From: emery@tc.fluke.COM (John Emery)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage
Subject: Letters to Tom [4 of 10]
Date: 6 Apr 92 22:36:52 GMT
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA


Dear Tom,

I feel different today, and I don't know if I can explain it.
Undoubtedly it stems from my fanciful proposition of the morning,
the possibility of my guilt.  Being guilty, or even feeling guilty,
is not pleasant, of course, but the mere suggestion of it seems to
have weakened another nagging emotional companion of mine: despair.
It makes me think of a clown hitting his thumb with a hammer to get
his mind off of his headache: now that I feel guilty, I don't feel
as much despair.

But-and this is purely for argument sake of discussion--it could be
said that the reasons go deeper than that.  As I've said before, an
all-out plunge into humanism and it total lack of absolutes can leave
you groping for fences, wondering where you are, wishing you could
know something for sure.  Now that's despair.

Then suddenly, guilt--well, the possibility of guilt--has come upon
the scene, and I find myself playing with the thought that I might
be standing in the wrong, which means I could have violated a standard
somewhere, which means there might be a standard to be violated, which
means there might be something out there somewhere that I can know for
sure.

So, I guess I said all that to say this: If I really can be guilty,
if I really am guilty, then at least I know where I stand.  Suddenly,
after all this time, I've found a fence, a boundary, and just the thought
of that dispels that old cloud of despair, so much that I've noticed it.

Just consider, Tom, what great lengths I've gone to all through my life
to quell despair.  The Young Potentials program at the Omega Center
presented a possible escape; I dove into everything they offered: yoga,
TM, diet, folk medicine, altered states, drugs, and a lot of mental
trips about my own divinity and ability to create my own reality.  It
was a long excursion into insanity, I admit it.  What good did it do to
make up my own truth?  I was lost and drifting to begin with, and any
reality born in my head could be no better off.  I and the universe I
created were lost and drifting together.

And then there was Jonas, my "consummate friend."  He was a marvelous
salesman with a lot of good lines, remarkably skilled in flattery.
We took long walks together during my yogic trances, and he did have 
me convinced that all reality--including death--was an illusion to
be manipulated, and that I, being God, could form reality to be
whatever I wanted it to be.

And for a crucial season, I believed that.  I believed I had formed
a reality to serve me and supply what I wanted.  I believed I had
formed a man who gave me pleasure without guilt.  I believed I had
formed a child that asked me to send her on to the next life, leaving
me free to continue to be whatever I wanted it to be.

But did I form the prison bars too?  I was talking about fences, wasn't
I?

I lived behind that fence for seven years, and Jonas never came to visit
me.  I did resent that.  I did blame him for Rachel's death.  It was,
in my thinking, his idea.  He was the one who took control of my body
and snuffed out her life.  He committed the act.  He was to blame.  But
I don't think that now.  I changed my mind at some point; maybe it was
this morning.  "Amethyst" was right; I killed my baby.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage