Love is my religion — part II

My blog has gotten off-track, as is wont to happen when one's emotions are in a bit of a tailspin. So I've been digging through my archives and looking for bits of my own wisdom to set me right again.
It's difficult to write about spiritual matters when your Spirit is wounded. Conversely, I also found it hard to write when I was deeply in love, because I wanted to focus all of my spiritual energy into my relationship. It takes an enormous amount of balance for me to effectively write about my spiritual life. Right now, I'm praying for the desire to embrace forgiveness, as my priest suggested. Anger kills my ability to effectively write about spiritual matters — except to point out the obvious: that it is a chain that binds me until I choose to release myself from it. I have all of this emotion, much of it negative, and I'm directing it all inward right now. Of course, this has manifested as physical illness (I'm not going to go into the details). I truly feel possessed by demons!

Amazingly, I still have managed to maintain some logical perspective. I know most of my suffering is self-wrought. But I also know that I had few good choices about some things and when an animal is wounded, it will take a protective stance. I don't regret my decisions — I just regret that I had to make them at all. I know that I have an enormous amount of love inside of me, beneath the anger and the hurt that will eventually break free again — because my nature is loving and kind and eventually, forgiving. I know it's there, because I've been able to tap into it time and again for the people all around me who are hurting and suffering to a much deeper extent than I am. And they seem drawn to me. I am cognizant of that fact -- that I am drawing in people who are hurt and needy right now. Helping them is probably where my own salvation and recovery lies — because we teach what we most need to learn. As I teach them to love themselves and change the negative voices in their heads, I remember that I too need to listen to love inside and let go of the anger and repair the hurt.