Someone once inquired of a Zen master, How do you maintain such serenity and peace? He replied, I never leave my place of meditation. Although he meditated early in the morning, for the rest of the day he carried the peace of those moments with him. Being quiet, slowing down, is one of the most difficult tasks facing most …
When I dwell on piddling things that annoy me—and they sprout resentments that grow bigger and bigger like weeds—I forget how I could be stretching my world and broadening my outlook. For me, that’s an ideal way to shrink troubles down to their real size. When somebody or something is causing me trouble, I should …
We’ve been our own worst enemies most of our lives, and we’ve often injured ourselves seriously as a result of a justified resentment over a slight wrong. Doubtless there are many causes for resentment in the world, most of them providing justification. But we can never begin to settle all the world’s grievances or even arrange things so as …
On numerous occasions, I’ve found that there’s a strong connection between my fears and my resentments. If I secretly fear that I’m inadequate, for example, I’ll tend to resent deeply anybody whose actions or words expose my imagined inadequacy. But it’s usually too painful to admit that my own fears and doubts about myself are …
As a recovering compulsive gambler, I have to remind myself that no amount of social acceptance of resentments will take the poison out of them. In a way, the problem of resentments is very much like the gambling problem. A poker game or casino is never safe for me. I’ve attended benefits for worthy causes, …
What can we do about our resentments? Experience has shown that the best thing to do is to write them down, listing people, institutions, or principles that are objects of our anger or resentment. When I write down my resentments and then ask myself why I’m resentful, I’ve discovered that in most cases my self-esteem, …
Sometimes through bitter experience and painful lessons, we learn in our fellowship with others in Gamblers Anonymous that resentment is our number one enemy. It destroys more of us than anything else. From resentment stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we’ve been not only mentally and physically ill, but spiritually ill as well. As …
Among the important things we learn in Gamblers Anonymous is to be good to ourselves. For so many of us, though, this is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. Some of us relish our suffering so much that we balloon each happening to enormous proportions in the reliving and telling. Self-pitiers are drawn to martyrdom …
One of the best ways to get out of the self-pity trap is to do some instant bookkeeping. For every entry of misery on the debit side of our ledger, we can surely find a blessing to mark on the credit side: the health we enjoy, the illnesses we don’t have, the friends who love us and …
The Twelve Steps were designed specifically for people like us—as a short cut to God. The Steps are very much like strong medicine that can heal us of the sickness of despair, frustration, and self-pity. Yet we’re sometimes unwilling to use the Steps. Why? Perhaps because we have a deep-down desire for martyrdom. Consciously and …