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How Do I Feel Kissed By God?

“Things We Lost in the Fire,” a 2007 movie written by Allan Loeb, is the story of a recently widowed woman, Audrey, played by Halle Berry, who impulsively invites her deceased husband’s best friend, Jerry, played by Benicio Del Toro, to live with her and her two children. Jerry is addicted to heroin. He cleans up for a short while but shoots up again. He tries a few times in the movie to get off the drug, attending NA meetings. Doesn’t work for him.

 

Audrey is totally absorbed in her grief. Jerry in his junk. In spite of their emotionally crippled condition, they do help each other find hope and happiness. It’s a compelling, moving story of family, friendship and addiction. Loeb communicates a good understanding of the addiction experience, no matter what the drug or other addictive “solution.”

 

Audrey sees the obsessions and compulsions that pull Jerry back to the junk. She seeks relief from her own hell. She asks Jerry, “What’s heroin like?”

 

Jerry: “You ever heard that expression, ‘Being kissed by God’?”

 

She shakes her head. “Uh-uh.”

 

“Well, that’s just at first.”

 

She’s interested. He sees that. “All you do is you chase it. You chase that initial feeling, and you never get it back.” She thinks that sounds preferable to her grief; nonetheless, she stays off the drug.

 

Everyone who is or has been actively addicted to any drug understands, at some level, “being kissed by God.” It does not even matter if the addiction involves drugs. Any ego-driven mind solution to the emotional pain of separation from the One (Being, Creator, Spirit, Life, God) is a weak ineffective substitute for the experience of unity with All (being kissed by God).

 

My experience is that whatever ego “solution” I have used to overcome the illusion that I am separate and alone has never worked. Oh, I have experienced that brief “kiss of God” many times. Then I do whatever I can to chase that feeling; never getting it back. When I employ chemicals or behaviors that are not in my best interest, I am an active addict. Instead of going home to joy, I journey to hell. Again.

 There are solutions. All of them, in my experience involve fully feeling the energy of the unresolved pain. Then I encounter the true “kiss of God;” the natural, unending awareness of unity with all creation and beyond. I have come home!