I tell my stories in a rather round-a-bout way. I'm just discovering this. Do you do that too? :) Me too. Well, I said it already, I guess. I don't really know if I should apologize for the quality of my example. Anyway, welcome to what I am pretty sure will be a story, told all backwards, kind of like me and the mind I am learning to love, mine.
So, I'm apparently really smart. Yeah, thanks, I'm tall too. Oh, and I'm white and attractive. I've had a lot going for me in life. Smart people like me are supposed to go to college. I withdrew from classes in my first semester. See, this seems all backwards, but how do I just come out and say my dad beat me up in the kitchen over my alleged intention in interacting with the woman he currently had at the house and then made me drop out of school? Don't worry; it's all very anticlimactic.
Without any further subjection of this already abusively stretched blog to the chaos of detail, I give you this:
Dear Reader,
Forgive me, for I have sinned. It has been 40 days since my last blog entry. I'll admit it; life has not gone the way I expected since I last wrote here. I had ideas of self-reliance mixed with good love and renewed purpose. I got all those things, but not by stoically quoting scripture and bravely denying my appetites. Jesus, it is written, spent 40 days in the desert, being tempted by Satan. I spent 40 days thinking about the ways in which I enter these roles as well as that of God, their silent partner.
Satan challenged Jesus to make the stones into bread. I have been working hard to earn more money after years of being stuck in poverty, living paycheck to pawn shop visit and back again. I haven't been offered a deal to betray my values. I do that for free. Satan offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if He would bow down and worship him. I've considered life's questions and the reasoning of my mind, in some cases choosing to set aside old virtues and parental directives. If the fruit looks good, sometimes I eat it. Satan dared Jesus to jump off the temple, presumably to impress the people with his immortality. I don't put much stock in angels catching me, but I did fall off a ladder yesterday, more accurately, I fell into it, toppling and hitting the ground along with it. Strangely, I don't have a mark on me.
Please, lovers of Jesus, don't take offense. I mean no disrespect. Quite seriously, I have been meditating on God, Jesus, and the Devil and how the drama of my mind can be understood through their stories, contained in the Bible. I used to think the Devil was evil, God was good, and Jesus was safe, all of them actual beings with those distinct personalities represented by Christianity. I've got a metaphorical angle going on God. Let's see if I can show you what I mean.
Remember me dropping out of college? There was this woman named Sam, just like me. She had arrived in Eureka sometime in the previous year, finding refuge in a warehouse controlled by a small group of semi-homeless men. My dad knew them. I remember hearing them talk about her. She was the "whore" they all wanted to fuck. They spoke disdainfully of her. "She can't be trusted." Then they would drag me into the conversation laughingly adding, "Don't leave her alone with Sammy!" I thought she was attractive, but, at 17, I didn't join in with such revelry. The fishermen and downtown drunks would join my dad in mocking me for my facial reactions to their comments, but I was determined to continue seeing Sam as a down-on-her-luck human being, not a sex opportunity to be exploited. How could they joke about using her for sex without any consideration of how to help her regain her dignity? Oh, that's right; her shameful position was part of the attraction.
I never saw her hang her head. She was proud and defiant when she stood up for herself. Maybe she was a little crass at times, but she was kind and polite to me. I liked her. They viewed her like a devil, untrustworthy, unfairly beautiful, and unworthy of their Christian charity or virtue.
Dad brought her out to the house a number of times. They would do drugs and have sex. By the way, now that I'm older, I would just like to say that doing drugs and having sex can be really fun! Growing up, I had no idea. Maybe that saved me some trouble as a youth, but I found it anyway as an adult. Why is our society so uptight about making sure kids stay on some straight and narrow path to recreating the currently broken social system? But that's another subject.
My dad, the God of the Bible, and most evil characters in fairy tales have this in common: They are all guided, to some degree, by their own selfish goals and personal emotional states of the moment. You could argue that God is good, but I will say that God's "good" is whatever he says it is. He is not guided by some greater idea of what is good or evil. If so, then that rule would be above God, begging the question "from whence did it come?" In that self-directed way, he's just like my dad. Stick with me here....
I had just gotten home from my morning classes at the University. I knew Sam had spent the night with my dad, but I was hoping to slip into the house, make lunch, and leave for my afternoon drawing class, unnoticed. As I finished making my mac & cheese and sat down at the bar in our kitchen, the two of them entered the dining room arguing. Dad's hair was wet with sweat and matted, his eyes refusing to make contact. He was on speed. I prepared to eat quickly and make my exit.
I heard her ask for a drink. She turned and headed toward me, just half a step, and I was already planning. Dad had expressed concern that I might be attracted to her in the past. In his paranoid, unpredictable state at that moment, I was trying to avoid any hint of inappropriate interaction between Sam and I. She was coming for a glass. I was sitting directly under that cabinet. To keep her from reaching over me, arousing his anger, I reached up and got one for her. She moved to other side of the kitchen and prepared to pour some juice.
Dad interrupted her, yelling at her, and made her leave the house without her juice. I guess she walked home. I thought he was putting the juice away until I felt that gallon burst against the back of my head. I withdrew from my classes the next day and went to work for him. Anyway, that's how I quit college.
So, how can I understand my mind in this story through the metaphorical characters in the Bible? I don't even know what I was thinking or feeling. I was just reacting to those around me. In that way I am both the Devil in his role as God's dependent second opinion and God in his role of omnipotent denial of his own internal self-judgment (the devil). Jesus is perhaps the forward step that I need to take. Jesus, in his setting aside of his own life and ego for the sake of some higher purpose, is attempting to lead me out of my God vs. Satan duality, my raging emotions overpowering and condemning my calm rational thought, arrogant animal impulses vs. sober self-judgment and patience. I believe it's a trap to think of these characters as separate beings. When they're seen as parts of the whole of the mind, then they start to make sense.
By the way, if all of this seems confusing, please accept my apology. I'm just trying to get the words out. Please offer comments and questions. I love questions!
As soon as I saw that God, Satan, and Jesus were all archetypes for stuff that happens in my own head, I remembered the words of Jesus.
"I and the Father are one."
"The kingdom of heaven is within you."
What if Jesus is the ultimate ego model? Fully pleased to follow the Father, he is free to act bravely.
What if God is an imperfect emotion model? If he wasn't so bad, Jesus wouldn't need to be so self-sacrificial.
What if Satan is a model for dispassionate skepticism? Is there any way to help these three get along?
"Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."
What if giving up what I want for me and making my choices based upon my own highest values would actually make me happier and braver than if I chose what seemed best in the moment?
I just didn't want to get hit. I just wanted to avoid Dad's anger. I work hard to anticipate what other people need. I stress about it. I have for years. Ironically, it hasn't worked well. I'm totally inept when it comes to setting people at ease or making them feel loved. In this way, the blind Father God of my ego must make peace with the objective questioner of my intellect, and it may require that my body make the sacrifices of its appetites in order to do that, to bring my whole being completely under the direction of my own mind. Maybe self-direction sounds scary. What if I do things like my dad did? What if I justify bad behavior by insisting that I may decide right and wrong? Well, it's good enough for your god to do the same, right?
Ok, this one's a mess, so I'm expecting your lively debate!
Thanks,
© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III
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