My worst nightmare, a speaking assignment last night. I've been OUT for 38 years!

by FatFreek 2005 9 Replies latest jw experiences

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  FatFreek 2005

  Every five years or so I have this vivid and recurring dream, tho you'll probably surmise it's more of a nightmare. I learn somehow that I am scheduled for this theocratic ministry school speaking assignment, the Instruction Talk (do they still have those 15 minute drone-athons?).

  I become racked with tension knowing that I haven't even prepared for an assignment that is only 30 minutes away. I'm in my casual clothes, no coat and tie, and there's no way I can make it home to change and get back – much less, prepare the material for that keynote address in the school.

  I look around the Kingdom Hall to see if I can offload this talk to someone else but no one even looks at me cuz I am disfellowshipped and am being shunned like a leper. This confuses me, the fact that they even want to listen to something I have to say from the podium. It's ironic that I actually want to do good on this challenging obligation, imagining that they may double-disfellowship me if I blunder the task. This will be, for them, reinforcing proof that apostates are evil.

  I look again at the outline, a dog-eared sheet of scratchings that I can't begin to decipher, and I want to scream “not fair”, but I know nobody would listen to one disfellowshipped piece of fecal matter – me.

  Hey, why am I going through this torment – this anguish, I ask myself. I haven't even believed this crap for the past 38 years, contradictory nonsense which has even become less and less credible as time marches forward. Go ahead, I mumble to self, get out of this joint and nobody will even notice. Go ahead and wake up from this nightmare – and I proceed to do exactly that with an enormous sense of relief.

  But, I must confess, for several minutes this morning, there was also this pervasive feeling of guilt because I hadn't honored that bizarre school “assignment”.

  Len
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  Village Idiot

  I think it's your mind seeking some closure. Maybe your subconscious is telling you that you have some unsettled business regarding the Witnesses in general or any individual Witness that may be related to you.

  I've been out for 35 years but I sometimes have dreams of visiting a congregation while I realize it's not the truth. It might be because I never had the opportunity to tell any Witness that their religion was not the truth.
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  FatFreek 2005

  You have a point there perhaps because my exit was rather bizarre itself. I had forgotten that the next Sunday following my announced exit from the body of elders I was scheduled to deliver the public talk in Ames Iowa. I had no intention of ever setting foot inside a Kingdom Hall again.
  The presiding overseer, a nice fellow, did not yet know my inner feelings and how strong they were and he approached me and asked me, he even begged me to go ahead with that assignment in Ames.
  I can't even remember the subject of that public talk but I do remember that it didn't offend my conscience at the time. As I looked out over the audience during the discourse I felt pity for the folks in those chairs. I also pitied myself, in a sense feeling like Judas Iscariot. It was the very last meeting I ever attended.
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  Godsendconspirator

  It sounds like you've already left and the only piece still in is your heart. Go against it and just never go back.
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  stan livedeath

  dont worry about it freek--next time you dream it you will be stood there at the podium bare ass naked.
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  WTWizard

  I have had dreams where I was at a boasting session, or that one was about to be held in my own home (which was still decorated with Christmas decorations, at times). Or that I was in field circus, or unavoidably headed out in field circus, and don't know how I got there. Or, at a big or grand boasting session--as often as not, out of town.

  The strangest part is that I will not willingly go back. In these dreams, I either blundered back (much the same way a smoker that is quitting might backslide into smoking) or found myself there not knowing how I got there. Yet, the biggest threat (indeed the only way I would ever go back) has not come up--the threat of getting a court order or threatening letter that needs to be signed at the boasting session under threat of getting sued for "breach of contract". Or being forced to sign agreements (such as pious-sneering, going on the Israel mission, and so on) under threat of being sued or drugged "because my dedication is a legally binding contract".
  
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  FatFreek 2005

  I guess my brain is not so dissimilar when compared to others, like ya'll, who've been at the mercy of this cult. To those lurkers who feel this cult is some dormant group, think again. The Great Watchtower Contradiction shows otherwise.

  Len
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  Vidiot

  Wow.

  Most of the nightmares I'm able to remember just involve high school and public nudity.
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  Nathan Natas

  Wow... it's a good thing that in the New Order people will take their obligations seriously.

  PS -

  I am not a crackpot.
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  Xanthippe

  Yeah I still occasionally dream about the cult - been out 27 years. But your dream is a variation of a common recurring dream that many people have of standing on a stage about to sing, speak or act in a play and not having the first clue of the necessary words.

  This dream is always accompanied by the feeling that everyone else knows what they are supposed to be doing except for you.

  From what I gather from talking to people this is a human condition dream. Sometimes we feel lost, don't know what the hell we are supposed to be doing with our lives. Everyone else seems to have goals and know what they want but today, this week, perhaps this year, we feel lost.