Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, there is a core myth that explains the fall of humanity from grace. In the story, a serpent tricks the first humans Adam and Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a tree that God has instructed them not to eat for they will die. Upon eating the fruit, the Bible describes what happens next in this way, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves" (Gen 3: 7). I have often jump right over these words and focused on the rest of the story which highlights the consequences that will arise from eating from the forbidden tree. However, now as I read this story, this verse is quite revealing and profound. Let me explain. This story reveals that something happens to us when we see our life experience through the eyes of right and wrong, the eyes of judgement. We no longer feel comfortable with our nakedness and vulnerability. Instead, we clothe ourselves so that we don’t have to face this nakedness directly. We go into hiding, not only by wearing physical clothes, as the Bible myth highlights, but we also start hiding from God psychologically no longer wanting to be truly seen for we fear God’s judgement as well. Probably all of us can identify with the feelings of embarrassment that often goes with being nude. However, as you watch young babies, you soon realize that babies in the beginning don’t feel this awkwardness. Most are quite comfortable with their nakedness like Adam and Eve were before the Fall. But as we grow through our childhood and teen years, something happens to us. We develop a discomfort with nakedness and vulnerability and feel a need to cover ourselves up with clothes, not just physical clothes but more importantly, psychological clothes. These psychological clothes take on many forms that keep us from feeling vulnerable to the experience of life. These clothes can be behavior strategies and relationship patterns that limit our risk of pain. These clothes include the ways we numb and contract our bodies so that we feel our pain less. These clothes consist of all the ways we medicate our pain through substances, food and drink or through distracting activities like reading, watching videos and TV, computer games, shopping, or talking. These clothes involve all the ways we manage our mind through adopting beliefs and thinking patterns that keep us from be with our immediate experience. It is important to know that these activities can be good for us but they can all be used as clothes that cover up our soul so that we hide from our experience of the present moment with ourselves, others, and the world around us. One of the most common clothes we put on is the garment of identity. Identity is a powerful psychological dynamic. When we investigate how identities form and change, we see that our identity is like a set of clothes that we can put on or take off. We often put on identities based on positive associations like our achievements in sports, our degrees in education, our levels of accomplishment in music, our occupation, our wealth, our religious tradition, our family name, etc. These positive clothes are useful for they hide our feelings of incompetency, doubts, uncertainty, not knowing, weakness, etc. when they arise. These external markers help us maintain a positive competent image in the world around us despite what we might be experiencing internally. However, these identity clothes can also be based on negative experiences and associations like past hurts/trauma or mistakes/sins. Unlike positive identities that we put on to coverup our feelings of vulnerability and artificially boost our self confidence, we put on negative identities for the opposite reason. These negative garments cause us to keep ourselves small or isolate ourselves so that we avoid experiences that we believe could really hurt us. We believe it is better to be safe, regardless of the cost involved in wearing a negative identity, than risk experiencing the significant pain that certain interactions created in our past. In the field of spiritual direction, one goal is to help people explore taking off their identity clothes so that they can experience themselves, others, life, and God directly in the present moment. It is here in these moment of vulnerability, nakedness, that we can experience most directly the dynamics of God’s spirit. Numerous people find this disrobing process very scary for lots of reasons. For many , their psychological clothes were their protection against feeling too much negative emotions of life. We believe that If we take off these clothes, we will become overwhelmed by the pressures and experiences of life. Possibly but probably not for many of these coping patterns were developed when we were a young child when life was overwhelming. For others, they are attached to their identity clothing; it defines how they see themselves and how they think others see them. The thought of taking off this identity is really scary to us. Who am I if I am not this? The fear of experiencing this “not knowingness” is so great that many avoid taking off these identity clothes at all costs. This is why retirement can be hard for some people. The reason spiritual directors guide people in this disrobing process is that when we are attached to our clothes, there is no space or freedom for God’s spirit to move within our soul and life in those areas of our life. Instead, our psychological clothes cause us to re-enact historical patterns imprinted in our souls, past patterns of thinking, feeling, doing, relating, and experiencing. However, as soon as we can take off some of our psychological clothes and allow more nakedness and vulnerability to exist, this opens space for the spirit of God to respond and minister to the pain hidden beneath our clothes. We may now feel sadness arise in us in response to the pain we start feeling, a sign of God’s compassion emerging to soothe our pain. We may feel anger developing within us toward those who have hurt us, a sign of God’s strength and truth rising to help us face the wrong that was done to us. We may feel inner support and steadfast arise with us, another quality of God’s spirit, allowing us to stay with our negative emotions until they reveal why they are there. We may feel a love bubbled up inside us, a divine love that reassures us that we are loved despite what our past was. These essential qualities of God’s spirit all can arise, along with others, in the spacious vulnerability that opens when we take off some of our psychological clothes.
When we learn how to slowly disrobe our psychological clothes, we discover that we don’t have to hide from God, others we trust, and ourselves anymore. Instead, we realize that we can be naked before God, and all will be well. Questions to pondered:
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