(Originally published 06/06/13 at Trojan Horse Productions.)
This has been a very heavy day, and there’s a lot here. For the moment, at least, I will not try to organize this.
Darkness at times appears to serve Light; destruction, to serve creation.
It is a rude awakening for me to have to revisit the world of infantile self-centeredness, apparently to have to re-learn correctly this time (at age 57!) some things I didn’t learn correctly on the first go-round.
A world where it is correct for me to want things only for “Me, me, me!”
I have known for years that in order to get out of my predicament (I was in jobless poverty for quite some time before I ever became homeless.), I needed to develop a healthy selfishness. I had, to the best of my conscious awareness, devoted myself wholly to seeking others’ welfare, to the detriment of my own.
As simple a thing as allowing myself to want things. Want them enough to work for them. Want them enough to overcome obstacles.
It’s not that I despised material possessions; I did not value them nearly as much as I (overwhelmingly) valued relationships. What I did despise was the desire for material possessions. As a result, now I have none.
In healing prayer, it’s essential that the patient be completely selfish in seeking his or her own healing. Otherwise nothing will happen.
When an active addict considers seeking recovery, it won’t work to make the effort because it’s a good idea, or for others’ sake. Only when the addict becomes able to do it from utter selfishness — “I’m doing this for me!” — will enough energy be given to the task to succeed.
So in the past few days I’ve found myself completely selfish in prayer time. Of course, my self isn’t the be-all, end-all here. The gifts God has invested in me will not profit very many people much at all so long as I remain homeless and dependent. To the end of coming into a position of being able to profit others, for now I must be completely selfish.
Then ego-centrism is not necessarily always evil, or destructive, or dark. It may be pre-requisite for one’s care for others.
I had significant depression today. Here again may darkness be serving light. In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck says depression may represent the deconstruction of attitudes, perspectives or habits that have outlived their usefulness, so that new, adaptative ones may be constructed. The old ways may have been perfectly correct at one time, but as circumstances and one’s place in life have changed — as one grows from infancy into childhood, for example, or from childhood into adulthood — they are no longer so. Destruction serves creation.
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Previous pertinent posts:
Jacob’s ladder 06/19/13
Sifting dichotomies
From my diary: Learning to pray
(Reblogged 01/12/17.)
on air talent, talk show host, radio talk show, the homeless blogger
The Homeless Blogger 
3 related thoughts:
I daydream and think a lot on the bus, but I started doing something recently when I’m not being that productive in such nonactivity. I will occasionally just start praying for everyone I see. One cannot easily follow Paul’s admonition to pray without ceasing (without becoming a monk) without such prayers being shallower than, for example, self-interested prayers. Yet they Shirley have an effect.
My buddy walks with a limp, and we usually roll out together in the AM. As I waited outside for him to leave on an icy day, I found myself praying for his safety on the ice that day. It then occurred to me that I hadn’t yet prayed for myself on the ice, as I cannot easily afford an injury either (even though my skateboarding and drinking have given me ample experience in falling).
I tell people that being homeless and living in a mission is not as bad as sitting in your place waiting to be evicted. Sometimes I’ll have a flashback unpleasant dream about the latter. I awake and think, “Oh good; I’m already homeless..”
My quality of life improved when I became homeless.