I get confused sometimes. Actually, there are some days I'm in grateful awe that I make it through them ok with all the confusion I seem to experience. Some days I think the greatest thing I can do is to endure the seeming chaos and still behave in a responsible, positive manner. (That's a high-falutin' way of saying, "Fake it 'til you make it").
Anyway, the deal is this - when I was pretty certain I knew who I was and what I was about, I was also suicidal. Then people came into my life, from different avenues, to let me know that my thinking was wrong. And so I got into the habit of continually questioning my thoughts and my perceptions, to see how well they really fit and worked, and I began to understand that my thinking led me to want to escape life. Being somewhat logical (I think so, anyway), it did not make sense to me that a loving Higher Power would give us a life that we would want to escape - that just doesn't make sense to me. My point here is that the confusion I experience each day is a step up from the straight-line thinking that leads only to my destruction.
Here is my challenge to myself, and what this blog is about: I know I have a human side, and I know I have a spiritual side, and, while they often seem at odds, I also know that they can live happily together, so my challenge, my goal, my purpose is to find out how. I was raised in one of the branches of Christianity, so understanding the teachings of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the teachings of Jesus is and His followers is one of the ways I go about understanding how best to be a spiritual being having this human experience. In my opinion, Jesus mastered this - Jesus knew his Oneness with God (that was the Christ in Him), yet He also knew His humanness. And He didn't hate. He didn't hate Himself, and He didn't hate those around Him. Some folks He knew were harder to love than others, and I totally get that. But He knew what He was about, and it didn't make Him better nor worse than anyone else, because essentially, we're all connected, and we're all on the same path of discovering our Oneness. I also study other sacred writings, and I follow contemporaries who are on the path to discovering and expressing their Divine nature.
One of the recovery programs with which I'm involved suggests, as part of its program, that it's a good idea to take some sort of personal inventory - to find out those parts of us that make living good, and those parts of us which make living difficult. I remember hearing a priest years ago speaking about doing this inventory, and he said that basically, when we truly know ourselves, we know God. (I always love to see priests and ministers and such in recovery - it reminds me that being close to God doesn't make one any less human. It'd be nice if a few more doctors would show up, too). That statement stuck with me. I have a knack for recognizing Truth when I hear it, even if I don't believe it at the time. At the time that I heard it, nothing, I thought, could be further from the truth. If you've read any other posts in my blog, you know this is how I felt about myself: "What's the difference between Ken and a carp? One is a bottom-dwelling, scum-eating parasite, and the other is a fish." How could any part of me be comparable to God, especially the parts I loathed?
Let's start with this: First, remember that I, we, are spiritual beings having a human experience. It's like going on a trip to a foreign land - we're going to see what it's like to live in another part of the world - we're going to experience something different that what we already know. Then, because we're having this experience, we need an Ego - the ego is our own will. If we didn't have a desire to experience something different than what we already are, we wouldn't need the ego or self-will to propel us toward that. The ego's role is essentially to keep us grounded in this plane of existence. Oh, by the way, part of this whole scheme is the idea that the only devil that really exists is called Fear, and that resides only between our two ears. You see, even though the ego is something God made, the ego can take on a life of its own. It wants to! Often, though, the ego finds out that life is really much too vast to handle all on its own, so it becomes fearful. The ego forgets whence it came, and thinks that its survival is entirely up to its own devices - the ego believes it must be self-sufficient, that all of life must come from it. This is where self-centeredness comes from - I'm out here all alone, and, in order to survive, I have to protect everything I think is mine. From that one single idea comes all sorts of aberrations of the Truth, which is that God, or Source, or the Universe has us covered, and we've really nothing to worry about. So we do things that are ultimately hurtful to others and ourselves in an effort to protect something we don't really need to protect.
So here's how coming to know ourselves is the same as coming to know God: When I take a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, I begin to see those parts of me that are not-God. I begin to see where the ego, fearful of its own survival, has created beliefs and ideas that try to separate me from God and from the rest of humanity. And when I'm able to take a look at these things - these false beliefs and ideas, and the harmful actions they created - I don't like them very much. And that's how I come to know God - by recognizing the very things that I have thought, felt, and done that aren't God, I begin to recognize the God at the core of my being, for, if God weren't there, I would be ok with all the things that I've engaged in that aren't God-like. And from there begins my journey back home.
Mixed in with all of this is all of the good the Universe has given me. All of my talents, my capacity to love, my capacity to create and to give, are in there. The fact is that I have misused or abused the gifts I have had in my life because I thought I was going it alone, and I thought that my survival was entirely dependent upon me.
To quote another person in recovery, "there is some good in the worst of us and some bad in the best of us." We are all children of a loving creator, and when I recognize that in me, it makes it easier to recognize it in you.
So, to get back to the first paragraph, there are some days when I feel like a brilliant star, shining my way through life, and there are other days, well...not so much. But every day I keep this in mind: I am not alone, I am supported, loved, and protected, and I'm always in a much better place than I think I am. And, when I can get past the worry and fear that comes from my ego still thinking that it has to go this thing alone, I can begin to express my true self, and know that it is good.
Namaste,
Ken
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