Why Paradise Would Drive JWs Insane

metatron

What would qualify as the most Paradise-like spot on earth? I'd say somewhere in the Pacific Islands.

Tropical breezes, lying in the warm sun on beautiful beaches ..... and so on.

But funny isn't it that these places often have high rates of suicide!?

http://www.who.int/mental_health/policy/country/pimhnet/en/index.html

The reason why is that such a context does not necessarily generate emotionally strong people

in the same way that avoiding exercise doesn't give you physical strength.

A clergyman once said that he was trying to offer eternal life to people who didn't know what to

do with themselves on a Sunday afternoon. If you put Jehovah's Witnesses in a real Paradise,

they wouldn't know what to do with it! How many Witnesses actually have outside interests

or a hobby or read books or even think?! How many Witnesses seem to be unable to chat

about anything deeper than the weather? For most Witnesses in western nations, 21st century life

offers them a better, longer life than EVER BEFORE IN HUMAN HISTORY - but how do they

react? "WORSE AND WORSE" is their endless mantra about the surrounding world.

Paradise for Jehovah's Witnesses? You've got to be kidding. It would drive them insane.

metatron

ESTEE

No duality, no black and white, no devil and demons . . . yup. They'd go insane! And it wouldn't take much to put them over the edge.

ESTEE

REBORNAGAIN

Good point. And so true.

At least I know I am not the only one who lacks skills in the arts. We were so deprived. *cryingmyeyesout*

LINDA

P.S. How about we all gang up on the Society and run them aground. If we can't take them to court for what they did, let's show revenge....in a decent, proper way.

BONEZZ

"Tropical breezes, lying in the warm sun on beautiful beaches "

...and GASP!...possibly immodest attire.

Fornication would be rampant.

Local Needs talk would be about those coconut shells being used for booby tops....

and grass skirts...did you know you can see right thru those things?! Oh My Gawd!

I think a better JDub Paradise would be Antarctica.

-BONEZZ

REBORNAGAIN

The Antartica? *heehee* I think it would actually benefit us all if they went there. It would freeze their mouths shut too.

This posting is actually making me wonder what THE Paradise will really be like. If not like a tropical island, then what? When we die, then we will know and no sooner. In the meantime, I'm beginning to wonder what Paradise really is? I think I will believe Sylvia Browne's version. What she says, makes a whole lot more sense now.

LINDA

ColdRedRain

Talk about your Tropical Depression.

REBORNAGAIN

I'm here in my office at work cracking my head off. My boss will wonder what I am laughing about. You made my day!

LINDA

lfcviking

How many Witnesses actually have outside interests or a hobby or read books or even think?!

Good point, but i think this is because the WT makes their own members so busy with preaching, studying & meetings that any outside interests become clouded out.

But funny isn't it that these places often have high rates of suicide!?

If this is so, this might be due to political, economic & social problems the country & people sufffer from, not necessarily any issues to do with geographical location.

WTWizard

To me, a true paradise involves being able to explore and use my brain. It means being able to have all the time in the world to take up science pursuits, find the field that suits me the best, and develop my proficiency in that area to the max while maintaining integration with everything else. And, once that is done, to use the knowledge to create value for myself and society, and keep the fruitages of that value for my personal use and not donating any of it for "higher causes".

This is diametrically the opposite of the Watchtower paradise. Their idea of paradise is being able to spend all their time worshiping Jehovah. There would be no time for taking up legitimate science. There would be no way to develop values, since the Watchtower Society would find a way to bash it to pieces and then some. And the whole of that value would go to the Watchtower Society, not to myself or to society. Plus, too many meetings and some kind of service. And "just meet other men", along with having to live forever with the hounders that made all those rules. To me, that is not paradise!

JamesThomas

Metatron, I don't quite agree that paradise would drive Witnesses insane, for the simple reason that they are already insane. I do agree that paradise could make things worse for most Witnesses and so exacerbate a preexisting pathology. Here's why:

As a Witness, there is little if any resting in the reality of the present moment. Rather, they are continually reaching past the actuality of here and now, out into a distant fantasy of paradise in some other time. This is a form of mental escapism that can be so deeply ingrained that people can live their entire lives mentally moving back and forth between abstract memories of the past and fantasies of the future without ever really experiencing the reality and depths of the present moment.

A Witness doesnt even know they're presently lost in delusional patterns of insanity -- nor do most other people -- so if they did happen to step into paradise it would not be long before a deep unease set in. Their entire identity before was based on focus of a time and place unreal, and a paradise real does not support or give comfort to an identity based on fantasy. So paradise could come to seem like a valley of death threatening my life and wellbeing. Never satisfied with what IS, we reach into make-believe and set up home.

For most people the moment is only something to get past. Real paradise is not about reaching or getting past, but rather meeting with the bottomless richness and depths of nature and beingness in this moment. Paradise is not so much a place, as it is simply being acutely aware of life here and now.

j

Why Paradise Would Drive JWs Insane

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