Posted by long time exer on July 05, 2011 at 12:13:52
In Reply to: Re: Slaves by choice? posted by OT2 on June 30, 2011 at 17:54:42:
I do realize that personal motivations for joining or for leaving varied by person. For me, I was searching for something meaningful during a sort of renaisance period of life that was descending into drug addiction and despair. TF was like a life saver and provided what I thought were all the answers and with a sense of security with my very high level of anxiety. To resign myself to something that was seemingly for a good cause seemed like a good decision. Sure, there are always choices, but sometimes choices are between the lesser of two evils presented as "good". At least until a person has more experience to start letting reasonable doubt overcome irrational indoctrination.
Not all of us were as connected to people anxious to have their family member back. Many of us were from broken families escaping "home" not unlike young girls who get married to the first available guy to get away from family, only to wander into a recreation of the same sick dynamics or worse.
I am not in a sick relationship at all now. But I did have a few after getting out of TF. I also don't have a specific religion and don't want one. For me, that works.
I like yoga, but follow no guru or leader. It is great for physical exercise and for some, it is good as an adjunct for their religion.
I don't demonize other venues of spirituality including the spirituality in a person who is agnostic or atheist. I like a song I was listening to last night that was very simple in lyrics, but very apt- about how we all bleed red, all have faults, stumble and rise- I see humanity as one and the same with no one culture, one religion or one ethnicity as having a superior stance than any other though there are certainly cultures that practice some very self destructive behaviors. Female circumcision is one such custom that I see as universally "wrong", as well as pedophilia and incest.
But back to the matter of "choice". I don't see myself as ever being a slave by "choice". Instead, I see it more as a stockholm syndrome sort of process and with no intervention from family, it took more time for reality to start seeping in. The reality that TF was just another system of dog-eat-dog for advancement, and a worse system as far as the instituted abuses of children, women and men. I noticed tangible shifts, first in seeing power stuggles and politics played out as people vied for position and then as FFing was introduced, I started seeing how there were arguments over territory, etc. Many of the writings that would have horrified me initially, somehow were dulled while in. Seeing how berg wrote about women, how he instituted pedophilia starting in his own home, and how he talked about snapping his fingers and breaking up families if a man resisted what was happening, I guess that was like being smacked with a cast iron frying pan enough times to put a few brain cells together and at least get out at the onset of what would become institutionalized molestation and programming of children within. Then I was exposed to more rational thinking and things began to fall into a less sick perspective, gradually getting better with time away.