Last night I had a vivid dream. I was in a Kingdom Hall, not one I recognize, during a Watchtower Study.
Not once in the many years since I left do I recall dreaming about meetings, field service, or anything JW-related. So I'm sure that spending time recently on this site inspired the dream.
So I was sitting on the far right of a row near the front, near the door, with my mother. The "study" was extremely boring. During the reading of the paragraphs I had very lucid thoughts of how hypnotic it was, how it was the root of brainwashing.
I contemplated making a dash for the door to take a walk in the wood-panelled corridor outside, just to stay awake. But I realized it would be too obvious, so I stayed in my seat.
I had a yellow highlighter in my hand, and I marked a phrase in the Watchtower magazine, then had an internal debate about why the heck I was doing that since I would never read it again, and now my mother wouldn't be able to "place" this copy.
I looked back and around me, and recognized three people as secret apostates. I don't know how I knew, but I sort of recognized them from JWN. One guy across the aisle gave me a big wink, as if he knew we both didn't belong there. A woman put up her hand to answer a boring question and I thought, how odd, since she doesn't believe this stuff. Then I realized that it was her way of pleasing her family sitting next to her, while alleviating her own boredom.
I thought about answering too, since I used to love answering during meetings. But none of the questions were on the same pages as the paragraphs!
The apostate guy directly behind me, who also seemed to recognize me, was sitting next to his mother. In fact all of us friendly apostate people were sitting with family members.
So this got me thinking.... how many congregations have "secret apostates" - I'm pretty sure there are more than a few in each congregation, running scared. If only there were some way to identify each other, support each other, in real life.