Fresh out of my weekly mental mind-fucking
While everyone else was discussing Puritan capitalistic principles, I was thinking about crap like this all night:
Thought One:
So many religions are focused on transcending suffering and reaching joy. That we are capable of joy, but only if we triumph over suffering. But that puts suffering first, it makes suffering the "default" existence, it sends the message that the world is basically evil or, at the very least, not full of joy or grace. Who's to say that we rise above suffering before we can ever reach joy? All around me, I see people who give up on joy--not who never achieve it to begin with. Part of life is suffering, sure, but life is joy too; part of our task on this earth is learning to live with both.
Innocence is ignorant joy. Loss of innocence is when joy and pleasure seem false and superficial when compared with the world's suffering. Grace is being able to live at peace with both.
Thought Two:
I have been struck lately, in a variety of ways, by the question of faith and people. Or rather, faith in people. How much faith and trust is it safe to have? How much is it realistic to have? How much faith do I have in myself?
The last question is, I guess, the most important, because the answers to it undercut all the answers to the first two. I need to know that there are those out there who will love and accept me unconditionally, no matter what I do (what's funny is when I first started writing this, I qualified it with "as long as I don't treat people like shit or murder anyone or whatever"...but then that's not unconditional, is it? This is how hard it is for me to wrap my head around "unconditional," because I've internalized the notion that everything in life has its condition or price). I've never quite been able to reconcile the issue of unconditional love. I've always felt, even with my own family, that I have to do something to earn love and respect. That eventually I will say or do something that will cause those people that I love and respect most to turn their backs on me. And the thought terrifies me. The idea that I'm alone, isolated and afraid, with my most terrifying inner faults is worse than lonely.
So maybe it's out of a need for self-preservation that I've been trying (or, at least, needing to try) to extend that acceptance to others. I've moved beyond the point where I can hold my self close and guarded, because I can't connect with other people that way. If I can't allow myself to accept others unconditionally, no matter what their faults, I'm yanking the rug out from under my own feet. But it's hard. It's hard to feel love for someone in spite of their silence, or in spite of distance, or in spite of actions that I have a hard time respecting, and be okay with not expecting anything in return but what people are willing to give me. It's hard to give my own actions value when other people dismiss them out of hand. But at its deepest, isn't that what friendship is? Trust is not knowing that someone will give you everything you need. It's somehow expecting the best and expecting nothing, all at the same time.
That said, I know I'm human. I know I fall into judgments and stereotypes and out-of-hand dismissal of people far too often, because it's easier. I know I'm not patient, and that I fall into manipulation and insecurity because I'm afraid people will leave me hanging. All I can do is ask your forgiveness, both in retrospect and in advance, for the times when that inevitably happens.
Quotes That Generally Relate to Thought Two:
"[The being] said that the way back to my real environment, the place where my soul was meant to exist, doesn't lie through any set of codes I will ever find outside of myself. I have to look inward. I have to jettison every sorrow, every terror, every misconception, every lie that stands between my conscious mind and what I know in my heart to be true. Instead of clutching around me the trappings of a 'good' person, a 'successful' person, or even a 'righteous' person, I have to be exactly what I am, and take the horrible chance that I might be rejected for it. I can't get home by cloaking myself in the armor of any system, social, political, or religious. I have to strip off all that comforting armor and go on alone." --Martha Beck, Expecting Adam
"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them--words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When a secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear." --Stephen King, The Body
Thought One:
So many religions are focused on transcending suffering and reaching joy. That we are capable of joy, but only if we triumph over suffering. But that puts suffering first, it makes suffering the "default" existence, it sends the message that the world is basically evil or, at the very least, not full of joy or grace. Who's to say that we rise above suffering before we can ever reach joy? All around me, I see people who give up on joy--not who never achieve it to begin with. Part of life is suffering, sure, but life is joy too; part of our task on this earth is learning to live with both.
Innocence is ignorant joy. Loss of innocence is when joy and pleasure seem false and superficial when compared with the world's suffering. Grace is being able to live at peace with both.
Thought Two:
I have been struck lately, in a variety of ways, by the question of faith and people. Or rather, faith in people. How much faith and trust is it safe to have? How much is it realistic to have? How much faith do I have in myself?
The last question is, I guess, the most important, because the answers to it undercut all the answers to the first two. I need to know that there are those out there who will love and accept me unconditionally, no matter what I do (what's funny is when I first started writing this, I qualified it with "as long as I don't treat people like shit or murder anyone or whatever"...but then that's not unconditional, is it? This is how hard it is for me to wrap my head around "unconditional," because I've internalized the notion that everything in life has its condition or price). I've never quite been able to reconcile the issue of unconditional love. I've always felt, even with my own family, that I have to do something to earn love and respect. That eventually I will say or do something that will cause those people that I love and respect most to turn their backs on me. And the thought terrifies me. The idea that I'm alone, isolated and afraid, with my most terrifying inner faults is worse than lonely.
So maybe it's out of a need for self-preservation that I've been trying (or, at least, needing to try) to extend that acceptance to others. I've moved beyond the point where I can hold my self close and guarded, because I can't connect with other people that way. If I can't allow myself to accept others unconditionally, no matter what their faults, I'm yanking the rug out from under my own feet. But it's hard. It's hard to feel love for someone in spite of their silence, or in spite of distance, or in spite of actions that I have a hard time respecting, and be okay with not expecting anything in return but what people are willing to give me. It's hard to give my own actions value when other people dismiss them out of hand. But at its deepest, isn't that what friendship is? Trust is not knowing that someone will give you everything you need. It's somehow expecting the best and expecting nothing, all at the same time.
That said, I know I'm human. I know I fall into judgments and stereotypes and out-of-hand dismissal of people far too often, because it's easier. I know I'm not patient, and that I fall into manipulation and insecurity because I'm afraid people will leave me hanging. All I can do is ask your forgiveness, both in retrospect and in advance, for the times when that inevitably happens.
Quotes That Generally Relate to Thought Two:
"[The being] said that the way back to my real environment, the place where my soul was meant to exist, doesn't lie through any set of codes I will ever find outside of myself. I have to look inward. I have to jettison every sorrow, every terror, every misconception, every lie that stands between my conscious mind and what I know in my heart to be true. Instead of clutching around me the trappings of a 'good' person, a 'successful' person, or even a 'righteous' person, I have to be exactly what I am, and take the horrible chance that I might be rejected for it. I can't get home by cloaking myself in the armor of any system, social, political, or religious. I have to strip off all that comforting armor and go on alone." --Martha Beck, Expecting Adam
"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them--words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When a secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear." --Stephen King, The Body