“But it was a silly idea that we were too good to need God. Now we try to put spiritual principles to work in every department of our lives.” (Chapter 8)
When I’m in a bad way, I’m inclined to attribute this to the world, to others, to a nature of mine beyond my agency, to some posited natural cycles of ups and downs, to the failure of the programme, to an intractable, knotty problem out there in my life, to some external roadblock, conundrum, dilemma, or fracas, in other words to treat the bad-way-ness as something from which I am suffering due to one or more factors beyond my control. I’m watching the shadow theatre play out on the wall, not realising that it is my hands, between the light of the flames and the wall, that is creating every nuance of the drama.
When I’m in a bad way, I’m necessarily concocting selfish plans and implementing them, yielding to selfish impulses, or passively measuring the world against a selfish ideal of my own fabrication. Selfishness and Godlessness are really the same thing. Both are a cul-de-sac without hope. The apparent complexity of unhappiness always resolves into these three elements, like complex carbohydrates resolving into carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen: Godlessness, selfishness, and hopelessness.