Author Archives: ccburn

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 29th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – close eyes briefly


Steps Four and Five


We must learn from our past mistakes. The personal
inventory in Step Four must be as searching and
thorough as we can make it. You can’t clean a house
properly if you don’t know where the dirt is.
Sometimes it’s convenient to ignore things too
painful to recall. But, a thorough Spring clean
brings great satisfaction. Have I completed a
searching and thorough Fourth and Fifth Steps?

Looking inside myself, I may still see defects of
character because few people are perfect. I need not
despair. Experience and the example of others has
shown me that life in recovery is manageable as
long as I am working towards spiritual growth. My
Higher Power is there to help me face my true self. I
must check my personality regularly, as a doctor
would check my body, and take remedial action
where it is needed. Today I ask God that I never be
complacent about my personality and the need for
regular check-ups.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 28th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – send positive thoughts

Better than well

People sometimes remark that those in addiction
recovery are strangely joyful and wonder how that
can be possible, especially when in a sober state.
The fact is that there is such relief in setting down
the great burden of our past misdemeanours that we
are bound to feel happy. Add to that the feeling of
belonging and the sense of purpose that we find in
Twelve Step fellowships, and our joyous appearance
is not surprising at all. Life is said to be what
happens when you are making other plans, but a
chance of a second life only happens when you have
scrapped your first plans in favour of much better
ones. Am I grateful for the chance of a second life?

All we really need to make us happy is something to
be enthusiastic about. In recovery, we are turning
our lives around, beyond our wildest dreams. No
wonder we are happy. Our feelings influence our
actions, but our actions also influence our feelings.
As the philosopher William James put it: I don’t
sing because I’m happy. I’m happy because I
sing.
I thank God today that happiness is not a state of
mind but an activity too.

Daily Readings from Recovery Days May 26th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – enjoy the moment


How important is it?


King Midas of Phrygia was granted by the Gods the
power to turn everything he touched into gold.
Unfortunately, this meant his food, his wine and
even his daughter became gold within a short time.
Luckily the Gods relented before he died of
starvation, but he had learnt a valuable lesson:
there are more important things in life than gold. A
lot of people nowadays don’t seem to have
noticed. They pursue wealth as if it is the answer to
everything. Do I understand that money is not the
answer to all my problems?


American Billionaire Chuck Feeney gave away all
his eight-billion-dollar fortune, living his last days in
a rented apartment, owning just one pair of shoes.
He was influenced by early twentieth century
benefactor Andrew Carnegie’s dictum: To die rich is
to die disgraced. His message to other billionaires
thinking of giving while living was: Try it, you’ll like
it. Today I ask to remember that by giving, I will
receive.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 25th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – relax your whole body gradually


Silence

The ancient Greeks had nine muses. The early
Roman king, Numa Pompilius, wisely added one
more – Tacita, the muse of silence. For silence can
be as powerful as the loudest of noises. Anyone
observing two minutes of silence on Remembrance
Day would agree. The value of communal silence is
not appreciated as it used to be. Mediaeval monks
valued silence greatly:
Everywhere peace, everywhere serenity.
Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx.
Do I recognise the power of silence?


The Prophet Elijah in his cave, listening for the
sound of God’s voice, said:
It was not heard in wind, earthquake or
fire, but in the sound of sheer silence.
Silence isn’t empty, it’s often full of answers. Just a
few minutes of silent meditation each day gives our
brain and more importantly, our soul, a chance to
rest and regenerate. Today I will find time for
silence and I will appreciate the peace it brings.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 24th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – close eyes briefly

Choices

I have the desire to do what is good, but I
cannot carry it out. For I do not do the
good that I want to do, but the evil I do
not want to do, I keep on doing.
St Paul, Romans.
Like St Paul, the good intentions of addicted people
are usually not enough. Somehow, we have to
motivate ourselves to take action. Often, we are
motivated by expectations – of pleasure or fear of
pain. In addiction, we find constant conflict between
expected pleasure and negative aftermath. Usually
we choose the former, but the struggle is highly
stressful. When the pain of stopping is finally viewed
as less than the pain of continuing, we ask for help.
In recovery, we mature enough to choose what we
need over what we want. Am I making choices on
the basis of meeting my long-term needs?


In active addiction, my life was an obsessive quest
for what I wanted, ignoring the real needs of my
loved ones and myself. Understanding this self-defeating
cycle was a turning point and the start of
recovery. Today I ask God to help me choose

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 23rd by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – review expectations

Creativity in recovery

I have come into my strength
And words obey my call. W.B. Yeats.
Contrary to popular belief, alcohol and drug use is less
beneficial to creativity than recovery from
addiction. Remarkable work has been produced
under the influence of drugs, but usually it is the
illusion of creativity, rather than works of true
genius. Frustrated talent is the most common result
of addiction, but when the stress and chaos of active
drug use ceases, creativity bursts out. This can be
used to process our feelings of loss, shame and guilt
as well as making life more fulfilling and
meaningful. Am I ready to explore my creativity?


Creativity takes us away from daily life towards the
spiritual side – there is something miraculous about a
work of art. Truly great art makes us think differently
and thus act differently.
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain. W.B. Yeats.
It gives us new ideas and new ways of seeing things.
Spirituality does the same. Today I ask God to open
my mind to the idea of creativity.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 22nd by Chris B

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Love

Romantic love is a fine thing, especially at the
movies, but love is not about dependence: ‘I can’t
live without you’ amounts to codependency. Love is
essentially what you do for another person. It is an
activity, not a feeling. That is what makes it so
powerful – if we all have love in our hearts, we are
actively working to help each other. Morgan Scott
Peck, author of The Road Less Travelled, said
exactly this. It came as a shock to some people. Do I
understand that real love is unselfish?


Step Eight is about brotherly love. It is the time
when we stop focusing on ourselves and look at the
damage we have done to others and what we can do
about it. Making amends is about honesty, courage,
forgiveness – and love. It is asking myself: What can
I do for this other person that I have hurt? It does
not matter how painful it is to make amends, we
have to be rigorously honest in all our affairs. The
truth will set us free, though it may hurt a bit too. If
we are going to truly love ourselves and our fellow
human beings, we must take this Step in courage
and humility. Today I ask to show true love.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 21st by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – enjoy the moment


Higher Power

When considering Higher Power, some people get
very tied up with what this means. Are they dealing
with a religious God and if so, which religion? What
does this Higher Power look like? They ask. The
point lies in the word ‘Power’. There is a power that
helps us, a power in the meeting rooms that you can
sometimes feel. Trying to put a label on this power
is missing the point. It is enough for us that the
power is there, and it works through other people.
Empirical knowledge of a Higher Power is not
possible, so let us just accept that it exists, if only
because something must make the planets go round
the sun. Why do we need a label? How important is
it? Am I content to accept my Higher Power as an
unknown but powerful source of help?

People of every outlook, background and belief find
support and success in the Twelve Step fellowships.
Atheists do as well as religious believers. I must
look at the similarities and keep it simple. The urge
to complicate things has been my downfall in the
past. A Power greater than myself is all I require.
Today I ask God for wisdom to keep things simple.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 20th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – send positive thoughts

Denial

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to
change the world. Today I am wise, so I
am changing myself. Rumi.
Feeling that we were clever and able to get away
with bad behaviour simply led us further down the
slippery slope of addiction. It may seem clever to
us during the bad times to change our job, our
location, our doctor or even our spouse – anything
in fact, except to change ourselves – the one thing we
really needed to change. That is not the behaviour
of a clever person but of somebody blinded by
selfishness and denial. How clever am I ?

Denial is the refuge where we hide from reality, and
it takes courage and humility to come out and admit
we were wrong. Years of denial turn us into people
‘constitutionally incapable of being honest with
themselves’ that are mentioned in Chapter Five of the
AA Big Book. We should not expect to turn that
around easily, it may take time. If we can identify
the problem and commit to doing something about
it honestly, then we have made a start. Today I ask
for honesty to face reality.

Daily reading from Recovery Days May 19th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – close eyes briefly


Honesty


If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Mark Twain.
We are victims of our own dishonesty. The tangled
web we weave when we tell lies, leaves us
floundering and trapped. The stress of dishonesty is
enormous, that’s why lie detectors work so well. It’s
also why honesty, openness and willingness to
change are the three components of successful
therapy. Unless you are honest, you cannot be
yourself and then therapy becomes pointless.
Some people get into the habit of telling lies
because they learn at an early age that it keeps
them out of trouble. Do I understand the harm
that I do to myself through my dishonesty?


Lack of self-honesty is at the root of all our
emotional upheavals and troubles. If I can’t give
myself the honest respect that I deserve, then I
probably don’t trust myself enough to make the
right judgments and choices. The danger of this is
that I may adopt the standards and ideas of
others instead – which may not be good. Much
better to be sure of my own integrity and to choose
according to my own ideals. I ask God today for the
self-respect to value my principles