Losing To Television

Continued from yesterday…

To give you a personal example about the ego, religion, and sin, I go back into my early 20s—a period in my life that seems almost absurd today. Yet it was my reality back then, and sadly enough the reality of many sincere seekers of God. I was deeply committed to the religious system I was part of at the time.

I was very sensitive to any evidence of sin in my life and was therefore afraid of what I now refer to as the god of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I remember a prominent religious leader telling me about the evils of TV. When he walked into a hotel room by himself, he would unplug the TV and cover it with a towel.

Looking back, I can see that my ego wanted to attain the same spiritual level as him. I wanted to be “anointed” like him, and have a large ministry, and would, therefore, need to pay the price by resisting the evils of TV.

Needless to say, the harder I—the ego—tried to resist the TV, the more I found myself being pulled in by the TV. I became fixated, and eventually, I lost to the TV, setting off another round of guilt.

That guilt kept my mind in the past, while simultaneously projecting punishment into my future. While focusing on my failures, my subconscious concluded that I could never have success within my religion. God was angry with me because I could not resist the temptation of TV. I was just not good enough.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from section 2 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren