by elderelite 46 Replies latest jw experiences
I hope that I have had more than one moment of clarity.
As it relates to the watchtower, I remember distinctly the discussion i was having with an individual from Columbus Ohio on Prodigy. Finally one of his points stuck. To say I was stunted, is an understatement. I remember moving from the computer to a chair in the family room and just totally frightened about what I just understood. This was the beginning of a long and very painful process to where I am today.
I expected that many would use whatever it was that woke you up.. and i believe that is indeed a moment of clarity.. when it hits you that everything you ever believed (if you were a born in) and everything that was "true" in your life just got turned upside down.. nice experiances all. Special nod of the head to voideater for "the eternal moment of now".. I was going to use that myself but sometimes my zen referances are lost so I tried to describe it instead. I like your way better.
I too had a moment of clarity regarding our little organization. It is happened here and is posted here on JW.net so I wont repeat it on this thread. However I had one other one some time ago as well, one that in its own way laid some of the ground work, but was very profound on a level deeper than just "the organization"....
Some time ago I went scuba diving in the cayman islands. There is, off the grand island, a world renown dive spot some call "the big tunnel". I took a trip out there. before I try to describe the specific experiance, scuba diving itself is unreal. The first few minutes of every dive is spent getting reoriented to the underwater world.. but once you are adjusted, your clothes or wet suit is water temp.. you become accustomed to being weightless.. it is the closet thing to flying you will ever experiance. after a short while you forget. Forget if you are a mammel breathing air that has to surface or a fish who is at home. it is unlike anything else i have ever done, no matter how many times i experiance it. but as i decended the line in the cayman's i reached that point of total sensory immersion.. i was a an underwater creature.. below me, as I slowly drifted down, was a huge flat surface. it wasn't the bottom of the ocean, but the top of a coral wall, but so wide and long that it appeared to be "bottom".. there was a crevice that we drifted towards.. as we got closer it grew in size until it was so wide that we could easily swim side by side.. we travled along the bottom of the crevice, 120 ft below the surface of the sea, impossibly deep, until we reached "the big tunnel".
I entered (you dont physically think about the movement or cause them, they just happen) and traveled the 30 ft length in awe and suddenly came out of the tunnel.. into open ocean. i froze. having been travling over the bottom of the the tunnel it seemed that i was "on the bottom" of the ocean, but suddenly the ground dropped out and now i was litteraly hovering over a void. a void so deep, so vast, so impossibly blue,totally silent, so utterly empty and perfect, I had that moment of clarity. I feel it even now as i type this, excatly as i experianced it then/now. i understood. i understood everything and nothing. i was totally empty of myself but full of all things. I had perfect peace, devoid of any and all senses, thoughts feelings emotions.. i dont know if i am breathing.. it dosent matter.. and then i feel a pull. it wakes me from the trance i am in.. a fellow diver would later tell me he was worried about keeping up with the group we were with.. it didn't matter. i have that moment forever. It changed me in a way i cant really explain.. to have touched the void or have it touch me, to be consumed by it..flew over nothingness.. have you ever had the dream where you fly? I had that dream while I was awake.. in the worst moments of my life, in the best of times i am still there.. knowing everything, being empty of myself, hovering in the expanse, at one with eternity in the moment of yesterday/today/tommarow
I came to the surface a change man. baptized in the waters of the carribean
I am not the most eloquent but as best as my imperfect words can describe that was my moment of enlightenment, my moment of clarity
I also know asilentone wont read that since it dosent have enough spaces and isn't short enough..
I was a few days from turning 26 when my youngest sister was born, (Dad had a second family). When I held her for the first time I thought, "I'd kill anyone if they ever tried to hurt her." Then it dawned on me that my brother and I didn't have any protection growing up with our jw mom. It was painful but also a relief to realize that the abuse we suffered wasn't my fault. I had always blamed myself for the unwanted sexual attention of my stepfather and the mental torture he inflicted on my sweet baby brother.
Thirteen years later I was channel surfing and came upon the original broadcast of the Dateline NBC episode that featured Barbara Anderson and Bill Bowen. I was a df'd believer who finally was shown he true nature of the organization. Even before I read the Silent Lambs website, I knew there had to be cover ups of domestic violence as well as child molestation as I had suffered both at the hands of the Watchtower.
Those two moments of clarity are why I am so militant when it comes ex and exiting jws keeping their kids away from jws.
wow...^^^^
EE, i also dive and spent a week wreck diving around grand caymen, the water was so clear i could see the boats name at 110 feet. feeling waitless in a different world is amazing. i usually dive in new england water cold and dark but i like the adrenaline rush that comes with 6 ft visability and the lobsters.
my clarity moment
i have to admit i have not had a very stable childhood. not growing up a jw had nothing to do with it poor parenting was to blame. anyway i was around 17 and had been coping with depression by self medicating and was starting to use cocaine. i felt powerful when i smoked it and had went with a friend to the projects to score a couple grams. we found a guy who took us to a girls apt, she looked horrible missing teeth, hair was a mess anyway there were a few people smoking so i made a purchase and started to make my rock and the girl tells me " ill s#$k your d&*k for a hit. she said this with no shame and it caused me to look around my environment through the smoke and stench i noticed a toddler in a playpen crying that i hadnt seen before that. in that moment i stood up left the drugs told my friend i am leaving. we left i reached a market with a phone and called the police and gave them the apt #. never again touched the stuff.
EA, deep. to just walk away from something that has so strong a hold.. clarity
(i also live on the east coast.have done the wreck thing here... i stick with the bath tub diving :-)
I've had several. The one that clearly pops into my mind was when I was about 12 my mother told me I would be a JW or she would kill me trying, as she was beating the s**t out of me for something I had not done. When you have someone doing this to you, you tend to believe them as this was not the first time she had done this. Years later, after being a good little JW and looking at my kids one day I realized this woman had no more hold over me, nor did any of the elders. I was always guilted into it and through fear. I never went back to the hall after that. MM
I read a Tucker Max story.
It gave me a perspective calibration.
I now know how good/bad I am in relation to the worst possible.
Now that is clarity!
Yes. When my brother died I realised he had experienced trouble with the supernatural as he had always claimed and I had dismissed.
