I didn't pressure any of our kids to quit the church when we quit believing. I quit believing long before their Mom, so I had to take the "New Order Mormon" route for about 3 years, to avoid getting a divorce. But eventually I found the key for her de-conversion, which was polygamy, polyandry and convincing her the Joseph's Myth was a sexual predator who abused his wife emotionally and totally gaslit her with a fake revelation that's still contained in D&C 132. It was like a light went on in her mind and she totally changed. She went from threatening me with divorce if I was honest with our kids about my doubts, to saying, "That's it. I'm done. Let's stop by Victoria's Secret to get some sexy underwear. I always hated these God Damned Garments, and the Temple! Every time they said 'bow your head and say, 'yes', I'd bow my head and say, 'Fuck You', Oh and stop by the liquor store. I need a stiff drink!" (Unfortunately she didn't stop there and ended up making up for lost time and threw our marriage in the garbage after 30years in the process of getting even with that man whore Joseph's Myth who robbed her of her GD youth!)
3 of our kids took to non-Mormonism like ducks take to water. But our oldest Son had the hardest time accepting the fact that we quit believing in Mormonism, when he was 12 years old at the time. He didn't quit, even though we did.
He kept going with his TBM Grandma and my TBM Sister. It wasn't until he got tired of being treated like a poor little orphan child, who's parents had died that he decided to quit going. He was like, my parents are not dead, they just go to a different church down the road. (Yeah, totally not a CULT.) He grew up and adjusted to not being Mormon, but he was always really resentful towards me for, in his words, "Ripping the rug out from underneath me, after raising me to be a Good Little Mormon Boy, by telling me everything you taught me about the church we were born into, was wrong."
That was one of the toughest parts of leaving the Mormon church, having to explain to my kids, in a way they'd understand, why I did a 180 and rejected our only family's only real religious identity. The way I did it was probably not very convincing to them at the time.
Yesterday he asked me how I explained the spiritual experiences I had as a Mormon, that confirmed the truthfulness of the church, now that I was no longer Mormon.
When I was a youth I got a "Patriarchal Blessing" that said a lot of things that would turn out to be true. One of them was that when I was ready, I should consider not only my needs, but the needs of my fellow men and I should go to the Lord in prayer and that I would be visited by heavenly messengers who would outline my field of study and career to me.
So when I got home from my mission, I knelt down on my knees, said a prayer and heard a voice telling me what my field of study and career would be. I had never considered that career or the field of study in college, which was Math, because the last math class I'd taken was 10th Grade Geometry, which I almost failed. I went and spoke to my college guidance counsellor who told me that if I really wanted to go into that field, I'd be the first one who graduated from that college to go into it and in order to get accepted into the school I had to have a year of calculus and a year of Physics. I signed up for Physics and Algebra 101. The first day of physics the professor started solving physics problems using quadratic equations and calculus. I knew I was in over my head. I decided I'd drop the class. I was walking down to the registrar's office to drop the class and that little voice in my head said, "Turn around. Go back and talk to your professor." Clear as a bell. So I did. I went back and explained to my Physics Prof why I had decided to drop her class. She begged me not to drop it and told me there were really on about 4 equations I needed to remember and the rest she'd give me if it was on a test. She went through and taught me all the equations and really encouraged me in physics. I turned out to love physics and excel at it. It also motivated me to learn all the math that goes into physics and I ended up excelling at math and loving it also.
So long story short, every step along the way in my career, I've felt like I've had a little extra help and motivation, from this little voice that pops up occasionally to tell me what direction to take in my life. And I always listen to that voice, because it's never steered me astray. I still do. Even though now I know that little voice isn't a 'heavenly voice' it's a voice inside of me. It's like my conscience, telling me the difference between right and wrong, and inspiring me to have compassion for others and raise my consciousness about the suffering of others.
So that's how I explain it now, it had nothing to do with Mormonism, it's just that my inner spirit, or psyche, or subconscience, or soul, that part of me that is the best part of me, knows, is like a guide that never steers me wrong.
It's that same still small voice that convinced me that I needed to turn around, when I had my hand on the door of the church office building. It told me I had some serious questions in my mind about the church that I needed to resolve before I committed to working for the church designing temples.
He said to me, "I have NEVER had any of those experiences. And I want them. Trust me. I do. And it's so rare to have those kinds of experiences. It's really rare Dad. It's like a gift."
Like I told him, "We all have a conscience. I believe that's the still small voice that spoke to me. It was my conscience or what Jung would call my psyche. You have one too. We all do. We just have to tune out all the other noise to hear it. and that's the tough part, tuning out the noise."

More than a decade after I left Mormonism, I am just now coming to terms with the idea that some of my strongest spiritual experiences probably came from within myself. My own conscience.

But, even if we go with the idea that there may be something outside of ourselves that we're connected to, it only means that we can't currently understand what it is.

It doesn't automatically mean that there's a god, and it definitely doesn't mean that Mormonism is "true." It just means that it's an ability that we can't explain yet.

`I have been helped all my life this way!!! I have a journal of experiences where I record this stuff periodically.

I agree some people want to call it 'themselves' that is ok as long as you recognize the potential of getting help.

My brother who was very intuitive never accepted it wasn't just his intellect. He definitely got a lot of help also.

In the past few years my sister claimed she never got any of this help then I gave her examples in my life. She has had a number of these 'helps' recently. It doesn't matter who gets the credit ---- its the believing in the 'possibility of getting help' and actually getting help that is important.

If you truly think about problems throughout the day and talk to others eventually the solutions or at least the next step to a possible solution does come across your mind as inspiration.

Thinking out loud, or praying to heavens could be seen as a form of meditation as you go over the problem and as you put it on the back burner the brain finally computes a solution. This my friends is inspiration. If you are religious in minded you just checkmark as the big guy handing you a win.

It doesn’t explain pre-cognition though. Once when I was smashed, I made a specific prediction that came true five years later.

How many specific predictions that you made NEVER came true?

Using your one criterion, everyone is a prophet and pre-cognition is a genuine fact.

Since I remote view for people that do use the data to invest and I get feedback the next day ----- on a good month I get around 65% accuracy in the stock market. On a bad month I go into the 50s% --- which is close to guessing. I think my record is 7 straight hits.

Working with a cryptocurrency investment group I have got currently over 70% accuracy on 7 predictions. They don't make daily predictions.

Based on a few months of doing this my accuracy cycles ---- sometimes life issues seem to decrease my accuracy. Hopefully, I can identify when I am more likely to be accurate and when not. More practice should help.

However, we don't tie RV to anything spiritual but something all people can do ----- get accurate impressions.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2020 01:58PM by spiritist.

Throughout my Mormon years, I got much better answers when I didn't seek divine assistance than when I did. That was partly because when I asked the Mormon deity, I carried a lot of baggage about what the correct, righteous, acceptable, doctrinally-aligned answer would be.

olderelder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Throughout my Mormon years, I got much better
> answers when I didn't seek divine assistance than
> when I did. That was partly because when I asked
> the Mormon deity, I carried a lot of baggage about
> what the correct, righteous, acceptable,
> doctrinally-aligned answer would be.

God that's so true.
I also think the more rational your decision, usually the better, and there's another side, the imaginative side.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2020 11:06PM by schrodingerscat.

My most powerful burning-in-the-bosom "spiritual experience" was when I finally admitted to myself I didn't actually believe any of Mormonism.

Spiritual experiences are just that: Experiences that seem special or insightful or difficult to explain. I continue to have experiences like this and they have absolutely zero to do with the mormon church in any way. It's so sad that people consider it all proof of a small controlling provincial sect of pseudo-christianity

Another of the kluges of human consciousness.

That same voice said to me, out loud, in the middle of a sea of suits, at a Priesthood broadcast, as if I had no control over it,
"It's a fraud."
in response to hearing the so-called "Prophet" Hinkley say, "It all boils down to the First Vision. It either happened the way Joseph Smith said it did, in which case it's the greatest news since Jesus Christ, or it didn't and it's the biggest fraud ever foisted upon mankind."

Cool, I wish it would have happened sooner for me!

However, it only happened when I was researching church history for a lesson and John Dehlins website came up and I don't know how as I can't remember searching for it. At the time he had all those interviews with BYU researchers that did research on church materials in the vault. After listening to the research work it didn't take long to recognize the scam, then other parts of the scam were disclosed via the net.

I do think we chose this 'Mormon experience' before we came here and the troubles and issues that came with us finding out and breaking away. We all had similar experiences but some much tougher than others.

Mormons often see this question as a silver bullet, for those of us that have left.

My response is always:- how does every Born Again/Catholic/Methodist/JW/Hindu/Sikh/Buddhist/Muslim etc, explain their spiritual experience because she sure all claim to have them, just as Mormons do.