My Idol was a suffering image. One who knew pain. The pain of self sacrifice and the pain of martyrdom. To the extent that I was imperfect, so must there be wages paid in suffering to rectify my lacks. For the Heaven of my God was an exclusive club, a gated community. And the price at the gate, was paid in coin of suffering. My Holy Brother had shown me that or, so I had been told.

Not ever knowing how much was enough to buy my way in, I lived my days doing my best stocking up on cosmic brownie points for the time I found myself before that gate. Judgment Day.

“The good of others”, was my creed. It didn’t matter what it was, so long as it was for “the good of others”. So long as my own good never entered the picture, “then anything goes“ as the saying went.

My desires, my joys, my needs and, my interests only counted as they served…others. For that is the role of a martyr. I was great at playing the role of sacrificial lamb on the altar of other people’s desires. With everything I denied myself for the sake of others, came the thorns on my crown of suffering. I wore my woe like a badge of moral glory.

Day after day I would think about all I had done for others that had failed to be appreciated. All those I had given my attention and affection to, that had never answered back in anything but abuse and demands for more from me. Yet, I persevered on. For that was the performance of Idolatry required by my Idol.

Self sacrificing martyr.

It’s the role many a ‘good’ woman plays, loving ‘bad’ men.

It’s the role many a ‘good’ man plays, loving ‘bad’ women.

Form when our goal is self sacrifice and martyrdom, then our associations are formed with only those who support what is of value to us. In the case of a martyr, this Value is suffering. If I got anything positive from a relationship, it wouldn’t serve to support my goal of ‘for the good of others but not my own‘.

This was the foundation I had willingly chosen to lay down for my life. Or maybe that should be laid down my life for? Building upon this, I could only form relationships that were of a sort that were ‘good’ for others but ‘bad’ for me.

Then one day I began to feel an urge. This urge, pulling me like I was caught in some kind of undertow, some kind of current, to question what I had been taught. Not especially to refute it or in any offense towards it. But simply to see if there was any MORE to be learned.

I looked up the word ‘sacrifice’ and found nothing about it conveyed any sort of loss. “Sacrifice”, from Latin. “Sacre” meaning sacred. And “facere”, meaning to make. To make sacred. To uplift.

Then I stumbled across a forgotten text. Published in a huge volume of other forgotten texts. And began to understand why they were forgotten. Because they had been banned. An immediate death penalty throughout the ages in effect, for merely knowing about them. They were the Gnostic Gospels. The same ones, the same perspective, the current Pope recently demonized.

I began to read. “Revelation of the Mystery of the Cross”, from The Acts of John, Christian Apocrypha) Chapters 97-102

“After the Lord had so danced with us, my beloved, he went out. And we were like men amazed or fast asleep, and we fled this way and that. And so I saw him suffer, and, did not wait by his suffering, but fled to the Mount of Olives and wept at what had come to pass. And when he was hung upon the cross on Friday, at the sixth hour of the day there came a darkness over the whole earth. And my Lord stood in the middle of the cave and gave light to it and said,

“John, for the people below in Jerusalem I am being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds and given vinegar and gall to drink. But to you I am speaking, and listen to what I speak. I put into your mind to come up to this mountain so that you should hear what a disciple should learn from his teacher and a man from God.”

And when he had said this he showed me a cross of light firmly fixed, and around the cross, a great crowd, which had no single form; and in the cross was one form and the same likeness. And I saw the Lord himself above the cross, having no shape but only a kind of voice; yet not that voice which we knew, but one that was sweet and gentle and truly the voice of God, which said to me,

“John, there must be one man to hear these things from me; for I need one who is ready to hear. This cross of light is sometimes called logos by me for your sakes, sometimes mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes a door, sometimes a way, sometimes bread, sometimes seed, sometimes resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace; and so it is called for men’s sake.

But what it truly is, as known in itself and spoken to us, is this: it is the distinction of all things, and the strong uplifting of what is firmly fixed out of what is unstable, and the harmony of wisdom, being wisdom in harmony. But there are places on the right and on the left, powers, authorities, principalities and demons, activities, threatenings, passions, devils, and the inferior root from which the nature of transient things proceeded.

This cross then is that which has United all things by the Word and which has separated off what is transitory and inferior, which has also compacted all things into One. But this is not that wooden cross which you shall see when you go down from here; nor am I the man who is on the cross, I whom now you do not see but only hear my voice.

I was taken to be what I am not, I who am not what for many others I was; but what they will say of me is mean and unworthy of me. Since the place of my rest is neither to be seen nor told, much more shall I, the Lord of this place, be neither seen nor told.

The multitude around the cross that is not of one form is the inferior nature. And those whom you saw in the cross, even if they have not yet one form – not every member of him who has come down has yet been gathered together. But when human nature is taken up, and the race that follows my voice, then he who now hears me shall be united with this race and shall no longer be what he now is, but shall be uplifted as I am now.

For so long as you do not call yourself one with me, I am not what I am; but if you hear me, you also as hearer shall be as I am, and shall be what I was, when you are as I am with myself; for from me you are what I am.

Therefore ignore the many and those who are outside the mystery;

So then I have suffered none of those things which they will say of me; even that suffering which I showed to you and to the rest of my dance., I will that it be called a mystery. For what you are, that I have shown you, as you see; but what I am is known to me alone, and no one else. Let me have what is mine; what is yours you must see through me; but me you must see truly – not that which I am, as I said, but that which you, as my kinsman, are able to know.

You hear that I suffered, yet I suffered not; and that I suffered not, yet did I suffer; and that I was pierced, yet I was not wounded; that I was hanged, yet I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me, yet it did not flow, and, in a word, that what they say of me, I did not endure, but what they do not say of me, those things did I suffer.

”Sacrifice….to uplift. “it is the distinction of all things, and the strong uplifting of what is firmly fixed out of what is unstable, and the harmony of wisdom, being wisdom in harmony.” It is lifting our eyes out of our preoccupation with our ‘inferior’ nature. This ‘inferior’ nature being one with our perception limited to form, to physical bodies. It takes our ’superior’ nature to see beyond form, to that which lies beyond. To see the cross of Light within the cross of wood.

“This cross then is that which has United all things by the Word and which has separated off what is transitory and inferior, which has also compacted all things into One.” The dispensation of Forgiveness for ignorance. And the establishment in concept of a Universal Brotherhood, being that we‘re ALL children of the same Creative Source. Siblings of the same house. Unity awareness.

“but if you hear me, you also as hearer shall be as I am, and shall be what I was, when you are as I am with myself;“ Echoes of ‘all this and more shall you do’. When ‘you are as I am with myself’. Unconditionally Loving.

My earlier Idolatry had been based on understanding the story from my ‘inferior’ nature. Multiplying and amplifying that inferior nature in importance. I had been very Passionate about my suffering. Now I just felt dumb.

By the law of Attraction I had ALWAYS attracted my desires, those experiences I imagined for myself. Had I been insane to worship suffering and martyrdom? Close to it.

Certainly out of my EVER Loving Mind, that’s for sure.

Sadistic?

Well…what can I say, I was self indulgent in wallowing in woe and suffocating in self pity.

I asked.

And I received.

Now I’m here to raise hell.

And I do mean lift it.

Lift it by opening those heavenly gates in our hearts and allowing Love to flow into our inner realms that have known none.