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Divine Truth Hub Forum Board (NOW CLOSED) • Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'
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Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'

Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2016 1:30 am
by Mary
Hey Everyone,

I thought it might be helpful to start a discussion on how we can 'go wrong' or 'get stuck' when it comes to repentance.

By that I mean a thread to discuss:
1. how we can kid ourselves we are repenting when we aren't actually engaging this beautiful process with God, or
2. how we can start our sincere but get shut down because of a particular block we encounter and don't want to deal with

Common Ways To Shut Down The Repentance Process:

Desire to Maintain a Facade Trumps Sincerity


Many of us when faced with recognising our sin suddenly feel 'unworthy' or 'less than others' or 'exposed', these are issues and errors from our childhood that need to be worked through and are all a part of deconstructing the facade.

However if we aren't sincere about working through our facade and we just want to avoid those feelings then we will attempt to 'engage repentance' as a way of avoiding those feelings. This is when people:

- get into their head, intellectualize about their emotions, analyse their behaviour and possible reasons for it without feeling ourselves while we engage the behaviour and feeling why we want to hold onto it (this is feeling of self is essential to gain emotional awareness of sin and its causes)
- can construct a whole big 'story' about the sin and might even try to see intellectually how it is damaging others without opening up to feeling
- they use will power to stop unloving actions while holding onto sin and justifying it in their soul
- often manufacture 'emotions' and call it 'causal' release (usually these 'emotions' reinforce the facade based viewpoint the person wishes to maintain about themselves, their motivations and their life)
- may self punish and call it 'repentance'

Engaging all these things and calling it repentance actually just reinforces the facade. Doing this is actually almost the opposite of the repentance process in that the person continues to sin and harm others and themselves in the guise of being 'more loving'.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is common to gain an intellectual awareness of your sin before you emotionally open up to it, that is a part of the deconstruction of facade and repentance process and is NOT what I am referring to here. If you are sincere your intellect assists you with awareness and to open up more emotionally. This is different from acting in your facade to avoid the TRUTH of your behaviour and the reasons for it and creating a big intellectual story instead :)


Self Punishment to Avoid Truth & Emotion

I observe that people are often self punishing and calling that remorse or repentance. Many times we are taught in our childhoods that this self attack IS the acceptable way to show or to be remorseful. But from personal experience I have found that self punishing is the exact opposite of desiring to seeing the full impact of the damage done. It is very self-involved. My self punishment is 'all about me' and me feeling bad about MYSELF, rather than opening up to see God's view of my sin and its impact.

Self punishment can also be about inflicting emotional pain upon self as a way to manipulate others into not having their emotional response to your harmful, unloving actions. e.g. "I've done wrong and now I'm beating myself up about it, if you feel bad about what I've done, I'll beat myself up more. You will be causing me to harm myself more if you have your natural response to my sin. You feeling your feelings harms me." In this state we shut down our own repentance (we don't even want to connect to the harm we have caused) and ironically we are attempting to prevent one of the important factors in another person forgiving us. That is, we are trying to stop them feeling their fear and grief which is necessary if they are to ever forgive us.

Ironically repentance can feel BETTER than self punishment - it is still painful but since you are connecting to God and God's view then things are better.


Unwilling to Challenge Blocks to God

If we don't want to give up certain false beliefs about God and God's Nature then we can try to 'do it alone' when it comes to repentance. This is impossible and a slow way to change. It also prevents us gaining a complete viewpoint of our sin, and its impact (God's Truth). It blocks us from having a compassionate viewpoint of ourselves and to receiving God's Love that will eradicate our desire for sin.

For myself certain fears and false beliefs about love are blocks to God. For example, when I live in the fear of being made to feel guilty and oppressed (emotions from earthly parents) I don't reach out to God. I prevent myself having the possibility of receiving truth lovingly and receiving forgiveness because I want to continue to tell myself that my childhood experience is how all parents will treat me and my sin.

Most of us associate acknowledging sin with the withdrawal of love on earth and unless we are willing to experiment with new experiences we won't reach out to God (in fact we might WITHDRAW from God).

The decision to involve God in repentance is a will based choice. It is important to not justify the false beliefs within us and to use these as an excuse to avoid God. I am finding more and more that I use my injured viewpoints and emotions as EXCUSES not to engage the great experiment. There is fear (in my case this is not relating specifically to repentance but to other global issues) about connecting to God and what that will mean to/for me and so I tell myself that I have to FEEL more of the injured emotions BEFORE I involve God - instead of taking what feels like a 'risk' and involving Her RIGHT NOW. So challenging blocks with God feels a lot to me about facing fear and acting to opening up emotionally in spite of fear.

I know that other many people use their injured earthly experiences as excuses not to simply engage with God as well.


Trying to 'Repent' When We Need to Forgive

Childhood experiences can make us believe that things are our fault when they aren't, or that we are harming others by having our personal desires or caring for ourselves. In these cases we need to work through the issue from God's Perspective, receive God's Truth and be willing to be humble to the hurt done to use in order to forgive and let go of the emotional beliefs that continue to generate pain.

It is important not to get caught up in a cycle of feeling 'guilty', admonishing ourselves for not repenting or attempting to repent when we actually just have an injured viewpoint of love and truth that needs to be let go of.


Trying to 'Forgive' When We Need to Repent

This happens so often when people's addictions are challenged. Because the addictions and acceptance of facade that most of the world lives in is accepted as loving, when an addiction is challenged or a facade exposed many people feel that they have been wronged and that they have to 'forgive' the 'injustice' done to them. I see this happen a lot in people who attend our groups - both in their personal relationships and in their interactions with us. Hey, I've done it myself many times.

This is another reason why it is so important to involve God in our lives. When we desire to have God's viewpoint of issues then we gain clarity a lot more quickly and can engage repentance for our demands and expectations upon others. Unfortunately, instead of doing this many people get angry about how they believe that they have been harmed which only further increases the sin for which, at some point, they will need to repent for.


There are many more ways we can 'mis-fire' when it comes to repentance. I thought in listing some of them in this thread could be a great way to assist us to grow our awareness of them.

I have found that it is key to be careful not to call things repentance that are actually just addiction and facade, and to work through each issue emotionally so that we can surrender to the forgiveness/repentance process with God. I often feel that this process is the true basis of a relationship with God.

Unless we want to engage repentance and forgiveness with God then there really can't be a relationship.

Love
Mary

Re: Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 1:52 am
by David R
Hi Mary,

Thank you for this insightful post!

David

Re: Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'

Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 2:42 am
by Maxine
This is also "Common Ways to go Wrong..."

This is great information just to help us through why we get stuck...

Thank you, Mary.

Maxine

Re: Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2016 10:22 pm
by Sandina
Hi again,

Is it fair to say that repentance takes a great deal of humility and openness to God?

For someone like myself who hasn't developed very much humility yet or a relationship with God....how do we navigate repentance? I understand from a feedback session on the "Laws of Compensation, Repentance and Forgiveness" that we can get to repentance by feeling the compensatory affects...will that then help us eradicate the desire to sin in the meantime as we work on our blocks to repentance?

I guess Im trying to ask, can we decide to stop the action of sin before we are humble enough to repent?

Also, from my understanding, even someone in the depths of hell can repent...so it shouldn't really be about how progressed we are, right?

Re: Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2016 2:45 pm
by Amanda Stracey
Sandina

I would like to point you in the direction of and make a suggestion to you, if you haven't listened already, this talk - a discussion by Jesus and Mary based on Jesus' own dictation to James Padgett.

This is the reference on the Divine Truth website:

28 Oct 15 Padgett Message With Jesus & Mary
Message 19160302A From Jesus Sin, Redemption & Receiving God's Love

This is the Padgett message itself on the internet

https://www.divinetruth.com/www/en/html ... 0302A.htm

This is the video if you have access to youtube:

20151028-1300 19160302A Jesus (Sin & Redemption)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkRTB60 ... A2&index=1

I feel there is incredibly incredibly valuable guidance and truth in there about coming out of denial (accepting that the world is an unloving place and we are part of the world etc so it's very likely that we must have some unloving conditions within us) and becoming aware of our sin, being very honest with ourselves and the differences between intellectual and emotional awareness.

With Love

Amanda

Re: Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2016 2:47 pm
by Amanda Stracey

Re: Common Ways to 'Go Wrong' with 'Repentance'

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2016 4:03 pm
by Sandina
Thanks, Amanda.

I've watched this before but I think it will be good to watch again.

Sandina