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Reorienting into Your Own Path: Belief Self-Torment

Reorienting into Your Own Path: Belief Self-Torment

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.

Debut Album Meme

Debut Album Meme

Found this meme at itisi while I was exploring sites at Entrecard.

Your Debut Album

1 – Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you’ll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 – Go to flickr’s “explore the last seven days” http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that’s your debut album.

“Will Fertilize the Soul” by Chihanga

Here’s the album cover. Flickr won’t let me use it, so you have to click to see.

(My friends started laughing before they even looked at the photo.)

“Will Fertilize the Soul” is from “Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.” – Rebecca West. Ok, I like the quote. I could do a lot with a song title like that. Maybe I’ll write a poem by and by.

Chihanga is an administrative ward in the Dodoma Urban district of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. Dodoma? It’s the new capital, but to an American, that sounds like a stupid mommy, or maybe an extinct cellist.

Chihanga? I would guess that Taoists would be a little concerned about the chi that would be a hanga. And it gets worse… chi hanga or hang-a, or ch i ha nga)

The album cover is the Belltower of Cremona (torrazzo) in Autumn, in the Lombardy region of Italy. According to Wikipedia:

The Torrazzo of Cremona (Lombardy, Italy) is the bell tower of the Cathedral of Cremona. At 112.7 metres, it is the second highest lateritious bell tower in the world built, the first being the Bavarian Landshut Cathedral tower.

According to popular tradition, construction on the tower began in 754. In reality, it was built in four phases: a first dating back to the 1230s, up to the third dripstone, a second, between 1250 and 1267, up to the dripstone under the quadriphore, a third around 1284, and the completion of the marble spire in 1309.

Its height is announced by a plaque embedded in the wall at the base of the Torrazzo itself, stating 250 arms and 2 ounces, which in the ancient measuring system of the towns translates to approximately 111 metres.

Archaeological excavations made in the 1980s have discovered the presence of underlying structures which are supposed to be the remains of a more ancient churchyard (or a cemetery associated to it), or even previous Roman buildings.

In the Torrazzo’s fourth storey resides the largest astronomical clock in the world. The mechanism was built by Francesco and Giovan Battista Divizioli (father and son) between 1583 and 1588. The exterior, originally painted by Paolo Scazzola in 1483 but later repainted many times, represents the sky with zodiac constellations and the Sun and Moon moving through them.

I’m guessing that I would love Cremona, but I would have to be very careful to use the Italian pronunciation. The patron saint is… Saint Homobonus, or Sant’Omobono in Italian. Quit laughing! Stop that! Honestly! It just means “Goodman.” He seems like he was like a really super-churchy Santa Claus – he was canonized in 1199 at the urgent request of the citizens of Cremona.

So now my mind is racing, but I’ll resist listing some imaginary song titles for the album and just go to sleep now!