Feasting Friday

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.

Lying to people you care about, that you know, know you're lying, is one of the rooms in Hell. I don't want anyone stuck there.
The admission to that room is shame. Noticing shame is 80% of the road out of that room.
The antidote was spending an hour reviewing every person I hurt because of my lies. Focusing my attention on the effect of the lie until it made me sick. Weirdly enough, that was the antidote.

In Heaven, they play Phantogram

The 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 Repeat

Black Out Days (Stay Away)

5 Day Event I'm Hosting in September

If 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 Prompt

What 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