The First Agreement

The First Agreement: Be Impeccable With Your Word...

Your word is the power that you have to create. Your word is the gift that comes directly from God....

The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life...

The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is the tool of magic. But like a sword with two edges, your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word can destroy everything around you. One edge is the misuse of the word, which creates a living hell. The other edge is the impeccability of the word, which will only create beauty, love, and heaven on earth. Depending upon how it is used, the word can set you free, or it can enslave you even more than you know...

The word is so powerful that one word can change a life or destroy the lives of millions of people...

Impeccability means "without sin"...

A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin...

Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself...

Sin begins with rejection of yourself. Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you commit....

If I love myself I will express that love in my interactions with you, and then I am being impeccable with the word, because that action will produce a like reaction...

Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy; it means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself. If you make an agreement with yourself to be impeccable with your word, just with that intention, the truth will manifest through you and clean all the emotional poison that exists within you. But making this agreement is difficult because we have learned to do precisely the opposite...

The truth is the most important part of being impeccable with your word...

You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self-love. How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word. When you are impeccable with your word, you feel good; you feel happy and at peace...

Taken from The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz

Hi folks.....have been gone a while. Kenny thanks for all the notes checking up on me. This reading took on so much new and deeper meaning this past couple of weeks. The quality and integrity of my word has been disgraceful lately. I have learned a valuable lesson the very hardest way possible. As this reading says....my WORD is my gift from God. I have used that word to hurt many people in my life and especially myself. As the Big Book says on p. 62....."Selfishness - self-centeredness! That we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So Our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of Self-will run riot....." This has my name all over it.....I have made decisions of late that were based on self that have left me in a position to be hurt and I have hurt others too. So where do I go from here? All I can do for today is turn this all over to my Higher Power, rely on that strength, take actions to fix what I can, accept those things that can't be fixed, and most importantly take ACTION to be honest and impeccable with my word. The chips will fall were they will and through it all I have a choice......trust in my newly strengthened relationship with a power greater than me and accept that all will be okay so long as I make my actions match this principle or rest on my laurels and hope I don't end up in this hole again. I have come to that place in life where I'm tired of the fight, for it is no different than the one I had with the bottle everyday. I am ready to cross to the other side of the street instead of going down this one and hoping the I can get around the whole. So today I have be honest and impeccable in word and action and I plan to do the same tomorrow but will cross that bridge tomorrow. It also says in the Big Book somewhere that we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it......so I know it's time to quit trying to run from it and make peace with it.

Friendships

Friendship between Women:

A woman didn't come home one night. The next day she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend's house. The man called his wife's 10 best friends. None of them knew about it.

Friendship between Men:

A man didn't come home one night. The next day he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house. The woman called her husband's 10 best friends. Eight of them confirmed that he had slept over, and two claimed that he was still there.

I got this today from a friend. Once I got past the intial humor I got to thinking about it. This story is kind of like the old me and the new me. The old me was very much like the friendship between men. There were so many stories and lies that sometimes I wasn't sure what the truth was anymore. Lies had to be covered up with other lies and pretty soon my whole life was a lie. The new me understands the importance and the freedom of the truth. When I am being dishonest I am opening the door for my addiction to take hold. Like water freezing in a small crack and breaking concrete apart, my addiction only needs a small foothold to pull my back to the bottom. The other thing I have learned and am so grateful for is the freedom that comes with honesty. Good, bad or otherwise, when I am honest I don't have to look over my shoulder. I am no longer waiting to be found out. I can say it and let it go. That is an incredible freedom and a relief. I am eternally grateful to my higher power, my friends in the fellowship and the program for teaching me the beauty of honesty.

Balance

I got this from Mable and thought I would share it with you all.

"Most of us must admit that we have loved but a few;
that we have been indifferent to the many
so long as none of them gave us trouble;
and as for the remainder -- well, we have really
disliked or hated them.

Although these attitudes are common enough,
we AA's find we need something much better
in order to keep our balance.
We can't stand it if we hate deeply.
The idea that we can be possessively loving of a few,
and can continue to fear or hate anybody,
has to be abandoned, if only a little at a time."
c. 1952AAWS, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp. 92-3

Now comes the hard part. Being honest about where I am. I had to admit out loud today that I am in relapse. Yah, I haven't picked up a drink or a drug yet, but I might as well have with where my head, my Ego is at. I have know this fact for a while now and have cycled back and forth between denial and acceptance, but have not taken all necessary actions to get myself out of this. Yesterday a very dear friend sat me down and was honest with me. My gut was telling me one thing and my head another. I was praying to God and feeling like I was getting no answer. I listened to my head, I forgot that my best thinking got me a seat in AA, and I made yet another poor choice. It was pointed out to me that the gut feeling, was in fact my Higher Power and I didn't listen. Had I have done that and taken action based on that answer the outcome would have been ver different. The blessing of this program is that I have choices today. I can start over and make this all right and make the choices to get back to where I need to be. I have caused some serious harm to myself and to others, but it doesn't have to be the thing that I chose to drink over unless I want to. So today I made some choices and took some actions that will restore me physically, mentally and spiritually. This will take some time but I can get through this if I place my hope and my life in the care of my Higher Power.

Which brings me to the reading I shared here about balance: I have been blessed beyond mywildest dreams. I have people in this fellowship who are willing to place our very frienship on the line for me and the only thing I can do, the right choice is to acccept that gift, be as honest as I can, and move forward from here. It is what I would want them to do and it is what my Higher Power would want for me. I have been blessed to be loved by one of the most wonderful men in the world. I have done more to destroy that relationship than you can imagine and he is still here. In my lifetime I doubt I can hardly repay all that he has done for me and all that he is to me. Just for Today I can begin a journey that is inclusive instead of exclusive as I have been doing. He was there through all the crap and I have not included him in the struggle, the journey, the peace and the serenity. Twenty-Years ago....Aug. 3, 1985 we made a commitment to honor and to serve, through struggles and joys, health and illness, a journey of growth and love, despite troubles and obstacles. He has lived up to that commitment everyday of his life and I have taken that commitment for granted nearly everyday of my life. With the help and gudiance of my Higher Power I went to him and told him this and made a commitment to live up to this as best as I could for today. My words can hardly mean anything anymore, but my actions speak volumnes. The greatest action I can and did give today is that of honesty.

So long as I follow this path I have nothing to fear. I need to stay in my gut where God speaks to me and to stay out of my head where my Ego struggles to regain control. Most of all I must remain Honest, Open Minded and Willing because this disease is the greatest advesary I have ever faced. It is patient above all and will always be waiting for an opportunity to gain ground.

Relationships

Today's thought is:

In normal relationships, there may be low times as well as high times. It's unrealistic to expect every minute to be perfect and filled with happiness. There may be times when my partner and I disagree. We may want to do something separate from each other, want to spend time alone, or simply be in a bad mood.

Relationships of any kind don't always have to be fun and exciting. Real life is about experiencing emotions of all kinds. We may experience sadness, frustration, anger, disappointment, depression, or any other feeling that isn't usually considered to be positive. These feelings are all part of life.

Today I will accept that as long as I'm communicating my feelings, all of them are okay. I will allow others to have their own feelings too.
You are reading from the book:

Time to Fly Free by Judith R. Smith

This was a good reading for me today. Good reminder that relationships are a lot of work. I always want happy moments, no turmoil, no downs. If I were to get my way I suppose that my relationships would not grow, they would become stagnant and die. I have a hard time with that principle about "if your ever gonna see a rainbow, you'll have to stand a little rain" I will try for today to be as honest, as open and as willing as I can be to letting my relationships stretch and grow.

Love and Acceptance

I will not hurt anyone today by any comment. I will truthfully share the love and acceptance I have been given.

Today's thought is:

If one is going to be truthful, one has to be very tender. --Florida Scott-Maxwell

Honesty is always the best policy, right? We glibly recite that saying, but it's important to reevaluate its meaning when we are eager to correct or direct the actions of the other people. If being honest will unnecessarily harm them, perhaps being silent is better.

The program is helping us restructure our lives. We discover that many former, automatic responses no longer fit who we desire to be. That means we have to try new, less-practiced behaviors, such as being honest without being harsh or critical.

Learning tenderness is possible. With the help of this program and one another, we are learning to express the acceptance and love that have been given to us by our Higher Power. Giving away what we have been given is sharing the truth absolutely.

I will not hurt anyone today by any comment. I will truthfully share the love and acceptance I have been given.

I needed to hear this today. It was a crazy, long day at work. I work in a field that can be very challenging at times. Yet I work with those who are the most disadvantage in our society. They also are the most accepting, truthful and loving group too. Sometimes I forget that if I want those qualities than I must live those qualities. When I chose not to live those qualities than the people around me feed off my negative energy and that's what I get on return. This reading was a good reminder to me and just what I needed to hear.

Purpose of Spiritual Development

The purpose of individual spiritual work and spiritual developement is empowerment, to remind you of your divine, spiritual identity. Through the power of your spiritual identity, you become conscious of your
ability to create life experiences. Spiritual work must be done in service and recognition of God. God expects us to serve one another. This requires discipline, focus, and knowledge of spiritual law and principal. It also requires purity of intent and heart. When these elements are absent, you are not building a good character. You are not doing spiritual work for the good of the world. You are doing something else that is bound to blow up in your face. I learned this through experience.

Taken from "Yesterday, I Cried" by Iyanla Vanzant

This is an important concept for me today. I really identified with the sentence.....requires purity of intent and heart. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous teaches me that, "belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements." (P.13-14 Big Book). Purity of intent and heart is really what humility is about. The book further states, "faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish" (P.16 Big Book). By doing this I find the empowerment that is talked about in this reading. For me it means daily service to God's people and the power of the choice to follow his will and surrender my will. When I was in the throws of my addiction I had no choices. Now that God's grace has relieved me of the obsession I have choices today. The choices I make will have a direct impact on whether or not I continue to stand "in the sunlight of the spirit" or fall into the shadows of addiction. So long as I make the choice daily to enlarge my spiritual life, to search for God's will and be of services I stand a good chance of being sober today. If I go to bed sober tonight and follow through with those same choices tomorrow than I stand a good chance of being sober tomorrow. It has taken me along time to come to this place....but along the way I have learned that I can't, He can, and I can choose to let him. I am very grateful for the choices I have today, for the gift of sobriety, for the program and all it has taught me, and for the fellowship where I can see by example how to live sober, work with others,and expand my spiritual life.

Understanding the 12 Steps

Understanding comes slowly from practice of the twelve steps. From simple acts such as:

1. Humbily addmitting our alcoholism. Desiring to stop drinking and treating our alcoholism.
2. Honest effort to lose alcoholic skepticism. Faith in God and the AA program.
3. Making a descion to live as free as possible of mental binges.
4. Identifying character defects that isolate us from contented society.
5. Submitting these defects in prayer to God for removal.
6. Honestly living each Step to establish a conscious contact with him.
7. Prayer without resentments in our hearts.
8. Studying the Big Book for understanding to improve our conscious. Forgiving others.
9. Dealing in right motives, fair treatment.
10. Acting with kindness and sanity in our business and home life.
11. Being honest and appreciative, helping others, showing tolerance.
12. Belief in our spiritual potential. Willingness to find God in developing it.

I needed to read this today. Especially the part about willingness to find God, faith in God. I am sitting here in misery because things aren't working out the way I want them to or think they should. I sat down to read and found this. It dawned on me that I am sitting in this postion because I never once asked God for help through this, and I haven't listened for an answer or tried to see what his will might be. I need to stop and surrender my will and my life over to my Higher Power and than maybe it will be a better day than testerday......

Steps Six and Seven

The several objects of Steps six and seven are:

1. To become honest and humble. To willingly seek God's help without resevation.
2. To perfect ourselves in the practice of unselfish prayer.
3. To be aware of our defective character traits.
4. To desire their removal.
5. To surrender completely all defects of character.
6. To believe God can remove them.
7. To ask Him to take them all away.

The results we expect from pursuit of these objects are:

1. A reconciliation to God's way of doing business. We become "fed up" with our way and with further practice of trying to run the show ourselves.
2. A willingness to work out a plan for suppression f self-centeredness through faith and a consious contact with God.
3. To experience disastisfaction as a result of our alcoholic practices and to seek a spiritual inspiration that will bring us an inner sense of pece and security.
4. Increased faith, clean hearts and minds, ability to offer unselfish prayer.
5. A spiritual courage that is fearless in its outlook on life; a desire to make restittion to those our drinking has harmed.
6. A desire to quit bluffing and honestly give God a chance to remove from our lives all that stands in the way of our usefulness to Him and t others. True humility.
7. Elimination of our defective character traits, acquistion of peace of mind, and sobriety.

Taken from The Little Red Book For Women

Now is a good time for me to concentrate on giving the old habits to God and concentrating on new ones. I herniated my disc again this afternoon. The pain is intense. My head of course is sceaming at me...morphine, fentonal, vicadine, lortab...all ot it. I had that brief moment when the Doctor asked which one I wanted....but in the end honesty won out....I said all of it, but Doc the problem is I'm a drug addict and can't have any of it. I am full of fear as this is the very way I relapsed just over a year ago.. I have 20more days to go and I can say I have made it a year clean and sober. I must rely on God and new habits to get through this. Pain killers are not an option for me....they are poison for me....so I must quite the voices and learn new ways of getting through this. One good thing in all this is I'l get a few days off from work and can catch up on some reading and some much needed sleep.

Loving Truth

Today's thought is:

Loving Truth

Since it is truth that sets us free - free from our addiction and free from crippling fear - we come to love this truth, even when it hurts. It was mainly our fear that kept us from recognizing the truth about ourselves. We needed help and support from a Higher Power before we could face reality. Now that we are sustained by the AA program, we can devote our time and energy to striving for truth in all that we think, say, and do.

Our devotion to truth may bring us into conflict with those around us. What we need to remember is that we are not responsible for convincing anyone else of what we believe to be true. We are honest about where we are, but we do not expect or demand agreement from anyone else. Since each of us has a different perspective, we can only know the truth as we each understand it. Loving truth means that we acknowledge it to be too big for any one of us to grasp completely.

The truth is something I have been really working on Lately. It has been a struggle because my nature is to lie and cheat whenever possible. Learning a new way is always hard. I have found that for the most part it is true.....the truth sets me free. Being truthful to myself was the first step. Until I could be honest about who I was and what I had done, there was no chance of me being honest with anyone else. Now that I have become honest about myself it is much easier to be honest with others, even when the truth is painful. The challenge lies in being truthful, yet minimizing the hurt and pain that some truths can bring. I imagine it will take a lifetime to master this skill, and I am only a beginner. For today, I can do the next right and truthful thing, thanks to the blessing of the program and all of you.

Silence

Silence teaches you many things. It teaches you how to listen and how to hear. It teaches you how to feel and how to translate into words what you are feeling. When you can't translate what you are feeling, silence allows you to go deeper into yourself and find the peace that surpasses understanding. A peace that enables you to move forward, even when you don't inderstand. Most of the time, silence is a good thing. But there are those times and circumstances when silence will kill you. A killing silence can destroy your identity and your spirit. It can kill your heart and your soul. When silence is used as a means of avoiding something you know you must deal with, it will murder your sense of worth. When you use silence to hide the truth, to avoid the truth, or to color the truth, it's the same as saying that the truth doesn't matter. It demonstrates your belief that people who tell the truth don't matter.
But they do.

Taken from "Yesterday I Cried" by Iyanla Vanzant

This is so true and has been a very tough lesson to learn. My whole childhood was full of silence and secrets that left me deeply scarred. As I began recovery I often spoke when I should have been silent and listened, but most damaging to my recovery has been the silence when I should speak. Honesty is a very big part of this program. I always thought that if I omitted facts than I wasn't being untruthful. It took a lot of work and support for me to learn that omission is the greatest untruthfulness because it contributes to being untrustworthy. I'm not perfect by any means, but I have learned that if there are no secrets than you are being honest and honesty leads to trust. Thanks so much to Mable for sticking by my side and helping me to see the dishonesty that I couldn't see.

Suffering

As children we learn a great deal about our ability to survive and get by in life, by the way we were treated. It is ultimately our ability to withstand or understand the treatment we receive as children that determines what we think about ourselves as adults......One big lesson.....grin and bear your grief....suffer in silence....silent suffering was good for the soul......He taught her that life was hard and that you must do whatever is necessary to survive.....Daddy taught her that money was more important than personal honor, and that it is okay to do whatever is necessary to get the money you need to live. He taught her that family is no where near as important as your reputation among your peers. He also taught her that making do with what you have is more important than asking for what you want. More important still, he taught her never to tell the truth if it will make trouble, or get you in trouble.....Unfortunately, when you have a survivalist mentality, you become so caught up in surviving, you forget that there is another way of living. You forget about the joy and the gentleness and the softness. You forget about communication and intimacy. You forget that in the process of living you must remember to be gentle and kind. When you are a daddy, you may even forget that your little girl is watching you, waiting for you to make things better. She had a hard time learning all of the things that her daddy and the other adults in her life forgot.

Taken from "Yesterday, I cried" by Iyanla Vanzant

This reading really hit home for me. I learned everything in this very same manner. What really hit me was the fact that I am recovering, yet I still do some of those old behaviors. I want my kids to learn a new way and hopefully stop the cycle of addiction and dysfunction. I am learning that this will take a lifetime to change all the old into new. All I can do is to keep trying and move forward from there. The key is being honest with my kids about the mistakes and help them to learn a new way as I learn the new way too. They already have so much growth and knowledge above what I came into this program with and that has to be a good starting point.

Healing

"Healing takes place from the inside out. I had to go to depths of my memory, the core of my soul, and make peace with what I had created. That's right I created it. Whenever we don't do what we need to do, for whatever reason, we create crap. I once thought if I prayed enough, meditated long enough, and demonstrated enough faith, things would work themselves out. I had thought I could live with the pangs of something not being quite right. Thank God I had grown enough to be unable to excuse away any level of dishonesty. Dishonesty was not a part of the nature of the new me...."

Taken from Yesterday I cried: Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving by Iyanla Vanzant

This I found to be so true in my life. Those things that I have allowed to come to the surface and have allowed them to heal are now gone. Not that they are forgotten, but that they are healed and no longer screaming to be heard and acknowledged. Those things that I have chosen to keep hidden, to ignor, to push further into the dark corners of my mind, have festered and grown. They have grown into something bigger than if I had just dealt with it in the first place. With each new bit of healing and growth I am learning a deeper level of honesty. Eventually maybe I will reach that place of rigorously honest.

The Old New into The New You

"Often, when you are on the spritual path, there is a war that goes on between the person you once were and the person you are becoming. Some call it "thought patterns." Others call it "habit." My experience was that there were two distinct personalities who need to be integrated...You may believe strongly, you may want deeply to change, and for your new found identity to emerge. But the new you is not quite sure it will work. It is there, in that glimmer of doubt, that the old you begins to work. It nags at you. It challenges you. It is called self doubt and lame excuses. It looks like not having to pray, to meditate, and not being able to figure out how praying and meditating are gonna put food on the table. The new you views problems as challenges, knowing that with every problem comes the solution, the escape, the way out. The new you is willing to confront challenges and wants to do so in a spiritually grounded way. When however, the new you is backed up to the wall, it will, out of habit, borrow from the old you. The instant borrowing occurs, the new you is rendered dead - even if it is only for a moment. The challenge is that when the new you is brought back into focus, there is probably a pile of old-you crap that needs to be cleaned up.....I had to learn the hard way that you must be disciplined, vigilant, and obedient about the practices that will build your spiritual muscles and put the old you to rest."

Taken from Yesterday I Cried: Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving by Iyanla Vanzant

This is a perfect description of what I'm going through right now. I am catching glimpses of a new me and I really want to be that person. I seem to be finding myself backed in the corner and borrowing from the old a lot these days. I know it will take time and plenty of spiritual muscle to get through this. The big difference between the old me and the new me is that the new me is filled with hope that there is a way out of the corner that works much better than the way the old me does it. If I work hard at this, keep admitting when I do it wrong, follow the suggestions given me and remain honest, open and willing I will get there over time. Thanks to those who have gone before me and blazed a clear path to follow. Your support and guidance has been a huge blessing. Thanks especially to Mable, your the bestest!

Willingness

When all is said and done, willingness is everything. --Frank D.

Most of us adult children know very well that recovery doesn't happen, nor is there any positive growth, unless we are first of all willing.

Sometimes we get confused over the difference between willing and wanting. We don't have to want, let alone enjoy, doing what needs to be done. Not wanting to do something is altogether different from not being willing to do it. As one recovering woman said, "Everything I ever let go of had claw marks all over it." The bottom line is that she did let go no matter how badly she wanted to hang on; she was willing.

Think of the people in the program we most admire, those whose progress seems so speedy compared to ours. They may very well not enjoy going out to meetings. They may find it uncomfortable to meet with their sponsors or to say kind words when they really want to complain. They may wish they didn't have to make amends to certain people. But druthers aren't the point. The point is that they are willing to do what it takes.

Today, I ask God to help me deepen my willingness to grow and to see the difference between what I want and what I will.

It's almost time for me to go home and get back to life on life's terms. It has been a much needed break from the world to come here to the safety of my Anna Poo's hideaway. Return to life I must. I have to come the place in my journey where only rigorous honesty with myself and my program is gonna keep me sober. It is something I have struggled with. I have relapsed over it once and it is not a place I want to go again. So my prayer is for the willingness to be rigoroursly honest. That simple act of praying for willingness worked on step 3 so I have faith it will work with this as well if I only just give it a try. Thanks to Anna for all that you've given me, even though you have so much uncertainty in your own life right now. Just a place to escape to now and than means the world to me and I know I'm safe here. Thanks to all of you for all the support. I couldn't make it without AA and you folks.

Honesty

Tributaries of Truth

This journey in this life, the way we all go, There's a predestined pattern, a definite flow. The truth is within us, provides us the boat. Variable individuals, determining our float. We sink or we swim, determined in our choices. Choice is the keyword, not forgetting inner voices. We tread and we dread, our futures with short view, Appropriate measures, truth, honesty in choose. Esteem is an issue for those who think grand. Esteem is an issue, for non-takers of stand. The float we maintain through these tributaries of life, The truth, no matter choices, will surface, end strife. However, life's journey, our view from above, Determined, predestination, our integrity and love.

by Therese Garcia


Quintessential Love

When there is honesty...When there is understanding...The willingness to sacrifice...When one does not take advantage of the goodnessof the other...In the absence of hate... vengeance... outrage...When there is compassion...When loyalty is free from betrayal...When love trancends material things...Then your love is pure...It is a Quintessential Love! ! !

by Roland B. Beltran

When I came to this program I asked how I was to work this program. I was told Honesty, Openmindedness and Willingness. Today I'm learning that my progress on the the road of happy detiny is directly proportionate to level of Honesty, Openmindedness, and Willingness I put into each and every action I take.