Well have just realized it has only been 2 years since I left New York and came here to Florida to start a new life after my divorce. All that has happened in that time makes it feel much longer than that. Isn't that how life is anyway. I've taken all the craziness of this time picked out the useful and positive in everything and every one I have met and saved them in my memory as the awesome. The bad, I have drawn the lessons from and saved them for future reference and experience. Putting it simply.
Lived and learned.
I told my mother this a couple days ago. That it's when you stop living. When you give up on the world around you and sink into your head and own bubble that your life truly ends. She is getting old and feeling as if she cannot deal with the world around her. Tho, how much of this is really how she feels. Or what her "Faith" has made her feel is the big question. I remember being in the Organization, how scary and evil everything outside it seemed to me. I also remember how it felt when my eyes were opening and I saw that it wasn't what I had been told at all. There was this odd conflict in my head that made me feel the same as she does now. I closed up into myself for a while. I was very young, so the emotional and mental effects of this really were easier for me to over come. For her, at her age, it really is safer, healthier and more logical that she would simply shut down.
I have seen the Jehovah's Witnesses likened to many things. The Borg, the major antagonist in the Star Trek series. A group of aliens who have developed a Hive Mind, They do not refer to themselves as "I" but "we" because there is no I in their "programming" as they are part Robot. Cyborgs, with the capacity for human thought and behavior but the Cyborg programming not allowing it easily, This parallel is the closest and most spot on I have seen. Now when talking about the organization itself, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the company behind The Jehovah's Witnesses. Matrix is a good parallel. Some were able to be removed from it and adapt accepting the truth about life that was hidden from them in the Matrix. Others when removed completely shut down. Could not accept the realities of life as it really was, and begged to be put back or wanted to Die.
My mother is one who could not be removed and survive, right now she is hanging on by a thread in this regard on her own. I have some part in it but only in how I live my life. She knows all my habits. She knows my good and bad. I am not a witness, I am not disfellowshipped according to the records they keep. I am a floater. SO she can talk to me, she does on a regular basis. She does not preach to me. Save for little comments not directed at me but to the air around her.
"There is only one way all this will end. I have to keep my sights on that."
She used to say,
"There is only one way all this will end, I Have my sights set on that."
I remember when that time of introversion began to lift, and I found myself seeing the good in all the bad people were telling me was there my whole life. When those people who I was told were evil and only out to corrupt and use me were the ones who were there and helped me. When I started to realize I Had a veil over my eyes. So when me and my mother speak she knows that if she asks or begins a conversation surrounding religion I will share my thoughts. I do not ever directly attack the Jehovah's Witnesses. I do not attack "God". I attack the evil only. I put my finger int he eye of the Organization, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. I have found keeping it simple. Using her own words is how I make my views known.
"Lilith I just have to do what it is Jehovah would want me to do." She says as she is walking out the door, I felt that fire in my chest and I took a deep breath a tear actually welling in my eye,
"YES! Mom you do exactly what Jehovah God would want. Not men, God only." She looked back at me and knew exactly what it was I was saying,
"Do not put your trust in nobles nor the son of man to whom no salvation belongs." Psalms 146:3
She stroked my chin and nodded with a smile told me she got it.
"I won't" and she left.
I believe she is one of the Conscious Class, Those who know the men are liars but believe in the Faith and spirituality. To me, that is OK. She is a smart woman. I do not think if it came down to an actual "Cool aid" moment she would partake.
I don't know why all of this was so stuck in my head. Why I felt I needed to talk about this. I used to do videos on YouTube a lot of them about how I felt when I was at my most angry with the Organization. I've thought a lot about that time and realize it was always the Org I was mad at. Never my parents. They were simply stuck where I had been. I could not fault them for not being ready. Without the organization I believe our family would have been much better. There would have been room for passion. There wasn't any. We could have handled our problems. My uncle would have been put away and dealt with long ago and not hurt as many girls in my family as he had. Maybe even Gotten help for his perversions. Everything would have been different.
Reality is I am just glad that everyone seems to have settled into life and where they wanna be in my life. At least as far as my family is concerned. I feel like life has hit a good pace and place. I haven't stopped being me and who I want to be. I haven't changed my views. One thing that I got from my whole experience is courage in my convictions. But in leaving and having my eyes opened to the world I added the ability to entertain other ideals and take in knowledge in a way most Jehovah's Witnesses will never be able to do. It's a shame that they don't realize. If you have the truth, then lies cannot harm it. Or maybe on some level they do realize they do not have it. Otherwise they would be able to do what we all do. Question everything. Because we all also know that doing it now. Questioning and learning all truth will not harm us but strengthen us. For them, learning all the truth in the world as it really is. It will at first harm them. It will be hell for them. So as I talk to people who are part of the organization I remember that.
Go gentle on them guys. THEY are not the evil, it's the Organization that is the evil. They are just unknowing sales men for a publishing corp. If you want to free the sheep, you do not attack them, you attack what keeps them locked up tight. We want them to be able to walk away, when and IF they are ready.
You are right
It's a Terrible fight.
A massive tug of War.
The only way
To win the fight,
Is Hide the truth no more!
Keep your eyes on the true prize
)O(
Lilith
