Poustinia of July 24th, 2019

I am so tired of myself. You have no idea how exhausting it was to write that last entry [a writing that attempted to make sense of some of my own personality features]. I had picked away at it throughout various points in the day and only finished it at about 9 pm. A whole day spent intentionally thinking about me. I went to bed with my peace sapped and spirit irked, but not before pulling Warnie [an old churchwarden] out for 45 minutes in an attempt to assuage the high level of anxiety that somehow took hold.

Since then, there has been an increase in a very specific kind of attack: one of adulation. It’s like the demons follow me around, lightly slathering on the highest of praises at all times. It’s as if they were so darn proud of me they wouldn’t waste a moment not letting me know. The best way to fight this is to simply reject the thoughts and remember how dishonorable and silly I can be sometimes, so I am reminded—despite what the enemy tells me—that I am most certainly not perfect. It’s difficult to do this since there is still that broken part of my nature that pines for recognition… and here I am getting it, but from the worst place possible. There is also the very holy desire in me to reach the highest degree of perfection I can attain, which only adds to the hardship of this temptation since it is one that wishes me to believe I have reached that point.

…all I want is to be removed from the equation. I’m sick of my insights and my wisdom and my spiritual life. I only want to be absorbed by Christ. No more of “my spiritual journey and strengths and weaknesses and experiences and growth and states”. I’m trying to escape all of that… that hidden little part of me that quietly observes my whole being, either satisfied or dissatisfied with the person as a whole it beholds.

It is this same part of me that almost joins with the demons’ applause when I do something right and also with their scorn when I do something wrong. This is a part of me I want to kill, because everything I do is filtered through him. If I walk away from poustinia with a word, he’s happy; something went “right”. If I act in a way that shows I’ve grown, he claps me on the back. If I do or say something that doesn’t fit his standards, he’s disappointed. He’s the real self we’re supposed to destroy.

Even now he’s ecstatic that I’ve exposed him; that the person he’s responsible to care for has discovered something that was hindering it’s growth. The trick now is to dispose of him with out him knowing I am doing so, and in that there seems a contradiction: in order to grow, I must renounce a part of me that wants to grow. The leaf must kill the root, the blood must stop the heart. For my own good, I have to somehow forget to seek my own welfare. Not to say I stop caring about myself and allow my soul to fall into ruin. It’s the side of me that is excited with its own success that has to die; it isn’t able to associate that success with anything other than itself.

This isn’t about me. None of this is about me. I have to learn to do the exact opposite of what the enemy did, which was to fall prey to the belief that it was—in fact—about him. There is something so much bigger and wider and deeper that I can become a part of than the relentless fervor to ensure the health of my tiny little experience on this planet. I am one soul to have lived among billions, souls that spanned many thousands of years in an ancient world that has shifted and evolved as many times… and these are only the bare tip of a Reality that spans to infinity… and that infinitesimal speck of dust I am is absurd enough to believe it is deeper than the ocean it floats upon.

Mind you, I am aware of my value. I may only be a speck of dust, but I am precious dust… and this ocean I find myself in was only created for my joy fulfillment. In no way am I indebted to it, but at the same time I must be aware that it is not indebted to me. I only refuse to offer the attention this speck demands. It wants to be big, important, seen. My job is to make it little, unimportant, hidden. It will writhe in pain as its life-breath is wrenched from it, but that is part of the beauty of the Christian life. In dying we learn what it truly means to live.