Saturday, 12 December 2009 17:52
Written by Nirmala
Someone emailed me who is dealing with a severe illness. They inquired and found that they have little or no will to live, that they fear God is punishing them with this illness, and that they also feel they do not deserve to be healed or have a passionate full life.Here is what I wrote in response:
I am very impressed with the depth and honesty of your inquiry. And it does seem that in order to heal your physical illness, you must first "heal" your will to live issue. And in this case, the deepest healing is the recognition that there is nothing to heal. By that I mean that there is nothing wrong or bad here, and you have done nothing wrong. It is simply not your fault that you feel this way, it is your conditioning which is based on your actual life experiences. And your conditioning is not your fault.
And everything you have done in this life has simply been the best way you knew to take care of yourself. Where is the wrong in that? I know that there are plenty of people willing to judge you or blame you for your acts, but what if they are mistaken? What if it really is not your fault and you were just trying to take care of yourself. How can you judge someone for that or ever consider punishing them? (Note: I am not saying it is never true for society to protect itself by putting someone in jail, it just does not make sense to try and punish someone for an act that is not their fault, which is probably why punishment rarely truly works to heal or rehabilitate anyone.)
And so if God is any kind of a halfway decent version of a god, he/she would know this. Therefore a real and worthy God is never judgmental and would never even consider punishing someone. If there is a god that does any of that, then I say it is time to get a new god, and fire the old one! But fortunately all we have to change is our belief about God, since the reality is that God or Being never judges or punishes. We might try and punish ourselves (and even that is part of the way we try to take care of ourselves), but Being never does.
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