Latest / Sober Readings / An Individual Adventure
Transcript
- 11 8Reading: Welcome back to Sober Readings, everyone. Today is Sunday, the 8th of November. My name is Scott, and I'm so glad you joined me for today's readings. We're gonna read Daily Reflections 24 hours and as Bill sees it, but 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 wisdom to know the difference. Today from Daily Reflections, it's titled An Individual Adventure. It's all about meditation and prayer. Meditation is something which can always be further developed. It has no boundaries, either of width or height. Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way. And that comes from the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. And there's only one line in this bottom paragraph that I'm gonna read because it really sums up the idea of today's reading. Daily meditation and prayer strengthen and renew my source of well-being. And so for me, daily prayer and meditation help me strengthen and renew the spiritual foundation that my sobriety depends on. Just as my body needs exercise and food and rest to stay healthy, my spiritual well-being needs daily attention. Through prayer I can turn to God for guidance and strength and the willingness to do His will rather than my own. Through meditation, I can quiet the noise in my head, listen, and find the peace and serenity that are so important to my recovery. Life has a way of draining us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and if I'm not careful, I can find myself running on empty. But one of the most important parts of prayer and meditation is consistency. I can't expect to develop a strong spiritual connection if I only turn to God when things are going wrong or when I need something, which is called a foxhole prayer. It's something I need to practice every day, especially on the days when life is going well. Just like physical fitness, spiritual fitness doesn't happen overnight. It takes discipline, commitment, and a daily practice. Some days I may feel a powerful connection with my HP. And other days I may not feel much of anything, but that doesn't mean that the practice isn't working. What matters is that I keep showing up. When I make prayer and meditation a consistent part of my daily routine, I'm reconnecting with my HP and replenishing that source of strength within me. It doesn't mean my problems disappear, but it does mean I'm better prepared to face them with patience and acceptance and faith. And like everything else in sobriety. It's something I need to practice one day at a time. Let's get to today's reading from 24 hours. I have lost much of my inferiority complex. I was always trying to escape from life. I didn't want to face reality. I was full of self-pity. I was constantly sorry for myself. I tried to avoid all responsibility. And I'll go to the last couple sentences in that paragraph. It says, AA showed me how to get over my feeling of inferiority. It made me want to accept responsibility again. And in today's meditation for the day, one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press onward toward the goal. And I'll skip down to the bottom of this paragraph. We can wipe clean the slate of the past. We can start today with a clean slate and go forward with confidence toward the goal that has been set before us. And in today's prayer for the day, I'm praying that I may drop off the load of the past. And there's a piece of sober literature, a book that I really recommend. It's called Drop the Rock. If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend it. And what that phrase means, it r well, it reminds me that so much of the weight I've carried through life has been of my own making. That rock represents the things like resentments and anger, fear, guilt, shame, selfishness. And the character defects that have held me back for so long. For years I carried these things around, sometimes without even realizing how heavy they had become. And the crazy part is that I was often the one refusing to let them go. I held on to resentments because I thought I was justified in being angry. I held on to guilt and shame because I couldn't forgive myself for my past. But recovery has taught me that I don't have to keep carrying all that baggage. Through the steps and prayer and meditation and a willingness to let my HP help me change, I can begin to put those burdens down. Dropping the rock doesn't mean forgetting the past, avoiding responsibility, or pretending that nothing happened. It means learning from my mistakes, making amends where I can, and letting go of the things that no longer serve me. And sometimes I have to make that decision over and over again. Because I have a habit of picking that rock right back up. But every time I choose to let go, I make a little more room in my life for peace and serenity and humility and the freedom that comes with sobriety. And last but not least for today, let's go to As Bill Sees It. This one's titled Out of Defeat Strength. If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol. And that line comes from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Such is the paradox of AA regeneration, strength arising out of complete defeat and weakness, the loss of one's old life as a condition for finding a new one. And those lines come from AA comes of age. So I want to talk about this paradox that they mention in Alcoholics Anonymous, the idea of regeneration, that strength can actually come from complete defeat. And for so many years I thought that being strong meant being in control and handling everything myself and never admitting weakness. But alcoholism brought me to a place where I had to admit that I was powerless, that my way of living wasn't working, and that I couldn't do this on my own. And strangely enough. That moment of complete surrender became the beginning of my greatest strength. It's a lot like the Phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from the ashes of its own destruction, reborn into something new. And in many ways, that's what recovery has done for me, because the person I was had to be broken down before I could begin rebuilding a better version of myself. Through the twelve steps and my HP and the fellowship of AA. I've discovered a strength I never knew I had. And that strength doesn't come from pride or ego or trying to control everything around me. It comes from humility and honesty and faith and willingness to change. So my lowest moments didn't have to be the end of my story. They be they actually became the foundation for a new beginning. And that's the miracle of recovery. Sometimes we have to admit complete defeat. Before we can experience real victory. And so that's it for today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you so much for listening. I hope something I read today, or maybe something I said today, will help you along in your journey. If you'd like to be a guest on Sober Readings and share your experience, strength, and hope, or you can pick a reading that we can talk about, just scroll down in the show notes and find the link to my email. Which happens to be soberreadings with Scott at gmail.com. Also, you'll find a link in the show notes to my website, soberreadings.com, where you can learn more about sober readings, you can learn more about me, you can stay connected to the show. And if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, stay on that website, click on the support page, and scroll down and find the button that says drop a dollar in the basket. And also, if you like sober readings and you'd like to help support the show, subscribe to the show, subscribe to this podcast, and give this episode a like because it really helps people find the show and it helps my ratings. And that's a great way of doing service and sharing or passing along this message. So thanks for spending a few minutes of your day with me. Be good to yourselves, be good to others, and remember, we only have to do this one day at a time. So just for today, don't drink. Go to a meeting and keep coming back. Have a great day, everyone, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.