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Reorienting into Your Own Path: Belief Self-Torment

Reorienting into Your Own Path: Belief Self-Torment

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For a number of reasons, I haven’t posted anything about Jehovah’s Witnesses for a while. There have been some horrible events in the news, and all sorts of doctrinal and organizational changes, but I find myself more interested these days in some of the larger questions. I’ve been trying to write something about that, but nothing I wrote was satisfactory to me. It turns out that I needed a real question for my thoughts on this to spill out. In trying to help ease someone else’s suffering, the words ring true again. Thank you for being the messenger for this lesson! I preserve the questioner’s privacy, but you know who you are. Big hugs.

I seem to be struggling with my relationship with God. I find myself so confused about what to believe. I used to be absolutely convinced that the Bible was Truth. Is this normal for a person in my situation. Any input that you might have would be appreciated.

It is totally normal for you to feel as you do. I do have some thoughts on this in terms of biblical scholarship and the history of the religions of the book(s), but that’s not what will help you most right now because you need first to find your bearings, your balance, and the (for lack of a better phrase) direction of your attunement to God.

Start with what you solidly know and experience for yourself. Be observant and pay attention and even “hold fast to what is fine.” That place where your mind and spirit and soul all connect in gratitude and admiration is where you start. Think of the qualities of the spirit – where do you see caring and forgiveness and love and thoughtfulness and creativity and all those things that you can just feel are *good* things? Let yourself be drawn into that world. Learn from and enjoy the presence of that “energy” in any moment where it happens. Even just noticing it changes you.

Then – and I resisted this one for a long time – think about service. Not big, cosmic service – just little bits of service. Be a little kinder, think of someone else’s feelings, do something nice for someone else, be a listening ear to a friend. Anything that puts your own needs to the side – even for a moment – changes you.

Think of things that you *truly* admire about people you know or have known or have read about or seen. Everyone is complicated, a mix of darkness and light, so you have to think of specific things, how someone made a good decision, how someone manifested an incredible skill, how someone calmed a situation. Those are things that speak to your inner self, to your inner directionality, and they are worth hearing.

For a while, move away from the questions of belief in this or that. That question will always be there for you, but that doesn’t mean you have to address it and be tormented by it right now. Come back to it when you are in a place of spiritual groundedness.

Your body can help you too, and in ways that you might not expect. Sit quietly and relax, listen to yourself breathe. When you are upset, take a few breaths and consciously let it go. Imagine blowing the seeds of an old dandelion into the wind. Self-torment seems to be part of the deal – but you can choose not to do it. Look again at these things when it isn’t self-punishment. Torturing yourself does nothing for you right now except prevent you from insight and focus your energy on everything that would overwhelm you. Love doesn’t want that, and you need to focus on that central thing. Open your heart and listen. Listen.

Try different body positions. Bow your head, raise your arms up to the sky, imagine your feet taking root in the ground, pretend to be blessed by the stars. Your body-imagination is always trying to help you. If you feel comfortable, reach out to the God *above* the God that is caricatured by the witnesses and ask for guidance in love.

Be authentic, be truthful, see beauty, learn when to trust and admire. Start there. In time, the beliefs will sort themselves out. The list of “I believe in this” and “I don’t believe in that” is really not the primary aspect of spiritual understanding. Assume, for a little while, that all the cosmos needs of you is that you pay attention and appreciate whatever you really, truly can. Go a little on that footpath, and see if you get reoriented.

I feel very strongly that each person’s spiritual path is their own, and cannot be regulated or mandated. This is about your own spirit and soul and heart and mind, and nobody else’s. And in that spirit, take what you find useful for you here – and disregard the rest. These are things I’ve learned for myself and from the experiences of others, so they may be very very helpful for you right now. Or not. You are the only you.

Spirit-Opening Questions / Reflections

Spirit-Opening Questions / Reflections

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Sometimes the asking is enough. Sometimes the thoughts that resonate or erupt are more important than the answers. Try these – and let your spirit speak to you.

  • In the last 24 hours, what was the simplest sense-pleasure you experienced? Fresh sheets? The smell of rain or fire? Snuggly slippers? A brisk walk?
  • If you woke up with no self-memory, how old would you guess you were?
  • What is one behavior/insight/skill that sets you apart from others and makes you feel special? Is making that a part of your self-identity more limiting or more freeing?
  • What laws would you transgress if you had a context in which it made ethical sense, or compassionate sense, to you for you to break them? What laws would you refuse to break, even to save someone you love?
  • What three things would you do differently if you were totally exempt from all judgment – from anyone – about them?
  • What is something that you have not done, despite a strong desire to do it? Why haven’t you?
  • Can you remember judging something as completely wrong or insane, and later changing your mind? How and why did your view change?
  • When something you have feared or dreaded has come true, what has been the net result?
  • What is one self-limiting thought or behavior that you haven’t yet transcended or released?
  • Who are the people in your life that understand the most about you; who “gets” you? How would you describe your feelings about each? If it’s a mixed bag, why do you think that might be?
  • If you could create your own small community, what would you wish as your ideal location, economy, laws, attitudes? If you could regulate it any way you wished, how would your community treat the people you liked least? Most?
  • What are three moments in your life when you have felt grateful and glad to be alive? How long ago was the most recent?
  • What are three moments in your life that you wish you could more perfectly express in language? If you had to pick only one person, to whom would you choose to express them?
  • What makes your most cherished childhood memories so important to you?
  • With whom do you experience a sense of meaning – in silence?
  • When you think of holding hands, whose hand is holding yours?
  • How have you expressed or accepted love recently? Are there disconnects between the ways you and your beloved express, accept, or share your love?
  • Do you prefer a smiling face or a more serious face? What appeals to you about each?
  • Who in your life is easiest to forgive, and who is most difficult? Why?
  • Imagine sitting on top of a mountain on a beautiful day with the ones you love – each in turn. What differences do you notice in your thoughts and feelings?

Please comment if you can improve the question, or you have another question.

Good Guidelines for a Spiritual Warrior Too

Good Guidelines for a Spiritual Warrior Too

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I’ve often found myself trying to “make everything all better,” acting as a mediator, and generally getting in the way of others. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve realized that not only it is not my responsibility to intervene in someone else’s path, but that it might actually be detrimental to try to do so. It somehow infantilizes others, or makes them dependent, or sets off a knee-jerk resistance. And – it is depressing, and frustrating, and damaging – to me.

Self-infusion with the kind of compassion that can let go and get my ego out of it is a real challenge. I’ve always been terrible at instantiating the insights of Buddhism (I can give you references on this one!). Being a passionate being, I resist the bracketing out, the lack of engagement, and what feels to me like cold distancing no matter how often I am assured that it isn’t so. However, the insights there have helped me – sometimes – simply to be present for others when they wish to engage or to hear another viewpoint, and to help trigger reminders for stepping back when they don’t.

The role of a frustrated Cassandra is its own punishment, after all. My urge toward the protection and healing of others, I now understand, can have a dark aspect both for myself and for others.

There’s no running from insights – ethics then requires a kind of internal transformation. I’ve been too much the mouth, and too little the ear. Balance, balance. I already know in my heart that better questions are always more helpful than direct guidance.

Meditations have helped me to get grounded, but I’ve been lacking the words. Articulating some of this to myself has been a challenge, too. This morning I found a treasure on one of of my favorite blogs to visit. Kimmy Sharing Light shared some great light with me from a discussion of empath ethics.

These are excellent guidelines even for spiritual warriors like myself. It’s not in a register that I’m used to and I don’t agree with every bit of it (I think arguments can be very helpful from time to time, for instance), but much of this helps reshape the dynamic. Thank you Kimmy for sharing this, and thank you – so much – to the original author.

Rules for an Empath

  1. People are NOT your pet projects for you to fix.
  2. You are NOT an ’emotional mechanic’.
  3. Just because you’re emotionally fine-tuned (as most empaths are) does not automatically obligate you to intervene.
  4. How others choose to live their life is not your call.
  5. Everybody handles trauma/distress in their own fashion.
  6. People CAN change, but ONLY if they have the desire to.
  7. Interference is not a promise of good results.
  8. There is nothing glamorous or cavalier about self-sacrifice.
  9. Forcing change never works on anybody.
  10. Accept that you can’t change everyone’s situation. That struggle is their personal journey, so give them the room they need to find their own brand of enlightenment down the road.
  11. Offer your unconditional love and unbiased understanding. This is the most you can do for an ailing heart.
  12. A listening ear is extremely helpful and has a bigger impact than you think.
  13. All your actions resonate for many years. You just may not be present to see the results.
  14. Your gut instinct. The alarm in your head. The nagging voice in the back of your mind. That bad feeling that warns you. LISTEN TO IT.
  15. Whatever you put out in this world comes right back to you. So tried and true. A real lesson in karma.
  16. Saying curse words, putting a curse on someone, or just the general desire to wish harm upon someone tends to have the negative effect of corrosion on your soul. You will feel it.
  17. Meditation does work; helps calm you the heck down! Find any Youtube video on mediation and follow it to clear your brain cobwebs.
  18. Walk out of the room if encountering a heated battle, before your “fight or flight response” kicks in. Petty squabbles are never worth the emotional damage it causes to your armor.
  19. Arguments are pointless, incendiary and help no one. Unless you’re a lawyer.
  20. Some people involuntarily extinguish your light. They may not be aware of how toxic they are, but you do. Fixing them is futile and not your responsibility. Get as far away from these people as you can.
  21. Be the bigger person. If someone says something nasty to you, you say “Thank you for your kind words.” and walk away. Be classy. They may scoff, they may retort, but after some time passes one thing is always guaranteed. And that nagging feeling at the back of their mind, it’s called shame.
  22. You pick up bad emotions, not only good ones. It’s important to pinpoint where they come from.
  23. If you feel overwhelmed and nothing stressful is occurring in your life, you’re accidentally picking up nasty vibes from someone nearby or some local event. Time to get away for a bit.
  24. It’s narcissistic to believe it’s your duty to ‘fix’ people. Wanting to help and believing you have to are two very different things.

Kimmy’s blog is always worth a visit, anytime:

Kimmy Sharing Light

Legally Ordained: Why not?

Legally Ordained: Why not?

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Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy, and now… Legally Ordained Spiritual Warrior!

Let the Light Shine Through!

The Universal Life Church has only two tenets:

  • To promote freedom of religion
  • To do that which is right

As a member of the Universal Life Church you are granted the ability to:

* Perform marriages, funerals, baptisms, ceremonial rites, and last rites.
* Start your own church, be it brick & mortar or online.
* Absolve others of their sins.

You tell me God is dancing in the rain

You tell me God is dancing in the rain

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The greyness is comforting, bittersweet, familiar.

Is the awareness of the longing itself the meaning? Is there an object for the longing? Is the longing the subject? What is beyond the longing? Where is the between of the longing?

“A Lonely Voice” – October Project

I keep looking back
A lifetime back
Across the desert
In a desert where no one can explain
You tell me God is dancing in the rain

I can hear the echo
In a maze of words
A lonely voice behind a door
Can you hear me calling
From a world away
A lonely voice behind a door

I keep looking back
Traditions back
Across the centuries
In a century where no one can explain
You tell me God is dancing in the rain

I can hear the echo
In a maze of words
A lonely voice behind a door
Can you hear me calling
From a world away
A lonely voice behind a door

As I stare ahead
A dream ahead
Across the ocean
Cross an ocean where there’s nothing to explain
You tell me God is laughing in the rain

I can hear the echo
In a maze of words
A lonely voice behind a door
Can you hear me calling
From a world away
A lonely voice behind a door

Quotations Train

Quotations Train

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“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are but princesses that are waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our help.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.”
~ Viktor Frankl

“Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.”
~ Henri L. Bergson

“Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects in the phenomenal world.”
~ William James

“In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.”
~ Hermann Hesse

“There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.”
~ William S. Burroughs

“It is very hard sometimes to know how intensely we are loved, and of what value our presence is to those who love us.”
~ Anthony Trollope

“The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.”
~ Erich Fromm

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
~ Ram Dass

“In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God’s existence, God’s justice, God’s love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.”
~ Erich Fromm

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
~ Carl Jung

“Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment – a little makes the way of the best happiness.”
~ Frederich Nietzsche

“Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.”
~ George Bernard Shaw