If you don’t know where you are going, you are likely to end up somewhere else.
Pondering sexual morality, I have discovered that each major shift in the line has occurred after going through a bout of depression. The actual pattern of my depression begins when I cannot get the things I most desire by holding current beliefs. I wallow in a pit of isolation and mind-numbing until I weary of the black hole and find a way out. Concurrent with finding a way out, my sexual morality shifts. I only made the connection between depression and sexual morality as I mind-wandered through this blogging of sexual morality.
Although I did not identify the malady as depression, I have been in and out of depression since puberty. I have dealt with it in different manners over the years. Right now, I am dealing with it by writing, because if there is any doubt, let me assure you that delving into this is mighty depressing. My comfort is that at the end, there will again be a shift – perhaps one that will grant me that which I most desire.
I began writing about all my struggles through depression, but I have decided that much of that is for me alone. I will share with you my road out of the most pivotal episode.
Around the time of my 35th birthday, I was seeing a psychiatrist for relationship issues. I was working at Enron at the time and had great health benefits that included most of the cost of the doctor. I think he was my paid confidential friend at the time. Before long, he had me on anti-depressants. This was in the days before prozac and for the previous five years, I had been on and off various other drugs.
After a short time on the drugs, I had a dream which told me I was on a pretty road, but it was going nowhere. I quit the drugs and the psychiatrist and decided I had to look for another path. My friend referred me to her therapist, who had taught her in seven sessions to control her alcoholism (at zero consumption). She wasn’t sure just what Marilyn did, but it had been magic for her and she was celebrating a year sober. (She is still a close friend and still sober nineteen years now I believe.) The magic that Marilyn performed was NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).
After two sessions in which we seemed to be making no progress, Marilyn suggested a program called imperative self. The program took six hours or until we get there. My session took a little over eight hours plus filling in a questionnaire before she even started. I came away with a note card which had my old way of thinking on it and a new way of thinking. Our perceptual bias is our individual filter, by which we see our objectives and our means of attaining those objectives. My 35 year old perceptual bias was: the right way to get what I wanted. My problem was that my religious education had taught me that I was never right(eous), which meant that striving to live right gained me nothing of what I wanted, while pursuing what I wanted left me guilt-ridden. We decided to install a new perceptual bias: ways of expressing who I am.
OK – back to my Bible roots. I AM is the name God gave Moses to identify him to the Egyptians. I AM is God within me. When I express God within me, I am right(eous). WOW!!! How freeing that was for me. I am feeling better just typing the words and thoughts.
I think I am almost at a conclusion here. hope so.
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| Sexual morality -- Part 4 |
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