Between You and Heaven - approximately what I preached today....

For whatever reason, the sermon simply wouldn't gel this week.  I kept tossing out what I had and trying another angle, only to feel dissatisfied with what was showing up on the page.  I felt strangely non-anxious.  I was revising my notes right up until 9:45, then just brought what I had and trusted the spirit.  It went quite well.  Here is approximately what I said.

“Between You and Heaven”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, June 7, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Zephaniah 3: 14-17; Matthew 16:24-29; DP 320

If we were to believe, as is the truth, that all goodness and truth come from the Lord, and all evil and falsity come from hell, we would not take credit for any goodness, nor condemn ourselves for any evil. 

Emanuel Swedenborg, The Divine Providence, portions of #320

“It is very hard to be truly intimate when we are in some way feeling flawed or deficient.”

Tara Brach

The thing that stands between you and heaven is your own self-judgment.

Let me say that again.

The thing that stands between you and heaven is your own self-judgment.

Heaven involves true authenticity which leads to true intimacy.  All self-loathing is a block to intimacy.

We tend to assume that someone is prideful and stuck on themselves and “thinks they are better than us.” Or we might assume someone hates themselves, and is too hard on themselves, and has no self-esteem.  But these are two faces of the same disease.  Anyone who seems to be narcissistic or superior or full of pride and snobbery is covering themselves with a thick defense mechanism to protect themselves from feeling their terror of being worthless.  

There is a belief and fear deep inside every one of us that somehow we are utterly unlovable.  John Bradshaw calls this “toxic shame.”  Regular shame includes regret over a word or deed or thought we may have experienced.  Toxic shame is the deep core belief that that somehow, something about our very selves is unlovable or is innately too evil to ever deserve love and belonging.

We are born into this imbalance.  We will tend to rush from one extreme to the other, finding difficulty holding a middle ground that enables us to be present with our faults without shame while being comfortable with our gifts without attaching superiority to them.  

Often those who are attracted to churches who have "The Truth" and who set themselves as "being right" over against everyone else's wrongness are those who need to attach themselves to something “perfect” because another part of them feels so utterly worthless.

I remember counseling a woman who belonged to such a church, and who was married to a controlling man, and who had seen enough traumas to be far less functional that she actually was.

She spent a lot of her time blaming her husband for her unhappiness, and asserting that if he would only change, she could be happy.  I listened and reflected and nudged her towards seeing the way she was contributing to the dynamic.  There was a moment when she hung in the space of realization that she had some responsibility….  And from that point she plunged into utter self-loathing.  

She had no space or inner middle ground between being a martyr or being utterly worthless.  It was as if her emotional muscles around her worth were either completely contracted or completely lax, with no ability to hold an even, moderate tension.  Imagine asking someone to walk who can only clench every muscle in their legs or completely relax every muscle, and nothing else.  I realized then how much work was ahead for her to develop the ability to stand in a space where she was neither pure victim nor deserving of annihilation. 

This moment with this woman was one of deep learning for me.  I was looking at what a lifetime of abuse can do to a soul, and also what black and white thinking can do to a soul.  In her mind, either she was all good or all evil.  And the minute she considered that she might be in error in some small way, every aspect of her self-worth collapsed and she believed she was worthy only of the lowest hell.

Until she was supported in building up a place to see herself as neither all good nor all evil, she would be unable to do self-reflection.  She would be unable to observe herself with curiosity and compassion. How could she stand to recognize where she was in error, and then commit to changing her part in any problem, when her inner sense of terror and self-loathing would launch her into raging inner cruelty the minute she recognized a fault?

Underneath her veneer of her own virtue and martyrdom, was a terrified, abused little girl who was sure she was utterly worthless.

There is a law in the universe that is the mirror of the Golden Rule, and it is this: "We give out to others what we tend to give to ourselves."  Anyone who is a verbally critical person and who puts on a show of being perfect themselves, is living with an equally harsh inner dialogue.  The need for their veneer of perfection is precisely because of that relentless, running, inner abuse.

When we are too harsh with ourselves we get judgmental, we martyr ourselves, we feel both inferior and superior at the same time—both from fear.  The superiority and snobbery is a defense mechanism for a terrified ego.  Self-loathing is also a defense mechanism for a terrified ego.

This law does not show up in obvious ways.  You must learn to look for it, and only the eyes of compassion can help you find it.

Many of us live with this harsh inner critic.  A deeply unkind running inner dialogue is much more common than many realize.  Finding compassion for ourselves and others takes work; it takes spiritual work.  You can’t just choose it and expect to be good at it any more than you can choose to be an athlete and instantly be one just by virtue of the choice.  But the intention to become an athlete is a great place to start.

We learn to love ourselves by learning to be kinder to others.  We learn to be more compassionate with others when we work on being more compassionate with ourselves.

e.e cummings said, “We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

Paul Boynton said, "Self-responsibility, self-respect and self-esteem go hand in hand. Work on any of these and you automatically see growth in all three."

We are all equally flawed and equally adorable.  It is the self-loathing that blocks us from heaven, not the flaws themselves, or babies wouldn’t be so utterly loving and lovable.  

We must all become like little children to enter heaven.

The thing that stands between you and heaven is your own self-judgment.

Let me say that again.

The thing that stands between you and heaven is your own self-judgment.

Heaven is true authenticity which leads to true intimacy.  And true intimacy is heaven.

Amen.

The Readings

Zephaniah 3: 14-17

Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel!

Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!
For the Lord will remove his hand of judgment and will disperse the armies of your enemy.

And the Lord himself, the King of Israel, will live among you!

At last your troubles will be over, and you will never again fear disaster.
On that day the announcement to Jerusalem will be, “Cheer up, Zion! Don’t be afraid!

For the Lord your God is living among you.  He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.  With his love, he will calm all your fears.

He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

Matt 16:24-28

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?  For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.  Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Divine Providence 320 portions

If we were to believe, as is the truth, that all goodness and truth come from the Lord, and all evil and falsity come from hell, we would not take credit for any goodness, nor condemn ourselves for any evil. 

Once we make these two acknowledgments, we can simply notice the evils within ourselves and, to the extent that we block them from becoming behaviors and we turn away from them because we see they do harm (are sinful), we throw them back into the place of fear and ignorance (hell) from which they came.