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I often had a difficult time while being a member of the organization Soul’s Last Stop, when dealing with people who had dominant personality traits. This was nothing new to me, since while growing up, I came across these types quite often. The issues that I had with these personality types consisted of a broad range that if unchecked, often left me feeling perplexed and would cause me to withdraw. One such issue in particular that I had was that some of them always treated me like I was less than they were. They had to have more knowledge, more wisdom, and more influence. These personality types would often push their will onto me and since I trusted them and had already invested myself emotionally, I would oblige them yet got little if anything in return. They were as bullies with their ideas and a person like myself possessing a mild temperament, found myself having to learn over time to be confident within my own skin enough to either deal with these personalities a certain way, or choose to not deal with them at all.
It didn’t matter if it was the leaders of the different churches over the years or if it were their parishioners, I often came into mental conflict with these personality types. In an ideal world, people would be okay with who they were and not try to make proselytes out of everyone else of themselves. But this world is not that ideal world. This world is based on other ideals. The leaders of Soul’s Last Stop often discounted and did not even consider on the minute of scale, my ideas, thoughts, nor wishes. After some time, I went into a shell and remained there for much of my tenor at Soul’s Last Stop. Because of remaining in this shell, I experienced even more criticism, humiliated privately and publicly for the most minute of things, laughed at, ridiculed and made the laughing stock among the males of this congregation. I had faced physical bullying growing up. At Soul’s Last Stop, I faced psychological and emotional bullying. This, of course, did nothing in terms of positively affecting my relationship with my spouse at the time, who said adamantly and often that she needed a strong husband and father for our children. I was in no way ready for either role.
After my spouse and I departed from our membership from Soul’s Last Stop, I encountered similar situations in later congregations. It took years to learn that if things were not already complicated enough trying to have a family and while I was still in the process of finding himself, that they would remain and even get more complicated if I was going to continue in the church arena, moving from congregation to congregation. Every dominant personality trait that I encountered, was able to persuade me into coming within alignment with what they wanted. My spouse at the time, followed me down these church rabbit holes for quite some time. Intelligence alone is not enough since gullibility knows no bounds when your emotional state and ego are not where they need to be.
A Traveler 