Since the moment it entered my mind, perhaps a year ago now, I’ve been unable or unwilling to let go of the notion that “matter is a phase of consciousness.”
I imagine it like this. Everything created is a flowing river. Sometimes, something uncreated splashes into the river and creates ripples. Those ripples are our material lives. They are us from dust. And when they even back out, we are still there in the flowing river.
Is this notion only delightful? Or is it true?
We are an old,
Abandoned shopping mall
Where there used to be
A GameStop,
And a Claire’s,
And an Auntie Anne’s,
And a Spencer’s Gifts,
And a Hot Topic,
And a Walden Books.
We are a mostly-empty building
With an Army recruitment office
And a Ross Dress for Less.
In a dim, forgotten corner,
Past the bathrooms
And janitor’s closet,
A light flickers on.
The powers of this world, through seemingly benign language, curse us.
Shaming and invalidating language can spread through songs, coworkers, neighbors, family members, movies, and just about any other medium. This kind of language is viral and toxic, and it works in the most sinister way.
Repeated phrases become repeated thoughts, repeated thoughts become repeated feelings, and repeated feelings become core beliefs. Even a common, seemingly harmless phrase can perpetuate a cycle of shame or distorted belief. Take, for example, this phrase from a popular Blink 182 song: “Don’t waste your time on me.”
In many cases, we apply no meaning to such a phrase. It’s just a catchy lyric that bounces around between our ears. But when our lived experience seems to line up with the phrase, when we’re wounded or hurt, the phrase takes on a certain life of its own and lives inside us, leeching our courage and disavowing our humanity.
When I say, “don’t waste your time on me,” it implies two terrible lies: one, that spending time on me is a waste of time, that spending time on a human being could possibly be a waste of time; and two, that the person spending time is not smart enough to use their time wisely, that they waste their time, and that time is a currency.
These lies promote a sense of shame, scarcity, broken relations, and, ultimately, untrue core beliefs. They are toxic.
They are spread through a single line in a simple song, a curse. And we have endless access to an endless number of very catchy songs, catchphrases, movie quotes, etc, with curses just like that one.
For our own mental wellness, for our own perception of reality, we must examine the language we use in our thoughts and in our speech.
The phrases we think, listen to, and speak are healthiest when they support positive social interaction; acknowledge the full dignity of every human person; promote a realistic sense of abundance, especially of the abundance of love; express emotion and experience with integrity, courage, and honesty; encourage ourselves and others to bear challenges and sufferings; inspire wonder by asking questions without demanding answers; and thank, praise, and glorify God, The Good Father.
But we don’t need to worry about a list of phrases that are okay or not. We only need to “think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” (Colossians 3:2) We only need to dispose our attention toward God, love, and virtue. Then, we will find freedom from the curses that the powers of this world place upon us.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Romans 12:2
The following was originally part of a novel I’m working on. In the editing process, I realized it didn’t fit there, but it still seemed worth sharing, so here it is.
I used to hate people. Then I figured out why. I still hate them sometimes, but I am mostly able to overcome it now.
I hated people because I thought people hated me, or at least didn’t care about me. And I thought my value was dependent on what they thought of me. And so I ultimately hated myself because I thought they hated me, and I thought that meant I was less of a human.
When I hated myself, I hated everyone else, too, because when we hate something, we hate what we perceive as flaws. My friend didn’t call me back, so he must not value me. Either he is flawed because he is wrong about me, about my value, or I am flawed because he is right about me, about my value. And so I hated. I hated flawed-ness. And because I hated flawed-ness, I hated human beings because human beings are flawed.
You know how that cycle of hatred is broken? I’ve only found one way: forgiveness. You can hate or you can forgive. If you hate, you turn whoever you hate into something less than human in your mind. You reduce them to an object and then throw it away. If you forgive, you love, and if you love, you give your attention.
I hope that makes sense. It’s important to me. It changed my life. Forgiveness isn’t easy, but it’s really the only way out of hate in a world full of flawed beings.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean, “you can do whatever you want to me.” It means something more like, “I refuse to see you as an object, to strip you of your humanity. I will see your flaws and still recognize that you are a whole person, so much more than your flaws.”
I have to remind myself about forgiveness quite often. It’s so easy to fall into hate. But it’s so much better to struggle to love.
Grief is the lover who gives
And gives
And gives
And waits
And does not receive
And dies of starvation.
Grief is why the widow —
Who once slept peaceful
In her lover's arms;
Who once had dreams
Instead of memories;
Who once caressed
Her lover's cheek and lips,
Lost in cosmic wonder —
Cannot eat more than
A spoonful of soup.
Grief is
Going home without,
And never again
Going out with home.
Loneliness means
Grocery shopping —
Seeing the incredible colors
And shapes and tastes
Lining bright aisles
Late at night;
BEEP.
Wondering at this wonder
Available in every town
Across America —
Alone.
In this world, there are places with God and places without God. That is for a very good reason. If there were no places without God, we would have nowhere to run from him.
For God’s love to be real, we must have the freedom to refuse it, to refuse him. It’s not true love if it’s not a gift, and it’s not a gift unless it can be refused. If we couldn’t refuse it, it would be an imposition, not a gift.
God makes his love a gift by giving us places to go where his love is not, where he is not. But a place without God, the source of all life, is a place with death. Death is the cost of a world where love exists.
Because we are loved, death is a part of this world.
Today, Catholics celebrate Passion Sunday, in which we remember Christ being deeply troubled upon seeing his friend, Mary of Bethany, weeping.
In John 11:33, Christ’s behavior is described with an intense Greek word, enebrimēsato, that translates to something like “he snorted in spirit.” Christ groaned from the depths of his soul, like a sobbing child, upon seeing the pain that death has caused his friend. He grieves at the pain caused by loving imperfect lovers.
I sat down with her.
"Can you separate from me?"
She started to peel herself away,
But she didn’t.
She wanted to,
And she didn’t.
"I think you want to,
But you’re clinging.
You can separate
If you want."
She clung.
I smiled.
My depression clung.
And I realized she
Was exactly what
I desperately wanted,
Someone to stay,
Someone to cling.
Sometimes you just hurt.
You wake up feeling beat up,
And then you hear they’re choosing her.
They’re choosing her,
The one you loved so much,
Who did not want you to exist.
She didn’t want you to exist,
But no one saw the hate she gave,
So they chose her and so she wins.
You want to hate her for that.
You clench and grimace and cringe,
But all you can muster is pain,
And maybe that was her hate too.
It wasn’t hate of you.
It was just some other pain.
Still, you want to hate her for it,
But you don’t because you understand.
You’ve done the same to others as she’s done to you.
So you try to forgive her for it,
But you don’t because you can’t.
Maybe yesterday, but not today.
And you carry all of this
Without a friend to walk beside
Because they all chose her.
They all chose her,
And the clock keeps moving forward,
And you’ve got to get to work.
So you do what you do sometimes,
You just hurt.