"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it"
Maybe you recognize this expression, maybe you don't. My eyes are open to it almost as if I had never heard it before, and yet I know I've read it countless times. It is God's injunction to Cain, his warning immediately before Cain kills his brother. The Old Testament Creator warns Cain in terms we all can understand, and yet do we ever pause to think about what this means in our own lives?
Perhaps I thought God was telling Cain about Satan, or the serpent, or some exterior force, warning Cain not to do what God knew he would do anyway. Let me be presumptious, I think God was talking about ego (and free will,) and I don't mean Freudian notions of ego; I think God is talking about our distorted projections of self--in fact the sin crouching at our doors is the very thing I've unsuccessfully wrestled with my entire life. In trying to do good, I again and again gave in to my opponent, my ego, my perverse view of who I am. Oh, I stood for this or that, but what I did and what I failed to do emanated from my failure to wrestle my darker angel, my opponent, my ego, myself.
When I embraced the notion of the "criminal under my own hat," I was trying to accept a judgment of myself that I heard from the outside. I knew that I was undertaking a journey, but I did not relaize that this journey would actually bring me within sight of a real self-awareness, or that the self-awareness would be so painful. Oh, I suspected the legal and disciplinary outcomes would be painful--but, that the genuine insight into who I am would cause me to flinch, Wow. I am shaken to my core. And as I look around, people that I reflexively dismissed as clueless and probabaly not worth the time of day, they turn out to be the ones that have the most insight. Who am I becoming? I'm scared, but give me time.
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As T Bone says, "Watch out for the trap door."
ReplyDeleteWe're with you, BL. You're doing fine. Run toward the roar, and remember that snot is love.
Thank you, snot is love!
ReplyDeleteProfessional titles, degrees, and accolades are easy to hide behind. When you emerge from behind them, it's scary...you feel naked. And embarrassed. And less. But after awhile, you feel liberated. (I should say "I feel." There I go again, universalizing.) But you know what I mean. I agree with your friend. You seem to be doing fine.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine was relating the OT story of Jacob and the angel, do you know this story? Jacob and his extended family, servants and livestock were migrating in the direction of his twin brother Esau who you might recall as the "red-haired" one.
ReplyDeleteJacob was the "grasping" one, and a bit of a pantload.
If you recall the story Jacob "cons" Esau out of his birthright, and then snookers him out of his dying father's "blessing." Nonetheless Jacob is blessed by the God, but as I was saying Jacob is coming upon Esau and he has a lot of reason to doubt how well this meeting with his brother is going to go, in fact it's fair to say he's scared shitless. Now on the night before the meet and greet Jacob is alone onn one bank of the river Jabbok (I know this all sounds like I'm a biblical scholar--I'm not.)
The Genesis story relates how as Jacob spends his anxious night separate from his family, he wrestles with a man (God, probably not, Jacob has met God....an angel) the Bible is not clear. The man who is in the image of man, can not get the better of Jacob in their wrestling match, and at daybreak the "angel" says let me go, but Jacob says he will not until the man tells him his name. The "angel" says "why do you ask my name?" whereupon Jacob releases him and let's him go.
Why does Jacob let the angel go with less than a satisfactory answer unless Jacob realized for himself the answer to his question making the "angel's" answer superfluous? Was not Jacob's opponent none other than Jacob himself? Jacob's ego and desire and distortions and temptations?
My dear friend Gayle and I were talking at her blog about the nature of desire and she has a further post about the canine imagery of the insults heaped on the tragic Jew, Shylock. I posted a comment the other day about how my friend, "the Pope" always contends that all law is commercial law, even when it pretends to be about divorce, or crime. Gayle wisely observed that underlying all of our acts giving rise to "law" on some level can be traced to desire or avarice some shade of commercial motive. In fact, let me go one step further and add that all the things I've done or failed to do in my professional and personal life that separate me are manifestations or distortions of my ego often nothing more than base desire.
We wrestle with what we can not name, because we fail to see clearly that we are wrestling our own ego and desire.
BL
Goddamn angels. Always pickin' fights. No names, please.
ReplyDeleteOkiedoke--
ReplyDeleteIt's the job of angels! Some religions believe that, that, one special angel picks the fight, and then secretly hopes we will resist and prevail. It's his special job.
BL
May you have strength, fortitude, and wisdom as you struggle with suffering.
ReplyDeleteAnon 12:06
ReplyDeleteThank you, but even "my suffering" is ego. Nonetheless I am grateful for your kind wish.
BL