[Leed]

From Days of Healing, Days of Joy - a Hazelden book

"Let the dead Past bury it's dead!"...............Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Like a rearview mirror, feelings face backwards. They show what's behind us - not where we are now, and not where we're going. The way we feel now has been conditioned by lessons we learned in the past. Our habitual feelings are reflections of where we've been and who we've been with.

It may be that we learned to feel guilty when we ask for what we need. If we learned the lesson well, we do indeed feel guilt every time we claim a right. Perhaps we learned that we're supposed to feel suspicious and nervous if too many good things happen - and so we do.

As we recover, we can't use these old feelings as guides. We need to forge new ways of thinking, behaving and feeling. We need to choose sane healthy behavior no matter how we feel. And we need to send our feelings back to school by persisting in that behavior until the new lessons are learned as well as the old ones.
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I now know that today's actions are the seeds of tomorrow's feelings. Today, I wait in joyful hope.

If any of you are like me, you certainly learned how to feel guilty. Growing up, it seems that's all I did learn!! But in recovery, I learned that I didn't have to feel like that anymore, and that today was all I had to think about. That was very freeing to me, even though it took me awhile to master it.
When I think of all the things that AA has taught me, I am so grateful.

And I can imagine, from my own life experiences, that a large part of what you and all of us learn is that to rely on our own minds for answers is not a solution. We have a responsbility to do well if we are able, but the real and true solutions of life lie in the presence of our God as our faithful guide, in my view.

At least that's what life has taught me.

[avlady]

Me Too!!!!!

[Leed]

I should have added that AA "taught" me how to have a higher power, having been an agnostic previously. Today my higher power is God. And I'm grateful!