My Journey from Dogma to Peace

By Crystal ~

Oh, where to start?!

Like many around me, I was brought up in a Christian upbringing. A Narcissistic Christian mother, but an Agnostic/Atheist father.

Because of the abuse that I suffered at the hands of my mother who frequently spoke of love but always acted in abuse towards me, so much so that I ended up believing that God LOVES abuse, and that he hated me and agreed with everything that my mother was doing hence the commandment "Honour your father and mother".

That said I also started to realize that the more I read into the Bible, the more it confused me. It contradicted itself, and research of these contradictions shocked me to the core.

This is the main one which I do remember: On one side i.e. OT I saw a God that kills, causes genocide, and sends people to hell; whereas on the other i.e. NT I saw a God who is loving, kind and cares for people.

(There are other contradictions that I found but since I've spent the last year trying to forget the painful memories of that religion I can't really remember them).

Anyway these findings confused the living shit out of me and I knew then that this religion was nothing but man made shitty dogma created to control people and send them living in fear.

After seeing the Bible and the religion for what it truly was, along with the believer who most of them are insane hypocrites who like to judge and condemn others just because they don't believe in their beliefs - I decided to leave this path and rethink my life.

I always believed that their was some force behind the universe, whether it was spiritual or otherworldly or in fact nature based, so I did my research of other beliefs that were less preachy and fear based.

I was in University at this time which helped a lot especially in dealing with my mother as I felt free to choose what I wanted without the hassle and constant living in fear.

I came across Wicca and Paganism which I had been drawn to during my time as a Christian, but was too scared to go into because of my fear of being hated along with having to argue and deal with my mother. And then I came across Buddhism and Taoism.

Since I could not choose between either of these beliefs since I believed in various things within each of them, I finally decided to just classify myself as 'Spiritual' whilst incorporating all of the practices of each one.

So that's my story. So glad and proud of myself for finally releasing myself from a trap that could've prevented me from growing my already grown open mindedness not to mention my Spiritual growth and mental state of mind.

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