Thoughts for the Day – Traditions

By | March 24, 2023
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A.A. Thoughts for the Day

Traditions

The Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous are a distillate of our experience of living and working together. They apply the spirit of the Twelve recovery Steps to our group life and security. They deal with the world outside and with each other; they state our attitudes toward power and prestige, toward property and money. They would save us from tempting alliances and major controversies; they would elevate principles far above personal ambitions. And as a token of this last, they request that we maintain personal anonymity before the open public as a protection to A.A. and as proof of the fact that our society intends to practice true humility.”
Bill W., The Language of the Heart, p. 96

Thought to Consider…
The reason they are called Principles is because they always work. If they didn’t always work we’d just call them “good ideas.” 

AACRONYMS

W I L L I N G
When I Live Life, I Need God

Just for Today

Growth
From “A Vision for You”:

So our fellow worker will soon have friends galore. Some of them may sink and perhaps never get up, but if our experience is a criterion, more than half of those approached will become fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous. When a few men in this city have found themselves, and have discovered the joy of helping others to face life again, there will be no stopping until everyone in that town has had his opportunity to recover if he can and will.”
2001 AAWS, Inc., Fourth Edition
Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 163 – 164

Daily Reflections

ACTIVE, NOT PASSIVE

Man is supposed to think, and act. He wasn’t made in God’s image to be an automaton.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 55

Before I joined A.A., I often did not think, and reacted to people and situations. When not reacting I acted in a mechanical fashion. After joining A.A., I started seeking daily guidance from a Power greater than myself, and learning to listen for that guidance. Then I began to make decisions and act on them, rather than react to them. The results have been constructive; I no longer allow others to make decisions for me and then criticize me for it.

Today -and every day – with a heart full of gratitude, and a desire for God’s will to be done through me, my life is worth sharing, especially with my fellow alcoholics! Above all, if I do not make a religion out of anything, even A.A., then I can be an open channel for God’s expression.
Copyright 1990
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS WORLD SERVICES, INC.

As Bill Sees It

WE Cannot Live Alone

All of A.A.’s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires; they all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than the Fifth. Scarcely any Step is more necessary to long-time sobriety and peace of mind. A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone with our pressing problems and the character defects which cause or aggravate them. If Step Four has revealed in stark relief those experiences we’d rather not remember, than the need to quit living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterday gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to somebody about them.”

We cannot wholly rely on friends to solve all our difficulties. A good adviser will never do all our thinking for us. He knows that each final choice must be ours. He will therefore help to eliminate fear, expediency, and self-deception, so enabling us to make choices which are loving, wise, and honest.”
1. TWELVE AND TWELVE, p. 55
2. GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961

Big Book Quote

Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that. It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. There you will find release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead.”
Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition
A Vision For You, p. 152

Twenty Four Hours a Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

Strength comes from honestly telling your own experiences with drinking. In religion, they call it confession. We call it witnessing or sharing. You give a personal witness, you share your past experiences, the troubles you got into, the hospitals, the jails, the break-up of your home, the money wasted, the debts, and all the foolish things you did when you were drinking. This personal witness lets out the things you had kept hidden, brings them out into the open, and you find release and strength. Am I receiving strength from my personal witnessing?

Meditation for the Day

We cannot fully understand the universe. The simple fact is that we cannot even define space or time. They are both boundless, in spite of all we can do to limit them. We live in a box of space and time, which we have manufactured by our own minds and on that depends all our so-called knowledge of the universe. The simple fact is that we can never know all things, nor are we made to know them. Much of our lives must be taken on faith.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that my faith may be based on my own experience of the power of God in my life. I pray that I may know this one thing above all else in the universe.
Hazelden Foundation PO Box 176 Center City, MN 55012

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