A letter to God

I wrote this letter to God a couple of days ago in a moment of clarity after expressing some anger at God. I still feel very much like I'm at the bottom of a difficult mountain to climb, and unsure of who I am and how to proceed from here, but on re-reading it this morning I felt that there was enough truth in it (and enough fear of negative feedback!) for me to go ahead and post it.

14 April

Dear God,

As you well know, I've had a pretty crap last 24 hours, actually a pretty crap 2 ¾ years. But just now I'm feeling a bit more 'myself' or at least I hope it is me. It was suggested to me yesterday that since I was very small, since before I can remember, I've allowed assorted spirits to direct my life and that resulted in me feeling awful, very 'yuk' inside, and also very afraid, not knowing where to go from here.

Because I was wondering what was 'real me' and what was not, and feeling I'd been taken for quite a ride, studying for most of my life on behalf of some spirit, perhaps taking up all sorts of pastimes to satisfy someone else's addiction, denying my own feelings and in some unintentional way choosing to feel someone else's.

One thing I queried was my long-held view of you, which is both the punishing God of my early childhood and the loving-father God of my teens and beyond. I've not questioned why I might have two opposite versions of how I see you until now, but when I ask myself which God my very small self believes in there is no question in my mind that it is the punishing God. And I'm left wondering if in fact the other version is just what some spirits (and I) would like me to believe.

Why? Because when I see you as a loving tender parent I can be a lovable little girl who feels actually quite sad but knows her Father won't get angry or make her feel bad about herself.

And for a long time I've retreated to this position, telling myself I would learn to trust you and love you and in time I would feel your love for me too.

But I'm still waiting. It strikes me that I've been waiting all my life. My little boy age about two was once in the bedroom holding up a large poster that had started falling off the wall while he was playing, calling out to me to come so that the poster would not be damaged as it fell. But then I heard no more and, being preoccupied (with less important things!) I assumed the situation had sorted itself. However after several minutes I heard his undemanding gravelly voice calling out, 'I'm waiting and waiting' and hurried in to see him quietly holding up the poster as best he could. I still feel the pain of how he must have felt in there, wondering why his mummy would not come to help him. And I guess that is my pain, waiting for you to love me.

But I have learned to wrap this in a variety of covers: zoning out for much of my life, but over the last few years increasingly indulging in self-pity and self-blame etc and so now I notice that I spend a lot of my time feeling quite heavy, struggling to do what I feel I have been taught is the Right Thing.

And I feel sure this heavy feeling hasn't gone for good but this afternoon I thought maybe that the truth is that the Real Me is very angry at what I still believe is you as God-the-punisher and that the other view of you is perhaps only a borrowed idea, not my own really. So I set off to see if I could express some anger. Actually I only got as far as being angry that I 'had to' do this anger stuff, angry that again I was 'having' to do something I didn't want to do.

But I notice that my head is clear for now, and it feels quite a bit like I'm me again. Still with lots and lots of anger to get through I know, but not bogged down, and definitely not feeling like I want to sit on your lap and be your little girl – which is a surprisingly good feeling.

Because my sense is that I've been kidding myself into believing that you will only make me feel good. But now I see that that's impossible while there are painful truths about myself I have yet to acknowledge. It makes much more sense that the real you (who neither punishes nor helps us gloss over the truth) has arranged the universe in such a way that the more truthful I am about myself the more real I feel, the less 'heavy'.

So I guess I'm just warning you that I want to get stuck into this feeling of anger I have at you - and at the world. I haven't wanted to pay it attention until now, judging myself for not being a 'good little girl', but at the moment I see it as the 'truth' I hold that you've been waiting for me to offload. And while I stay with this goal I have a feeling that I may not feel particularly loved by you but I will feel much more myself and clear-headed than I've been for a while now.

I will be asking for your help to be angry at you! And I hope to remember that waiting to feel your love for me while I deny the truth of how I really feel is not somewhere I want to return to.

Love

Karen

Self-pity versus self-love

This is an excerpt of a letter to a friend; I thought I'd put it out there in case anyone else is in the same boat and the spirit message is helpful to them too:

"I visited a friend who's been into psychodrama the other day because she was happy to do it with me.  So there we were, her telling me to choose a time when I was little and set the scene.  It was play-stuff and easy for me to get in to (would you believe that inside this cool calm exterior has always been someone who likes playing pretend games with little kids!).  Anyway I randomly chose the age of three and constructed this scene of me being outside (where I felt safe from people) and the rest of the family all inside this rather dark house.  I didn't see anything wrong with that but Mary raised her eyebrows a bit!  Anyway on we went and the story developed into my losing my dolly Elisabeth and how I felt.  I've been there before and know there's still stuff around that, but since then I've been thinking more of asking the little girl in me how she feels at different times of the day, which is quite interesting and surprising.  Makes me realise how much I override acting on how I'm feeling with my 'need' to do something I think I want to do but which is partly, if not wholly, driven by my fear of what judgement, or some variation on that theme.

I was writing in the book that I use for imagining dialogues with spirits, wanting to clarify this sudden feeling I had that perhaps my difficulty feeling remorse was related to my choosing not to love myself, somehow that this not-feeling how I really feel also makes it harder for me to feel how others feel.  This is what came back:

When you have these thoughts, be aware that we are trying to guide you with messages, pictures, memories etc and also that your own filters of damage and your allowance of unhelpful spirit influence will affect the purity of what you receive.  So look carefully at what you believe is being conveyed and examine it for evidence of love and truth - or otherwise.  So in the example above, where it is true that you have little love for yourself, little feeling of connection with 'little Karen' as was shown so clearly yesterday with Mary and Hugh, you also know that you very easily fall into the error of self-pity. 

Loving yourself is very far from pitying yourself.  Loving yourself is all about allowing yourself to feel.  Spirits around you are very focussed on your not doing this and constant prayer to God, sincere prayer where you want to embark on feeling the feelings you had as a small child, is needed to lessen the spirit influence.

Once you are able to connect to your own very suppressed childhood pain you will have less difficulty in feeling remorse for your own children.  Pray for help to feel anything at all, connect to feeling rather than hardening to it, and know that your childhood fears and pain etc are being activated.  Do this without self-pity; do not rush to comfort the little child in you, or to shame her with thoughts of disapproval and self-ridicule, but embrace her as she opens to her pain, as God does to you.

When I want guidance 'from above' all I do is imagine what they might be saying to me, and generally the conversation starts taking a bit of a life of its own.  At the time it feels just like I'm talking to myself but usually when I re-read it there is much that I find very helpful.  So, I'm not for a moment suggesting that this is a 'pure' message and if it doesn't feel right to you, let that be your guide.  And let me know if you want to!