I am good, and so are you

People usually say that everyone wants to "be happy".  I don't think this is exactly right.  I think everyone wants inner tranquility, a sense of all being right with the world and within oneself.  I think this comes from the subtle recognition of our true nature.  Tranquility and inner peace makes me think of stillness, joy, acceptance, awe, beauty, observation, reception, breathing, embracing, free-flowing and unrestrained movement (say, dance), being in a state of flow, living in the moment...

That said, if we want inner tranquility, there must be something that interferes with this when we start to base our sense of self-worth on the validation of others.  Sometime in our early childhood development, we must have been taught that to live in that inner tranquility, there are certain pre-conditions that must be met first.  Often, these are quite literally the approval of others, especially our parents.  We are taught to respond to compliments of our being.  If we are told we are "good", it's generally in relation to something we are doing.  Therefore, we learn that to be at peace means to be "good", and to be "good", we must do X.  

Once that false notion is established and internalized, we start to pursue that external validation as a constant affirmation of our being OK.  And of course, it is not other people's job to always affirm us, especially since they're often busy trying to do the same thing for themselves.  And so since we're hyper aware of other's responses to us, we notice right away anything that veers even minutely away from 100% validation, and we immediately sound the alarm that something is not right, that we are not "good" (enough), and therefore CANNOT be at peace with ourselves UNLESS and UNTIL we DO something - please someone, change ourselves. 

This never-ending cycle feeds on itself and will never be satisfied.  The only way out is to get off the looney train.  Stop seeking validation outside of oneself, and recognize that I am already perfectly "good" without having to "do" anything special, and without having anyone affirm that for me.  I must learn to trust myself.  If I tell myself that I am well, then I am well.  Nothing else is needed to prove this to myself, and certainly not to others.  I can choose to be at peace with myself just as I am, even when others disapprove, because their approval is irrelevant to my inner state, unless of course I delegate my responsibility to maintain my mental and emotional equlibrium to others.

How can someone outside of myself ever truly judge me, though?  They will never know the entire thought process that went into my decision-making.  They will never have experienced my life's circumstances in the same way that I have.  They will never have had the same set of experiences in the first place. No one can ever relate 100% to my lived experience, so how can they truly tell me if I'm "good" or not?  Why should I trust them if they offer such a judgment?  It's chaos.  

We must remember that what we're struggling with, they are too.  Why should they be validating us when they ought to be validating themselves?  That's what happens - we start validating others, and forget to validate ourselves.  And then we fill that void by seeking others to validate us.  And then we're resentful of those who don't fully validate us, because we think - we're validing others, why can others validate us?  What if we all stop validating each other and start validating ourselves?

Will I make mistakes?  Yup.  So what?  Who taught me that I shouldn't make mistakes?  It doesn't matter, because they were wrong.  Mistakes are a part of life, just like breathing.  There's better and worse ways of breathing (some lead to hyperventilation, some are context-dependent [like holding one's breath under water]), but as long as we're breathing, we're "good".  We waste precious potential breaths when we think, "oh, no!  I shouldn't have breathed like that!  I should've slowed my breathing down a little.  That would've calmed me down.  I can't believe I did that." 

Mistakes are like breaths.  If the inopportune one happens, we acknowledge it and focus on the next one.  Nothing more, and nothing less. Mistakes are not evidence of our failure as human beings.  And while we're at it, successes (as measured by society's standards) are not evidence of our being exceptional human beings.

If something or someone does not help me circle back to this basic realization, I need to distance myself from it or them.  If my religion tries to make me focus on my mistakes (sin! confession! hell or purgatory!), then it's not leading me closer to my true nature of oneness with God (which is what even Christian scriptures claim to be the end goal of the Christian life, just via often convoluted wording).

If it's not helping, it's harming, and I'm distancing myself from it.

Following the Dao of Jesus

What if Christianity is not only not helping me, but is actually causing harm?  I'm not talking about abuses by Church authority figures, which is its own ironic evil. I'm talking about the way that Christianity is presented and taught in general; what if THAT is what's causing me harm?

Christianity is based on the premise that I am a victim of original sin.  I am sinful without any effort from me.  There's nothing I can do about it.  I'm doomed.  BUT... here's the good news!  If I accept Jesus's sacrificial death on the cross as somehow making it all better for me, then and only then can I rest in the Father's love again.  I intentionally didn't refer to Jesus's "atoning death" because not all Christian traditions see it as a "ransom".  Even in the more .... gentle, shall I say?.... approaches to the purpose of the Cross, nonetheless I NEED it.  I cannot escape the horrific torture of the Man I'm supposed to emulate, and even if we don't call it "payment for my sins", the implication is there.  

The message is clear - I am inherently not good enough.  God went through hell and high water and then some to bring me back, and I owe Him my life.  This is not the sort of gratitude that I find a healthy approach to life.  It's rather a sort of shame-based relief that the wrath of God passed me by. But there's still a wrathful God in the picture, and supposedly this is the God "of love" Who created me in the first place.  It would appear that He did so for His own entertainment, then.  And if that's the case, this sort of God doesn't exactly scream "virtue" and "goodness" and "righteousness".  

It seems that there's the Father, who is the yang, if you will, of the operation, with justice and the ensuing inevitable doom to humanity. And there's Jesus and the HolySpirit Who are the yin or the merciful aspect of God, with forgiveness and love.  Or maybe just Jesus is the yin, and the Holy Spirit is the connection between the two?  At any rate, it seems like the Trinity and Christianity as a whole is a sort of personification of what we read about in the Dao De Jing.

But in the Dao De Jing, the focus is not on sin, shame, guilt, wrath, punishment.  Rather, the focus is on acceptance, balance, inner tranquility, detachment.  The framework is completely different.  All the same aspects of reality are still there, but we are not taught to fear any of them.  We are not running from anything.  Or towards anything, for that matter.  We simple are, just like God introduced Himself to Moses when He said His name is "I AM".  If we are to be like God, then we, too, are supposed to focus our lives on "just being".  

I have known this on some level for a long time, but I've been oscillating between denial and unhealthy attachment.  I could not let go of my image of God.  In spite of my best efforts, I have been breaking the first commandment by creating a certain idol of God based on what other people have erroneaously told me about Him.  God is supposed to be mysterious and beyond definition or description, yet this has never stopped religions from insisting they've got Him figured out anyway, at least to some degree.  And I totally fell for it.  Their assuredness made me assume they were right just bc they believe they are.  

Instead, I am learning to trust myself.  I am learning to listen to that still, small voice of God that doesn't need to be filtered through the lens of religion and therefore someone else's experience or interpretation.  God will tell me whatever I need to know for this journey.  I trust God.  I trust God more than I trust Church.  I trust God completely.  I believe in God in that I believe in God's ability and desire to commune with me directly, to convict me directly of what I need to draw closer to Him, to be more like Him, and therefore to be more like My True Self.

I'm tired of trying to force myself into believing "facts" ABOUT Jesus instead of believing (read: trusting) Jesus based on what He taught.  I can't imagine going down in human history merely for my death, and not for my life, my character, my teachings, my efforts.  To say that we only needed Jesus on the cross, and not on foot among the people is to objectify Him into a token "source of coattails" that we can ride on into heaven.  I don't want to do that anymore.  I want to get to know Jesus for His teachings, and through His teachings, and I want to emulate Him based on His teachings.

And I believe Daoism actually does a better job of that than mainstream Christianity.