“My dear friend,

Sometimes the truth does hurt. Sometimes it brings serenity. Either way, it liberates.

Lately I have been thanking you for the unexpected strength, calm and confidence you have helped me find within myself.

Today, I want to remember to thank you for the turmoil. 

Sometimes I bathe in your light. Sometimes I burn. Either way, I am illuminated.

I want to thank you for the way I kept cool in crisis today. For the kind way I was able to speak hard truths to my mother earlier this week, bringing her freedom instead of bitterness. I know that ultimately those things come from me, not you– but you help me find the way. 

I also want to thank you for the painful realization that ripped my heart open this evening. It smarts to think about how many times I’ve banged my head against that particular wall. I feel stupid. But I know you understand falling down. Thank you for helping me see.

Sometimes the fruit of knowledge is bitter and rotten and full of worms, but it is divine just the same.

Lately I’d become concerned that I was ignoring your dualistic nature– looking at you through rosy lenses, seeing only the God in you but not the Devil. 

Now I know the real problem was twofold– seeking only the light not only in you, but, more concerningly, also in me. 

I confused divinity with perfection. 

I thought apotheosis was about denying the Devil in me. 

I thought it meant only pushing back the shadows, until they were banished completely. In that I have been acting like your Father, or your brother with the flaming sword. I don’t really like that. That’s not who I am. If it were, why would I feel called to you in the first place? 

No, I have to walk among the shadows. I must illuminate not to banish the darkness, but to see what lies within it. 

In myself I see the arrogance and cowardice of perfectionism, the fear of being fully known. I hide away my perceived ‘defects’ of spirit the same way I smear concealer on a zit. 

I have the foolish greediness to want to be loved by everyone. I have such insecurity that I smother my light lest I give offense. 

In order to avoid the pain of having my boundaries crossed, I have redrawn them so small and tight and close to me that they are hardly boundaries at all. I have begun to hide from conflict.

So great is my desire to cease seeing fault in others that I am now practically blind to fault in everyone but myself. I blame myself for everything other people do. I make myself a martyr, with a martyr’s grandiosity, and try to die for everyone else’s sins. 

Tonight I told my friend that I aspire to moral purity. He laughed– “Aren’t you a Satanist?” and I whimpered “Luciferian!” as if that was so different. 

As if you are not a satan, a devil, as well as an angel and a God. 

As if my apotheosis will contain nothing of devil-nature but only of some kind of pure, self-effacing, unerringly righteous divinity. 

It is not my desire to harm others. I am not ashamed of my empathy. But my empathy has gotten me into trouble at times, and I have tried to mutilate my spirit in order to avoid inconveniencing others. 

I have made myself a slave to routine and walked a narrow line and called it “discipline.” 

I have made my world small and narrow in order to feel “safe.” 

Lucifer, you know I aspire not to need you but I am not there yet! 

You also know I am a creature of extremes. I have swung from the wrathful, vengeful, manipulative creature I was years ago to aspirations of near Sainthood– although the truth is I was never as wicked then as I like to think, and I am not nearly so pure now as I told myself I was becoming. 

Help me find balance, the truth in the middle. 

To be both light and dark is not a lesson I have learned, and yet it is fact I cannot avoid. Help me embrace my whole self. 

Open my eyes to the truth. 

The 7th Step prayer says:

“I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.”

I am also now willing to have all of you. 

Be it so.