From our online literature study guide at AABookClub.org , an analysis of Tradition Five, and a link to Tradition Five in the 12&12: AA Book Club.org Analysis of Tradition Five Twelve and Twelve: Tradition Five
Posts
Spiritual thoughts for the week: May 28 Now Is Your Time Always remember that the only thought that you need to concern yourself with is the present time. The thoughts of yesterday or of last year do not matter now, because if you can get the present thought right it will make everything else right here and now. The best way to prepare for tomorrow is to make today's consciousness serene and harmonious. Never go delving in your mind to look for troubles to pray about. Deal faithfully with those that bring themselves to your attention, and hidden things will be taken care of. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) May 29 I will try to help others. I will try not to let a day pass without reaching out an arm of love to someone. Each day I will try to do something to lift another humanbeing out of the sea of discouragements into which he or she has fallen. My helping hand is needed to raise the helpless to courage, to strength, to faith, to health. In my own grat...
Tuesday AA literature post - from our online literature study guide at AABookClub.org , Big Book topics for meditation, discussion or use with a sponsee. For background on the origin of these topics, click on: Big Book Topics How Long Does It Take To Be A Saint? Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can’t go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. (Page 60) Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. (Page 77) We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dish...
Spiritual thoughts for the week: May 22 A Simplified Life It is unquestionable that the spiritualization of thought does undoubtedly lead the student to simplify his mode of life, for so many things that previously seemed important are now found to be unimportant and uninteresting. It is unquestionable too, that he gradually finds himself meeting different people, reading different books, spending his time differently; and that his conversation naturally changes it quality. These things follow upon the change of heart; never can they precede it. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) May 24 Your Heart Follows Your Treasure In the long run, no one can retain what does not belong to him by right of consciousness, nor be deprived of that which is truly his by the same supreme title. If you are looking to outer, passing, mutable things for either happiness or security, you are not putting God first. If your are putting God first in your life, you will not find yourself laboring und...
From William Schaberg's Writing The Big Book, Page 152-153: Bill's Religious Perspective ... [j]ust how open was Bill in this early version of 'There Is A Solution' to 'nearly every conceivable... shade of belief"? It does not require a careful reading of the text to realize that Wilson is very much a man of his own time, culture and upbringing and when he uses the word "religious" - despite all his protests to the contrary - he was was identifying with a specific concept of God to the exclusion of all others. Whatever later liberalizations may have been introduced by the substitution of spiritual for religious or by Bill's consistent efforts over the years to open the doors of A.A. ever wider, the open concept claimed for religion here does not embrace a while host of the "varieties" so candidly acknowledged in William James's book, a study that includes investigations into the religious beliefs of Pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, and S...
Spiritual thoughts for the week: May 15 GOD IS NOT BECOMING God is not progressing or improving. What improves is our understanding of Him, and as this happens all our conditions necessarily improve too. There never was a time in your history when God was not all that He is today, and there never can come a time when God will be any more than He is today. God is continually expressing Himself in new ways—but this is not improvement; it is unfoldment. Your life is simply part of this unfoldment, and that is the only reason for your existing at all. You are the living expression of God now—and to understand this is salvation. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) May 17 I must constantly live in preparation for something better to come. All of life is a preparation for something better. I must anticipate the morning to come. I must feel, in the night of sorrow, that understanding joy that tells of confident expectation of better things to come. "Sorrow m...
Spiritual thoughts for the week: May 8 NONRESISTANCE When you fight a thing you antagonize it and it hits back. The harder you fight it the harder it hits. When you give your attention to anything, you are building that thing into your consciousness, for good or evil. When you are faced with some negative condition, withdraw your attention from it by building the opposite into your subconscious. Then the undesirable thing falls away like an overripe fruit. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) May 10 INCONSISTENCIES MADE CLEAR Those who are perplexed by the difficulties and seeming inconsistencies of life should remember that at the present time we get only a partial view of things; and that a partial view of anything never shows the thing as it really is. I So it is with life. Some day (when we have enough spiritual growth) we will come to see that the seemingly disjointed happenings, the apparent accidents, are really part of an orderly pattern. Around the Year w...
