Breaking Out Of The Bubble

A Moment Of Truth

September 25, 2008 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

I have spent an awful lot of time in my life trying to reconcile some pretty impossible conflicts.

It all started when I was very young.

I grew up in a religious system which was very fond of emphasizing Just How Bad We All Are. How we are all born into this world as terrible, wretched sinners, and how everything about us is offensive to God and makes God very angry, and how all that we deserve is to be eternally punished by God. But maybe, if we grovel and abase ourselves enough, God will grudgingly agree not to smite us down from the heavens-but only if we agree to remember in every second that we really do deserve the smiting, and never ever dare to think of ourselves as anything better than the sniveling worms we truly are.

(I know that I tend to exaggerate a lot in the interests of humor, but I’m actually not exaggerating this. See: Why I No Longer Participate In Organized Religion)

And at the same time that I was under constant bombardment by this dogma, I was also being told that I was supposed to love God, and do everything for God, and want to spend all of my time with God.

Um, I don’t think so.

It never made sense to me, why I should want to have anything to do with a being that was reported to hate me so much, but because I wanted to be A Good Girl, and I wanted people to like me and approve of me, and I certainly wanted God to like and approve of me, I did my best to follow this convoluted system, which pretty much boiled down to agreeing to lose my mind.

[Read more…] about A Moment Of Truth

What Do Mayflowers Bring?

December 7, 2007 By Jenny Ryan 3 Comments

Lately I’ve been reading the book Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. I always enjoy learning the stories behind history, but this particular part of history has a special place in my heart because I am the 15th generation descendant of 4 people who came over to the New World on that ship.(Important Side Note: Which does not at all cause my husband to crack frequent jokes about “inbreeding” at my expense.)

This material is dovetailing nicely with all the things I was thinking about after reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, back before my intestines became the unfortunately fertile breeding ground for Hostile Alien Bacteria. Specifically it’s helping me to answer the question, “What’s my word?” Because not only have I realized that, of course, my word cannot be anything other than FREE, all this reading about my ancestors has given me a good idea of where that might have come from.

Of course we all know the traditional story of the Pilgrims and their desire for freedom from the king of England and his church, but it’s the way that Philbrick describes these desires that sometimes has all my hair standing on end in amazed recognition.

When I read things like, “…the Puritans had chosen to spurn thousands of years of accumulated tradition in favor of a text that gave them a direct and personal connection to God,” I remember how powerful an experience it was for me to go through the workbook of A Course In Miracles for the first time (Philbrick, p.8).

Or when I read that they wanted to be “…free to establish themselves on their own terms”, I think about how I have done the very same thing in creating my own work, my own contribution to the world, and my own role within my marriage (Philbrick, p.16).

And when I read that during their services, “…the entire congregation had participated in a passionate search for divine truth”, I almost shot out the top of my head, because that is what my entire life has been devoted to (Philbrick, p. 12).

Signs You Might Not Quite Have Left The Bubble In Which You Grew Up

September 12, 2007 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

In the parking lot of our gym, looking at the window decals on one of the trainers’ car.

Me: Oh look, she likes the Care Bears.

My husband (looking at me a little pityingly): Um, dude, that’s a sticker for the Grateful Dead.

Waking Up (This Is A Long One)

August 17, 2007 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

Every week my friend and fab-o-rama coach, Lynne pulls a Tarot card or a rune for the week, to give us readers something to think about or to explain why certain issues might be “up” for us. This week’s was quite a doozie but I knew exactly what it was talking about, because it pretty much sums up what this past year has been like for me. You can read the entire text at her blog; I’ve excerpted the parts that were particularly applicable to my experience here.

“The role of Nauthiz is to identify our shadow, our dark or repressed side, places where growth has been stunted, resulting in weaknesses that are often projected onto others.”

“This is a time to pay off old debts, to restore, if not harmony, at least balance.”

“When something within you is disowned, that which is disowned wreaks havoc. A cleansing is required here; in undertaking it, you will fund a will and strengthen character.”

“Thus you are required to undergo the dark side of your passage and bring it into the light.”

Yup, that pretty much sums it up quite nicely. But as you know, if you’ve ever gone racketing around in your own unconscious for an extended period of time, there’s a b-i-g difference between reading these words on a page and actually undergoing the process. A difference which I think can best be expressed by the phrase HOLY. F&%@!!