Why Do You Feel Bad?

Why are you mad?

Why are you angry?

Why does that person make me mad, sad, angry, etc?

These questions do not manifest enough in our lives.

We spend so much time trying to feel better, when we need to pay attention to what we are thinking, pure and simple.

Some people could make me mad. Other people would make me feel ashamed

Or did they?

In reality, it is perfectly true that no one can make us feel anything.

What we are thinking makes all the difference in what we are feeling.

This lesson is hard to accept in part because the feelings, the emotional responses we have toward other people -- those vivid experiences are the most real, or rather present aspects of our experience.

For so long, I would pay attention to my feelings, to my thoughts, to the fears and worries, then live a life of reacting to how I felt and who was responsible for "making me" feel a certain way.

A sense of shame has been common in my life.

Every time someone was angry with me, or someone yelled at me, a sense of upset would not go away.

Some people I would go out of my way to avoid.

For a long time, I never understood why some people seemed to inspire so much shame inside of me..

Now I understand what Paul was writing about in Second Corinthians:

"(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 5Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; 6And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled." (2 Corinthians 10: 4-5)

For so long, I believed that I had to judge God's love for me based on how I felt.

If I felt bad, it meant that God was angry with me. If I sensed some unease in my life, if my mind was not focused a certain way, then God was not going to be with me.

This kind of mind control comes only from cult like practices, which AA is founded, which were forced on me because of my stepper Mom.

I had the wrong impression of God for so long. I saw Him as harsh and overbearing, demanding obedience from me, and I was constantly under stress and strain, fearing that I was doing something wrong.

The issue was not even feeling bad, necessarily, but the lie attached to the sensate emotion, which in the past then sent these shock waves of condemnation up and down in my head.

God's love for me has nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Himself.

How true it is - we need to understand the fullness of the Cross, and if we think that we understand everything about what Jesus did for us, then we are greatly mistaken (and can be easily deceived)

For years, my mother presented to me a false impression of God, and everything that I understood about Him was tied up in what she thought, she said, she believed.

A false icon from beginning to end.

I was severely abused as a child, and the spiritual intimidation which I had endured is now being peeled away as I understand more of how much God loves me, and that as Jesus is, so am I in this world!