EVASION! How to blank out what you don't want to know

by Terry 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

Terry

Thinking is the virtue man prizes most. All other virtues proceed from thinking. Logically, the greatest source of all evils stems from EVASION of thinking. .
EVASION is the willful suspension of one's consciousness.
No, this doesn't mean you fall asleep. It mean's you deliberately UNfocus. Awareness requres focus. Active and purposeful focus of reality allows rational thinking the enviornment it needs.
In order to accept a LIE as truth one must practice EVASION. You cannot detect false information if you fail to pay attention
Refusing to see what is there to be seen; refusing to hear what is there to be heard in an analytical mode of thought is evasion. It leads to a refusal TO KNOW.
Bad news? Unfocus your mind and say "No!"
Burdens of responsibility? Induce an inner fog and escape knowing.
Mystical thinking is the act of evasion. What is it? The unstated premise that A THING WILL NOT EXIST if only you refuse to identify it.
What induces evasion?
Unpreparedness. If you are unprepared to face the facts you are doomed to attempt to avoid acknowledging they even exist.
How many active JW's are unprepared to face the fact their religion is squandering their time and leading to a futile existence? Fear sets in. How would they cope without some organization to dictate their every move? What would they do without all their "friends" to support them (their so-called brothers and sisters)?
How do JW's evade?
1.Prayer
The premise of prayer is that you are helpless. The premise of prayer is that there is somebody out there who can help IF YOU ARE WORTHY. But, prayer never works without pretzel-logic interpretation of mundane events.
2. Fellowship
The premise of fellowship is the others give you strength and encouragement and on your own you are weak and selfish. Fellowship is the opposite of self-esteem.
3.Indoctrination
Reading matter controlled to filter out reality programs the evasive mind to set life's purpose on a future event in order to squander all opportunity for life in the here and now.
4.Magic-thinking
Spending your thoughts on fantasy and fending off actuality leave no time for analytical purpose destroys your rational process.
5.Dulling the senses
Pills, alcohol, tobacco, entertainment (fill in the blank) all serve to take the edge of what is really happening and make intruding events go away. "Make the world go away" is a delaying mechanism and an evasion. It means you have no skills to live in the here and now and must resort to hiding from the natural alarm-bells that go off when action must be taken. Dulling the senses is a way to shut out the alarm.
6.Seeking advice
To seek advice you have to regard yourself as incapable of thinking out your solutions to life's problems. Seeking advice means a total stranger who does not live in your shoes is given the magic power to tell you how to live your life for you. This is abandonment of the self and a collapse of personal individuality. The difference between consulting an informed source and seeking advice is this. A consultation will afford you facts that require decisions of action. Seeking advice is turning over the wheel to another driver.
7.Delay
Procrastination delays the decision that must be made now; the action that must be taken. It is a default decision which is no more than a coin flip. It says "Whatever happens; happens. All things work out for the best. I'll let go and let god..." The difference between a person who is an individual and a slave is the slave must wait for commands.
It is not ORIGINAL SIN which infects mankind. No, it is suspending your mind in an act of abandonment which destroys you.
Evasion, blanking-out and avoidance lead to mindless out-sourcing of your thinking to a worthless OTHER.
Horoscopes, I Ching, Tarot, rabbit's foot, superstition, religion, fortune cookie, magic 8 ball, etc. These take the place of your active mind and become your master.
Evasion begins when you are made to feel inferior, sinful, worthless and in need of rescue. Worthiness is paid for by servitude.
SOUNDS LIKE EVERY JW I KNOW. Fear is their master.
yaddayadda

"Thinking is the virtue man prizes most. All other virtues proceed from thinking. Logically, the greatest source of all evils stems from EVASION of thinking."

Not according to Buddhists. Their aim to kill the constantly thinking mind and remain instead aware of the present moment. Their argument is that too much thinking creates evil. In fact writers such as Eckhart Tolle insist that we are generally unconscious as long as we are thinking.
The problem is not a lack of thinking by JW's because all they ever go on about is knowledge, knowledge,knowledge (John 17:3 ad nauseum). The problem is what they think about. Their problem is a lack of considering all sides of the argument. They wilfully choose to only think about what their own leaders feed them.
tetrapod.sapien

Thinking is the virtue man prizes most. All other virtues proceed from thinking. Logically, the greatest source of all evils stems from EVASION of thinking.

what is "virtue"? what is "logic"? what is "evil"?
done with virtue myself. not sure what logic is. and evil, well of course there is no such thing.
i personally like blow-jobs more than thinking.
however, that said, like all your threads, i enjoyed it anyways:
It is not ORIGINAL SIN which infects mankind. No, it is suspending your mind in an act of abandonment which destroys you.
ts
bikerchic

LOL Terry I learned at a very early age to tune out, blank out, escape. It took years of practice living in a very dysfunctional family where what you heard, saw and thought could not be spoken just internalized.
At age 40 something I got over it.........then I left a cult.
I'm all better now, well maybe not ALL, but life is pleasant, real and livable without drugs or any other kind of escape.
Oh, thanks for the memories Terry.
A Paduan

I don't see how this statement fits:
Mystical thinking is the act of evasion.
?
Terry

Not according to Buddhists. Their aim to kill the constantly thinking mind and remain instead aware of the present moment. Their argument is that too much thinking creates evil. In fact writers such as Eckhart Tolle insist that we are generally unconscious as long as we are thinking.
The problem is not a lack of thinking by JW's because all they ever go on about is knowledge, knowledge,knowledge (John 17:3 ad nauseum). The problem is what they think about. Their problem is a lack of considering all sides of the argument. They wilfully choose to only think about what their own leaders feed them.

Buddhists in Tibet successfully killed their own thinking as the Communists invaded and wiped them out! Causes (not thinking) led to effects (obliteration). Now the Dali Lama drifts around like a celebrity ghost. Smiling and wishing peace on the world he evades the cause of his brethren being obliterated: failing to think!
JW's have substituted "accurate knowledge" for actual knowledge. This cuckoo's egg hatches and flies away with their sanity. Jehovah's sheep are a chain gang awaiting instructions from the Boss Man in Brooklyn. JW's are conditioned to NOT think; but to OBEY.
T.
Terry

what is "virtue"? what is "logic"? what is "evil"?

By blurring the definitions of what we must cope with living on planet Earth (virtue,logic, awareness of evil) we blank out having to deal with them pro-actively.
VIRTUE: is being consistant with rational values. The choice to live with the facts of life and not the fantasies must be implemented with uncompromising rationality. In other words: you walk the walk and don't just talk the talk. The trick is this: choose your values carefully. Select values that are attached to reality. Act in order to impact on what is real. Faith is passive reliance on fantasy.
LOGIC: is the art of non-contradictory identification and measurement. Refusing to accept effects without causes. Thinking is an act of identifying and integrating what is identified. Logic is the measuring device that divides the consistant from the inconsistant.
EVIL: is the failure to think and act RATIONALLY. (The evil of Hitler's Germany was the result of good people refusing to act to prevent what what happening. The default mechanism of not acting allowed others (who let the STATE think for them) to do harm.
In other words; we cannot possess and live by values passively. We cannot identify and measure passively. We cannot prevent harm passively.
Thinking is an ACTIVE process. EVASION is avoiding the action that creates a positive difference in our life.
Do we make our life happen....?
Or..
Is our life what happens to us? The choice is there and it requires action and not evasion.
T.
Terry

I'm all better now, well maybe not ALL, but life is pleasant, real and livable without drugs or any other kind of escape

I'm very happy for you!
Taking the steering wheel and turning it in your own life is the only way to get to where you want to go!
I think how many years I wasted sitting in the back seat of my own life while the Watchtower drove me around in circles---it was such an abyss!
T.
Terry

I don't see how this statement fits:
Mystical thinking is the act of evasion.

A man is hungry. His body needs nutrition.

Set before him is a table with two bowls; one has actual fruit while the other one has waxed fruit. The two look identical.

Does it matter which fruit he places in his mouth, chews and swallows?

You might say "yes" because of the taste. But, that isn't the issue.

What if the waxed fruit could be made to taste somehow exactly like the real fruit?

Or....even better than the real fruit?

Would it matter then which one was eaten?

Of course it would! The purpose of eating is to give your body the nutriments it needs for energy and operation in health.

Now, what has this got to do with your question?

I'll answer you directly.

We live in a real world, but, we are capable of creating an alternate reality in our mind. Often, this alternate reality (fantasy) is "better" and more comfortable than the real world.

Does it matter which world we try and live in? Is our comfort the real issue?

Mysticism is a way of creating an alternate "reality" which is not better than tasty waxed fruit. Instead of the natural world we are given a tastier alternate called the SUPERnatural.

This mystical alternate is tasty. We can become obsessed with the pleasure and comfort it gives us. Especially when the real world is often bitter and painful!

The decision as to which world we will try and live in makes the difference as to whether we are fully functioning human beings or not. People who try and escape reality pay a heavy price!

Have you ever known anybody who just plays video games all day (and all night)?

Have you ever known anybody who just stays high all the time?

Have you ever known anybody who just talks about God and thinks about Armageddon all the time?

They have made a choice. That choice is TO EVADE REALITY.

What kind of life do they end up with?

We are ex-Jehovah's Witnesses. We come here to talk about the pain and waste in our lives BECAUSE WE CHOSE AN ALTERNATE reality.

It started with trying to avoid the real world by selecting a delicious bowl of waxed fruit called The New World Society.

It was mysticism we were choosing.
It was evasion.
T.
jojochan

Excellent post Terry!
I see this all the time when those that read certain books that are indeed thought provoking. When that happened to me that weird feeling I would realise was that my brain was actually waking up to make new connections and growth in information, which the society would call information overload, and I would remember those warnings back in the day.
Also deep down I would know that I was starting to THINK; which is the society's fear that all of the collective would in fact start doing. Slowly but surely.
jojochan.

EVASION! How to blank out what you don't want to know

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