Letting go of the black and white thinking... (page 2)

ithinkisee

I couldn't help noticing your name is TALL PENGUIN and this thread is on BLACKand WHITE thinking.

Seriously though ... thanks for the perspective.

-ithinkisee

bythesea: "I've finally come to the place that I'm comfortable just NOT KNOWING...NOT having all the answers."
Yes, the not knowing is indeed freeing. Having all the answers gives a false sense of security and really isn't much fun. I like to wonder a lot now. Put a question out to the universe and wonder about what the answer might be rather than feeling I must wrack my brain to come up with it now.

Goldminer: "By putting it on Jehovah or Satan we could take the accountability away from ourselves and spin the situation in the direction we wanted it to go.You could write a whole chapter in a book on this one."
A whole book could be written no doubt. It is really a lack of personal accountability isn't it? When I started into various healing therapies some years ago, I learned about the value of taking personal responsibility. And realized how jw's really don't have a clue about what that means. The more work I did on myself, the more I saw how unhealthy it was to be around jw's. It was hard to be around people who were delaying working on their personalities or health issues because the "new system will be here soon."

Sentient: "The WBTS' teachings basically create these unbelieveable intense irrational fears, that dictate every aspect of life as you described Tall Penguin."
These irrational fears were indeed intense. For a few years before I left, my brain felt like it was slowly being fried. The conflicting voices in my head, the neverending questions and analysis...it was all so crazy-making. My mind has quieted down considerably since leaving. There is still much work to be done but I'm healing.

Narkissos: "I can still remember the exact moment and place (crossing a street in Paris, just a few weeks before I was df'd) where this simple thought occurred to me: I am not supposed to have an opinion on everything. I am not even supposed to be right."
I love those ephiphanous moments where it all becomes more clear. It's very freeing to not have an opinion on everything. I think one of the most empowering statments I'm learning is "I don't know."

ithinkisee: "I couldn't help noticing your name is TALL PENGUIN and this thread is on BLACKand WHITE thinking."
Ha! Yup, that's me. For me, the penguin is about the contradictions. Flightless bird. Warm-blooded animal in a freezing cold climate. It represents my contradictory nature. Thanks for noticing. ;)

Terry

And one day it came to me......

If Jehovah didn't have such a bad attitude mankind wouldn't have to jump through feckless hoops to please him.

Then, it followed logically, the idea of one person dying FOR another so that this selfsame Jehovah could sit in the grandstands of the arena and put a

thumb's up or thumb's down struck me as quite barbaric and pagan.

I stepped back and took a BIG PICTURE look at this so-called "plan" of salvation. It was weird, crazy and quite mad! Why hadn't I seen it before?

Sin and death entered the world through one man? Duh, I don't think so!

The millions of years of dinosaurs eating each other were filled with death and violence.

Man is the result of many violent confrontations by many stages of life struglling in life or death battle for survival.

The chaos we see in the world is the very NATURE OF EXISTENCE ITSELF! It is not the result of abandoning a "perfect" world at all. That is a huge lie.

Nature has a bizarre, violent, tragic and hideously sadistic character to it. Our longing that it be not so leads us to pretend it was once otherwise. And then, we fall in love with our own fairytale!

No thank you.

Black and white thinking comes from not seeing the world itself as it is truly. Black and white thinking comes from destroying the color deliberately through the most narrow focus possible. Turn down the light and the color fades from everything. The rational mind, as it dies, becomes blindness itself. The surrender to darkness is the willing capitulation to the fantasy tales told by idiots signifying nothing.

Terry

T.

tall penguin

Wow Terry! You da man!!!
tall penguin

Terry

Wow Terry! You da man!!!

tall penguin

You da Penguin!

Golf

T.P. I'm a risk taker. This means I will accept whatever consequence without pointing a finger. This ideology "if it is God's will or the devil made me do it" doesn't enter my mind. I live for the present. This doesn't mean I don't think or plan my life, etc, no way.

Risk taking has made me what I am today.

Golf

greendawn

The black and white thinking is nothing but elementary unsophisticated narrowminded thinking from people that don't have the ability to develop their thinking to an advanced and civilised stage. Eg the JWs that can't believe that there are good people in the world apart from them, "all worldly people are evil and will be destroyed at armageddon" sounds like a childish attitude. In the world there are many people that are much nicer than the average JW.

ICBehindtheCurtain

Terry, glad to see you around these parts again, I agree with your statements. Tall Penguin- you are so right - that black and white thinking takes away all accountability for ones actions making it Satans fault for stumbling us or tempting us instead of realizing it's just bad decisions and careless actions that result in negative outcomes or just being human, then when positive things happen in our lives we would think "Oh Jehovah is blessing me" instead of feeling proud of ourselves for our achievements.

I believe this thinking leads to mental illness, this constant questioning if things are from Satan or Jehovah. My mom drives me crazy with this, if things go well and she gets something that she had been praying for, she says that Jehovah answered her prayer, and when she doesn't get it or when calamity strikes she says that Satan doesn't rest, that he's always looking to stumble Jehovah's loyal ones, AAARRRGGGHHHHH, it drives be berzerk!

I'm so glad you are recovering from this craziness, I too rose above this, and today I am a very happy person, and I see life for what it is, a journey that at times is wonderful and at times painful but I am free to choose without worrying that some powerful being is trying to destroy me.

IC

Terry

I believe this thinking leads to mental illness, this constant questioning if things are from Satan or Jehovah

You are SERIOUSLY correct!

It hit me one day. I had been mentally ill. Those years of "serving Jehovah" were no different from years spent putting my hand in my shirt and believing

I was Napoleon! All the "good" I had done was about as useful as sprinkling holy water on rose bushes.

I simply wasted years of my life walking around spouting off utter nonsense with the utter conviction I was specially blessed totally right.

I was wrong and I was sick.

There was a lady yesterday in the bookstore who was looking for a book in the Christian Living section of the store. When she found it I watched her. She closed her eyes and threw her head back in ecstacy. "Oh Lord...Lord! You are SO good to me, Lord! Thank you, Lord Jesus...thank you!" She made quite a spectacle of herself and it took her actual MINUTES to regain her composure!

She was nuts.

But, I had been too.

Religion is a can of mixed nuts.

T.

Quentin

Religion is a can of mixed nuts.

But the cashews are so good!...

Black and white...we do not live in a world of black and white, and gray, we reside in a world of color and it's not meant for us to know the answer to everything...leaves room to learn and explore...go from black and white to color...what would you prefere, a TV that broadcasts in B&W or Color? The choice is simple...

Letting go of the black and white thinking...

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