Hello Kandice,
It's a really good question and I'm glad you asked. Let me try to say what Julie is saying, in a different way: Each of us, in our history as a soul, has spent many lifetimes separated from God - which means we have also been separated from the truth of our selves, because we are all part of God. In this time, many painful things have happened because of our separation, and that of other people: We have hurt others, and been hurt by them. We have experienced fear, rejection, rage, violence. All of these painful experiences are embedded within us - our bodies remember them, even if our minds have forgotten. By the way, even if you don't believe that we live many lifetimes, the same applies to our experiences in this lifetime: The history of past pain is stored within us - what has been done to us, what we have done to others.
When our hearts seek to come back to God, we invite light to come into us. In order to be filled with God, we need to make room inside - that which is not of God needs to come out. This is the work of light: To illuminate what is not of God so we can become aware of it, and so it can be cleansed.
As these parts of the past come out of us, more often than not we experience them as energies, as emotions, and patterns of negative thought - rather than as conscious memories. We may think and feel all kinds of terrible things, things that arise in our thoughts and emotions without apparent cause. Even though this is happening because of our desire to return to God, in the moment it can feel like its opposite. We desire to be pure in heart and mind and action, to feel peaceful inside - we think, this is what it means to be moving towards a spiritual life. However, we are feeling upset, conflicted, angry, suspicious, afraid, confused - and so we may think, "I must be moving away from a spiritual life because I'm having these bad feelings".
To move past this, we need to learn to trust in our essential goodness, in the truth of our hearts' devotion to God. We need to be able to hold negative thoughts and feelings as a kind of "bad weather" passing through us, to know that they do not define who we are. This is the "premise that needs to be revised": That the experience of negative energies means we are not living a spiritual life. In fact, we may be feeling negative energies because we are seeking a spiritual life. How we hold that experience makes all the difference in the world.
Best regards, Gordon
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