Feasting Friday
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What is it inside us that keeps lying when we know they know we're lying? Remember when, as a kid, you'd get caught in a lie, and would just have rather died than admit you lied? lol, me too. But have you considered when was the last time you did this as an adult? When was the last time you looked in the eyes of your best friend, child, parent, partner, or yourself, and lied knowing they knew you lied. I don't think Hell is a place in spacetime we go after we die. I believe Hell is a psychic place eternally open for us to drop into. This kind of lie drops us in Hell. The last time I lied to people I cared about and knew they knew I lied, was when I was 18. My last year of high school was complex. I lived alone in a completely empty 3 bedroom house save a blow-up mattress, two lawn chairs, and a TV. I had recently gotten rotator cuff surgery, which ended my basketball dreams, and was hiding an addiction to oxycontin. I'd skip breakfast, pop two pills, and drive to school before the numbness dissolved me. I wouldn't be able to talk till after lunch. It was during this chapter that I sat before four of my friends, lying about having had sex with someone while I was visiting my family for the holidays. It was a lie, and they knew it. What they didn't know was that at 18, I was still a virgin. When I was 12, I saw a female comedian performing a Comedy Central special. She said "Why are all the good men gay...or uncircumcised." The room roared, and at that moment, I took on a huge shame story about not being circumcised. For the next 7 years, I'd learn to charm then ghost, over and over and over. Hundreds and hundreds of lies were told because of one punchline I heard as a 12 year old. I hurt a lot of women because of my shame. I hated the way I felt that day I sat in my empty house lying to my friends. I hated that I could see the glee in one of them as they recognized I was lying. I hated how none of us were honest. We were all masked and ashamed and panicked we'd be found out. During my freshmen year in college, I had to take an Old Testament class. I don't know how it happened (YWHW?), but I did a review of how many specific sexual experiences I ran from because of this shame story. For some reason, I thought this list would make me feel good, "Look at you, Romeo," but instead, I left that class feeling sick to my stomach. Within a month I had sex for the first time, it was great, and shockingly (not to you maybe, but to me definitely), she didn't care. No one I have ever been with has cared. I share this for 3 reasons.
In Heaven, they play PhantogramThe first time I did MDA, I sat on an ugly yellow couch in the same house I had lied to my friends in 4 years earlier. I was 22 or 23, and I was playing super smash bros with my girlfriend as the sun slowly began to set. We were listening to Phantogram when the chemical cascade hit. It was both of our first time, and we noticed its effect because we were unable to attack each other in the game lol. We put our controlers down (how hilariously mythopoetic), and laid together, listening to Phantogram as the setting sun painted the inside of my living room. Somewhere in the reverie, I connected to a song of empathy that has reverberated uninterrupted in my psyche ever since. Let me see if I can transmit a little of it to you now: We are all self-aware apes chocking on infinity and mortality. We are overwhelmed by the grandeur and ugliness of existence. Inside each of us is a sweet little child who wants to be held, loved, and encouraged. And yet, we are terrified. Forgive the ugliness, its is because the sweet little one is scared. Forgive them and you will be able to forgive yourself. When you forgive yourself, you will be able to giggle where you previously ridiculed. The God you are looking for is found in the giggle. The God you've never believed in is found in the ridicule. We each are both the zoo keeper and the goofy, confused, sweet ape. Forgive them, forgive yourself, and, when you can, help the ape in others feel safe, seen, and encouraged. Something in me changed that evening. Like a lens clicked into place and my vision changed forever. May you forgive yourself and others. May you never again find yourself in that room in Hell reserved for the lier who lies to loved ones who know they lie. And may Phantogram live forever. Song I'm Listening on Repeat5 Day Event I'm Hosting in SeptemberIf spending 5 days working on your most important project alongside 30 other creators sounds interesting to you, I'm hosting a 5-day Immersive on 100 acres of regenerative farmland in Lockhart, Texas, September 17th-21st. Weekly Journal PromptWhat was the shame at the core of the last time I lied to people I cared about? Have I digested this shame, or does it still control me? If it still controls me, who all have I hurt because of the lies? (if you spend an hour looking at the truth, if you're like I was, you'll find the courage to face the shame. Good luck). |
Erick Godsey
Every week, I bring the best of what I've gathered. Enjoy the feast.
As of the minute I write this sentence, I am 24 hours away from stepping out of the steaming doorway of a sweat lodge, and walking to a spot in nature where I will sit alone for 4 days -- without food or water. The circle is made of 411 prayer flags woven through 4 long strands of string. A prayer flag is a little square of cloth with a pinch of tobacco in the center. I spent the past week cutting each square, adding each pinch of tobacco, wrapping the square into a little pouch, and then...
I am both a child of God, and a child of the simulacrum generation of American culture; a 90s baby. I lived on fake food, primetime television, pop radio, the full vaccine schedule, and a Prozac commercial every 8 minutes repeating the chemical imbalance lie. I was told I didn't have a soul, and that there wasn't microplastics collecting in my testes. Both were lies. Not many people talk about what it means to have a soul during the collapse of an empire. When I say soul, I mean the the same...
In 17 days I'll be walking out of a sweat lodge and guided to a spot under a tree, where, for the following 4 days, I'll sit without food or water, listening. To nature, to the voices in my head, the pulses from my body, and god willing, visions sent by the dreamer. I'm nervous, and honored. I'll have a sleeping bag and a tarp. They tell me the tobacco will protect from the scorpions and snakes. I tell myself this quest will protect my dharma from the creeping opiate we call comfort. My...