I’ve been complaining for a long time about the people who I blame for lying to us all, specifically, those who hold leadership positions–any kind of leadership positions–and spreading and promoting the lies about homosexuality, masturbation, pornography, the “institution of marriage,” etc.
I’m asking myself a new question since a couple of days ago. Is it possible that who I’m really angry at is myself, for having drunk the kool-aid they mixed for me for as long as I did? I don’t feel like that’s the case, but it seems like a logical explanation, and it does make a few things make sense.
I’m mostly writing this because this train of thought isn’t going much of anywhere between my ears–I feel very much that I’m not seeing the process all the way through. So I’m writing in an attempt to hold myself to account for this line of thought.
What would it mean if I were actually blaming myself for having believed the lies that the lying liars told? What would it mean about myself? What would it mean about them? What would it mean about the world? What if I made the whole thing up?
I carry a grudge against the people who drink the kool-aid because it hurts not just themselves, but others as well. I wish the Universe were structured such that a person could do whatever they want without hurting others, but it’s just not that way.
So I’ve been angry at the people who lied, angry at the people who believed them, and angry at the people who knew but did nothing.
What if I take responsibility that I’ve been in each of those categories?
While in this inquiry, add a few more questions to the list:
What if they didn't lie? What if they weren't ill-informed? What if they weren't "wrong"?
If your going to question your place in it all, go all the way down the rabbit hole and see what (if anything) is there.
Then ask if assuming anyone being at error here at all isn't just another lie, or perhaps better put, a conversation for nothing workable.
What would it look like to meet judgment with love? What would it take to not judge the judges? What would love unfettered and uncontained by anything they say or do BE like? What would it be like to have no triggers around this?
Great inquiry.
Why does it matter whose fault it is? When you find yourself in an abusive relationship, the solution is to get the fuck out — not spend countless hours navel-gazing in some misguided effort to find the perfect ratio for which to apportion blame.
In any case, whatever the ratio you decide on for your past self-deception, one thing is certain: now that you're aware of the reality of the situation, it's ENTIRELY your fault if you choose to continue with this abusive relationship. Every conversation you have with a Mormon who tells you that homosexuality is evil is a conversation YOU have chosen to participate in. Every sacrament meeting that you attend where a speaker spews the most absurd nonsense is a meeting YOU have consciously decided to attend.
You're not going to heal any of the wounds Mormonism has inflicted on you until you stop pealing off the scab — and that means divorcing yourself from Mormonism in every conceivable manner.
Donovan.
Service *always* and *only* begins with listening.
Is your coaching really the thing that's going to make a difference here? Does it reliably deliver on what really matters to me? Does it actually fulfill on the concerns that I have? Do you really know what really matters to me? Do you really know what my concerns really are?
Healing does not require divorce (although that may also work), but you should at least stop using the hand with the infection if you want the infection to go away. That doesn't mean you never use the hand again, just that you give it a break.
Taking a break from things can create new perspectives.
Mormonism isn't always the culprite either: There are many who are zealous without knowledge and heap burdens on others that they themselves would not tolerate. I'd avoid these types regardless of their religion.
Recognize that in any mature church, there will be a variance between the official and the common held beliefs. If all the same-sex attracted people on earth fled from any particular religion, that religion would lose perspective on the humanity of same-sex attracted people. The only way to bring real meaningful change here is to let the common members experience homosexuals as other than "sinful". I've known you, David, to be one of the most Christian men I've ever met, and that certainly doesn't meet the expectation one has of a sinner.
Our posts crossed…
The advice I've given is universal in nature. It applies regardless of the variations or wrinkles of a particular topology.
1) One should always consider the possibility that one's assumptions are off in any particular matter (and I've willing placed myself in that position repeatedly in conversations with you.) So, if you are going to question how much of your anger is really a transference from a self-frustration with being duped, it should also be considered (at least within the realm of all possibilities) that your anger may exist WITHOUT you actually being duped. It's ratcheting it up a few notches, and may appear to be agendized (it isn't), but the inquiry is a worthy one.
2) Love is the answer – to nearly every question. Not much isn't improved by it. Little isn't made worse by its lack. Love (being acceptance) and judgment (being a lack of acceptance) are opposites.
3) A conversation that is so rife with labels and right thinking vs. wrong thinking is ultimately not going to work or satisfy. My nudge above is that you leave the conversation for right and wrong with all its judgments and enter instead into the conversations for workability and love.
I submit that this is good coaching regardless of what really matters to you or are your concerns. I also submit that it may be very poorly given coaching either way.
Donovan.
First, I'm dealing with a set of "assumptions" that I have tested from dozens or hundreds of perspectives and have been on all sides of. How many times do I need to test what's so before you grant me permission to accept it?
Second, no shit, Sherlock. Do you think I didn't consider love as an answer? Do you think that maybe I'm looking for a way to have that be the outcome?
Third, the judgment exists only in your listening. Yes, really. My conversation is for one of integrity–"workability"–and responsibility. I wonder if you even read my post. I'm observing where integrity is lacking and asking how I can take responsibility for it. I am literally looking for a way to be responsible for the lack of integrity in someone else's actions and create workability and possibility and you think I'm running a racket.
Your coaching is crap. It comes from the most limited and limiting listening I think anyone has ever offered me. You are projecting judgment onto me and ignoring my underlying commitments, which I have endeavored to make as clear as possible.
I'll take this opportunity to point out that your listening of me has no integrity either: someone who's committed to transformation and having the world work, who knows what you know and has done what you've done has a commitment to listen for what people are committed to and relate to them as a possibility, not as a racket. You have completely failed to do that here.
I believe that you may have some really good points here.
I request you reread your above post and comment and tell me how one might hear judgment in it. I'm not projecting it. I'm not getting racket from it as such either.
I have failed (yet again) to properly acknowledge – a failure that is costing me greatly in workability.
I have known you to be a very committed and integeral soul. I've seen you turn yourself inside several times to better be your word. I've known you to care and share on a level that even went to the level of discomfort.
My listening of you is bigger than what I sometimes get from you.
Acceptance is the diametric opposite of judgment, and the exact equivalent of love.
Vanilla: Choose.
David… the hamster is in the wheel. You'll get there. Have patience.