a ghost

preface: i wrote this a few days ago and after you read this you will understand what im about to say. blogging has become yet another way for me to find others to affirm me, or fill a void that i have. my writing has become about me but in an unhealthy way. my time at labri is teaching me a lot and i think for the next month i just need to focus on that and not focus on what im going to write. so many days i think of things to write.things that might interest people or make them think....which..in and of itself is narcissism....what this post below is about. so i need to step away for a bit. i need to take the pressure off of myself...(that came from me essentially) and just be in my mess, in my thoughts, in my experience instead of trying to figure out how to write about it.

i have pushed back some things and will be staying at labri longer. i will staying until the end of june now. being here is where i need to be sooo im extending my time!

i will be blogging more but more than likely it wont be until the end of june.

please continue to pray for me tho! and feel free to email me thoughts if you have any or any prayer requests you may have!

you are loved!!

 

Ghost

No..not casper, although that would be sweetJ last week I listened to a lecture called narcissism: the modern view of self.  This lecture was heavy for me and really made me think. Andrew fellows- one of the workers at labri was sharing his ideas on self and his perspectives on it and by the end of the lecture I couldn’t help but agree with him. Im going to try my best to put it into words but please note, this is me trying to explain a lecture i heard with also adding in my own thoughts. .....meaning...it might be confusing:)

Many times when I think of narcissism I think of my mars hill graduate student housemates and friends. So many people throw that word around when they are talking about their motives for a specific situation or about how self centered they are being.  Andrews distinction is different. As human beings, from the fall, we are already selfish, but his argument is that we have taken it to another level. We are living in our heads so much that reality exists only in our heads and that there is no more reality outside of ourselves. We are so often trying to figure out who we are that we are using our immediate surroundings to mirror for us an image of who we are or who we want to be. So every interaction and reaction is directly about us. For example when we meet someone are we seeing them as an individual or are we tryin to get them to like us, to want them to be impressed by us, to admire us, to find us attractive, to want to be our friend. are we seeing traits in them that we appreciate about them that maybe we want to try as to have as well.

Due to consumerism there are so many ways to identify who we are- also called self representation. The clothes we wear, the car we drive, the type of coffee we drink, the food we buy (fair trade, organic), etc etc are all ways we are saying who we are or at least attempting to try on. Its as if we can try on a new self and if it gets old or doesn’t fit then we try on something else. Its as if we are constantly trying to figure out who we are in everything. Its ironic because we are around ourselves all the time, so you’d think we would understand ourself. We define and give meaning to everything around us, even to the universe that we don’t necessarily know much about- but when it comes to defining us, knowing ourself, we struggle. He read a quote from a book that said we have one way to help with pneumonia but we have 16 types of psychotherapy schools that all have different theories on how to help someone, how to work through problems, etc etc.

After we try on many types of self representations we have an emptiness in ourselves due to not feeling substantial enough because we are basing our representation on an image.  We become a ghost. So then how do we feel real? Intense experiences makes us feel alive. Somethings will feel better than others and so we will continue to search for the most intense experiences which will make us feel human, feel complete.  How many times have you heard someone say “I felt so alive doing {insert action}.” life becomes about feeling alive and then reality/our identity/our search for who we are is based solely on our feelings/emotions. If you feel something and it impacts you then it is real.

Instead of having an outside world separate from us, which is how God created us, we are only using the outside world as a looking glass and self understanding becomes everything. God created us to respond to the real, and now we are using the real to respond to us. Existentialism =  what impacts us is real, so truth is in us and not outside of us.

I have started to think about this all week and started noticing my interactions with people and other’s interactions.  When people take a picture the first thing they do is check the picture to make sure they look okay. It doesn’t matter about the rest of the scenery but the first thing to check is how they look..dont we know how we look? We look at ourselves all the time. The moment with those people and the whole reason for taking a picture turns into a) try and get a unique picture that defines you as different or that people will see and think good of you  b) to see how good we looked (or how bad).  when people tell a story, is the story really to benefit others or is it about looking like you are fun person, or some other aspect of who they are that they want to get across.  Even in asking questions- are we asking so people see we are intellectual or that we have valid thoughts on something or is it truly a question? When we read the Bible….how often are we “tryin to get something out of it for our self for our immediate situation” instead of just learning about God and who He is not making it about us.

And then comes sex.  “we live in an erotic culture that we feel the power from sexual urges and for a moment the ghost feels alive”- sex, becomes more about the self then about the other person. It becomes about pleasing ourself and our inner desires then about being with a person in the most intimate setting possible. sex has become about us and feeling alive. It isn’t a surprise then that there is so much sexual violence and addiction because if sex and pleasure and feeling alive are so intertwined then people will continue to do it again and again because they know it will feed what the “self” is looking for.

Moving beyond sex, we could talk about cutting. Many people are acting out in self harm because it is the only way they feel alive. For a moment you cease to feel like a ghost. The same could be said with drug use, alcohol, danger sports, and even film. All of these things make us feel a certain way, they produce a physical sensation that then helps us to define everything around us. 2 Timothy 3 talks about godlessness in the last days and in it, it says “people will be lovers of themselves…lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”. Lovers of themselves….narcissism in a nut a shell.

if you are still reading this, well done. so where am i going with this? to be honest, im not sure. all i know is that i keep coming back to this reality that i myself try to define who i am through my experiences and everything comes back to me. the past 3 years i have essentially been searching for meaning in life and i kept coming back extremely empty. my work gave me nothing, i felt like i was trying to suck meaning from it but couldnt. so then i tried getting it from my small group and  again, ended up feeling alone and empty. decided then to start going to counseling to talk about this emptiness and the chaos that  kept coming back in my head. then i decided to quit my job and then travel for the summer and now here i am. realizing that ive been trying to figure out who i am from other places and ended up short every time. i think even in tryin to turn to the Lord ive made it about me..wanting to be filled versus just knowing the Lord and who he is and letting that just be my starting point. In every situation ive looked out into the world and tried to use it to define me.

Am I ghost trying to fill my life with intense experiences…you better believe it. but am I also an image bearer and in the likeness of God and capable of moving out this inner narcissism…..because of Christ, absolutely. Will it be easy…no way. Do I have a 12 step program, or even a to do list on where to go from here…no. Do I have a compassionate and grace filled creator who despite my constant selfish desires continues to love and forgive…..yes.

 I have today, I have right now, I have prayer and I have God. I guess that’s all I know and all I should know when it comes to moving forward. I think im beginning to see this concept of prayering constantly J the beauty of even narcissism…of our distorted humanity is this- it points back to a creator who did not intend this to be normal. Our world, our view of ourselves is abnormal..because we are separated from God and one day…one day…it will all be redeemed. So even in this, it can point to God and his love and grace…which I gotta admit keeps me humble and keeps me focused.