Hold yer water, pard! Just got off the phone with my ol' D.O., Sam Hurd, and he says both definitions are still new light. So until he says different, that's the whole truth and nuthin' but the truth!
Unlearning
by Narkissos 29 Replies latest jw friends
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Narkissos
About re-learning, especially from others: a few years after I left the JWs a Christian friend of mine told me: "You will not let anybody convince you except yourself." That was not meant as a compliment but I think she was perfectly right. I could read or hear a lot of things, like or dislike them, but they didn't directly make me move. I just stored them as ideas, right or wrong, to revisit later -- or not. Only when I had revisited something subjectively could I make it mine -- modifying it at the same time.
The JW "Truth" was a central and all-embracing reference to me. I always came back to it, "polishing" it and "refinining" it with every "new light". There is no such thing now. In the center of my mind there is an empty room that must remain empty. All "knowledge," "opinion," "belief," is out of it and subject to change.
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Golf
Sports was always my main attraction,in sports you win some and lose some. When you lose, you learn from your lost, at least I hope one does. Baseball pitchers use to go the full nine innings, some got battered, but, came back to pitch the 'third' day and won. I carried the same mentality when leaving the org.
Golf -
gumby
In the center of my mind there is an empty room that must remain empty. All "knowledge," "opinion," "belief," is out of it and subject to change.
My whole craniums empty
Interesting perspective their buddy. Do you mean you have a void thats waiting to be filled.....or a void you plan on making sure stays empty?
Gumby
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MegaDude
In the center of my mind there is an empty room that must remain empty. All "knowledge," "opinion," "belief," is out of it and subject to change.
I can relate.Once you've been awakened to the fact that you believed such foolish things as we learned and taught others in the JWs, it tends to make you take less stock in your current beliefs.
Or as I said once to my cousin in a bad moment, "I'm so skeptical, I'm skeptical of my own skepticism." LOL.
or
"Don't believe what I say, I once believed a bunch of old geezers in Brooklyn were God's only mouthpiece on earth."
Like Little Toe I believe the experiential path is the way to go. I do have strong beliefs but they are based on my experiences and my experiments and my intuition. I can't completely prove them to anybody and that is a new paradigm for me. Before, I always had a rock solid system of proving. But now always in the back of my mind there is a knowing that I may completely change what I believe based on new information. That doesn't hurt my faith in my current beliefs but makes me less dogmatic than the slavering self-righteous fool I was in the JWs. I listen better now.
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Narkissos
Just saw an interesting article posted by JamesThomas on another thread:
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Narkissos
As I said I will try to describe how I did "unlearn".
Starting from the time when I had the most consistent doctrinal system in mind: just imagine the perfect () 20 y-o. pioneer, always up-to-date with the last Watchtower issue, who knew the Aid book almost by heart. Making talks without WT onlines. Doing Bible studies with illiterate people, using my own sketches and diagrams to make everything clear and fitting.
First thing was having to speak less. Each time you teach or discuss doctrine you comfort the whole system, even when details of it are questioned. An assignment to Bethel did that to me.
Second, I started to read WT literature with a critical eye, even if only at a formal level. Translation work obliged me to do so. When you translate you have to understand the logic (especially as French uses to make it more explicit than English) -- and all the logical gaps become obvious. This was a common conversation topic among translators, although none of us was thinking of "apostasy" (yet). Yet I was unwittingly and unconsciously unlearning.
Third, I read other materials. I was encouraged to do it in order to enhance my French writing skills -- a very important thing for translators, especially without previous professional training. So I read a lot of French and other literature (especially novels and poetry), which I had not done since high school. The interest and thrill opened me to other approaches of life, which the WT questions and answers didn't reach.
Fourth, I allowed myself to play with ideas, which is something I wouldn't have dared to do as a pioneer, either before other JWs or non-JWs. There were quite a few takers to this game in Bethel. What I didn't know is by playing you sometimes come across really deep thought which is worth a thousand times more to you than the "serious" beliefs you used to profess. It is like a superficial scratch on a structure which has long been destroyed from inside, although that didn't show. In an instant a world crumbles and still you are not lost, for you have already found something better.
One Bible text which came to my mind at this point is Peter's liberation in Acts 12, where he dreams his way out of jail...
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jgnat
An analogy my pastor taught me has helped immensely through the years. It is massively difficult to get the brain to forget something once it's stuffed in there.
I've been meaning to yell at my son for inviting me along to a screening of "Trainspotting". I thought PG14 meant thirteen year-olds could watch it. There's an image from that movie that is seared on my brain forever. It has to do with the fatal effects on an infant when it is being cared for by a drug-addicted mother. No thanks to you, son! I haven't been back to a PG14 since.
http://www.gtm.ca/cdn_ratings_chart.shtml
Anyhow, the analogy my pastor taught me was to "replace the pictures in the gallery of your mind." In other words, instead of trying to erase what is there (the brain physically won't do that) add more. Cover it up with new images and pictures.
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MegaDude
From my reading the brain forgets nothing. It has a perfect record of everything you have experienced with picture, sound and emotion. While you may not be able to forget something you can certainly make new and more positive neuro-associations. It is helpful in doing this consciously to get things done which you keep putting off.
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Narkissos
I think we are getting somewhere.
You cannot erase but you can add, build, or draw, something else beside the extant figure. And it may change the whole structure or picture. Sometimes to the point of making the once central into an insignificant, or even funny detail.
If somebody had seriously questioned my beliefs it wouldn't have helped a bit. I was prepared to any serious question. On the other hand, the "non-serious" part of my mind was completely free for an apparently insignificant game. If this happened to prove meaningful the fortress would fall, of itself, without a fight. The "bypass" strategy of life, or God, if you will.