Letting Go of the Mask

I kindly urge you to read the previous blogpost series entitled Revealing the Hurt, (see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), so that you can more clearly understand this continuation of our journey…

We are ready to learn how to get back to who God made us to be, to walk away from that false person inside who loathes themselves, lives in fear and walks alone. It is done by breaking the pattern that keeps drawing us back to our destruction.

As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness. Pr. 26:11 NLT

There is no problem with anyone who lives as their authentic self. It’s that mask that we hide behind, that we built to hide our imaginary flaws, which keeps us from living life in all its glory.

We cannot pause to take life in, because we’re too busy running from our past, and what we’ve made it mean. Ironically, we cannot heal, until we embrace those unworkable patterns that make up our unconscious behavior and acknowledge what we’ve been up to. We have been prisoners of our own thoughts.

In that prison, we fluctuate falling into two pits – one fraught with thoughts of inadequacy and loveless-ness, and the other burning with your desires for what you think you do not have.

Yet knowing that you suffer from an unavoidable condition, is by no means a reason to condemn yourself! You deserve compassion for having had to endure the unconscious cruelty that has been handed down to you. And so, does everyone else.

Everyone has that faultfinder in their head. It is modeled after, and moderated by, the devil himself. But those who love Jesus possess a vital edge:

Little children (believers, dear ones, you are of God and you belong to Him and have [already] overcome them [the agents of the antichrist]; because He who is in you is greater than he (Satan) who is in the world [of sinful mankind]. 1 Jn. 4:4 AMP

God has a good plan for you; and if you remove the gulf between you and Him, He will see that you gather the fruits of it. It doesn’t matter what you have thought or done. When you confess and repent, it’s a new game. Jehovah wipes the slate clean and undoes the damage that you wreaked in your ill-begotten state.

Yet God will not violate your free will. You must pray for His help; you need to choose the Light. Realize that if you could have fixed your problem(s), you would have done so by now. It’s just that you were knocked off your divine path as a child, and you need Him to get back on it.

What happens when you don’t? We’ve seen good Christians fall, even when they’re doing their best to be godly. Didn’t they have enough faith? I don’t think that is the answer in most cases.

First, many people mistakenly think that the devil takes a hike when you saddle up with God. Just the opposite! He double downs on his efforts to separate you from your Creator. It’s going to be up to you to not to listen to or act upon his suggestions.

Secondly, we swim in sea of humanity, whom for the most part, are godless – either by choice or through ignorance. It can break us down, back into the mire of our old ways. We aren’t even aware of it until our lives begin to crumble once more…

Still, we can always return to God and begin anew. Yet, what if we could greatly reduce our ‘backsliding,’ and thus, our valleys of suffering and spend most of our time on the peaks of life’s joys?

After 50 years of researching human behavior, I have amalgamated a particular pathway that works for me. In fact, it brought me back from the brink of death, and it continues to do so.

How does it work? We must become a detective to acutely investigate all of the sneaky ways the world tries to pull us down into its miserable muck. In addition, we apply that same process to uncover all of the games that we unconsciously play, to satiate the desires of the flesh.

It allows us to become hyper-aware of all those shenanigans and nip them in the bud when they first raise their ugly heads. It also reminds of to enlist the Holy Spirit to come back home – to reclaim our perfection through Christ.

You don’t have to understand that perfection, you only have to embrace it. You already possess all the attributes of His Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22, 23.).

By getting out of your head and back into your heart, you will manifest these qualities; and then love, acceptance, and happiness will lose its elusiveness. Self-judgment will be a bygone practice, and you will attract that person who will share with you, your rediscovered joy.

This is the most important task that you will ever take on, because it is a matter of life or death – to either live in and by the light of God, or to remain in darkness and die by degrees.

Like any endeavor in life, you must possess the right tools. For this path of recovery, (in sequence of application), they are: willingness, God, meditation, steadfast awareness and inquisition, and action.

WILLINGNESS

No one can give you your life back. You must take it back; and you can only do that if you are willing. Jehovah will not work on your behalf unless you are willing to follow His lead.

That’s why it is so important to make sound decisions (in alignment with God), because in order to preserve your free will, your Creator must let the consequences of your free-will choices play out. Better to have your outcome to be favorable through intentional choices rather than have them based upon those you make unconsciously.

Finally, you must be willing to change your ways of being and doing in order to shed that unworkable life that you suffer through.

GOD

(You can’t call Jehovah a ‘tool,’ because He is the center of everything we need to live our highest and best life. But humor me, just for the sake of presentational syntax.)

Maybe you’re thinking, ‘I can change my life by myself.’ How’s that working for you? Clearly, for many people, it is not. We all need help to rise above the fearful chaos that was thrust upon us as a child and from the unique model that we morphed it into. Given that most people share in that all too common affliction, we must reach out to the only solution – the hand of God.

Jehovah is love. So, He is whom we must go to, to restore the love in our lives. When you return to Him, He covers you with His forgiveness, and no longer remembers your past thoughts and deeds (Is. 43:25). If God forgives you, who are you to not forgive yourself?

When you embrace the guidance of your Creator, that devil-inspired-and- encouraged voice in your head, will be reduced to an impotent squeak (Rm. 16:20). God will heal your wounds (Ps. 147:3) and place you back on your path, for achieving the life that He has planned for you (Pr. 3:5, 6.).

God helps you make all the right decisions in life by filling you with His wisdom, when you are ready to receive it.

We definitely do not thrive when we depend solely upon our own cognition. THAT IS OUR PRIMARY PROBLEM!

For as he thinks within himself, so he is. Pr. 23:7 NASB

We literally become what we think. If our focus is on God and what He thinks, we will understand all that is true and good for ourselves and everyone else:

…those who seek the LORD understand everything. Pr. 28:5 CSB

Living without the wisdom of God is not an option for those who desire a good life:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Hos. 4:6 NKJV

We must look at what we have wrought, and learn:

The ear that hears the rebukes of life will abide among the wise. Pr. 15:31 NKJV

When we have God (perfect love), we can cast our fears away:

“Do not be afraid…I am your shield; your reward will be very great.” Gn. 15:1 CSB

MEDITATION

We first encounter the word ‘meditate’ in the Bible, just before Isaac encounters his bride-to-be (Rebekah):

And Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening. Gn. 24:63 ESV

God also gives us clues on what to meditate about:

“Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.” Josh. 1:8 NLT

…whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things. Phil. 4:8 NKJV

So, meditation is not a foreign or objectionable concept to God. We are commanded to contemplate His word continuously. That way, we can accurately apply it, which makes for having a great life. In addition, we also find that meditation is also a tool for making the mind a ‘still place,’ to prepare us for communing with our Creator (Ps. 4:3, 4.).

I bring this up because there are many false notions about meditation in some of the body of the church. Some even go so far as to describe it as a process for emptying the mind, which allows the devil to rush in and set up house. This is a total misconception. Furthermore, that devil has already taken residence in your head a long time ago, in the form of ‘ego.’

Meditation is a tool for slowing down the mind, creating a pace where we can watch it and the ego do their worst – looking for the lies we’ve created that bind us. Then, we can unravel them.

It is also a very powerful tool to facilitate our re-entry into the present moment, freeing us from the past, to contemplate a different way of being. If we stop running from the present moment and from ourselves, we can deconstruct our impressions of the past, and create a space where God can come and heal us from our self-inflicted meaningless meanings of hurt.

When we take care of our present moment, we can help bring about fulfilling consecutive moments (i.e. our future).

Meditation helps you embrace whatever life is offering, (whether or not it is attractive to you), and be happy in that moment. It frees you up from the deluge of your opinions and from the punishments you administer to yourself when you don’t meet them.

In other words, it helps you exorcise your false persona, so that your focus is trained upon what is beneficial to you and not to that voice in your head.

Lastly, the practice of meditation is for enlightenment (spiritual growth), and it’s good for your health (lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety, sharpens your focus and increases your compassion). It reveals the qualities of your spirit to enable you to see who you really are, and be able to fall back in love with yourself.

In a nutshell, it is for unlearning what you think you know. This can be very scary for those who are strongly attached to their mask. Ironically, it is that very camouflage that perpetuates their suffering…

Next time, we’ll look at a simple method of meditating…

Goodnight and God bless.

Revealing the Hurt 3

Previously, (see Part 1 and Part 2), we looked at how we might construct a distorted view of life, (that it is unsafe), and a broken view of ourselves (that we were unlovable and / or unacceptable). We also examined how we fabricated an ego to navigate our problems that were created from that mindset. And we saw how that voice in our head turned against us and became our greatest critic.

Then we examined how this view of the world and ourselves filled us with perpetual fear, and saw the damage that it does.

If you are chronically afraid, you live in a state of continuous defense. One of the ways you do that is by creating a false self-image, a mask, if you will (see Are There Giants Blocking Your Path?).

You weren’t born with a self-image; you had a God-image:

So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Gn. 1:27 NLT

But then, life stepped all over you, or, at least you perceived it that way; and that voice in your head makes sure that that conviction remains intact. In desperation to be loved, you create a false persona, a mask to hide behind, and to present to others, hoping that they will then find you acceptable.

The problem is that you build the foundation of your mask on the myriad of lies that your ego tells you that you must incorporate to be acceptable.

In other words, you try to appear to others as someone who isn’t real. And you can never let your guard down. Why? Because that devil in your head has convinced you that you have shameful hidden parts or behaviors, which would drive any potential partner away if they were discovered.

An exhausting effort must be sustained in maintaining the imagined integrity of your mask. And you continually fine-tune it to please each person that comes along – all in order to avoid rejection. Worse, because that other person never gets to respond to the ‘real’ you, your true needs are never met. Why? Because you don’t express them.

The core problem that drives this mess, is that we never examine what we think about; or what drives our need to purposefully take on a false identity. The mask is a symbol of our suffering, which keeps it front and center in our focus.

Your life never gets to be lived because the voice in your head keeps feeding your self-image. It knows that as long as your obsessed with that, you will never reach your full potential as a child of God.

Until then, you will continue to judge yourself for who you are not, and then administer self-flagellation in order to make you a ‘good’ person. However, you cannot beat ‘goodness’ into anyone….

As you might deduce, if your ability to relate to the world and the people in it is broken, and your speaking from behind a mask, your ability to effectively communicate is highly diminished (see Communication Breakdown).

This happens to everyone to some degree. We are all engaged in sharing our false ‘Life Stories’ through the filter of our fabricated masks; and each mask is unique. Therefore, we hold no common views, making the exchange of truth impossible.

Real communication is all but lost:

They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself… Rm. 1:25 NLT

Think about it. Is not your mask a created thing for acquiring the favor of the world / humankind; when we should be cultivating the acceptance of God?

Communication becomes a hollow, unsatisfying exchange – almost painful. Subsequently, many people isolate themselves and live in their heads. When they do muster futile attempts at human-to-human interaction, it becomes an exercise in knee-jerk reactions from behind a wall of defense – to keep from being ‘triggered’ into wallowing in the pain of old imagined wounds.

If your attention is always focused on self-preservation, you cannot accurately hear what the other person has to say. This is coupled with your inattentiveness, because you’re waiting for them to cease wagging their tongues – so that you can blurt out your truth and invalidate theirs.

You know when you’re in this ‘zone,’ when you tell yourself, ‘I’ve heard all this before.’ In this space, you learn nothing new, and stay shackled to your past. And in your frenzy to be ‘right,’ you make the other person ‘wrong,’ creating enemies, and bringing more loveless loneliness upon yourself.

We see then, that when we are self-absorbed, and living a lie, our inability to relate to others, fractures our connection with them, including the one we have with God Himself (see Rejecting God Leads to Broken Relationships).

Our entire lives are lived within the framework of relationships – with friends, family, significant others, coworkers, ourselves and God. Yet, for most people, relating is the hardest part of living.

God gave us a manual (the Bible) for how to have good relationships, but most people do not refer to it. Instead, we take our cues from watching how our parents related, (many unsuccessfully), and absorbed them without examination for efficacy.

As a result, we are thrust into relationships since birth, one after another, without workable clues – helplessly trying to learn to do relating, while falling in and out of them. And that voice in our head is of no help, because our preoccupation with listening to its lies, has caused us to be afraid to share our true selves.

Pathetically, we at least hope that others will fall in love with our masks. Yet, that will never bring authentic and loving relationships. You must allow them to see the real you and how you need to be loved…

So, we show up for relationships with a HUGE self-induced disadvantage. We are sad, scared and defeated before we even start, pining over our imaginary flaws, hoping this new person will be able to ‘fix’ us. Yet, we come bearing our false personas and wonder why they don’t relate to us.

We cannot get anything from anyone unless we are first willing to provide it for ourselves. It is not possible for someone else to alter the experience that we have created of ourselves (see Why Are Your Relationships Disappointing? )

This experiential change must come from within. We must learn to love and accept ourselves first, before we can ever know when we are receiving that from others. We begin by looking at how God feels about us: There is no one unacceptable in Jehovah’s eyes, and He cherishes everyone.

Without this change, we will only continue to attract people who run the same unworkable schemes that we do – who will abuse us in the same proportion of assault to which we tolerate from our ego.

Think about this: if you have two false personas coming together to get something without reciprocating, what chance do you have for a loving, accepting relationship?

Staying with old mindsets, it’s obvious that there will be a lot of failed relationships, which brings along with it, pain and suffering. Because we are afraid of that experience, we begin to avoid relating altogether.

You can’t fix this by yourself. You have to tap into God’s way of loving:

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. 1 Jn. 4:18 NLT

For many of those still operating in the dark, there comes a time when the pain of loneliness far outweighs the fear of inadequacy and failure. So, they venture out once more – frantically grasping for scraps of tenderness. However, their tactics are riddled with flaws.

The People Pleaser: They are always giving of themselves, hoping the recipient of their efforts will intuit the manner in which the pleaser wants to be loved. Yet it is always a one-way street, because their love-interest does not read minds. This tactic shows up as a fearful frenzy of giving, in addition to performing in ways to check their partner’s wrath, to prevent abandonment, or to glean a smidgen of love and acceptance.

Dropping your common-sense boundaries: These sufferers take on the attitude that anyone is better than being alone; and in their acute need, they will take in strays, smothered in ‘red flags.’ They’ve lost the ability to discern what is good or bad for them, because their primary need is for acceptance, regardless of where they get it. Subsequently, they invite problematic relationships, irrespective of their toxicity – trying to compel their partner to love them.

Hunting for the ‘one’: You know who the ‘one’ is. He / she is the flawless mate who will love you perfectly and save you from suffering. A hunter is one who is ‘loneliness’ personified, a desolation begotten from self-rejection. Should you miraculously find the ‘one,’ that voice in your head will tell you the he / she is not, because true love means certain death for that rascal. Lastly, desperate love hunters attract other hunters who exist at the same level of suffering.

Regardless of which tactic is used, the attempt at relationships between broken people generally follow this pattern:

In the initial rush of attraction, the participants look at each other with ‘rose-colored’ glasses,’ ignoring any warning signs as they paint the picture of an ideal romance, trying to fill their aching need for intimacy. The fixation is on the similarities they share, (the things they like the best about themselves). Each think ‘This it!’ And they let their walls of defense crumble – giddy with the notion of being in love.
Eventually, their focus lands upon their ‘differences’ – perceived to be barriers against their agendas; and the romantic dream begins to implode.
Instead of seeing these differences as seeds for growth, as an amalgam of new possibilities, you make your partner ‘wrong’ for having them. You recall what was wrong with your previous relationship(s), mystified that the same problem has reared its ugly head again.
Your ‘fix’ is to demonstrate to them the ‘perfect’ way things need to be done. At this point, you have moved into a position of judgment – a reflection of your self-righteousness. You tell yourself that your partner is wrong. Yet, what’s wrong with them is the thing that you don’t like about yourself. So, most of the time, it is not your partner who is the problem!
Safety and trust are lost. Resentment builds. Competition begins for attention and control; and victim mindsets are firmly set in place.
Survival strategies ensue – either by passively modeling the behavior they want to see from the other, or aggressively punishing the other by caustic speech, withholding love, or distancing.
The old hurts begin to surface and outward conflict begins. They see each other as the enemy, but inwardly they believe that the relationship is failing due to some inadequacy that they themselves possess.

Ultimately, they will either anesthetize themselves or walk away and hunt once more; and the cycle repeats.

The only way that a healthy nurturing relationship can work is if we make a continuing choice to be related, to bring love and compassion, and commit to being present with our partner – staying awake to whatever life is offering.

Unfortunately, most people can’t get to that space because their focus is always on their own needs. They bring no empathy, compassion, love or understanding. What they do show up with, is self-defense and control; and then they wonder why their relationships don’t last…

Wow! Revealing our hurts carries a lot of painful insights. Isn’t it time that we looked at how to heal them?

Next time…

Goodnight and God bless.

Revealing the Hurt 2

Last time, (see part one), we looked at how as children, we constructed an ‘ego’ to help us cope with a world we viewed as treacherous, and believed we were incapable of living in it. We also saw how this feeling we have, was a function of parental, governmental and media indoctrination, which began with the devil in the Garden of Eden. Ultimately, we take on a self-image of being unlovable and / or inadequate.

How does all that show up in your life? Fear – in all its forms. A ‘fear mindset’ is the disease of an anxious world (see Fearless).

Fear is a result of recycled emotions packaged in the meanings that we gave to our past experiences, maximized by our need for love and acceptance from others, (who are just as messed up as we are, under the grip of their own Life Story).

It cripples us, yet fear is not a real thing. It’s an emotional mechanism for avoiding things that might happen and make you suffer. But it is this very preoccupation that agonizes you. Your focus is in the wrong direction:

Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the LORD means safety. Pr. 29:25 NLT

Moreover, chronic fear is ruinous to your health, causing insomnia, ulcers, high blood pressure, heart attack, strokes and cancer.

When the fearful child reaches adulthood, he or she avoids the unknown for fear of failure and the punishment that they believe would follow. Their biggest punisher is that devilish voice in their own head. Life is lived in a near panic state, trying not to make a mistake, striving to be perfect.

There are three basic fears:

1. The fear of death: This is especially acute in those without faith in God. If you don’t know Him, you have no foundation for dealing with death, because no human being has returned from the dead to tell us what happens. It is the idea of dying that is at the root of their fear. Subsequently, they cling to earthly possession and people, not realizing that their very act of indulging in this fear brings a swifter demise.

2. The fear of abandonment: This is rooted in the belief of being unacceptable or unlovable. As a result, you look to others to find your meaning in life. Thus, you are preoccupied with a fear that people will leave you; and you become a ‘people pleaser.’ But you work against yourself by projecting your own ‘self-rejection’ upon them, while you’re obsessing over how they might perceive you. Ultimately, they will see the pain in your frenzy and will reject you because it reminds them of their own suffering.

It wasn’t personal; but ego will tell you that it was. And should you start to care for someone, that voice will say that he / she is wrong for you. So, you desperately search for love, while holding them at arm’s length, taking a preemptive defensive posture and obsessing on imaginary problems – ultimately driving them away.

3. The fear of change (impermanence): Yet, the only thing life guarantees is change. However, most people try to resist impermanence because they want to be in control of all their outcomes. Here’s a big clue: We don’t know what will happen next, and there is no control! God is the only unchangeable force in this universe, the only reality. We live in an anxious world because we want to usurp Jehovah’s control, to resist reality, which is the source of all suffering.

“I am the LORD, I do not change.” Mal. 3:6 NLT

We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps. Pr. 16:9 NLT

Other expressions of fear: (see Anger Kills)

Envy: the fear of being ‘less than,’ believing others to be better than you.

Jealousy: a lust for something someone else has, while holding them in disdain for their apparent good fortune.

Pride: lifting yourself above others, effectively oppressing them.

Anger: the biggest fear of all – the fear of life itself. It is an unsuccessful strategy of an oppressive defense, borne out of a refusal to bear the responsibility for how their life is unfolding. And they project this anger onto anyone whom they feel is interfering with their survival mechanisms.

Anger is a form of ‘closing down’ by ‘striking out.’ It creates walls between the angry one and the target of their wrath. It is addictive, feeding upon itself and getting stronger with every outburst.

It is a false relief valve. We explode to take the pressure off or ourselves and to shift our accountability for our life onto something or someone else. Eventually, anger becomes an uncontrollable torrent, detonating even when we don’t want it to.

Our tirades drive everyone away, piling shame and guilt upon ourselves. Worse, it does nothing to relieve our pain and eventually leads to violence against ourselves and others.

Ironically, this is one of the rare times that voice in your head will agree with you, saying, ‘Didn’t I tell you that you were unhappy? See how wretched life is, how the world is, and what it’s done to you? How can you possibly get along without me?

Anger makes you think that you are powerful, but it is actually killing you.

Stop being angry! Turn from your rage! Do not lose your temper – it only leads to harm. Ps. 37:8 NLT

Roots of anger:

Not liking something; i.e. manifesting your ‘preferences.’
Wanting life to be different yet suffering from paralysis due to the fear of change.
Seeing others as ‘enemies’ because they don’t share your preferences.
Afraid the past will repeat itself, trying to protect yourself against potential rejection.
Trying to avoid having your mistakes being revealed, or having your false persona exposed.
Fighting what you think is an attempt by someone to control you – especially if you see yourself as a victim.

How does life look when you are driven by fear?

You become obsessed with getting everything right, filled with terror that you might not, that it might be out of your control. Fear smothers you, paralyzes you, making you afraid to make any decisions in life. You are afraid to do, to be, and you run from the meanings that you’ve attached to everything. It is fear that you run from, without realizing that you are generating it.

We scramble from the present moment and hide from the next one, because they are unknowns. Thus, we lose any opportunity to be happy, because we’re too busy struggling to bring all our conditions together that we think must be met, to have that perfect moment – the one that never comes.

Life is something we react to instead of evaluating it, so we are perpetually blind to the true nature of what we are afraid of. What we are afraid of is being ourselves. There can be no life without fear, if we are frightful of expressing our true selves.

We believe the lies that our ego throws at us – that same one who invalidates our feelings, while eviscerating us for having them. Yet is pales in comparison to the abuse we heap upon ourselves.

Piteously, we believe there is a secret to managing life and we are sure that everyone else knows it, but we can’t seem to figure it out. The truth is, life presents itself as it is, but we won’t accept it because it’s not the way we want it. We’re so afraid that we’ll never get it all together. Spoiler alert: nobody does! We are all a work in progress.

No one would consciously hurt themselves and others, invite pain, and believe that they were unlovable or unacceptable. It’s just that they forgot their God-given perfection:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you, says the LORD. “I will end your captivity…” Jer. 29:12 – 14. NLT

To be continued…

Goodnight and God bless.

Revealing the Hurt

There is a driving force that makes you act the way that you do. It is usually something you built around a ‘hurt’ that you have perceived you were inflicted with. Today, we’ll begin revealing that hurt and see how it affects every aspect of your life.

We have previously considered the prophetic messages about the coming Messiah (see Introducing the Messiah) and added to that a theological discussion about who Christ is (see Who is the Savior). Now, I could stop right here and say, ‘If you want a great life, just emulate Jesus.’ And that would be true.

However, most of us created ‘meanings’ about life when we were very young that have distorted the way we look at the world, and we have drummed up patterns to deal with the dangers we believe are confronting us. They are buried so deep in our psyche that we live lives in an always automatic way of being, which plays out in our unconsciousness.

So, even though we may be saved, we have a have a self-inflicted wound that drives us back to our old sin patterns. Indeed, most of these patterns are performed unconsciously. Wouldn’t life be better if we didn’t have to continually go to battle with ourselves?

Our wounds begin in our youth. In fact, they were first handed down to us in the Garden of Eden (see A Devilish Indoctrination). The Great Liar (Satan), planted the wounding seed when he convinced Eve, and ultimately Adam, to disobey God by convincing them that He was lying to them. They disobeyed because they thought they could be something more, god-like.

Instead, Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace after committing that first sin – shamed and afraid of His rejection. How does this play out?

We are composed of a body (molded from the same dust as the stars) which is meant to be a temple of God (1 Cor. 6:19), a soul (mind, will and emotions), and a spirit (a piece of God that vivifies the body and functions as our God-connection). In God’s plan, the body is subject to the soul, and the soul to the spirit.

The devil’s strategy is to break that hierarchy by stealing your soul. He does that by distorting your soul with lies until you lose all memory of your innate goodness. This ‘distorted’ soul does the Adversary’s bidding, by yielding to the desires of the flesh, leading to corruption, and it oppresses the spirit.

Satan spins a complex multi-layered web to capture your soul, to steal you from God, by keeping you out of your eternal home by persistently egging you on to sin. Subsequently, you begin to judge yourself as inadequate (‘not good enough’) and unlovable. This is at the root of every problem that you have…

This warped way of thinking has been passed down through every generation – beginning with Cain. (see The Bad Seed). The result? People scurry throughout their lives searching for acceptance and love, which they don’t think that they deserve. They create laws for people to follow to gain acceptance from other humans.

They replaced the Law of God with the laws of Man, which dictated how one must think and or act, in every conceivable situation, laws now twisted and so voluminous that they have become impossible to adhere to.

We aren’t born with seeds of doubt or a spirit of rejection, we must be indoctrinated with them. That’s where Mom and Dad come in (see What Are We Teaching Our Children?).

Our parents were indoctrinated similarly by their parents, and they likewise infiltrate their child’s brain with drivel that they think will help their kids to ‘fit in.’ This is an unconscious process, not a malevolent undertaking.

Nevertheless, the child is branded with other people’s opinions about truth, evil and good, instead of letting them form their own views through experience. Worse, many of these opinions contradict what he or she can sense through their innate knowledge of right and wrong.

And let’s not forget the malevolent mental drubbing taking place by government, media and public schools.

Usually, by the age of six, the devil’s work is firmly in place.

Some of what Mom and Dad indoctrinate, may clash with what you need; e.g. maybe you’re afraid of the dark, but they make you cry your way through it, or they refuse to feed you when you’re hungry because it’s not dinner time. Your parents aren’t being hostile, they are basing their decisions on what some ‘expert’ told them.

But you’re just a kid. All you know is that the people you love aren’t meeting your needs. Worse, you might begin to think that there might be something wrong with your needs or with you for having them – especially if your parents are punishing you regarding them as well.

Nevertheless, kids are smart. They invent ways to get their needs met – either by ‘acting out,’ or by memorizing their parent’s ever-expanding list of ways that they are supposed to be, to make them acceptable and lovable. In other words, they’re learning to become someone who they are not.

The children create a mental construct, (ego), to index all of these ‘necessary behaviors.’ It is a defensive cocoon of conformity for being protected from pain – a creation to help them compensate for a lack that never existed. (See Evolution of the Dark Mind)

Ego drives its host by playing on its fears and desires. It grows a voice that says the world is a dangerous place – a place to be survived, not lived.

However, this ego begins to feed on the power the child has given it; but then it becomes resentful because it knows that its very existence depends upon its host’s perceived need for it. Thus, it begins to berate its host with their ‘imaginary flaws,’ to increase their feeling that ego is necessary to their survival.

Eventually, the child identifies with ego, believing its voice is his or her own. They don’t question the voice and come to forget that they created it, not realizing that it only survives through their faith in it.

When ego is in charge, your soul takes a back seat. As it pummels you with your ‘flaws,’ you either go into hiding or try to change – neither being an effective solution. And you can’t fix them, because they are imaginary!

Ego then contaminates all of the information you receive from your God-given brain, so that all you perceive are altered meanings / realities, which you accept as truth. As a result, your life is brimming over with anxiety. In that state, you will never pursue a good life.

That voice in your head wants to keep control over you continually, so it goes to war with your past and future, in addition to ruining your present time. It creates a darker past with you at fault (your Life Story) and presents a future with no hope. Suffering sets in.

When you listen to ego, you are separated from God – just what Satan wanted…

You drag your Life Story into present time, and your preoccupation with it keeps you from living, because life only lives in the ‘now.’ We try to bring comfort to the child we were in the past, feeling unlovable and inadequate, looking to fix problems that lived in that same past (see The Past Sure is Tense).

For as he thinks within himself, so he is. Pr. 23:7 NASB

You tend to isolate yourself. Your life mirrors what’s going on in your head, which is a miasma of meaningless thoughts that has you running from what is real. You become agitated and strike out; and you take on a victim mentality so as to not be responsible for how your life is turning out.

Your only real sin is making yourself suffer and throwing your life away. Definitely not what God wants:

“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder the things of the past. Behold, I will do something new…” Is. 43:18, 19. NKJV

When you live in the past, the conversation in your head becomes a series of regrets: ‘if only I would have done ___;’ ‘If only I would have married___;’ ‘If only I wasn’t so___,’etc. And life just keeps passing you by.

Just the ways ego likes it, because it can’t control present time.

What kind of life is this? It’s painful. So, we add addictions, distractions, change jobs, relationships, or geographic locations. The pain remains. We become victims of a false reality where we exist as a perception of smallness, ineptness, and surrounded by problems.

As our lives progress beyond childhood, we encounter major events and interactions with others whom we perceived bigger-than-life or more powerful than we thought we were. We assigned false meanings to these events.

Subsequently, we avoid events / people that we judge to have the potential to bring suffering. Thus, we have a life void of challenges that might bring growth and is also filled with mediocrity and loneliness.

This isn’t the life God wants for you. To be continued…

Goodnight and God Bless.

revealing the hurt

Still, we can always return to God and begin anew. Yet, what if we could greatly reduce our ‘backsliding,’ and thus, our valleys of suffering and spend most of our time on the peaks of life’s joys?

Like any endeavor in life, you must possess the right tools. For this path of recovery, (in sequence of application), they are: willingness, God, meditation, steadfast awareness and inquisition, and action.

Regardless of which tactic is used, the attempt at relationships between broken people generally follow this pattern:

Other expressions of fear: (see Anger Kills)

Roots of anger:

How does life look when you are driven by fear?

We aren’t born with seeds of doubt or a spirit of rejection, we must be indoctrinated with them. That’s where Mom and Dad come in (see What Are We Teaching Our Children?).

Discover more

Archives