Sometimes I Just Write

[Narrator]

Hi all,

 

I wrote this 9 years ago. It was not long after leaving Christianity. Part of my leaving journey, I guess.

It's not often I can write at length without a lot of editing and deleting, but once in a while it just flows.

This was one such experience. It's like an internal dialogue. Nine years later, I recognize some of its flaws.

Here it is, completely unedited.

 

Set You Free

Duality is the platform of human nature. No one is immune. Within us are the anima and the animus, left and right, yin and yang. One of the great dualities of human behavior is the desire to be free and at the same time to be bound to conventions. It matters little what those conventions are, just so long as they exist.

A good man once said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” But the institution which bears his name requires the very opposite. People want the freedom that comes from being born again, of finding that which will set them free, hoping to be released from the chains of the first life to freedom in a second life. But because there is nothing new in history, the road less traveled is now owned; curbs and barriers have been built, speed limits imposed, tar and white lines have been laid down, penalties created and enforced by policemen.

We are our own saboteurs. An alternative set of conventions is far less frightening than no conventions at all. It is the job of religion to give freedom with one hand and take it away with the other. People scoff at religion for this and other reasons, ignorant of their white knuckled grip on their own duality, even if that duality takes supposedly radical form.

Alternative lifestyles are no different. Like conventional religion, they threaten to deliver true and personal freedom, and advocates will tell you that they have been liberated, radically and philosophically differentiated, saved from the death of mediocrity, conformity and convention. But is that really true? Or is it just a variation of the same illusion, offering a different convention through which to define self, swapping one contrivance for another?

We are ever drawn to the religion within, the duality of liberation and dogma, along with the gimmicks and clichés that suggest validity. On one hand we play as radicals, on the other we look for proven mechanisms that enable us to function, wishing to be original yet adopting contrivances that are little more than iconoclastic shadows.

When Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free, is it dishonest to then add conditions? And people who hate convention will conform to a different convention for the sake of proving themselves different, for how can you define yourself as different without the gimmicks that others will recognize. Hence the duality.

People have to have gimmicks and cliches, needing a pattern to conform to and people to pass judgement on and be judged by. Liberation is immediately subverted at its point of origin. It is rare to find a truly unique individual, and even when you think you have found one you will soon learn that they are as much a slave to contrivances as anybody else. Many gurus are little more than a parody of themselves, living up to their own publicity, bathing in their own glow and believing in their own transcendence, and yet just as enslaved to their duality as anybody else. Far from free, the celebrity is caught within his or her own gimmick.

A part of the human condition is to define oneself in ways that will help us to go on breathing. Sometimes that means saying “I’m no different to anyone else,” and on other occasions, “I’m different from most people.” And a part of what defines us is the conventions we incorporate in our lives, whether they come from our formative years or are learned later.

But just how valid are these conventions? They provide a means to help us to go on breathing, so that makes them useful. Perhaps it is the duality of our lives that acts like the opposing forces in an engine, keeping us moving. Or perhaps these conventions and contrivances are the result of some genetic lack of imagination. Whatever the answer, we’re easily conned into believing that those/we who are unconventional are not slave to any convention.

In my own life I tossed it all out – all conventions, all cliches, all gimmicks, all contrivances. That lasted for about three seconds. It was then that I knew that in order to survive, even if just for now, I must accept, allow, even make friends with, a good many of those conventions that I was ready to dispose of. I search within for their replacements, knowing that I’ll be dancing with shadows.

Similarly, my ego says I will always reject such fabrications. But my ego has less of a voice today than it did yesterday. Ego is the conscious self. It’s the subconscious self that needs to be heard now. We are a complete person within, if only we would hear the other half of self - the animus and the anima. How often do we look for that other self in a partner rather than within? “You complete me,” says the person who projects rather than looks within.

So then, where is this truth that will liberate us? The subconscious self knows more than we give it credit for. Perhaps then our duality has more to do with the divorce between our conscious self and our subconscious self. Could it be that a marriage of the two within us will make us whole and set us free to love truly rather than projecting and maintaining a conflicting duality.

Within us there is male and female, dominant and submissive, eros and logos, the lover and the loved. Without a marriage of these dual parts of us, we will always be at their mercy as they compete for attention, judging each other, two halves in conflict, slave to ourselves yet projecting this on others and failing to relate and to be intimate. As long as our internal duality remains in divorce we will not be free, our loving will mirror our inability to love our whole selves and our attempts to be intimate will be thwarted by our inner lack of intimacy.

The truth that will set us free is located in the deep jungle of the soul, the ancient palace of the subconscious. We acknowledge the tip yet ignore the iceberg. The truth that will set us free is not external to us. It is truth. And it is entirely within us.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I find that even ego has multiple facets that could be called different personalities. It may be a way that the mind puts desires into silos, balancing raw desire with social rules and fears. So it is no great leap to realize that the subconscious mind is also comprised of multiple "people". I once had a dream where my subconscious mind drew me out into a trap of sorts where I had to face "the devil" I had always feared. A fascinating and very creative experience where I realized he was me and that I didn't need to fear me, but learn to know me and discover the many facets of what comprise my own self. 

 

Side note, better to add a bit of white space between your paragraphs. It makes reading more easy and less of a wall of text. I wrote a LOT when I first deconverted. It helped get my thoughts out. I even wrote an unpublished book, just get it off my chest and to solidify some concepts.