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.