What's your purpose for being here?

Many friends of mine go about life everyday wondering what's their purpose in life. They suffer anxiety wondering if jobs, relationships, and goals are inline with or a distraction from their "true" purpose.

In The Two Agreements, I give a simple, clear practice -- enter the Stillness and enter the Silence as often and as long as one can. Then, Intuition provides guidance to a purposeful life. All one needs are "ears to hear".

quote:

“The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you’d like to see ‘show up,’ not what part of another you can capture and hold. There can only be one purpose for relationships, and for all of life: to be and to decide who you really are."

Neale Donald Walsch -- Conversations with God

S.L. Brannon on DBSA Life Unlimited web site

http://bit.ly/1kEBzlZ

To Speak or not to Speak . . .

In regard to the church sign below:

The feelings of fear, shame, and guilt are the fuel and mind's prison of organized religion, as evidenced here. Another major tool of control is a "belief in lack", i.e. God does not have enough Grace to cover all souls, God's forgiveness is not immediately and all-at-once forgiving of all "sins" for all time, etc.

Those of us who know God to be The God Without Any Limits of Grace need to "find our voices" and speak up for the Grace we know to be true. Today, we are needed in preserving the freedom to believe as WE choose. 

To speak up or not to speak up is the question?  . . . we choose or we loose.

As Natural as Breathing

AS NATURAL AS BREATHING

Many people who believe in the “spiritual but not religious” path—myself included—are often considered “anti-religion”.   This is the furthest thing from the truth. I am forever thankful for the incredible work that Christian organizations do to ease human suffering. Each day, millions of people around the world are fed, clothed and taught by Christian churches, schools, and hospitals.  For centuries, Christians have made a positive difference, from healers like Mother Theresa and Padre Pio, to the individual who anonymously donates money to a poor family in their congregation. Furthermore, I still believe in church as a sacred place and would never do or say anything to belittle it. 

That said, it is also my belief that the “faith-built” churches of today are not a continuation of the original church begun by Christ.  Instead, over the past two millennia, man has created the Church in his image, rather than in God’s.  The result is that there are some 39,000 separate and different expressions of Christianity around the earth that claim to hold the Truth.  

In a rather straightforward manner, I state in Chapter 7 of The Two Agreements, “As evidenced by the history of all religions, mankind seems to compulsively work to complicate the spiritual life of living in harmony with God, a relating that is as natural as breathing.”  Indeed, the connecting to God has become so circuitous and convoluted as to be a life’s pursuit, instead of the place from which we live our lives. I am reminded of the story of the two cats.  One is turning in circles chasing its tail. The second cat asks him why he is doing such a thing. “I was told that happiness abides in the tip of one’s tail. And I desperately want happiness.” To which the second cat replies, “I have learned that as I peacefully go on my way that happiness is with me and follows me wherever I go.” And, certainly, we need not seek something we already possess.

Indeed, upon examining church history, we find that the original church was not a formal institution, but small groups of people meeting in each other’s homes to spread Christ’s messages. The purpose of these meetings was twofold:  first, to bring salvation to those who had been born under the first covenant with God and, secondly, to spread the story of Christ’s life and resurrection.   The Church of today, however, is something altogether different. Sadly, it has become a tool to measure our “worthiness”, even one’s worthiness to hold public office and serve society.

Please note, Christ did not give a list of rules and regulations for doing church the “right way” in order to prove that we believe deeply enough or in the right way. He simply told us to accept the Holy Spirit. Ironically, the man who was persecuted for saying, “I and my Father are the same” is now believed to have been the only one so connected to Source, when in fact we all are. Now we are the blasphemers if we make this claim. Too often, instead of being encouraged to live our lives with God, we are encouraged to give our lives over to institutions that run similarly to the government and any other bureaucracy.  These institutions are largely based on the premise that we are separate, not only from God, but from each other. Ultimately, that premise leads us into feelings of fear, guilt and shame, which make manipulation possible.

As evidenced by the thousands fleeing the Church each year, that premise is no longer working. I believe these folk are being called to be mystics—to directly plug into the Source instead of going through the “middle man” that the Church has become.  

Your religious life can cause you mental health problems

I enjoy my spiritual life in every respect. To reach the place in my life of living in the liberty I enjoy, I first worked through a lot of "stuff" others taught me about the Creator. That stuff kept getting in my way of living in the natural harmony that I was born with. In fact, we are all born with a natural relationship with the Creator, a relationship of harmony.

Many of my friends enjoy a religious life. Our different paths to God do not get in the way of our friendship. However, I caution anyone seeking a spiritual life in organized religion to use wisdom. For years, I have supported folk in finding a better life as they suffered with mood disorders. Many of them are seeking a place of peace and acceptance with the power they believe gave them life. It is not their belief in a Creator God that causes them pain. It is the judgement they direct at themselves. They feel like they must be spiritual failures for God to punish them with a mental illness.

I came across the following article that brings a very interesting perspective to the situation I just described. In my book, I share my story of learning a new way of understanding God and interpreting Christianity's wisdom book. Since, I began living from the interpretation in my book, my life is one with peace and assurance and a wonderful absence of self judgement.

Peacefulness to you and yours . . .

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads to Mental Health Problems

Posted on March 26, 2013

by Valerie Tarico

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia.  When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister.  “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said.  “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia.  I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling associationprotested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” Onecommenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?  I asked her.

Let’s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that – the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.

Or consider this comment, which refers to a film used by Evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

 I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW.  I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 yrs old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death.) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship and there is a group organized  to oppose their incursion into public schools.  I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding” or “trust and obey.” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today? Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometime this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free website and discussed in my talk at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait…That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but i cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way i can have sex is to pay for it.

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion, describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals.  They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, nontheists are asking how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma.  More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums for people to support each other. The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help.  For example, there are thousands of former Mormons, and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference.  I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim  which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren’t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves.  Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped.

—-  Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion. More information about Marlene Winell and resources for getting help with RTS may be found at Journey Free.  Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.  She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org.  Her articles can be found atAwaypoint.Wordpress.com.

SBNRs, Keep reading the words are not religious but radical (really)!

The divine is the sea. All religions are rivers leading to the sea. Some rivers wind a great deal. Why not go to the sea directly?  
                                                                                                               ~ Mother Meera

                                                       Not Religious but Radical (really)!
                                                                    By S. L. Brannon
 
Is modern Christianity missing the intended "messages" in  Christ's life and ministry?  Before  exploring the issue that holds such importance for me, I must note that when I  question Christianity, I do so with a respectful and reverent heart. Much like William F. Buckley's Nearer, My God, my book The Two Agreements honors the religious tradition of my childhood. That said, I sincerely believe that  Christianity misses the mark, largely due to a misplaced focus on the "sender",  rather than the "receiver", of those messages, as well as their historical  context.  As a result, the popular  interpretation of the Gospel message holds people in the shadows and distracts  them from the good news messages Jesus taught to bring the people of His day into the Kingdom. Christ's messages were a help in relating to God. The modern
popular interpretation, however, is a hindrance.

 What is the popular interpretation of the Gospel? Most of us are familiar with it, whether we are churchgoers or not. Known by many as "The Greatest Story Ever Told", it depicts an angry, vengeful God, so fed up with His own creation that He holds it in condemnation. As an act of mercy, He sends His son Jesus to live among humankind, knowing all along that Jesus would die for our sins. According to this interpretation, Jesus could have stopped the crucifixion at any time, but instead He sacrificed Himself to save people from
eternal damnation. Humankind is seen as inherently sinful, but after Jesus' death and resurrection, we were given a choice to believe in this story or not. If we are believers, then we are saved; if not, we are damned, forever excluded from God and His Kingdom. This has been the script from which much of the world
has operated for the past two thousand years. 
 
In reality, the story is not as straightforward, or as accessible, as the  interpretation implies. This is due largely to the pressure that Christianity was under to present a single, perfect message to one audience. The result of this pressure has been to ignore certain inconsistencies. For ages, Bible scholars have noted the differing records of Jesus' life and his messages of how to live in right standing with God.  Specifically, they pointed out that while Jesus' teachings focused on obeying commandments, Paul taught that one needed to exercise faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Furthermore, a small book entitled James seems to counter Paul by requiring people to do good works in order to satisfy God.  One is left wondering what the true message might be.  However, what if each of  them is correct in their message?  In fact, that is the case. There are differing messages, each correct and each directed at a different audience.
 
Let's look at the historical context. Jesus' arrival changed everything.  His conception and birth began a time of transition, a transition from the first (old) covenant to the second (new) covenant. The popular interpretation attempts to freeze  time—and humanity—in that transition period.  However, in so doing, it attempts to return people never enslaved back into slavery (servants to a Lord). Of course, this is impossible, yet millions of Christians have been persuaded that they are servants to an angry, tyrannical God, destined to a life of condemnation and damnation. Each time the gospel is presented in a way that encourages or demands that one submit to the mindset of those souls  born under Jewish law, a horrible injustice is done to the hearers. Those receptive individuals that accept this premise are subject to feelings of fear, guilt, and shame, and are therefore easily manipulated.  How sad, for the good news declares a freedom to life, love, and liberty, to bask in eternal grace!

 My reinterpretation of that popular interpretation seeks to clear up the confusion.  he problem with our most popular understanding of the messages of Jesus does not have anything to do with the messages.  Instead, one must look at the audiences He taught.  A clue  that there was something special about the masses listening to Him is in the phrase that is repeated again and again, "let those who have ears to hear . . ."
His reason for repeating the phrase was because it was something of a prayer for those listening to get the message that was specifically intended for them.  It is important to note that Jesus also  taught in parables for the same reason, to give the lessons in a form that each audience needed at that particular time. 
 
Why is it so important to know the audience in order to unravel the seemingly mixed messages of Jesus and the apostles? It is important because Jesus taught three groups of "hearers" that comprised the masses of the original ordained church. 

The first two groups I describe are well-known to Christians: the believers and the non-believers, both born under the old covenant. Jesus taught that there was a way for those born under that first covenant to be
"born-again", meaning born into the second covenant. These original born-again Christians were the original ordained church. The non-believers remained under the teachings of Judaism, honoring the old covenant relationship into which they were born.  

Now, to understand the remaining audience Jesus was speaking to, one must first understand that those born in the time of Noah, up until the time  of Christ, were born into the first covenant with the Lord God, locked in by birth. This was the harsher God depicted in the Old Testament. The children who  were conceived at the same time that Mary conceived, however, were born into the second covenant of unconditional love and Grace that remains in effect today. Jesus taught them messages of their being children of God and of their oneness  with the Father God. They did not need to be "born-again" in order to enter the new covenant for they were naturally born into it.  
 
As long as Christianity chooses to ignore the error of its  interpretation, its members are destined to live with blinders on. They must selectively read and interpret chosen parts of the story in  order to hold the "fidelity" they believe is there. All the while, innocent people are accepting a role (as a lost soul) they never held as free spirits in a kingdom of unconditional love and Divine grace. These innocent people are those of us born into Grace, never to know the stinging judgment of the Holy One.

 In the second covenant, we live by free will in a life of our own choosing. By free will, we can live as people subject to the Jewish laws, as people of the transition period born-again into the church, and as people born
under Grace as children of God the Father.  The choice is ours. In the reinterpretation, I encourage the readers to enter the Silence and  become still in order that "the still small voice" rises above the noise. The
Holy Spirit is available to teach us all things beyond the bible theme and Gospel. "Let those who have ears to hear . .
  ."