And that question asks me to notice how rarely my mind is actually where my feet are. In sobriety, my thoughts can carry me years into the past, replaying mistakes, regrets, resentments, and moments I wish I could change. Just as quickly they can send me months or years into the future that hasn't happened, imagining problems, conversations, failures, and outcomes that may never come. Meanwhile, the only place where I can actually do anything right now is passing me by. And so, as the title of this reading suggests, I must learn. I must learn to keep my thoughts in the present, where my feet are. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of Sober Readings. If you'd like to send me your thoughts and your comments on today's reading, you can send me an email at sober readingswith at gmail.com. Also, there's another way. If you go to my website, sobereadings.com and scroll down, there's a short form that you can fill out that will send me an email. So I'd love to hear from you. And also, if you'd like to come on my program and talk about it as a guest, I'd love to have you. And so that's gonna do it for today's episode. 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. Keep coming back. Have a great day, everyone, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.