I’ve been contemplating, a lot, the idea of being whole. What does wholeness look like? If we think we’ve achieved it, we probably have not. Buddhists talk about Enlightenment- maybe that’s the idea of being whole? But the very idea of having an end goal and achieving it seems beside the point. To truly feel enlightened aren’t we supposed to recognize that we just keep going? If we reach our goals we shoot higher? We walk through fear- step out of our comfort zone?
I'm going to throw some ideas out there. Jesus suffered his whole life and his death was the ultimate suffering. He suffered so we allegedly wouldn’t have to, but I don’t think that was the moral of the story. I think if we look at his life and we see that he was just a man, divinely inspired, created, human, we can see that we are in fact just like him. Christians say Jesus died for our sins and that we are supposed to be Christ-like, but let’s break it down on why that’s sort of right, and also very wrong.
First of all if Jesus died for our sins then we should either be void of sin as if we are Adam and Eve before that bitch took the bite of that damn apple- I have a lot of thoughts on this. Why do we blame women for everything? Eve was not the enemy, the single cause of the downfall of humanity. Why are we so obsessed with this? We are allegedly lured into temptation and fall prey to it and then are blamed for the aftermath. We are the problem. There are fairytales and countless other literature that regurgitate this. We were tempted to take something that wasn’t ours to begin with or we were cast under a spell that coerced us to make a decision guided by lust and desire.
This is puts a lot of weight on one person. Eve is not our God, or our Devil. She is not that powerful. Also if she was perfect, void of sin, then why did she want to eat the allegedly forbidden fruit? Maybe she was just hungry. If she was tempted, that implies influence, a feeling of lack, the opposite of wholeness. She was always human. They were never immortal and perfect. Because if they were, there would have been no desire for more than what they already had.
Also why are the human bodies so shameful that we have to cover up? They were embarrassed, naked, ashamed? I thought we were created in the image of God. So shouldn’t our bodies be something to be worshiped? Admired? Yes, but conditionally. The concept that Adam and Eve felt ashamed of their bodies after eating the forbidden fruit so much so that they had to cover up is appalling. This perpetuates the narrative that bodies that are not covered up are sinful or too tempting. Tempting what? Giving in to our natural desire for human connection? How sinful! And how dare a woman be confident enough in her body that she wants to show it off.
Also it’s kind of fucked up to think that a perfect God would create a perfect world with perfect humans only to say you have free will but follow me without question and give up yourselves to me wholly. AND put something so perfect and beautiful in front of them, something more beautiful than they’d ever seen before, talk it up, and then say, “oh but this is just decoration, have fun with that.” God was putting Adam and Eve in a real life Marshmallow experiment, but not promising if they don’t eat it they will be rewarded tenfold, no, he just said here’s a marshmallow, it’s the best, most amazing thing you've ever tasted, but if you eat it you will die, and I’m just gonna dangle it right here and leave you to stare and wonder what if. That doesn’t sound like a loving God to me. That sounds like a controlling and maniacal God. We were set up for failure from the get go.
Also Adam had free will. He too could have chosen to not take a bite. Quit blaming her. Women are always the ones who get blamed. We shouldn’t dress a certain way because we are tempting the men. Why don’t the men take responsibility for their own damn selves? They too are not perfect. No one is. Not even Jesus.
I mean even Jesus was tempted. It’s preached that if we are tempted, it comes from the Devil, and if we are tempted to sin, whatever that means, we are disobeying God. If he was actually God in human form, he would never have had the temptation in the first place, or are we going to blame that on his tempter too? And what about him and Mary’s relationship? You know there was something going on there and the Bible just conveniently left that out.
What we don’t focus enough on is that Jesus said thank you before every miracle. He was divinely connected and inspired, one could even say enlightened, but he said thank you before he healed anyone. Who was he thanking? Because if he felt the need to thank, he was acknowledging that he was not doing it alone. He was just a human being tapping into the magic that all of us are capable of harnessing. I mean think about it, all the people before and after him that have performed miracles and created miracles in their own lives. Those people are not being called the sons and daughters of God. They are not God in the flesh. They are merely divinely inspired mortals carrying out actions that they believe will happen, therefore they thank the outcome in advance.
If we have free will and we choose to use it, the lesson we learn is that we are bad. The message is actually saying you are free to devote yourself wholly to God and no one else and if you don’t exercise your free will accordingly, you will be punished for all of eternity. Why even have free will if we never had a choice in the first place?
Free will is the Christian’s whole thing. Every single Christian or any other cult-like group starts with the idea of free will. That’s how they get you. You have a choice. No one is forcing you to be here. It’s a gaslighting tactic to make us feel like we are missing out or making the wrong choice if we leave. It’s manipulative and controlling and exactly why people get sucked in and feel like they have no way out. Because they can leave whenever they want right? Well not if you want to be on the wrong side of something great. That’s also a cult-like tactic. If someone preaches that they have all the answers or the the solution, that’s our cue to run. Run very far away.
So let's look at the definition of will. Expressing inevitable events. To decide, to bring about. To attempt to effect. To cause or try to cause something by using the power of your mind. Allowed to choose what we want. Conscious and deliberate action. All of these definitions have one thing in common. They all are based in self. We decide. So my interpretation of that is that left to our own devices we choose ourselves and what we desire, but if we are guided by something good, or some would call it the light- this I've come to realize is actually within us, not external- that's where we transcend above our egos and live real, meaningful, enlightened lives.
The truth is, we need to listen more closely to the voice within. Our minds and hearts always know our own truth. We know deep in our bones what is right for us. Let me repeat that, what is right for us. There is no one way to our so-called enlightenment and if someone is selling you that idea, they definitely don’t have it. The idea of wholeness has always been within us, not something to be obtained or achieved from external influences.
I mean Jesus was one of the original cult leaders. Yes there was a lot of good he did, but when he spoke he said he was the way, the truth, the life, or something jarring like that. I read a post recently on Billy Graham’s website (of course) that answered a question from a concerned friend. His friend said Jesus didn’t actually claim to be God but rather he was on a spiritual journey just like the rest of us and we can learn from his teachings to live ultimately live more spiritual lives. Billy quickly corrected this friend and said no. Jesus was not just a spiritual man living as an example for us to seek our own truth, but rather the only way to God and was actually, in fact, God himself. He goes on to say that Jesus was sent here to deliver us from Hell and Satan and that his enemies knew this so they put him on trial and killed him.
I want to know more about this friend. It sounds like he was pretty enlightened himself.
When you think about the idea of Holy Spirit, the Christian name for part three in the Holy Trinity, you have to wonder if they are being hypocritical. They use the term Holy Spirit so freely but if you say you’re on a spiritual journey, that’s code for you are not a Jesus follower. Turns out, spirit is not a religious term at all. In fact it’s the opposite. I figured I would look up the definition of it because I always like to dive in deep when I’m expanding on a subject.
There are lots of definitions of spirit- The non-physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character, aka the soul; A supernatural being or essence; The principle of conscious life (I love this one)
Looking at the last definition it makes me think the idea of spirit is much more fluid than evangelicals would like us to believe. To be conscious is to be awake. And to be awake you have to be able to think. Thinking is not to be trusted though.
So to be spiritual, one could argue that it’s a conscious journey towards enlightenment. An awakening. Basically open your fucking eyes and choose for yourself.
If we need to invite Jesus or the Holy Spirit into our lives or get saved or whatever that means, we are following a message that has been so warped and limiting, yet people insist it’s the only way. It’s like the worst game of telephone you’ve ever seen, only the person at the end swears what they heard is exactly the same as what it started with.
So what is the right thing? That’s the thing, what is right for one person is not always right for another. There’s a reason why they warned us about Groupthink when I was studying communication. There is research that suggests that it is nearly impossible to go against the grain when everyone else is doing one thing. There are accounts of horrific crimes being committed on busy streets and bystanders walk by and don’t help because no one else is helping either. Groupthink has this magnetic grip on us and everyone is guilty to some degree of following it.
The psychological phenomenon is the idea that conforming and the desire for harmony outweigh rational and result in dysfunctional decision-making. The power of it discourages creativity, and individual responsibility.
Follow the masses right? But isn’t there also a warning about the Anti-Christ in the Bible and people blindly following him? I went to a small Christian high school for the second half of my high school career and we were taught theology by this absolute batshit crazy guy who was so convicted in his beliefs it was terrifying. He talked a lot about End Times. Probably as a scare tactic aimed at making us so desperate we would get saved.
I remember him telling us about the idea of the Anti-Christ. He said we don’t know when Christ is coming back so the Devil is always prepared. Every generation since the beginning of time has one charismatic leader who has mass followers. By this definition so many people could be that. Because if the Devil is so good at swaying us, don’t you think it would be hard to tell who they actually were? Some people could say Hitler or Trump was. But you could also argue that Oprah or MLK or Taylor Swift are Anti-Christs. For the record I don’t think they are.
I’ve never been one to follow the status quo. My therapist says society does not support people like me. I’m a disrupter. I ask questions, I go against the grain and it makes others uncomfortable. People like conformists. It’s reassuring. It’s comfortable.
Now let’s address my second point- so Jesus died for our sins, but we are also supposed to live Christ-like lives. What does Christ-like even mean? Are we supposed to be miracle workers, martyrs, evangelists, sinless, willing to die for our beliefs? Or if we are basing Christ-like behavior on evangelical's strict belief that Jesus was the only way, does that look like being egotistical, narcissists?
Whether Jesus claimed to be God is debatable, but there is still plenty of scripture that states his self-proclaimed holiness. So, of course he had enemies. We have to remember that all these people writing the Bible were humans not named Jesus. They blindly followed him and claimed to be divinely inspired by his teachings so they wrote about them and their experiences. The problem is, when you have such convicted beliefs, it’s often difficult to be objective in your reporting. There are countless contradictions in the Bible, but it’s all just retelling of what allegedly happened. Memory is finite, and can’t always be trusted, and false memories are a very real thing that every human experiences. You know those disciples were chatting about their writings. So it brings into question whether they were recounting what actually happened or what they think happened. Maybe their memory is actually based on a story someone else told them.
So we base all this religious doctrine on questionable human accounts. Historians have not been able to prove any of the miracles. What we are left with is a man touting that he’s the Son of God. These religious groups then spin the narrative even further and in Jesus’ name spew hate and discrimination.
One thing we know for sure is that Jesus was kind and loving to all.
But what about the Devil? He was an angel right? Everything that is bad in the world is always blamed on Satan. He’s the perfect scapegoat for all our problems. How convenient. The problem, though, is that so many of the people pushing this agenda are fueled by hate. So does the Devil live within them? Or is the concept of good and evil really just bullshit. A UCLA professor by the name of Henry Ansgar Kelly argues that Satan’s basic intention is to uncover wrongdoing and treachery. He’s just misunderstood. He goes even further and says that Satan is part of God’s administration.
If Satan works for God and his job is to tempt us, then the joke is on us. By following God we are giving in to the idea of failure because, when tempted enough we are eventually going to crack. Kelly also describes him as the old guard authority figure committed to the status quo that objects to social change. Some of these ideas of change came from Jesus, hence the collision.
So in this scenario, Jesus is the disruptor with radical ideas and Satan is actively trying to keep him in line. The Attorney General of God he would say. That’s basically the exact opposite of what Christian doctrine is fundamentally rooted in. It makes you wonder if they would be the ones actually putting him on trial.
So let’s go back to the idea of wholeness. I think there’s a fine line between perfectionism and wholeness. Perfection is the illusion of wholeness. Perfection is being void of any faults, doing everything right. It sounds like perfection is wrapped up in what so many fundamentalist Christians interpret who Christ was, what Adam and Eve were before Applegate, and their benchmark for what the Jesus follower life really looks like.
But the illusion of perfection is as seductive as the apple. It’s a rabbit hole that has no bottom. Nothing can get you there and once you have “arrived” you’ll still need more.
The idea of wholeness is completeness in totality and wanting nothing. Not divided, not broken. The condition of being physically and mentally sound. Having been restored or healed.
All of these definitions are rooted in the idea of completion. But to live in harmony and feel complete in who we are, we can’t be wrapped up in what we don’t have. Pain will always be part of the human experience, it’s what we do with our pain that makes us truly whole. It’s easy to blame others, hide behind group ideologies, escape through drugs and alcohol or another person. But sitting in the pain. Soaking it all in. Feeling every feeling gives us our power to come back to our purest most beautiful selves.
I think our sinful nature is what makes us so beautiful as humans. Our messy, unfiltered selves. I think Eve was on to something. She saw something she wanted, someone told her you can’t have it and she said fuck it and took it anyway. I admire her bravery. She made a choice (free will) and it had backlash, but she chose anyway. She thought for herself. As humans we are born with big beautiful brains and if we use them accordingly we are going to make decisions that don’t always turn out the way we want them to. That’s what being human is. It’s trial and error until we slowly find who we want to be and what we want our life to be like.
Think about babies. They are the best example of humans who have yet to be tarnished by self-doubt and fear. They fall, they get back up, they fall again, they get back up and then they fall again. Eventually the falling becomes less and they learn how to walk. But they've also learned how to fall. They have no fear and are not embarrassed, because, unlike grown-ups, when they fall, we encourage them to get back up again. We become cheerleaders for their development. I’m not sure where the disconnect happens, but I’m guessing it’s around the time they start to form their sense of self.
Because when they start forming connections in their brains and begin to make sense of their world outside of the tiny one that’s in their line of site, they begin to understand free will and begin forging their true life path. Think about it. This is when kids start lying, they start pushing the limits. They test their parents to see how far they can get away with something. They are testing what is right and what is wrong. Not that that matters, turns out it’s all bullshit. But this development phase is so critical because they learn from the reactions they get. All babies want to be loved and receive the approval of their parents and society. When they get in trouble, babies cry. They learn not to repeat that thing because the consequences out way the pleasure.
This system is fucked up because this is how we learn to follow the rules. We learn that when we stray away from the comfort of what we know, bad things will happen. I think it’s exactly the opposite. I think as humans with magnificent brains, it’s our very life purpose to ask questions and critically think. Unlearn. If someone doesn’t approve of our behavior, let’s get to the root of why that is. Are they uncomfortable? Are they enforcing the invisible rules that we as a society collectively decided are the only ways to live and exist in this world? Think about it, nomads, entrepreneurs, women who leave their husbands- all are disruptors of what society deems acceptable behavior, but why is that? Why does everything have to be a one size fits all mold? We criticize people who are brave and take the road less travelled when they first start. If they fail we say, “told ya”. But if they succeed, we eat out words and praise them for their courage. Well sometimes.
Maybe the Devil is waiting for us to fall so he can bring justice in the name of God.
But just like the babies learning to walk, we need to give everyone, especially ourselves the room to fall. That’s how we learn to get back up and keep going. It’s through the discomfort that we find true joy because on the other side of fear is growth. The most incredible humans who have ever lived have one thing in common. They did hard things and they failed, but they kept going. Doing the easy thing is easy, but it makes for a boring story and an even more boring life. Why would anyone settle for mediocrity?
Well we settle because it’s hard not to. And we settle because, like babies, disappointing others is much more painful than pleasing them. Remember, to be tempted to stray from the expectations is to disobey. True freedom, however is when we stop asking others for their opinions and taking their directions. This is our life and we only get one of them. The most important thing to remember is we must never disobey ourselves. We need to stop having opinions about other people’s lives. They are allowed to think and act for themselves and so are we. Remember free will?
The idea of comfort is alleviating one from pain and constraint, or easing someone’s feelings of grief or distress. To be free from mental or physical suffering. We look for comfort externally. We want validation, sympathy, love, whatever will make us feel better.
Discomfort means to make someone feel uneasy, anxious or uncomfortable. Annoyance, minor pain. That’s fascinating. So when we feel discomfort it's because we are minorly inconvenienced by pain, a feeling or situation.
So in a nutshell we would rather seek comfort to avoid even the slightest pain, therefore derailing our ability to heal whatsoever. So the question becomes, if we want to heal and find wholeness, how much discomfort are we willing to endure? It’s up to us. We have free will after all.
I think it’s no coincidence that the word forbidden is so closely associated with sex. The idea of something taboo. The unknown.
Don’t do that it’s forbidden. Says who? Is the very idea of being forbidden rooted in keeping us comfortable and safe? God is protecting us from the darkness? He gave us free will but he really wants to intercept our pain when we fuck up.
I want to explore the unknown. The darkness. I am a seeker of knowledge. A sponge. A curious person. Those are all things that have gotten me in trouble my whole life. I’m learning to embrace this side of me though, and lean into it. Because the more I uncover, the bigger my world gets. We have an opportunity from the moment we take our first breath to be anything we want to be. Why would I squander that? I want to be known and seen. I want to feel alive. What I’m starting to understand is that all of this comes from within. I have to see myself. Define her and fight like hell to protect her. I don’t need a god or anyone else to save me.
Garden of a Thousand Buddhas
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