Conversion crap unpacking

I'm thinking that some digging into the over all conversion process is vital to my personal understanding the de-conversion process.  After having a vivid dream of praying (imagine it, I don't believe in god; maybe . . . "The spirit is drawing me"; go fuck yourselves all you voices of unreason), I suppose I realize there's a lot of unconscious unpacking going on.  At 2am, it's not a pleasant thing, though.

For several years prior to my deconversion (why is it necessary to reference this?) I read around the block. I've read The True believer.

Hoffer, Eric. The true believer: Thoughts on the nature of mass movements. HarperCollins, 2011.

  I re-read this morning:

Inner Experience and Conversion  by Michael D. Langone, Ph.D., Executive Director, AFF Editor, Cultic Studies Review

I've been over this territory so many times.  dé·jà vu!

My conversion: I wanted to fit in.  I was of an impressionable age.  I was six when I was saved (converted).  There is a massive amount of cognitive dissonance surrounding even this.

Have not read yet, but intend to get around to it one of these days.  I'm pretty sure that I saw these source research texts several years ago:  

Rambo, L. R. (1992). The psychology of conversion. In H. N. Malony & S. Southard (Eds.), Handbook of religious conversion (pp. 159–177). Birmingham: Religious Education Press.

Rambo, L. R. (1993). Understanding religious conversion. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

Rambo, L. R., & Reh, L. A. (1992). The phenomenology of conversion. In H. N. Malony & S. Southard (Eds.), Handbook of religious conversion (pp. 229–258). Birmingham: Religious Education Press.

You know, I'm still looking for the silver platter approach to serving up my healing!  "I'll have an order of healing please".  (What an insightful peek into the inner workings of the mind).

There is no god.  There is no silver platter tray of healing the hurts of the past.  One of the fundamental under-pinnings of my new thinking is "There are no short-cuts".   Plain and simple.

Now on the topic of conversion, It's a inner personal/outer personal experience all at once.  I think for children it is especially damaging.  We are making strong attachments. Attachment theory may provide a reasonable explanation.  I was converted!  Hell yea.  I will be honest about the emotional experience.  It was real.  It was a real attachment!

This will be a long journey.  You know what irritates me, is the vague nagging voice, "how can you be sure".  Here is what I can be sure of at this moment:

1. when I was six these were not safe adults that I attached to.  They had no interest in anything other than keeping their reality alive in the up and coming younger generation.  These adults had no understanding of their own attachments.  
2. while it lasted....20 years, god had plenty of opportunities to enlighten me, and a heck of a lot of other people, on how to figure out healthy relationships and inner and outward boundaries. 
3. conversion strips the convert of all moral underpinnings!  It unhinges the distinction between who I am, and how I fit into my culture and society.

So far now, I leave these questions of who I am now, and all the mess of life that surrounds this journey to stew at the subconscious level.  A new day is about to start for me, I'll enter the real world as an adult, where I am now.  I have work to do.  I'm luckier than most that I can carve out time, sometimes hours at a time to do all this crap unpacking!