I think I am starting to understand the reasons why I’ve hated myself so much. I grew up believing that I deserved to burn in hell. Along with everyone else who didn’t bend there knee to the coming king. That Jesus’ primary purpose was to save sinners from an eternal conscious punishment for a sin state that they were born into. Also, I just didn’t have a very good understanding of what sin is or what “sinning” even means. Also, for folks who deeply believe this I understand the impulse to defend it. I’m also not writing this from a place of resentment or anger. That’s all gone out of me.
It is capital T truth inside that framework. It must be defended, or else what else is left? I guess I’m seeing this as a deeply trauma informed perspective on how to be human. Specifically, the view that I was born deserving hell deep down. Taking a second to look at that idea, it implies that at my core, at the suchness of my pre-named incarnated form, birthed from my mother’s body; an insidious lie is breathed into that wide eyed boy full of curiosity and wonder.
“I need to be erased in order to be connected to love. I am not accepted until this change happens.”
I think most of my problems as a human being have come from this deep belief. It feeds off of all my deepest fears and has worked to keep me locked in a shame spiral that is self destructive and deeply harmful. I think I’ve been deeply perplexed as to why a lot of spaces where folks believe in Jesus are just super toxic. Why men who gather together aren’t being freed from their addictions to things they want to be free from. Why the hatred of self is scapegoated onto other folks, usually women/nonconforming folks inside the power structure and abuse and gaslighting run rampant.
I don’t really marvel at that anymore. It makes sense. If I need to be erased in order to be accepted by this god construct, then so do you. So do all of us. In other words, (none of us can actually see each other in these conditions). We get caught in an incredibly toxic ego centered version of reality that makes us prime candidates for following leaders who are on a power trip because it’s about image and deep down we can’t trust ourselves anyways.
Codependency will make no room for the actual process of being saved. The tender process of becoming aware of my weakness and my tendency to be drawn into illusion. To acknowledge my power and the frailty with which I am walking through this story. To see the fissures in my internal topography as I work out trauma that has been passed onto me. To lay down my weapons, because I am learning to be given freely in love to the love that loves me so deeply that it would give all of itself to draw me back into this awareness of being loved. I now believe that’s what the gospel is about.
I am deeply loved and the journey to find myself is the journey back to that remembrance of the communion I deeply long for with Christ, (ultimate reality), because it is at the essence of who I am. This false self that seeks to exist outside of this love is that which seeks to live out all the energies that have broken the world. This deep illusion in which the self is unknown by god. This is always a false and imagery/fictional self, because in our deepest places we were birthed from god. The vision Luci had for itself was to create a kingdom outside of love. A kingdom of false, self worship (the exaltation of the ego, fractured from the self-giving vulnerability of love) and a compulsion to dominate and enslave others to this false will. Since at the core nature of existence this is not congruent, it is passing.
However, the whole “world” is under the sway of this evil. (language is sticky here. All creation is groaning for the revealing of those who are awakening to this love reality. The objectification of everything, the lust of the flesh, eyes, and pride of life are what I’m talking about when I say “world” here.) We are born into an environment where this tendency to be drawn towards illusion and operate out of destructive energy that harms us and others is often pervasive. The trauma cycles often grind on.
Still, the deepest longing inside me pulls me beyond the veils that are trapping me in darkness. Beauty whispers in a place that is so difficult to articulate sometimes. The impulse and movement within; i long to be with you. There is deep connection to be had and that is what I want more than anything. I’m listening to this podcast that is diving into the incredible work of Thomas Merton and a lot of what I just wrote here is taken from a session on that podcast. It is language that is so healing for me. Language large enough to allow me to go free from the dogmatic cages that have used language to trap me.
It’s truly what my heart has been longing for and is finally remembering. This reality that loves me so fervently through my confusion. Loves me through my propensity to harm myself by buying and eating the bread of illusion. Christ is still holding the true meal out to me saying come and be with me in love. Commune. A love that meets me there and shows me mercy, because this love cannot help but desire my good and my freedom and my deep connection to myself and others and it. Repent or perish is not a damning statement, but a discourse on the ways in which we fall asleep to the depth within us and pursue that which causes us to perish. For me to welcome the process of healing, in order to break the trauma cycle, is to be changed through the energies of wonder, beauty, and curiosity. A true repentance.
structures of home 