Re: Help Constructing Fictional Cross-Religious Movement

In article <42f9dd29.2140458@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jonathan L Cunningham <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>That's one way of looking at it but, from personal experience about
>other issues, there have been times when I've made a choice and it's
>almost like an internal "click". On *those* occasions "strong enough"
>and willpower just don't come into it. I've decided. If I were a
>smoker, and I decided to give up, and if I felt that internal "click",
>I'd *know* that I'd given up.

>But I'm not sure that, as a hypothetical smoker, I could bring myself
>to the level of intention required to feel the click: there'd have to
>be some trigger, some reason for it, other than "I really ought to
>give up smoking some day".

In my experience, sometimes the reason for the "click" is entirely
mysterious or only emerges with long introspection after the fact
(and maybe still isn't the real reason). I started going to the
doctor on my own after a lifetime of moderately severe phobia, quite
suddenly, and with surprisingly little difficulty. All I can see
in retrospect is the line of thought "How am I going to justify this
to my own children?" but as I didn't even have any children, I
don't see why this was enough of an argument to break something so
very deep-seated.

>And I just don't think "makes a choice" captures this *certainty*
>that comes with the "internal click" I'm trying to describe.

Rachel Pollack, in her book on the Tarot, talks about the Judgement
card (which my coven is currently studying) as meaning that the
choice is already made at the point at which you become aware of
it, so that all there is left to do is accept it. "The old life
is already dead." I think she's talking about much the same thing.
And CS Lewis in _The Screwtape Letters_: "Not the conscious
fret and fume of resolutions and clenched teeth that humans call
will, but the real thing, what the Enemy calls the Heart."

My sense of these has always been that, uncontrollable and
mysterious as they are, they are still *my* choices: just choices
made with so much of my being that there's no room left for
the to-ing and fro-ing of ordinary decision processes.

How to write about this so that the experience will be
recognizable, and so it won't look like authorial fiat? Shallow
how-to books say you can't just have your character get over
her problems by magic. But this "click" experience, this *is*
magic. Yet it happens; it ought to be showable in fiction.

I don't think, incidentally, that this is the only way people
break addictions, though it's probably the sure way (when it
happens--how to make it happen is a mystery). I think some
people do get there one teeth-clenched step at a time. I know
I have accomplished a few fairly major things that way, though
it's devilishly hard.

When I was six I decided I would never drink, smoke, or do drugs.
I never have. Several psychologists and social workers have
asked how I did that, how I made the choice and got it to stick;
all I can answer is that I *decided*, in the sense of that click,
and so it was literally never an issue for the rest of my life.
I just don't. It's not a temptation. But I have no recipe for
how to accomplish such a choice; I certainly can't do it by wanting
to in the ordinary way.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@xxxxxxxxxx
.

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