Venting
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From my youth up, I called my lord by the name Jesus.
There was a point on this path where I could no longer suffer what I felt was the endless self-sacrifice and repression of my nature. In my mind and heart, I rejected this very old inner friend, and beat the hell out of him. From there, I have walked on a long crazy journey investigating the gods and archetypes of Thelema.
But I miss my oldest inner friend desperately. Desperately.
Still, at the end of all my insane trials, I still believe like Paul Case wrote in True and Invisible. . .
I still believe that the eternal Logos performed a historic and specific task through the man Jesus. The more I study what it means to find one's Will and pour out one's cup, the more beauty I see in the man's life, death, and, yes, I believe, resurrection. But I make this demand of no one else, and I reject almost all of the theology that has arisen afterward.
I feel like I've been on a long journey, and now I want to go home - home where there are hearth-fires and laughter and love for one another. And it's broken and twisted, but it's spiritual family. And I desperately need spiritual family.
But mostly... perhaps entirely... I miss my oldest inner friend. I'm just in freaking tears over it. And I don't really know what to do.
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What I am about to say is very, very serious. I've been through it numerous times myself. It's just possible that I'm only talking about myself and my path, but I don't believe that at all - I've seen this provide an answer for so many people in just such a situation. - So, take it for what it's worth to you, but I wanted to set this up with a tone of "this is important."
How you know and experience God will change at each threshold of your inner growth. It is routine - routine! - that those who develop a genuine inner connection to Divinity will rise into its beauty for a time until they outgrow that particular projection. (And yes, the form of the object of devotion is a projection. Even if it's true, it's a projection, because we're talking about your relationship to it, not its actuality.)
The pattern becomes very familiar: Suddenly, after the fullness for some stretch of time, that particular mode of connecting dries up. It stops working. The heart implodes from the ache of the loss. One must persist... go on, alone... You will never again find THAT mode of connection in THAT way. Instead, you go on to something else - some higher, or deeper, or truer (or at least different!) way of relating to the Divine, one that is drawing you in circular movements in to your actual divine center where, eventually, you stand before... IT.
I've experienced this in every single Grade through which I've passed in A.'.A.'.. Before Adepthood, it was especially marked. After Adepthood, it took more of a form of an evolution in my way of relating to the Angel.
If the above doesn't serve you sufficiently, I encourage you to get and read St. John's Dark Night of the Soul. It should fit your paradigm well. The first two pages will bring you to tears right now. This book is really a work on bhakti yoga. To avoid misunderstanding it, note that the Dark Night he describes is only possible after one has established a direct, experiential relationship to the Divine. It is in the loss of that relationship that the heated, consuming heart-agony exists.
It's just another step along the way, something that will bring you closer to your Truth. You need to sacrifice a whole world of illusion to see it more truly.
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Thank you both.