Integrating Shame Around The Religious God & The Holiness of Dark Work
This is an aspect of my journey that I don’t share much, but it still plays a huge part in what I do and how I do it as far as my creative expressions and my lifestyle is concerned.
As many of you may know from following me, when my aunt got custody of me after my mother died, I was raised Christian. And to cut to the chase, I never really agreed with how she introduced me to the faith, nor did I resonate with the church that she forced me to attend every Sunday. Something about it felt greedy, performative, judgmental and it left out a very important component when it comes to salvation: the reality of our own humanity.
As a child and even as a teenager, I grew paralyzed by many of the things that my aunt said about the world through the eyes of Christianity: that I would burn in hell if I didn’t repent for cursing, having sex before marriage or not worshipping God every chance I got and rebuking evil the ways of the world. And as a young Virgo already naturally strived towards perfection, the task became far more stressful than she may have anticipated. Because she was led mostly by fear and didn’t deal with her own pain very much, it convoluted the presentation of her faith to me and deeply traumatized me.
I vividly remember when I became of age enough to have awareness of the concept of sin. The idea of eternal hell fires was maddening and every 5 seconds, I remember repenting desperately every time I made a mistake. It was a hellish way to live in and of itself; and looking back, I was way too young to be burdened with the weight of what only life experience itself could help me understand. Just like with people who refer to themselves as spiritual, even in those realms, you cannot force someone to be where they have not yet arrived to organically.
After years of forceful church visits, being forced to shout “Thank you Jesus” at the onset of some adult crisis I didn’t even understand and many other subtly traumatic things, once I hit the age of 18, I denounced the church. I began smoking weed, I began to truly see what was so enjoyable about sex and I was what my aunt would have considered “in the world”. And every chance she got from then on, she denounced everything I did on my self-discovery journey as demonic or witchcraft…which was also traumatic for me; and I began to unconsciously carry that around. Looking back, I wish she had more faith in the purity of my heart and it’s ability to carry me through the journey of finding myself.
Either way, to me, this was much better than pretending and forcing things in order to make it through the pearly gates. But once I hit college, that’s when I discovered my supernatural gifts and felt that I had made a terrible mistake.
I was so frightened by my seership, I did not sleep. I repented my heart out and begged God to make it go away; any gift but this one! And it seemed to go away…only to return much later. But when it returned, I managed to distract myself just enough to not spiral. Then eventually, I created my life’s work around making sense of not only the entities that I was able to see, but every other super natural phenomena that I didn’t understand; as well as human suffering as a whole. Unbeknownst to me, I had begun my journey toward meeting God; not through the eyes of man or religion, but through my own, authentic experience. And I did.
Meeting God wasn’t what I expected, given the theatric accounts portrayed in churches, but it was certainly more beautiful, simple and profound than I could have imagined. I suddenly (and naturally) began to comprehend all of the cryptic Bible verses that seemed like confusing jargon that no preacher could ever explain in a way that clicked for me over the years.
I’m feeling urged to refer to the Bible as the “IYKYK” book…because that’s really how it is when it comes to being able to spiritually comprehend holy texts. There is something within that needs to be awakened, activated and inspired into knowingness in your mind, body and spirit; and until then it will remain as belief that you can only aim to comprehend with your mind.
Not too long ago, a thought that controversially contrasted with my Christianity beliefs was the huge role that sex has played in my life from as early as pre-k. From the moment that I began to enjoy it (outside of wedlock, might I add), it became a pillar for my deepest reflections, transformations and fears, even. And I never really knew where to place it given it’s obvious importance to me; do I become a prostitute? Do I strip? Hell, was I a sex worker in a past life and the residues have simply carried over? I wondered.
6 years into my psychospiritual work and karmic advisory, on plenty of occasions, I realized that my work was holy. Now my delivery, the platform I delivered it on and the ways in which my own humanity may have convoluted the message might not have been, but I was doing dark, holy work; which unbeknownst to me, was the start of a huge build up inside of me that would result in a mania induced episode of the integration of all my religion induced fears, weaknesses and everything in between.
In a nutshell, the work that I was doing was not for the faint of heart and blurred many of the lines between good and evil. And if you did not truly know God, you could easily get swept away in the ways of the world; which include the inversions of New Aged Spirituality. I’ve had many affirming dreams and premonitions about the reality that my work is like going to hell to retrieve people’s souls; but in order to do so, I had to school them on hell itself and it’s horrifying inhabitants. And to even be able to do that, I had to learn darkness in so much of an intimate way, that I practically blended in.
But I was not one of them. I was not Godless, lost, perverted or any of that. It’s just that I must have been such a strong warrior of Truth, that my assigned task was only assigned because there was a higher chance that I would prevail rather than the average human who is typically at the mercy of their own flesh and fears. People, such as myself, who were traumatized by religion needed an unconventional approach to guide them back to embodied godliness. And our mother’s generation, despite their good intent, had too horrible of a relationship with their mind and bodies to healthily house the Holy Spirit, let alone guide anyone towards integrated salvation. I felt like I was one of those people who had to help piece it all back together. Everyone has a godly element to them, everyone truly is made in the eyes of their Creator if you are grounded in your heart space enough to see it; whether their personal philosophies allow they, themselves, to see it or not. But my job wasn’t to sway them, my job was to help them integrate in a way that the conscious mind could not detect.
Now, I’m sure you’re wondering, where is she going with this entry? Well, it all started randomly today when I got a message from a girl via email telling me to purchase the book “He Came To Set The Captives Free” by Rebecca Brown. I almost ignored it because I did not know the person who sent it, nor do I just indulge much of anything that people randomly recommend unsolicited, but something led me to find the free PDF and begin reading it anyway. And when I did, instantly, waves of anxiety and fear rushed over me and I felt a heavy feeling in my chest. My breath grew shallow and my heart began beating uncontrollably. I put the book down and tried to distract myself, but my nerves were really bad.
Then before you know it, I’m in a full blown worship and repentance session begging Jesus for forgiveness and pleading the blood over myself and everyone I loved. I weeped uncontrollably and my tears felt light as feathers. I shook my body, stretched my body and prayed a prayer that I wished I could have had the confidence and shamelessness to pray as a child. I felt that I was blasted to the past of my 8-12 year old Christian self and was being allowed an opportunity to do what my lack of direct experience with the God did not allow me to back then. As a child, I think I might have dissociated really hard and internalized the guilt of sinning, dabbling in occult knowledge seeking answers, having sex with women, the whole nine. And there was so much of it to release; as if I had stored more of this stuff than anything else in this lifetime. It was so deeply internalized and it all began to surface very aggressively. But as I had learned many times over through underworld work and integration, I stayed with myself, breathed, stretched and worshiped as I felt called to without shame, embarrassment or hesitation. I cried out for the God I so desperately wanted to know, but felt locked away from at such a young age; which created the subconscious story that I was unworthy of a relationship with God. I begged for forgiveness and apologized for my arrogance. I apologized for misleading people, if at all. I fell into the pits of my own unintegrated emotional despair to the point of slight hallucination. So much was being released into the atmosphere because to be quite frank, it did not belong to me anymore; and as stated in my previous column entry, I was changing my story…I was swimming. And with that, a broad spectrum of sensation washed over me. Looking back, I had felt this sensation creeping up weeks prior, but had no idea what it was; I thought it was a bad reaction to an antibiotic I took the other day, but I tried not to lean unto my own understanding.
As I write this particular entry, I am still processing and will continue to release throughout the day; yes it’s that much. But I wanted to express my realizations around why I committed to the psychospiritual work that I’ve done for so long, why my work is so dark, why I felt that I had to navigate otherwise forbidden realms and how I damn near feel like there needs to be another Holy Book that is more up to date in regards to the vastness of Holy Work without confusing people or tricking them into glamorized godlessness. I think that once people feel that they are liberated from religious dogma, they think that spirituality will save and free them when really, it’s going to throw them right into the pits of their unresolved shit; something that many Christians need to do if they want to embody the gospel they preach.
And I hope my life and whatever form my work takes on, helps people to not get confused, lost and manipulated in the grey area. The grey area is where many people lose sight of the purpose of darkness, the salvation in transmuting the shadows and how to navigate the world without getting sucked into the elusivity of how far we can go with expression and exploration of our human nature without it causing any sort of spiritual demise.
And while I’m still not here to become preachy or be a formal leader any longer, I am here to be as much of an embodied example of the truth as I can; in a way that is not convoluted by worldly fragmentation or dogmatic fragmentation.
Original Publishing Date: June 7th, 2024
