Pataikos the dwarf god

 

 Pataikos: The Open Confessions of a Reptilian Lord

Ever get to feeling that you are nothing but an ugly, grotesque little dwarf, jumping up and down screaming bloody murder, and turning cartwheels on the sidelines of life while the world goes on its merry way into oblivion? Ever feel like you're speaking a language that no-one can understand; that you are a minority of one; a negative cipher cast off and adrift; no longer a part of the great machine because you are just to damn broken to function properly-- unable to blithely take the shrieking madness around you as sanity and as truth and as real--let alone pretend that it isn't?

You could turn on the television then, and commiserate. You could smile through your tears because god is in his heaven and all is right with the world. You could opt for spiritual morphine. And what is worse than the terror of being utterly alone and knowing it and trying to face it with integrity is the ludicrous obscenity that pretty much everyone else is running scared too. No shred of human dignity remains to you. Your very pain is a marketed, enumerated, meaningless commodity, readily available for wholesale distribution. In fact, there is no getting away from the neighbors at all. The Jones, be they ever so humble, and vulgar, despicable and crude, will follow you straight to hell. One cannot but think of that one who concluded that since god did not exist one would have to commit suicide so as to become a god oneself.

See, the thing is, if you are a vessel of purest gold…the clay vessels will kill you for daring to expose their lives for the lie that they have become. They will silence you, ignore you, and mock you, and when that no longer works they will put you on a pedestal and make you irrelevant--accessible to all. Because once you do become a Mahatma, they have already won--they have made you safe enough to love; an innocuous adornment for which they can congratulate themselves for having had the wit to discover in the first place.

But I would maintain that the parable of the clay jars has nothing to do with the homogenization of human suffering but with the recognition that the beginning of the spiritual life is the awakening of the human conscience to the intolerable enormity of sin, and the singular realization that you cannot die--neither to the sniveling mediocrity which you are not, let alone to the divinity which you are.

So long as there is a democratization of the human spirit--so long as religion refuses to take up the cross in absolute fullness and in anguish, so long will I cry out for Jihad, and fight on the side of St. Michael whose sword is free of gore only because it is washed clean in the tears of the slaughtered lamb. And let us not delude ourselves here. Among each other we are safe. Together, in our solidarity of vision, are we nourished and strengthened. Those we have come to serve have every reason to fear us though. And they will revile us as whores, because that is what we will become for their name's sake. Behold us then, the towers of the flock. Our garlands of peace and love mean nothing, and less than nothing, if they are not watered by the blazing fire of the passion of the Christ that dwells within each one of us.

That said, I think it would be best if I left this group. With every post I become more and more disheartened. I no longer feel welcome here. My twin-flame assures me that I do have a place here in this group, but then, she loves me. We are each of us halves of one undivided sky. Our love is the only truth in which I believe. The thing is though, I see no cause for hope. I never have. My vision is dark and speaks of suffering and no-one wants to hear it. Everyone seems to want love and light and peace and joy and happiness and uplifting inspiration, and positive thinking and optimism and strengthening and faith and glorious visions for the future and there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all. But if that is what is required, if that is what is  needed, then I have no business being here. It is not something that I have ever been able to deliver without being fundamentally dishonest with myself. I apologized for having written.

The Silken Thread, and I was serious about that, though I made light of it at the time. I was apologizing ,

for being untrue to my vision, and writing that bit of drivel was the hardest thing I have ever done because it disconnected my heart from the truth that I must speak or perish. I wrote it in absolute anguish and it tore through my soul like a plague of locusts. I am simply not strong enough to ever bring out of myself such depth of gentleness again. Do you have any idea how much that hurts? I am, after all, a healer. I want nothing more than to inspire people--to make them feel warm and loved and nurtured and safe and good all over, but that is not what has ever been asked of me. I am asked only to create the balance, whether I want to or not. All the world wants sunshine and light and so here by the grace of god go I bringing darkness and storm.

We talk here of Gibran. He inspired hundred of millions around the world with the spiritual clarity of his light, but what no-one wants to hear about is the fact that he could do this because not a day went by when he did not wrestle with his Lord. And well, in the end… he might well have lost. He drank himself to death. We talk of Mother Teresa and but neglect what her memoirs and confession reveal, namely that she spent her entire life in a dark night of the soul, never once experiencing the grace of the presence of the Lord whom she loved and served. Who among as could carry so terrible a burden or pay so high of a price for peace? We speak of Gandhi, the great Mahatma, and never once pause to consider the tremendous violence within him out of which he wrested the Herculean strength required of him to do all that he was enabled to do for his country.

What I'm saying is simply this. If we truly want peace, then what are we willing to give for it? If we want only the love and the peace and the light then we are whitewashed tombs and liars because that love and that light which is Christ was born in passion on a real cross with real nails that pierced a real body that really really died in real pain. You cannot have the flower without the dark soil in which it was grown. We say that we want peace, but we don't want to shovel the shit, and why would we? The shit is what is real in our lives.


 It is much easier to hold the light of an ideal than to embrace ones own damn suffering and cowardice and simple human ugliness and the anguish that it causes in our selves and in the lives of those we love the most. And let me make it plane and simple-- until that peace we so long for becomes an absolute reality to us in the most intimate and most profound of ways; until it is wedded to our sinfulness; until that peace becomes an absolute necessity in our lives, we are just pissing in the wind. Unless we know down to the very marrow what that peace IS and until we are willing to give our lives for it, and until that peace becomes a concrete necessity to us we are merely giving the party line, and I want no part of it, now or ever. I am not a pacifist and I am not a vegetarian and I am only willing to die for what is absolutely real and for nothing else.

I know which peace I am looking for. I know what it looks like. It is nothing more nor less than the conscious and immediate presence of god in my life. And that peace--where is it found? It is found in my envy of Michael who not only writes better and thinks clearer than I do, but has found his peace with the Lord and can thus articulate the blessed love and gentleness that I want so desperately to share with the world but cannot.

 So then…as the immortal bunny said: "that's all folks". If you want me to stay, then stay I will, but only if I hear from you all. I cannot promise inspiration or sweet roses…only ever the rain that feeds them and the shit they grow in. Mine is not the portion of gentle kindness or inspiring sentiments that make all things right and beautiful and glowing. I am no optimist and never will be one. I give only what I have. But this I promise--what I give here, I will give ever and always straight from the heart, no matter how much it hurts to say it. Okay?

My formula for peace is very simple and but extremely difficult: it is to stand before each other even as we stand before our god…naked, raw, and bleeding. Until we can share our fears and our tears and our vulnerabilities without shame and without excuse we will have no peace. Until we can look at each others secret selves without flinching; until we can be vulnerable with each other, and that in recognition of our inalienable dignity as human beings, the peace we long for will remain an illusion that can do no more than give comfort in the night of unreason.

My vision for this group: that we have the sheer guts it will take to share with each other honestly how it is that we create the peace of the presence of the holy spirit in our day to day lives. And/or how we don't. Let us weep together at our failures and rise together in triumph at our victories then. Let us then truly be our commitment to peace. We can each of us be each others strength. When it comes right down to it, folks--we have only each other, and if we can create the living peace of god amongst each other, and for each other, then truly are we gathered in his name, and his blessed name will cover the earth with his mercy and the mighty peace of his unending love.

Long live the Jihad. Long live our little family. Long live the fond

hope it might become one.

L