Dark Desires

Lines to Her Heart
Photo by SB

Satisfying dark desires is sin & yet frees me; denying them infects my soul. - JP Sartre

Some Christian sects thrive on sin. If they did not have it to battle, they would have nothing to feel superior about and would have to take up new passions. Other Christian sects will accept anybody and love them unconditionally, except they despise the holy rollers I mentioned first. Many Christian sects are in between.

I am personally struggling with my own faith. I feel the same as Sartre. "Denying them (dark desires) infects my soul." I also don't know what to believe in anymore as something to have faith in.

Even though I use the term, "struggling", I am not torn apart by it. According to many Christians' definitions of sin, I've sinned by my actions, my art, my desires, and my needs. I am trying to take a new look at them. I feel I have sinned with my art and my actions, but with sin being defined in a different way.

To me, a sin is when I hurt someone or something for my own pleasure, hedonistic need or vengeance. I am not going to add God and sin into this at all.

I kept much of my nude photography secret from people very close to me. I felt they would judge me as a deviant. I was wrong to do this. When it came out, these people were hurt that I did not trust them enough to be able to handle my work. They were upset that I didn't want them to celebrate my art with them. I felt guilt over not trusting their love for me and who I am.

Satisfying dark desires is sin & yet frees me; denying them infects my soul. - JP Sartre

I think true sin comes when we try to suppress dark desires and not confront them. My dark desires are not the sexual ones. They are the ones for seeking vengeance, hatred, despondency, and other truly dark things. Denying them by not recognizing I have them and determining why I feel them, truly infects my soul.

It is easy to sweep dark desires under the rug. That is part of my family's methods of dealing with dark desires, we suppressed them. I am learning now that I can't do that anymore. I need to recognize them and find ways to move on. This may mean seeking justice instead of vengeance, seeking and giving forgiveness if it is needed, and to examine my true motives for feeling dark desires.

These introspective looks usually find one root cause, envy. Sometimes envy is a useful tool for survival, but many times it is a destructive weapon. One thing I am working on is to change envy into desire, and then decide if what I desire is really something I need. Most of the time the answer is "no," but sometimes the answer is "yes."

One of the advantages of being forty is my ability to look back and see what I have learned during my time in existence. As I hit the fast times, that age where 1990 seemed like yesterday, but it is now 2009, I accumulated life experiences. Some of these were: happy ones, successful ones, failures, heartbreak, death, new love, craziness, desperation, erotic, elation, exclusion, inclusion, salvation, and depravity.

Through all of those experiences, I find it harder to judge people. While my personal faith in a higher power is at best a dim bulb in the sky, I appreciate what Jesus said when he spoke to a crowd that wanted to stone a woman to death for adultery.

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. ^"8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. ⁹ And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. ¹⁰ When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? ¹¹ She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

John 8:7-11 (King James Version)

It is interesting that Jesus made every person evaluate their own sinfulness before casting judgment on the woman. If Jesus was without sin, why didn't he condemn her? That right there makes me believe Jesus was more human than divine.

I am not sure if I can classify what I have done as sins, but I know I have done wrong and also suffered from others who have wronged me. I have hurt people intentionally and accidentally. I have done things that I am proud of and other things that I feel sorry and shame for. I can not easily judge absolutely upon others because I know why they did it from my own experiences.

Maybe age taught me of the beauty of subtlety. I see shades of gray between the polar opposites I lived in during my idealistic youth. Some things are still absolutely wrong and others are purely right. While it is easy to differentiate those, we all spend most of our days in the gray existence of subtlety.