Counseling: (n) professional guidance in resolving personal conflicts and emotional problems.

I certainly understand why people are leery of counsel. I completely comprehend why entering a counseling session could be terrifying.

Because as horrific as it may be to consider following an errant path, having one chosen for you and then failing would certainly place a root of bitterness deep in your soul, which could be very difficult to extract.

Stated bluntly, if I’m going to end up screwed, I’d like to be the driver.

For true counseling has nothing to do with guidance or instruction. Any person who desires to give counsel to another human being must understand that since God has no intention of removing free will from any son or daughter of Adam and Eve, it is therefore not the job of the inspirer to rob someone of his or her own fragile, but necessary, power of decision.

What is good counseling?

1. Clarify all the crap, trash, fears, insecurities and prejudices and help individuals discover what really surrounds them.

Most people don’t die in battle. They pass away from suffocation, because that which could have aided them crushes them. A good counselor literally clears the air and allows a friend to see exactly what of the dilemma is real and what is trying to haunt the darkness.

2. Long before answers arrive, questions must be taught politeness. They need to be arranged by importance and dealt with respectively within that lineup. The counselor helps someone to find the right questions and then place them in a pecking order.

After these two things are achieved, the counselor listens, only steering when a cliff is in sight.

If you want to call that “professional guidance,” then you would be correct.

But what I believe it to be is a calm reshuffling of availability.

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