Ahhh, Celtic, this thread is right up my alley.
I am the way I am right now because of the event of my epiphany in January of this year.
Before that time, I was still essentially me. I looked the same, spoke the same, and felt the same about many things. The only difference was, I was spiritually damaged. I was in limbo. I had no true inner joy or fulfilment.
When I was young, my cognitive training and my own genetic makeup set me up to be a very shy, tentative person. I was afraid to make decisions. I wanted to be loved and accepted, but never felt as if I was. I was always on the sidelines, watching everyone else have fun.
There was a very deep conscience that prodded me along, and I had great motivation to be a good person, because I feared hellfire. Then when JW's came on the scene, they got rid of the hellfire fear, but replaced it with the Armegeddon fear. Living in fear and guilt is not healthy. Living in a disfunctional family is not healthy. Being a JW in a cult was not healthy. It only fed into the emotionally scarred being that I was.
I lived much of my life not knowing the true me, that is, the inner self that could feel free to live life to the fullest, and not worry so much or live in fear and guilt. I did this through much self study and going back, way back and "retraining" my belief system, as to what was really valid and what was not, and how it shaped me and what I needed to change. This took years and years. But, then, boom, out of nowhere, the beauty of my true self came forth and I felt like my soul had at last been freed within my being. I had entrapped my own soul because of how I was living my life. I wasn't really living. I was just existing.
Now I am so completely happy and full of joy. As I've said here before, this has nothing to do with any religion and everything to do with understanding my own spirituallity. This does not mean that anything at all has really changed. My perception of the world that I exist in has evolved.
Thank you for allowing me to express myself here.
Love and Light,
Karen
