Many Christian people don’t worship God, they worship the Bible. I assume the same is true of other sacred books such as the Koran, the Torah, and the Bagavhad Gita, although it wouldn’t HAVE to be this way. A particular set of circumstances have risen up in the US to bring about this result. But that’s another post, and one that would be really boring to most of my readers.
The point is that Christians are not to worship the Bible.
You are more like Dexter Morgan than you think.
In fact you are very, very much like Dexter, and like Walter White. They both have family that they care about, just like you. They both are struggling with who they are, just like you. They both are hiding something, just like you. They both fear that people will find out who they really are, just like you.
I said in my last post that in this one I would explore our true power. If you are just coming to my blog and have not read the two earlier posts in this series, please check them out before you read this one, because I am convinced that you will never understand your true power until you have come to grips with, and understood, the extent to which you are powerless. You will never embrace your true power until you know what it is — and what it isn’t.
Your true power lies in the only place — and I repeat, the ONLY place — that you have true control, true say, true influence: your own actions and attitudes. Yes, I have truly written two posts and part of a third one in order to give you the cliche, “You can only change yourself.” This cliche can never sound like anything but a cliche until you grasp how deeply, frighteningly true it is. But when you do the work of confronting your powerlessness, this is all you are left with, and it comes as a relief. “At least there’s something I can change!”
The good news is, this is what matters most. Imagine how your life would feel if you were unable to feel angry or anxious. Continue Reading…
In my previous post I tried to clearly show that the path to peace is to embrace powerlessness. I showed that we have very little power over most of the things we care most deeply about. The question is how do we actually embrace powerlessness? The answer is as common as it is profound: by acting powerless.
Gestalt Therapy uses a technique called “acting as if.” This is where the therapist tells the client to act as if he/she is already the person he/she wishes to be. If he struggles to speak to women, he should act for a while like men act who do not struggle to speak to women. If she struggles with confidence, she should act like women who have confidence. This is what is often called, “fake it ’til you make it.”
If what I wrote yesterday is true, and we actually are powerless over a great deal of our lives, then the sooner we embrace this the better. And the way we embrace powerlessness is by acting powerless. Continue Reading…
If you have not watched either Showtime’s Dexter, or AMC’s Breaking Bad, chances are pretty good you have been living in a hole, but I’ll begin with a quick summary. Dexter tells the story of Dexter Morgan, a handsome, charismatic blood spatter analyst who moonlights as a serial killer, killing only the guilty who were for various reasons never imprisoned. Breaking Bad is about a man named Walter White, diagnosed with terminal cancer, who begins cooking methamphetamine in order to be able to leave a small fortune behind for his family when he dies.
The objection many raise to these shows is that they, in some way, glorify evil by sympathetically portraying those who do evil things. Indeed one of the strange things about Dexter, at least, is that as a viewer you do quickly find yourself rooting for him. But is there anything wrong with that? What exactly are people afraid of?
Continue Reading…
