“Look to yourself—it is there that all your answers are found.” (ODAT, 24 June)
Nothing can fix me. No one can fix me. Sure, some tools
(instructions on how to take the Steps) come from the outside. But I’m the one
that has to take them. Once the wrong attitudes and debris are cleared away,
God and the path ahead are apparent.
The answer is not elaborate processes or special ways of
highlighting conference-approved literature.
The answer is not infantilising myself and treating a
sponsor like a dial-a-Ted-Talk, a diagnostician and treating physician, a
parent, or a proxy mind.
It’s up to me to assess the facts, devise action using the
programme, and get on with it. Others sometimes have a very small role in sense-checking
the result of a diligent process: but as soon as this is relied on, the process
becomes lazy. I have to proceed as though it’s just me and God. Only then do I
really grow up.
I never ask general fishing questions like, “Do you have any
experience on …?”, “What do you think I should do in this situation”, “Do you
have any general tips, for …?” and put my feet up as I put Grandpa to work,
performing the assessment that I should be performing.
Again and again, I’m faced with the fact that I have to
listen to God, and then take the risk of doing what I’m told, even though there
is no certainty my discernment is right. Once the first nine steps have been
completed and the last three are bedded in as a way of life, there’s a far
greater impartiality with regard to my own life that ensures objectivity, but I
do not become infallible.
Fair enough, ask others, but others’ discernment might not
be discernment at all: they have the tactical advantage that they’re not me, but
they have the tactical disadvantage that they do not have all the facts
and—worst of all—have been briefed on the matter by me; it’s the easiest thing
in the world to present a situation in such a way as to elicit a particular
answer. They also have their own issues.
At the end of the day, it’s between me and God, and, if I make
the wrong decision, it’s my fault, no one else’s.