Agreement

I used to say 'I agree' with this or that passage in the book or with something a sponsor said.

I don't any more. To say 'I agree' means I still hold my own assessment capability in high regard, I have run the input from the book or a sponsor past my internal assessment department, and I have given it my seal of approval. By the same token, the internal assessment department is capable of disagreeing, which means that, when I seek input from someone but follow only what I agree with, I'm not following their input at all: I'm following my own 'wisdom' in as far as it is reflected in them. It looks like surrender but is actually co-signed self-will masquerading as surrender.

This is not open-minded and cannot lead to change or improvement, let alone revolution, because anything that challenges the status quo will be rejected on the grounds that it is 'disagreed with'.

Therefore, when I pick a book as a source of wisdom or a sponsor as a source of input, I deactivate my assessment capability and treat the input as true, until such time as overwhelming evidence proves the input wrong (which occurs vanishingly rarely).

I am always, therefore, suspicious of anyone who says 'I agree with you'. They're not agreeing with me. They're stating that what I've said matches their preapproved list of Things That Are True. They hold the ultimate wand of discernment, however, so, if you say something they disagree with, they take their view to be true. 'I agree with you' means 'I hold the casting vote'.

Surrender is not tested by agreement but by disagreement: someone who disagrees but disregards that disagreement as an irrelevant artefact of a broken mind, and then opts to believe, think, and act in accordance with the input. With alcoholism (and many other obsessions of the mind), this is the only approach that works.