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Aa reflections today12/30/2023 ![]() ![]() These judgments act as barometers of our own self-image. We need to be attentive to our judgments of others, be they verbalized in gossip or only savored in silence. Mingling our vulnerabilities secures our closeness. Gossip loses its appeal when we know we share a closeness already. Self-revelation strengthens our ties to the people we long to connect with. The program’s Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Steps guarantee that we’ll feel the closeness we long for when we work them. Knowing that we do belong fosters the inner warmth that accompanies security, well-being. We need a sense of belonging, every one of us: belonging to the neighborhood, belonging to the staff where we work, belonging to the group we call friends. We yearn to feel connection with someone, and gossip about another someone can draw two lonely people close. In our alienation from others, paranoia grips us. Women sometimes gossip when they want to get close to people.įeeling alone and lonely heightens our fears of inadequacy. Help me love them better.Īction for the Day: Today, I’ll catch myself when I start to judge others. Help me accept the people I love, faults and all. Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me to judge a little and love a lot. When we love someone, we don’t stand back. But we decide to trust or love someone, we have to stop judging. We should take a good look at the others person before we fall in love. We have to do this before we trust someone in business. We have to do this to choose people whose relationships will be good for us. We stand back and look at how their lives affect our sobriety. If I attend a meeting, I’ll show the same warmth and acceptance toward every person there.Īt times we need to make judgments about people’s behavior. I’ll face the day with a feeling of goodwill and acceptance in my dealings with every person I meet. Before we lash out at another person’s lack of honesty, we must take an honest look at our own motives and feelings. There are few, if any, times when a verbal assault can be justified. The best group setting for good recovery is always one that expresses warmth, acceptance, and understanding. If there is hostility in our words or manner, the other person will certainly sense it. Far from helping the person, we may be showing off. While we may be right in concluding that a person is not showing honesty, we have NO RIGHT to denounce or expose anyone in a group setting. Now and then, we’ve seen grumpy older members demanding that those who slip get honest. Sometimes this fuses into a hostility directed toward newcomers or chronic “slippers”. One of the pitfalls in continued recovery is the tendency to become self-righteous and judgmental. They keep me on the track of right acceptance they break up my compulsive themes of guilt, depression, rebellion, and pride and sometimes they endow me with the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. These fragments of prayer bring far more than mere comfort. When I am feeling depressed, I repeat to myself statements such as these: “Pain is the touchstone of progress.” “Fear no evil.” “This, too, will pass.” “This experience can be turned to benefit.” I pray that many souls may be helped through my efforts. I pray that I may be used by God to lighten many burdens. In my own gratitude, I will turn and help other alcoholics with the burden that is pressing too heavily upon them. My helping hand is needed to raise the helpless to courage, to strength, to faith, to health. Each day I will try to do something to lift another human being out of the sea of discouragement into which he or she has fallen. I will try not to let a day pass without reaching out an arm of love to someone. Do I want to be a uniquely useful person? Will I use my own greatest defeat and failure and sickness as a weapon to help others? We in Alcoholics Anonymous can be uniquely useful, just because we have the misfortune or fortune to be alcoholics ourselves. We can be used as a connection between an alcoholic’s need and God’s supply of strength. ![]() ![]() We who have learned to put our drink problem in God’s hands can help others to do so. I feel acceptance is love and love is God’s will for us. The most impressive thing to me was the feeling of acceptance from members who were practicing the Third Tradition by tolerating and accepting me. said in his tape on the Traditions that the Third Tradition is a charter for individual freedom. If there had been any physical, mental, moral, or religious requirements for membership, I would be dead today. I could not accept myself, my alcoholism, or a Higher Power. I first heard the short form of the Third Tradition in the Preamble. ![]()
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