A free verse poem about what it’s like in the mind of someone living with, well… All the above.
Author: Heidi Rachael Pieterse
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ADDICTION
An acrostic poem
Are we truly free?
Do we know who we should be?
Does living mean surrender to captivity?
Is trauma our own?
Can we suffer it alone?
There's a demon that needs feeding.
Internally, it's breeding. BUT...
Once our eyes are clear
K(No)w that destiny is near. -
Behold the fruit
Free verse
We scramble
And fumble the fires we light.
We quench our thirst
With sand.
We do not seek
Anything that is not pleasing to the flesh
We feed our hunger
With smog.
We lie
First to others and then to ourselves.
We soil our souls
In shit.
We say "not now"
To the unspoken voice
sent to guide us home.
Behold the fruit to know the tree that birthed it -
Reflections
My first visit to Dzaleka refugee camp.
My first experience of the camp is as vivid today as it was all those years ago.
It was November, 2022. We ( 2 girl friends and I…) took a little day trip to attend an arts and culture festival being held within camp grounds.
Tumaini festival was founded in 2014 by refugee poet and activist Menes Le Plume. The only one of it’s kind in the world, it has become an annual must do for the who’s who of the local and NGO expat community in Malawi. VISIT TUMAINI WEBSITE to learn more about this amazing initiative.
Upon arrival my senses found themselves assailed by a myriad of jarring and not all together pleasant stimuli. The parking grounds baked beneath African summer’s sun. Not a single tree to break it’s relentless onslaught.
Driving slowly, we sought out a space amongst hundreds of poorly parked vehicles. Dust followed in our wake, speaking to the desolation of the land.
Not much would grow here.
Fresh out of South Africa and still rather partial to 1st world living, I was ever ready to thumb my nose at any experience that did not meet the standards of the first world privileged lifestyle to which I had become accustomed.
Upon entering the camp, pampered nose firmly thumbed, I observed (with not a little distaste…) the sad scene that welcomed us.
Shabby shelters are thrown together from whatever is at hand: tarpaulin, old timber, stitched fabric…all patched into a fragile shade against the harsh open sky.
A scene of temporary economy, built on top of heat and dust and improvisation.
First, the arts and crafts stalls. Beautifully crafted local wares hidden within the crowded confines of small lean to structures built hastily out of whatever materials were available to camp residents at the time.
Next, the food and drink stalls.
Rows of tables form a kind of commercial corridor. Drinks deliberately displayed, local alongside imports. The blue cooler boxes holding reserve beers at a less than bath water temperature are visible behind the bare steel tables.
Then the food… Hand forged iron rounds atop a wood or gas fueled furnace. Multiple food stalls selling the exact same thing…chapati in all her (admittedly delicious) glory. Chapati and eggs. Chapati and salad. Chapati and chips.
Some food vendors boast seating areas for their guests, dusty crooked canvases beneath which rest plastic chairs and make-shift tables in varying stages of disrepair.
We choose a chapati stall with one such seating area and make ourselves as comfortable as we can.
Only once we’ve begun to eat do I notice the children. There are about 15 of them, circling us. Keeping a respectful distance at first but then mover closer as they notice me noticing them.
Their clothing is torn and baggy and they are all barefoot, ember legs powdered red with dust.
My first instinct is to be annoyed, but then my conscience/God/holy spirit pipes up from beyond the ego…” look at them. They are hungry. They are starving. They are CHILDREN…”
Job well done, oh ever prodding conscience of mine.
Now I am REALLY looking at them, some of them are the same age as my children. I force myself to imagine my 6 year old boys here, amongst these children… circling tourists like destitute vultures, barefoot and dirty, hoping for scraps of food.
This is is a nifty little psychological trick I stumbled across that helps cultivate empathy. I discovered that (or rather, it has been SHOWN to me. God using various life experiences to teach me this non-negotiable aspect of humanity. ) taking examples from my own life and superimposing them onto reality, results in empathy for an unknown person suffering a life experience that is foreign to me. I cannot speak for others, but in order for me to truly feel compassion and sympathy for another, I must first have suffered a similar thing myself.
I digress…back on topic.
And now my heart is aching for them.
“I cannot eat this food while all these starving children are watching. “
I call them closer, begin rationing out my chips. The story of Jesus multiplying bread and fish springs to mind. “I wonder if God will work a miracle here today…” is what’s going through my mind as the number of children queuing for chips grows.
Before the chips on my plate have had a chance to run out, the chapati chefs are upon us.
Grown women and men chasing children, with sticks. Like they’re rabid dogs.
I get angry. I yell at them to stop. They don’t. I am a mzungu and I don’t understand the way that things work here.
Once the chaos has settled, I am approached by 2 azunga human aid workers who are based in the camp.
“We appreciate that you felt moved to help the kids…but there are better ways to do it. “
I couldn’t have known then, that a simple offer of food can quickly turn dangerous in a place where there is a consistent scarcity of it. I wanted to help but I’d acted in ignorance.
This was the first of many humbling lessons I have learned.
“So what CAN I do to help?” I later asked Angela, who’d watched all the drama from the sidelines, calm where I had been frantic, knowing where I had been ignorant.
“Well…” her characteristic pause. ” We could come back here next week, do a survey with the schools, maybe they’d benefit from a school feeding programme.”
And that is exactly what we did.
The following week, Angela and I drove the 45 minutes or so to the camp, this time we’d venture deep into the settlement, seeking out schools.
Turns out, most established schools already have a feeding programme, so there wasn’t much we could do to help there.
What we did find, by speaking to the heads of various schools, was that there were not enough schools to accommodate the 20+thousand children that now call Dzaleka their home. Not enough by half, was their estimate.
And sooooooo…..
Home schooling for hope was born
The concept was simple but the impact would be huge : We’d supply parents who’s kids had no place in school, with learning materials and a syllabus and THEY would teach their children, at home.
It was the perfect solution!
We could get things up and running immediately, no waiting around for a school to be built. There would be relatively low overhead costs: basic stationary, workbooks, shared reading books and art supplies.
We’d utilize the Perivoli teacher training approach, designed specifically for low resource settings. We planned to host bi monthly meetings with the community parents to discuss their weekly teaching goals, get feed back…set up some sort of evaluation system so that we could assess where each child sat in terms of current learning level and progress…etc etc.
We had it allll planned out.
We would single handedly save the unschooled masses of Dzaleka!! HOORAH!
And then. Reality.
At the very first meeting, we met with 100 parents, 150 children varying in age from infancy to teenage-hood in tow. We all gathered in a hall big enough to accommodate… maybe 50?
No chairs. No tables. No lighting or even proper flooring. We sat together on cold concrete, babies on laps, toddlers running amok.
We did not speak or understand eachothers languages. (Lucky for us Dontien is an excellent linguist, fluent in many languages, and he acted as translator for us)
The parents understood the concept. They were enthusiastic about the and totally on board.
Yes! this was going to work!
Until…
“We cannot read or write ourselves.”
*Um. Slight snag.*
I found myself once again, blindsided by my own ignorance.
Turns out…NONE of the 100 parents present, could read or write.
And that’s how “homeshooling for hope” morphed into “adult illiteracy and home schooling.
(For hope. Maybe. One day there might be hope. Right now there is confusion and despondency. I’m not crying you’re crying!)
Moving swiftly along…
Adult illiteracy AND home schooling proved too large a task for me to manage. After a few months, I am sorry (and not slightly ashamed) to say that the project ran out of steam.
Dontien picked up the torch where I had dropped it, and his team of teachers have managed to keep some semblance of the project going all these years.
One other good did come out of our efforts. The Dzaleka christmas toy drive would never have happened if I hadn’t climbed out of my comfort zone in an (albeit misguided) effort to help another human being.
Every Christmas for the past 3 years, we have raised funds to buy Christmas presents for those 150 kids. It was the very least I could do.
If you are able to help out with the toy drive, please click here.
Writing this post has, if nothing else, been cathartic for me. I’ve carried a lot of shame with me all these years, around my ignorance…
and because I couldn’t make that project work. Writing this has helped me see that although yes, I was ignorant…I was also willing to learn. I was willing to let myself be humbled. I TRIED to make something work, I tried to serve. I haven’t stopped trying. Maybe one day my efforts will solidify into something consistent and sustainable.
I do know that, without the lessons that experience taught me, I’d most likely still be that pampered prejudice princess.
So basically, a transformative experience. And I’ve only just realized it.
Thank you for taking the time to read.
If you feel moved to donate to the cause, please follow this link.
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Yoga no more?
Everything (well…not quiet everything) I thought that I KNEW, might after all…be wrong. Or partially true. True to a point and perspective.
Yoga woke me up and gave me power. But were those powers in my best interest? It’s all relative.
Maybe, what worked yesterday will not work tomorrow. I am developing a new spiritual practice and this time I am utilizing the teachings of Jesus and some Christian theology.
Yoga was the catalyst.
Allow me to share my story.
My yoga journey began on a bathroom floor.
8 years ago, I was employed as a plant operator on a new build pumped storage power station. Good pay and benefits. 8 hour shifts. A good stable job. Employment for which many would be grateful.
But I was suffocating.
I was a rat trapped in a cage. Was this going to be my life? Stuck in small town South Africa, living just down the road from my childhood home and all the unsorted trauma baggage that came with it.
A slave to employment and security. Completely miserable in my existence but too afraid to take steps to free myself. Too depressed to imagine that I deserved anything more than this life I’d stumbled into, blindly, lazily . On autopilot.
I didn’t care about my work and I was a terrible employee.
Which is why, without an ounce of guilt.. I’d sneak off to the ladies bathroom to practice yoga whenever I had the chance.
At first, I practiced purely for the physical gains. Vanity driven by low self esteem. (2 sides of the same coin? A topic for another day?) *
For most of my teenage years and early adult life, I’d suffered from food addiction and struggled to maintain a healthy( astetically appealing) weight.
(thanks, in large part, to my mother, who suffers from food addiction herself...and my sister…and my mothers mother…my aunts my friends my female cousins. Coincidence? I think not. *Emulating the collective: What’s yours (addiction) is mine*
To compensate for my unhealthy attachment to food, I threw myself at a lifestyle of intense exercise, hyper fixating on one fitness fad after the next, desperate to find that magical key that would open the door to a firm, slender figure.
I was vain back then, unconsciously so. My self worth based solely on appearance.
(A fate met by many an abused girl, our self esteem diminished in a conservative patriarchal society that places all emphasis on beauty and none on intellect.)
Of course, this approach yielded disappointing results(because no amount of exercise can compensate for excessive food intake…hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?)
Also, I was damaging my body and my psyche with the intensity of the exercise which I was forcing upon myself.
There came a time when I was no longer able to lie to myself. This extreme amount of effort was yielding virtually no results, and I was still a slave to my food addiction.
Enter Yoga
I approached Yoga, initially, in much the same way. From a yang mindset. Push, sweat, suffer…”Sweat is your fat crying!” (Jillian Michaels provided my workout mantra…)
But it didn’t take long for the shift to begin, such is the power of Yoga.
My wonderful You-tube yoga teachers would sprinkle some Yogic wisdom into their asana based classes.
50% Stirha, 50% Sukha” (50% effort, 50% ease…)
This was the first message (delivered by Lesley Fightmaster, may her kind and brightly shining soul rest in peace) that I absorbed and integrated (begrudgingly) into my practice.
I was astounded by the results.
In a very short space of time, (with half the effort..) I began to see evidence of this wisdom for myself.
Their philosophy was correct.
No amount of crunches or weight lifting yielded the results that an hour of gentle, mindful yoga did. Later, I’d reduce practice time to 30minutes and still see the same results. I was getting stronger, I was losing weight, and the irony of it all…I didn’t even care any more.
Because a far more significant shift was taking place, inside of my mind.
My Self awareness began to expand and I could suddenly see, the why of my food addiction, from whence it had come… and once I understood this, it lost it’s power over me.
The weight dropped off effortlessly and 8 years later ( at the age of 35, after having twin boys…) it is STILL effortless to maintain a health weight.
It’s crazy how for me, it’s not even a THING anymore. But if I take the time to reflect, let my heart travel back in time with me… it remembers how very HARD it was, to live in a body that you knew wasn’t what is should be. Not due to natural selection or tragedy or happenstance…but because of YOU. You and your bad habits and food addiction.
To be free of food addiction is liberation for the soul as much as it is for the physique.
With this new Self awareness came a deeper understanding of the why of Me.
The weight issues were a symptom of a much larger underlying issue that I hadn’t even known was there….CPTSD. Childhood trauma.
From here it cascaded… my healing journey had begun. I made the decision to respect my soul…
And turns out, my soul hated the life I had chosen for us.
Yoga gave me the insight and the strength to ask for more for myself.
Most importantly, it opened my eyes and pointed the way to God. A God I’d run from but who had never left my heart.
It would be a poetic end to say that it was solely this expanded self awareness that led to a better way of life for me, and I suppose in small ways it did…
I was able to admit to myself that the shift work was having severe impact on my already shaky mental health. I advocated for myself, and my manager was kind enough to honor my needs.
But ultimately, it was God who provided the means for me to leave that soul destroying job I loathed and was not at all competent at.
Through a set of providential circumstances (more on that in another post…*God’s hands*)I was able to quit my job, and left that small town to move to an also rather small but not LADYSMITH small…and wonderfully international) 3rd world city.
Here in Lilongwe, capital of Malawi ,I studied yoga, and so began a 7 year long intensive yogic spiritual journey that did exactly what it said it would…expand my consciousness. BUT. It did some other not so good things too… this will ALSO (you guessed it…) be a topic for another post.(*YOGA: The good, the bad and the demons*)
Some Christians say that Yoga is evil, but look at what it has given me…
Freedom, Self awareness, direction and connection to God.
Anything that can do all this for you, cannot be totally evil my friends. (*Nuggets of truth…*)
I have partaken in powerful practices ignorantly, and maybe they brought about some mental/spiritual harm…but I believe the impact of that harm is far outweighed by the impact of the benefits.
Yoga may not be THE path to God, but for me, it was a path leading towards that path.
I will be forever grateful.
Namaste, in nomine patris et filli et spiritus sancti.
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Who is God to me?
Only a few weeks before, I’d been a devout Yogi, with daily spiritual practice of Qi qong and taoist centred meditations. I thought I’d find God in these practices alone, for seven years I’d pursued them with an obsessiveness that only an autistic can.
Then came the 2 weeks from hell. ( or perhaps… from God?) A little more than 14 days of zero relief from the barrage of things that can and often do go wrong when you live in a 3rd world country.
I was nearly mugged, 200m from my house. (My spidey senses saved me, but the incident really shook me and shattered the naïve sense of safety I’d carried around since leaving South Africa for Malawi, 7 years prior)
A transformer blew up near our house and our whole neighborhood was without power for nearly a week.
My boys and I contracted malaria and alongside a co-occuring parasite , leading to countless blood tests and treatment protocols, none of which really worked till 3 weeks in.
Malaria is extremely dangerous in children under the age of 5. My boys are 4 years old. They take a daily dose of prophylaxsis, but over the course of the 6 months wet season, I’d missed one or 2 doses. ( my frantic and not often fully present Autistic and ADD brain to blame…)
So on top of the stress, I carried a heavy burden of guilt, shame and frustration.
Misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment protocols are, unfortunately, pretty commonplace here. I did not know who’s opinion to trust, and my BPD/CPTSD mind is given to catastrophizing…I was convinced that the were going to die because they hadn’t received correct treatment and I would have to fight to save them.
My little boys needed blood test after blood test…some clinics insisted on drawing from the vein. This experience was traumatic for them, by the end of it they were pretending to be healthy so as to avoid seeing another doctor.
It was a real trial for me as well, and I was losing the fight against my triggers. Being an autistic mother who is very sensitive to sound in general and the sound of her children’s screams in particular, not to mention the stress and frustration of it all…I was having meltdown after meltdown (ie: autistic overwhelm.)
Eckhartte Tolle speaks about the pain body. When it is activated, your sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive and your thoughts and emotions are impaired and compromised. In someone with Autism, CPTSD and BPD, the pain body is intense and will often lead to autistic overwhelm and meltdowns, which can be a very scary thing. (and this is why it is my life’s mission to heal my brain, so that my children are not impacted by my trauma as I was by my father and mothers trauma.)
And then… the straw that broke the camels back…
I got a bad haircut.
Like, a really bad haircut.
People can be, and many often are…assholes. Before anyone tells you to not care about what people are saying about you (and your bad haircut)think about this…
We DO impact each other. Not only our actions or the words that we speak but also our thoughts and feeling’s towards each other. Autistic people are super sensitive to all kinds of energies. Which is why I have zero self esteem and have sufferred most of my life with debilitating depression. Instead of denying the impact we have on one another, would it not be better to ask that we start being kinder, to each other, to ourselves? Just a thought. I digress…back on topic.
At this point my mind was in full catastrophizing mode. My pain body constantly activated and my heart closed. I had no patience, kindness or time for my children. I hated myself and my mind and the body that assailed me with the unbearable sensations of heightened anxiety and dread.
And then a thought came to me.
(Actually, this same thought had been coming for awhile…a few months…whenever I was in the grips of a powerful BPD episode the voice would come…)
And the voice said…
“This is not only trauma. This in NOT only mental illness. This is a demon.”
I’d dismissed this voice before, but the time had come where I was desperate enough to heed it.
So I googled “demonic possession”. The article which caught my eye resonated with me, was surprisingly scientific and practical. It spoke of demons and “infestation” (guys i know how nuts this sounds but bare with me..)in terms that I could understand from a psychological perspective.
My next step was to you search tube for a prayer, to “release myself from the grips of demons.” I was still dubious and slightly embarrassed at this point, but like I said… desperation drove me.
For 15 minutes straight, I prayed to a God I’d shunned and laughed at, repeating the words of the prayer along with the you-tube bot, letting my mind focus only on the words and their meaning, pleading for relief from my “demons”
And the relief was immediate. A peace settled on me that I cannot remember every feeling. I carried this peace with me for the next few days.
I was still in my time of trial, things were still going wrong, we were all still ill and my book launch was coming up and technology was failing me…but I had peace. For the first time in my life, probably.
So now I believe in demons and “open doors”. I believe that I have been wrong about many things. I am not ready to shun yoga and maybe I don’t have to, but I do see now that I can no longer enter into any spiritual practice lightly.
Yoga gives power, it is undeniable. But nowhere in all my years of practice did any teacher, article. book or scripture mention demons or how important it is to protect your mind and body from their influence.
There is alot more to know. I continue to pray for direction and correction when and where needed.
This is the end of this post but not of my story…God lives rent free inside my mind and you’ll find many of my posts centre around him, follow the link below for more or check out the posts under the category “philosophy/spirituality”
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The journey to a more conscious me
DEATH TO VANITY & THE SPARK OF SELF AWARENESS
My apologies for the time between posts.
I was away from home for 3 weeks to attend the wedding of my baby(not so baby anymore apparently) brother and his surpassingly lovely wife.
Sigh.. .to be young and beautiful. ( I’m not bitter… Can you tell?) ( this is me doing sarcasm. Is it working?)
The loss of a woman’s beauty comes as a deep, cutting pain.
Many women ( and not only women..) subject themselves to all sorts of crazy protocols and procedures to avoid feeling the pain of this loss for as long as they possibly can.
Others accept the loss with grace, and how I envy them their freedom from vanity.
I would DEFINITELY have fallen into the former category…if I’d been living in a country with access to affordable anti aging treatments/cosmetic surgery I’d have been ALLLL over that.
As fate would have it I find myself here, in a 3rd world country, where only the very wealthy are afforded the luxury of more time with their beauty.
So I watch mine wither and fade and with it the attention and respect of men, and even women…and I wonder…how many more ways are there for the damned ego to create suffering?
And in my darker moments I wonder… Is God a sadist?
And then I apologise because no… Of course God is not a sadist.
Humans made the world the way that it is. God made us, and let us do our thang…and now we worship beauty in place of God.
Ironic? Perhaps not. Perhaps we seek God through beauty? A post for another day.
I digress.
I’ll pick up where I left off in my previous post.
“What even IS expansion of consciousness?”
I edited this post quiet heavily so if you’ve read it before and weren’t really resonating, maybe give this newer version another go.
Today’s post gives practical examples of what an expansion of consciousness can look like, in real life.
More specifically, what an expansion of consciousness looks like in MY life.
I had my first big change in perspective, leading to a big shift in perception (which is synonomous with expansion of consciousness. You cannot expand your mind if your perception stays the same….) at a pretty young age.
I was, 10 or 11 years old.
I didn’t recognize it then for what it was: The stirring of Self awareness (and consequently an awakening to consciousness) but that is what it was.
I’m going to tell you a story, a chain of violent events that became the catalyst for Self awareness to spring into perception.
With this new level of awareness, I was able to perceive myself for the first time, as both ego and other(which I now think of as my true Self) .
It all started with me, straddling my then 6 year old brother, hands wrapped around his throat, strangling him in a fit of rage.
I was a child given to violence, with a short temper. Quick to anger, quick to lash out with hurtful words and hands.
I was a bully, too. Mostly to my younger sister, but also sometimes towards Kyle, my junior by 6 years and the last and only born son.
*I don’t remember what started the fight. All I remember is experiencing a sort of rage induced black out… finding myself straddling him, hands around his throat.
He struggled for breathe and turned a frightening shade of pink.
I’m going to tell you something now, that only a handful of people know. It is a difficult thing to share, but I’m feeling like it should be shared.
Before I tell you, I would like to ask that you try and not judge me too harshly. You do not understand the circumstances of my upbringing. Young Heidi was violent because she was raised in violence.
God saved me from that narrative, he freed me of that particular evil, and salvation came in the form of self awareness, beginning on this day.
Back to our story.
Kyle was turning pink. There was adrenalin, and then fear… but also something else.
A split took place inside of me and I perceived it from afar… As conscious awareness. One part of me was horrified at what I was doing, of what I was capable of.
And the other part felt EXCITEMENT. At his pain, at his suffering. At it’s power.
The realization of this Evil inside of me scared me more than anything ever had before, or has since.
And then, in that moment of realization I chose to become the first part of me, the higher version, the Self.
I released him….and prayed to God to release me from that darkness. I swore to never again give reign to it… That thing inside of me that I am now convinced was a demon.
Not of God, not of Me….
Passed on through generational trauma (which is one of the ways in which demons move about.)
I conquered a demon that day, though I didn’t know it at the time, and something even more significant happened as a result…
Self awareness had begun to blossom within me.
After this incident, I began to change for the better, using my newly cultivated Self awareness and force of will, I made a practice of watching my hurtful words and my quick temper. I’d even set challenges for myself.
Today I will not belittle my little sister… Today I will challenge my dark mood/my impatience.
It took a little while, but eventually I weaned myself from inflicting cruelty, large or small.
And today no one who knows me would say I was ever capable of so violent an act.
This awakening of Self awareness was in itself, an expansion of consciousness. Suddenly I was capable of perceiving more, the separate segments of myself, and also more of the nature of reality.
Now there were 3 parts of me where there’d only been 1 before.
Ego. Self. And Awareness.
I used this expansion of consciousness to create a better version of myself. The version of myself that the Other(my true Self) wanted me to be.
And this is the lesson I took away from that experience:
. No man or woman is evil, but we can be possessed of evil.
. Evil can only be carried out by someone in a state of unconsciousness. ( slumber, Christians call this the spiritual death)
This is what Jesus meant when he said “forgive them, for they know not what they do”
For those of who you find the seriousness of the bible unpalatable, here is a scientific perspective on the matter:
The birth of self awareness is a disengaging of ego autopilot.
My auto pilot was disengaged, I suddenly became CONSCIOUS of the Self within me, and therefore aware of it’s NATURE and PURPOSE for me, and now I had a choice to make.
Would I acknowledge what Self had shown me?
Or would I look away and reengage auto-pilot?
Self awareness is what woke me up from my unconscious state of being. In that moment, the birth of Self awareness, I saw and perceived evil and I saw and perceived my Self and we were 2 separate entities existing in the same flesh.
I have experienced multiple expansions of consciousness, this was the first in my memory, and the most dramatic.
(Free speech is still a thing right? I can say these things without worrying about being carted off to a padded cell somewhere? Just checking…)
Thank you for taking the time to read. I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section. (is there a comments section? how do i set up a comments section?I’ll set up a comments session)
In my next post I will discuss my decade long struggle with food addiction,
the next big shift in perception which would free me of that addiction AND set me firmly on the path to seeking God.Till next time.
POST SCRIPT
*Already then, I was suffering from BPD and NPD.
BPD-Borderline personality disorder
NPD-Narcissistic personality disorder
An apology to my brother.
He is my first (and on this date, only…) subscriber.He says he doesn’t recall the incident…”my brain must have blocked it out”(I believe that this is exactly what happened… a child’s brain will block out the unbearable. It is a defense mechanism. Mine did the same for me. I remember very little of my childhood)
I am deeply sorry Kyle, for the trauma I inflicted. I see the amazing human being you have become, kind, intuitive and intelligent, generous and charasmatic..soooo very gifted in many MANY ways, and I am grateful that whatever damage I caused was overshadowed by your incredible strength and zest for life.
I am blessed and grateful to have you in my life and more than proud to call you brother. You will do special things, baby broheim.
Love you
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My autism diagnoses
I self diagnosed at the age of 30, after seeing, in the female lead of the netflix series “queens gambit”, behaviors and “peculiarities” that mirrored my own as a child. Forgotten behavior’s I’d long since learned to forsake. Not very accepting of autistic characteristics, was the society to which I was born…
Sorry South Africa, I’m going to hate on you a little bit. You kind of deserve it. Well, small town South Africa does, at any rate. I cannot speak from the perspective of someone growing up in a city…although I am of the opinion that there is a kind of nation wide abuse (casual cruelty and teasing culture) going on that no one really acknowledges. What is the IMPACT guys??? Resist the urge to be a dick! Fight the cruel thoughts. Don’t let them manifest. Choose good over evil! Just be nice for goodness sakes. Do you know how many addicts and psychopaths you are churning out?
South Africa does have its own individual brand of trauma and the way that said trauma manifests is unique to the people of our very complex and diverse society. So too do Germans, so too do Americans…Asians…Malawians…and on and on. It’s all at once fascinating and incredibly sad…the degree to which my and previous generations of humans were traumatized. The scientist in me is fascinated with the cause and effect of it all…the artist in me is distressed at the sheer enormity of this generational/collective trauma, and the spiritualist in me is aghast at the impact that this trauma will continue to have until one generation is brave enough to stand up and say”enough!
This world, the way that we live and treat eachother and relate to eachother…it’s all been formed by the minds of traumatized men. The trauma will continue until humans develop an advanced state of self awareness and transcend the collective traumitised ego.Why? Because only traumitized people become addicts. Become psychopaths. Become narcissits, meglomaniacs. Only the ignorant can remain “evil” and ignorance is a side effect of an unhealed human heart and mind.
I digress, back on topic.
At this point I would like to clarify that I do have an official ADD and autism diagnoses. Not that I really needed one…
I know from experience that the term “self diagnoses” will result in an immediate raising of the collective eyebrow. I really wish that this was not the case. It is a very frustrating thing, to have your theories, hypothesis, ideas and opinions totally invalidated by the knee jerk reaction of a species that has been brainwashed into believing that we are not allowed to use our own minds to make psychological or physiological deductions. I am labelled a layperson and told to stay in my lane. I say, if you have the intellect (as I am sure many or even most of us, do) to educate ourselves we will of course be able to identify whatever is amiss in our minds and bodies. In fact I’d go so far as to say that this is part of the process of becoming Self(and self) aware. Something that the powers that be are trying to avoid, perhaps?
Moving swiftly along (removes tin-foil hat….)
At first, I was in denial about the whole thing. When a google search revealed that the protagonist was written to have (what was then termed) “Aspergers”, I was like…
“pffft. I DO NOT have aspergers….”
.
.
“Wait, what is Aspergers?”
And so my search began. And it didn’t take very much digging before the initial denial became certainty.
I WAS Autistic.
And I was going to tell the world.
Because maybe, just maybe…if they knew the WHY of me, they’d be more accepting. If they know my limitations, they will not push me beyond what I can comfortably manage. If they understand that I am different than they are, they will no longer expect me to act the same as they do. If they realize what is special about me, they would make room in their hearts and their minds for someone who was put on this earth to create and challenge and explore and discover and to teach…as opposed to opposing my aspie energy at every turn.
Discovering my autism was life changing, but mostly internally. I no longer consider myself unloveable, I am simply misunderstood. I no longer carry guilt of not being able to fit in, I was not made to fit in. I no longer yearn to be the same as they are, I love what sets me apart.
Externally, not much has changed. People have expectations. They pass judgement. They think cruel thoughts. They lose patience, they invalidate. It took me awhile to accept that humans…we are slow to change. Psychological evolution, like its biological counterpart, is a slow process. All we can do is be consistent, and persistent, in our quest for equality, acceptance, understanding, justice, peace and kindness. We’re already moving in this direction.
It is an exciting time to be alive and autistic.
TataKoza.
Heidi
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The pain of purification
James 4:8- Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners: and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow.
Be humbled in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.“Those who come from darkness will have their eyes burnt by the light”
It is by fire that we are sanctified, either here on earth while we have an opportunity to repent and turn to God, or after human life, in the fires of purgatory for a painful season.
(1 Corinthians 311-15:Every man’s work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a rew ard. If any man’s work burn,he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved)
OR in hell for eternity, if our hearts are hardened to the point of no return.
Christ sees and knows all
there is no fooling Christ.
If you are suffering now be grateful for it, you are being sanctified, purified. Remember when I told you to be learn to be comfortable with discomfort? Just like coal is turned into a diamond through intense pressure over time, and as steel is forged in fire to be made from something weak into something strong, so too is God forming you into a precious diamond, forging you into a powerful weapon, in the fires of His judgment.Judgment is SEEING what Christ sees, FEELING the same way that Christ feels, about our sin and ignorance, about every vice we have adopted, that we have made part of our identity, that ultimately is what separates us FROM Christ, from knowing ourselves through Christ, from becoming what Christ created us to be, as opposed to what the world and the ruler thereof has created us to be.
This is painful process and can feel like dying. It kind of is, because so far you have not been living in your Christ identity. Instead, you now identify with what satan created you to be, and separating yourself from that identity WILL feel like a death, and it should.
This part of you…once it dies, will make room for the REAL you to emerge from the flames.
Humbled. Strong. Unbreakable. A powerful weapon for God to yield. And totally at peace, because you are FINALLY living your purpose in you true nature, Christed, sanctified.
Thank Christ for the opportunity to
be purified now. Suffering while human IS overwhelming and seems sometimes impossible to bare, but the suffering of sanctification while human is a
grazed knee in comparison to the suffering of a pure spirit in the spiritual realm.
You are now suffering for your own transformation, sufferring to rid you of your sins and vices, your blindspots and impurities, just like Jesus suffered before you.But please, never forget that Jesus is FULL of mercy for you as you suffer. He forgives you even before you ask. To ask for forgiveness is for your benefit not His, for humility and to break the bond with the stony heart that satan formed within you.
And Jesus has given us many tools to get through this suffering. He is teaching us to lean on Him, to rely on Him and not our own strength, to trust in HIS plan and to relinquish the steely grip that we have on our own lives. The process of letting go is a trial in itself, but it is very important to work at surrender, everyday.
Habitare in me est quia parvus sum -“He abides in me because I am small” –Saint Gemma Galgani
MARK 10:15-Amen I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall not enter into it.”
Small children are totally reliant on their parents and they do not need to have it any other way. They are perfectly happy letting the parent do everything for them, although early on they are expected to learn from their parents and apply themselves to their own growth. They also give and receive PURE love freely, unrestrained.
Work at making yourself small so that Christ can abide in you also, so that you may suffer your sanctification in relative ease, do not fight against humility or it will prolong the process, believe me. I have learned this the hard way.
The tools Jesus gave us to endure this multi layered and complex process are as follows:
PRAY for strength to endure.
Christ knows what you can handle and will never give you more than you are capable of baring. Satan will come disguised as your own thoughts, and tell you otherwise. He will try to get you to blame Christ for your suffering (which, I mean..is not completely without merit but never lose sight of the bigger picture here. Just like a parent will apply burning ointment to a minor cut, knowing that it will hurt the child, to prevent an infection and WORSE suffering down the road, Christ will judge us in love and let us suffer the fires of His sanctifying grace, knowing that he is saving us from a far worse fate )
Satan will tell you that it is not fair. He will try to get you to feel sorry for yourself as a ways of keeping your from repenting of and renouncing your own sins, the part you have played in your own sufferring. He will try to get you to blame others for your state of mind and heart. He will try to get you to HATE those people who have damaged you.
When these thoughts and feelings come, do not indulge in them. Thank satan for plaguing you, because He has just reminded you to pray.
It really hurts God to see you suffer, just as it hurt Him to see Jesus suffer, yet He
knows that the suffering that awaits you if you are not purified now, while human, is far greater. Just like He knew, that if Jesus did not suffer then, none of us would have the hope of salvation today.Develop trust in Christ.
PROVERBS 3:5-6 Have confidence in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not upon thy own prudence (prudence means care, caution and good judgment, as well as wisdom in looking ahead)
Spit in Satan’s face.
Literally. Turn west and spit, the sun sets in the west symbolizing darkness. It is no coincidence that so much evil comes from the west and the Western way of living is driving many people from the arms of Jesus. Renounce Satan, spit in his face and turn east to embrace salvation, the rising sun, victory over darkness.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Fasting– You saw your angel during a period of fasting, you understand that it brings graces. To crucify the flesh is crucial in our spiritual war against the demonic forces that hold us prisoner and keep us from the fullness of Christ.
When you use the will power to sacrifice something that the body wants and craves, you weaken the hold that your flesh has on you and you strengthen your will power.
Satan controls us through the flesh. If we exercise will power over our flesh he will no longer to be able tempt us this way, into sin.
Christ does not want puppets. He does not want robots. He wants swords of steel that he can wield and in doing these spiritual practices, we are participating in the forging process. WE must be giving permission for the mind to be transformed. WE must be making an effort when called to, to strengthen the will power. When we pray for will power, does God give us His will power or does He give us the opportunity to develop our own?
And it goes without saying…pray during times of fasting. Offer up the sacrifice to help others who are in need, maybe your fellow recovering addicts, because Jesus also calls us to help and pray for one another.
Give God an inch and He will take you a mile.
Finally, never forget… even Christ fell under the weight of His cross. If you fall, if you fail, get back up again. And always try to remember, that guilt and shame are of Satan. When you fail He will use it to try and make you give up. Spit in His face. Pray for forgiveness if needed, for graces and strength, discernment so next time you can see the attacks coming before they knock you down. And keep in your mind that this is not a linear process. There will be valleys and peaks. And God (and we!!! your friends, your family…) are with you through it all.Praying for you. Cannot wait to meet the real you, I have seen glimpses here and there, and…wow.
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Salvation through sanctification: Becoming Christs.
Could I have chosen a more triggering title…
What does it mean to be “saved?”
“Salvation is understood as the hope of eternal life in communion with God in heaven.”
A statement which seems at first glance, pretty straight forward. Many Christians take it at face value and will agree that this statement, broken down into it’s simplest form, means thusly:
My soul will go to heaven to be with God when this earthly form expires. Ie. I (my soul) will go to heaven and live forever there with God if I am saved, and if I am not saved, when my body dies, my soul goes to hell to suffer everlasting torment.
In a nutshell: In the minds of most Christians, to be saved means that you are saved from hell, and your soul given everlasting life in heaven.
This belief is based on the premise that everlasting life only happens in heaven, after your body has died. And that the only time you get to be with God is there, in heaven, as a soul, after your body has died.
I see things a little differently.
Catholics prescribes to the belief that God calls us all to be holy, in essence, to be saints. They believe that ONLY saints enter heaven. It is not good enough to be “saved” in the strictly Christian sense. We must be TRANSFORMED. Made HOLY. Sanctified. So that we SEE God the way that Jesus did, KNOW God the way Jesus did.
“And I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am going, you may also be” -John 14:3
I see Christ as a SPIRIT, a spirit that came to fruition in the man called Jesus, who was ordained to be the man who would manifest this spirit, the spirit and essence of God.
A spirit of Truth and Love and Obedience and Humility and Servitude. A spirit that can and SHOULD become part of our own psyches, the force to transform the mind and soul.
“Believe you not that I am in the Father and that the Father is in Me?” John 14:11
Adonai’s own spirit resided in Jesus and Jesus resided in Gods heart, He could not have performed the miracles that He did if this were not the case.
To reside in the heart of God means to be Obedient to His will, Humbled to the point of ego death, in essence, an empty vessel to carry out the will of He who sent us all out into the world to discover this Truth for ourselves.
Jesus was the first and only human to fully embody Gods spirit, He was the first to achieve the empty vessel like state, the humility and obedience, necessary to obtain this state. And He was ORDAINED to do this, from the beginning of time.
In fact, the spirit of Christ WAS with God in the beggining, at creation.
“In the beggining was the Word, and the Word was with God and the word WAS God.” John 1:1
” In Him was life, and the life was the light of man…there was a man named John, and He came to give testimony of the light.” John 1:4-7
And so Jesus was born into the world, with the spirit of Christ. He was half divine, half man.
Was Jesus perfectly divine? I do not believe that He was nor could He have been, for the sacrifice He made to hold any water.
If God came to earth, knowing COMPLETELY that He was God…there would be no fear in Him, for what is an earthly death to God? There would be no need of faith, for why would God need to have faith in what He KNEW to be true?
That would not be a sacrifice at all, like an adult pretending to lose at a game to make a child feel good about themself. The adult would not feel the pain of that loss at all and the win would not be real. No, Jesus was made half human, He thought He was that child, and He felt the pain of his sacrifice.
In the garden of Gethsemany, Jesus asks for the cup to pass from Him..and He cried tears of blood, so deep was His anguish in the knowledge of what He must suffer.
Jesus also knew He was God yes, BUT the human side of Him, the part of Him grounded in flesh and therefore the ignorance of “sin” ( I find it annoying how easily Christian speak has worked it’s way into my writing but believe me… there is not an easier way to say these things. I can call the flesh “ego” and I can call sin “acts which cause unconsciousness” and I can call “unconsciousness” disconnect from God” and sometimes I will, but sometimes…I’ll stick to biblical terms because lets face it…there won’t be many non Christians reading this article.) Where was I? Ah yes…
Jesus also knew He was God yes, BUT the human side of Him, the part of Him grounded in flesh and therefore the ignorance of “sin”…doubted. Because that is what it means to be human, that is what it means to be vulnerable to the attack of he who plants doubt and clouds our knowledge of who we were created to be. (I am talking about Satan. Who is not so much the ENEMY of God as he is the embodiment of that which is NOT God, ie. Evil.)
Also, this is what it means to be called to have FAITH. For what good is faith if we KNOW?
So, Jesus lived a dual life, inside His mind and outside of it.
I imagine He fought mental wars against the forces of evil just as any human would do.
An angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other.
The big difference being…His faith. His connection to God, and the presence of the Holy spirit AND the spirit of Christ within Him gave Him power to continuously defeat that evil. And so…He was Christ, the faithful, the obedient and humble. God on earth. He became that which He was made to be, over, I believe, many a lifetime.
There are passages in the bible which hint at reincarnation but since the adoption of this philosophy into eastern spiritual practice it has become something of a swear word amongst Christians. I WILL SPEAK MORE ON THIS IN ANOTHER ARTICLE AND PROVIDE BIBLICAL REFERENCE TOO.
“But you see me: Because I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know that I am in my Father: and you in me and I in you.”
“He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, He it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him and manifest myself to him”
If anyone love me he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.
So what exactly is the point of this article? Why am I telling Christians that they are not REALLY saved, until they are sanctified, and begin to be transformed by the spirit of Christ, until nothing of their impure flesh remains to marr their perception of God?
Because I perceive that ALL Christians are stopping short of the goal that God has for them.
I believe that Christ will come again, but I am still uncertain of the specifics of His coming.
Will He come again manifested as Jesus, in the same bodily form?
Or will His spirit come again, manifesting this time through humans already alive? Humans transformed BY the spirit?
Will Jesus bring the kingdom, or will Gods kingdom come, when God’s will is done…on earth as it is in heaven?
“Neither shall they say: behold here, or behold there, for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21
And to non Christians, why does this matter?
I think it is an undeniable fact that, if the world were ruled by men and women manifesting the spirit of Christ, that the world not be in the mess that it is in.
There would be no inequality, for inequality is a byproduct of greed. There would be no violence, for violence in a byproduct of ignorance, the need to control, prejudice and again…greed. There would be no misunderstandings between religions because Truth would shine a light on long held misconceptions of exactly WHO God is…because the spirit of Christ comes to shake things up and dispels such delusions.
Was Christ not killed by the Jews for this very reason?
We are called to be holy, and not by our own strength, because no ways are we strong enough to overcome the ruler of this world, who is Satan. It is only through full surrender to God, and to His spirit, Christ, that we can be strengthened and transformed. And only the faithful will surrender and obey. It goes against the very NATURE of what it is to be human, obedience and humility. Almost as if, our very nature is intrinsically linked to the nature of he who manifests that which is not God..ie Satan.
Adonai tells us to pray (1 thessalonians) and Jesus tells us HOW. (Luke 11:1)
Jesus tells us that only those who obey God’s will, will enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Mathew 7:21)
Jesus also tells us that He will only reveal himself to those that love Him and that to love Him means to obey His commandments. (John 14:21-24)
I am not “sola scriptura” but I do believe that these verses alone are enough to blow “salvation through faith alone” out of the water.
God allows mistakes and oversights and if I have made any in this article I know I am forgiven so long as I admit fault and ask forgiveness. God knows.. my intellect has fooled me before.
I am open, as always, to debates and questions.
I will end in prayer
God, Adonai, please show us who you are. Send your spirit to transform our hearts and open our eyes. Be there to comfort us when we awaken and begin to see the life we have lost to sin and ignorance, give us the strength to turn away from sin and the humility to ask for forgiveness. Touch the hearts of non-believers in such a way that it is no longer possible to deny your existence. Free us from bondage. Protect us from Satan and his army of demons who move undetected amongst us, causing generational trauma and turning hearts to stone. SHOW THEM TRUTH ADONAI. Only You can.
Amen.
.
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Hypatia: The first feminist martyr?
Hypatia was a pagan philosopher of surpassing intellect and beauty. She lived in 355 AD Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Roman empire.
She was a prominent and influential mathematician, astronomer and teacher.
She lived in a very turbulent era of Alexandria’s history. Christianity was on the rise and the Parabalani, a sect of violent zealots who served as Christian militia under the arch Bishop Cyril, spread discord and terror as they sought to force their “faith” onto Jews and pagans alike.
I use air quotes to describe the so called “faith” of these zealots, because no man with the true love of and for Christ in his heart will perpetrate such violent atrocities on his fellow human. A Christian may act in self defense, yes. And sometimes war was necessary in the pursuit of purging the world of men made evil by the spirits that rule them. But a true Christian would never use violence to force their faith unto another. These men did not know God, and neither did their Archbishop Cyril, for it was he who incited the mob to violently murder Hypatia on false accusations of witchcraft.
She was 30 years old when met a grisly end at the hands of the Parabalani. She was stoned to death with shards of roofing tiles, and her body mutilated. No man with Christ in his heart will have stomach for such violence, no matter the “sin” of the victim.
And that she was sinful is not in question, because we all are, every one of us. If God called for the murder of every sinner there would be no one left to populate the earth He created.
She did not know God, it is true. She did not prescribe to belief in any God, not even her own, for all she could see was the violence perpetrated by the so called believers of these faiths.
The Parabalani were the only example of the Christian faith that she was exposed to.
“As far as I am aware, your God has not yet proved himself to be more just or merciful than his predecessors.”-Hypatia, as played by Rachel Weis in the film “Adora”
Is it then surprising that she refused to bow the knee to the misrepresented God of the parabalani and their ambitious Archbishop?
I have no doubt that, if she had been allowed to live and use her God given intellect to unravel and marvel at God’s creation, He would have made His way into her heart.
It is what philosophers are called to… understanding of the nature of creation. God calls us to Him through the intellect. Submission and humility comes later.
We all come to God in our own way. Some through the heart, some through the mind.
Hypatia was a pure and gifted being. She died a virgin. She was kind, and compassionate, and a light unto the world into which she was born. She was more Christian than the men who murdered her were.
The story of Hypatia effected me deeply, because I too identify as an intellectual and a philosopher. God made me this way, and at the beginning of my Christian journey I felt I’d need to deny this truth to be accepted by those who follow Him. In the end, I could not do it, and I very nearly walked away from the Christian faith altogether.
And then …God led me to Catholiscm.
I am sure many of you would be surprised to hear that I still consider myself something of a feminist, and that my Catholic faith allows me this freedom. From the outside looking in, it might not seem this way, but since becoming Catholic, I feel for the first time since becoming a Christian, a sense of feminine pride.
Catholics believe that Mary is crowned as queen of heaven, and that she rules there, alongside her Son Jesus.
Catholics declare her the most holy and powerful human to walk the earth, second only to Jesus, who was half divine, so there is not real comparision.
Her courage, humility, chastity, obedience and faith, made her a worthy vessel for the son of God, and she is richly rewarded and revered in the catholic faith.
None come to God but through the Son…and then Son cannot refuse the mother.
Yes it is true woman are not permitted a place in the clergy, and for good reason…
Would you send your daughters to fight in the frontlines?
We women were not made for the fight, we are too sensitive and precious. Our strength is one of subtlety and loveliness. The soft beauty of a fragrant rose is trampled on the battle field but a source of divine inspiration if left in peace to blossom.
Does the rose bow to the sun, or does it grow in proclamation of it’s glory? And does the rose not demand respect? For it’s thorns will pierce any who handle it without care.
Mary was exalted and given a high position of power alongside her son in heaven, for her chastity, faith, obedience, courage and the love she holds in her heart for God and all of His creation.
She was most likely not an intellectual, which is the way she was created and perhaps this made it easier for her to BE holy. Because an intellectual mind is often plagued by pride, and pride is the largest stumbling block to a would be Christian, but ANY weakness/blindspot/shortcoming can and should be used as a method of sanctification.
If a prideful intellect can be bent to the will of God, and the voice of that intellect anointed… who amongst us will not be persuaded to turn to Him?
The human mind longs for knowing, the heart for feeling, and the soul for sanctifying.
I pray for the souls of the parabalani and their archbishop who surely burn in hell for their misrepresentation of God, and the weeds they planted during this time of violence. Weeds which would strangle many millions of Gods precious roses, and turn many million more away from a false sun that they could not reconcile the strength of their hearts and their minds to.
I also pray, for the soul of Hypatia. A woman condemned not by God, but by ignorant, unsanctified men.
Save her soul God, show her your true face. Lead all women who share in her spirit… the intellectuals and philosophers, the scientists and mathematicians…all us roses with thorns…please show us your love, heal our broken hearts, humble us where needed, and help us delight in the minds that you have gifted us, teach us to use them to serve You, despite the world.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and the holy spirit, Amen.