Endigar 767
From Courage to Change of February 05;
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” says the Zen Buddhists. Or, as an Al-Anon speaker put it, “We each get here right on time.” To me, this is an important reason to have a public relations policy based on attraction rather than promotion, as the Eleventh Tradition suggests.
My own arrival in Al-Anon was right on schedule. I first heard about the program when I was a teenager; I attended my first meeting twenty years later. I don’t regret that lapse of time because I don’t think I would have been ready to come to Al-Anon any sooner — I spent those twenty years resenting any implication from well-meaning family members that I had been affected by alcoholism. Only after many years of living with the effects of the disease did I really become ready to get help. No amount of nagging would have hurried me along any faster.
Today’s Reminder
There is no magic wand that can make others ready for Al-Anon. And it is presumptuous to assume that I have a better idea of their true path than they do. Let me help those who want help. When my life improves as a result of working the program myself, I do more to carry the message than I ever could be forcing it on others.
“Let me not dilute the effectiveness of the help I can give by letting it take the form of giving advice. I know I will never have enough insight into another’s life to tell that person what is best to do.” – The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage
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The wind blows and we know neither where it comes from nor where it is destined to arrive. It is the same for all those who practice a life surrendering to the flow of the guiding Spirit. There is neither rushing nor hindering the timing of my Gomu by the thrashing of fearful impatience. I breathe, exhaling purposeful activity and inhaling the invisible flow of a loving God.
Living in the World of the Spirit has taken much practice. The demand of relationships has given me my greatest opportunity to live in fear or faith and in the process I gather evidence for which is most effective. My goal is to breathe, surrender, and move in tandem with the irresistible Spirit of Liberty I have been introduced to in this program.
Daily Reprieve 
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