Lee Marsh does a daily "Dear Lee" column on Free Minds with a lot of advice on getting on after the cult life. Today's was really good, and I wanted to share it with you, along with my response.
Today's entry:
How important are we?
Randy (owner of www.freeminds.org ) made a comment to me in an email earlier today that got me thinking about something. He said, “…the most noticeable sign of a cult member is their inability to see themselves as small.” It is a very insightful comment.
As Jehovah’s Witnesses we identified ourselves as people who were important in the world. We represented Jehovah God. We were the only ones preaching “The Truth” in all the world. We were unique and special. We had status. But that was a collective status. There was nothing personal in it.
For many people who could not succeed in the world, being a Witness gave them a status they could never achieve outside the Watchtower Society. Even within the organization many achieved status as pioneers, Bethelites, ministerial servants, elders, etc. Men especially were encouraged to reach out for positions within the congregation. In this case although it appears to be a personal status in reality it is simply more slave labor. And no matter how much you do it can be wiped out in a moment by a judicial committee that decides you are no longer worthy of being a Jehovah’s Witness. In the end it really doesn’t give you any real sense of who you are in the world or your importance. We were only important for what they could take from us and all the while denying us any real value.
Then we leave. Whatever sense of who we were in the world is gone. The Watchtower Society and Jehovah’s Witnesses now label us as unimportant, unworthy, the walking dead.
So here we are out in the real world, often without an adequate education, little world experience and feeling adrift. How do we begin to feel like we have some value in the world around us or even just to ourselves?
I was disfellowshipped. I felt like nothing. I had no education, few skills and nowhere to go. I had to have a new friend co-sign for an apartment for me so I would have a place to live. The Witnesses sure weren’t going to help me. Even my mother wouldn’t help. Talk about feeling like nothing.
I went to school and trained for a career I loved passionately. In many ways it was my way to find importance in my life, a sense of purpose and personal value.
Now we might not all be so lucky (yes we can use that word now). Many find work that pays the bills but look for ways to find value in your life. It might be to be a great parent or spouse. It might be to get involved in volunteer work. There is always a need an almost any field you might want to consider. Hey you don’t have to go knocking on doors anymore so why not help out at a food back, knit clothes for babies in other countries, become a Big Brother or Sister, coach a sports team. Just get involved in your life, your families life or the community.
I am here because I think YOU are important. YOU are taking the time to read this. My hope is that you begin to think YOU are important enough to me that I keep doing this.
I had one person who thought I was important enough to take the time to talk to me, to be my friend, to help me sort out my head. Maybe all we need to get started is that one person.
YOU are important even if the Watchtower Society says you aren’t. We aren't small. After all they lie about almost everything so why believe them?
My response (Dogpatch):
I think growing up in the country or a rural area keeps a sense of self-importance at bay in more people's lives than living in a big city, having a famous family, working for a notable corporation, or belonging to the only true religion(s).
We tend to not want to be comfortable and feel insignificant in the universe, but we are. In the first 20 years of my life I spent a lot of time alone, thinking about the universe and how small we were, and learning to live with respect for other creatures, great or small, and that they have as much right to the universe as I do. Naturally this applied to people UNLIKE ME as well. For thousands of years civilizations like ours have learned to respect others around them until they are perceived as dangerous; then we fight to remove them from our presence. Jesus went a step further in showing, what is for many, a better way that is not so dog-eat-dog. (I call it the peaceful, anarchistic approach.)
But Jesus or not, we do benefit from being alone. If you are not comfortable being alone for a few hours or perhaps days, you do not really recognize yourself as a lone entity - you scramble to be with others and tap off of their powers and desires and myths so as to live in a sort of "community fantasy" about what life really is about. You are willing to ignore the smaller problems and inconsistencies with that community fantasy for the sake of the power it gives you... FAR MORE important to the primal being than being concerned with abstract "morals" or "ethics." The dogma (shared communal reasonings as to why you are doing the RIGHT thing, in spite of certain "ethical" problems) that quiet such dissonance come free with the communal fantasy kit. Not a bad exchange for some!
It's like cults... they come in a package! It arrives at your door in kit form, complete with new friends you never saw before in your life; little books that give you all the mental drugs to silence your internal cognitive dissonance as well as to quickly establish a sense of superiority over the rest of the human race. You are God's only true people, if you GIVE UP YOURSELF and become part of this new collective consciousness. It becomes reality to you, a new world view to replace the old that didn't work for you. It is so powerful that you are willing to cut off anyone who gets in the way of assembling your new kit. You are reinforced with strong, scary lectures against letting anyone denigrate the kit or take it away from you; or you will lose all effects of this new drug and hate yourself and die.
That is what alone time prevents, if used wisely. We realize that, for the most part, we are alone in this world, and we must ultimately be the judge of right and wrong (as we see it) to survive. We choose to deliberate and make our own decisions that are OURS and not those from the shiny new kit of mind drugs.
If we don't spend reflective time alone (and most people don't), we by default choose the drugs. We want to be part of something bigger, as it seems to cure the problems and quell the dissonance. A sense of POWER for once.
The easiest way to do that without building a good life and being proud of your own hard work and reputation, and gaining the mastery of your little world, is to by proxy join someone else's world... someone bigger, stronger and seemingly omnipowerful; or at least powerful enough to make us feel part of something bigger. It is designed to help us forget what we really are; small semi-intelligent beings with strong predatory instincts that lead us to suck power from others around us and tap into that power.
It's all too easy to feel strong and better than others by just opening the kit.
Randy