Before moving onto the rest of this essay you should probably take the time to read the following questions and then a few moments to consider your answers. Several possibilities are discussed once we get to the end.

Q:Do you think the Adam and Eve story happened? Why?

Q:What do Adam and eve represent? Why?

Q:Did Jesus exist? What makes you so sure either way?

Q:Could Jesus perform miracles? How? Why?

Q:Did Jesus raise from the dead? Yes or No? Why do you think this?

Q:Do I have a soul, what is it?

Q:Does Christianity teach us the morals of life? Why?

Q:If not are we immoral?

Q:Do you believe in heaven and hell? Why?

Q:Do you believe in god? What is his role?

Q:If I don't have a soul what am I?

Q:Do you believe in evolution? Why?

Q:Is everything around us, our very being a consequence of nature and not god?

Q:Do you think we are here for a purpose, what is it?

Q:So what makes man so special

Q:Is the bible the word of god?

Q:What as individuals gives us a sense of right and wrong, what is morality?

I am cool with me right now. But this was not always the case.

There is a stage in adult life when you come to a crossroads. Usually about late twenties, early thirties. It is often a time in life when popular culture tells you this life should have panned out differently.

The problem is entirely to do with love and guilt, or more to the point the need to be loved and lose your guilt.

As children we love our parents unconditionally. As adolescent adults, we transfer this need for love to our sexual partners. As young adults there are usually one or two major relationships where you become part of something else. For a time we feel that this whole is us! There are friends, there are good times, times when you feel complete as part of the whole, it swallows us up.

The stability of this whole hinges entirely on your desire for 'love' and someone else's desire for yours. Invariably such a relationship is never made up of two equals that love in the same quantities. Generally one is more dominant, the other loves more. Over time individuals change, your minds 'self' emerging with passing years, ironically, often from the strength of these relationships. The balance shifts. If there is to be continued success one of you has to accept something that is not you.

So then, we drift. Different people do different things. Sometimes they will launch into another relationship, for that short term fix. Sometimes they find faith, a career, religion, others have babies and create devoted love of their own.

So few of us actually do what we need to do, because its the hardest option. To truly anchor yourself, the absolute first person you need to love is yourself. I don't mean looking in the mirror and liking what you look at. I mean looking at that person and loving what that person stands for, what they think. What are their passions, what do they love, hate and what makes them insecure. Taking these insecurities and looking them in the eye, managing them, accepting them. THIS IS ME!! I DO NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT!

I think we desire to be perfect because our childhood leaves us with so much guilt. We start out on the back foot. I have felt guilty all my life, as a child I turned left I should have gone right, do this not that. Why did you think this, think that. As an adolescent, girls; bad. sex; hell and brimstone. Babies outside of wedlock; Your life will be nothing, you will amount to nothing, you will go to jail!

By the time I was 34 I had worked so hard at overcoming the objectives set by my parents, exceeded them, obliterated them, so lost myself and my frailties in relationships that when I found myself ejected into the big wide world, alone in 2000 I felt utterly disconnected. In truth I had been adrift for a lot longer. I had built a shield through which people could not see me. Anyone that knew me at the time would probably have summed me up as confident, assertive, successful, occasionally overbearing and sometimes witty. Inside I was still petrified like I had been at 18.

I don't recall that I made a concious decision, I think some part of my mind strove to be anchored, that part of me that is strong beyond most peoples comprehension decided it was time to stand up else I was going to sink. I strove to work out how it had come to this, why and to what purpose. Why did I feel so guilty? Even for feeling this! Who the fuck was I?

The very first thing that I decided to do was work out what I believed in. At the time I had no idea why!

If you wondering what brought all that on? Check out Blogspot : Girl : Who Am I?

This was actually recounted to me by a friend the other day who had been told this by the father, got that?

A father has two daughters. One is 18 and the other is 12. The 12 year old would like to be a nun. This makes her father very happy. He is a committed Christian and loves his 12 year old daughter.

His 18 year old daughter has just left home. She did not want to leave home, but was kicked out by her committed Christian father because she wanted to sleep over at her boyfriends, did sleep over at her boyfriends.

My very first books in school were of Jesus on water, Moses parting the red sea, Jesus feeding the 5000, Adam and Eve deliberating over the apple, Jesus healing and raising from the dead, Noah's Ark.

As soon as I got to school in the morning from the age of five through to eleven I was preached to by the headmaster, usually a saying from the bible and then we sang Christian hymns. All the major holidays in the year, Easter and Christmas were about glorifying religious iconography and repeating this message. I was essentially brainwashed from a very early age and it stuck deep, deep inside my psyche.

At the time of my great identity crises, circa 2002 my religious identity was technically that of a non practising Christian. I wasn't sure why though, other than I didn't find Christians to be very agreeable.

It felt very important to me that if I was going to find out 'Who I was' that I needed to start with my religious identity.

I started with a whole bunch of religion orientated questions that date back to the fundamental concepts I had been brainwashed with as a child. At the time I realised I didn't have a clue.

The questions are posted at the end of the essay with my answers as they stand today,

I did feel that if I could break down these questions and answer the 'why' I would at least have my feet firmer on the ground.

So I began. I listened to historical tapes and read books. Nothing dodgy or secret, just purchased from Amazon and the Teaching Company. I studied the life of Jesus, the world of Jesus, the emergence of Christianity after his death. I studied the religious writings of the time, saw how some of these became the New Testament. Studied the impact of Judaism on Christianity.

I soaked information up like I was a sponge. I studied the evolution of early Christianity into the Roman Catholic church, the middle ages and the impact it had on our culture even from then, the emergence of Europe through the first millennia, the emergence of England through the second. I studied the origins of Islam, what it stands for and its early history. I even studied the psychology of the mind, religion and existentialism.

You could of course study all this for a lifetime and not know everything in detail, but I had gathered a high level knowledge over a number of years, and is of course ongoing.

Through this, I now have a clear understanding of what I believe, feel very secure in my being here, what I stand for. Especially my place in all this.

Being nurtured into existence ...

What is right and wrong, what determines who is right and what is wrong?

Chapter Three

Submission: 5 November 2006
Revision: none