Dealing with mistakes

I used to know what I believed and why I believed it. But somehow along the way I stopped believing what I believed and instead started to try to believe what everyone else did. The truth no longer mattered to me. What mattered to me was fitting in. Sure I fit in a whole lot better, but at what cost? I found myself working to fit into something that I didn’t believe totally in the first place. Don’t get me wrong. There are parts of it I do believe, but there are many more parts that I am left without a conclusion on. And these are the questions that I gave up in favor for a more peaceful co-existance with the people I have grown up with.

The major question that bothers me currently is “How do I get back to thinking as an individual and not as a blind follower.” Maybe this is what that dream meant. (I am refering to a dream that I had in Ohio about a sheep struggling in it’s automated pen.) I was the sheep struggling to get free of the automated system. And I indeed have fallen into the trap of the automated christian circle… just going along to fit in. I tried to believe to fit in. Instead of being reasonable I pushed my reasoning aside and attempted to believe things that blatantly contradicted what I had believed before.

I feel as if I have been hedged in for so long that I am having trouble separating myself from simply going along with others. I am having trouble separating my rational processes from the fears and emotions. There is an invisible fence around my thinking that I installed and now I am trying to find my way out.

Some may ask why i need to get out. I need to get out because I am tired of trying to live a life that I know deep inside is only half true. Plus, I cannot think and rationally process things very well. It is as if that center of my brain has been clouded or shut down. There is a hedge and I want it gone.

Now, this understanding is good and all, but I still find myself without ability to do so. There is still something in me that is keeping me from fully engaging down this path. I remember at one point breaking mentally, literally feeling as if something snapped because of the stress between what I was coming to believe and the sheer horror of being rejected. From that point on it seemed as if the truth no longer mattered. I remember writing in my journal that it felt as if I no longer cared about the truth. I just wanted the pain to go away. It scared me… because one of my fundamental convictions, at least before that time, was to be as authentic and genuine as possible. I wanted to be real to myself and to the world around me. But the stress literally became so great that the conviction that I had for the truth was left a tattered mess, only a shadow of what once was.

It is from this place that I am attempting to rebuild that conviction. I am attempting to engage in this journey once again, trying to to rebuild the ruins of my mind so that they may endure the testing that comes. They say a bone that is broken is stronger the second time around, lets just hope that the same is with the rampart of my convictions and mind.