Why do intelligent people still believe in religion? p. 39 | GinaConspiracy
Focus completely on Jesus In my church growing up, everything and I mean everything we did required us to think about or have something to do with Jesus
To spend any time not thinking about Jesus gave the devil a chance to make us sin Even secular songs like “She'll be coming round the mountain” got the words replaced with “We will learn of Jesus when we go to church” It didn't matter how wholesome or moral the song or activity we were doing, it required to have something to do with Jesus Prayers before any activity, one of my friends at the center who is a former creationist and still has to hide it from his fundamentalist family reminded me of this when we were going to start playing settlers of catan and he half jokingly asked “you mean praying before playing this game isn't in the rules?” As a child I was obsessed with Christianity, on top of an asperger's like obsession, my fear of hell and the fear of hell for others kept me incredibly focused on Jesus
Hypnosis is the act of focusing on one thing to the point that you reach an altered state of thinking where you are open to suggestion This allows your reality to be twisted, it can be used for fun like stage magicians tricks, or it can even be used to implant false memories by bad psychologists who want to make money off of you in counseling when you have a fake repressed memory rise of your father molesting you Scientists really do not know what causes a person to be more or less susceptible to hypnosis Children are especially vulnerable and open to suggestion Perhaps one of the positive side effects of Media induced ADD in the new generation is their inability to focus preventing them from being effected by suggestion
Hypnosis was of course considered evil by my church and a possible way for demons to get in We didn't even know what it really was and that our single-minded focus on our faith was hypnosis as deep as you can get I have a very vivid memory of playing baseball or one of our calvin-ballesque version of it out in the front yard I remember it hitting me that I had not thought about Jesus for an hour because I was focused on the game I felt a pang of guilt shoot through me
I seriously wonder how much of my intelligence was wasted because of the narrow mindedness of my beliefs This religious hypnosis has been key to recruiting people especially children and passing the meme on in the religion Reality is distorted, mindsets are changed, possible avenues of thought are closed off, you are now controlled and locked into a way of thinking that facts and reason cannot penetrate Learning self-hypnosis and the mechanisms of it was a major game changer in my life, as I was able to go in and change the way my mind worked so that I could become socially capable and not so prone to panic attacks and depression of all the people I knew who were going to burn forever in the fiery pits of hell My mind expanded to other possibilities and helped me to overcome my fear and change my habits
Self-hypnosis requires you to reach a state of extreme relaxation, usually using a particular technique that slows your breathing much like a ritual Mine involves starting out with the count of twenty with my eyes wide open, but focusing on relaxing, when I've reached a certain state I'm at 15 with my eyelids heavy, I close my eyes at 10, 5 and zero are even slower breathing and relaxation Unlike meditation, it doesn't require you to stop thinking and focus on one thing, your brain can wander all it wants, but you then focus on what you want and what you want to change and figure out little ways to mentally feel like you've exerted that change For me I imagine a column running through my brain and I will run a string underneath the column, I will then focus on something I need to change, or need to keep in mind and I will pull both ends of the string thrusting up the column Depending on how opposing to my normal ideas the thought is depend on how hard I need to mentally pull, whether the column will shatter or pass through
I usually need to do this exercise around 3 times before I've made significant changes to my thoughts and behavior I never used self-hypnosis to overcome religious beliefs, until after I had become an atheist and was dealing with some of the after effects of things like hadephobia and the feelings of guilt I had for studying our evolutionary ancestors Mostly its, I'm slacking too much I need to change that, or I'm too socially afraid, I need to change how I view a social situation so I don't end up feeling embarrassed Changing these things about me also had the side effect of making me less afraid to question and less afraid to doubt and less afraid to study new ideas Hypnotism requires several factors, relaxation the feeling of community and singing helps with this in the church, It uses ritual to get your mind out of reality which religion is rife with
Many of their buildings are intentionally set up to be so different with the pulpit as the central focus of the viewers Then it requires you to focus and think only about one thing The church is great about this as well It requires slowed breathing, which reduces oxygen and CO2 exchange The church doesn't have this but it does make you short of breath via group singing, especially the more charismatic churches
Eddy Izzard's rendition of the Anglican Church's worship service may indicate why their numbers are declining yearly Lastly symbolism to focus on changing your mind, religion is nothing but symbolism and allegory The ability for the mind to wander also occurs in the sermon, believe me I have spent many a Sunday morning with my mind wandering while trying to focus on yet another redone sermons So there we have it, all the elements of hypnotism all encompassed by the church They need you to come back for repeated doses or the effect may wear off
Ones better engineered at capturing your focus do better which is why the mega churches are so powerful Its been shown that if you use hypnosis to try and quit smoking it works very well but if you have a bit of weakness like you were drinking or something and you smoke, it requires a lot more effort to rehypnotize you to get yourself back to that state of mind It is why its so hard for a hardcore christian to return after losing his faith, he knows the methods used and is now immune to them It would take something extremely mind altering like death to cause the return to religion I recently talked with someone who still goes to my old church which has given me a new perspective on my past
I felt like our youth group was losing focus on Jesus back when I was in it It confused me and disheartened me We did a lot less that was focused on Jesus and actually allowed more secular entertainment in We spent one night watching Grease which I thought was just appalling condoning sex and pre-marital sex As it turns out now, the youth group has been taken over by my youth pastor's daughter and the beliefs and teachings are a lot more moderate, Focusing more on social community and charity and much less on brainwashing, changing with the times
It must change or die, religion has continued to evolve with every generation and will continue to do so, although many are completely oblivious to it If they went even 25 years back in time, I don't know if they would recognize the church and its attitudes, much less back in the years of the early church Forcing children to focus on Jesus out of fear or love is a power tactic that works, but if they ever break out of the hypnotic spell, they will never return
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