What I Feel

What I Feel (1,121)

April 19th, 2011

You are abducted and taken away, placed in an environment of your captor’s choosing. You are only given specified food and drink, taught what they want you to learn. Of course, you must follow the dictates of your prison. So you go to bed at their bidding; you rise in the morning at their whim. They completely control your access to the outside world. They manage your thinking. They greatly discourage defiance, while welcoming compliance. They manipulate your pulse on life. They become your heartbeat.

We call them parents. And our greatest hope is that they are benevolent, flexible and generous. Of course, when they aren’t, there’s not a lot we can do about it. But the good ones do desire three things for their offspring: they want then to be healthy, wealthy and wise.

Now healthy, in every generation, is determined by what the doctors are currently touting. For instance, when I was a kid it was all about the “food pyramid,” which had mashed potatoes and meat at the wide bottom and at the tiny top were fruits and vegetables. Guess what? Time passes. We have flipped the pyramid and now, natural foods grown in a garden are the wide base.

Wealthy. No one gets rich in America by being weird. So our parents wanted us to adopt acceptable behavior. The difficulty? If we were still following the acceptable philosophy of even ten years ago, we would find ourselves unacceptable to mainstream thinking.

And finally, good parents want their children to be wise—conventional wisdom. And what is conventional wisdom? Conventional wisdom is the amount of truth we are able to speak aloud without having too many people object. It is wisdom that is accumulated through the general affirmation of a convention. For let’s be honest—Jesus never taught us to hate anyone. But over the years, various groups have been targeted for controlled disapproval in order to maintain the purity of our society’s agenda.

So now here you sit. It is no wonder that most of us feel like a car wreck. If you’ve ever wrecked a vehicle, you know exactly what I’m talking about. First there’s the shock of suddenly being struck, followed by an immediate decision to take an inventory of your faculties, determining if you can get out of the vehicle without having a leg fall off; and then standing outside the car, looking at the damage, with flashes in your mind of how beautiful it was just moments before; and finally, while perusing the dents, you suddenly notice the feeling of injury in your own body.

Therefore, it is our responsibility during this “house cleaning” of holy week to separate what we really feel from what we were told to feel.

For verily I say unto you: it is those individuals who successfully tap their own emotions who permanently change our world through the innovation of discovery instead of the repetition of practice. Let’s look at it:

· I grew up believing that interracial marriage was wrong.

· I was told that homosexuals were psychologically imbalanced because they didn’t have relationship with their mothers or their fathers.

· I was informed by well-meaning adults that blacks were different and liked being separate from us—whites—because of their own personal hygiene and cultural choices.

· I was warned that the Soviet Union was determined to drop a bomb on us and it was just a matter of days until they did.

· I was taught that boys play with army men and girls play with dolls.

· I was impacted with the idea that real men play football and foo-foo guys like music. I was instructed that pre-marital sex was wrong, having babies out of wedlock was a great sin, but masturbation was evil in God’s eyes and would be punishable with some unknown affliction later in life.

I was not allowed to feel—because feelings were often contrary to normalcy. So I found a way of taking it out on myself with an “acceptable behavior” that was abberant but not forbidden.

I got fat.

What did you do? Maybe you just got scared. But it’s time to come clean, because Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” Not “blessed are the pure in thought or body.” Blessed are the pure in heart.

Emotionally naked.

So how can we get there? Let’s stay with healthy, wealthy and wise.

1. I will be honest with at least one other person about what I feel in my heart without fear and after I share it with myself and this other person, I will then stand back and wait to see where it takes me.

2. I will share my feelings clearly when I do not agree with what society says is normal, not doing it pridefully, but with a bit of humility, hoping that I can discover the truth of the matter.

3. I will freely question things that have been introduced into my society that are not sensitive to the only universal rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The only reason sharing our feelings seems so foreign is that no one is willing to start the ball rolling. If it becomes “normal” to be honest about our feelings, then it will no longer be considered odd to have sensations that are different from everybody else.

Because I will tell you this right now—I don’t like to stand in a church building and sing hymns written by other people and recite words that were approved by religionists long dead and pretend that this is worship. I don’t think I’m alone in that. And the only time that religion has a strangle-hold on our society is when people are not allowed to express what they really feel.

I don’t like to listen to politicians attack other politicians to get a vote when they don’t have the foggiest idea on how they’re going to get us out of the darkness. I don’t think I’m alone there, either. But as long as they can stuff us in a box and take us to their political party, we are not free thinkers, we are just a present for their pleasure.

I don’t want to judge anyone, even if I don’t understand them. I want the Muslims to be able to be Muslims, but I also want to choose to not be one. I want the Jews to be Jews, I just don’t feel the need to study the history of their people in relationship to my spiritual walk.

I want to be allowed to feel and be wrong, if necessary, without having to apologize for enjoying the benefit.

I love Mary and Russell Cring because they gave me birth, but long ago I was born again, and am now grateful to my new heavenly Father and enjoy fellowship with my elder brother, Jesus.

You and I both grew up being told what to feel. It is time to find a way to be healthy, dealing with our own desires; wealthy, pursuing those dreams which really excite our being; and wise—by holding everything we hear up to the gold standard of the rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The end result? Freedom.

I welcome you to the wild abandon of the sensation.