by pale.emperor 22 Replies latest jw experiences
Good for you ! Personally, I get flashes now and then even after being out for eight years.
i think it's like an alcoholic who is attending AA, the urge to return to drinking is always lurking underneath the surface. But by making the effort to stay away, and surrounding yourself with like minded, supportive people helps tremendously.
For me, I have zero guilt related to the cult.
I try to let my in-born conscience and my common sense determine if I should...or shouldn't...do something.
I wouldn't say guilt... but I remember for about 5 years after leaving I would inexplicably have most Thursday nights free and get a funny feeling I should be doing something?!
Big time!
I will never be able to shake that. This is one of the many reasons I really cannot fully leave this religious Org. My indoctrination runs so deep that even if I disagree with a few things, there are soooo many more things that I do agree with until my dying day.
Hotel California all the way.
DY
I've had guilt over some things here and there the first time I did something, like celebrate a holiday, but it goes away real fast as I enjoy the celebration and never returns. I've been out not two years yet.
Sometimes something will come up unexpectedly that might strike me funny because I've never consciously thought about how I feel yet. It hits me when that happens. So I think about it and move on. There's never any guilt though.
Mostly I'm just proud of my new life and the stand I took. It feels amazing.
Being a JW meant constantly wrestling with guilt, but once the lightbulb turned on and I woke up, nope!!!
I voted for the first time in 2012...and have voted in every election, big or small, ever since. There's a governor primary coming up next week, I'm hoping to do that as well.
The first time I wasn't guilty...but I was anxious some JW would spot me and report me to the elders. Didn't happen.
I found that the best way to silence the conscience is to immediately do whatever it happens to be upbraiding me for. So if, for example, you feel guilt over having masturbated, the proper thing to do is not pray for forgiveness, but repeat the dirty deed as soon as possible. There is no act, no matter how heinous you may regard it now, which cannot become a habit in time. Just keep ignoring your conscience, keep outraging every moral instinct you possess, and it will eventually atrophy.
Like you, I find, inexplicable or out of proportion guilt is one of the pesky residue feelings that depending on how much of it I am experiencing has been a useful gauge of how far I 've come.
For the first few years i had guilt /apprehension about what i was doing ,however in time it passes especially when you research how JW`s are just another American religion that sprung up in the late 18th century and is no more inspired by any God than ,Mormons ,Christadelphians,SDA`s or any other crackpot religion.
Free yourselves from religious superstitions and you will have no guilt.
