N.A.

Just for Today

Daily Meditation
February 24, 2024
A new influence
Page 56
"Personality change was what we really needed. Change from self-destructive
patterns of life became necessary."
Basic Text, p. 15
In early life, most of us were capable of joy and wonder, of giving and receiving
unconditional love. When we started using, we introduced an influence into our lives
that slowly drove us away from those things. The further we were pushed down the
path of addiction, the further we withdrew from joy, wonder, and love.
That journey was not taken overnight. But however long it took, we arrived at the
doors of NA with more than just a drug problem. The influence of addiction had
warped our whole pattern of living beyond recognition.
The Twelve Steps work miracles, it's true, but not many of them are worked
overnight. Our disease slowly influenced our spiritual development for the worse.
Recovery introduces a new influence to our lives, a source of fellowship and spiritual
strength slowly impelling us into new, healthy patterns of living.
This change, of course, doesn't "just happen." But if we cooperate with the new
influence NA has brought to our lives, over time we will experience the personality
change we call recovery. The Twelve Steps provide us with a program for the kind
of cooperation required to restore joy, wonder, and love to our lives.

Just for Today: I will cooperate with the new influence of fellowship and spiritual
strength NA has introduced to my life, I will work the next step in my program.
Basic Text, p. 15
We reached a point in our lives where we felt like a lost cause. We had little worth to
family, friends or on the job. Many of us were unemployed and unemployable. Any
form of success was frightening and unfamiliar. We didn’t know what to do. As the
feeling of self-loathing grew, we needed our DOC more and more to mask our
feelings. We were sick and tired of pain and trouble. We were frightened and ran
from the fear. No matter how far we ran, we always carried fear with us. We were
hopeless, useless and lost. Failure had become our way of life and self-esteem was
non-existent. Perhaps the most painful feeling of all was the desperation. Isolation
and denial of our addiction kept us moving along this downhill path. Any hope of
getting better disappeared. Helplessness, emptiness and fear became our way of
life. We were complete failures. Personality change was what we really needed.
Change from self-destructive patterns of life became necessary. When we lied,
cheated or stole, we degraded ourselves in our own eyes. We had had enough of
self-destruction. We experienced our powerlessness. When nothing relieved our
paranoia and fear, we hit bottom and became ready to ask for help.
We were searching for an answer when we reached out and found the Fellowship.
We came to our first meeting in defeat and didn’t know what to expect. After sitting
in a meeting, or several meetings, we began to feel that people cared and were
willing to help. Although our minds told us that we would never make it, the people in
the Fellowship gave us hope by insisting that we could recover. We found that no
matter what our past thoughts or actions were, others had felt and done the same.
Surrounded by fellow addicts, we realized that we were not alone anymore.
Recovery is what happens in our meetings. Our lives are at stake. We found that by
putting recovery first, the program works. We faced three disturbing realizations:
1. We are powerless over addiction and our lives are unmanageable;
2. Although we are not responsible for our disease, we are responsible for our
recovery;
3. We can no longer blame people, places and things for our addiction. We must
face our problems and our feelings.
Alcoholics Anonymous
From the book Daily Reflections
A THANKFUL HEART
February 24
I try to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great
conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in
outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know.

AS BILL SEES IT, p. 37

My sponsor told me that I should be a grateful alcoholic and always have "an
attitude of gratitude"—that gratitude was the basic ingredient of humility, that
humility was the basic ingredient of anonymity and that "anonymity was the spiritual
foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before
personalities." As a result of this guidance, I start every morning on my knees,
thanking God for three things: I'm alive, I'm sober, and I'm a member of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Then I try to live an "attitude of gratitude" and thoroughly enjoy another
twenty-four hours of the A.A. way of life. A.A. is not something I joined; it's
something I live.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 37

A Full and Thankful Heart

One exercise that I practice is to try for a full inventory of my blessings and then for
a right acceptance of the many gifts that are mine -- both temporal and spiritual.
Here I try to achieve a state of joyful gratitude. When such a brand of gratitude is
repeatedly affirmed and pondered, it can finally displace the natural tendency to
congratulate myself on whatever progress I may have been enabled to make in
some areas of living.
I try to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great
conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in
outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know.
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962