[bluidkiti]

October 4

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
How easy the breath that kills a flame,
How hard to kindle that light again.
Cold words kill and kind words kindle,
By words withheld a dream may dwindle.
--Joan Walsh Anglund
How we treat the people we live with affects the happiness of our family. Just as a breath can blow out a flame, a mean remark can cast a shadow across a brother or sister's heart. People of all ages have left dreams behind because no one encouraged them. They are like candles snuffed out.
On the other hand, if we see a friend or family member feeling good about something they have done, we can learn to be happy for them. If we notice their excitement and encourage them with kind and sincere words, it will help their candle burn brighter. Sharing the happiness of others will make our own candles burn brighter, and it always feels good when we receive kind words ourselves.
In what ways can I bring light and warmth with my words today?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
You should not have your own idea when you listen to someone.... To have nothing in your mind is naturalness. Then you will understand what he says. --Shunryu Suzuki
A man who is mistrustful and self-centered has difficulty listening to someone else. Perhaps a woman we are close to wants to be understood by us. But we do not hear her on her own terms because we are so intensely involved with our own shame. So we react to our feelings of guilt rather than really hearing what she wants to say about her experience. Or we may be so worried about who has control that we fail to receive the information we are being given. Then we respond with "Yes, but..."
True learning comes - like true intimacy - when we have an open mind. As we detach ourselves, separate from our own ego, we hear the other person better and grow more intimate.
May I learn to set aside my own self-centeredness. Today, I will grow more if I set my ego aside when others are talking to me.


You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Ambiguity means admitting more than one response to a situation and allowing yourself to be aware of those contradictory responses. You may want something and fear it at the same time. You may find it both beautiful and ugly. --Tristine Rainer
Flexibility is a goal worth the striving. It eases our relations with others, and it stretches our realm of awareness. Letting go of rigid adherence to what our perceptions were yesterday assures us of heightened understanding of life's variables and lessons.
Being torn between two decisions, feeling ambivalent about them, need not create consternation, though it often does. Hopefully, it will encourage us to pray for direction, and then to be responsive to the guidance. And we must keep in mind that no decision is ever wrong. It may lead us astray for a time, but it will also introduce us to uncharted territories, which offer many opportunities for flexibility.
Contradictory responses, our own and also ours in relations with others, keep us on our toes, lend an element of excitement to our lives, and push us to think creatively about our perceptions. Growth and change are guaranteed.
I will be in tune with myself today. I will let my perceptions guide me.


You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Getting Through the Discomfort
Surrender to the pain. Then learn to surrender to the good. It's there and more is on the way. --Beyond Codependency
Our goal in recovery is to make us feel comfortable, peaceful, and content. Happy. We want to be at peace with our environment and ourselves. Sometimes, to do that, we need to be willing to face, feel, and get through discomfort.
I am not talking here about being addicted to misery and pain. I am not talking about creating unnecessary pain. I'm talking about the legitimate discomfort we sometimes need to feel as we heal.
When we have surgery, the pain hurts most the day after the operation. When we do the kind of work we are facing in recovery, we are doing an emotional, mental, and spiritual surgery on ourselves. We're removing parts of us that are infected and inflamed.
Sometimes the process hurts. We are strong enough to survive discomfort and temporary feelings of emotional pain. Once we are willing to face and feel our discomfort and pain, we are almost to the point of release.
Today, I am willing to face my discomfort, trusting that healing and release are on the other side. Help me, God; be open to feeling whatever I need to feel to be healed and healthy. While I am doing this, I will trust I am cared for and protected by my friends, my Higher Power, the Universe, and myself.


I choose to be in places and situations and with people where I feel good about myself. I deserve to feel good and I trust that my heart will tell me where to go. --Ruth Fishel

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Journey To The Heart
October 4
Let the Miracle of Acceptance Find You

I found this miracle in a small church in New Mexico. The Sanctuario do Chimayo is famous for its healing powers and miracles. The ground under the church, some say, is particularly holy and powerful. Crutches– evidence of the healing miracles people experienced there– line the walls of the church’s back room.

Four years ago, a friend had sent me to the Sanctuario to find my miracle. It was three months after my son died. I didn’t know what miracle could possibly fix my situation. Now, sitting in the back of the chapel, I knew. I didn’t have any crutches to hang on the wall, but the miracle of acceptance had healed my heart and changed my life.

We may search for miracles that change our situation so we don’t have to deal with the loss or feel the pain. Sometimes we get that miracle. Our circumstances change. But sometimes the miracle we get changes us. If the situation is too difficult, the loss to painful to accept in one leap, take smaller steps. Accept what you’re feeling today. Accept who you are today. Accept what you think today.

Look for your miracles. Hope for the best. But when you can’t change what you’re going through, let the simple, quiet, daily miracle of acceptance find you.

*****

more language of letting go
Value your dreams

I always wanted to be a writer. Long ago I talked to God about it, then asked God to bring it to pass if that dream was from Him. Or Her. Within twenty-four hours, I had my first writing assignment from a community newspaper. I got paid five dollars a story, and I've been writing ever since.

Sometimes, we get a vision of ourselves doing something. We might get an inkling or even have a dream where we see ourselves doing something in the future. We might get a feeling that we're about to become pregnant. Or we might have a dream in which we see ourselves moving into a new home. We might be driving by a neighborhood one day and get a special feeling that it would be right for us to live there.

We might get a hunch about a career-oriented event.

Some people think these little hunches or dreams are our soul's way of remembering what it came here to do.

We see a flash: a dream, vision, or special feeling of what's coming next. Maybe your dreams about what you want and what you'd like are more important than you think.


God, show me what you want me to do and experience in life. Then give me enough consciousness to relax and see what you're pointing out.

Activity: Have an I see page in your journal. As you go about the days ahead, pay special attention to the dreams that pop into your head. Nighttime dreams are important. It's good to write in your journal about those,too. Often they give us clues. But what I'm talking about here are our daytime dreams and feelings-- those things we think we want or can see ourselves doing. Have you buried any dreams from childhood or adulthood, things you really wanted to pursue but forgot along the way? Tell yourself it's time to remember. Then let it go. Pay attention to what pops up into sight. Write it down, even if it's just a sentence or two. Then let the dream go again. Don't try to control the future. It will happen of its own accord.

*****

Culling Out the Weeds
Mind Over Matter

The power of the mind is a curious thing, because it is so powerful yet so difficult to control sometimes.


The power of the mind is a curious thing, because it is so powerful yet so difficult to control sometimes. We find ourselves thinking a certain way, knowing that this thought may be creating trouble for us yet we find it difficult to stop. For example, many people have the experience of getting sick at the same time every year or every time they go on a plane. They may even be aware that their beliefs impact their experiences, so continue to think they will get sick and then they do.

Sometimes we need to get sick in order to process something or move something through our bodies. But often we get sick, or feel exhausted, because we don’t make the effort to galvanize the power of our minds in the service of our physical health, which is one of its most important functions. We really can use it to communicate to our bodies, yet we often regard the two as separate entities that have little to do with one another.

Knowing this, we have the power to create physical health and mental health, simply by paying attention to the tapes running in our minds. Once we hear ourselves, we have the option to let that tape keep running or to make a new recording. We harness the power of the mind in our defense when we choose supportive, healing words that foster good health and high spirits. All we need to do is remember to tend the field of our mind with the attentive and loving hand of a master gardener tending her flower beds, culling out the weeds so that the blossoms may come to fruition.

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A Day At A Time
October 4

Reflection For The Day

We are powerless over our addictions; that admission brought us to The Program, where we learn through unconditional surrender that there is victory in defeat. After a time, we learn in Twelfth Step work that we’re not only powerless over our own addiction, but over the addictions of others. We cannot will another person to sobriety, for example, any more than we can hold back the sunset. We may minister to another person’s physical needs; we may share with him, pray with him, and take him to meetings. But we cannot get inside his head and push some sort of magic button that will make him — or her — take the all-important First Step. Do I still sometimes try to play God?

Today I Pray

may I understand my all-too-human need to be the boss, have the upper hand, be the final authority — even in the humbling business of my own addiction. May I see how easy it would be to become a big-shot Twelfth Stepper. May I also see that, no matter how much I care and want to help, I have no control over another’s addiction — any more than someone else has control over mine.

Today I Will Remember

I cannot engineer another’s sobriety.

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One More Day
October 4

The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one’s own efforts.
– Albert Einstein

Too often we expect to have lives in which only happy events occur and no one is ever hurt. Instead of tears and sadness, we expect only happiness. In doing this, we do not face life realistically. By ignoring all the problems around us — our own and others’ as well — we skim the surface of life.

When we face reality, we begin our real journey. A life well lived is not one of constant happiness and joy. More often, it is the life as lived by someone who has known intense pain and extreme disappointment. Our negative experiences give us that opportunity to be strengthened within.

All my experiences give me a chance to grow.