AA Daily Reflections: The Meditation Book and How Meetings Use It
Daily Reflections is the meditation book most often meant when someone in Alcoholics Anonymous mentions the daily reading. It is Conference-approved, it is free to read online, and hundreds of groups build an entire meeting format around it. For help finding those meetings, call (866) 920-0628.
Read more: Upon Awakening AA: The Power of Morning Reflections in Recovery
What the Daily Reflections Book Is
Its full title is Daily Reflections: A Book of Reflections by A.A. Members for A.A. Members. Alcoholics Anonymous World Services published it in 1990 and it carries Conference approval, which means the fellowship as a whole adopted it rather than any one author or publisher.
It holds 366 entries, one for every calendar day including 29 February. The writers are ordinary members rather than professionals, which is the point: what they offer is experience, not instruction.
How Each Entry Is Built
Every page follows the same shape. It opens with a short quotation from AA literature, usually the Big Book or the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and follows it with a reflection from a member on what that passage has meant in their own recovery.
The book is arranged around AA's Three Legacies of Recovery, Unity and Service, so across a year the entries move through personal sobriety, the life of the group, and being useful to others.
Where to Read Today's Reflection
AA publishes the current day's reflection free on aa.org, and that is the source worth bookmarking. It is the official text, it is correct, and it costs nothing.
The book is also sold in print and large print through AA's own literature service and ordinary booksellers. What is best avoided are the scanned PDFs and mirror sites: the text is copyrighted, and those copies are often incomplete or wrong for the date.
Daily Reflections or Twenty-Four Hours a Day
These two get confused more than any other pair of recovery books. Daily Reflections is AA's own and Conference-approved. Twenty-Four Hours a Day is published by Hazelden and is not, though it is just as widely read.
If someone says the daily reflection, they almost certainly mean this book. If they say the thought for the day, they mean the other one.
Daily Reflections as a Meeting Format
This is where the book stops being something you read alone. A great many groups run a Daily Reflections meeting: someone reads the day's entry aloud, and that entry sets the topic for the hour.
The format suits newcomers because it removes the hardest part of a discussion meeting, which is deciding what to say. There is a passage on the table, and you talk about the passage or you pass.
Finding One Near You
Our directory lists meetings across every state, and many carry their format so you can tell a Daily Reflections or literature meeting from a speaker or step meeting before you turn up.
If you are new, it is worth trying more than one. The book is the same everywhere; the room is not, and the room is usually what decides whether you come back.
Making It a Daily Habit
Members who stick with it tend to read at a fixed point in the day, most often before anything else. A few minutes is the whole commitment.
Some pair the reading with the eleventh step, which asks for prayer and meditation as a daily practice. Others simply read it and get on with the morning. Both count.