You’ve suffered at the hands of clergy who you’ve entrusted with the keeping of your very soul. You’ve pledged your allegiance to a religious order, given of yourself in service, sacrificed for the benefit of the organization, then found out it was not what you thought it was. Now, you’re in religious recovery.
Religious recovery is not to be confused with AA, which assumes that you’ve failed if you ever take a snort of alcohol again. No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
There is hope for you.
You have had a relationship with God, and you can keep your relationship with your higher power without having to submit to your previous religion. God is not the God of any particular religious organization. Individual religious organizations are stepping stones to a greater relationship with the source of all life.
Had you not had this experience, you might not have been aware of the existence of a higher power. Now that you have been introduced to God and started to develop a relationship, you can keep growing and expanding as you keep pursuing a greater relationship with the creator of all life on your own.
You’ve taken the first step. You’ve exited the influence of an organization whose intent it was to control you, which has held you back from moving forward and beyond the capabilities of the faction you had associated with in the past.
The will attempt to deploy all the fear-based intimidations they can to make you feel like you are unworthy, unwanted, and may even threaten your survivability, tell you you’re going to hell, or decrease your own will to live, and you may occasionally feel like you can’t go on another day.
Your initial reaction might be to rebel, and judge the organization for treating you badly, deciding,
If that’s the way God is, I want nothing to do with it.
But remember, your problem is not with God. It is with the organization run by the people who are doing the best they can to serve God in the only way they know how. They have been programmed by the generations that went before and they live within the confines of a religion based on fear. Fear of doing it wrong, fear of punishment, fear of eternal damnation.
God is not a God of fear. God is a God of love. And you know it.
Now that you’ve taken a step toward your own religious recovery, you have the wherewithal to start your own relationship with your higher power without having to succumb to the heavy-handed mechanisms of religion.
You are empowered to follow your own path to enlightenment in any way that you see fit, sort of like a modern-day shaman. The traditional path of a shaman is more structured, not unlike an organized religion, but the modern-day shaman is widely expanding and evolving along with the rest of the human race.
The times are changing, and the whole planet is evolving from a fear-based system (which is not sustainable) to a love-based system which is heart-centered and seeks peace and harmony for all.
God is loving you, so excited about your finding your own way, and waiting for your awakening.
See you at the Recovery from Religious Trauma Event in Olympia, September 21st
