Endigar 404 ~ “Hold Back Nothing”
From Today’s Daily Reflections;
The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey. . . .Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquility takes its place. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 61 – 62)
A tiny kernel of locked-in feelings began to unfold when I first attended A.A. meetings and self-knowledge then became a learning task for me. This new self-understanding brought about a change in my responses to life’s situations. I realized I had the right to make choices in my life, and the inner dictatorship of habits slowly lost its grip.
I believe that if I seek God I can find a better way to live and I ask Him daily to assist me in living a sober life.
END OF QUOTE
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My sense of self relief came from finishing a difficult task. My guilt-o-meter is broken, so that I feel guilty for things I have no control over, and no guilt for things that I hear others say sparked great remorse in them. I do not know why this is. Maybe the emotional tripwires of my family of origin, my mother being an adult child of an alcoholic father that she lost to this disease when she was around seventeen. My stomach acid is composed of 78% constant anxiety knowing that on some front, somewhere, I am going to get in trouble. This probably makes me a “double dipper,” someone who is both an alcoholic and qualifies for Al-Anon. I have visited them before. For now, I will stay with AA and try another time to work the fourth step, if a new sponsor thinks that is necessary.
I am intrigued by one phrase from the above contribution; “the right to make choices in my life” while “the inner dictatorship of habits slowly lost its grip.” This seems to ring in my ears, as if it is a spiritual clue. Or maybe an inner child’s hope.
Daily Reprieve 
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