Small Epiphanies

Below, is what I wrote in my journal until 2am last night. It's a beautiful, hard-covered journal with inspiring quotes on each page. I usually use crappy notebooks so I don't feel pressure to write a masterpiece, but my friend, Elise, gave me this as a gift, and I love it! It is perfect for capturing my new found optimism. I'm still going to use my crappy notebooks for writing practice and useless journaling. This journal will be used to capture my spiritual journey over the year: both good and bad. I want this to be a more meaningful journal. I look forward to being able to capture my growth in it.

 This was a quote on one of the pages I wrote on:

"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness." -Chang Tzu

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I just got back from Jon's house. Tonight we gathered in a circle to talk about how the past Omega trips influence us today, current concerns, and dreams for the future. It proved to be a very spiritually healing night. I'm praying again. I'd been thinking about it for a while, but I made the decision tonight.

There's been several factors influencing my desire to return to faith. I've been really moved by song lyrics, reading Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg, and conversations with friends. I don't want to ignore the fact that my biggest reason for returning is because I can't imagine going through another depressive episode with  nothing to believe in. Is that needy or childish? Maybe, but I left faith because I believed in a god out of fear. I realized that was stupid. What kind of higher power needs me to believe in it, or will punish me for not believing? Plus, believing out of fear is selfish, because I am only being pious to save my own ass. What kind of higher power rewards that?

I'm no longer afraid of hell because I don't believe in it. I don't even believe in an afterlife. I don't want my new faith to be distorted into something it is not. I'm still not a Christian. I love Jesus' ideas, but he was human. Non-believers are quick to point out Jesus's shortcomings and anger. Humans make mistakes and have parts of themselves they are not proud of. Why should I let Jesus' teachings and goodness be discredited because he couldn't always practice what he preached? Who has never done something hypocritical? One of my favorite quotes is," It's easier to preach ten sermons than to live one." I try to practice what I preach, but sometimes fail. I'm learning that I need to accept my humanity with dignity. I can't keep punishing myself for my inability to achieve all of my goals--especially those that deal with morality. I forgive others ten times more than I forgive myself, which not only hurts me, but it limits my ability to grow and reach other people. How can I help other's to love everyone, including themsevles, if I don't love me? I'm not talking about arrogance--loving myself so much that I stop self-evaluating and putting in the effort to make change--I'm also not suggesting I abandon my high standards. I want to know real love for myself and life. I feel real altruistic love for my friends and family. Natalie Goldberg said something about how we need to stop seeing life in black and white, and acknowledge that love is not mutually exclusive with betrayal and hurt. She said real love is being able to say, "This person really let me down and betrayed me. I'm going to hold them accountable, but I love them." I love my family even though they've all made me cry. I love my friends even when they let me down. I know these people love me in the same way. I need to love me in this way.

I've told several people that I believe life to be like a relationship: Sometimes you hate it so much, you wonder why you're even with it. Other times, you love it so much you are in awe that it's with you...but most days, it's just there.

I need to accept, maybe embrace, the idea that life is supposed to have darkness. I think depression has a time and a place. I also cannot let that trick me into believing that I shouldn't take anti-depressants because I'm supposed to/deserve to be depressed all of the time. Life is a cycle, and all emotions can teach us something. I need to begin acknowledging emotions that I have been taught to repress because they are bad. Some of these emotions include: anger, sadness, fear, shame, guilt, humiliation, pride, jealousy, and disappointment. I need to acknowledge those emotions and not make myself feel bad for feeling them. 

I could go on forever about things I need to do, but I am beginning to believe that the key to happiness is balance, but only when balanced with self-acceptance for falling short. I almost wrote the word "failure" in the place of "self-acceptance," but even the word "failure" terrifies me. Natalie Goldberg also said we need to stop seeing success and failure as mutually exclusive. She said, "out of the great failure comes the great success."

Now, I realize I'm on this happy, spiritual high right now. This often leads to disappointment, because I build up the idea that I will make all of these positive changes, but I fail to make them. I don't want this to be like that. I think all I can really take away with me right now is the idea of being more forgiving of myself. Self-hatred is not only toxic for me, but it is toxic for everyone who comes into contact with me, because it's just plain negative energy. Negative energy can be highly contagious.

I want to be the kind of person who is so self-accepting that I love life and my joys, and even sorrows, radiate with light. There's this quote we use in our S. Dakota group about how it's our light, not our darkness that scares us. It also says something about how our playing small and dimming our lights does not serve the world, and letting our light shine helps others to do the same.

Of course, I am terrified of being completely healthy. I've formed my identity around my depression. It's comfortable for me to hide in its darkness. Plus, I'm afraid of standing out, even though it is all I dream of. I think I am finally ready to meet what lies in my future with courage. I want my light to be so blinding, it helps illuminate others so they can produce blinding light.

Writing this, I feel happy. We prayed and reflected using medicine cards tonight. We each drew a card with an animal on it. The animal is supposed to help tell us where we are at and what we need to do. Jon believes we all pick a card that "calls" us and no one ends up with the wrong card. I don't feel quite that strongly, but I think the cards can be used like spiritual horoscopes, in the sense that they give us a new lens for viewing our day. It's then up to us to apply it to our own lives. Jon read us what each animal represented and what they were calling us to do. I drew a spider. My first thought was, "I don't like spiders."

When Jon read everything the spider represents, it was like everything I wanted to hear. The spider represented creativity. It said that I need to stop to celebrate something I created and congratulated me (The first thing I thought of was my project). It also suggest I do a lot of journaling. This is the most passionate journal I've written in ages. My pen keeps flowing and my thoughts are racing, but not violently like normal. Tonight, they are gentle, letting me be wherever I need to, letting me hang on each word and idea.

The spider also suggested taking a new, creative approach to my life. I've never been readier for such a change in my life. I don't even think it will be drastic actions. I think it will just be combining all of the advice and buried treasures I've gathered from stumbling around like a drunk in the dark. Now that I am sober, I know to collect all of the treasures, dust them off, and keep walking. I know that despite the fact I am no longer stumbling, I will not walk in a straight line. There will be obstacles I cannot even imagine, curves that blind me, hills that burn my muscles so much I want to quit but give me a great ass in the end. For now, I'm enjoying leaving this goddamn tunnel, and just cruising the straight away on a sunny day.  It might rain again tomorrow. I plan to carry an umbrella. I know it won't protect me completely from getting dripped on or getting chills from the cold. 

I can't help but be incredibly excited and embarrassed about my huge change in mood (partially due to drugs) because I know I am overflowing with idealism and optimism, which do not survive well in the real world. I know there's a lot of people out there who believe/worry that I will be hurt and jaded by life. I don't think hurt and maturity have to taint me. I'm also aware that I have a lot of maturing to do, so I don't want to be naive enough to think I will always be this passionate...but at the same time, if I can work my way out of two major depressive episodes in three years, I have to believe I don't have to let suffering and life kill my spirit.

I know depression will always be something I struggle with throughout life. I don't want to surrender to it, though. I can't let it kill my spirit, even though I know it already did kill it--twice, but somehow I find a way to revive it. When I'm in a major depressive episode, I believe that the depression is the real me, and that I never got better, and never will. I'm sure there will be another time in my life when I return to that. I hope to be able to look back at this journal entry and feel comforted by this new found enthusiasm for life. I know I will only feel sadness in that moment, because I will feel like I failed to keep the disease away again. I will feel discouraged, and tell myself I was so naive and foolish to write this. I don't think this is me being naive. I'm not denying future suffering, or even full-out relapses (even though I would like to believe that will never happen again). I'm only allowing myself to acknowledge my pain and suffering, stop being angry with the mess I made again in this episode, and be thankful for this newly discovered hope.

The Gray Area of Faith (Adam the atheist and Adam the priest)

Recently I was talking to lisa about attending Peace Day in the Park. I told her I would be attending with Adam. She responded with, “Adam the atheist or Adam the priest?” which of course made me giggle considering how black and white that made it sound. While talking to Adam (the atheist) this evening we were discussing the spiritual views of Karen Armstrong the ex-nun who is now a religious scholar and no longer religious. He asked if she was an atheist, but I responded with “Well, I don’t know that she believes in God per se, but I think she is still spiritual. I can’t really tell, because once you leave organized religion it all gets to be a gray area.” I began thinking about religion and spirituality as a whole after this conversation. My initial response was that the religious spectrum could be similar to the scale used in psychology about sexual orientation, where very few are entirely gay or straight or exactly in the middle. Most of us lean one way from somewhere in the middle. I thought about my brother who is atheist and believes that everyone should be and compared him with the regular attending “church people” who believe that everyone should be like them. I realized that beliefs are all a gray area, because it is so complex. I feel like everyone judges faith and people in general on one question, “Do you or don’t you believe in God.” Everyone has different ideas of God. Some individuals' God hates other people who believe in the “same God.” I don’t think this praising of a higher power can be summed up in one three-letter word.

My friend, Adam (the [aspiring] priest) once told me a story that I believe came from Buddhism. The story was something about how 3 blind men come across an elephant. One man has a hold of the leg; another has a hold of the trunk, while the other has a hold of the tail. Each man describes what he feels. Each man’s description is different and missing the big picture of the elephant, but that does not mean he is not describing the elephant. He claims that is what religions do. They each describe pieces of truth that they can cling on to, but no one will ever see the whole elephant, because we are all blindfolded.

I feel so restricted spiritually. I feel like I could just fly if someone would unchain me, but everyone is afraid of where I might fly. I once talked with April about how despite everyone’s fronts of having strong faiths, we are all so vulnerable and feel better to know we have support. That is why everyone pretends to care about your belief system and feels offended when you disagree with his or hers. There are very few people in the world who will accept you for your beliefs alone when you do not adhere to a particular label. They all want you to see their truth, which isn’t necessarily the truth you are seeking. Everyone can talk religion and their beliefs, but I know very few people who live it. The people who seem to live it the most are usually the ones who are open with the fact that they can’t live their faith at all times. The people who I feel most spiritual with are the ones who are exceptionally self-aware by realizing their weaknesses and accepting them (whether they believe in God or not). That is an incredibly difficult task, and while everyone (myself included) can claim to be accepting of his or her faults I find that not to be the case. That kind of acceptance takes a lot of meditation, mindfulness, and maturity, which is scorned upon in our technological society. My friends get upset when I want to spend a night to myself, just sitting outside. I feel self-conscious when people see me sitting alone outside, doing nothing. I always have the protection of my ipod, computer, or phone around just like everyone else to let people know "I have stuff to do. I am important." I find the more I sit outside alone the more at peace I feel, but the more isolated I feel when I am with my friends and other people my age.

I believe the reason that I am feeling spiritually dead is because I am undergoing a big transformation that will be beneficial in the long run. I find that I feel a lot less instances of paranoia that someone is watching me or judging my thoughts, but a lot more moments of peace and self-acceptance. I read a lot of spiritual books still, so I know that there has to be something in me that seeks more than anything I have ever come across spiritually. I have many mentors on every aspect of the belief system and as helpful as they all are, I don’t like the way most of them don’t entirely support my beliefs if they are different than their own.. I feel frustrated, because I feel that I am supportive of most people’s belief systems, but very few are supportive of mine. I have many people that “tolerate” my beliefs, but I think that should be a given. I am okay where I am at, which could be a first. I don’t feel like I need to change anything about where I am at, and that makes me feel good. Maybe maturity is not so far away.