“If the resolution we’re about to make is highly charged with anger, resentment or bitterness, it would be wise to hold back until the hysteria has subsided and we have taken time to consider all the factors calmly.” (ODAT, 29 October)
According to my ego, emotional crises need an immediate solution in the form of decisions and actions.
What they need is nothing. A great big, gaping, yawning expanse of nothing, until I calm down and learn to enjoy life.
What if that takes ten years? Well, even that is reasonably ambitious.
If I’m disturbed, I’m therefore banned from making a structural decision, and wise to avoid any small decisions except those necessitated by implacable circumstances or actual forks in the road.
If I’m unhappy in my home, occupation, or relationship, my job is to get happy and then see if I’m really in the wrong home, occupation, or relationship.
This is because, if I’m unhappy, I’m not seeing things right, and that would be a bad time to make a structural decision.
Until I accept everything as it is, trust God’s providence entirely, and recognise I am the only person responsible for my state of mind and almost every element of my life, my mind is warped.
So, wait, wait, wait.
How long? As long as it takes.
What’s more: discussion of everyone and everything outside the hula hoop of my own consciousness is out of bounds. Every single resentment, fear, and other maladjustment is not to be discussed except in the sanitised, clinical environment of formal step work. 99% of all discourse—off the menu. Almost everything one wants to talk about—off the menu. I can talk about my own warping perspective, but that’s the end of it.
This is because the discourse, the thoughts, the words ARE the problem. They are not the discussion of the problem; they are the very problem itself, the spinning of narratives. The little machine has to be taken offline.
I read a book thirty years ago that suggested I look not at my life but how my mind was looking at my life. It said it might take decades to change. I thought: I don’t have time. But the book was right.
The same happens in sponsorship. The process of sponsorship is a process of deconstructing the mental mechanism producing the problem. When the sponsee realises that the sponsor does not care about any of things the sponsee is exercised about but about removing the distorted pair of glasses used to look at these things or—even worse—in looking ONLY at the principles of the programme, the sponsee often backs out. I once rejected an offer of excellent sponsorship because the chap seemed quite uninterested in me. I didn’t want change; I wanted an audience for my screenplay, and help in changing my life, and that sponsor was not interested.
The only thing that needed changing was really my consciousness. Any changes that were necessary flowed automatically from that with no direct thought or effort.