Real

What is real? I've been struggling with that recently. I've been leading a double life for so long I just don't know what is real and what isn't.  Is real subjective or concrete? In each of the lives I've been leading simultaneously, I've done things the other person would not have approved of.  So which life is the fraud? Is my spirituality real? Are the feelings and thoughts and impression I've had from Heavenly Father real? Is my addiction my real self? Who am I? What do I do? What do I like? What is real about myself and the world I live in?

When I asked my therapist these questions today he gave a very simple answer:  "It's all real."  I've repeated those words to myself over and over again since he said them.  It's all real.  What a relief!!  The things I thought about myself, my spirituality, my relationship with God, my strengths and weaknesses, remain in tact.  But on the other hand -- what about the other life? The one filled with doubt and need? The one where addiction reigned supreme, where my agency had been given away, where life was dark and lonely?  That's all real as well?? It is - at least so my therapist tells me.

Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine that such incredible light, peace and patience exist along side such darkness, fear and lust. But they do. I can attest to that. I have had incredible moments of peace and love and just as unmistakable moments of darkness and fear.  Like Alma said "I say unto you ... that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you ... that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy" (Alma 36:21).

For so long I have tried to embrace the light and reject the dark.  But I'm starting to think it doesn't work that way. After being banished from the Garden of Eden, Eve is recorded to say: "And Eve ... heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient (Moses 5:11)". Known good AND evil she says.  I'm intimately acquainted with both the good and evil inside me.  So much of my energy is put into the constant inner battle between the two.  But I'm tired of fighting.  I just want the darkness to go away.