Did you AWAKEN from the JWs by yourself?

cultBgone

I was thinking about how so many posters here on JWN are frustrated and frantic to help their loved ones get away from the brainwashing of JWs, and how much advice is given about how to help family members and loved ones. I considered my own leaving and that it was internal turmoil based on the teachings getting weirder and child abuse issues, to name just a few, and it made me wonder:

Did you self-awaken or were you assisted by the gentle proddings of a friend or family member? Did you start to listen to the misgivings in your own conscience or did a comment from family rattle your senses?

Simon

Did you self-awaken or were you assisted by the gentle proddings of a friend or family member? Did you start to listen to the misgivings in your own conscience or did a comment from family rattle your senses?

I don't think people telling you things awakens you but when you see something that confirms some snippet you may have previously been told OR something happens that makes you start listening to things then you have a good chance of waking up.

That was my experience anyway and why I believe a gentle approach is best.

The guns-blazing approach may work for some but I think they are a minority.

tiki

i had cognotive dissonance in a large way for a very very long time.....but i kept at it because i figured if i had given it so many years, why quit now. my husband had a far more objective viewpoint....and although my fade was very slow and lengthy (at the time i didn't even realize that was what was going on... i just thought i'd lost the spirit and that i'd make a comeback someday)......but all the crap really got to me and there came a memorial and i was grappling all day with loathing to go but feeling duty-bound. he would go or stay home - whatever i wanted.....he ended up asking me and i quote "do you really want to go to the shindig?" and i said "no".....and he told me i didn't have to and i never had to go to a kh again if that's how i felt. i literally felt a weight come off me and felt free, liberated.........................and only was in a kh once since and that was only because a dear friend's funeral was held there.

blondie

I did not find boards like JWN until I had already awakened. I just had the mindset that I had to know where I was going to. After examining other religions we just left, cold turkey. One too many unloving stupid sayings

1) kissing a non-jw spouse is like kissing a corpse

2) becoming a jw is like training a young elephant by chaining it to a post; condition it to think it can't get loose even when it is an adult

3) If Jesus saw a dirty penny and a shiny quarter, he would only pick up and value the shiny quarter.

tiki

blondie - i've heard #1 before...........never #2 although i can see where some sick minds would find that appropos....but #3 ?????? what on earth is that supposed to mean???????

flipper

CULTBGONE- Very good thread, thanks for posting it. I DID awaken by myself from experiencing injustices from the elders towards me and other JW's I knew. No one prodded me- I had my awakening and epiphany all at once after the elders met with me in a meeting in the back room before a Tuesday night meeting started. I walked out of the back room, picked up my books on my seat and walked out the Kingdom hall door- never to return. That was 11 years ago. Best decision I ever made. I have had freedom of mind ever since

life is to short

I agree with Simon and flipper. I had listened to Dateline with Barbara Anderson in 2002 but I convinced myself it was not really true, that it happened only in her area and she much have misunderstood it, etc. It was not until I saw pedophiles in my hall myself that I believed it. If someone had been in my face telling me that it was a cult as did happen it just made me more sure it was the "truth". But it was seeing as flipper said injustices myself that I woke up.

So with me I totally agree that gentle way is so much better than the blow horns and yelling in front of the Kingdom. I know I have been told that I need to do that but it just turned me off when I was in and I try to treat people like I want to be treated.

And a huge shout out to this sight Simon and thoes like flipper and Mrs. flipper who helped me so much reallize I was not crazy and gave me so much encouragement. I do not know what I would have done or where I would be now with out this place to come and read and know I am not alone.

LITS

blondie

dirty penny = no good (actually all humans are sinners, right, and Jesus died for all sinners per the WTS)

shiny quarter = WTS view of who are worthy of attention

So Jesus died only for the shiny quarters, not dirty pennies

All 3 were used in a circuit assembly in 2001.

OnTheWayOut

I started slowly waking up on my own. After 1995 and the generation change (one of several since then), I realized I would grow old and die "in this system of things" and made appropriate life plans to have a career and a retirement. I had only jobs before my career that started in 2000.

As a JW elder, I did research for platform speaking parts. I could find the answer to virtually any JW questions in their Watchtower Library and I could find the answers to anything else in Google (and other search engines before Google was the one to fall back on).

A few things in the JW world did not sit right with me, namely showing favoritism to elders then to higher ups even more so. I pioneered one year to give Jehovah the opportunity to use me and shine the spirit on me, but instead saw that it was just all about time and stats and felt no spirit. I started reading what outsiders said about the scriptures- scholarly people of Christianity mostly. I saw that there were plenty of ways to look at things.

One day in 2005, I just up and decided I would google "Jehovah's Witnesses." I said that truth is not afraid of lies, I would see the truth and know it. So I would go to every link without fear of who is writing it, and if it's craftiness from Satan, I would be able to discern that. I quickly discovered jwfacts.com and freeminds and started waking up faster.

PaintedToeNail

It was an article in the Watchtower, study article, that made me realize how ridiculous it all was. Another comparison to 'faithful Job'. It dawned on me for the bazllionth time that I would've never felt God was blessing me. That out of love, god allowed my kids to all die, and for everything owned to be taken or destoyed. Soooo loving to allow the most faithful person on earth to go through that to satisfy the devil's curiosity. . And just why did god feel the need to accept a bet with the devil, anyway?

Did you AWAKEN from the JWs by yourself?

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