Healing

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The (my) human struggle


Blame myself (I am evil. I am Satan.)

I feel okay. Things are good. Something bad, very painful happens. What I love most is taken away: God. I get angry at God for leaving me, but I’m so scared of angering him and him leaving again, so I don’t display my anger and try to punish him. I decide it must have been my fault, to give myself a sense of control. I think that maybe if I do everything exactly, perfectly right, I can win back his love and favor, and He will never leave again. Because what I did must have been so terrible as to warrant his leaving, I feel it would be just for me to be punished forever. I decide to punish myself forever, constantly, hoping that he will see how hard I’m trying to do the right thing (what I know he would do). At the same time, if he sees how good I am, maybe he won’t know or believe, or see that I did anything bad to make him leave, and he will never leave again. He will also see then, because I have punished myself (and thus denied what I deeply need) that I am lonely and needy, and he will want to provide me with what I need and be with me again.

Blame God (I’m perfect, holy. I am God)

At the same time, I blame God and think it’s his fault, that he’s punishing me for no good reason, and leaving me. Then I respond by believing that part of His punishment is taking away my free will (which I need so much), and forcing me to torture myself. Although I actually do it out of my free will, I don’t see this and believe that God is forcing me to try to hold on so hard to what I need and want (because God is trying to take it away). In trying to hold on so hard, I choke the life out of and imprison what I love. Part of this is that I believe God is forcing me to try to kill and imprison Him, who I love so much. But in trying to imprison what I love, God, I kill and imprison myself, both out of grief for hurting what I love so much, and just punishment for doing wrong. Of course my efforts do not actually imprison God, but in my delusion, anger, and pain, I believe that they do. Then I get mad at God for making me do this, because He was the one who took away my free will and made me do this in the first place.

In Summation

I at once believe I am both God, and Satan, Christ, and the Antichrist. Inside me there is constant spiritual warfare between the two sides. But I am neither God, nor Satan. I am not capable of being so perfectly polarized, but I have split myself into those two parts out of fear of both. I am afraid of God, and afraid of Satan, so I try to live both parts, hoping that I can escape punishment by either. But in trying to be something that I am not, I deny the truth of my existence: I am human, I am not capable of being so linear and polarized. I am a complicated mixture of things, perhaps neither good, nor bad. My understanding of God and Satan, these poles, is also a result of fears. My fears create these misconceptions of God and Satan, of constant war, terror, torture, abandonment, and pain. Perhaps there is just one unified force, neither good, nor bad. This force is infinite, but it is not to be feared. It just is what it is. It is not really separate from me (although not unified in a way I can understand). It flows freely, and I cannot control it. I am a manifestation of this force, boundless, but usually unable to see this. Perhaps this force is God, just not God as I have ever conceived Him to be. But that is the point: I have not conceived this force to be anything. It just is, regardless of what I conceive it to be.

I had been living under a false conception, a misunderstanding of God. But maybe I don’t need to try to understand God. God is incomprehensible, and there’s no reason why I need to try to understand, create a theory or conception to fit Him in a box. I just need to let God be God, instead of trying to understand and dissect Him, trying to desperately hold on so He never leaves. I need to let go of my strangle grip, and set Him and myself free. Not that I have ever held him down, or prevented him from doing anything, as I believed I had. In holding on, I do not prevent people from leaving me, I do not prevent my dreams from leaving me. They do what they do regardless. In fact, in holding on so tightly, I cease to see them clearly and honestly as they are, and thus effectively lose them, making my greatest fear a reality. They are still alive, but I can’t see them clearly, and I am hurting them in the process. When I try to hold on, in my mind I turn them into still photographs, lifeless shadows of their essence. I become blind to their true nature. They appear as pictures on a TV screen, not people. And that is what had been happening to me, in college. That was the feeling. I was so hurt by things that had happened to me, that I responded maladaptively by trying so hard to hold onto life, that I could not see life. I could only see still, disconnected photographs. Thus, in trying so desperately hard to connect, I lost everything.

The only way to connect, to have, is to not have, is to genuinely let go, with full desire for everything around you to be free. Connection is not holding on and controlling. Connection is letting go and allowing the fullest expression of freedom from everyone, and everything in one’s life, including oneself. Whether it is a dream, a person, one’s body: This is true connection. This is true life. This is truth. This letting go is forgiveness. This is what Jesus spoke of, this is what Jesus died for. Jesus died, so we could have this, so we could see this truth, act upon it, and have faith in it. It is the struggle mentioned at the beginning of this essay that Jesus frees us from, if we willingly choose to do so (and this is often very hard!!). And this is what I need to do with everyone and everything in my life, every day. I need to let go; I need to forgive.

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