Hi all!

I'm new here (and to not being a die-hard Mormon), and I've been really struggling with feeling alone. I'm posting my experience in hopes that I won't feel so alone in it anymore. I don't really have anyone to share this stuff with that really gets it.

I grew up with divorced parents (non-Mormon mom and Mormon dad). They had 50/50 custody, so I spent equal time with both of them, although I favored my dad. I adopted Mormonism as a way to be close to him, but also to cope with the idea of my broken family (the promise of an eternal family and Heavenly Parents was all my little heart wanted). I went to church every other week (when I was with my dad), did the same for seminary. I graduated seminary with a lot of makeup classes, got my YW Medallion twice, Honor Bee once, and my Faith in God award. However, since I was only half there, I was always kind of on the outskirts of everything socially. I really just wanted to belong.

I took everything a bit to the extreme. Shorts above the knee weren't okay, so I only wore pants and maxi skirts. I learned everything there ever was to know about the doctrine, and it's all I knew how to talk about at school (where I was almost always the only Mormon around). I made a plan when I was twelve that had me having kids every two years from when I was 21-35. I was Mormon to the max.

My mom wouldn't let me get baptized, so I wasn't baptized until I was 18. I had a huge baptism with a ton of people there. My ward scheduled a youth temple trip for that weekend so I could go for the first time and everyone could celebrate with me. I remember being excited to get baptized, but when I actually got to the font, I felt like I was outside of myself. It didn't feel like any of it was actually happening to me; I could feel the water, but it was like I was standing behind myself. Same thing for the confirmation. I brushed it off as me being nervous.

That weekend, my ward went to the temple. I was so excited. My dad was either in the bishopric or in the YM presidency at the time, so he came with us. My stepmom came too, to help me navigate inside the temple (I didn't know what I was doing and struggle with anxiety). I was super grateful for them both coming. When we went to the welcome center to drop off our things, I immediately started crying. I didn't know why, and everyone thought it was a happy cry, but it was very much not. It felt very painful, and it only got worse as I got in the temple. I had brought family names and was so excited about it. I wasn't worried, but I couldn't stop crying. I cried through the whole session, and the chlorine in the water actually burned the skin under my eyes because it was so raw. I thought then that I was upset about the drama my baptism had caused with my mom's family, but I remember thinking that it didn't make sense. The temple was supposed to be the place closest to Heaven on Earth, the place of ultimate peace. I was so confused as to why I was in so much emotional pain and couldn't access that peace. As soon as I left the temple and was able to take a few private moments, I was fine.

A few months later, my dad's family had a mini family reunion/family temple trip weekend. We did a baptism session. i didn't cry that time, but I went back into that semi-dissociative state I was in during my baptism for the whole time. I felt the water, but I didn't feel like I was in the water. I didn't know what to make of it, but I hated the way the temple made me feel. I didn't know how to reconcile that. I didn't know why God would let me feel like that in His house, and the thought of ever going again scared me. I have never renewed my recommend because of it.

I haven't been going to church for about six months now. These experiences were the beginning of the end for me. I did everything the way it was supposed to be done, and I couldn't find peace. One of my YW leaders at the time told me that she had her first panic attack in the temple. That seems so wrong to me. It's God's house!

Has anyone else had any experiences like this? How did you deal with it?

I'm sure I'll be posting more and more. I'm excited to have found a place where I can talk to people who went through a similar experience. It's hard to recover when there's no one to talk with.

JadeDuck

Glad you're here, pretty new myself, great folks here.

Sounds rough what went through, nothing like that here but do recall a sense of profound be-bafflement at the outfit I found myself wearing. "I mean -- really?" was the sense while looking at the figure looking back at me in the celestial mirror. Made no sense even then.

I wore a temple dress for my baptism (one of my stepmom's). I can't get over the square necklines. Why choose a square neckline? They're hideous! Just make it come all the way to the throat!

When my grandmother died, she was buried in her temple clothes. My dad made a point to bring me to see the body (I didn't really want to) to show me the clothes. I thought it was really strange. I'm glad I never had to wear them. I would've felt so embarrassed.

You are not alone! Coming here has helped me and I’m not from a mormon family. I’m an ex-mormon and resigned ten years ago; I did lose most of my friends, and mormon family members have been difficult dealing with. However my best friend is mormon. Let’s just say you find out who your real friends are.
However I’ve been much happier not being mormon. I can’t remember dissociating in the temple, but I have had experiences of that elsewhere in my life; my understanding of that is I was experience that was unpleasant and traumatic and it’s your brains way of coping.
I got baptised at 19. I remember right before my confirmation that I had feelings of panic and wanted to run from the room. It was really weird. Of course I was told this was Satan trying to interfere with what was right. I now see it differently; like my intuition was telling me it was all wrong.
I left due to using my brain for a change and discovering the mormon church is not what it claims to be. It was pure logic in the end. However, I do believe that our feelings can often tell us before that point that all is not right. I remember feeling that deep down it was all wrong before that point. For example, I went to a stake conference that was supposed to be about Jesus, but all they talked about was tithing; and no one was friendly to me. Red flags everywhere that day, and I felt it, rather than questioned it consciously - after all, as mormons we are conditioned not to question, so I think our feelings are all we had.
I was very TBM as well. It was a huge change losing that. But I felt so much better and it was like I could finally think clearly once I discovered the truth. I only occasionally have nightmares about being back in church.

My fiance is not and never has been Mormon and is baffled by Mormon's treatment of tithing. It never occurred to me in other religions that tithing was just something you should do, not something required of you to get into Heaven (or the temple). Once he pointed out that that isn't standard for Christian sects, I realized that it made me uncomfortable.

I can sort of understand your feelings. I was a very devout Mormon, all my life, Born into the Mormon church (BIC), and in a "Mormon Royalty" GA family. I would see my relative speak in Conference on TV, and would feel very special, and that I had to set an especially good example of obedience to my peers.

I loved two men, and one was an atheist, and 6 years older, and my parents made him stop dating me. My other boyfriend was a Mormon neighbor, in our ward, who refused to go on a mission, because his education was too important to him. When he got his PhD, he knew the church wasn't true, so he quit. My parents didn't want me to marry him, so I married a returned missionary, after knowing him only 5 months. We had never met his family. He pretended to be perfect, but he was hiding a history of abuse and assault. I divorced him, but not until I suffered 14 months of being a battered wife--trying to keep my temple vows, and thinking that it was my fault that I was being beaten. After the divorce, I spent many years trying to get a temple divorce, or cancellation of sealing, or a "temple clearance", or whatever it was called. I married an old boyfriend from BYU, and had children with him, and the Mormon leaders told me that I and my children by my second husband were all sealed to my first husband, as his property in the Hereafter. My temple husband was married in the temple two more times! I started investigating the temple rules, and the rules of how sealings worked, and the disparity of those rules between men and women, and how the rules kept changing over the years. This led to more study about JS and his polygamous, criminal past, and I uncovered all the lies. I resigned.

The first time I went to the temple was to a temple dedication, over which my GA relative was presiding. I was about 15. During the dedicatory prayer, I felt a strong feeling of--evil! It was similar to a strong feeing of hatred mixed with fear, but it was so real, that I still believe in "Satan", or "the presence of evil" in out life. Everyone told me that Satan could not enter the temple, once it was dedicated, so I thought maybe I felt Satan leaving the building.

My first temple session was in preparation for my marriage. It was back in the days when the matrons actually touched our breasts and pubic area with oil, during the "anointing." I was dressed in only a "shield" which was like a poncho: a short, square sheet, to the knees, with a hole in it for your head. Completely open on both sides. The matron put her hand under the sheet. It was creepy!

In the endowment ceremony, they ask if anyone wants to leave. This is before anything happens, and it's all secret, so I didn't know what was about to happen. My mother was firmly on one side of me, and my SIL on the other side, and some friends and aunts, so I didn't dare leave--but I wanted to jump up and run out of there!

In those days, we had to actually act out, in pantomime, the slitting of our own throat, then the cutting open of our own chest, then disemboweling ourself, saying, three times, with each of the three actions, "suffer my life to be taken", if we ever told any of the secrets of the temple. No wonder no one ever talked about it!

I have felt the presence of Satan every time I have been to the temple! I've been to several different temples, but the evil feeling has been the same. My purse and shoes were stolen out of my locker, and I walked out of the temple barefoot on my wedding day! I had a sweater stolen, in a different temple. The lockers do no good.

I had been looking forward to finally talking about the temple with my mother and father in the celestial room, but no talking is allowed! Every time, in every temple, we were rushed through, and not allowed to sit down on the chairs and couches there! Those are just for show! The matrons would say, "Please hurry--another group is coming through. A couple of times, my friends and I waited, and we saw no other group coming through.

Follow your heart! Your gut feelings--also known as "woman's intuition"--are all you can trust. Don't let others TELL YOU what your gut feelings SHOULD BE, either. Like many other ex-Mormons, my instincts led me to study and investigate the religion further, and I discovered, on my own, that Mormonism is a hoax. When I was studying, I promised myself two things:

1. I would not read any "anti-Mormon" writings. I studied only the Mormon scriptures, Mormon church history, Mormon books.

2. I would keep my beliefs in Christ and the Bible, and would separate those from my brainwashing of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

Welcome to RFM. The world outside of Mormonism is beautiful! You will understand that there's no such thing as "a broken home", and realize that your life was not "lesser than" anyone else's! There is unconditional love in the world. The stratified, exclusive Mormon heaven, polygamy, and the temple rituals are nasty lies. You don't have to pay money to God. And that's just the beginning. ((((Hugs. You will be fine!)

This is true. The temple rites have actually become LESS creepy and weird. Imagine how you would have felt:

1. Before 2006, when the initiatory portion required you to sit naked under a thin "shield" or poncho-like piece of cloth, open to the sides, while another person reached under it to smear parts of your naked body with oil while mumbling promises.

2. Before 1990, when the endowment included enactments of *three* different ways to be killed for revealing the temple signs and tokens. (Like Charades, but with murder!) There was throat-slitting, chest-ripping (heart torn out), and disemboweling. Good times.

I did mine in 1980.

Yeah, the "I would suffer my life to be taken" part always creeped me out. My brother who went with me the first time, asked me afterward if I was okay. Not because I was showing an odd face, but I think, as I look back at it now, that it must have bothered him some also.

Oh yes. The temple was gobs of fun my first time. Stand there naked while old dudes bless your body parts. Then you have to wear this horrible underwear all the time.

Then you go in and promise you will give the church everything you own and swear death oaths while wearing a ridiculous costume.

I have OCD and let me tell you. The temple is not good for people with OCD.

The best thing about the temple was getting the hell out of there.

My mother warned me about the temple rites (as they were in the late '90s), but I chose not to listen for some reason. My dad would mention that it was silly how secretive they were kept, but he never did tell me about them (although he would share other things he wasn't supposed to; patriarchal blessings and church manuals and such).

I had forgotten about the two temple dedications I went to before I was baptized. Both times I was so sad. I thought it's because I knew my mom couldn't ever go in (again with some family guilt), but until now, I never saw that as a red flag.

I'm so sorry to hear about your experiences with your ex-husband. That's truly terrible, and no one should have to go through that. I've never dated Mormon men, and luckily my family is pretty cool with it. I can't imagine adding that extra pressure to such an important decision. I'm so sorry that the temple marriage was never able to be broken, too. You had every right to have the sealing broken. It blows my mind that anyone would force you to be unwillingly tied to him like that.

who I brought up in mormonism to the age of 8 and then I sent my twins to seminary so they could decide what they believed. The other twin is a boy. I wasn't sure where I really stood any longer. I had started to question just before I met my eventual gay husband. The gay situation made a huge mess and I've posted about it all over this board. I found out before I married him.

He left us when the twins were 10. My daughter was anti-mormon for quite a while and then she announced to me about 11 years or so ago (or longer, she'll be 34 soon) that she had gone back to church. At the time, I was WAYYY OUT of the church.

And I see that her reasons for being so over the top mormon are the reasons you were such a good mormon girl. She wants to make sure that what happened to her childhood doesn't happen to her marriage and any kids she has, that somehow she can save us, too, and have her family she remembered from her childhood as "we were happy then" she always tells her twin brother. She just doesn't understand that he was cheating from the time she was 1-1/2 years old and I just kept it to myself. I was going to stay with him no matter what for my kids. I didn't want to be a single mother.

She doesn't talk to me about her experiences in mormonism. She talks to her father. She did a lot of baptisms for the dead for years before she did her endowment 1-1/2 years ago and she did talk to her dad about it. I had told her everything about the temple before she went back to the church, but she still found it bizarre, but now she goes every week with her new husband. She is determined!!!! To be who I was not, she thinks.

I was the most devout child in my family. My parents used to argue about whose fault it was I left (per my sister). I never wanted to lose my family. My parents argued a lot when I was young and I worried about having to pick which parent I'd go with if they divorced. AND when I got married, I wanted to make sure that I had a forever family. My worst fear in life was losing my family. Well, as my therapist says, I tested mormonism to its very limits and it failed me. I even have mormon friends who tell me "You did everything right and look what happened to your life."

I didn't have disassociation in the temple, but I have disassociated, so I know exactly what you are talking about, like you aren't in your own body. BUT baptisms were one thing, doing the endowment was an entirely different thing. I went back maybe 4 or 5 times because my husband guilted me into it. I hated it. The last time, I did sealings to a stranger. I had 40 minutes to sit in the foyer waiting for my husband to finish the endowment session and think about what I had experienced, and I never went back. That was in 1990.

The temple is the most bizarre experience. My dad told me the same thing after he realized I wasn't going back to the church. He didn't go back for over 25 years (when my sister got married).

Myself, I had a letter from Boyd Packer that he sent to me after I sincerely asked about my gay boyfriend and what the answers are. He was so vicious towards me that every time I saw his letter, I felt a dark feeling. I've never felt that before or since. I burned the letter.

Are you allowed to / be willing to put the letter on here?

I burned it just before I married my "husband" in 1984. My dad said if I still had it, he would have taken out a whole page ad in the Salt Lake Tribune.

I was very disturbed by it and I felt like I had done something so horribly wrong I didn't want anyone to see what he said to me. I do believe my sister is the only one who saw it. I didn't even show it to my "husband."

It was a church leader who told me to write to him. I didn't even show it to this person.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2019 10:31AM by cl2.

I had the same anxiety about the temple. My mother had it. When I went through, she told me to take someone else with me. She'd go along, but she couldn't help me and she had been quite a few times, but not all the time like they do now.

I always took a friend the few times I went except the time I went to a live session when my husband's friend was getting sealed to her husband. That was horrifying.

I took my very good friend with me the last time I did an endowment to help me. I got to the veil and I had the robe on "inside out." The lady made me take all stuff off and then put the robe back on correctly. My husband and my friend were waiting for me in the celestial room wondering what had happened to me. Everyone else was long gone.

I never once got to sit down in the celestial room. The only reason I ever went again after the first time was to be able to sit down in the celestial room. I just knew that if I had time there, I could figure out this mess that was my life. I did go back one more time, but that was when they pulled me aside to do sealings to someone other than my husband, who was with me.

I am so grateful that I never went through the endowment. I think it would've just completely broken me.

Thank you for sharing about yourself and your daughter. Knowing that the promise of eternal families captured other people's attention really helps me feel validated. Sometimes I think that I should've seen the signs, but the promise of an eternal family seemed so worth it. I'm sad to know that it's caused others the same kind of pain that it's caused me, but I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one.

PS: I never understood how God, who loves us all unconditionally, would separate us from our families in the afterlife. It seems cruel. The idea of eternal families is something I still hold very close to my heart, but it's a different take on it.

There's many great people here at RFM. Please share your experiences and you will likely find support.

So many of us have experienced unpleasantness in the so called "House of God." Unlike sacrament meeting, where I felt comfortable and uplifted, my temple journeys were terrifying. There was always something that went awry there. Mostly, I suffered a lot of rudeness from temple workers, but there was always disorder and chaos at the temple.

I hated being dunked for the dead and that's somewhat odd for a guy that grew up swimming in the family pool! When water goes up my nose, it leads to sinus pressure and discomfort. I told my Mom that I no longer wanted to go on youth temple trips and her response was "Oh, I'll just buy you some rubber nose plugs." So the next trip I went and I carried them in my jumpsuit pocket. Before I descended into the cess pool font, I inserted them. A bunch of my peers laughed, including the leaders. The nose plugs helped. After several dunks, somebody was telling the ph baptizer to stop. A temple worker asked "What's in his nose? Tell him to take that out. It's not permitted. He can pinch his nose if he wants, but external accessories are not allowed in the font."

So I had to pinch my nose and be rebaptized for the ones where I was wearing the nose plugs. I think I was baptized 30 or 40 times that day. I suffered from a sinus infection for weeks.

I think one reason that I hated being dunked was because it was done superfast. It was like being on a 15 minute roller coaster that never stopped being flipped over and over. That was no thrill to me.

I had very sensitive sinuses. I had bloody noses A LOT. I actually had one when I was playing the piano for the priesthood restoration program for mutual and had to get up and leave.

So I went to do baptisms for the dead and I got a bloody nose. You'd think I had committed the ultimate sin. We had to wait and wait and wait for my nose to stop bleeding, and with the pressure from them holding my hands and me holding my nose, that took a while to get done. Why didn't they just let me stop and have someone else finish for me?

Then they took us to the showers and the old ladies wouldn't let us have a towel until we stripped out of the baptism outfit. They tell you to be modest and then send you to the temple and strip you bare.

The old ladies were so rude to me EVERY SINGLE TIME.

As a young man, I suffered tremendously from migraine headaches. Some of these were so strong that I often had to "sleep them off" to feel relief. My Mom knew about them, but gladly sent me off on Saturdays to the temple. She and my leaders both agreed that I would somehow feel better after getting wet. It never worked for me.

Until I married my wife, I had no idea that the young women used "the monthly visitor" excuse to avoid getting dunked. My wife told me that they had a cabinet full of extra kotex for women on their periods. So yes, she was dunked with extra protection.

I had a church friend who thought she had a clever way of getting out of it. Many of us teens were having our smiles perfected-straightened. She showed up wearing her external headgear for her braces (which you would rather die than be seen wearing it in public). I think it was her plan that she would go along with the trip, but not get dunked. She told the youth trip chaperones that she had to wear the device all day Saturday. She kept it on for the several hour car drive to the temple. She was in the young women line still wearing the headgear. When she got closer, she gestured that she couldn't go in. She was escorted by two sisters back to the changing rooms. About 5 minutes later, she returned without the orthodontic device. She was dunked and she was reminded by the leaders not to cheat her dentist and wear it the remainder of the day.

On one of my last visits before getting endowed, one young man had broken his arm and was wearing a cast. They improvised with a tight plastic bag to dunk him. The only problem was that the bag wasn't being fully submerged and the leaders were becoming upset about it. They finally encouraged him to move on after a few dunks.

baptized for the dead at that time of the month. It was a sacrilege or something. You know, we women are filthy.

When I was young, we didn't get to go do baptisms very often. (My daughter did them once a week and still does them now and then if her MIL has names.) The first time my class did baptisms, I actually did have pink eye (which I got all the time) and I was not able to do the baptisms. I was sad about it. I got to rent a temple dress and wear it and sit with the leaders. I hated it.

Same here. It felt like I was being drowned.

All of these experiences are awful! I'm so sorry! I can't believe that temple workers would be so unaccommodating! I only ever went with people I knew and trusted, and these temple worker horror stories are making me grateful for it!

You have a good head on your shoulders and it came through for you. Being a the wrong place is often a time when your inner self speaks the loudest to you. Going to the temple was a catalyst that allowed your true self to surface is my guess as the arm-chair psychologist that I am.

Learning more about what the church really is will calm you-- is also what I say. Reading No Man Knows My History is a crash course in all that is false about the Mormon church. It brought me great peace. Knowledge will set you free.

I relate to you because you seem to have left on a gut feeling---which is what I did. Because, I left before I knew all the facts on the Mormon church surfaced in a big way. I just knew suddenly in my gut it was bull. My catalyst was reading Miracle of Forgiveness while at BYU and in the middle of a chapter just looked skyward and said, "OMG it's all a lie!"

Glad you found RFM. Best to your Mom. Had to be hard for her to watch it all?

It was really difficult for her to watch everything, especially because it made her feel like I loved my dad more than her. She did the best she could, snapped a few times, but I realize she could've been a lot harsher.

I did leave on a gut feeling. I didn't admit that I didn't believe until I had some bit of doctrinal evidence, but I realize now that it was completely on gut feeling. I felt guilty leaving with no hard evidence, but so much of the church experience is based on the Spirit, so I really shouldn't have been at all. That's probably the most Mormon way to leave!

  I was a happy mormon, even when I sinned the sin next to murder, I was happy! I repented (if not doing it again, but wanting to, is repentance, then I repented!) and even got set up to go on a mission.

  One of the final steps before leaving for Salt Lake City (this was in 1965) was to go through the temple if one was available) so I went to the St. George temple. I went in with something of a testimony and came out without a testimony.

  I concluded that the farce in which I had just participated (some old fart almost touching my StrokeMaster 1000!?!? Wearing a baker's hat and a green apron!?!? Etcetera!?!?) had nothing to do with whatever ghawd was in charge of this world, if any.

  I was still a tribal mormon and served a tribal mormon mission and went to the tribal college and was proposed to by a BYU tribal coed, which meant SEX! I plodded along ye olde path of mormonism, but with no belief that there was a ghawd associated with the plan of salvation for only 10% of what I earned.

  And then I stopped pretending. Turned out that I ended up of the opinion that I was lonelier as a religious mormon than I've ever been as just tribal mormon.

  I'm lucky though, in that I don't get lonely, which I think comes from being an only child. If you just keep moving, you'll find people with whom to associate and then from that group will come friends and lovers.

  It's hard for herd animals, which includes we humans, to deny, much less avoid their/our social nature. But you can control the 'quality' of the animals with whom you associate. The riff-raff (riff-raffing around!) who have washed up here on the shores of RfM are an interesting bunch of Boners and Beaners, if I do say so myself.

  I don't bother wondering about what could have been; I'm too busy sorting out and making heads or tails of what is.

Ditto. I was only a Mormon because I was born into it. My parents were inactive and went back to church before I was born. I almost was born out of the church.

By tribal Mormon, do you mean cultural Mormon? I've had a really hard time letting go of Mormon culture because as miserable as it made me, it's so familiar. It's what I grew up with.

a combination of gas-lighting and The Emperor's New Clothes.

The actual, easily observable substance of it is manifest nonsense. Goofy floppy hat. Goofy green apron. Goofy handshakes called "tokens". Goofy chanting around an altar. Goofy church-issued underwear. Goofy "we will go down" movie. And, before 1990, C R E E P Y, C R E E P Y throat slitting gestures and disembowelment gestures called "penalties". You had to promise to agree to being violently killed as punishment if you ever broke your vow of secrecy by revealing the sacred "tokens" to any outsiders. Then you got the "tokens". What were the tokens? They were nothing more than a few goofy handshakes plagiarized from the Masonic lodge rituals that Joseph Smith had taken part in before getting his endowment "revelations".

But they surround all that goofiness at the core with several protective layers of irrational hype. The temple is sacred, special, wonderful, profound, sublime, deeply spiritual...at least that's what they say over and over and over whenever they talk about the temple. If you can't see it, there's something wrong with you, you see. (Just like in The Emperor's New Clothes.)

I wasn't able to play along. The temple was the eye-opener that started me on the path to getting out of the cult. I was more pissed off at the deception than I was concerned about fitting in and going along to get along. I felt like I had been punked. Like the church had played a big practical joke on me.

Sublime, deep spiritual learning experience, my ass! (Pardon my French.) It was a bunch of goofy handshakes and doofy costumes! It was an insult to my intelligence. Most ridiculous thing I ever participated in was the temple ritual.

Au contraire, my dear sir! No less an august personality than Elder Jeffrey R. Holland would take serious issue with your characterization of the temple as "goofy." In fact, he specifically refers to "the awe and majesty of the temple endowment" as a "first-level truth" in this seminal 2015 address to a room of fair-minded and wholly unbiased CES religious educators:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/broadcasts/article/evening-with-a-general-authority/2015/02/helping-with-the-real-issues?lang=eng

Can you not discern the majesty of bakers' hats? Do you not feel awe at placing your thumb upon another man's knuckle? If you do not, may I suggest that it is *you* that… that… oh shit. Never mind.

I'll have to add those to the list of fantastic adjectives that they love to use to hype up the temple.

Awesome

Majestic

Profound

Sacred

Holy

Sublime

Ineffable (but actually totally effed up)

Edifying....


Such impressive words. And then I remember that we're talking about underwear and handshakes.

The whole Mormon temple experience is like a lost Monty Python movie. The Mormons struggle not with powers and principalities. They struggle with reality.

I believe that I suffer from anxiety. I always had the butterflies in my stomach sensation. It never went away. I wanted to be the guy that snored away as soon as the temple film began, but I worried about doing everything wrong. I remember losing my satchel that contained my apron and robes. It turns out that the man sitting next to me took it. I held up the session for about 10 minutes looking for it. I even got down on my knees (which one of the temple workers told me "I hope you don't find it on the ground under a chair. That's the most disrespectful, irreverent thing you can do in the house of the lord.") The workers made no attempt to help me. It was my problem alone to resolve. I asked the man sitting next to check his cloth satchel and there it was. He had stuffed mine inside of his satchel.

And the most miserable part of the session was the constant dressing and changing robes, strings and shoes. A string attached your silly baker's hat to a shoulder epaulet. It never stayed in a neat bow, but went to a tight knot. Often, I wore it wrong and then it was a challenge to see if the workers caught my mistake.

Oh those dumb slippers. You were supposed to remove them as part of the ceremony every time you changed. I sometimes forgot. I went through the trouble of changing and sat back down. A temple worker had watched me go through the act of dressing. He said nothing, but waited until I sat down. He walked over and tapped my shoulder. "You didn't remove your slippers." So I stood up and kicked them off and started to slip onto my foot and the same worker interrupted me. "No, no, no. Not that way. You must start anew, all over again. You should know by now that you don't take short-cuts with sacred things." Yes, I had to remove everything and start over. A lot of eyes were upon me as I held up the session.

messygoop Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> You should know by now that you don't take
> short-cuts with sacred things."


Excellent description of the insanity and the reason I hated the whole fussy, fidgety temple experience and the pretentious nagging and petty nitpicking and "correcting" done by the weird temple workers.

"Sacred things".

There could not possibly be a more arbitrary adjective than "sacred"...especially the way it is used in Mormonism.

What's the definition of "sacred" ?

--> made or declared holy (So we have one arbitrary adjective (sacred) defined by another arbitrary adjective (holy).

Well, who declared it holy and sacred? That's right. The same guys who declared that people of African descent could not be worthy to hold the priesthood because they were descended from Cain. The same guys who declared that the penalties were sacred and holy, but then felt free to get rid of them because they were no longer desirable.

The way the sheep just fall in line for everything. Amazing. They could arbitrarily introduce a new feature called "smell the dirty sock of the prophet" and pass around one of the prophet's socks (taken off during a foot-washing ceremony) for everyone in the temple to sniff and touch, followed by sticking the finger that touched the sock into their mouth. And you know what? The sheep would do it, as long as they were told it was "sacred".

The Ordinance of the Sacred Stinky Sock.

"O Lord, we thank thee for a prophet who has worn this sock and sanctified it with prayer, so that we may be blessed with humility, as we inhale the pungent odor that reminds us of the frailty and impurity of our mortal shell, so that we will be reminded of our need to be saved from our imperfections, yea, even through the blood of Jesus Christ, who was sinless and did not wear socks. Amen."

You won't feel alone here; these are good people and I'm glad I stumbled onto here a few years ago.
My husband and I went through the temple for the first time in 1983, so for 7 years prior to 1990, we did the penalty stuff and the Five Points of Fellowship. I ignored all the red flags, such as Satan telling everyone what to do and everyone being instructed to follow along, and not realizing that when you repeat things back at the Five Points of Fellowship, you are condemning yourself, your children, and many descendants to Satan's power and direction. I only realized last year that the penalties have ties to the MMM, and that was the straw that broke this camel's back. We resigned last year.

Condemning yourself and future generations sure sounds like Original/Ancestral Sin...

Don't know how many times I was told that the workings inside the temple building were sacred not secret and that's why no one talked about it on the outside.I observed that for years. Satan is watching and listening so don't talk about what happens inside the temple building.These were the lines they were feeding me way back when and I bought into them hook line and sinker.I was told to never use Satan as an example in any talks given on Sunday. So when I jumped through all the hoops to get a recommend one of the first things that surprised me considering how he was viewed outside a temple building was that he had a rather large part in the film shown inside temple buildings.I guess its OK to think about him inside the temple building but not in the car going home.

Leadership doubled down and told me to look for a higher level of learning but that was not available. With all the silliness the atmosphere felt like "beam me up solution" wasn't too far off. A look back on those times it really was just all hype. But when doubting the line was you must be more righteous to see spiritual matters which are much finer and harder to see than the world has to offer.

Took temple preparation classes but we couldn't discuss anything about the inner working of the temple. Well there was one thing that people talked about and that was the mirrors you could look into to simulate eternity. Just go to any furniture store that sells mirrors and recreate it yourself a few $$$$

A couple years later it was a real eye opener while searching the internet I came across the word for word temple video on You Tube. So much for sacred not secret line of BS that I was fed for years. No wonder they told us not to be searching the internet for gospel info. Maybe should have been more forth right with better instruction at those temple prep classes so you would feel no pressure to memorize the lines when they ding that bell and a hand comes through the magical drapes. Now I know as well as anyone reading this that its all symbolic but when they just keep feeding you the old milk before the meat line you just gotta draw a line in the sand and call them out.

Some can detach easily from this cult while others depending on how deep they are can not easily separate. These are the people I have compassion for. When you meet them on the streets I used to think they were feeling sorry for me for leaving the New and Everlasting Gospel but as I matured I see it as they just can't muster up the strength to cut ties as they are too intertwined

The human imagination shows show no bounds just look what Smith created.

It always bothered me that we were told not to look into "anti-Mormon" stuff. Sure, it has a bias, but didn't the church trust its members to be able to look through that? Even more importantly, shouldn't members be able to refute any anti-Mormon preachings with doctrine? If anything, I always thought looking at anti-Mormon stuff should deepen your faith, since it raises questions and makes you look for answers.

Jade Duck, dissociation is how many normal people react to trauma!

I was traumatized, too. Like a few others, I felt I was in the presence of evil, every time I went to the temple. That creepy feeling never went away, no matter how hard I tried to delude myself.

You have a very good point, about questions leading to answers! I agree with you! Now, the Mormons don't really have Sunday school, and don't study the Pearl of Great Price, the Book of Mormon, the discourses of JS or BY, or church history, anymore. That's all supposed to be done "at home", under church supervision.

Ha-ha! I see "eternity" every day, in my dressing room mirrors.