Your Life Inside Out.

Chapter 24, Leaving the Saints, by Martha Beck.   "My hardest labor, however, happened in my head and heart as I made the transition in my spiritual quest from Camel to Lion.  This phase of inner change involves one of the most dramatic paradigm shifts in the human psychology repertoire: the move from what psychologists call an "exogenous locus of control" to an "endogenous locus of control."  It means the process of dropping one's dependency on external structures and establishing a sort of moral guidance system that comes from within." "I'd spent the better part of three years trusting external structures and organizations, keeping every rule of every spiritual discipline I could imagine, quieting my own resistance, aiming for total obedience and humility. But continuing to do this would mean protecting the Mormon Church by keeping a dark secret, which would isolate me in a life of smothered rage and hopelessness.  It felt wrong.  I was in what felt like a no-win situation: my internal moral system was directly at odds with my family, community, my ancestral religion." "Something a bit like this happened to me once before, when I'd rejected the advice of every obstetrician and adviser at Harvard by deciding not to end the pregnancy that later produced Adam.  That time, however, I'd known in the back of my mind that millions of Mormons, including my natal family, would agree with my decision, This time, the child I wanted to defend was my own five-year-old self, someone who no longer existed except in my memory, and the people I would offend were my flesh and blood, my ward family, my brothers and sisters and my Brothers and Sisters." "The Chinese have a phrase to describe the confusion that accompanies the change of dynasties: "when the earth turns over heaven."  I kept remembering this phrase as I slogged through my days, watching everything I 'd thought solid and reliable fall into the sky,while unexpected new beliefs appeared in parts of my mind and heart I had thought were empty space.  I diapered my babies, taught my classes, wrote my dissertation with the dull mechanical effort, robotic on the outside, tumultuous within..." What I love most is that there is actually a psychological term for transitioning control from the outside to within.  I wonder if they note that you will be going against your family of origin, IF they too chose not to transition control to within, that if you structured your life to fit a certain religion, that too will drop away?   Just interesting to be a text book example, but knowing the personal details of this switch. I had intuitively called this, "Living Inside Out." And that is exactly the street version of endogenous. You literally will be turning your life inside out.