The Kingdom of God is within you

It was a lazed out Saturday afternoon like any other weekends, when my cell phone rang and my world came crumbling down when I heard the shocking news about the death of my friend very close to my heart. He had died that morning of a massive heart attack on a train journey. I was in such a shock and disbelief, as I could not come to accept his death. I was deeply in love with him and I was taken over by fear and heart ache as I did not know how to accept his sudden death, and the thought of him not being there for me in the ways he had been there before was indeed causing me in deep sadness.

I had not spoken about our relationship to my parents and I could not call them up for support and help too. I was facing all of this alone and I did not know how to get over my deep pain and sorrow with no help from my loved ones and to go on with my life. Having lived through a bad divorce some years back and also coming from a background where I had undergone a lot of pain and sorrow in my childhood, it was weighing very heavy on me. All my past hurts were also surfacing as I was facing the death of my friend and this was my first encounter with death of a loved one. I was really struggling to find a break through to get over the grief and move on with my life normally. I mourned the loss of my friend alone for three days in tears and agony and was getting angry at God for letting me go through this pain and for taking him away from me so suddenly. I had developed a very comfortable love relationship with him and I was unable to eat or sleep and I was in a very depressed state. I could not even go to work as I could not focus on my tight work schedule. On the fourth day the thought occurred to me to seek help outside as I knew I would just collapse in the current state of mind I was in. As I could not go home and grieve as my parents did not know about our relationship, that's when I thought of the Inner Freedom Retreat in Belgaum. I had planned to attend the inner freedom retreat some time last year and due to unavoidable reasons I could not make it. I had got to know about the inner freedom retreat through a Catholic News letter which my friend had passed to me.

In the days before losing my friend, I had seen a strong pattern of behavior. I was becoming overly sensitive to any criticism or shame in the office, with my friends and loved ones. I would cry inside and would be down for a few days before I could resume back to being normal. I was overly pleasing people and would go to any extreme to make them happy as this was causing me a lot of pain and misery as i was really suffering inside. I tried to work out these issues through prayers and charismatic retreats and by asking people to pray for me. I also consciously tried to stay positive by reading positive thinking books and pop psychology materials to keep me pepped up. It was not really helping me as the patterns were still repeating and I was getting frustrated.

The conscious level positive was not a lasting help as I was only feeding the conscious mind, but deep down my unconscious mind was controlling me with all the negativities that I had acquired over my past years. In pain I had cried to Lord Jesus to set me free from these pattern of behavior and the sorrow and pain that I was facing, but little did I know that God was answering my prayers and that I would be landing up in Belgaum for a month's retreat to work on my problems.

There was a lot of apprehension in my mind about going to the retreat as I knew about the difficulty of taking a break for a month from work and it was not a very easy thing, but deep down I knew I had to seek help as I was unable to focus at work and may eventually lose the job in the state of mind I was in. Being in an emotional state of mind after the loss of my friend I was a bit apprehensive about my decision to go for a retreat as I had made blunders in the past when I took decisions in emotional state of mind. I was also worried if I could easily get over the pain and agony of my sorrow by going to a retreat as I was really messed up with my emotions. In order to make a proper decision about the retreat I consulted two of my friends about my decision to go down for the retreat and one of them encouraged me and other friend suggested me on taking a holiday and come back refreshed instead of going to retreat. I consulted my brother and he was apprehensive whether I would get worsened in emotions, given the emotional state of mind I was in and he wanted me to take a day and think calmly and take a decision. My gut feeling was telling me to go down and seek help in the Inner Freedom Retreat, but was worried about what the retreat was about etc..etc. I wrote an Email to Fr. Vijay mentioning about my loss and that I needed to come down for a retreat. I later spoke to him over the phone and about the dilemma in making my decision to come down to the retreat. Father asked me a few questions and I mentioned that I had a past divorce, he encouraged me to come and seek the liberation from my emotions. He mentioned not to delay as I would be in agony till I dealt with the negativities of the past, he assured me one thing -"You will go back in peace and not in pieces". He mentioned to me over the phone that working on negatives requires a lot of hard work and slogging from my end to set myself free and that he was there fully and totally to render his support in working out my negatives. I really felt comfortable talking to the father and he also replied to my Email mentioning that he was with me in my sorrow. I took two days to make a decision to come down for a retreat in spite of my friend's and brother's fears, with the reasoning that even in the worst case scenario if the retreat was not suiting me, I would sit in the Chapel and pray to get over my grief and also read Bible and some positive psychology books.

I was lucky to get a month's break from work and I landed up in Belgaum. I was greeted by Fr. Vijay with a beautiful and warm smile. Father did not want me to lose time so he put me to work the very same day that I arrived. I spoke to Father about my pain and sorrow of losing a dear friend and the heartache of a divorce and the childhood neglect that I received from my mother. He was so non judgmental of me and very accepting of me and that made me very comfortable and also his confidence made me think that my decision was right.

He mentioned that if I had delayed my arrival a little longer, I would have acquired a lot more negativity and landed in a deep depression and that would have made me impossible to get over my negativity. I knew what he was talking about as I had experienced myself in my family circle of people going through a lot of pain and not taking help and landing up as mental patients with deep depression and no way to return back to normalcy. He followed a very natural process of allowing me to consciously invoke the negatives that I faced by reliving my past and transforming the negatives into positives that I had acquired from my childhood and up to now.

Fr. Vijay made me to work on the death of my friend. He made me relive the pain that I experienced when I heard the news that my friend was no more and all the fears and panic that i felt in my heart. He took me through the process of facing his death again and to face my fears of future of not having him physically with me. I worked on it for three days and I still was not getting over the fact that he was dead as I was still viewing life from his eyes and there was a lot of sorrow in my heart of he not being there for me. He made me work through attachment that I had developed and how to let go and gain my independence. It was a real painful process to detach myself and come to live with the reality of the fact that he is dead. I had developed a deep attachment for my friend and it was really painful to detach myself from him. Father guided me to understand how I had hooked onto the concept of what I believed was love in my mind and that was making it difficult for me to let go. With the help of Fr. Vijay I was able to get over my attachment feeling by reliving my pain and sorrow and finally I was able to let go of my friend and bury him in my mind. So with the help of Fr. Vijay, I freed myself and gained independence from him and came to accept the reality of his death. It is something amazing that after working with him for a week, I was able to talk about my friend without tears rolling down.

The beautiful part of the process is that Father allowed me to be myself and also express the anger that I had towards God in allowing things to happen to me. This was the first time that I could express my anger towards God who had allowed me so much pain and that was a healing process to develop my faith experience.

My next three weeks I had to work on my past issues of divorce and the pain that suffered as a result of it. I had undergone a lot of emotional pain, sorrow and sexual abuse under the hands of my Ex-husband and I had to relive through the shame and ridicule that I suffered with my mother-in-law and my husband. It was a very painful process. Father would encourage me not to give up and to keep working on it till I got over it. He was so patient in listening to the abuse that I went through and the ways my husband had rejected me and used me as a sex object to gratify his sexual pleasures and fantasy and how I had ended up in divorce in two years time, as it was forced upon me by my husband though I could not think of separating from him. He made me suffer by inflicting pain and sorrow of satisfying him sexually in all the possible ways and he never gave me the respect that was due for a wife. He was a control freak who controlled every aspect of my life and made me to suffer physically, sexually and emotionally. I understood as I worked my negatives that I had developed myself as a slave and that I had sold myself cheap with no dignity. Fr. Vijay asked to work on the issue of how I developed the slave mentality and how I sold myself cheap to make him happy all along. In spite of me working on my negativity towards him, I still had love for this man who used me and moved on to find another partner in his life leaving me with the tag of divorcee. In the process I came to the realisation on how I had degraded myself as I never had love for myself and lacked self respect.

Father insisted that I work through the process to get over my low self esteem and to find freedom from my Ex-husband through forgiveness and to accept divorce and all the painful consequences. This was the first time someone had worked so intensely with me to work me through my pain and negativities and understand the root cause of my problem and to work on till I finally came out victorious. It was Father's unrelenting way in making me work through the painful process even though I felt like giving up at times as it seemed real slogging and hard work, that I was able to achieve the results. It was only through this process that I realised the deeply buried anger that I had towards God.

After completing the work of slave mentality that I had developed with my husband, I had to go through all childhood sexual abuses. In the process of working, I came to realise how I had picked up masturbation as I was misused by a neighbour when I was just five years old. This resulted in later years into a terrible guilt feeling which affected my self image very badly and I used to find receiving communion very disturbing. Though I suffered so much guilt feeling about masturbation, I never felt a bit angry for not accepting, loving, being angry, hating and fully rejecting my mother from my childhood till this process!

Another area of burden that I was carrying was the hurt feelings that I received when I was used by a close relative of mine when I was a child to gratify him with oral sex. It was very disgusting that it happened to me and had lived with the secret for so long. As part of work process I got to realise how this mangled my self image and my sexual attitudes

I had developed a lot of hurt feelings from one of my brothers because of his controlling attitude. I realised how I handed over my life to others and that I had developed a slave mentality and that led to so much of misery and pain in my marriage. In the retreat it was not easy for me to forgive my brother for this.

I had developed a deep attachment towards my father as I did not receive any love from my mother and I had lot of fears of losing him. I had developed a lot of regard for him as he was both a mother and a father figure to me and the only person who loved me very dearly. I had highest regards for him as he took a lot of pain and strain in bringing us up and he suffered a lot from the hands of mother and it had really pained my heart and I had developed a lot of love towards him and deep vengeful hatred towards my mother. Father put me through a process of detachment from my father and made me go through the deep sorrow of losing my father. It was a very painful and sad process which I undertook to get over the attachment and love for him and to gain my independence from him.

Little did I know before I arrived that the major chunk of my hurt feelings and mangling of my personality had to do with my mother's lack of love and the torture and pain that I suffered from her. Father understood that the source of my personality issues with identity and deep hatred needs to be dealt by reliving that pain and trauma that I suffered at her hands. It was real cruel and heart breaking process for me as I had lived my life under the notion that I did not have a mother.

I had always pictured my mother as Lucifer, because of her malice. I along with my other siblings suffered a lot of pain and sorrow in our lives because of her. She never was there as a mother to me and I had shut myself to her in convincing myself that I never had a mother for me. She put us through a lot of shame and pain and it had affected me very badly. She had deserted me when I was just a few months old, and I was left under the care of a relative who was taking care of me. She shamed me and my family when she walked out of the house in the early morning hours after having a nasty and stormy fight with my father. It really shamed me a lot and it affected me a child as we were the talk of the locality about my mother's behaviour. She was a person who would go to any level to cause shame as she never cared about us or our reputation. She never nurtured me or cared for me as a mother and she was full of malice and did not have any compassion for anyone. She was a self-centered lady who only was bothered for herself and caused me a lot of shame and misery. She had ill-treated my father whom I loved a lot and she had caused a lot of pain and suffering. With all these behaviours that I had experienced at her hands, I had concluded that I never had a mother! Even though at the conscious level I had learned to forgive as a Christian act, but deep down I had not forgiven her and accepted her as my mother. It was a long painful process to get out of my anger, sadness, frustration, lack of love and care, deep hatred towards my mother and eventually forgiving her and accepting her as my mother as she is. My mother was a very suspicious woman who would suspect my father with anything and she would constantly pick up fights with him and would control him and us with her shaming behaviour. She was a person who would stoop down to any level to control us. In my womb experience process, I came to experience a deep sadness and rejection.

Working through this process of reconciling with my mother was very painful and I really had to work on it for nearly a long period and I finally succeeded in forgiving and also in reaccepting her as my only mother and not any other mother from the hands of God. I am happy that even though the process is hard, genuine forgiveness frees you and it would not have been a real forgiveness if I did not go through the process of working the pain and transforming all the anger and hatred that I nestled for so many years including the terrible anger towards God for giving me such a mother. I am happy that I went through the hard process and was able to set myself free in that area of my life. Today I understand the fact what Father was emphasizing on reliving ones past history to work out our liberation through the guidance of God. Today I can tell from my own experience that we eventually become positive people without having any positive thoughts by working out our negativities. When the negativity is burned down by reliving our painful experiences, the mind becomes clear to make choices from our true liberated and authentic self. The paradox is I came into this retreat to get over the grief of a friend through death, but today I go back home with a living mother who was dead for all along.

Thanks Fr. Vijay for your detailed work that you have done in my life, you have been so accepting and non judgmental in your ways of handling me and I never once felt I was dealing with a religious person of a fixed mind set. I always felt I was working with a buddy of my age group who understood my problem and felt the empathy and pain that I suffered. I felt you were really being part of the struggle process that I was going through as you were working with me alongside when I was working with all my negativity. I deeply thank God for giving his grace in leading you in this wonderful work of liberation, I am indeed looking forward for a life of freedom to make free choices in my life from the liberated life that you have helped me to achieve. I pray for your wonderful work and I have seen the passion with which you worked with us to find our inner freedom. Now I truly understand in a glimpse what is one's Inner Freedom.

Finally, I must confess though I forgave and accepted my mother, it is not that easy yet to create warm affection for her. The difference is I am open for it and I am bent on loving my mother as she is without my past anti-mother feelings. I am sure the Lord will definitely make a success in this endeavour.