What really bums me I made a really piss-poor sacrificial lamb. I gave up so much of myself and didn't even get very much in return. Supposedly Jesus Supposedly, God sacrificed His only-begotten Son, so that all people might have eternal life.”[1] See, there's an equation going on here. Something that is sacrificed x, gets a payoff, y, in return. My payoff was that I usually fucked myself.
The whole point of the sacrificed is that it must lose its intrinsic value through destruction, which oddly enough, carries the same energetic dynamic of demonism. Either mode, whether pious or demoniac, justify the murder of another creature in extinguishing life.
I look back in my life as a sad parade of sacrifices, small and large, which I enjoined because I thought and believed I was making a choice. But I never made the "choice," say, to marry women I didn't love or even intend on staying with. It seemed I was always "led" into the decision, and gave myself away, or closed my own doors to possibilities or opportunities, but I never really chose.
I'm not like the Jesus in the Crucified Christ story. I didn't seek out to be sacrificed. But I didn't (or couldn't) get out of the way when it showed up in my world. I didn't know self-direction existed then. Nietzsche would have called it "will." I was too enamored of the path of least resistance - going with the flow, as it were. And that flow led me through some strange times of self-defeat and directive paralysis.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to sacrifice myself to/for others through "going with the flow" and giving into other's opinions of what was the best for me instead of using my self-directive principle to determine what was good for myself.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to live in resentment for having made sacrifices of my time and energy for things I really didn't value much.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to live in helpless anger over the sacrifices I made, because I never got what I wanted in exchange for making the sacrifice.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself for feeling cheated by the sacrifices I made, even though I realized what I was doing - taking what I thought was the "easy way out."
I forgive myself that I did not accept and allow myself to question the value of sacrifice every time I made up my mind to sacrifice myself.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I had no choice but to be victimized through sacrificing myself to and for others, as this mindset has allowed myself to not face and accept self-responsibility for my actions for I wanted others to take responsibility for what I imagined happened to me.
I commit myself to not use the idea, projection or belief "sacrifice" or "self-sacrifice" as an excuse for not taking self-responsibility for what occurs in my life.
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[1] This however, never made much sense to me because if Jesus could be "raised from the dead," then his death wasn't as "real" as human-folk are. For human beings, once you're dead - you stay that way. Poof. Gone. But Jesus gets a mulligan, a do-over. Imagine (just this once) the sacrificial lamb which the priests convinced an incredulous, ignorant and superstitious people that beast could actually be ladened with the "sins" of the people and then slaughtered - its spirit sent back to God - imagine then after that the lamb popped back to life! The sacrifice would be useless as the whole point of taking the life of a creature is that it holds a value that is consumed and "given back to the Creator." This is a contradiction. Once a "gift" is destroyed, how can it be given back? In this case, sacrifice seems to be a negative-sum proposition. "Here, God. We extinguished the life of this animal, the life that you endowed this beast with and made it something of value. Isn't that cool?" So why would the Creator desire something of value that He created to be given back after it was destroyed? Because we are dealing with the human (genetic?) quality of escaping self-responsibility. Better to imagine someone else more powerful taking that responsibility for you. But Jesus turns the concept upside-down. He doesn't really die, according to the narrative. He rolls away the stone and shows up to his disciples and disappears again. The precious, sacrificial quality of Jesus' death never really takes place because the Son of God is immortal. It's simply a trick. Like Sarah Silverman says, "Jesus is Magic!"
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