I have noticed that since the blinders came off RE the church, I am becoming aware of ALOT of bullsh!t going on in the world around me. It seems that truth is a very rare animal indeed on this earth. We have been, and continue to be, lied to on nearly every front. Does no one tell the truth anymore?

I think maybe it has to do with the continual effort to allow myself to be lied to by the church, leaders and teachers in the church, and TBM family members. That some or even most of them believed the lies themselves makes no difference, they were lying nonetheless. I believe that somewhere deep down inside, we know when something is not true, and have to continually prop up the lies we claim to believe and live by. I think this is a great source of many of the ills of society, both physical and mental.

By the same token, allowing ourselves to see and acknowledge the truth is at the same time liberating and soul-crushing. It's a double-edged sword, one which cuts through the ties that bind us and keep us in the dark, and at the same time pierces our hearts when we see the enormity of the deception and betrayal used against us as a mechanism of control, which are forms of muted violence inflicted upon our hearts and minds.

And the pain we experience when our former friends and family members turn against us for telling the truth, thereby exposing to them the falsity of their cherished but oh-so pitifully flimsy belief system.

Politicians, religious leaders, corporations, government entities, advertisers and PR agencies, doctors and lawyers and lawmakers, history-book-writers, and many others are constantly lying to advance their own agendas, truth be damned. They couldn't care less for the truth. Truth only gets in the way. It's a pesky thing, to be swept aside, stepped over or around, drowned out, obscured, and obliterated when possible.

We who have somehow found the courage to shine a light into the dark basement of the falsely constructed reality that was our prison and allowed ourselves to see the matrix we were living in, have tasted some of the pain that accompanies those who dare to stop defending the lies. And this may be, in part, precisely because it is the lies, and not the truth, that dominate the social construct in which we operate. We would like to believe otherwise, but it seems obvious that the lie is much more ubiquitous than truth.

We are taught from a young age, to believe in every sort of fairy tale. Santa, Tooth Fairy, ghosts and goblins, some form of god, whether Elohim, Allah, Krishna, etc., superheroes, you name it. We are taught that the U.S. is some sort of special god-country ordained and brought forth as a bastion of freedom for the rest of the world to emulate. What a joke. We are being played, big time, by our government and prevailing economic and corporate power structure, just as much as we ever were by the so-called church.

(The fore-going rant was prompted not only by the reading of lots of material about the real history of this great country of ours, but also by the very recent family reunion I am participating in, which has reminded me of just how much psychic energy I expend when surrounded by my family members, whom I love, and yet who are all working so very hard at all times, whether they know it or not, to support a framework of lies handed down to them, and which they are studiously working to pass on to their poor unsuspecting little children, for whom my heart aches...)

Thanks for listening.

Greg

In spite of all the lying going around, I still prefer to tell the truth. Truth doesn't seem to go down very easy with mormons. At least that's been my experience.

You said it.

Truth has never been a compatible bed-mate with politics, religion, or even general stupidity.

Try not to let it get you down.

Great post,it takes a strong person to face the truth head on.
Those who are doing that are not in the norm of their personal circumstances and surroundings, and that makes it even more difficult. Congratulations to all of us who broke through the barrier.

I didn't spend any of my adult life in the church so I don't have nearly as many scars as some on this board do. My social structure wasn't tied to the Mormon church so I didn't lose anything by not going. I simply went as long as I was forced (about age 17) and then stopped going. I hated every single minute of it.

In spite of that, I feel a lot of anger towards the church. In fact, I'm somewhat surprised by it considering I didn't waste as much time, energy, and emotion on the church as many have.

However, when you come to the realization that you spent many hours of your youth going to an institution that is absolutely false and ridiculous, it tends to incite anger. I'm pissed that those hours didn't bear any fruit, in any fashion. My time could have been spent on more important things, like hanging out with friends I actually liked.

“In the time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”George Orwell, 1984

” Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.”Isabel Paterson


TRUTH IS TREASON IN THE EMPIRE OF LIES - Ron Paul



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2012 03:43PM by guynoirprivateeye.

Very thoughtful and well written post Greg.

It's the way I feel every time I leave a family reunion.

It would appear that the Father of all Lies is leading the church and doing a bang-up job.

A recent thread left me wondering what the church teaches that actually is true and I couldn't think of anything. I'm sure there is something, but I wouldn't trust it anyway with their track record. When some apostle said 'some things that are true are not very useful', I think he really meant to say, 'anything that is true is not very useful".

Lies and wishful thinking are a great match.

I totally agree, excellent topic, Greg (Formerly Beatnik?), and great insight into this topic!

I too feel that way every time I even so much as step out into mainstream society. It truly is very hard to express the truth that I've discovered without anybody ganging up on me, jumping down my throat, censoring or otherwise desperately trying to silence me, or accusing me of pushing some sort of selfish agenda!

I was going to type, right here at the end of my post, a quote I have seen a lot on bumper stickers that truly is relevant to this subject, but it seems guynoirprivateeye beat me to it once again! I guess "Great minds think alike" just might actually have some truth to it.

BTW: The quote I had in mind was the George Orwell quote in guynoir's post.

Thanks for the thoughts and support on this post. I was actually right in the middle of the family reunion when I wrote this, it's winding down today. Everyone went off to church, and just before they did I lost it (just a bit) when one of my brothers said something to my sister about how it didn't matter if she went to church in the clothes she had travelled in (jeans and a flannel shirt). I said that yes, it would matter, as the mormons are judgemental, and it sort of escalated from there. I had to leave and go home, and felt sick about it, because I had been holding SO MUCH in during the many hours I was with them all.

The trouble is, I love them. If I didn't, I wouldn't care. I could easily walk away, and not worry about their delusional lives.

I was talking with one of my SIL's today, she's very sweet, and I really do like her alot. But we're right in the middle of the conversation, and she says something about the church, I don't even remember what it was. Because what it sounded like to me, was something like this:

"So yeah, I've been busy working etc, things are going pretty good. And by the way, the EASTER BUNNY and I are getting together tomorrow for a bit of shopping! Wanna come?"

WHAAAAAAAAT!? Do you realize you just said you are going shopping with the EASTER BUNNY!? That IS crazy, isn't it?

OK, so that got me a little wound up. Add that to my finding one of my nieces reading the BOM while we were all at the beach yesterday. I just wanted to grab her and say STOP IT! That is all made up! WTH is wrong with you!? But of course I couldn't really do that, it just wouldn't accomplish anything except for major drama.

Then the final straw that really got me wound up today was this:
My brother and his family have a couple of NoMo high school girls living with them, due to the girls having serious family issues and needing a place to live. I just found out today that one of them is going to BYU-Idaho, and I was like WTF? Then I also found that one of them has been baptized, and that they were going to speak in church today! It just got me so angry.

These are a couple of really beautiful, sweet girls who have now been blind-sided and thrown into a situation where they've been love-bombed by my bro and his family, and are too young to know better. I'm so angry about all of this I can't see straight.

So now one is going to BYU and the other off to another college and they will be split up, yet another division caused by the g*dd*mned church!

Mormons have been Dumbed Down NOT to acknowledge any difference between Lies/Truth/Facts/Opinions/Perceptions.

with me, anyway:

a FACT is information/theory that can be demonstrated & repeated with 100% reliability.

a TRUTH would be something like: I Love my children, it may be accurate, but can change in the future, often isn't provable in any scientific sense.

Opinions are thoughts about such matters as religion, philosophy, politics, etc.

Perceptions are such as "I saw the red car go thru a red light & hit the green car in the intersection."

I have had some of the same struggles with loosing faith and not just in religion. I think it is because we now trust no one and only can rely on the facts. So when you stop drinking the coolaid of ___________, you have to come to your own conclusions. Those logical conclusions are often disheartening.