[bluidkiti]

October 17

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
Fear makes strangers of people who should be friends. --Shirley MacLaine
No one is brave every moment; each of us feels awkward, shy, perhaps even ugly or dumb part of the time. If we could understand that about each other, it would make it easier for us to be friendly and willing to talk to someone new. Instead, we often sit back, waiting to be noticed; waiting for someone to invite us to join in an activity.
We are all so much alike, yet we are so certain we're different. Being self-conscious is normal. Even those who are the most popular suffer the same fears as the rest of us. The better we understand the ways we are the same, the easier it will be to make friends with someone new. And it's through friends that we grow and are strengthened for whatever lies ahead.
What new person can I offer friendship to today?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
I never suspected that I would have to learn how to live - that there were specific disciplines and ways of seeing the world I had to master before I could awaken to a simple happy, uncomplicated life. --Dan Millman
Wisdom begins in seeing how much we do not know. Sometimes it's a painful blow to our egos to face what we still have to learn. Many of us have believed we know how to live. Yet, when we look at our lives, we see something has been missing. When we continue to have great stress, when we haven't made progress in simplifying our lives, when our lives seem full of crises - perhaps then it is time to open ourselves to some new learning.
We can talk to sponsors and get ideas from group members. Perhaps they have noticed our blind spots and will tell us if asked. Expressing our problems in specific ways may point us to new learning. Our program teaches us twelve specific disciplines for our growth. We need to return to them again and again. We can always ask ourselves, "What Step am I working on at this time?" We may need to learn new ways to work on a specific Step.
I will turn to my fellow group members and focus on one Step for my growth today.


You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Pride, we are told, my children, "goeth before a fall" and oh, the pride was there, and so the fall was not far away.
--Wilhelmina Kemp Johnstone
Requesting help. Admitting we are wrong. Owning our mistake in either a big or small matter. Asking for another chance or someone's love. All very difficult to do, and yet necessary if we are to grow. The difficulty is our pride, the big ego. We think, "We need to always be right. If we're wrong, then others may think less of us, look down on us, and question our worth." Perfectionism versus worthlessness.
If we are not perfect (and of course we never are), then we must be worthless. In between these two points on the scale is "being human." Our emotional growth, as women, is equal to how readily we accept our humanness, how able we are to be wrong. With humility comes a softness that smoothes our every experience, our every relationship. Pride makes us hard, keeps us hard, keeps others away, and sets us up for the fall.
I will let myself be human today. It will soften my vision of life.


You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Feelings and Surrender
Surrendering is a highly personal and spiritual experience.
Surrender is not something we can do in our heads. It is not something we can force or control by willpower. It is something we experience.
Acceptance, or surrender, is not a tidy package. Often, it is a package full of hard feelings - anger, rage, and sadness, followed by release and relief. As we surrender, we experience our frustration and anger at God, at other people, at ourselves, and at life. Then we come to the core of the pain and sadness, the heavy emotional burden inside that must come out before we can feel good. Often, these emotions are connected to healing and release at a deep level.
Surrender sets the wheels in motion. Our fear and anxiety about the future are released when we surrender.
We are protected. We are guided. Good things have been planned. The next step is now being taken. Surrender is the process that allows us to move forward. It is how our Higher Power moves us forward. Trust in the rightness of timing, and the freedom at the other end, as you struggle humanly through this spiritual experience.
I will be open to the process of surrender in my life. I will allow myself all the awkward and potent emotions that must be released.


Today I look to my Higher Power for strength, courage and direction. I gather my own strength and confidence from all possible resources and follow my own inner voice. --Ruth Fishel

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Journey To The Heart
October 17
Feeling Overwhelmed Is a Trap

Feeling overwhelmed is a trap, a tricky one at that. When we’re overwhelmed, we see all that needs to be done and say, That’s too much. I can’t do it. So instead, I shall do nothing. Feeling overwhelmed occurs when we say, I am already too busy so I can’t do that and now all is pressing in on me and I can’t do anything. And the acts that are ours to do keep piling up and pulling on us. And we keep resisting. And stress and pressure build up.

Feeling overwhelmed leads to feeling stuck, and both are an illusion. How simple those things that overwhelm us actually become when we release the feeling and return to the rhythm of our lives. When we say, Yes, I need to make that phone call, do that task. How simple the task becomes, how simple life becomes.

What’s bothering you that needs to be done? What’s pulling on you? What’s causing you to feel overwhelmed and maybe stuck, too? Make a list. Put your list aside, and begin by taking one simple action. Then watch as life unfolds. One act at a time, one thing at a time, all that needs to be done will get done. The stress will disappear, and you’ll feel back on track.

You’ll be given the ability, power, and guidance to do all that is on your path to do. Begin simply, quietly, by acknowledging feeling overwhelmed. Denying the pull of life and its tasks doesn’t remove stress, it compounds it.

Surrendering to the simple truths, even the simple truth of what we’re really feeling, will always set us free.

*****

more language of letting go
The beauty is easy to see

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

One lesson road trips have taught me is that while it's good to have a destination, it's good to see what the trip has to offer rather than waiting for it to bring us what we expected.

Recently, a friend and I made a trip to Santuario de Chimayo to visit the church and bring home some of the healing dust from the sacred place. Along the way, we planned to pass through other beautiful places in the Southwest, a spiritual pilgrimage we thought. We left the house ready to be enlightened. But something happened. In the hot Arizona air, we stopped letting the trip happen and started looking for a specific experience. The Indian ruins were overrun with tourist groups, and the beautiful red rock vortex center had been reduced to strip malls and time-share condos. Or spiritual quest had yielded nothing but disappointment so far. We felt antsy, irritable, and let down.

Then we saw the sign Meteor Crater road next right. We turned down that road, giving in to the cheesy kitsch of the trip. A mile wide and over five hundred feet deep the crater was left over fifty thousand years ago in the middle of what is now the Arizona desert. A man bought the land and he and his family became meteor experts-- marketing experts as well since they now charge ten dollars to see a big hole in the ground. Nice enough folks though, and we smiled for the first time on the trip.

I'd always wanted to see the Petrified Forest, Though I feared that once again the hype would overpower the reality of what it was. It didn't. The giant log-turned-to-stone were scarce but the place had a powerful timelessness to it. The sky was pastel blue. I lay on a giant wave of sand while Chip ran around taking pictures that would end up overexposed.

Later that evening we crossed the border into New Mexico. Chelle's-- a nice place to eat read the sign on the side of a building in Gallup. And it was nice, just like the sign said.

We can search for joy and enlightenment so frantically that we don't see the brilliance at our own feet. Sometimes in the search for enlightenment, it helps to remember to lighten up. To paraphrase Winnie the Pooh, if you're looking for enlightenment and only find the ordinary, then try looking at the ordinary and let it be what it is. You might then find something you weren't looking for, which might be just what you were looking for when you began.

Don't let your hopes and expectations be so high that you miss the beauty in what is. Joy and enlightenment, after all, aren't that hard to see.

God, help me let go of my expectations and delight in what is.

*****

Apologies
Empowered Forgiveness

by Madisyn Taylor

If we can remember that our response to others is important, we can realize that trust and forgiveness go hand in hand.


In life there will always be times when we are affected by the actions of another person. When this happens, we often receive an apology. More often than not we say, “It’s alright,” or “ It’s okay,” and by saying this we are allowing, accepting, and giving permission for the behavior to happen again. When we say “thank you,” or “I accept your apology,” we are forced to sit in our feelings rather than ignore them.

There are many of us who feel that it is easier to brush off how we really feel than to express our discomfort with something that has happened to us. While this may initially seem like the best thing to do, what it really does is put us into an unending pattern of behavior; since we are not honest with another person, we continue the cycle of letting them overstep our emotional limits time and time again. By doing this we place ourselves in the position of victim. We can put an end to this karmic chain by first acknowledging to the other person that we accept their request for forgiveness; often a simple “thank you” is enough. To truly create a greater sense of harmony in our relationship, however, we need to gently, and with compassion, express our innermost concerns about what has transpired. By taking a deep breath and calling upon the deepest parts of our spirit, we can usually find the right words to say and verbalize them in a way that lets the other person recognize the consequences of what they have done.

If we can remember that our response to others is important, we can begin to realize that trust and forgiveness go hand in hand. And when we react in a way that engenders a greater amount of honesty and candor, we will establish a more positive and empowering way of being and interacting others. Published with permission from Daily OM

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A Day At A Time
October 17

Reflection For The Day

Now that we’re sober and living in reality, it’s sometimes difficult to see ourselves as others see us and, in the process, determine how much progress we’ve made in recovery. In the old days, the back-of-the-bar mirror presented us with a distorted and illusory view of ourselves; the way we imagined ourselves to be and the way we imagined ourselves to appear in the eyes of others. A good way for me to measure my progress today is imply to look about me at my friends in The Program. As I witness the miracle of their recoveries, I realize that I’m part of the same miracle — and will remain so as long as I’m willing. Am I grateful for reality and the Divine miracle of my recovery?

Today I Pray

May god keep my eyes open for miracles — those marvelous changes that have taken place in my own life and in the lives of my friends in the group. May I ask no other measurement of progress than a smile I can honestly mean and a clear eye and a mind that can, at last, touch reality. May my own joy be my answer to my question. “How am I doing?”

today I Will Remember

Miracles measure our progress: Who needs more?

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One More Day
October 17

Maturity: among other things — not to hide one’s strength out of fear and consequently live below one’s best.
– Dag Hammarskjold

The fear of being different is a powerful force in our lives, especially in the early times after a chronic illness is diagnosed. We fear being recognized as a victim of an illness, and we become afraid of any recognition at all.

We don’t want to live with this unreasonable fear, and we begin to understand that healthy thinking requires us to develop and use our many strengths. We stop denying and start accepting. The voice of our individuality begins to speak, loudly and clearly, and we answer with definitive action. We start to face our problems, to accept the ways in which we differ from others, and to rejoice in our strengths.

I won’t hid my strengths, for they are the means to life at its best.