Written to a sponsee:
“The reason you can’t let go of your behaviors and resentments is that they serve a purpose and give you apparent, short-term relief, coupled with a type and level of pain that you are used to, can manage to some extent, and which you have begun to think of as your birthright. Or birthwrong. In the long term you know this isn’t working, but in the short term you have no idea how you can change from a familiar pain to something unknown. That’s where faith comes in; it can act as the bridge beyond all the “yeah-buts” that your mind puts up in defense of the ego — which, ironically, is the source of all your pain.
I say this because it’s true of every human being, not you in particular. Maybe not the Dalai Lama or Jesus.”