Every day, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) posts messages to support those who are working to maintain their recovery. You don’t have to be an active AA participant, or even follow the 12-Step model, to benefit from AA’s daily reflections and meditations.
What Is an AA Daily Meditation?
The first thing to know about an AA daily meditation is that this practice is not the same as mindfulness meditation. However, both can be beneficial to your recovery efforts.
During mindfulness meditation, the goal is to clear your mind of thoughts and emotions. Typically, you will focus solely on your breath or a mantra.
An AA daily reflections meditation (which some people also refer to simply as an AA daily meditation) is a brief passage that addresses some aspect of addiction or recovery. Similar to how the motto “one day at a time” reminds us to focus on the present, daily reflections encourage us to momentarily devote our full attention to one aspect of recovery.
Some days, an AA daily meditation might address a specific lesson from The Big Book. Another day, it might highlight a particular challenge or point out a certain skill. Regardless of the day’s topic, every reflection or meditation gives us the opportunity to think deeply about what it means to live a healthy life in recovery.
5 Examples of an AA Daily Reflections Meditation
The AA website includes a Daily Reflections page that features a new passage every day of the year. The selections that are featured on this page are from AA publications such as The Big Book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and As Bill Sees It.
Here are five examples of AA daily reflections meditations from 2024:
- Jan. 1: The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.
- Feb. 24: I try to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one’s heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know.
- March 16: My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. . . . “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.
- April 8: We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction.
- June 21: The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime undertaking, one that can never be wholly completed. When under heavy attack, acute illness, or in other conditions of serious insecurity, we shall all react to this emotion – well or badly, as the case may be. Only the self-deceived will claim perfect freedom from fear.
Benefits of Doing a Daily Reflections Meditation
We already alluded to one of the most important benefits of incorporating AA daily reflection meditation into your schedule: Each reflection gives you the opportunity to focus on a single aspect of recovery and think deeply about how the day’s topic applies to you.
Examples of the many other potential benefits of daily reflections include:
- They are chances to calm your mind and center your thoughts.
- They can help you get into a positive frame of mind as you prepare to face whatever challenges the day has in store for you.
- If you journal on a regular basis, daily reflections can provide ideal topics to explore in greater detail when you sit down to write.
- They allow you to revisit concepts or lessons that you may have forgotten about or not fully considered before.
- Reflections and meditations reinforce the concept that recovery is a lifetime pursuit that requires daily effort.
- They remind you that you are part of a global community of people who are working to live healthier lives. If you refer to the reflections that are posted each day on the AA site, you will be joining countless others throughout the world who are thinking about the same passage on the same day.
- You can use meditations however you see fit. If you aren’t able to take time in the morning as you prepare for your day, you can schedule time during lunch, as you’re getting ready for bed, or whenever else works best for you.
Please note that you have many options for finding daily reflections or meditations that resonate with you, or that feel like they are most appropriate for you. The AA website is just one of many sources of recovery-related passages.
Many websites feature daily thoughts, reflections, and meditations that can be valuable to people in recovery. Take some time to explore your options, so that you can make this part of your day as meaningful as possible.
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