The Warm Bath and the Higher Forces

Therapist Phil Stutz, in Lessons for Living: What Only Adversity Can Teach You, identifies the most insidious adversity we face daily: the lure of immediate gratification. This dopamine-charged, compulsive, addictive pull consigns us, he says, to “the lower channel,” the “Warm Bath,” the comfort zone. Its source is the inner saboteur he calls Part X.

In Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, the same force appears as “The Resistance,” the invisible enemy that diverts us from lives of creativity and meaning. Sometimes it takes the form of “unwholesome activities”—scouring the internet for smut or indulging in materialistic temptations that pull us away from hard work. Cal Newport warns that when we return from such addictive detours, our brains are still coated in “lower channel” residue—mental detritus that dulls our clarity and compromises our work.

Confronting Part X—or the Resistance—is not a one-time victory. We never ascend to a nirvana where the demon vanishes; it is always nearby, waiting for an opening.

Rejecting the endless circuit of traditional talk therapy, Stutz arms his patients with Tools—practical methods to counter the bad habits born of Part X. His patients are often “either trapped in a past that no longer existed or living in fantasy about a future that hadn’t arrived yet—and might never.” The Tools, he says, “open the door to the infinite wisdom of the present.”

His therapy hinges on three elements:

1. Homework—daily exercises outside of sessions.
   
2. Forward Motion—steps away from the past and repetitive stagnation toward a new life.
   
3. Connection to Higher Forces—a necessary change, not an optional one, to avoid the self-destruction that leads to death.
   

“We are only a tiny part of an infinite universe,” he writes. “On our own we can do nothing. But, in a silent miracle, the universe puts its energies at the service of human evolution.” Higher Forces help us escape personal hell and learned helplessness. When his patients connect with them, they find hope and the power to change—here, in the present.

Before going further, I have to pause and unpack this. First, I believe Stutz’s framework offers a real way out of the wide path to self-destruction and onto the narrow path of meaning. Second, I can’t help but think of Christianity, Judaism, and A.A.

In Christianity, especially Pauline theology, we are compulsive creatures, helpless before our sinful drives. Only surrendering to Higher Powers—in this case, the cosmic Christ—can break our demonic impulses. Paul spells this out in the Epistle to the Romans.

Judaism, at least as Rabbi Hyam Maccoby describes it in The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, rejects this helplessness. We do have self-agency. When we cry to God for rescue from our self-destruction and abasement, He meets us halfway—we move toward Him, and He moves toward us.

In A.A., the principle is stripped to its core. Comedian Marc Maron has spoken about his recovery from substance abuse: every day, he got on his knees and told a Higher Power he could not free himself from addiction alone.

Across these three traditions, I see more similarities than differences. I’m confident that anyone who sincerely applies these principles will improve.

But here’s the sticking point: belief in a Higher Power without religious baggage is not the same as belief in a specific deity. The Jewish God—open to debate, vague about the afterlife—is quite different from the Christian God who, under Pauline influence, recasts Judaism into a universal religion for gentiles, condemns Jews as cut off from the vine, and adopts Augustine’s stark vision of eternal paradise or eternal damnation.

Three notions of deity—each with profound implications.

As an addict and an agnostic, I wonder: am I letting these theological questions distract me from the urgent need to connect with Higher Powers so I can face my own demons? This question burns in me. Will these Higher Powers help me navigate my dense jungle of doubts? Will they help me find clarity?

Stutz notes that many of his patients backslide. Why? Because they stop using the Tools. Why stop? Complacency. Or disbelief in the stakes.

Which brings me to the core of my own struggle: faith in a doctrinal God versus a personal God without doctrine. The doctrinal God comes with teachings—eternal perdition, the Virgin Birth, a literal resurrection—that can be difficult to swallow. For a fuller exploration of the problems with doctrine, see Elizabeth Anderson’s essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”

The personal God without doctrine might be more palatable, but perhaps lacks the high-stakes edge that some people need to stay committed to their daily battle with Part X, the Resistance, or whatever name we give this destructive force.

So what’s the path forward? Should I call life a nihilistic joke and live recklessly? Certainly not. Even with my doubts, I must press ahead, use the Tools, and seek communion with Higher Powers. I can only hope such a life will yield answers—and remind myself that giving in to immediate gratification only strengthens the lower channel, leading, inevitably, toward darkness, confusion, and death.