One more thing. Everything you feel is real! Everything is the feelings of a real and genuine human! Amazingly every feeling you have will have been felt by millions of others just as uncomfortable about stating it as you are. It is who you are and what we all should have been taught is a natural human thing anyhow. Teaching humans not to be human is what causes so many problems. And denying the emotions we have and the thought which possess us is what puts so many people in other peoples hands to be manipulated. Sounds like you are knowing yourself real well and even realizing it's absolutely fine no matter how negative it looks - its real!
WILL YOU kindly help me?
by Terry 86 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
UU Now
Terry, what year were you drafted? My oldest brother had friends who were drafted in the late 1960s and who did accept alternative service assignments at hospitals. It's not my recollection that they were sanctioned by the JWs for doing so. Was there a doctrinal shift at some point during the war, or was my childhood congregation more forgiving?
My brother, BTW, was 4F for being overweight. They actually sent him to a psychologist to talk about why he didn't want to lose weight. "Um, because if I do, you'll draft me?" Duh.
-
Abandoned
Congratulations Terry!!!
Doesn't it feel amazing? I'm about two thousand words away and I have the rest of the day to get them so barring anything crazy, I should be crossing the finish line later on today as well. I don't really know how to answer your question since I don't know what you've included already, but I think some information on the power structure at work in prison would be interesting. Not so much the legitimate one, but the one created by and of the inmates themselves. How do you cope with such a dramatic change in your situation? What did you have to do to keep people from messing with you? Did you become more cynical? What did you learn about yourself? Things like that I guess...
Good luck getting it published too.
-
Terry
While you were in prison, did you begin to doubt the Organization and their rigid legalism which caused your imprisonment?
I was, at that time, a one hundred per cent True Believer with not a doubt in my body. Alas!
-
Terry
What were the thoughts in your mind that supported the position you took as you walked the walk. Did you rely mainly on one or more ideas when inside to justify it to yourself? In your heart, did you feel you were in touch with Gods will or were you following head rules and feeling emotionally detached from Him -or both? Did you see yourself standing like Paul, for your Christian belief in Jesus? Did the reality fit the position you thought you were taking? Did you feel you were doing it on behalf of a brotherhood? How close did you feel to that brotherhood on release? Did the reality of the brotherhood ever become realized in terms of how you viewed it and how you committed yourself to their cause? Did you ever get the feeling you were a lab rat who'd been put in for a scientific experiment rather than standing for Gods will? Did you carry an essence of brotherhood in your head which inspired you to take a stand but which you realized later was your personal over loyal heart deluding your mind that everyone else had the same essence as yourself, only to discover later that everyone else seemed more in touch with Bible bureaucracy than the spirit of love? Did you ever get the feeling you stood in the middle of the pitch for a big game, ready to give your all for your team, all the floodlights were on, but alas you were the only player who turned up - the stadium was empty - it was just you and god? The rest were all having lunch or taking a walk at some convention someplace? Did you ever feel what was overflowing your heart was only found in yourself and you didn't know what to do with that feeling? Did you ever feel your whole spirituality was overflowing like a young male going through years waiting for his dream girl who never showed and now the fires have died to embers? Did it make you feel wasted? Hope one or two snippets helps! Ray.
The shortest answer I can give that would come close to describing how these things happen is this. You choose sides and jump in. Once you jump in to a group or movement you are part of everything that identifies that movement. The JW's were anti-social and anti-everything normal. I signed on and became that. It was my turn to jump off the building without a parachute. I was a lemming. Off I went without a clue how I would land intact.
This scares me admitting all this. It is so contrary to how I have ever seen myself.
At one point, I thought I was in direct contact with Jehovah. I prayed inside my head (In other words, I was talking to myself) day and night. This running dialogue was self-hypnosis, I feel.
The question of wasted time is important. I gained things and I lost things. I can't every go back and relive the other life I left abourning. I did the best I could with what I chose.
My entire 21st year of my life was simply a waste in many ways (or, in every way.) I should have been in college. I should have been developing social skills which excluded delusional thinking and fantasy wish-fulfillments.
But---what can I do now? Nothing; just keep moving!
-
Terry
One more thing. Everything you feel is real! Everything is the feelings of a real and genuine human! Amazingly every feeling you have will have been felt by millions of others just as uncomfortable about stating it as you are. It is who you are and what we all should have been taught is a natural human thing anyhow. Teaching humans not to be human is what causes so many problems. And denying the emotions we have and the thought which possess us is what puts so many people in other peoples hands to be manipulated. Sounds like you are knowing yourself real well and even realizing it's absolutely fine no matter how negative it looks - its real!
Had I written about this experience right after I got out this would be entirely different in every way imaginable. I don't have the same mind I had, pure and simple.
This makes everything completely odd and disjointed by way of reportage. I don't know what was real to me other than the fantasy mindset. I hate re-visiting that mentally defective period of my existence. I've postponed doing it for forty years if that gives a clue.
I coughed this novel up out of a diseased portion of my life. It ain't pretty.
-
horrible life
Terry, what year were you drafted? My oldest brother had friends who were drafted in the late 1960s and who did accept alternative service assignments at hospitals. It's not my recollection that they were sanctioned by the JWs for doing so. Was there a doctrinal shift at some point during the war, or was my childhood congregation more forgiving?
Well this statement from UU Now, gave me a big whiff of deja-vu. Mexico and _________? Society cherry picking at it's finest.
Terry, did your stay in prison, affect the way you see the organization more now, since you have escaped the JW's? Example, are you more pi$$ed off at the top of the pyramid, that is Brooklyn, since you were actually imprisoned, not just indoctrinated?
-
Terry
Terry, what year were you drafted? My oldest brother had friends who were drafted in the late 1960s and who did accept alternative service assignments at hospitals. It's not my recollection that they were sanctioned by the JWs for doing so. Was there a doctrinal shift at some point during the war, or was my childhood congregation more forgiving?
My brother, BTW, was 4F for being overweight. They actually sent him to a psychologist to talk about why he didn't want to lose weight. "Um, because if I do, you'll draft me?" Duh.
I was specifically admonished by my Presiding Elder (Congregation Overseer) and his assistant what to do and what not to do. They verbally instructed me to lie about this! "Never tell anybody that WE or any other brothers counselled you what to do. You must always say this is YOUR idea and YOUR belief."
I have to think they didn't make this up out of their own ideas. There must have been communication directly from headquarters what to tell brothers in my situation.
I have discovered over the years that a lot of guys lied about what they did or didn't do. Shame? I don't know.
Many, if not most of the brothers my age did NOT go in prison. They either didn't every register for the draft in the first place or they took civilian jobs and pretended not to or they had family pull strings with the draft board or they didn't pass the physical.
I just think it supremely odd so few of my fellow JW's at the time went to Jail!!
-
Terry
I don't know what you've included already, but I think some information on the power structure at work in prison would be interesting. Not so much the legitimate one, but the one created by and of the inmates themselves. How do you cope with such a dramatic change in your situation? What did you have to do to keep people from messing with you? Did you become more cynical? What did you learn about yourself? Things like that I guess...
Great to hear, Abandoned, you are almost across the finish line on your book as well!!
Keep going--upload and get your Winner Certificate.
About your question: I do cover those thoughts and questions alot in my book. Especially the mind change from True Believer to Skeptic and why that happened against my will.
Thanks and good luck.
-
Terry
Terry, did your stay in prison, affect the way you see the organization more now, since you have escaped the JW's? Example, are you more pi$$ed off at the top of the pyramid, that is Brooklyn, since you were actually imprisoned, not just indoctrinated?
I don't think anybody at all in the Organization ever cared in their actual emotional self about any brother or sister who endured any kind of upset, suffering, privation, injury or death. I just don't think they did.
They moved pieces around on a chessboard in their head. They are geeks and nerds. They are obsessive and compulsive cretins who destroy lives without a snap of their fingers or an admission of error or failure.
They aren't any kind of human beings who should tell others how to live their life!
So, I'm a bit bitter about the guys at the top and the bottom.