Rabbit Hole

Lately more has happened. I feel like I'm approaching a convergence of some kind. A metanoia. I am really feeling a need to shed false pretenses and be who I am. the problem is that who I am is not widely accepted. It isn't narrowly accepted. It just plain isn't accepted.

This was highlighted by a recent exchange in which I revealed a bit too much in a setting where I thought it would be safe. Man, was I wrong. The bulletfire rained down on me, mostly from someone I considered a friend. Honestly, I don't blame him too much. I knew how he was and what set him off. As I have blogged before, when my true self leaks out, it is often denied, attacked, or hurriedly swept back under the rug because people are uncomfortable with it. Heck, I'm uncomfortable with it. It's an uncomfortable state of being! Made worse by the fact that I am so communicative and good at pretending.

I had once found a group of people that healed me in a lot of ways. They validated my outlook. They allowed me a space to be who I was. We were all misfits, so we welcomed the company. But that ended, and for good reason. It had become corrupted by our own problems. But I do desperately miss the ability to relax in myself. To not be guarded all the time. Even in my own home, I have to be guarded because my son is sensitive and easily freaked out. If the full measure of my personality came out, as has leaked, he loses it.

So for a long time now, I've had terrible dreams. Every night almost, I wake up numerous times and in the morning feel drained as if I've been struggling all night. The dreams vary, but often have the same issues leaking in. I can't determine where it comes from or what needs to be done. But recently, I became aware that this must represent some repression trying to break out of my subconscious. so I asked a friend who is very good at dream interpretation what he thought.

In a few sentences he explained things about me that I had not revealed. That he did not know. He acquired it simply from my description of the dreams. That was all it took to poke a hole in the damn. The trickle started through and I delved deeper into my own existence, making connections. I haven't sorted it all out. It just happened today, and this blog is part of that processing. But as usual, many things in my life have started to coincide...events, chance happenings, thoughts, memories out of chronology, etc.

It all has to do with my frustration at having buried who I am. What I need to live. But man, it's in deep. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of it and I'm honestly a bit scared to. The last time I began down these paths, I nearly lost my mind altogether. Already, the doubts are beginning to attack the anchors in my reality.

...

I broke to read to my son before bed. We're reading the Chronicles of Narnia. we're on The Silver Chair. Wouldn't you know, Jack has come through again. What we read tonight opened a whole lot more to me. The whole book even fits so timely. So, I think I can write it now. Starting way back.

I've been confronted with the idea lately that God is a projection of my own mind. Sure, I've heard that before. But it's different reading about it, or apologizing against it than encountering it in action and word and deed. It seeps into my head like a dark spell...it might actually be. I find myself trying to remember why I thought God was anything else. What evidence I can cite seems always to be swallowed up nicely in the idea. "I subconsciously created it all. I longed for it, needed it, and it occurred. But this is not a bad thing", the spell goes, "only the same thing in different clothes. One is all, all is one...eternally God, eternally me, aspects of myself...I am God. God is me. As I face the truth, I will see it is so." Just like the Green Witch, enchanting the four heroes that they imagined any world but hers. So hard to fight it, it seeps in like music, like incense fills a room. My defenses become hazy as my mind is lulled. "And when I realize this truth, I'll realize that goodness is all there is. Move toward goodness, toward happiness, what makes me feel good, and I move toward God because I am God and my desire is for myself, so pleasing myself pleases God." It's an insidious poison. Just like Rillian lives in his enchantment happy and carefree all the time. But it is pain that brings the heroes out of it. Not just any pain, but the pain of the Marsh-wiggle, the melancholy depressive. It is he that is most resistant to the spell, and it is his self-inflicted pain that breaks the enchantment. Good God! Thank you!

This is why I hurt my foot. Even a foot like in the book. This is why my head hurts so much recently. This is why I've become acutely aware of the restrictive and deadening nature of my chair at work, which I am "strapped to" increasingly...and it's silver!! Oh God it's too much! This Rabbit Hole is deep and strange.

I am dark. I was made dark. I am gloomy. I am angry. I see things gravely. But it is this gravity, this severity, this darkness that is my nature and my grace. I didn't make myself. But I can be myself. I don't need to change. I don't want to heal from this. It is a blessing and a part of the Body. Is the mouth a foot? I am what I was made to be and can be no other. I am tired of trying. I'm sorry for denying the holy goodness of my own existence, even if the whole world denies it. I have seen the sun, I have seen the grass and the trees and the Lion. And with a taste of that, this world pales. Even if I never see it again, I choose that over this dark and hellish planet. I'm sorry, this life is NOT worth living. It is NOT beautiful. And I will stake my entire soul on the one hope that the Lion is real. That I did not dream up the true world.

I will make changes. I will live in this understanding...God give me strength. I don't know how far down this particular hole goes, but I'm in. The crazy thing is (just one crazy thing?) that I can now see again how the real world is set crosswise through this one. We draw the lines in the wrong places. That's one of the reasons I am so misunderstood. When I deprecate this life, most people immediately jump to "suicidal", but that is not the case at all! My natural eyes see the same boundaries, but my real eyes see the true nature. (This is not going to make sense.) The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Because the Earthly physical world is false does not mean that all physical is false. The Kingdom of the Air and the Kingdom of Heaven are not divided along the lines of physical and nonphysical, heart beating and not beating...

wow, this is too much. I have to stop. My mind is winding down for now.

Working

This absolutely drives me crazy: "if we only all lived like God wants the world would be fixed." and the corollary, "if I really want to follow Christ I have to pull myself up by the straps and get out there and fix the world!" This is crap. I'm sorry. It is. It is unbiblical. It is unChristlike.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do good works. What I'm saying is that it isn't the works that do anything. That's like saying the bread makes the wheat. The good works that are associated with Christianity come from a reworking of one's mind. They are done because they couldn't be otherwise. It isn't up to us to just get off the couch and go do them. If our hearts were right, we'd be off the couch and we'd be doing them. No amount of motivational speaking or guilt, or string pulling will change someone's heart. Sure you can manipulate people into doing things. People can even manipulate themselves into doing them. But that kind of good work happens in Buddhist culture, in Muslim culture, in Hindu, even in pagan, stone-age, and secular cultures. It has nothing to do with Christianity. Let's keep that straight.

Secondly, Jesus said he didn't come to bring peace but a sword. To turn families against each other. To turn things upside down. He didn't come to fix the world. To think this is to think exactly as the Jews thought their Messiah would do...as many Jews still think their Messiah will do. Just listen to Matisyahu. Admirable, yes, worth thinking about, yes, but this isn't what Jesus taught. Plus if all it took was for us to get our act together, don't you think we'd have made more progress in the 2000 years Christianity has been around?

So what did Jesus teach? He taught that the Kingdom of God was within us. That it was at hand. He taught turning from our old ways. He taught spiritual life. The kingdom of God is spiritual. It's about revolutionizing the soul.

I firmly believe in a physical resurrection. I am confident that when true reality is revealed we'll see just how solid and tangible it is. Just how literal many of the statements in the Bible actually are. But I don't believe for a second that we can move one inch closer to a utopia in this world. I believe this world is burning to hell. Passing away. Spinning into entropy. It isn't going to get better. It isn't going to get much worse either. It's dead. It is what it is. It is only by renewing of the mind and regenerating of the soul that we have any hope. And this is not something we do. Sorry. It isn't.

I know because I am the jerk. I am the calloused insensitive Stranger from Camus' cautionary tale. I was the Trenchcoat Mafia before it had a name. Tell me to work for justice, and I am Rorshach waiting to happen. I have seen the depths of human indifference and didn't care. I have hated every living breathing thing with venom. I have dreamed of fire and destruction and blood and woke smiling. But people don't believe this about me. Guess what. It isn't me your seeing. What you see is the change Christ has made. I didn't do it. You won't either. So don't give me that "if we only" crap. I give you, "Hoshana!" God save!

Metanoia: Simple

Metanoia is the Greek term that is often translated as repentance. It means to change one's mind. In behavior science, metanoia is the crux of change. Especially in deep personal change, metanoia occurs at the bottom of a long decline, after which a personal reformation begins the climb back up based on the new psychological foundation.

I recently had a metanoia experience. I had felt it coming as I slid down, down, down in the confusion over suffering and faith. I think it has a more personal meaning for me than my posts may have reflected because, simply, I suffer. I don't pretend to be special at all in this. It's just that I am the person I know best and it is therefore keenest to me. I am no stranger to sufferings that cannot be released with any amount of prayer or behavior change or what have you. I don't go into the details here because it is very personal, but I'm sure many who read this can relate in your own way even without the details.

I couldn't get past how the medeival mystics talk SO much about suffering as a virtue that many of them inflicted things on themselves! I don't want these sufferings, but since I can't be rid of them, there must be some good in them...am I supposed to relish them like these writers did? I can't!

But then modern people, good, respected modern people, say that God doesn't work like that. He desires healing and peace. This is true too! So I'm missing something! This was driving me crazy and I was so bound in it that I became aware of it and started consciously trying to come up the slick wet slope...hence the joy post.

Then today, I crossed the watershed...or rather God opened the solution for me: Simple.

Oneness. The worlds build so much on top of what is real and important, even the Christian worlds, that sometimes I get lost in it. The simple truth is Jesus. I don't even remember how I came to it, but I found an anonymous article today that reminded me of it. Jesus is our model. More than that, the firstfruits. He is what we are becoming. He didn't strive. He didn't complicate. He simply loved. ALL other additions to this are artifice...artificial...built on top of the truth. I recognize that like most personal revelations, this falls far too flat in writing. The simplicity confounds.

My intellect is a gossamer sham. Our systems, medeival or modern are too. Jesus said that to be saved we must simply come. I have come. Grace abounds. I understand it more now. Pieces of the clockwork puzzle of my life have again fallen into place and the gears have rotated one more tic. In my mind, I can jostle this simple truth and see just how many silver strands of reality vibrate throughout the whole ecology of the universe. It is a nexxus moment. A metanoia.