knowmad Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Greetings people, A big thanks to MQTA for the link. Will post my deconversion hilights within the next few days. Had a quick squiz around and the site feels great. Deconverted Jan this year and so far it's been liberating, but more of this when I get some serious time to devote to it. Laterz ~waves~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MQTA Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Welcome ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Checkmate Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Greetings and salutations, Knowmad! Welcome aboard the good ship Heresy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Greatly Welcome Knowmad, I hope you will enjoy it here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dianka Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Greetings and salutations, Knowmad! Welcome aboard the good ship Heresy! 100968[/snapback] Hey, I thought this ship's name was The Seaword. In any case, welcome Knowmad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnosis of Disbelief Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Hello hello hello! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
All Gods Fail Posted November 4, 2005 Share Posted November 4, 2005 Looking forward to hearing your eximony! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knowmad Posted November 9, 2005 Author Share Posted November 9, 2005 Thanks for the welcome. Hope to get it posted sometime today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knowmad Posted November 10, 2005 Author Share Posted November 10, 2005 My deconversion. Background: The hardest aspect about this will be to keep it short as I am energised through writing so here we go...hold on to ya knickers girls ! Born into a non religious family. Although I can recall mother sending us to Sunday School a few times when I were real young, there was never any discussion about bible god or anything spiritual. Come to think of it, we never really discussed anything. Quite a messed up family now that I think about it. The world was interesting but I never explored any aspect of it. I just took a quick glimpse every now and then. For 20 years my life consisted of this routine. Wake up. Go to school/work. Come home. Go to sleep. Much like how animals seem to live. I existed but I never thought about anything. I'm the youngest of three brothers and I can't recall any deep emotional or intellectual interactions with either of my parents. We were basically ignored on those levels. We were fed and clothed etc but the emotional bonds were never established. In that horrible environment I grew up extremely naive and underdeveloped. For example, 14 years old and had no idea how to use a public telephone. Life was scary and confusing and I felt like the walking dead for many many years. You can also see how utterly unlovable I perceived myself to be from growing up in that environment. A good candidate for being seduced by the promises of a religion for sure. With such an empty foundation to build from no wonder I was suicidal and full of self hatred from as early as 7 years old till well into my 30's. Add to that, my inability to think about things only kept me in slavery to my internal hell. From the start to about 22 years old I had never thought about bible god but had a nieve notion that he didn't exist. Like all the other things I internally accepted, they were not based on facts or reasonings. Because of all the inner turmoil, I had a major meltdown at the age of 20. My mind had been overloaded so much that it just shutdown for repairs. If I didn't have a strong trait of never giving up I would still be in shutdown mode shuffling my way around some cold mental institution. LOL I spent a few months carrying a dictionary because I could not even comprehend it when someone said hello to me. I'd have to consult the dictionary to understand what they were saying to me. The expressions on people's faces when I whipped out the book was well worth the insanity ! As I began to climb my way back from the brink of full blown insanity, I think I was about 22 and I was chatting to a fundie and I had an encounter with bible god. Also at this time, I was once again extremely suicidal and at the end of my life. This encounter changed my life. The knowledge that bible god existed and that he loved me and that there was a purpose for my life gave me absolute hope and that the inner hell would be dealt with and that life would make sense and I could be a part of reality. So from that first encounter on, I devoured anything and everything in regards to bible god. Bible God explained everything and every aspect of life was slowly being taught to me. Looking back at it, the first 10 years of my christianity was mainly one of a superficial external change to conform to my peers concept of what a christian should look and behave like with a subtle undercurrent of a steady accumulation of knowledge and internal change. And during those years I was for the first time starting to use my brain and saw that I could delve deep into things and explore and reason and formulate and all those other great things that the mind can do. YAY ! I have a brain and know how to use it. This was a great time for me because it was the start of self acknowledgment and the counter productivity of the negative view I had of myself. The year after my major meltdown, I was telling my friend, " I have no idea who I am, I feel like I don't exist.I just don't understand anything." Bible god began to change all that. LOL this is long already...anyway, During my first 10 years of christianity while I was devouring the biblical truths and my mind was finally active, I began to notice cracks in the truths presented. During this time I just put it down to my insanity and that I was percieving it wrong and just trusted bible god for my life. How scary is life when you have no idea if what you percieve is real or not. During those 10 years I did the whole married with kids thing and my social interactive life was progressing nicely but still I had bouts of sheer depression and confusion and still a strong sense of alienation or detachment with reality. But these were weakening as time went on but also I noticed more and more that man's christianity was not the christianity I read about in the bible. I started to chase after the real god of the bible and not the fake/watered down one christianity was presenting. Then one day, out of the blue I had a Job experience. My wife left me with no warning. She took the kids. I contracted Glandular fever and was unable to work for 1 year, losing my house, possessions and ability to generate a 'head above the water" income. Ten years ago my christian walk came crashing down around me and utter hopelessness and confusion reigned once again. But something wonderful happened when my world came crashing down. The god of the bible made his first real visit and from that day on we had an amazingly deep and intimate relationship. And within this real relationship, the inner hell was beginning to be removed. Year by year I can recall key elements being exposed, addressed, dealt with and overcome. Finally I thought, I am living and it will only get better. Half way throught the last 10 years I knew god was calling me to be an apostle and I walked a purely spirit led life and it was amazing to see the transformation. A transformation from deep within and not some superficial covering the previous 10 years were. My life in christ was secure and I was powering on to becoming an apostle who would change the lives of millions of people. Turning point. About 1-2 years ago I was in a forum explaining all my spiritual experiences and the reality of bible god and he asked me this question, "How do you know it's not just in your head ?" I honestly could not answer that question. Yeah I could have given a LOTV response and said, "Because bible god is real." But there's no way I could live with myself knowing I had not explored this concept. (For those of you that don't know who LOTV is, I cannot explain her. You have to see her for yourself LOL...if you can handle the mind warp) A concept that I had never thought of before because I went from not thinking or having established beliefs to one of fully believing in the bible and god and never exploring all other concepts or truths that were out there. I realised that in my christian life I was in a form of denial or unwillingness to check the validity of this life. To check my beliefs out and test them to see if they stand up to interrogation. So for about 1 year I recounted all my experiences I had with bible god and found that they could all be explained or categorised under something that wasn't interaction with bible god. For the first time in my life I began to honestly explore my christian reality and my inner perceptions of it. I began to look at my walk of faith and had realised it was psychology that had done the internal repair work in me and not some mystical spirit doing surgery on me. Deconversion. The final and absolute revelation that bible god didn't exist was me thinking about water. One of these thoughts being the tsunami that hit last year. That event summed up all the biblical inconsistancies and errors I had noticed in my 20 years of believing but had denied or brushed aside as me being insane to not understand them correctly. December 2004 I was at my lowest and had 2 failed suicide attempts and had the third one planned knowing it would work. It was during this time that I began to reason that bible god had not freed me from any of the inner hell his word promised. And snap! I concluded that he didn't exist. With this new foundation I went to the doctor and for the first time in my life I was told I had chemical imbalance manic depression. The depression and suicidal thoughts last year just came from nowhere and hit me like a tidal wave. Where was bible god during that time ? Nowhere to be seen compared to the supposed interactions with him for the last 10 years. He wasn't going to help because he never existed, so I helped myself. I took responsibility for my life, past, present and future and am happy to say that soon after my initial doctor's consultation I knew I was cured of this illness. Self repairing is all I can describe it as. After realising that bible god doesn't exist, I began to devour information that during my 40 years I found intriguing but christianity forbade it: Geology, ufos, ancient knowledge, science, history of other cultures, unexplained mysteries and the power of the mind etc. I was completely blown away when I read these books because it showed how blind I was when I was a christian. So in summary I suppose my deconversion is a result of being honest with myself and confronting and finding answers to those questions and doubts that I used to have and ignored. Although during the last 10 years of my christain walk I had internal freedom but nothing compared to this new freedom I walk in now. I also have noticed that my life walk goes in ten year increments. Age 0: birth.Then 20 years not believing. What happened to me when I was 11 ? I dunno, premature puberty ? Age 22: Conversion. Then 10 years of looking for bible god. Age 32: Job experience. Finding bible god and 10 years of intimate relationship with him. Age 43: Deconversion. Realiseing that bible god never was there in all those interactions. Now the start of another 10 years. Look forward to what I will discover during it. As I write this I just realised that most of my deep thinking is done on a subconscious level. So while I was a believer I suspect that deep down I was costantly analysing my beliefs LOL blah blah blah. Okay, I better unplug from this post or it'll never be finished. Rereading this post and it comes across as a hodge podge of information. Sorry about that and I know if I wanted to make this post as perfect as I can it would take me a month of development. I hope it's not as bad as I percieve it to be and thanks for the opportunity to share it with you all. Life is absolutely amazing and such an adventure of exploration and discovery. Oh shit, now I'm crying. WOO! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knowmad Posted November 10, 2005 Author Share Posted November 10, 2005 LMAO ! I knew I had forgotten something. I just woke up in a slight panic realising what I had left out of my post. So in summary I suppose my deconversion is a result of being honest with myself and confronting and finding answers to those questions and doubts that I used to have and ignored. Plus this new info... As the inner turmoil decreased, confusion, lack of self belief in my thinking and rationality, I began to believe in myself as to what was truth instead of living with doubts and uncertainty. And I have always been an outsider, a non conformist always challenging the status quo. As insanity decreased , these qualities came forth and during my 20 years of christianity I found myself growing in confidence that what I saw I really did see and I started basing my life on my own thoughts and not on others. So what seemed like a sudden 1 month deconversion event actually was a culmination of many factors over the years. LOL Funny because christianity claims to shed total light on reality but it seems that as I was on my journey of self discovery, christianity was just a place I was walking through to get to the real light. In my journals of the past 10-15 years I recount my christian walk like climbing a mountain. This mountain had to be ascended, yet every time, no matter how far I had climbed, I would find myself at the base once again and I would repeat the ascension over and over knowing I had to get to the top. And during last year I was constantly mulling over Jesus' words about having faith to remove mountains. How ironic that I would use this principal to remove the mountain from my life to clear my path and finally see the true light. Ah, now I have closure for this post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MQTA Posted November 11, 2005 Share Posted November 11, 2005 Thanks for sharing Welcome to ex-c where you can actually Discuss things Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Posted November 12, 2005 Share Posted November 12, 2005 Welcome. Pull up a chair and stay for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knowmad Posted November 15, 2005 Author Share Posted November 15, 2005 Thanks everyone. Wee, life has been enjoyably hectic these last few weeks. Haven't even had time to enjoy this forum yet. MQTA, loved your deconversion thread and hopefully will go check out all those links you have in it. The building industry is going to shut down for the whole month of Jan next year so I am working my ass off to build a financial buffer to have the my first decent holiday in 15 years. Bought a smick MTB so me and my boy can do stuff on his school holidays and look forward to spending some quality time here in the near future. So much life to explore ey. laterz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MQTA Posted November 18, 2005 Share Posted November 18, 2005 Thanks Good to see you here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts