a channel that works without your understanding it

Gately's recovery runs on the theme's most counterintuitive discovery: a practice that transmits without comprehension. He addresses a Higher Power he can't believe in by "talking to the ceiling" — a channel he keeps open only because it beats "talking to Nothing" — and the thing works anyway, so that he comes to "no longer much cares whether he understands." It is the exact inverse of Geoffrey Day's need to understand before he'll believe (n090): here the connection lands precisely because the man stops requiring that it make sense to him first. (The program/prayer mechanics are addiction-recovery's; landed here on the understanding-optional-channel angle.) [sweep · shared-ground addiction-recovery]