Abject helplessness (ICA)

This is experienced as the inability to achieve anything by one's self, sometimes even the most seemingly simple tasks. One discovers that one's achievements are not one's own. It occurs when one is shocked by one's complete ineptitude, such as getting huge supplies of food to Ethiopia and not being able to transport it to where it is needed.

In the ICA New Religious Mode in the arena of acting out one's freedom (the life of prayer) the third formal aspect is surrender to one's unlimited inadequacy, or petition. At the first phenomenological level, this occurs when one encounters the burden of one's own existence.