When I was a child, I trusted myself.
I believed in the truth of my thoughts and my emotions. It was effortless - I never even questioned them.
At some point along the way, doubt crept in. I don’t remember why or how.
I was told different things - different ways to live and behave - and started to believe them.
My childhood dreams and visions became “fairytales”.
My ability to discern between right and wrong became “judgment” and “trauma responses”.
My creative expression became “Peter Pan Syndrome”.
They told me to follow them - into the pack, into the world. So I did.
They told me let go of those made-up stories of God and his Son. So I did.
They told me that science rules all, that I was meaningless at birth and will be meaningless at death. So I believed them.
It was not their fault - they knew not what they did.
Steadily, I grew in the their ways. I gave my innocence to the highest bidder.
I tried to do what’s right, but I had forgotten what that meant. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
I couldn’t recognize what I had become. The pleasures I sought became balls and chains and vicars of death.
Then, slowly, something began to move inside me. It was a light, dimly lit, that I kept buried and locked away.
I began to see the lies:
The lie of pleasure.
The lie of wealth.
The lie of status.
The lie of power.
The lie of Man.
The lie of “I”.
That light inside me burned brighter. It spoke to me, and it taught me the backwards motion.
It was then I became a man - the day I stopped growing up.
I found my truth once again, buried in the same place I left it years ago.
I remembered how to trust it. I remembered my visions, and I remembered how to discern between right and wrong.
That’s when I realized it was never mine to begin with.
It came from somewhere else, and existed long before me.
It was The Spirit.
The Holy Spirit.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful.
And kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created.
And you will renew the face of the earth.
Amen.