OUR PAST MAY INSPIRE PERSONAL CHANGE – “Even though we can’t undo the past, our experience has shown that we still need to look at what we’ve done and acknowledge the damage we’ve caused. Despite the impossibility of changing what happened, we can start to make amends by not repeating the same behavior.” (It Works, How & Why, p. 58)
LESSONS FROM THE DEBRIS – ” … having had cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our new found knowledge of ourselves, we may develop the best possible relations with every human being we know.” (12 & 12, p. 77)
“The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.”
– Israel Zangwill (1864 – 1926) Jewish UK, playwright and coined the phrase, “The Melting Pot”
REDEEM TODAY – “We give freely and gratefully of our time, service, and what we have found here.” “… working the Twelve Steps guides us from humiliation and despair … .” “The more eagerly we wade in and work, the richer our spiritual awakening will be.” (The Basic Text, p. 51)
How have you recently shared and given freely of yourself, lately?
Michael Vick Redemption from Dog Fighting
It’s hard for most animal lovers to truly forgive this guy for what he did, but in the end, he served his time and has not been caught doing anything bad since then, so you have to give him his due.
Mike Vick redeemed himself on the football field by becoming an even better passer after being away from the game for four years.
In fact, Vick’s career renaissance is in a league of its own. Nothing more than a bit player for the Eagles during the 2009 season—his first season back in the league after serving almost two years in prison because of his dogfighting conviction—Vick electrified the NFL in 2010.
Yes, he was a three-time Pro Bowl quarterback for Atlanta, but since his return from jail, Vick has elevated his game to a new level.
He has been more accurate than he was before, and more of a real, honest to goodness QB.
Oh, and since he served his time, no one should begrudge his return to the NFL. Even convicted felons need employment, and while most do not sign multi-million dollar contracts like Vick has, as long as he keeps his nose clean and plays well, that’s all that matters.
Football and professional sports, in general, is a business that entertains, and Vick does seem genuinely sorry for what he did.
Vick can never undo the horrific things he allowed to happen to those poor animals, and many people simply will never forgive the man. And that’s OK.
His redemption has come on the playing field. (https://bleacherreport.com/articles/989483-the-10-best-redemption-stories-in-nfl-history#slide1)
HOLDING ONTO THE NEW JEWELS IN OUR CROWN – ” … when we have difficulty practicing spiritual principles, we turn to the God [or H.P.] of our understanding. In this step, we ask a loving [H.P.] to remove our impatience, our intolerance, our dishonesty, or whatever
shortcoming is currently in the way.” (It Works, How & Why, p. 52) “One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.” Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948) – India Independence Movement Leader from British rule
What spiritual value(s) have you defended at all costs, lately?
Value of Time :
Once, a king and a lazy man named Haria were very good friends. One morning, the king said, “Why don’t you do work to earn some money?” Haria said, “No one gives me job. My enemies told everyone that I never do any work in time.” The kind king said, “You can go into my treasury and collect as much wealth as you can, till sunset.” Haria rushed home to tell this to his wife. She said, “Go and get the gold coins and gems now.” “I cannot go now. Give me lunch first.”
After lunch, he took a nap for an hour. Then in the late afternoon, he picked some bags and went to the palace. On the way, he felt hot so he sat under a tree to rest. Then, two hours later, he got up to go but saw a man showing some magic tricks. He stopped to watch for an hour again. When he reached the palace it was already time for sunset. The palace gates had been shut. So Haria had lost a golden chance because he had not learnt the value of time. (http://www.english-for-students.com/Value-of-Time.html)
“Hostile, resentful, self-centered and self-seeking, we cut ourselves off from the outside world. Anything not completely familiar became alien and dangerous. Our world shrank and isolation became our life. We used in order to survive.” (The Basic Text, p. 4)
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” – Jim Morrison (1943 – 1971) U.S. musician lead singer for “The Doors”
How has “self-centered” fear given you grief, lately?
Now That We Have Tasted Hope –
by Khaled Mattawa, 1964
Now that we have come out of hiding,
Why would we live again in the tombs we’d made out of our souls?
And the sundered bodies that we’ve reassembled
With prayers and consolations,
What would their torn parts be, other than flesh?
Now that we have tasted hope
And dressed each other’s wounds with the legends of our
oneness
Would we not prefer to close our mouths forever shut
On the wine that swilled inside them?
Having dreamed the same dream,
Having found the water behind a thousand mirages,
Why would we hide from the sun again
Or fear the night sky after we’ve reached the ends of
darkness,
Live in death again after all the life our dead have given us?
Listen to me Zow’ya, Beida, Ajdabya, Tobruk, Nalut,
[L]isten to me Derna, Musrata, Benghazi, Zintan,
Listen to me houses, alleys, courtyards, and streets that
throng my veins,
Some day soon, in your freed light, in the shade of your
proud trees,
Your excavated heroes will return to their thrones in your
martyrs’ squares,
Lovers will hold each other’s hands.
I need not look far to imagine the nerves dying,
Rejecting the life that blood sends them.
I need not look deep into my past to seek a thousand hopeless vistas.
But now that I have tasted hope
I have fallen into the embrace of my own rugged innocence.
How long were my ancient days?
I no longer care to count.
I no longer care to measure.
How bitter was the bread of bitterness?
I no longer care to recall.
Now that we have tasted hope, this hard-earned crust,
We would sooner die than seek any other taste to life,
Any other way of being human.
“Other people in our lives help us to develop trust and loving attitudes, we demand less and give more. We are slower to anger and quicker to forgive”. “We begin to feel lovable which is a feeling totally alien to our old egocentric selves.” (The Basic Text, p. 97)
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” – Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892) British poet
Once in Arabia, there lived a Sheik. He and his wife lived in a village. As she had no child, the Sheik married a maiden for a second time. By his second wife, he had a son. He loved his son very much and he grew up as a hand some young man. Sheik’s first wife hated the second wife and her son.
Sheik’s first wife began to plot against the second wife and her son. One day the Sheik had to go out on a journey. He said to his son that he would return home before Bakrid and he would bring him some fine gifts also. As the first wife had some magical powers she changed the second wife and son as goats when the sheik was away. When Bakrid was nearing he returned home and could find only his first wife. He asked her where his son and his mother were.
…
The First wife lied that his second wife died in some unknown decease and that her son ran away from home and didn’t come again. On hearing this the Sheik became worried but consoled himself that it was God’s will.
On the day of Bakrid Sheik asked his first wife to bring a goat for sacrifice. His first wife brought the second wife who had been changed as a goat. When it came near the Sheik it started to brush his leg with her tongue. The Sheik took pity on the goat and asked his first wife to bring another. So he brought the son goat to the Sheik. It also come near the Sheik and started to lick his hand with tongue.
Again the Sheik took pity on the goat. He said, “The two goats do like men. So I can’t kill these two.” Then the first wife got angry and said. “If you refuse to kill all goats like this, we will not be able sacrifice anything.
…
Just then a butcher’s wife passed by the way. She also had magical powers. So she found that these two goats were none but his second wife and son. Soon she went near the Sheik and said, “O Sheik! These two goats are your second wife and your son. They are under some spell of magic”. The Sheik was stunned and asked her if she had the magical power to change them to their old form.
The butcher’s wife took a small bowl from her bag from her shoulder. There was some water in the bowl. She took some water from the bowl and sprayed it on the two goats.
The very next movement they became his second wife and his son. He was delighted to see them as before. They told him what had happened to them when he was away. The Sheik asked the butcher’s wife to cast some spell of magic on his first wife. She also chanted some words. His first wife was changed as a dog and it ran away from there. Then the Sheik, his second wife and his lovable son lived happily for a long time.
Like Krishnamurti, how have you followed your own Sacred Heart to the peaceful resolution of a challenge you’ve faced, lately?
“We have found that God [or one’s H.P.]* does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the realm of spirit is broad, roomy, all-inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all … .” (As Bill Sees It, p. 7)
“In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.” – Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986) Indian spiritual author
Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.
Half in dreams, he was his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.
He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.
“Yes, we … did dream those dreams. How natural that was since most [of us] are bankrupt idealists. Nearly every one of us had wished to do great good, perform great deeds, and embody great ideals.” (12 & 12, p. 156)
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) Swiss, psychologist
What steps have you taken to live the life you have always wanted, lately?
“Jung was the eminent adept of Freud and, for a while, a tireless fighter for the Freudian cause, that is, the universal promotion of psychoanalysis. He was influenced by Freud’s approach to the delicate problem of dream interpretation. Later on, Jung develops his own theory which includes several revolutionary features: subject level, prospective aspect, compensation, amplification method.
It is known that Freud interprets dreams on the object level; that is, according to the relationship between the dreamer and the persons or situations in his real of phantasy life. Jung introduces the subject level. What is this level? The fact that the dream reveals, in a symbolic way, some features of dreamer’s psychic life or of his internal psychic transformations. This way the dream becomes an indicator of those changes that sometimes point to the development of the individuation process.
Dreams are a cloudy picture.
So if someone dreams of his mother, the mother in Jung’s view is not an evocation of the real mother, but of the dreamer’s anima, that is, his emotional, feminine side. Mother can also be a suggestion to what is basically biologic in the human nature or can lead to the inherited background, the homeland in a cultural way.
Freud’s dream approach is retrospective; that is, it refers mainly to past events, placed back in the dreamer’s childhood (psychic trauma, sexual repressed wishes and so forth). Jung’s dream approach is prospective; he treats the dream like an inner map of dreamer’s future psychic evolution towards a more balanced relationship between his ego and the unconscious (be it personal or collective).
Talking about infantile complexes, Jung states, in accordance with his orientation, that complexes are not of importance per se; what really matters is what the individual’s ego does with them. This way, the complexes, even the neurotic ones, become raw material for dreams, the language through which the dream (the unconscious) expresses itself.
The mother complex,
for example, may indicate a process of development on the basis of some inherited features or life events that constitute the background of the individuation.
For Jung the concept of compensation includes another powerful idea: the dream is an attempt to counterbalance a hypertrophied ego. That is why the interpretation of dreams should seek to discover the compensatory aspects; that help the ego better adapt to the demands of internal and external life. In a certain clinical situation, as a result of a dream interpretation; Jung had to explain to his patient that she must resign her too rationalist attitude (as a consequence of her animus inflation). [I]n order to cure her severe neurosis. This way the dream becomes a message of the unconscious; that indicates several neurotic deficiencies in the individual life orientation.
Finally, Jung adds to the free association method, developed by Freud, the method of amplification . He states that there are elements of the dream to which the dreamer cannot provide personal associations.(1) These elements are symbols.(2) In this case, the analyst should intervene with his knowledge and complete the dreamer’s gaps related to them. The associative material comes from various cultural areas: mythology, religion, alchemy, folklore and so forth.
One must notice that these essential additions to the method of dream interpretation should not be taken over easily. Jung warns us repeatedly that dreams ought to be interpreted at first by Freud’s method. Only exceptional cases demand the use of his own method.(3)” (https://www.carl-jung.net/dreams.html)
“If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions. But in no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation. That is something we are supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves.” (12 & 12, p. 65) “Whatever God’s dream about man may be, it seems certain it can not come true unless man co-operates.”– Stella Terrill Mann / English spiritual author
How has your own “cockiness” played a role in causing you pain, lately?
Oh! the days are gone, when Beauty bright
My heart’s chain wove;
When my dream of life, from morn till night,
Was love, still love.
New hope may bloom,
And days may come,
Of milder calmer beam,
But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream:
No, there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream.
Though the bard to purer fame may soar,
When wild youth’s past;
Though he win the wise, who frown’d before,
To smile at last;
He’ll never meet
A joy so sweet,
In all his noon of fame,
As when first he sung to woman’s ear
His soul-felt flame,
And, at every close, she blush’d to hear
The one loved name.
No, — that hallow’d form is ne’er forgot
Which first love traced;
Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot
On memory’s waste.
‘Twas odour fled
As soon as shed;
‘Twas morning’s winged dream;
‘Twas a light, tht ne’er can shine again
On life’s dull stream:
Oh! ’twas light that n’er can shine again
On life’s dull stream.
“When we first
begin to practice
these principles, they
may seem very unnatural
to us.” “Even though we are
admitting our addiction,
we may still wonder if
this program will real-
ly work.” (It Works,
How & Why, p. 7)
What honest admission have you felt the need to make, lately?
The Milkman and the River –
A milkman became very wealthy through dishonest means. He had to cross a river daily to reach the city where his customers lived. He mixed the water of the river generously with the milk that he sold for a good profit. One day he went around collecting the dues in order to celebrate the wedding of his son. With the large amount thus collected he purchased plenty of rich clothes and glittering gold ornaments. But while crossing the river the boat capsized and all his costly purchases were swallowed by the river. The milk vendor was speechless with grief. At that time he heard a voice that came from the river, “Do not weep. What you have lost is only the illicit gains you earned through cheating your customers. (http://www.english-for-students.com/Honesty-is-The-Best-Policy.html)
How have you had success lately using your own pain or fear as the motivation for what you really want?
FEAR AS A DISTANT FRIEND AND MOTIVATION FOR LIVING –
“The achieve-
ment of freedom
from fear is a life-
time undertaking, one
that can never be wholly
completed.” “Only the
self-deceived will claim
perfect freedom from
fear.” (As Bill Sees
It, p. 263)
“We fear vio-
lence less than
our own feelings.
Personal, private, sol-
itary pain is more ter-
rifying than what
anyone else can
inflict.”
– Jim Morrison (1943 – 1971) U.S. musician / lead singer of The Doors
Vikram was a brave king. Once, he had to fight against a large army with just a few soldiers, he was defeated. He had to run for his life.
Vikram took shelter in a forest cave. He was very depressed. His courage had left him. He was blankly gazing at the ceiling of the cave. An interesting scene captured his attention.
A small spider was trying to weave a web across the cave ceiling. As the spider crawled up, a thread of the web broke and the spider fell down. But the spider did not give up. He tried to climb again and again. Finally, the spider successfully climbed up and completed the web.
Vikram began to think, “If a small spider can face failure so bravely, why should I give up? I will try with all might till I win”. This thought gave strength to the defeated king.
Vikram got out of the jungle and collected his brave soldiers. He fought against the large army. He was defeated again. But now, he would not give up his fight.
Vikram again and again fought against the large army and finally, after many attempts defeated the large army and regained his kingdom. He had learnt a lesson from the spider. (http://www.english-for-students.com/The-King-and-The-Spider.html)
