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Accessing Inner Wisdom

ACCESSING INNER WISDOM

My daughter, Sheryl and I were talking about the twelve steps and particularly about step four which calls for a searching and fearless moral inventory. She was explaining to me the purpose of this step and why it is so important that an addict do this. I think it would be a really great idea for everyone to do it, though most people never do anything like it. I have never been in a twelve step program, but I have done similar work and one process in particular made me think of step four, because it calls for fearlessness as I look at my life, and surrender as I give what I find to God for healing, recognizing that I cannot do it without Him.

There are things I have done in my life that I am not proud of. The way I used to handle these things was through denial. What a great tool denial seemed to be. I just pushed the stuff way back into my mind and covered it up with other stuff. Pretty soon, it was like I couldn?t remember it. Oh sure, I would get triggered from time to time and it would pop up. Those sudden unexpected pop-ups could be pretty disconcerting, but with a little effort I could usually get it buried again.

Another useful tool was blame. Actually, I could always find a way to place blame for nearly anything, and as long as that place was outside me, I considered the job a success. If I wasn?t being a very good parent then it was surely because my mom didn?t do a good job modeling that for me. With the way I was raised who could expect me to know how to parent. Or, if I lost my temper during an argument with my partner, it was his fault. His behavior justified my response. I mean, who wouldn?t have lost it when faced with someone who acts like him.

Sometimes, my behavior was so bad that I really couldn?t afford to think about it at all. I just couldn?t look at it. If I accidentally looked, if for some reason looking was unavoidable, I could spend the next few days in a deep depression. Sometimes I could avoid a response by keeping frantically busy. I spent a period of my life so intent on keeping my dark secrets buried that I shopped myself into bankruptcy.

The problem with dark secrets is that they poison you. They poison the personality. The symptoms are extreme whininess, depression, joylessness. They poison your behaviors and cause you to spend too much money, drink too much alcohol, do drugs, practice obsessive behaviors of all sorts. They poison the way you see the world and how you react to it. Your secrets make you feel vulnerable and so you spend your time defending yourself through attack. It requires great vigilance to keep those secrets buried so you become very self absorbed. You start to feel isolated and alone.

Your dark secrets spread their poison to your body. The stress this constant vigilance puts on your body, leaves you vulnerable for all sorts of illnesses. You begin to experience migraines or stomach disorders. If you hold onto grievances long enough you invite in cancer or arthritis.

A few years ago, I began to see another way to do this. I was introduced to the idea that I can forgive all this stuff. It seemed like a pretty farfetched idea. I had been harboring some of these sins for a long time. They had seemed bad at first, now they seemed monstrous. I couldn?t even look at them. How could I forgive them. Well, that was the second part of the good news. I didn?t have to look at them alone and I didn?t have to forgive them. I just had to be willing to accept forgiveness.

I have talked about the forgiveness process before. In fact, I have talked about it more than once. It works in a lot of ways, but this is the first place I ever used it. Let me tell you about how this happened.

When my first two children were still very young, I chickened out of being a parent. I was just terrified of the responsibility. I gave them to their father who I thought would do a much better job without me there to screw it all up. I visited them and they visited me, but I didn?t have to make those day to day decisions and do the work it took to raise them.

Then I spent the rest of my life regretting that decision. I felt such smothering guilt that I could hardly stand myself. I tried everything to run away from myself. I tried drugs, alcohol, many unsuccessful relationships looking for someone who could restore my self worth. I tried over and over to make up for my early error. I tried to be a good parent to them in every way I could think of. I had other children and threw myself into motherhood with a ferocity, thinking that maybe this second chance would afford me salvation. I suffered all of the symptoms of denial that I talked about earlier. Even when I wasn?t thinking about the guilt, it was there in an unconscious way affecting how I felt and how I acted. I was able to gain only temporary peace broken by periods of intense grief.

By the time I had begun studying for the ministry, I had made an uneasy peace with my misery. That was when I was first began to understand true forgiveness. I had been reading about forgiveness in the Bible and in A Course in Miracles, but I just wasn?t opened to truly forgiving. A fellow ministerial student took me through a process called Accessing Inner Wisdom. It is a really simple spiritual process. She helped me to get comfortable and relaxed and guided me into a meditative state.

She helped to provide a safe environment for me to access the Holy Spirit. God placed the Holy Spirit in me so that I would always have His Voice, but I seldom took advantage of that. I didn?t think I could afford to talk to God about my errors. I was afraid to do this, as if He wouldn?t know about them unless I confessed all. It?s a pretty silly way to think, but that seems to be the way I was thinking all the same. Finally though, I was able to trust Him enough to tell Him my secrets. I told Him the whole story, and how I felt about it, and how hard it was to live with my guilt. I brought up all the deep dark secrets, every bad parenting decision I had made that I could think of. Together, we looked at each one.

At first it was so painful looking at all this stuff, saying it out loud, hearing myself enumerate each supposed sin. Then it got easier and even started feeling better. I felt lighter as I unburdened myself. But we didn?t leave it there. My friend took me further through the process as she brought me into the Light where I allowed God to heal me. Before now I had not been able to look at this alone, and when I accidentally glimpsed it I was left only with pain. But when I looked with the Holy Spirit, and when I invited forgiveness and healing through God, it was a miracle.

In the final part of the process, I was directed to ask the Holy Spirit for a personal message, a new focus from an aware perspective. He said to me that I had never made a mistake in my life. He said I was only learning lessons and that I needed to learn those lessons, and now I could pass them on to others as well as to my children. Through this healing I would be able to give them what they need.

This was the most extraordinary miracle. I was able to release a lifetime of shame, fear, and guilt. Being free of that also helped me to be a better parent. I was able to focus more on my children and their needs now that I wasn?t always focused on my guilt and my need to be forgiven.

I use this process all of the time now. I don?t always use the formal approach involving another minister, but I do the same thing by myself. When I feel I need to forgive myself, when I?ve made an error, I invite the Holy Spirit to look at it with me. I tell him all about it just as if I were speaking to you. I?ve learned that it doesn?t matter what I do, it is never so bad that I cannot freely speak of it with the Holy Spirit.

I think of it as bringing my dark thoughts into the light. And what happens when you shine a light into a dark space? The darkness disappears, doesn?t it? The light doesn?t beat it back. There is no battle. The light simply replaces the darkness. That is what happens for me when I look at my errors in the Light of the Holy Spirit. Then I ask the Holy Spirit to heal me. I ask Him to heal my thoughts and to show me another way to see. He always answers, and the change He creates in my thinking is a real miracle. Then I ask for God?s love and comfort.

I use this process in a lot of different circumstances. If I feel sad or angry, guilty or fearful, I bring these feelings to the Holy Spirit and I ask Him to help me sort them out. With His help, I trace these feelings back to the thoughts that caused them, and then to the belief behind the thoughts. Then I ask the Holy Spirit to heal these beliefs and to give me new beliefs, beliefs that will work in my life and bring me joy instead of sadness. There seems to be no circumstance in which this process isn?t helpful.

It took some courage to take that first look into the dark closet of my secret sins, but I am so glad I did it. I am especially glad that I did it with the Holy Spirit and I am so grateful for the miracle of forgiveness. Now I naturally surrender control of my life to God and I don?t know why I ever hesitated to do this.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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WHO IS THAT BEHIND THE MASK?

WHO IS THAT BEHIND THE MASK?

I have spent nearly all of my life in a kind of spiritual amnesia. I had forgotten who I was. From the moment I was born into this illusion that I think of as my life, I began to look for a separate identity for myself. I was born with one question on my mind: Who am I?

In my search for my identity, I played many roles, and wore many masks. On his website, Dan Joseph tells a story about the roles we play and the masks we wear.

The Costume Ball
Imagine that you are invited to a masquerade ball. You spend weeks choosing a costume for the event. Should you dress up as royalty? As a villain? As someone famous? As an angel?
You eventually settle on a costume, and go to the ball. There you find hundreds of other people, dressed in the widest variety of outfits. The party is all in good fun, and you play through the night in your chosen role.
Then, around midnight, a strange thing happens. Everyone in the costume ball suddenly falls asleep. When they awake, their memories have vanished. Where am I? everyone asks. And silently, they wonder: Who am I?

People look around the room, and begin to sort out the situation. Over there is someone dressed in gold finery, with a crown. She must be the queen of this place. And look at him over there ? he has knives and swords. He must be dangerous. And look at that one: she looks like some sort of animal. Maybe she?s crazy.

There?s a great scramble. People flock to the “good” people, away from the “bad” ones. Some of the good people bravely begin to round up the bad ones, using the weapons at their disposal. For a while there?s a chaotic melee. Eventually, after a struggle, things settle down. The bad people are subdued, and they sit ? tied together ? in the middle of the room.
Then, abruptly, part of a man?s costume falls away, and a woman cries out. “Wait,” she says, “I remember now. That pirate ? he?s my husband. He isn?t really a pirate.” The memories begin to return. “She isn?t a queen ? she?s just dressed that way. And he?s no priest, I?ll tell you that.”

As the costumes come off, people begin to remember their true relationships. “I?m sorry, I didn?t recognize you,” they say as they untie their friends and family. “Please forgive me ? I forgot who you were.” “I don?t know what came over me.”

The party-goers shake their heads at the strange turn of events. They tear off their costumes as they walk out of the party, concerned that they might forget again.
“How easily we are fooled,” remarks a man as he tosses away a mask. “A little cardboard, a little paint, and our loved ones are gone.”

This illustrates perfectly what happens to me as I go through life. I try on different masks. That I tried these masks on and even wore them for awhile did not make them real, nor change who I am. But I am easily fooled into thinking I have become the role I am playing. The role becomes so real, I am so accustomed to the mask, that I forget I have a true identity.

As a very young child I tried to separate myself from my mother, demanding my independence even though I wasn?t ready for it. It was very frustrating for my mom as it was for me when my children entered that stage of their development. At each stage I thought I was developing into an independent, separate person.

As I grew older, the need to complete this separation process became more acute. I needed to know who I was. I tried on a lot of masks as I moved through the process. As a teenager, I traded one mask for another as quickly as I discovered them. I tried being more mature, more glamorous, more hip. I tried being sophisticated. Periodically, I tried going back to being a child.

Even as I moved into adulthood, I kept trying on masks, trying to find one that ?fit?; that felt like me. I wore a student mask off and on for awhile. I saw myself as a college student with all that implied for me. I saw myself as an intellectual, but also as a party person; a combination that was not easy to balance.

I tried on the mask of a more mature wife and mother and when I looked into the mirror, I didn?t recognize that person and was really scared of the responsibility represented by that mask. I took that one off for awhile and threw on a mask easier to wear. I pretty much liked the free spirit mask. There was lots of alcohol, drugs, free sex, hard rocking music, burning my bra, paying lip service to saving the rainforest, and stopping the war, if not actually doing much about it. I liked the thought of connecting myself with these lofty ideas, but it is a little hard to do a lot about it and keep up with the partying.

Well, that pretty much got me through the sixties and into the seventies, but that mask became a little too dangerous to wear. It also became heavy with guilt and regrets, so I put it aside. I wandered around trying first one mask then another, feeling uprooted and uncertain. There was a lot of depression going on as I tried to discover myself, and nothing seemed a good fit.

What I couldn?t see at the time was that I wasn?t alone in my search; that all along there was a guiding hand.  Even as I tried these things, there was a guide showing me another way. I ignored my guide for so long that I no longer recognized His help when it came my way, but it was always there and helped me to, eventually, get where I am now.

I was looking, in my mind?s eye, at the discarded pile of masks and thinking what a waste of time all that was. But then I thought, no, not a waste of time. Every role I played, every mask I tried on, taught me valuable lessons. I learned through my errors and the personal guilt they brought me to feel compassion for others as they look for their own path. I learned to forgive others and myself for what I thought were horrible mistakes, and to accept that they were only learning experiences.

For a long time, I was unable to discern my true Self. I thought I was the mask, not the person wearing the mask. But as I discarded the masks I was brought closer to the realization that I am not any of these roles I play. As I took off the mask of one role and picked up the mask of another, I didn?t cease to exist. Who was I in that interim? What I learned is that I have a true identity that the roles I choose to play in my life are masking. I have spent the last several years of my life, learning about my true Self.

What I have learned is this: My true Self is me as God created me, perfectly preserved, waiting for me to notice. And what else could be there? How could I have ever thought differently? To think that I could be different than what God created me to be is arrogance of a degree as to be almost comical. What am I saying here? Am I suggesting that I have the power to un-create what God created? God created me like Himself, so I am powerful, but I am not more powerful than my Creator. Even in my most foolish moment, I could not really believe that. The closest I could come is to pretend that I can?t see the obvious.

So here I am, a child of God, created like Him, therefore powerful and holy; powerful enough to move mountains, holy enough to heal the sick and raise the dead. Didn?t Jesus promise that I could do all he did and more? Why does this sound so unlikely? It even sounds scary to think of it.

I think it is because I have spent so much time making small the power my Father has given me. Instead of playing the Child of God, I have been playing little roles. I have been trying to be something I am not. I have allowed this behavior to obscure the truth of who I am. The most damaging thing I have done to myself is to obscure the truth that I am whole, that I am a part of you and a part of God. I have believed that I exist in a separated state, little me in defense against evil. No wonder I have been afraid and depressed in my life. No wonder I have been guilty and regretful. I thought I had thrown away my birth right. I thought I had thumbed my nose at God and made myself into something He doesn?t know.

I am truly the prodigal son spoken of in Luke 15. I have squandered the gifts of my Father, but He doesn?t care about my foolish mistakes. He only wants me to remember who I am. He doesn?t forgive me because He never condemned me. It is only I who condemned myself to a life without the peace and love of my Father. It is only I who can set aside all those roles I chose to play and all the masks I have worn in this illusion and choose instead to recognize the truth of who I really am; God?s holy child, forever perfect as He created me.

Just as I have been easily fooled into believing in the role I am playing, into thinking I am the mask I wear, I have been equally fooled by your mask. I have thought you were what you did. I have thought the role you are playing defines you and identifies you. But it is not true. You are not a gay couple. You are not a recovering addict. You are not a student, a father, a black man. There are no thieves, no liars, no cowards. There are no strong people, no weak people, no leaders, no followers. There are only children of God, still just as He created them. When they slip out of their masks, and walk away from the roles they have chosen, I will recognize them for who they are and wonder how I could have been so fooled by such flimsy evidence.

Can I see my true Self now? Can I see you as you really are? Is it really only a matter of choosing to recognize the truth of who we are? Could it really be that easy? Well, I never said it was easy. It is that simple, but I have not found it to be so easy. It requires great vigilance to remember my true identity. It also requires that I remember your identity as well. God created you perfect just as He did me. He did not favor me over you. In fact, He created us just the same and that is the secret of our strength. We are strong in our sameness, in our wholeness. We experience our wholeness only when we recognize that we are one. It is in our unity that we know our true self and experience our perfection.

So, if I look at you and see only the mask you wear, I am teaching myself that I am only the mask I wear. What do I see when I look at someone else? This is where my vigilance is important. When I went to visit my friend in the hospital, it would have been easy to see her has sick, weak and vulnerable, but that is only the role she was playing now. ?Sick person? is the mask she was wearing. I give that vision of her to God and ask that I might see her as she truly is. I ask to see her as God sees her, brilliant and beautiful and perfect and very very holy. This picture of her whole and healed is the vision I hold for her until she is able to look past her own role playing and see this for herself. This is my healing prayer for her.

Sometimes the picture I see of the other person is too vivid for me to see past. This often happens when fear becomes part of the equation. Imagine that you were fired from your job and you could not see that you had done anything wrong. Wouldn?t you be angry with your boss? Wouldn?t you think he was jerk? How hard would it be to see him as a child of God instead?

It would be hard for me because I would be feeling fear at the loss of income. In my fear and frustration, I would want to lash out. It would be hard to see this differently. Luckily, God has provided me with the help I need to change my perspective. I have His Voice and I can ask for help. I can give all this fear, and all the thoughts around the fear, to the Holy Spirit and ask Him to show me another way to see it. I can ask Him to show me the reality of my boss; the real person behind the mask.

Even if I am not entirely willing to see him differently, I can give what willingness I have and then ask that the Holy Spirit help my unwillingness. In the one case, I would be looking out of a victim mask and into an attacker mask. The Holy Spirit will change my vision if I let Him. He will help me take off the victim mask so that I can see I am my Father?s Son and then I can see the boss?s true identity and know he is my Father?s Son as well. He is not the attacker that his mask is showing me; he is my brother. Together we are One.

I look at my children and see them as the roles they play for me, which are different than the roles they play for their friends, the roles they play for their bosses and co-workers, for their own children. Sometimes I get a glimpse of one of their other roles, and I have a flash of realization. For a moment, I recognize how flimsy are the trappings that define their different roles. And right beneath these masks, these costumes, is something else for me to see. As Dan Joseph puts it: For a moment, our hearts are touched by a flash of beauty ? perhaps we see it in a friend or family member; perhaps a stranger. But for a moment, we find a glimmer of something that we didn?t know was there.

For a moment, there?s a shimmering of glory that makes the costume seem ridiculous. It might be gone an instant later, but we saw it. And we can see it again. As we let our vision be led past the outer trappings, the light within begins to emerge.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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