Healing and counseling sessions
Hungry for love
July 30, 2008
Photo: Kevin Kelly, Asia Grace
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.~ Rumi
Contents:
- Not good enough
- If I could only change
- Valley of the shadow of death
- Seeking help
- Finding the path - but not walking it
- The return of karma
- Jesus, please enter my heart!
- Darth Vader on his knees
- In the arms of the Mother
- I do have something to give, after all
- Precious response
- Can I trust God?
- Jesus is pleading
- The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak
- The true well
I grew up with a feeling that something is wrong with me. Although I was healthy, smart enough, excelled at school and never made any trouble for my parents. True, I was shy and introverted, but it only made things easier for my parents – they didn't have to struggle to hush me up on the bus, or apologize for the mess I made at their friends' place. Besides, I was never ill - my mother never had to miss work because of me. And I never missed a single hour from school.
But somehow, that wasn't good enough. My good marks were taken for granted, and my slight deviations from "perfection" were not taken lightly. If I would, on rare occasions, get a 4 (5 was the best mark), my mother would immediately notice that I hadn't been studying hard enough. When acquaintances would ask her how I was doing at school, she would say "good – so far". As if she was expecting that any moment things might go bad. And she was. She was that kind of person. "Life is a struggle" type of person. Bitter, unfulfilled, frightened, anxious. Life was too much for her. I was too much for her.
And so I grew up with that heavy dark cloud casting a constant shadow on my life. My mother placed it there, it was her own distorted perception of reality, which at first didn't match with mine. But after many years of living in that "reality", I started believing it. It became my reality too (although maybe this same belief already existed in my soul and only got triggered by my mother - which is quite possible judging by my long-term resistance to healing, as will turn out later).
Whatever the origin, the dark cloud was always there. No matter what you do, you cannot be truly happy. No matter what you do, you are not worthy of love. Something is always missing. In the eyes of my mother, there was something in me that was missing. By the time I entered puberty, I took to trusting her. It was me. I was the problem.
She was right in a way – something was indeed missing from our lives. Love, warmth, tenderness, joy. Joy of simply being alive and being blessed with good health and all opportunity to create the kind of life we wanted for ourselves. Everything was there, and yet, my mother felt so deprived. So unhappy. And even though she believed in God, her God was a distant figure up there in the sky, who was very displeased with her performance, and was punishing her – or allowed life to punish her – because she deserved it. She believed she was a failure. Her mother told her so. And now she was telling me the same.
I entered puberty with this feeling of lack, both within and without. I thought if I could only be different, I might find happiness. If outer circumstances would be different, I could be fulfilled. For many years before I had been trying to change my mother, but without success. So now I decided I would change myself – to fit an ideal of outer perfection. I thought I had a few kilos over what was dictated by the fashion magazines and by the tall and slender twin sisters who looked like photo models and were the hit of my class. They were so cool, and I was so pathetic. And I thought if I lost a few pounds, I'd be cool as them. That's when my anorexia started, at the age of 17.
But after a year of almost starving myself to death, and losing much more than a few extra pounds, I felt more miserable than ever. I looked appalling, like someone from a concentration camp, and my new image was nowhere near "cool" that I hoped for. In fact, people judged me and pitied me. I closed myself in my own world and vegetated. I felt like a plant. But the kind that rejected the sun.
This utter deprivation of life couldn't last long. I started craving for food, for life juices. So I became bulimic. And this has lasted for the next almost 15 years. It was hell. I felt terrible about myself for doing it, and yet couldn't do anything to stop it. I was hooked like a junkie. Only my addiction wasn't so expensive and so lethal. So I didn't have to steal to get my next fix. Food was everywhere, and it was plenty. And yet, I felt so utterly empty in my soul. Even love – love for another being or their love for me – couldn't help me. It would lift me for a while, but I would soon go back to my old habits. Nothing and no one was more important than feeding the beast. I turned into a miserable creature serving the demons of self-gratification.
3. Valley of the shadow of death
Years have passed, the habit has left traces on me. My hair went gray, my teeth decayed, my eyesight worsened. I was dying from within. And during all that time, it didn't occur to me to ask God for help. In all that blindness, I lost perspective of God. Once, in the beginning, in the anorectic phase, I asked God to take me to himself. That was when I felt like a plant, when the spark of life has almost left me. I felt I couldn't go on, there is no point in going on like that.
But God wouldn't listen to me (thank him for that!). So I stayed and survived, but in the process became much less than I was born with. A large part of my soul was gone. Fragmented. Now I really was incomplete. And there really was something wrong with me. As my mother has claimed all along. I became my mother's prophecy come-true.
There was still some light in me though. I had my moments of inspiration. I felt great in nature, when climbing a mountain and making an effort beyond what I would otherwise do. When transcending myself. Then I felt closer to God. And the reward I got when I'd finally make it to the top and saw the view below was like a reward for walking the path to God, for making the effort to Be More. And in those moments, life made sense.
But still, those moments were rare. They were peak experiences in the valley of the shadow of death. And I was mostly staying in the valley, never thinking to turn to God for help. Because I was worshipping a couple of false gods – the god of lack and the goddess of fulfillment through physical pleasure. And that kept me bound in the spiral of self-destruction.
I hit the rock bottom when my boyfriend wanted to leave me, my PhD studies were not going anywhere and I was becoming increasingly incapable of life. I became a weirdo who couldn't even work properly, and was aware that sooner or later I would have to look for another job. But how – I was terrified of a job interview! I was terrified of being among people, of merely existing – because I believed I was nobody. I believed I was the bottom, the scum, the great pretender whose time was up.
I came to a wall and was forced to look for help. I started going to therapy. I learned I was more than a bunch of lies. I learned I was good enough. I learned I was loved. And my life improved: I kept my relationship, I didn't lose my job and more or less put myself together. But I didn't stop vomiting. The craving for food didn't go away. The feeling of emptiness was still there. I learned that I was loved, and I believed it was so, but I didn't really experience it.
My relationship with God was still vague. I had learned by then that God is not an angry being in the sky, and that life is not about suffering, but I didn't know how to relate to him. God was still outside of me. My teachers told me that God is All, and as such, encompasses both light and darkness (a typical New Age approach which can sometimes lead to confusion), so I shouldn’t feel bad about myself. But I intuitively knew that some things that I do are simply not right. Even if God didn’t object to it, even if it was all acceptable and part of the human experience, I knew it's not right to continue doing it forever. I knew there has to be a higher way of living.
So I kept searching. I wanted to know what God is really about, and what it means to live our life in God. And I found the answer – we are here to be the Living Christ in embodiment. We are here to follow the path that Jesus showed us. We can be like Jesus because we too are sons and daughters of God. But it requires sacrifice – we need to sacrifice our ego, our separate sense of self, which for this or that selfish reason refuses to unite with God. I realized that God's will is in fact the will of our own higher being, of our true self. And that by following God's will – which we now see as coming from within, from our true being – we are living up to our highest potentials and fulfilling our divine plan. I realized that God is at the core of my being. And that my task is to let God be through me.
5. Finding the path - but not walking it
It was a life-saving realization. I found my path, I found the truth. My heart sang from joy, my mind wasn't confused any more. But my ego stayed unmoved. Although I was learning a lot about the path, my life on the outer didn’t change much. The addiction was still there. Even though I wasn't vomiting that often - because I didn’t have the chance - the urge was still there, and I knew I would succumb to it - when left alone. I was bound as ever.
As if a part of my soul was locked in an iron casket, and the light and love of God couldn't flow in. I did become more aware of things, more aware of the stubbornness and anti-will of my ego. But again, I didn't want to talk to God about it. I didn't want to meditate. Didn't want to see what it is really inside of me which keeps the door to God locked. I hid from God, like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden.
And so, the tension in me was increasing. I was caught in the epic battle between good and evil, and the evil was still there, no matter how "enlightened" I became. I thought I need to get rid of the evil through the power of my human will. And I called myself a failure for not being able to do it. But it didn't occur to me to ask God for help. I was holding on to that iron casket, to the "treasures" of the ego, with my full power. As if my life depended on it. And it did – the life of the ego did. I used to think of myself as a weak person, with no willpower, but I realized then that my will is very strong. Only it was the will of the ego, the will that opposes God, the will that opposes my true being.
And I let my ego live. I continued worshipping a false god – the god of selfish pleasures – although I knew now what it takes to connect to the true God. And sure enough, I started feeling the consequences of this anti-will: my teeth degrading even more rapidly, my skin becoming problematic practically over night, my hair getting even dryer… It was as if the karma that was held at bay finally descended, because I willingly chose to ignore the truth of Christ, the call of my inner being. Until then I was still partially ignorant and was destroying myself not knowing that there is a better way. And there was a chance that once I see the full truth, I would turn around. But that didn’t happen. I obviously chose to learn the hard way – I enrolled into the school of hard knocks.
And I got it all back – the misqualified energy of years descending on me, causing various health problems. It's not that I became seriously ill or anything – but my general condition deteriorated. I suddenly got old at the age of 33.
That got me thinking. I am destroying myself, and now it's visible too. And it hurts, even physically. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The ego was visible like a neon sign. What do I really want in life? Do I want to live from my Higher Self, or would I rather destroy myself? Do I really love God more than my ego? Do I really trust Jesus when he said "it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom"? Meaning that God desires to give us love and abundance and all treasures in Heaven and on Earth, if only we would turn to him and accept it. What is it that keeps me from turning to God? What is it that keeps me from accepting his Kingdom?
7. Jesus, please enter my heart!
A part of the reason was that whenever I meditated and tried to imagine a beautiful garden with Jesus in it – as instructed in some meditations – I would see monsters and distorted characters. Jesus' face would be distorted too, and so I could never reach the point of contact with him. My mind was flooded with distorted images– no wonder considering my addiction – but I never sincerely asked God to help me get rid of those images, to help me reach him. Until one day.
I was desperate, my health was deteriorating, the inner split was increasing. I longed for God's love, consolation, fullness. Because I realized – after hitting my head against the wall enough times – that nothing from this world could compensate for that sweet love that I was missing. Nothing could quench my thirst, nothing was and will ever be enough. So I closed my eyes and cried out in desperation "Please Jesus, I want to feel your love, I want to feel you in my heart. Even if my mind is full of distortions and fears, please come down on me, awaken the flame of life in me, I want to connect with you! I want to feel you in my heart, even if my mind cannot accept you right now. Please come, come to my heart!"
I had a vision of a swamp filled with mud, and I was beneath the surface, but my arm reached up, towards the sky, towards redemption. In that moment I felt a wave of heat in my heart, arms and back. The image of Jesus was blurred at first and started to get distorted again, but I disregarded it. I said once again: no matter the distortions, Jesus please, I want to feel you in my heart. I repeated Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus… many times. I couldn't stop. Something inside of me was saying those words, and I just let myself into it, letting go of control.
My eyes were closed and the vision appeared of Jesus pulling me out of the swamp, by the hand I stretched out. There was light above the swamp, and energetically, in my body, I felt as if having been lifted. Now Jesus looked more or less like himself, and whatever disturbing thoughts remained, I ignored. It was the gentle, benevolent Jesus, and suddenly I saw myself kneeling before him and taking off the mask of Darth Vader, the villain from The Star Wars.
A wave of heat came over me, and a surge of emotions. I cried my heart out, said I was sorry. I apologized for all these years of separation from him. I called him brother, and that's how I really felt. I felt that Jesus was my brother whom I abandoned many years before, and now I am back, kneeling before him and repenting for everything I have done. My voice changed, it was deep and resonant, almost like a male voice. One word came to my mind: THE TRUTH.
When I later analyzed what happened, I realized that I – my conscious self – gave up the identification with the evil – by taking off the mask of Darth Vader. Before that I believed that deep down I was bad. Because I knew that the mask of "niceness" that I wore before the world was just a pretense. And that when the world is not watching, I am doing bad things. But I didn't know (except in theory) that there was something genuinely good and pure inside, something that wants light, something worth loving. And now I touched that part.
I also realized that the only way to God is through the heart – through a sincere wish to go beyond our mental boxes, or resistances, our ego. To let go of everything – for the love of God, for the love of who we are.
Of course, my ego didn't give up all control at that point. But I stopped vomiting. Bulimia was gone. Not just the act itself but the urge behind it. I knew that there is no point. I knew with absolute clarity that any further episode would mean hitting another nail in the coffin. There was a self-destruction impulse in me, but there was also the will to live. I chose to die another day.
Another phase on my spiritual path started. A phase of more sincerity, more humility, less ego. I meditated frequently and explored various recesses of my psyche. Whenever I felt anxious about a situation, I would go in meditation and see what it is beneath the conscious level that makes me anxious. What are the voices, the images that come up. And I had some remarkable experiences. In one meditation I received unconditional love from Mother Mary and healed the wounded child in me – the child who never received true love and nurturance from my physical mother. And I realized that I, supported by Mother Mary, can be the source of that love for myself – that I could be a mother to myself. And some day, a mother to a child of my own.
Another thing happened - I forgave my physical mother. I realized she couldn't have given me what she herself didn't have. She too was a starving child. How could have she given me anything? I felt compassion for her. Compassion for she didn't know what she was doing, she didn't know that life is a precious gift, not a struggle. She didn't know better and she refused to learn. I didn't have the need to please her any more, I didn't feel guilty nor did I blame her. I healed my relationship with her and moved on. While she stayed in her illusion.
Receiving Mother Mary's love and nurturance also changed the image I had of my body and of my feminine side in general. I started taking more care of my body and my health. I realized that the lack of motherly love is what made me want to destroy myself – first through starving my body, then through torturing it through cycles of binging and purging. Once I received the love I longed for, I could never again go against myself like that. I not only wanted to live, but I wanted to live so that the Mother in me reflects the love for the Father, i.e. that my life in matter reflects the perfection of my Spirit.
10. I do have something to give, after all
I still had a way to go, but one major block was overcome. My creativity opened up, after years of hibernation. Since I stopped wasting all my energy on the addiction, the real me started emerging. I felt inspired to write about spiritual topics and so I started this website. It happened after participating in a spiritual retreat of Theosophia is the Way and learning what my God flame is. It was confirmed what I intuitively already knew - that my mission in life is to spread the truth of God.
Finally I felt capable to make a contribution – not just by quoting others and re-telling someone else's teachings as until then, but from my own insights and contemplations. I don't say those insights are perfectly accurate, but while writing some of the articles, I felt the flow of energy between me and something beyond me. I called it the Presence. I felt inspired and happy to give to the world what I learned and experienced on the path.
Not many people responded to my website, but one person did. I received a lot of positive feedback from him, and it seemed I helped him step on the path of Christhood. He was a spiritual seeker, having experimented with a variety of spiritual teachings over the previous few years, and finally recognizing the vibration of truth in Jesus' teachings. I enjoyed being a sort of a mediator between him and Jesus' teachings. I served not exactly as his teacher but rather a helper, a bit more advanced student on the path. I enjoyed answering his questions and explaining things. And he seemed very receptive and genuinely interested in the teachings. Which made me even more enthusiastic about the path. Finally someone who "saw" me. And with whom I can share my spiritual ideas, my true being.
But the problem arose when I became attached to this relationship. My "student", who after a period of intense "tutoring" was ready to walk the path on his own, and at his own pace, felt a bit of a pressure from my side, and started withdrawing. He didn't need me anymore – but I needed him! And why – because during our interaction, while exchanging emails and sharing ideas, I would stop thinking about food. I would feel "high", I didn't need food. And I felt closer to my true self. I thought I was finally free. But what happened is that I replaced one attachment with another. Maybe a better one, but still an attachment.
As he gradually withdrew from my life, the ego kicked in again. My craving returned and before I knew it, I was stuffing myself with food. But I didn’t lose my head – I was observing myself in the process, trying to draw a lesson from what was happening. I realized that there are no shortcuts to God. I cannot reach God through anything or anyone but myself – through my conscious decision to surrender whatever stands between me and God. No other key opens the lock.
And there are no shortcuts to true happiness and fulfillment. True happiness, as Buddha said, comes from the inside. It is an inner state that doesn't depend on anything from outside of us. No matter what happens on the outer, even if there is no one to accept us and love us for who we are, we are still joyous, for we know that God loves us. We know the truth of our being.
Well, that was the lesson I needed to learn. Why do I think I need something or someone from outside myself to be happy and fulfilled? And the answer is – because I didn't fully surrender to God. Because I am afraid that God wouldn't give me what I need. Or not in the way I would want to. I don't trust God, that's the problem. Even though I follow Jesus' teachings, even though in theory I know everything, in practice there is still a part of me that holds on to that iron casket, to the meager "treasures" of my ego.
I lived with that realization for a while, fully aware of my resistance. And then one day I was inspired to read the New Gospel again. Where Jesus explains how an angel of the Lord appeared to his Mother and announced that she is to conceive the Christ child, the Son of God. To which she responded, without questioning, "Lord, be onto me according to thy will." Jesus further says that as we are reading his teachings, an angel of the Lord is appearing to our soul at inner levels. And he is pleading, he is kneeling before our soul, to accept his gift of love.
The reality of those words struck me. Here he is, offering his All, and I am holding on to the crumbs of my ego. What have I without you, my Jesus? What am I without you? I closed my eyes and found myself in a heavenly garden with Jesus. And I knelt before him, as once before. Through tears I told him I never want to be apart from him again. He was sitting in a chair made of stone, and I sat on the grass in front of him. And leaned my head on his knees. And cried, and cried. Never again do I want to leave you. I want to be all I can be in God. Please show me the way. I want to help you in your mission, I want to bring the truth to the world. I want to shine my light and proclaim my oneness with God. I want to sing the song of Heaven and awaken the Earth. I want to be with you always.
And the iron casket disappeared as the darkness disappears when light is cast on it... My heart opened up to Jesus fully. There is no place for shadows any more, at least not in my heart, at the core of my being. There is only one love that moves me - the love for God. There is only one desire - to be all I can be in God. I am not saying I am completely free yet, but I am on a good way. On the straight and narrow path. The inner path.
And I know that if I wander off from that path, it will be a detour, and it will take more time to get where I am heading. Because there is no other way but through the heart that is willing, that is humble, that is innocent like that of a child. There is no other way but through oneness with Jesus, oneness with God. But I don’t see it as limitation any more. I see it as utter and ultimate freedom. Freedom to be who I really am.
14. The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak
That was one of the major victories, the first time I felt I want God more than anything else. And life changed from that moment on, I stopped misqualifying energy through distorted eating habits. Once I connected to Jesus, I also realized that I am here to give love, and to give selflessly, instead of waiting to be given from the outside. I realized I already have it all, because I am with God.
And so I started to give, to serve the spiritual community I was a part of. And when volunteers were needed to broadcast rosary sessions over the Internet, I volunteered, because I felt called to do it. I wanted to break through my fear of speaking in public, and I also wanted to do good for the community. I had all the necessary technical equipment, all the preconditions met. Not doing it would have been plain selfish. And so I did it. And survived. It wasn't perfect, but it was a gift from my heart. In the process I also realized that I am allowed to make mistakes, although it didn't seem like that when I was growing up. I realized that I am loved, loved unconditionally.
But although I strenghtened my will to Be, the temptation was still there. I was aware that the consciousness behind it was not completely healed – I still felt I needed something from the outside to fulfill me. In other words, I knew oneness with God is the way, but I couldn't feel it fully in my being. I knew it intellectually, and even in my heart, but it didn't go all the way down to my soul (to the seat of the soul chakra), where a part of me was still attached to things and people outside of me to fulfill me.
I craved for fulfillment and I believed that God might not give me that fulfillment. Because I craved for a specific thing – for some ultimate ecstasy in merging with a person I love, for union of body and soul, for bliss of such an experience. I craved for a perfect partner and for oneness I would feel in such a relationship. I thought this is what will finally fill me, this is what will finally give me a taste of heaven. God is okay, I thought, but what if he won't give me this specific experience, what if my life will remain "dry"? And even if I find a certain satisfaction in serving God, still it wouldn't be the "ultimate bliss ".
And sure enough, life soon gave me another opportunity – an even more radical one – to see that this was an illusion. I thought I found the perfect person, someone who is both spiritual and responding to my love, and it seemed perfect. But the problem was that he was married, with two children, and finally he decided to stay with his family. In spite of our big love. In spite of all the magic between us. That was quite a shock. He was supposed to be my soul mate or something of the kind, we fitted together like hand and glove (or so it seemed), and still, still it didn't happen. Then what will it take??
And then I realized – to let go. I need to let go of the belief that I need someone outside of God to fulfill me, someone outside of myself to help me fulfill my mission, someone outside of me and my God to be really happy.
I don't need anyone to get me to heaven. I already am in heaven – if I only surrender and trust. God is my only true source. I don't need anything but God. In oneness with God I feel the bliss, I am full, I am nurtured, I am loved, I have everything that I could possibly need. And more.
I realized I was drinking from a false well, and it would always leave a bad taste in the mouth. Bitter-sweet feeling, pleasure mixed with pain. Dualistic struggle. Illusion. I finally saw it.
I realized I want God more than anything else. I tried many things, hoping I could make it without God. But it wouldn't work. I was like a refugee in the desert, dying from thirst, when the well was so close - within. I finally decided to drink from the true well.
Now I am free. I know what my mission is. I know what I need to do. I know that in serving God in all life, I am receiving all that I need. In reaching out to others, heaven reaches to me. I am blessed, I am whole, I am being who I was born to be.
It took many years, many hard knocks, but I finally got it. It all makes sense now. Life is a gift. We are given the chance to be who we are and express ourselves and enrich the world with our unique talents. We are a chalice of God's light, a unique chalice, which colors God's light in a very special way. Our way. God loves when we do it our way. Because our way is also God's way. Because we are One.
