I have been approached for sponsorship by a large number of
people over the years.
Some have aborted the process prematurely. Some have
followed the process in full.
Every single person who has followed the process in full has
stayed sober and had a spiritual awakening, experiencing a liberation of
thought. Many of the people who have aborted the process prematurely have ended
up with other sponsors and eventually 'got the programme' (as they say), one
way or another. A number have aborted the process and are elsewhere or nowhere.
Here is a question: why do people abort the process?
The mind that comes to AA is usually functioning only in
part. Some critical faculties are intact, but the reality perceived is not the
whole of reality but a fragment, due to rotten cherry-picking of the negative,
and the world is always seen from the point of view of self; this fragment of reality
is then distorted by a lot of speculation, interpretation, generalisation, and
extrapolation.
Frankly, the theological conclusions that are going to be
reached any time before the end of Step Nine are highly likely to be warped by
unresolved 'issues' (as they are called).
I would not give tuppence for any theological conclusions I
came to early in AA, or before the end of Step Nine, even.
The people I have seen be successful are the ones who can
muster logic-based faith, not in a God they do not believe in but a sponsor or
others they do. That is what 'We Agnostics' in the book Alcoholics Anonymous is all about. It does not seek to convince
anyone about a particular brand of God. Its logic essentially relies on this: 'We're
doing better than you, aren't we? If you believe that, you are in, and all you
have to do is copy us.'
The ones who fail are not the ones who simply copy and
complete the first nine Steps and then live in the last three, as instructed.
In fact, the ones who succeed are often the ones who do
precisely that, gradually developing spirit-based critical faculties as they
go, wake up, and then draw their own theological conclusions with a clear mind,
without being warped by cognitive distortions and the emotions that flow from
them. Anyone who does that cannot be swayed intellectually if they are truly
awake, because their spirit is too strongly in charge. No sheepishness now, in
any sense.
The ones who do not succeed typically find some objection to
the actions of the programme based not on the experience of having taken said
actions but on some speciously concocted world view borne of long-standing
misery. The reasons for 'no!' or 'not yet!' are like the reasons for the free-thinking
rebel baby not wanting to leave the womb—how could they believe in a world
outside they have never seen? Ridiculous!
What unites those who do not take the actions can be boiled
down to this: 'you say these actions will get me well. I do not believe you.
You have taken them; I have not, but I am right and you are wrong. I have
better things to do. Goodbye'.
So, it is not for a surfeit of logic that people typically abandon
the programme and take the consequences thereof; it is for an absence of it.