Latest / Sober Readings / Giving It Away
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Good morning everyone and welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Wednesday, the twenty sixth of August. My name is Scott. I am glad you're here with me today. Let's get started 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's reading from Daily Reflections Giving It Away. Though they knew they must help other alcoholics if they would remain sober, that motive became secondary. It was transcended by the happiness they found in giving themselves for others. And that's in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous page one hundred nine. Those words for me refer to a transference of power, through which God, as I understand him, enters my life. Through prayer and meditation I open channels, then I establish and improve my conscious contact with God. Through action I then receive the power I need to maintain my sobriety each day. By maintaining my spiritual condition, by giving away what has been so freely given to me, I am granted a daily reprieve. Today's reading from twenty-four hours a day, August twenty-sixth, AA thought for the day. If we are still clinging to something that we will not let go, we must sincerely ask God to help us to be willing to let even that go too. We cannot divide our lives into compartments and keep some for ourselves. We must give all the compartments to God. We must say, My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and And to my friends. And today's question is, Am I still clinging to something that I will not let go? And by the way, that is the seventh step prayer, where it starts with, My Creator, I'm now willing that you should have all of me. Today's meditation for the day. The laws of nature cannot be changed and must be obeyed if you are to stay healthy. No exceptions will be made in your case. Submit to the laws of nature or they will finally break you. And in the realm of the spirit, in all human relationships, submit to the moral laws and to the will of God. If you continue to break the laws of honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love, you would be broken to some extent yourself. The moral and spiritual laws of God, like the laws of nature, are unbreakable without some disaster. If you are dishonest, impure, Selfish and unloving, you will not be living according to the laws of the spirit, and you will suffer the consequences. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may submit to the laws of nature and to the laws of God. I pray that I may live in harmony with all the laws of life. And I have to say before I continue that that meditation for the day seems a little extreme for Alcoholics Anonymous, and I find that sometimes with the Hazeldin readings, is that sometimes they seem to go a little too far and they don't really match with the AA principles. But that's just my opinion. Let's move on to today's daily meditation from Touchstones. Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. And that is a quote from what seems to be a Russian name, which I am probably going to massacre here, but I'll give it a shot. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The primary requirement for our recovery is honesty. To grow in honesty, we first needed to see how we had lied to others and to ourselves. This was not as easy as it first appeared. Our lies to ourselves kept us so fully in the dark that we did not know we were lying. We sometimes told sincere lies because we honestly did not distinguish the truth within ourselves. For so long we had preferred dishonest rationalizations. And we had come to believe them. The spiritual life of this program is based on experience. What we feel, what we see, and hear is what we know. When we simplify our lives and base the truth on our experiences, we slowly cleanse ourselves of the lies we told ourselves. With this kind of honesty comes an inner peace with ourselves in which we can say, I know myself. Today I will accept my experience as a simple message of truth. And for today's final reading, we're gonna go to As Bill sees it, and remember we're back in the beginning of the book. This is chapter two, and it's called In God's Hands. When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned. And that's from page one hundred of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. My depression deepened unbearably, and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the very bottom of the pit. For the moment the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, If there is a God, let him show himself. I am ready to do anything. Anything. Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to me in the mind's eye that That I was on a mountain, and that a wind, not of air but of spirit, was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of presence, and I thought to myself, so this is the God of the preachers. And that's from AA Comes of Age, page 63. And that's gonna do it for today's readings. Thank you so much for listening. Hey, if you're interested in sponsorship, in how sponsorship works and how how it works to get a sponsee, how you should be a sponsor, all those questions and answers are answered in this pamphlet. It's called Questions and Answers on Sponsorship. And it's it comes from the AA General Service Conference. And I am gonna read that in its entirety in another episode. The next episode, actually, which should be airing today. So watch out for that. And so that's it for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you'd like to help me pass along the message, just click that like button and share this episode with someone you think might like it or need it. If you'd like to drop a dollar on the virtual donation basket for today's readings, just go to my website, soberreadings.com, scroll down a little bit, find that donate button. And I really appreciate it. So 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, everyone, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.