It is not for nothing that the great philosopher Decartes said something about there being a physical pathway between the mind and soul. Since ancient times people have sought to link thinking with emotion.

Also over the centuries, we have been basically asked to fit into either camp, emotion or reason. We moderns think that we have surpassed these vital questions and to be fair the question of ‘does it really matter’ is a pertinent one. If the answer is no then feel free to wait for another post!!

Yet our cultural mentality lets slip vital clues as to our ongoing search for understanding the drives that make up our humanness and then imposing some kind of order upon them. Consider for a moment DR Spok from Star Trek. He is the greatest clue that underneath things we still want to know how it all works and then some. Has Spok not won the ‘battle’ between feeling and reason? No he has not is the answer.  We have never let go of wanting to work stuff out and finding a way to reason over our emotions.  If it is a mistake to do so, I have made it many times. It is natural!

There is an interesting conversation in The Apocrypha about wanting to know the workings of the Most High (God). The language may be a bit strong in parts but here are a few words from the conversation in 4 Ezra 4 (scroll down till you get to chapter 4). It goes something like this:

And the angel said unto me, go weigh for me the weight of fire, or measure for me a handful of wind, or call back the day that has passed. I answered and said, who has been born that can do such and why do you ask me concerning these things? The angel said, if I ask you how great dwelling places are in the midst of the sea or how many springs are at the source of the deep or how many springs there are in the heavens, or which are the exits of hell or the entrances to heaven, would you not say that you had not been to the deep nor to heaven or hell to know about such!

But I have only asked you about fire, wind and the day. Things through which you have passed and cannot live without and you have given me no answer to them. You cannot even understand the things that you grew up with. How can you then understand the ways of the Most High? How can one already worn out by a corrupt world understand incorruption? And so on….

It is an interesting conversation and probably not for the faint hearted but worth a read anyway. The link I have left is for the King James version. It might be easier to read in another more modern version though. I hope it provokes some thought….or even emotion. Enjoy.

Trying to explain or understand myself is an ongoing task. It is an interesting fact that in all cults and industries closed to the ordinary Joe, words and language play a vital role.

If a person or group can control language they tend to think that they can control ideas and meaning. To the curious outsider or vulnerable mind admission to such ‘clubs’ means learning another language.

In effect this means that control of an individuals thinking is governed by the meanings given to them and in order to fit in one must accept the new language as explaining the truth. Many desperate people have to do just this in order to survive in today’s recovery industry. Control language and you control ideas. It is very difficult for the layman to conceptualise new words that give meaning to their life’s. Therefore it is easier for them to let someone else do it for them. Especially if that person is forceful and confident with what they are saying.

The only problem with this is that the one person starts telling the other person what they are or who they are. In the long run this is a fallacy and can be quite dangerous. It can though, be useful especially if I/you don’t want to think too much and are happy to fob responsibility on to another.

But even simple language leans a certain way and can be fulfilling without being precise. What I call anger someone else might call pride, and so on. We can make a point without having all the ‘right’ words. And needn’t be worried if the next person seems to have all the answers and definitions.

In this game of recovery it is vital that we say it how we see it with the words that we know fit best.  Only then do I feel that I have truly spoken.

Psalm 139: 14 says that we ‘are wonderfully and fearfully made’.

Indeed, the ebb and flow of our faith in life and ourselves passes through many stages. And you might personally know the paradox in this psalm.

Why I cannot seem to eradicate fear completely from my heart is a burning question that has caused me to turn toward God and, at times away from God. I am wonderfully and fearfully made.

I suppose I have reached a point where I keep unconsciously asking myself ‘is this it?’ The question and the answer have caused me great pain. I am at odds to explain who I am and what I think I would like to be.

The fear has grown alongside the loss of trust both in myself, in God and in those around me. I am told that in this place faith is….somewhere. That God has not left me and that I will be a better man for the experience. But pain has a way of persuading otherwise. I feel the cancer of my emotional conflict.

But here I am, fearfully and wonderfully made, like it or not. I reach out to you my friends….our God, and bid you goodnight wherever you are.

Simple but true slogan.

Sometimes life seems pretty easy and at others pretty difficult. What used to work yesterday, might not work today. And on it goes. Our job is to keep on keeping on. If we do there will always be a break in the cloud, a sign, some realisation, that will change our course.

Things never quite work out how I think. There are always unplanned for and ‘illogical’ coincidences that make my life different.

My part in recovering from nervous illness is to find a way where I will be happy living with myself. When things do not seem that clear it is vital that we just keep on keeping on.

And I gazed upon my own life

from the edge of the mountain.

If I fall

it is only into myself.

Further unto God

the prayers of a dying man.

Rested where death is,

upon a plinth

in the halls of the great king.

Victory fades as the wreaths

are strewn before me.

I will stand before him

who has also stood

at the mountains top.

Wrote that last night. Not sure what it was about really. The mystery of one’s self is a great pastime. Although can be melancholic. Have a good day wherever you are.

My friends, pride is a great wall that isolates a person. Or perhaps it’s fear (I suspect that they are the same things anyway), I have recently spent some time in hospital with severe depression. And although this blog is important to me it was not at the top of my ‘get around to list’.

I suppose the main reason was that I didn’t think that I could look you all in the eye and speak honestly (in a cyber look in the eye way). Having spent so much time trying to post messages that had some amount of progressive meaning in them, I suddenly felt troubled to say anything at all. Depression and all its hangers on have been with me. I have decided to take the advice and the medication that has been offered.

After many years of not even taking an aspirin it is time to bite the bullet and accept the help at hand. My thinking is temporary in this regard but we shall see how it goes. Horror has a way of persuading a man to change tack. Pride (if that is what it really is) has a way of changing that same mind into resistance. But pride has been losing this fight….pain has made it so.

A thought has come to my mind on a recurring basis. I suppose it is me thinking about what it is to be a whole person and not just bits sown together like a cheap garment. Sometimes I get the feeling that there are 3 parts to who I am. Mind, body and soul. This gets awful confusing when I am trying to work things out. Perhaps a mistake in itself? If there are these things, separated from each other then what do I ever say that I am? Yes my friends, Plato and the rest have left us a chestnut alright.

Anyway. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden keeps coming to my thoughts. Before the ‘fall’ God calls to Adam and Adam replies ‘here I am’. This response occurs other places in The Bible as well. I will leave you to find out where for your homework. But something happens after they have taken from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Again God calls but this time there is no reply. Instead Adam hides himself away, knowing that he was naked.

I find this a very profound story. What happened to him that he would say ‘here I am’, all of him, his whole being, and then not reply at all?

It is the ‘here I am’ that has given me much to think about. In my depression and pain, in my fear, in my painful thinking, I am trying to say ‘Here I am’.

This blog gets about 10-20 hits per month. To those who land here by mistake or those that make a point of it….I salute you!

It’s not true of course. But sometimes it does feel like that. Take heart.

If I may, a Proverb: Trust in The Lord with all your heart, and rest not on your own insight. Turn away from evil and He will make straight your paths. Prov 3:5-6.

Breaking the link of fear in our thinking is the thing which sets us free. Once that link is broken the thoughts that once disturbed us become harmless because that have no value of association anymore. We struggle with them less and so they last shorter time. Then we sense that these thoughts are transient and powerless over us.