January 27
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. Galatians 5:19-21 The Message
Our true, in-Christ self is called to desire and love and let go.
Our false self wants to grab and get, attach and depend upon something outside ourselves in a vain attempt to calm our inner experience.
We must unlearn much of what we thought it meant to be a spiritual person.
i really identify with some of those “obvious” things the verse talks about concerning the kind of life that develops out of trying to get my own way all of the time. when i first started recovery people were getting on my nerves…then i got on my nerves…now…really being part of a healthy community with folks that tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothin but the truth…slowly slowly slower than paint dries sometimes, i am finding some freedom. does anybody out there think and feel the same? once i drove by a marvelous local ice cream place near where i live and i had the thought…there isn’t enough ice cream in that place to do it for me. my false self wants and grabs and always leaves me…wanting. i am blessed to read this blog and be in the process of UN-learning.