Between You and me, these delusions keep resurfacing. The indulgence leaves me feeling disconnected from You. Yet, I seek You again, asking for Your forgiveness. And You forgive.
Reality is either not enough or too much for us to bear and express. We need to save ourselves, or so we think, from sinking into a void or being engulfed by emotions. We resort to delusional thinking. It isn’t really ‘thinking’. It’s too automatic, blind, unconscious, compulsive. I bet none of us can tell when we began to deceive ourselves, create fantasies, give in to maladaptive daydreaming, to avoid reality. Perhaps the entire process takes place away from our conscious minds so that we can never return to the beginning. And that seems to be crucial, to return to where it all began. That process cannot be cognitive. It must be spiritual. It left deep imprints on our souls, it changed us forever, it made us who we are; it must be healed on the level of the soul.
It must have been painful. An unconscious influence we received from the parents. I can feel a pain rising to the surface, sometimes, in a sajdah, or during tilawah, like an old pain that lingers, unacknowledged, raw.
Art of Longing 