I M Perfect lady

Tag: Religion

  • Silence is upon them.

    I watched this episode about sexual abuse among the amish. “Keep Quiet and Forgive” on PBS.

    https://player.pbs.org/viralplayer/3105356631/

    And there is a book “Behind the Blue Curtain” – by Lizzy Hershberger – which I plan on reading soon.

    “How Great Thou Art” was being sung….leading into stories of young girls and women breaking the silence of their sexual abuse – the beauty and the horror – is the how I feel about religion. The juxtaposition leaves religion with a very sour taste.

    This is just another cult like sect that uses the fundamentals of their religion to keep victims silent – while protecting the males who are criminals.

    When the leaders speak of forgiving the perpetrators – it is a sex trafficking environment where little girls are unprotected.

    I don’t care how many times you sing “How Great Thou Art and how you see Him – etc. If your religion blesses away sexual crimes against children It is NoT a God connection. Period.

    Folks are quick to tell me I am against religion. I am trying to wreck the First Apostolic Lutheran Church, that the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church- and any other religion who allows the perpetrators to sit in their benches. I am against these ones for sure and I don’t believe they would be sanctioned by God or love or kindness.

    The tragedy is the criminal sexual assault on young girls IS that it happens in the midst of ‘god fearing folks’.

    The hymn plays on – in its beauty and behind the scenes little girls are forever changed by the acts of sexual deviant behaviors.

    It is insulting to even call these religions of God. They are more of the devil.

    I feel so deeply about the exposure of these crimes in religions and I would love to see them all implode –

    The women are leading the charge and some men have joined in to see what can be done.

    Some were saying there needs to be a preventive measure put into place – instead of dealing with it after the fact. Now isn’t that a great idea! I am sure the little girls and boys would love to be in a spot where abuse was forbidden.

    This gives me great hope – of more and more silences breaking. That even in the ultra conservative churches, the women are standing up!

    An alternative to silence is upon them.

    I hope there is a movement of women failing their religions and the rules that were forced upon them.

  • “Called Out of Darkness,” a Spiritual Confession by Ann Rice

     …was playing in my Mail Jeep today.

    It is a very interesting journey, from being a Catholic, to Atheist to…not sure, not done with the book. 

    It was very interesting to see her viewpoint of religion and really life itself.

    She is about 20 years older than me, for she graduated the year I was born. But she noticed as a child, that the adult didn't like the children, and often times treated them as if they were innately bad. That if the adults were not watching the children would naturally misbehave.  

    She didn't like the way adults treated the children.  Her parents were different, and to them the kids were just other people in the house…and she never even was treated like a girl, but just a person.  So, she didn't have gender self esteem issues.  In fact her parents named her Howard and the kids called their parents by their given name. They didn't know authority in their home.  An interesting way to grow up.

    Imagine the hidden ways in which we lower a child…naturally.

    She said children are told things long before they have a question about things.  What an interesting observation. Imagine if we didn't tell children things, but waited until they asked???

    Her mother was teaching her religion…long before she could even understand the dynamics of it.  She does however recall feelings of awe and wonder about the Saints and Statues etc.  

    Life to me is lived mostly from the Authority viewpoint and imagine how much better we would all be IF we took the child's viewpoint instead?

    Lots of our religion can't be explained to a child, yet a child can tell you all the wonders it sees as they walk through life.

    She has a very unique viewpoint of her life…and herself.  Her novels spoke of her internal spiritual struggle that she failed to realize until later…I know the feeling.

    Listening to her story has provoked many new things to ponder.  I like it when books do that…nothing I love more than to see things from a new angle.

    IMG_3937

  • Extreme in Religion

    There was a haunting phrase in the book, “Inside the Kingdom” by Carmen Bin Laden.  After she separated from her husband she bumped into one of her favorite brother-in-laws, and he explained how he could no longer be her friend.

    “You may be right, but my brother is never wrong.”

    This sentiment or mindset is similar to how people feel about their family members, that they MUST always see them doing what is right, no matter what.  Or even church members are giving a huge margin of error compared to those not in the clan. 

    This so poignantly describes how family members cannot see their father outside the lens of that title. 

    That at the end of the day, “You may be right, but my father is never wrong.”  I feel this totally, that my father can never be wrong. It is an awkward place to stand in. They will shun me to have a ‘right’ father.

    I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the ways of the Saudi people and could see such pointed similarities.  Perhaps somewhat less extreme, but still debilitating to the women of the FALC. 

    Our veils were not made of cloth, but as Carmen said, she carried her jail upon her back…by submitting to or allowing another to tell you what to do with your own body.

    The Arabic word woman comes from the root word Sin and that is how the ladies are treated.  Just by being born a woman, you lose all rights.

    They cover up their sins…so the woman has to be hidden.

    How like the FALC church…

    And the word Islam means submission…

    One other idea she wrote about is that in this strict society, that it is never ‘bad’ to be too extreme. That it is seen as good to be excessively strict or religious. 

    Imagine you can never be too extreme in religion…

     

     

     

  • We go to the outside.

    On facebook a blog was shared, and I went and had a look.  http://extoots.blogspot.com/  I browsed a few posts and came upon an article that was referred to on a posted dated, April 30th. 

    http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Shedding+light+on+child+abuse+among+the+Laestadians/1135265532861

    While reading that article, it seems it matters not whether you are in Finland or in the USA, if you are asking for abuse to be recognized within the church, you will be bypassed.

    This article has tons of great information and insight, however this is one section that caught my eye.

    Have the leaders put pressure on you?
          “I wouldn’t say that my treatment involved pressure, because putting pressure is something that is active. But I have felt that I have been bypassed.”

    Boy do I get that.  They don’t pressure you or threaten; they simply bypass what you are saying. There is literally NO reaction or action taken when you bring up sexual abuse in the church.

    Anyone that is pondering, how in the hell, sexual abuse and pedophiles has been able to play within the confines of this religion, need to read this article. 

    However, by her speaking out and others like her we can air out this issue, bring light and awareness, open the closet and see what is hanging there.

    This inspires me and makes me feel that my treatment wasn’t personal, it is simply the way it has been dealt for over a 100 years. But due to the fact that she has written an article in their newspaper, perhaps we too can do the same.

    When bypassed inside the religion, we go to the outside.

     

     

     

  • 100 Proof.

    When I hear people so vehemently defending their religion, it almost seems like they are taking it personally, perhaps too personal, like there isn’t a self left standing, that the self and the religion are one.

     

    In my experience within the FALC, that the stamp of the church infected each one of my roles.

     

    In fact as a child, you were first taught what a sin was.  That you could or could not do this, not by what was kind or good for humanity, but rather what is good for being a First Apostolic. 

     

    So, instilled within us was the foundation of the FALC, before we even knew who we were, we identified ourselves as First Apostolic, and it ruled our lives from the time we were very little.

     

    Not only that, but the adults in our lives, the ones we depended upon for food and shelter, also lived by this formation. The FALC controlled them, not reasonable thought or what was good for their own family, but what was seen as good within the church.

     

    If you look at how we were indoctrinated from the time we were just babies, it is easy to see how any comment that is shining a light or seemingly smearing the church, it is actually feeling personal, for there is very little about the self that isn’t created by the FALC.

     

    And while deeply invested and entwined within the confines of the religion, there is very little self exposed, so any comment will feel like a direct hit.

     

    Otherwise, if this weren’t so, the reactions would not be so rabid…there could be two people having a discussion.

     

    Yet as far as my experience goes, having a dialogue with someone who is 100 proof of religion or abuse, all you talk to is the religion or the abuse.

     

    You can’t get to the individual or self, for each role and thing they do is seen first through the lens of abuse or religion.

     

    There is no separation…or awareness, it is one solid piece and no matter what words you use or what tone of voice or what research you have found, what the truth literally is, IF it something being said about the 100% make up of who they are, they will react and not respond.

     

    Their reactions will be from fear and understandably so.

     

    I have very little recollection of my years in the FALC, for I was missing.  There was no self there.  I moved through life following the group more or less or feeling shame and guilt if I didn’t.

     

    Mostly I would say shame and guilt for not being a good member.

     

    I didn’t marry within the religion, and I feel that was the first weakening of the hold the religion had on me.  And they do preach that the devil is out there waiting to pull you out.  And it does, but I don’t see it as a devil.

     

    I seen myself from the view of the church or the view of how my family saw me…or the view of how my husband saw me, or the view of how my friends saw me. But never a view of how I saw my self.

     

    If you took all the views away…or without them giving me value, I disappeared.

     

    And in fact, when my family’s abuse came into view, I lost a huge part of my self, for I lived for them.  Then when I discovered that the church knew of my abusive father and that he was blessed repeatedly, even for the latest little girl BY her father, I lost another huge chunk of who I was.

     

    In a few short days, I stood alone.

     

    It was then that I knew I had no me.

    All I had was a person who had been built up by what was needed by the religion and family too. But I had built very little of me and I was 46 years old.

     

    Oh, I suppose I had 25% me.  My art…well maybe not that high, I guess it was more like 5%. 

     

    That 5% was pure me.  And it was from that small beginning I began adding more and more of me into me…and each time I discover another vein of religious or abusive beliefs or thoughts…I know it is another percentage of me coming forth to be brought upright.

     

    So, as I read the comments of those who feel so viscerally attacked, I understand.  For there is very little of you that isn’t made up of FALC ingredients, you may be 100 proof.   

  • Rob me of being Me.

    Doesn’t it seem like people lose their senses when it comes to love and religion, that they leave their common sense and critical eyes behind, and blindly follow?

     

    How is it that matters of the heart and soul are often sold to snake oil salesmen speaking of a promise land, someday?

     

    The seemingly intelligent folks who fall victim to the fairy tale most religions spin is utterly amazing to me, that we will give up the very insides of us for their cause.

     

    We will give up the right to our bodies, our minds, our hearts and our souls…until all that is left is a shell.

     

    A useless shell, for there is no heart, no soul, and no mind.  We become members along their narrow pathway leading to the promise land.

     

    We sell all our todays, all our feelings within our hearts, all the stirrings of our souls, for Heaven after we die.

     

    What they fail to tell us is we are the walking dead.  That we of our own free will and ourselves is dead.

     

    We have no I.

    We have no me.

    We have no self that is free to live, as it wants.

     

    And grown women give up the rights of their bodies, minds and souls and call this a spiritual experience with God?  How???

     

    It sounds like a very dysfunctional love affair.  Where one has all the power and the other is stripped of all sense of self.

     

    That was my old relationship with God…it was self less.

    Without common sense or my eyes, my ears, my feelings, my intuition, my gut, my instincts, my heart and my soul, my passion, my gratitude.  I was absent; I disappeared in order to love that god.

     

    And that god as far as I can tell is the devil who wanted my soul…a destroyer god, one who stole my free will.

     

    In my experience the God that I now know, the one who orchestrates the stars, the moon, and is intimate with each blade of grass, wants for me more than I can dream myself.

     

    He isn’t here to rob me of being Me.

     

  • Programmed self.

    Sometimes I sit here aghast at the programming that runs within me and wondering how much of it is left running, when will I uproot the last thread.

     

    It is hard to believe that each and every thing we do is for a reason, it has a belief attached to it, an ironclad will that has been laced through the middle…and we have to destroy it or it will destroy us.

     

    It is like having an enemy’s mind living in our cells.

     

    I have been putting off having a sweet treat for a few hours to regain control of my craving button.  Usually, the button goes off and I run to find what it craves. 

     

    I am coming to learn that I will not die or go crazy without it, and that the whining subsides and the mind goes on to something else.  It is talking back to the control or putting it on pause that I believe will eventually give me back my power.

     

    This programmed system that has been running my life is more than the abuse and the church, for both also imprinted on me that bad was good and good was bad, that self loving was bad, and neglect was good, that feeling wretched was good and feeling good was bad.

     

    Which is why it is so hard to get one clear precise belief on any one thing, for my major CPU reads bad good and good bad.

     

    Even if my mind knows best, my operating system discerns the opposite. 

    Just as foreign as I seem to my family, which is what a veggie treat feels like to my body.  Or my actions of yoga compared to actions of co-dependency my family of origin is used to. They want to feed upon me, not have me be my own self.

     

    I am not certain I can articulate this correctly, but me doing good for me feels bad for them.  And me doing good for me feels bad for my programmed old self.

     

    What is good for my programmed self will destroy my real self.

     

    What is bad for the programmed self is good for me.

     

    I am getting the twist and seeing that it is normal to feel the angst and stress and force it takes to wrestle back our rightful feelings, to unhook and rehook them onto the right feelings.

     

    I was programmed to feel bad when I should have felt good and visa versa.

     

    Incredible that the feelings are in sync with messed up mind.

     

    I knew it wasn’t just that there was a belief that was running along un-questioned, but that the feelings were messed up too.

     

    My body was programmed feel the opposite.

     

    Programmed feelings instead of having natural ones.

    My programmed self loves sweet treats, I feel like I am getting something good, when I am really feeding myself something that has no value.

     

    Imagine, my treats are getting something of no value.

     

    Very interesting to watch what your programmed to like and do and to explore deeper and see what is going on behind the façade.

     

    Within my childhood religion, the same dynamics were going on.  The sins were for the programmed person, not the real self, in fact what is a sin for the programmed person most likely was good for me.

     

    To take back ownership of my body.

    To not bless away others actions.

    To question all things and not just follow submissively.

    To seek my own relationship with God.

     

    Interesting to see what is programmed into you and then learn how to de-program it.  Mostly by doing the opposite of your childhood…you will find your way out of the programmed self.

     

  • Why I left.

     There are times in life you have to realize that there is no common ground, where the differences are just too vast, where white is white and black is black, but the commonality between them is only that they are colors.

     

    Dialoguing the finer intricacies of being in a religion or being outside of it, you will not find a place to stand in agreement, just that one is in and the other is out.

     

    When you leave a religion and the folks who still remain, they can’t see why you left any more than you can see why they stay…and it doesn’t really pay to try and convince someone who is happy and content where they are.

     

    It is far better to gather into your world things that bring you happiness, love, peace and joy.  If theirs if found in their religion, let them be.  And if yours is found outside of their religion, own it and play vigorously in the wide open spaces.

     

    I keep bumping into folks who are in the cult like religion who are hell bent on convincing me it wasn’t cult like…while they still remain inside its strict rules or prison.

     

    There is no way the two shall meet.

     

    One is free and the other locked inside. Yet they have been convinced that it is their will to be there.  However, most of their lives are dictated by the beliefs and guidelines of this faith, they are unable to live totally free.  They are free within the confines of its walls.

     

    All the dialoguing does is affirm the reasons why I left.

     

     http://www.erinstales.blogspot.com/ is where you can see the exchanges…the blog is written by a young girl who just exited the FALC.  The blog post Mine has comments which you can see the insanity of trying to speak to each other, everything gets lost and tangled up…

     

     

  • Colored windows lose their beauty.

    “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still,” is a phrase that stops me from entering into a closed mind.

    What I find so enthralling is that religion isn’t a thing it is a thought.

    A thought, a wispy flighty jumble of words and it has the power to control a body and a family and a whole community a group and a bunch…just a few words.

    You can open up a church door and not find ‘religion’ and you can open up a mind and not find it there either, it is nowhere to be found, yet people build their whole lives based upon it.

    This illusive imaginative faith is as controlling as a dictator and yet there is no dictator to be found.

    When someone dies where does their religion go?

    Deepak Chopra says that you can dissect a brain and not find one single thought. And we know it isn’t held in our arms or legs, but yet we move like we are puppets on a string when we commit ourselves to a certain religion.

    Our words are tempered, our voices rising in unison using the same phrases and following the same rules, our minds are synchronized to match.

    Yet, when you take us apart no evidence will lay there.

    In fact the only evidence of your religion is how you lived your life, your life’s trail is a clue.

    What does your life’s trail look like?

    Just as there are footprints I believe there are religion prints that showed how you traversed this life.

    It shows what you leaped over or what you dodged, where you stopped and for how long, who you traveled with and why, your life history is your religious history.

    My first 46 years of my life were led by this religion, it told me who to be with and who to shy away from, what to overlook and what to look towards, who to befriend and to unfriend, who to care for and who to be indifferent to, when to shun and when to embrace, when to talk and when to sing…it controlled my everything.

    My body wasn’t mine it was a vehicle that I had to use to get to heaven and I had to do or not do certain things to it in order to arrive at Heaven’s gate.

    Heaven’s gate was the total focus and life and my body were out to see that I wouldn’t make it, they worked against me at every turn.

    It is my new understanding that what was working against my old religion was me. Me the individual, a me that wasn’t happy without a say.

    It may be hard for folks to realize the ramifications of following a religion and how it leaves out the individual freedom, where your own intuition is squelched.

    I was taught to not listen to my body and not to pay attention to the subtle and not so subtle messages it sent, to instead pull my attention away from the body and focus on the church.

    The church knew the way for me…yet many times I went against it, in shame and guilt, doing what felt right to me.

    It seems that the only way religion works is if they can control you mind body and soul. If the soul is alive if it has a whisper of breath, you will deviate off the path and be less controllable.

    What is so maddening to me is that they take the lives of people but they don’t care about the people.

    They are after the control, but not what they control. There is power when you control.

    Just as Hitler wanted power, he was able to control people to kill people…imagine???

    Perhaps religion has a kinder tone a more gentle approach a church it is housed in, with pretty glass windows, but it’s the overly sweetness that scares me.

    The charismatic chairman whose actions of indifference trail behind him. To the preacher whose trail of raped boys lie in his wake…the pretty colored windows lose their beauty.

  • As far as I can tell.

    From David Hawkin’s book, Truth vs Falsehood a chapter called, Spiritual Truth.

    “While the majority of people in the United States believe in God (90-92%, CNN News, April 2004) and therefore tend to look to established religions for the highest truth, the source of the truth upon which all religions depend stems from the even higher primary source of spiritual reality itself. Thus, religion is the institutional consequence of spiritual truth rather than is origination or primary source. However, because religion incorporates the truth revealed by its founders, the derived teachings are sufficient and satisfactory for the great majority of people for whom the information is facilitated and made available as scripture by institutionalized religion.”

    “There as been a great deal of research into the historic origins of the scriptures of all religions, resulting in much discourse and debate over the centuries as to specifics, such as dates, people, and authenticity. Some finalized versions of scriptures were formalized by exclusive councils and became “canons” by virtue of scholastic authority. Technically, interpretation of their meaning is the providence theology, epistemology, metaphysics, and ontology (the science of life).”

    “All the great spiritual teachers throughout history were mystics, and the source of their awareness of spiritual truth was the result of Enlightenment and transformational Realization of the Reality of Divinity as the subjective knowingness that ensues from advanced consciousness by virtue of being at One with that Known. Thus, the avatar does not speak from knowing “about” but from the actual Presence within, which radiates forth and constitutes the Essence of that which replaces the mind as the source of understanding and Knowingness (the classic Purusha). The process whereby this transformation occurs has been described in the history of each saint, safe, and divine teacher and is often included in the scripture itself.”

    “From a purely research viewpoint, the calibrations of levels of consciousness can be aptly applied to verify the reality of any spiritual teaching, including their traditional scriptures. Each level represents the actuality of the possibilities of consciousness and the progress from the linear to the nonlinear context, which is infinite and beyond space, time or location.”

    “The source of the highest spiritual truth is non-mental, and the intellect has difficulty comprehending this critical fact because the mind is intrinsically dualistic and limited, expecting a “this” to come from a “that”. In the advanced spiritual Reality, duality dissolves because the “this” is the “that.” The seeker and the Sought become One with the transcendence of the limitation of duality, i.e., Realization of the Self, Illumination, and Enlightenment, i.e., “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

    (he list some calibrations, I will post a few that I recognize)
    A Course in Miracles, workbook – 600
    A Course in Miracles, textbook – 550
    Bhagavad-Gita- 910
    Bodhidharma Zen Teachings – 795
    Dead Sea Scrolls – 260
    Gospel of St. Luke – 699
    Gospel of St. Thomas – 660
    King James Bible from the Greek –475
    Lao-Tsu Teachings –610
    New Testament (King James Version after the deletion of the Book of revelations) 790
    Torah – 550
    Trinity (concept) 945
    Yoga Sutras, Patanjali – 740

    “Displayed above are integrous calibrated truths available to humankind, some for over thousands of years of evolutionary history. Any single selection is, in and of itself, sufficient for a lifetime of study and spiritual endeavor. As aspirants discover, it is one thing to know about the truth and quite another to understand it or, even more importantly to become it. Spiritual progress is simultaneously simple yet complex, subtle and yet cataclysmic, inspired and yet intimidating. To transcend the limitations of the ego requires intention, integrity of purpose, and resolve (plus grace: the assistance of an advanced teacher and positive karma). The journey often starts seemingly accidentally or as a consequence of curiosity. It then gathers interest and finally involvement, followed by commitment and the discovery of undreamed-of rewards.”

    “To facilitate this endeavor, scriptures and the great spiritual classics supply critical information. Commitment to the goals of spiritual progress, in and of itself, has a transformative effect on brain physiology and attracts spiritual energies that shift alignment and power of concordant attractor energy fields. These recontextualize subjective reality and optimize realization.”

    “From the calibration levels, it becomes evident that the great sages from the early Aryan culture of ancient India represented the first major emergence of the highest spiritual awareness available to man recorded. The same truths emerged later in different cultures and eras, completely and separately from each other, and yet the realization of the nature of the highest truth was essentially identical in each case, with some variations of expression that reflected cultural and linguistic differences. Thus, truth as such is not exclusive but universal, or it would not be truth. Therefore, spiritual or religious claims of exclusivity indicate the interference and errors of the egos of later followers of the original sages.”

    “Truth by definition, has no limitation or qualification and is not discriminatory. Inasmuch as everyone already has a calibratable level of consciousness at birth, the circumstances of that even would imply that they are not accidental but consequent to patterns of spiritual evolution as they manifest in the physical world as culture, family, time, and circumstances. (Consciousness research reveals that the particulars of every individual’s birth are absolutely, perfectly karmically just and maximally advantageous, despite appearances or personal opinion to the contrary.)”

    “The calibrations of the world’s greatest teachers are concordant with human experience and validation over great periods of time despite the major cultural changes to which they are relatively immune due to their nonlinear essence. Because truth exists independently of its discovery, like gold, its rediscovery elicits excitement and attraction to a new source.”

    “Advanced spiritual students value all sources of truth and often study combinations of them. Thus, the study of Christian mystics clarifies the truths revealed by the Vedas, and, in turn the Vedas clarify Buddhist teachings that then clarify the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

    “ The limitation of traditional religious practice has been that it often gets involved with the peripheral issues of times, places, personalities, and ethnic propensities (i.e. form and content). Of greater significance is the study of material that is intrinsic of the truths revealed (i.e., the field) and not the circumstances of the events, as anecdotally interesting as they might be. These trappings, which are actually extraneous, have a negative effect in that they are deceptive, diversionary, and lead to such absurdities as people killing each other over whether or not one should wear a bear or worship on a certain day of the week, the designation of which did not even exist at the time of the appearance of the great avatars. In Realty, which is nontemporal, there are no “days of the week.”

    “Religious zealots who kill “nonbelievers” for trivia, such as hats, beards, diets, and designated days of devotion, display the negative fallout of undue emphasis on cultural eccentricities. As readers of the original scriptures can see for themselves, every day is a day of devotion; every day is Sabbath. In the hands of barbarians, trivial differences are magnified and then become merely tools of war that “justify” serious sacrilege and violation of even the simplest of spiritual principles. Perhaps transmission of spiritual truth is best done by example and attraction rather than by promulgation to the people who are incapable of appreciating its value, appropriate use and intention.”
    “True missionaries spread valid information and teach by example. Those who are incorrectly motivated become sources of oppression, which leads to revolt (e.g., the Boxer Rebellion).”

    “Missionary zeal reaches it ultimate expression as theocracies and the establishment of state religions that utilize force and punitive government regulations. The history of Europe reflects the utilization of religion in the name of monarchies and power struggles involving the nonintegrous exploitation of church authority. Religious conflict has led to religions wars, which have traditionally been the worst of all wars over the centuries and in almost all parts of the globe, even as reflected in current events arising out of the Middle East. Spirituality unites, whereas, unfortunately, the downside of religion divides. Severe distortions of religious truths lead to them becoming the exact opposites in practice.”

    “Questionable Scriptures and Notes on the Christian Bible”
    Old Testament – 190
    Book of Revelations – 70
    David Hawkins

    What is so amazing is that it seems instead of seeking the truth that the great masters and sages sought, religions are fighting over semantics on the masters journey, completely failing to see the journey of truth while fighting about how they got there.

    Religion has done more damage to the truth in life than any other source as far as I can tell.