Perhaps I am alone on this, but often, when I find myself retreading old ground internally, repeating old patterns and habits of thought, I feel a deep sadness tinged with frustration.

Periodically I feel angry and down on myself–disgusted maybe–when I realize I’m struggling with the same issues yet again that I’ve struggled with for decades. I tell myself I should be over that, past that, by now. A decade ago an ACPE Certified Educator asked me, “What ARE you working on in therapy?!” That at least got me to a different therapist and maybe some greater clarity on issues the educator saw I was still apparently unaware of. But it’s a frustrating experience to struggle for growth and healing and be told, or tell myself, I’m not making progress. My personality’s defense structure thinks as long as I’m moving forward toward tasks and goals including personal growth and development, I am safe enough–people can’t really criticize me too much because of how hard I’m trying.

“Still” as in “again, continuing, unrelenting” feels heavy and sad inside me. In my heart, under my sternum, down at the flexible tip, I feel this sour sadness like a little candle flame in an intense immense darkness. I recognize it as a dryness.

My tradition’s sacred scriptures say, If anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink. They shall receive rivers of living water.

I just felt powerfully distracted by an imaginary critic accusing me of relativizing all religions’ sacred literature with the Bible, and I experienced parts of me reacting violently verbally with unrelenting accusations and projections. Unblending, I listen to the parts of my internal family system by placing my hand on the various parts of my body. My queen and king parts in my head were relatively uninvolved. My throat speaking part was burning. My heart was crying that I keep getting into these internal debates…after all these years away from fundamentalism, I’m still not free of its ghosts. That’s why I’m writing this essay. My confidence felt angry, ready to keep pushing. My inner chamber in the solar plexus had enough light to see my spirit animal, a lynx, sleeping–or pretending to be. I asked him why he was sleeping, and he said I would see. Down in my gut, my shame part was really hot with feeling disgusted and upset. “I can’t stand being criticized by people who think they are superior,” he says. I’ve dealt with this reaction since I was in third or fourth grade, when the teacher had a poster on the wall of the classroom that said something like “Those of you who think you know everything are really annoying to those of us who do.” I laugh at myself a little, gently, at the human conundrum. The sad thing is, I don’t get up this kind of energy to have this kind of angry discussion with people in real life in a way that could offer an opportunity for forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. I keep this hidden, so I feel alone.

The two times Christ said If you are thirsty, ask me and I will give you living water to drink that will spring up from inside of you, I think he was primarily speaking to audiences (the woman at the well and the people in the temple) who were retreating to dry arid places intellectually, trying to show their superior logic and knowledge. They were seeking; they had a zeal for knowledge and right understanding, but it was in an arid and dry place. The book of Revelation ends with the invitation as well, If anyone is thirsty, the Spirit and the Church say to come and drink. How do these invitations fit the message and scenery of the apocalyptic visions in that book? The book summarizes the entire corpus of Hebrew literature, especially the prophets, drawing on the garden imagery in which there were three rivers I think.

Anyway, I feel like I’m in that arid place now, and far away from the emotional experience of “still.”

The word “still” evokes the text, “Be still and know that I am God.” Can my nervous nervous system calm down long enough and to a great enough extent to receive that heavenly vision? that spiritual infilling?  I wait, even now, and breathe….