The Lies of My Life: God

Earlier this week, I was listening to a podcast recommended by a co-worker about matters of spirituality, and one message really caught my attention. The speaker asked the people in the crowd to raise their hand if they believed in God. Of those who raised their hand, he asked them why they believed in a God. The consensus was that people believed in God because they learned about God as kids from their parents, schools, family, churches, etc. Of the people who believed, none mentioned their belief came from a direct experience of the divine. None of them believed because their intellect agreed with their parents. They just ate it like pudding and didn’t ask questions.

Of those who didn’t believe in God, he then asked the question “why?” Again, they pointed to parents, families, etc., but they also explained that because they had no experience of the divine, they had no reason to believe.

Fair enough. Then he asked how many people had an iPhone. Of course, most of the people raised their hand, and he laughed. He explained that he was not surprised at the amount of people who have an iPhone because the funny thing about the iPhone is that you’ve totally lost the experience of the “i,” and that was apparent in his questioning about God.

I’ve been working on this “God” blog for months, but I really needed something inspirational to get my butt in gear and finish it up. This was it.

I grew up in a pretty strict Catholic family. Considering my mom is one of 11 siblings and my dad is one of 15, you could say my grandparents took their faith very seriously. Attending weekly mass was a must, and those who didn’t go to church regularly were “fake Catholics” or ones that had *gasp* “fallen away.”

My parents sent me and my two sisters to a Catholic school. They felt the Catholic faith was so important that we should have religious education as a part of our daily life. While I’m grateful that prayers and religious studies were part of my daily life, the school, church and my family didn’t actually teach me anything about spirituality – real spirituality. There were no tools available for me to have a direct experience of the divine other than the natural intuition and inner knowing that I was born with. Even when I asked my teachers and playground attendants (I just loved Mr. and Mrs. Brown) about God, they offered no answers. Why do we believe in a God? Why is God a man? Why does God have a son and no daughters? Who made God? Here I was, surrounded by priests, teachers, and lifelong Catholics, and no one could answer the fundamental questions of life.

…and I knew why.

One thing you learn early on as a Catholic is the Profession of Faith, also called the Nicene Creed. You can Google that if you’re interested in reading the whole thing.

Basically, you go to mass, and there are a series of prayers and rituals that take place. Like witchcraft or other ceremonial practices, there’s a guy running the show with his helpers, an altar, transformation taking place, and it’s where you learn knowledge about your religion. Going to mass reinforces the belief that a group of people (well before our time) decided what was true, and they pretty much brainwash you with it until it’s part of your subconscious experience.

I know that sounds a little rough, but that’s literally what’s happening. …and it’s not necessarily a bad thing either, unless you stop using your own mind and God-given intellect and don’t work toward having that direct experience with the divine so that you can personally experience the truth.

When I was only three years old, I had my first experience of seeing spirits from a non-earth realm, so I knew there was much more beyond my comprehension. Throughout my entire life I would hear voices, see spirits, and commune with people who had passed away. Normally this happened in a dream state, but many times (especially when I was under the age of 10), it happened when I was fully awake. Outside of my sisters and some close family members and friends, I haven’t mentioned this to anyone. This is mostly because of the stigma in my family with my father’s diagnosis of schizophrenia. My favorite experiences have been seeing my Grandpa Geno, Grandma Joanie, Uncle Beaver, Greg’s friend Jason who passed last year, his Great Aunt Mary and my spirit guide, Caleb. They’ve helped me resolve some things within myself, given me knowledge that has helped me in my own life, and helped me to comfort those who are grieving.

After my accident, my brain was a total mess. I lost my ability to think let alone have any experiences with Spirit. Once I learned Transcendental Meditation, and started on my fully raw, organic, vegan diet my nervous system became more stable and purified. In fact, I suspect that due to my body being in a healing process that it was able to clear out a lot more cobwebs and see more clearly.

So over the past two years, I’ve really been thinking about what it is that I believe based on my own personal experience of the divine. From my own experience, I know that God is not a man. I believe in one God made up of the Divine Mother, the infinite unmanifest, and an Almighty Father that through the Spirit (karma) manifests everything into creation. I believe in Jesus, and all of the divine incarnations of God on earth. I know that Jesus is the manifestation of the most pure and unconditional love on Earth. He’s not “coming again” because he’s already here for those who want to have a direct experience with him. I don’t believe heaven is in the sky or far away, because it’s right here existing along side us. Those who have purified their bodies and nervous systems can experience those in heaven, we can see heaven, and we can see the most subtle realities in all of the monotony of creation. Yes, even the Washington D.C. metro sparkles when you’re firmly established in this state of pure Being. You are divine. I am divine. All of nature is divine because all of it is a direct reflection of God. …I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here. This is my profession of faith.

Faith is supposed to be based on a direct experience, but most people use the word faith when they’re really talking about hope.

Faith is knowing your alarm clock will buzz at exactly 7 a.m. because it has every day for the last five years since you set it YOURSELF.

Hope is a wish or a preference that SOMEONE ELSE set that alarm for you to make sure you wake up on time.

Despite the risk of being labeled “crazy” for this post, I’ll offer this up: Do you believe based on what you have experienced yourself, or what someone has told you to believe? If you aren’t having your own experiences, but you profess a faith based on what someone else has taught you, I challenge that’s “crazy.” HA!

Do you have true faith or do you just have hope?

After years of going to mass and reciting creeds and prayers that don’t even scratch the surface of my beliefs, I realize now that everything I openly said about my belief in God has been a lie – or at least a half truth. This is a big lie in my life. It’s one that I’ve told myself just as much as I’ve told others. I didn’t want to believe in my own personal experiences because my entire life I was afraid of a label. I’m not afraid anymore. This is what it means to be born again.

I challenge everyone who reads this blog to examine your beliefs and your faith. If you’re lacking a direct experience, seek it in all that you do. Get lots of sleep at night. Don’t fill your body with drugs or alcohol. Eat an organic diet that is in line with your digestion. If you must eat meat, make sure it’s humanely raised and killed. Drink only purified or spring water without fluoride or chlorine. Spend time in a state of transcendence. Clean out your emotional baggage with the help of a therapist, family and friends. Don’t believe everything that you think – question it. Trust your gut, and definitely trust your intuition so it will grow.

I promise it’s worth it!

With all my love,

The Guru Girl

What’s In An Experience?

I’m telling this story based on hearsay. I didn’t actually witness this event, but I’ve heard it retold from a few different people who were at the scene.

A few months ago, my bestest friends Mary and Mike got married. The time had come for them to see each other in their wedding clothes. Mike was outside waiting in the picturesque scenery only found in Luray, Virginia. His back was to the door where Mary would be exiting. Mary walked up to Mike and turned around so they were facing back to back. The photographers were downstairs to capture the moment, and their family members and some very good friends staying at the big cabin were witnesses to this amazing moment.

Mike and Mary both turned to face each other, and the people on the balcony saw Mike rubbing the tears from his eyes and Mary embracing him and helping him remove the tears from his eyes. He was so overwhelmed by his bride – obviously the most beautiful bride in the entire world – that he just couldn’t hide his emotions any longer. *Cue the sigh* The onlookers were witnessing the sight of true love.

But that’s not what actually happened. …At least not from Mary and Mike’s experience.

Mike was standing outside, and the gnats could smell his super sexy cologne. He was surrounded, and couldn’t escape. Mary came out, and while Mike was trying to keep his shit together while under siege of the gnats, the time came for them to turn and face each other. As Mike turned around he caught at least one gnat in the eye. It burned and scratched and he couldn’t get it out. Mary tried to help him. There was a full-blown violation of Mike’s eyeball!

The photographer captured these candid moments so beautifully. What looked like particles of dust around Mike were actually gnats. The pictures showed the two of them trying to see each other through the veil of gnats while trying to escape the swarm. The pictures are pretty funny.

If Mary and Mike didn’t actually tell the folks on the balcony what happened, they might go on believing that they had witnessed nothing more than a groom being overwhelmed by seeing his gorgeous bride. If the balcony folks told me what happened, I would only know their story. However, I would not know the additional details of what happened.

Even Mary’s and Mike’s experience is difference. Mary saw and felt the event from her own experience, while Mike’s experience was unique in that he actually had a gnat in his eye. While Mary was empathizing with Mike, which lead her to try and help him remove the bug from his eye, only Mike had the experience of his eye being violated by the gnat (and subsequently, Mary’s finger). The story Mike would tell of his experience would be different than the one Mary would tell.

Hypothetically, let’s say Mike was the kind of guy who never showed emotion, had a big ego, and wouldn’t ever admit to crying (far from the truth, but let’s go with this). If he told me the gnat story, and I didn’t believe him because of my invalidating attitude and pre-judgement about Mike as a person, I might think he’s lying to cover up for someone judging him as a crybaby.

Lucky for Mike, he had Mary and a photographer present that could support his story.

Others are not so lucky.

This week a family member specifically challenged me about a blog post, accused me of making false statements, and told me to tell the truth. I challenged her a couple times asking for her to enlighten me, but she wouldn’t respond in writing to share her truth – or her direct experience. Interestingly enough, there are five living witnesses to one event she challenged. When I’ve previously reminisced with two of the witnesses, we all had the same version of the story.

Without the luxury of video or photographic evidence, we have only our memories. She claims my grandmother wasn’t there, but me and both my sisters remember my grandmother being there.

First Question: Why does it matter if my grandmother was there if the meat of the event is true?

Answer: It doesn’t. It only matters to a person who tries to pick apart one portion of the story that she doesn’t remember clearly to serve as a platform to invalidate the entire experience.

Second Question: Why is this important to discuss?

Answer:

First, blogging is all about sharing an individual and personal experience. In my blogs, I specifically recount what I remember, what I was feeling, what I did, and how I overcame it. Then I share tools and techniques that I find helpful to rising above some of the sad experiences of my life. Maybe this family member didn’t see my grandma because she was in a fit of rage, blazing up the stairs, with her attention focused on the 16 year old girl she went on to assault. I know that when people experience that level of rage they can forget major details of the story. While she spent two days taunting me to tell the truth and demanding that I call her on the phone (probably to just yell at me some more), she spent no time validating my experience, acknowledging the pain that she caused me, so this further illustrates and supports the type of treatment I received as a child. How ironic that my blog gets invalidating and abusive comments. I can’t say that I’m surprised. …and yes, Grandma was there.

Second, validating and acknowledging someone’s personal experience is very valuable because it prevents the story from being changed. If someone came up to Mike after the event and told him he had an eyelash in his eye instead of a gnat, he might believe it and go onto retell the story using the eyelash. Although possible, based on the photographic evidence, it’s unlikely Mike had anything in his eye other than a gnat. They were everywhere! Like Mike’s experience, my experiences didn’t have the opportunity to be rebutted (until now). Mike had photographic evidence and an eyewitness bride. No rebuttal needed. I didn’t often share my experiences, but when I did I was validated by friends, or largely ignored by family members. There was no one to taint my memory.

Third, as a society that has a bad habit of victim shaming and invalidating the pain of others, this is a wake-up call to checking ourselves when we notice ourselves behaving this way. I see daily Facebook posts of invalidating, threatening, demeaning, shaming, and other yucky stuff. What’s the end game in posting something like that? Why is it so important for us to shame someone? Is it because were were shamed as kids and now we feel that people deserve that shame for doing the same things? Is it because we need to tell people what to do? Is it because we feel the need to control the behaviors of someone else?  Oftentimes, the people who are trying to control others are the ones who have the least control over themselves. …It’s something to think about, and it’s very much what I saw happen in my last blog post. A person who could not control their own self was trying to control me.

If there’s any takeaway in this post, let it be this:

If someone is sharing a personal experience with you, it’s likely true for them. They’re recounting the events they remember, how it made them feel, and sometimes they just need to vent off some steam. Know that when people are doing these things, they’re digesting their emotions. Practice compassionate listening. You don’t even need to offer any advice. Just be there to listen. If they ask you for your advice, you might want to take a moment to step in their shoes, feel what they’re feeling, and then offer up a suggestion from the heart. If that’s too difficult for you, just offer to be a sympathetic ear. If this person is suffering from abuse and violence, make it your responsibility to help them be safe. Not only is it the human thing to do, but the payoff for you and that person will be huge.

I want to specifically thank those of you who reached out in suppot this week. Your messages of kindness really helped balance the attacks from the internet trolls. I’m so grateful. And as always, I’ll sign this blog the way I do…

With all my love,

The Guru Girl

 

 

Get Over It

Whenever I hear my family members say or write this in response to reading one of my blogs, I realize why I write in the first place.

The line “get over it” is indicative of the environment in which I was raised – one of chronic and severe invalidation. If I had a different opinion or view of the world than my family, I was shamed and deeply criticized through invalidation. My private childhood experiences were met with erratic, inappropriate, and extreme responses. The experience of my painful emotions were completely dismissed, and I was often told to just “get over it” – just as I continue to be told today.

I actually remember one time that my 16 year old sister was so violently invalidated, that she was actually slammed into a wall by one of my aunts while my mother, grandmother, and another aunt looked on and also invalidated her after the event happened. What was the line?  OH, “I don’t want you girls to sing at my funeral.” Yep. That’s the one.

That takes me to the question I want people to really think about. What does it actually mean to get over something? How do you just get over it?

Well, in a family that constantly invalidates the feelings and emotions of others, it means bury your anger deeply, deny that it happened to you, remain angry inside, don’t talk about it to anyone, and never bring it up again. Sometimes it means you act out by drinking excessively, using drugs, or lashing out at others to the point of complete alienation.

But in order to truly get over something, you need to bring those emotions to the surface, you need to feel them, face them, analyze them, feel them some more, be vulnerable, accept your emotions, and ultimately surrender them. Maybe you’ll even blog about them to help others process their own pain.

Like food, you need to digest feelings. It’s true. Let’s examine that for a minute. When you wake up in the morning, you might feel hungry. Instead of having a light breakfast of some fresh or cooked fruit, cereal, or a broth, you might have a pile of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and pancakes. If you’re eating that pile of food before 10 a.m., your digestive fire isn’t working well enough to break apart all that food. It lies stagnant in your gut, it gets sour, and it actually starts to get rotten and toxic. This toxicity can spill into your blood stream through the tight junctions of your gut, and then create loads of inflammation in your body. Inflammation creates all kinds of diseased states in the body including cancer and chronic inflammatory conditions like MS, lupus, and other not fun stuff.

Invalidation works the same way. Let’s say you get up in the morning, and you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. On your way to the bathroom to pee (and your bladder is spilling into your kidneys), you step on a piece of Lego (besides childbirth and heart attacks, likely the most painful experience known to humans), and you buckle over in pain to soothe the foot that probably has at least a 3 inch deep hole in it. Someone shouts at you, “Man up you little bitch! It’s just a Lego! Get over it!” (If you’re a man, I just emasculated you on top of invalidating your pain. If you’re a woman, I probably just offended the hell out of you.)

Wow. That really hurts. Not only did you have to get up too early, but you’re in a state of total renal congestion, just stepped on Lego, and now someone tells you to “man up.” Seriously?

Next you rub out your foot, take your morning pee, and on your drive to work, you’re totally consumed with angry thoughts about the “man up” comment. You’re unable to be present with the drive because the thoughts are consuming your conscious awareness. Someone stops short, you slam on your breaks, and now you’re mad at the driver in front of you for being an asshole driver.

Because you know it’s really your fault for not paying attention, you take the “man up” comment and you bury it. In order for you to safely drive the car, you need to focus on the road, and that means to also control your thoughts.

Because your body is in a state where it’s unable to process those emotions, it festers – just like the big breakfast too early in the morning. Your body doesn’t like anything that festers, so it stores it in your body, and often surrounds it with fat (the way the body protects itself). If you’ve ever had a broken heart, you know that love can cause physiological changes to your heart – that’s where that distress is buried. It’s actually theorized in Eastern medicine that undigested emotions and broken hearts lead to heart disease, lung problems, and breast cancer.

If you’re carrying around too much weight try this: eat your largest meal of the day at noon when your digestive fire is at its peak and call a therapist who can help you confront and healthfully digest old emotional baggage. I’m confident you’ll see the scale move in a healthier direction.

…and because I’m such a big fan of Transcendental Meditation, I highly recommend that as well!

If you saw pictures of people in my family, you’d probably see a few things in common – obesity and chronic illness. If you read any of their posts on Facebook, listened to phone conversations, or read their emails, you might also see something in common – chronic invalidation. Some of it is actually full of nastiness and hate.

So the next time one of my family members tells me to stop writing blogs because they think I need to “get over it,” maybe I need to gently label their behavior as invalidation, suggest a diet change, and about 6 months of DBT with a good therapist. Then, I’m sure they’ll be able to get over it themselves.

In the meantime, I’ll remain being over it. It takes great strength to write these blogs in the face of familial resistance. However, people like my soul sister Amina (LOVE YOU GIRL!!) and others have found these to be therapeutic because they recognize their own experiences in mine. Sometimes we need a spark to start us on our journey, and sometimes you get to travel with a great group of people who all seek the same release from this toxic, emotional baggage.

That’s why I do this. I’ll never tell you to get over it, because it’s time someone breaks the cycle. Instead, I’ll offer this:

I’m sorry that you don’t like what I’m writing. I’m sorry if it makes you relive your own experiences that you have buried. I’m sorry if this blog triggers feelings within you of anger, resentment, or your own memories of emotional pain. I know you are a strong person and have the ability to work through those issues in a healthy, positive, and functional way. However, please know that writing this blog is my mission and my duty. It’s what I have spiritually been called to do. Please respect my boundaries as an adult even though you didn’t respect them when I was a child. Know that I’m writing out of goodness and with an open heart.

With all my love,

The Guru Girl