A recent meeting topic was forgiveness. One of the members shared that it was hard for her to forgive her alcoholic mother. She loved her mother but had a hard time forgiving her and now needed to do so.

What I’ve learned is that I first need to forgive myself. Until I forgive myself for the things that I have done and my attitude, then I harbor resentment, guilt and contempt that poison my relationships with others. Working through my fourth step helped me realize how much anger, judgment and guilt I was carrying over in the decisions that I had…

from: BigHappyBuddha.com

November 26, 2008

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.       

~Rainer Maria Rilke

We live in such a diverse society in the USA (and most other Western countries) that we sometimes have difficulties coming to terms with the holiday season.  In my family alone are Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Atheists, Methodists, people who don’t know what they are (and don’t care) — and at least one Buddhist Agnostic.  I can extend that, by listing friends and acquaintances, to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Secular Humanists, a Quaker, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Episcopalians, and a bunch of recovering alcoholics who are too scared of what God might be thinking and won’t admit to any beliefs at all.

Thank goodness for…

My doctor’s office called Friday afternoon. Seems that I’m not just lazy after all! My thyroid test came back low, which explains a lot of the soul-crushing fatigue I’ve been feeling lately. I have an appointment to adjust my medication on Monday, and then there will be some waiting while my body catches up. But hopefully I’ll be feeling better sooner than later.

Something good has come out of this though. I’ve been forced to work on my boundaries, to enforce those limits that I’m always violating in the name of not making anyone around me unhappy.

My friend was over last…

When I was about eight or nine, I took my beloved uncle’s cigarettes away and started flushing them down the toilet. I didn’t want him to die prematurely (as he did anyway). Even as a child, I was sure that if I showed him how desperately I did not want him to kill himself, he’d stop. He never did. I wanted that change to somehow be within my power, yet it was completely out of my control. Sometimes death comes before change.

When I was trying to have children, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. And once I…

I love the sharp crack when I open a fresh can, the hiss of carbonation escaping, the ice cubes popping in my freshly poured drink.

Mmmmmm…sweet, sweet, Coca-Cola - my love for you is becoming a problem.

My whole family drinks Coke. It was always in the fridge growing up, in the cooler at the beach, with our burgers at McDonalds. My mom even gave it to us when we had upset stomachs - a treatment I practice to this day. In fact, I’m drinking a Coke right now.

Sure, I’ve given up Coke from time to time. Back when I used to…

A meeting topic this week focused on guilt. It seems to be something that rises up for various reasons and can drag us down if we let it. Guilt is defined as having remorse for having done something wrong. What is important is to decide to forgive ourselves by letting go of what others have done to us. Forgiveness is where healing occurs.

I know that it’s easy to slip into the feelings of guilt. But guilt is like almost all feelings, best just felt and let go. The danger for me comes when guilt turns into shame, the feeling that…

Step 7: Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings

I’ve been going through the process of working the 12 Steps around my own personal craziness, and last week, I reached the point where I was supposed to humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings. Whew! That has so many problematic words in it. I mean even if we forget about “shortcomings” (because, let’s face it, don’t most of us want to keep on keeping on with the ignoring in that department?), we have words like “God” and “ask” and “remove” and (trickiest of all) “humbly.”

I don’t know about you, but I…

One of the things that relatives of alcoholics do is put forth a happy face to the world that masks a mess underneath. I’ve always liked the saying that “Happiness is an inside job”. But one of the challenges in recovery is to understand how to go about fixing my inside so that I am able to feel the happiness that I know is buried within.

I’ve read something in one of the on line forums that it’s best to “live life, and allow happiness to find me”, as opposed to trying to pursue happiness. This is a lesson that is…

(photo from americanhistory.si.edu/collections/toolbox/machin.html)

My sponsor first told me about the God Box. I had never heard of this and at first it seemed like an idea that I would ignore. I have quite a few boxes around–antique ones mainly. I’ve always liked boxes and my recent purchase was a machinist’s chest from the late 1800’s. Anyway, someone had given me a small wicker box that was just sitting on the window seat in the master bedroom.

So when I was having a really bad day about six months ago, I wrote down a prayer for a friend and placed it in this…

One of the fundamental tools I learned early on in recovery was HONESTY. It is key to any healing, growth and recovery. As an active addict—I lied. I told white lies that I thought were harmless and I told major lies that I knew were destructive. I lied about little things and I lied about big things. I strung together a laundry line of lies that got so tangled by the end of it that I couldn’t tell fact from my created fiction. The lies were a part of keeping my addiction alive and kicking. The lies were built from…

I was watching the dogs playing yesterday and thought how they are really living in the moment. They are good examples of the Keep It Simple philosophy. They enjoy the simple things such as a good stick or a puddle of water. They hardly ever are irritable and if they are, they deliver a swift message that doesn’t have any double meanings. They are happy for their biscuits and kibble One Day at a Time. The dogs aren’t worried about whether they are going to be fed tomorrow or whether they are going to be brushed tomorrow. They just enjoy…

My friend hooked me up with some friends of hers who do this thing they call The Abundance. Every Friday, they get the culled items from one of the local organic-produce delivery companies, and they set all these awesome veggies out in boxes on the side of their house, send out a text message and it’s free for the taking.

I went for the first time a few weeks ago. There were boxes of little potatoes, big green leeks, leafy Swiss chard, peppers, onions, grapes and my favorite apples - Jona Golds. It was like an awesome, free farmers market, and…

Thanks to Barbara O’Brien:

“Hungry ghosts are pitiable creatures. They have huge, empty stomachs, but their mouths are too small and their necks too thin to take in food. Sometimes they breath fire; sometimes what food they do eat turns to ash in their mouths. They are doomed to live with incessant craving.

The Hungry Ghost Realm is one of the Six Realms of Samsara, into which beings are reborn. Understood as a psychological rather than a physical state, hungry ghosts might be thought of as people with addictions, compulsions and obsessions. Greed and jealousy lead to a life as a hungry…

When people see some things as beautiful,

other things become ugly.

When people see some things as good,

other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.

Difficult and easy support each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low depend on each other.

Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master

acts without doing anything

and teaches without saying anything.

Things arise and she lets them come;

things disappear and she lets them go.

She has but doesn’t possess,

acts but doesn’t expect.

When her work is done, she forgets it.

That is why it lasts forever.

Since I’m spending the evening in bed nursing a sinus infection, and the pressure in my…

I’ll be sharing these great little gifts I get every morning. Hope they inspire.

Your Humble Road Warrior

www.gratefulness.org
WORD FOR THE DAY
Tuesday, Oct. 28

Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you.

A life practice from Br. David Steindl-Rast

The new, slow pace of my life has changed my focus and deepened my appreciation for all the clear, simple moments which I arrive at each day. The carpet of new-fallen leaves covering the path in the park, a hug from my daughter at the bus stop, her face in the window as the bus pulls away around the corner, the flurry of finches wings in the Japanese maple tree in our back yard.

Tonight I saved my energy to cook for my family. I’ve been getting better at the kind of cooking where you wing it - fixing a tasty…