the shadow of egypt

"The path to the afterlife as laid out in the Egyptian Book of the Dead was a difficult one. The deceased was required to pass a series of gates, caverns and mounds guarded by supernatural creatures. These terrifying entities were armed with enormous knives and are illustrated in grotesque forms, typically as human figures with the heads of animals or combinations of different ferocious beasts. Their names—for instance, "He who lives on snakes" or "He who dances in blood"—are equally grotesque. These creatures had to be pacified by reciting the appropriate spells included in the Book of the Dead; once pacified they posed no further threat, and could even extend their protection to the dead person."

- Wikipedia

“Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being able to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the Holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell” 

- Brigham Young

"Therefore shall the ... trust in the shadow of Egypt [be] your confusion."

- Isaiah

I've been watching videos about Bohemian Grove. For anyone who doesn't know, this is a two-week retreat that the most powerful men in the world all attend in order to do all their plottin' and schemin'.  The retreat culminates with the "Cremation of Care" ceremony:


Attendees have included George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Eisenhower, Reagan, um, pretty much every important person ever. All of the most evil plans get hatched here. Our country is literally run by evil people. Aight peace

"Heaven and earth are impartial. They allow all things to die." ~Lao Tzu

Preach it, Lao Tzu. The Buddhist principle of impermanence has helped me a lot, coming out of Mormonism. In Mormonism you're taught that you can only be happy if you live forever with your family. I think a lot of people have trouble leaving because they can't come to accept that their life will end at death. The truth that we all have to come to grasp is that things end and there's nothing we can do about it, so we might as well accept it. But there is so much beauty that can be found in infinite moments, moments that touch the divine. These moments connect to things that are eternal. Truth, beauty, wisdom. But like Solomon said, "all is vanity." All will vanish. But it's all good tho #yolo

When Buddha was going to die, one of his followers asked him who should lead them when he was gone. This is what he told them:

"O Ananda, Be ye lamps unto yourselves. Rely on yourselves, and do not rely on external help. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Seek salvation alone in the truth. Look not for assistance to any one besides yourselves.

"Those who, either now or after I am dead, shall be lamps unto themselves, relying upon themselves only and not relying upon any external help, but holding fast to the truth as their lamp, and seeking their salvation in the truth alone, and shall not look for assistance to any one besides themselves, it is they, Ananda, among my bhikkhus (monks), who shall reach the very topmost height! But they must be anxious to learn."

In order to reach true happiness we must become lamps unto ourselves. This is the same principle that Jesus was teaching when he went around telling people that those who drank from his presence were drinking from a well that would never run dry, and that they could have this as well.

Stopping believing that everything happens for a reason is essential. What this really is is a kind of flattened way of thinking. It's manifest destiny, the thinking that led Columbus to kill all those people and take their land. It's what made people think the universe revolved around the earth. It's ego. It's It assumes that you know everything, or at least something. The way to get over a mistake is to realize that there are no mistakes, because nothing is really supposed to happen one way or another. But when it comes to love it's just so much harder to accept that.

It's like when Jesse and Celine in "Before Sunset" talk about how they'll just end up hating each other probably, but at the end of the day you just know that's not true. I think that's what's great about those movies, they really make you feel that some magical things like destiny, love, even love at first sight are possible. Even though it sets it in a very skeptical and pessimistic universe. I wanna write like that. But anyway. The dark ages won't be over until the majority of people realize that there is no special rhyme or reason to the events that happen in life. Everything has a cause, but the cause precedes the effect. It is not pre-destined (unless it is formulated by a conscious mind).

The way to have the well that never runs dry is to kill the ego and die to your past self and be reborn in every moment of your life. Never cling to any opinion or idea that you have, always be willing to throw it in the garbage when new information comes along and even then never think that you know anything for sure. But it's good to have principles. Pillars, gems of wisdom that you can hold onto in life (unless they prove themselves to be false). They're like theories, but rock-solid ones. It's good to build a house on rock and not sand. Iron rods. The golden rule is a good one. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Everyone's equal, pretty much ends up being the gist of it.

For me, the reasoning behind that is that none of us chose to be here. In Mormonism, everyone fought in a war in heaven before we were born and so when we were born, we basically have earned our lot in life based on how valiant we were in the war. But in reality, everyone was dragged into this world kicking and screaming against our will. So we all kinda have the same right to be here, and at the same time we never asked to be here. So I definitely think that everyone should have the right to live in total abundance (in the same class level), because that's what the earth provides for.

“Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times, that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils. Poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.….While poverty exists there is no true freedom. Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Make poverty history. Then we can all stand with our heads held high.” -Nelson Mandela.

So Republicans, let's stop talking about "work ethic" because honestly, to me that is code for master race talk. It's the same exact thing, because you're talking about the survival of the fittest. That's not what Jesus talked about. He said that since we have left the garden of eden, we have evolved past the animals, it's our responsibility to think on a higher level. We are not subject to the laws of the jungle anymore, or at least we don't have to be.

In closing, my friend just got back from living in Africa and confirmed for me that this is a real thing:

 found the following on tumblr. made me very sad for this girl...

There is so much I need to repent for…it makes me so sick.

I am so incredibly nervous for tuesday. I know my bishop won’t judge me but I HATE myself for all the things I have done. I keep feeling satan justifying everything for me..saying “hey its okay it was years ago” or “hey just say little details about it”

I keep letting myself believe its okay to only tell him half truths…but I will NOT serve a mission unworthy. Heavenly Father has given me this beautiful opportunity to serve HIS children. The ONLY way I can survive through this mission and give his words to those who he prepared to hear it is by doing EVERYTHING HONEST.

Kneeling before my Father tonight…I have decided to tell the bishop the FULL truth to everything I have done. I will NOT let the adversary justify my actions as okay. I just can’t wait til all of this is off my chest and I can have all these burdens removed.

I can testify of the beauty of this though. The Savior gave me everything on that cross, he suffered so incredibly much for me so that I could partake of such a blessing as repentance and the sacrament. How would he feel if I didn’t partake of this that he so willingly gave to me….how can I say I love him so much when I don’t even utilize the one thing he offered to me so freely because he LOVED ME.

I challenge all of you to do the same. We are all not perfect, but I can say we can achieve perfection, little by little.

her email is shannastlaurent@gmail.com; you can email her if you want to try to stop her from telling this 
middle aged dude all the intimate details of her sex life like we're in fucking iran or something

World peace.

There is only one way to achieve peace, and that is through freedom. The symbolism of the ring of power dropping into Mount Doom and dissolving. All authoritarian power structures, all tyranny and lordship, erased. The end of patriarchalism. This isn't going to happen without a fight. The powers that be aren't just going to stop destroying the earth and ruining the lives of its inhabitants as long as it benefits them greatly to do so. We have to rise up and make it happen.

I've been thinking...if you were to ask any Mormon if they were for or against world peace, what do you think they'd say? Probably FOR. But that's because there are two ways of achieving peace, and one is an illusion. The way that Mormons want to achieve it is through everyone on the planet becoming Mormon. Hence, the intense missionary effort and the baptizing of dead people. Total, universal conformity in mind and action. A Nazi's wet dream.

The other way is through the opposite philosophies, the philosophies of freedom, which are the philosophies of Jesus and the founding fathers of the United States. More freedom = more peace. Not control. The difference is the difference between believing that people are basically evil or basically good. If you believe that people are basically evil, then you believe that people need to be changed from what they are into something better. If you believe people are good, then you don't have to really govern them. It's the governing that actually causes the problems.

The idea that one state or religion could take over the whole world is the overall permeating fantasy of Mormonism, and it is a useless one. If we as Mormons really want to change the world for the better and have world peace, we not to stop going around telling people what to do and just help people. Instead of building a 3 billion dollar mall and other stupid things that Jesus Christ would truly facepalm at, let's go to third world countries and help create self-sustaining infrastructures for millions of people who are dying. There are holocausts in this world that are happening because of poverty and we're doing nothing about it. Ugh. It hurts me to much to write these words because I feel like they're so true but so few people will ever actually see them. I just have to try to make a change through my films.

stuff.

A lot of people tell me I should move on. Like, I write about my experiences in the church and some people are like, I think you should get on with your life and write about something else. And these are the friendly ones. Some people say things like "people who leave the church can't leave it alone," as if that's proof that when you leave you become an asshole. I'm sure church members see people who have left and are angry as like, evil people. I used to. 

The thing is, we can't leave it alone because in a way, at least at a certain point when we're leaving, it's literally all we have. When you're Mormon and you leave, it's like smashing a wine bottle and you have to build another wine bottle to catch the wine before it hits the ground. But the new wine bottle does form, almost automatically.

I reblogged this on Tumblr today and I thought it applied to this stuff.

I think that in losing one's god, one loses one's entire self. This is why, Osho says, Nietzsche went mad. He didn't have zen to go to. In the summer after I left Mormonism (Summer 2011) I sat in my room all day and sucked in zen buddhist philosophy and the theories of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. I feel like I have experienced what Buddhists call "the great death," a spiritual event that essentially dissolves the static idea that you have of who you are and what you can do, and opens up a whole new world alive with possibilities. I think this is also what the Christians mean to do with baptisms. A rebirth.

See, there were a few things that I was so attached to in Mormonism that I couldn't bring myself to live without. I need these things to function, and I think everyone kinda does. I've just come to have different undrstandings of them.

Ritual.

I definitely think ritual is an essential part of a society, but it has lost its usefulness at the moment because no one is using it properly. The function of a baptism is about the most useful ritual I've seen in Mormonism, but my favorite ones have been the Masonic ceremonies. They have way more fun death and resurrection parts. Anyway, ritualistic practice has been used from time immemorial to help mold the growing ids of the members of the tribe. The problem is that in our temples right now we're inculcating the people with a patriarchal, authoritarian agenda and this needs to be changed. We are waking up to the fact that all of this is meant to be taken metaphorically, but at the same time it exists in a very real way inside of our minds. 

"Myth is the public dream. Dream, the private myth." 

-Joseph Campbell. 

I think new ritual must be created. If we are entering into the age of Aquarius, as some say, I think the symbols of the two ages are apropos to what is happening to the consciousness of the people in regards to ritual and doctrine. We are moving from the fish (The Age of Pisces) to the water-bearer (Aquarius. If you believe that malarkey). In the previous age, men were fish in water. But now we are the man carrying the water; we can create our own myths and rituals according to what we have discovered to be right, not the old morals that we have been force-fed. 

Christ.

As a Mormon, there was a lot of emotion wrapped up in this archetypal image of Christ in my head. Basically, for me, Jesus Christ always represented the ultimate personification of compassion, empathy, selflessness, humility, grace, and unconditional love. The problem with Mormonism is that it doesn't actually put you on a path to BE any of these things. They tell you to be these things, but they don't actually have the knowledge of how to become like Jesus. They have boiled it all down to the magic tricks that he does in the Bible. Water into wine, walking on water, healing the sick, raising the dead, suffering for our sins, and coming back from the dead. You're supposed to get really watery-eyed when you talk about all this in church. Okay, so the reason that they hit so hard on all of these points is because this is the part of religion that has always been used to suppress the people. It's really just the same sun god religion passed down from Egyptian times. 

The reason that Jesus was crucified wasn't because he was half super-alien and therefore the universe needed someone to suffer all of the negativity in the universe or else bla bla bla. God, I used to twist my mind in such science fiction-y ways to try to make Mormonism fit in there. If there really was a guy named Jesus who got crucified, I think that story can still be useful to us as a nation and as a people. First of all, the teachings of Jesus are probably the purest, best moral teachings anyone has ever given anyone ever. He was for total non-vioence, taught that everything is one, he basically just got it. Thomas Jefferson made his own bible by cutting out the "diamonds in the dunghill" of the bible and pasting in essentially the teachings of Jesus. So what is this "Christ" business all about? Honestly I think that what Christ is is whatever principle in the universe allows us to love ourselves unconditionally. Leaving the garden of eden (growing up) is accompanied by feelings of shame. But we can enter back in and eat of the fruit of life if we simply decide to walk back in and say "Hey god! I actually don't care if you see me naked. Don't really need these Mormon garments anymore." Haha. Yeah.

I think the reason that Jesus was crucified was because he represented freedom, or in other words independence. Independence in its purest form; freedom from all judgement but God's. Freedom even from one's own self-judgement. But this would defy both the patriarchal system of government and of religion, so these systems killed this man for basically thinking and living on the next level. 

Satan.

I read a really good book called "The War of Art" in which the guy talks about the principle of Resistance. The thing where every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I think this is true with everything in life. Basically anytime you're ever going to do something, there are going to be forces at work to try to push in the opposite direction. I'm not really saying that these forces are going to necessarily exist outside of yourself, but it's possible. This is just how life works. I honestly think that the creators of Mormonism were on some next-level Satanic shit. Have you guys seen the Nauvoo temple? Check it:

Yeah, there are inverted pentagrams all over it. I'm fairly sure Joseph Smith actually was a Satanist. It would make sense. He grew up really immersed in the occult, and now that I've immersed myself in it all these years I've come to understand what Satanism actually is. Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, defined a true Black Mass thusly in the Satanic Bible:

"A black mass, today, would consist of the blaspheming of such "sacred" topics as Eastern mysticism, psychiatry, the psychedelic movement, ultra-liberalism, etc. Patriotism would be championed, drugs and their gurus would be defiled, acultural militants would be deified, and the decadence of ecclesiastical theologies might even be given a Satanic boost."

So basically he's saying the true church of Satan isn't necessarily the one that walks around going "hail Satan!" The true church of Satan is the one that abhors truth, light and progress (Christ) and embraces the darkness of ignorance, the mists of deception, and as I defined Satan earlier, the principle of Resistance. By aligning itself morally with the politics of the American right, the Mormon Church has wholeheartedly embraced all of the latter and thereby become the true Church of Satan.

Fate.
I have come to totally reject the concept that anything is predestined to happen before it happens, and I actually think that this is one of the most Luciferian aspects of Mormon doctrine. When you're about 16 or 17 (I was about to leave on my mission when I got mine) you get something called a patriarchal blessing. This is a blessing that supposedly tells you everything that's going to happen to you in your life if you are faithful and worthy enough. Mormonism totally embraces the philosophy of "everything happens for a reason," and flipping this way of thinking around is very important for someone leaving Mormonism. What you have to realize is that this way of thinking is responsible for most of the terrible things that have happened to people in the world. This is the aspect of God that is most destructive to people. For instance, when Christopher Columbus came to America, it was just a random thing that happened that could've been good or bad, like the farmer from the zen parable I quoted a couple of blog posts back. Now, we can argue about whether it was a good or bad thing but the reality is that a lot, hundreds of thousands if not millions, of people were killed and raped because Columbus showed up and took their land. Columbus is seen as a total hero in the Book of Mormon, which "predicts" him sailing gloriously to the new world and preparing it as a place for the gospel to be restored. The Book of Mormon is largely a love letter to the concept of manifest destiny. 

"I will be a second Mohammed to this generation…whose motto, in treating for peace, was 'the Alcoran [Koran] or the Sword,' so shall it be eventually with us, 'Joseph Smith or the Sword.’" -Joseph Smith

This way of thinking was eventually checked by the Mountain Meadows Massacre incident, which is a weird thing to read about. Mormons sneakin' around dressed like Indians. They can't be straightforward in anything, They've always got to be sneaking around double-talking. 

In conclusion. If you can sit still all alone and feel ok, then you have found Christ. That's what I think. Finding Christ is about finding the still point, that point that existed before time and space came into existence, that one single point that is the I AM, finding that point in the deepest parts of your being. When you access that, you have accessed Christ, and you can begin to have light in your mind. Your eyes will be like windows to light because you have understanding. When you start to live your life according to what you personally believe is right and wrong, rather than according to what you're told, then you have integrity of character. This is all enlightenment is, and finding Christ. It's having the inner light to know right from wrong and actually do what you really feel is right, not try to seek out the approval of others. 

Found this guy's story on exmormon.org. Just the first two paragraphs, the rest can be read here. 

I'd like to add my story to your web site. The decision to leave the church has been made very recently [Jan. 1999], with letters going out this very week to family, bishop, stake president, and church office informing them of my decision to have my name removed from the records of the church. So, I'm right in the middle of it all... which may make for an interesting post. (Perhaps I'll update it in couple of months or so with some perspective.) I've never done anything in my life that I was more sure of than stepping cleanly away from the church. I've never felt so peaceful, so free, and so alive in my life as I have since the 'change' began about 4 months ago.

What was the change all about? It was about doing my own searching for the meaning of it all. It was about reading some concepts in a book that were put so clearly that I couldn't help but change my mind about such basic things as the nature of God and the purpose of life. For the first time, the world made sense to me. No big nagging questions that I had had since I was a small boy. I gained a perspective that simply wiped out the stereotypical concepts of God that I'd been exposed to (Mormon and Christian mainly). For the first time in my life I saw God's love as truly unconditional and that we have God-given free agency to create what ever we want to in this life WITHOUT fear of condemnation or judgement in any form. Life is about the experience. It's simply about being. We're all OK in God's creation.

This guy totally gets it. 

Been thinking about polygamy. I mean, honestly, would I have multiple women all hanging around me all the time if I could? I mean I know for a fact that it's possible to be in love with more than one girl at a time, because that's my life 24/7. I'm going to save the polygamy talk for another day though. For now read this blog post.

Joseph Smith must have had a huge libido. I think that comes with being a very creative person. I imagine Joseph Smith to have been tripping on shrooms from a very young age. I myself have never done it, but I have read up on it and it really seems like it's what he had going on. In the Nauvoo days, he said "It is my meditation all the day, and more than my meat and drink, to know how I shall make the Saints of God comprehend the visions that roll like an overflowing surge before my mind." There are naturally growing hallucinogenic mushrooms in the area where he grew up, and he grew up in the folk magic community which definitely knew something of drugs, so I don't see it as too distant of a possibility.

In any case, I have often felt the same way, walking around with an overflowing imagination and wishing I could share it with people. Imagination was a big part of what led Joseph Smith to do the things that he did, which I think is cool. I mean, a lot of the challenges of the future are definitely going to require a lot of creativity on the part of leaders to solve. Unfortunately I think he was the last leader of the church with any creativity or charisma at all. I wish they'd let me take the reigns of the church.

Haha, isn't this what people always do when they leave cults or churches, they come back and say that it should be them running the place? Well now I get why. It's only when you enable yourself to view your own life or your organization with some objectivity that you are able to see the problems that need fixing. You have to be willing to admit that you might be making some mistakes, in order to be able to fix them. You have to drop the magical thinking that comes with the spiritual narcissism of Mormonism, and say hey, maybe I'm not perfect. Maybe no one is perfect.

There are still a lot of parts of the Bible that I believe in, because they line up with what I've experienced to be true in life. Here's a good part:

"And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."

Jesus told a guy that no one is good but God. I think when Mormons read this, it leads them to be self-righteous and kind of fake-humble. But lets all stop crying from the beauty of this guy's humility and actually examine what the fuck he's talking about.

There's no one good but god? Dude, you're just going around being a good guy to everyone. Who's better than you? I think the only thing that Jesus can be referring to here is the idea of subjective reality instead of objective reality. What's good to one person might not be good to another person.

This is a big, big concept in Buddhism. The idea that we shouldn't judge life as good or bad, but simply accept what is without wishing it were anything else. There's a zen parable about a guy whose son breaks his leg and his neighbor says "Oh no!" but he said "Meh, could be good or bad." Then the next day the military comes to enlist all eligible men to be in the army and the young man gets to stay. It goes on and on back and forth in the parable, but you get the idea. It's like, you might buy flowers for someone but then they might end up being allergic to flowers.

So in life, it's not that everything happens for a reason and that's why we can be ok with it. We can be ok with it, but because our notion of what is good and bad might be wrong at any given moment of the day. It's my opinion that Jesus was teaching Eastern philosophy to the Jews through what they could understand.

This is important because it taps directly into what is going wrong with the church. A gerontocracy has been been established as the government of the church. This is where the oldest guys automatically get the power. I think Joseph Smith originally wanted it to be a hierarchy but that didn't work out. The thing they need to realize is that the true spirit of Christ can't be expressed through any authoritarian power structure, because Christ is against all authority but God's and therefore is anarchic (without any power structure or authority) and, I would say, socially democratic.

So yeah. In my opinion, the people in charge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, specifically the Presidents, Counselors, Apostles, and Seventies, need to be overthrown and replaced by other committees of people who are genuinely committed to the principles that were taught by Jesus Christ. Why not dissolve the church altogether, you say? Well I mean, I still think that the church could have an important mission in the world, but it needs to change from what it is now. You can't just say that you really want to be like Jesus Christ but then lead the people in a totally different direction. They just spent 3 billion dollars on a luxury shopping mall and all of the prophets and apostles were there cutting the ribbon and shouting, "let's go shopping!"

So the question becomes, well, what is good? Like, what is that "god" thing that Jesus referred to? If that's what's good, what is it? Well, in Mormonism there was an image of an iron rod that got used a lot. "The iron rod is the word of God." It's like a thing we can hold onto in this world of Satan's confusing mists. Like the parable of the house built upon the rock and the house built upon the stone. You have to have some kind of footing in this world so you don't get "tossed around by the waves of the sea," as James said. I think that the iron rod we can all hold onto is simply, love. Meaning, do unto others and you would have others do unto you. Non-judging love. Total acceptance of reality. For me what it means is that if you're the one in the situation bringing the vibes down, then you're the one that's wrong, whatever the situation may be. Aight, Hurt out.

Diary of an Ex-Mormon...it begins

I think I was 12 the first time I noticed something was weird about my religion. The missionaries were over, giving my 10-year-old sister and I their shpiel. Another thing to keep us kids entertained while the adults were out doing God knows what. Basically imagine Bart and Lisa Simpson sitting half-eyed on the couch listening to two chuckling young "Elders" drone on about religion. Bla bla Jesus Christ. Bla bla God. Until one of the missionaries mentioned something in passing that made me raise my head up.

"Wait--did you say that we become gods someday?"

The missionary looked at his companion, with a look asking if he should answer. His companion smiled.

"Yeah, man. Someday we can create our own planets."

I laughed and thought of all the possibilities. I told them I wanted to make a planet someday where the show Beast Wars was real, and dinosaurs and robots could have awesome wars all for my pleasure. All of a sudden I had the best religion at my school! Wait till my friends heard about this! I'm going to a way better heaven than you, bitches.

They continued on in their lesson and started talking about the temples, those beautiful buildings we've all seen. I had recently gone inside one and participated in the Mormon practice of baptism for the dead. I had been baptized like 40 times in a hot tub by a guy dressed in white, "for and in behalf of" a bunch of dead foreign people.

I was telling one of the Elders about my experience and I mentioned that the guy who was doing the confirmations for the dead (laying hands on the head of the newly proxy-baptized kids and praying) had seemed like we was gay. I didn't say it with judgement, it was just mentioned in kind of a detail-remembering way. But they laughed to each other and said, "No, if he were gay he wouldn't have been in the temple." And I just remember feeling really weird right then. Like, oh. This is the trade-off. If I want the planet with the robots that fight the dinosaurs…I've got to say I have a problem with two dudes being together, I guess. There's always a catch. Well. Whatever.

I think there are a lot of moments when you're a kid and you have to say Whatever to the situation you're in. When the girl you like at school would never like you back. That's one time we all have to learn to say Whatever. But it gets harder when the situation is that your father is screaming at the top of his lungs in the kitchen about how he's going to leave, which had happened two years before. When you've already had that big of a Whatever, a lot of other Whatevers can kinda hide under it.

I have a journal from my mission that contains an entry in which I talk about how I'm trying to figure out why homosexuality is a sin. None of the explanations I had heard make any sense; they all just basically appeal to tradition, ignorance, and bigotry. Eventually my half-sister Kristy (from my dad's previous marriage) got married to a cool girl that I like and started having kids that I really love. They're one of my favorite families. Not long after, the church told us all from the pulpit that we had to tell all of our friends and family in California to vote for Prop 8. At that point I knew something was wrong. I started to realize that all those "Proclamation to the World" pamphlets about family that I passed out on my mission were actually gay-hate propaganda. I started to realize that the church had an agenda. Something was moving this organization that I had never before thought could have had any motives other than to try to help people come to Christ. It was moving the church in a bad direction. 

Eventually I learned about politics, how modern conservatives and liberals are, and I figured out that the church has aligned itself with the far-right for political purposes, much like Joseph Smith would have in his day. Right now they're sending out a lot of missionaries by lowering the age to 18 for kids to go, so I guess they hope to accomplish something politically by that. Joseph Smith actually sent out political missionaries when he ran for president, so that kind of parallels this.

Anyway, long story short, here I am, an ex-Mormon (well still technically a member of the church I guess, until they excommunicate me or whatever), writing about the things I learned as a Mormon and the things I've learned as a non-Mormon. I still live by a lot of the things I learned as a Mormon, like striving to be humble and a good person. It's just that my journey to become a good person led me away from the church. I've come to see that the church has been misled by false prophets into ignorant philosophies of prejudice and hatred, the very philosophies that Jesus of Nazareth fought so hard to destroy.

Eventually when I spoke up to my bishop about my feelings about how the church should keep politics out of religion, first I was given a pamphlet on how to deal with my gay thoughts. After explaining to the dude that I wasn't gay, he then proceeded to tell me about when he was on his mission and he had a problem with the church not giving the priesthood to Black people before 1978, and his mission president just told him to "put his thoughts on a shelf." That seemed to solve everything for him. I was just floored by how this guy seemed to take an easy solace in simply accepting the notion that he did not deserve to think his own thoughts. That was the last time I went to church.