CMA

Just for Today
August 20, 2026

Facing death
Page 242

"Often we have to face some type of crisis during our recovery, such as the death of a loved one..."

Basic Text, p. 102

Every life has a beginning and an end. However, when someone we love a great deal reaches the end of their life, we may have a very hard time accepting their sudden, final absence. Our grief may be so powerful that we fear it will completely overwhelm us--but it will not. Our sorrow may hurt more than anything we can remember, but it will pass.

We need not run from the emotions that may arise from the death of a loved one. Death and grieving are parts of the fullness of living "life on life's terms." By allowing ourselves the freedom to experience these feelings, we partake more deeply of both our recovery and our human nature.

Sometimes the reality of another's death makes our own mortality that much more pronounced. We reevaluate our priorities, appreciating the loved ones still with us all the more. Our life, and our life with them, will not go on forever. We want to make the most of what's most important while it lasts.

We might find that the death of someone we love helps strengthen our conscious contact with our Higher Power. If we remember that we can always turn to that source of strength when we are troubled, we will be able to stay focused on it no matter what may be going on around us.

Just for Today: I will accept the loss of one I love and turn to my Higher Power for the strength to accept my feelings. I will make the most of my love for those in my life today.

A Spiritual Principle a Day
July 20, 2026

Forgiveness Sets Us Free
Page 208

"Forgiving is its own reward. We start to find peace within ourselves. When we are free of guilt, shame, and resentment, our minds can be still."

Living Clean, Chapter 7, "Love"

Self-righteous indignation used to be its own reward. We were uplifted by our intolerance of other points of view. Mad rage was addictive. No one was going to stop us from reaping its choice benefits: isolating ourselves from others, a free pass to gossip, fortifying our side against the person who wronged us--and, of course, a thousand more reasons to get high. A member shared, "Why would I want to forgive when that adrenaline rush of righteous anger felt so damn good?"

But what do we really gain by being "right"? It's a distraction from the real problem. All the hard work we put into staying angry at others could be used to improve ourselves. And like drugs, that initial rush of self-righteous indignation wears off--exposing the shame and guilt lurking below the surface. "I needed more, just to stay well," the member continued. "A thousand hits of justified anger just weren't enough." We end up alone obsessing about our guilt, shame, and resentments, stoking a fire of fixation no one is tending to but us.

Through the process of recovery, we can let go of reacting to every injustice we experience (or think we do). That's a bit of relief right there. Beyond that, we seek to forgive and do the work required to let go of resentments. The rewards are far more satisfying and long lasting. We become more content with minding our own business and less inclined to keep tabs on the behavior of others. We actively try to love them instead--or at least try to understand them. And a lot can be said for off-loading the resentments we've lugged around forever. There's so much freedom in that. There's lightness and even some ease in walking through life.

For many of us, forgiving others does get easier over time, not least because we have experienced its rewards. "I know what it's like to be imprisoned in a deep, dark hole of anger and self-righteousness," the member went on. "But freedom ain't free--and a lot of times the price of freedom is forgiveness."

——— ——— ——— ——— ———

Who in my life have I forgiven or at least started to--and what has that been like? How might my life be different if I continue down this path?

Just for Today
July 20, 2026

Step One
Page 210

"We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable."

Step One

The First Step begins with "we," and there's a reason for that. There is great strength in making a verbal admission of our powerlessness. And when we go to meetings and make this admission, we gain more than personal strength. We become members, part of a collective "we" that allows us, together, to recover from our addiction. With membership in NA comes a wealth of experience: the experience of other addicts who have found a way to recover from their disease.

No longer must we try to solve the puzzle of our addiction on our own. When we honestly admit our powerlessness over our addiction, we can begin the search for a better way to live. We won't be searching alone--we're in good company.

Just for Today: I will start the day with an admission of my powerlessness over my addiction. I will remind myself that the First Step starts with "we," and know that I never have to be alone with my disease again.

A Spiritual Principle a Day
May 18, 2026

Connecting to Our Conscience
Page 143

"We learn to listen to our conscience--that still, small voice within that tells us if we're heading in the right direction."

Living Clean, Chapter 3, "Spirituality Is Practical"

Some of us might argue that the solutions to our problems, the answers to our moment-to-moment decisions and our big life choices, have always been within our reach. We just haven't been listening to our conscience. We've been unable to hear it because of the competing, confusing cacophony of noise in our heads, a squeaky hamster wheel of thoughts that we can't get off of. Others of us feel as if we never had a conscience and that it's som**hing we develop only once we become abstinent and start to work a program. We come to the opinion that our disease speaks to us--in our own voice, no less!--and is the sole influence for our bad decision making. Conversely, our conscience, as an expression of our Higher Power, is the source of positive influence.

Whatever our opinions are about the origin story of our conscience, we can probably all agree that we can do a lot to cultivate our sensitivity to the voice of our higher self. We get clean and become humble enough to ask for help. We listen to each other's experiences of recovery. The work we do on ourselves through the Steps and for others through service awakens us enough to experience our conscience. Many of us would say our conscience has become clearer, more distinct, and more dependable as we've grown in recovery. It becomes easier to access because we're able to turn down the static brought on by its evil twin, our disease. We learn to quiet our minds and, through prayer and meditation, we gain a lot of practice in not just being able to hear it but in listening to what it has to say.

"My conscience is my inner guide," wrote a member. "It's a driving force that gives me what I need to make an honest decision. I still can't control outcomes just because I'm choosing wisely, but I come to my decisions with integrity."

——— ——— ——— ——— ———

I will practice staying conscious of my conscience. It's there for me when I listen, helping me to stay connected to living this new way of life.

Just for Today
May 18, 2026

Friends and amends--keeping it simple
Page 144

"We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others."

Step Nine

In every relationship, we don't always handle things the way we would have hoped. But friendships don't have to end when we make mistakes; instead, we can make amends. If we are sincerely willing to accept the responsibilities involved in friendship and make the amends we owe, those friendships can become stronger and richer than ever.

Making amends is simple. We approach the person we have harmed and say, "I was wrong." Sometimes we avoid getting to the point, evading an admission of our own part in the affair. But that frustrates the intent of the Ninth Step. To make effective amends, we have to keep it simple: we admit our part, and leave it at that.

There will be times when our friends won't accept our amends. Perhaps they need time to process what has happened. If that is the case, we must give them that time. After all, we were the ones in the wrong, not them. We have done our part; the rest is out of our hands.

Just for Today: I want to be a responsible friend. I will strive to keep it simple when making amends.

A Spiritual Principle a Day
May 17, 2026

Love for Unity's Sake
Page 142

"Unity depends on our willingness to keep coming from love, even when that seems like the hardest thing to do."

Guiding Principles, Tradition Two, "Spiritual Principles"

Why is coming from love so difficult sometimes?

Practicing the principle of unity in all of our affairs--and coming from a place of love while doing it--so often seems to require superhuman powers.

Sometimes coming from love is hard because a friend has truly wronged us or hurt someone else we love. Or maybe it's the member who stole money from the group or the one who gossips constantly. Or a newcomer from a treatment program uses language from another fellowship. Or, at dinner after the meeting, that guy is chewing with his mouth open. Again.

At other times, coming from love is a challenge because we know we are right! Yet our group's conscience runs counter to this indisputable fact. "There's no way in hell that our collective Higher Power is being expressed through that ridiculous decision!" We want to throw a chair across the room or break down in tears of frustration.

Clearly, coming from love may not be our first reaction to most any distraction. The good news is that we're teachable. We can learn to empathize with others, to trust group conscience, and to let go of our desires to control everyone and everything. The more we're able to absorb this lesson and practice unconditional love, the more relief we experience from our anger and self-righteousness.

Tradition Two reminds us that the group's conscience is expressed through a loving Higher Power. To support this idea, we've heard members say, "We are acting out of either love or fear." Maybe it's not always quite that simple, but as we grow, we come to understand how critical unity is to our own recovery, and we become willing to examine whether a chosen action squares with spiritual principles.

——— ——— ——— ——— ———

Even at an emotional breaking point, it is possible to ask myself, "Am I coming from a place of love?" Today I will take a moment to breathe before opening my mouth, clicking send, or throwing a chair.

Just for Today
May 17, 2026

"Defects"
Page 143

"We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

Step Six

After taking the Fifth Step, many of us spend some time considering "the exact nature of our wrongs" and the part they'd played in making us who we were. What would our lives be like without, say, our arrogance?

Sure, arrogance had kept us apart from our fellows, preventing us from enjoying and learning from them. But arrogance had also served us well, propping up our ego in the face of critically low self-esteem. What advantage would be gained if our arrogance were removed, and what support would we be left with?

With arrogance gone, we would be one step closer to being restored to our proper place among others. We would become capable of appreciating their company and their wisdom and their challenges as their equals. Our support and guidance would come, if we chose, from the care offered us by our Higher Power; "low self-esteem" would cease to be an issue.

One by one, we examined our character defects this way, and found them all defective--after all, that's why they're called defects. And were we entirely ready to have God remove all of them? Yes.

Just for Today: I will thoroughly consider all my defects of character to discover whether I am ready to have the God of my understanding remove them.

A Spiritual Principle a Day
May 11, 2026

Honest Self-Appraisal in the Steps
Page 136

"The steps help us to increase our ability to be honest with ourselves and others."

Living Clean, Chapter 1, "Growing Pains"

To say that honesty wasn't a top priority when we were using may be an understatement. We gain a new awareness of honesty's value once we clean up. With a clear head and a restored conscience, we find that dishonesty comes at a price. Regret is no joke, so we try to avoid it. Practicing honesty with ourselves can be a little more complicated. Self-deception creates some major blind spots that have a nasty habit of reemerging. Fortunately, our ability to be honest with ourselves deepens as we work the Twelve Steps.

We admit our powerlessness and begin to reckon with our unmanageability. We come to recognize that we're, frankly, screwed on our own and decide to accept some help. Taking action that's aligned with that decision begins with an honest evaluation of how we've lived our lives so far. Sometimes we get as many insights in sharing our inventories as we do in writing them. We go on to dig a bit deeper, examining how aspects of our character had become disproportionate to their intended purpose. We turn this bag of dirty tricks over to a Higher Power--and over and over and over again as we strive to be better people with help from that Power, whatever we conceive that to be. Taking another look at the harm we caused, we make an earnest effort to right our past wrongs.

Continuing on this path takes daily commitment and, honestly, we all slack off from time to time. Our experience with the Steps means we're quicker to notice when old patterns of thinking and behavior creep back up on us. Oh, I'm doing that again. We may find that we've shut down emotionally, become disconnected from our spiritual lives, resumed a hurtful interior monologue, or taken up some other outmoded approach to life. We put in the work to restore wholehearted honesty to our lives and in our relationships, including those with ourselves and with a Higher Power. We tune in to reality, to the truth, to our higher selves. And we help others to do the same--to live and to thrive through the daily application of spiritual principles.

——— ——— ——— ——— ———

I will engage in some honest self-assessment today. I will shore up my foundation and restore my zest for learning how to live.

Just for Today
May 11, 2026

Balancing the scales
Page 137

"A lot of our chief concerns and major difficulties come from our inexperience with living without drugs. Often when we ask an old timer what to do, we are amazed at the simplicity of the answer."

Basic Text, p. 43

Finding balance in recovery is quite a bit like sitting down with a set of scales and a pile of sand. The goal is to have an equal amount of sand on each side of the scales, achieving a balance of weight.

We do the same thing in recovery. We sit down with the foundation of our clean time and the Twelve Steps, then attempt to add employment, household responsibilities, friends, sponsees, relationships, meetings, and service in equal weights so that the scales balance. Our first try may throw our personal scales out of kilter. We may find that, because of our over-involvement in service, we have upset our employer or our family. But when we try to correct this problem by resigning from NA service altogether, the other side of the scales go out of balance.

We can ask for help from members who have stabilized their scales. These people are easy to recognize. They appear serene, composed, and self-assured. They'll smile in recognition at our dilemma and share how they slowed down, added only a few grains of sand at a time to either side of the scales, and were rewarded with balance in recovery.

Just for Today: I seek balance in my life. Today, I will ask others to share their experience in finding that balance.

A Spiritual Principle a Day
May 04, 2026

Willingness Gets Us into Action
Page 129

"Willingness without action is fantasy."

Living Clean, Chapter 6, "Commitment"

Those of us who weren't stoned out of our minds for middle school science may recall the law of inertia: "An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force." In other words, things tend to keep doing what they're doing unless som**hing intervenes. The same might be said for people.

When humans experience inertia, it can signal our resistance to change. Addicts sometimes take this to extremes--imagine that! When we get stuck in place or in constant motion, a powerful force may be needed to provoke change. That's why getting through the doors of our first meeting is so extraordinary. This first, often tentative action demonstrates a sublime willingness. Looking back on this first hint of surrender, many of us might sense the presence of an external force that propelled us into action. Individually and collectively, you might say that the force is strong with us.

Then and now, meetings can provide a potent antidote to inertia. They offer inspiration and help us imagine a future without drugs. Beyond fantasizing, we learn from each other's experience and try out practical new tools. We give ourselves a break and learn to let momentary or even obsessive thoughts of using come and go. By attending meetings regularly, we get frequent reminders about the kinds of actions we can take to sustain our cleantime or delve more intensely into recovery.

The NA program holds the potential to change the direction or speed of the addict who still suffers, but it takes some cooperation and effort on our part. As one member pointed out, "We say, 'It works if you work it,' not 'It works if you fantasize about it.'" We're not strangers to wishing things were different. In NA, we still hope and pray, but then we roll up our sleeves and get to work. As the age-old saying goes, "If nothing changes, nothing changes."

——— ——— ——— ——— ———

Whether I've let complacency grind my forward momentum to a halt or let constant motion block my awareness, I invite a loving force greater than myself to nudge me out of inertia.