Sin, as a category, has always felt strange to me. As if it doesn’t describe a living human being, but rather a system of control where any expression of life is labeled dangerous in advance.

From childhood, we are told the same story. There is a list of what is “forbidden”: desire, especially sexual... your body...  your anger, jealousy.... pleasure... wanting power... ambition. And there is the threat of punishment... always! Take a step to the side (even in your thoughts), and you are already guilty. Already “wrong.” Already separated from God. and not worthy.... 

At some point, this stopped feeling like an idea and became something I could sense in my body. What moved through me felt older than my own story, heavier, as if it had been carried forward through layers of memory written into my very cells, into the quiet intelligence of my DNA, into the maternal line that lives inside every cell. Women before me had learned to contract, to quiet themselves, to choose safety over truth. Their bodies held the memory of what happens when you step outside the line: judgment, exile, public shame, abuse, punishment, and, at times, death. And I saw how precisely I was repeating that movement.

How I betray myself not because I don’t know what I want.... but because I can feel exactly how “this might end.” How I adjust to other people’s expectations, anticipate their desires, move toward what will be accepted, even when it is not my direction. Not out of love.... out of a deep... almost animal fear of being rejected, marked, punished... I am sure whoever reads it will relate also... this is not my personal unique story. I am remembering generational pain! GK 13 has been activated and it is overwhelming! lives that never lived.... paths that were never taken.... regrets... regrets... regrets... 

This does not feel like a conscious choice. It feels like a survival program. And in the body, it shows up very clearly. Contraction. Silence where I want to speak. Freezing where there is an impulse to move. Losing connection with myself in order to remain “safe.”

When you begin to see this, it becomes clear how deeply this is embedded. This is no longer just religion or culture... It is a structure of perception that has been passed down through generations until it became almost invisible. And this is where it becomes especially interesting, because in ancient texts this was described in a completely different language. In works like the Apocryphon of John and the Pistis Sophia, there is a description of what are called “archons”: forces that hold consciousness inside a limited perception.

They are described as seven layers or “rulers”:

Yaldabaoth, the chief, associated with distorted perception and ignorance
Yao
Sabaoth
Adonaios
Eloaios
Astaphanos
Horaios

At first, this sounds like mythology. But if you listen more carefully, it becomes clear that this is not really about external beings, but about layers of distortion between a human being and truth. DEVIL enters your life....  If you translate this into lived experience, these “archons” appear as states that bind perception:

• ignorance of one’s true nature
• attachment to identity and form
• desire turning into dependency
• fear and control
• false authority, where external knowledge replaces inner knowing
• inflated or defensive ego
• fragmentation of awareness

In the Pistis Sophia, these forces are not presented as enemies to fight, but as barriers that must be recognized and passed through. It is a process... It is a path... So when people speak about “seven seals”, they are pointing to a structure. Not seven monsters, but seven layers where consciousness forgets itself... Seven chakras...  And when you bring this back into lived reality, it stops being abstract. 

It is the inherited fear.
It is the need to conform.
It is the inner voice that replaces truth with safety.

And then the whole question of sin begins to sound different. If you step outside of that fear for a moment and look wider, a simple question appears - how can something be called sin if it is precisely what allows a human being to come to know themselves?

What we call “sins” begin to look more like fundamental human experiences. SACRED HUMAN EXPERIENCE!  Through them, a person encounters limits, learns about measure, sees consequences... Takes responsibility.... This is not a mark of shame, but a process of maturation. Not a prohibition, but an opportunity to see where you lose yourself and where you find yourself. 

It is impossible to understand light if you have never moved through the density of desire. It is impossible to arrive at inner freedom if you have never seen what dependence looks like. This is not about allowing yourself everything. It is more subtle than that. It is about not handing over control of your life to these impulses. Because the problem is never the experience itself. The problem begins when the experience starts to possess you.

This is where true measure appears. Not imposed from the outside.... lived from within. When you no longer cling, not because you are told “you cannot”! because you simply no longer want to... well, maybe you don't need to anymroe...  Because you see clearly!  You FINALLY see clearly! 

Very often, the church system does not operate on this level. It works through guilt. Through a constant feeling that something is wrong with you. That you are not pure enough, not worhty enough, not correct enough, not “close enough to God.” And then a person does not stop doing what is forbidden.... They begin to do it with shame! Why? Because if I am not worhty already, fuck it! the loop continues... fear, shame and guilt becomes your normalized existence... Hiding and lying for the sake of external validation (at least THEY tell me I am a good person!)... They do it with shame and an inner split. With a sense that they are living a life that is not their own.... Always proving... always earning love.... 

And here I arrive at some conclusion I can’t quite ignore. I haven’t yet met many people who feel truly alive inside their Christianity. I’m speaking about a simple, warm presence. A love for God that naturally extends into love for other people, without judgment, without the quiet need to prove one’s righteousness. I’m not saying those people don’t exist. I’m saying my path has crossed them rarely. There is one who stays with me: Father John from the Antiochian Orthodox Church of Fayetteville, AR. I remember a moment when I was younger, full of certainty, ready to create a brochure pointing out the “falsehoods” of other denominations. It felt righteous at the time. Clear! Justified! And he looked at me gently and said, “Child, we earn their respect by loving them. We love them fully, even when we think they are mistaken, even when we ourselves might be mistaken.” Yes, he came from Protestant church too... There was no argument in his voice. No correction that felt like control or judgement. Just something quiet and grounded that made my certainty feel… unnecessary....  What I see more often, though, is something else. People come to church as if accumulating invisible points, building an internal sense of being better, cleaner, more correct than others. And somewhere along the way, faith becomes a performance... A structure that feeds the same ego it was meant to soften. 

I also remember an older couple from that same church. He had been a Catholic priest, she - a nun. They fell in love later in life and were condemned by their community for it, cast away... What had been devotion suddenly became transgression in the eyes of the system... They found their way into the Orthodox faith eventually, and over time he became a priest again. There was nothing rigid in him. He served with a kind of open-hearted acceptance that you could feel without words. She was always beside him, steady, present. She was a real Matushka.... They never had children, but in a quiet way, we became theirs. He passed away years ago, but something about them stayed.... as a reminder that beneath all systems, there are still people who remain human, who choose love without needing to defend it... and they chose love (God is love) even though their system was telling them they chose Devil. 

This pressure affects the feminine especially deeply. Where there should be living energy, sensitivity, embodiment, there is contraction, fear, and a sense that being fully alive is dangerous. If we return to the story of the forbidden fruit, it begins to sound different. If God is everything that exists, then the Tree of Knowledge was created by that same source. And the fruit stands in the center, visible. This looks less like a trap and more like an invitation. Right?  But the system turns it into a prohibition. A test of obedience.... with points collection... How many times did you go to a confession this week? And a person freezes.... Afraid to touch... Afraid to live. Afraid to KNOW! 

And yet, perhaps the point was something else entirely. To experience. To feel. To see consequences. And to return to oneself not as an innocent child, but as a mature consciousness. Then “sin” is no longer an action. It becomes a state of being stuck. A state where experience is not integrated, but turns into dependency. 

And then what becomes frightening is not that you might taste life, but that you may never know its taste at all.

Because you spent your entire life hiding behind someone else’s prohibitions. And perhaps this is where real awakening begins.