Thought for today: Another DA principle we practice is gratitude. Gratitude for the progress we’ve made in our personal recovery. Gratitude for the help and inspiration we’ve found in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Tools of DA. And, especially, gratitude for being able to give back as a sponsor. As a sponsor we share with someone […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Humility is an acquired taste. No one seeks it without exhausting the opposites of arrogance, haughtiness, pride, anger, fear… Practicing the 12 steps can lead to humility, to a place where we can have a spiritual awakening sufficient to replace our compulsion to live beyond our means. In the past we may […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Let’s consider the implications of what Step Twelve means by “…practice these principles in all our affairs”. What principles are we talking about? Honesty for one thing. Honesty with ourselves and others. Honesty in recognizing our need for reconciliation with God and our fellows. Honestly knowing that we need to change. We […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Whenever anyone shows up at meetings they seem to get exactly what they need. An old-timer will share their story and be reminded of what works. For perhaps the first time, a newcomer will hear a sane answer to the puzzling paradox of debt and living beyond their means. That’s how Step […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Without DA, a “spiritual awakening” might have eluded us. Being mired in debt and overcome with grave anxiety was the normal state for us. Not only have we found solvency, we have also found a faith that works, and a peace of mind in the face of debt. We deal with daily […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: In recovery we need God-consciousness to stay with us throughout the day. Our Higher Power buoys us, where we would likely sink otherwise. As we work with step 11, “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God this we understood Him,” we learn to still ourselves down, petition […]
Continue reading →Step Ten, “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it” helps keep us honest. In the steps before we honestly worked through our history in a process of “Awareness, Acceptance, Action”: – Awareness of our feelings; of our motives; of God’s will. (4 & 5) – Acceptance of who we […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: In step nine, “Made direct amends to such persons we had harmed wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others,” we complete a process that we began in step four, a path out of darkness into light. A member summarizes what we are doing: “In step four, we […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: We make a list of people we have harmed in step eight, and become willing to make amends to them all. Whether we actually make amends or not is irrelevant at this point. Our willingness is what matters in this step. We start by reviewing our fourth step, where we discovered our […]
Continue reading →Step eight is: Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. By now we should have identified our shortcomings and their impact in our lives. If we aren’t ready for this step, we can go back over the preceding steps (starting with step 1) to […]
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