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November 2009 
How did you start on your spiritual path? (700 words)
Posted on Oct 15th, 2008
by 
TextMage
TextMage
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for October 15, 2008:
"Aw, Jesus, Edith!"
Questions like these always leave me feeling like Archie Bunker: Leaving aside that "wise and insightful comment" bullshit. I reckon I got a fair bit of Archie Bunker in me, but I couldn't be Amerikan without a little Archie Bunker and a whole lot of Christian nonsense. Culture being what it is and all-pervasive.
But having a redneck-Judeo-Christian background ain't my main problem, nor why I really feel like an all-Amerikan bigot when I read certain questions here. My main problem with questions like this one is honesty. And that honesty bit is two-fold: One is that most of US do not like honesty of any flavor -- no matter how WE doth protest.
Secondly, when someone is honest with US, WE almost always wanna kill the messenger and that ain't good for the messenger. I say this, without ignoring how hard it is for the receiver to even hear the message without feeling murderous and frightened. Those outraged felonious feelings toward the messenger are hard on US too. The blood-pressure goes up; the ability to think goes down.
What does ALL this preamble mean? Certainly it means that I am grumpy when I read such questions and it means that some of ya'll need to stop reading right now: Lest I offend you, or be murdered. ME be-in grumpy and all.
Coming back to Gaia, I committed, at least internally, to answering these questions and questions like these because I can't be here honestly otherwise.
Here goes . . .
When I was ten, my father tied me to a bed and beat me with an extension cord until I honestly thought that I would die. The year was 1962. We lived in the projects in pre-Disney Orlando. I do not know what my infraction was, and in all likelihood did not know even then. Offence is not a requirement for a a rage-filled drunken beating, although some excuse can always be found -- usually by both parties.
As Daddy whipped me, inwardly, I drew further and further into myself; while outwardly I begged and screamed all the louder, for him to stop. I had been cruelly beaten many times before and was used to beatings, for the most part, but something in this rage was different and not just its intensity or length. Finally, I accepted the fact that my father was going to kill me and that I would die.
At that moment a sort of internal bliss came over me and the pounding stopped affecting me inwardly, though I do not believe that I stopped snuffling and crying. As the beating continued, a voice came to me -- that to this day I do not think of as MY own, and told me that I would be alright.
Depending upon your spiritual and social background, I either had an out-of-body experience, or a disassociative episode, or both, in that childish moment.
I really do not care what WE call any of OUR shared-moments, so long as WE can talk about them with compassionate and cooperative understanding. Neither do I intend to ever let anyone make ME wrong about ANY of MY moments. So you lingering psycho-babblests and New-Agers take heed.
I have always felt blessed and protected -- even before that beating; I also know that this is a typical kind of magical-thinking for abused children.
MY problem is that I remember feeling blessed and chosen before I remember being beaten. There was a period, when I was real little, that my siblings and I were not beaten every day and even during that time, I felt that there was something exceptional and extra in the world. I still do. I don't know what it is.
I know that WE call these unknown things meta-physical, but to me they feel more real sometimes than reality. I know there are psychological terms describing this so-called misconception of reality as well. I know ALL the lingo and can talk a lot of shit when I want. My very first college degree was psychology; I was that fucked-up.
Now I have nothing to do with psychology, or religion, which has very little to do with MY spiritual Path. Mostly this is because of long-term participation in 12-Step programs, but it also has to do with many other fellowships and Ways of learning.
Questions like these always leave me feeling like Archie Bunker: Leaving aside that "wise and insightful comment" bullshit. I reckon I got a fair bit of Archie Bunker in me, but I couldn't be Amerikan without a little Archie Bunker and a whole lot of Christian nonsense. Culture being what it is and all-pervasive.
But having a redneck-Judeo-Christian background ain't my main problem, nor why I really feel like an all-Amerikan bigot when I read certain questions here. My main problem with questions like this one is honesty. And that honesty bit is two-fold: One is that most of US do not like honesty of any flavor -- no matter how WE doth protest.
Secondly, when someone is honest with US, WE almost always wanna kill the messenger and that ain't good for the messenger. I say this, without ignoring how hard it is for the receiver to even hear the message without feeling murderous and frightened. Those outraged felonious feelings toward the messenger are hard on US too. The blood-pressure goes up; the ability to think goes down.
What does ALL this preamble mean? Certainly it means that I am grumpy when I read such questions and it means that some of ya'll need to stop reading right now: Lest I offend you, or be murdered. ME be-in grumpy and all.
Coming back to Gaia, I committed, at least internally, to answering these questions and questions like these because I can't be here honestly otherwise.
Here goes . . .
When I was ten, my father tied me to a bed and beat me with an extension cord until I honestly thought that I would die. The year was 1962. We lived in the projects in pre-Disney Orlando. I do not know what my infraction was, and in all likelihood did not know even then. Offence is not a requirement for a a rage-filled drunken beating, although some excuse can always be found -- usually by both parties.
As Daddy whipped me, inwardly, I drew further and further into myself; while outwardly I begged and screamed all the louder, for him to stop. I had been cruelly beaten many times before and was used to beatings, for the most part, but something in this rage was different and not just its intensity or length. Finally, I accepted the fact that my father was going to kill me and that I would die.
At that moment a sort of internal bliss came over me and the pounding stopped affecting me inwardly, though I do not believe that I stopped snuffling and crying. As the beating continued, a voice came to me -- that to this day I do not think of as MY own, and told me that I would be alright.
Depending upon your spiritual and social background, I either had an out-of-body experience, or a disassociative episode, or both, in that childish moment.
I really do not care what WE call any of OUR shared-moments, so long as WE can talk about them with compassionate and cooperative understanding. Neither do I intend to ever let anyone make ME wrong about ANY of MY moments. So you lingering psycho-babblests and New-Agers take heed.
I have always felt blessed and protected -- even before that beating; I also know that this is a typical kind of magical-thinking for abused children.
MY problem is that I remember feeling blessed and chosen before I remember being beaten. There was a period, when I was real little, that my siblings and I were not beaten every day and even during that time, I felt that there was something exceptional and extra in the world. I still do. I don't know what it is.
I know that WE call these unknown things meta-physical, but to me they feel more real sometimes than reality. I know there are psychological terms describing this so-called misconception of reality as well. I know ALL the lingo and can talk a lot of shit when I want. My very first college degree was psychology; I was that fucked-up.
Now I have nothing to do with psychology, or religion, which has very little to do with MY spiritual Path. Mostly this is because of long-term participation in 12-Step programs, but it also has to do with many other fellowships and Ways of learning.
Access: Public
as a lifelong learner you probably have dozens of degrees by now all in the preperation for the next level I suppose.
Maze, I am strangely enough still unprepared for this level.
I have a Master's Degree in Social Science which qualifies me to drive a cab in any major city. I do know that neither science, nor religion are as great a wisdom as kindness, love and compassion.
This dark entry has been bothering me all day. I'm not sure it answers the question, even though I am certain positive that it was a very strong spiritual event – for me.
I'm never sure that any of my comments answer the question; usually I am not sure what the question is.
The bit about leaving a “wise and insightful comment” makes me pause, thinking I'm neither wise nor insightful.
I love your honesty TextMage.
I saw a couple of plays on TV when I was young that really affected me. I don't know the names of either, and probably should try to search for them. The first one I saw was a play set at the Nuremberg trial. I must have been around 12 and the enormity of the cruelty of the exteremination camps astounded me, worst than my worst nightmares. The second play I saw on TV was as a young adult. This one had just two actors: a pschologist and a Veitnam Vet suffering from PSTD. For both plays I thought how important it was to listen to those who had travelled to hell and lived to tell about it.
Recently I've been doing a lot of thinking about dialogs with religious people. My ideas about dialogs are probably too expansive. Some of my friends are quite religious so certainly I mean dialogs with them about religion. But I also mean reading what religous people write, even when there's little chance of talking babck to them. I think religous or not people opperate using metaphors and myths and it's good to try to become more aware of those in our lives.
So I've come across Walter Wink in my explorations of religion. Wink bleives that Christianity is one way to oppose death power, that is a way for people to move from a strong belief in redemptive violence. Ah I see I can add links here. This one Wink talks about the Enuma Elish myth. Maybe competing myths are silly, but as I say I think like it or not most people use metaphors and myths to negotiate through the world. So I do think it's worth considering myths with the same sort of earnest thoughtfulness the ancient Greeks did with tragedies.
TextMage wrote: “So you lingering psycho-babblests and New-Agers take heed.”
Please, I do hope you don't take this preamble or anything I say–ever–to skirt around or not to take sincerely what you say.
Your expereinces of abuse are not myths! Trying to incorporate the facts of your life into myth is very dangerous territory to trod.
But here's two facts: You have suffered violence. You eschew violence and have commited yourself to making peace.
That's very different from the common myths of redemptive violence that permeate our society. I know too that you're explicit about not making this part of Christian religion. Still sometimes you do point out that Jesus seems to have had the same wisdom that violnece wasn't going to redeem us. Or that violent governments have the explicit authority of God.
You do it best by simply telling your story and not connecting it to mythic patterns. It is your story. Certainly you are not wrong, you are blessed. I believe that with all my heart because you tell me so. I'm probably a bit crazy when I connect your story with myths, for example the ponderings I do about the mission and accomplishments of Jesus, but I do connect. I suspect others when they hear your stories do too.
Your story is so important and people want to understand it in the context of the larger puzzle about living here on Earth. Stories are tricky things in the way that once given away it's not always easy to bring them back home. Okay, so making you the hero of the stories I tell myself maybe is quite innappropirate, but it is one way that I learn.
John, I love you so much. You are one of the omidiyans that I sorely missed, but I see that you still type too dammed fast. You and Monkeyfingers, aka, Debbie Gleason used to challenge my ability to keep up: even just in thought, not to mention the demon-typing thing. MY wife can type like the possessed as well. I however am much more sedate and ladylike. Ahem …
How the hell you been, Boy?
I don't know what to tell you about Wink. I am tangentially familiar with him from reading other Christian writers, but don't really know much about him and haven't read any of his work. I might correct that shortcoming, but there is so much to read that I might also not get around to Wink.
I would say that for far too long Khristianity was the death power.
My specialty, IF I have one, is just war doctrine. The principles of just war were more or less invented to let Khristians separate themselves from Christ's teachings and murder other people for the State. It's easy to say that Christianity and Christians have changed and now support peace, love and equality, but the recent run up to the war in Iraq belies almost any change in revenge-hunger, zenophobia and self-righteousness amongst modern Khristians.
I don't mean to single out Khristians; most Amerikans are looking to blame Others for OUR own fear, hatred and bigotry. As are most denizens of any nation.
Good to hear from you, MY Brother. Keep writing to me. I love your mind.
Speaking of monkey fingers, I see so many mistakes in my comment it's quite embarrassing. I must remember to use the spell checker!
Richard, I love you right back. I was overjoyed to see you posting here. Of course with you here it makes me think about trying to be a responsible community member too. Blogging on your threads isn't really fair, but it's practice for posting here.
Yes people do blame others for OUR own fear. I'm not trying to redeem Christianity, that is to excuse violence perpetrated in the name of Christianity. And I really haven't read much by Walter Wink. But both Walter Wink and Rene Girard have looked closely at violence and peacemaking from the perspective of Christianity. Their work has caught my attention lately and given me much to chew on. Your diagnosis about violence seemed much like their's.
I get confused by spirituality. One problem is that I'm not much on supernatural explanations of things because I don't know how once I start believing one silly thing how to stop from believing every silly thing. I liked very much where you wrote:
“I felt that there was something exceptional and extra in the world. still do. I don't know what it is.”
There are plenty of mysteries, and I don't ignore them.
John, I hear you saying, “I'm not trying to redeem Christianity, that is to excuse violence perpetrated in the name of Christianity.”
I am not condemning Christianity either, or excusing non-Christian violence. My background is in studying how the justification for war and violence put forth by Christians, the Just War Doctrine, lives today.
My message is simple:
Until ALL Christians, and all mothers and all carpenters, call for an end to war, violence will continue to be a way of life chosen by far too many.