More Recovery Readings - October

[bluidkiti]

October 5

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep. --May Sarton
"How can I do what you say," asked the child, "and still be me?"
"Look at me," said the tree. "I bend in the wind, droop in the rain. Yet I always remain myself, a tree."
"Look at me," said the man. "I can't change."
"Look at me," said the tree. "I change every season from green to brown to green again, from bud to flower to fallen leaf. Yet I always remain myself, a tree."
"I can't love anymore," said the woman. "With my love, I have given away all that I am."
"Look at me," said the tree. "There are robins in my branches, owls in my trunk, moss and ladybugs living on my bark. They may take what I have, but not what I am."
Whether we know it or not, we are like the tree. Only our pride hangs on to a false sense of self, wanting to keep everything, refusing to follow advice or orders. What we do doesn't matter; how we do it is what counts.
What changes have I gone through without losing my real self?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
Men are doomed to live in an overwhelmingly tragic and demonic world. --Ernest Becker
Life is difficult. We never reach the point where our path is free of obstacles and hardships. And regardless of how much we grow, how faithful we are to our program, nothing changes the fact that death is still there for us. As painful and hard as it is, life also is deeply meaningful and worthwhile when we submit to its reality and live in a spiritual way.
After we stop living in denial and accept the hard facts about life, we see that we need each other. We need relationships to stay sane. We need to pull together and support one another the way people do in difficult times. Rugged individualism isn't always good for real people in the real world. We need relationships so we can celebrate and make music and encourage one another. We need relationships so we can laugh and make jokes and tell our personal stories. And we need to stand together to oppose the destructive forces around us.
God help me learn to have relationships with my brothers and sisters.


You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Sometimes I think I'm the luckiest person in the world. There's nothing better than having work you really care about. Sometimes I think my greatest problem is lack of confidence. I'm scared, and I think that's healthy. --Jane Fonda
We each vacillate between feeling confident on some days, lucky on others, and yet frequently scared on others. It's very human to vacillate. We need not be anxious because our emotions refuse to stand still.
Changing emotions are part of the process of normal living. And changing emotions reflect an involvement with the moment. Situations do touch us, as they should. They do invite responses, as they should. And our responses will reveal our emotional involvement, as they should. We can cherish the variety of our emotions. They enrich us. But they may also create problems, if they go unchecked.
We need to maintain a balance. Confidence, certainly desirable, can become overconfidence and thus complacency. Confidence needs humility to temper it. Fear makes us cautious, and that's good; but too much can immobilize us. Being in charge of our emotions makes them work for us.
Emotions can energize me and keep me involved with the moment. They can also control me. It's my decision to be in charge.


You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Knowledge
Learn to let yourself be guided into truth.
We will know what we need to know, when we need to know that. We don't have to feel badly about taking our own time to reach our insights. We don't have to force insight or awareness before it's time.
Yes! Maybe the whole world saw a particular truth in our life, and we denied it - until we were ready to deal with it. That is our business, and our right! Our process is our own, and we will discover our truths at the right time, when we are ready, when the learning experience is complete.
The most growth-producing concept we can develop for others and ourselves is to allow ourselves to have our own process. We can give and receive support and encouragement while we go through this process. We can listen to others and say what we think. We can set boundaries and take care of ourselves, when needed. But we still give others and ourselves the right to grow at our own pace, without judgment, and with much trust that all is well and is on schedule.
When we are ready, when the time is right, and when our Higher Power is ready - we will know what we need to know.
Today, I will let myself and others have our own pace and time schedule for growth and change. I will trust that I will be empowered with insights and the tools for dealing with these insights, at the right time.


Today I will be aware not to judge myself when I feel less than perfect. I am beginning to love myself just as I am and that feels so nice. --Ruth Fishel

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Journey To The Heart
October 5
Spiritual Growth Can Be Easier Now

For so long, you thought that spiritual growth, healing, life had to be hard. And it was– for many reasons.

That’s no longer the case. Do you see the rose struggling and straining to grow? Do you see a tree pushing and forcing its growth? Your growth can unfold as naturally, as inevitably, as beautifully as the tender shoots of a rose break through first with green, then a bud, then a fully opened flower. You have committed to life, you have committed to growth, you have committed to opening your heart and taking the journey. That is enough.

The rest will be revealed to you in time. The answers will become clear. The visions, the guidance, the leadings you are seeking will come. All you need to guide you through life will come– quiet spiritual awakenings, quiet revelations that profoundly change your life. Each awakening will take you to the next place. Each will lead you home.

Don’t worry about what you have to do to achieve spiritual growth. Let yourself be. The growth will happen, and it will happen naturally and easily.

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more language of letting go
Take time to see it first

"Go over your skydive in your mind," my jump master taught me, when I first began learning to jump out of the plane. "Sit down by yourself and see yourself going through every movement from the time you get into the plane until you come back to earth."

Visualization has been a helpful tool to me in skydiving and in most areas of my life.

In the 1980s, Shakti Gawain wrote a best-seller, Creative Visualization. She talked about the powerful impact of using your mind to imagine yourself in some activity before actually doing it in reality.

Visualization has been a self-help tool that's been around even longer than that. Many people in all walks of life, from therapists to sports professionals, agree that seeing yourself doing it beforehand is the best way to do it well.

We can use the tool of visualization to help create matter out of spiritual energy, simply by spending quiet time during our meditation focusing on what we want, seeing ourselves having it, doing it, touching it, and feeling it. One woman told me she used visualization to help see herself letting go of a partner.

"I get quiet and I actually see myself living happily without the person I thought I had to have in my life," she said to me. "I get into the details of myself,too. How unencumbered I feel. How grateful I am for the lessons that person taught me. How I'm free of the burden of obsessing about this person. It really helps me let go."

Visualization is an important tool. It's a gift when we can see ourselves doing something and then having that activity manifested in reality.

Visualization only works if you use it. Make it a regular practice in your life.

Visualize yourself living with one of your dreams. Visualize yourself doing something you're nervous about doing. Take a few moments and run through the entire scenario in your head, until you can see yourself doing that thing calmly, clearly, and successfully with all obstacles cleared from your path.


God, help me use visualization as a regular tool in my life. Help me do my part in creating positive situations by taking the time first to see it, to visualize it.

Activity: Become an expert at visualization. Go to the library or bookstore and get a couple books on visualization. Then, read these books and begin applying the tool of visualization in your life.

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Habitual Anger
Unblocking the Ally

by Madisyn Taylor

Anger can easily become our go-to emotion; to remedy, start noticing when and why you get angry.

Sometimes when we feel anger, it is coming from a deep place that demands acknowledgment and expression. At these times, it is important that we find healthy ways to honor our anger, remembering how dangerous it is to repress it. However, anger can also become a habit, our go-to emotion whenever things go wrong. Often this is because, for whatever reason, we feel more comfortable expressing anger than we do other emotions, like sadness. It can also be that getting angry gives us the impression that we’ve done something about our problem. In these cases, our habitual anger is inhibiting both our ability to express our other emotions and to take action in our lives.

If it’s true that anger is functioning this way in your life, the first thing you might want to try is to notice when you get angry. You might begin to see a pattern of some kind. For example, you could notice that it is always your first response or that it comes up a lot in one particular situation. If the pattern doesn’t become clear right away, you could try keeping a journal about when you get angry and see if you can find any underlying meaning. The good thing about keeping a journal is that you can explore your anger more deeply in it—from examining who in your family of origin expressed a lot of anger to how you feel when you encounter anger in others. This kind of awareness can be a formidable agent of transformation.

Anger can be a powerful ally, since it is filled with energy that we can harness and use to create change in the world. It is one of the most cathartic emotions, and it can also be a very effective cleanser of the emotional system. However, when it becomes a habit, it actually loses its power to transform and becomes an obstacle to growth. Identifying the role anger plays in your life and restoring it to its proper function can bring new energy and expansiveness to your emotional life.

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A Day At A Time
October 5

Reflection For The Day

Soon after I came to The Program, I found a Higher Power whom I choose to call God. I’ve come to believe that He has all power; if I stay close to Him and do His work well, He provides me not with what I think I want, but with what I need. Gradually, I’m becoming less interested in myself and my little schemes; at the same time, I’m becoming more interested in seeing what I can contribute to others and to life. As I become more conscious of God’s presence, am I beginning to lose my self-centered fears?

Today I Pray

May I see that the single most evident change in myself — beyond my own inner sense of peace — is that I have come out from behind my phony castle walls, dropped the drawbridge that leads into my real village and crossed it. I am back among people again, interested in them, caring what happens to them. May I find my joy here in this peopled reality, now that I have left behind those old self protective fears and illusions of my own uniqueness.

Today I Will Remember

What is life without people?

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One More Day
October 5

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself.
– St. Francis de Sales

Life fine cheese, we wait, as we grow older, to ripen properly. We would like to hurry the process along, but haste won’t serve us well in the long run. We have learned to let others take their time to mature and to become responsible adults, but often when it comes to ourselves, we are quick to anger at our own mistakes. We frequently are not as forgiving of ourselves as we are of others.

Maturity arrives when we understand that some of the goals we thought were crucial are really unattainable, and that it really doesn’t matter. Maturity is a frame of mind where we learn to be pleased with what we can accomplish. We can find contentment in just living our days as best we can.

I recognize there is no magic moment when I will become a fully mature adult. Maturity is an attitude that conveys peace with myself.