LIFE

Definition of Life:
The existence of an individual human being or animal.

Synonyms of Life:
Creature, existence, human being, living, person, etc.

These notes are from recovery in AA and/or related 12 step programs. Readers are encouraged to click external links for more detail. We hope you find them helpful.

Love in fellowship.

Seek conscious contact with God more and more each day. Make God an abiding presence during the day.

Be conscious of His spirit helping you.
All that is done with God’s spirit is life eternal. –24 Hours | More…

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. -William James Living itself, is a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace. -E. B. White

The distance doesn’t matter; only the first step is difficult. Now we’ve chosen a new path for our lives.

Making that choice was hard. We knew only the old path. We were afraid to change. But we did it. That was the hardest part. –Keep It Simple | More…

What is the meaning of life? life isn’t an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.

Looked at differently, “nowhere” becomes “now here.” When we take things apart, stand back, and examine them from a different angle, we often find we held the answer from the beginning.

Sometimes, when we’re convinced we are the problem, we discover we were the solution all along. –Today’s Gift | More…

Our Twelve Step program promises us a new way of life. But most of us won’t just wake up one day with a new attitude.

We only gain this new way of life if we get involved. The Twelve Step are tools to build a new life.

The more we use a tool, the easier it is to use. –Keep It Simple | More…

We discover that we receive guidance for our lives to just about the extent that we stop making demands upon God to give it to us on order and on our terms. In praying, we ask simply that throughout the day God place in us the best understanding of His will that we can have for that day, and that we be given the grace by which we may carry it out.

There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. These practices when logically related and interwoven, result in an unshakable foundation for life. –As Bill Sees It | More… (p.33).

Our First Step in this program introduces us to a radical idea – that accepting our powerlessness is beneficial. In surrendering to life as it unfolds, we find ourselves on an adventure. –Touchstones | More…

Spiritual and emotional growth is a process of raising our awareness. We see ourselves more as recovering, caring, strong, vulnerable persons in relationships with others.

It is not idle fantasy to imagine beginning life again because, in a sense, we have. In recovery, it seems we have begun life again, only with our eyes a little more open. –Touchstones | More…

We’re told that we should forget the past when we come into AA. There was much in our past however that was good, even when we were drinking.

The real dangers of living in the past come either from brooding about its mistakes or from thinking that our best days are already behind us. We can think of the past as a foundation for the good we expect today and in all the days ahead.  –Walk In Dry Places/Mel B. | More…

The more we open up, the happier we are.
Our feelings are free.

They bounce around.
They don’t get stuck.

We feel alive.
Sure, we feel pain and fear sometimes.

But we feel joy, love, and laughter too. And, more and more often, we feel alive. –Keep It Simple | More…

Life is to be lived or endured. My spiritual recovery means that every day I reach out to life and grasp it, hold it, smell it–and smile. –Father Leo | More…

A speaker told us one day that people who can’t manage their time also have difficulty handling their money. We have even heard that “time is money.”

Without becoming misers, we have a responsibility to use time wisely – other people’s time as well as our own. Being prompt and managing all of our time well is part of mature living.

It’s part of being a responsible, grown-up, caring person. If we’ve been guilty of poor management of our own time, we’ve probably been wasting other people’s time as well. –Mel B./Walk in Dry Places | More…

Only those who dare, truly live.
Having a sponsor–and being one–helps.

Taking a Fifth and working the Twelfth helps.
Going to meetings and sharing helps.

We must not miss out on what life offers. We can risk feeling it all, hearing it all, seeing it all. –Each Day a New Beginning/Karen Casey | More…

May you live all the days of your life. –Jonathan Swift
I heard a story that offers a key to the meaning of spirituality: Two little fish were huddled together, afraid to move.

A large fish swam by them, confident and strong. The big fish shouted out to the two little fish, “Why don’t you swim out and enjoy the beautiful ocean?”

The two little fish looked at each other and asked, “Where is the ocean?” They were in it but they didn’t know it!

As an alcoholic I existed in life but I didn’t live: I was numbered amongst the “walking dead”. Today I make a spiritual choice that avoids alcohol. Today I am alive. –Father Leo | More…

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.

Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. –M. Scott Peck | More…

We each are traveling on our own, very special path in this life. At times our paths run parallel to each other.

But we do all have a common destination: knowledge of life’s meaning. We have never needed to take any step alone on this trip.

Our troubles in the past were complicated because we did not know this; but now we do. Our lifeline is to our higher power. –Each Day a New Beginning/Karen Casey | More…

While on our journey, life can sometimes get bleak and dark passages may envelop us. Often these moments come at the deepest period of working things out.

Plan on these moments. They are not the end of the journey. They are the passageway through the tunnel and into the light. –Journey To The Heart/Melody Beattie | More…

At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it. –Albert Camus.
What is time for? How often we say, “I don’t have the time for ______”

Just what is important anyway? Some people seem to do everything in the margins of their lives, without thinking or knowing much about it.

They go to school, get married, have children, get divorced, experience losses, get jobs, all rather offhandedly. Their attention always seems to be somewhere else.

All of us are preoccupied sometimes. And sometimes, in the middle of our lives, the preoccupation clears. “I woke up this morning and took a long look at my life. What have I gotten myself into!”

Suddenly, somehow, our full attention is turned on the matter at hand. Suddenly, we have time to think. What’s revealed then is the pattern of our lives.

Did we make choices at random, irresponsibly? Now that we can see, are there parts we can do over? –The Promise of a New Day/Karen Casey & Martha Vanceburg | More…

God’s presence is within us, now and always, even though we feel alone, alienated, scared, and forgotten much of the time. We often overlook God’s presence because we don’t recognize it.

The creative potential goes unrealized among so many of us, perhaps because we have a rigid definition of what creativity is. We are creative. We are all, each of us, creative. We must be because God’s presence is here now.

Encouraging creativity, our own and someone else’s, may mean breaking old habits. It also means giving ourselves fully to the experience of the moment and trusting that God’s presence will prompt the deliverance of our special gift. –Each Day a New Beginning/Karen Casey | More…

The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. When new in the program, I couldn’t comprehend living the spiritual aspect of the program.

But now that I’m sober, I can’t comprehend living without it. Spirituality was what I had been seeking. –Daily Reflections | More…

Women are created with the ability to produce life. Women have a special tie to the Earth Mother. They have something in common. They are the source of life. The Earth Mother gives songs to the Woman to sing. These songs are about life, about beauty, about children, about love, about family, about strength, about caring, about nurturing, about forgiveness, about God. The World needs to pay attention and listen to Her. She knows. –Elders Meditations | More…

The cycle of life is a circle: baby, youth, adult, elder. The sun gives life to the earth who feeds life to the trees whose seeds fall to the earth to grow new trees. We need to practice seeing the cycles that the Great Spirit gave us because this will help us more in our understanding of how things operate. We need to respect these cycles and live in harmony with them. –Elders Meditations | More….

The Red Road is the path we walk on when we want a direct relationship with the Great Spirit. This requires sacrifice. This requires us to have our beliefs tested. To walk this path is really an honor. The returns for doing so are exciting, not only for ourselves but for the effect that will be felt for three generations. This means your children will see the benefits as well as your grandchildren. Do I want to walk this sacred road? — Elders Meditations | More…

With our enhanced understanding of ourselves, we gain greater insight into and acceptance of others. The Twelve Steps are the key to a process we call “life.” In working the steps, they become a part of us—and we become a part of the life around us. Our world is no longer meaningless; we understand more about what happens in our lives today. We no longer fight the process. Today, in working the steps, we live it –Just For Today | More …