The CORE Workbook

Description

 

The Coming Out of Religious Experience (CORE) Workbook

Available in pdf or ePub versions

  This book is designed to help you discover and understand the complex issues of sexuality and gender, the nature and workings of our personal and unique paradigms, and how that affects our understanding of religion and spirituality. It looks at why we are the way we are and examines our world views and beliefs about sexuality and gender, the influence of religion, conversion therapy, and a way forward into freedom and self love.

Each chapter has an “application” section that helps you apply the content in personal and practical ways. It’s challenging and potentially life changing!   For some people, it is recommended that you have a trusted friend or professional counsellor/therapist on hand when working through this book. Some of the material may be triggering, especially where abuse has been a part of your history.

The main focus of Silent Gays is to help LGBTI+ people who have experienced religious abuse, be it any form of rejection through to outright hostility as well as all forms of Christian ministry, demonic deliverance and all forms of conversion therapy. Silent Gays doesn’t attempt to reconcile religious faith to our battles over sexual or gender identity, but rather empowers us to find our own unique spirituality.

Over the last few years we’ve been helping people through either personal contact, seminars and workshops and an online support group, as well as being an “online presence” with blogs and resources. The CORE Workbook is a culmination of extensive research and personal experience, providing a unique approach to working through the damage caused to LGBTI+ people by religion. 

This course doesn’t “beat around the bush”. It confronts head on the issues of sexual and gender identity, cultural and religious paradigms, religious abuse and even the foundations of faith itself. It provides a practical way forward by helping to build self-worth, self-love and a different way to see ourselves, the world and spirituality.   

The Workbook is available as a pdf or ePub download and ready to print and assemble in a folder with room for your own notes and journaling).

You can also request to be added to the private Facebook support page.

 

Topics covered in the workbook:

• Paradigms and how we see ourselves and the world
• What is LGBTQ+
• The nature of spirituality and religion
• The impact of religion
• Conversion therapy
• Mental health
• Building self-worth and a new life

   

Here’s the Intro from the CORE Workbook:

In this workbook, my goal is to help you discover and understand the complex issues of sexuality and gender, the nature and workings of our mind, and our personal and unique paradigms, and how that affects our understanding of religion and spirituality, and the depth and complexities of religious abuse for LGBTI+ people. But even more importantly, to provide a whole new way of seeing life!

Integrity (the inner sense of “wholeness” deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character ~ Wikipedia) is a very important part of my life, so the act of recognising my own biases and paradigms has been a huge part of my journey.

A large part of the book will be around attempting to free us from the need to embrace dogmatic religion and recognise the true extent of subjectivity in our beliefs.

I’ll be challenging you to ask questions, to dig deep, to step out of the status quo, to not be afraid of where the questions take you, and to be confident that in the end, love is the only constant – the only thing that matters – and that we are intrinsically one with love itself at the very core of our being.

But before we can look at the issues in any depth we first must look at what we are actually talking about at the basic levels.

We all know that sexuality and gender are an integral part of our sense of identity.

Many spiritual and religious streams have gone to great lengths however, to separate them from our core nature, often to extremes of creating various monastic/celibate movements, and principles around “denial of the flesh”, to allow for greater spiritual growth, unfettered by the “lower energies” and “earthly” distractions of sexuality and gender.

Although there may be some benefit to these ideas under certain circumstances (considering that we truly are so much more than our sexuality), these types of spiritual views and disciplines are far beyond most people and can be destructive to a large part of our psyche.

In terms of our daily struggles, relationships and interactions with our fellow humans, our sexual and gender identity is extremely important and affects just about every aspect of our life.

Religious beliefs (for myself, that mostly refers to Christianity because of my own experience) have consistently tried to define our sexuality in a simple binary concept – male or female, as described by our physical bodies and outward characteristics.

For traditional and fundamentalist Christianity, there are no other variations to that formula and to even consider anything outside that binery is questioning the very nature of God and how he created us.

But the facts reveal a much bigger picture.

The last 50 years or so have seen a lot of research in this area that is constantly expanding as scientists and medical professionals from all disciplines begin to focus on this strange conundrum that defines us so dramatically.

One very important aspect of this book is the need for you to do your own research.

(I decided against sighting references, apart from the odd one, throughout the book simply because most people never use them, and they just clutter up the flow and make the whole thing look like a university reference book, rather than an easy to understand guide.)

My own research has helped me to unravel, or “de-construct” religion, sexuality and gender, and from that space, build a system of beliefs that work for me and are constantly evolving as I continue to learn and grow.

One of our human weaknesses is to expect others to think for us, to do the hard yards on our behalf so we can just pick the voice that we feel most comfortable with and run with it.

We have our favourite preachers/teachers/gurus because they do the spiritual/religious work for us and then dish it out in bite size chunks, and we never even think that we can actually do this for ourselves.

So if you question my opinions and conclusions, as you should, please take the time and effort to follow them up with as much unbiased research and objectivity as you can.

In religious circles, most opinions on anything outside the boundaries of the heterosexual world are viewed as sin, because the bible says so, and that’s the end of the story.

Sadly, most religions claim to be the “only true religion”, so to question either their beliefs on LGBTI+ issues, or even their core doctrines that shape those beliefs, is often considered heresy.

My aim is to present the big picture with as much relevant detail as possible – to expose the flaws in the fundamental approach used to understand the issues – and to challenge the religious mind-set that only sees black and white because God apparently only sees the same way.

There is a lot of material in this workbook that might initially offend you or make you want to dump it. But push through!

Do the application exercises with all the honesty you can muster.

Ask the questions, and keep going.

The idea is that all the material here can create a whole new “picture”, a way of rebuilding our “paradigms”, and help you to find a genuine life of love, self acceptance and self worth, and a way forward out of the legacy of trauma and abuse.