It's okay to have bad days

I have a tendency to feel that I’m back at square one when I don’t manage to keep my emotions in check. And I feel that all the work that I’ve done on myself has been for nothing. And it feels like the bad mood is going to go on forever. And because I let this feeling go unchallenged, I probably hold on to my bad mood much longer than I have to.

I think that this is something that needs to be talked about. Because I think that this is a huge stumbling block, as well as a cause of much suffering, for those of us that are committed to change. Because that is what we are, right? The spiritual awakening process necessarily entails confronting loads of baggage that we have inside ourselves. And when you look at most public figures that talk about this, you can easily get the impression that, while they certainly have som bumps in the road, they are more or less living their dreams and manifesting tons of abundance.

I’m not one of those people. I’ve accumulated so much baggage during my almost forty years, that I’m many days totally overwhelmed by it. What keeps me going is that I know what I’ve experienced and that I have my wife by my side. I mean, I’ve received actual proof that God exists and that the world is totally different from what my five senses tell me. How cool is that? And I’ve had my wife with me to confirm that I’m not just going crazy.

When I listen to many self-help gurus and and people in the Law of Attraction sphere (I’ve realized a while back that I’m not a big fan of the Law of Attraction by the way), I almost get the feeling that there is something wrong with me because I don’t manage to be happy, grateful and think happy thoughts all of the time.

But I can hardly be alone in feeling that, yes, I’m on a wonderful, magical journey. But it’s also one that entails a lot of struggles and sometimes downright misery and suffering. Problems that I cannot just see as challenges, face them head on with a smile and say “bring it on”. Problems that I would be happy to miss out on the opportunity for growth that they contain, if I just could be rid of them.

At the same time, I know that I’m the one that has created all of my problems and I know that I have no other option than to try and fix them to the best of my ability. The alternative is to throw away all of the wonderful things in my life because of my emotional and financial difficulties. And that is not really an option when it’s put in its proper perspective. Because somewhere, even in my darkest moments, I know that there is something so much bigger than the world with all its petty problems going on here.

Growing through our issues

We often tend to forget that when we deal with a problem, we don’t just solve the problem. We, as people, change as well. 

Basically, the more baggage we have, the more potential for growth we have. Which is good news for me. Provided that I don’t give up. Because just as we grow every time we deal with our problems, every encounter with a problem also provides us with a reason to do just that. To give up. 

Feelings of anger, hopelessness, fear or shame, tensions, bad posture, procrastination, lack of responsibility, overeating, selfishness, difficulty handling money, low self-esteem, addiction, judgment, pride, self-deceit, difficulty staying focused. These are all issues that I either have dealt with or still have in my life. And I have dealt with all of them to some degree.

And most of them have made want to give up and curse my unconscious past, where I either unknowingly created these issues for myself, or they arose due to the circumstances that I found myself in and my inability to cope with them at the time. 

But my refusal to just live with my limitations has also made me grow a lot. Today I know myself pretty well. I’ve become more confident, less judgmental and my ability to understand other people has grown because of it. And maybe the biggest thing is that it is quite a humbling experience to be confronted with all of the dirt one has in one’s life. Even though bursts of pride still flare up in me from time to time. And humility is most definitely one of the most important qualities to grow if one wants to get closer to God. Maybe the most important. 

Seeing all of these things inside me, has also made me understand the fallen state that we are all in. And seeing my ability to handle my difficulties grow, has also given me glimpses of what God intended us to be and what we need to do to start moving in that direction. It has also allowed me to understand many of the deep psychological truths in the Bible and to understand the concept of sin in a different way from most people. Not as something that makes us bad and deserving of condemnation, but as a statement of fact regarding our brokenness and unconsciousness, and their inevitable consequences for our characters and behaviors. In seeing this, I am also trying not to beat myself up too much, as self-acceptance is important and not always easy.

By the way, did you know that sin originally means “missing the mark”?

What is sin?

The concept of sin comes from the greek word “hamartia”, which means “to err” or “miss the mark”. 

Now, I don’t claim to be an authority on sin (I do have a lot of first-hand experience of it though… ;)). So maybe I’m completely wrong here. But I do believe that this original meaning can tell us something that has gotten lost. And I’m not alone in this. Several teachers that go beyond traditional interpretations of the Bible have pointed this out.

Looking at the original meaning, sin seems to imply a failure to do something correctly, rather than an act of evil. And if we look at how life seems to function, I believe this way of looking at sin to be correct.

You see, from my own experience, I’ve come to believe that we always act from a place where we believe that our actions are “right”, in some sense. Even if we don’t believe that there are such things as right, wrong, good or evil, we still in a sense believe that what we do is right. Or, at least not wrong. Since we don’t believe in such a thing as right or wrong. 

Is it possible to downright do something that we know is wrong, without having some justification for our actions? Sure. But those that do it are a very small minority. And they become even fewer when you take away mentally disturbed people. 

So, the complete nihilist might feel somewhere in his or her heart that some actions are wrong. I used to be a nihilist and I can for sure say that I could feel that many of my actions were wrong. But because of my belief-system, I managed to shut my eyes to these feelings. This does not mean that I’m not responsible for my actions. It’s not an excuse. But it is an explanation. An explanation that I believe is sufficient for me not to be considered evil. Corrupt maybe. Nihilism is for sure a corrupt belief-system. Had I persevered in my nihilism, I might even have become so corrupt that I became completely deaf to my conscience. Fortunately, this is something that I will never know.

The more I analyze my actions and other people’s actions, the firmer I become in my belief that most of us are a pretty confused bunch. We don’t really understand why we do what we do, or how it affects us or other people. On top of that, we live in a very confusing world, where we are bombarded with different messages on how to think, feel and act, together with different types of appeals to our lower natures. And let’s not forget that the values (here in the West, that would be Christian values), for good and bad, that we’ve considered as facts for almost two millennia, are being questioned, with no new “truth” about right and wrong to replace them. 

So if you believe in the idea that God hates the sin but not the sinner, how could it make sense that God would judge the sinner? Isn’t sin, logically, a product of wrongful thinking that, logically, cannot be the fault of the sinner? Doesn’t the sinner engage in wrongful thinking because he or she is broken and confused and not because he or she wants to do bad things? 

How wonderful it is to be a sinner

The title of this post is sort of click bait. What I’m talking about here is something akin to the parable quoted in the post-image.

The point is that I’m grateful for my sins, because they make it harder for me to judge others. However, I had to become aware of my sins for this to be the case. In the past, I didn’t see my own sins. Or more specific, I didn’t look at them as sins. As something disgraceful or hurtful, or whichever other label one might give to actions that fit under the label “sin”. So I judged. I still catch myself judging sometimes, I have to admit. In my thoughts, I catch myself doing it quite often, even though I catch myself quicker and quicker and do my best not to believe my judgments. 

Do I judge the pharisee? Let me put it like this: for most of my life I didn’t look properly at myself. So I judged. I could have continued not looking at myself, had it not been for the grace of God. I could have continued being just as bad as the pharisee regarding judgment and I did not get out of this mindset by my own effort. I couldn’t have, since I wasn’t aware of how I was acting. In many other instances, I’m probably still just as “bad”, or “worse” than the pharisee.

Punished by God? Part 1

What if God isn't angry at you? Just try the thought on. What if God never is out to get you? What if God just loves you unconditionally, no matter what you do, because he knows that everything “bad” that you do, you do out of ignorance? Just try these thoughts and see how they feel.

I don't know if I myself can fully believe this. But the more I think about it, the more right it feels. It doesn't have to mean that we're free to do anything. There are still consequences in this life, and this perspective does not exclude the possibility of some hard lessons in the next life, if we fail to learn what we came here to learn in this one. 

But why would our loving, heavenly father punish us for making mistakes, for all eternity? We would never call a human father loving, if he hurt his child when the child made mistakes.

Undeserved grace

What did I do to deserve the grace that I’ve received? Of course it’s not about actions. But all is not well on the inside either. My character isn’t what it ought to be. I can often be unloving and judgmental. I try not to be. But I am. I’m selfish and greedy. Not all of the time. I don’t consider myself a particularly good person. And yet, I catch myself bragging about virtues and accomplishments, even though they in truth are pretty meagre. 

The only things that I’ve really got going for me, is an honest willingness to change into the person God intended me to be. That, and a longing for being with God, that sometimes can move me to tears, but that often is drowned out by my ingratitude for what I have and resentment stemming from all the things that I perceive as being things that I lack, or from the things in my life that I don’t want. 

And yet, God has chosen to step into my life and make his presence known. Perhaps this is so not is spite of all my shortcomings, but because of them. Because, even though I’m still pretending to others that I’m someone that I’m not, I’ve stopped pretending to myself. I’m weak and sinful. I don’t want to be. But I am. And I can only keep striving for a perfection that I know that I will never reach. At least not in this life. 

The strange paradox in all of this, is that I'm okay just the way I am. And at the same time, I'm all but okay.

I did something bad a few days ago part 2

The final choice of doing what I did, can be divided in two. I first made an initial choice, telling myself that I’m just going to do this one thing. Just to see how it is. Then I’m going to let it go. But about five minutes later, I had gone through with the rest of it. 

As you can see, I managed to trick myself over and over again, slipping more and more. It is also worth noting that there is a potential continuation on a possible chain of events relating to the topic that I’m talking about. But I’ve decided to say no to my mind. No to my ego. And I pray to God that he will help me to stay committed to my “no”. 

I did something bad a few days ago part 1

Not something BAD bad. Not anything that most people wouldn’t find totally okay. But bad in a way that I prefer to leave it to your imagination to figure out what it was. So, why am I writing this post? Well, in the hope that I will learn something from the experience and that others might learn from it as well. By writing this down, making it clear that this was something bad and stating my clear intention of not doing what I did again, I hope to turn this fall into a fall forward. 

You see, it started in my thoughts several weeks before. And since the thoughts were connected with pleasant memories in the past, I chose to hold on to them. It was a choice. I could have chosen to just observe them and let them go. But this was not the choice that I made. 

Here is some context: As my two weeks vacation started, I started slipping back into some other old habits as well. These I wouldn’t call bad in the sense that I call that other thing bad. But they made me lazy and comfortable. And when you’re lazy and comfortable, you’re less observant and your will is weakened.