Off the radar--until today.

Had I sat a thousand hours, intent on honest self-examination, my list of character defects wouldn't have included anxiety. In the first place, it doesn't seem like a character defect. In the second, it didn't seem like my character defect. But that's what God's got me focusing on today.

Angeles Arrien wrote:

Anxiety is an energetic experience caused by holding back. Basically, it is the state of frustration. It is the experience of having abundant energy but not knowing what to do with that energy, or it's a lot of energy that's being contained or held back, which will produce anxiety or the state of strife.... ...creative power that does not want to be limited, restricted or restrained, and desires full expression....

Any holding back or self limitation will move you into that state in alchemy which was known as  leaded consciousness.... In states of anxiety or strife you have difficulty accessing inherent wisdom....

This Mac computer's internal dictionary gives the definition "a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome." At that I chuckle. It's that feeling Dr. Silkwood described as he wrote for the Big Book:

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks -- drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery. (Alcoholics Anonymous, pages xxvii-xxix)

Of course we overeaters see the same addictive behavior in ourselves, the same restlessness, irritability, discontent -- the anxiety. Funny, how sticking a new name on something I already identified with gives it new life! In the next paragraph, Silkwood says:

On the other hand -- and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand -- once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.

So, the message of the day is that the necessity for computer games and unplanned eating goes away along with restlessness, irritability, and discontent, and creative energy flows unchecked when we go back to the source, check in on that psychic change, and remove the blockages of our own will from God's taking our lives and rocketing us into the fourth dimension. I lived yesterday without computer games, and the food came close to plan. That's a way to describe yesterday from the standpoint of anxiety -- the things I avoided with God's help. Now, let's see what can happen with the same behaviors when the negatives aren't in charge, anxiety is swept away with other defects that stand in the way of my usefulness to God and my fellows, and creativity's cage is crushed.

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 76)