DAILY CONTEMPLATIONS FOR MEMBERS OF

ACTIVE ADDICTIONS ANONYMOUS

THE WILD LIFE

DAILY CONTEMPLATIONS FOR THE MEMBERS OF
ACTIVE ADDICTIONS ANONYMOUS - THE WILD LIFE

is createdmanifested by

Harishchandra Sharma TuTu and Solvejg Sharma TuTu

TRANSLATED FROM DANISH

Third Edition

Published by: The Active Addictions Anonymous World Service Office

 Free Copyright

Art on front cover – The Wild Life Day
Art on back cover – The Wild Life Night

Courtesy: Harishchandra TuTu

The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions reprinted for adaptation by permission of AA World Services, Inc.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Program of Active Addictions Anonymous was originally suggested in the book The TuTu Doctrine – The New World Order,
published by ToTos Solfond (Danish for TuTu’s Sun Foundation) as a pathway that the individual human being can use to move
from his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to contentment in his/her life irrespective of circumstances.

The Program has come into being with permission from ToTos Solfond without any obligations to or affiliations with ToTos Solfond otherwise.

The Program has been createdmanifested as an adaptation of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous with permission from the World Service Office of AA. inc without any obligations to or affiliations with Alcoholics Anonymous otherwise.

CONTENT

JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH  APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

JANUARY

January 01 Feeling small	January 02 Active Addiction	January 03 Being unique
January 04 Isolation	January 05 To Follow the heart	January 06 Addiction to chronic dissatisfaction
January 07 What is Active Addictions Anonymous	January 08 Self-respect	January 09  My Truth
January 10 Fear	January 11 To seek help	January 12 Step Three
January 13 The Group Conscience	January 14 Discernment	January 15 Easy does it!
January 16 Step Twelve	January 17 Fellowship	January 18 Death
January 19 Addiction	January 20 Simplicity	January 21 Group Readings
January 22 Freedom from guilt and shame	January 23 Mutual wisdom	January 24 The Fruit of the Right Action
January 25 Self-importance	January 26 The Ring of Hope	January 27 Poverty
January 28 From Self-centeredness to God-centeredness	January 29 The Gratitude Prayer	January 30 The 'For Free' Principle
January 31 Sharing in AcAdAn Meetings

JANUARY

January 01: Feeling Small

However, when we came to AcAdAn, we discovered we could learn to live a content life with the help of the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous whether our active addiction was mild, moderate or severe.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, Page 7 

Before coming to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us were not aware that we were suffering from an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, because our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction had been with us for as long as we could remember, but when we worked with the AcAdAn Program, we discovered that we had taken a big dissatisfied decision as children.

We had decided that when we became adult we would not feel as small as we did, when we felt limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable, but as the years passed by, it became evident to us that even if we had now become ‘grown ups’ we still felt small, when we felt dissatisfied with our humanness.

As a result of our childhood decision to never again feel small, we added injury to pain by thinking that we failed our self by being limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable, and this further contributed to that we became addicted to being chronically dissatisfied with our humanness.

Gradually, as our work with the AcAdAn program evolved and we thereby became better and better at letting go of using our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction on our humanness, at the same time, we became better and better at finding ways in which we could live our life with contentment.

Contemplation for the day

Today, I will accept my limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability by taking my human nature to heart, so I can become content with myself and my life.

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January 02: Active Addiction

Those of us who, even if we want to, cannot liberate our self from our obsession over alcohol, drugs, nicotine, food, our body, compulsive spending, sex, relationships, codependency, destructive thoughts and emotions, character defects, work, money, power, prestige, fame, material or spiritual ambitions, or any other obsession that drives us to act compulsively, suffer from an active addiction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, Page

Our lack of capacity to accept our self as we were, settled in us as the constant low lying nagging pain, which stemmed from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with ourselves, others and our life, and this pain made us look for a magic cure that could stop the pain.

When we came to our first meeting in Active Addictions Anonymous, we discovered that we were not alone about experiencing the pain from use of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, even if the other members spoke about being dissatisfied for reasons that were not necessarily the same as ours.

Although we and the other members maybe had different reasons to be dissatisfied, we all had one thing in common, and that was the constant nagging low lying pain from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and this helped us to understand that we could use the diversity to help each other.

When we heard the myriads of reasons to be dissatisfied both from within our self and from the other members, we realized that both we and they tried to understand, why we had this constant low lying nagging pain without us having discovered before we came to AcAdAn that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction was the pain we suffered from.

Contemplation for the day

Today, I will remember that the constant, low lying nagging pain I experience daily is due to my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, which I can recover from by the help of the AcAdAn Program.

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January 03: Being unique    

Each of us in AcAdAn have our own unique way of understanding and working the Steps, and that is what makes our Fellowship so diverse and interesting.

Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life, Page 85

When we came to AcAdAn, many of us suffered under the perception that we should adjust to the Fellowships we were a part of, whether it was one of two in our coupleship or one of many in our family or at our workplace.

Little by little, as our work with the Rings of Joy and Pain in the Active Addictions Anonymous Program evolved, we became acquainted with the Small Ring of Arrogance with its superiority, inferiority, overcrowding and isolation.

We also became acquainted with the Small Ring of Truth with its humility, honesty, individuality, and fellowship, which is the antidote to the Small Ring of Arrogance, and thus we learned that our individuality means that we are unique.

This made us understand that our individuality was our unique gift, not merely to our self, but to everything and everyone around us, and that we could give our self and others this gift by standing by our individual uniqueness and thus make our own life and the life of others varied and interesting.

Contemplation for the day

Today, I will give my individuality's unique gift to myself and others and thereby enrich my own and their life.

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January 04: Isolation

Those of us who tried to achieve contentment on our own realized that it was together with others that many undiscovered points of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction surfaced.

Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life, Page 23

Some of us chose to try to achieve contentment on our own, because we had noticed that it was especially when we were together with others that we experienced the emotional discomfort that is typical of our defects of character.

After coming to Active Addictions Anonymous however, we discovered that we could use those defects of character that surfaced in our interactions with others to come closer to our self as human beings and to grow spiritually.

In Step Ten we investigated one of the defects of character that we had used in our social life in the course of the day, and thus we came closer to our self as human beings, and when we transformed the character defect to the corresponding virtue, we came closer to our self as Spirit.

The more often we transformed our defects of character into virtues by the help of our daily Tenth Step, the lesser discomfort we experienced in our social life, and the lesser our urge to isolate our self from interactions with other people became.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Tenth Step to take care of one of the defects of character I used in a social interaction, by transforming it into the corresponding virtue so as to come closer to myself both as human being and as Spirit.

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January 05: To Follow the heart

The principle of Step Three is Surrender. Slogan: Follow your heart.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

It was a common perception among us that God lives in our heart, so when we followed our heart, we surrendered to God, but before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us did not know what it meant to surrender to our heart and thus to God, so we worked with our Third Step principle of surrender by the help of the Third Step slogan in our AcAdAn Program, and gradually it became clear to us that in all its simplicity it meant that we surrendered to our heart, when we did what we felt like doing.

In Step Two, most of us had chosen a Higher Power, which was omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and immortal/unchangeable, and who was unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate, and merciful, which are the qualities most religions and spiritual creeds attribute to God, and these qualities in our chosen Higher Power made us realize that our Higher Power wanted or needed nothing from us other than what we our self wanted, so it became important for us to find out what we wanted.

We heard in meetings that no desire was to big, and no desire was to small to be fulfilled, that every desire of ours would be fulfilled in the long run by our chosen Higher Power, and that no desire would be judged by our Higher Power as unworthy or wrong so the only one, who prevented us from getting all our desires fulfilled was our self, and we prevented the fulfillment of our desires by judging them as unworthy or wrong or by thinking that we we were unworthy or did not deserve to get what we wanted.

When we fulfilled one of our desires, it could happen that we did not like the consequence of the fulfillment of the desire, and this might make us believe that there was something wrong or unworthy about our desire, which God now punished us for, but the consequence was merely the result of earthly principles that we our self, as humankind, had wanted so as to createmanifest stability in our life so that salt was always salt and did not turn into sugar because we had mistakenly put salt in our tea and wanted God to miraculously turn it into sugar.

Today's contemplation
Today, I choose to liberate myself from believing that there is something wrong or unworthy about my desires, or that I am not worthy or deserving of their fulfillment so I can begin to walk The Path of The Heart by me surrendering to working on fulfilling all of my desires and needs to the best of my capacity.

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January 06: Addiction to chronic dissatisfaction

We we began studying our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in Step One, we discovered that it sprang from the fact that we had difficulties accepting our four basic attributes as human beings - our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, Page 15

We began to investigate our daily state of mind by the help of the concepts of Active Addictions Anonymous because we wanted to find out if it could be true for us that we were addicted to chronic dissatisfaction, and we became surprised at discovering that it was really so that we compulsively used dissatisfaction with our self, others, life or the World at large many times a day.

In spite of the destructive effect it had on our and their joy of living, we had made it a daily habit to be dissatisfied with our self, others, life, or the World at large, hoping that our dissatisfaction would be experienced to be so uncomfortable by our self, others, or the World at large, that it would give us or them that little push, we or they needed to move in the right direction according to our opinion.

As children, we knew innermost that our parents' task was to love us unconditionally, even though we discovered that their love was sometimes dysfunctional, and we often experienced that when they wanted to give us a little push in the right direction according to their opinion, the push often consisted in that they exposed us to various discomforts or punishments, which they believed would have the desired effect.

This had made us believe that it was that way we should give our self, others, our life or the World at large a little push in the right direction, but gradually as we investigated the matter, we discovered that this did not work according to intention and it was thus a dysfunction we had learned in our childhood that had developed into an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in the course of our life.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my First Step in AcAdAn to get ready to begin my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in Step Two.

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January 07: What is Active Addiction Anonymous?

Active Addictions Anonymous is a non-profit Fellowship of men and women, for whom addiction to dissatisfaction with our self, others, life and the World at large had become a problem.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, most of us had done our utmost to become content with our self, others, our life and the World at large without success.

We were dissatisfied with that all our efforts had been to no avail, and even when we came to AcAdAn it was hard for us to face that we were addicted to use dissatisfaction.

It was also hard to face that we were powerless over our addiction, and it took many of us several years of struggle with our addiction to dissatisfaction before we were ready to receive help.

When we finally admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, we discovered that the Fellowship of AcAdAn was ready to give us the help we needed no matter how long it had taken us to become ready.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will participate in the Fellowship of Active Addictions Anonymous to have my desire fulfilled of being lead to contentment with myself, others, my life and the World at large.

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January 08: Self-respect

Instead of thinking that we had to sacrifice our time, energy, money and interests for others to be able to feel good about our self, we accepted that we needed to take care of our own needs first by the help of the time, energy, money and interests we had at our disposal.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 48

Most of our lives, we had been told that we were selfish if we wanted to spend our time, energy, money and interests on taking care of our own needs, whether our needs were material, physical, energetic, emotional, mental, social or spiritual.

However, in our AcAdAn Program, we worked with the Ring of Codependency from Step Four onward, and thus, we realized that such an attitude led to pain in our life, and we also learned that we could transform this pain to joy by working with the Ring of Emotional Sobriety.

The Ring of Emotional Sobriety says that it is an act of self-respect, when we take care of our own needs first of all, and that it is also respect for others that we do so plus allow them time and space to take care of their own needs, before we decide, if we have a surplus that we want to use on contributing to their life

If we believe that it would bring us joy to contribute, we do it, and if we feel that we are sacrificing our resources in a way, where we deny our self our needs for the sake of contributing to others, we do not do it.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will use my resources to take care of my own needs, and I will give others time and space to take care of their needs, before I consider whether it would give me joy to contribute to their situation.

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January 09: My Truth

The principle of Tradition Eleven is Truth.
Slogan: My truth is not the whole truth.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

Little by little, as our work with the AcAdAn Program progressed, we realized that there were as many perspectives on AcAdAn’s Steps and Traditions as there were members of our Fellowship.

When we realized this, we clearly understood that although we had our Program, our Traditions, our meetings and a sponsorship/recovery-buddy-ship in common, we had our own unique perspective on them.

This realization gave us the freedom to express our perspective, knowing very well that our perspective is unique so we do not need to seek others' approval of what we perceive to be true.

In the same way, we gave others the freedom to express their perspective, knowing very well that their perspective was also unique and we did not have to agree with them in what was true for them.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will express my personal truth without trying to overwhelm others with it, and I will listen to their truth and take to heart what I find useful for me and leave the rest

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January 10: Fear

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us felt that we could not be fully understood by anyone, and we kept that a secret, which we perceived to be our failures out of fear of the condemnation of others, and we kept that a secret that we perceived to be our successes out of fear of the envy of others.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 43

When we began working with the Program in AcAdAn, we discovered that our life had been dominated by fear on all our planes of existence, and in the material field, it came to expression by us fearing not getting what we wanted of material advantages and benefits, in the physical area we were afraid of illness and death, and in the energetic area we were afraid of not having energy for the day.

Little by little, we also caught sight of our fears on our higher planes of existence, because we were afraid on the emotional plane of those pains we experienced when we or others had negative emotions, and on the thought plane, we were afraid of both of our own thoughts and those of others', as many of us perceived our own thoughts and those of others’ as demonic if they sprang from our defects of character and thus gave rise to painful emotions.

Furthermore, we were afraid of our self, other people and animals plus the World at large in our social life, and in our spiritual life, we were afraid that God would punish us for unknown trespasses, or would demand services from us that we did not want to perform so as to give us what we wanted and that could give rise to our disease of people pleasing, which made us try to flatter God and people, hoping to get what we wanted.

In Step Two, we discovered that we could choose a new Higher Power that were unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate, and merciful in place of the punishing Godhead that was unloving, uncaring, hardhearted and merciless, like most of us had been presented for in our childhood, and thereby we began to let go of our fear of our self, others, life and the World at large.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will stand by myself and courageously share with my AcAdAn Fellowship about a success that I have experienced recently, which I have kept a secret, and about a failure which still pains me that I have also kept a secret, so as to be able to begin my journey of recovery from my fear of myself, other people and animals, life and the World at large.

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January 11: To seek help

We admitted we were powerless over our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction – that our life had become unmanageable.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

In order to begin to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we needed to admit that we suffered from the disease of addiction, and that one of the many faces of our illness manifested itself by us actively using our addiction to give our self permission to be chronically dissatisfied.

When we had admitted that and investigated the consequences of our disease in this area and discovered that they came to expression by our life becoming unmanageable on all our planes of existence, we needed to seek the help that it took for us to become able to recover from our illness in this area, because we were powerless over it.

It took most of us many years both to admit that we were addicted to chronic dissatisfaction and that this made our life unmanageable, because we believed that we could become content if only we did the right thing in the right way at the right time with the right attitude, and this idea made our life into a daily struggle.

The struggle arose because we worked on carrying this out, however, without it giving us the contentment we had hoped for, and it was only when we joined like-minded people in AcAdAn that we understood that we could let go of our daily struggle with our dissatisfaction and open our self to receive the help we needed to recover.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Fellowship to get the help I need to let go of my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction instead of struggling with it.

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January 12: Step Three

We made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of our Higher Power, as we understood that Power.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 27

In our work with Step Three, we investigated our dissatisfaction with a Higher Power's contribution or the lack of it in our life, and to our surprise we discovered that our Higher Power ever so quietly had fulfilled many of our unfulfilled desires from our childhood and our youth without us having noticed it before.

Our dissatisfaction was thus an old emotion that continued to blind us so that we were not able to spot the abundance that our Higher Power had contributed with in our life from our childhood till now, and thereby we understood even clearer that our dissatisfaction only could be used if we denied Reality.

When we achieved these realizations in our Third Step work, we could finally give our self permission to understand that we were out of touch with Reality, when we used our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and thereby it became clear to us that we suffered from an illness that we could recover from in AcAdAn.

Simultaneously, by the help of these insights, our trust in our Higher Power's unconditional love, care, compassion and mercy grew, and that gave us the courage we needed to surrender our will and our life to our chosen Higher Power's care in Step Three.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will surrender my will and my life to my chosen Higher Power's care.

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January 13: The Group Conscience

When we address an issue or suggestion at our Group-Conscience meetings, each of us take our turn to express our individual conscience regarding the issue that is being discussed, and we listen attentively to what each of the group members have to contribute until all, who want to express something about this issue have spoken.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 87

In our Step Work in Active Addictions Anonymous, we learned to surrender to our chosen Higher Power, and in our service work we learned to surrender to a Higher Power on group level.

If we wanted to debate a topic that was important to our group in Active
Addictions Anonymous, it took place in a business meeting after our recovery meeting.

When we participated in our business meetings, we both became acquainted with our Twelve Traditions and with the Group Conscience that we perceive to be our Higher Power on a group level.

When each member, who wanted to had expressed his/her conscience about a solution to the topic/s that were up for debate, we perceived it to be our Group conscience that had spoken.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will surrender to my Higher Power in my groups by surrendering to the Group Conscience, whether my group consists of to or many.

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January 14: Discernment

When we began to seek our Higher Power’s guidance on a daily basis, we discovered that our ability to distinguish the voice of our Higher Power from our own began to develop, and thus Step Eleven began working for us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 69

In the course of our Step Work in AcAdAn, we had become more aware of the difference between purely physical feelings, and feelings that sprang from our thoughts and expressed themselves as emotional feelings.

Feelings such as hunger, thirst, tiredness, touch, etc., are exclusively physical, and feelings that spring from our thoughts and which could settle anywhere in our physical body we experienced as lightness or tensions in various body parts.

In Step Eleven, we we further developed our discernment to such an extent that it became easier for us to discern the feelings we experienced from each other, so we could know if they came from our Higher Power or from our thinking mind, our Ego.

When an impulse sprang from our Higher Power, the thought was accompanied by a feeling of joy without opposites, and when it sprang from our thinking mind, our Ego, it always had an opposite.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will use my discernment, when I seek guidance about my Higher Power’s will for me in Step Eleven to discern if the impulse comes from my thinking mind, my Ego or from my Higher Power.

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January 15: Easy does it!

It is also important to remind our self that we did not develop our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in one day and we do not recover in one day either, so remember – EASY DOES IT!

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

It took us so long time to realize that we suffered from an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction even though we maybe suffered under an addiction in other areas of our life that we had come to believe that dissatisfaction on a daily basis was a natural state of mind.

When it dawned on us that it was not a natural state of mind, and that the Fellowship and the Program of AcAdAn could help us to become content, we wanted to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction as soon as possible.

Our friends in AcAdAn, however, explained to us that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction began with the use of dissatisfaction that, on repeated use, grew into chronic dissatisfaction that grew into addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

We had become accustomed to our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, so when we began to let go of it, we could become afraid and feel empty and insecure about the change, so we accepted that it took time for us to recover and remembered to take it easy.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will work with my AcAdAn Program and thus take another small step forward in my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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January 16: Step Twelve

Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, we practiced these principles in all our affairs, and carried the message of AcAdAn to others suffering from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 82

When we reached Step Twelve in our Step work, our perception of our self, others. life and the World at large had changed dramatically from dissatisfaction to contentment in most areas.

In a Twelve Step inventory, we inventory a situation, where we used our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by using all the principles of the Steps from Step One to Twelve to recover from the situation.

Thereby, we became aware of those sufferings that sprang from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in the situation, we inventoried and how we could recover from them by the help of our AcAdAn Program.

Thus, we became ready to also use our Twelfth Step to share with others, how we had used our AcAdAn Program to recover from the pain of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, so they too could begin to recover from a similar situation.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my experiences with my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by sharing my recovery with others, who still suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, if they want me to.

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January 17: Fellowship

Thereby, we became aware that we could seek and receive consolation, understanding and fellowship with others if we were brave and honest about our thoughts and our emotions, irrespective of the reasons we had to think and feel the way we did.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 44

When we thought of our AcAdAn Fellowship, many of us often remembered a story that circulates in our Fellowship about a Red Indian mother, who wanted to show her son the importance of the Fellowship.

She took out an arrow from the arrow quiver and said that it was supposed to illustrate a person, and then she asked her son to break the arrow, and he did so easily.

Then she took out a bundle of arrows from the arrow quiver and said that they were to illustrate the Fellowship, and then she asked him to break the bundle, but he could not do it.

This story showed us how important it was for us to seek Fellowship with others, because when we were alone our pains could break us, but together with others we could recover from them.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will seek consolation and release of my life’s pains in my AcAdAn Fellowship.

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January 18: Death

We also stopped fleeing from death in all its forms, which could actually be perceived in one word as ‘change’.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 18

For many of us, death was a scary and difficult area of life until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous and began working with the AcAdAn Program.

By the help of our Program, we became aware that we experienced death every moment of every day and not only when we separated from our physical form.

We realized that each NOW has a form, which consisted in everything that NOW contained, only to disintegrate into the next NOW, and the NOW that was before has thus passed into death.

By the help of this observation, we realized that death in Reality merely is change, and that change is what made our life vibrant and interesting.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will embrace both my own changeability and the changeability of everything and everybody everywhere at all levels of consciousness, by looking at Reality as a huge kaleidoscope showing me new pictures and giving me new experiences of Reality every single moment.

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January 19: Addiction

Our active addiction can be of a mild, moderate or severe nature, just as it is the case with any other physical or psychological illness.
Today many are found who suffer from a severe case of active addiction, and many more that have a mild or moderate form of this disease.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

Many of us found difficulties in perceiving our self as an addict, because we connected addiction with people, who were addicted to drugs, but in Active Addictions Anonymous, we present our self as people, who suffer from an active addiction.

This disease means that we became possessed by a dissatisfied thought pattern that could overwhelm us to such an extent that we felt compelled to act as our possessed mind told us to, only to discover that these compulsive acts did not give us the joy we thought they would.

As a result of these types of thought patterns, we became dissatisfied with our self, others, our life or the World at large, and eventually, our dissatisfaction was so extensive that we were dissatisfied on a daily basis in spite of all the benefits that life had given us.

We had sought many solutions to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, but only when we came to AcAdAn, we found the solution we had been looking for, because we really began to recover by the help of our work with the AcAdAn Program.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will work on recovering from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by the help of my AcAdAn Program.

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January 20: Simplicity

There are no restrictions for us as individuals to participate in other enterprises of a related nature, but an Active Addictions Anonymous Group strives to keep everything simple by maintaining that which is characteristic for an AcAdAn Group in its place and our other activities of a similar nature in their place.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 92

Gradually, as we got to know the principles of the Traditions in AcAdAn, we discovered that it became easier for us to live a life of contentment, when we followed the principle of simplicity of Tradition Seven, so we chose to simplify our life by prioritizing the various areas of our life and this also helped us to stay focused in the NOW.

We createdmanifested simplicity in our material possessions by creatingmanifesting a space for every thing and put every thing in its place, when we were done using it, and thereby we saved our self from using much time and energy on searching for our things, when we were going to use them and from getting dissatisfied for that reason.

We createdmanifested simplicity in our activities by setting off a time slot for each of the activities we wanted to prioritize and we followed our plan, as best as we could, and in our mental-emotional life we createdmanifested simplicity by setting aside a time slot for taking care of our emotions and thoughts by the help of our Step Work.

In our social life, we createdmanifested simplicity by making clear to our self how much of our time we wanted to use on social interactions and with whom, whether our interactions were with human beings or with animals, or whether it was face to face or by the help of social networks on the internet.

Today's contemplation                                      

Today, I will keep everything simple by creatingmanifesting a space for all what I want to prioritize, whether it is my material things, my activities, my care for my emotions and thoughts or my social interactions.

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January 21: Group Readings

The group readings can be read in the following order:

(at the beginning of the meeting:) Who has the disease of active addiction? What is Active Addictions Anonymous? Why are we here? The program of Active Addictions Anonymous Easy Does It!

(at the end of the meeting:) The Twelve Traditions of Active Addictions Anonymous What Can I do? Just For Today

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, pages 120, 121 & 122

Most of us use the meeting format as suggested at the end of our book Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life when we lead an AcAdAn meeting, because we feel that this suggested meeting format covers those areas that we think we can advantageously include in our meeting for the benefit of all.

Our meeting format includes the group readings from the beginning of our book, and we find these group readings so sufficiently informative that we think it is important to hear them again and again at our meetings, and the group readings remind us that we suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and that this originates from our active addiction, which is a disease and not a moral flaw as many tend to think.

The group readings also remind us what Active Addictions Anonymous is and what our purpose is, as well as what our own purpose as AcAdAn members is.

When these group readings are read at our meetings, they also help us to introduce the AcAdAn Program to newcomers attending their first AcAdAn meeting, making it easier for them to decide if the AcAdAn Program would be helpful for them.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will listen attentively to the group readings when they are being read in the meeting, or I will read them myself to reconfirm my recovery in AcAdAn, if I cannot make meeting today.

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January 22: Freedom from guilt and shame

By applying these Steps in our daily life, we became able to keep our path free of guilt and shame.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 66

In many situations from our childhood to the present day, we did not feel accepted when our way of being in the World was in conflict with others' perception of the right thing, whether it was our family or others, who condemned us with words or with body language.

The natural impulse for all of us was to adjust our self in relation to our environment so as to be able to survive, and when it was not possible for us to adjust our self, we felt guilty and ashamed of our self.

In Step Eight and Nine, we pulled out all the things we felt guilty and ashamed of, and we decided how we would make amends to our self and others for what we had pulled out, and in Step Nine we made the amends that we had decided on in Step Eight.

By the help of Step Eight and Nine in our AcAdAn Program, we liberated our self from the guilt and shame we had borne from childhood to now, and thereafter we used Step Eight and Nine to keep our path free from guilt and shame on a daily basis basis.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will remember that my feelings of guilt and shame because of being who I am are the deadliest poisons for my spiritual life, and therefore, I will liberate myself from these feelings by the help of Steps Eight and Nine.

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January 23: Mutual wisdom

We need that fountain of mutual wisdom which is found in our group.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 85

In the AcAdAn Fellowship, we meet many different people with many different perspectives on AcAdAn’s Steps, Traditions, sponsorship and meetings as well as different perspectives on people in general and life as it is for a human being.

We listened to the wisdom of others and we also shared about our own, and little by little, we got to know each other well, and thereby we became familiar with each other's strengths and weaknesses in the same way at we were familiar with our family of origin.

This made it possible for us to approach those of our group members, who had found a solution to a problem that we are presently struggling with, so we could learn from them how we could solve the problem.

In this way, we made use of the wellspring of mutual knowledge and experience that is to be found in our Fellowship, and that made it easier for us to live with contentment, because we could have confidence in t hat our mutual wisdom would be at our disposal, when we needed it.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will seek solutions to one of my problems in my AcAdAn Fellowship either by sharing at an AcAdAn meeting or by reaching out to another member, who had found a way out of the problem that I need to solve.

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January 24: The Fruit of the Right Action

We have come to realize that the right action is the sweet fruit itself, which means that the joyful consequences of our virtues are sufficient on their own; likewise, the painful consequences of our defects of character are sufficient on their own, and both have theirs to give.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 24

When we came to AcAdAn, many of us had the idea that the joy we experienced when we did the right action was a reward from our Higher Power, because we had been 'good'.

In the same way, we had the idea that the pain we experienced when we used our character defects was a punishment from our Higher Power, because we had been 'bad'.

After working with the Steps in AcAdAn for a while, we realized that it was not the case, and thereby we became able to take the slogan of AcAdAn to heart, which says that the right action is the sweet fruit itself.

Thus we realized that our pain due to using our defects of character was not a punishment from our Higher Power, but an opportunity for us to to grow in wisdom and mercy using our AcAdAn Program to transform the pain to joy.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will rejoice in those of my actions that sprang from my virtues, and which therefore brought me joy, and I will use my AcAdAn Program to recover from those of my actions that sprang from my defects of character, and which therefore brought me pain.

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January 25: Self-importance

Some of us used a prayer that covers most of our defects of character, and we used this prayer for our Seventh Step work at adequate moments in the course of the day, thinking or saying, “God, liberate me from this self-important seriousness.”

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

Before we came to AcAdAn, we had taken our thoughts very seriously because we knew innermost that our Higher Power often used our thinking mind, our Ego as a sounding board for impulses that our thinking mind, our Ego translated into thoughts.

Little by little as our Step Work in AcAdAn progressed, we realized that most of our thoughts revolved around the past or the future that we thought negatively, positively, or neutral about, and thus they did not spring from our Higher Power.

These negative, positive and neutral thoughts were merely 'stories' that we told our self, and we could change these 'stories' to our advantage anytime we wanted to, and with that purpose in mind we worked daily with the Tenth Step in AcAdAn.

Therefore, it was important for us to use our Seventh Step in the course of the day to liberate our self from our self-important seriousness by preying the various Seventh Step Prayers so as to be liberated from painful thoughts and find a thought that felt better by telling our self a better ‘story’.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will use my Seventh Step Prayers every time I discover that a painful thought about the past or the future dominates my mode of thinking.

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January 26: The Small Ring of Hope

When The Small Ring of Hope became active in us, we had faith that our needs and desires would be met if we worked for it (Belief), and that our Higher Power would show us the way ahead (Enlightenment).
Therefore, we listened attentively to the guidance of our Higher Power (Discernment) before moving ahead along the shown path, one step at a time (Serenity).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 35

In many areas of our life, we had given up hope that what we wanted could come to our lot even if we worked for it, and therefore, we had often given up even beginning to take the required steps to get our desires fulfilled.

When we began our work with the Small Ring of Hope in AcAdAn, we realized that the Small Ring of Hope was set into vibration the moment we opened our mind and came to believe that we could get our desires fulfilled if we worked for it.

Therefore, we began to gather information so as to become more enlightened about that, which could help us to achieve our goals, and we tried out some of the suggestions, and thereby we developed our discernment.

Little by little, we came closer to our desired goals, and when we saw the effect of applying the Small Ring of Hope in various areas of our life, we achieved serenity concerning the fulfillment of all of our desires.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my knowledge of the Small Ring of Hope to work on fulfilling my desires.

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January 27: Poverty

We always felt that something was lacking in our life, and we believed that if only we used our addiction to dissatisfaction to force our self and others to work more, change enough, think, feel and act differently or became better in some areas, we would become able to accept our self and others as we and they are; and if only others treated us better, were more understanding, loving and caring, we would be able to accept our self, them, life and the World at large as everything is.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

When we felt that something was lacking in our life, we feel poor, and that could make us believe that if we made a bigger effort to acquire more in the area in which we wanted more or if others would only use some of their time and money to help us getting, what we wanted, our sense of poverty would disappear.

In AcAdAn we worked with the Small Ring of Avarice with its stinginess, greed, poverty and gluttony, and thereby we discovered that our feeling of poverty had got nothing to do with what we had at our disposal of personal qualities and material possessions or with the help others were willing to give us.

It only had got something to do with our attitude to all the benefits and advantages we had at our disposal and it became even clearer for us in our Sixth Step where we learned to let go of using the Small Ring of Avarice and instead began using the Small Ring of Faith with its generosity, trust, prosperity and accountability.

As we began to consciously use generosity by taking the principles of the Small Ring of Faith to heart, we discovered that our feeling of poverty disappeared to give way to a feeling of us being wealthy enough to have something to share with others, and thereby we came to trust that we could both be accountable to our self and others.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will investigate, how the Small Ring of Avarice affects my attitude to my resources and find out how I can consciously choose to use the qualities of the Small Ring of Faith instead.

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January 28: From self-centeredness to God-centeredness

We investigated how our self-criticism had brought about depression and how our self-praise had brought about euphoria in us, and how this had impacted our life from childhood till today.
We also investigated how our open-mindedness had brought about help from unexpected sources, how this had empowered us to solve our issues, and how this had brought about gratitude and joy in us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 31

In Step Four in our AcAdAn Program, we began to work with the Rings of Joy and Pain that we perceived to be energy fields, also called archetypes, so as to analyze how our stay in these energy fields had influenced us from our childhood to our present, both when it was a Joy Ring and when it was a Pain Ring we found our self in.

We discovered that when we were in the energy field that is called the Ring of Self-centernedness, we suffered under a constant bipolar fluctuation from depression, which sprang from thoughts of a self-critical nature, to euphoria, which sprang from thoughts of a self-praising nature and back again, and that this fluctuation was painful and made us feel emotional unstable.

In AcAdAn, we used the Ring of God-centeredness for the healing of the pain of our self-centeredness, because when we were in the Ring of God-centeredness we opened our mind to new thoughts and ideas and that could give us the power to solve the problem we had criticized our self for having and thus we achieved an empowerment instead of becoming depressed.

When, in this way, we achieved the power to solve our problem, we used joy and gratitude in context with the help we had received instead of praising our self for having found a solution and becoming euphoric and in this way we remained in the joy from the Ring of God-centeredness.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will use my knowledge about the Rings of Joy and Pain in AcAdAn to let go, if I discover that I find myself in the pain from Ring of Self-centeredness, and then I will do my best to move into the joy from the Ring of God-centeredness instead.

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January 29: The Gratitude Prayer

The ‘I’ Version: God, You know what this, Your child, needs today.

The ‘We’ Version: God, You know what these, Your children, need today.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 77

When we used the AcAdAn Gratitude Prayer, we acknowledged that we were not necessarily aware of what we needed in the course of our day.

In particular, we had difficulty imagining that we might need illness, weakness, discomfort and pain, but nevertheless we needed it.

We needed this because we needed contrast to achieve the experience of life, so we needed a contrast to health, strength, well-being and joy.

If we did not experience contrasts, our life experience would be like looking at a white canvas instead of a canvas that held all the colors of the rainbow, as well as the black and the white.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Gratitude Prayer to remind myself that my Higher Power knows what I need today both of pain and joy.

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January 30: The For Free Principle

Active Addictions Anonymous is a non-profit Fellowship, and hence, we pass on our literature to anyone who wants to read it by making it available for free.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 92

The building blocks of our Earthly life are money, time, energy and interest, and generally, we can spend our time, energy and interest on making money, or we can use our money to buy other people's time, energy and interest for our projects.

If therefor we receive something from a stranger that we do not have to pay money for, we often become suspicious towards the free gift, because we have difficulties imagining that others give us this gift exclusively, because they wish us well.

Since the purpose of Active Addictions Anonymous is of a spiritual nature, we do not want to mix worldly means into our purpose, and therefore we do not want to take payments in any form to pass on our knowledge to anyone, who wants it

In AcAdAn, we mark that we are interested in our members' well being rather than their material situation by giving anyone, who wants it, access to everything we possess without demanding money in return.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the for free principle in AcAdAn to further my own well-being by making use of AcAdAn’s literature, sponsors, recovery buddies and meetings, and I will contribute to other people's well-being by passing on the message of AcAdAn for free to those, who want to know more about it.

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January 31: Sharing in AcAdAn Meetings

In AcAdAn meetings, each member shares how far he or she has come in this work with the help of the AcAdAn Program.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 90

Regardless of who we were and how our position in society were, our work in AcAdAn consisted in working with recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction so we could become able to live a life in a state of contentment.

In meetings in AcAdAn we shared about how we worked on letting go of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and often we chose to tell how we had liberated our self from using our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in a concrete situation.

By sharing about our progress and our problems with letting go of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we got to establish for our self, that we had made much progress, although there could be areas where we still had not let go.

At the same time, our discoveries about how best we could let go of using our addiction to our chronic dissatisfaction in a specific situation help and inspire others to let go of their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will share in an AcAdAn meeting, how I have let go of my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in a specific area, and I will also seek inspiration from what others have to share about how they have liberated them self from using their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in specific area.

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FEBRUARY

February 01 New perspectives	February 02 Service	February 03 The Ring of Emotional Sobriety
February 04 The Serenity Prayer	February 05 Creatingmanifesting a Group Conscience	February 06 Tradition One to Four
February 07 The origin of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction	February 08 Membership of AcAdAn	February 09 Tradition Four
February 10 From addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to contentment	February 11 From emotional pain to emotional joy	February 12 Guilt
February 13 To let go of dissatisfaction	February 14 Growth	February 15 Prayer and meditation
February 16 Expansion of consciousness	February 17 Passing it on	February 18  Acceptance of the process of sorrow
February 19 Surrender	February 20 The victim role of codependency	February 21 Progress rather than perfection
February 22 Conscious contact with a Higher Power	February 23 Forgiveness	February 24 Honesty
February 25 The Newcomer	February 26 Humanity/fallibility	February 27 Willingness to transformation
February 28 Step Five to Eight	February 29 Guilt and shame

February 01: New perspectives

JUST FOR Today through AcAdAn, I will try to get a better perspective on myself and my life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 14

When we began to work with our Active Addiction Anonymous Program, we discovered many opportunities to get the new perspectives on our self, our life, others, and the World at large that we needed, so as to make it possible for us to recover from our addiction to using our chronic discontent and thereby get to live a life in a state of contentment.

We had our four books Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, One Sponsor's suggestions for working the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous, Daily Contemplations for members of Active Addictions Anonymous, and Sixth Step Analyses for members of Active Addictions Anonymous, and from them we could find many new perspectives on our self, life, others and the World at large.

The four books contain a detailed description of our Program each in their own way, and they made it possible for us to be inspired in our daily recovery, because when we read these books or used them as encyclopedias, we recognized our own thoughts and emotions in many of these descriptions, and we also discovered new thoughts that could nourish us in our recovery.

In addition, we had our meetings where we met with like-minded people, listened to group readings, and told others about our recovery process and received inspiration from the recovery process of others, and we had sponsorships or/and recovery buddy ships, where we were together one on one to help each other to make the most of our membership of Active Addictions Anonymous.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will choose to use my membership of AcAdAn to get a better perspective on myself and my life.

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February 02: Service

Each of us serves the group by being part of our meetings.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 86

In the beginning, when we were newcomers in Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us thought that it was only to serve AcAdAn if we were either a chair person, treasurer, coffee-man/woman, Area Service representative, or if we had taken on a post in ASC, but later we understood that we also served AcAdAn when we participated in a meeting.

By participating in a meeting we did not only serve our self, but also others and AcAdAn as a whole, because we served our self by listening thoroughly to our group readings and to what others had to tell about, and we served others by giving them the opportunity to be inspired when we told about our own recovery process.

When we told about our recovery process, we also got an opportunity to share about our successes and failures in our Step Work, and we also got the opportunity to relieve our hearts from from various problems we sought a solution to by the help of the Fellowship and in that way we could make use of the mutual wisdom that our Fellowship holds.

By participating in Active Addictions Anonymous meetings in this way, we could thus serve both our self and others, and that was why we both celebrated members ' participation in meetings and members' completion of the work with a Step at the beginning of our meetings, because we as meeting participants is part of the life force of the Fellowship.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will attend an AcAdAn meeting and thus serve both myself, others, Active Addictions Anonymous and the World at large.

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February 03: The Ring of Emotional Sobriety

We also took a look at how we could move from the pain of our codependency to the joy of our Emotional Sobriety, by looking at how we could move from the attributes of the Ring of codependency to their corresponding attributes in the Ring of Emotional Sobriety.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 47

Instead of remaining in the savior role in the Ring of Codependency and thus try to save another from his/her life's pains, we entered into the Ring of Emotional Sobriety, and thus we liberated our self from his/her problems whether it was material, physical, time and space-related, emotional, mental, social or spiritual by relating to his/her problem with detachment, however without detaching from our love for, care for, compassion with and mercy towards him/her.

Thereby, we liberated our self from the idea that it was our job to solve his/her problem, which had been given to him/her by his/her Higher Power, and instead we gave him/her the time and space to learn the required from his/her life's pains in the same way that we our self learned from our life’s pains, and rather than offending the other by thinking or saying that he/she ought not have these pains, we respected that pain was one of life's greatest teachers, and that he/she was just as entitled to his/her pains, and the wisdom they lead to, as we were entitled to ours.

Instead of feeling like a victim of him/her, if we have chosen to show interest and spend time and energy on easing his/her existential pains without achieving it, not to speak of liberating him/her from them, we chose to accept that it was not always given to us to be able to ease the existential pains of others even if we had found a solution to a similar problem, because his/her Higher Power possibly had a different plan for him/her.

Instead of seducing our self and the other to believe that we were able to save our self and others from life's pain, we admitted that pain was a part of life that no one could avoid, and maybe we could even suggest a way out of the pain that we have discovered our self without thinking anything about it, if our path out of a specific pain was not at the same time his/her path out of the pain.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to move into the joy of the Ring of Emotional Sobriety in a situation, if I observe that the pain of the Ring of Codependency has taken over my thinking.

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February 04: The Serenity Prayer

The ‘I’ Version: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference

The ‘We’ Version: God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 52

For us serenity implied that we could look at a situation from our neutral point, because we did not have a desire for a particular outcome, when we found our self in our neutral point, and we used the Serenity Prayer to remind our self that Reality is as it is, whether we accept it with peace of mind or not.

The Serenity Prayer helped us to realize that no matter how angry we got, because it rained when we wanted to go out for a walk, it still rained anyway and we wanted to learn to accept that with serenity, because rebellion against a Reality that already was a fact was painful and useless.

Many situations that we would prefer were different we could change however, so they were more in conformity with our desires, and this we also used the Serenity Prayer to remind our self about, because we did not want to be idle bystanders in the areas that called for an effort on our part so as to have our desires fulfilled.

Furthermore, we reminded our self that we needed to investigate whether we were in a situation we could not change or in a situation we could change, and if it turned out that it was a situation we could change, we wanted to show the courage it took to make it possible to createmanifest a voluntary change.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will practice the Serenity Prayer by accepting the things I cannot change and show the courage to change what I can to have my desires fulfilled plus use my wisdom to see the difference.

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February 05: Creatingmanifesting a Group Conscience

Active Addictions Anonymous is a Fellowship, which is governed by our Group Conscience, and the Group Conscience comes to expression, when each individual member’s voice is heard and taken into consideration before the group makes a decision.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 95

When we entered into a Fellowship with others, whether the Fellowship was Active Addictions Anonymous, a sponsorship, our coupleship or other Fellowships, we wanted our point of view to be heard and taken into consideration, and we knew that others wanted the same, both when a decision had to be made, and when we merely wanted to share our thoughts and emotions with each other.

To fulfill this desire, we createdmanifested a Group Conscience in each of our Fellowships, and we did this primarily by making sure that each member got time and space to express them self on the topic that was on the agenda, and that each member's thoughts and desires were taken into consideration before we made a decision together on a course of action, if action was required.

In AcAdAn there could be many perspectives that needed to be heard and taken into consideration, and therefore we could decide that each member had one voice, and that meant that when each member had spoken once about his/her perspective on the topic and his/her desire for action, the group was ready to make a decision, even though some might think that they could more easily have their desires fulfilled, if they were allowed to speak more than once.

In the Fellowship of our coupleship, we could make use of various ideas such as setting various time limits for each partner’s sharing time, thus giving both parties the time and space they needed to express them self about their perspectives on a given topic, but only imagination sets limits for how we can choose to design our Group Conscience in each of our Fellowships.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will honestly express my thoughts and emotions to the other members of those Fellowships I am a part of and I will listen attentively and respectfully to what others have to share about their thoughts and emotions.

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February 06: Tradition One to Four

1: Our common welfare should come first; our personal recovery depends on the unity of our group and the survival of the group depends on each individual member’s sense of belonging to the group.
2: For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority, a loving Higher Power, as that Power comes to expression through our Group Conscience. Our leaders are trusted servants; they do not govern.
3: The only requirement for membership in Active Addictions Anonymous is a desire to stop using dissatisfaction.
4: Each AcAdAn group is autonomous except in matters affecting AcAdAn as a whole; similarly, each member of the group has the right to be autonomous except in matters affecting the group or AcAdAn as a whole.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 12

Some time after we became members of Active Addictions Anonymous, we begin to spot the Traditions and thus the foundation on which our Fellowship is built.

By taking the Traditions into consideration in our relationship with our home group and with AcAdAn as a whole, we find out that we can use the Traditions in our relationships with other groups and in relation to the World as a whole.

The Traditions call our attention to the fact that it is important that both we and the other members of our group thrive if we want to achieve the results that we became part of each group to achieve, and this will only be possible if we put the group’s welfare first, when we participate in it.

We put the group's welfare first by listening attentively and respectfully to each member's thoughts, feelings, actions and desires and then incorporate them as part of the solution to the issue under consideration.

We call that to surrender to the Group Conscience, which is the universal and impersonal voice of conscience, which comes to expression when all members have contributed to the subject that is being discussed, by expressing their thoughts, feelings and desires about it, and our Traditions teach us that when we surrender to the Group Conscience we surrender to a loving Higher Power at group level.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will surrender to the Group Conscience in all the groups I become a part of in the course of my day, whether the group consists of two people or two hundred.

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February 07: The origin of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction 

We felt chronically dissatisfied with self, others and our lives.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

Already in our journey of discovery in the First Step of the AcAdAn Program, we discovered that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction sprang from our dissatisfaction with our humanness, our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

When we were dissatisfied with our limitation, we rebelled against the natural limitations of our Mother Earth body, we rebelled against the time things take, we rebelled against our emotions and thoughts, we rebelled against our social life and our spiritual life, because it seemed to us that there was something wrong with limitations of any type.

When we were dissatisfied with our ignorance, we tried to deny it and to pretend that we knew something about everything, although we had no personal experience with what we talked about, and when we were dissatisfied with being powerless over that, we knew nothing about, we became angry and bitter because of our ignorance that we perceived to be stupidity.

When we were dissatisfied with our mortality/changeability we became scared every time we traced changes in our Mother Earth body that could indicate that we were getting older, maybe we were about to get sick, that we thought we did not look as good as we did in the past, and we began to struggle with our physical bodies and our lives to stop the changeability.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will find out how I can give myself permission to be content with myself, as I am, and my life, as it is, every time I am dissatisfied with myself or a situation in the course of the day.

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February 08: Membership of AcAdAn

You are a member if you say you are.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 119

In Active Addictions Anonymous we have no leaders; we have trusted servants, who are members, who have taken on serving the Fellowship in various ways.

Members can serve the Fellowship by coming to meetings and share their experiences, they can take on chairing meetings, be treasurers, coffee persons or group service representatives.

Because we have no leaders, we need not approach anybody to seek membership, so we were members if we said that we were.

It was only we, our self, who knew if we had a desire to give up our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and this is the only requirement for membership.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will make use of what the AcAdAn has to offer me, if yet another time I have come to acknowledge that I need help to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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February 09: Tradition Four

The principle of Tradition Four is Serenity.
Slogan: To meet and to separate and to meet again is the life condition of all creaturesmanifestations.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

The free flowing Spirit is found as the ruling energy just beneath the crisp surface behind any form we meet, whether the form is Earthly and thus from the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom or the human kingdom or the form in question is a space-time form, an emotional form, a thought form or the form of a social interaction.

When we interacted with others, it was thus in Reality always the Spirit behind the form, we interacted with, and this has made many spiritual teachers through the times call all manifested forms for an illusion, because any form is crystallized Spirit with a free flowing Spirit as the ruling energy.

Sometimes, we felt a special attachment to one or more people that met various of our needs for us, and we could be scared of losing these people to disease or death, because we forgot that the true Self inside any form is Spirit, and the Spirit could never be lost.

If we separated from a person, who had met a need for us, we would again meet this person, maybe in the same form, maybe in a new form, but we would always meet again, no matter how many times we seemed to separate, because basically, we are One Being that some choose to call God, and God can never be lost.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will remember that it is the Spirit behind the form that is coming to meet me in all the forms I meet.

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February 10: From addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to contentment

If you become consumed by a thought that springs from your addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, then put yourself on a ‘5 minutes at a time’ basis to abstain from taking your addiction to dissatisfaction into use.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 13

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous many of us believed that we could get control of our dissatisfaction, if we only used it occasionally as a driving force for change, but when we came to AcAdAn we discovered that this was not how it was.

We became aware that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction would take our power away from us, if we used dissatisfaction in any way, so we had to abstain from using dissatisfaction to be able to liberate our self from our addiction.

Although we were scared that all driving force to improve our self and our life would dissolve, if we stopped using dissatisfaction, nevertheless, we chose to try to let go of our dissatisfaction, if necessary, five minutes at a time

Thus, we discovered little by little, that there was always space for improvements in all areas of our life without us having to be dissatisfied for that reason and thereby our life became an exciting journey of discovery of constant improvement of our self and our life.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use contentment with myself, my life, others and the World at large – if needed, five minutes at a time.

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February 11: From emotional pain to emotional joy 

Gradually, as we investigated The Big Ring of Pain and The Big Ring of Joy this way, we understood that these rings were named so, because our defects of character brought us pain and our virtues brought us joy.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 31

In AcAdAn we look at different thought patterns as energy forms and the outflow of these energy forms we look at as our emotional feelings.

Through our experiences with our work with our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that some energy patterns brought us emotional pain, and others brought us emotional joy.

In AcAdAn we investigated our personal use of these patterns by the help of the Rings of Pain and Joy and thus we became aware of where we were at in our psychological landscape.

Little by little, as our discernment developed, we discovered that we could move from the Rings of Pain to the Rings of Joy in many situations, and thus we became more content.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to work on moving from the Rings of Pain to the Rings of Joy.

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February 12: Guilt

We also knew that we were limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable, and thus fallible, and as such, we knew that we would make mistakes in the future too.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 77

In our Eighth Step in Active Addictions Anonymous, we investigated those areas we felt guilty about from our childhood to the present day in order to use this in our Ninth Step.

Our Ninth Step we used to make amends to our self and others for our mistakes and thus we purified our consciousness of guilt, which is the deadliest poison for our spiritual life.

Sometimes we were reluctant to make amends to another, because we thought that the other createdmanifested the situation, so we thought that we needed the other to make amends to us first.

In our Eighth and Ninth Step however, we exclusively dealt with purifying our own consciousness of guilt, and therefore we were not dealing with the guilt of others.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will focus on how I can liberate my mind from guilt without putting hindrances in my way by demanding that first, others must make amends to me for those mistakes they did to me.

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February 13: To let go of dissatisfaction

This is a Program of complete abstinence from using dissatisfaction with our self, others and life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

For many of us, it had become a habit to use dissatisfaction in any area we wanted to improve, whether the area was about our material possessions, our physical body, our living space, our time, our emotional feelings, our thoughts, our social life or our spiritual life.

Until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, it had not occurred to us to investigate how our dissatisfaction affected us, our relationships with others, our life and the World at large or that we used dissatisfaction daily, many times a day and that our dissatisfaction thereby had become chronic.

It had not dawned on us either that we were addicted to chronic dissatisfaction, and this meant that we were obsessed with dissatisfied thoughts, which were followed up by compulsive acts, and when we began to investigate the issue, we discovered that our dissatisfaction on top of it did not give us the results we had imagined.

When we used our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, on the contrary, we became sick in soul and body because of our use of it, and as a result of this discovery, we became willing to let go of our use of dissatisfaction under all circumstances, no matter what they were by the help of our AcAdAn Program.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will let go of my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by moving my focus to satisfactory elements in the situation that I am dissatisfied with, or if I become aware that dissatisfaction has appeared in my thoughts.

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February 14: Growth

Some of us were angry about our ignorance and that of others, until we realized that no matter how wise we are Today we will always be wiser tomorrow.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 20

Many of us had great difficulties in admitting our human ignorance, because we had often experienced that others mocked or ridiculed us if they knew something we did not know, and we had also experienced that our ignorance was perceived as stupidity, if we were ignorant about something that our social circle perceived as common knowledge.

Our most painful experiences concerning our ignorance took place when others perceived us to be evil, so that they therefore thought that we we unloving, uncaring, hardhearted and merciless, if we were ignorant about how we could take care of our self or others in a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful way in one or more areas.

For all these and many other reasons, we tried to hide our ignorance by having an opinion about everything between heaven and earth, whether we knew something about the topic or not, but after we came to AcAdAn and realized that we could not escape our ignorance in any possible way, we finally became able to accept our ignorance.

Gradually then, we also realized that our ignorance had it’s advantages, because our ignorance made it possible for us to discover new things about everything on a daily basis without having to pretend that we already knew it all, and thereby we became more alive and our Reality became more vivid and interesting.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will even accept my ignorance in the areas that I have most knowledge about, and in this way I will open my mind to new knowledge, new inspiration and new growth in all areas.

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February 15: Prayer and meditation

Some perceived our approach to our Higher Power as prayer and our Higher Power’s answer to be meditation.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 69

In the Eleventh Step in our AcAdAn Program, we expanded our conscious contact with our chosen Higher Power by the help of prayer and meditation, and most of us chose to use the prayers of our Eleventh Step for this purpose, in particular the Two-Way Prayer.

Already in Step Two, we chose a Higher Power, in Step Three, we worked on surrendering our self to the loving, caring, compassionate, and merciful Higher Power that we chose in Step Two, and in Step Seven, vi began our cooperation with our Higher Power.

Our chosen Higher Power often used our thinking mind, our Ego as a sounding board to give us the guidance we sought, and our thinking mind, our Ego translated our Higher Power's impulses into thoughts that we could understand.

It could be difficult for many of us to discern the voice of our thinking mind, our Ego from the voice of our chosen Higher Power, but when we used the Two Way Prayer, we became better and better at distinguishing the impulses of our Higher Power from the impulses of our thinking of our mind, our Ego.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will to expand my conscious contact with my Higher Power by the help of the Two Way Prayer from Step Eleven.

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February 16: Expansion of consciousness

The principle of Step Eleven is Expansion of Consciousness.
Slogan: God, Your will be done.   

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Little by little as we expanded our conscious contact with our Higher Power in Step Eleven in our AcAdAn Program, it became easier for us to be present in our life from moment to moment, whether we experienced joy or pain.

As we got accustomed to take the suggestion of our Eleventh Step to heart of practicing Constant Remembrance, we became more and more aware of the loving, caring, compassionate, and merciful intention of our Higher Power behind all our pains.

Gradually as our discernment developed, it became easier and easier for us to let go of our self-will, which was what we thought should happen during our day, instead of what actually happened.

Instead, we surrendered our self from moment to moment to the will of our Higher Power for us, which was that, which actually happened, whether it was the pleasant good or the unpleasant good that took place in the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will surrender to my day as it IS, while being consciously aware of my Higher Power's loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention for me both concerning the pleasant good and the unpleasant good.

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February 17: Passing it on

If somebody outside the Fellowship expressed a desire to know what we were up to, we readily shared about our experiences with the AcAdAn Program, and thereby, we passed on the message of AcAdAn to them.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 82

In the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous, we work with our deepest and most frightening existential sufferings; our fear of and our dissatisfaction with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

Our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, which is the result of our lack of acceptance of our humanness, had led to big sufferings both for our self, our life, others and the World at large, before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous.

When we began to achieve recovery from these sufferings by the help of theAcAdAn Program and thereby came to see the advantages that this entailed, we also wanted that our discoveries should benefit others and the World at large.

When others expressed a desire to hear about it, we therefore readily told them, what it had meant to us to be liberated from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and in that way we gave our contribution to ease the pains of the suffering humankind.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will pass on my discoveries and experiences from my work with my AcAdAn Program in a meeting or to others, who are not members of AcAdAn, but who express a desire to hear about it

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February 18: Acceptance of the process of sorrow

Over time, after having consciously gone through the process of sorrow a few times, we became more accepting and patient, both with our self and with others, whether it was our own grief of having lost a loved one or our having to deal with a child who had just lost his or her favorite plaything.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 41

The process of sorrow consists of five stages that come to expression in different order as denial, anger, negotiation, grief and acceptance and could come to expression in our every day life when things and situations did not happen, as we thought they should, and the process could last from a few minutes to months or years.

Usually, the daily processes of sorrow consisted in that we grieved because we or others did not live up to our desires, and the long processes of sorrow also usually consisted in us rebelling against Reality, because we had difficulty accepting our own or others limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

Gradually, as we consciously observed our self go through the process of sorrow several times, we became more and more calm, even though we might be in the middle of a process of sorrow, because it was clear to us that the process had a beginning, a climax and an end, and therefore it would not last forever even if at times it could appear like that to us.

Consciously to live through a process of sorrow like suggested in our Active Addictions Anonymous Program meant, that we actually came out on the other side of the process of sorrow with acceptance and a greater knowledge of our existence as a limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human being.

Today's contemplation
Today, with serenity, I will accept my processes of sorrow, because I know that I come out on the other side as a wiser and more compassionate human being.

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February 19: Surrender

No matter how we chose to perceive our Higher Power, we needed to surrender our will and our life to the care of our chosen Higher Power in Step Three, because we by our self alone were powerless over our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 27

In Step One it had been difficult for most of us to come face to face with how it made our life unmanageable that we were addicted to chronic dissatisfaction with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

Therefore, it was at big relief for us to come to Step Two, where we came to believe that a Power, greater than us, could help us to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

After having developed the faith in Step Two that a Power greater than us could help us, we came to trust that we could surrender our will, our life and thereby our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to the care of our chosen Higher Power in Step Three.

Thus it became possible for us to let go of our struggle with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction so as to instead let our self be led to contentment with our self and thereby with our life, others and the World at large by the help of the rest of the Steps from Step Four to Twelve.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will let myself be led to contentment with myself, my life, others and the World at large by surrendering to the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous.

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February 20: The victim role of Codependency   

When others failed to give us the praise we sought from them, we felt victimized, and this brought about a state of anger and disrespect for others in us, as the feeling of being a victim is accompanied by feelings of hostility.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 32

When we came to Active Addictions Anonymous and began investigating our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we discovered that many of us had felt that there was something wrong with us, because of the criticism we had been exposed to from our childhood until now.

In our desire to be as we believed we ought to be, we tried to please others, and we perceived it to be a sign that we had succeeded if others praised us, so we became addicted to praise, and thus we began to do something exclusively in order to receive praise from others.

If others failed to praise us, we felt like victims and got angry at them, because we had spent so many of our resources, our money, time, energy and interest on their wellbeing instead of on our own without them praising us and thereby giving us our antidote to criticism.

Little by little, we discovered however, that we had seduced our self and others by imagining that it was our job to save them from solving their own tasks, and we also found out that it was our task to use our resources on solving our own tasks.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will work on moving from my victim role by moving from the Ring of Codependency into the Ring of Emotional Sobriety.

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February 21: Progress rather than perfection

Thus, we became aware that we would continue to make mistakes, and we would still need our Program and continue to need guidance, help and consolation from everything and everyone around us, so as to get empowered to find solutions and move on instead of getting stuck in various dysfunctional patterns.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 58

When we began working with the Program in AcAdAn, some of us hoped that we could achieve perfection in all areas of our life by the help of the Program until we realized that we still made mistakes and still needed support and guidance from others no matter how far we had come in the Program..

At first, we became dismayed by the fact that there was always room for improvements of our well-being either materially, physically, time and space wise, emotionally, mentally, socially or spiritually, but then we realized that it was precisely this fact that made our life interesting.

When we thought that we could not improve a project further,  we were admittedly done working on this project, but this however, did not mean that we could lean back and not be exposed to more challenges or new projects that we needed to work on in our life.

Life would present us with a new project that could fill the empty space that the completed project had left behind, and in this way, we continued to develop our talents in many different areas without us ever reaching a point where our talents could not be further developed in one area or another, and so we realized that there was always room for improvements in our life.

Today's contemplation
Today I rejoice in my progress in the many small things that I improved in my life today and I will gratefully think of all the help and guidance I have received that made these little advances possible.

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February 22: Conscious contact with a Higher Power

The most important thing was that it worked for us to interact with our Higher Power.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 74

dawned on us when we reached Step Eleven that now we had to further develop our work from Step Two, Three and Seven so as to createmanifest an interaction that worked for us with our chosen Higher Power.

With this purpose in mind, we began to investigate, how we could learn to use prayer, meditation and Constant Remembrance like it has been suggested in our Eleventh Step.

Many of us used the Two Way Prayer to learn to expand our conscious contact with our Higher Power and moreover we used meditation to come into oneness with our true Self, our Spirit.

Gradually, as we became better and better at discerning between those impulses that came to us from our thinking mind, our Ego and those that came to us from our true Self, our Spirit, our Eleventh Step began to work better and better for us.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use Constant Remembrance to return to the meditative state of mind that I achieved during my morning meditation so as to maintain my conscious contact with my Higher Power’s guidance throughout the day.

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February 23: Forgiveness

In the end, we set aside a day that we called the Sacred Day of Forgiveness, where we went through our list point-by-point and forgave our self for the mistakes we had made in the past, and thus, we were ready to move on to Step Nine. 

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 64

We discovered in our AcAdAn Program that forgiveness could not be given as a decision, but had to spring from the heart however much we wanted to forgive our self or others.

We faced that what we thought others had done against us, which we thought they should be ashamed of, we our self could have done under similar circumstances.

By the help of this realization, we became better able to understand the actions of others, and the understanding of the actions of others made it easier for us to forgive them.

When it concerned forgiving our self for the mistakes we had done to our self or others, we could make it possible for us to forgive our self by making amends for our mistakes.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will ask my Higher Power for the capacity to forgive myself for my I have done to myself or others.

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February 24: Honesty

We strived to be as honest and thorough with our Fifth Step as we could be, because we realized that it was decisive for our progress in our recovery.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 44

Most of us strived to be as honest to our self as possible, so it had not occurred to us to stop and ask our self whether it was possible for us to tell the truth about anything before we came to AcAdAn.

After we came to AcAdAn and investigated the issue, we realized that we were actually unable to tell the truth about just a single event in our daily experiences, no matter how honest we wanted to be.

If for example, we walked from our home to the nearby bakery, it would be impossible for us to tell about all the people, animals, plants and things that we passed by on the road, and about all the thoughts, emotions and sense impressions, we experienced in that context.

Therefore, our honesty in our Fifth Step consisted in sharing our discoveries about the limited areas that we had chosen to focus on in our Fourth Step, no matter if we thought they put us in a less flattering or a more flattering light.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will be honest to my self both about a side of me that I find less flattering and about a side of me that I find more flattering.

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February 25: The newcomer

The newcomer is the most important person in AcAdAn as he/she is the source of growth for us and our Fellowship, giving us an opportunity to keep what we have received from AcAdAn by sharing it with the newcomer.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

As a Fellowship, we understood that our old-timers were very important for us, because they were the backbone of the Fellowship, and therefore it was important for us that they wanted to continue to be members, so we did our best as a Fellowship to ensure that they felt respected and comfortable.

When a newcomer came to his/her first meeting, we remembered that we felt a bit uncertain as newcomers and therefore we took well care of the newcomer by giving him/her all of our attention so we could find out what he/she needed from our side so as to feel safe among us.

As a Fellowship we also understood that the newcomer was the most important person in AcAdAn, because the newcomer gave both old-timers and other newcomers the opportunity to share our experiences with the AcAdAn Program, and thereby we could all broaden our own perspectives on the Program, thanks to the newcomer.

Last, but not least, the number of members grew, when a newcomer decided to become a member of AcAdAn, and the more members we got, the more perspectives on our Program, we gained access to and the greater freedom we got, and thereby we became more content.

Today's contemplation
Today I will further develop my social skills by taking care of a newcomer or an old timer in my AcAdAn Fellowship.

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February 26: Humaneness/fallibility

No matter how much spiritual information was passed on among us, we realized that we still needed to accept each others’ humaneness and fallibility.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 17

Before we came to AcAdAn, our existential sufferings made us seek for a solution to these sufferings, and in our search we heard from many quarters that the solution to our sufferings lay on the Spiritual Path, and this had led us to believe that if only we became spiritual enough, we would no longer suffer under being a human being on this Earth.

When we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we imagined that we would no longer feel that there was something wrong with being a limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human being, if only our spiritual life became more and more prominent because of our work with the AcAdAn Program.

Gradually however, we discovered, that no matter how prominent our spiritual life became, we were anyhow still limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human beings, and that our fallibility sprang from our humanness, so the fallibility was in inbuilt part of our humanness and not a moral flaw.

This realization led us to become completely calm, because we realized that now, we had an opportunity to become content with our self and thus with others, our life and the World at large, if we used our AcAdAn Program to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction on our humanness/fallibility.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to forgive myself for the mistakes that I think I have made today as compared to my goals.

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February 27: Willingness to transformation

This Step is exclusively about achieving the willingness to have all our defects of character removed through transformation; it’s not about becoming super human beings.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 46

In our Sixth Step, we began to transform our defects of character into virtues by shining light on them, and we did that by using Step One to admit that a specific defect of character was active in us, and how it makes our life unmanageable.

Next, we ask our self what we hoped to achieve by taking our defect of character into use, and in that way we discovered that desire, which lay at the root of our use of the defect of character in question.

Then we moved from the pain in the defect of character to investigate, how we believed that the situation would have transpired, if we had used the joy in the corresponding virtue to fulfill our desire.

The more often we went through the process of transformation from pain to joy, the more experienced we became at moving from emotional pain to emotional joy, and the more willing we became to go through the process of transformation in Step Six.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Sixth Step to go through a transformation process and thus transform my pain to joy.

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February 28: Step Five to Eight

The Program of Active Addictions Anonymous Step Five to Eight.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 10

We gradually discovered that it was not only Step One to Four that set the Big Ring of Joy  with its faith, hope, love, and truth into oscillations, but that it also was true for Step Five to Eight.

In our work with Step Five in our AcAdAn Program, we had faith in that it was to our advantage to share our realizations from Step Four with our self, our Higher Power, another human being and our Fellowship.

In Step Six, we hoped that the transformation of our defects of character would make us more content, and in our cooperation with our Higher Power in Step Seven, we received the unconditional love of our Higher Power.

In Step Eight, we came face to face with the truth about those areas we were ashamed of and received forgiveness from our self, our Higher Power, another human being and our Fellowship.

Today's contemplation
Today, Today, I will use Step Five to Eight to set the Big Ring of Joy into oscillations.

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February 29: Guilt and shame   

We brought all those areas out in the open that we felt guilty about from our childhood till today.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

In Step Four, we bring all that out into the open that others have done that we feel hurt by, and in Step Eight we bring all that out in the open that we feel guilty about and which we therefore are ashamed of, because we believe that we have harmed our self or others.

The intention of bringing our guilt and shame out in the open is to liberate us from these two emotions, which are the deadliest poisons to our material life, our physical life, our energetic lives, our emotional life, our thought life, our social life and our spiritual life.

Before we came to work with our feelings of guilt and shame in Step Eight, we have worked with many painful emotions and experienced the recovery from the pain, and that has given us the courage to bring our most secret painful emotions out into the open, so that the recovery process can begin.

The recovery process begins when we acknowledge our pain, admit how it makes our lives unmanageable and then use our Steps to transform the pain to joy.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will bring a painful emotion that I am ashamed of out into the open, so the work of transforming the pain to joy can begin.

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MARCH

March 01 The purpose of the group	March 02 To pass on the message of AcAdAn	March 03 Coming to believe
March 04 The Higher Power's will	March 05 The Small Ring of Avarice	March 06 The Seducer Role of Codependency
March 07 The Smile Meditation	March 08 To stop fleeing	March 09 To let go of control
March 10 Step Twelve	March 11 Artificial joy	March 12  Ignorance
March 13 To share understanding with others	March 14 Comparisons	March 15 Step Seven
March 16 Loss	March 17 To try to escape from life	March 18 Praise from others
March 19 The euphoria of self-praise	March 20 Task solving	March 21 Choice of a Higher Power
March 22 Appreciation of the group members	March 23 To learn by listening to other members	March 24 Acts of violence and war
March 25 Step Eight	March 26 Accountability in Service	March 27 Transformation
March 28 The changeability	March 29 The consequences of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction	March 30 Recovery from existential pains
March 31 Acceptance of the ignorance

March 01: The purpose of the group

As a group, we possess vital collective experiences and wisdom about recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and we consider it to be the group’s primary purpose to make this wealth of knowledge available to our self and others.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 90

By creatingmanifesting an AcAdAn meeting, we createdmanifested a place where we could meet a group of like-minded people, who also had discovered that they were dissatisfied with them self, others, their life and the World at large on a daily basis, and that this dissatisfaction made them physically ill and gave them a feeling of being unhappy like it had happened for us too.

When our group held our meetings, we told each other about our experiences with recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and about how we succeeded in finding contentment under all circumstances no matter what they were by the help of the Twelve Steps in Active Addictions Anonymous.

We listened to each other's experiences and began to understand that we were not alone about this suffering and that put together, we held a wealth of experiences about how we could recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, which made it possible for us to discover many sides of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we otherwise could not discover.

By the help of our meetings with the other members it became easier and easier for us to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction both physically and psychologically and thereby we learned to live a content life under all circumstances by the help of our AcAdAn meetings.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will attend a meeting in Active Addictions Anonymous to let myself be enriched by the experiences of other members and to enrich others with my experiences.

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March 02: To pass on the message of AcAdAn

The Twelfth Step suggests that we practice these principles in all our affairs, and when we did that, our way of being clearly reflected the rewards of working the AcAdAn Program in everything we did, and thus we carried the message by living it even when we were not passing it on to others by word of mouth. 

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 82

In AcAdAn, it was important for us to pass on the message that it was possible to recover from one’s addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with oneself, others, life and the World at large.

It was important for us both because we wished others well, and because growth in our AcAdAn Fellowship helped us to gain new perspectives on our Program.

When we passed on the message, it was important for us to remember that pressure createsmanifests counter pressure, so we did not try to overwhelm others with the message or to persuade them to become members.

Instead, we chose to follow the principles of our Active Addictions Anonymous Program, which states that our Program works through attraction rather than promotion.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will to apply the principles from my AcAdAn Program, when I pass on the message about AcAdAn to others.

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March 03: Coming to believe

After coming to AcAdAn, we discovered that it is a process to come to believe in someone or something greater than us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 24

When we came to AcAdAn, most of us had been completely confined inside by our fear of our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and this fear had appeared so overwhelming to us that we had done everything in our power to deny our humanness.

In spite of all our efforts to deny our humanness, yet every day, we came face to face with the fact that it was not possible, and instead we tried to flee from it in many different ways, and when we did not succeed in that either, we became dissatisfied with our self, and thereby we ended up being chronically dissatisfied.

When we began coming to meetings in AcAdAn, we were relieved to hear that others had found a solution to our existential problem, and the solution was to begin the process of developing faith in a Power greater than our self to whom we could safely surrender control of our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

The further we came with developing our belief in a Power greater than us, the more freedom we received to look at our humanity as a journey of discovery that gave our life an interesting content on a daily basis, and thereby our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self and others as human beings dissolved.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will work on developing my faith in that I can safely surrender the responsibility for my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability to a Power greater than my self for in that way recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with myself and others.

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March 04: The Higher Power's will

The Eleventh Step suggests only to pray for knowledge of our Higher Power’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
This meant that we wanted to know our Higher Power’s will for us, which is, in Reality, our own will for our self when we are not blinded by our thoughts and emotions.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 74

In Step Eleven, we sought knowledge of our Higher Power's will for us daily by the help of prayer and meditation, because prayer helped us get into contact with our Higher Power, and meditation made it possible for us to intercept our Higher Power's guidance.

It was necessary for us to become empty of thoughts by the help of meditation, because it could be difficult for us to intercept the subtle impulses that continually streamed through our mind beyond our thoughts, and which were our Higher Power's constant guidance on what was the right action for us in this NOW.

In the beginning, many of us were afraid of becoming slaves of our Higher Power when we began to know the will of our Higher Power for us, but we have a free will, however, so we can either choose to surrender to the impulse and the action, the impulse suggests, or we can choose to surrender to what our thinking mind, our Ego suggests.

Little by little, as we harvested experiences with the work of our Eleventh Step, we became more and more willing to surrender to the will of our Higher Power for us, because we gradually discovered that when we did, we achieved what in Reality we our self wanted innermost, because our Higher Power's will for us was our own true will for us.

Today's contemplation

Today Today, I will open myself to listen to my Higher Power’s will for me, so I can become able to find my own true will for me.

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March 05: The Small Ring of Avarice

We discovered that when The Small Ring of Avarice became active in us, we wanted to receive something materially, physically, time-space wise, emotionally, mentally, socially or spiritually without having to use our own money, time, energy or interest to get it (Stinginess), and we readily received anything that we didn’t have to make an effort to get (Greed) even if we did not need it (Gluttony), while at the same time, we felt poor in spite of all the things and advantages we possessed (Poverty).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 38

When we investigated the Small Ring of Avarice, we discovered that poverty did not consist in a lack of material things or money, but in that we found our self being in a particular state of mind that belonged to the Small Ring of Avarice, which made us feel poor in spite of the fact that we had our basic needs covered.

We both had food to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over our head and most of us could afford downright gluttony by possessing far more clothes than we needed, and we lived in big houses or apartments filled with furniture and toys for our entertainment, such as TV, computers, internet and games.

Our feeling of poverty led us to become greedy to procure more and more for our self, even if we did not need it and we became stingy towards others because we feared to come to lack something if we passed on to others what we did not need and therefore had in surplus.

As a result of our investigations in Step Four about how the Small Ring of Avarice affected us, a desire arose in us to move out of this energy field, and therefore, in Step Six, we began to investigate how we could move from the Small Ring of Avarice to the Small Ring of Faith, which is the antidote to the Small Ring of Avarice.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will work on moving out of the Small Ring of Avarice and into the Small Ring of Faith.

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March 06: The Seducer Role of Codependency

At times, we seduced others by claiming to know better than them and their Higher Power as to what their path and their truth in life ought to be or not to be, or by pretending to genuinely care for their wellbeing, whereas we were actually driven by this need for others to take our suggestions to heart, for us to feel better and more valuable than we were able to due to our self-criticism.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 30

Sometimes, we felt a need to have confirmed by others that we were valuable, in particular when we felt a low self-esteem, and we imagined that we could achieve this by doing something for others that would save them from the pains of life in those areas where we had found a solution to our existential pains our self.

This need to save others from their existential pains could make us try to seduce our self and them to believe that we were able to save them from the pains of their life, if only they followed our guidance and therefore did like we had done to recover from the pain in question.

When thus we seduced our self and others to believe that we could save them from the pains of their life it could lead to that we used our resources, our money, our time, our energy and our interest on saving them, and when we discovered that our attempts to save them usually had the opposite effect, we felt like victims.

We had overlooked the fact that each and every human being had a need to find his/her own way out of the pains of his/her life, so when we took on the existential pains of others as if they were our own, we prevented them from beginning the work of finding a solution to the pain, which their Higher Power had presented them for.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will give others time and space to find a solution to their small or big existential pains instead of seducing myself and them to believe that it is my task to save them from carrying out this work.

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March 07: The Smile Meditation

This central area of our brain together with the healing power of a smile has been used by spiritual masters for millennia as an object of contemplation and has createdmanifested the smiling eyes that are so well known in spiritual masters, and this central area in the brain has been named the cave of Brahma in Hinduism and the Crystal Palace in Taoism.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 79

In our Eleventh Step in AcAdAn we used the Smile Meditation to help our Mother Earth body/physical body to recover from various weaknesses and illnesses during our state of meditation, where consciously we moved our attention into the central part of our brain to pick up power.

For many of us, it was a new thought that our physical brain and our state of meditation could be connected, but research has shown that the central part of our brain, which contains thalamus and hypothalamus, the pineal and pituitary gland plays a part in context with meditation.

These areas with associated glands secret oxytocin, endorphin, dopamine, serotonin and adrenaline, and when we focused on this central part of our brain with a gentle smile during meditation, we could release these hormones, which could help us to achieve a powerful healing meditation and a greater joy of living.

When we let our attention rest in this part of our brain with a gentle smile, we could infuse the healing power from here to our eyes, so they became smiling eyes that we could use to heal various weak or diseased areas of our body and that we could also use to infuse healing power into the eyes of others.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the healing power of the Smile Meditation from my Eleventh Step in AcAdAn to heal my own existential pains and that of others, whether the pains are physical, energetical, emotional, mental, social or spiritual.

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March 08: To stop fleeing

Some of us became so despondent upon these realizations that we withdrew from life, but when we came to AcAdAn, we decided to stop fleeing from life's pains.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 18

As members of AcAdAn we investigated the existential pains that sprang from our lack of acceptance of our four basic attributes as human beings, our limitation ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

We had done much to flee from our humanness, but every time we came to the end of yet another attempt to flee, we had to face that we were still limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable.

In Active Addictions Anonymous, we found a Fellowship with others, who suffered from the same addiction to chronic dissatisfaction that we did due to our lack of acceptance of our humanness.

By the help of our AcAdAn Program and the Fellowship in Active Addictions Anonymous, together we moved from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to contentment under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use mu AcAdAn Program and my AcAdAn Fellowship to learn to accept my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

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March 09: To let go of control

We feared that our lives would get out of control if we surrendered to a Higher Power, but we shared our fears and reluctance at the AcAdAn meetings and with others who had experiences with working Step Three.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 27

Step Three suggests we turn our will and our life over to the care of our chosen Higher Power, but many of us feared to take any such an action, in particular because many of us had been brought up with the idea of a punishing Godhead.

This idea had made us imagine that our Higher Power would be like a parent who ordered us to do things we did not feel like doing, and who punished us if we did not do as we were told.

In our Second Step, however, we had worked on choosing our personal Higher Power as an unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power, and this has made it easier for us to use Step Three.

Although we had chosen an unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate, and merciful Higher Power so as to get the courage to surrender our will and our life to the care of our Higher Power, we discovered that surrender was a process, not an event.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Third Step to move forward in my process towards a wholehearted surrender to my Higher Power’s care.

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March 10: Step Twelve

The principle of Step Twelve is Mercy.
Slogan: We do not ask how your addiction to chronic dissatisfaction arose but what you want to do about it and how we can help.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Before we came to AcAdAn many of us were not aware that we were addicted to chronic dissatisfaction in spite of us using our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self, our life, others and the World around us many times a day every single day.

We used our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, because we were trying to escape our powerlessness over our self, others, life and the World around us, hoping that our body, others, life and the World around us would change to our contentment.

It never occurred to us to investigate if what we did was working for us when we tried to gain control over our self, others, our life, and the World around us by using our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction before we heard about Active Addictions Anonymous.

Only when we came to AcAdAn we meet people, who worked on their recovery from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and thereby we finally met people, who understood the sufferings that sprang from our disease and had begun their recovery.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will joyfully receive help from other members of AcAdAn by receiving the wisdom, they have to offer about recovery in AcAdAn so I can become able to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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March 11: Artificial joy

The pattern of Codependency settled in us because of our self-criticism and depression creatingmanifesting within us a need for others to praise us so that we reach a state of euphoria, also called artificial joy, springing from self-praise, which for many of us was the only form of joy we knew before we came to AcAdAn.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 31

The only kind of joy most of us knew, when we came to AcAdAn was the artificial joy, which is called euphoria, that springs from self-praise, and because of this need we activated the Ring of Self-centredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise.

When we used self-praise to get to feel better by becoming euphoric we could not however, avoid becoming self-critical and depressed very soon, because these four attributes are to be found in the same energy pattern that we call the Ring of Self-centeredness in AcAdAn.

When our self-praise and euphoria was replaced by our self-criticism and depression, we often got a need for praise from others to get to feel valuable without being aware that thereby we opened our self for the pain in the Ring of Codependency.

Thereby we added pain to pain, but gradually, as our work with our Sixth Step developed we became better and better however, at moving away from the pain in these Rings to the joy in the Ring of God-centeredness the Ring of Emotional Sobriety.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will let go of using the Ring of Self-centeredness in relation to myself and the Ring of Codependency in relation to others, and instead I will use the Ring of Godcenteredness in relation to myself and the Ring of Emotional Sobriety in relation to others.

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March 12: Ignorance

We respected our own and others’ emotions and stopped pretending that we knew something about everything, and as a result, we became more content.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 21

While we were growing up, many of us were mocked, if there was something we did not know, and sometimes, we were called evil when we accidentally harmed another living being.

At other times, we were called stupid, and it could also happen that we were teased, when we were ignorant about something or the other, in tones that made us squirm.

This made some of us decide that when we grew up we would no longer be ignorant, and therefor we had a harder and harder time admitting our ignorance.

As a consequence we pretended to know something about everything, because we were afraid that someone might disclose our natural human ignorance.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to liberate myself from my fear of my human ignorance.

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March 13: To share understanding with others

We also realized that the spiritual wisdom we were blessed with was inherent in each one of us as a natural part of our being; so it was not our task to persuade others to believe in anything that was not true for them, but their own task to seek help to come into contact with their inner knowing.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 17

Many of us became so excited about those discoveries about our true nature both as human beings and as spiritual beings which we achieved by the help of our AcAdAn Program that we wanted our fellow human beings to benefit from it as well.

Therefore, we had a tendency to share the pearls we had found with others, who had not expressed a desire them self to hear about it even when we senses the lack of interest from others concerning the happiness creatingmanifesting effect of our self-realizations.

Instead of letting go of further explanations to the deaf ear, some of us could become so eager to make the other person understand how it would be to his/her advantage to become member of AcAdAn, so he/she could achieve, what we had achieved.

Little by little as we had done this a number of times, we discovered however that it had the opposite effect, so we realized that it was not our task to persuade others to show interest in the rewarding aspects of self-realization by the help of our AcAdAn Program.

Today's contemplation
Today, I choose to only share my experiences with my AcAdAn Program with others, who express an interest in hearing about it them self.

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March 14: Comparisons

As a natural consequence of using the Ring of Emotional Sobriety, we came in touch with the Truth that any creaturemanifestation is equally valuable to creationmanifestation, exactly the way they are, and thus the Big Ring of Joy opened up to us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 33

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we could sometimes get an urge to compare our self with others, and when we did that, it could happen that we compared our best qualities with other people's worst qualities, or that we compared other people's best qualities with our own worst.

After we came to AcAdAn, we discovered however, that we are all so unique that even our fingerprints are so unique that none are found similar to our own in the whole World, and that made us realize that we could not achieve an understanding of our existence by comparing our self with others.

Instead of trying to find understanding of our self by comparison with others, we therefore began to use the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others so as to become able to understand our self.

Thus we let of looking at other people's character defects and virtues so as to look at our own instead by respecting that both we and the others held character defects and virtues, and it was our job to build up our integrity by being true to our own and it was the job of others to build their integrity by being true to their own, and thus we and others were at an equal footing concerning our existential tasks.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of Emotional Sobriety from my AcAdAn Program so as to accept that it is my task to take care of my emotions and thoughts and it is the task of others to take care of their emotions and thoughts.

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March 15: Step Seven

Step Seven consists of two parts, and the first part we could do immediately after finishing Step Six.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 54

When we came to Step Seven, we had become entirely ready to allow our Higher Power to liberate us from our defects of character, and we began our Seventh Step by praying to be liberated from  all of our defects of character.

Next, we moved on to the second part of our Seventh Step, which is a daily cooperation with our chosen Higher Power about being liberated from our defects of character in those situations where we observed they arose.

Gradually, as we developed our Seventh Step we became better and better at spotting our defects of character and thereby we also became better and better at cooperating with our chosen Higher Power about being liberated from them.

As a result of our daily use of Step Seven, we experienced that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction was decreased, and thus we became more and more content with our self and our life under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Seventh Step to cooperate with my Higher Power about liberating me from my defects of character.

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March 16: Loss

Because we accepted that the process of sorrow had to take its own course and it took its time whether we wanted it or not, gradually, we learned to not oppose it but to allow it to pass so as to become able to liberate our self from our sorrow that otherwise might turn into bitterness.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 41

When we lost something or someone, which or who were important for us, whether it concerned our possessions, our lifestyle, our health, or people who were important in our life, it often happened that we found it difficult to accept the loss.

Our lack of acceptance of the loss set the five stages of the process of sorrow into movement: denial, anger, negotiation, grief and acceptance, and it did not matter for the intensity of our pain, if our loss was of a material nature or it was a loss of our familiar life style.

Even if the loss of the familiar was to our advantage, it could still be painful for many of us, like it happened for example, when our life style changed for the better, like it did, when we recovered from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

When we suffered a loss of the familiar, it could make many of us turn our back to our AcAdAn Program so as to focus on our sorrow because our life was in constant change just like we were, and therefore it was important for us to learn to live through the process of sorrow.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to ease and heal the pain of my losses.

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March 17: To try to escape from life

We discovered that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction were just one of the many paths we had traveled in our attempts to escape from coming face to face with our four basic human attributes.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 15

Most of us had been on the spiritual path for a long time in our search for a solution to our existential pains before we came to AcAdAn.

At meetings in Active Addictions Anonymous we heard others talk about that it was good to stop trying to flee from life.

However, we could not put a finger on what it entailed to try to escape from life even if we had a vague idea about that it was something we did.

Only when we heard about our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability we understood that it was our humanness we had tried to flee from.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn to be content with my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

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March 18: Praise from others

Instead of thinking that we had to save others from the consequences of their thoughts, emotions or actions so as for us to be able to feel good about our self, we respected their right to own the consequences of their thoughts, emotions and actions, and hence, we gave them time and space to find their own solutions, and at the same time, we gave our self the right to the same.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 48

Our need to be able to perceive our self as good people when we do not feel that we are can make us use the savior role of our codependency so as to achieve praise from others so that we can feel better about our self, and as we can not expect to get praise from others just like that, we become willing to use our time, our energy, our interest and our money to save others from life's pains.

However, our true motive is not to save others from their life's pains, but to achieve praise from them or from others, who witness that we sacrifice our time, our energy, our interest and our money so that our fellow human beings may get well .

We can discover our true motives, if we begin to experience emotional pain, if no one expresses praise about our efforts.

If that happens, we know that our co-dependency is active, so we need to move from the savior role of our co-dependency to the detachment of our emotional sobriety concerning the existential pains of others so as to recover from our own.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to liberate myself from my need for praise from others.

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March 19: The euphoria of self-praise

Instead of praising our self for the successes we thought we had achieved in the course of a day and thereby creatingmanifesting a short-lived euphoria from the thought of how great we thought we were, we chose to focus on our gratitude about the help we received in the course of the day that made our success possible, whether the help sprang from within or without.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 47

When we look at the beauty and personal qualities of other people, we can feel that they are better off than we are, and it can make us want to praise our self for the successes that we have experienced.

When we praise our self for our successes, we have a tendency to forget that we have achieved them, because we have received an empowerment from our inner World in the form of inspiration or from our external World in the form of help, support and ideas from others.

When we praise our self for our successes, we achieve a short lived euphoria because of how good we think we are thereby we have stepped into the pain in the Ring of Self-centeredness, and self-criticism and depression will soon follow in the wake of our self-praise and euphoria.

At the same time we lose the capacity to feel grateful and hence the ability to move from the pain in the Ring of Self-centeredness with its self-praise, euphoria, self-criticism and depression til the joy in the Ring of God-centeredness with its gratitude, joy, open-mindedness and empowerment.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to move from the pain in the Ring of Self-centeredness with its self-praise, euphoria, self-criticism and depression, to the joy in the Ring of God-centeredness with its gratitude, joy, open-mindedness and empowerment.

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March 20: Task solving 

Some of us thought it wasn’t necessary to seek our Higher Power’s will for us so often in the course of a day as we had done so at the beginning of the day itself.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 70

Step Eleven suggests that we must seek guidance from our Higher Power, before we begin a task to be able to find the best possible solution to the task.

Furthermore, Step Eleven suggests that we thank our Higher Power for the guidance and the power to carry out the task, when the task is completed.

Many of us did not think we had the time to stop both before and after a task, because we wanted to proceed to the next task immediately.

We discovered however, that this impatience and rashness often led us to feeling rushed, irritable and belligerent, and thus we lost our contentment.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the suggestion from my Eleventh Step in AcAdAn to stop both before and after a task to seek guidance before the task and to thank for the guidance and the power to carry out the task afterwards.

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March 21: Choice of a Higher Power

The right to have a Higher Power of our own choice is unconditional and without traps.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 27

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we had some perceptions of a Higher Power that scared us, because we had been told that if we did not do certain things or neglected to do others, our Higher Power would punish us.

In AcAdAn, we had a need to liberate our self from this impression, which for many of us looked like our relationship with our parents, and instead we needed to select a Higher Power that did not reward or punish us for things we did or did not do.

The only suggested guidelines in our Second Step in AcAdAn was that we chose a Higher Power that we were able to perceive as unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful so reward and punishment could not get space in this relationship.

When we heard about the experiences of others with their unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power at meetings, our trust grew in that we did not have to fear a punishing Godhead because of our choice of a Higher Power.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my faith in that my choice of my personal Higher Power is completely without traps so I can freely choose a Higher Power that I trust.

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March 22: Appreciation of the group members

We know that each and every group member is vital for the group to survive.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 86

When we moved around in society, we saw that people were treated more or less respectfully depending on their outer appearance.

Moreover, we saw that people were treated differently because of their wealth or prestige or lack of the same, in particular if they had a high position in society.

In our Fellowship we did not want to use this outer yard stick for how we related to each other, because our mutual purpose was of an inner nature.

We knew that each member was important for the survival of our group, and therefore we wanted show each member of our group the same respect.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will respect and appreciate every single member of my group both in my AcAdAn Fellowship and my other Fellowships, like for example the Fellowship of two people in my marriage.

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March 23: To learn by listening to other members

The Program of Active Addictions Anonymous might seem to us like a humongous task, and it helps us if we remember that we cannot do it all at once, and that nobody expects us to.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

In our first AcAdAn meeting we heard about many concepts that were new to us, and for many of us it seemed overwhelming to think about acquiring an understanding of them.

After the meeting, we talked with other members, and they told us that their understanding of the concepts also kept developing, so they had learned to take it easy.

They suggested that we took it easy and just listened to what others had to share about their understanding of the concepts, and little by little our understanding would develop.

Furthermore, we could consider beginning the work on our own AcAdAn Program and thus become even better at developing our own understanding of the concepts.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will participate in an AcAdAn meeting to learn about the AcAdAn Program by listening to other members' understanding of it.

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March 24: Acts of violence and war

We remembered that attack is the first act of violence and defense the first act of war, and an explanation would be an expression of our desire to defend our wrong.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 67

Most of us considered our self to be peaceful people, until we came to AcAdAn and investigated the issue further, and here we found out that we often attacked others, although we rarely did so physically, but in various other ways.

We had denied that it was a violent attack, when our violent attack on others happened by us using irritated, impatient, belligerent or bitter tones, when we looked at them with angry facial expressions or when we used angry words towards them.

We defended our attacks on others with that we defended the good against the evil, or that we saved the person in question from his/her misconceptions of what was the right and the wrong thing, so that he/she could be spared future pain.

After having worked with our Active Addictions Anonymous Program for some time, we realized that all these ways of attack on others were acts of violence, and our defense for these attacks on others were acts of war irrespective of whether they attacked us first or not.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to stop those acts of violence and war that I usually carry out in my social life.

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March 25: Step Eight

We began by looking at what we considered to be harm Today seen through the eyes we have gained through working the first Seven Steps in Active Addictions Anonymous. Therefore, we took an honest stand on how we had harmed our self and others materially, physically, time-space wise, emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 60

Until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we had mainly perceived material loss and physical diseases as harmful to us, and it had taken many of us a long time to understand that we were addicted to chronic dissatisfaction, and that this was harmful to us.

We had slowly come to terms with this fact, when we came to Step Eight, and thereby we had become aware that we needed to make amends to our self and others for the harm our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction had inflicted on our self and others.

When we worked with Step Eight, it became clear to us that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction was a mindset, which had had humongous costs for our self, our dear ones and everybody around us, and that it was the root of many of the sufferings of our life.

Furthermore, we discovered that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction not only harmed our life socially, but also materially, physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, so we needed to make amends to our self in all these areas.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Eighth Step to make myself ready to make amends for the harms I have done to myself and others with my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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March 26: Accountability in service

Tradition Nine opens up the possibility that we may createmanifest service boards and committees if we want to take on a bigger project like writing new literature or organizing an event or a convention, but those who take on this service are directly responsible to those they serve – the members, groups and the Fellowship of AcAdAn as a whole.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 95

In AcAdAn our most important task was to help and support each other in recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, which is a condition that has got nothing to do with our profession, our status or our position in our society.

To createmanifest the haven we needed to work with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction without fear or favor, we needed that our Fellowship was non-professional, so our focus did not get removed from our basic purpose.

This meant that we did not look at ease others’ status or position in society, and therefore we had a need for that service work in our Fellowship happened on a voluntary basis, so our service structure did not depend on status or fear or favor.

Also when we needed to carry out a bigger project, we wanted it to happen by the help of a voluntary effort, and that those who served our Fellowship, kept the Fellowship informed about their line of action and the economics of the projects we had agreed on.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will be aware of that although the service work I do for the Fellowship is voluntary, an important part of this service is, that I keep the Fellowship well informed about my workflow and the economics in my part of the service work.

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March 27: Transformation

This way, by being thorough, meticulous and committed to do this work day after day, gradually, we became entirely ready to be liberated from all of our defects of character by allowing our Higher Power to transform them to their corresponding qualities in the Rings of Joy.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 53

Gradually, as our work with our Seventh Step in our AcAdAn Program progressed, we became aware of that our perception of what transformation of our defects of character involved, was not in conformity with Reality.

We had imagined that our Higher Power would stretch out his/her/its magic finger and transform our defects of character to virtues without us needing to contribute with anything but a single prayer one time only and our willingness to allow our Higher Power to transform them.

When we worked with Step Seven however, we realized that we had to contribute every step of the way to a working Seventh Step, because the first part of Step Seven where we prayed to our Higher Power to be liberated from all our defects of character were merely the beginning.

After completing this prayer, we discovered that we needed to begin the second part of Step Seven by using our Seventh Step many times a day to pray to our Higher Power to liberate us from using the character defect when we discovered we had taken one of them into use.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Seventh Step to allow my Higher Power to transform my defects of character into virtues by praying to be liberated from them, when I discover that I have taken one of them into use.

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March 28: The changeability 

Thereby, we became able to understand that every moment is precious and is forever over, when the next moment is born, and by looking at our mortality through this perspective, it became less frightening, and we became more content.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 21

When we worked with our four basic qualities as creaturesmanifestations – our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability – in our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that our perception of death changed.

Most of us thought of death as that moment where we left our physical body, but by investigating death in everyday life, we discovered that mortality/changeability is an ongoing process throughout our day.

We also discovers that we needed the mortality/changeability to become able to continuously see our self, our life, others and the World at large in new perspectives, which arose all the time because of the changeability of everything.

In that way we could continue to find our self, others, our life and the World at large interesting, and thereby it became possible for us to enter the Ring of Fulfillment with its fulfillment, interest, meaningfulness and oneness.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to let go of my fear of change.

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March 29: The consequences of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction

Most of us realized that in spite of our continuous efforts to change, and in spite of all the understanding, love and care we received from others, we still felt dissatisfied with our self and others.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

Gradually, as we worked with our addiction to chronic satisfaction in our AcAdAn Program, it became clearer and clearer to us how deeply seated it was.

It also became clear to us that the thoughts we thought as a result of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, gave rise to some emotions that both hurt us and our loved ones.

This insight into our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and its consequences, made our desire to recover from it more intense.

Thereby, it became easier for us to let go of this disease by the help of the daily work with Step Ten, Eleven and Twelve for the maintenance of our contentment.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to maintain my contentment.

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March 30: Recovery from existential pains

Some of us tried to hide parts of our past in an attempt to look better, but we could not afford this mistake.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 44

When our Fifth Step is approaching, some of us may feel uneasy by the thought of sharing some of those discoveries about our self that we discovered in our Fourth Step.

That thought made us consider hiding them, so that our Sponsor/recovery-buddy should not think poorly of us or maybe even not loose interest in working the Step with us.

We spoke with other members of AcAdAn about our feelings, and they told us that Step One is the basis for the healing to begin, because in Step One we admit what pains us and how they make our lives unmanageable.

.
They told us further that Step Four is an inventory of many of our existential pains, and the more we have the courage to admit, the greater will be our possibility of recovering from the pains, so it is essential that we have the courage to stand by our self in Step Five by admitting our pains to another human being.

Today's contemplation
Today courageously, I will admit my existential pains, and how they make my life unmanageable to another human being.

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March 31: Acceptance of the ignorance

Many of us had equated ignorance with stupidity, and even with evil, and as we neither wanted to be stupid nor evil, we had problems admitting our ignorance, but when we accepted the fact that ignorance is an integral part of our humaneness, we gave up blaming our self and others for not knowing better.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 20

In our highly developed culture, we received a flow of information all the time through newspapers, magazines, TV and the Internet, and that could make many of us imagine that we knew a lot about this, that and the other.

As we were not personally involved in most of the events, we got information about, we were ignorant about the true nature of the events, but anyway we were expected to have a stand point on everything between heaven and earth.

If we admitted our ignorance, we could be exposed to reactions from others, which gave us the impression that there was something wrong with our ignorance, and this could lead us to get an urge to hide our ignorance.

The fact was, however, that both we and others could not escape our human ignorance no matter how much information we possessed, because there would always be a lot of areas that we knew nothing about.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will accept my ignorance as a part of being human.

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APRIL

April 01 Recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction	April 02 Fellowship with everything and everybody	April 03 Existential pains
April 04 The Twelve Traditions of AcAdAn	April 05 Individuality	April 06 Decision-making process
April 07 Appreciation	April 08 To give and receive life force	April 09 Courage to be honest Courage to be honest
April 10 First meeting with the Big Ring of Joy via Step One to Four	April 11 The Truth	April 12 Responsibility
April 13 Cooperation with our Higher Power in Step Seven	April 14 Meditation	April 15 Priorities
April 16 The Ring of God-centeredness	April 17 Anger	April 18 Respect and love for myself
April 19 Trust	April 20 Self-will and God's will	April 21 Obsession
April 22 Tradition Five	April 23 Tolerance	April 24 Detachment
April 25 Changeability	April 26 To make amends to make amends	April 27 Sponsorship Sponsorship
April 28 To carry out a full Twelve Step Recovery To carry through a full Twelve Step Recovery	April 29 Self-createdself-manifested sufferings	April 30 A punishing Godhead A punishing Godhead

April 01: Recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction

Our experience has shown us that, whether our disease is mild, moderate or severe, over time, it generally settles within us as an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self, with everything and everyone everywhere, at all levels of existence, and thereby with life itself.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

Most of us perceived dissatisfaction to be a means we could use, when we wanted to createmanifest a change for the better in our life.

It did not occur to us that we were dissatisfied on a daily basis many times a day without changing anything for the better for that reason.

Before we came to AcAdAn we were not aware of that our daily use of dissatisfaction was a chronic condition that was harming us and our loved ones.

After we came to AcAdAn, we used the Program to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by changing that, which we were dissatisfied with, one day at a time.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program and my AcAdAn Fellowship to get the help I need to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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April 02: Fellowship with everything and everybody 

In the course of our spiritual work in AcAdAn, we discovered that self-sufficiency is an illusion. We need everyone and everything around us, and we need to experience a sense of Fellowship with everyone and everything around us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 85

Before we began to investigate our perception of that we exclusively had a Fellowship with our loved ones and our like minded people in those groups we were part of, we missed out on the awareness of the Fellowship we have with everything and everybody everywhere on all planes of existence.

We may have felt that we did not have a Fellowship with a stone, and yet a stone is a creaturemanifestation that is limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal like we are, and Mother Earth is a stone, who gives us our food and everything else in our life as human beings.

A plant is also a limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable creaturemanifestation, and it is sensitive to light and darkness, heat and cold, like we are, and the same is true for animals, who are also sensitive to light and darkness, heat and cold, kindness and unkindness, like we are.

Besides this all of our fellow human beings without exception are also limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable creaturesmanifestations, and they too are sensitive to light and darkness, heat and cold, kindness and unkindness, positive and negative thoughts and emotions, like we are.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will open myself up to the Fellowship, I have, with everything and everybody everywhere on all planes of existence.

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April 03: Existential pains

We sought help and consolation from each other in AcAdAn, and thus we got the strength to go through the emotions of pain until they subsided.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 40

Little by little, as we worked with our AcAdAn Program, we began to accept that pain is an advantageous part of life even if we had not imagined that something like that could become possible for us.

We realized that pain protected us from sitting down on a burningly hot stove, and it made us go to the doctor if we had experienced pain in our physical body for a while without us being able find out why the pain was there.

When we experienced emotional and mental pain, our natural action was also to move away from the pain, but gradually as we developed sensitivity to our self, we practically experienced pain every day, if not physically then psychologically.

It were these existential pains that eventually led us to seek a spiritual solution to our pains, and thus we stopped fleeing from our pains at long last and instead we investigated them, before we released them and let them go.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to investigate a physical or psychological pain to find out what I need to do to release it and let go of it.

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April 04: The Twelve Traditions of AcAdAn

An AcAdAn Group’s fundamental purpose is of a spiritual nature, and the moment we begin to be preoccupied with money, property, power and prestige issues, we are diverted from our primary purpose.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 91

AcAdAn’s Twelve Traditions are an expression of those experiences we have had with our Fellowship as a whole both in our relationship with each other and in our relationship with the surrounding society and the World at large.

We have discovered that if we let our self get diverted from our basic purpose, which is to liberate our self from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, the Fellowship soon lost its healing power, and thus, once again, we lost our contentment.

We had achieved our contentment by the help of our Fellowship and our AcAdAn Program and when our AcAdAn Fellowship did not function in conformity with our Traditions, the Fellowship lost its coherence power.

When we no longer had our Traditions to hold together our World-wide Fellowship, we also did not have the support that we needed to maintain our recovery.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will respect the Traditions of AcAdAn and maintain my focus on my spiritual work in AcAdAn above everything else.

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April 05; Individuality

We know that no single person can speak for the group or for Active Addictions Anonymous as a whole in public discussions, and therefore, we do not speak on behalf of the group or on behalf of Active Addictions Anonymous as a whole.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 96

As members of AcAdAn it was important for us that no one spoke on our behalf by speaking on behalf of the Fellowship as a whole, because we are all unique, so we all have our completely unique way of understanding our Program and that only we our self could express.

However, sometimes we needed to give one of our members a mandate to speak about AcAdAn in a public context, and when one of us got this task, it was important that we remembered our Traditions,.

When we spoke about AcAdAn in public contexts without mandate we let nobody have any doubt that we spoke on our own behalf about our experiences with the Fellowship and with the Program in AcAdAn and not about AcAdAn or the Program as a whole.

If a member had got mandate to to put forward a group’s perception in front of our Area Service Committee, our group service representative saw to it that he/she exclusively expressed the perspective that he/she had been given the task to put forward.

Today's contemplation
Today, I accept that I cannot speak on the behalf of others, so I choose to be aware that I am speaking for myself and about myself when I express my thoughts.

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April 06: Decision making process

Beginning the day by making up our minds if our decision to surrender to our Higher Power’s care was also valid Today the decision could slowly grow and become wholehearted.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 28

In Step Three, we had a need to surrender the care for our will and our life to our chosen Higher Power’s unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention.

For most of us, this decision was not an event but a process, and while we worked with our Third Step, we reached to a desire to surrender our will and out life to our Higher Power's care.

We soon discovered that we felt like withdrawing our desire to surrender our will and our life to our Higher Power’s care for many different reasons that we felt were good reasons to no longer want to use Step Three.

By beginning the day with our Third Step Prayer, we could support our self in our desire to achieve that wholehearted surrender that we had experienced in short glimpses during our work with Step Three.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Third Step Prayer to support my desire to surrender my will and my life wholeheartedly to my Higher Power's care, one day at a time.

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April 07: Appreciation

The principle of Tradition Five is Gratitude.
Slogan: Mutual appreciation pleases the heart.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

Many of the actions that we carried out in the course of a day, were about our interaction with others, and in that context we carried out many actions that contributed to the lives of others and that empowerment that we contributed with could make many of us feel that we were entitled to receive the gratitude and joy from others.

To expect the gratitude and joy of others for our contribution entailed that we expected that they should be in the Ring of God-centeredness with its joy, empowerment, open-mindedness and gratitude regardless of where they were actually at in their psychological landscape.

Therefore, it was important for us to know that appreciation of our contribution was not necessarily possible for the one whose life we contributed to so instead, we could be grateful for that we had been given the capacity to contribute to the life of others and thereby give them an empowerment in their undertakings.

The highest joy for us as givers was to experience the appreciation and joy of others because of our contribution, but we were not entitled to the appreciation or gratitude of others, so instead we could choose to receive it with appreciation and gratitude, when it came to our lot.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will receive others’ appreciation of the empowerment I contribute with, with gratitude and joy.

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April 08: To give and receive life force

When we participate regularly in the meetings, we are part of that Power that keeps the group alive.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 86

Life holds so many opportunities that we are faced with choices many times in the course of a day.

Little by little, we discover that there are some areas of our lives that we value particularly much and therefore we support these areas by using our time and our energy on them.

For us as AcAdAn members our inner life is of great importance, and we give life force to our inner life, when we work our AcAdAn Program, and we give life force to our AcAdAn Fellowship, when we attend meetings.

At the same time we receive life force to our inner life, when the other members share their experiences with us about their inner life in the AcAdAn program.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will give life force to my inner life by doing Step work in AcAdAn and I will attend an AcAdAn meeting and receive life force to my inner life from what the other members share during the meeting.

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April 09:  Courage to be honest: Courage to be honest

We needed to be honest and brave to be able to do this work, and we initiated it by seeking strength from our Higher Power every time we sat down to write about our defects of character and our virtues, and how our use of them had affected our lives till this day.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 41

During our upbringing many of us experienced, that it could be difficult for us to be allowed to be honest.

Both our parents and other adults around us could get upset with what we had at heart, and sometimes they could even become violent and beat us, push us or show displeasure in other ways about our perception of Reality.

This had lead to us believe that it was not safe for us to be honest about our social interactions, our thoughts, our emotions and our actions, and therefore, it is no longer natural for us to be honest, but in our AcAdAn Program, we have a need to be honest, if not to others, then to our self, so already in Step One we begin to gather the courage to admit how our life expresses itself, and we discover that it is to our advantage to be honest.

When we come to Step Four, we have admitted so many things to our self and our sponsor or recovery buddy and to our AcAdAn Fellowship that now we have the courage to honestly take a look at our defects of character and our virtues..

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program, my sponsor or recovery buddy and my AcAdAn Fellowship to get the courage to become more and more honest.

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April 10: First meeting with the Big Ring of Joy via Step One to Four

The Program in Active Addictions Anonymous Step One to Four.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 10

In our AcAdAn Program the Steps themselves are a meeting with the Big Ring of Joy with its faith, hope, love and truth.

We carry out Step One, because we have faith in that it is to our advantage to begin to be honest with our self by admitting what pains us and makes our life unmanageable, and therefore we are willing to carry out the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous.

We carry out Step Two, because we hope that we can get a better life by opening our self to take a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power into our life, and we carry out Step Three, because we want to surrender to our Higher Power's care by developing a loving relationship of trust in our Higher Power that makes it possible for us to surrender to our Higher Power’s care.

We carry out Step Four, because we want to find out the truth about those defects of character that prevent us from surrendering to our chosen Higher Power's care and the virtues that help us to surrender.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use Step One, Two, Three and Four in my AcAdAn Program to set the Big Ring of Joy into vibration in my psychological landscape.

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April 11: The Truth

The principle of Step One is Honesty.
Slogan: Truth always triumphs in the end!

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

In our AcAdAn Program, we need to be as honest as we are capable of, so as to become able to carry out the Program, but it is important for us however, not to demand too much of our self by expecting that our words and the Truth are identical, no matter how honest we are.

We accept that the word chair is a symbol that points to the truth, which is the chair, and whether we use one or the other word for chair, depending on the language we speak, the word however, will never become the chair.

As a result of this realization we realize that a dispute about words is a waste of our time, our energies and our interests, and this realization allows us to honestly acknowledge that our way of expressing our perception of Reality in merely one possible way among many.

That makes our Soul life, our social life much easier, because we no longer need to try to persuade others to accept our words about our truth as we see it right here and right now, but can let them use their own words to describe their own truth as they see it right here and right now.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will remember that words are not the Truth, but a pointer to how I and others perceive Reality right here and right now.

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April 12: Responsibility

We took responsibility for that part which we felt guilty about, and let go of their feelings of guilt or the lack of it as something which is between them and their Higher Power.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 66

In our Ninth Step, we make those amends that we had decided on in Step Eight, but sometimes it could happen that we suddenly lost the desire to make amends for our wrong, because we thought that the person we were about to make amends to had also done us wrong.

If this happens, we remember that there are four different types of tasks in life, which are our tasks, others’ tasks, our chosen Higher Power’s tasks and others’ Higher Power’s tasks

If we choose to perceive our AcAdAn Program as given to us by our chosen Higher Power, it is our task to work this Program, as best as we can, and it is other people's task to take care of the tasks given to them by their chosen Higher Power.

In other words, it is only our responsibility to carry out the tasks that our Higher Power has sent to us TODAY and not to use our resources to take responsibility for the tasks of others, because we think that their Higher Power ought to have given them tasks in relation to us that would suit us better.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will choose to take responsibility for the tasks my Higher Power has given to me, and I will let go of any attempt to take responsibility for the tasks that the Higher Power of others has given to them

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April 13: Cooperation with our Higher Power in Step Seven

With the first part of Step Seven, we had shown our Higher Power and our self that we were entirely ready to have all our defects of character transformed. Now, we began to cooperate with our Higher Power about having them transformed.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 54

The first time we read the headline of Step Seven, we imagined that we would be free from all of our defects of character, when we had finished Step Seven.

When we actually began working with Step Seven, we became aware that our Higher Power did not liberate us from all of our defects of character in one stroke, even though we prayed for it, because we would probably become so alien to our self that we would go mad from it, or we might even die from shock.

With the initial Seventh Step prayer we had shown our self and our Higher Power that we were willing to be liberated from all of our defects of character, and thus we had become ready to cooperate with our Higher Power about our liberation from them on a daily basis.

We cooperated by praying to our Higher Power to liberate us from those defects of character, that we observed as they began to rise to the surface in the course of our day, and in this way we showed our self and our Higher Power that we were entirely ready to be liberated from them.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will cooperate with my Higher Power by the help of Step Seven by praying to my Higher Power to liberate me from my defects of character, when I observe that they surface in the course of my day.

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April 14: Meditation

To be able to hear our Higher Power’s guidance, we had to empty our mind from all thoughts and turn silent.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 69

In Step Eleven, we learn how we can use prayer and meditation to expand our conscious contact with our chosen Higher Power, and with this purpose in mind, we need to learn to empty our mind of all thoughts by taking a step back from our thinking mind, our Ego to observe it.

We observe that our mind is full of thoughts, and we discover that we have a tendency to grab hold of various thoughts to investigate them more closely, but to be able to empty our mind from thoughts, we need to learn to let the flow of thoughts pass by us without holding on to anyone in particular at all, no matter how pleasant or painful it is.

Initially, many of us thought that when the mind became still, it was empty, but now we discovered that our mind was not empty, although it had become still.

There was an almost imperceptible sense of sacred presence in our mind, and we understood that now we had entered into meditation and were therefore able to sense our Higher Power's presence.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use meditation to expand my conscious contact with my Higher Power.

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April 15: Priorities

We place strong emphasis on this, for we know that when we use dissatisfaction in any form, we activate our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction all over again.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

For many years we had used dissatisfaction many times a day, because we imagined that our dissatisfaction would give us the power to change the areas we were dissatisfied with.

We observed however, that although we were dissatisfied with a particular area in our self, our lives, other people or the World at large, it didn’t mean that we got the power to change the area that we were dissatisfied with, but anyway we imagined that if only we continued to be dissatisfied with that area, eventually, it would give us the power to change that area.

Only when we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we became aware that we used our dissatisfaction to give our self a feeling of having done something, or that we hereby had made our self willing to do something in an fictional future about that, which we were dissatisfied with.

When we began working the Program in AcAdAn, we became aware of how our dissatisfaction harmed us, our lives, others and the World at large, and therefore our work with our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, became the central part of our lives.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will give my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction first priority in my life.

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April 16: The Ring of God-centeredness

We also investigated how our open-mindedness had brought about help from unexpected sources, how this had empowered us to solve our issues, and how this had brought about gratitude and joy in us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 31

Many of us imagined that the use of God-centeredness meant that we thought of God or was focused on the concept of God all the time during our day.

In Active Addictions Anonymous, we use the Ring of God-centeredness which is our way of liberating our self from the pain of the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self -praise.

The Ring of God-centeredness makes it possible for us to be grateful for everything that happens in the course of our day, whether it brings us pain and thereby the opportunity to grow in wisdom and compassion by the help of our Program or joy and thereby zest of living

Both sides of life bring us an empowerment, we can rejoice in, if we open our minds to the Ring of God-centeredness and in this way, it becomes possible for us to find contentment with our self, our lives, others and the World at large.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of God-centeredness to find contentment with myself, my life, others and the World at large

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April 17: Anger

We had a tendency to live secret lives by hiding behind artificial masks, hoping we could fool others into loving us by the help of these masks. However, we discovered that the only one we fooled was our self.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 44

We had a tendency to hide behind artificial masks of friendly approachability, because we did not want to hurt others with our anger, and we did not want to experience the consequences of expressing our anger towards others either.

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we did not know what else to do with our anger other than trying to cover it up with friendly approachability, even though the reaction of others towards us indicated that they knew we were angry.

In AcAdAn we finally found a place where we could safely express our anger, because we were told that suppressed anger is hatred, and we needed to express our hatred to recover from it.

Therefore we needed to admit our suppressed anger to our self, another human being, our chosen Higher Power and our AcAdAn Fellowship, so our recovery from it could begin.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will liberate myself from one of my anger forms by the help of my AcAdAn Program.

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April 18: Respect and love for myself

Even if we would succeed in making others love and respect us, it would still not bring about our own love and respect for our self and thus we needed to develop respect and love for our self to be able to achieve contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 16

Many of us thought that if we could make others love and respect us, we would be able to love and respect our self, and on this basis we had led many wars with other people in our attempts to force them to do what we wanted them to do, so that we might be able to believe that they loved and respected us.

No matter how many times others did what we wanted them to do to prove to us that they loved us, we discovered that it did not change anything in our perception of our self or in our belief that we were worthy of love .

Thereby, we understood that even if others did, what we wanted, we could not know whether it was an expression of that they loved us, but we could choose to believe it, when others expressed their love for us, but even if we chose to believe that others loved us it still does not change our ability to feel respect and love for our self.

We need to learn to love our self to become able to believe that we are worthy of love, and we can develop our love for our self by taking care of our self with unconditional love, care, compassion and mercy, whether we feel pain or joy.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to work on those thoughts in me that prevent me from respecting and loving myself.

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April 19: Trust

When we had made our choice, we moved ahead in confidence with our chosen person.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 43

In our Fifth Step, we had admitted to our self how our misunderstandings and use of pain had affected us and our life until now, by writing it down in our Fourth Step.

It had been a painful but also a liberating task to write it down in our Fourth Step, and in our Fifth Step, time was ripe to share it with our chosen Higher Power, and we did this by reading it to our higher Power.

Thereby, we made our self ready to share what we have written, with another human being, and it could be a scary thought for many of us to have to admit the mistakes of our life and our use of pain to another human being, and therefore we needed to choose to have trust in the person to whom we have decided to tell about our mistakes and our use of pain from our childhood till now.

By making this choice, we discovered that we were met with recognition and understanding by our chosen person, and we also discovered that our joy become twice as big and our pain half as big when we sincerely shared it with another human being, and furthermore it intensified our trust in the suggestions of the Program, so our capacity to trust grew.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will choose to trust that I can sincerely share my joy and my pain with another human being.

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April 20: Self-will and God's will

We began taking care of our pain and the changes that took place in our lives all the time with the help of our AcAdAn Program, and as a result, we discovered that both pain and change are advantageous parts of life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 18

When we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, most of us never had imagined that we could come to look at our pains with contentment, not to mention to look at them as an advantageous part of life, because we thought that our pains were an unpleasant part of life that we would rather do without.

After working with our AcAdAn Program for some time, we became more and more content with that it actually IS an advantage to experience pain, for what would otherwise prevent us from being burned, if we accidentally sat down on a hot stove?

We had not imagined that we could be content with change unless it was our self, who had decided to change something in our lives, and therefore, it was profoundly satisfying for us to discover that as we developed our relationship with our chosen Higher Power, we could look at the changes that occurred in our lives, which we had not decided our self, as our Higher Power's influence in our life.

When then we investigated the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention behind the changes that we experienced the greatest ill will towards, we discovered that they were to our advantage, and thereby it became obvious to us that we could be content in areas, we were dissatisfied with before we came to AcAdAn.

Today's contemplation
Today I will use my AcAdAn Program to find my chosen Higher Power's loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention behind the events in my day that I harbored he greatest ill will towards.

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April 21: Obsession

When we become overpowered by such obsessive thoughts, we end up acting on them, impulsively and at times against our will, and thus we are compulsive.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

We thought that we were in control of our thoughts, when we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, and we had spent much time criticizing our self, because we did not implement the decisions that we had made in the beginning of the day.

However, we discovered that we were not only powerless over our feeling of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, but we were also powerless over the thoughts that led to our feeling of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

We believed that our thoughts spoke the truth, when the thoughts that went through our mind, told us that we had good reasons to be dissatisfied with our self, others and the World at large.

It did not occur to us that we could suffer from a mental obsession that gave rise to our feeling of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and that we needed help to recover from this obsession.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my membership of Active Addictions Anonymous to get the help I need to recover from my mental obsession by thoughts, which holds addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with me, others and the World at large.

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April 22: Tradition Five

TRADITION 5:
Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry the message of recovery to others suffering from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 12

Before we came to AcAdAn, we believed that we could recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by using willpower.

After we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we became aware that we suffered from a mental illness that we needed help to recover from, and we received that help from our AcAdAn Program, our personal work with our AcAdAn Program, from our Sponsor or recovery buddy and from our meetings.

In our meetings we heard how others handled their recovery from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and that gave us much inspiration in our own recovery.

When we shared in meetings our self about how we worked on our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we deepened our understanding of our disease and at the same time we passed on the message that recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction IS possible.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will share about my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in an AcAdAn meeting.

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April 23: Tolerance

The principle of Tradition Three is Tolerance.
Slogan: Tolerance furthers understanding.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

In Tradition Three we open our self both as individuals and as a group to the fact that we cannot judge other people's lives and motives by looking at them from the outside.

We are honest when we admit that we can never know if someone else has a desire to give up his/her dissatisfaction with himself/herself, his/her life, others and the World at large.

It is up to each one of us to decide for our self by the help of the Program in AcAdAn, our personal work with it, our Sponsor or recovery buddy, our Higher Power and our meetings, if we have a desire to give up our dissatisfaction with our self and our life and thereby with others and the World at large.

Therefore, we welcome anyone, who expresses a desire to give up his/her dissatisfaction with himself/herself, his/her life, others and the World at large, regardless of the reasons the state to be dissatisfied, and regardless of in what their active addiction consists.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to show tolerance towards others, who suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and thereby give myself a chance to get a new perspective on my own addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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April 24: Detachment

We detached from others’ material, physical, time-space wise, emotional, mental, social and spiritual issues without detaching from our love, care, compassion and mercy for them, and thus, we maintained our detachment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 48

Much of our dissatisfaction with others sprang from our belief that it was our job to solve their existential problems.

When therefore we used our time, our energy, our interest and our money in trying to solve their problems without succeeding, or without them showing gratitude for our help, we became dissatisfied yet another time.

Slowly, it dawned on us that our task is to use our time, our energy, our interest and our money on our own existential problems.

Furthermore, we became aware that it is other's task to spend their time, their energy, their interest and their money on solving their own problems, so we let go of the idea that their task is our task, and thus we stopped attaching our self to other people's problems, as if they were ours..

Today's contemplation
Today, I will listen respectfully to others' problems without taking them on as if they were my own.

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April 25: Changeability

In Active Addictions Anonymous, our recovery began only when we stopped using dissatisfaction, and that meant that we stopped finding reasons to be dissatisfied every day, even many times a day and found reasons to be content every day, many times a day instead.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 22

When we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us believed that the impetus to createmanifest advantageous changes in our life sprang from our dissatisfaction with our self and our life.

We also believed that we could force others to change in accordance with our perception of what is right, if we voiced our dissatisfaction with their way of being in the World.

It never occurred to us that we could createmanifest advantageous changes in our lives without using dissatisfaction as a driving force, but as we progressed in the Program in AcAdAn it became clearer and clearer to us that the changeability of us, others and life elicited changes without us having to use dissatisfaction.

When we used our AcAdAn Program to take a closer look at the changeability in our self, others and our life, the changes always and without exception proved to be to our advantage, and thereby it became easier for us to be content.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to further my recovery from my compulsive use of dissatisfaction with the changeability of myself, others and life.

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April 26: To make amends

We made a decision as to how we could restore the damages we thought we had done, and thus, we became empowered to liberate our self from our feelings of guilt and shame.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

In the course of our life we had done extensive damages materially, physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually, and we wanted to make amends for the damages that we believed we had inflicted on our self or others to become able to liberate our self from guilt and shame.

In our Eighth Step, we brought those areas out into the open that we felt an urge to make amends for, and in Step Nine, we carried out our amends after having sought guidance from our chosen Higher Power and our Sponsor or recovery buddy about how best we could make amends.

We could make direct amends to our self by changing the type of behavior that had harmed us, and we could make direct amends to the others by admitting our mistake to them and then together, we could find out what we could do to restore the damage we had done, if they did not find our own suggestion for amends satisfactory

We could make indirect amends to others if it was not possible to make direct amends to them by carrying out our planned amends in relation to another human being, who needed what we had to offer, but most of our amends, however, consisted in a commitment we took on to change behavior without us having to contact anyone at all directly.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will make amends to myself and others in those areas I think I need to make amends for in order to become able to liberate myself from guilt and shame.

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April 27: Sponsorship

When we took on a commitment as Sponsor, we found yet another way of passing on this message.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 82

In our work with our AcAdAn Program we discovered that when we got the opportunity to express our self about our understanding of our Program, our understanding of the Program became deeper and clearer.

That inspired us to pass on the message of AcAdAn to others, who suffered from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

At the same time, we experienced the satisfaction of contributing to that another person's existential pains diminished, and this is the phenomenon we call a 'win win' situation, because we both win something valuable in our cooperation.

When we took on the commitment as Sponsor, we discovered the benefits of having a person in our life, who was deeply interested in what we thought about the Program in AcAdAn, and who therefore made it possible for us to confidently express what we had learned in AcAdAn..

Today's contemplation

Today, I will deepen my understanding of my AcAdAn Program by passing on my experiences with my Program to another human being, who is interested in my Program, and thus I will createmanifest a 'win win' situation for myself and the other human being.

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April 28: To carry out a full Twelve Step Recovery To carry through a full Twelve Step Recovery

Sometimes, we discovered that our Higher Power did not remove a particular defect of character in us, for example, our impatience, in a given situation even if we prayed for it.
From this, we realized that our Higher Power wanted us to take a closer look at what our impatience had to tell us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 58

Gradually, as we became accustomed to using our Seventh Step many times a day, when we observed that a character defect rose to the surface, we were also getting used to being in recovery under many different circumstances.

However, sometimes it happened, that we used our Seventh Step without a change happening in our painful perspective on the situation, and we know then that we need stronger measures to recover from our pain.

Therefore, we made use of the first given opportunity that arose to inventory the situation by the help of our Sixth Step, and if we were still not able to recover from the situation, we carried out a full Twelve Step recovery on it by taking the situation through all Twelve Steps.

A full Twelve Step Recovery is a powerful means to recover from most pains in life whether the pain is material, physical, energetic, emotional, mental, social or spiritual.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to take a painful situation through a full Twelve Step recovery, if my Sixth and Seventh Step do not work for me the situation.

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April 29: Self-createdself-manifested sufferings

When we had completed our list, we went through it point-by-point, and we wrote down how we wanted to make amends.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 63

We had many situations in our life from the past that we felt guilty about, because we did not like the way, in which we handled the situation in question, and we needed to recover from our feelings of guilt from the past in the course of our Step Work to be able to live a life of contentment.

We also needed to recover on a daily basis from our feeling of guilt about the way we handled situations in the present.

It is important for us to learn how to handle any situation that gives rise to guilt in us, whether it took place in the past or in the present, because guilt leads to shame of our self, and guilt and shame are the deadliest poisons for our spiritual life, where we otherwise find happiness.

Guilt and shame make us break off our contact with our chosen loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power, when we need this contact the most, and thereby our sufferings are prolonged unnecessarily, so we use Step Eight and Nine from our AcAdAn Program til liberate ourselves from our self-createdmanifested sufferings, which springs from out feelings of guilt and shame.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use Step Eight and Nine in my AcAdAn Program to recover from ways in which I handled a situation that I am ashamed of.

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April 30: A punishing Godhead A punishing Godhead

Therefore, we could approach our Higher Power in many different ways that could give us an experience of a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power, such as our 12-Step Program, the earthly and spiritual principles, God, our Spirit, love that flows as the life energy between us and others, everything and everybody everywhere at all levels of existence or any other understanding and experience that we had of a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power’s presence.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 73

Whether we grew up in the North, the South, the East or the West, our surrounding society had given us an impression of an invisible Higher Power together with all what our society thought about the invisible Higher Power.

An important detail for many of us was that we were told that the Higher Power, which our society perceived as the right one, was the only right one, and if we thought something else, we were doomed to hellfire and brimstone, if not now then once we died and the time of reckoning came.

This made our life far more difficult than it needed to be, so it was a great relief for us when we came to our Twelve Step Program in AcAdAn that we were told in Step Two that we had an absolute freedom without traps to choose a Higher Power.

The only stipulation was that our choice was consistent with our own perception of what it held to have a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power in our life, and thus the punishing Godhead lost its power over us.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will to use my AcAdAn Program to let go completely of a punishing Godhead by the help of my Second Step.

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MAY

May 01 The principle of anonymity	May 02 The purpose of our lifeOur life's purpose	May 03 Our basic purpose in AcAdAn
May 04 To listenTo listen	May 05 Our choices	May 06 The five states of our thinking mind, our Ego
May 07 The function of pain	May 08 Forgiving our self	May 09 Us
May 10 To move from distrust to trustTo move from distrust to trust	May 11 Powerfulness	May 12 The driving force of pain
May 13 The Small Ring of Faith	May 14 The Tree of Hatred and the Tree of Love	May 15 The process of sorrow
May 16  To be ill from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction	May 17 Creationmanifestation of thought paths	May 18 Super human beings
May 19 The Step of Liberation	May 20 Comparison with others	May 21 Dissatisfaction with our four basic attributes
May 22 The third meeting with the Big Ring of Joy	May 23 Limitations	May 24 To serve principles
May 25 Shame	May 26 A wholehearted decision	May 27 Politics
May 28 Recovery in AcAdAn	May 29 Self-criticism	May 30 Accept
May 31 Anger

May 01: The principle of anonymity

When we interact with the outside world – both with the public as well as while carrying the message to others who suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction – in the course of our AcAdAn services, we practice Tradition Ten by not expressing anything about outside issues such as religion, therapeutic communities, politics, treatment methodologies etc.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 96

As members of AcAdAn we tried to give everything its proper place, and our Traditions were one of the areas, we wanted to keep in mind, so we could do our best to respect them, because they hold everything in our Fellowship simple and in it right place both inside and outside our Fellowship

Therefore, we did our best to respect the Traditions in AcAdAn by respecting the Principle of Anonymity, and that implied that we were aware of being AcAdAn’s ambassadors instead of our personal self, when we expressed our self about AcAdAn in public contexts.

Therefore, we did not express our personal opinion on outside issues, but we readily expressed our knowledge about AcAdAn's capacity to contribute to our individual well-being and thus the well-being of our society without concealing the fact that it is our personal opinion, we express and not the AcAdAn Program as such.

So if others wanted to find out what AcAdAn has to offer them personally, we can only suggest that they read our literature and/or participate in a few AcAdAn meetings to find out if they think that they could benefit from what we have to offer.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will respect the Anonymity Principle of AcAdAn by accepting my role as AcAdAn's ambassador in public contexts if my participation in AcAdAn crops up in the conversation.

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May 02: The purpose of our life Our life's purpose

The principle of Tradition Six is Life-force.
Slogan:  I liberate myself from that which does not serve my purposes.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

Many of us felt guilty when we wanted to take care of our own purposes first and foremost, because we learned during our upbringing that we had the right to take care of our own purposes only, when we had spent our money, time, energy and interest on taking care of the purposes of others to their satisfaction.

Our parents taught us that their purposes were more important than ours, and our society taught us that their purposes were more important than ours, and some of us have even learned that we should serve the God’s needs instead of our own, as they were described by others, who thought they knew exactly what God needed.

When we came to AcAdAn we finally realized that our omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and immortal Higher Power who holds everything and everyone everywhere at all levels of existence desire does not need anything from us other than us following our hearts, and that meant that we served those purposes that were important for us!

When we discovered that it became clear to us that our life’s purpose is to improve our life on a daily basis in accordance with our perception of the right thing, so at long last, we understood that our true purpose in life is the same as everyone else's: namely to work on improving our own life, and thereby improve life on Earth.

Today's contemplation

Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to liberate myself from that which prevents me from using my resources on improving my own life and thereby on improving life on Earth.

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May 03: Our basic purpose in AcAdAn

Therefore, we don’t use AcAdAn resources to endorse, finance or lend the AcAdAn name to any related facility or outside enterprise, because such an affiliation of Active Addictions Anonymous with other facilities having a purpose similar to ours may easily createmanifest a situation where power, prestige, and debates over money and ownership might divert us from our primary purpose.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 91

In AcAdAn our basic purpose was to liberate our self from the existential pain that sprang from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

Those results we achieved by working with our AcAdAn Program were of such a miraculous nature that many wanted to take AcAdAn’s credit for their work of a similar nature.

This could easily lead to controversy about which enterprise should be given the honor for these results, but in AcAdAn we were not interested in participating in a public debate about the honor.

Our basic and only purpose is to help each other to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and thus achieve contentment, so we do not participate in discussions about to whom belongs the honor for the improvement in another person's life situation

Today's contemplation
Today, I will stick to my basic purpose when I take part in conversations, whether they are about my membership of AcAdAn or other areas of my life.

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May 04: To listen

The principle of Step Two is Open-mindedness.
Slogan: To listen attentively and respectfully to another is the first expression of emotional sobriety.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Most of us could become so eager about expressing our perception of a topic that we stopped listening to the other participant/s in the conversation, especially if it was a topic that we knew something about, and even more so if it was about our area of expertise.

It could even lead to us completely stopping listening to what others have to contribute with on the topic in question, because we became so consumed by thoughts of what we wanted to contribute with, when our turn to speak came.

As our entire focus was on our thoughts instead of on listening attentively and respectfully to what the other/others had to share, we lost the very purpose with conversation with others.

In that way, at the same time, we lost the enrichment of our own perspectives that we could have achieved, if we had chosen to listen attentively and respectfully to what the other/others had to contribute with to our perspectives.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will listen attentively and respectfully to others to draw nourishment from the perspectives they have to offer.

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May 05: Our choices

This way, by being thorough, meticulous and committed to do this work day after day, gradually, we became entirely ready to be liberated from all of our defects of character by allowing our Higher Power to transform them to their corresponding qualities in the Rings of Joy.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 53

In AcAdAn, little by little, we got to know our psychological landscape in Step Four, and thereby we got to know the emotional and mental energies that brought us and others pain and those that brought us and others joy.

In Step Six, we were given the power to choose between using the energies that pained us and others and the energies that gave joy to us and others and this strengthened our capacity to find contentment under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

At the same time we discovered how it affected our material life, our physical life, our energy life, our emotional life, our thought life, our social life and our spiritual life when we chose pain, and when we chose joy that both have theirs to give .

Thereby we achieved the capacity to appreciate the message of pain, because pain showed us what we could advantageously transform in our life, and furthermore the pain gave us an intensified drive to renew our self, and joy gave us the power to experience a life of contentment.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Sixth Step in my AcAdAn Program to transform an emotional pain to joy.

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May 06: The five states of our thinking mind, our Ego The five states in our thinking mind, our Ego

This meant that we wanted to know our Higher Power’s will for us, which is, in Reality, our own will for our self when we are not blinded by our thoughts and emotions.
When praying for the power to carry that out, we were actually praying for the capacity to overcome our thoughts and emotions that stood in our way.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 74

As our work with our AcAdAn Program evolved, we discovered that our minds basically contain five types of thoughts with the associated emotional feelings.

We found out that our painful emotions coincided with the fact that painful thoughts passed through our thinking mind, our Ego, and in the same way our joyful emotions coincided with joyful thoughts passing through our thinking mind, our Ego .

When neutral thoughts passed through our thinking mind, our Ego, we felt neutral and when habitual thoughts passed through we experienced emotional joy or pain depending on what thoughts passed through.

In addition, we discovered that when our thinking mind, our Ego became completely silent without thoughts, we entered into meditation, and thereby it became possible for us to pick up the vibration of our Higher Power passing through our minds, and that we used it in our Eleventh Step to come to  know our Higher Power’s will for us and to seek the power to carry it out, and thus we became better at discovering what we wanted innermost.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to study the five basic states of my thinking mind, my Ego in the course of the day, and I will use my silent mind to find out what I want innermost.

JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

May 07: Pain's function

In Active Addictions Anonymous, we want to be led to contentment, and by investigating these patterns that revolves around and around in circles we clearly saw how our contentment was blocked by our self-centeredness and was achieved by help our God-centeredness.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 31

When we came to AcAdAn, we discovered that the pains of life were not meaningless or a punishment for known or unknown trespasses, because we found out that the function of pain is to be an action signal, which tells us that we must move away from what is going on, whether it is material, physical, energetic, emotional, mental, social or spiritual pain that we experience.

We also discovered that if we did not feel able to move away from the pain in our inner or outer World for various reasons, we could use our AcAdAn Program to inventory our pain, so we could find new ways in which to move away from the pain in a similar situation in the future.

By the help of our inventory, we developed new perspectives on Reality and at the same time we developed our capacity to become creativemanifestive, when we came face to face with our own or others’ existential pains.

We could furthermore develop our capacity for mercy towards our self and others and little by little we could expand our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful ways of being towards our self and others and thereby we brought ourselves on line with our true Self, our Spirit and that joy of living, which this leads to.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my existential pains to develop my wisdom and my capacity for mercy by the help of my Program in Active Addictions Anonymous.

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May 08: Forgiving of ourselves

We simply admitted our wrongs, made amends, and then let go of them, and if we were still not able to forgive our self, we applied Step Two to open our minds to the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention of our Higher Power behind our pain.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 67

It was common knowledge in our Fellowship that the one we had the hardest forgiving was our self, and it was due to our relationship with the pain of life, because we imagined that if we did everything perfectly, we could escape the pain of life.

This could make us believe, we must have done something wrong, when we were paining, but as our work with our AcAdAn Program evolved, we realized that pain is a natural and advantageous part of the experience of life as a limited, ignorant powerless and mortal/changeable human being.

We realized that the pain came to us, because it was the pain’s task is to warn us about that we might come to harm, if we continued to do what we were into, and the warning meant that we needed to change something, like ex, when the pain warned us about that our hand would come to harm, if we did not move it out of the fire.

Similarly, we needed to act on our mental and emotional pains by changing something, when we pained, and we did that by using our AcAdAn Program to identify that, which was the cause of our mental and emotional pain, and then we changed that, which was the cause of the pain by the help of our Sixth Step and in the end, we moved on to forgive our self in Step Eight and Nine for our condemnation of the pain.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to forgive myself for my condemnation of today's material, physical, emotional, mental or social pains

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May 09: Us

For some of us, coming to believe was equivalent to opening our minds to the possibility that there might be more between heaven and earth than what we were able to perceive with our senses, and this helped us to begin approaching the concept of a Power greater than us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 24

In our AcAdAn Program, we worked with two concepts, which are ‘a Power greater than us’ and a ‘Higher Power’, and by the help of the concept 'a Power greater than us' we became able to receive guidance from everything and everyone around us that we could experience with out physical senses.

That made us realize that an interaction took place all the time between us and the World around us, and that in all these interaction was found ‘I’. ‘you/it’ and ‘us’, and that ‘us’ was a power greater than ‘I’.

By the help of the concept a 'Higher Power' we became able to receive guidance from the invisible, and thus from everything we could not perceive with our physical senses.

The invisible guidance could consist in that we let our self be guided by ‘us’, as ‘us’ came to expression in our interactions with the impulses that come to us from the thoughts and emotions that passed through our mind or from the impulses from our Higher Power that came to expression through the Silence in our thinking mind, our Ego.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the empowerment that I receive from 'us' whether it is in my interactions with the visible or the invisible.

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May 10: To move from distrust to trust

We talked with and listened to others in our Fellowship, and gradually, we discovered that there were one or more of the others in whom we had a special confidence, and thereby, we began trusting.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 26

When we came to AcAdAn many of us had lost trust in both God and humankind because of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction that made us see let downs and the possibility of let downs in all context, whether it was an actual possibility or not.

So when we came to AcAdAn we distrusted both to the Program, the other members and our chance of ever getting to live a content life.

Anyway, we hoped that we had finally found a way out of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, so we read the literature and listened to the other members so as to find out if we could find that piece of information that would confirm to us that AcAdAn did not intend our best.

As our investigations progressed, our confidence grew in that AcAdAn really intended our best and that we had found a path to resolution of our daily pains because of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will give myself permission to investigate all aspects of AcAdAn that I distrust before I surrender to the suggestions of the Program.

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May 11: Powerfulness Powerfulness

To escape our powerlessness, many of us tried to achieve power over various aspects of our lives, varying from the cleanliness of our homes to taking on high positions in society.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 15

It could be difficult for us to face the fact that we were powerless over many things, because we often had the impression that we were powerful, especially when our projects were a success and our desires were fulfilled.

When our projects succeeded and our desires were fulfilled, we have a tendency to forget that it did not happen solely by the help of our own efforts, and if we forgot that it could happen that we praised our self for the results instead of being grateful for the help we had received from others, who made our success or the fulfillment of our desires possible.

We discovered that if we overlooked that we did not achieve this success in our projects without the help from others, it also led to us criticizing our self for projects that failed or desires that were not being fulfilled, because all the energies in the Ring of Self-centeredness became activated, when we used self-praise.

When we activated the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise, our life became one long painful struggle to prove to our self that we were powerful, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, for when we took the credit for our successes and the blame for our fiascos, our life became unmanageable.

Today's contemplation
Today I will use my AcAdAn Program to cultivate gratitude for the help and support that I receive from others.

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May 12: The driving force of pain

Most of us were scared of admitting that we needed the driving force of pain and involuntary change in our lives to achieve enlightenment, but we realized that not only we but any creaturemanifestation is Spirit exploring the information hidden underneath the pains and changes of life, each in our way.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 19

Pain is an action-signal, which tells us that we must move away from what is happening, whether the pain is material, physical, energetic, emotional, mental, social or spiritual, and most of us do this naturally to take care of the pain.

Most of us in AcAdAn, who had been working on the program for some time, did this quite naturally, but some of us were unable to move away from the pain, because we sought the driving power of action that lies in the pain.

Even though our various forms of anger gave us a temporary power of action, at the same time it incurred huge costs for our physical body, our energy level, our emotional life, our thought life, our social life and our spiritual life.

When we discovered that, most of us chose instead to use the Tenth Step in our AcAdAn Program to dive down to the root of the pain and find the wisdom and mercy that hides there, and in that way we transformed the emotional pain, we experienced in everyday life for joy.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to dive down to the root of one of those pains that I experienced today to find the wisdom and mercy that lies at the root of the pain.

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May 13: The Small Ring of Faith

We also discovered that when The Small Ring of Faith became active in us, we believed that our Higher Power gave us what we needed when we needed it (Trust), and we used our Higher Power’s gifts to the full or passed the surplus on to others if we did not have any use for it our self (Accountability).
Therefore we passed on our material, physical, time-space wise, emotional, mental, social or spiritual surplus to others who lacked what we had in excess (Generosity), and through these actions, we realized that we indeed had a surplus to give from (Abundance).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 38

Despite the abundance that many of us lived in both materially, health wise, time and space wise, emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually, it could be difficult for us to remember that it is so, because it was our habitual situation.

Therefore it was important for us to face that we were wealthy enough to have something to share in one or more of these areas for it to become easier for us to become able to be content with our self and our life.

By using the Small Ring of Faith, we could learn to trust that we could pass on our surplus without fearing to regret it later.

In that way we became able to experience the joy of experiencing the joy of others about receiving that, which we had in excess while at the same time we became more content by taking responsibility for that Mother that Mother Earth's resources did not go waste.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Small Ring of Faith to get the driving power to share my surplus with others, who lack what I have en excess.

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May 14: The Tree of Hatred and the Tree of Love

First, we needed to find out what our part of the work consisted of.
To find this out, we needed to have an overall idea of the nature of this part of our Seventh Step work.
We could achieve this by using the below illustration of The Tree of Hatred and The Tree of Love as a representation of our defects of character and our virtues.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 54

In our Seventh Step, we began co-operating with our Higher Power about having our defects of character transformed to virtues, and to illustrate the process many of us used the Tree of Hatred and the Tree of Love as shown in Step Seven.

We imagined that the soil the trees grew in was a situation that we experienced, and the cilia of the tree, the finest roots illustrated the most subtle energies we used to handle the situation.

These cilia led nutrition into the larger roots, which led nourishment into the stems of the trees and up into the crowns, which in the Tree of Hatred was the fully unfolded hatred, and in the Tree of Love it was the fully unfolded Love.

The situation was the same, whether we chose to nourish one or the other tree in context with the situation, but dependent on what energies we used, we developed the Tree of Hatred or the Tree of Love. 

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use those energies, which bring forth growth in the Tree of Love in my interactions with others.

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May 15: The Process of sorrow

The process of sorrow moves us through a sequence of emotions namely denial, anger, negotiation, grief and acceptance in several waves, one after the other, in varying order and intensity.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 40

Gradually, as our work with our AcAdAn Program developed, we had investigated our processes of sorrow and discovered the five stages of the process of sorrow.

At the same time, we had become aware that three of the characteristics that the process of sorrow brings forth belongs in the Rings of Pain, and two characteristics belong in the Rings of Joy.

Thereby, we discovered that we could transform the process of sorrow by the help of our AcAdAn Program.

When we used the Sixth Step of our AcAdAn Program for the transformation process, we recovered faster, because we merely needed a turning point, and the turning point took place when we stepped into that Ring of Joy we had chosen for the process.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to investigate the losses that still pains me and transform the pain to joy.

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May 16: To be ill from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction

Today many are found who suffer from a severe case of active addiction, and many more that have a mild or moderate form of this disease.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

During our growth, we studied our surroundings completely open-minded in order to get an impression of what were the norms of our surrounding society, and this gave us the impression that dissatisfaction was a useful energy, which could be used to get driving force to set projects into movement or do the needful to fulfill our desires.

We took this to heart without being aware that it was a disease of the mind of our surroundings, because this disease was so common that it was perceived to be a normal state of mind.

We did not discover either that this disease was chronic in our surroundings, because they were dissatisfied with their human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and the multitude of consequences they experienced because of the inescapability of their humanness.

As a result of their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction they put up impossible demands on themselves and us, and they also had expectations of themselves and us, which were impossible to live up to, and all of this contributed to createmanifest a serious addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in us, and we were so accustomed to our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction that it did not even occur to us that it was a disease until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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May 17: Creationmanifestation of thought paths Creation of strings of thoughts

Our mind consists of strings of thoughts that we have createdmanifested from a combination of our experiences with our material life, our physical life, our life in time and space, our emotional life, our thought life, our social life and our spiritual life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 71

We were not aware that we had createdmanifested a long series of rows of thoughts that belonged together in sets before we came to AcAdAn and began to raise our awareness of these sets in Step Four by working with The Rings of Pain and Joy.

Thereby, we discovered that even if a single thought had no power by itself, it could belong to a pattern, and that pattern our use of the thought set into swing, had such immense power that it could dominate our thinking mind, our Ego as a obsession.

Therefore, it could be difficult for us to move out of a Painring and into a Joyring, but in Step Six we worked on creatingmanifesting thought paths between the various Painrings and Joyrings that made it possible for us to move quickly out of a Painring and into a Joyring.

The more thought paths we createdmanifested that supported our movement out of a Painring and into a Joyring the easier it became for us to experience contentment, so therefore we worked diligently with our Sixth Step.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to createmanifest thought paths that make it easy for me to move out of a Painring and into a Joyring.

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May 18: Super Human Beings

As a result of using our codependency, it became clear to us that arrogance was the natural consequence of our demand on our self that we must be able to save our self and others from the pains of life, because our desire to save our self and others from pain made us pretend that we were superhuman beings, who were not affected by our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality, and as a result the Big Ring of Pain opened up to us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 33

Because we had grown up in a society that made impossible demands on us, we had got the impression that if we were not super human beings, we were not good enough, and this impression had led us to strive to be super human beings, and thus we had made impossible demands on our self.

We demanded from our self that we should be able to do more than we are able to, know more than we know, be in control of more than we can control, should not change even if constant change is the life condition for all creaturesmanifestations, and moreover we should not change things, until those, who had power over us had given their permission.

That had contributed to that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction became severe in nature, and it had led to such existential pains that many of us had resorted to using alcohol, drugs, nicotine, sugar and other chemical substances to quiet our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and others of us killed themselves in despair over not feeling that they were good enough.

Yet others of us had used the people pleasing of codependency, hoping that others would accept that we were not super human beings, if only we used our resources to contribute to their lives instead of our own and thus our chance of finding contentment became even more impaired, but when we came to Active Addictions Anonymous we learned to move from our codependency to our emotional sobriety, and thus we became more content.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn to use my emotional sobriety to accept my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability instead of trying to be a superhuman being.

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May 19: The Step of Liberation

Gradually, as we progressed in our Ninth Step, we experienced how relieved we felt about resolving all such situations from our Eighth Step list, one after another, and therefore, many call Step Nine The Step of Liberation.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 65

From our childhood to the present day, our parents and many other people in our life had explained to us that we should feel ashamed, because we were guilty of something or the other that was not good in their eyes, and they let us know that if they were to believe that we felt ashamed, we had to bend our neck and admit that we were bad people, who had deserved to feel bad, because of what they thought we ought to feel ashamed of.

We did not know as children that guilt and shame are weapons that our surroundings use to make us bend to their will, and we also did not know that even when it was our loving parents, who used these weapons against us, they did us great harm, because these weapons are the deadliest poisons to our spiritual life and thus a block for us to become one with our true Self, our Spirit.

We believed it, when others said that we were guilty and ought to be ashamed of our self, and even when nobody said it to us anymore, we continued to say it to our self, because innermost we trusted that our parents and other authorities had shamed us exclusively because they wanted to do something they believed were to our advantage, even if it was painful.

Therefore, we were deeply grateful for our Eighth Step, where we brought out in the open all the big and small things that we our self and others had shamed us of, and for our Ninth Step, where we both liberated our self of what we had been ashamed of our self and what others thought we should be ashamed of from childhood to now, and the relief this gave us enabled us to henceforth keep our path free of guilt and shame to our utmost relief.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Ninth Step to let go of my feelings of guilt and shame from a situation in the present

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May 20: Comparison with others

Before we came to AcAdAn, many of us perceived our demands, that we should be understood, admired, respected, perfect, healthy, beautiful, famous, rich and so on, and that others in our lives should be completely loving, caring, giving, understanding, tolerant, and so on, as fair and reasonable, but we cannot afford to be confused on this issue.
These demands createmanifest dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

From our society, we received a lot of information about other people, whom we did not know, but who apparently were perfect, healthy, beautiful, rich, respected and admired, and we got the impression that if we did not possess all this, we were not as we should be.

We also received a lot of information about other people, whom we did not know that gave us the impression that they had a wonderful social life, full of admirers and suitors, good male friends and female friends and an ideal relationship with parents, siblings, spouses and their own and others’ children.

So when we looked at the outer image presented to us and looked at the Reality of our own personal and our own social life, we saw the true picture instead of the surface image, and we saw that our personal life and our social life held pain on a daily basis, and that we had issues with parents, siblings, spouses and our own and others’ children.

Thereby we discovered that when we compared the outer image of the Reality of others with our personal Reality, we could easily get an impression of not being as we ought to be, but at our AcAdAn meetings, we heard others share sincerely about how life was for them, and then we discovered to our delight that others were like us, when we and they let go of only showing the surface.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn meetings to learn to let go of comparing myself and my life with others and their life.

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May 21: Dissatisfaction with our four basic attributes

After having tried everything we could by our self to overcome our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction without success, we eventually sought help from each other in Active Addictions Anonymous.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

One would think that it was evident that our four basic attributes as human beings are that we are limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable, but before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous most of us were not aware of our four basic conditions as human beings.

After we came to AcAdAn, we discovered that we were limited by our form, and we were ignorant about everything that was outside our limited life space, because even if we in many ways possessed information about the World at large, we were still ignorant about them in the true sense of knowledge, which is information paired with experience.

We also realized that even when we paired information with experiences there would always be unimaginable amounts of information about life and places on Earth that we knew nothing about, and it became evident to us that we are powerless over what we knew nothing about, and even if we tried to be stable, we discovered that it was not possible because of our mortality/changeability.

Our resistance to our four basic attributes createdmanifested an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in our mind, and because we wanted to recover from this disease, we became willing to carry out the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program and my AcAdAn Fellowship to get the help I need to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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May 22: The third meeting with the Big Ring of Joy

The Program in Active Addictions Anonymous Step 9-12.
STEP 9:  We made amends to our self and others except when doing so would cause more harm to us or others.
STEP 10:  We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
STEP 11:  Through prayer and meditation, we sought to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power, as we understood that Power, praying only for knowledge of our Higher Power’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
STEP 12:  Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, we practiced these principles in all our affairs, and carried the message of AcAdAn to others suffering from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 10

When we worked our Ninth Step by making amends to our self and others for the harm we believed we had done as compared to our goal in AcAdAn, which is to live with contentment, we did so because we had faith in that it would make it easier for us to be content with our self and thus with others, our lives and the World at large.

When we worked our Tenth Step by taking personal inventory and admitting our mistakes immediately when we discovered them, we hoped that this would reduce the harm that could come to our self, others and the World at large as a result of our mistakes.

When we worked our Eleventh Step by expanding our conscious contact with our chosen Higher Power by the help of prayer and meditation and by seeking knowledge about our Higher Power's will for us plus seeking the power to carry that out, we wanted to act on our knowledge that our Higher Power's will for us holds love for us and everything and everyone everywhere at all levels of existence.

When we worked our Twelfth Step by passing on to others, who suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, our knowledge about the Program in AcAdAn, we stick to the truth about what we have received in AcAdAn, and we do this in order to keep what we has achieved, and also because we wanted to help suffering humankind to recover from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will set the Big Ring of Joy with its faith, hope, love and truth into vibration in my own life by the help of Step 9-10-11-12, and thereby also help suffering humankind by the help of the information I have to share about these Steps.

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May 23: Limitations

Furthermore, many of us have realized that we are limited in many different ways, but it was hard for us to admit this even to our self, because we felt defiant when we encountered limitations of any kind whatsoever and that could make us wage war against any type of limitations.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 20

Many of us had difficulty accepting our emotional limitations, and thus we had a hard time saying no to a task that we did not feel like doing, and when we did not feel like performing the task, but did it anyway, we did not have our heart with us in the action, and thus it became a heartless action towards our self and others.

When we lacked the courage to say no, we could experience a feeling of defiance, while we carried out the task, and that meant that we now found our self in the Small Ring of Envy with its defiance, submission, disbelief and superstition.

Our submission consisted in that we performed an action, we did not want to perform, and our disbelief consisted in that we believed that such a heartless action did not have any consequences for our self and others, and our superstition consisted in that we imagined that others – our boss, our friends, our spouse, our Higher Power – should refrain from asking something from us that we needed to say no to.

When we found our self in the energies from the Small Ring of Envy, it also meant that all our tasks would be permeated by these energies, even if it was tasks we would otherwise love to perform, and thus we lost the joy of every action we performed.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Program to release my fear of saying no to tasks that I do not want to perform.

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May 24: To serve principles

The principle of Tradition Two is Service.
Slogan: I do not serve to elevate myself but to give life-force to the principles I wish to further.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

When we chose to serve AcAdAn by taking on a service post, it was important that we investigated our motives taking on the post in question, because if we sought the power and the glory associated with the post in question, we needed to work with our self, until we were able to take on the post to serve the principles, we wanted to further.

First and foremost however, we needed to investigate if we had our heart with us in our chosen service to the Fellowship, and that meant that we served the principles that we wished to further with joy and interest.

Sometimes, we realized that we had our heart with us in our service to begin with, but lost the desire do the service at a later date after we had discovered in all details what it entailed to do it.

As we do not want to perform heartless actions against our self or others by performing a task we do not have our heart into, we liberate our self from the service that we had undertaken at the earliest possible opportunity even if we had committed our self to do it longer, when we took it on.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will joyfully serve the principles that I want to further in my AcAdAn Fellowship and in my life as a whole, until I do not want to do it anymore.

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May 25: Shame

We looked at the harm we had inflicted on our self or others by destroying some of our possessions or that of others, whether the things were big or small, or whether we had done it on purpose or not.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we maybe denied that we were ashamed of our self, when we destroyed our things, harmed our body, carried out actions that drained us of energy, cultivated painful emotions, thought hateful thoughts, harmed others in our social life or harmed our own spiritual life or that of others.

However, gradually as our work with our AcAdAn Program developed, we realized that in Reality, we could not harm our self or others without being ashamed of these actions.

When we admitted that we were ashamed of the harm we had done in our Eighth Step, we refrained from judging if we were ashamed of a little thing or a big thing, or if we were ashamed of something we did on purpose, or something we did not do on purpose.

The decisive factor was that we were ashamed of our action and therefore had a need to change our way of being in the World to be able to forgive our self by making amends to our self or others for that, which we were ashamed of by the help of Step Nine.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Eighth Step to decide how I will make amends to myself or others for a wrong I believe I have done, and I will use Step Nine to carry out my amends.

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May 26: A wholehearted decision

The more times we made this decision, the less frightening it became.
Every time we made it, we got new insights about our self in the form of our reluctance and fear that prevented us from making the decision wholeheartedly that day.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 28

When we wanted to change one of our decisions, we were met with resistance from that part of us that wanted to hold on to our old decision, and therefore it was extremely rare that we could move straight from discovering that we needed to change a particular pattern of action that harmed us to a new pattern of action that benefited us.

To reach a wholehearted decision about changing one of our patterns of action, we needed to change the mindset and its accompanying emotions that supported our old painful behavior, and replace the mindset in question and its accompanying emotions with the new mindset that we wanted to make use of instead.

Sometimes, the change in our thinking mind, our Ego might take a few years before we reached a wholehearted decision in a specific area, but mostly the changes in daily life could be digested within a few hours or at few days.

However, this did not make us loose courage, because we had our Program that we could use to work on replacing our old habitual painful mindsets with new mindsets that brought us joy.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to change an old habit that does not serve me any longer, even though I might have to work on it now and then over a longer time phase.

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May 27: Politics

Each member has one voice, which they can contribute when their turn comes, and that means, we proceed to take a collective conscience on the issue through a written vote when everybody has spoken once, even if some of us might feel that if we were allowed to speak more than once, we would have a better chance of explaining and convincing others that what we suggested could be the right action to follow for our group.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 87

In political debates, it is often the most eloquent, who can convince others that their point of view of the right thing should be the foundation for decisions on behalf of everyone, and therefore they should be given the power to implement their perception of the right thing, but in AcAdAn we have a different perception of what is politically correct.

When making decisions on behalf of the group, we do not want that the most eloquent of us speak again and again so in that way we give them the power to overpower the rest of the group with their view points.

Our politics in group settings is therefore that each member has one voice, and thus we only get the opportunity to speak once about our perception of the right mutual foundation for action for the group.

Furthermore, we want that all group members get the opportunity to express their perception of what could be the right foundation for action for the group, so that all members are being heard and taken into consideration, before we cast our vote on, what each of us think is the right action for our group.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will express my conscience in my AcAdAn group, if a decision has to be made about a mutual foundation for action for my entire group.

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May 28: Recovery in AcAdAn

Abstain from using your addiction to chronic dissatisfaction one day at a time.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 13

In AcAdAn we inventoried, how we used dissatisfaction in our daily life, and to our surprise we discovered that we were using dissatisfaction from we opened our eyes in the morning til we went to sleep at night.

Because we were content for few short moments in between the moments, where we made use of our dissatisfaction, we had not been aware that we were chronically dissatisfied, that we were in fact addicted to dissatisfaction.

When we investigated, why it was just as difficult for us to let go of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, as it is for an addict to let go of his/her drug of choice, we discovered that we used dissatisfaction with our self or others hoping that the pain of our dissatisfaction would give our self or others the incentive that we and they needed to change our self or them for the better.

In AcAdAn, we also investigated if our use of dissatisfaction gave the desired result, and we discovered that our use of dissatisfaction did not createmanifest a change for the better neither for our self nor for others, and thus it became easier for us to let go of our addiction to dissatisfaction.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to investigate how I can use contentment instead of dissatisfaction in my daily life, one situation at a time.

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May 29: Self-criticism

Instead of criticizing our self for the mistakes we thought we had made in the course of a day, we chose to open our mind to ideas and ways to remedy those mistakes, whether those ideas sprang from within us or from outside us though others. This way, we were empowered to set right our mistakes instead of sinking into despondency and depression.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 47

Self-criticism createsmanifests depression in us and that we discover in AcAdAn, when we began to investigate the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise in Step Four.

Until then, many of us had believed that depression was an unpleasant state of mind that we would suffer from now and then, but in AcAdAn we began to replace our self-criticism with openmindedness.

We did this in our Sixth Step by the help of the Ring of God-centeredness with its joy, empowerment, open-mindedness and gratitude.

The Ring of God-centeredness gave us the empowerment, we needed to leave our self-criticism with its accompanying depression behind us and gradually, as our work with these two Rings developed, we discovered that depression became a more and more rare state of mind for us.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of God-centeredness with its joy, empowerment, open-mindedness and gratitude to recover from my use of the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise.

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May 30: Accept

Before we came to the Fellowship of Active Addictions Anonymous, we could not accept our self, others and our lives.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

Because of our addiction to dissatisfaction we focused throughout our day on those areas we thought ought not to be the way they were, whether it were our spiritual life, our social interactions, our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, our appearance or material possessions.

 Always and without exception we found something to be dissatisfied with about our self and our lives, others and their way of being in the World, our society or the World at large.

Our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction went like a red thread through the days of our lives, and we felt pain, whether we looked into our self or out onto others, but when we came to AcAdAn and let go of our addiction to dissatisfaction, the miracle happened.

We became better and better at accepting our self, others, our society and the World at large as we and our lives are, and as they and their lives are, as our society and the World at large are, and thereby we began to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn to accept myself, others, my society and the World at large exactly the way we all are on all levels, whether it is materially, physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally, socially or spiritually.

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May 31: Anger

Thus, when we approached and healed our angry thoughts and emotions both mentally, emotionally and energetically, in loving and respectful ways, we could move beyond the anger, to the joy of feeling love for our self and others.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

Our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction led us to become angry again and again for all kinds of reasons, and over the years we had used a lot of our energy to deny, defend, justify and rationalize our anger.

We felt that our anger had its role to play in our understanding of life, because it told us that we needed to do something about the situation that gave rise to our anger, but because we used denial, defence, justification and rationalization, we became unable to listen to the message of our anger.

Instead we tried to find good and loving reasons for inflicting the suffering on our self and others that came in the wake of our anger, but when we began to work with all the Painrings in AcAdAn, we discovered that it became possible for for us to hear the message of our anger, so we could begin to take care of it.

After coming face to face with the many anger forms that is found in all the Painrings, at long last, we found a way, in which we did not only become able to hear the message of our anger, but we could also learn to transform our anger to joy about achieving the wisdom and mercy that was a result of our work with throwing light one our anger by the help of the Painrings and then transform it by help of the Joyrings.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Sixth Step in AcAdAn to transform my anger to joy about the wisdom and capacity for mercy that my anger makes it possible for me to achieve, because I used the Painrings and the Joyrings to take care of my anger.                     .

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JUNE

June 01 Courage	June 02 AcAdAn literature	June 03 To share experience, strength and hope
June 04 Letting go of the seducer role of codependency	June 05 The importance of Step Five	June 06 Perfect laziness
June 07 The importance of Step Five	June 08 Achievement of honor	June 09 Our mutual purpose
June 10 The Step of forgiveness	June 11 The Small Ring of Envy	June 12 Self-criticism and self-praise
June 13 To forgive our self	June 14 To open our self	June 15 Understanding
June 16 Wasting resources	June 17 To respect our emotions	June 18 The importance of meetings
June 19 The Ring of Fulfillment	June 20 Our psychological landscape	June 21 Success and failure
June 22 Dissatisfaction	June 23 The importance of our Fellowship with others	June 24 The Higher Power of the group
June 25 The message of AcAdAn	June 26 The First Tradition	June 27 The flow of information
June 28 To harm our earth connection	June 29 The process of meditation	June 30 To harm our self and others spiritually

June 01: Courage

The principle of Step Four is courage.
Slogan: I accept both my virtues and my defects of character.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

We had associated courage with physical actions, before we came to AcAdAn, but after we began our Step Work, we discovered that it took courage for us to use Step One to admit things that we thought, felt, said or did that made our life unmanageable.

Gradually, as we used Step Two to investigate the unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention of our chosen Higher Power with us being exactly the way we are, it began to become easier for us to admit those things that made our life unmanageable, so we could begin to change them.

When we surrendered to our chosen Higher Power's unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention in Step Three, it became possible for us to carry out those actions that we found out in Step Two that we needed to do to make our life manageable.

By the help of this work, we became ready to show that courage, which is required in AcAdAn to be able to admit our exact nature in Step Four, even if it could still be hard for some of us to either admit our defects of character or our virtues, but in Step Four we muster our courage to stand by both sides of our self with the help of the Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will show courage in AcAdAn by admitting both my character defects and my virtues by the help of the Rings of Pain and Joy in Step Four.

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June 02: AcAdAn literature

At the founding time of Active Addictions Anonymous, our literature consisted of four books: Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life, One Sponsor’s Suggestions for Working the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life, Daily contemplations for members of Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life and Six Step Analyses for members of Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 92

The purpose with the literature of AcAdAn is to slowly build up a library in which various members express their experience of their way through the AcAdAn Fellowship.

Some members might want to make an alternative sponsor suggestion that better suit their taste and others, who have the same taste as them.

We could also have various books of daily contemplations for members of Active Addictions Anonymous, written by members, who felt like contributing with their ideas on how they thought a set of daily contemplations should be.

We could also choose to write pamphlets about our Traditions and about Service in AcAdAn, because only imagination sets limits for how we can expand our literature in AcAdAn for the benefit of our members.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will read some of the books that are available to me as a member of AcAdAn, and if I also feel like writing something for the benefit of other AcAdAn members, I will do it.

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June 03: To share experience, strength and hope

We carry our AcAdAn message best when we simply share our recovery, express our experiences from our work with the AcAdAn Program and how the Program has helped us, because thereby, we give others hope that they too can achieve contentment; and also, this way, they get the strength to begin their journey of recovery towards contentment with self, others and their life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 96

When we met our sponsor or recovery buddy in the beginning of our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we told him/her about our emotional pains, and how that made our life unmanageable.

Thereby we gave our sponsor or recovery buddy the opportunity to tell us, how he/she would have used our AcAdAn Program to recover from the emotional pains, we described, and in that way it became a win-win situation.

It became a win for our sponsor or recovery buddy, because we gave him/her an opportunity to deepen his/her understanding of the Program by telling us about his/her understanding of the Program, and it became a win for us, because we got new knowledge about how we could use the Program on our existential pains.

Gradually, as we developed our own understanding of the Program and how we could use it, we continued our win-win situation with out sponsor or recovery buddy by exchanging experiences with our unique and personal application of the Program on our existential pains, so we in that way had our understanding expanded on our self, our life and our Program.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will share my experiences with my AcAdAn Program with my sponsor or my recovery buddy and in an AcAdAn meeting and thereby contribute to give others hope that they too can recover from their existential pains and thus get the strength to do what is required to recover from their pains.

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June 04: Letting go of the seducer role of codependency

Instead of seducing others by hiding our own pain or by pretending that we were wiser than them and their Higher Power so as to make them change according to our perception of the right thing, we gave them time and space to express their thoughts, emotions and actions according to their own perception of the right thing.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 48

Many of us had the impression that it was our task to save others from their existential pains and that could make us seduce both our self and them to believe that we must not be subjected to the pains of life just like everybody else, because we could not see how it would be possible for us to save them, if we had the same pains as them.

By believing in this, we came to step into the role of the powerless helpers, who could not get the help we needed to recover from our existential pains, because that required us to admit the pains of our lives instead of pretending that we were above them, and it also required that we asked for the help, we needed.

When we were presented with the Ring of codependency with its savior role, seducer role, victim role and offender role, we discovered to our relief that it was not only us, who suffered from this misunderstanding, but that everyone in our Fellowship worked on letting go of the seducer role of codependency.

We used the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment to let go of others' problems, its integrity to let go of seducing our self and others to believe that it was our task to save them from the pains of their life, respect of our need to use our resources to solve our own problems and respect for the needs of others to use their resources to solve their own problems.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others to let go of my codependency’s seducer role.

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June 05: The importance of Step Five

We discovered that no self-appraisal, however thorough it was, had a lasting effect unless followed up by just as thorough a Fifth Step, and with this knowledge we moved on to Step Five.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 41

In Step Four, we had made many discoveries about our self, and we thought that they were so big and so important that we would be able to remember them and benefit from them quite effortlessly, but they were lost anyway, like a dream in the night, if we did not reaffirm them.

We reaffirmed them by reading to our self, what we had written, because that gave us the opportunity to look at our self-realizations from our neutral point of view, and we wrote a synopsis at the same time about what we had discovered about our self.

Then we read our synopsis to our chosen Higher Power, because we needed to receive inspiration from our chosen Higher Power so we added those inspirations to our inventory that came to us while we read to our Higher Power.

In the end, we read our self-realizations to another human being and to our AcAdAn Fellowship, an thereby we also got the opportunity to hear what another human being and our AcAdAn Fellowship have realized that were related to our own realizations, and thus our understanding of our self-realizations got further deepened.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Fifth Step to share my self-realizations with myself, my Higher Power, another human being and my AcAdAn Fellowship.

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June 06: Perfect laziness

The principle of Tradition Seven is Simplicity.
Slogan: A place for everything and everything in its place.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

Many of us perceived laziness as failure in picking up our home, but that was a very superficial point of view on laziness, because laziness is in Reality a quality we could benefit from a lot, if we chose to look deeper at what perfect laziness is, because thereby we discovered that perfect laziness is perfect order on all levels of our existence.

When we had perfect order in our home, we knew where all things were down to the smallest pin, and that meant that we did not need to spend time, energy and interest on finding things that we needed just now.

When we had perfect order in our physical condition, it meant that our physical body was well rested, well exercised, well groomed and well nourished, and in this way, we were spared of having to spend money, time, energy and interest on taking care of various lifestyle illnesses.

When we had perfect order in our thoughts and emotions, it meant that we lived a principled life, where we took care of our thoughts and emotions to the extent that was necessary for us so to develop a social life, where we did not constantly clash with the thoughts and emotions of other human beings, so that did not have to use our time, energy and interest on resolving the conflicts that constantly arose, if we did not have order in our thoughts and emotions.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use time on cultivating my perfect laziness by creatingmanifesting a place for every thing, and I will put every thing in its place, whether it is my material things, my physical body, my energy, my emotions, my thoughts, my social life and my spiritual life.

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June 07: A content life

However, when we came to AcAdAn, we discovered we could learn to live a content life with the help of the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous whether our active addiction was mild, moderate or severe.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

People, who were not addicted to dissatisfaction, and who had thus not developed an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, could easily feel that they lived a contented life, although sometimes they were dissatisfied, but this however, is not the case for members of AcAdAn, because we suffer under an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Before we came to AcAdAn and began to face our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we found reason to be dissatisfied many times a day, seven days a week, so there was not one day, when we did not lose energy to our addiction to dissatisfaction.

Exactly because we suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we need to abstain from taking dissatisfaction into use, and to begin with, we do it five minutes at a time, later one hour at a time, and slowly we set up the time to abstain from using our dissatisfaction one day at a time.

Day by day, we become better and better at finding reasons to be content with our self, with other people, with things and situations that we previously were discontented with, and this meant that we slowly came to live a contented life.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn how to let go of my dissatisfaction so that I can get to live a contented life, one day at a time.

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June 08: Achievement of honor

Even when it did seem like we had succeeded in making others honor us, we discovered that this didn't bring us any closer to self-acceptance and contentment in any possible way.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 17

In our state of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction many of us imagined that if only others treated us better, were more loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, we would be more content.

Some of us hoped to achieve to be honored by others in such a way that we could feel valued and appreciated, not only by our family and our circle of people, but by a larger group outside our personal circle of people or even by all of our society at large.

Some of us succeeded in achieving special honors, either from our family, from our circle, from a larger group outside our circle or even from society at large, and we discovered that it was a short-lived joy that did not make us more content with our self, others, society at large or our life.

Thereby, we understood that honor from others in and of itself does not createmanifest contentment with our self, others, society at large or our lives, and therefore we became even more willing to work with our AcAdAn Program to become able to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will continue my work on recovering from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by the help of my AcAdAn Program, even if I receive honors from others.

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June 09: Our mutual purpose

In Active Addictions Anonymous, each of us needs a sense of Fellowship with our group.
This we attain, first of all, with the help of our mutual purpose, which is our work with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, so that it becomes possible for us to be led to a state of contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 85

It was not possible for us as members of AcAdAn to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction on our own, and therefore we needed our group in AcAdAn so we could get the needed help with our Step Work, when we shared it with our sponsor or recovery buddy or others, who has the same purpose as us.

People, who did not suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and even people, who suffered from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, could have difficulties understanding us if they were not members of AcAdAn or in other ways worked with their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Therefore it was vital for us that our group stayed available to us and the other members of our group, and to achieve the necessary trust in our group, we needed to achieve a sense of fellowship with our group.

Our common purpose binds us together in love, care, compassion and mercy, and slowly, we began to get the courage to change our way of being in the World from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to contentment.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will remember that we are all members of AcAdAn, because we have a mutual purpose, which is our work on recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and therefore I will maintain that as my most important focus in my AcAdAn meetings.

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June 10: The Step of forgiveness

We used Step Eight to liberate our self from feelings of guilt, and thereby, from shame.
Therefore, many call this Step ‘the Step of Forgiveness’ as forgiving our self liberates us from guilt and shame.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 58

In Step Eight we became able to look at how we had harmed our self or others, seen with the eyes that our AcAdAn Program had given us to see with.

We brought out into the light, all of our guilt and shame and thus we discovered that we did not have nearly as much reason to feel guilty and ashamed as we thought we had.

We investigated the areas where we thought we needed to make amends to our self and others and decided which amends we wanted to implement when we had finished our Eighth Step list.

We ended our Eighth Step list by forgiving our self for having made the mistakes that we had made, and thus we could let go of our feelings of guilt and shame.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to correct my mistakes and forgive myself, so I can become able to let go of guilt and shame.

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June 11: The Small Ring of Envy

When The Small Ring of Envy became active in us, we imagined that we could get what others had without doing anything for it (Superstition), and that there was nothing or nobody who would help us get what we so desired if we worked at fulfilling our desires our self (Disbelief).
We got angry if someone suggested that we should participate and contribute with our interest, energy, time or money, like others did, to get the same as they had whether it was material, physical, time-space wise, emotional, mental, social or spiritual (Defiance), or we submitted to various demands that were contrary to our innermost desires, hoping that others e.g. God, our employer, spouse, friend, family etc. would fulfill our desires if only we threw our self on our knees and flattered them with sacrificial gifts or words of praise (Submission).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 38

Before, we came to AcAdAn, many of us confused the Small Ring of Envy with its disbelief, superstition, submission and defiance the Small Ring of Avarice with its stinginess, greed, poverty and gluttony, because we thought that envy meant that we begrudged the person, we were envious of, what he or she had or were, which we wished we also had.

After, we came to AcAdAn we discovered that the Small Ring of Envy is about us seeing something we desired, but which we did not believe that we could get and therefore we gave up in advance doing the required to have our desire fulfilled.

Instead of working on getting our desire fulfilled, we might then end up using the Small Ring of Avarice, because we begrudged the other person, we were envious of, the things or qualities that we did not believe we could achieve.

By the help of our AcAdAn Program, we had many misunderstandings about these two concept cleared up and little by little we learned instead to use the Small Ring of Hope with its credence, information, discernment and serenity and the Small Ring of Faith with its generosity, trust, prosperity and accountability.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will learn to use the Small Ring of Hope instead of the Small Ring of Envy and the Small Ring of Faith instead of the Small Ring of Avarice.

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June 12: Self-criticism and self-praise

We investigated how our self-criticism had brought about depression and how our self-praise had brought about euphoria in us, and how this had impacted our life from childhood till today.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 31

When we investigated how self-criticism and self-praise had affected us and our life from childhood to the present day, we were surprised to discover that thoughts are not duty free, which we had otherwise heard many say that they are.

We discovered that when we praised our self for something it led to a feeling of euphoria, which is the companion of self-praise, but that was a short lived joy, which soon turned to depression, because euphoria belongs in the Ring of Self-centeredness with its self-praise, euphoria, self-criticism and depression.

In our work with Step Four and Six we discovered that when we found our self in a specific field of energy in our psychological landscape, we became permeated by the energies in the field, and thus we could not experience euphoria without experiencing self-criticism and depression too in fast succession after the self-praise and euphoria.

Thereby we became aware of that it is self-praise and self-criticism that leads to bipolar disorders, and we found out that we could recover from them by using the energies in the Ring of Godcenteredness with its joy, empowerment, openmindedness and gratitude.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to use the Ring of Godcenteredness in a situation where I used to use the Ring of Self-centeredness.

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June 13: To forgive our self

When we had made amends for the mistakes of our past, we let go of them and the harm done whether we achieved the forgiveness of others or not, remembering that we did not carry out our Ninth Step to achieve the forgiveness of others, but to take responsibility for our part of the harm so that we are able to forgive our self and let go of our guilt and shame.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 66

It is common knowledge in the Twelve Steps Fellowships that the one we have the hardest time forgiving is our self, and thus it was a great help for us to come to Step Eight, where we became ready to forgive our self for our mistakes from the past by planning how we would make amends to our self and others for the mistakes we felt we had made.

After that, we used our Ninth Step to make our planned amends towards our self and others, and when thus, we had achieved the capacity to forgive our self by making our planned amends, simultaneously we were liberated from feeling guilty and from feeling ashamed of our self.

As we got better and better at forgiving our self, we discovered that much of our self-criticism in Reality was due to the way we experienced our fellow human beings handling their relationship with us, and thus it had got nothing to do with us.

These discoveries made it easier and easier for us to accept our mistakes without feeling weighed down by shame, because we had made a mistake, and in that way we improved our capacity to forgive our self for the mistakes we made.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Eighth and Ninth Step to forgive myself for the mistakes I have made today.

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June 14: To open our self

Step Five was the key to freedom, because it was only through bringing that out into the open which we had discovered in our Fourth Step that we were liberated from our feelings of being victimized by others and life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

In the Fourth Step we discovered many things about our true nature, which we had not been aware of before, both concerning our virtues and our defects of character and we also discovered that use of our defects of character had made us wish that we had been able to act differently in various situations.

Our intention at the root of our defects of character was loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, and our innermost knowledge about that could make us deny that our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention was not fulfilled, when we took our defects of character into use.

It is this deep knowledge about having acted contrary to our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention that pained us, but in Step Five however, we discovered that it was to our advantage to come out into the open with those sides of our self that we wanted to deny or hide in the past, because we pained due to our use of these sides of our self.

Gradually, as we became better and better at coming out in the open with the pain of our defects of character, it became possible for us to use Step Six to transform the pain of our defects of character to the joy of our virtues and thereby it became easier for us to be content with our self, exactly the way we are.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will open myself to use my Program to recover from my use of one of my defects of character.

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June 15: Understanding

Some of us chose to do our Fifth Step with a person who was not a member of Active Addictions Anonymous, although we felt that we would be better understood by one of the other members.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 43

We had often been told that we were not special, but when we came to AcAdAn we discovered that we are all unique in our individuality, and that the area where we could meet with and recognize each other was our our emotions even though we might have  different reasons til feel the way we did.

In our AcAdAn Fellowship our interaction with the other members was about sharing with them, how different thoughts gave rise to different emotions for us personally, even if others had different thoughts that gave them opportunity to have the same emotions that we shared about.

When we came to Step Five, we needed to find a person, we could share our Step Work with from our First Step to our Fourth Step, and it was important for us that we found a person, we felt, expressed his/her thoughts and emotions in a way that was understandable to us.

Sometimes, it could happen that we felt we had a better opportunity to be understood by a human being we knew, who was not a member of AcAdAn, and as the most important thing was that we had the courage to share our joyful and painful thoughts and emotions from Step One to Four with another human being we chose to trust our self to the person we found best suited.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will be careful when choosing the person that I am entrusting with my existential joys and pains.

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June 16: Wasting resources

So we let go of our attempts to achieve love and respect from others in this way, and instead, we began using our time, energy, interests and money to build up our own lives.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 16

When we worked with the pain in the Ring of Codependency with its savior-role seducer-role, victim-role and offender-role, we discovered that we had spent a lot of money, time, interest and energy in an attempt to save others from the pains of life without succeeding.

That had made us understand that it was a waste of our resources to spend it on something that did not lead to anything fruitful, neither for our self nor for the one/those, we tried to save from life's pain.

This realizations gave us the courage to begin using our resources on our self and our own life instead of using them on others and their life to no avail.

We achieved the courage to spend our money, time, energy and interest on our self and our lives by the help of the joy in the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will spend my money, my time, my energy and my interest on myself and my life.

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June 17: To respect our emotions

We challenged our self emotionally by denying those emotions that we found to be limiting our freedom to do anything we wanted; for example, when we were scared, we defied our fear by doing what we feared instead of respecting our emotion and working with it until we were ready to perform the action in question with confidence instead of defiance.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 21

Many of us of us found it difficult to accept a no, when there was something that we wanted to do or to get, and it was even harder for us to accept a no, when it came from within our own being.

If we wanted to be together with specific people, and our emotions told us that it was not the right choice, because we had some tasks we had promised our self to carry out that required we gave up being with these people, even if they would like to be with us as well, it was a no coming from within.

We could feel an urge to go back on our promises to our self, and when we chose to do so, we discovered that our feeling of low self-esteem intensified and this expansion of emotional discomfort was our guidance that we needed to fulfill our promises to our self.

If we denied keeping our promises to our self in the NOW our integrity and our belief in our self diminished and therefore we chose to respect our own and life’s changeability by being very careful not to promise our self anything unless it was strictly necessary.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will respect my own and life’s changeability by not promising myself anything, which is not strictly needed from hour to hour, day to day.

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June 18: The importance of meetings

We meet regularly to help each other recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by sharing our experiences and drawing strength and hope from each other.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

Many of us had been or were members of another/other Twelve Step Fellowship/s before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, and by working with the Twelve Steps in this/these Fellowship/s we had discovered how powerful it is to accept our powerlessness in a particular area.

In Active Addictions Anonymous we discovered that our powerlessness was only one of our humanness’ four basic characteristics and that it was even more powerful to work with all four of them by working with our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability in our AcAdAn Program.

In addition to this, we realized already in Step One in our work with our AcAdAn Program that our lack of acceptance of our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability led to addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, which takes away from us the joy of living.

Our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction hid under many masks, and therefore we needed to attend meetings to hear, what parts of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction others have spotted, so we can get help to unmask our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in some of its many disguises and thus become better able to recover from it.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will attend a meeting in AcAdAn to listen to what others have to say about their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and how they handle it and to share about my own perception of my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and how I handle it.

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June 19: The Ring of Fulfillment

When we investigated our use of the Ring of Fulfillment, we discovered that if we found our self in the Ring of Fulfillment, when we had empty time ahead of us, our empty time was accompanied with a feeling of fulfillment, because we could fill it with something that had our interest and which therefore was meaningful for us and this sense of meaningfulness made us experience a sense of oneness with our self, others and our life, also if we were alone when we were busy with that which we were interested in.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 30

The Ring of Fulfillment is also called the God box, Sudarshan Chakra, the Sun Wheel and many other luminous names, because it lights up our inner World in the same way the sun lights up our outer World, and when we chose to use this Ring, we released all the joys of the World into our lives.

The Ring of Fulfillment is the antidote to the Ring of Emptiness with its emptiness, boredom, meaninglessness and loneliness, and the Ring of Emptiness is also called Pandora's Box in Greek mythology and is said to release all the miseries of the World into a person's life, if he/she chose to use it.

We learned to use the Ring of Fulfillment with it with its fulfillment, interest, meaningfulness and oneness in our AcAdAn Program, when we had empty time ahead of us, and thereby we could learn to transform the energies in the Ring of Emptiness to the Ring of Fulfillment, and in this way we elevated our self to a higher vibrational level in the NOW.

Many of us had tried to get out of the Ring of Emptiness in many ways right from numbing our self chemically to make our self so busy that we could not feel our emotional feelings, and therefor it was a great relief for us to begin using the Ring of Fulfillment so we no longer had to fear emptiness, boredom, meaninglessness and loneliness.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of Fulfillment with its fulfillment, interest, meaningfulness and oneness and thus release all the joys of the World into my life, when I have empty time in front of me

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June 20: Our psychological landscape

Those of us, who chose to use the symbolic image of the trees for this purpose, imagined that the soil in which the tree grew was the situation that we inventoried, and the small cilia found on the finest roots of the tree that drew nourishment from the soil were various thoughts and emotions that we took into use in that situation.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 55

When we reached Step Seven in our AcAdAn Program, we had formed a picture of our thoughts and feelings by investigating how the mental-emotional patterns in the Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy had played out in our life.

Furthermore, we had found out how we could move from a Painring to a Joyring, and this knowledge we call the knowledge about the transformation of our psychological landscape.

In our Seventh Step most of us preferred to use the symbolic picture of the Tree of Hatred and the Tree of Love to make clear to our self, how best we could make our Seventh work for us.

Thus we began to develop the capacity to move around in our psychological landscape in conformity with our free choice of mental-emotional energies, and this implies that we begin to find contentment under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will to use the symbolic picture of the trees from the Seventh Step to develop my understanding of my psychological landscape.

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June 21: Success and failure

While working our Fifth Step with our chosen person, we realized that we had difficulties perceiving specific incidents that our chosen person shared from his or her life as successes or failures, and thus we discovered that we had considered some incidents in our life as successes or failures that others did not necessarily perceive in the same way; and in that way we found out that our perception of successes and failures was subjective.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 44

Until we came to AcAdAn, most of us thought that our perception of success and failure was objective and that everyone else had the same perception of success and failure that we had.

When we discovered in our Fifth Step that it was not the case, at first, we became uncertain and sad, because we felt that we lost our yardstick for whether we were on the right track in our life or not.

After having digested this fact and accepted that the perception of others was true for them just like our perception was true for us without it meaning that we were not on the right track, we began to experience a new freedom.

Our new freedom consisted in that we could choose to look at success and failure in a way that did not bring us pain by accepting that sometimes things worked out as we wanted them to and sometimes not, because our Higher Power had made it possible sometimes and sometimes not.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to liberate myself from praising myself, when I perceive something I did to be a success and to criticize myself when I perceive something I did to be a failure.

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June 22: Dissatisfaction

Dissatisfaction is an imbalance that affects all areas of our lives.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 22

When we came to AcAdAn, we began to investigate our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and we discovered that a sure sign that we are suffering from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction was that we found reasons to be dissatisfied, even when our desires were met, and that meant that we were dissatisfied under all circumstances, no matter what they were.

Maybe, we had a long standing materially desire fulfilled, and maybe we had not expected that we had to use time to get used to our new acquisition and the use of it, so this could be our reason for being dissatisfied.

Maybe we had long since wanted to have a coupleship or a friend come into our life, but when the coupleship or the friend came into our life, we maybe thought that he/she should be different than he/she is, so this could be our reason to be dissatisfied.

Our dissatisfaction in these situations made our life unmanageable, and we realized how important it was for us to use our First Step to admit our dissatisfaction and how our dissatisfaction made our life unmanageable, so we could begin to recover from it by the help of our Program.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my First Step in AcAdAn to admit my dissatisfaction with something or someone, for example with a gift life brought me, and how my dissatisfaction makes my life unmanageable, so that I can begin my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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June 23: The importance of our Fellowship with others

At long last, we had found a Fellowship with others who suffered from the same as us, and together we moved from our dissatisfaction with self, others and our life, towards contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

Our Fellowship with the other members of AcAdAn showed us how important it was for our progress in a particular area to find Fellowship with others if we wanted to achieve a particular goal, because the Fellowship gave us many perspectives on our goals that could give us access to the most inspiring path to the goal.

When seeking Fellowship with others, who had the same goal as us, we were strengthening our capacity to fulfill our desire to achieve the goal in question, whether the goal was material, physical, energetical, emotional, mental, social or spiritual.

With the help of our Fellowship with others, at the same time we achieved access to a source of wisdom, which reinforces and further develops our own ideas about how we can achieve our goals, and furthermore our Fellowship with others gave us an empowerment, we would otherwise not have had access to.

Our goal in AcAdAn is to achieve contentment with our self and our life, and we needed a lot of inspiration to reach our goal, because our dissatisfaction comes to us under so many guises that it could be difficult for us to see through them all, so therefore we made use of all those tools that AcAdAn has to offer.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will let myself be inspired by my AcAdAn Fellowship to work with some of the types of dissatisfaction that my Fellowship has inspired me to inventory.

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June 24: The Higher Power of the group

We have chosen to trust that our will and our life is governed by our Higher Power, and in the same way, we choose to trust that our group’s will and life is governed by the Higher Power of the group that comes to expression through our Group-conscience.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 87

In the course of our service work in AcAdAn we came into contact with the Traditions, when various problems occurred in our group, our service group or in our Area Service Committee.

By the help of our Traditions, we found a principled solution to the problems, and little by little as we became acquainted with the Traditions, we learned to surrender to a Higher Power at group level.

This dis not only benefit us in AcAdAn, but also in all the groups we were a part of, whether the group consisted of two in our coupleship and our friendships or more people in our family, in our circle of friends, in our Fellowships, at our workplace, or wherever a decision cannot be made by us alone in various areas.

This knowledge helped us in our social life in many ways that we could not even imagine before we became familiar with the Traditions in our service work.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will work on becoming familiar with the Traditions, so I can learn to surrender to the Higher Power of a group as it comes to expression in the Group-conscience of the group.

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June 25: The message of AcAdAn

When we went to meetings in Active Addictions Anonymous, we shared our experiences with the AcAdAn Program with other members, and in this way, we passed on the message.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 82

Many of us in AcAdAn used dissatisfaction as a lever, because we imagined that the discomfort of our dissatisfaction would drive us to createmanifest the changes we wanted to createmanifest in our life.

When we came to AcAdAn and investigated if it worked, we discovered that it did not and instead it merely createdmanifested discomfort and existential pain.

Little by little, we discovered that we did not need to use dissatisfaction to bring about those changes in our life that we wanted to createmanifest.

Instead, we could use our creativitymanifestivity to make improvements of the benefits that already were there in our life, and to let go of or transform the areas which gave rise to us experiencing existential pain.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will take AcAdAn´s message to heart that I can use my AcAdAn Program to createmanifest the changes that I want, without taking my dissatisfaction into use.

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June 26: The First Tradition

The principle of Tradition One is Fellowship. Slogan: Together, we can accomplish what we cannot accomplish alone.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

Gradually, as our individuality became evident to us, we realized that we were unique in our way of thinking, but that we had a Fellowship with others emotionally, because we might have different reasons for being angry, but we are knew the feeling of anger.

We also knew the feeling of joy for various reasons, and we worked on admitting our anger and our joy by the help of The Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy in our AcAdAn Program.

When we share about our work with the the Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy with our sponsor or our recovery buddy and in an AcAdAn meeting and hear others share about their work, we discovered that although we thought that others felt the same as us under the same circumstances, it was not necessarily the case.

We realized that others recognize our emotions, but not necessarily our reasons for feeling like we did, and thus we gained a new freedom to change perception of many things that we had taken for granted, thanks to our AcAdAn Fellowship.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Fellowship to get the help that I need to change painful thoughts with joyful thoughts by the help of at movement from a Painring to a Joyring.

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June 27: The flow of information

When we began to seek our Higher Power’s guidance on a daily basis, we discovered that our ability to distinguish the voice of our Higher Power from our own began to develop, and thus Step Eleven began working for us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 69

When we came to Step Eleven in AcAdAn, we began to develop our capacity to open our self to receive our Higher Power's guidance, both when it came form the inside and the outside, by the help of the flow of information that constantly came to us both from the inside and the outside.

It helped us a to navigate in our psychological landscape that we both listened inside and outside, and we listened inside by the help of prayer and meditation and outside by listening to that part of the flow of information that came to our lot.

The flow of information is the information that we receive from others, whether it is happens through other people, TV, radio, Internet or from our cat.

The point is that there is some of the information that comes to us that repeats and keep repeating itself, regardless of the source we listen to, and it is this repetition, we call our Higher Power’s personal flow of information to us from the outside.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will both listen to my inner life by the help of prayer and meditation and to my outer life by by listening to my personal flow of information so I can develop my capacity to ‘hear’ my Higher Power's guidance under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

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June 28: To harm our earth connection

First, we looked at how we have harmed our self physically in various ways, for example, by denying or ignoring our physical needs.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

Many of us in AcAdAn had been spiritual seekers long before we came to AcAdAn, and in our quest for a personal connection with our chosen Higher Power, we had neglected our physical body in many ways.

Some of us had even developed various dependencies to anesthetize our physical body with chemicals like white sugar, nicotine, alcohol, heroin, cocaine and many other chemicals that were harmful to our physical body in an attempt to escape taking responsibility for the needs of our physical body.

Our physical body has a need to be well-rested, well-groomed, well-nourished and well-exercised, and after we came to AcAdAn we began taking responsibility for fulfilling these needs, even if it demanded that we used energy, time, interest and money on this task.

When we began taking responsibility for the needs of our physical body, we used our AcAdAn Program to liberate our self from old habits of thought, which made it difficult for us to invest our resources in the well being of our physical body, but gradually as this work came to fruition, we became more content with our self and our life.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to develop my capacity to take responsibility for my physical body being well rested, well groomed, well nourished and well exercised.

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June 29: The process of meditation

Thus, the process of meditation consisted of withdrawing our consciousness from being focused on the outer world into our inner point of concentration, and then letting go so that the expansion of our consciousness could take place.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 72

 Ordinary          Reflection       Contemplation        Concentration    Meditation

When we came to Step Eleven in our AcAdAn Program, we wanted to expand our conscious contact with our chosen Higher Power.

In Step Two, we chose our personal Higher Power, in Step Three, we began the process of surrendering to our chosen Higher Power's care, and in Step Seven we began to learn to cooperate with our Higher Power by the help of The short and The Long Seventh Step Prayer.

In Step Eleven, we united everything we have learned in Step Two, Three and Seven about surrendering to our Higher Power´s care by adding prayer and meditation as means to expand our conscious contact with our chosen Higher Power.

We use the graph from the Eleventh Step to learn how to step into meditation and thus to become better and better at receiving our Higher Power's guiding impulses from within.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will train my capacity to enter into meditation, so I can become able to pick up my chosen Higher Power's guiding impulses and thereby find greater contentment with myself and my life.

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June 30: To harm our self and others spiritually

We looked at how we had harmed our self and others spiritually with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self, others and our life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 62

In the course of our work with our AcAdAn Program, it dawned on us that we could not harm our true Self, our Spirit, but we could harm our self and others spiritually in many ways.

Harming our self spiritually meant that we lost touch with our true Self, our Spirit and thereby we lost touch with our capacity for love.

Harming others spiritually meant that we tried to make them follow our ideas about the right thing instead of giving them space to follow their heart and thereby do what they felt like doing.

By harming our self and others spiritually we took away from our self and others the joy of living, which is creation'smanifestation's highest purpose.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will choose to spend that money, time, energy and interest I have at my disposal on following my heart and thus do what I most feel like doing as best as I can.

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JULY

July 01 The first step towards contentment	July 02 The Eleventh Step Prayer	July 03 The right action
July 04 The formal part of Step Three	July 05 Discomfort in the fulfillment of our desires	July 06 The right time to make amends
July 07 The admit our wrongs to our Higher Power	July 08 The belief in our Higher Power as a rational being	July 09 To believe in life
July 10 Achievement of honor from others	July 11 Humility	July 12 The Book Active Addictions Anonymous-The Wild life
July 13 Focus in AcAdAn	July 14 Emotional Sobriety	July 15 To move from pain to joy in AcAdAn
July 16 The flow of thoughts	July 17 Tradition Eleven and Twelve	July 18 The guidance of the Ego
July 19 To liberate our self from guilt	July 20 Seduction of others	July 21 The consequences of dissatisfaction
July 22 Change	July 23 To be part of a group	July 24 Live and let live
July 25 The power and the glory	July 26 Religion and spirituality	July 27 Fellowship
July 28 Our attitude	July 29 The admiration and respect of others	July 30 To admit
July 31 Anonymity

July 01: The first step towards contentment

When we fully concede to our innermost selves that we are powerless over our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we have taken a giant step towards acceptance of our self, others and our life, and thereby we have taken a giant step towards contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 13

In the course of our work with our AcAdAn Program we realized that recovery from our existentialist pains could only begin, when we admitted that we pained.

Some of our existential pains we had lived with for so long that we perceived them as a natural state of being, and therefore we thought that we were powerless over the pains that had become chronic and thus a daily experience in our life.

Therefore it was a surprise for us to discover that our daily dissatisfaction with this that and the other was an existential pain that we no longer had to live with after we had come to AcAdAn.

The first step towards contentment is to admit that we are chronically dissatisfied, because we are dissatisfied with our self, others and our life for various reasons, many times in the course of a day, and that our dissatisfaction made our life unmanageable.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on recovering from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by admitting how my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction expressed itself today and how this made my life unmanageable, so my recovery can begin.

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July 02: The Eleventh Step Prayer

The ‘I’ Version  God, I meditate to expand my conscious contact with You, to seek knowledge of Your will for me this day and to seek the Power to carry that out.

The ‘We’ Version  God, We meditate to expand our conscious contact with You, to seek knowledge of Your will for us this day and to seek the Power to carry that out.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 74

When many of us chose to pray our Eleventh Step Prayer every day, it was not to remind our omniscient Higher Power that we wanted to expand our conscious contact with our Higher Power, but to remind our self of this desire.

We therefore chose to use the Eleventh Step Prayer as an object of contemplation, because we wanted to become able to enter into meditation to become better and better at expanding our conscious contact with our chosen Higher Power.

Gradually, as we became more experienced in picking up on our Higher Power's subtle presence, we also became better and better at translating the impulse that came to us from our Higher Power about, what we could use our time, our energy, our interest and our money on advantageously today to build up a life that made us content.

Furthermore, we sought the power to carry out our Higher Power's will for us, because our experience has taught us that when we succeeded in finding ways and means to carry out our Higher Power's will for us on daily basis we became more content than when we merely drifted away in life haphazardly.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Eleventh Step Prayer to remind myself that I become a happier and more content person by expanding my conscious contact with my Higher.

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July 03: The right action

When we inventoried how the right action brought joy into our day, it became easier for us to remember how we could choose the right action in any situation, and thereby, we were ready for Step Eleven.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 68

When we had become ready for Step Eleven, we had worked so much with our painful thoughts and emotions plus the transformation of them to their opposites that we were no longer as afraid of our thoughts and emotions as we had been.

It had lead to it becoming easier for us to just let the flow of thoughts pass through our mind without grabbing hold of a particular thought unless were were in the process of working on our inventory or on solving an issue, which required thinking.

In this way, it became easier for us to intercept the vibratory impulses that came from our innermost heart and translate them to thoughts that are always and without exception unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, when they came from our chosen Higher Power.

In that way, it also became easier for us to to find the action that was the right one for us, whether it was met with criticism or praise from our surroundings, because we felt good about what came to us from our chosen Higher Power.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will listen inwardly to receive the impulse to the next right action, which is that action that feels delightful to me, and I will follow that impulse regardless of, whether others think it is the right action or not.

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July 04: The formal part of Step Three

In Step Three, we investigated our most obvious reluctance and fears of being liberated from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and when we reached a point where we could honestly say that we wanted to surrender our will and our life to our Higher Power’s care, even if we might be able to do so only for half an hour, we had finished the formal part of the Third Step.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 28

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we were not aware that we suffered from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and even after we had become aware of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we had a hard time thinking the thought of surrendering our life and our will to our Higher Power's care to be lead to contentment.

We had used dissatisfaction in so many contexts that we found it hard to imagine that our life could work without us using this means to try to make our self and others do what we had been told that we and others ought to do.

When we had completed the formal part of Step Three and thus had surrendered our will and our life to our Higher Power's care, we realized that we not only needed to surrender in this now, but that we needed to surrender to a life without the use of dissatisfaction on a daily basis in any now.

We had a tendency to take our will back again in certain areas that we thought could not be changed unless we used dissatisfaction as a leverage, so we needed to let go of our dissatisfaction again and again and surrender our will and our life to the care of our Higher Power to be able to recover.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will be aware of my dissatisfaction and do my best to let go of it and instead I will surrender my will and my life to my Higher Power's care.

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July 05: Discomfort with the fulfillment of our desires

In the course of this work, we also discovered what we wanted innermost when we took the various Rings into use, and we found out that when we took the attributes from the Ring of Emptiness, the Ring of Self-Centeredness, The Ring of Codependency and the Big and Small Rings of Pain into use, we generally did not achieve what we truly wanted; on the contrary, we destroyed our possibility of achieving it, but even in those instances where we seemingly achieved what we wanted by the help of our defects of character we experienced discomfort in context with the fulfillment of our desire.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 45

In Step Eleven in our AcAdAn Program, vi discovered that our innermost nature is unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, and that meant that we could not be unloving, uncaring, hard-hearted and merciless to our self and others without experiencing emotional discomfort, because we acted, felt and thought in ways that were contrary to our true Self, our Spirit.

However, often we were not aware that our actions, emotions and thoughts were unloving, uncaring, hard-hearted and merciless to our self or others, because our intention was loving, caring, compassionate and merciful.

Therefore, we needed to develop our capacity to discern by the help of our AcAdAn Program to find out when we acted on a defect of character so our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention was not being fulfilled, and in that context we used our emotional discomfort as guidance about that we had come out of oneness with out true Self, our Spirit.

When even the fulfillment of our desires felt uncomfortable, we knew that we had not been able to fulfill our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention, but we had instead been unloving, uncaring, hard-hearted and merciless without being aware of it, and when we experienced this, we used our AcAdAn Program to find out, how we could fulfill our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to investigate a situation, where I felt discomfort about the fulfillment of one of my desires.

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July 06: The right time to making amends

Even though we longed for this liberation, we accepted the fact that we had to be patient and wait for the right circumstances to occur to make each of these amends; but we did not use this to postpone a Ninth Step that we could do now.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 65

Gradually, as our work with our AcAdAn Program progressed, we became more and more aware of the harm that we have caused our self, our loved ones, our friends and the World at large because of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

That could make some of us want to make amends to our self, our loved ones, our friends and the World at large before we actually were ready to make those amends in our Ninth Step.

Even when we had come to the Ninth Step, we needed to be patient with making amends for our mistakes to our self, our loved ones, our friends and the World at large, because an amend given at an unripe point in time could result in a backlash.

Therefore, we let our Eighth Step decisions to make amends lie in the back of our mind until our Higher Power createdmanifested a situation, where we experienced a powerful impulse to make an amend before we carried out our amend.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will carry out one of those amend that I decided on in Step Eight, if I get a powerful impulse to make this amend.

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July 07: To admit our wrongs to our Higher Power

When we admitted our exact nature to our Higher Power after having admitted it to our self, we opened up to approaching our Higher Power with something that we might otherwise want to rationalize out of the picture by thinking that our Higher Power already knew about it.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

Most of us have a clear sense of our Higher Power's merciful nature, so we thought that our Higher Power's mercy meant that we had been forgiven in advance for the mistakes we had made in the course of our day.

Therefore, it was hard for us to imagine it would make a difference to admit our wrongs to our Higher Power, but we had not thought about that even if we were forgiven in advance for our mistake, we could receive inspiration from our Higher Power.

We discovered that when we read our discoveries from Step One to Four to our Higher Power, it often happened that we received inspiration to look at our virtues and defects of character from new angles.

Little by little, as we took the suggestion of Step Five to heart about admitting both our virtues and our defects of character, it became inspiring for us to admit our exact nature to our Higher Power.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will admit my exact nature to my Higher Power, and I will take those inspirations to heart that occur while I share my inventory with my Higher Power.

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July 08: The belief in our Higher Power as a rational being

To others of us, coming to believe meant developing faith in that our Higher Power is a rational being, who always works on creatingmanifesting the maximum benefit for all even though our Higher Power’s actions might appear incomprehensible to us in the moment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 24

Many of us had heard the words: God's ways are inscrutable, but as we evolved to higher and higher levels of insight, we began to realize that God's ways are rational and to our advantage.

In Step Two, we began to develop our understanding of a Higher Power, and in Step Three, we learned that it was always and without exception to our advantage to surrender to our Higher Power's loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention.

When we reached to Step Seven and began to cooperate with our Higher Power about liberating our self from our defects of character, we became more and more clear-minded, and our belief in that our Higher Power is a rational being, grew to unconditional trust.

Thus we became ready to use Step Eleven to expand our conscious contact with our Higher Power, to seek knowledge about our Higher Power's will for us and to pray to our Higher Power for the power to carry that out.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the four Higher Power Steps - Step Two, Three, Seven and Eleven - to develop my trust in my Higher Power’s loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention.

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July 09: The belief in life: The process of coming to believe restored our faith in life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 26

Many of us had lost faith in the good, when we came to AcAdAn, because we had learned about a punishing God, who would punish us in various ways, if we did something that the punishing Godhead did not like.

Moreover, the punishing Godhead would punish us if we failed to do something that the punishing Godhead thought that we should do and send us to hell for eternal torment, when we died if we had not been, like the punishing Godhead thought we ought to be.

In our Second Step in AcAdAn, we were told that we had an unconditional freedom without traps to choose a Higher Power, and that the only suggested guidelines were that we chose a Higher Power that was loving, caring, compassionate and merciful.

Gradually, as we learned to look at our our self, our lives, others and the World around us through our faith in our personal loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power, our faith in life as a delightful adventure was restored.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will choose to look at myself, my life, others and the World around me through my faith in the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention of my chosen personal Higher Power.

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July 10: Achievement of honor from others

We imagined that we had to achieve that others honored us, because we believed that if only we achieved this, we had achieved their love and respect, and then we would be able to accept our self.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 15

After having been members of AcAdAn for a while, we became aware that we had difficulties accepting our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability and that this had led us to use our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

One of the many means we had used in an attempt to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self, others, our life and the World at large, was to try to make others honor us, because we imagined that honor from others would make it easier for us to accept our self.

When we succeeded in making others honor us, we discovered that it did not bring us closer to accepting our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, so that was not a solution to our issue with our dissatisfaction.

As a result of this realization we understood even clearer how important it was for us to use our AcAdAn Program to begin recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self, our lives, others and the World at large, so we could be led to contentment.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will let myself be lead to contentment by the help of my chosen Higher Power, my AcAdAn Fellowship and my AcAdAn Program.

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July 11: Humility

The principle of Step Five is Humility. Slogan: I’m neither more nor less than any other creaturemanifestation.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Until we came to the Fifth Step, many of us had a feeling that we alone used our defects of character in our relationships with our self, others and the World at large, and that had made us to feel inferior to others.

We were not aware that our sense of inferiority belongs to the Small Ring of Arrogance with its superiority, inferiority, overcrowding and isolation.

That however, we discovered in our Fourth Step, so when we had to share our Fourth Step discoveries about our self in our Fifth Step, we had gained confidence in that both we and everybody else knew the Rings of Pain and thus all the defects of character from personal experience.

Furthermore, we discovered that we were also able to use the Rings of Joy and thus the Small Ring of Truth with its humility, honesty, individuality and fellowship, which is the antidote to our arrogance, and thereby we realized that we were neither more nor less than any other creaturemanifestation.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Fifth Step to admit my discoveries from my Fourth Step about my exact nature and thereby that I am neither being more nor less than any other creaturemanifestation.

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July 12: The Book Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life

Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life contains members’ collective experiences with the Steps and Traditions of Active Addictions Anonymous.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 92

In Active Addictions Anonymous the Fellowship began their work with their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by the help of the book Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, which became the basis for all the work with the Twelve Steps, which came to take place in the Fellowship.

Little by little, the work became more clear by the help of yet another book, which is One Sponsor´s Suggestion for working the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life that suggests how one can work with the information found in the basic book Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life.

After some time further, the work began on the book Daily Contemplations for members of Active Addictions Anonymous, because many members wanted to begin the day with forming some thoughts about their AcAdAn Program.

In the end the work began on Sixth Step Analyses for members Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life and thereby it became possible for anybody, who wanted it to go straight to a Sixth Step analyses by working with the Rings of Pain and Joy on a specific topic.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the basic AcAdAn book, Active Addictions Anonymous – The Wild Life, to carry out my Step Work, whether I choose to do it by the help of the book One Sponsor's Suggestion for working the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous or by the help of my own and my sponsor's/recovery buddy's chosen or self-createdmanifested tasks for the book

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July 13: Focus in AcAdAn

We refrain from either endorsing or opposing issues and causes outside of AcAdAn.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 96

When we came to AcAdAn, most of us had a well-developed thinking mind, a well-developed Ego, because we had invented infinitely many reasons to be dissatisfied with different areas of our life that we had tried to change in many different ways.

That our Ego was well developed did not necessarily mean that it was healthy, but it meant that we had many different options to address a wide range of topics from many different perspectives.

In connection with our AcAdAn membership, we chose to use our ability to look at life from many different perspectives to focus on those perspectives, which made us dissatisfied to make it possible for us to identify the areas that we needed to change to contentment by the help of our AcAdAn Program.

Therefore, we did not use our thinking capacity to focus on approving or opposing issues outside AcAdAn in the time we had devoted to working with our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our AcAdAn Program, our sponsor/healing buddy and our AcAdAn Fellowship.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will share in a meeting how with success I used my AcAdAn Program to recover from what pained me most today that I had tried to use my disease of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to recover from without success.

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July 14: Emotional Sobriety

We also investigated our Emotional Sobriety by looking into those instances where we were able to respect our self by taking care of our self materially, physically, time-space wise, emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 32

Most of us had worked with our co-dependency in some form, before we came to AcAdAn.

In AcAdAn we worked with four concepts, when we worked with our codependency, and these concepts are the savior, the seducer, the victim and the offender.

Besides this we worked with The Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others, which is the antidote to our codependency.

By using our emotional sobriety it became easier for us to recover from our codependency and thus to use our resources to createmanifest a life for our self that satisfied us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my emotional sobriety to createmanifest a life for myself that satisfies me.

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July 15: To move from pain to joy in AcAdAn

After having worked with learning to move from the Big Ring of Pain to the Big Ring of Joy, we dived deeper in our Sixth Step work, by learning to move from the Small Rings, the Minirings, the Microrings and the Nanorings of Pain to the Small Rings, the Minirings, the Microrings and the Nanorings of Joy.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

In our work with Step Four in our AcAdAn Program, we investigated our psychological landscape by investigating how the energies from the Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy had influenced us from our childhood until now.

In Step Five, we discovered that we had these experiences in common with our sponsor/recovery buddy and our AcAdAn Fellowship.

Thereby we became entirely ready to use these energies consciously in Step Six, where we learned to move consciously from mental-emotional pain to mental-emotional joy.

Thus, we had achieved the capacity to find contentment under all circumstance no matter what they were, and if we failed in fulfilling our purpose, we used Step Eight and Nine to make amends to our self and others, who had been affected by our mental-emotional pain.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Program to learn to move from mental-emotional pain to mental-emotional joy in as many situations as possible.

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July 16: The flow of thoughts

Because of our active addiction, we are trapped in a constant flow of thoughts overwhelming us to act contrary to our heart’s desires, and this we call obsession.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

In our work with our thinking mind, our Ego in our AcAdAn Program, we noticed that our thinking mind, our Ego is traversed by a stream of thoughts that give rise to our emotional feelings, which is that energy that is flowing from our stream of thoughts.

We observed our stream of thoughts, and sometimes we observed a thought pattern passing through our mind, which delighted us, and sometimes we observed a thought pattern passing through our mind that pained us.

Some thought patterns we caught hold of, and if we chose to think those thoughts that the pattern held over and over again from various angles, it meant that our mind became possessed by the energies that the pattern holds.

In AcAdAn, we made a conscious decision about which thought patterns we wanted to cultivate and which ones we wanted to replace with more advantageous patterns that made it possible for us to act in accordance with our heart´s desires.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will choose to use my AcAdAn Program to consciously cultivate the thought patterns that make it possible for me to act in accordance with the desires of my heart.

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July 17: Tradition Eleven and Twelve

TRADITION 11: Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of internet, press, radio, TV and films.
TRADITION 12: Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 12

In our work with our AcAdAn Program and in our Fellowship, the Principle of Anonymity as it is described in our Traditions, is of the utmost importance,.

The Principle of Anonymity ensures that we do not make the mistake of letting our self become blinded by the status in society or in the Fellowship of other members, so we lose sight of our goal with being members of AcAdAn in that way.

We did not want that our work with recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction should come out of course by us beginning to focus on topics, which had got nothing to with our recovery.

By using the principles that are described in Tradition Eleven and Twelve we could all meet as equally worthy in recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by the help of the joy these Traditions open for us.

Today’s contemplation
Today I keep the Principle of Anonymity in mind in my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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July 18: The guidance of the Ego

Our thinking Mind is also called our Ego and has the task of guiding us about how best we can handle our life; however, in the course of our Stepwork we discovered that our thinking mind was dysfunctional due to lack of information or due to flawed information that had made us draw wrongful conclusions about our self, others and our life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 71

When we began to study our thinking mind, our Ego by the help of the Painrings and the Joyrings in our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that our thinking mind, our Ego could be more more or less misinformed about various areas that we needed correct information about.

Furthermore, we discovered that our thinking mind, our Ego could lack information that we needed to be able to take care of various parts of our lives in a satisfactory way, and therefore it was important for us that we took care of keeping our thinking mind, our Ego updated.

We did not only want that our thinking mind, our Ego should be updated about, which goals we wanted to achieve, but to us it was way more important that we took care of keeping our thinking mind, our Ego updated about where we wanted to move to in our psychological landscape, so we could get correct feed back from our thoughts.

Gradually, as we equipped our thinking mind, our Ego with plentiful and accurate information both about what we wanted, and about what energies we wanted to make use of to fulfill our desires, our thinking mind, our Ego became more and more functional by the help of our virtues, and therefore we could have greater and greater confidence in the guidance we receive from our thinking mind, our Ego.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on providing my thinking mind, my Ego with plentiful and accurate information about where I want to move to in my psychological landscape, and what energies I want to use so I can begin to have more and more confidence in the guidance of my thinking mind, my Ego.

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July 19: To liberate our self from guilt

What was important was not whether it was a big or small thing, or if we did it on purpose or not, but whether we felt guilty about it and therefore were ashamed of our action.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

During our growth, we got the impression that we were guilty of the painful mental-emotional states of others, especially our parents, siblings, teachers or friends/girlfriends, and that had led us to believe that honor was also due to us, when others were happy, comfortable and in a good mood.

For us a sign that honor was due to us was that we were praised by our parents, siblings, teachers or friends/girlfriends, and we did not know until we worked with our codependency in AcAdAn that praise is the addictive poison in our codependency, and that people pleasing is the sickly state in our mind, which is the result of our addiction to praise.

When we began to liberate our self from our codependency by moving from the Ring of Codependency with its savior role, seducer role, victim role and offender role to the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect of self and respect of others in Step Six, we stopped poisoning our mind with praise and people pleasing.

We stopped our self from poisoning our mind with praise and people pleasing by both liberating our self from feeling guilty about other people's mental-emotional pains and from taking credit for other people's mental-emotional joys by using the Ring of Emotional Sobriety to recover from our codependency.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to liberate myself from feelings of guilt due to the mental-emotional pains of others and that feeling of shame that my feeling of guilt brings forth and I will refrain from taking credit for the joy of other people as well.

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July 20: Seduction of others

To accomplish this, we tried to overwhelm others with our perspectives, to make them believe that we could save them from the pain of their lives if only they followed our directions, seducing them further by concealing the pains of our own life, refusing to acknowledge that we were no wiser, better or more powerful than they and their Higher Power were, and we denied the truth that they had to find their own answers to life just like we had to.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 32

Many of us came from other Twelve Step Programs that work with various existential problems, before we came to AcAdAn, and many of these Fellowships work with codependency.

Some Fellowships call codependency the drama triangle, and the various Fellowships, as well as some forms of psychology work with three concepts in that context and that is the savior role, the victim role and the offender role.

Therefore, we were surprised to discover that our AcAdAn Program works with four concepts instead of three by adding the seducer role to the other three, and that the Program has set up the concepts in a circle instead of in a triangle.

Little by little, as we investigated the seducer role, we realized that the seducer role is the twin of the savior role, because we were seducing our self and others, when we imagined that it was our job to save others from their existential pains, and gradually as this perception was rooted in us, more and more of our resources were released for our own use, whether it was about money, time, energy or interests.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will take my knowledge about letting go of the seducer role of codependency to heart, so I may be able to free up my resources for my own use.

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July 21: The consequences of dissatisfaction

If you are like us, you know that a situation which is received with dissatisfaction createsmanifests a multitude of consequences.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

When we came to AcAdAn and began to investigate our dissatisfaction, we discovered that dissatisfaction did not merely arise out of the blue in the now, because a long series of habits of thought lay behind any expression of dissatisfaction, and it was these habits of thought that affected us in such a way that we lost the joy of living.

We found out that when we lost the joy of living and entered into a state of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, it meant that our thinking mind, our Ego was obsessed with thoughts that createdmanifested dissatisfaction and it led us to live in existential pain all of the time.

When we tried to recover from the pain, we could attempt to do so in many ways, such as seeking out psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual guides or family and friends to seek guidance on how we could recover from the individual situations we were dissatisfied with.

Only after we came to AcAdAn, we realized that our dissatisfaction was not only focused on individual situations or people, but that it was a chronic condition we made use of many times every day, and thus we understood that we needed to work with the disease of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction on a daily basis in order to be able to become content with our self, others and life.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn to be content with myself, others and life.

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July 22: Change

We realized that if our Higher Power pulled up the whole Tree of Hatred from its roots all at once and thereby instantly transformed it into a fully developed Tree of Love that was new to us when we asked to have all our defects of character removed by way of transformation, we would probably feel so alienated from our self that we might go insane from it or even die from shock.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 56

Most of us imagined that we wanted to improve our life in many different ways, which could include quitting smoking, losing weight, getting a new car, meeting a partner or getting a child.

However, we were not aware that any change createsmanifests an upheaval in our everyday lives, whether the change consists in an improvement of our life, or it consists in a deterioration of our life, and therefore we needed to work with our thoughts and emotions in context with change.

Already in Step One in our AcAdAn Program, we became aware that death can be expressed as the changeability, and that had indeed made it easier for us to accept death, but we also needed to learn to accept the changeability as a daily occurrence on all our levels of existence.

Many of us had tried to stifle our self or put our self and others into categories to overcome our discomfort about death/changeability, but in AcAdAn we worked on coming to accept of the changeability of our self and others, and as we became better at accepting the changeability, we also became better at living in the NOW.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn to live in the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment.

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July 23: To be part of a group

So, we let go after having expressed what we want for the group, trusting that the outcome is the best for the group here and now, also if our own wish for a specific outcome is not in conformity with what the group chooses as a solution.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 87

In AcAdAn we learned to look at the Group Conscience, as our Higher Power speaking to us through our group, whether the group consisted of two in our marriage or many in our Fellowship, in our workplace or other social contexts, we were part of as a group member.

The Group Conscience consists of each member's conscience, and therefore we took each members’r expressed conscience into consideration, when we had to make a decision on behalf of the whole group.

By learning to listen to the Group Conscience as our Higher Power speaking to us, we developed our social skills, so we became better and better in being part of a group as a contented and harmonious part of the group.

While we learned to listen to the Group Conscience, much of our anxiety in social situations disappeared, and thus we became more and more content with our self, others and our life.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will surrender to the Group Conscience in the same way that I surrender to my individual and personal Higher Power.

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July 24: Live and let live

The principle of Tradition Eight is Respect.
Slogan: Live and let live.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

In the hierarchy of the Rings of Pain the Ring of Codependency comes as number three after the Ring of Emptiness and the Ring of Self-centeredness in our AcAdAn Program.

To us this meant that practically all of us suffered from a severe case of codependency, and therefore we are consumed with our perception of what other people were doing.

At times, we believed others needed to be saved by us, at other times we wanted to change others people, and therefor we interfered in their actions, or their interaction with their peers or the way they had chosen to live their spiritual life.

We discovered to our dismay that others mostly did no welcome our interference and little by little we learned to respect their way of being in the World, and thus we took to heart the slogan of Tradition Eight: ‘Live and let live’.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will take the principle of Tradition Eight to heart and respect others' right to live as they choose to do.

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July 25: The power and the glory

Others of us tried to achieve power and glory by raising our level of energy beyond what was naturally possible for us through ingesting various chemical substances that were harmful to our body and mind so as to force our body and mind to yield more results than they were otherwise capable of.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 16

As our work with our AcAdAn Program developed, we discovered that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction sprang from a low self-esteem, and our low self-esteem sprang from our use of the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise.

Our self-criticism made it difficult for us to appreciate our self, and therefore a need arose in us to raise our self-esteem by being honored by others, and that had led many of us to seek power over various areas of our life or various areas of our society, hoping that others would honor us.

Furthermore, many of us chose to use various chemicals to increase our capacity to perform, so we could accomplish more than other people in our pursuit for the power and the glory, but this soon proved to be counterproductive, because our preferred chemicals turned against us at one point in time instead of giving us the power and the glory, we had hoped for.

At the same time, we became addicted to our drug of choice, so we had to use them to merely feel normal, and we had to find a way back to normalcy by going through a time and energy consuming process of recovery to get back to normal and to get used to what was normally possible for us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will accept my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and therefore I will accept that the power and the glory solely belong to my Higher Power.

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July 26: Religion and spirituality

AcAdAn is not a religious program.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

Many of us came into contact with the religion that was dominant in our society at a young age, and for many of us it had led to us getting various existential problems that had made us turn our backs on religion.

Gradually, as our quest for answers to our existential problems developed, we discovered that there is a difference between religion and spirituality.

Religion is the initial learning, which is given to human beings, who do not have personal experiences in the spiritual area, so they can have a guideline, which advantageously, they can use to handle existential problems.

At one point in time, however, a desire arises about experiencing the spiritual states that the various types of religions describe, and thus this human being begins his/her spiritual path.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will accept that religion has its place in the big picture, and that spirituality is my personal experiences with the states that religion describes.

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July 27: Fellowship

At long last, we had found a Fellowship with others who suffered from the same as us, and together we moved from our dissatisfaction with self, others and our life, towards contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

Before we came to AcAdAn it was not easy for us to spot our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, even though we used dissatisfaction in many different situations and for many different reasons.

When we came to AcAdAn and heard what other members had to say about their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we felt an immediate recognition of what shared, so we decided to give our self a change to recover by the help of the AcAdAn Program.

It was a bit relief for us that now we had a Fellowship with others, who also admitted that they lost the joy of living because of their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and we chose to begin to come to the AcAdAn Fellowship.

To listen to others at meetings, and to find a sponsor and begin to carry out the Program gave us an opportunity to investigate how our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction affected us, our life and everything and everyone around us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Fellowship to investigate how my daily use of dissatisfaction affects me, my life in general and my surroundings.

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July 28: Our attitude

An attitude of indifference and intolerance towards earthly and spiritual principles can destroy our recovery process.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

Most of us had been on the spiritual path for a long time, when we came to AcAdAn to work with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

On our spiritual path, we had received much information that we could advantageously apply to our spiritual life, but it had not occurred to us that it was equally important that we found information, which was about our earthly life.

When we came to AcAdAn. it was the first time for many of us that we came across information that emphasized that we also needed to apply earthly principles to achieve contentment with our self and our life.

Therefore, it was a big relief for us to come face to face with the First Step in AcAdAn, because immediately, we got to work with our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn to accept my limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

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July 29: The admiration and respect of others

We imagined that we had to gain honor from others, as we believed that if only we achieved this, we would have achieved their love and respect, and then we would be able to accept our self.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 15

Before we began to study our self by the help of our AcAdAn Program, many of us imagined that we could achieve self-acceptance by being admired and respected by others, but by studying our self, we discovered that when we actually received admiration and respect from others it didn´t help us to achieve greater self-acceptance.

We even spotted self-critical thoughts in this context, so when others expressed admiration or respect for our way of being in the World or for our talents and capabilities in certain areas, our self-critical thoughts could make us think that their admiration and respect was connected with the fact that they did not know us, as we were in Reality.

Our self-critical thoughts could also make us think that if others knew us, as we were in Reality, they would not admire or respect us, and these thoughts in particular showed us that we had not come any closer to our self-respect, because of other people's admiration and respect.

Thus it became clear to us that we needed to achieve self-respect by the help of the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others to be able to take other people's admiration and respect to heart.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of Emotional Sobriety to achieve self-respect, so I can also become able to receive other people's admiration and respect in my social life with an open heart.

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July 30: To admit

Nobody could convince us that we were chronically dissatisfied. This was an admission we had to make for our self.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 22

Being chronically ill had a lot of unpleasant associations for most of us, because it gave us the impression that it is a disease,which we could not recover from, and if it came to being chronically mentally ill, it became even more difficult for us to admit how we were doing.

In AcAdAn, nobody tried to convince us that we were chronically dissatisfied, because we knew from personal experience that this disease was very painful to have to stand by, especially because we had tried to be happier than the happiest in social contexts to hide our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Therefore it was a big relief for us to admit our disease and how it affected us and our life when we attended meetings in our AcAdAn Fellowship, confident that our AcAdAn sisters and brothers understood us and in our AcAdAn process it also became clear to us that it was a basic existential pain we were facing.

We understood that is was about our fear of our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and it was not us alone, who tried to escape our humanness, but that every human being tried to do that to a certain extent, and that we could arrest our disease by the help of the AcAdAn Program to such an extent that we could become symptom free without using medicine.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my First Step to admit that I am dissatisfied with a certain situation today, and how my dissatisfaction makes my my life unmanageable, so I can use Step Two to begin to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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July 31: Anonymity

We listen to the message instead of our personal opinion of the messenger, and in this way, we maintain the anonymity by placing the principles before the persons involved.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 98

When we began to become squinted with the Traditions of AcAdAn, we discovered that one of our Program's main principles is to place those principles another member shared about before his/her personal appearance.

If we listened to our personal opinions about the person, who shared about those principles, which he/she shared about in a meeting, we cut our self off from being open-minded enough to pick up that message that we needed to hear.

Therefore we choose to use Step Two's principle, which is open-mindedness and Step Two's slogan that says: Listening attentively and respectfully to another is the first sign of emotional sobriety.

We wanted to be emotionally sober, so therefore we choose to maintain the anonymity by the help of Step Two and Tradition Twelve, which says: Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will choose to maintain the principle of anonymity by listening attentively and respectfully to those I interact with in my social life, rather than being preoccupied with my positive or negative thoughts about their personality.

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AUGUST

August 01 Freedom in our work with the Program	August 02 Attraction rather than promotion	August 03 Prejudice
August 04 Cooperation with our Higher Power	August 05 Belongingness	August 06 The Small Ring of Arrogance
August 07 Transformation	August 08 The Ring of Fulfillment	August 09 To enter into meditation
August 10 Respect for others	August 11 To open up about our secrets	August 12 To admit to our Higher Power
August 13 The Ring of Emptiness	August 14 Miracles	August 15 Pain as a teacher
August 16 Problem-solving	August 17 To harm others	August 18 Flawlessness
August 19 Denial	August 20 Mental limitations	August 21 Accountability in service
August 22 Lacking acceptance of humanness	August 23 To pass on the message	August 24 Spirituality and religion
August 25 Principled lifestyle	August 26 Our Higher Power's talk	August 27 To admit anger
August 28 Transformation in daily life	August 29 Unmanageability	August 30 Uniqueness
August 31 To harm our self and others with arrogance

August 01: Freedom in our work with the Program

One Sponsor’s Suggestions for Working the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous describes how we can work with the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous, but we have the freedom to choose to work the Program in any other way as long as it works for us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 92

When we worked with the Program in Active Addictions Anonymous, we basically worked with the dissatisfaction that was connected with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

We made use of many different methods to express our dissatisfaction and we worked with many of these expressions by the help of the Archetypal Rings of Pain and Joy from our Fourth Step and onward.

The Sponsor Suggestion in our literature suggests to us, how we could carry out this work, but we had the freedom to work with our dissatisfaction with our humanness in other ways, if we found other ways more advantageous.

The most important thing was that our method made it possible for us to work with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our humanity in such a way that it became possible for us to recover from it.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on recovering from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with my own humanity and that of others in any way that works for me.

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August 02: Attraction rather than promotion

When we talk about Active Addictions Anonymous in context with public relations, we don’t promote AcAdAn.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 97

In our enthusiasm about the results we achieved, as a result of our work with the Program in AcAdAn, we might be seized by an irresistible urge to try to overwhelm others with our enthusiasm.

Therefore, our Traditions have established that we want to let our Program work by attraction rather than promotion so those of us, who had a desire to convince others of the excellence of our Program could learn to take it easy.

When we became able to take it easy, it became possible for us to not talk about our Program with people, who were not part of AcAdAn unless they had expressed a desire to hear about it.

By leaving to a Higher Power to lead those, who wanted it to AcAdAn, we learned to let of attempting to overwhelm others with our enthusiasm about our Program, knowing that the Program would only work for people, who were willing to take on the extensive work it takes to recover from one’s addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will leave it to a Higher Power to bring those people, who has a deep and earnest desire to recover from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to me, so I can inform them about the Program of AcAdAn.

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August 03: Prejudice

In Tradition Three, we open up both as individuals and as a group to the fact that we cannot judge other people’s lives and motives by looking at them from the outside.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 88

Before we became familiar with the Traditions of AcAdAn, we mostly stuck to the first impression we got of others, which often meant that we formed an opinion about them solely because of their outer appearance.

When we heard others share in an AcAdAn meeting, often, we formed an opinion about what kind of human being they were solely based on their voicing, their facial expression and their body language.

We call this for prejudice in AcAdAn, because it is impossible to judge others' lives and motivations by looking at them from the outside, whether the judgement came into being because of their physical appearance or their way of expressing their thoughts.

In AcAdAn we wanted to identify with what others had to share instead of keeping them at a distance by the help of judgements, and therefore, we chose to open our self to get to know them better, before we determine in what ways we could benefit from those people our Higher Power sent into our lives.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use levelheadedness in my perception of others that my Higher Power sends into my life, before I take a stand on in which ways if any I might benefit from them.

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August 04: Cooperation with our Higher Power

Hence, we began cooperating with our Higher Power on a daily basis about doing this work at a pace we would be able to bear.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 56

In Step Seven we began to cooperate with our Higher Power about liberating our self from our character defects at a pace we could bear, and how fast this process could take place was decided by our courage to change.

We had discovered that even if the change was to our advantage, any change could createmanifest a sense of alienation from our self if we moved forward too fast and thus did not feel at home in our self any longer.

Those of us, who had let go of a chemical addiction, like for example an addiction to sugar, nicotine, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, etc., knew that it was an improvement in our lives that we were liberated from our addiction to our drug of choice.

But although it was an improvement of our lives to recover from our addiction, it was not a change that happened from one day to the next, and thus we realized that it was to our advantage to change our self in cooperation with our Higher Power at a pace we could bear, so as to not drive our self mad with our desire for change to happen fast.

Today’s contemplation
Today, Today, I will use Step Seven to work on changing to my advantage in cooperation with my Higher Power at a pace I can tolerate.

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August 05: Belongingness

We know that it is vital for our group that all its members feel that they belong to the group, for our experiences have shown us that when more and more members lose their sense of belonging to our group, the group ceases to exist.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 85

We knew from our experience that if we did not experience a feeling of belonging to a group, we quickly lost the desire to be part of the group and our Traditions also taught us that it was important that we left contexts that did not serve our purpose, even if they had served our purpose for a while, but did not do it any longer.

It was important for us to attend meetings in AcAdAn, because we had an opportunity to share our work with the Program with like minded people, and at the same time we could let our self be inspired by listening to what others member’s  had to share about their work with the Program.

Therefore, it was important for us that those members of AcAdAn, who had chosen to attend the AcAdAn meeting, we and our group had createdmanifested felt like a welcome and valuable part of our group, so joyfully we welcomed them to the meeting in our group, whether their participation was a single meeting or many.

We talked with those, we felt inspired to talk with both before and after the meeting and related to what they had to share, while at the same time, we remembered that both newcomers and old-timers had a need to feel like a welcome and valuable part of the meeting and to be talked with before to not to lose the desire to participate in our meetings.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I choose to take good care of both newcomers and old-timers with loving kindness, because I want them to experience a sense of being a welcome and valuable part of the meetings in my group.

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August 06: The Small Ring of Arrogance

When The Small Ring of Arrogance became active in us, we felt above others when our needs were met (Superiority), and below others when our needs were not met (Inferiority).
When we felt below others (Inferiority), we stayed by our self to hide our vulnerability and our feelings of worthlessness (Isolation), and when we felt above others (Superiority), we filled up our time and space with people and activities to show off our superiority by the help of the number of people present in our lives and the numerous activities we undertook with these people (Overcrowding).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 40

Until we worked with the Small Ring of Arrogance in Step Four in our AcAdAn Program, we believed that arrogance exclusively consisted in feeling superior to others, but in our work with this Ring we discovered how our arrogance also holds feelings of inferiority.

Furthermore, we realized that our goal with taking our arrogance into use and overcrowd our day and our life with people to meet and activities to do was to be attractive to other people, but we discovered that as a result of taking our arrogance into use, instead, we felt isolated from other people.

This lead to us becoming entirely ready to work on transforming our arrogance in Step Six, where we worked on becoming entirely ready to allow our Higher Power to transform our defects of character to virtues by investigating our use of the Small Ring of Arrogance in all details.

When we had investigated our use of the Small Ring of Arrogance in all details, we moved our focus to the Small Ring of Truth with its humility, honesty, individuality and fellowship to investigate how we imagined that the situation could have transpired if instead, we had used the Small Ring of Truth, and that createdmanifested the transformation, we had longed for.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to transform the pain from my use of the Small Ring of Arrogance to the joy of learning to use the Small Ring of Truth instead.

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August 07: Transformation

The principle of Step Six is Transformation. Slogan: I own my hurts.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Many of us felt that others that were responsible for our hurt feelings, until we came to Step Six in our AcAdAn Program and became acquainted with the slogan of the Sixth Step, and it was a shock to acknowledge that our hurt emotions belonged to us, because it meant we were responsible for healing them.

We had imagined that if others would only treat us better, be more loving, understanding, accommodating and kind, we would not feel hurt, but when we investigated the issue, we found out that it was not everybody, who felt hurt by the same situations that we felt hurt by.

We also discovered that what hurt us one day did not necessarily hurt us the next day, so it would be impossible for others to behave in ways that were loving, understanding, accommodating and kind enough to make sure that they did not hurt us in any possible way.

This meant that we could not see to it that others did not feel hurt either, no matter how well meaning we were, and thereby we began to exclusively take responsibility for our own hurt emotions and after that we could use our Sixth Step in AcAdAn to transform our pain to joy.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will heal my hurt emotions and transform them to joy by the help of my AcAdAn Program.

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August 08: The Ring of Fulfillment

In Hindu mythology an archetype is found called the Sudarshan Chakra or the Sun Wheel, that is said to light up our inner World as brightly as the Sun lights up our outer World and thereby the Sun Wheel transforms all of our defects of character to their mature state – to virtues.
In AcAdAn we use the name the Ring of Fulfillment for the same archetype and we perceive this Ring to be the origin of all our virtues and thus the origin of all of our joys.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 30

It is not only in our AcAdAn Program that we may encounter information on compositions of various energies and their consequences for life as a human being.

In mythology, there are other names for various energy fields we work with in AcAdAn, which we call the Rings of Joy and Pain.

Thus, we encounter the Ring of Fulfillment in mythology under the name Sudarshan Chakra that Lord Krishna used to decapitate all demons/defects of character.

The Ring of Emptiness, we also encounter in mythology with the name Pandora's Box, which is said to release all the sufferings of the World for the one, who opens the box, which we in AcAdAn perceive to be the root of all our defects of character.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on consciously moving into the Ring of Fulfillment with its fulfillment, interest, meaningfulness and oneness, when I discover that I am in the Ring of Emptiness with its emptiness, boredom, meaninglessness and loneliness.

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August 09: To enter into meditation

To enter into meditation, we moved from our normal state of daily consciousness into the reflective state, then into the contemplative state, from there into the concentrated state of our mind, and in the end, we let go and entered into meditation, where our consciousness expanded.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 72

When we began working with prayer and meditation in Step Eleven in our AcAdAn Program, little by little, we came to know the meditative state

Thus, we discovered that actually, there had not been a day in our life where we had not spontaneously entered into meditation, however without us having put the word meditation on our state of mind.

When we experienced a moment of pure presence, we found our self in a thoughtless state, because in that moment, we had stopped thinking anything about anything and this we call meditation.

Right before we fell asleep at night, we discovered that as long as the band of thoughts was running, we could not fall asleep, so we had to wait for the flow of thoughts to stop, before we could fall asleep, and when the flow of thoughts stop, we have entered into meditation.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will consciously work on entering into meditation as often as possible during my day by consciously prolonging those moments, where the meditation naturally arises.

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August 10: Respect for others

Instead of offending others by saying or thinking that they thought, felt and acted wrongly, we chose to respect that they needed to think, feel and act in accordance with their reality as it was for them.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 48

Before we worked with the Ring of Emotional Sobriety in AcAdAn, it was hard for us to find out how we could handle our co-dependency with its savior role, seducer role, victim role and offender role.

When we found our self in the Ring of Codependency, we had an urge to save others from the difficulties of their life without being aware that their difficulties were tasks given to them by their Higher Power.

By taking on solving their tasks we blocked them from learning what they needed to learn, and this insight made us realize that it was to the advantage of both us and others that we left the responsibility of solving their problem to themselves

If they directly asked us for help to solve a problem we took time out to think about, if we would love to contribute to a solution, before we said yes or no and thereby we showed respect both for our self and others.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will respect the capacity of others to solve their own problems, and therefore I will give them time and space to find a solution, before I invest my resources – my time, my energy, my interest or my money – in their problem.

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August 11: To open up about our secrets

Only complete trust in the person we chose could give us the courage we needed to be thorough with our Fifth Step.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 43

In Step Four in our AcAdAn Program, we came face to face with our hurts from childhood to the present, and we had kept many of our hurts secret out of fear of others using this knowledge to hurt us if we did not submit to their desires.

Therefore, it was frightening for us to think about opening up about our secrets to another human being, but it was a comfort for us to think of that others had done it before us and that we had been told that it took courage to do Step Five.

We were careful with selecting the person that we wanted share our secrets with, whether we chose a person inside or outside the Fellowship to share our Fourth Step with.

We needed to trust our chosen person to be able to summon the required courage to let our secrets come out into the open.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will be careful in choosing the people I share my secrets with, so I can trust that I will not be the subject to hurtful gossip.

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August 12: To admit to our Higher Power

This way, we discovered that it did make a difference to admit our Fourth Step to our Higher Power, and at the same time, we also prepared our self to admit the exact nature of our character to another human being.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

Our Program helped us achieve the courage it took to become able to share our Fourth Step with another human by us first admitting to our self that we felt hurt about many things that we used to tell our self that we did not care about.

Next, we admitted to our Higher Power that we felt hurt by the experiences we had written down by reading our Fourth Step to our Higher Power and add those inspirations that came to us while we were reading.

After having shared our pain with our Higher Power, we discovered that much of the intensity of our pain disappeared in the process, and in that way it was not so scary to share our hurt feelings with another human being.

When we shared with our self, we experienced our hurt from the inside, and when we shared with our Higher Power, we could look at our hurt from the outside, and when, in this way they became less personal, our courage grew to share our hurt with another person.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will follow the suggestion of the Program to first admit my hurts to myself, then to my Higher Power, then to another human being, then to the Fellowship and then I am ready to meet the World at large without having a need to hide my hurts

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August 13: The Ring of Emptiness

When we investigated our use of the Ring of Emptiness, we discovered that if we found our self in the Ring of Emptiness, when we had empty time ahead of us, our empty time was accompanied by a feeling of boredom, and with the boredom we experienced a sense of meaninglessness that made us wish to abandon our self and our lives and that made us feel lonely, no matter how many people we were surrounded by.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 30

Humankind’s biggest sufferings spring from the Ring of Emptiness, and until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous many of us were ashamed of our emptiness, boredom, meaninglessness and loneliness.

We were not aware that we were in the energy of the Ring of Emptiness, and we were not aware either that it was quite easy to move out of the Ring of Emptiness and move into the Ring of Fulfillment with its fulfillment, interest, meaningfulness and oneness.

It was a great relief for us to read in the texts of AcAdAn that this was possible, and that made us willing to learn how we could move from the pain of the Ring of Emptiness to the joy of the Ring of Fulfillment by the help of our Sixth Step.

In Step Six, we learned how to move spiritually, socially, mentally, emotionally, energetically, physically and materially from pain to joy, and this meant that we achieved the freedom to move from the Ring of Emptiness to the Ring of Fulfillment.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to choose to move from the pain in the Ring of Emptiness to the joy in the Ring of Fulfillment.

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August 14: Miracles

The real miracle happens when you realize that your compulsive need to use dissatisfaction has been repealed. You have stopped being dissatisfied and have begun living a life of contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 13

There are many perceptions of what miracles are and in AcAdAn we consider miracles to be events that are contrary to the generally approved perceptions of life on Earth, and therefore, we consider it to be a miracle that a human being can look so deeply into himself/herself that he/she can discover that the most intense of his/her existential pains arises from his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Furthermore we perceive it to be a miracle, when he/she realizes that his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction springs from his/her dissatisfaction with his/her human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and that it is actually possible for him/her to recover from his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

We experienced time and time again that when a newcomer had become ready to admit that he/she wanted oneness with his/her true Self, his/her Spirit it could lead to that he/she became so dissatisfied with his/her humanness that he/she was been ready to do many destructive acts to his/her physical body in a misunderstood attempt to become himself/herself.

In AcAdAn we discovered, however, that a prerequisite for completing our spiritual journey into oneness with our true Self, our Spirit while we were still living on Earth, was that we learned to accept and even love our own and others' human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and it is this development we call the full AcAdAn miracle.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on creatingmanifesting my personal miracle in AcAdAn by learning to use the Program by the help of my sponsor/recovery buddy, my Higher Power and the Fellowship.

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August 15: Pain as a teacher

As long as everything in our lives worked to our satisfaction and did not change, unless it was a change we had chosen our self, we did not stop to think deeply about the meaning or purpose of our life, but when we experienced pain, or when our life changed in ways we had not expected, we began investigating the cause of our pain and the reason for the change, and in this process, our awareness and understanding of our life grew.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 19

Before we came to AcAdAn most of us perceived there to be something wrong with us or our life when we experienced pain, but gradually, as our work with the Program progressed, we became aware that pain is a teacher.

It was the pain associated with our use of our character defects in the Archetypal Rings of Pain that taught us to stop and take a closer look at our self and our life, and thus the pain helped us to become more aware in many areas.

At the same time that pain made us more aware we learned to use the Archetypal Rings of Joy consciously, and thus we became able to use our defects of character constructively by transforming them and thus lift our self to a higher level of energy.

Little by little, as we developed our capacity to consciously use the Rings of Joy and Pain, our fear of our existential pains disappeared, and thus we became able to see that both pain and joy have theirs to give.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on reducing my fear of existential pains by developing my capacity to use my AcAdAn Program to move from pain to joy.

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August 16: Problem-solving

We are not interested in who or what caused our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, what we have done in the past, how much or how little we own, but only in what we want to do about our problem and how we can help each other recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

When we became aware that we were chronically dissatisfied, many of us felt frightened, because we could not see how it would be possible for us to figure out our problem and find a solution to it, and that could make us stay stucked in our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction for years.

We knew instinctively that contentment, joy, happiness, bliss and ecstasy are spiritual states, and therefore we perceived it as a step backwards to admit our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, in particular because we thought we had come so far on the spiritual path that we ought to be more joyful and content with our self and our lives than we actually were.

Gradually, as we heard others share about that they too had had the same problem with admitting their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, it helped us to discover that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction cropped up, when we began on the spiritual path, because we thought that our humanness stood in the way of our oneness with our true Self, our Spirit.

Our idea that our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability stood in the way of our oneness with our true Self our Spirit, had settled in us as an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, which exactly lead to a limitation of our oneness with our true self, our Spirit.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use Step One in my AcAdAn Program to admit my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, so my recovery can begin in Step Two.

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August 17: To harm others

We looked at how we had harmed others physically by turning violent and causing physical harm, for example, by slapping, pushing or beating them, and we included our children too in this list.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

In the past it was very common that parents exposed their children to violent assaults, and many of us in AcAdAn has been subjected to exactly such attacks by getting spankings or being told that we were not allowed to follow our heart, but had to do what our parents thought was the right thing.

This had given us the impression that love came to expression through violence in many forms, and therefore we treated those we loved with many forms of violence, because we believed that it was they way to express love in conformity with the saying; the one you love, you tasten.

Only when we carried out our AcAdAn Program, we realized that when we gave others pain, we our self pained, because we did not feel in conformity with our true Self, our Spirit, when we were unloving, uncaring, hardhearted and merciless.

We pained in particular, when we were unloving, uncaring, hardhearted and merciless to our near and dear ones, whom, in Reality, we wanted to treat with love, care, compassion and mercy and as we broke our old patterns by the help of our AcAdAn Program, we became more content with our self and our life.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to find out how I can stop being unloving, uncaring, hardhearted and merciless towards myself and others and instead fulfill my desire about being loving, caring, compassionate and merciful.

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August 18: Flawlessness

Instead of being hard on our self by expecting to be flawless from hereon, we drew hope from Steps Eight and Nine, knowing that we could use them to right our wrongs, whenever we made a mistake as revealed to us seen in the light of our AcAdAn Program.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 56

When we came to Step Seven in our AcAdAn Program, most of us imagined that we had finally come to a point, where we could learn to be flawless, because now we were going to cooperate with our Higher Power about being liberated from all our defects of character.

In Step Six, we had become entirely ready to allow our Higher Power to liberate us from our defects of character, and in Step Seven our cooperation with our Higher Power help us to become flawless, because we had now become ready to cooperate with our Higher Power about it.

Our willingness made us believe that we were now going to succeed in becoming flawless, and we became disappointed, when we discovered that it was a misunderstanding of Step Seven, because even if we cooperated with our Higher Power about becoming liberated from our defects of character, they still became active in many situations.

Gradually, we discovered that any new idea necessarily would lead to us making mistakes in the carrying out of our idea, whether we wanted to createmanifest a new mindset or a new bridge, and thus we became able to give our self permission to experiment with new ideas even if we made mistakes in the carrying out of it in the beginning.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will give myself permission to make mistakes, because I know I have Step Eight to acknowledge my mistakes and forgive myself and Step Nine to make amends to myself and others for my mistakes.

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August 19: Denial

Also, our denial convinced us that we could get to feel content any time we wanted to, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 22

When we began our work with our denials in Step Seven in our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that denial is that veil of grace that covers up those mistakes, which we are not ready to come face to face with as yet.

This means that we, as a Fellowship, did not try to tear the veil of denial from someone else's eyes, because we perceive that to be an act of violence.

Neither did we tell another that he/she was in denial in any context whatsoever, and instead we gave him/her time to become ready to come face to face with his/her mistake.

It was no longer important for us, if we or others we in denial, because we knew that our Higher Power would show us, what we needed to know, so therefore we let our self and others be in denial to the extent our and their Higher Power allows.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will refrain from thinking that I or others should know everything there is to know about our mistakes, trusting that my Higher Power and theirs  will lead me and them gently face to face with our mistakes and a solution to them, when time is ripe.

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August 20: Mental limitations

At the mental level, we had problems accepting our limited knowledge and pretended to know something about everything even if we had neither personal experience in the area nor book knowledge about it.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 21

In AcAdAn we consider wisdom as personal experience in a particular area, we have book knowledge about, for even if we have book knowledge about many things, we do not perceive book knowledge as wisdom, no matter how much book knowledge, we had gathered.

We used the gathered information from those books we had read about a particular area to begin practicing what we had read, so little by little we could achieve personal experience with it and thereby achieve more and more wisdom in the area.

No matter how much knowledge we have achieved in essential areas, we could still not escape our ignorance, because there would always be more on our areas of expertise that we did not know anything about.

That had made us work on acceptance of our ignorance, even in the areas we knew most about, and that meant that we could finally begin to take it easy in the mental area and become teachable, also in those areas we knew most about.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Microring of Hope with its appreciation, teachableness, openness and worthiness to handle my ignorance, also in the area that I know best.

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August 21: Accountability in service

The principle of Tradition Nine is Accountability.
Slogan: I serve with pleasure or not at all.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

Before we came to AcAdAn many of us perceived accountability to be performing service in the Fellowship, whether we felt like it or not.

When we became aware of the Ninth Tradition, we realized that it was possible to look at accountability in a different way.

We realized that when had our heart with us in what we were doing, we rejoiced in it, and when we did not have our heart with us, it became joyless.

This realization made us choose to be accountable according to the definition of AcAdAn, so we could become able to perform our service with joy.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will be accountable and perform my tasks with joy

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August 22: Lacking acceptance of humanness

Then, we admitted how our lack of acceptance of our humanness and that of others gave rise to our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with self and others, and how that made our life unmanageable.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 15

Most of us had not thought about how often we used dissatisfaction in the course of our day, and we were shaken, when we began to investigate the issue in AcAdAn.

We discovered that often we used dissatisfaction several times in the course of every hour, and that made us understand how all pervasive our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction was.

We had not previously investigated how our dissatisfaction was directed towards our own and others' humanity.

When we became aware that it was possible for us to recover from our lack of acceptance of our own and others' humanity, it gave us the drive to take on the task of carrying out the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to recover from my lack of acceptance of my own and others' humanity.

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August 23: To pass on the message

When we reached Step Twelve, we had achieved a spiritual awakening by reaching a state of mercy those who still suffer, and we considered how we could pass on the message to other people who suffer from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, that it is in fact possible to achieve a state of contentment with our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 82

Gradually, as our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction moved forward by the help of our AcAdAn Program, we discovered more and more of the costs that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction has led to.

We discovered that both physical, mental and emotional illnesses, social and spiritual illnesses were among the follow illnesses that our chronic dissatisfaction had brought in its’s wake.

This understanding made our heart swell of mercy, when we met a fellow human being, who suffered from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and therefore we became willing to contribute time, energy and interest to the recovery of this human being.

We let him/her know that we are members of AcAdAn where we work on recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and if he/she wants to hear more about it, we share our experiences with him/her.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Twelfth Step to contribute with time, energy and interest to another person's recovery from his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, if he/she expresses a desire for help.

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August 24: Spirituality and religion

AcAdAn is a spiritual Program, and as such, AcAdAn neither endorses nor opposes any conviction, creed or religion; we are neither connected to any religious or political group nor affiliated with any other organization.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

Many of us only had a vague idea about the difference between spirituality and religion, when we came to AcAdAn, because both deal with our relationship with a Higher Power that some choose to call God.

When we said to newcomers that AcAdAn is a spiritual Program, it meant that we were people, who wanted to experience The Eternal Truths that reveal themselves as the core of any religion or spiritual creed.

As long as we did nor have those experiences our self that our religion taught about, we did not participate in spirituality, but chose to believe that the religion in question spoke the truth about the personal experiences of the founder in the spiritual area.

Gradually, as our work with our AcAdAn Program progressed, we experienced more and more glimpses of oneness with our true Self, our Spirit, and thus we became able to confirm the experiences of the founders of religions out of our personal experience.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on achieving oneness with my true Self, my Spirit by the help of my AcAdAn Program.

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August 25: Principled lifestyle

Four of these principles that are essential for our recovery are honesty, open-mindedness, willingness and humility.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

In our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction we found out that we needed to apply earthly and spiritual principles to recover.

The first principles, we were presented with were honesty, open-mindedness, willingness and humility.

Honesty was necessary for us to carry out our First Step and admit how our use of dissatisfaction made our life unmanageable.

In our Second Step, we needed to be open-minded to the idea, that there might be a loving intention behind our life's pains, so we could investigate the issue willingly without feeling less than others because of our pains or more than others because of our joys.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use honesty, open-mindedness, willingness and humility in my work with my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

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August 26: Our Higher Power's speak to us

Sometimes, our Higher Power spoke to us humorously and sometimes seriously; sometimes from within our self and sometimes from outside us through everything and everybody, everywhere, at all levels of existence, but always and without exception, with unconditional love, care, compassion and mercy.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 70

In our Eleventh Step, we worked on expanding our conscious contact with our Higher Power by the help of prayer and meditation, so we put aside time to focus our awareness on our Higher Power's speak, which comes to us as an impulse.

We translated the impulse by the help our thinking mind, our Ego and little by little we became better at discerning, when if the impulse came from our Higher Power or from our thinking mind, our Ego.

Besides the feeling in the vibration, we used the content of the thought as a help to determine, whether it came from our Higher Power or from our thinking mind, our Ego.

We investigating, whether we perceived the message of the thought to be unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, and if so, we took the message to heart as our Higher Power's speak to us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Eleventh Step to decide if, what comes to me from inside or outside is unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, and if so I will take it to heart as my Higher Power speaking to me.

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August 27: To admit anger

We were thorough and prompt in admitting our anger to our self, to prevent it from striking root within us and turn into hatred that could crystallize and settle in us as a constantly nagging and miserable bitterness.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

Until we came to AcAdAn, many of us had had big problems with our anger, for we knew it was harmful for our health to suppress our anger, because that meant that it was pressed down into our physical body.

If we continued to suppress our anger, eventually, it began to come to expression in various physical illnesses, and when our anger had reached this stage, it was very demanding to enter into recover from it.

We also knew that it was harmful to our Soul life, our social life to send our anger out into the World by thinking that others' ways of being in the World was a fair and just reason for us to be angry.

Only when we began to live the AcAdAn Program, we had at long last got a functional way of handling our anger, because we could use Step One to admit our anger to our self and begin our recovery from it in Step Two.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to receive my anger’s message in Step One and use Step Two til Twelve to heal the pain of my anger.

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August 28: Transformation in daily life

Step Six is often called the Step of Transformation. We used Step Six to take a look at how that, which we discovered about our self in our Fourth Step expressed itself in our daily life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 45

When we came to the Sixth Step in AcAdAn, we finally became able to take care of our defects of character in a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful way.

We did this by receiving the message of the painful emotion, and we discovered that even physical pain had a message to give us, once we have tapped through the pain

Our physical body carries our mental-emotional pains as a blockage of the body's circulation of energies, and this could result in stiffness and pains in the body.

Therefore, we used Step Six to investigate what mental-emotional patterns of thoughts and emotions that createdmanifested the blockage and then we removed the blockage by moving from a Pain Ring to a Joy Ring.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use Step Six in my AcAdAn Program to transform my material, physical, energetic, emotional, mental, social or spiritual pains by the help of the Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy.

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August 29: Unmanageability

We needed to admit that our life became unmanageable, when we took our dissatisfaction into use, and we also needed to admit that we needed help, because we were powerless over our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 23

When we became members of Active Addictions Anonymous, we got access to the help we needed to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and the unmanageability that we experienced in our life as a result.

We could hear at meetings, what others had done to recover from the areas of their life that became unmanageable, because they had used dissatisfaction in connection with these areas.

Moreover, we could find a recovery buddy or a sponsor in the Fellowship, so we thereby had a personal buddy or sponsor to talk with privately about our discoveries in our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

This cooperation made it easier for us to share our experiences at meetings and thus achieve even more clarity about our recovery while at the same time we gave hope to other members that also they could recover from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will seek help from my sponsor/recovery buddy and from my AcAdAn Fellowship with the unmanageable problems I cannot find a solution to myself.

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August 30: Uniqueness

We admit that it is our personal point of view we express when we speak about the principles, and at the same time, we are aware that others do the same.
In this way, we don’t take offense when someone expresses the principles in a way we cannot relate to.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 98

In AcAdAn we became aware of our uniqueness, because our literature made us aware that even our fingerprint is so unique that none like it is to be found in the whole World.

In our emotional life however, we could relate to each other, because we all knew how it felt to be joyful or angry, even though we might have different reasons to feel joyful or angry.

That made us understand that even if each one of us were unique and therefore could not expect that others understood what we had at heart just like that, we could relate to each other emotionally.

In our social life we therefore did our best to inform those we interacted with about how we felt emotionally instead of assuming that they already knew it without them having been informed by us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will do my best to inform others about what I feel and my reasons for feeling it, so they have a chance of understanding, what is happening in my situation right now and here.

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August 31: To harm our self and others with arrogance

We looked at how we had harmed our self and others socially and love-wise by either isolating our self and thus depriving our self and others of the love and care we all need from each other or by overpopulating our lives and thereby losing out on intimacy and closeness with others.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

When we investigated our use of The Small Ring of Arrogance Ring with its superiority, inferiority, overcrowding and isolation, we found out that we had believed that others would feel that we were more attractive if we were superior to them.

We imagined that others would wish to achieve our state of superiority by learning from us, but when we took a closer look at arrogance, we discovered that the result of our arrogance was isolation from others instead of the interest we had hoped to achieve from them.

We also realized that when we isolated our self from others because of our arrogance, we harmed both them and our self, because that presence and togetherness that we all need was lacking in our being together.

As a result of these realization, we chose instead to use the Small Ring of Truth with its humility, honesty, individuality and fellowship so as to finally achieve the fellowship with others we longed for in our social life.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will choose to use the Small Ring Truth in situations, where I used to use the Small Ring of Arrogance, so I can stop harming myself and others with my arrogance.

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SEPTEMBER

September 01 The Short Seventh Step Prayer	September 02 Wholehearted decisions	September 03 Getting off course
September 04 Our humanness	September 05 Kindred Spirits	September 06 Letting oneself be adored
September 07 Choosing of a personal Higher Power	September 08 Old wine on new bottles	September 09 To become more enlightened
September 10 Superficial perceptions	September 11 The Step of Consciousness Expansion	September 12 The rightful place of our thinking mind, our Ego
September 13 To buy the helping hands of others	September 14 Let go and let God	September 15 To liberate oneself from guilt and shame
September 16 To set others free	September 17 Mistakes	September 18 Just for today
September 19 Development of faith	September 20 Overpowering emotions	September 21 Integrity
September 22 The purpose with our work in AcAdAn	September 23 To help each other	September 24 The loving intention of our Higher Power
September 25 To hit others with guilt and shame	September 26 The nature of illnesses	September 27 The purpose of personal inventory
September 28 To do justice to our anger	September 29 To liberate oneself from one's successes	September 30 To give others time and space

September 01:  The Short Seventh Step Prayer

The ‘I’ Version  God, Liberate me from this self-important seriousness.  THANK YOU!

The ‘We’ Version God, Liberate us from this self-important seriousness.  THANK YOU!

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 75

When we came to Step Seven, we learned about The Short Seventh Step Prayer, and when we began to use it, we became liberated from many of our defects of character, because we could pray it, when we thought that we were not being respected by our self or others.

By praying this prayer maximum four times we could liberate our self from the situation in which we did not feel respected, because it helped us to remember that we may feel treated with disrespect, if we took our self to seriously without it necessarily being so.

When we felt treated with disrespected, we could use this prayer to give our thoughts a new direction, and when we have calmed down by the help of it, we could consider what wish we did not have fulfilled, or which of our boundaries we perceived to be crossed.

Then we could find out if we needed to find a way to fulfill our desire our self or if we needed to set a boundary in an amiable way, or whether we needed to withdraw from similar situations completely in the future.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Short Seventh Step prayer in the course of my day, when I feel disrespectfully treated.

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September 02: Wholehearted decisions

We were loving and caring to our self as far as our reluctance and fear were concerned, by continuing to work with them until we reached a point where all aspects of them were understood and cared for.
Thereby, our reluctance and fear melted away, and we moved forward in our process towards a wholehearted decision of surrender.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 28

Until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us had the perception that we should just do what we feared to do so we could learn to overcome our fears, but in AcAdAn we perceive that as an assault on our self.

This assault could make us experience the pain of the Miniring of Envy with its insecurity, confusion, unclarity and wretchedness, and as we did not want to use these energies in our decision-making process, we decided to use the joy of Miniring of Hope instead.

We wanted to use the joy in the Miniring of Hope with its safety, well-informedness, clarity and nobleness to find out, how we could use these energies to squires an overview of where our decision-making process could take us by the help of these energies.

When we had used the pain of the Mining of Envy to investigate the energies we used in our decision-making process and the joy of Miniring of Hope to form a picture of where our decision could take us, we were then ready to make a wholehearted decision.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Miniring of Hope with its safety, well-informedness, clarity and nobleness to get to a wholehearted decision in an area where I am in doubt.

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September 03: Getting off course

Even when no strings seem to be attached to contributions coming from outside, we decline them, because we have discovered that the price we might have to pay in indirect and unforeseen ways may give rise to disagreement and conflict.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 92

It was important for us that we did not come off course in our work with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in Active Addictions Anonymous, so therefore we did our best to make sure that it did not happen.

Our Traditions are createdmanifested in such a way that we were protected both from external influences and from members, who wanted to steer AcAdAn in a direction that was no longer focused on our recovery.

If influences coming from the outside had power over our economy, or what literature we should make use of, our recovery would soon come out of course, and therefore we declined outside contributions.

We declined these contributions, whether they were money or property, literature or lecturers with a purpose, which was the same as ours, and in that way we kept things simple and avoided coming off course in our recovery was important for us that we did not come off course in our work with our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in Active Addictions Anonymous, so therefore we did our best to make sure that it did not happen.

Our Traditions are createdmanifested in such a way that we were protected both from external influences and from members, who wanted to steer AcAdAn in a direction that was no longer focused on our recovery.

If influences coming from the outside had power over our economy, or what literature we should make use of, our recovery would soon come out of course, and therefore we declined outside contributions.

We declined these contributions, whether they were money or property, literature or lecturers with a purpose, which was the same as ours, and in that way we kept things simple and avoided coming off course in our recovery.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will keep my focus on my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in all contexts that are concerned with my personal affairs and with my AcAdAn Fellowship.

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September 04: Our humanness 

The Program of Active Addictions Anonymous made it possible for us to accept our four basic attributes as human beings – our limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality – thereby liberating us from the suffering that sprang from our lack of capacity to accept our self and others as human beings, and life as it is for a human being.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

Our awareness of that we in Reality, wee a Spirit, who for a while is experienced life on Earth as a human being, could lead us to be dissatisfied with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

It seemed to us that it was our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability that made it difficult for us to achieve oneness with our true Self, our Spirit, especially if we had come far on the spiritual path, when we came to AcAdAn.

After we came to AcAdAn, we began to investigate the issue and discovered that we had been mistaken, because our true Self, our Spirit lives within every limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable form and is therefore compatible with everything.

When we had realized that, we got the courage to begin the work on accepting our humanness by the help of our AcAdAn Program, and thus it slowly became possible for us to experience our self and life on Earth as a human being with contentment.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to learn to accept my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability and my life as a human being on Earth.

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September 05: Kindred Spirits

We have faith that the Program will be attractive to those who seek the same as us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 97

Before we came to AcAdAn many of us had the perception that we were reasonably content with living as human beings on Earth no matter how many times we use dissatisfaction with our self, others and life in the course of the day, and we were thus not interested in what AcAdAn has to offer.

No matter how often we discovered that we used dissatisfaction with our self, others and our life however, we were still not interested in what AcAdAn has to offer and it was only when our longing after achieving oneness with our true Self, our Spirit became stronger that we began feeling drawn to AcAdAn.

We had become aware the oneness with our true Self, our Spirit held states of mind like contentment, enthusiasm, joy, happiness, bliss and ecstasy, just to name a few and that our chronic dissatisfaction blocked us from experiencing these states of mind.

Therefore, it was a relief for us to meet a kindred spirit, who told us that we could become members of AcAdAn, if we wanted to and there we could work with recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by the help of the Fellowship and the Program in AcAdAn, and this meeting with a kindred spirit made us choose to become a member of AcAdAn.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will have confidence in that my AcAdAn Fellowship and my AcAdAn Program can help me to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, so I can achieve a content life by the help of oneness with my true Self, my Spirit.

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September 06: Letting oneself be adored

Often, they critically scrutinized our life and our character, and they felt let down when they found out that we were human too, and thus limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 16

Many of us also participated in other Twelve Step Programs, before we came to AcAdAn, and little by little as we picked up the Program in AcAdAn, we discovered that it has much to offer that we had not encountered before in our Twelve Step work.

When shared our new experiences from our new Twelve Step Program in our other Fellowships and with newcomers in AcAdAn, we discovered that others might have a tendency to worship us, because they perceived us to be identical with the information that we shared at the meetings.

If we began to hide our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, because we let our self become sucked into the drug of our codependency, our craving for praise, the admiration and adoration that some members of AcAdAn and our other Twelve Step Fellowships showered on us, could become pure poison for our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Therefore, we chose to receive praise, admiration and adoration from our knowledge of how we could stay in our emotional sobriety, when others showered us with roses, so that we did not lose our grounding and thus our connection with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will receive praise, admiration and worship by the help of the Ring of  Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others.

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September 07: Choosing of a personal Higher Power

The only suggested guidelines are that this Power is loving, caring, compassionate and merciful and greater than our human limitation, and that coming to believe in this Power worked for us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 26

When we began to consider how we could choose a Higher Power in Step Two in our AcAdAn Program, we needed some guidelines, because we were not used to having to take responsibility for, which Higher Power we wanted to surrender to.

The suggested guide lines were that we chose a Higher Power that were loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, because it would be easier for us to surrender in Step Tree to a Higher Power, who was loving, caring, compassionate and merciful.

In addition, it was suggested that we could choose to emphasize that it worked for us to approach our chosen Higher Power so it could become possible for us to expand our conscious contact with our Higher Power in Step Eleven.

Little by little as our interactions with our chosen Higher Power developed, we discovered that our Higher Power became our source of action-power, because we became confident that we were loved and would be met with care, compassion and mercy, when we made mistakes.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will follow the suggested guidelines in AcAdAn about how I most advantageously can choose my personal Higher Power in Step Two.

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September 08: Old wine on new bottles

In Greek mythology, an archetype is found called Pandora’s Box that is said to release all the miseries of the World if opened.
In AcAdAn, we use the name The Ring of Emptiness for the same archetype, and we perceive this Ring to be the origin of all our defects of character and thus the origin of all of our pains.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 28

All over the World we meet various archetypes in the mythology of various countries and these archetypes consist various combinations of thoughts and the emotional feelings that springs from the thoughts.

In Greek mythology the Pandora's Box is found, and in Hinduistic mythology the Sudarshan Chakra is found, and these archetypes we call the Ring of Emptiness and the Ring of Fulfillment in AcAdAn, but these names are merely new names on ancient knowledge.

In AcAdAn, we learned how to work with some of these archetypes in the form of the Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy, which we began to work with in Step Four, when we needed to map out our psychological landscape.

In Step Four, we used the Painrings and the Joyrings to investigate how these energy fields had influenced us from our childhood to the present, and thereby we realized to our surprise that they had been with us throughout our lives, even though we did not know it.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will take the new names to heart that the old archetypes have got in AcAdAn.

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September 09: To become more enlightened

We shared with all the people to whom we owed amends what we were into and that we wouldn’t have acted today like we did at the time, when the harm took place, if we had known then what we know today and then we offered our amends.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 65

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous many of us had been on the spiritual path for a long time, and we had believed that becoming a more enlightened person belonged to the spiritual plane.

After we came to Active Addictions Anonymous however, we discovered that our true Self, our Spirit is omniscient, and our true Self, our Spirit could therefore not become more enlightened, so becoming more enlightened was a mental phenomenon.

We used our Ninth Step to make amends for the mistakes we had made in our Soul life/our social life so our Soul life could be filled with the love, care, compassion and mercy that is characteristic of our Soul.

In addition, we used our Tenth Step to nourish our thinking mind, our Ego with more enlightened thoughts from our AcAdAn Program, and thus it also became easier for us to become one with our true Self, our Spirit in Step Eleven.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use Step Nine, Ten, and Eleven to become a more enlightened human being and Step Twelve to share my enlightened information with others in my AcAdAn Fellowship.

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September 10: Superficial perceptions

In Tradition Three, we open up both as individuals and as a group to the fact that we cannot judge other people’s lives and motives by looking at them from the outside.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 88

When we began working on developing our social skills by the help of our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that we had a tendency to form our perceptions of others by looking at their age, looks, color, clothing, use of language, social status or other external factors.

We discovered that when we judged a human being on his/her outer appearance, it meant that our superficial perceptions made it difficult for us to receive that inspiration, which might be exactly what we needed to hear in the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment, from another human being.

In this way our superficial perceptions also became a stumbling block both for our continued stay in The Blissful Flow of the Present Moment and for our attempts to develop our social skills.

Therefore, many of us chose to let that stream of thoughts that passes through us with the superficial perceptions move through our thinking mind, our Ego without taking them to heart both to make it possible for us to remain in The Blissful Flow of the Present Moment and to further develop our social skills.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will let my superficial streams of thoughts pass through my thinking mind, my Ego without taking them to heart to be able to remain in The Blissful Flow of the Present Moment and to further develop my social skills.

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September 11: The Step of Consciousness Expansion

We continued the work we began in Steps Two, Three and Seven, by using Step Eleven to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power.
Therefore, this Step is often called ‘The Step of Consciousness Expansion’.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 69

In Step Two, we opened our mind to let a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power into our life, and we chose our personal Higher Power solely from our own heart rather than from the heart of various religions.

In Step Three, we experimented with surrendering to that, which we believed could be our Higher Power's loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention for us with that pain we experienced in various situations.

In Step Seven we had developed our perception of our chosen Higher Power sufficiently to begin to cooperate with our Higher Power about being liberated from the pain of our defects of character through their transformation into the joy of our virtues.

When we came to Step Eleven, we had therefore become able to liberate our self from those circumstances that prevented us from cooperating with our Higher Power, and thus we had become ready to expand our conscious contact with our Higher Power on a daily basis.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Eleventh Step in AcAdAn to expand my conscious contact with my Higher Power.

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September 12: The rightful place of our thinking mind, our Ego

By the help of our Stepwork and our Higher Power, we now began to correct our flawed information and conclusions, by redirecting our thinking from dysfunctional and immature thinking to functional and mature thinking and by allowing our Spirit to take up more and more space in our mind when no thinking was required, which we discovered, was most of the time.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 71

As we grew up, we received much information that had become outdated before we became adults or that were downright erroneous, because the people, who gave us this information, thought it was in conformity with Reality.

In the course of our Step Work in Active Addictions Anonymous, we discovered that we could replace our outdated and erroneous information about existence with updated and accurate information that were in conformity with our experiences and new knowledge.

When we discovered that we could replace one mindset, which didn’t serve us anymore with another mindset, which served us at the present point in time by the help of our AcAdAn Program, we became aware that we had taken our thinking way too seriously.

At the same time, we discovered that when we were able to observe our thoughts and decide that we would think in a way that was loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, it meant that we were on a higher plane of consciousness, on the plane of our Soul-consciousness.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will observe my thinking mind, my Ego from my Soul’s plane, and I will use my observations to give my thinking mind, my Ego its proper size with love, care, compassion and mercy by the help of the Rings of Joy and the Rings of Pain from my AcAdAn Program.

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September 13: To buy the helping hands of others

Yet others of us tried to achieve power and glory in our quest to find self-acceptance and contentment by acquiring material wealth way beyond our needs, and when we used these riches to buy the helping hands of others towards fulfilling our needs and desires, we felt powerful and hoped that others’ expression of respect and love for us this way would help us accept our self better and thereby find contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 16

Many of us held the idea that money, power, property and prestige would help us to better achieve self-acceptance, but those of us who came into possession of these advantages, discovered that it was not how it was in Reality.

It took some time for us to realize that even though we had achieved money, power, property and prestige, we still felt that we were not able to accept our self in many areas that had nothing to do with our possession or how others perceived us, but how we perceived our self.

Furthermore, we discovered that other people's appreciation of our money, power, property and prestige, did not necessarily mean that they appreciated us as a person, and even when they did appreciate us as a personality, it did not help us to achieve self-accept.

Therefore, finally, we became ready to admit to our self that our self-esteem was very low, and that we needed help to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self, and thus we had become ready to begin working with the Program in AcAdAn.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work with my AcAdAn Program so that I can achieve self-acceptance and thus gain access to the Small Ring of Love with its admitting, self-acceptance, health and sanity.

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September 14: Let go and let God

The principle of Step Seven is Letting Go.
Slogan: Let go and let God.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Our Sixth Step work had made it easier for us to stand by our defects of character and to find out how we could move from the pain of our defects of character to the joy of our virtues.

In our Seventh Step we used our discoveries from Step Six, where we became entirely ready to let our Higher Power liberate us from our defects of character, and thus we became able to use our Seventh Step efficiently.

When we discovered that a defect of character was about to become active in our thinking mind, our Ego, we prayed to our chosen Higher Power to liberate us from the effect on our mind of the defect of character in question.

When we had prayed this prayer maximum four times, we let go and let our Higher Power take care of transforming our defect of character, so we could make the quantum leap from a defect of character to a virtue.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Seventh Step to ask my Higher Power to liberate me from a defect of character, when I discover that it is beginning to rise to the surface.

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September 15: To liberate oneself from guilt and shame

When we had completed the formal part of Step Eight, which was about liberating our self from the guilt and shame that we carried from our past, we could use this tool according to our needs in our daily life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 60

When we thought, felt and acted towards our self or others in ways that were unloving, uncaring, hard-hearted and merciless, we felt guilty and ashamed of our self, because we did not act in accordance with the unconditional love, care, compassion and mercy of our true Self, our Spirit.

In our Ninth Step we could make amends to our self and others and for our unloving, uncaring, hardhearted and merciless way of being and thereby liberate our self from feeling guilty and ashamed of our self by choosing to act in a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful way towards our self and others in a similar situation in the future.

Sometimes,we felt guilt and shame without it having got anything to do with being in conflict with the unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful being of our true Self, our Spirit, but simply because others had expressed that we ought to feel guilty and ashamed for various reasons, which they thought we ought to feel guilt and shame about.

We could make amends to our self for this type of guilt and shame by using the Ring of Emotional Sobriety to stand by ourselves by admitting that we did not find it reasonable to feel guilt and shame about this situation, because others thought that we ought to feel guilty and ashamed, so we let go of others’ perception of what we should and should not think, feel and do.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will liberate myself from guilt and shame by using my Eighth Step to find out how I can make amends to myself and others and my Ninth Step to carry out what I found out in Step Eight.

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September 16: To set others free

We looked into those instances where we respected others by accepting that just as it is for us, others needed to follow their own path and their own truth in life even if their path or truth might be different from ours.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 32

When we came to AcAdAn, many of us had a perception of friendship as being a lifelong relationship, where we and our friend were willing to help each other with everything between heaven and earth.

Little by little, as we examined our social life by the help of the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous, we became aware that these perceptions had made us demand to much of our self and others.

We realized that two or more people, who had the same purpose at any given point of time in life, could form a friendship to help each other fulfill their mutual purpose, but when the purpose had been fulfilled they parted ways.

Therefore, we examined if some of the friendships we held on to, were an energy drain or a contribution to our life, and if they no longer served our purpose, we used our Traditions to give our self permission to set them free.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will set those friends free, with whom I no longer have anything in common.

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September 17: Mistakes

Our purpose with this Step was, however, neither to indulge in our mistakes from the past nor to seek forgiveness from others, but to take a look at those areas of our lives we felt guilty about, and which therefore made us feel ashamed of our self.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

Many of us were afraid of coming to Step Eight in AcAdAn, because we imagined that it implied that we had to humiliate our self in front of others, if we admitted that we had made a mistake in relation to them, and that they would use it as a weapon against us at a later point in time.

Furthermore, we were afraid that others would use our admission of our mistake to maligning us, but in Reality we were well prepared, when we came to Step Eight, because in the Sixth Step we had become entirely ready to allow our Higher Power to liberate us from our mistake.

In Step Seven we had worked on giving up our denial, defense, justification and rationalization of our mistake, because we had discovered in Step Six that it was to our advantage to stand by our mistake, so we could work on transforming them into successes.

So, when we came to Step Eight, we were entirely ready to plan the amends that we wanted to make both to ourselves and others without having to humiliate our self for that reason and without fearing that others would use our mistake to maligning us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Eighth Step to plan how I want to make amends to myself and others  for a mistake I have made without needing to humiliate myself, because I am fallible.

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September 18: Just for today

JUST FOR TODAY my thoughts will be on my recovery, living and enjoying life without using dissatisfaction with self, others and life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 14

Many of us had tried to createmanifest an overview of our life on a daily basis, hoping to get control of it in such a way that we would become able to createmanifest what we thought our life should consist in from this day to our death, so we did not have to make decisions on a daily basis.

By trying to do this, we came to carry our whole life on our shoulders every single day without being aware that we had given our self an impossible task, which made us feel exhausted on a daily basis, and that the changeability would demand that we still made decisions for the day, often one hour at a time.

We could neither get an overview of the contents of our life from a point in the present to a point in the future because of the changeability, nor could we get control over our life, because of the powerlessness over everything that we did not know anything about, which limited our freedom of action.

Gradually, as we worked with Step One in Active Addictions Anonymous, we became better and better at accepting our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and thus we became able to live just for today without taking our dissatisfaction with our self, our life, others and the World at large into use.

Today’s contemplation
Today,  I will choose to live a content life by just living it one day at a time, at times one hour at a time.

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September 19: Development of faith

There were others among us for whom coming to believe was about developing our faith in the perception that a Higher Power is present in the core of each atom of the Universe, and hence in the core of our very being.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 24

Before we came to AcAdAn, many of us believed that a faith in a Higher Power was something that a human being had or did not have.

But after we came to AcAdAn and began working with Step Two, we discovered that faith in a Higher Power was something that we could develop.

Little by little, as we developed our faith in a Higher Power, it became possible for us to 'see' our Higher Power in everything and everybody everywhere at all levels of existence.

Thus we began to feel safe as limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human beings and our contentment with life grew.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on developing my faith in my chosen Higher Power, so I can get to feel content and safe although I am a limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human being.

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September 20 Overpowering emotions

At this point in our Seventh Step work, most of us discovered that if we waited to apply Step Seven until, for example, our irritation had developed into hatred, often, the feeling had gained so much power over us that we were not able to or willing to make use of Step Seven.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 57

When we came to Step Seven in our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that if we found our self in a Pain Ring, like for example the Mining of Hatred, with its ill will, unkindness, irritation and impatience, it could be a shorter or a longer stay.

If it was a shorter stay for a few seconds, we could allow our self to take our Seventh Step into use without interrupting what we were doing, but if the stay was a couple of minutes, a more comprehensive Seventh Step was required.

A longer stay for a minute or more meant that our emotion had already gained so much power over our state of mind that we needed to stop what we were doing to investigate, which Pain Ring we found our self in.

When we had identified that we found our self for example in the Miniring of Hatred, we asked our Higher Power to liberate us from the attributes of the Miniring of Hatred by praying to be liberated from each single attributes of the Ring, though no more than four times for each attribute.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Seventh Step immediately if a defect of character becomes active in my mind, and if the defect of character is active for a minute or more I will stop what I am into to carry out a more comprehensive Seventh Step.

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September 21 Integrity

The principle of Tradition Ten is Anonymity.
Slogan: I speak for myself about myself.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

When we learned about the Traditions of AcAdAn, we discovered that our Traditions put emphasis on respect for the principle of anonymity, both when we participated in meetings, and when we had a social interaction with another/others, who confided in us.

The principle of anonymity encouraged us to both maintain the anonymity of the members in a meeting and to treat what was shared in the meeting as confidential, because thereby we could feel more safe, when we participated in and shared in meetings

When we felt safe, we could begin to develop our integrity and thereby become better and better at using the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others.

Thus we also got the courage to speak for our self about our self instead of hiding behind quotes of others’ words of wisdom that we had picked up from our Program or other sources, and instead we expressed our personal wisdom, which was our knowledge paired with our experience.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of Emotional Sobriety to develop my integrity by speaking for myself about myself about how I use my AcAdAn Program.

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September 22: The purpose with our work in AcAdAn

We are men and women, who want to achieve acceptance of our self, others and our life and thus contentment and to fulfill this desire we work with the Program in AcAdAn.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

Because most of us had been on the spiritual path for a long time before we came to AcAdAn, many of us found it difficult to accept that we were chronically dissatisfied, and it was even more difficult for us to admit it both to our self and others.

We knew innermost that the happy life we sought was to be found in oneness with our true Self, our Spirit, and we also knew that dissatisfaction removed us from this oneness so we had a hard time facing that we were chronically dissatisfied.

After we came to AcAdAn and investigated whether it could be true that we were chronically dissatisfied, we discovered that we found reasons to be dissatisfied many times every single day in spite of all our desires for the opposite.

Little by little as we developed acceptance of our own and others’ humanity by the help of the Program in AcAdAn, we discovered that there was no contradiction between our spiritual goals and our humanness and thereby we became more content.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to achieve contentment with my human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

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September 23: To help each other

We feel that our approach to our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction is highly therapeutic, for the recovery power of two or more people helping each other liberate themselves from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction is without parallel.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

Before we came to AcAdAn, many of us had an urge to hide from others, because we were ashamed of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, as we moved in circles putting emphasis on being in oneness with our true Self, our Spirit.

We thought there had to be something wrong with us, when we were dissatisfied with so many things in our daily life while at the same time, we tried to be in oneness with our true Self, our Spirit and thus with the joy without opposites, which we call happiness.

We perceived our self to be spiritual people, and we also wanted to appear to others as spiritual people, so our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction crushed our self-image, and it also made us have an urge to hide our true emotions from others.

Our denial to our self and others of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction made our recovery difficult, and therefore we needed the help from our AcAdAn Program, our sponsor/recovery buddy and other AcAdAn members to be able to recover.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will make use of everything Active Addictions Anonymous has put at my disposal for me to become able to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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September 24: The loving intention of our Higher Power

When we opened our minds to this perception, we realized that we could actually see our Higher Power’s loving intention behind everything; even behind the misfortunes and pains of our lives, because when we looked for it, we always came to a point where the loving intention became obvious to us, both behind our fortunes and our misfortunes, our joys and our pains.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 24

Most of us had not imagined that we could become able to see our life's misfortunes, sufferings and pains as an expression of our Higher Power's love for us, until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous and wanted to use our AcAdAn Program to learn to be content under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

However, in Step Two in our AcAdAn Program we worked with our belief-systems so as to investigate areas of our life, where we felt let down by our Higher Power, because we perceived these experiences as misfortunes, sufferings and pains and this we could not reconcile with that there could be a loving intention behind them.

On closer inspection, we spotted that we had had our wisdom and capacity for mercy expanded by the help of the painful experiences in our life, so they had served a purpose, which was to our advantage, but which we had not spotted until we inventoried, what was the result in the long run of our sufferings.

Furthermore, we discovered that pain is an advantageous part of life, because it gives us a short lived action signal that tells us that we need to change direction, and if we did not feel ready to change direction, the action signal became stronger, and it was this we called misfortune and suffering, but exactly this gave us renewed strength to change direction to our advantage.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to inventory the sufferings of my life so as to find the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention that my sufferings served.

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September 25: To hit others with guilt and shame

In Step Four, we looked at the wrongs we thought that others had done to us so as to be able to reverse the process concerning the guilt and shame that we thought others ought to feel for what they did to us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 60

In Step Four in our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that an important part of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction consisted in the dissatisfaction we felt, because others have done something in relation to us that we thought they should not have done, or they failed to do something that we thought they should have done in relation to us.

Gradually, as we identified the hurts we still suffered under from our childhood to the time, when we did our Fourth Step, at the same time we became aware that what others had done or had not done in relation to us in Reality was not personal, but was due to the energy field, they were in at that time.

Furthermore, we discovered that our perception of what they had done or had not done, was also associated with what field of energy we were in our self at that time, and that meant that we slowly let go of thinking that others should feel guilty and ashamed because of what they had done or had not done in relation to us.

Besides this, we also slowly became able let go of thinking that we our self were guilty and ought to feel ashamed of what we had contributed with to createmanifest the situation that pained us, and when we reached to Step Eight and experienced The Grand Day of Sacred Forgiveness, we discovered that this day made it easier for us to let go of guilt and shame thereafter.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to recover from my desires to hit myself and others with guilt and shame, because I experienced pain in a specific situation.

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September 26: The nature of illnesses

Our active addiction can be of a mild, moderate or severe nature, just as it is the case with any other physical or psychological illness.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

In our Second Step in Active Addictions Anonymous we learned to find the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention behind the illnesses of our life whether our illnesses were physical or psychological, and in that way we grew in wisdom and mercy.

We discovered that all illnesses could come to us with a nature that was mild, moderate or severe, but no matter what form they came to us in, they always and without exception came with a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention.

It could be difficult for many of us to accept that there could be a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention behind our illnesses, especially if they were of a severe nature, which might lead to our physical death within a shorter or longer time frame.

In our daily application of Step Two in those areas of our day, where we experienced physical or psychological illness, we became better and better at being in touch with love, care, compassion and mercy towards our physical body and our mind, even when they were ill.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to develop unconditional love for, care for, compassion with and mercy towards my physical body and my mind.

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September 27: The purpose of personal inventory

When the day was over, we reflected on the events of the day and took a stand on one of the situations of the day and looked at where we took into use the attributes from The the Ring of Emptiness, Ring of Self-Centeredness, The Ring of Codependency, the Big Ring of Pain and one of the Small Rings of Pain in the course of our day.

Then, we looked at what came out of it and looked into what we thought we could advantageously change in view of a similar situation in future.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 45

Those of us, who had worked daily with Step Ten in our AcAdAn Program for a while, had discovered that we gradually began to feel young again, no matter what age we had, and this was because we got better and better at looking at those areas we were dissatisfied with and transform our attitude towards these areas.

In this way, we were liberated from much stress that ate away at our body before we came to AcAdAn, and the purpose with the daily inventory of our self was exactly to build up the knowledge that the situations we were dissatisfied with could always be seen from another perspective that made us content, and thereby we were liberated from much stress.

We built up our contentment over time by the help of perseverance in our Tenth Step, and gradually as we became more and more experienced in our daily self-examinations, it became easier and easier for us to look at any situation from a perspective that gave us contentment, and thereby our capacity to live a content life grew.

By the help of our daily Tenth Step, it became possible for us to change on a daily basis and thus our life changed in the same way that children and young people constantly changed their perception of themselves and their life, and therefore the state of mind, we achieved through our daily Tenth Step inventories is called for being 'eternally young'.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Tenth Step to keep myself and my life 'eternally young'.

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September 28: To do justice to our anger

Instead of suppressing or ignoring our anger and thus allowing it to become hatred, we admitted to our self, our Higher Power and another human being that we were angry, and we found out what we felt deprived of or which of our boundaries we felt were transgressed.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

When we were children, most of us learned that our anger was not an acceptable emotion, and if it were our parents, we were angry at, it became even more dangerous for us to show our anger, because it was life threatening for us if our parents chose to disown us.

Furthermore, we had got the impression that we were not allowed to be angry, because we were on the spiritual path, but in AcAdAn we learned that our anger was a messenger from our inner, who made us aware that we needed to change something.

Therefore we used our Program to find out, why we were angry, and we discovered that most of the time it was because one of our boundaries had been crossed or that a desire we had, had not been fulfilled.

When we had listened to the message of our anger by writing it down in our Step Work, we used the knowledge we achieved to carry out those actions that the message demanded from us, and we did it without criticizing our self for being angry and without offending others.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will listen attentively and respectfully to my anger, and I will act on the message of my anger in a way that satisfies me without hurting myself or others.

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September 29: To liberate oneself from one's successes

We also became aware that it was just as important for us to liberate our self from our past successes as it was to liberate our self from our past failures, if we wanted to be able to live in the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment and thus, achieve contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

Before we came to AcAdAn, many of us had made it a habit when we became self-critical, to try to recover from our self-criticism by thinking of past or present successes, but after we came to AcAdAn, however, we became aware that when we were self-critical, we found our self in the Ring of Self-centeredness.

In AcAdAn we came to know the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise, and we also learned that we needed to recover from our self-criticism by moving into the Ring of God-centeredness with its joy, empowerment, open-mindedness and gratitude instead of praising our self.

By the help of this work we realized that when we praised our self of the successes from the past so as to recover from the pain of our self-criticism, we found our self in the Ring of Self-centeredness still, because we praised our self, and thus our pain continued in a concealed way, even if we thought we had liberated our self from it with the euphoria, our selfpraise createdmanifested.

We wanted to live in the joy of the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment, and that was not possible if we tried to liberate our self from our self-criticism by using self-praise, and when we lost touch with the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment by going to the past in our thoughts, we still experienced the pain from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will liberate myself from praising myself of  successes from the past by using the Ring of God-centeredness to let go of my self-praise, so that I can enter into the joy of The Blissful Flow of the Present Moment.

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September 30: To give others time and space

,

We allow others to take the principles to heart at the pace they want, because we know that the Program will only work for those, who want to take it to heart.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 98

Many of us became so enthusiastic about what we discovered, when we worked with the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous, that we wanted to share it with all the people, we knew, who suffered from chronic dissatisfaction.

We discovered, however, that others had their own path and made their own choices in accordance with their path, so our enthusiasm could make them feel forced and therefore repulsed rather than attracted to our Program.

When we talked to others about what we had achieved by the help of our AcAdAn Program, we chose to pay attention to whether others were receptive to what we had to share or whether others would rather talk about something else.

If we saw that others were not interested in what we had to share, we let go of talking about it so they could get time and space to find out if AcAdAn was something for them without them needing to feel overwhelmed or forced by our enthusiasm.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will to give others time and space to find out if AcAdAn is something for them, and I will give other AcAdAn members time and space to take the Program to heart at a pace that suits them.

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OCTOBER

October 01 Forgiving our self and others	October 02 Courage in AcAdAn	October 03 Remedies for addiction to chronic dissatisfaction
October 04 The Small Ring of Truth	October 05 Fleeing from life	October 06 Principles
October 07 The joy of helping	October 08 The Bird Phoenix	October 09 Empowerment
October 10 Amassing riches	October 11 Admitting of our successes	October 12 Constant remembrance
October 13 Discovery of our defects of character	October 14 The God Prayer	October 15 Stopping the sufferings of life
October 16 The Small Ring of Love	October 17 Our perception of the right thing	October 18 The work with the Archetypal Rings
October 19 Application of contentment	October 20 Careful choices	October 21 Our basic needs
October 22 Explaining our mistakes away	October 23 Individual choice	October 24 Contribution to the Fellowship
October 25 Meeting attendance	October 26 Our innermost core	October 27 Liberation from envy
October 28 Liberation from hurting our self and others	October 29 Personal anonymity	October 30 Freedom to choose
October 31 Overpowering of others

October 01: Forgiving our self and others

The principle of Step Eight is Forgiveness. Slogan: Forgive my mistakes and give me the capacity to forgive those who mistake me.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Only, when we came to AcAdAn, many of us discovered that forgiveness of our self was the hardest of all forgiveness, because forgiveness can not be given as a decision, but has to spring from the heart to bring forth that liberation from the feeling of guilt, which we experienced when we thought that we had made a mistake.

We also discovered that forgiveness of others was difficult, because we often thought that others had wronged us too in the situation we had in mind, and many of us felt that others got away with having wronged us if we tried to make amends to them for our own mistake.

Therefore the work with forgiveness came late in our Program, namely in Step Eight, where we decided which amends we wanted to make to our self and/or others for those actions we felt guilty about, which we therefore felt ashamed of and wished that we had done differently.

To be able to reach that point where we forgave our self and/or others for our/their mistakes from our heart, we needed help both from our Program, our Fellowship, our Sponsor and our Higher Power for us to become able to work with our list for amends.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will accept that forgiveness of myself and others, takes place late in my Program, so I am waiting patiently for my time to come, when I can begin to forgive myself and others by the help of Step Eight.

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October 02: Courage in AcAdAn

By working Steps One, Two and Three, we had achieved the level of trust and strength it took to honestly look at our self, and we needed these qualities in Step Four so as to be able to take an inventory of our self and of our life as it had expressed itself until now.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 29

In AcAdAn, we have a different perception of courage than that, which is usually found in our environment, which often links courage with physical action, whereas we perceive courage to be the willingness to inventory our motives.

It required courage of us to use Step One in AcAdAn to admit how we used mental-emotional pain energies in our spiritual, social, mental, emotional, energetic, physical or material life, and how this made our lives unmanageable.

It also required courage of us to open our self to take our chosen Higher Power’s loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention with our pains into consideration in Step Two, because we often felt that our existential pains was some kind of a punishment.

Moreover, in Step Three, it required courage of us to be willing to surrender to the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention we found out in Step Two, because it required that we changed and change frightened us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use Step One, Two and Three from my AcAdAn Program to achieve the courage to face my humanness, so I can achieve the courage to carry out my Fourth Step.

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October 03: Remedies for addiction to chronic dissatisfaction

We had tried several other means to rid our self of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction – psychologists, lovers, new places, new people, new jobs or all of these.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 23

For many years we had felt an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in our emotional life, and after working with our AcAdAn Program for some time we became aware that our emotional life sprang from our thought life.

Therefore we wanted to learn to put those thoughts into words that gave rise to our painful emotions and when we learned that, it made us realize that the remedies we had used in an attempt to get rid of our undercurrent of dissatisfaction had been inadequate.

In this way we discovered that we needed to develop our capacity to both look inward to investigate our psychological landscape and to look outward to investigate what was happening around us so as to become able to take care of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Gradually, as our observation capacity developed, we realized that we could give our self reasons to be content or to be dissatisfied with same truth value, and thereby our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction began to pick up speed.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to find reasons to be content with something I usually am dissatisfied with.

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October 04: The Small Ring of Truth

When The Small Ring of Truth became active in us, we felt that everybody is equally valuable to totality (Humility) even though we were not able to evaluate the full value of our self and others (Honesty).

Therefore, we did not try to evaluate our worth or that of others; instead, we sought to find that part in our self where we recognized the emotions of others (Fellowship), while at the same time, we accepted that we and others may have different reasons to feel the way we did (Individuality).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 40

Before we came to AcAdAn, many of us had the perception that we should give up our individuality and submit to others' thoughts and emotions so as to be accepted by them.

After we came to AcAdAn and began our work with the Small Ring of Truth, we realized that our individuality is our unique gift from our Higher Power

We also realized that our individuality is our unique gift to the World, so it was a great relief for us to become able to use the Small Ring of Truth in our social life.

The Small Ring of Truth gave us permission to honestly show our self as we are, and it also gave us the Fellowship with others that we had longed for.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Small Ring of Truth to honestly stand by my individuality.

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October 05: Fleeing from life

After having investigated how our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our humanity expressed itself, we also took a look at how we had tried to escape our humaneness by taking our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction into use.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 15

When we came to AcAdAn we discovered that deep down we had known all along, who we truly are, but this knowledge about our self as an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and immortal/unchangeable Spirit had been covered by layer upon layer of createdmanifested forms, all of which are limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable.

Because we had lost contact with our true Self, our Spirit, life as a limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable creaturemanifestation could seem daunting and give us a desire to escape from our life as a human being, and our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction was one of the many means we use in an attempt to escape our life as human beings.

Little by little, as our work with our AcAdAn Program evolved, we began to spot our true Self, our Spirit again and we discovered that when we were in oneness with our true Self, our Spirit, life as a human being was no longer scary, and we also lose the desire to escape from our humanness and our life as human beings.

In oneness with our true Self, our Spirit we felt entertained and content with our life on Earth under all circumstances, no matter what they were, because we realized that our participation in the life on Earth was like attending a live three-dimensional drama, which we could participate in heart and soul without having to take the game to seriously.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Short Seventh Step Prayer, if I begin taking myself or my life so seriously that I no longer have fun.

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October 06: Principles

Some of us chose to consider the earthly and spiritual principles to be our Higher Power, and began opening our minds to these principles.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 25

When we began studying AcAdAn’s Principles, we wondered if it was to our advantage to take the principles to heart or not, because we did not want to change our old habits in order to be able to take the principles to heart.

We experienced those changes that we imagined it would take to be overwhelming, but exactly because we were reluctant to follow them, we became aware of what the consequences of not following them were.

When we became aware of these consequences, we hesitantly began to use the principles of the Program, and in that way we achieved a qualified knowledge about what it meant for us when we followed the principles.

This knowledge made us ready to surrender to the spiritual and earthly principles, which says that our true Self, our Spirit is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and immortal, and that our human self is limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will surrender to the earthly and the spiritual principles by the help of my work with my AcAdAn Program.

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October 07: The joy of helping

We also did our best to remember that it is given nobody to help everybody with every issue and that it would not give us joy to help someone if we were not bestowed with the capacity to help out with the issue at hand.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 33

Most of us felt joy about helping others in a way that had an improving effect on their life, but in our work with the Rings from our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that sometimes it could happen that our desire to help sprang from a desire to achieve our 'drug' in our disease of codependency.

The ‘drug’ in our disease of codependency consists in achieving praise for our help, and the desire for praise made us refrain from taking a stand on, whether we had experience with the area, we wanted to help with, whether what we wanted to help with actually was a help and if it would give us joy to help.

At other times it could happen that we wanted to help, because we felt a low self-esteem and therefore we thought that it could help us to become able to praise our self of being of value, but we discovered that it meant that we found our self in the pain from the Ring of Self-centeredness with its self-praise, euphoria, self-criticism and depressions so that did not ease our pain either.

Therefore, it was important for us to give our self time and space to consider, whether we had experience with the area, we wanted to help with, whether what we wanted to help with actually was a help and whether it would give us joy to help, and if those conditions were not fulfilled, we gave up the idea of helping.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will give myself time and space to inventory my motives before I offer my help to a fellow human being, even if I imagine that I would rejoice in helping.

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October 08: The Bird Phoenix

When thus our pain was burned to ashes, we rose from the ashes with our new wisdom like the Bird Phoenix of Mythology that burns to ashes just to rise from the ashes to a new life on a daily basis.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 19

When we had finished the formal part of Step Ten in our AcAdAn Program, we had achieved the capacity to use the tools of the Program for a daily inventory on the existential pains, we had experienced in the course of our day.

We experienced pains of various types and they could be physical, energetic, emotional, mental, social and/or spiritual, but at this point in our Step Work, we had achieved the capacity to take care of them,

No matter which area we wanted to work with, we could select the pain, which had given us the biggest energy loss in the course of the day and work our Tenth Step inventory on this pain, and as a result we grew in wisdom and compassion.

At the same time, the mythological Bird Phoenix became realized in our life, because we rose from the ashes of our pain with our new wisdom and capacity for mercy in the same way as the Bird Phoenix that rises from the ashes of his/her pain to a new life on a daily basis.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to rise to a new life from the ashes of my pain on a daily basis.

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October 09: Empowerment

When we respect each other’s diversity and listen attentively to each other, we feel comfortable in each other’s company, and benefit more from what others have to share with us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 85

When we learned to consciously use the Ring of God-centeredness with its joy, empowerment open-mindedness and gratitude in our Sixth Step, we discovered that we received an empowerment in our AcAdAn meetings.

We received this empowerment, because we both had the opportunity to share our own experiences with the Program and to hear about the experiences others had with the Program and thereby our perspectives on our Program became expanded.

In was in this way our meetings became a source of empowerment, and we also observed that we became happy about participating in meetings, because we opened our mind to listen gratefully to what others had at heart and moreover we shared from our heart too.

At the same time, it also became easier and easier for us to appreciate and respect each other's differences and to feel comfortable in each other's company, and simultaneously it also became easier and easier for us to consciously use the energies of the Ring of God-centeredness.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will be aware of how the Ring of God-centeredness opens up for me, when I am in a meeting in AcAdAn because of the empowerment to understand my Program better that I receive during meetings.

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October 10: Amassing riches

Some of us amassed spiritual riches way beyond our existential needs in our attempts to achieve power and glory, and thus self-acceptance and contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 16

After we began on the spiritual path, we picked up many pearls of wisdom through our meetings with various spiritual teachers, and some of us discovered that when we passed on these pearls to others, they praised us for our understanding.

They did this without considering if we had taken the pearl in question to heart our self and made it our own through experience, and this could lead to that we began to collect pearls of wisdom without making them our own.

In this way we could amass riches of pearls that we could pass on to our fellow human beings in exchange for their praise and even in exchange for their resources in the form of their money, time, energy and interest, if we would teach them.

Gradually, as we discovered that this did not createmanifest the self-acceptance and contentment that we had hoped for, we became ready to let go of this means in our attempts to achieve self-acceptance and contentment.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to liberate myself from the thought that the pearls of my spiritual riches can createmanifest the self-acceptance and contentment that I long for, if I have not made them mine throught experience .

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October 11: Admitting of our successes

Some of us found it difficult to admit to another person about our dissatisfaction with our self, our lives and our failures, and others of us found it difficult to admit areas where we felt satisfied with our self, our lives and our successes.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

As members of AcAdAn we worked on recovering from our existential pains on our various planes of existence, and this recovery was an essential incentive for us to work with the Program on a daily basis.

Therefore it came as a surprise for us, when we came to Step Five and were told that it was just as important that we admitted the joy of our successes as it was that we admitted the pain of our mistakes, if we wanted to live in The Blissful Flow of the Present Moment.

Many of us had got the impression that we ought not talk about our joy about our successes, because others might think that it was self-praising and unattractive, but if we did not express them the grew wild in our mind.

In our secret life, this createdmanifested an exaggerated picture of our successes, but when we got used to talk openly about our joy because of them, they got their proper size, and at the same time it became easier for us to let go of the past, also in this area.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will share with a another human being about a success from the past, which was particularly delightful for me.

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October 12 Constant remembrance

We maintained contact with our Higher Power throughout the day by praying for our Higher Power’s guidance before we began each and every new activity in the course of the day, as to how we could accomplish the task at hand in accordance with our Higher Power’s will for us, and we then prayed for the power to carry out the task to the best of our abilities.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 70

In Reality our omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and immortal/unchangeable Higher Power does not need anything at all from our side, so when we tried to come to know our Higher Power's will for us anyway in Step Eleven, it was due to that our innermost heart’s desires were also that, which was our Higher Power’s will for us.

Moreover, our heart's innermost desires were known by our chosen Higher Power, but were often being obscured for us by our thinking mind, our Ego, so in our Eleventh Step in our AcAdAn Program we sought through prayer and meditation to come to know our Higher Power’s will for us, because we now knew that it was also our own true will for our self.

Little by little, as we became better and better at picking up our Higher Power's guidance, it became more and more important for us to move through the day in accordance with our Higher Power’s will for us, one hour at a time, and therefore we began to practice constant remembrance of our Higher Power’s will for us, one task at a time.

By constantly staying in touch with our chosen Higher Power’s will for us in this way, we ensured that we surrendered to our innermost heart’s desires under all circumstances no matter, what they were without letting our self be led astray by our thinking mind, our Ego, who could easily lead us out on detours, which were an energy drain that we did not want.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use AcAdAn’s Eleventh Step Prayer to practice constant remembrance.

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October 13: Discovery of our defects of character

Thus, our part of the work consisted in that we prayed to our Higher Power to liberate us from our defects of character every time we discovered them arising within us in the course of the day, and our Higher Power’s part was to liberate us from them, by transforming them.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

In our Seventh Step, we began to cooperate with our Higher Power about being liberated from our defects of character, when we discovered that they were about to take over our trend of thinking.

Many of us thought that it would be easy for us to do so, because we had worked with our defects of character in Step Four, Five and Six and had come to know them from many different perspectives.

When we began the daily cooperation with our Higher Power about being liberated from our defects of character, when we spotted that they rose to the surface, we discovered however, that it was not as easy as we had imagined.

Because we always and without exception had a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention with everything we did, it could make us deny, defend, justify and rationalize
that our way of fulfilling our intention did not work as intended.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Seventh Step to pray to my Higher Power about being liberated from my use of my defects of character as soon as I discover that one of them are active, so my loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention can be fulfilled.

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October 14: The God Prayer

The ‘I’ Version God You are the only true goal of my life I’m yet but a slave of my wishes putting bar to my advancement and You are the only God and Power Who can take me up to that stage.

The ‘We’ Version God You are the only true goal of our life We are yet but slaves of our wishes putting bar to our advancement and You are the only God and Power Who can take us up to that stage

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

Most of us had used many thoughts and feelings on considering what our life’s purpose might be for real.

It was clear to us that we wanted to be happy, but we could not figure out how we could make our self happy, so we had tested many ideas that we thought was the solution.

Again and again we discovered that when we were happy for some reason, we became unhappy, when our reason to be happy disappeared.

In Step Eleven we discovered that we were happy for no reason, when we experienced oneness with our true Self, our Spirit by the help of prayer and meditation.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use Step Eleven in my AcAdAn Program to reach my only true goal, which is to be unconditionally happy.

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October 15: Stopping the sufferings of life

But no matter how much knowledge we acquired, we had to face the fact that life and death went on anyway, and in spite of our vast knowledge and capacity to relieve many maladies of life, we were still paining either, materially, physically, time-space wise, emotionally, thought-wise, socially or spiritually.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 18

Gradually, as we faced our existential pains at all levels by the help of our AcAdAn Program, life’s pains began to occur less frightening to us, because we developed functional ways to deal with our pains.

In meetings we heard other members say: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice, and they explained to us that pain is a short lived action-signal, and suffering is refusing to carry out the action that the pain ordains.

Furthermore, we discovered that our physical pains was the loud and definitive expression of painful thoughts and emotions that we had not been aware of or that we had not known how to handle.

Now, however, we had our AcAdAn Program to take care of our painful thoughts and emotions, and thus we became able to stop our existential pains before they manifested as sufferings.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will stop my existential pains by the help of my AcAdAn Program, so they do not have to develop into sufferings.

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October 16: The Small Ring of Love

When The Small Ring of Love became active in us, we took responsibility for our self by fulfilling our needs materially, physically, time-space wise, emotionally, thought-wise, socially and spiritually (Self-acceptance), and we sought the help of others with those needs that we could not fulfill our self by admitting our need for help to another human being (Admission).

As we fulfilled our needs this way (Sanity), we experienced an increased well-being in all areas (Health).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 39

Before we came to AcAdAn, most of us had got the impression that it was love setting our self aside so as to give to others, so if we gave to our self instead, we had gotten the impression that it meant that we were selfish people.

Therefore we became surprised, when we began working with the Small Ring of Love, because it gave us the information that it is love to take care of our self first and foremost and to seek help with those areas, where we could not solve our problems on our own.

When we began using the Small Ring of Love, we discovered that when we treated our self the way of the Small Ring of Love suggests, our sense of self-esteem and contentment grew and so did our capacity to take care of others from the heart too.

This led us to become better and better at taking care of our self, and the increased self-esteem and the increased contentment we experienced in this context was simultaneously beneficial for all the people we came into contact with without them necessarily needing our help.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will follow the suggestion in my AcAdAn Program about taking care of myself by using the Small Ring of Love as a guideline.

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October 17: Our perception of the right thing

We also gave our self time and space to express our perception of the right thing without trying to force our understanding on others or to overwhelm them with our perception.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 48

Despite the fact that we had worked a lot with accepting our thinking mind, our Ego before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us felt uncertain about our own perception of the right thing.

Therefore we could feel compelled to try to convince others about that what was the right thing for us also was the right thing for them, and our eagerness in attempting to convince them about that could make us try to overwhelm them with our perception.

We felt that it was not enough that we our self knew what was the right thing for us, and therefore we wanted that others should confirm that it was the right thing for all by also taking it to heart as if it was the right thing for them too.

Little by little, as we worked with our humanness, we discovered that no two people were to be found that had completely identical Mother Earth bodies, and thereby we realized that we are all unique, and therefore the right thing for us was not necessarily the right thing for others.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will express my perception of the right thing without trying to make others take my perception to heart by overwhelming them with arguments so as to receive their approval of my perception.

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October 18: The work with the Archetypal Rings

We made our self entirely ready to allow our Higher Power to liberate us from our defects of character by investigating how our defects of character affected us in our daily life socially, mentally, emotionally and energetically by first and foremost working mentally, emotionally and energetically with the energy fields of the Rings, also known as Archetypes.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 46

In our work with the Rings of Joy and Pain in our AcAdAn Program, we discovered various mental-emotional energy patterns, and in our meetings we became aware that these patterns held the same energies for all of us, even if we expressed them differently, and therefore they were called Archetypes/basic patterns.

In our meetings we became more and more aware that many different ways were to be found, which we could use to handle the Archetypes, and it was inspiring for us to hear about how others chose to handle them, whether it concerned their perception of the Rings of Pain or the Rings of Joy.

Thereby we realized that our usual way of handling the Archetypes was merely one possibility for handling our material life, our physical life, our time and personal space, our emotional life, our thought life, our social life and our spiritual life, and as a result our creativitymanifestivity and capacity to observe began to unfold on all of levels.

By investigating those Archetypes that brought us emotional pain and those Archetypes that brought us emotional joy by the help of Step Six, we became better and better at making conscious choices about what energies, we wanted to take into use in various situations and thus we became more content with our self and our life.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work consciously with the mental-emotional Archetypes in Step Six, so I can develop my capacity to choose joy over pain in as many situations as possible.

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October 19: Application of contentment

The only way to avoid returning to our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction is by not taking our dissatisfaction into use.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

Gradually, as our work with our AcAdAn Program developed, we discovered that behind the use of each and every one of our defects of character, our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction lay as the initiator of the defect of character in question.

This meant that it became even more important for us to use our Seventh Step to liberate ourselves from using our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction in the course of our day, and if we could not make our Seventh Step work for us immediately, we stopped what we were into.

When we stopped what we were into to focus on our Seventh Step so as to pray to our Higher Power to liberate us from a feeling of dissatisfaction in the situation, we got a breathing space, which made it possible for us to experience that our dissatisfaction was lifted.

If our Seventh Step still did not work for us, we chose to use our Sixth Step to turn our perception of the situation or the person around by thinking of what we could choose to be content with in this situation and in this person.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will choose to focus on, what I am content with in each situation, and what I am content with in each person that I me in the course of my day.

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October 20: Careful choices

However, we had to be careful in choosing the person with whom we wanted to share what we had found out about our self in Step Four.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 43

In Step Four, we came face to face with many experiences that had been so painful for us in our childhood, youth, adulthood and old age that we had pushed them down under the threshold of our day consciousness.

Moreover, we came face to face with many joyful experiences that we had not shared with any human being, because we were afraid of being perceived as boastful or of being ridiculed because these experiences delighted us.

To get the courage to bring our painful and joyful experiences into our day-consciousness in our Fourth Step, we had a need to know that the person with whom we wanted to share our existential pains and joys was understanding and merciful.

Therefore most of us preferred to share our discoveries from Step Four with our AcAdAn sponsor/recovery buddy, because he/she had faced his/her painful and joyful experiences himself/herself in his/her own Fourth Step.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will be careful when choosing the person with whom I share my existential pains and joys, so I do not need to fear that my confidentiality will be misused.

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October 21: Our basic needs

We looked at how we had harmed our self time-space wise by depriving our self of the time and space that we needed for our self so as to be able to take care of our basic needs and personal interests.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us were not aware that we not only needed money to take care of the basic needs of our Mother Earth body/our physical body being well-rested, well-groomed, well-nourished and well-exercised.

After we came to AcAdAn, we realized that we also needed to show interest in taking care of these needs, because if we were interested, we became willing to use our energy and our time on this care for our mother Earth body/our physical body.

By the help of our Active Addictions Anonymous Program, we became better and better at liberating our self from the thoughts and emotional hindrances we came across, when we began trying to take care of our basic needs as human beings on the Earth.

Gradually, as our loving care for our Mother Earth body/our physical body developed, we not only discovered the harm we had inflicted on our self, but we also discovered that we harmed others with those states of mind that arose when we were unrested, ungroomed, untrained and malnourished.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will treat my Mother Earth body/physical body with loving care by seeing to it that he/she is well rested, well groomed, well nourished and well exercised.

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October 22: Explaining our mistakes away

When we were wrong, we didn’t try to explain to others how or why we committed a mistake, because thereby we harmed our self and others further, and this was also contrary to our desire to let go of our mistakes as soon as possible.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 67

Most of us put much too high demands on our self, because we imagined that we were not allowed to make mistakes, if we were to be valuable in other people's eyes, so we demanded from ourselves that we must do a new task perfectly, even if it was the first time, we did it.

That could make us deny, defend, justify, rationalize and explain away our mistakes, if others called our attention to that we had made a mistake and thus we blocked the learning process, which any mistake opens the possibility for.

If we discovered our self that we had made a mistake, which we had to admit to another human being, we could wish to explain how it had happened and why, but our Tenth Step suggests us to refrain from explaining or defending our mistake.

In AcAdAn we learned that attack is the first act of violence, and defense is the first act of war, and therefore we no longer wanted to defend our mistakes by explaining how it happened, so instead we took it to heart and corrected it as fast as possible.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will merely admit my mistakes and correct them, whether it is another person, who calls my attention to my mistake or it is me, who spots it.

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October 23: Individual choice

It is up to each one of us to ascertain for our self, with the help of the Program, our Sponsor and our Higher Power, if we have a desire to give up our dissatisfaction with our self, and thereby with others and our lives.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 88

After we had worked with the Rings of Joy and Pain in our AcAdAn Program for some time, we understood that we are all unique and therefore only we alone could know what our psychological landscape looked like, what was joyful and painful to us and how we used the Rings of Joy and Pain in our life.

Nobody, but our self could thus know if we suffered from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability and as a result of our illness found reasons to be dissatisfied with this, that and the other many times a day, and if we wanted to be liberated from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Therefore, it was important for us to give our self permission to hold on to our membership of AcAdAn, even though our near and dear ones maybe began to oppose our membership, when they experienced the new strength we achieved in our social interactions, which made it difficult for them to have the same control of our actions that they had had before.

It could also happen that we shared about our AcAdAn membership with another person at our workplace or in our circle of friends, and this person had maybe difficulty imagining that we could have a need for such a Fellowship, and yet we knew in our innermost heart, we were an AcAdAn member, because we needed to be.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will hold on to my membership of AcAdAn, because I need it even if others might think that I do not need it.

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October 24: Contribution to the Fellowship

We let the kitty bag go around at our AcAdAn meetings and each of us contributes towards the rent of the room, the coffee or other refreshments and for meeting other group expenses according to our desire and capacity.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 93

In AcAdAn we were not obligated to contribute money if we did not want to, but if we wanted to, we could contribute to make our meeting with other AcAdAns possible and cozy.

We wanted to have our meetings in a room, and because we were self-supporting, we needed to pay for rent of the room, and if we wanted to drink a cup of coffee or tea during the meeting, we needed money for this expense.

We salute the for free principle by making it possible for everyone, who wants it to get access to AcAdAn’s literature and to attend AcAdAn’s meetings without having to pay anything for getting access to those resources that AcAdAn has to offer.

If however, we had the possibility of paying for our own coffee or tea as well as contribute to paying for the rent of our meeting room, we made it easier for our self and newcomers to get access to the recovery, which Active Addictions Anonymous has to offer.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will give a contribution to the costs in AcAdAn by paying for my coffee or tea plus give my contribution to the rent of our meeting room.

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October 25: Meeting attendance

We have learned from our experiences in the AcAdAn Fellowship that those of us who keep coming to our meetings regularly learn to stop using dissatisfaction with our self, others and our lives.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

There were many undiscovered sides of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, which we could only spot in interaction with our kindred spirits, who had the same purpose as us.
When we participated in meetings in Active Addictions Anonymous, we heard our kindred spirits share about how they handled their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

By listening attentively to other members, we became aware of the many ways in which our own addiction to chronic dissatisfaction could come to expression.

Those inspirations, we received, helped us in our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and thereby we become more and more content.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will attend a meeting in Active Addictions Anonymous and take to heart a new perspective from what others have to share about how their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction expresses itself.

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October 26: Our innermost core

When our focus point became empty, we became able to achieve the direct experience of our Spirit, our Highest Self, and thereby we became able to see, hear, feel and sense our Spirit’s presence from where unconditional love, care, compassion and mercy flows through our entire being from our innermost core.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 72

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, most of us knew that we are a spirit, who has an experience as a human being, because we had been on the spiritual path for a long time.

As we began to move into the spiritual path, we were seekers, however, without having a clear idea of what we were looking for, or how we could find what we were looking for.

Gradually, it dawned on us that what we were looking for was our true Self, our Spirit and that our true Self, our Spirit is our innermost core.

We also discovered that it was not so easy for us to rest in oneness with our true Self, our Spirit, because our thinking mind, our Ego often stood in the way of our oneness with our true Self, our Spirit.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to clean up my thinking mind, my Ego, so I can be in oneness with my innermost core, my true Self, my Spirit most of the time.

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October 27: Liberation from envy

Instead of enviously thinking that we could never achieve what others had, we chose to move forward in life with hope that we too could achieve what we wanted if we worked for it by learning from those we envied as to how they had achieved what they had or were.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, many of us had confused avarice with envy, but after we came to AcAdAn and became acquainted with the characteristics of the Small Ring of Avarice and the Small Ring of Envy, we discovered that envy consists in that we believed that we could not achieve what others had or were, even if we worked on it.

That could make us feel defiant, because we thought that our Higher Power did not give us what we wanted, and that made us want to distance our self from the love, care, compassion and mercy of our Higher Power, and instead of seeking our Higher Power’s help to have our desire fulfilled, we submitted to the situation.

We learned, however, in our Sixth Step in Active Addictions Anonymous that we could liberate our self from envy by using the Small Ring of Hope with it’s credence, information, discernment and serenity to have credence in that we could get what we wanted, no matter what it was, if we worked on it our self.

Therefore we sought information from those, who possessed what we had been inspired to want too and gradually, as our discernment developed and the results began to show, we achieved serenity concerning the fulfillment of all of our desires, because now we knew what energies we could use to fulfill our desires.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Small Ring of Hope to fulfill a desire I have been inspired to want by seeing someone else having it or being it.

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October 28: Liberation from hurting our self and others

We took a closer look at how we had harmed our self and others emotionally by hurting or putting our self and others down in our thoughts, words and actions, and how we had harmed our self and others mentally by lying, manipulating, concealing or distorting the facts of our life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 62

Many of us of us had not discovered that we hurt our self when we hurt others, until we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, but after having worked with the Rings of Social Interaction in Step Eight, we became aware that we became sad about having hurt others, when our anger-intoxication had subsided.

This knowledge we used in our Tenth Step to begin inventorying situations, where we found our self in an anger-intoxication, which made us consciously desire to hurt another human being, whether we actually acted on our desire to hurt or merely cultivated revengeful thoughts in our mind's eye.

During our Tenth Step inventory, we used all our tools from Step One to Step Ten included, and when we were done with our inventory, we had formed a clear picture of how we wanted to act without hurting our self or others in a similar situation in the future.

Gradually, as this work progressed, our understanding grew of that we hurt our self when we hurt others, and therefore we no longer projected our anger-intoxication out into the World, but put it into our AcAdAn Program so as to purify that wound our anger pointed to by the help of our Tenth Step.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to purify my thinking mind, my Ego from an anger-intoxication that I would otherwise hurt another human being and thereby myself with.

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October 29: Personal anonymity

Even if we readily tell about our membership of Active Addictions Anonymous when others express a desire to hear about it, we don’t present our perceptions of the Program as the viewpoints that apply to Active Addictions Anonymous as a whole, and neither do we try to overwhelm others with our perceptions or act as if we are vouching for AcAdAn.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 97

By working with the Small Ring of Truth with its humility, honesty, individuality and fellowship in Active Addictions Anonymous, we understood that our individuality entailed that we were unique, and this was true both for our material life, our Mother Earth body and our energy, our emotions and our thoughts, our social life and our spiritual life.

Although we all had a Mother Earth body in common, the combination of our body parts were so unique that even our fingerprints were not to be found similar in the whole World, and the same was true for our thoughts and the resulting flow of emotions, because we all used mental-emotional patterns in our own individual way.

This meant that we could only speak for our self and about our self, when we spoke about existential issues in social contexts, and therefore we respected that others also had their individual perspectives on existence, and in this way we maintained our personal anonymity by not pretending that our perspective on AcAdAn was the only right one.

In context with Active Addictions Anonymous, we also did not express our self about what the Fellowship at large stood for, but exclusively about our personal perception of the Program and what we had gained from working with it while at the same time, we did not conceal that we spoke on our own behalf and not on behalf of AcAdAn as a whole.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will remember my personal anonymity and thus that my perspective on AcAdAn is unique, so I will not try to overwhelm others with my perspective or pretend that I speak for Active Addictions Anonymous as a whole.

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October 30: Freedom to choose

The principle of Tradition Twelve is Freedom.
Slogan: I take to heart what I can use and leave the rest.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 99

The natural thing for us as limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human beings is to desire to belong to a Fellowship with others, whether it is one of two in our marriage, one of many in our family, or one of many in our workplace.

Our desire to belong to a Fellowship could make us do everything in our power to adjust to that, which we imagined that others in our Fellowship wanted us to say, do, feel and think even if we might feel that it was not the right thing for us.

If we felt that it was not the right thing for us, it meant that it was in sharp contradiction with our individuality, our uniqueness and if we chose to do something that did not feel like the right thing for us, we lost our integrity in our eagerness to adjust to others.

In AcAdAn’s Twelfth Tradition however, we learned to respect our right to choose that, which fitted our path in life right now, right here and to discard that, which did not fit into our path right NOW, and right HERE, and thus we maintained our integrity.

Today’s contemplation
Today will use that freedom which AcAdAn’s Twelfth Tradition gives me to take to heart, what I can use, and let go of the rest.

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October 31: Overpowering of others

We express our opinion about the principles, both inside and outside the group, but we don’t try to overwhelm or overpower others with our understanding.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 98

In the Second Step in our AcAdAn Program, we wanted to open our self to take a personal Higher Power into our life by opening our mind to choose a Higher Power, who is loving, caring, compassionate and merciful.

Our open-mindedness made it possible for us to accept that our personal choice of a Higher Power could be very different from the choice others had made even if we chose to listen to what others had chosen to be inspired to our own choice.

When we listened attentively and respectfully to what others had to share about their choice of a Higher Power, we used the slogan of the Second Step that says: To listen attentively and respectfully to another it first expression of emotional sobriety.

Our respect for others helped us to respect their choice of a Higher Power and their way of working with the Program, so we refrained from trying to overpower them with our understanding of a Higher Power and our way of carrying out the Program.

Today’s contemplation

Today, I will listen attentively and respectfully to what others have to share about their understanding of a Higher Power and their Step Work without trying to overpower them with my own understanding of a Higher Power and the work with the Program.

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NOVEMBER

November 01 Our choice of a Higher Power	November 02 The right attitude to helping each other	November 03 The right action is the sweet fruit itself
November 04 The interrelation among the Steps in our AcAdAn Program	November 05 The Third Step Prayer	November 06 Expansion of conscious contact with a Higher Power
November 07 Public appearance	November 08 Achieving of worldly power and glory	November 09 The Small Ring of Hatred
November 10 The forgiveness from others	November 11 Trusting the help	November 12 The context among the Traditions in our AcAdAn Program
November 13 Detachment in the past	November 14 The invisible in the visible	November 15 'Good' and 'bad' people
November 16 Members of AcAdAn	November 17 Suppression	November 18 Social interaction
November 19 Prerequisite for membership of AcAdAn	November 20 Nameless defects of character	November 21 Accept of our limitations and that of others
November 22 Accept of our fallibility	November 23 Self-acceptance	November 24 Prayer
November 25 From arrogance to humility	November 26 Conscious movement in our psychological landscape	November 27 Respect for confidentiality
November 28 To welcome others again	November 29 Bragging	November 30 The difficulties with forgiving our self

November 01: Our choice of a Higher Power

Our understanding and choice of a Higher Power was up to us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 25

Most of us were spiritual seekers before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, and we had participated in many spiritual paths in our search for answers to the meaning of life and death, good and evil, joy and pain.

One area that had given us cause for particularly many considerations, was the question: How should I be able to believe that a Higher Power is unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, when I suffer in so many areas of my life, and when I see so much suffering in the World around me?

In Step Two, we choose to decide on, if we want to begin a relationship with a power greater than our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, and the only suggested guidelines are that our chosen Higher Power is loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, and that it works for us to turn to our chosen Higher Power.

When we are done with the formal part of Step Two, we have chosen a Higher Power, who always and without exception has a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention behind everything that happens to us and around us, and when we suffer and get doubtful about our chosen Higher Power ‘s loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention, we use Step Two to seek out the intention until we find it, and in that way we get connected with love, care, compassion and mercy under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Second Step to find my chosen Higher Power’s loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention behind one of my sufferings.

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November 02: The right attitude to helping each other.

The Essential point in this Tradition (Eight) is that we help each other as equals in our efforts to achieve contentment, and therefore, our profession or status in society has no relevance in AcAdAn.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 94

Often, in our society we primarily come into contact with others, who have the same job as us, and furthermore our interaction happens with the people, who have the same status as us in the company that we work for.

In AcAdAn we come into contact with people from many different professions with more or less status in society, but our Traditions teach us that it is important that we do not deal with members' profession or status in society, but only with where that person we want help from is to be found in his/her recovery from his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

If we focus on other members' profession or status in society, when we are going to help others by taking on sponsorship or to be a recovery buddy, their and our recovery easily comes off course.

Therefore we keep in mind that we need to find a sponsor or recovery buddy that fits what we need in our recovery and that we take on being a sponsor or recovery buddy without taking into consideration the profession or status in society of our new sponcee or recovery buddy.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will refrain from focusing on the profession or status in society of other AcAdAn members so that my purpose with being a member of AcAdAn does not get off course.

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November 03: The right action is the sweet fruit itself

The principle of Step Nine is Liberation.
Slogan: The right action is the sweet fruit itself.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

Due to our co-dependency it can be difficult for us to discern whether it is the right action for us to help another human being.

Here the slogan of Step Nine comes to our aid, because we can decide for our self whether we want to help because this action gives us joy, or whether we want to help to get praise from another person or to praise our self because of our action.

If we want praise from others, or if we use our action to praise our self because of the action, it arises either from the Ring of Codependency with its savior-role seducer-role, victim-role and offender-role or from the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise.

If we discover that these are the motives behind our actions, we refrain from acting, because we know that we are acting from a pain-energy, whether it is one or the other of the two Rings we use for the purpose, but if we discover that we want to help, because we think that it would bring us joy to do it, we know that we are now in the process of performing the right action, which is the sweet fruit itself.

Today’s contemplation
Today I use the slogan of Step Nine when I have to decide for myself whether it is the right action for me to help another human being, so that I do not need any other reward for my action than the action itself.

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November 04: The interrelation among the Steps in our AcAdAn Program

The Program in Active Addictions Anonymous from Step One to Step Twelve.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 10

In Step One our recovery begins from an existential pain, because we admit that we are in pain and that it is a problem for us, and thereby we become ready to open our self for receiving help to recover from our pain by the help of our chosen Higher power by investigating the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention behind our pain, and in Step Three we surrender to the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention that we discovered in Step Two.

In Step Four, we investigate what prevents us from surrendering to the loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention and find that, which could help us to surrender, and then we share our discoveries from Step One to Four wit our self, our Higher Power and another human being, before moving on to Step Six, where we transform our use of pain energies to using joy energies.

In Step Seven we begin to cooperate consciously with our chosen Higher Power by praying to be liberated from a character defect, we observe in a situation and in Step Eight, we consider how we will make amends to our self and others for our mistakes during the day, and then we forgive our self for our mistakes, and after that we proceed to Step Nine to make amends to our self and others for our mistakes and then we let go of it.

In Step Ten, we do a daily inventory of that mistake from our day that pained us the most, and in Step Eleven, we seek guidance from our chosen Higher Power on how we can best carry out our Higher Power's will for us for the day, and ask for the power to carry that out before we move on to Step Twelve, where we pass on to others, who are interested in hearing about it, the information we have obtained from Step One to Eleven about, how our use of our AcAdAn Program has helped us to recover from our pain.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use all of my AcAdAn Program to recover from  the existential pain that pained  me the most in the course of  the day, and I will share my recovery with others, who want to hear about it.

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November 05: The Third Step Prayer

The ‘I’ Version God, take my will and my life and show me how I can live in complete compliance with my true Self, my Spirit.

The ‘We’ Version God, take our will and our life and show us how we can live in complete compliance with our true Self, our Spirit.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page

In our Second Step, we have investigated our belief-systems at all levels, whether it concerns our physical life, our time-space life, our emotional life, our mental life, our social life or our spiritual life.

In the process, we decided on how we wanted to look at our spiritual life and at a power greater than our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

The only suggested guidelines was that our chosen Higher Power was loving, caring, compassionate and merciful, and that it worked for us to turn to our chosen Higher Power.

After we have finished this process of choosing, we have chosen a Higher Power that we can trust to always and without exception give us what we want, and therefore we are ready to apply our Third Step by using the Third Step Prayer to surrender to what comes to us during the day, because we perceive it to be our Higher Power's will for us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Third Step Prayer as soon as I wake up, so as to remind myself that what comes to me today is my chosen Higher Power’s loving, caring, compassionate and merciful will for me.

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November 06: Expansion of conscious contact with a Higher Power

For the expansion of our conscious contact with our Higher Power, we used prayer and meditation.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 69

Some members perceive our prayer to be our talk to our Higher Power and meditation to be our Higher Power's response to that, which we turned to our Higher Power for.

When meditation occurs, our mind becomes empty of thoughts, and therefore it becomes so still that we are able to pick up the vibration, which is our Higher Power's answer to our prayer.

Our thinking mind, our Ego can translate this vibration to a thought, we can understand, but sometimes it happens that the translation is not entirely correct, and at other times the translation is completely in conformity with our Higher Power's response to us.

In our work with expanding our conscious contact with our Higher Power, slowly, we learn to separate the faulty translation from our thinking mind, our Ego of the vibration from our Higher Power to the right ones, and the yardstick we use to determine if the message is correctly translated, is whether it contains our Higher Power's unconditional love, care, compassion and mercy for us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will expand my conscious contact with my Higher Power by the help of prayer and meditation, and I will also expand my capacity to discern, when my thinking mind, my Ego's translation of the vibration is in conformity with my Higher Power’s answer to my prayer.

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November 07: Public appearance

Since this Tradition is about the context of our public efforts, one way we can practice the principle of Tradition Eleven is by making sure we pass on the message of AcAdAn in public contexts and not our personal perception of the Program.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 97

If we are to appear in public, it is important that we remember the principle of anonymity, which says that we speak for our self about our self, when we speak about AcAdAn, so we do not give the impression that we speak on behalf of AcAdAn as a whole.

It is also important that we do not show our face to the public, when we speak about AcAdAn in the media, because it can have adverse effects for AcAdAn as a whole if we subsequently behave in ways that are contrary to the behavior that society finds acceptable.

Although AcAdAn do not condemn our behavior, it is important that the members of our society, who hear about AcAdAn from our mouth, do not get discouraged from seeking recovery, if it turns out later that we become involved in situations, which are unacceptable to our society in general.

Therefore it is important for us as AcAdAns to remember that we remain as anonymous as possible, when we speak about AcAdAn in public relations.

Today’s contemplation
When I speak about AcAdAn in public relations I let no one be in doubt that I am not speaking on behalf of AcAdAn, but that it is my personal viewpoint on AcAdAn, I express.

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November 08: Achieving of Worldly power and glory

Others of us tried to achieve power and glory by moving in the hallways of power.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 16

When, as young people, we looked around in our surroundings for a goal for our lives, many of us got the impression that if we achieved power and glory by moving around in the hallways of power, we would become a valuable member of our the Fellowship of our society .

That might mislead some of us to imagine that we could achieve love from others, if only we gained worldly power and glory, and that could make us use a part of our lives to achieve this goal.

After we achieved worldly power and glory, we realized that still, we felt chronically dissatisfied, and we experienced an emptiness in the power and the glory that we could not have imagined in advance.

After coming face to face with, that achievement of worldly power and glory did not heal our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our self, others and the World at large, we were finally ready to begin to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by becoming a member of Active Addictions Anonymous.

Today’s contemplation
Today will set my recovery from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction to be my highest priority, because my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction can not be healed by the power and the glory.

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November 09: The Small Ring of Hatred

When The Small Ring of Hatred became active in us, we denied our needs and refused to take responsibility for them, whether they were material, physical, time-space wise, emotional, mental, social or spiritual (Denial), and we tried to manipulate others into fulfilling our needs to have it confirmed that we were valuable (Manipulation).

At the same time, we imagined that others fulfilled our needs because we were so special (Madness), and if others did not fulfill our needs, we continued to deny them until we felt so bad physically, time-space wise, emotionally, mentally, socially or spiritually that we got ill from it (Disease).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 36

In our Fourth Step, we begin to get to know the Rings of Pain, and it is a big relief for us to see that many of our thoughts and emotions are described by these Rings, because it shows us that our defects of character are not merely something that only we make use of, but they are part of the energies that all of humankind comes into contact with in their psychological landscape.

By the help of the Small Ring of Hatred, we begin to face our hatred, our suppressed anger, and it is a big help for us to have the Small Ring of Hatred with its denial, manipulation, illness and madness as a guideline, when we want to investigate our hatred in a neutral way, because that allows us to receive the message of our hatred.

Little by little, as we work with the Small Ring of Hatred, we become better and better in receiving our suppressed anger as a messenger from our psychological landscape, and thus we can begin to recover from our hatred.

The better we get to know our hatred, the better we become in taking care of it, and the better we get in hearing the message of our hatred, the faster it will be transformed into love.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will open myself to the message of the Small Ring of Hatred, so I can transform the pain of my hatred to the joy of my love.

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November 10: The forgiveness from others

Sometimes, the one we had harmed forgave us and at other times the person was not ready to forgive us.

We accepted this, knowing very well that now we had done our best, and we let go of the situation.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 65

When we have come to the Ninth Step, we need to make the amends that we decided to do in Step Eight.

Before we came to this point in our Step work, we had completed the Grand Day of Sacred Forgiveness, where we went through our mistakes from the past to the present day, and we received our own and our Higher Power's forgiveness for our mistakes.

That had led us to realize that we should not expect to receive other people's forgiveness, when we came to them to make the amends for our mistakes towards them, for it had taken our self a very long time to achieve the capacity to forgive our self and others for our and their mistakes.

Therefore, we do not make the amends to others to achieve their forgiveness, but to be able to createmanifest a pure path for our self, so we make our amends and then let go of our mistakes, whether we are forgiven by others or not.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will let go of my mistake after I have made amends to another human being for my mistake, whether the other person  forgives me or not.

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November 11: Trusting the help

JUST FOR Today, I will have faith in someone in AcAdAn who believes in me and wants to help me in my recovery.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 14

Our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction has caused many thought patterns, which are filled with distrust of our self and others.

Therefore, it may be difficult for us to feel trust in facing something new from the outset, but it is important for us to have trust in the help we can achieve in Active Addictions Anonymous with our recovery from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Our distrust has led many of us to be on our guard towards anything that we thought could prove to be a good reason for us to have distrust in AcAdAn, and therefore it was important for us to admit our distrust, so we freely could to investigate what we were afraid of, before we decided to trust in Active Addictions Anonymous.

When we had finished investigating what, we needed to investigate in AcAdAn, we could finally choose to believe in someone in AcAdAn, who believes that we are able to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and wants to help us with our recovery.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will believe in someone in AcAdAn, who believes that I can recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and I will believe that the other wants to help me in my recovery without me having to fear being exploited.

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November 12: The context among the Traditions in our AcAdAn Program

Tradition One to Twelve

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 12

Tradition One taught us that the survival of a group depended on that each member felt like a comfortable and respected part of the group, and Tradition Two taught us that we could look at the Group Conscience as the Higher Power of the group and moreover how we could surrender to the group's Higher Power, whether the group consisted of two members or many.

Tradition Three taught us to define our common purpose for the group, which is that which is going to keep the group together, and Tradition Four taught us to accept the autonomy of the group members as long as they respected the group’s common purpose as we describe it in Tradition Five, and in Tradition Six we defined those traps we could encounter in the fulfillment of the group’s purpose.

Tradition Seven taught us the importance of fulfilling our personal needs so we did not lose our integrity in an attempt to get our needs fulfilled by the group in those instances where our needs had got nothing to do with the group's purpose, and Tradition Eight taught us to define how we best could help each other with fulfilling our group’s purpose.

Tradition Nine taught us to organize the group in such a way that no single member achieved control of the group, Tradition Ti how we could speak about our group with others outside the group, Tradition Eleven how we could refrain from overpowering others with our perspectives, and Tradition Twelve to listen to the message instead for our perception of the messenger, and thus we let principles come before personalities.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the principles of the Traditions of Active Addictions Anonymous to take care of my external life in the same way as I use the Steps of Active Addictions Anonymous to take care of my internal life.

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November 13: Detachment in the past

We also investigated those instances from our past where our detachment came to expression, when we were able to detach from others’ material, physical, space- time wise emotional, mental, social and spiritual issues as if they were our own without detaching from our love, care, compassion and mercy for them.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 32

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous we were not aware that we could be or not be emotionally sober, but after we began working with the Ring of Emotional Sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others, we became more and more aware of it, when we were not emotionally sober.

We discovered that it was important for our emotional sobriety that we did not attach to others' problems as if they were our own, when we investigated how our detachment expressed itself in the past in Step Four, and how it felt to be loving, caring, compassionate and merciful while at the same time we did not attach to the sufferings others told us about, as if they were our personal problem.

This meant that we could listen attentively and respectfully to what others told us about their sufferings without us needing to try to find a solution for them, because we had trust in that they merely needed to express their pain, so they could begin to find their own solution to the sufferings they told us about.

Thereby we discovered that our detachment to the pain of our fellow human being made it possible for us to use the first signs of emotional sobriety, which is to listen attentively and respectfully to our fellow human being, and thereby we gave space and time for our fellow human being to ease his/her heart, because he/she were allowed to express his/her pain and thus come closer to a solution according to his/her own choice.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the detachment I have observed from my past in Step Four to listen attentively and respectfully to a fellow human being’s pain without attaching to his/her pain as if it were my personal problem.

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November 14: The invisible in the visible

For some of us, our perception of our Higher Power included both the invisible presence of the earthly and spiritual principles and the visible presence of everything and everybody around us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 25

Many of us had perceived the invisible to be unreal, but when we began working with earthly and spiritual principles in our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that although we could not take a thought or an emotion out and show the thought or the emotion to another person, we could see the invisible in the visible anyway.

If we met an angry person, we could easily see that he/she was angry because the anger came to expression in the other person's behavior, body language, tone of voice and facial expression, and if we asked why he/she was angry, and he/she answered that he/she was not angry, it did not change our perception of him/her being being angry.

We merely thought that the other person did not want us to know, why he/she was angry, and even if the other person gave us the silent treatment without saying a word to us, when we addressed him/her, we also knew that he/she was angry even if he/she did not say a word.

Although we could not see the invisible thoughts that made the other person angry, we could see the anger anyway, even if we could not see the thoughts behind the anger, and we could choose to respect the other person’s anger without taking it to heart, even if the other person thought that we were the cause of his/her anger.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will give others space to recover from their anger by moving out of the situation either mentally or physically instead of taking responsibility for the other person's anger, even if he/she claims that it is my fault that he/she is angry

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November 15: 'Good' and 'bad' people

We were used to perceiving our self and others as ‘good’ people when we took our virtues into use and as ‘bad’ people when we took our defects of character into use.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 29

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we perceived our self as ‘bad’ people, when we took our defects of character into use and moreover we also perceived our self to be dysfunctional but after we had come to AcAdAn however, we discovered that our use of any of our defects of character had got something to do with being a 'bad' person.

It also had got nothing to do with being a ‘bad’ person that we were dysfunctional, because it merely meant that we used pain energies to fulfill our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention, and thereby we discovered that our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention was not met with the help of pain energies.

As we worked with the Rings of Pain and Joy, we discovered that we needed to use our virtues to be able to fulfill our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention and we also discovered that we could use our Sixth Step to transform our defects of character into virtues and when we did that, we became able to fulfill our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention.

Once we had transformed our defects of character into virtues by the help of Step Six, we discovered in the same way that it did not mean that we were 'good' people but simply that we now had the necessary information to use functional ways of fulfilling our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention, and thus it became easier for us to be content under all circumstances, no matter what they are.

Today’s contemplation
Today, , I will stand by my loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention, so I can investigate if my loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention is being fulfilled, and if not I will change my ways to become able to fulfill my intention.

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November 16: Members of AcAdAn

Anyone may join us regardless of their form of active addiction, age, race, sexual identity or preference, political conviction, creed, religion or lack of religion.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

Whether we suffered from a physical or psychological illness that we were dissatisfied with, we were welcome to work with our dissatisfaction by the help of the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous so we could recover from our dissatisfaction.

Furthermore, we were welcome in AcAdAn no matter what our existential standing was, because addiction to chronic dissatisfaction had got nothing to do with if we believed in God or not and it had got nothing to do with what race, sexual grouping or age group we belonged to either.

The basic purpose for us as members of AcAdAn was to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, whether we were dissatisfied with our self, our life circumstances, others or the World at large, because addiction to chronic dissatisfaction has many faces.

What otherwise was going on in our life was not something we dealt with in Active Addictions Anonymous, but only with what we wanted to do to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will focus on how I can recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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November 17: Suppression

However, our successes and failures had a tendency to grow wild in our mind if they were suppressed, and when they were brought out into the open, they dissolved.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 43

Little by little, as we worked with our AcAdAn Program, we discovered that it led to physical and psychological illnesses to live with suppressed emotional pains, and that these sprang from our defects of character, and that they could lead to physical illness, if we suppressed them, because then they settled in different places in our physical body and got stuck there.

Over time, the pain in our defects of character createdmanifested pain in the place where they were stuck, and this could lead to various physical illnesses, if we did not release the suppressed thoughts and emotions that createdmanifested the pain, whether it was about the pain in the fear of sharing our successes or in the fear of sharing our failures with others.

When we used Step One to admit a painful thought with the accompanying emotion and how the pain made our life unmanageable, it became possible for us to recover from the pain by the help of Step Two to Twelve, whether it was about a thought with the accompanying emotion that pained or it was about a physical pain.

As a result of these experiences, we discovered that we were as sick as our secrets, and therefore it felt like a great relief for us to share our secrets with our sponsor or our recovery buddy, so that we no longer needed to suppress our painful thoughts and emotions or our physical pains.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will make an inventory on one of my painful thoughts with the accompanying emotion by the help of my AcAdAn Program..

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November 18: Social interaction

When we felt less than others (Inferiority), we stayed by our self to hide our vulnerability and our feelings of worthlessness (Isolation), and when we felt like more than others (Superiority), we filled up our time and space with people and activities to show off our superiority by the help of the number of people present in our lives and the numerous activities we undertook with these people (Overcrowding).

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 23

Before we came to AcAdAn, many of us had withdrawn from life by doing our best to not have interactions with other people, because our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction easily became active, when we were together with other people.

It pained us so much on a daily basis that we had chosen to live a kind of hermit life in order to escape the pain even though some of us lived in a big city, which opened up the opportunity for many interactions with others for us.

Little by little, as we became better and better at taking care of our painful emotions and transform them into joy, we became more and more courageous, and our desire to have a blooming social life came alive again.

We slowly began to open up by the help of our AcAdAn Program, and as a result we opened up to our AcAdAn sponsor/recovery buddy, then to our kindred Spirits in our AcAdAn Fellowship and finally to the World at large.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will open myself up to develop a blooming social life by the help of my AcAdAn Program, my AcAdAn sponsor/recovery buddy, my Higher Power, my AcAdAn Fellowship and the World at large.

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November 19: Prerequisite for membership of AcAdAn             

The only prerequisite for membership in AcAdAn is a desire to give up one’s addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 119

Sometimes our basic purpose with being members of Active Addictions Anonymous could drown in the many perspectives we achieved on our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability when we worked with our AcAdAn Program.

As it was our dissatisfaction with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability that settled in us as addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we had a need to expand our understanding of our humanness so as to become able to recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Therefore, it was important for us to remember that the only prerequisite for membership of AcAdAn is a desire to recover from one's addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and therefore many of us began our daily recovery work with the AcAdAn Program by reminding our self of our basic purpose with being members.

By remembering this, we could take any kind of dissatisfaction up for transformation by the help of our AcAdAn Program and by listening to the message in our dissatisfaction and finding out giving to our self what we were dissatisfied with not having received from others or by setting the boundaries that we had allowed others to overstep.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will remember that the only prerequisite for membership of AcAdAn is a DESIRE to recover from from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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November 20: Nameless defects of character     

In some cases, we became aware of a defect of character rising to the surface due to a sense of emotional discomfort without us being able to put a name to it, and in such cases, we prayed to our Higher Power to  liberate us from this defect of character without naming it.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 57

Gradually, as we learned by heart the Long Seven Step Prayer and the Prayer of Joy from Step Eleven, we achieved the capacity to put a name to many defects of character and many virtues.

Therefore, we eventually became well-informed about where we found our self in our psychological landscape under different circumstances, and as a result we became able to use our Seventh Step more and more efficiently.

Sometimes it could happen that we experienced a sense of emotional unease, however, without us being able to put a name to the place, where we found our self in our psychological landscape.

Under such circumstances, we still use our Short Seventh Step Prayer by simply praying to our Higher Power to liberate us from the emotional discomfort we felt rising to the surface.

Today’s contemplation
Tod, I will use the Short Seventh Step Prayer, even if I cannot put a name to the defect of character, I can feel rising to the surface by praying to my Higher Power to liberate me from my emotional discomfort.

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November 21: Accept of our limitations and that of others

When we came to AcAdAn, slowly, we began to learn to accept both our own limitations and that of others.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 21

Innermost, we already knew before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous that we are a Spirit, who experiences life as a human being for a while and that we as Spirit are omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and immortal/unchangeable.

Therefore, we could feel that the contrast between our limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human self and our true Self, our Spirit, was so great that we could have trouble accepting it.

Exactly this had contributed to our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, because we were often dissatisfied with the limitations we experienced in our self as well as in others, regardless of what we perceived to be limiting our self or others so that our expectations were not met.

Therefore, we often put unreal demands on our self and others about what we or they should be able to do, but gradually, as we used our AcAdAn Program to learn to accept our own and others' limitations, we became more content.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work on accepting my own and others' limitations by setting down my expectations of myself and others, so I can become more content.

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November 22: Accept of our fallibility:

We also knew that we were limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal, and thus fallible, and as such, we knew that we would make mistakes in the future too.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 66

When we first came to Active Addictions Anonymous and began to form an impression of the Program, many of us thought that we would become able to control our defects of character, if we were persistent with our Step Work, so we worked diligently on acquiring the Program as fast as possible.

Gradually, as our work with the Program developed, it became clear to us that those pains that came to us, whether physical or emotional, were an advantageous part of life, because what else would make us get up, if incidentally we happened to sit down on a burning stove top?

We also discovered that our emotional pains were an advantageous part of life in the same way, because they told us that we needed to move away mentally or physically from the situation that pained us to use the situation in our Program instead of just reacting and thereby hurting our self or others emotionally.

By the help of the Program, we transformed both our physical and emotional pains to joy, and although we thought that we had made a mistake by activating a defect of character, we realized that the pain had helped us grow in wisdom and mercy, and thus it became easier for us to accept our fallibility.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will accept my fallibility, because I know that I can use my AcAdAn Program to take care of it, so I thereby can grow in wisdom and mercy.

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November 23: Self-acceptance

Our inability to accept our self and life as it is actually createdmanifested our own problems.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

Most of us were often angry about being limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human beings, without us being aware however, that it was this, which gave us most of our existential pains, until we began working with the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous and discovered how deep our dissatisfaction were.

When we came to Step Six, we discovered that we almost constantly found our self in the pain from the Small Ring of Hatred with its denial, manipulation, disease and madness, because we denied our humanity and tried to manipulate our self and others to believe that we were above it, and in this madness, we ended up making our self physically ill.

Only when we used the Rings of Pain and Joy to map out our psychological landscape in daily living, we realized that we needed our AcAdAn Program to become able to learn to accept our self and life as it is for a human being, and as a result of accepting our self, we also became able to accept others and life as it is for a human being.

When we moved out of the pain from the Small Ring of Hatred and into the joy of the Small Ring of Love with its admitting, self-acceptance, health and sanity we came closer to the acceptance of our self as a human being and in the same way we moved from others of the Rings of Pain to others of the Rings of Joy again and again and again until we had achieved a wholehearted accept of our humanness.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Sixth Step to move from a Painring to a Joyring, if I discover that my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction has become active

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November 24: Prayer

When we entered the contemplative condition, which is called Prayer, if our contemplation deals with the spiritual sphere, we began to learn how to concentrate our awareness consciously, in one singular point of focus.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

When we came to Step Eleven in our AcAdAn Program, we worked with the contemplative state, and that means that we were considering an issue, whether our contemplation was about something worldly or something spiritual, but if our contemplation was about something spiritual we called our contemplation for prayer.

Many of us had a need to know that our prayers were heard by our chosen Higher Power, and we thought that a sign that we had been heard was that we received what we had prayed for, preferably without us lifting a finger to get it, so that we could become able to call the fulfillment of our desire for a miracle – something that went against the normally accepted ways of how we thought that events would transpire.

Sometimes we felt that our prayers were heard and sometimes not, and when we did not feel that our prayer had been heard, many of us believed that our Higher Power was angry at us, and if we believed that, we tried to figure out, what we needed to do to appease our Higher Power, so we could have our desire fulfilled, but our Higher Power loved us unconditionally, so our Higher Power was never angry at us for any reason whatsoever.

When we prayed for something from our Higher Power it could happen that we almost immediately received an inspiration to do certain things, which were necessary from our side to have our desire fulfilled, and gradually, as we became aware that that our participation in our own life was necessary for the fulfillment of our desires, we became able to participate consciously in the creationmanifestation of our own destiny.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will be aware of what I need to contribute with for the fulfillment of my desires so that consciously I can begin to participate in the creatingmanifesting of my own destiny.

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November 25: From arrogance to humility

Instead of arrogantly thinking that we were above or beneath others, we accepted that we were ignorant and that we did not know the true value of our self and others; so we chose to let go of the pain of our arrogance and move into the joy of meeting others with humility, which means, thinking neither that we were above them nor beneath them.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

Many of us associated humility with being humiliated, and furthermore most of us perceived humility to be weakness, before we came to the Active Addictions Anonymous, so we did not want to become humble.

In AcAdAn we became familiar with the Small Ring of Truth with its humility, honesty, individuality and fellowship, which is the reverse of the Small Ring of Arrogance with its superiority, inferiority, overcrowding and isolation.

By the help of the Small Ring of Truth, we discovered that humility meant that we did not feel smaller than others, even if they stood high in esteem in our society, and we did not feel more than others, even if they stood low in esteem in our society.

We also discovered that when we found our self in the Small Ring of Arrogance, we experienced emotional pain, and when we found our self in the Small Ring of Truth, we experienced emotional joy, and that made us want to be humble.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to work on becoming humble by the help of the Small Ring Truth.

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November 26: Conscious movement in our psychological landscape

We began to work with the Rings by learning to move consciously from the Ring of Emptiness to the Ring of Fulfillment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

In Step Four, for the first time, we worked with investigating various mental-emotional combinations that are archetypes, which contain certain combinations of thoughts and the resultant emotional feelings, and these fields we call Rings of Pain, when they lead to emotional pain, and we call them Rings of Joy, when they lead to emotional joy.

We observed how our use of Painrings and Joyrings went all the way back to our childhood and up to the present day, and thereby we realized that our defects of character was a natural part of our thinking mind, our Ego, and as a result, we began to get better able at orienting our self in our psychological landscape.

When we came to Step Six, we began to work consciously on moving around in the various energy fields by observing what energy field we found our self in and then make a conscious decision about whether we wanted to remain in the energy field that we were in, or whether we wanted to move to another energy field, and how we could do this.

If we found our self in a Ring of Pain, we wanted to move to a Ring of Joy, because pain was our action signal that told us that we had a need to change direction, and when we took this message to heart, we began to work on moving consciously from a Painring to a Joyring in Step Six and thereby our joy of being grew.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will consciously move around in my psychological landscape by using the Rings of Pain and the Rings of Joy from Step Six as a guideline about how I can do this.

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November 27: Respect for confidentiality

Sometimes, we feel a need to pass on something we heard at the meeting that may help another, and we can do this by not putting a name on the person, who expressed that pearl of wisdom we want to pass on.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 98

We wanted our participation in AcAdAn meetings to be like meeting a good friend, we wanted to talk to about the problems we had had in one area of our life and how we had used our AcAdAn Program to recover from our problem.

Although, we had even found a solution to our problem, we did not want others to talk about it in a way that made us regret that we had trusted our AcAdAn Fellowship with our problem, so it was important for us that our confidentiality was respected.

We could respect each other's confidentiality by refraining from using names, when we told others about how various members had solved a problem by the help of our AcAdAn Program, which they had shared about in our Fellowship.

Therefore we used the Anonymity Principle to refrain from using names, when we talked about others both inside and outside our Fellowship, and in that way we could stop gossip that would hurt the person we spoke about.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will refrain from using names when I talk about other people.

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November 28: To welcome others again

If a person changes his/her mind and leaves the group to return later, we welcome him/her as many times as he/she has reached this desire yet another time.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 88

The only requirement for membership of Active Addictions Anonymous is a desire to give up one’s addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and it is only the individual himself/herself, who knows if he/she has this desire.

Sometimes it can happen that a member thinks that the work that is necessary to become able to let go of his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction is more than he/she feels ready to carry out at this point of his/her life.

This may lead to him/her wanting to leave AcAdAn, and it can also happen that a member wants to leave AcAdAn for various reasons that only he/she knows, and nobody needs to explain, why he/she wants to leave AcAdAn.

After a while he/she may again feel ready to work on letting go of his/her chronic dissatisfaction, but no matter how many times a member leaves Active Addictions Anonymous, we welcome him/her back again.

Today’s contemplation
Today. I choose to welcome anyone, who wishes to work on letting go of his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by the help of Active Addictions Anonymous, whether it is a person, who returns after an absence period or a newcomer, who wants to explore what AcAdAn has to offer.

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November 29: Bragging

We feared that others would rub salt into the hurting wounds of our failures by looking condescendingly or scornfully at us, or in case of our past successes, that others would think that we were boastful when we admitted our joy over our successes, or even worse, that they would think that our successes were without any value.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

For many of us it was easier to admit our failures than our successes, because we had discovered that it was easier for us to receive other people's condescension or scorn about us not having done better than it was to receive others' criticism for bragging in their eyes, because it was painful for us to see our successes being annihilated by others.

Therefore, we had gotten used to keep our successes to our self without us being aware that this createdmanifested an imbalance in our way of taking care of our psychological landscape, because our exaggerated ideas of other people’s envy of our successes, createdmanifested a distortion of our social life.

Even if it is true that other's avarice or envy maybe became active, when they witnessed our successes, it was important that we learned to express our joy about our successes, because it made it possible for us to let go of the past in the same way as our admission of our failures did it.

Therefore, we picked up our courage and admitted our successes to our sponsor/recovery-buddy and in a meeting to learn to be present in The Blissful Flow of the Present Moment instead of being stuck in past successes or failures, and this new freedom made it easier for us to be content..

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will admit a success I have experienced in the course of my day to my sponsor/recovery-buddy and in an AcAdAn meeting

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November 30: The difficulties with forgiving our self

We knew that the one we had the hardest time forgiving was our self.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 61

When we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we discovered that the Program was about being content with our self, our life and others as limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human beings and with the living conditions that were common to a human being so it could become possible for us to develop contentment with our self, our life and others, regardless of the circumstances.

When we studied our Mother Earth body, most of us saw many deviations from how we wanted our Mother Earth body to look and after we came to AcAdAn, we discovered that we had perceived it to be a flaw in our Mother Earth body that he/she did not look like we thought he/she should look and we had difficulties forgiving our Mother Earth body that he/she looked like he/she did.

When we studied our way of being in the World, most of us saw many deviations from how we wanted our way of being in the World to be and we had difficulties forgiving our self for our way of being in the World and, even if at times, we thought that our Mother Earth body looked perfect and that our way of being in the World was perfect, we discovered that there was always room for improvements.

As a result of these realizations, we used our AcAdAn Program to let go of our perception that it was a flaw in our Mother Earth body that she looked like she did or that we were in the World the way, we were, and at the same time we chose to receive inspirations for improvements of our Mother Earth body and our way of being in the World as a gift for renewal instead of as a criticism pointing at a flaw in us.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to develop contentment with my Mother Earth body and my way of being in the World.

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DECEMBER

December 01 Trusted servants	December 02 Governing of AcAdAn	December 03 To escape death
December 04 Self-appraisal in AcAdAn	December 05 Gossip	December 06 Guidance
December 07 Abstinence in AcAdAn	December 08 To have a Program for the day	December 09 The successes of the past and the present
December 10 Anger over our powerlessness	December 11 The for free principle	December 12 Lack of joy of living
December 13 Explaining of wrongs to others	December 14 Impossible expectations	December 15 The problems of daily living
December 16 Gratitude	December 17 Our dissatisfaction list	December 18 From avarice to generosity
December 19 Building up of faith	December 20 The Rings of Social Interaction	December 21 Rejection of our desire to help
December 22 No obligations towards AcAdAn	December 23 To take up more space than we need	December 24 Acceptance or rejection of our amends
December 25 Autonomy in AcAdAn	December 26 To learn to listen to our Higher Power	December 27 Right and wrong
December 28 Alienation	December 29 The purpose with membership of AcAdAn	December 30 The beginning of our own Program
December 31 The Silence

December 01: Trusted servants

The Second Tradition establishes that we have no leaders who govern but only trusted servants.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 86

Our Second Tradition in Active Addictions Anonymous had made us understand that no single member of a group could decide for all members, if the group should remain healthy and therefore we had no leaders, who decide, how our personal path through the Program must take place, but only trusted servants.

We have a chair person, who sees to it that the day, the time and the meeting format that the Group Conscience has decided on is met, but the chair person does not decide, who can attend the meeting, because only the individual member himself/herself can decide, if he/she wants to participate in the meeting.

We have a treasurer, who is our trusted servant, who takes care of the money we collect during our meeting for coffee, literature, rent for our room and the likes that the Group Conscience has decided, so our treasurer does not decide how our money should be used.

We have a GSR - a group service representative - representing our group at ASC meetings - area service committee meetings – but it is our Group Conscience that decides, what our GSR must say, and our Group Conscience also decides, how our greeter must welcome the members to the meeting.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will remember that I do not lead Active Addictions Anonymous, because I have taken on serving AcAdAn as a whole by taking on a service post to illustrate the feminine principle to illustrate the feminine principle .

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December 02: Governing of AcAdAn

Our Steps and Traditions are organized in a specific sequence and order, and when we say that AcAdAn should never be organized, we mean that it should never be organized in such a way that it gives individuals control over Active Addictions Anonymous, and thereby enable them to govern AcAdAn in a specific direction.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 95

Because we are limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human beings, we could often imagine that we needed to steer and control everything and everyone around us to feel more safe about our humanness, but after we came to AcAdAn we became aware that our enterprise could not succeed.

Our powerlessness over people, places, events and things, and even over our own humanness made it impossible for us to gain control over these five areas, and besides, any attempt to defy Reality put us us into the pain of The Small Ring of Envy with its disbelief, superstition, submission and defiance.

Therefore, we wanted to surrender the steering of us and our life to a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power, and furthermore we wanted to surrender the steering of AcAdAn’s life to the Group Conscience, who is AcAdAn’s loving, caring, compassionate and merciful Higher Power.

The Group Conscience comes into being as the voice that comes to expression, when all members of a group or AcAdAn as a whole had been heard and taken into consideration, and therefore we surrendered to the Group Conscience instead of insisting on our own will about, how AcAdAn should proceed, when we had made a common decision.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will surrender to the voice of the Group Conscience both in my AcAdAn Fellowship and my other Fellowships.

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December 03: To escape death

We also realized that invariably, we had to face death at some point in our lives in spite of all our efforts to live pain-free and survive; so this was not the path to achieve the love and respect we sought, either from our self or from others.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 18

Many of us found it hard to deal with, that we were going to be separated from our Mother Earth body/physical body at some point in time, and we did a lot to make sure that he/she was healthy and did not become seriously or even fatally ill.

When we discovered that our Mother Earth body/physical body had become fatally ill anyway, and that we only had a limited time left together with him/her and our life on Earth, it could make us bitter.

Our bitterness was expressed through the Microring of Hatred with its indignation, vindictiveness, belligerence and bitterness, and as the Microring of Hatred is a Painring, it meant that we added insult to injury, when we used it on our mortality/changeability.

Instead, we chose to use the Microring of Love with its mercy, forgiveness, conciliatory and sweetness, when we became aware that our time on Earth was running out, so we could discover that we could experience joy of living until our last moment had come.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Microring of Love with its mercy, forgiveness, conciliatory and sweetness on my mortality/changeability.

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December 04: Self-appraisal in AcAdAn

We could do our self-appraisal in any way that worked for us, but as a starting point, we investigated how our use of our defects of character and our virtues had affected us materially, physically, time-space wise, emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually in the course of our life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 29

In AcAdAn, we came into contact with different forms of self-appraisals and in Step Four, our self-appraisal was about how we had experienced our defects of character and our virtues from our childhood to the present day, and thereby we achieved the courage to admit that we had used both our defects of character and our virtues in the course of our life.

When we shared about our defects of character and our virtues with another human being in our Fifth Step, we discovered that we were not alone about using both defects of character and virtues and that gave us courageous, so we became ready to admit in Step Six how we still used defects of defects and virtues in our daily life.

We used Step Six as another type of self-appraisal, which enabled us to transform our pain into joy by the help of the Rings of Pain and Joy while at the same time, we continued to further develop our wisdom and mercy-capacity through this experience, where we learned to transform emotional pain to emotional joy.

Step Seven we used to liberate our self from emotional pain in co-operation with our Higher Power, when we felt that a defect of character took hold of us; Step Eight and Nine to make amends to our self for the mistake we had done to our self and Step Ten to end our inventory by admitting our mistake yet another time and then let go of it.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use a self-appraisal from my AcAdAn Program, which fits with the pain that I want to be liberated from, or which helps me to build up a daily application of the principles I wish to pay tribute to.

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December 05: Gossip

It is important to us that we can freely express our self in our group, but this is only possible when we have confidence in that what we disclose would not be spoken about or discussed with others after the meeting.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 98

We wanted our Active Addictions Anonymous meetings to be a sacred place where we could open both our higher heart that is our holiest of holy and our lower heart, where our defects of character and our virtues live without us risking to be exposed to derogatory talk about what we had shared in a meeting.

Sometimes, it could happen that we had opened our higher heart during a meeting, and what we had shared, came back to us in a distorted form a few days later, because a member, who pretended to be our friend wanted that we should know that others have perceived what we had shared as boastful.

It could also happen that we had opened our lower heart, our solar plexus, during a meeting, and what we had shared, came back to us in a distorted form a few days, later because a member, who pretended to be our friend, wanted us to know that others looked down on us because of what we had shared during the meeting.

We felt unsafe and became sad when we were subjected to derogatory talk after having poured our heart out, and we wanted to stop the pain both in the now and the future by making sure that both our friends and the other members knew that we did not want to hear what others said about us when we are not present, whether it was praise or criticism.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will inform both other AcAdAn members and my friends about that I do not want to know what others have to say about me, when I am not present.

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December 06: Guidance

The principle of Step Ten is Willingness.
Slogan: Guide me through my desires and liberate me from my wrongs.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 83

When we were done with the formal part of our Tenth Step, we had discovered that we could recover from many existential pains that had become chronic to such an extent that we had believed that we had to live with them for the rest of our life.

To our surprise, we were liberated from those mistakes from the past that still came to expression as painful physical and psychological experiences in the present, if we were willing to carry out a Tenth Step on those pains we experienced in the present.

Gradually, as we carried out a series of Tenth Steps on the pains of the present, we became more and more content with our life, because now we knew that we could always recover from our painful mistakes from our past and our present by the help of our Tenth Step.

Therefore, we became more and more willing to seek guidance from our AcAdAn Program about our daily problems by carrying out a Tenth Step and thereby transform our pain to joy and in that way we became more and more content with our self and our life.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Tenth Step to inventory something that pained me today.

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December 07: Abstinence in AcAdAn

We are people who suffer from an addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with self, and thereby with others and our lives, and we must abstain from using dissatisfaction in all its forms and disguises to be able to recover.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

Abstinence in Active Addictions Anonymous is of an emotional nature, because our dissatisfaction is of an emotional nature, which has come into being as a result of dissatisfied thoughts we have thought about our self, our life and everything and everybody around us.

As AcAdAn members, we wanted to refrain from being dissatisfied with our self, our life and anything or anybody anywhere at any level of existence so as to not activate our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction yet another time.

It was very simple and easy to understand, but even if it was simple and easy to understand, it was not easy for us to carry it out, because there were so many thoughts and emotions woven into our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction that it took us by surprise again and again.

By working intensely with the Joyrings and the Painrings of AcAdAn, we got to know our psychological landscape and discovered the many mental-emotional patterns, which held our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction and those, which held our contentment.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will uncover yet another layer of my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction by the help of the Painrings from my AcAdAn Program, and I will transform this layer by the help of the Joyrings.

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December 08: To have a Program for the day

JUST FOR Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program. I will try to follow it to the best of my ability.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 14

In the same way that we followed the suggestion of AcAdAn to set off time to make sure that our Mother Earth body/physical body was well rested, well groomed, well nourished and well exercised, we chose to set aside time to make sure that our thinking mind, our Ego was well rested, well groomed, well nourished and well exercised.

We nourished our thinking mind, our Ego by the help of our Tenth Step, where our thinking mind, our Ego came into contact with new uplifting thoughts, and at the same time our use of the Tenth Step lead to that our thinking mind, our Ego got well exercised in thinking the thoughts we had chosen consciously from the Rings of Joy.

Furthermore, we groomed our thinking mind, our Ego by taking our painful thoughts and emotions to heart and transform them to joy by the help of our Tenth Step, and by using our Eleventh Step, we gave our thinking mind, our Ego rest, because we emptied our mind from thoughts, when we entered into meditation.

We also used our Twelfth Step to give our thinking mind, our Ego rest by passing on our experiences with our AcAdAn Program by the help of those thoughts and emotions we had already worked out and achieved clarity about, and when we shared this with another person, we benefited both our self and the other person.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will have a Program for my day, where I createmanifest space for that both my Mother Earth body/physical body and my thinking mind, my Ego are well rested, well groomed, well nourished and well exercised.

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December 09: The successes of the past and the present

However, it was just as important that we admitted our successes as well as our failures.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 42

Most of us had difficulties admitting our successes from the past and the present, because we were afraid that others would feel smaller than us when we talked about our successes and that then they would get angry at us, so we kept our successes a secret without us being aware of that this lead to that they grew wild in our inner.

We were also afraid that others would think we were boasting when we talked about our successes, or even worse that they would perceive our successes to be a trifle, which was not even a success in their eyes, and our imaginations about other people's possible reaction made us afraid of losing the joy of our successes.

However, when we came to Step Five in our AcAdAn Program, we both needed to talk about the pain of what we perceived to be our failures and the joy of what we perceived to be our successes, and we understood at this point in our Step Work that it was necessary to talk about both areas to achieve presence in the NOW.

When we had shared with our sponsor/recovery buddy and had heard our sponsor/recovery buddy share about his/her successes, we discovered that here after it became possible for us to let go of our fear of other people's possible reactions to our successes, and that we no longer had an exaggerated perception of the meaning of our successes.

Today’s contemplation
Today,  I will share with my AcAdAn Fellowship about a success that I have already shared with my sponsor/recovery buddy.

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December 10: Anger over our powerlessness

After coming to AcAdAn, we accepted that powerlessness is an inevitable part of our humaneness, and thus, we let go of our anger and accepted our powerlessness.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 20

When we came to Active Addictions Anonymous and began working with our powerlessness over our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability, we discovered that we were angry because of being powerless over our humanness.

Little by little, as we worked on recovering from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we discovered that there were many advantages in learning to be aware of our powerlessness, and one of the many advantages was that we learned to reach out for the help our Fellowship had to offer.

We heard in meetings that we were not only powerless over our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction but also over things, places, situations and people, and this meant that we could let go of our attempts to gain control over those areas that it was not possible to gain control over, no matter how hard we tried.

When we let go of trying to get control over areas we were powerless over, we avoided much emotional pain, because we used our AcAdAn Program to let go of our attempts to get control and instead we surrendered the control to the care of our Higher Power.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program to recover from my anger over my powerlessness by beginning to find its advantages.

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December 11: The for free principle

It does not cost anything to be a member of our Fellowship.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 119

In AcAdAn the for free principle is about it being free of cost to be a member of the Fellowship.

This means that we make our literature freely available to those, who want to use it to recover from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Furthermore, we undertake to lead others through the Program as sponsors or recovery buddies without demanding money for our service.

Last but not least, it is free to participate in our meetings, and thus we have made it possible for anyone, who wishes to become a member of Active Addictions Anonymous, to have their desire fulfilled without them needing to feel blocked by money-related issues.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will contribute to the for free-principle in AcAdAn by passing on to others the information I possess, if they want to find out if Active Addictions Anonymous could help them recover from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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December 12: Lack of joy of living

We could not live and enjoy life like other people could.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 9

We had often wondered why others seemingly got more out of life than we did, because we found it hard to enjoy what gave joy to others.

Only, when we came to Active Addictions Anonymous, we became aware that we suffered from addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and that this had to do with us being dissatisfied with our humanness, because we had progressed on the spiritual path.

We had had many glimpses of oneness with our true Self, our Spirit, and that had led us to understand that it was possible for us to experience the joy without opposites, which is also called happiness.

We imagined that it was our humanness that stood in the way of our happiness, so we had become chronically dissatisfied with it, and as a result we lost the ability to enjoy life as limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human beings.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Eleventh Step in my AcAdAn Program to expand my conscious contact with my true Self, my Spirit and thus experience the joy of being a limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human being from the core of myself.

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December 13: Explaining of wrongs to others

Trying to explain our wrong was an expression of our wish to defend our wrong, and of our expectation that the person we had harmed must approve our mistake by understanding or accepting it.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 57

Gradually, as our work with our Seventh Step develops, we discover that we have an urge to defend our wrongs to others.

That is connected with us knowing that we had a loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention with what we did, and we thought that others should understand our loving intention, so when they did not, we felt urge to explain it to them.

We were not aware that our desire to explain our mistake was the same as defending our mistake, but when we discovered that in our Seventh Step, we let go of defending our mistakes.

We knew that attack is the first act of violence and defense is the first act of war, and we did not wish to be at war in our social life anymore.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will remember that attack is the first act of violence, and defense is the first act of war, so I use my Seventh Step to let go of defending my mistakes by the help of an explanation.

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December 14: Impossible expectations

Even if we were thorough when we did this work, we did not set up impossible expectations on our self by imagining that we would become flawless, because we knew that as a human being we are ignorant and thereby fallible.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 58

As human beings, we experience new things every day, and our experiences give rise to new thoughts and ideas on how best we can feel good about our self, others, our lives and the World as a whole.

New thoughts and ideas are immature and dysfunctional, because we have not achieved a clear understanding of the consequences of using our thoughts and ideas in action.

Gradually, as we gain experience by putting our thoughts and ideas into action, the thought or idea that we put into action becomes more and more functional.

We want to experience new thoughts and ideas and therefore we choose to accept that we will continue to be fallible, no matter how extensive our old knowledge is.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will accept my fallibility as a necessary part of my humanness.

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December 15: The problems of daily living

We believe that the sooner we take care of our problems in our daily lives, whether they are physical, time-space wise, emotional, mental, social or spiritual, that much sooner we begin to live in contentment.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 11

Before we came to Active Addictions Anonymous many of us perceived daily life issues to be trifles, because we were not aware that everyday life’s small events were exactly what gave rise to our dissatisfaction with this that or the other.

We could always find reasons to be dissatisfied with something in our life, whether our dissatisfaction was directed against our material possessions or the lack thereof, or against the time at our disposal or the lack thereof, against our emotions, our thoughts, our social or our spiritual life.

When we investigated our dissatisfaction with the problems of our daily life, it turned out that basically, we were dissatisfied with being powerlessness over various areas, or we were dissatisfied with the fact that we changed or others changed.

We might be dissatisfied with not knowing what it would take to take care of various situations with our limited capacity to take care of them, but whatever reasons we than had for being dissatisfied; it turned out to be connected with our dissatisfaction with our humanness.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will investigate an area that I am dissatisfied with and change my perception of the area to contentment by the help of my AcAdAn Program

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December 16: Gratitude

By being chronically dissatisfied, we deprived our self and others of the joy that is an integral part of being God-centred.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 62

When we work with the Ring of God-centeredness with its joy, empowerment, open-mindedness and gratitude in Active Addictions Anonymous, we become better and better at putting behind us our use of the Ring of Self-centeredness with its euphoria, depression, self-criticism and self-praise.

When we came to AcAdAn, we had been so enclosed within our self, that we felt it was our fault when something happened that was not to our contentment, and this led to us criticizing our self for those actions that we thought had led to the undesirable situation, and our self-criticism made us despondent and depressed.

When something happened to our contentment it led to us praising our self for the actions that we thought had led to the desired situation, and our self-praise made us euphoric.

We wanted to replace the artificial joy of euphoria with genuine joy and we achieved that in Active Addictions Anonymous, when we used the Ring of God-centeredness, and when it began working for us making a conscious shift between the two Rings, simultaneously, we achieved the joy that the gratitude in the Ring of God-centeredness gave rise to.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Ring of God-centeredness consciously so as  to achieve the joy of gratitude.

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December 17: Our dissatisfaction list

In order to be able to see the difference between the things we could change and the things we could not change, we chose to make a dissatisfaction list every day by writing down hour by hour what we were dissatisfied with in the hour that passed.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 52

In AcAdAn we work with a dissatisfaction list so as to form a realistic idea of what areas we can change and what areas we cannot change, because often, we use dissatisfaction with the underlying thought that we can force our self to change what we are dissatisfied with, if only we continue to be dissatisfied with it, even if in fact, we cannot change it.

When we divide our list into areas that we can change and areas we cannot change, we use our AcAdAn Program to find a way in which we can let go of our dissatisfaction with the areas we cannot change.

The areas we can change, we also take a stand on by assessing whether an area is something that we want to invest the money, the time, the effort and the interest in so as to do what is required to change the area in question.

If we do not think that we want to invest our resources in creatingmanifesting the change, we let go of our dissatisfaction with the area, but if we think that we want to invest our resources in creatingmanifesting the change, we make a plan of action by the help of our AcAdAn Program.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will work with my dissatisfaction list as suggested in my AcAdAn Program so I can learn to let go of what I cannot change and begin to change what I can that I want to change.

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December 18: From avarice to generosity

Instead of avariciously holding on to our material, physical, time-space wise, emotional, mental, social or spiritual possessions and amassing more and more, we chose to have faith that we could pass on our surplus to others and thus experience the joy of our abundance.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 49

Many of us imagined that we were accountable, when we saved those of our material possessions that we no longer needed, in a shed or in an attic in order to have them at our disposal later, if we ever had a need for them, which we, more often than not, found to not be the case.

Our physical surplus could be that we had found a way to recover from an uncomfortable state in our physical body, which we could pass on to others, who needed it, and we could do this by giving of the time, we had in surplus so as to teach another person, how he/she could recover.

The same could apply for our surplus in the mental-emotional area, where we could choose to pass on our surplus on to others, who needed to recover from mental-emotional pains in areas where we had plentiful experiences with recovering from them.

In our social life we might have more contacts than we could overcome taking care of, so we could pass on our contacts to others, who wanted to expand their social circle, and last but not least, we could pass on to others how we had gotten surplus in our spiritual life by the help of Step Eleven in AcAdAn.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will pass on my surplus from one of my planes of existence to another, who needs what I have plenty of.

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December 19: Building up of faith

The process of coming to believe was similar for most of us and we had to open our minds to the possibility that there existed a Power greater than us that could help us recover from our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, because we by our self were powerless over it.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 26

Before we came to the Active Addictions Anonymous it had not occurred to us that faith is merely a thought, we have repeated enough of times until we believe that our thought about Reality and Reality itself is one and the same thing.

In Step Two, however, we investigate our belief systems, and we discover that much of what we believe in is harmful to us, so we begin to consider how we can createmanifest a belief system that is to our advantage.

We begin to let go of the belief systems, which we have built that are harmful to us and to support those, which are to our advantage.

The main change in our belief system is that we begin to consider how we can use the idea that a Power, greater than us could be found that can help us to recover from our powerlessness over our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and from there we begin to build up our faith in this Power.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my Second Step in AcAdAn to begin building up my faith in that a Power greater than me, who can help me recover from  my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction is to be found

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December 20: The Rings of Social Interaction 

By the help of these Rings, we could easily see that there is a ‘me’, an ‘us’ and a ‘you’ in any social interaction, be it in the fleeting interaction with a stranger on the street, with our green grocer, colleagues, friends, siblings, parents, our children or our significant other.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 54

When we came to know the Rings of Social Interaction in Step Eight, it was easy for us to see that when we hurt another, we hurt our self.

We can easily see that the two intertwined Rings hold a mutual area for both Rings, and in addition, there is an area which each Ring alone has at its disposal.

The mutual area is a symbol of a social interaction, and the individual areas are a symbol of the two, who have a social interaction.

When we pull the two intertwined Rings from each other, the area that before used to be intertwined is still there in the individual Ring, and that means that the hurts that were inflicted during the interaction is still to be found in the individual Ring, which thus illustrates, how it happens that we cannot hurt another without hurting our self.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use the Rings of Social Interaction to remind myself that I can not hurt another without hurting myself.

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December 21: Rejection of our desire to help

Even if we believed it would bring us joy to help, we accepted that at times others had to or wanted to receive help from another source than us.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 33

Although we may be old-timers in AcAdAn and would like to help a newcomer to recover from his/her addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, it may happen that the newcomer feel overwhelmed by our knowledge of the Program, and therefore the newcomer might reject us, when we approach to help him/her.

The newcomer may feel much more attracted to another newcomer, who has just begun his/her work with the Program, because the other newcomer does not yet have a knowledge of the Program, which appears to be overwhelming to the newly arrived newcomer in AcAdAn.

If we are not aware that our desire to help is not necessarily welcomed by a newcomer, we can inadvertently overwhelm the newcomer to such an extent that he/she chooses to leave Active Addictions Anonymous.

We want to take good care of newcomers, and we do that best by giving them time to find out themselves, who they want to receive help from.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will give a newcomer time and space to find out from whom he/she feels safe in receiving help to carry through his/her AcAdAn Program.

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December 22: No obligations towards AcAdAn

There are no strings attached to AcAdAn.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 8

We are used to there being strings attached to our participation in various contexts, and therefore most of us try to find out, which strings are attached to our membership of Active Addictions Anonymous.

Although we hear in the group readings during our meetings that there are no strings attached to our membership of AcAdAn many of us need to ensure that we do not become unpleasantly surprised at a later point in time by hidden strings, which we could not spot initially.

We investigate the entire meeting structure in AcAdAn, and little by little, as we participate in various areas of the meeting structure of Active Addictions Anonymous, we discover that there are no strings attached to the meeting structure.

We also study the entire service structure in AcAdAn, and little by little, as we participate in the service structure, we discover that there are truly no strings attached to the service structure, and so it became clear to us that it is true that there are no strings attached to membership of AcAdAn.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will give myself permission to investigate Active Addictions Anonymous from all the angles I need to before I surrender to the Fellowship.

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December 23: To take up more space than we need

We also looked at how we had harmed others time-space wise by demanding more of their time and space than we needed and thus depleting them of the time and space that they needed to take care of themselves or their other loved ones, and we included our parents, our significant other and our children in this list.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 62

When we work with Step Eight, we come face to face with some areas, in which we have harmed others seen through new eyes that we have achieved in our work with our AcAdAn Program.

We discover that we have demanded more time and space from others than we needed, because we imagined that if we could make others - especially our significant other - fill our empty time with their presence, we would be secured against emptiness, boredom, loneliness and meaninglessness.

When we used our AcAdAn Program to investigate our fear of emptiness, boredom, meaninglessness and loneliness, we had discovered that these properties belong to the Ring of Emptiness, and that our attempts to get more of others’ time and energy than we had a need for, belongs to the Ring of Codependency.

Our co-dependency is also called our fellow-human being-misuse, and as we now want to stop misusing others’ time and personal space, we let go of our misuse by the help of the Ring of Fulfillment with its fulfillment, interest, meaningfulness and oneness and the Ring of Emotional sobriety with its detachment, integrity, respect for self and respect for others.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will let go of my misuse of other' time and personal space by the help of the Ring of Fulfillment and the Ring of Emotional Sobriety.

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December 24: Acceptance or rejection of our amends

Sometimes, the amends we offered were accepted and sometimes not.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 65

When we begin to make amends in Step Nine to our self and others for the mistakes, we think that we have made, it can happen that others receive our amends with joy and forgiveness, and at other times it can happen that our amends is rejected with indifference or downright anger.

However, we do not make amends to achieve the forgiveness of others, but to be able to let go of our feeling of guilt and the consequent shame that we feel in context with the situation that we want to make amends for.

Once we have made our chosen amends, we therefore let go of our feelings of guilt and the associated shame.

It can happen that our feeling of guilt due to the same issue pops up again, especially if our amends was rejected by the other person, but we continue to let go of our feeling of guilt every time it shows up once we have made amends.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will make amends to myself and/or others for what I did that made me feel guilty and ashamed, and then I let go of my feelings e of guilt and shame about the situation, as best I can.

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December 25: Autonomy in AcAdAn

An Active Addictions Anonymous group is a group that follows the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions of Active Addictions Anonymous. Within this frame, each group is autonomous as to how it wants to set up its meetings, welcome newcomers, have varying topics at the meeting, conduct Step meetings, Tradition meetings and so on.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 89

There is a large selection of groupings that work with self-realization and development of the character of the members.

A group of people can call themselves an AcAdAn group if the group follows AcAdAn’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

If the group respects AcAdAn’s Steps and Traditions, the group has its freedom to develop their particular group as it wants and can still call itself an AcAdAn group.

This means that the group is autonomous in all its internal affairs as long as its internal affairs do not harm other groups or AcAdAn as a whole.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will respect AcAdAn’s Steps and Traditions in my interaction with my AcAdAn Fellowship

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December 26: To learn to listen to our Higher Power

Sometimes, it turned out that what we thought to be our Higher Power’s guidance for us, in actual fact, was not so, or we would have got distracted and diverted from the guidance we received while going about the task, and in such instances, we used our Tenth Step, admitted our mistake, planned our amends, forgave our self and restored the situation as best as we could.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 70

Most of us in AcAdAn have a strong desire to surrender to our chosen Higher Power, and it can make us anxious, when we come to the Eleventh Step and need to expand our conscious contact with our Higher Power.

We imagine that we must obey blindly, if we have got the impression that an impulse comes from our Higher Power, but such a view point can lead to tragic consequences, for even though we believe that a particular impulse comes from our Higher Power, there is the possibility that we have mistranslated the impulse, or that we might have misunderstood something when we believe that the impulse comes from our Higher power.

Therefore, it is equally important that we learn to say yes, no or maybe to impulses which, we believe, comes from our Higher Power, as it is that we learn to say yes, no or maybe to what we are offered in other areas of our lives.

When we work on expanding our conscious contact with our Higher Power in Step Eleven, we give our self permission to be open to that we cannot always be sure that an impulse comes from our Higher Power, although we believe it and if we have doubts, we choose to say yes, no or maybe to impulses until we have made sure that we have not misunderstood what the impulse holds, or whether it comes from out thinking mind, our Ego or from our chosen Higher Power.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will give myself permission to say yes, no or maybe to impulses that I think comes from my Higher Power, if I have doubts about my translation of the impulse, or about whether is comes from my thinking mind, my Ego or from my chosen Higher Power.

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December 27: Right and wrong

Now that we were at Step Four, we wanted to begin moving beyond judging our self, others or the World at large on this basis, in order to achieve even greater freedom that could lead us to accept our self, others and the World at large, as everyone and everything is.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 29

Until we came to Step Four in our AcAdAn Program, we had perceived it to be the right mindset when we thought thoughts full of faith, hope, love and truth and the wrong mindset when we thought thoughts that were full of avarice, envy, hatred and arrogance.

In Step Four, we need to put that view point behind us, because we become unable to acknowledge both sides of our world of thought, if we condemn our defects of character and praise our virtues.

With the help of the Rings of Joy and Pain we acknowledge both our defects of character and our virtues, and thus we can begin to acknowledge that when our way of thinking and acting does not fulfill our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention, we have taken a defect of character into into use.

When our way of thinking and acting fulfill our loving, caring, compassionate and merciful intention, we have taken a virtue into use.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will let go of thinking that my defects of character is the wrong side of me, and my virtues is the right side of me, so I may be able to harvest wisdom and mercy from my defects of character and fulfillment and joy from my virtues.

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December 28. Alienation

We chose to surrender to the Fellowship and the Program of AcAdAn, and thereby, we began to receive help to overcome the alienation from our self, others and our life that our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction had brought about.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 23

It was a surprise for many of us, when we first heard that members of Active Addictions Anonymous worked on recovering from their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

Our own addiction to chronic dissatisfaction was so habitual for us that we had not even observed that we had become alienated to our self and others, because of the dissatisfaction that we took into use many times in the course of a day with our self, others, our lives and the World as a whole.

Little by little, as we attended meetings and heard how other members perceived their addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, we became aware of how our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction made it hard for us to accept our self and others.

Our lack of acceptance of our self and others led to an alienation that made us feel like strangers to our self and others, and this alienation, we began to let go of by surrendering to the help we could get in our Fellowship with others in AcAdAn.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will begin to let go of the alienation I feel because of my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, so that it may become easier for me to recover from my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction.

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December 29: The purpose with membership of AcAdAn

The main purpose of each individual in Active Addictions Anonymous is to find and live in contentment through abstaining from using dissatisfaction with self, others and our life.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 90

When first, we come to Active Addictions Anonymous, we find it difficult to imagine how we would become able to let go of our addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, although it is the very basic purpose with our membership of AcAdAn.

Gradually, as we attend meetings and hear how others have found out how to go through difficult situations that they used to be dissatisfied with without taking their dissatisfaction into use, we become better and better our self at finding ways to be content in the situations we used to be dissatisfied with.

Our personal work with the AcAdAn Program also gives us inspiration to let go of our dissatisfaction with our human limitation, ignorance, powerlessness and mortality/changeability.

Thereby, we begin to achieve days, weeks, months, years during which we experience our self, others, our lives and the World as a whole to be satisfactory, although we face existential challenges like everyone else.

Today’s contemplation
Today, I will use my AcAdAn Program and my AcAdAn Fellowship as a means to help myself to be content with myself, others, my life and the World as a whole

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December 30: The beginning of our own Program

Begin working your own Program with Step One from the Program of Active Addictions Anonymous.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 7

At meetings in Active Addictions Anonymous, we hear about what others have achieved by working the Program in AcAdAn.

It can make us want to carry out the Program in a hurry so as to achieve what others have achieved, but we have to do like everyone else and begin our work in the AcAdAn Program by carrying out Step One.

When we freely admit to our self that we are chronically dissatisfied and that it makes our lives unmanageable, our recovery can begin.

Our recovery begins in Step Two, when we begin to find our loving intention behind our use of addiction to chronic dissatisfaction, and it is up to each member to find the loving intention that is true for him/her:

Today’s contemplation
Today I begin my work with the AcAdAn Program by admitting that my addiction to chronic dissatisfaction makes my life unmanageable

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December 31: The Silence

When we began to learn to consciously empty our point of concentration from all thoughts, we moved into the meditative state, which is also called the Silence or the emptiness in the focus point.

Active Addictions Anonymous - The Wild Life, page 72

When we came to Step Eleven, we began to study what meditation is and how we can achieve entering the meditative state.

We discovered that our thinking mind, our Ego had to become silent for us to become able to pick up the vibration, which streams through all of our being as that Flow that springs from our innermost heart, and which our thinking mind, our Ego translates into words we can understand, and thus we can even let the Stream of Consciousness from our innermost heart flow out of us in words without restriction so as to form an exact impression of the contents of the vortex of our true Self, our Spirit in our innermost heart.

Sometimes we chose to maintain the Silence in our thinking mind, our Ego, so it could become possible for us to remain in the Flow from our innermost heart and experience life as a limited, ignorant, powerless and mortal/changeable human being in the joy from the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment.

The more experience we got with maintaining the Silence in our thinking mind, our Ego at all those times, when we did not need thinking to solve a problem, the easier it became for us to stay in the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment, and the easier it became for us to be content with our self, others, our lives and the World at large.

Today's contemplation
Today, I will use my Eleventh Step to learn how to maintain the Silence in my thinking mind, my Ego, so that I can experience myself, others, my life and the World at large from the Blissful Flow of the Present Moment.

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DAILY CONTEMPLATIONS FOR MEMBERS OF


ACTIVE ADDICTIONS ANONYMOUS

THE WILD LIFE