Is becoming an XJW like growing up?

ballistic

Did your process of leaving the organisation and learning new stuff feel like growing up to you? Looking back at your time in the so called "truth", do you think you were misled or even "naive"? Even "innocent"? Do you think it is just the result of having your eyes opened to something that makes it feel that way? Or do you think there is a real process going on here?

Sometimes when people post those "going back to the hall" threads, this is the perspective from which I cannot understand it one bit. Once you have had your eyes opened, you cannot un-learn what you know, or return to innocence.

anglise

Hi Ballistic

Interesting thoughts.

I think it is like growing up in a sense, and being in control of your choices in life.

I dont think going back to religion in general or JW's in particular is going back to innocence, I think it is a life style chosen in order to abrogate having to think to deeply about the future of either the worlds destiny or ones own. Leave everything to the big man in the sky.

So in that sense it is childish but not innocent.

Innocence once lost can never be regained.

I will probably annoy some by these thoughts. If so I am sorry, but at this time they are what I feel and believe. (After a religious life for more than 40 years).

Anglise

SpunkyChick

Oh most definitely! I feel like I am constantly re-educating myself. I am basically reading and studying everything I was told not to as a JW! Very very liberating. I'm learning much more about the world I live in than I ever did.

Phantom Stranger

Well, B, as Dorothy Parker said, you can take a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

It's an opportunity to become a true adult, but I know former JW's who are now Mormons, and to me, that's not a huge wakeup.

If you define adulthood as taking responsibility for your words and actions, many JW's go from being victims of the worls and of Satan, to being victims of the WTS. Getting past victimhood seems to be a good yardstick of adulthood.

gumby

Ballistic,

Excellent topic!

If a person has spent MANY years in the organisation, and especially those raised in it,......Have to grow in many ways in area's they didn't consider before. The future is one. Believing in others as equals is another. The truth about life is another. The list goes on. It's intresting to be doing a "crash course in life" at an age later than the rest of the world.

Gumby

Odrade

Yep, yep, yep. In fact I told my dad last week that he needed to grow up. Adults learn (hopefully,) not to go around imposing their ideas on everyone around them. Being a WTS lackey teaches exactly the opposite.

Odrade

somebody

Ballistic,

You asked and said::

Did your process of leaving the organisation and learning new stuff feel like growing up to you? Looking back at your time in the so called "truth", do you think you were misled or even "naive"? Even "innocent"? Do you think it is just the result of having your eyes opened to something that makes it feel that way? Or do you think there is a real process going on here?
Sometimes when people post those "going back to the hall" threads, this is the perspective from which I cannot understand it one bit. Once you have had your eyes opened, you cannot un-learn what you know, or return to innocence.

I feel as if I could have written the same thing on looking back on my life in being raised a JW. I had the same thougths and I asked MYSELF the SAME questions that you have asked here. I could never understand anyone "going back to the hall" either. For me, it was like a child going back to believing that there really is a Santa Claus. Once you grow up even to the age of say....6 or 7, your natural thougths are that there isn't and you face reality no matter how much you really wish Santa existed. Comparing that with what you said, I did look at leaving the borg and facing real life as growing up. I knew that "going back to the hall" was not going to help me grow up and live life in reality, nor could I have sat there and listened to make -believe land, no more than a child can "go back to believing" that Santa Claus really exists. But even coming to that conclusion took me quite a few years. It takes a long time to grow up! ;-) peace, gwen

luna

Odrade-

You told YOUR dad he needed to grow up?? Oh man... Wish I hadn't gone back home 2 weeks ago. I would've hid in your spare bedroom and listened.

As far as the topic...Yeah, I'd definately say it's like growing up. I think if you put ANYONE, no matter their age, in the situation of losing pretty much everyone and everything they love, you kind-of are forced to grow up. I know, personally, i went from being an insecure little, 19 year old kid, to being strong enough to deal w/ pretty much anything. I jumped out w/ both feet, tho...i didn't ease out, so I really got slammed w/ the shunning bit. Went from having a million friends and big family, to having pretty much no one. So, that in itself gives you ample opportunity to self reflect and realize how much you really needed to change in your life. For all the newbies out there, it really does get better. And all my friends that I loved and missed the most are out now, anyhow. (yay, Odrade!!)

Makaveli

Hi there.

I was going to start by saying 'in many ways' but surely that should be 'in every way'.

Although I would never say that I was innocent being a Witness. I knew all too well what kind of a world we live in. But in every way, leaving the organization pushes you into growing up.

For a start, you must search to find your real self. Being a Witness, you were never your real slef... you were self conditioned, designed and manipulated to think the way that those down in Brooklyn want you to think, and want you to act. I could never do this. I tried, I really did... but I just couldn't fit in to what they wanted me to be.

Deep down, I knew that my day of reckoning would come. By the time I left, I had gave over 75 talks,but I knew that I had to stop, I had to join the real world.

When I did, I began to look at people in a different light. These people weren't 'worldly', they are just the same as me!

I always kept one eye on politics, when no other Witnesses seemed to be doing so. I became gradually more passionate about what I believed... after beginning to read Crises of Conscience, I decided enough was enough and made a promise to myself that I would never go again. It's the only promise I have never broken.

I always said that Witness people, kids in particular, are soft like bread. One day, and everybody reaches that day, it catches up with them. It caught up with me. They have been raised in a controlled environment, protected from the elements of the real world. Unfortunately, this protection goes on and on as they are supported not to do anything in the 'world' and encouraged to engage in the 'pioneer work'.

When you leave something as controlling as this, its one hell of a shock to the system. Only those who have ever been involved in such a cult could ever understand ; I find it ever frustrating trying to confide in others about something they couldn't even begin to understand.

ballistic

Wow, thanks for all the replies and read all of them, I don't normally get many.

I guess I've done quite a bit of growing up in the nine years since I got divorced and disfellowshipped at the same time. (and every time I say that I feel inclined to say it wasn't me that was unfaithfull even though that scenario sounds like it!)

I really knew nothing about even basic things like fitting in with people. I think, though that now, I have taken some good things about my upbringing with me, but dosed up with a reality pill.

I guess Gumby is right, the post is of particular relavance to those raised in it.

Makaveli, you sound English, are you really in Turkey?

Is becoming an XJW like growing up?

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