PARASITIC HATE
I’ve heard the path to the true self is often initiated and trod due to great suffering. Despite the crushing suffering I've endured and every well-intentioned desire and attempt to release my self-affirming ego, it absolutely refuses to yield. It's appetite for affirmation seems infinite, and I worry that only infinite suffering could ever hope to dislodge it. How I've come to hate it so, this self-obsessed, self-referent shell. Even having ruined me, it will not yield. It cares neither for my, nor its welfare, preferring to drown me and itself rather than accept that everything, including my flaws and failures, belong. In turn, I can’t abide its continued existence for even another moment. It’s ironic and hypocritical, but I’m saturated with a disgust that’s turned inward on itself. I want this egoic mechanism dead, even if it kills me. In fact, I no longer have any desire to live if it persists. I know it makes me a lot like it: we'd each see ourselves dead rather than give into the other's terms. I oftentimes want to end it, rather than live with this vampiric parasite even one more day.
Yet, God never fails to call a truth to mind in such times, when the darkness seems impenetrable and faith is miles from nowhere. I’m reminded of inner demons and a lesson about love. When faced with my demons in the past, I considered them enemies - alien forces invading my mind. How wrong I was. These “demons” were a part of me, and didn't need to be fought, run off, or destroyed. They needed to be healed. It took some time, but loving those wounded parts of me ultimately brought closure.
Perhaps this is exactly the same. However I feel about it, God's creation gives rise to unhealthy egos like mine. And despite how much I hate it, it's a part of me - a pathetic, needy, disgusting part, but a part nonetheless. It’s the mother of demons, the one who, through humiliation and shame, twists the shadow self into a monster. And as hard as it may be, perhaps this hypercritical part of me needs to be loved too, rather than hated and despised. It's hard to even utter this, much less accept. How I despise it so...
Nevertheless, I will try to love it. Like I said before, its need seems infinite. If so, only God can resolve this. Whether he will, I do not know. Up to this point, all he's seen fit to do is humiliate and make a fool of me. Such ruin seems a perfect landscape for this intervention, with shame firing incessantly like an exposed nerve. Perhaps he'll do something when he's ready, but I have no idea when that'll be. In the meantime, I continue twisting in the wind...