Pervert is a verb, and we do it all the time. To pervert is to degrade, to cut down to size. We do it to people in our minds. We devalue them. We reduce them to the limitations of our appetites, of our sense of what might prove useful to us, of our sense of what strikes us as appropriate. We often only file them away – these living and breathing human beings – into separate files of crazy-making issues-talk. When we think of a person primarily as a problem, a potential buyer, a VIP, a celebrity, a threat, an asset, or an inconvenience, we’re reducing them to the tiny sphere of our stunted attention span. This is how perversion works. Perversion is a failure of the imagination, a failure to pay adequate attention.
Big exhale. Spot on for this girl at 5:30 a.m., wrestling for the last day with a person whose intent has been to blatantly bully and devalue me. So in return, my ego-driven, feeble inclination to protect myself and my value is through denigrating them and tearing them down into my mind "as a worthless piece of shit." The result is that though this initially feels pleasurable, i know that there are natural consequences to face. Primarily, it is the enormous disconnect from Spirit that I feel. I traded my connection with the Divine for the experience of ripping apart another human being. And I know that I myself am in need of as much "radical grace" as they are.
Thank you for your writing. It brings me to table again with the challenge of learning peace to myself and the other person during times of conflict.
Great piece, David.
Big exhale. Spot on for this girl at 5:30 a.m., wrestling for the last day with a person whose intent has been to blatantly bully and devalue me. So in return, my ego-driven, feeble inclination to protect myself and my value is through denigrating them and tearing them down into my mind "as a worthless piece of shit." The result is that though this initially feels pleasurable, i know that there are natural consequences to face. Primarily, it is the enormous disconnect from Spirit that I feel. I traded my connection with the Divine for the experience of ripping apart another human being. And I know that I myself am in need of as much "radical grace" as they are.
Thank you for your writing. It brings me to table again with the challenge of learning peace to myself and the other person during times of conflict.