THE SPIRITUAL GROWTH MEASURING CUP – “Many of us use spiritual principles as a power greater than ourselves.” “This makes sense to us. Because we have tried many times to think ourselves into a better way of life. Trying it the other way. Practicing a better way of life by living according to spiritual principles, will eventually have an effect on our thinking.” (It Works, How & Why, p. 15) “The real spiritual progress of the aspirant is measured by the extent to which he achieves inner tranquility.” – Swami Sivananda (1887 – 1963) Hindu spiritual teacher
In what ways have you determined that you’re making spiritual progress, lately?
Outer Calm = Inner Tranquility
By Rivka Caroline
“You shall dwell in sukkot seven days, every citizen in Israel shall dwell in sukkot, so that your descendants shall know that in sukkot I caused the Children of Israel to dwell when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. (Leviticus 23:42–43)
For eight days we camp out in a sukkah. We eat there, we drink there, and we hang out there.
Here’s the funny part: The comforts of home are left inside the house, while we live life outside in a very basic, über-simple structure.
There are plenty of spiritual reasons as to why we make and dwell in a sukkah. I also think we might be onto something for those of us still living in cluttered homes (with its counterpart of cluttered thinking).
What is in a sukkah, exactly? Table, chairs, shared meals, guests, and great The comforts of home are left inside the house conversation. There is something very liberating about having a really bare-bones setup. No ornate lamps, no china closet, no piles of unopened mail. It’s the quintessential example of how the best things in life aren’t things.
The sukkah serves as a reminder of how temporal stuff really is. When we dwell outside in the simple, bare-walled sukkah, we look up at the star-filled sky through the sechach above and have a deeper realization of our dependence on G‑d. What a fabulous wake-up call to reprioritize our lives and make time and space for what really counts.” (https://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/2306039/jewish/Outer-Calm-Inner-Tranquility.htm)
MAKING PEACE AND HARMONY – “In the previous steps, we began to make peace with our Higher Power and with ourselves. In the Eighth Step, we begin the process
of making peace with others.” (It Works, & Why, p. 54)
“Shall I not inform you of a better act than fasting, alms, and prayers? Making peace between one another: enmity and malice tear up heavenly rewards by the roots.” The Prophet Muhammad (570 – 632) founder of Islam
How have you lived in peace and harmony with others, lately?
The Flowers from The Moon :
High in the mountains lived a prince whose great wish was to journey to the moon, because he loved its gentle glow. His dream finally came true. When he reached the moon, he discovered its light comes from the moon king’s beautiful daughter.
The two young people soon fell in love, but the worlds they came from were very different and soon they had to part. As a sign of her great love, the moon king’s daughter gave the prince one of the smooth and lovely flowers that covered the moon like snow and this was how the first alpine flower was brought to earth.
THE HEART OF THE N.A. WAY – “We begin by asking for help and trying out recommendations of people at the meetings. … In time we learn to pass on what we have been given.” “[I]t is the heart of the N.A. way of recovery from addiction – one addict helping another.” (The Basic Text, p.57)
“That change we seek … it can not happen without you. … [W]ithout a new spirit of service – a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolve to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.” (The Basic Text, p.57) – Barak Obama (1961 – ) U.S. Pres.-elect, 11/04/08 Victory speech in Chicago, IL
What have you done lately to help your fellow man and replenish your spirit with love?
Heart of The Monkey :
There grew a big tree on the seashore. Half of its branches were over the land and the other half over the water. A little Monkey lived in the tree. He played in the branches all day and when he was hungry, he ate the sweet fruit that grew in the tree. Now, in the sea there lived a Shark. One day the Monkey threw some of the fruit into the sea. The Shark ate it up. From that day on the Shark and the Monkey were friends and the Shark asked the monkey to throw some fruit down to him every day.
“Thank you, friend Monkey,” said the Shark, “I have only fish to eat in the sea and I like your fruit very much.”
The Monkey was happy to be a friend of the Shark and threw fruit into the sea every morning. Once, the Shark said to the Monkey, “You are so good to me that I want to do something good for you.”
The Monkey looked down at the Shark and listened. The Shark said, “I want to show you my home. You will meet my brothers and sisters. You are so good to me that I think they will like you.”
The Monkey thought a minute and said, “No, I don’t want to go. Thank you. I am afraid of cold water. And I cannot swim. I shall be happier if I stay in my tree.”
…
“Oh, no, no!” said the Shark. “Don’t be afraid! Come with me. I shall carry you to my home on my back. I shall not swim very quickly.”
The Monkey thought, “The day is very hot. It will be nice on the water. I think I’ll go.”
So the Monkey sat down on the Shark’s back. And they went off.
At first the Monkey did not like going on the Shark’s back, because the Shark swam very quickly. But soon he liked it and looked at the new places and at the fish in the water. It was so interesting!
“Do you like the sea?” asked the Shark. “Is the sea better than your forest?”
“Yes, it is. How far must we go?” asked the Monkey.
“It is not very far,” the Shark answered. “And now I must tell you something. Our chief, the biggest shark in the sea, is very ill. Our doctor said to him, ‘You must eat a monkey’s heart. Then you will be well again.’
So I am taking you to him and I am telling it to you, because you are my friend.”
The poor Monkey was ready to cry. But he did not cry. The Monkey thought of a plan to save himself. Then he said, “How silly you are! Why didn’t you tell me that before? I have no heart with me. It is at home, in the branches of a big tree. We Monkeys always hide our hearts in the branches of big trees in the daytime. We take out hearts only at night. What will you do if your chief finds that I have no heart? How angry he will be? I am ready to give my heart to your chief, because I am your friend. But how can I do that when I have no heart with me?”
…
The Shark asked the Monkey, “If I take you back to your tree, will you go and get your heart?”
“Of course, I will. And let us go quickly. Your dear chief must not wait!”
The Shark with the Monkey swam back very quickly. They came again to the big tree. The Monkey climbed up the tree saying, “Wait for me! Wait for me! I’ll take my heart!”
But the monkey did not come back. The Shark was swimming and swimming in the water under the tree. Then he shouted, “Friend Monkey, where are you?”
There was no answer. The Shark thought, “I am afraid he can’t find the heart in the branches!”
The Shark waited and waited for the Monkey. Then he shouted again, “Monkey? Monkey? When will you come back to me?”
Again there was no answer. Then the Monkey began to laugh.
“Do you think I am a fool?” asked the little Monkey. “Do you think I want to give my heart to your big bad chief and then die?”
“But you said your heart was in the branches of the tree,” said the silly Shark.
“My heart is in its place in my body. It is always there!” shouted the Monkey. “And you go away! We are not friends any more!”
And with these words the clever Monkey threw a big rotten fruit on the Shark’s nose.” (http://www.english-for-students.com/Heart-of-The-Monkey.html)
Acting Upon our Spiritual Principals- “To a degree, he has done this when taking a moral inventory, but now the time has come when he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt and in what ways.” (12 & 12, p. 77)
A CLEARER PICTURE OF THE HARM WE’VE CAUSED –
“By making our list, we can no longer deny that we caused harm. We admit that we hurt others, directly or indirectly, through some action, lie, broken promise, or neglect.” (The Basic Text, p. 38)
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) British economist/philosopher
TAKE ACTION TODAY – ” … we simply try to live this program in the here and now. We find joy as we start to learn how to live by the principles … needed to carry the message of recovery.” “Spiritually refreshed we are glad to be alive.” (The Basic Text, p. 52)
“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) U.S. poet
How do you take action to live according to your own spiritual ideal, lately?
How We Used to Take Action and VOTE –
On the morning of November 2, 1859 —Election Day— George Kyle, a merchant with the Baltimore firm of Dinsmore & Kyle, left his house with a bundle of ballots tucked under his arm. Kyle was a Democrat. As he neared the polls in the city’s Fifteenth Ward, which was heavily dominated by the American Party, a ruffian tried to snatch his ballots. Kyle dodged and wheeled, and heard a cry: his brother, just behind him, had been struck.
…
Next, someone clobbered Kyle, who drew a knife, but didn’t have a chance to use it. “I felt a pistol put to my head,” he said. Grazed by a bullet, he fell. When he rose, he drew his own pistol, hidden in his pocket. He spied his brother lying in the street. Someone else fired a shot, hitting Kyle in the arm. A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds.
…
The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party’s Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis’s victory was upheld on the ground that any “man of ordinary courage” could have made his way to the polls. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/13/rock-paper-scissors)
WE DIVE WITHIN TO FEED THE HIGHER SELF – “As we have seen, self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures.” “We will want the good that is in us all, even in the worst of us, to flower and to grow.” (12 & 12, p. 52)
“He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” – Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC) Greek tragic dramatist
How has your sense of self-searching gratitude made you feel spiritually relieved, lately?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32qIyKx8QI
The Lion and The Grateful Mouse :
A lion was preparing to eat a mouse it had just caught.
‘Let me go,’ the mouse begged him, ‘sooner or later you may need my help.’
The king of the forest found this idea so ridiculous that he laughed aloud, but he let the little mouse go anyway.
Some time later, the lion was trapped in a net which had been set down by the hunters. Then along came the mouse that chewed the netting and freed him.
‘As you can see,’ said the mouse, ‘even the mighty sometimes need the help of the weak.’ (http://www.english-for-students.com/The-Lion-and-The-Grateful-Mouse.html)
“When you burn a bridge sometimes — it doesn’t matter if it’s a significant player on a team, especially a significant player like Kobe — you might say let bygones be bygones, (but) there’s always that underlying, ‘Oh, you talked about me.’ Me personally, I don’t think it’ll work out. But who knows? Crazier things have happened.” – Robert Horry (1970 – ) U.S. Laker star basketball player
“We want to be proud of ourselves and feel at peace with our behavior, yet we are increasingly embarrassed at what we find ourselves saying and doing. These actions, attitudes and habits do not reflect the person we are striving to become.”(How Al Anon Works,p. 55) “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.” – Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) English novelist and social commentator
When has pride and vanity prevented you from doing what you know to be right, lately?
A Poem for Pulse
BY JAMESON FITZPATRICK
Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?
I don’t think it’s going anywhere any time soon, I said,
though the crowd was slow for a Saturday,
and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go?
He walked me the half-block home
and kissed me goodnight on my stoop—
properly: not too quick, close enough
our stomachs pressed together
in a second sort of kiss.
I live next to a bar that’s not a gay bar
—we just call those bars, I guess—
and because it is popular
and because I live on a busy street,
there are always people who aren’t queer people
on the sidewalk on weekend nights.
Just people, I guess.
They were there last night.
As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching
and of myself wondering whether or not they were just.
But I didn’t let myself feel scared, I kissed him
exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience,
because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear—
an act of resistance. I left
the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside,
to sleep, early and drunk and happy.
While I slept, a man went to a gay club
with two guns and killed forty-nine people.
Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed
recently by the sight of two men kissing.
What a strange power to be cursed with:
for the proof of men’s desire to move men to violence.
What’s a single kiss? I’ve had kisses
no one has ever known about, so many
kisses without consequence—
but there is a place you can’t outrun,
whoever you are.
There will be a time when.
It might be a bullet, suddenly.
The sound of it. Many.
One man, two guns, fifty dead—
Two men kissing. Last night
I can’t get away from, imagining it, them,
the people there to dance and laugh and drink,
who didn’t believe they’d die, who couldn’t have.
How else can you have a good time?
How else can you live?
There must have been two men kissing
for the first time last night, and for the last,
and two women, too, and two people who were neither.
Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country
which is a racist country, which is gun country.
Today I’m thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph
Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations
in the rifles of the National Guard,
and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple.
The protester in the photo was gay, you know,
he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS,
which I am also thinking about today because
(the government’s response to) AIDS was a hate crime.
Now we have a president who names us,
the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are
getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us,
some of us getting killed.
We must love one another whether or not we die.
Love can’t block a bullet
but neither can it be shot down,
and love is, for the most part, what makes us—
in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul.
We will be everywhere, always;
there’s nowhere else for us, or you, to go.
Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you.
Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing.
“The process of the Seventh Step brings about a peace of mind that we never dreamed possible. We sense that what is present throughout our search for spiritual growth is our ability to feel our Higher Power’s love for us.” “It doesn’t matter that we will not attain a state of perfection or complete humility in our life-time.” (It Works, How & Why, p. 53) “Affirm divine calmness and peace, and send out only thoughts of love and goodwill if you want to live in peace and harmony. Never get angry, for anger poisons your system.” – Paramahansa Yogananda (1893 – 1953) renowned Bengali Yogi
What have you done to achieve “peace and harmony”, lately?
Peace XVIII
by Khalil Gibran
The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning. But now silence prevailed overall as if Nature’s war had never been fought.
At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart flamed with agony. But she could finally open her lips and say, “Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me. I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death’s door; let him see me, or come and take me to him.”
Quietly a young man entered.
He wrapped head in a bandage soaked with escaping life.
So he approached her with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice which bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union. And uncertainty of her reaction, he said, “Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. And be not sad. But smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment. For Love has a power that dispels Death; a charm that conquers the enemy. I am your one. Think me not a specter emerging from the House of Death to visit your Home of Beauty.
“Do not be frightened, for I am now Truth, spared from swords and fire to reveal to the people the triumph of Love over War. I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace.”
Then the young man became speechless and his tears spoke the language of the heart, and the angels of Joy hovered about that dwelling, and the two hearts restored the singleness which had been taken from them.
At dawn, the two stood in the middle of the field contemplating the beauty of Nature injured by the tempest. After a deep and comforting silence, the soldier said to his sweetheart, “Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun.”
OLD-TIMEY WISDOM – “Theirs is the quiet opinion, the sure knowledge and humble example that resolve a crisis.” “[T]hey lead by example. This is the experience which has led us to the conclusion that our group conscience, well-advised by its elders, will be in the long run wiser than any single leader.” (12 & 12, p. 135)
“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.” Lin Yutang (1895 – 1976) writer & inventor of the 1st Chinese typewriter
When has the wisdom of the group conscience been evident in your journey, lately?
What Is an Informed A.A. Group Conscience?
The group conscience is the collective conscience of the
group membership and thus represents substantial unanimity on an issue before
definitive action is taken. This is achieved by the
group members through the sharing of full information,
individual points of view, and the practice
of A.A. principles. To be fully informed requires a
willingness to listen to minority opinions with an
open mind.
…
On sensitive issues, the group works slowly —
discouraging formal motions until a clear sense of
its collective view emerges. Placing principles before
personalities, the membership is wary of dominant
opinions. Its voice is heard when a well-informed
group arrives at a decision. The result rests on more
than a “yes” or “no” count — precisely because it
is the spiritual expression of the group conscience.
The term “informed group conscience” implies that
pertinent information has been studied and all views
have been heard before the group votes. (https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-16_theaagroup.pdf)
