My curiosity and open-mindedness seem to have helped me wake up.

I was baptized in a foreign language congregation. Because of it, I got to speak with peoples from different cultures and languages. However, most of the people from other countries lived in gated communities. It's very difficult to enter those gated subdivisions.

I had to reach my pioneer hours, but I couldn't do it if I had just stuck to door-to-door. Therefore, I resorted to informal witnessing. I would converse with people for longer periods. This is because either they were just hanging out and chilling. Sometimes they would appreciate that I would talk to them, because they had no one to talk to anyways.

I would say that 80% of the time, I would talk to people informally on the streets, in shopping centers, in the market, in parks, and other public areas. 20% of the time we would still do return visits to people in their houses.

Whether in public or at home, what I noticed was that whenever I would ask people about their worldview, they would usually make sense. I found it fascinating. Whether they were from the Baha'I faith or from Sufism, my curiosity would take me to rabbit holes that a PIMI would find threatening. I was still dogmatic, but secure. It doesn't matter what philosophy I was navigating with another person. Deep down I knew that I had the truth. I was very comfortable with seeing other POVs.

Sometimes I would listen with a view of establishing a common ground for me to insert the good news to them, pretty much like what Paul of Tarsus did in the Areopagus in Athens. (Acts 17:16-34) But sometimes I thought of digging deeper into the beliefs of people, just so I could have the good news tailor-made for them.

I would encounter people who are very intelligent and smart. But in my mind I would ask, "Why are these people still not in the organization of JWs? Maybe they're not 'rightly disposed.'" I knew I had the truth, but "why would people not get it," I would ask myself. Of course looking back as a POMO now, I understand.

One of the most intelligent people I met in service were people from the Baha'I faith. They would have libraries of books in their houses and they were very smart. They're well-informed about history, philosophy, economics, spirituality, and the esoteric traditions. They would comment on my background being "Russelites" and know of the secular history of JWs.

"Well, JWs dated all the way back to the time of Abel" I thought to myself. I would get defensive in my mind whenever my religion is thought of as just an offshoot of something. I was very dogmatic, ideological. I would take pride in representing Sky Daddy in the field, even if it means embarrassment.

I had once invited a Catholic scholar to a meeting, but as soon as he realized it was a JW meeting, he vehemently declined, labeling it a "cult." "A cult? My religion is not a cult. It's favored by God." I took it to heart.

Another encounter I had that got me even curious was when I was listening to a Youtube video in 2018 about cult psychology. The speaker enumerated all modern cults, and guess whom he included on the laundry list: JWs. I was shocked, because I respect the speaker's intellectual integrity. I also took that to heart.

During the pandemic, I cold approached an American lady in her late 60s or early 70s. She was part of the Moonies, got married to a Japanese husband, and now she's a faculty in a community college in the mountains, part of the Unification Church's organization. I knew she was part of a high-control group. And I pity her, because she was married to a person whom she had never met before.

And then I subscribed to a booklist access where Steven Hassan's Combating Mind Control book. I did my research on Hassan's background and started reading his book. When I encountered the BITE model, shit! I had a feeling of threat within my gut.

Then I started doing something that the borg had warned me not to do: to do research outside the JW library. I thought that if I wanted to test my faith, I had better hear what the other party is arguing for. After many years of pattern recognition and research, I'm officially disassociated this year. I was PIMQ the whole year last year (2023).

I would always remember the verse at Proverbs 18:17 which says: The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him."

The JW dogma was the first case I was exposed to; and it seemed right, but when we examine the other camp's argument, they seem right also. Therefore, I don't belong to any school of thought or organized spirituality. I have somehow developed trust issues with authorities. Relying solely on people especially in areas as profound as spirituality could be a big trap.

What I don’t agree to do now is dogmatism, believing something at all cost without considering the arguments that oppose it. It appears that one cannot make an absolute claim about something. Even scientific theories get replaced by new ones.

Will I ever get to the bottom of my epistemic and metaphysical questioning? Time will tell. But even if not, I guess the discovery process could be an end in itself. Maybe the whole purpose of life is to investigate the nature of this phenomenon called existence. Framing the right questions could derive more profound answers.