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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AnonymousBosch" data-source="post: 1251150" data-attributes="member: 5255">I've had a melody running around in my head for the last 18 months of my process.  A friend heard me playing it recently:  "Is that one of yours?""Yeah.""That's an earworm.  Finish it up."I used to write songs constantly, then gave it up for God a couple of years ago, but now I'm understanding that it's OK to enjoy writing music if I put God at the front and centre:  this is the process of mortification.Two phrases, but only one part of the lyric was there.  It's about the process of moving closer to God and everytime I get tempted towards discouragement, I start singing, optimistically:"It's one step left of a million more steps."Now I finally have the second line."One fall less of a million falls."Rob:  you have to understand that the process of coming to God isn't an instant sanctification - yes, some people are very blessed, and that happens, but, for the rest of us, it's a slow process of walking towards God, tripping, falling flat on our face, then getting up again and continuing.Blessed Julian of Norwich was an english mystic known as an anchorage:  Back in that time, when a church was built, Anchorages would agree to be bricked into a room at the side of the church and spent the rest of her life in prayer.  In her famous work, 'Revelations of Divine Love', she explains that God expects us to fail.He chooses us, and sets us off and running towards our goal.  Then we fall, hard.  This is then what separates us from God:  We lie there in the mud, feeling ashamed and clumsy and very, very sorry for ourselves.  He's standing there, willing to forgive us and help us back to our feet, but our pain is so all-consuming we forget that he's there.He says he doesn't care about our sins or the specifics of them - the worst sin has been committed against him by Adam and Eve, The Fall, and that was repaired by Jesus at Calvary.  The one sin we can commit is to feel a weird, twisted pride in the belief that our petty little sins are so important that they outweigh his Infinite Mercy. He doesn't care about the particulars, just that we don't feel so dirty and unlovable that we turn from him instead of asking forgiveness.This, particularly, is a very common problem in those who misunderstand who God is and how he works, which is a problem with those denominations who present as Christian but controlled by Jewish power, 'Judeo-Christianity', teaching the Old Covenant Beliefs about God:  that you were his slave; to fear him as stern judge; obedience will make you blessed and prosperous; he will 'smite' the unjust, the wicked and Israel's enemies.  This was known as the Law of Fear, and creates a mindset called 'Freedom of Indifference' - you obey out of fear and punishment.  This always keeps you at arms length to God.  Imagine the reaction of a dog who is unsure if the master is going to give him a piece of food, or whack him with a stick.This is why Jesus came along.  The revealed the Truth that the Jews thought they were holy, but didn't know God at all, and he gently tries to explain to his followers that their leaders are Evil and worship the Devil.  The old covenant was broken, the Jewish laws, so complicated no man could live by them, were abolished and simplified into the New Commandment:  'love one another as I have loved you', and, rather than the Jewish Belief in outward appearances, ritual, wealth and prosperity being a measure of holiness, he shows it's the inward conversion of heart that matters, and where exactly God's favour lies:  the poor, the despondent, the persecuted, the sick, the unclean, the stranger, the sinner.  This is the revolutionary nature of the Beatitudes, and why they arranged to have Jesus killed:  their power was threatened.The truth of all the writings of the Catholic Mystics is identical:  the revelation is always that God is Infinite Love, and that his mercy always, always overrides Judgement.This is why the New Covenant is known as the Law of Love.  He's not a stern judge, but a loving father who suffers to see us suffer and whose compassion is infinite.  We are not his slaves, but are valued as his adopted children.  He allows suffering - never wills or creates it - for our sanctification, for comfort and excess corrupts us.  Understanding this leads to a mindset known as 'Freedom For Excellence':  you gradually learn to obey the Natural Law not out of fear, but because you are drawn to the good and the true.  This is not an instant process, but requires lifetime of work where you don't let external appearances create judgements of your own holiness or others.  Even a formation work for Priests like 'The Spiritual Life' warns Priests not to presume - for example, it's possible to be in high grades of prayer whilst still falling into sinful habits.If you study the different writings of the Saints and the Mystics, they always describe and ongoing process of purification.  It's not instant.  Someone once chided me for talking about holiness whilst outwardly-appearing to attack another member.  Yes, I've heard a a priest swear.  It's not unusual for religious to experience sexual feelings during deep prayer.  We all have failings that surge and recede like a tide - it's just the surge gradually reduces.  If you were instantly-perfected, you would be Divine.  You're not... you're wonderfully, beautifully human.Something I just remembered:  St Bernard of Clairvaux in 'On Loving God' describes an ongoing process of passing through four stages of love towards perfection:- you love yourself for your own sake;- you love God for what he gives you;- you love God for his own sake;- you love yourself for God's sake.You have to learn to forgive yourself for what you believe as 'disappointing' God.You can't accelerate this process.  You will have a series of experiences and understandings where, gradually, you walk a little further along the path through each stage.  If you start detaching from the world, you will notice this process happening more and more, and then You will eventually understand that everything that happens to you is divine providence, because if you didn't have those experiences, you wouldn't had gained knowledge.I once scandalised a very young Priest by saying that every time I fell, it's like it was for a reason, because I understood my failings better through the humiliation.  The more I've read, I've seen that concept isn't unknown in theology.  Particularly, I've noticed a pattern of a severe humiliation striking if I've ever gotten too full of myself, reminding me that everything comes through God's grace, not my own power.Your sin doesn't make you any less loved by God.  If anything, it increases his compassion for you:  "I come not to heal the healthy, but the sick".  The pain you feel is a reminder to put your trust and hope in him, and not yourself.If you'd have asked me two years ago, I would have said I was inherently-evil, God couldn't possibly-love someone like me and I was going to hell.  All the Saints and writers I was oddly-drawn to all reinforced the message of God's love and mercy.  I thought I was hugely-promiscuous because I loved the 'evil' of sexual intercourse.Now, after 2 years of reading, prayer and therapy?  God showed me:I banged women compulsively because I had no true understanding of masculinity.  I thought being a player made me man, much the way the outward physical externals I focused on - bodybuilding, tattoos, facial hair, exual virility seemed to accentuate the belief in my own masculinity.  Who I actually was was a damaged little child whose sense of his own masculinity was stolen through sexual abuse as a toddler, and turned himself into the child's cartoon exaggeration of what he understood masculinity to be:  a walking professional wrestler / GI Joe doll perverted by sexual abuse before the age of reason into a porn stud overlay.  I'm an adult man who is really a child playing with an action figure, and I'm so good at it the only person in every social transaction who doesn't think I'm an Alpha Male is myself.  To the extent that now I'm becoming more Christlike, I forget how I externally appear to others and keep frightening to old age pensioner types when I mean to help.My Priest said to me recently: "You have to understand that you're a very scary man," and that he never would have picked anything wrong with me normally except for the fact he saw me struggling with a cane at the Easter Charism Mass and was told by the Holy Spirit to talk to me, because he recognised Demonic Oppression.  Even then, I only ran into him later to talk about the problem by seeming-chance.  Note that the Charism mass involves every Priest in the Diocese, and he was the only one who ever picked up on my problem, so don't be put off by the first Priest you approach for help not helping.This broken sense of masculinity is what is known as a demonic wound.  Everyone has one, usually a primary one.  This is how the demons keep hurting you and making you sin.  Now, when I'm tempted sexually, the thoughts that usually come up are related to analysing what is happening:  "Why do I think this is what normal men do?", "Why is humiliating a woman considered masculine?", "Huh, these people aren't enjoying sexual intimacy, they're using each other for their own gratification, and it's taken a terrible toll on their souls."  I particularly see it in their eyes.  With that, the temptation often loses all power, because you see it for the twisted lie it is.This is how God can heal you.  It takes time.  There's some qualities at play here in your story - the inability to practice perfection for any length of time, choosing a latin mass, a sense of your own damnation - that suggests Compulsion and Wounding could be at play.  The problem isn't that you don't love God, you most likely love him very much, but that you're very afraid of him, expecting to be hit with the stick, which is what gives the temptations their obsessive power.For your treatment, you'd have a few options:- Ask your diocese if they have counselling available;- More likely, ask your diocese to put you in touch with Dominican Order Therapists, if possible.  They're grounded in the Summa Theologiae, so should understand compulsions and Demonic Oppression very well, assuming either of those are problems.- You could contact a CCR (Catholic Charismatic Revival) in your area, if possible, for Deliverance Ministry by a Charismatic Priest.  Some Thomist Priests might be able to do it too.  If you think those demonic healing videos you see online are all people getting worked up into group hysteria, I've also experienced it via teleconference, and I was *incredibly* skeptical such a thing was even possible.In the meantime, you need to start practising regular Catholic meditative prayer.  This isn't vocal prayer.  Nothing any of us can say here can convince you that God loves you.  You need to practice regular meditative prayer through the Rosary and Spiritual Reading so God can infuse this knowledge directly into your heart, which you'll experience as what is known as Spiritual Consolation:  a sensible reaction.  You might feel at peace, you might cry silently, you might be inflamed with love.  Yes, even a sinner.  Once this starts, you stop reading and let yourself experience it.God will do this regularly for as long as you're in the first stage of the spiritual life to reassure you that you're loved, and, as such, let you understand that you can love him back.  Meditation has to be practiced to encourage this.  He will eventually stop it as you pass into the second stage, but deal with that when it happens.  His love hasn't gone anywhere.  It's just you're being asked to experience him intellectually rather than emotionally.I just recalled a podcast I watched a year ago on Ven. Bruno Lanteri- most likely God thinks it might be useful for you.  It's a whole series, but it's the first search result - 'Refuse to accept discouragement'.  Each day failures is a new chance to 'begin again' the next:[MEDIA=youtube]wA6y3aLvZ6I[/MEDIA]Be at peace mate, you're loved.</blockquote>

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