Don't get brainwashed

Hi everyone , Cling is alive and kicking. I keep thinking of this ridiculous conversation I had with this lady I know. She was suffering from manic depression and then became born again and seemed to replace all her addictions with religion. She certainly has some hypocritical views on life and is completely brainwashed, but she doesn't see it herself and you can't talk logically to her about anything. She was going on about how God sent a tornado to Brighton because it is the gay capital of the UK and they must all be punished, not very christian. Then in the next breath, she was idolising Cliff Richard and saying how he was her ideal man etc etc, I mean hello is he not in the closet, not to mention all the plastic surgery, are these people all blind or what? This is the problem I have with religion, It is all just a way of controlling people. I believe in God , but I don't believe you need any third party in order to have a relationship with him, and for that matter I don't believe that God needs 10% of anyone's salary either, it's all a load of crap. All religions say the same thing anyway, if you're not one of us, you won't go to heaven, let's really play on some fear. Disgraceful, no wonder there are so many wars .
A similar thing happened to me, I joined an organisation, supposedly to learn meditation. Next thing I was getting up at 03.30 every day to meditate, I studied their philosophies, I became celibate, I became vegan and every spare moment I spent at the meditation centre doing "service". I truly believed that I had found a way to God and inner peace. It wasn't till I ended up in India at this organisation's headquarters that I finally twigged on that I was indeed following some sort of religion, and I felt very peed off because all the time we had been told that it wasn't a religion at all, it was just a meditation lifestyle. How did I escape from this cult? I met up with Gerald again and decided I didn't want to be celibate anymore, ha ha. Be careful Clingers, that's all I can say.