The Tearing Down of Asher Poles

About twenty years ago, I participated in a weekend experience called Discovery. The intention of the weekend wasn’t to fix anything or tell you who to be. It was designed to teach you how to listen to yourself, to your inner world, to the quiet guidance that shows you what is already there.

This event was about learning how to self-reflect.
How to notice your feelings and emotions.
How to bring what lives in the subconscious into conscious awareness-so it no longer runs your life without your permission.

One of the exercises that weekend was simple, but profound for me.

You were asked to sit knee to knee with a partner, looking directly into their eyes. I sat knee to knee with a woman I had never met before. From the moment we sat down, everything inside of me was screaming.

Run.
Get away.
Leave.
Now.

I was a full-flight response. My body, my nervous system, my inner being wanted out immediately. The instruction was to stay, ask questions and to listen to what your body and inner self is saying.

Why do you want to run?
What are you running from, Rebecca?

As I sat there, breathing through the discomfort, something revealed itself to me. This woman, at some deep internal level, was representing love to me. I realized something that stopped me cold.

Love for me had been shaming.
Belittling.
Condescending.
Manipulative.
Controlling.

Love was not safe. Love was something to escape.

Love was impatient and easily angered.
It was harsh instead of kind.
It envied and compared.
It bragged and made others feel small.
It was proud and unwilling to admit wrong.

It dishonored instead of respected.
It was selfish and demanding.
It kept record of every mistake.
It found fault instead of giving grace.

It celebrated hurt instead of truth.
It protected itself but not others.
It doubted, controlled, and withdrew.

What I knew of love was not love at all.

That night, I went home. I walked into my house and looked up at a cross mounted at the highest point in our home. I stood there and thought:

I have no idea what kind of love would bring Christ to surrender his life. I projected human love onto Gods Divine love.  I did not know or had the ability to comprehend:

Love is patient when hearts are restless.
Love is kind when the world is harsh.
It does not rise in pride or compare itself to others,
but walks humbly and gently beside them.

Love does not wound with careless words,
nor turn away when things are hard.
It does not keep a record of every wrong,
but forgives and begins again.

Love rejoices in truth and goodness.
It protects the weak, lifts the weary,
and stays when leaving would be easier.

Love hopes when hope seems lost,
believes when doubt grows loud,
and endures through storms and silence.

This is the love God shows-
a love that never abandons,
never fails,
and never lets go.

I realized that even through religion, I had never learned about a love that was infinite. A love that keeps showing up. A love that forgives and tries again. A love that accepts you as you are, while loving you enough to guide you without shaming, harming, or diminishing you.

That night, I went to my knees, face down on the floor, and said:

I don’t know what Divine perfect love really is.

Then immediately I was given a vision.

I saw what looked like thousands of Asher Poles.

In the Bible, Asher Poles were erected by the Canaanites in the high places of Israel. They were objects of false worship; structures people turned toward instead of God. They represented belief systems that distorted truth and slowly eroded life from the inside out. God commanded the righteous kings to tear them down.

As I stood in this vision, I felt God say:

I have called you, Rebecca, to tear them down inside of you.

I understood instantly. These poles were belief systems-false beliefs I had been worshiping as truth. Some had been passed down through generations. Some I had built myself. Some had been given to me by others-taught, modeled, imposed.

God said, one by one, we are going to tear them all down.

He showed me this wasn’t going to be easy. Some of these poles were deeply rooted. Some were even belief systems I held about God himself. About who I thought He was. Who I thought I was. What I believed about others….

He showed me I would have to do the hard work of digging them up with in myself.

I saw myself standing next to a massive pole-like a telephone pole buried deep into the ground. Then I felt God say:

You are going to understand exactly what this belief taught you.

What your thoughts are about this
Why you believed it.
And what this belief system has cost you.

Because every thought and belief has a cost.

Some beliefs bring life.
Some steal peace.
Some erode freedom.
Some quietly rob us of joy and connection-especially when they go against our inner being and our true nature.

Since July 2, 2002, when the Spirit of God entered my life in a way I never could have imagined, this has been the work of my life. One by one. Belief by belief.

Naming them.
Understanding them.
Pulling them up.

And in their place, creating a wide, open space within me.

A spacious place.
A place to breathe.
A place of freedom.

Like a cluttered house being slowly cleared out, my inner world had been crowded with faulty belief systems. Some have been removed completely. Some are still being uncovered.  I know there will probably be poles I’m digging up until the day I leave this earth.

But many have been torn down.

Beliefs that shamed me.
Beliefs that filled me with guilt.
Beliefs that robbed life from me and from others.

In their place, something truer has been emerging.

I still cannot say I fully understand perfect, divine love. But I have tasted Divine love and this glimpse of love has made me hungry for more. This glimpse of perfect love is the fuel that drives my life to uncover everything that is robbing me of experiencing that love.

Since 2002, it has been the force drawing me forward—the work of uncovering what greater truth has always there beneath what was built on top of it.

So the question becomes this:

What are the poles?
Are you willing to dig them up?
Are you willing to look honestly at what you believe, why you believe it, and what it has cost you?

Because sometimes, the most sacred work of our lives is not adding something new, but tearing down what never belonged there in the first place.

Rebecca Dawn