Tag Archives: Spirit on the A’s

N.A., Reflection, Spirit on the A's

Filling the Emptiness

Filling the emptiness

Page 269.
“We think that if we can just get enough food, enough sex, or enough money, we will be satisfied and everything will be alright.”

Basic Text, p.80.
In our addiction, we could never get enough drugs, or money, or sex, or anything else. Even too much was never enough! There was a spiritual emptiness inside us. Though we tried as hard as we could to fill that emptiness ourselves, we never succeeded. In the end, we realized that we lacked the power to fill it; it would take a Power greater than ourselves to do that.

Emptiness
Emptiness

So we stopped using, and we stopped trying to fill the emptiness in our gut with things. We turned to our Higher Power, asking for its care, strength, and direction. We surrendered and made way for that Power to begin the process of filling our inner void. We stopped grabbing things and started receiving the free gift of love our Higher Power had for us. Slowly, our inner emptiness was being filled.

Now that we’ve been given our Higher Power’s gift of love, what do we do with it? If we clasp that gift tightly to ourselves, we will smother it. We must remember that love grows only when it is shared. We can only keep this gift by freely giving it away. The world of addiction is a world of taking and being taken; the world of recovery is a world of giving and being given. In which world do we choose to live?

Just for Today: I choose to live in the fullness of recovery. I will celebrate my conscious contact with the God of my understanding by freely sharing with others that which has been freely shared with me.  – (c) 2015 NA World Services.

Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. – N.A. Twelve Steps.

Emptiness (Phir Suna).
Gajendra Verma.
performed by Rohan Rathore (2012).

Oh, love of mine
With a song and a whine
You’re harsh and divine
Like truths and a lie.

But the tale ends not here
I have nothing to fear
For my love is yell of giving and hold on.

If emotions have sound, that will be called music. This is the belief Gajendra Verma grew up with. Gajendra was born in a small town Sirsa in Haryana. He is blessed by a musical family and that is how music is imbibed in him.
During Gajendra’s journey through life he had his share of bittersweet experiences in the competitive world of Music, where every new tune is as precious as a pearl in the sea. Gajendra’s song “Emptiness” also known as “Tune mere jaana” got leaked on internet with a fake sympathetic story of a dying IIT student named Rohan Rathod and had instant liking by 3 million music lovers across the nation. This was followed by Gajendra going through the process claiming his right to the song. This became big news.

N.A., Reflection, Spirit on the A's

Bend with the Wind

Bend with the wind

Page 265.
“We learn to become flexible.. As new things are revealed, we feel renewed.”

Bend with the Wind Fred Rogers
Bend with the Wind Fred Rogers

Basic Text, p.102.
“Flexibility” was not a part of the vocabulary we used in our using days. We would become obsessed with the raw pleasure of our drugs and hardened to all the softer, subtler, more infinitely varied pleasures of the world around us. Our disease turned life itself into a constant threat of jails, institutions, and death, a threat against which we hardened ourselves all the more. In the end we became brittle. With the merest breath of life’s wind we crumbled at last, broken, defeated, with no choice but to surrender.

But the beautiful irony of recovery is that, in our surrender, we found the flexibility we had lost in our addiction, the very lack of which had defeated us. We regained the ability to bend in life’s breeze without breaking. When the wind blew, we felt its loving caress against our skin, where once we would have hardened ourselves as if against the onrush of a storm.

The winds of life blow new airs our way each moment, and with them new fragrances, new pleasures, varied, subtly different. As we bend with life’s wind, we feel and hear and touch and smell and taste all it has to offer us. And as new winds blow, we feel renewed.

Just for Today: Higher Power, help me bend with life’s wind and glory in its passing. Free me from rigidity.  – (c) 2015 NA World Services.

Blowin in the Wind
Bob Dylan (1962).
performed by Peter Paul and Mary

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

“Blowin in the Wind” poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war and freedom. The refrain “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind” has been described as “impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind”.

A.A., Reflection, Spirit on the A's

Bring the Message Home

Bring the Message Home

Can we bring the same Spirit of Love and Tolerance into our sometimes deranged family lives that we bring to our A.A. group? – TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp.111-12.

Practice Spirit of Love and Tolerance
Practice Spirit of Love and Tolerance

My family members suffer from the effects of my disease. Loving and accepting them as they are just as I love and accept A.A. members fosters a return of love, tolerance and harmony to my life. Using common courtesy and respecting others’ personal boundaries are necessary practices for all areas of my life. – Daily Reflections. © 1990 Alcoholics Anonymous A.A. World Services.

Acceptance is the Key to Serenity.

Turn Turn Turn
Pete Seeger (1965).
performed by The Byrds

To everything, turn, turn, turn.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born, a time to die.
A time to plant, a time to reap.
A time to kill, a time to heal.
A time to laugh, a time to weep.

To everything, turn, turn, turn.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to build up, a time to break down.
A time to dance, a time to mourn.
A time to cast away stones.
A time to gather stones together.

Pete Seeger wrote this song inspired by the Book of Ecclesiastes in the 1950s. The storyline in the Book of Ecclesiastes has moved many religious leaders as a contemplative inward self-reflecting theme. The Book of Ecclesiastes centers on King Solomon who relates to many experiences we may all relate to in life.

N.A., Reflection, Spirit on the A's

Freedom from Guilt

Freedom from guilt

Page 223. N.A. Big Book.

“Our addiction enslaved us. We were prisoners of our own mind and were condemned by our own guilt.”

N.A. Basic Text, p. 7.

Guilt is one of the most commonly encountered stumbling blocks in recovery. One of the more notorious forms of guilt is the self-loathing that results when we try to forgive ourselves but don’t feel forgiven.

Sorrow
Sorrow

How can we forgive ourselves so we feel it? First, we remember that guilt and failure are not links in an unbreakable chain. Honestly sharing with a sponsor and with other addicts shows this to be true. Often the result of such sharing is a more sensible awareness of the part we ourselves have played in our affairs. Sometimes we realize that our expectations have been too high. We increase our willingness to participate in the solutions rather than dwelling on the problems.

Somewhere along the way, we discover who we really are. We usually find that we are neither the totally perfect nor the totally imperfect beings we have imagined ourselves to be. We need not live up to or down to our illusions; we need only live in reality.

Just for Today: I am grateful for my assets and accept my liabilities. Through willingness and humility, I am freed to progress in my recovery and achieve freedom from guilt. – (c) 2015 NA World Services

Guilty
NewsBoys
God’s Not Dead

When did it become breaking a rule
To say Your name out loud in school
When Your name is the only one that sets us free
When did it become incorrect
To speak the truth about life and death
When Your life gave us all eternity.

Even if it gets me convicted
I’ll be on my knees with my hands lifted.

Spirit on the A's

Twelve Steps to Recovery

Twelve Steps to Recovery (in Generic Form).
– First Attributed to A.A. Alcoholics Anonymous, aa.org

Step 1

We admitted we were powerless over our addiction; that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step 2

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step 3

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

Step 4

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Step 5

Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 6

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Step 7

Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

Step 8

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step 10

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step 11

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step 12

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

– 12Step.org