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"You never bring friends to church with you because
> you are embarrassed by how weird the church is."
If things go on at your lodge that you don't feel you can tell your
outside friends, and worse, you feel you must not discuss this with members of your own lodge, this is how oppression takes over.
Bad enough to keep secrets from your outside friends; it is even more oppressive to keep secrets from yourself, you fear to have a conscious inner dialogue about your own life.
When there are too many incidents you fear to admit to yourself, fear to reflect upon within yourself, your inner life dries up. It happens at first at the edges of your awareness, the way some eye diseases blind us by eroding our side/peripheral vision. One can lose most of one's vision without awareness of loss if blindness creeps in from the periphery.
One goes numb inside. This can be mistaken for serenity, but lacks the vibrance of serenity.
One may cease to have dreams -- especially if one is required to discuss one's dreams with a lodge preceptor or with a therapist affiliated with your lodge whom you fear does not respect confidentiality. (One good reason among many why ethical therapists avoid conflicts of interest.)
One may grow numb and become more and more dependent upon the joyful feelings manufactured by the group's rituals.
Over time You can find it too much of an effort to maintain lodge life and outside friendships, precisely because there are too many things you cannot tell your friends.
So, over time you may, by default, spend less time with your outside friends and end up with only the church and its people for company. You can
end up surrounded by people who have done the same thing -- dropped
outside relationships.
Ever so slowly, like fog drifting in, you end up lacking outside perspective.
**And..one of the things you dont like to be aware of is...feeling trapped. That becomes one of the things you find you dont want to face, and that feeling of being trapped becomes another secret you keep from yourself. It can be tempting to become yet busier with church or group projects and convince yourself that all this is right for you. And that feeling trapped is just a temptation from ego.
And because one often drops outside friendships by default, by not
thinking about it, you dont realize you've done it.
And these days, when so many of us have the 'busy disease' our
outside friends may be too distracted to catch on that they
are not seeing us quite so often.
Some exploitative leaders and groups deliberately keep people busy for
exactly this reason - no time to think.
When one is run ragged, whether by secular society or by an exploitative
guru or employer, one becomes too busy to be a person. One becomes a blur.
And..finally. Watch out if during pastoral counseling or shepherding, you are told something about yourself that turns into an oppressive secret.
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An off balance Sheikh or Pir or Msd
wants you to keep secrets. God doesnt deal in secrecy.
Privacy is negotiated between equals. Privacy supports truthfulness. Secrecy
generates lies and oppression.
Secrecy is imposed -- and it serves the Adversary. Paul told his judges that he
preached openly and things were not done in a corner.
Whispers and rumors and secret keeping are signs of a bad relationship, whether a group or friendship going sour -- or a church going sour.
The ways to confuse us are many.
* Keeping people busy and short on sleep. This hampers our ability
to use critical thinking -- and that includes discernment, a delicate
process.
* Exploiting crises when people are under stress due to hardship
in their lives. This happens to any of us - we get sick, or someone we
love gets sick or has some other hardship.
* People we love and trust are tricked into putting their trust
in something misleading and we trust their recommendation because we love
them as friends. This happened to me.
* Hanging onto good memories and not being able to face that a once
trustworthy leader or group has changed for the worse.
*Becoming used to living with unease. I have fallen into this trap a lot. I
grew up in a very anxious family and so before I could think, I was
accustomed to living in the midst of unease. People from this kind of background
can easily ignore bad signs or incongruities.
Properly taught and understood, God works through creation and through our bodies and relationships, not against them.
* Are you getting sick more often? When I got out of a bad situation, I
had fewer colds. A girl pal of mine who was involved in a miserable relationship
and got out of it, was amazed when her grades improved and her anemia went away. She'd been suffering heavy GYN bleeding due to stress. When she left this
bad situation, her health improved.
* If you get sick do you discover you are glad because that means you dont have
to go to church or to meetings of a group that is making you miserable?
* Do you find yourself feeling angry or anxious or depressed when on your way to church or a group that you formerly enjoyed?
*Are you doing more stress eating? Doing shopping compulsions you never had before? Instead of feeling shame and berating yourself, treat these as clues and apply discernment. I was once very angry at someone. Instead of being able to face this, I did something I had not done before -- purchased and read books about battles and military affairs. I remember being puzzled. Only after I got out of the situation did I realize I was feeling as though in a war, and acted it out in my choice of reading materials. So...notice changes in your own behavior -- it may be a sign of a secret you are keeping from yourself.
* You find you are putting more effort into hiding things about yourself
because you dont want to allow an opening that could lead to your being
reprimanded
* You learn to avoid key words or topics that trigger discord or work requests
from your domineering leader
* You stop telling your family or friends about what is going on because you feel afraid that if you do tell theml, they will stare and think it is strange or bad for you and you dont want to face this kind of honest input from your friends.