Posted by:
The 1st FreeAtLast
(
)
Date: March 14, 2011 03:53AM
If you're 22 years old, you were 'programmed' by cultic Mormonism during all of your formative years. As you know, Mo-ism was (and still is) all about PERFORMANCE, starting with OBEYING church teachings and complying with a myriad of LDS rules and expectations. If you were 'good'/'righteous' and jumped through all the time- and energy-consuming hoops that the Morg Church has created, and proved that you were 'worthy' by performing/behaving in the 'correct' way(s), according to Mo-ism, you received 'blessings' from the LDS Sky-God ('Heavenly Father', 'the Lord').
If you were 'bad', 'disobedient', 'slothful', 'rebellious' and otherwise an 'under-achiever', spiritually, the message of cultic Mormonism was very clear: 'God', as defined by Mormonism, was displeased with you, upset with you, saddened by your 'sinful' behavior and otherwise p*ssed-off at you for not PERFORMING as you should have (according to the control-addicted LDS Church and 'brainwashed' LDS leaders and teachers).
Here's relevant info. from the website about how cultic Mormonism 'programs' people:
'Worthiness'
Your thoughts and behavior do not make you worthy or unworthy. You are worthy of happiness and being treated decently simply because you exist. Your intrinsic worth has nothing to do with what you accomplish or do not accomplish in life. If you spent your life in a cave meditating (for example), you would be just as worthy as the busiest, most-sacrificing and hardest-working Mormon you know. You don't need to waste your energy always striving to be perfect in order to be granted blessings by God and receive, after you die, the big, 'celestial' prize, 'Exaltation' (so Mormon have been indoctrinated by the LDS Church to believe). Just live your life as you wish and create the life you want to have. Live fully by your mind and judgments, and develop your own values and sense of purpose based on your observations and experience. You have the right to do so. Furthermore, define success for yourself; you're not obliged to use others' yardsticks to measure (judge) your worth.
There is no omniscient, judgmental God who grants blessings and metes out punishments based on mortals' compliance or non-compliance to certain teachings and rules, only versions of God that people believe are true/real. All religions, including Mormonism, have come into existence through the mind of one or more individuals (starting with Joseph Smith, in the case of the Mormon religion). If you want to believe in some sort of 'higher power', create with your mind whatever version of God works for you. You're not obliged to subscribe to and mentally regurgitate anyone else's religious/spiritualistic beliefs.
(There's a lot more useful info. online at
http://members.shaw.ca/blair_watson/)
The HUGE problem with the very dysfunctional LDS Church's constant emphasis on PERFORMANCE and WORTHINESS is that it 'programs' young people - it conditions them - to feel very stressed out/anxious and fearful about making ANY 'mistake' (see the list of 40 fears created by Mormonism at
http://members.shaw.ca/blair_watson/fears.htm) and otherwise psychologically wounded.
Society and its messages about performance/achievements is also part of the dysfunctional 'programming.' People's true worth has NOTHING to do with what they achieve or don't achieve. A homeless person is no less worthy of being treated decently than the world's richest and most powerful people. But does society extend its fickle approval to homeless people? No. Those who achieve are lauded, while people who do less, make less (or very little) money, and otherwise are 'unspectacular', according to society's value system are typically ignored.
Were you raised to be a human DOING or a human BEING? If the former, the message to you was clear: Perform in accordance with others' expectations and you'll be approved of. But being is fundamentally about inner truth, including the truth explained in the 'Worthiness' section above.
Seems to me that the pendulum of your psyche has 'organically' swung from one extreme (all about performance - yes?) to the opposite side. You're free of cultic, performance-obsessed Mormonism and now your 'soul', if you will, is simply 'chilling' (i.e., getting used to being - and enjoying just being - as a 'non-achiever').
School at the post-secondary (college/university) level is typically intense, academically, and requires a good level of psychological well-being. I'd say that you're still in the process of 'deprogramming' yourself after 22 years in cultic Mormonism. My niece has been for the past two years. A few months after high school she was shipped off by her Mo-bot parents to BYU-I, where her class attendance and academic performance was so 'poor' that the univ. asked her to leave.
Back home, her 'brainwashed' LDS parents continued with their control-addicted, dysfunctional parenting style and things came to a head. She left, had to move out of the U.S. to find work (she was born in Canada and returned here), and slowly but steadily has reinvented herself post-Mormonism. Interestingly, her motivation to go to university has 'organically' emerged in the past couple of months and she's taking a senior high-school level chemistry class in preparation for her first year.
My advice to you is: Go with the flow. Let go of any negative judgment that you might think about yourself because of your lack of motivation relative to school. It'll come back in its own, good time. It's like a tree in autumn that sheds its leaves and shuts down for the winter. Or a bear that goes into hybernation (maximum 'non-performance' in the bear world!). In both cases, when spring comes, the tree slowly and steadily creates new leaves and gears up for more growth, and the bear emerges from being a 'lazy-ass' over the winter.
When you're ready to get back in the scholastic saddle, you'll feel it. Until then, enjoy a pace of life that works for you. To everything there is a season.
Best wishes!