Robert Rient, writer
Good morning.
In the beginning I'd like to confess that I'm not normal.
(We've had some issues with the presentation)
I didn't know it back then.
I discovered it in preschool during Grandmother's Day.
We were supposed to prepare greetings cards.
All kids prepared 1 or 2 of them and I prepared nine.
Because besides my mom's and dad's mom
there were all these "grandmothers" from congregation.
During Polish class I didn't learn Bogurodzica.
During music class I didn't sing carols.
During school assembly I've never stood up on Polish anthem.
But the most painful were birthdays, because every kid celebrated this day
and was going through class with the bag full of candies.
And over 8 years I've never eaten any of these.
I've never treated class to candies, I've never sung Happy Birthday To You.
I was raised in Jehovah's Witnesses family.
I was baptized when I was 14 on local stadium in Walbrzych.
I wanted to show you this vague picture.
In high school I've quickly become a fanatic.
I've dropped school and moved to weekend classes.
I've become the first regular pioneer,
that means I used to spend 90h each month preaching.
I wanted to tell people about the Kingdom and salvation,
warn them about the end of the word - Armagedon
But actually I think I wanted God to love me,
to heal my sinful heard, to remove "thorn" from my body.
Jehovah's Witnesses as all believers
live within own dictionary. And so:
truth - means religion and lifestyle
- you can live either in truth or beyond it.
Beyond it means "in the world" - world is taken by Satan.
World means its residents - "wordfuls"
- as some people say in the corridors.
Those are who don't attend to congregation
or other meetings.
Excluded, apostates - those are who you aren't supposed to say "Hello" to.
You can leave on your own or be excluded
or be excluded as a result of committing severe sin
such as smoking or having sex outside marriage.
You shouldn't say them "Hello" in the literal sense.
"Literature" means JW publications.
That's how they call their publications and you're suppose to read them.
And don't read publications of apostates - it's forbidden.
Fruit - this is a monthly report that JW preachers made.
It's written on a piece paper and shows their commitment:
number of propagated newspapers - what is called public ministry.
Pioneers camps...
I used to spend holidays in pioneer camps.
They are 2 weeks camps in rural areas
or somewhere where are very few Jehovah's Witnesses.
On one of these I met Gaja - redhead English teacher.
And we fell in love.
Gaja was suppose to be mother of my kids, and she was suppose to save me.
At the same time she was supposed to take the thorn out of my body,
but we didn't make it...
"What do you make us endure?"
- this is the question, that Gaja asked me the night we split up.
She cut her arm.
When she was bleeding on the floor she kept asking this question.
And I wrote it down not because, she repeated it many times,
but because there was some kind of despair, for me truth as well.
Question of subject, who is human, to object, who is God.
Later during my journalist career I've heard this question number of times.
It was asked by refugees running away from the war,
by victims of sexual violence, by people in trauma,
by people in grief.
They asked e.g. "Where are you God?" or "Why me?"
or "Why are you doing that to me?", "How long do you make me...?"
And when I quit JW religion,
I was leaving with the strong conviction that the truth or true religion exists.
And I spend number of years going through Catholicism,
being fascinated with Buddhism, meditation.
I got very emotional in front of Western Wall in Jerusalem.
I attended protestant churches,
where they heal you by laying on of hands,
where they speak in tongues.
I haven't found true religion,
but I came to understanding that believers is constructed in similar way
in every religion.
From one side we have sin, from the other side we have salvation.
Sin doesn't exist - it exists only in religion sense.
It doesn't implicate that crimes don't exist,
It's not enough to confess your fault and repent to efface the crime,
but it's enough to confess your fault and repent to efface the sin.
And in such a way religion moves responsibility from the present
to future, to salvation.
Sin in other religions has different names.
Hindus call it "Maja", what means illusion, dream, utopia.
Buddhists say "Duchha", what means suffering, misery, pain,
the suffering circle, which you can unleash.
Christians would call it fall.
Sin initially meant "missing your target".
On the other side we have salvation - paradise.
Eternal life for Jehovah's Witnesses,
heaven for Catholics,
liberation from suffering circle for Buddhists,
or enlightenment, nirvana or very popular recently awakening.
I've spent 3 years in so-called non dualistic circles.
Those are people, who quit their religion and don't believe in personal God
but they believe that we all are love,
we all are unity, we all are connected, but we just forgot about it,
because we are dreaming and waiting for awaking.
The believer is constructed by fear,
which is always the story of the past
and hope, which is always the story of the future
Fear of Satan, of danger,
of other people.
Hope for fulfillness, perfection,
for love, happiness, salvation, health recovery,
and between fear and hope believers go through that bridge
of sense of superiority.
Not all, but most of them manifest sense of superiority.
It rarely takes explicit or aggressive form,
forms that we know from Christian Inquisition,
Ku Klux Klan or terrorists from ISIS.
These 3 groups try or tried to repair the world in the name of God.
Believer's sense of superiority usually is much more subtle.
I call it pseudo-concern or pseudo-understanding.
We know it even from colonisers behaviour,
who came to Africa.
Current believers feel sense of superiority, which means
leaning over somebody with full of superiority care to help,
to rescue them, to save them.
I'm coming back to my personal story. When I quit my religion,
I decided to set up a birthday party.
First party lasted 3 days and 2 nights.
We were drinking, smoking, taking some psychoactive drugs.
At the time this text was painted on the wall in my student flat.
And over few years I felt like
the party is over but it is still on.
At some point: tired, jaded of the drugs,
bored with looking for God, with looking for love,
tired with falsity, I decided to commit a suicide.
I was rescued and I turned to psychology.
And if I didn't meet smart and professional psychotherapists
I wouldn't be standing here today.
But if I didn't meet narcissistic and unprofessional therapists,
I would save many years of my live chasing the illusion, utopia,
ideal parents.
Over 7 years I've worked in psychological studio.
I've completed many courses about psychoterapy and psychology.
In the end I've achieved second degree of recomendation
granted by Polish Psychological Foundation.
So I was professional interpersonal trainer.
And then it became clear to me that I replaced one religion with the other.
This one was called psychology.
And I want to speak about psychology as a belief,
not about indented use of it, which I still consider worthy.
And still in my phone I can find contacts to psychotherapists, who I recommend,
but it's very short list.
Rosenthal effect - effect of the expectations
of person that conduct the experiment.
I'll tell in a while what it's about.
The scientist who measure e.g. speed of light or weight an elephant
can have various expectations about the outcome,
but these expectations don't influence the result.
On Virginia university since 2011 many psychological experiments
have been repeated.
And from 100 experiments, that were described
in professional psychological literature,
over 60 experiments gave different results.
Tremendous divergence. Where did it come from?
There are theories that group was not selected properly,
that was too small
but it turns out that in case of psychological studies
number of scientists didn't publish results
that didn't align with their expectations, and what is most important
that mood, emotions and expectations of the person
that carried out the experiment
were key for the outcome.
And if we have such divergence in scientific studies
imagine what can happen in silent psychotherapists offices.
This is a picture of famous prison experiment.
Filip Zimbardo in 1971 split the group of people on prisoners and guards
and aggression was escalated on a big scale.
Experiment was interrupted.
Zimbargo became famous because of it worldwide.
Experiment was described in all psychology handbooks,
but not many people notice who attend this experiment.
That was 24 people, all students,
all originated from US, all had white skin.
All were men.
Famous Zimbardo experiment wasn't attended by any women,
any not white skin person.
And based on this experiment many conclusions were drawn
about current society.
About hidden capabilities that we have to be criminals or heroes.
Zimbardo experiment was just a story about 24 white-skin men students from US
and nothing more.
On the left you can see JW congress.
I attended such many times.
On the right you can see Tony Robins
- current American adviser and his followers.
It's hard to see any differences: in both cases we see followers.
In both cases we see hope, story about salvation/success.
In both cases we see preaching.
In both cases: you can see successful path to fulfilment.
Me - psychology often encourages to communication with "me".
Me is important, me gets angry, me gets upset, me gets scared.
Me has concerns, me expresses, but me most of all suffers.
Suffering me often becomes separated from the rest of the world,
from relations, from reality.
This is the most egotistic emotion, sadness and suffering
you can immerse in it and forget about other people, reality.
In Poland we throw out 9 mln tones of food.
40% of us do it, in Europe that's 30%, in US up to 40%.
Meanwhile the other side of the globe is inhabited by
2 billions of undernourished people.
800 mln people is starving.
Habitants of Sub-Saharan Africa spend 40 billions of hours per year
just for carrying water.
40 billions years - this is working time of all working people in French.
Please, look at the outcome,
what quality of life we have in both areas.
French people come back from work, take a shower, drink a glass of water,
buy themselves holidays in Africa,
pay for theirs treatments.
And those who spend theirs live just to drink some water,
get washed if they are lucky.
Suffering doesn't ennoble.
If suffering ennobles, in Poland we'd be better people,
world would be better.
Magdalena Tuli, writer, said that what ennobles is raising,
lifting up.
I think, that beauty ennobles.
Not decorating yourself, your body or car not decoration your personality
with new assertive capability,
but beauty that leads to goodness
to sympathy with the others.
Psychology has one message for its client:
you suffer, you need help, when you confess all,
you're going to be healed, get better all the time.
Religion has similar message.
You sin, you need help, when you confess, God is going to forgive you,
you are on salvation path.
In such a way dictionary changes, but the structure stays the same.
Sining from the past is replaced by suffering.
Salvation is replaced by success
and in the middle, in the present, we are living.
We're imperfect,
deficient, not special, but good enough
because we're authentic.
I've talked you about the thorn in my body,
that I wanted to remove with God's help,
later with Gaja's help.
I won't elaborate on love.
No believing in psychology and faith, I'm still learning it.
When I was 19, I gathered the courage to come out,
but I didn't have the courage to open my mouth.
I've written on a small piece on paper "I am gay"
and I passed it to my friend - Ewelina.
The major part of my life I've spent trying to get rid of
homosexual part of me.
Praying, preaching, committing myself,
later with relationship with Gaja, who knew it from the beginning,
who we prayed together for salvation,
to get rid of this part of me that is despised, rejected.
Later I've encountered psychotherapist in Krakow.
He promised to make me happy heterosexual men.
He failed, me too.
And at the moment when I resigned, thorn fell out.
I am gay. I don't brag, but I don't feel ashamed because of it.
I'm telling this for those who living in the margins,
excluded from family, communities and work environment...
Often those excluded have to struggle a lot
to understand the system which excludes them,
to understand the rules of the world where they are living,
which wants to oppress them.
Often they make this effort to pretend to be someone else.
Major part of my life I've been pretended homosexual.
And I think that those excluded become the exception
that not necessarily proves the rule.
Latin saying "exception proves the rule" contains the verb "probo",
which means testing and sampling.
In such a way these excluded people, these who lost their faith
or were obligated to abandon it can be a key to understand the system.
(I went to far in the presentation) (Can we come back?)
(So I will continue waiting for the presentation to be rewinded)
Those who are living in the margins can open the doors for us
to understanding rules of the system.
And in the same way as the whole in the wall
don't prove that it is complete,
exception doesn't prove the rule, it checks it every time.
(one moment) (technical problems)
Now I want to encourage you to faith decustrion method.
This method that I've used for many years.
It's about discovering the moment, when you started to believe in something
It doesn't matter what you believe,
if I think that men should be... or I believe in god.
This method doesn't mean that I'll change my believe,
but that I'll understand it.
You need to ask yourself 3 questions: 1. What do I believe?
2. How long have I believed that? 3. Who are socialisation agents?
Socialization agents mean parents, siblings, counsellors, teachers,
priests, books, films.
All the people that convey the message and we accepted it
at some point as our own, often unconsciously.
Even if you don't reach the moment, when you started to believe in something,
the journey itself is fascinating,
because it covers all these messages.
Let's wonder: when did I start to believe that God wants to kill sinners?
Or when I started to believe that visiting church and prayers
is more valuable than spending this time in the pub with friends?
When did I start to believe that couple is suppose to live with each other?
When did I start to believe that sex with stranger lasting several minutes
is more harmful than living with someone that you don't love for several years.
When did I start to believe that happiness is more valuable than sadness.
I gathered my experiences of leaving the faith and seeking it in psychology
in a book called "Witness". I recommend it.
I've written it because we're living in the world of words.
But if truth exists,
it should be beyond the words or between them.
Although the have the power to show us direction
they almost never give us the answers.
If the truth exists, it need to succeeds doubts
and these often lead to faith deconstruction.
Men, women, believer, gay, strong, smart - these are just words.
Part of the story about ourselves.
There is nothing wrong to believe in ourselves, in our capabilites.
To believe that you will succeed, that you deserve better job.
To believe that you deserve better relation and looking for it.
Faith helps, if you use it consciously.
And if you do it unconsciously, You "wear" these words
as costumes that burden you. Then you become faith slaver.
Faith that you haven't chosen, faith that you haven't
or haven't been given a chance to discredit.
Faith limits or excludes the present.
The present doesn't need faith.
Every faith excludes the present,
because it invites you in the world of expectations and fantasy
based on past events,
old experiences, old books and convictions.
And the change, the real change, act of change
can take place only in the present.
In the same way as you are the present,
listening, being focused possibly, maybe even lacking your faith for a while
and as a result of that - not normal.
And this is what I wish you all:
loss of your faith and not being normal.
Thank you.
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