The Great experiment

I have been wanting to talk about today's subject for a while, because it's a subject I am passionate about, I feel one cannot fully explain this subject in one short blog post, however, today I have found a way to give you a brief insight into my journey towards discovering God. ( Holy shit did I just say discovering ‘God’? That's right, I did.)

'You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen -- the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives. I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.' - Kahil Gibran. 

 The walking wounded:
 That's how I feel sometimes, and that's how I often see humanity... walking and wounded. Ask most folk, ‘hey how are you feeling?' 'Fine they say, I'm fine’ - Walking wounded may I suggest.

 We are often so numb to the painful emotions deep within us that we do not even know that they are there, we do not even know that we are wounded, our pain thresholds are so high ! We are so desensitised to pain its incredible. Pain has become so 'normal', we actually believe that it is natural to feel pain, and that this is how things are supposed to be - 'that's just life' we say. You can't feel joy unless you feel pain right ? WRONG - that's the talk of the walking wounded ! ( I do believe that pain is a wonderful feedback system to let us know when we are not acting in harmony with Love. Pain lets us know where we need to correct ourselves and when. )

 I'm not suggesting that we can become pain free in an instant, that one great miracle from God will heal us over night with one little prayer - no, that's not what I'm suggesting. I am suggesting though that gradually, little by little, there is 'a way' to release all pain in our life for good ... granted it is a process. So what is this process that I am talking about ? And what are these wounds I keep going on about ? Sounds all a bit too depressing right ?

 Well, I have a little story for you which will hopefully illustrate to you just how high our pain thresholds are, and how holding onto them does not do us any favours.
  Imagine for a moment that you are being chased in the hot desert, running away from being attacked by a murderer in the vast sands. The adrenaline is running high, the sweat is pouring, the heart is pounding and nothing is going to stop you from getting away - NOTHING! because if you fall, you will be caught, and you will die, and so you desperately keep on running. Suddenly the murderer fires an arrow from the distance and it hits you in the left leg. You feel the pain and you falter, you stumble, you bleed, it hurts a lot, but you do not have time to stop and take the arrow out because the murderer will catch you up, and so you leave the arrow in, and you run away struggling with a limp. Not satisfied, the killer see's that you are still gaining considerable distance away from him, so he fires another arrow and it hits you in your right shoulder. You scream and feel the pain, blood splashes onto your shirt and you clutch onto the shoulder to ease the pain, you want to stop because it hurts, however the fear of being caught far outweighs the desire to stop and pull the arrow out, and so you eagerly carry on running, now with two arrows piercing your body. You are losing blood fast, but the adrenaline is now starting to numb the pain and you are running quite firm and strong. Fiercely, the attacker arches another arrow and aims for your other leg to take you out but he misses, and it whips into your right arm. This time, the pain is not so severe, you are already in too much pain from the other two shots to notice more suffering, so you just keep on running as if you have no injuries at all. The madman understands that if he fires more arrows into you, you will soon surely have to stop, and so he glides another arrow, and this time it spears into your back. Again, the pain is hardly noticed, its as if nothing has touched you. That's it, the killer has had enough and so fires one, two, three, four, five more arrows, all of which stab various parts of your body. Six, seven, eight more shots hit your legs, causing you to finally slow down. As the rain of arrows intensify, you progressively start to feel the pain once again and grunt in discomfort. Nine, ten, eleven more arrows are whizzed into your body, hitting major veins and arteries, blood is now oozing out of you, and with intense fear you try to get away. Confident, the cold killer smiles and aims carefully, he shoots another sharp silver arrow right through your back and into your heart ... and this is the final blow, it drops you to the floor instantly, but still no major pain. You look down at your chest and see the blood tipped arrow protruding from your chest. You look behind and see the killer is very close. He is running eagerly towards you to finish you off. By now, the fear is at its highest, you understand that you are about to do die, you fall to your knees in a pool of warm blood, eyes fixed at the killer as the fate of death is near. With nothing left to do and nowhere else to run, you open your arms and surrender. At last you stop ... your threshold has been broken, and you allow yourself to feel. In that moment of despair, heavily wounded, exasperated and covered in blood, you finally feel the full impact and severity of the pain that every arrow caused, these are the same arrows which only moments before you temporarily denied their total existence...and in your present pain you slowly mouth the words 'help me, somebody please help me'. - It's amazing the amount of pain we will put ourselves through before we ask for help.

 This 'asking for help' my dear friends is what I call 'prayer'. And the savior who comes to our rescue is what I call 'God'. The arrows fired into our body are what I call 'emotional injuries' to the soul. If the arrows are left in our body then we will surely bleed and feel pain. If emotional injuries are not felt and left in our soul to fester, we will surely suffer and feel pain - and this is what I call the 'walking wounded’.

 Do you ever wonder why most life threatening illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes,arthritis, dementia, brain injuries, organ failures and cancer ect do not develop as adults until we hit around Fifty to sixty years old and so on ? I believe this is because of years and years worth of denied emotional arrows that have been suppressed, such as grief, resentment, bitterness, anger, fear, rejection, lack of faith, demands, neediness, hate, disappointments, expectations and lack of love - IT'S TIME to pull out and feel those emotional arrows now so that they do not fester and cause you greater pain in your later years - because they will !

 If you would have told me years ago that one day I will believe in God, I would have absolutely disagreed with you. Not a cat in hells chance would I have accepted that notion. But slowly and surely, somehow ('somehow' meaning I desired to feel my emotional arrows) I started to believe that God just may exist, and so my experiments began !

I experiment most days if not everyday with my conversation / communication / relationship with God (my prayers). Some days I talk out loud or write out on paper "Hey God, I'm not feeling so happy today, what emotion am I avoiding ? " or  "Thank you for sending me that person today, they really helped me". Sometimes I might say "God I don't feel you really exist, how can I know that you do ?". Basically any question I have about anything, I take it to God. You can also experiment by not praying and not believing and see what happens then ? I use my life like a scientific experiment. I say yes to new things and experiences. I also reflect on the things that I have missed out on, and pray to have more courage next time to act quicker! The beauty of experimenting is that you embrace and open yourself up to life and all its possibilities and Gods great gifts ! ( learn more from my previous blog post - receiving love )
 " Let what I say sink deep into your memory and try the experiment. I know you do try, but try, and then try, and never cease trying. Love will come to you and with it faith, and then the knowledge, and then the ownership"- .taking from the 'padgett messages' given by Solomon. 20th April 1916 (wow, almost 100 years ago to the day)

 I will try now to grossly explain the stages and the process of how my own walking wounded self opened up to the existence to God. ( The steps below were the beginnings and foundation to my steps in prayer and faith) It went something like this -

1) I don't even know I have emotional wounds that cause me pain (physical, mental or emotional).
2) I start to become aware of patterns happening in my life that cause me pain, but I don't know what to do.
3) I start to become aware of patterns happening in my life that cause me pain, and I deny them, I shut my feelings down, I pretend they don't exist.
4) I start to become aware of patterns happening in my life that cause me pain, I learn denying my feelings no longer works as it's causing more suffering, so I try medication, therapy or use techniques and practices to try to change and stop the pain.
5) I start to become aware of patterns happening in my life that cause me pain and I realise that medication, therapy and techniques are a long process, they don't always work, and if they do, it's only temporary.
6) I start to think and contemplate that there must be another way to heal this pain ? (physically, mentally or emotionally.)
7) I try everything and nothing works and so in surrender I call out loud, 'please, if there is a God, please help me!'
8) If my calling was sincere, I start to feel a presence of this intense Love around me that wants to open my heart that I have never felt before. It starts to feel like these arrows of emotional injury are being slowly pulled out of me one by one with such a caring and compassionate hand, and it feels like I am being healed. The feeling that God may exist along with the feeling of being healed with Love is so overwhelming that it makes me cry, and with a deep sense of gratitude I cannot help but say thank you - Thank you. ( you cannot help but be deeply thankful when 'pain' has left your soul -growth has just occurred)
9) The more I feel, and the more I grieve, the more pain leaves my soul, and the more love pours in, and joy starts to stitch the lacerations of pain.
10) After feeling this grief through to the end, the pattern in my life which caused me pain no longer reappears -EVER. No further medication, techniques or practices are needed, because for the first time in my life 'I -feel -safe' - I lay down and feel safe in the hands of God. I feel that I am being taking care of and that everything is going to be ok ... everything is going to be ok.

 Unfortunately no amount of words I write can truly help you understand what I mean by receiving this thing called 'Gods love' for its something you have to experience, and so all I can urge you to do is 'try' and then try, and never cease trying. This clip shows perfectly in motion what I have written in words. Any questions, please ask.