Emotional Constipation

Fear. What a driving emotion. People have a difficult time making the simplest commitments to dating, marriage, to a meaningful future based on fear of being emotionally intimate.  My ex and I were married for 20 years and in all those years he could not, would not be emotionally intimate with me on the shallowest level. I dated a man/boy for 2 years who went emotionally deeper, but even when I took marriage off the table, he could not, would not discuss the possibility of our having more than a dating relationship in our future.

What are some signs of emotional constipation? From my own experience as well as those of many of my friends, I have come up with this list. It comprises a spectrum of relationships; from a few dates, to dating for a few years to living together, to marriage. Just because a man commits to marriage does not mean he has made an emotional commitment. Sadly, I have learned this from experience. (Some women can also be susceptible to this disease):
*They do not call you when they say they will
*They say what a great time they had, but do not follow up with more dates, phone calls, etc.
*They are perpetually late or do not show up and have silly excuses
*They take from your well/reserves but do not fill your well up
*They will not stay the night
*Even though their words say one thing, you feel that they aren't that into you (trust the feeling) they are just keeping you on the hook until something else comes along; and something else always comes along; they are either ruminating on the one that got away or keeping the door open for someone else to come along. Living in the moment with you is not an option.
*They are hyper-critical of the smallest things
*They wait until you are asleep until they come to bed
*They insist you engage in their activities but will not engage in yours with you
*They talk endlessly about themselves but do not ask about you
*They will keep at least some aspect of their life from you- either a secret or will not allow you to participate in it
*They complain that they are low on money to spend on you while they spend money on frivolous things

Learn from me. Get a clue early in the relationship. Let them go. They will never change. They are not worth the value that you can give them. Find someone who will appreciate the fun and excitement and joy that you can bring into their life. There is a man out there who gets giddy when he sees you, can't wait to hear your voice, is not afraid to express his deep feelings for you.  I have seen it. I have experienced it. I know it exists. Embrace it when it happens to you.

I am Not Afraid

During Communism's rule in the USSR, the government slowly gained power by having the people spy on each other and having commity members turn their neighbor's in to the reigning powers that be.  They used fear to control thoughts and actions to keep people in line. To keep people thinking like each other, dressing like each other. To keep sameness, to squelch individuality, creativity, uniqueness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strengthening_Church_Members_Committee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

Great and Spacious Building

Evil in the Mormon church is defined by a great and spacious building. The corporation of the LDS church is building a mall in downtown SLC which is costing them $3 billion, yes, $3 billion.  There is a photo of it on the flicker page.

They say that no tithing money is being spent to build it. What they do not say is that all money in the corporation at one time began as tithing money and was diverted into the corporation. Why is any money being spent on investments  and malls and hotels in Hawaii instead of feeding the poor, building wells in Africa and helping people who are victims of earthquakes?

Honesty is not the priority of the LDS church, just as charity is not the priority of the LDS church. Building great and spacious buildings is.  They have spent $1 billion on humanitarian efforts over the past 25 years and $3billion just on this mall in the last 8 years.

General Conference Wisdom

With General Conference Coming up, thought I'd post some nuggets of wisdom from past conference talks:
Let's start with good old fashioned racism:
In General Conference, 1960 (and the ensuing published official Conference Reports), Spencer W. Kimball said: "I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today.... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl--sixteen--sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents--on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather....These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness."


Not to be outdone by Ezra T. Benson:

"There is no doubt that the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is used as a Communist program for revolution in America just as agrarian reform was used by the Communists to take over China and Cuba." 

Ezra Taft Benson, Conference Report, October 1967, pp. 34-39

http://scriptures.byu.edu/gettalk.php?ID=1569&era=yes

Of course, Brigham Young was the best racist of them all:

Will the present struggle free the slave? No"

"Ham must be the servant of servants until the curse is removed. Can you destroy the decrees of the Almighty? You cannot. Yet our Christian brethren think that they are going to overthrow the sentence of the Almighty upon the seed of Ham. They cannot do that"

Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Bowery, Great Salt Lake City, October 6, 1863.

http://scriptures.byu.edu/jod/jodhtml.php?vol=10&disc=49

More to come. More to come...

Conundrum

Why is it ok for Joseph Smith to have sex with fourteen year old girls and other men's wives (polyandry) but it is not ok for women to have more than one set of earrings?
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/

Why I do not believe

After leaving the Mormon church, I began questioning everything it taught me. One of these things is that marriage is only between one man and one woman. The thing that troubled me about this is that the Mormon church has a history of the opposite. It has indoctrinated marriage between one man and multiple women, or polygamy. In fact, it has historically taught that monogamy will ruin nations and is immoral. In the proclamation to the family; it's current stance is the opposite of its previous belief system:

"It is a fact worthy of note that the shortest lived nations of which we have record have been monogamic. Rome...was a monogamic nation and the numerous evils attending that system early laid the foundation for that ruin which eventually overtook her."
- Apostle George Q. Cannon, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13, p. 202

"Since the founding of the Roman empire monogamy has prevailed more extensively than in times previous to that. The founders of that ancient empire were robbers and women stealers, and made laws favoring monogamy in consequence of the scarcity of women among them, and hence this monogamic system which now prevails throughout Christendom, and which had been so fruitful a source of prostitution and whoredom throughout all the Christian monogamic cities of the Old and New World, until rottenness and decay are at the root of their institutions both national and religious."
- The Prophet Brigham Young Journal of Discourses, Vol. 11, p. 128

"...the one-wife system not only degenerates the human family, both physically and intellectually, but it is entirely incompatible with philosophical notions of immortality; it is a lure to temptation, and has always proved a curse to a people."
- Prophet John Taylor, Millennial Star, Vol. 15, p. 227

"Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire....Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers.... Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord's servants have always practiced it. 'And is that religion popular in heaven?' it is the only popular religion there,..."
- The Prophet Brigham Young, The Deseret News, August 6, 1862

"This law of monogamy, or the monogamic system, laid the foundation for prostitution and the evils and diseases of the most revolting nature and character under which modern Christendom groans,..."
- Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13, page 195

"We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if they (Non-Mormons) envy us our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow-minded, pinch-backed race of men, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy, and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. They ought to be ashamed of such conduct, and the still fouler channel which flows from their practices; and it is not to be wondered at that they should envy those who so much better understand the social relations."
- Apostle George A Smith, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 3, page 291

"I have noticed that a man who has but one wife, and is inclined to that doctrine, soon begins to wither and dry up, while a man who goes into plurality [of wives] looks fresh, young, and sprightly. Why is this? Because God loves that man, and because he honors his word. Some of you may not believe this, but I not only believe it but I also know it. For a man of God to be confined to one woman is small business. I do not know what we would do if we had only one wife apiece."
- Apostle Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses Vol 5, page 22

"Just ask yourselves, historians, when was monogamy introduced on to the face of the earth? When those buccaneers, who settled on the peninsula where Rome now stands, could not steal women enough to have two or three apiece, they passed a law that a man should have but one woman. And this started monogamy and the downfall of the plurality system. In the days of Jesus, Rome, having dominion over Jerusalem, they carried out the doctrine more or less. This was the rise, start and foundation of the doctrine of monogamy; and never till then was there a law passed, that we have any knowledge of, that a man should have but one wife. "
- The Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses Vol. 12, page 262


By the way, Brigham Young, according to the bible, which you believed in, monogamy was introduced on to the face of the earth with Adam and Eve. 

The Mormon Church is its own enemy. It does not need to look to anti-mormon sources as its enemy, but within its own boarders.

Lawsuits and Truth

For the past 6 months I was being sued by the ex over $7,000 of back child support that he did not willingly pay. His wages were being garnished by Health and Welfare for non payment. He was 3 years delinquent. He was suing me, I was not suing him. He was trying to get out of paying this child support.

The same week that the ex filed the lawsuit to get out of paying this delinquent child support, the Mormon church allowed him permission to be sealed in its temple to his new wife. There are 9 questions of worthiness that are asked by a bishop and a stake president before a person is granted permission to enter a temple. One of them is; are you honest in all you dealings with your fellow man. Another one is; are you current on your child support. Another is, are you paying 10% of your income to the Mormon church.   In my opinion, I cannot understand how the ex could possibly pass a worthiness test, yet he was allowed to enter and have the sealing take place.

I beg to answer the question: WHY? The only answer I can come up with is that all the Mormon church cares about is money.  As long as they are getting their 10%, that is all that matters.  I had written a letter to the bishop and stake president informing them of his delinquency when the ex threatened the lawsuit. I wrote the letter, not to get him in trouble, but to try to circumvent the lawsuit.  Going to court costs lots of money. It cost both of us more money to fight over the child support more than the $7,000 he owed me. It was a total waste of money.  I asked his bishop to help him get over his feelings of anger, to move on with his life. None of my efforts worked.

Where did this lawsuit get him? Exactly where I told him and the bishop it would get them. I told them they would lose. They lost. He has to pay; the divorce decree states so, the judge is of course going to uphold the divorce decree.  It cost him money, money that he could have used for other purposes. It cost him time, time he could have used for other purposes.

Why does the Mormon clergy allow its own rules to be broken by men who pay tithing? Yet they claim special inspiration and direction from God. Would God really allow his children to be treated in such a manner? Would God allow his children to go without child support? Would God allow a man to receive blessings from him while that man made the mother of his children fight him in court over money that the courts have already determined is rightfully due them to support his children?

People in the Mormon church justify poor decisions by their clergy all the time by saying, "the church is perfect, the people are not". I cannot believe this any more because if the church were perfect, then the leaders would follow its own rules that are already in place to protect its children. No, Mormon church, you are not perfect. You do not follow God, you are not inspired by God.  My own story proves that.

The Secret and Other Silliness

In the book, 'The Secret' a person is told that they are in charge of everything that happens to them simply by controlling their thoughts. If you think it, you will achieve it. What if something awful happens to you that you didn't wish to happen to you? According to the author, James A. Ray, you secretly wished it and brought it on yourself.

If you are raped, your thoughts made it happen. You live in a war-torn country, it is your fault your house got bombed and your child was permanently injured. I do not believe this; I cannot. As someone who has had terrible things happen to me, I know that at no time did I wish these things to happen to me.  Another weakness to this hypothesis is this: what happens when two people have opposing desires and equally strong thoughts to bring about their will?

Example 1:  The ex husband wants to take my car away. He is very determined to do this. He files a lawsuit, hires an expensive attorney, spends lots of money. the ex wife is as equally determined that he is not going to illegally take her car away. She also hires a lawyer- a good one. She fights him in court. Only one person can win.  She wins out. Was it because she had more brain power and more mental power or because she had the law on her side and a better attorney?

Example 2:  The Democrats want to win, the Republicans have the same determination. Only one can win.  It often isn't a matter of mental energy exerted, but on money, power and other factors that determine the outcome.

Example 3: James A. Ray has been indicted for the death of 3 people in a sweat lodge where other people where injured.  James in now facing his own music (did he bring this on by his own thoughts?). Although he hasn't been convicted; the question has to be asked, 'did he want those people to die? Did he want those people to be injured?  I am going to suppose no; no he didn't.  I am going to suppose bad decisions were made and that it wasn't the result of anyone's wishes or thoughts.

 Sometimes, shit happens, whether we wish it to or not; despite our best intentions or thoughts. A lesson we should all learn. We do not have control over our entire lives. It is silliness to think otherwise.