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ready to move into the future; his superficial consciousness is clinging with the past. So watch it... and you have to be really involved!
If you are indifferent you will not be helpful at all -- then you will fail more and more. If the failure does not bring pain to you why should you bother to succeed? Then it is his business! If he wants your help he will take it, if he does not want, he will not. But people are not so simple and so uncomplicated.
They want your help and yet they will destroy your help; that's how things are. They desire to be helped and they will create all kinds of hindrances. This split is so deep that just by saying, it cannot be dropped; you will have to work on it... so get involved in it.
The patient is your painting, the patient Is your poem, the patient is your music. If the instrument is not cooperating with you, you fix it: you tie the wires or loosen the wires. You do everything... you are involved in it! You are not dependent on the instrument. You don't say, 'I don't care; if the wires of this guitar are loose it is okay. I don't bother, I am not dependent on this instrument'... but then the music will be destroyed.
You have to be involved in it! When you have taken the responsibility of helping a man, then it is your business too as much as his. And sometimes there are moments when it is more your business than his, because your responsibility is greater than his.
He is in a mess, he goes on destroying his own well-being; he is neurotic. You are not in that mess, you can see the whole point more clearly than he can. He is too close to it; you have a little perspective, a distance -- you can see it. Your responsibility is great so don't become indifferent and don't withdraw into yourself.
If the patient is trying to defend himself and trying to make you fail, let it be a challenge. That will create a real therapist in you. Give him a good fight! Now it is not only a question of him, it is your problem also. If you don't give him a good fight you are failing. When therapy fails it is not only that the patient has failed to cooperate -- on a deeper level it is the therapist who has failed
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