Originally published in ESSAY, March 1996

When I used to nourish lust thoughts, there was something going on inside me we might call spiritual fornication. Within my spirit I was shutting God out in rebellion, perverting the reality of the lust object to suit my sick need (splitting myself to create and then imagine that inner partner), and then having sex with her, which was really having sex with myself. My soul is fornicating whenever it turns from God as Source of life to the substitute (Augustine).

I’m discovering that the same is true with resentment thoughts and those negative judgments against people, where I select the actors, write the script, and direct the action so they come out looking bad. When I nourish these, I’m also having intercourse with myself, the only difference being that sex is not involved. The instant I start nourishing that thought against that person, I’ve shut God out. I’m creating something that doesn’t exist. It’s all in my mind and thus “spiritual,” a closed-loop within the self. It’s as though I’m trying to nourish the self on the self by projecting wrong onto the other person. I’m actually fornicating with my created image of that person, relishing getting into him or her and messing with them.

This is just another technique to shut God out of my consciousness. When that happens, the ego is all alone, totally isolated, the same as in lust. The real high is the total isolation from reality and from God into the self. The naked self plays with the self in a cycle feeding on itself under the guise of something happening “out there,” in or with another person, which isn’t true at all; it’s really happening within me. I’m arranging it in my mind so it seems like it’s all “out there” somewhere, in the other person.

What I am seeing increasingly today—and many of us seem to be going through this resentment phase in SA now—is that I must still be carrying my own guilt. For me to make the other person continually wrong means I’m projecting my wrong onto that person, which means that my guilt is not resolved. So I take my salvation into my own hands every time I do this. I reject God and I’m on my own every time I’m playing that negative tape and that person comes out guilty or wrong. (The dialogue is scripted so that always happens.) And when the person may truly have wronged us to begin with, we have the perfect excuse to commit spiritual fornication.

Ours is the ego disease par excellence, no doubt about it. For through such an exercise we are in essence pure gods. The human spirit, without benefit of drugs, sex, food, or any other kind of stimulation, is rising up against God and is becoming its own god. When man shuts God out, he becomes the one and only god. So for the time while I’m doing this, there’s a feeling of omnipotence and control, because when I’m writing the script and directing the actors on the stage to make them come out wrong, I’m in control. And I think the part of my life that’s out of control is refusing to see my own wrong and surrender to the Wrong-Bearer. The scenario is written so the other person is wrong; so, in effect, I transfer my sin and guilt onto him or her. The great control is that I make them the sinner so I come out clean. Whereas the key is that I have to acknowledge that I am a sinner.

Today I could feel the isolation and spiritual fornication beginning. It’s a poisonous feeling. You’re having that imaginary conversation with the one who’s crossed you, and you’re relishing putting them down. You’re all alone, you’ve shut God’s presence out, and the inside of you turns dark and negative. And it’s scary. And when you’ve been out of the dark and in the light for so long then go back into it, you know there’s a drastic change of state, that it’s different. I used to live in that darkness all the time. When you live in the light and then go into the darkness, you feel it; it gets your attention sooner as sobriety and recovery progress.

What gives me release now is this: I feel the darkness and poison and the destructive effect within me—the spiritual fornication, the dwelling on the self, the creating an object for resentment by splitting the self, the perversion of the reality of that person, the driving of the self into the self in that terrible isolation and darkness. If I can see my wrong and let God bear that instead of me, that’s the best way out of it for me today.

[Footnote to original article: This inventory was written some years ago, and does not bear an exact date. Roy K.]