I M Perfect lady

Category: FALC

  • Total Contradictions…

    There is a difference between suspecting something and actually knowing or reading in plain English what you feared or intuitively felt…but once you read it it doesn’t go away.

    It nestles up closely with the feelings and they become one.

    The truths click together like a magnet and you can’t force them apart. 

    What I now know is that the Christian neighbors who toot their high moral and high value ways are not able to walk the walk of morals and values. 

    Adults in my childhood world crumbled and their character turned to ash…this I felt about 6 years ago… without proof I had felt deep to my bones that they knew and did nothing.  They were no better than my mother.

    Jim Torola’s blog, has an interesting view of the members of the FALC and child sexual abuse, and he shows that my family and neighbors are not unusual, but perhaps this is an ongoing practice, handed down from generation to generation whose legacy are tainted with abuse. http://jimtorola.typepad.com/blog/

    What I too find so telling is the longevity and the multiple families who happened to all deal the same way, like there is an unwritten or unspoken rule, just a knowing…keep it quiet and away from the hands of the police.

    Detective Tom Rosemurgy speaks of what makes his job of getting the pedophiles off the street so difficult.

    “…without somebody with first hand knowledge (a victim) stepping up first, my hands are tied.  Most folks in (or out) of the church aren't too willing or eager to speak on such matters.  And If I try to start there, more often than not, the victims are taken care of with threats before I can speak with them.  I am always more satisfied with results when I can speak to a victim before the predator or the predator's family knows I am out and about.”

    The last line is so haunting…

    It seems literally a miracle that a child would step up and speak out when the whole family and church are trying to keep this away from the police.

    Hear that, they are trying to keep this info away from the law.  And in my case, oh my, did they do a good job.  For forty year they dodged the law.

    Now tell me who all should be sitting in jail???

    The law is simply not the normal course of action for sexual abuse within the FALC.  And it hasn’t been for years and years…. 

    I know this, for No one called the police.  NO One….come on people what is up with that???

    They will use the law for car wrecks, breaking and entering of their homes, but no report is written up when the children are broken into and wrecked, NO one calls the police.

    Am I the only one who can see the insanity of this?

    In my little corner of the world, I would have presumed many things about the good people of my church, I had them with a rock solid moral compasses, with values that were of a higher standard than the run of the mill criminal, now I am no longer sure as to who they are.

    What does it say about you if you are not sharing information about criminal sexual conduct against a child, be it your child or the neighbor’s child, be it a Christian or non believer?  What does it say about your moral compass if you willingly keep this away from the hands of the law???

    Are you not aiding and abetting criminals?

    I have made a general sweep of the congregation of the FALC as being co-conspirators for pedophiles. How they are knowingly hiding them among their pews…by NOT going to the police.  And it wasn't just my family, it is many families through the ages. 

    I do know and have known that the major factor in these sex rings is that the predator is a family member and the families are ‘in good standing’ among the church members and the church is one of ‘high morals and high values’ and this would not sit well to uncover pedophiles within.

    What I had said in the very beginning of this was that I trusted a whore.  She didn’t act or portray anything else.  She was a whore, charged for sex as whore does, but she wasn’t sitting in church on Sunday proclaiming her piety.

    What totally blows my mind is that people who sit in church on Sundays, and then act like criminals.  Who are you? 

    I love ducks that act like a duck, walk like a duck and quack like a duck.

    Which is why I sought out nature… nature always was what you seen….a tree remained a tree no matter what time of the day or day in the week it stayed the same when I looked at it.  I loved its stability…The FALC and its members are total contradictions…  

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  • Sit and hear Why.

    It almost seems like my father’s life and its impact it had on so many little girls is the classic case, the textbook example of what happens when you ignore the truth.

    What happens when you feel a certain way, but tuck it away and not address it…for I had very strong feelings of not trusting him and certainly never wanted to be near him…this was just the way it was from the time I was so little.  I just never questioned myself or delved deeper in to why.

    The truth of my fear was never explored.  And in fact I grew to become accustomed to just being a person who didn’t have warm feelings towards her parents.  I never questioned why, I just lived this way, it was my normal set point.

    My parents determined my set point, and I never challenged why we were this way, it just was.

     When you are not able to discuss the whole truth of our lives, you are then living in this weird spot way above truth in a place called pretend.

    They pretended to be loving parents and I pretended to feel love…and I never felt I could challenge them, nor was there a great urge to do so, to blatantly just flat out want to lay it all on the table.  I am thinking subconsciously, I knew that once I crossed the line of no longer pretending, all hell would break lose…and it would have.

    Just by tugging on one little string, the whole ball of wax would have come undone.

    While I can understand that inside of our house how we would have had so much to lose by seeking the truth of our fears and suspicions, I am not really clear as to why the outside wasn’t able to be reckless with abandon and come in demanding the truth to be exposed.

    How is it that the parents of the neighborhood were not picketing outside of our driveway, demanding his arrest for what he did to their daughters?

    What stopped them? 

    Keeping them away from Ray is what I did.  I tried to stay back from him. My sisters tried to stay back from him…and I can understand the kids without an option to just stay away, but I still can’t comprehend how a parent who hears their child’s story…doesn’t take it to the law.

    My mother’s reasons were clouded in love and wanting to keep the family together at all costs. Her facing the truth would have destroyed her whole family as she knew it.  Her pretend loving husband and untouched girls would have come tumbling down.  She would have to face things she ignored for years.

    But what did the neighbors have to lose by prosecuting Ray?

    What stopped them from taking this to the 9/10’s of the law? 

    And this is being done in three separated homes and during the span of many years.  It didn’t all happen during one bad month…or a particularly awful summer, it went on for years in the same neighborhood.  Different girls and different parents same perpetrator and similar reaction.  No law was involved.

    Again, I can see what my mother would have to lose, she would lose everything…but as a neighbor what would you have to lose?

    My father wasn’t the cement that held the neighborhood together to make it this wonderful place to live, he made it a living hell for the girls, and yet the outside wasn’t willing to prosecute…and it just doesn’t make sense to me.

    Even the minister… why would he ask about motives for telling on a man who seldom, and I mean seldom sat his butt down on a church bench?  And not be stricken by the fact that a little girl is telling him of her wounds…instead to immediately go to the defense of Ray.

    Most it seems seemed to care more about what would happen to Ray, than what was happening to the girls, like they immediately swing their heads in the wrong direction, instead of moving heaven and earth to protect the child, they first consider what this information will mean to Ray and even perhaps to themselves. 

    It is the lack of police reports on this man for over 40 years that is so telling…and I am sure the reasons are varied and complex and believable by each person who did what they each did at the time.

    I am sure they understand their decisions.

    While I had feelings of being afraid of my father, I had no pictures, so I couldn’t know why…and when I heard that he molested my niece I immediately had my answer…But what I hadn’t expected was that others knew.

    I was blown sideways by the fact that I felt I was the last to know, like a wife of a cheating husband, it seemed that everyone knew and talked about what I didn’t know.

    No one but me seemed to be too surprised.

    While I was sent reeling and tumbling into an abyss others continued on with life as normal, for they had this information now for 30 to 40 years.  It wasn’t new news, but just the same old story coming around again.

    I was 46, and as incredible as it seems this information had been in place in other people’s homes and minds…the answer to my puzzled life.

    And I could tell immediately by the reaction of so many, that I was the last to know…and they now began turning away from me.  Which seemed even weirder.  We are all on the same page so let’s talk.  And yet, by this time…I knew who my friends were and what they kept from me and the cost. 

    I wasn’t really open to listening…and I am unsure today, I would still want to sit and hear why.

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  • Normal Results.

    “What is your motive for Telling…” is a phrase that lends it self to much debate.  The simple fact that a child is then put in a position of feeling ‘bad’ for squealing stops many from coming forth.

     No one wants to be a squealer.

    Squealing is seen and incurred as to being weak or bad and that you should not say anything, IF you don’t have anything kind to say…

    It is seen as soiling someone’s reputation. 

    How is it that the squealer is the one who is in charge of that?  Surely it wasn’t the little girl’s fault that in Telling on Ray, he would then be made to ‘look bad’. 

    He was bad each moment he forcibly made a girl touch him.

    She was telling to stop an action, she wasn’t concerned how it looks or how it would fit into others lives.  She just wanted it to stop. 

    In order for things to stop, reputations will change color, past ideals of a person will take on a new tone, lives and relationships will hang in the balance, things will not go on as “Normal”.

    For now an abnormal behavior has entered in.

    Insanity ensues if you continue to act normal when abnormal walks and talks in your world and you don’t tell or pay attention to it, to see it like it is. 

    It seems preposterous that you would carry on life as usual with this oddity in your midst, that you would pretend to pretend to pretend that there is nothing amiss, that you would try harder to be normal instead of addressing the abnormal behavior.

    But take it from me, we do.

    In fact, in home this was not abnormal, but normal.  I come from a long line of sexual abuse…and the way they treated it was to do nothing, but carry on as usual.

    When the adults in my childhood life didn’t see abnormal, I then became abnormal.  I had to become abnormal to fit in.

    What I had thought was that only our home acted abnormal to normal abuse, but come to find out there is a sea of people willing to sweep abnormal under the rug to keep up with their normal lives, normal religions, normal families, normal marriages, normal relationships.

    It isn’t abuse that is the problem, but holding on to normal.

    Holding on to normal, all will discount, overlook, and under react in order to keep their own normal lives. 

    What is so incredulous to me is that they hang on to normal in their minds only.  For abnormal has now come to live with them and the longer they don’t see abnormal, the more abnormal becomes their family.

    I lived and learned that abnormal was the normal way to be.

    How grateful and blessed I am, that I was finally able to see that what I had stood for and championed was not normal.  What a gift to see my abnormalities.

    Most are not given this awareness.  I am speaking out and shouting out and pointing out what others are failing to see.

    Since I lived for 46 years believing I had a ‘normal’ family but that I was abnormal, I want to share my experience.  I am not a squealer, but a person who is telling to help stop abuse…for people to start seeing that what they think or want to believe is normal is so abnormal.

     Being raised in abnormal it is hard to know normal.

    Sometimes doing the complete opposite of what you were taught will bring in normal results. 

     

     

     

  • Who Knew and Turned Away.

    The evidence report adds credence to my journey, it gives supporting evidence, names, locations, and sets the tone or energy of what I felt towards my father.   It takes this inner feeling that I had and makes it public knowledge.

    This public knowledge sits so heavily upon me, for years I watched and waited for a reaction that would tell me that others seen my father as Not Normal, yet he was always treated normally, so my feelings that he wasn’t right went unsubstantiated. 

    I had to look up Unsubstantiated.

    1.             Unsubstantiated means, unverified: not proven factually.

    Synonyms: unconfirmed, unproven, unsupported, uncorroborated

    The greatest tragedy is that I waited for an adult or any person to verify that what I felt about my father was true.  That my terror feelings were spot on, and yet no one led on to what they knew or suspected.

    I was left alone unsupported with this knowledge and my body refused to let go of.

    I am thinking what is a deeper wound than the abuse itself is to then have your feelings of the event go unconfirmed.

    No one wanted to corroborate what I had experienced and what fills my body with incredulousness is that I now have facts, verifiable facts, and supported data showing that they knew, but kept this information from me. 

    When I need an adult the most, they failed to support me.

    Here is what I read yesterday…

    “Jenich spoke with Marvin Heinonen, retired Houghton County Protective Services Manager.  Marvin informed myself that indeed Ray Huhta has been under suspicion for at least THIRTY years for sexual assaulting his own children and most of the young girls in the Saint Mary’s Location neighborhood north of Hancock.”

    (a paragraph has info on a victim, so I am excluding it)

    “Marvin Heinonen said back then and even into the later years when Ray Huhta was suspected of molesting girls, there seemed to be a cover up all the time, meaning people in the church and family members would not believe that Ray Huhta could be doing this.  Marvin said the information kept resurfacing for years that Ray Huhta is a pedophile, molesting his girls…”

    One victim wrote in her statement about her family contacting Peter Torola of the Apostolic Luthern Church that she was molested by Ray Huhta. She recalls Torola’s response to her, “What is your motive in telling on Ray Huhta?”  She also stated that three more victims approached minister Pete Torola after she left the area and nothing was done.

    Another victim said her parents confronted Ray and he denied the whole time, from that point on her family’s children were forbidden to go to the Huhta house.

    What was more horrifying to learn so many years ago, was not only did I have to find peace with having a pedophile for a father, but I also learned that so many knew and did nothing.  That 30 years ago he was suspected and the girls told to stay away…

    And some knew 40 years back and at the time wanted to know the ‘motive’ for telling on Ray. Telling on Ray.  Really?

    Imagine that?  Like we are gossips?… And how telling is it that Pete Torola didn’t disbelieve it, he just wondered about the motive for telling.

    Perhaps he had a motive to keep it silent…for a child’s only motive is for you all to see what we see, for you to change your ‘normal’ definition to not normal.

    I guess I wasn’t prepared to hear the details of the little girls, and had braced myself,  but I hadn’t expected the stories held bits and pieces of how uninterested the adults were about the children in the Huhta house.

    I am not meaning to lessen the girls in my neighborhood who were abused by my father, but what stands out is that their parents warned them away from our home, but no one came and took us out.

    I have six sisters…plus eight brothers, and we lived with the Pedophile and his wife. That was our only home.

    We were left there knowingly.

    Somehow, I would feel slightly better if no one knew…if we had gone underneath the radar, an incest nest undetected, but instead it was operating in full plain view and many just turned their heads away from the Huhta children living within.

    What does a person do with this information?

    How do your process the minister’s neglect or Protective Services suspecting but without follow through or neighbors keeping their children away with no heed to us living full time with a ‘suspected’ pedophile. 

    Surely these are actions of an enemy and not of a friend.

    I am not bitter or angry, but I am wise and now validated, vindicated…but it is a hollow victory.

    You find out no one was standing for you…you never mattered enough.

    The main reason I am working with Tom Rosemurgy, is I refuse to be one of the adults who knew and turned away…

     

  • Who is Behaving Badly?

    What stayed with me is how off balance the justice system is where the victims get a ‘court appointed attorney’ called prosecutor and the perpetrators get the option to pay for a high powered expensive, save your ass lawyer.

    How is it that the system was set up this way, where each victim is already without options before the trial even begins?

    As I read through my father’s evidence file, everything was off…except the girl’s reports.  They were right on.

    What was off was that in the history of the little girls stories, it was almost always noted, that an adult knew, was in the room or had been told, but not believed. 

    How off is that? 

    The children had been talking, telling and no one was listening. Then, a Detective arrives in our home, we give once again our stories add a touch of hope that this time, the Bad Man will get punished…and nothing bad happens to him and our faith and hope are dashed once again.

    He wins, he carries on as if 'nothing bad' has happened.

    I hadn’t truly considered the volume of abuse, while I had knew there were many…many seems so oblique. 

    But when you read names and descriptions and locations and what my father is wearing, where he is sitting and then how he ensnares a little girl to sit with him in his kindness and laid back ways and then how strong he becomes in keeping them upon his lap…Forcible Contact on his penis, it sharpens the focus and makes him even more a pedophile if that is possible.

    My friends wrote, and theirs were not table abuse if you will, but mentioned instead tents and beds…rape and masturbation… I can see his technique changed over time, perhaps age or laziness or just the threat of being caught increased…

    My friend’s stories match my fragmented memories of sneaking out of his bed…in terror of waking him.  I now have collaborating evidence to my body’s feelings of him.

    Nothing is off in their stories, nothing doesn’t make sense, all are literal confirmations of who my father is.  They all add up to the same definition, and yet at the end of his trial he walks free.

    It would seem with the volume of evidence remembered, the outcome would have gone better for us, but we didn’t know who we were entrusting our stories to.

    Doug Edwards Prosecuting Attorney was suppose to serve up our justice, but he didn’t allow most of us into the courtroom, our stories lay without a serving of justice, just tucked into a file to remain in the dark.

    How was justice any different than the church’s blessing and forgiving and wanting us to forget?

    It seems there is a very off pattern here, children speaking and the forces that be or the higher powers, neglecting to do their part.

     What is and always has been consistent over the 40 years of this abusive reign my father has been on, is that the children are the only ones doing their part.

    Each time they are asked they tell the truth.

    Each time they are asked they put hope in the abuse ending.

    Each time they tell they are once again disappointed.

     Imagine, the adults who knew and the vast intersections in the community? 

    Wife, mother, neighborhood parents, minister and socical services and then finally the law.

    And then imagine when the law sets him free what we are left with?

    What I know for sure it wasn’t for the lack of evidence or the lack of victims speaking out or the lack of remembering or recalling correctly…the one main source of his freedom is the reactions from all the adults who were informed of his behaviors.

    And I believe each adult had their own personal reasons, their own personal stories of pride and friendship…of fear of what this will do in their own lives by facing this morsel of truth full on.

    It had very little to do with Ray Huhta.

    For anyone with nothing to lose would read these reports and be incensed and filled with the off color of Ray and the repeated and long suffering of abuse of the girls.

    You would have to be legally blind and totally incompetent to not get it. 

    No one reading this could possibly believe that he wasn’t a serial abuser, a pedophile with long standing reputation, for the birth dates of the oldest victim is in the 1950’s to the youngest…in the late 1990’s.

    What sits with me the most is again that it isn’t that we need to have more victims come forth, we need to have more victim rights, holding more adults accountable for dropping the ball.

    Why is Doug Edwards not reprimanded for this?

    Why wasn't the Social Service Man, Marv Heinonen not taken to task for knowing for over 30 years and doing nothing?

    Why wasn’t the Minister, Pete Torola not held accountable for knowing that children were being abuse and he did nothing?  (yes I get it, he is dead. But he was quite alive back in my childhood when my friends told him…)

    Why are we allowing adults behaving badly?  What is so odd is not only is my father way out of line on treatment to children, but then are the rest who knew and did a feeble at best attempt to shut him down.

    Imagine, HE is a FREE Man.  He had lots of help in order to remain free up against so much evidence.  He had lots and lots of help!

    Honest!  Read these stories and you would shudder to think he is free, living in Texas, has access to his newest little great -granddaughter and has full approval by his daughter and his grandson to have a ‘relationship’ with her.

     Again, adults behaving badly!

    Not JUST him, all who are still blindly and without comprehension of the danger they are willingly allowing his latest victim, his 2000 model from walking down my same road.  Sure, it may not be rape today or even masturbation, perhaps she will get off lightly with just forcible contact of her private parts while her father and grandmother visit with him, like there is nothing wrong. 

    Who is behaving badly?

  • Help not Hurt

    “The question is not, “Can you make a difference?” You already do make a difference.  It’s just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet.”  Julia Butterfly Hill

    I hadn’t considered that we are all making a difference; it just may not be the kind of difference that will impact another’s life in a positive manner.

    For each thing we do or even what we don’t do matters to someone.

    Just how or who it helps is the difference.

    While taking actions to speak the truth about abuse I am making a difference. And what kind of difference it will make in the lives of pedophiles will be different than how it will affect the lives of children.

    In the past my silence made a difference…it allowed my father to continue abusing. 

    Giving my report of my childhood which lacked memories or odd memories standing out, and how my body feared him, helped bring him to the court of the land.

    My viewpoint of him made a difference, albeit 40 years after the crime.  My report validated the little girl’s experience six years ago…together our stories made a difference to each other.

    The Detective shared with me that he honors and truly understands anonymous reports, how it may be hard for victims to stand tall and share their story.  I get it now too.

    My view of anonymous changed. 

    Anonymous reporting of abuse is vastly different than anonymous attacks.  Both make a difference in completely different ways. 

    Anonymously helping feels so much better than anonymously attacking. 

    There is room for anonymous when it’s used to help not hurt.

     

     

  • Extreme in Religion

    There was a haunting phrase in the book, “Inside the Kingdom” by Carmen Bin Laden.  After she separated from her husband she bumped into one of her favorite brother-in-laws, and he explained how he could no longer be her friend.

    “You may be right, but my brother is never wrong.”

    This sentiment or mindset is similar to how people feel about their family members, that they MUST always see them doing what is right, no matter what.  Or even church members are giving a huge margin of error compared to those not in the clan. 

    This so poignantly describes how family members cannot see their father outside the lens of that title. 

    That at the end of the day, “You may be right, but my father is never wrong.”  I feel this totally, that my father can never be wrong. It is an awkward place to stand in. They will shun me to have a ‘right’ father.

    I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the ways of the Saudi people and could see such pointed similarities.  Perhaps somewhat less extreme, but still debilitating to the women of the FALC. 

    Our veils were not made of cloth, but as Carmen said, she carried her jail upon her back…by submitting to or allowing another to tell you what to do with your own body.

    The Arabic word woman comes from the root word Sin and that is how the ladies are treated.  Just by being born a woman, you lose all rights.

    They cover up their sins…so the woman has to be hidden.

    How like the FALC church…

    And the word Islam means submission…

    One other idea she wrote about is that in this strict society, that it is never ‘bad’ to be too extreme. That it is seen as good to be excessively strict or religious. 

    Imagine you can never be too extreme in religion…

     

     

     

  • Yours to decide, always.

    I talked to the Detective today and it was very enlightening.

    He is willing to help us help the children by giving us information that will educate us of the process. We know what abuse is, but not all levels and kinds, but we we want to stop it, but we don't know how to stop it… who to report, how to report or what to report. What is applicable, what is not, what is too old etc. 

    His focus is the victims and wants all to know that no matter if you want to report anonymously or not, he welcomes your story. 

    He and I both feel that the beginning of the healing process is to speak out, no matter how long ago your abuse happened, it will break the bond of silence.  He needs your help to help the children.

    His job is to separate the abusers from the children and in order to do this he must have courageous victims willing to share their experiences.

    What I believe most victims feel is that they will be met with the same kinds of disbelief or non-action that they have met thus far.  However, talking to him showed me that they listen and not only listen but they believe in you.

    In just telling your story you will feel so much better. 

    Tom Rosemurgy is willing to take your calls, to answer your emails or receive your letters.

    What I want most is for you who have been abused to have access to someone who will hear you.

    trosemurgy@houghtonsheriff.com  Is his email address.

    Or you can write him at,

     403 Houghton Ave.  

    Houghton MI 49931

    You don’t’ have to leave your name, but please leave your story.  You have been carrying it too long; it is time to let it down, to hand it over to someone who can carry it for you.

    Your power is regained in your voice.

    I am here and will help anyone who has a story to tell.

    The truth needs to come forth, for while it is kept quiet there are children in danger.

    I know our voices will make a difference in the life of some child.

    I send you courage and strength…I cheer you on as you wrestle with the decision to speak now or remain silent, and the choice is yours to decide, always.

     

     

  • Not being Free.

    I listened to a woman speak yesterday in her audio book, Carmen Bin Laden “Inside the Kingdom”, my life in Saudi Arabia… She was raised in Europe and married the brother to Osama Bin Laden. 

    So she had to do as women do in that country… she lost her freedom as she covered herself up. 

    She married her husband in the 70’s. Both had lived in the United States and went to college here, so her vantage point is as a woman who was free going to not being free. 

    It was interesting to hear that the women and men felt they ‘respected’ woman by making them hide and not show themselves.

    How odd.

    We respect you so much that you are to become invisible???

    She explained how the world looked from behind the dark veil, how you cloudy and dark all things were.  How when she left the country and could be without the veil, how crisp and clear and fresh all things looked.

    And how when she was in a large group of women, she lost her sisters, for they all appeared as dark triangles.  There was no way for even the women to tell who was who; they all just blended into covered triangles.

    She said it was like entering a parallel universe, for it was completely foreign and she said little by little she allowed her self to be taken over.

    What is so interesting to me is that she is a grown woman, who in order to be ‘loved’ by her husband and his family had to hide behind the veil, giving up all her free rights as a human being. 

    Coming from the outside she could see things so differently than the women born into this society. 

    The ones born in this didn’t even know that they had another choice available.

    While listening to her, you can see how the beliefs and lifestyles mindlessly get handed down.  Girls are treated differently from the day they are born; they are never groomed to have rights.

    What is so odd is that the men/boys would get in trouble for seeing a bare unveiled woman. So they are taught it is wrong to see a women without her being hidden. 

    The value systems are set in place in childhood…

    The extreme societies are extreme examples.

    Yet on the scales of freedom, a loss of individual power is still a loss.  Some of us are in the process of getting our power back, enabling us to shed the veils or silken chains of not being able to own our own lives. 

    Carmen is showing me the extreme cases of women being brainwashed into succumbing and giving up the right to breath fresh air, to see clearly, to walk freely…and yet it is my belief, that while many women in the FALC don’t wear a darkened veil, they are just as imprisoned.

    Albeit on a lesser scale, but not being free is not being free.

     

  • Guilt and Judgment

    Yesterday as I rode along my mail route, I listened to The Course of Miracles coming from my Kindle…I have it strapped to the headrest so I can hear it without headphones.

    A jotted down a few things that seared my mind…and then this morning wanted to go back and find the text, but I haven’t been able to find all sections that caught my ear.

    Here is one I found.

    “When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has violated the laws of God, but you have not.  Leave the “sins” of the ego to me. That is what Atonement is for.  But until you change your mind about those whom your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot release you.  While you feel guilty your ego is in command, because only the ego can experience guilt.” 

    I stopped and wrote that down. “Only the ego can feel guilty” this was an incredible thing to hear for its implications are mountainous.  No one ever has said, “sins of the ego” instead they act like our spirit has sinned and in order to get a clean spirit to heaven you have to get it forgiven. Imagine if you raised a child to understand there is an ego and there is spirit? 

    Imagine learning that there are two ways to view the world, by ego or by spirit…and to know this as a child.

    If only the ego feels guilt, what is religion for?  So when we were made to feel sinful and unworthy who were they talking to??? It has to be the ego, for if the only the ego can experience guilt, they surely were not talking to our spirits.

    I also wrote down, The ego can’t Know, that Knowing is of the Spirit.  The ego can’t know, it perceives and the spirit can’t perceive, it Knows.

    Here is something else I hadn’t considered. 

    “The ego and the spirit do not know each other.  The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. Having done this, it denies all truly natural impulses, not because the ego is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that you are.  The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only your decision to use the device that enables and endures ” 

    This makes perfect sense to me, for when I was a fully engaged ego whom I lovingly call “the mental woman” I had zero contact with my Spirit…I love that they don’t know each other. 

    And imagine…the ego is a device use for separation? 

    To me it kept me separated from God and Spirit.

    Then, came a section on Judgment…

    “Have you really considered how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many of them you refused?  There is no limit to the power of a Son of God, but he can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses. Your mind and mine can unite in shining  your ego away, releasing the strength of God into everything you think and do. Do not settle for anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal.  Watch your mind carefully for any beliefs that hinder its accomplishment, and step away from them.  Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of Judgment.  Judgment, like any other defense, can be used to attack or protect; to hurt or heat. The ego should be brought to judgment and found wanting there.  Without your own allegiance, protection and love, the ego cannot exist.  Let it be judged truly and you must withdraw allegiance, protection and love from it.”

    It seems that the church taught us to judge another, but not to judge the ego.  I love that we are to judge how we are doing by how we are feeling.

    Mostly what I listened to yesterday were the differences between the ego and the soul…and it made sense to me. 

    “Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane.  Yet this confusion is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself.  In one sense the ego’s fear of God is at least logical, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego. But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, makes no sense at all.  The body is the ego’s home by its own election. It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe, since the body’s vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God.”

    Imagine, the ego only judges what is a threat or non-threat to itself. It could care less of how this impacts your life or your souls journey.

    It was so beneficial to my peace of mind to listen to the antics of the ego and its needs and how they contrast directly the spirit, and it made perfect sense to me in my experience.

    And when you read this book, depending upon who has a greater control in your world, the spirit or the ego, it will land differently as you read it

    I am not here to try and convince anyone, I am here to share what I heard.  It brought me peace…and it helped me understand the confusion I have with religion, for it seems to me that religion courts the ego with guilt and judgment.