Today's step is Step 5: "I believe what I want to believe." Right from the start I know I need to dig deep into my closet of horrors. Foolishness and self-deception are things not easily faced, at least not honestly. Taking responsibility for such mistakes is tough. Even finding them and seeing them with clarity is a real challenge.
Already in my first practice I could feel myself at a loss. What do I believe? I have always been rather skeptical. Paradoxically, I am also naive. I will consider something seriously if I have no reason to mistrust it. But if you come at me with claims that feel wrong to me, I will remain unconvinced. I believe in climate change, because it is an objective scientific fact. I believe that the Earth is round, because it is a planet, and we are not living in a fairy tale. I do not believe that Jesus performed miracles. I do not believe that aliens are actually angels come to bring humanity into some spiritual dimension like a scifi rapture. I believe life is as organic, difficult and gritty as it seems to be when you lie in the dirt on your stomach and see what nature thinks of your high ideals and your beautiful poetry.
So, what do I believe? I want to be important, at least to somebody. I know that because I get insecure and lonely. I have a great fear of being discounted and discarded as not being useful or necessary. I want to matter, but less in the ego-inflating manner, and more in the desperate-to-belong-somewhere manner. I want to fit in, but I do not want to conform. I resist any forces that would seek to shape and mould me into something that feels unnatural. I want to be me. But the New Message casts into doubt who I really am. I am not the collection of ideas and experiences that I associate with my personal self. I am not the behaviours and reactions that characterise my personality. Who am I really?
So we come back to Knowledge - my True Self. Somewhere, beyond the small and frightened human, there is a Presence, This Presence doesn't care what colour car I drive or how I cut my sandwiches. It is only concerned with the greater direction that my life is taking.
The last part of the text stayed with me: "You will find that even your fearful or negative beliefs are associated with your ambitions. Only careful application of today’s practice will reveal this to you." My fears of being useless, being alone and unwanted, having no value or purpose - these fears reveal that I want to matter. I want to have some impact, some sense that my existence was not wasted. We all suffer in life, some more so than others. So we naturally want to feel like that suffering is not for naught. However, I know that my fears in particular come from a place of personal ambition; to show the world that I have merit. To feel vindicated. I want to say, "Look! I was valuable all along, I wasn't just a weirdo." I suffered like many children suffer, being different and unable to make sense of that difference. That pain is still there, burried beneath layers upon layers of "I don't care". But deep inside, that kid is still there, wondering if they truly matter.
I hope that I can clense that pain sufficiently to trust myself, my motives and my actions. I do not want to be haunted by personal insecurities for the rest of my life, even subconsciously.
Thank you for reading!
Submitted March 29, 2019 at 02:25PM by Everythingisanexampl https://ift.tt/2JRoL1J
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