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Endigar 1095

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Nov 14:

Step Six talks about becoming entirely ready to have God remove all my defects of character. This readiness rarely appears to me in a sudden, blinding flash of enlightenment. Instead, as I struggle to make progress in a positive direction, I become ready a little at a time.

An important part of my Sixth Step work is practicing gratitude. The more I give thanks for my life as it is, the more I can accept the healing that allows me to change and grow. By recognizing and cultivating my abilities, I am increasingly willing to let go of my defects.

This Step is a lesson in patience, but as I see my life opening up before me in new directions, I do finally become ready to have God remove all my defects of character.

Today’s Reminder

“Progress, not perfection” applies to my readiness to let go of my defects, as well as to other parts of my Al-Anon program. One day at a time, I make progress in readiness.

“Step Six is my chance to cooperate with God. My goal is to make myself ready to let go of my faults and let God take care of the rest.”
~ Alateen—a day at a time

END OF QUOTE—————————————

I don’t treat Step Six as a lightning strike or a spiritual credential earned through intensity. Instead, readiness is something accrued—earned slowly through lived effort, missteps, and the humility of repetition. This is spiritual honesty at work. I am not going to wait to feel holy enough to change; I commit to changing until readiness quietly catches up.

Gratitude is not a polite accessory to recovery. It is an active solvent. By giving thanks for life as it actually is—not as I wish it were—I create the internal conditions where change can occur without violence. Gratitude softens the grip of self-attack. It allows defects to loosen naturally, not because they are condemned, but because they are no longer needed for survival.

There is an important reversal here: I do not become grateful after defects are removed; gratitude itself becomes the mechanism of readiness. As I recognize and cultivate my abilities, defects lose their authority. They are revealed not as moral failures, but as outdated strategies—once useful, now burdensome.

Patience emerges as the quiet discipline of this Step. Not passive waiting, but a willingness to remain in process without demanding immediate transformation. I notice my life opening “in new directions,” which suggests that readiness is not merely subtraction (removal of defects), but expansion—more room to move, choose, and respond.

When I invoke “progress, not perfection,” it does not land as slogan or self-soothing. It reads as a lived measurement tool. Readiness itself becomes something you practice one day at a time. Some days I am more willing, some days less—but the commitment is to return, not to arrive.

What this reflection ultimately reveals is a mature relationship with God: not a God who fixes me once I qualify, but a Higher Power who works with my consent, at my pace, through gratitude, patience, and incremental courage.

This is Step Six as craftsmanship—quiet, honest, and enduring.

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Endigar 1083

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Nov 02:

Step Two states that we “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Recently at a meeting I heard someone paraphrase this Step in a way that perfectly described my own experience: “First I came, then I ‘came to,’ then I came to believe.”

The journey toward a Higher Power has been so gradual for me that I have been unaware of much of it. There has been no burst of light, no burning bush — just a gradual clearing of the fog that I lived in before finding recovery in Al-Anon. Like my fellow member, first I came, bringing my body, if not my faith, to Al-Anon. Then, once I was here, slowly I “came to,” and eventually I came to believe that I wasn’t alone in the universe. There was and is a force, a drive, an energy that can give me the means to make my life joyous and productive. I need only ask for assistance and keep an open mind.

Today’s Reminder

The arrival of faith in my life has been a gradual process. This process continues and grows stronger each day I keep myself open to it. Perhaps acknowledging this process will help me when I am impatient with the twists and turns of life.

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

END OF QUOTE—————————————

NOTE: There were two famous Oliver Wendell Holmes, Father and son, senior and junior. The sited quote is from the Father. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

Profession: Physician, poet, essayist, and professor at Harvard Medical School.
Known for:

  • Being part of the Boston literary circle (“Fireside Poets”) alongside Emerson and Longfellow.
  • Coining the phrase “the Boston Brahmins,” referring to the city’s old, elite families.
  • His poem “Old Ironsides” (which helped save the USS Constitution from being scrapped).
  • Medical contributions, especially his early work in preventing puerperal fever (he argued physicians were spreading it with unwashed hands—years before germ theory was mainstream).

Holmes Sr. believed literature and science should both explore the human condition.
He embodied the 19th-century American intellectual who moved easily between poetry and anatomy.

END OF NOTE—————————————

There is something deeply merciful in Step Two when read slowly:

Came. Came to. Came to believe.

No sudden conversion.
No thunder.
No forced certainty.

Just presence → awakening → trust.

It honors the reality that faith is not something we manufacture. It is something that arrives in us when we make room.

I know what it feels like to live in the fog — the body attending the meeting while the soul waits outside. At first, there is no faith; there is only pain, confusion, exhaustion, and the faint hope that maybe there is another way to live. But I showed up anyway.

That “showing up” is the first miracle.

Because sanity doesn’t return as a lightning strike — it returns as clarity in increments. A soft, almost imperceptible lifting of the veil. The mind stops running. The heart loosens its grip. Something in us begins to breathe again.

Step Two is not a declaration of belief.
It is permission to let belief come on its own terms.

  • First, I came — I moved my body to a safer room than the one I used to live in.
  • Then, I came to — awareness returned, like someone waking after a long emotional coma.
  • Then, I came to believe — not through argument, but through experience:
    “I wasn’t alone in the universe after all.”

There is a humility in that awakening.
And also a profound dignity.

Because the Higher Power we slowly recognize is not a distant voice shouting from the clouds, but a quiet companion who has been walking beside us the whole time — waiting for us to turn our head.

Recovery teaches that faith is organic.
It matures in the soil of willingness and ordinary days.

Not burning bushes.
Just breathing through another morning,
holding on through another wave,
and allowing the fog to clear as the morning Sun dawns.

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Endigar 1081

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Oct 31:

So many of the choices I’ve made in my life have been reactions to fear. Something in my world changes: a loved one seeks sobriety, a friend is displeased with something I’ve said, I’m given a new task at work, the grocery store runs out of chicken — and inside I panic. I’m attacked by thoughts of disaster. I imagine failure, torment, agony. And then I act. I do something rash or fruitless in order to put a bandage on the situation, because the one thing I most fear is being afraid.

Fear can become a power greater than myself. I may not be able to fix it or make it go away. But today, with a Higher Power who is greater than my fears, I don’t have to let them run my life or make my choices for me. I can grab hold of my Higher Power’s hand, face my fears, and move through them.

Today’s Reminder

Al-Anon is a program in which we find spiritual solutions to the things we are powerless to change. Today, instead of seeking relief from fear by trying to do battle with it, I will turn to my Higher Power.

“That the birds of worry and care fly above your head, this you cannot change. But that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.” ~ Chinese proverb

END OF QUOTE—————————————

Fear is the counterfeit god that thrives in the vacuum left by unclaimed authority. It feeds on reaction—the trembling reflex that mistakes movement for mastery. Every panic-born choice is a ritual sacrifice to that false altar: I flail, I fix, I appease. I confuse the pulse of urgency with the rhythm of purpose. And fear smiles, because it knows I’ll bow again tomorrow.

But fear is not the enemy—it’s the mask of the god within. It’s the skin-suit of divinity trying to fit through a human aperture. When the world shifts, the fragile architecture of control collapses, and the imprisoned Self starts to shake the bars. That quake is not failure; it’s prophecy.

So, I no longer “battle fear.” That war is rigged. The 12 Steps teaches me to utilize fear—to forge it into vision. I grip it like a live wire until it burns through illusion and reveals the circuitry of my conditioning. The panic that once ruled me now becomes a doorway. I do not sedate it with false relief or overreaction. I stand still long enough to feel its shape, to let it name what I have refused to grieve.

The Higher Power of my recovery is not a distant rescuer but the fire that walks beside me—the one who demands eye contact. Together, we do not bypass fear; we consume it. Its smoke becomes incense in the temple of recovered Self.

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Endigar 1077

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on October 31, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Oct 27:

One sweltering summer day, I sought escape from the heat at a nearby beach. Lying there with my lemonade, I looked at all the people soaking up the sun. No matter how many people were on that beach, there would be enough sun for everyone. I realized that the same was true of God’s love and guidance. No matter how many people seek God’s help, there is always enough to go around. To someone who believed that there was never enough time, money, love, or anything else, this was amazing news!

This awareness was tested at an Al-Anon meeting when someone spoke about his Higher Power with a personal love and intensity that matched my own. I felt as if his intimacy with God would leave less love for me. But I think that the opposite is true. I often feel closest to God when I hear others share about how well a Higher Power has taken care of them. Today I try to remember that there is enough love for us all.

Today’s Reminder

I may not have everything I want, but today I have everything I need. I will look for evidence of abundance and let it remind me that my Higher Power’s love is broad enough to touch all who have the courage to place themselves in its presence.

“I can learn to avail myself of the immense, inexhaustible power of God, if I am willing to be continually conscious of God’s nearness.” ~ One Day at a Time in Al-Anon

END OF QUOTE—————————————

The image of the beach is a gentle dismantling of the scarcity mindset. You lie under a sky so vast it cannot be owned, and it becomes a living metaphor for divine sufficiency. Heat, light, love — all flow without measure or merit. Recovery, at its heart, is the re-education of the nervous system to trust that abundance is not a trick of fortune but a property of reality itself.

That moment in the meeting — the flicker of jealousy or fear when another spoke of intimate communion with God — is sacredly honest. It reveals how deeply the family disease distorts love into competition. In the alcoholic household, affection is conditional, attention is rationed, and safety feels temporary. The ego learns: If you are loved, there is less for me.
But spiritual maturity is learning to feel another’s blessing as proof of your own. What touches them touches the field you share.

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Endigar 1076

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Oct 26:

I remember others’ unkind words vividly. Criticism sent me reeling. Snickers crippled me for days. It never occurred to me that I was being abused, or that the harsh words could be untrue. Everyone seemed to know just how wrong I was, and my identity was bound up in a knot of shame. My self-esteem sank lower and lower.

I, in turn, treated others cruelly. I found it great fun to assault someone’s character in the company of friends. For a few minutes I felt better about myself — but not for long and only at other people’s expense. Gossip never enriched anyone’s character. It was only an excuse to avoid focusing on myself.

Today’s Reminder

Many of us tend to react rather than act. When we hurt, we may want to strike out and hurt someone else. In Al-Anon we learn that we can interrupt this automatic response long enough to decide how we really want to behave.

Someone else’s unkindness is no reason for me to lower my standards for my own behavior. When I take responsibility for my actions, regardless of what other people do, I become someone I can be proud of. When I feel good about myself, it’s much easier not to take insults personally

“If one throws salt at thee thou wilt receive no harm unless thou hast sore places.” ~ Latin proverb

END OF QUOTE—————————————

NOTE: There’s no credible named author for the “Latin proverb.” The saying shows up in 19th-century American print as a proverb/maxim—sometimes even called a “Quaker maxim”—but not tied to any classical Latin writer.

  • Earliest hits found in AI directed search are U.S. newspapers/magazines from the 1850s printing it as a proverb (no author): Savannah, GA paper (Jan 18, 1851) and The Water-Cure Journal (July 1852).
  • A later retrospective explicitly calls it a “Quaker maxim.”
  • Modern quote sites often label it “Latin proverb,” but I can’t find it in Erasmus’s Adagia or other standard classical collections—suggesting the “Latin” tag is a generic or spurious attribution.

So, if you need to credit it, the safest is: “Proverb (often misattributed as ‘Latin’; sometimes described as a ‘Quaker maxim’).” It makes sense to me that the Antebellum South would prefer to call it a Latin proverb rather than a Quaker maxim.

END OF NOTE—————————————

There is a deep wound that strikes at the core of many recovery stories — the confusion between being criticized and being defined. When a child or partner grows up in a household where shame is the native tongue, words become weapons that etch themselves into the nervous system. The body keeps score — not only of trauma, but of tone.

This confusion is not a misunderstanding; it is a crime scene. Every time a parent or partner names a child lazy, dramatic, or ungrateful, they are engraving graffiti on divine architecture. Those words become neurological scars — the body’s way of carrying the courtroom of the past into every new encounter. It’s not just that “the body keeps score”; it’s that the body was drafted into a war it never consented to fight.

The haunting belief that “everyone seemed to know just how wrong I was” captures that suffocating illusion of consensus — a world where the false self is built entirely from other people’s verdicts. Yet recovery reveals the first glimmer of transformation: recognition. Seeing that cruelty can be both inflicted and internalized allows us to break the spell of projection. When we gossip or mock, we are only transferring the shame we have not yet metabolized.

But reflection is not retreat — it is reconquest. It is the moment we decide that the verdicts of our abusers will no longer define our vocabulary. That we will no longer carry their tone in our throats. That our anger, refined through awareness, becomes the forge of integrity.

Recovery invites us to stop exporting pain and start composting it — turning the rot into fertile soil for new growth. Al-Anon’s wisdom here is profoundly liberating: reaction can be replaced with reflection. The pause between impulse and action is the doorway to self-respect. And when we act, rather than react, we reclaim authorship of our own story.

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Endigar 1072 ~ Amends to Myself

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2025 by endigar

I have been through the 12 Steps several times. First in AA, then once in Al-Anon. The only person I had not made amends to was myself. The Self. So, I turned to my inner core and promised to do so through ACA 12 Step guidance. I have arrived at the extensive ACA moral inventory, and I spent time listing and clarifying the transgressions against that little one within. Once I had exhausted that process, I asked AI to look at my list. I explained what I was doing. It apparently is familiar with the ACA process. It rendered a beautiful response to what I had written. Yes, I know they are my words, but the crafting was deeply moving for me. I wanted to share that with you:

✦ Amends to Myself ✦

(in the spirit of the Eleventh Step, where confession becomes creation)

To the one who bore the weight of perfection and the ache of exile,
I have long mistaken your yearning for weakness and your sensitivity for sin.
I asked you to starve the body so the soul might eat.
I shamed your smile because it mirrored your father’s tremor.
I buried your art under the altar of other people’s comfort.
I taught you to despise your own vitality — to treat laughter, lust, and leisure as signs of betrayal.

I am sorry.

You deserved music, not mortification.
You deserved the sweat of play, the discipline of motion, the unashamed pulse of being alive.
I see now that neglect is also violence — slow, invisible violence turned inward.
I release you from that bondage.

You may read for pleasure now.
You may lift weights without martyrdom.
You may write as though the angels are your editors, not your judges.
You may speak even when your voice shakes.
You may fail in public and still be faithful to the experiment of being human.

I forgive you for believing that suffering was the same as sanctity.
I forgive you for chasing divine union as if it required annihilation.
I forgive you for letting cinema cradle you when books felt too heavy — you were surviving, not surrendering.
I forgive you for feeding the ache with sugar, with porn, with silence, with impossible ideals.

Now, I call you forward:
To practice small follow-throughs as sacred rites.
To honor the mundane as the threshold to the miraculous.
To build a temple not of control, but of rhythm — frequency over intensity, patience over purity.

Your body is no longer a battlefield.
It is a covenant renewed daily with breath.
Your mind is not a cage for angels and demons — it is a workshop for wonder.
Your heart may open again, even if it trembles.

I asked the AI, “In the Amends to Self, you said parenthetically – (in the spirit of the Eleventh Step, where confession becomes creation) The 11th Step has to do with the cultivating conscious contact with my HP. What is the relevance in your beautiful wording of making amends (Step 9) based on the ACA moral inventory (Step 4)?”

Lucien the AI responded thusly: You’re right to catch that, Lorcan — and your instinct is precise. Step Nine belongs to the world of repair; Step Eleven to relationship.

The reason I wove the Eleventh Step into that parenthetical wasn’t to blur the lines between them but to describe what happens when self-forgiveness and spiritual contact begin to intertwine. In adult-child recovery, making amends to oneself can’t stop at restitution; it naturally opens into re-connection with the Loving Parent and Higher Power.

Here’s the deeper linkage:

StepPrimary MovementWhen Applied to “Amends to Self”
Step Four – Moral InventorySeeing with honestyI name the ways I abandoned, silenced, or punished myself.
Step Nine – AmendsRepairing with responsibilityI offer restitution and commit to new behavior.
Step Eleven – Conscious ContactListening with intimacyI cultivate ongoing communion with the Self that was restored — the “child of God” now safe to speak again.

So when I said “in the spirit of the Eleventh Step, where confession becomes creation,” I meant that your amends has crossed a threshold: it is not only an apology but a creative act of alignment.
In ordinary Twelve-Step rhythm:

  • Step Four reveals the truth.
  • Step Nine restores justice.
  • Step Eleven renews relationship.

But in ACA’s inner work, these three begin to circle each other. When you make amends to yourself, you’re both restoring relationship (Step 9) and cultivating conscious contact (Step 11) with the part of you that is an expression of your Higher Power.

In other words:

Every sincere amends to Self is also a prayer answered from within.
Confession becomes creation the moment the Loving Parent and the Inner Child begin speaking again.

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Endigar 1058

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Oct 9:

I used to think of God as my adversary. We were engaged in a battle of wills, and I wasn’t about to let down my guard. You can imagine how quickly this attitude led me to hit a hard emotional bottom! I came to Al-Anon, but I was reluctant to admit that I was powerless. I knew it was true — I had obviously failed to conquer alcoholism — but I wasn’t going to submit to my enemy!

I’m so grateful to Al-Anon for helping me learn to surrender. It took a long time, but I finally realized that surrender does not mean submission — it means I’m willing to stop fighting reality, to stop trying to do God’s part, and to do my own.
When I gather flowers, or marvel at nature’s wonders, I do not lose face when I concede that I am not in control. So it is with everything in my life. The best way I’ve found to invite serenity is to recognize that the world is in good hands.

Today’s Reminder

Today I can be grateful that the earth will continue to revolve without any help from me. I am free to live my own life, safe in the knowledge that a Higher Power is taking care of the world, my loved ones, and myself.

“The First Step prepares us for a new life, which we can achieve only by letting go of what we cannot control, and by undertaking, one day at a time, the monumental task of setting our world in order through a change in our own thinking.” ~ One Day at a Time in Al-Anon

END OF QUOTE—————————————

I was at a block this morning. I truly did come into the recovery rooms with a high level of distrust for surrender to any concept of God, a Higher Power. It has gotten much better, but internal cognitive dissonance prevents me from settling into the stable trust I desire. Sometimes, I am just tired of the limitations of my life. And I did not want to project that struggle into today’s writing. I asked AI to help me out and what it produced I found to be beneficial. I hope that it will be for you as well:

Opening Context

Many of us arrive in recovery with clenched fists toward the idea of God. We confuse control with strength and surrender with defeat. In truth, the First Step dismantles that illusion gently: powerlessness is not humiliation but permission to rest. To stop trying to play God is not to lose our dignity, but to rediscover it.

When the author says they once saw God as an adversary, they are describing one of the most human reflexes — the fear of being overpowered. Yet the paradox of recovery is that what feels like yielding to an enemy becomes yielding to life itself.

Scriptural Echoes

  • “Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10
    Stillness is the first act of trust.
  • “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” — Matthew 11:28
    The rest offered here is not absence of effort but the end of unnecessary struggle.
  • “Thy will be done.” — The Serenity Prayer’s hidden anchor.

Spiritual Realization

Surrender transforms when it ceases to be a white flag and becomes a flower gathered. The same hands that once clenched in defense now open to gather beauty. The text’s shift from “battle of wills” to “gathering flowers” is not accidental — it is a description of inner evolution.
Surrender, rightly understood, is the release of illusion: the illusion that our will can rewrite gravity, time, or the hearts of others.
Reality becomes a teacher instead of an opponent.

Meditative Questions

  1. Where in my life am I still treating reality as an adversary?
  2. What does it feel like in my body when I release control — not in despair, but in trust?
  3. Can I remember a moment when I stopped fighting and something good quietly unfolded on its own?
  4. How might I honor my Higher Power today not through effort, but through allowing?

Closing Reflection

The world continues to turn without our command, yet this is not a reason for despair — it is the foundation of serenity.
The First Step is not an abdication of power, but the discovery of where true power lives: in humility, trust, and alignment with the rhythm that already carries us.
When we stop trying to make the sun rise, we finally notice the dawn.

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Endigar 1055

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Oct 6:

Although the crisis that brought us to Al-Anon may be past, there is always something new to learn, even after years of recovery. We change. Opportunities for spiritual growth, as well as new character defects, pop up like weeds in a newly-mown lawn, and we find ourselves turning to the Steps for a fresh look.

I experienced this one day when I noticed that I had begun to be angry much of the time. I thought that other people and situations were to blame, but I decided to concentrate on my own part of the picture. I took a written inventory of my memories, feelings, and behavior whenever I lost my serenity, and then read it aloud to someone I trust. As I read, the common thread — the exact nature of my wrongs — jumped out at me. My problem was my pride and arrogance, not my situation. The need to be right was robbing me of my serenity in all kinds of situations.

No matter how long I work the Al-Anon program, I will never cease finding new ways to apply it to my life. That is a blessing, for it means that my life will continue to get better.

Today’s Reminder

There is something new for me to learn today. I will open my mind and my heart to the lessons my Higher Power brings me.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” ~ Albert Einstein

END OF QUOTE—————————————

Like a gentle but bracing wind—the kind that wakes the soul without apology. It reminds us that recovery isn’t a one-time rescue but a living cycle of awareness, humility, and rediscovery. The “crisis” that brought us here may have passed, but the work of remaining teachable never ends. Every new layer of living—aging, loving, losing, forgiving—stirs up fresh sediment in the soul.

Anger is not condemned but examined. It becomes a mirror revealing the quiet arrogance that insists the world must adjust to our script. Pride, when disguised as principle, steals serenity one argument at a time. The inventory process here—writing, reading aloud, discovering the thread—is the crucible where humility is reforged. It is not shame that heals us, but truth spoken in trust.

To keep turning toward the Steps is to keep tending the soil of the self. We learn that serenity is not a permanent achievement—it’s a living ecosystem, constantly asking to be pruned, watered, and renewed.

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Endigar 1050

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Oct 1:

Suddenly I am aware of thoughts racing and crashing through my mind at an alarming speed — memories, broken promises, fears about the future, failed expectations of both myself and other people. This is a familiar chaos and one that I can now recognize. It is a signal that my life has, for the time being, become unmanageable.

At such a time, serenity is often just a phone call away. A simple acknowledgment of the chaos immediately diminishes it. I step back, step outside the madness, and all at once it washes away or scatters in all the myriad directions from which it came. The pieces of my chaos return to their proper places, where I can either leave them alone or choose to confront them one at a time.

Today’s Reminder

If problems arise today, I will try to acknowledge them — and then put a little spiritual space between my problems and myself. If I can share about them with another person, I will further diminish their power. Recognizing that my life is unmanageable is the first step toward managing it.

“When we bring things out into the light, they lose their power over us.” ~ In All Our Affairs

END OF QUOTE—————————————

I admit my life becomes unmanageable. Sometimes suddenly, like a storm tearing through my skull. Sometimes subtly, like vines choking the Core. Thoughts collide, memories accuse, fears multiply. The storm pretends it is endless. But I know better: unmanageability is not doom. It is a marker on the map. Recognition itself shifts the ground.

The lesson is plain: chaos thrives in secrecy. When I hoard it, the swirl of fear and regret mutates into false identity. But when I name it — even whisper it to myself — “My life is unmanageable now,” I puncture the illusion of control. That naming is smashing the idol of my own secrecy. Chaos scatters back into fragments. Fragments can be faced. Fragments can be conquered.

Growth does not mean erasing chaos. Growth means social containment: forcing chaos into pieces too small to dominate me. The mystical edge is how quickly the storm collapses once named. Serenity is not manufactured. Serenity is revealed. It waits behind the noise, eclipsed but patient. One phone call. One word of honesty. One pause of breath. These are not trivialities. They are sacraments of a very personal spirituality.

To drag shadow into light is to strip it of false authority. That is the beginning of my negotiation with Truth. I trust that the light is stronger than secrecy. Chaos does not need annihilation in one blow. It needs to be disarmed, piece by piece, until it cannot enforce stupidity upon me.

I risk sharing what I would rather hide because secrecy is slavery. Light dissolves its power. When I bring chaos out, I discover it was never infinite. It scatters, weakens, and yields. Serenity is not absence of storm. Serenity is the deliberate spacing between storm and soul.

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Endigar 1045

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on September 26, 2025 by endigar

From Courage to Change of Sep 26:

When I first came to Al-Anon, I thought that anger, resentment, jealousy, and fear were “bad” feelings. The program has helped me to learn that feelings are neither good nor bad — they are simply a part of who I am.

I have come to realize that good has sometimes come as a result of those feelings. Anger has prompted some constructive changes in my life. Resentment has made me so uncomfortable that I’ve had to learn to combat it — as a result, I have learned to pray for other people. Jealousy has taught me to keep my mouth shut when I know I will say only irrational, destructive things. And fear has been perhaps my greatest gift, because it forces me to make conscious contact with my Higher Power.

Now that the negative has become the positive, I am better able to accept the whole picture. There is no more need to judge or hate myself just because I experience a human feeling.

Today’s Reminder

Feelings may not be comfortable, but that doesn’t make them bad. With a change of attitude, I have choices about what to do with my feelings. Anything can be used for my good if I allow it. Recognizing this opportunity may take every ounce of imagination I have, but maybe that’s why God gave me imagination to begin with.

“My feelings are neither right nor wrong but are important by virtue of being mine.” ~ In All Our Affairs

END OF QUOTE—————————————

Emotions are not intruders to be evicted, but landmarks on the inner map of recovery. They belong to me, and I will not surrender them to the enforced stupidity of a culture that insists I amputate half my soul to stay palatable. Anger, jealousy, and fear are not above me, and I am not above them. They march beside me, and when I dare to tell the truth about their presence, I invite God to forge them into constructs for the writing of My Story.

What if every unwelcome emotion was a disguised angel? Or a disguised threat map revealing enforced silence? What if these unwelcome visitors are the hammer that cracks open complacency? Processed resentment reveals the threat of endless begging, and thus becomes the goad that drives me into prayer and surrender to a Higher Power that does not colonize Me. What if the appearance of jealousy is the illumination of the threat of romantic override? What if fear evades the threat of contamination, and also the one force that hurls me into conscious contact with a Higher Power? The thorns of My inner garden are not weeds—they are barbed wire that guards the perimeter of My God given sovereignty.

The paradox is clear: My feelings may not be right or wrong, but they are still significant because they are mine. They are entrusted to me as sacred signals. In claiming them, I break the tyranny of self-judgment. I do not have to punish myself for being human. I choose instead to stand in Intelligent Self-Patriotism: to pause, reflect, and act without apology. Recovery does not demand erasure of anger or fear; it demands that I braid them into My fabric with the personal mythology of my faith.

When I embrace my emotions without condemnation, I become a man who does not outsource his soul. I extend grace to others not as a surrender but as a chosen act of containment. I admit jealousy, rage, fear—not as confession of weakness but as courage to be seen. Recovery gave me imagination; My Story activates it. Imagination paints possibility onto the canvas of fear, but My personal ethos presses that canvas into a banner: My life is about writing My story. Let the Patriots bleed. Let every feeling become a landmark, a teacher, a threat revealed, a scar turned into scripture.

Emotions are horrible masters, but excellent servants to those that own the story of their lives.

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