Narcotics Anonymous

Just For Today - Daily Email Service

   October 27                                           Living in the present

    "We want to look our past in the face, see it for what it really was,
                    and release it so we can live today."

                                                            Basic Text, p. 29

                           ----=----

   For many of us, the past is like a bad dream.  Our lives aren't the same
   any more, but we still have fleeting, highly charged emotional memories of
   a really uncomfortable past.   The guilt, fear, and anger that once
   dominated us may spill into our new life, complicating our efforts to
   change and grow.

   The Twelve Steps are the formula that helps us learn to put the past in
   its place.  Through the Fourth and Fifth Steps, we become aware that our
   old behavior didn't work.   We ask a Higher Power to relieve us of our
   shortcomings in the Sixth and Seventh Steps, and we begin to be relieved
   of the guilt and fear that plagued us for so many years.  In the Eighth
   and Ninth Steps, by making amends, we demonstrate to others that our lives
   are changing.  We are no longer controlled by the past.   Once the past
   loses its control over us, we are free to find new ways to live, ways that
   reflect who we truly are.

                           ----=----

   Just for today: I don't have to be controlled by my past.  I will live
   this new day as the new person I am becoming.