Here and there

The programme is a set of tools for adjusting how we see things and how we act. When we're going through the programme, with a sponsor or a sponsee, the subject matter is our lives. Is the sponsorship relationship unnecessarily intrusive when it examines and challenges our attitudes and our actions, how we see things and how we do things?

I don't think so, because, otherwise, there would be no content to the sponsorship. In fact, since the programme is already written down, in the Big Book up to page 164, the sponsor would just give the sponsee the Book, ask if there are any questions, and leave it at that. Sponsorship, from start to finish, once the book has been read, would last maybe a couple of hours.

The notion that the programme is 'over here' and life is 'over there' and there is no connection between two is not a helpful one. The programme has no substance itself: it's a method of doing something, namely living, so the programme cannot be discussed in any meaningful way, let alone applied, unless the programme and life are fully integrated.

Moreover, sponsorship is initiated by the sponsee. The sponsee usually wants help to apply the programme to their lives, to sift the true from the false and the right from the wrong. It makes no sense to say: Please help me with my life, but stay out of my life. The invitation to a sponsor is itself an invitation to examine and challenge. There is no 'here and there'. There is only 'here'.