Spiritual transformation, part 2

by Bob Charnes

People perceive each other and behave towards each other in terms of how that other
person can be used to satisfy their need to defend against feeling their fears and
insecurities, guilt or shame. We all use people to shore up and fortify our outer shell, to
gain a feeling of security based on worldly pleasures and worldly attachments. This is not
love. This actually precludes and impedes love. This is selfishness. No matter how nice
and loving we may seem on the outside—the sole purpose of the interaction has at its root
the selfish desire to protect oneself from pain, hurt, weakness, fear, insecurity, guilt, or
shame. Often the unconscious intention is to appear loving and good, so as to gain
approval from the person or from God, or to compensate for or cover over and hide an
inner feeling of inadequacy. Here, again, the goal is to avoid appearing weak and needy,
and to ward off feelings of weakness or fear. Although it is right to appear loving and
good, if the motivation does not come from a felt realization and communion with the
transcendent realms, then it originates in the self, and it only veils the self from the
realms of grace.

There is a danger that measuring ourselves to a religious standard can reinforce feelings
of inadequacy, when we realize that we don’t or can’t live up to these ideals and
standards. Many of us have an inner critic that condemns us when we don’t live up to
ideals we have imposed on ourselves, especially from religious training. When we
haven’t experienced unconditional love and grace, when we don’t feel forgiven, we have
the tendency to see religious laws and ideals as judgmental and punitive, which reinforces
our original childhood wounds of feeling bad, wrong, guilty, and not good enough. Of
course on the outside, we show the idealized self-image, how we think we are supposed
to be. But inside there is shame, guilt, insecurity, and fear of punishment for not being
good enough. We do anything to cover up these feelings of worthlessness and shame. We
make it our life’s goal to ward off these seemingly life-destroying feelings. Who wants
their life to topple and collapse in front of them? So a sense of security and stability is
created through the outer life, so that one can remain stable and semi-peaceful, while
warding off the inner pain.

One of our biggest fears is public ridicule or humiliation. We definitely don’t want
someone or a group of people to make fun of us in public. This we defend against with
our very lives. For this alone we would spend our lives creating a mask, in order to not
have to feel the pain of a public mocking. Many adults were mistreated or ridiculed as
children by their classmates, peers, or even parents, and they carry the wounds of these
torments. As a coping mechanism, these adults can be seen occasionally attacking or
ridiculing others, as a way to compensate for the unhealed wounds and hurts they have
inside—as memories of our past hurts are carried within us.

When we allow ourselves to feel our pain and unhealed wounds, we will be forced to
attempt to heal them, and we will want to receive and feel the love we did not get as
children and do not receive in our daily lives. We hide these wounds because there is no
love in us which would heal the pain. So what else can we do in order to function through
the day? We cannot walk around emotionally bleeding around everyone, so we create
walls and defenses, and put a nice false self around the whole inner mess, and we go
about our business. That works as long as you keep warding off all your pain, and keep
manipulating your mind and your circumstances so as to not run into any bumps on the
road. Inevitably, we come up against the truth that this world and its struggles have an
eternal counterpart, a realm within which is sanctified from the changes and chances of
life. When we feel pain, the mature soul will crave the eternal, sanctified realm, and will
cry out to God for His presence and ask to be taken into His love. When we experience
His love, not only as an intellectual truth, but as a bodily-felt experience, there will
indeed be healing. The healing needs to go deep, so we need to feel and experience God's
love deeply. This occurs as a result of our own practice of accessing the parts of ourselves
which are normally hidden. When we bring to light these hidden 'demons', they become
exposed to the light of truth and awareness, and then we can bring God's remedy to these
'dark' aspects. You will see that the light will transmute this darkness, and without
repressing our feelings, we will change ourselves, and we will see a new creature--a
spiritual being--emerge within us. This being is created by God—but we allowed
ourselves to be transformed and we gave up our hidden aspects and brought them to His
threshold for transmutation and purification.