AA Book Club

  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...

  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...

  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...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: May 2 You must BE before you can DO. To accomplish much, be much. In all cases, the doing must be the expression of the being. It is foolish to think that we can accomplish much in personal relationships without first preparing ourselves by being honest, pure, unselfish, and loving. We must choose the good and keep choosing it, before we are ready to be used by God to accomplish anything worthwhile. We will not be given the opportunities until we are ready for them. Quiet times of communion with the Higher Power are good preparation for creative action. 24 Hours a Day May 3 I must overcome myself before I can truly forgive other people for injuries done to me. The self in me cannot forgive injuries. The very thought of wrongs means that my self is in the foreground. Since the self cannot forgive, I must overcome my selfishness. I must cease trying to forgive those who fretted and wronged me. It is a mistake for me even to think about these injurie...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: April 23  COMING OF AGE As you grow in spiritual power and understanding you will find that many outer regulations will become unnecessary; but this will be because you have really risen above them. This point in your development, where your understanding of Truth enables you to dispense with certain outer props and regulations, is the spiritual coming of age. However, this spiritual coming of age cannot be hurried or forced, but must appear when the consciousness is ready, exactly as the flowering of a bulb can only be the result of natural growth. You have to demonstrate where you are. To seek to demonstrate beyond your understanding is not spiritual. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) April 24  STRIVING FOR PERFECTION What of the man who is conscious of considerable moral imperfection, perhaps of the habit of grave sin, and is at the same time sincerely desirous of spiritual growth? Is he to relinquish the quest for spiritual kn...

  Spiritual Thoughts for the week: April 16 I must try to love all humanity. Love comes from thinking of every man or woman as your brother or sister, because they are children of God. This way of thinking makes me care enough about them to really want to help them. I must put this kind of love into action by serving others. Love means no severe judging, no resentments, no malicious gossip, and no destructive criticism. It means patience, understanding, compassion, and helpfulness. 24 Hours a Day April 19  THE SHINING LIGHT The state of your soul is always expressed in your outer conditions and in the intangible influence that you radiate at large. There is a cosmic law that nothing can permanently deny its own nature. Emerson said: “What you are shouts so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” The soul that is built upon prayer cannot be hidden, it shines out brightly through the life that it lives. It speaks for itself, but in utter silence, and does much of its best work ...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: April 11  LOOSEN UP! Loosen up. To be tense is the surest way to fail in any undertaking great or small. To desire success is a splendid thing but to pursue success too tensely is to make certain of missing it. The carefree approach in any endeavor is a shortcut to success. In music, in sport, in study, in business life, many people fail, or advance very slowly, because they make hard work of it. Around the Year with Emmet Fox  (Excerpt) April 12  A DOOR OPENS Change is the law of the universe. Without change, the world would not merely remain in a static state, but it would soon become stale and stagnant. Without change there would be no progress, for change is the essence of betterment. It is obvious that to do anything in a new and better way there must be a change. When a problem or condition arises in your life that indicates a change, rely upon God, and realize that it is not so much that a door has closed on a chapter of your...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week:  April 2  INSUFFICIENCY OF KNOWLEDGE Most people, and learned people especially, have all kinds of knowledge that does not in the least affect or improve their practical lives. Doctors know all about hygiene, but often live in an unhealthy way, notwithstanding; and philosophers, who are acquainted with the accumulated wisdom of the ages, and assent to most of it, continue to do foolish and stupid things in their own personal lives. Now, knowledge such as this is only opinion, or head knowledge, as some people call it. It has to become heart knowledge, or to be incorporated into the subconscious, before it can really change one. The modern psychologists in their efforts to “re-educate the subconscious” have the right idea, though they have not yet discovered the true method of doing so, which is by single-minded prayer, or the Practice of the Presence of God. Around the Year with Emmet Fox  (Excerpt) April 4 You cannot help others u...

Spiritual thoughts for the week: March 28 There are two things that we must have if we are going to change our way of life. One is faith, the confidence in things unseen, the fundamental goodness and purpose in the universe. The other is obedience: that is, living according to our faith, living each day as we believe that God wants us to live, with gratitude, humility, honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. Faith and obedience, these two, will give us all the strength we need to overcome sin and temptation and to live a new and more abundant life. 24 Hours a Day March 29 I must live in the world and yet live apart with God. I can go forth from my secret times of communion with God to the work of the world. To get the spiritual strength I need, my inner life must be lived apart from the world. I must wear the world as a loose garment. Nothing in the world should seriously upset me, as long as my inner life is lived with God. All successful living arises from this inner life. 24 Hours...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: March 21 All is fundamentally well. That does not mean that all is well on the surface of things. But it does mean that God's in His heaven and that He has a purpose for the world, which will eventually work out when enough human beings are willing to follow His way. "Wearing the world as a loose garment" means not being upset by the surface wrongness of things, but feeling deeply secure in the fundamental goodness and purpose in the universe. 24 Hours a Day March 23  THE POOR IN SPIRIT Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3) To be poor in spirit means to have emptied yourself of all desire to exercise personal self-will, and, what is just as important, to have renounced all preconceived opinions in the wholehearted search for God. It means to be willing to set aside your present habits of thought, your present views and prejudices, your present way of life if necessary; to jettison, in fact, an...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week:  March 12 Simplicity is the keynote of a good life. Life can become complicated if you let it be so. You can be swamped by difficulties if you let them take up too much of your time. Every difficulty can be either solved or ignored and something better substituted for it. Love the humble things of life. Reverence the simple things. Your standard must never be the world's standard of wealth and power. 24 Hours a Day March 16 I must have singleness of purpose to do my part in God's work. I must not let material distractions interfere with my job of improving personal relationships. It is easy to become distracted by material affairs, so that I lose my singleness of purpose. I do not have time to be concerned about the multifarious concerns of the world. I must concentrate and specialize on what I can do best. 24 Hours a Day March 16  LETTER OR SPIRIT Jesus made a special point of discouraging the laying of emphasis upon outer observances; ...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: March 5 Fear is the curse of the world. Many are our fears. Fear is everywhere. I must fight fear as I would a plague. I must turn it out of my life. There is no room for fear in the heart in which God dwells. Fear cannot exist where true love is or where faith abides. So I must have no fear. Fear destroys hope and hope is necessary for all of humanity. 24 Hours a Day March 6  OPEN YOUR MIND Have you an open mind? Is the window of your soul open for fresh air and the sunshine of Truth to come in, or is it closed and shuttered by mental laziness or the emotional congestion that we call prejudice? None of us knows how many fine things we have missed through being self-satisfied and cocksure. No one can be considered really intelligent who does not have a readiness to examine new ideas with an open mind. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) March 8 The joy of true fellowship shall be mine in full measure. I will revel in the joy of real fell...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: February 26 Priming The Pump An understanding faith is the life of prayer. It is a great mistake, however, to struggle to produce a lively faith within yourself. That can only end in failure. The thing to do is to act as though you had faith. Act out what you wish to demonstrate, and you will be expressing true faith. This is the right use of the will scientifically understood. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) February 27  Consistent Building During prayer, many people build up the new mental structure, but as soon as their time of prayer is over, instead of faithfully preserving that structure intact they promptly knock it down again by negative thinking. Obviously, a bricklayer could work hard in this fashion year after year without ever accomplishing anything. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) March 3 I will try to grow in this new life. I will think of spiritual things often and unconsciously I will grow. The nearer I get t...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: February 21  Quarantine Your Troubles When you are praying or "treating" about a particular thing, you should handle it, mentally, very carefully indeed. The ideal way is not to think about it at all except when you are actually praying about it. Moreover, to talk to others people about it is exceedingly likely to invite failure. When a new problem presents itself to you, decline to consider it except in the light of Truth. I call this "putting a subject in quarantine." Even an old long-standing problem canbe put in quarantine" today, if you mean business and will resolutely break the habit of constantly thinking over that problem. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) February 22 Change From Within Man is a mental being, and to know this is the first step on the road to freedom and  prosperity, for as long as you believe yourself to be primarily a superior kind of animal, you will remain in bondage - in bondage, that is to...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: February 12 Our Daily Bread The most futile thing in the world is to seek to live upon a past realization. The thing that means spiritual life to you is your realization of God HERE and NOW. Be thankful for yesterday's experience, knowing that it is with you forever in the change of consciousness that it brought about, but do not lean upon it for a single moment for the need of today. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) February 13 In a race, it is when the goal is in sight that heart and nerves and muscles and courage are strained almost to the breaking point. So with us. The goal of the spiritual life is in sight. All we need is the final effort. The saddest records are made by people who ran well, with brave, stout hearts, until the sight of the goal and then some weakness or self-indulgence held them back. They never knew how near the goal they were or how near they were to victory. 24 Hours a Day February 15 Demonstrating Forgiveness The...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week:  February 5 I believe that life is a school in which I must learn spiritual things. I must trust in God and He will teach me. I must listen to God and He will speak through my mind. I must commune with Him in spite of all opposition and every obstacle. There will always be days when I will hear no voice in my mind and when there will come no intimate heart-to-heart communion. But if I persist, and make a life habit of schooling myself in spiritual things, God will reveal Himself to me in many ways. 24 Hours a Day February 7 Thy Kingdom Come If only you can find out the thing God intends you to do, and will do it, you will find that all doors will open to you, and you will be gloriously happy. There is a true place in life for each one of us where we can bring the Kingdom of God into manifestation, and truly say, "Thy Kingdom cometh." Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) February 8 Thy Will Be Done Now we often choose to use our free will...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: January 29 The Law Of Growth What you think upon grows. This is an Eastern maxim, and it sums up neatly the greatest and most fundamental of all laws of the mind. WHAT YOU THINK UPON GROWS. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your own life. Whether the subject of your thought be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows. Any subject that you keep out of your mind tends to diminish in your life, because what you do not use atrophies... This is the basic, fundamental, all-inclusive law of the mind, and actually all psychological and metaphysical teaching is little more than commentary upon this. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) January 31 I believe that all sacrifice and all suffering are of value to me. When I am in pain, I am being tested. Can I trust God, no matter how low I feel? Can I say, "Thy will be done," no matter how much I am distressed? If I can, my faith is real and practical. It works in bad ti...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: January 22 If The Key Sticks We have said that the Golden Key [of prayer] is simple, and so it is, but, of course, it is not always easy to turn. If you are very frightened or worried it may be difficult, at first, to get your thoughts away from material things. But by constantly repeating some statement of absolute Truth that appeals to you,... you will soon find that your mind is clearing. Do not struggle, be quiet but insistent... Do not try to think out in advance what the solution of your difficulty will probaby turn out to be, This is technically called 'outlining,' and will only delay the demonstration. Leave the question of ways and means to God. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) January 24 I know that the vision and power that I receive from God are limitless, as far as spiritual things are concerned. But in temporal and material things, I must submit to limitations. I know that I cannot see the road ahead, I must go just one s...

  Spiritual thoughts for the week: January 15 I will relax and not get tense. I will have no fear, because everything will work out in the end. I will learn soul-balance and poise in a vacillating, changing world. I will claim God's power and use it because if I do not use it, it will be withdrawn. As long as I get back to God and replenish my strength after each task, no work can be too much. 24 Hours A Day January 17 God Is Spirit The sixth main aspect of God is Spirit... Spirit is that which cannot be destroyed or damaged. It is the opposite of matter. Matter wears out, but Spirit does not because Spirit is substance... You are Spirit. Spirit cannot die and was never born. Your true self was never born and will never die. You are eternal, divine, unchanging Spirit, in your true nature. The whole universe is a spiritual creation but we see it in a limited way. Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt) January 18 God Is Principle The seventh main aspect of God is Principle, and thi...