Seeing the Same Things Part2

So let's continue with my journey, in my atheist/agnostic days I prayed to God out of fear. I was funny enough afraid of demons, evil things. I had my own apartment when I was 18-19 years old, I worked nights  and I dreaded being alone when I got home. I had very little human companionship, I remember staying close to my wall because I heard noises from the apartment next door, it helped me feel I was with someone.  

I did not change much after that night that I prayed, I tried to keep in mind that I needed to follow God again but would never return to my fundamentalist past. I would be cautious this time, I would give him little parts of me, only as much that I could bear to let go of. He reached out for me though. During this time I came across the graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns". I remember browsing it and reading it straight through in one sitting, I was so engrossed by the story, it showed an old Bruce Wayne having his last hurrah, this man had courage, honor, and a sense of right but was shrewd and unorthodox. In fact his super power is his drive to put things right, to make right the wrong done to his parents. God speaks to us in our vernacular, at that time comics and action movies spoke to me and showed me what Good was like and that it is not, by any means, lame. Another good influence to me was I discovered U2, this was when they were still young and post-punk, right before they hit it big with the Joshua Tree. They were also intense and uncompromising.

These little things set my life on a different course, I tasted good apart from the church or religious setting. I received courage to face my lonely world and yearn for better things.

Seeing the Same Things Part 1

I read something last week that stuck to my mind, the gist of the comment or post (I forget what it was) was that it is no wonder that people who read the Bible can come up with totally different ideas as to what it is really saying.

I came from a fundamentalist Christian background and was taught to see the Bible as "God's Word" - this meant that it was God's only way of speaking to me at this day and age. If I could support my idea or action by a verse or passage then I was on solid ground, I was correct. As a person with OCD it was so easy for me to be confused about religion, about the demands that God is placing on me. This idea was good for me because it placed authority outside of me, meaning I could bypass all emotions and inner voices and look at a written book and say "Aha! This is the ultimate guide". But it had it's downside, it was only a short time before my view of God was colored by this idea of Him being holy, so holy that He could not tolerate me as I was, I had to be a certain person to be safe with Him. This person was someone always "winning souls", always reading theology, living for the church 24/7. In this mindset, I feared God and really wanted to be away from Him, I just behaved like this because it was the only way I could be safe. I remember it was a praiseworthy thing, in those days, to shout in the middle of your sermon because it showed passion for the Bible.

It is predictable enough that I did not last in this environment, I was in my teens and moved to the USA during this part of my life. The pressure of being 17 was so intense: my desire was to be accepted by my peers. I was also adjusting to a new country that was so different from my own, a dangerous place where I was practically lost. I gave up on it all eventually, the God I learned about was impossible to please in my situation and I said I no longer believed. I gave up on faith.

Funny enough, my life took off after this. My departure from religion brought about a new sense of freedom and this included freedom from the voices of my OCD. I became good at my job, confident, eager to overturn all ideas that people had of me. I was awesome! Except I was afraid when I was alone, correction, I was afraid that I was alone. It was probably an existential fear, if there is no God then I could only only rely on myself and my machinations to make it in this universe. And that was not really much to hold on to.

My fears eventually led me to a place where I asked God to help me. I somehow came to the end of myself and had to have something more, had to believe in something more, simply had to.

Dreams

We are often admonished to dream, to hope and work for something we really want that seems improbable at the current time. In my experience there is little mental energy and optimism to even conceive of a dream, the closest I can get to this is hoping and trusting that good things will come my way. It seems, in my life, that when I aggressively took action to achieve an outcome that I wanted I ended up in places where I did not belong and only caused me more pain. It sounds pathetic but maybe my way in life is to be passive, to trust the inner and outer guidance from above to lead me. Good thing just happen to me, when I plan and act to achieve what I want only harm comes my way.

First Post

This is my first post and I guess the first thing I should write about is to explain the name of my blog. I have lived with obsessive compulsive disorder for most of my life, it started in my teens and has been coming and going in my life for more than 30 years now. Since I had this disease, I can count with my fingers the times when I was clear and free from the hold of this disease. In those times I experienced what it was to really live, to have peace, to be whole. Sadly these times do not last long, sometimes they go for a few hours only. I wonder if my experience is the norm for most people, if I am missing out on what everyone is enjoying. My guess is that other things afflict us all and, like me, most if not all people have few moments of clarity and peace.