The inner castle has no parish

The reason why I became a christian, alongside the ones previously exposed yesterday, was due to me feeling it was true, that Truth was present there. And I use "feeling", because sometimes human discernment goes beyond reason.

I was interested in philosophy and knowing how the world works since I was a child; I remember myself devouring books at the public library, and eventually buying then with the spare money I had from birthday presents and working at the land. I read Hesse, Camus, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Plato, Rothbard, Hoppe, Borges, Kafka, Mann, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus... all the big guys, because existentialism was kinda my thing and stoicism seemed interesting. 

The thing is that I always felt that what they said was incomplete to an extent or poisoned even. Just look at Kierkegaard projecting his resentment towards his own bad decisions on God, Abraham and Isaac in "Fear and Tremble".

After being "touched by grace" for the first time, I got myself a Bible, a cheap Bible I found at the local library I befriended during my college years. It wasn't perfect, it didn't have a good translation nor good commentaries, it wasn't traditionalist approved, but it was enough for my younger self, who was yearning for Truth, understanding and consolation. And it was mesmerizing.

Of course I am not referring to the Book of Deuteronomy and the way an arch shall be constructed but to the psalms, the stories of Abraham, Job,the prophets, and, of course, the Gospel. 

Within those lines I found out a profound wisdom that simply rejected everything the industrial revolution and its consequences has brought upon us; simplicity, trust, death of the ego, a merciful and caring God, inner peace, love and respect towards communities, traditions and ourselves. I also found there some teachings the stoics or the greeks gave me years before, but this time they had a meaning; I didn't have to endure just for the sake of it, but because terms "suffering","enduring" and "becoming" so to speak, had a meaning and a purpose.

Not to say that everything that happens to us is a message from God, but that some things are just what they are, and enduring them, letting them forge us and change us, is either necessary for our own development as individuals or part of life itself.

So, after being completely mesmerized by all of this, I decided to get closer to the Church. I started going to mass in a parish closer to where I lived, because I thought I would feel something extraordinary, that the feeling of communion with other faithful people and the real presence of God in the Eucharist would move me. Too bad I only found old people, parents with babies and guitars playing covers of U2 with arranged letters and religious persons that say "yes I am the most perfect being amongst creation" and then proceed to be pure shit.

Afterwards, a friend of mine told me about this Vatican II Council,the traditionalists that preserved the true flame of God's will through the latin mass... all that. So I sought where did people celebrate the old rite, and I found a place that did so, an Augustinian convent which had a friar that offered to be my spiritual director -later on I ran away from him because he tried to manipulate me into becoming a priest-. The mass was glorious, I loved it, it was more serious, deeper, more profound, but still, something wasn't right.

I was told to go to an adoration with people my age, only to find out they were all "cayetanos" (rich mommy's boys) that used that as an excuse to do networking and drink afterwards. I was so disgusted by the guitars, the candles, the couples making out... I promised to never come back to these reunions.

So, the only branch remaining were the "true traditionalists", that, while amicable, were like pharisees, constantly telling everyone else on the Church that they were the holiest people alive and the rest were heretics. And, even if religious orders like the carmelites,franciscans and so on are nowadays just a shadow of what they were, they are not entitled to do so. Neither do I.

And I know, I might sound like that right now, but I am not saying everyone else but me is wrong, but rather that I do not belong in those places because I seek something different, more honest about itself,more simple. I am no one to speak when, after being traumatized by my prior spiritual director, I went to study demonology, magick and all sorts of things to find answers.

And, even if I hate new age mass, even if I do not have a community,even considering that my new priest friend just tells me that things are what they are and that I shall offer this, I have found peace.

Because after years of silent prayer, of reading the mystics and seeing myself transformed into a calmer, kinder person, I realized that the relationship between oneself and God is strictly personal, and that it has to be cultivated from within, with effort and sincere prayer, not wishing to get visions, but just for the sake of it. Rites and rules may change, status amongst people is temporary, but the road towards spiritual maturity belongs to us entirely. 

The road towards the interior of the inner castle is up to us to take, no one else's.