Difficulties again. I become shrill and disputatious, argue theological points I know little about against people who know less of them -- as if the doctrinal issues of Christianity were any of my business! So maybe I can win an argument. And maybe that means driving someone off of the only spiritual path open to them at the moment. Grand victory.

I should know enough by now to recognize that argumentative, letter-to-the-editor obsessiveness as one of my pet forms of procrastination. Which is one of my pet forms of anxiety. I guess it's progress that I'm now working with all three of the issues that have bedevilled me all my life -- compulsive eating, compulsive sexuality, and procrastination. (None of them at all dignified. How I wish I was tormented by spiritual doubt, or righteous indignation, by the sort of spiritual obstacles that put a worried look of respectful understanding on people's faces, rather than a snigger!)

But anyway, I'm engaged directly with all of them now. Used to be I could only begin to deal with one by giving way completely on the other two. So that's progress, maybe. Ngondro seems to keep stirring things up. I feel like a monkey who's climbed into the cab of a running pickup and inadvertently started driving. I don't know how this thing works and I don't know where it's taking me, but I do know it's faster and more powerful than anything I've ever encountered. Though I'm not at all sure that I'm not just headed for the ditch.

I need to take on all three at once, though -- as I recognize now -- because they're all the same thing. Fixing one at a time doesn't get rid of anything. It's just chasing the mouse from one hole to another. It's all anxiety, fear of emptiness, fear of failure.