Yes, I was born into the jw faith. It was a horrible disadvantage for me, I believe. The propaganda was internalized in me very deeply. I was in therapy for nine years. I left almost four years ago, through the course of being disfellowshipped.
It is impossible to stay and almost as difficult to leave. I had to de-program myself - - - tear out all the old beliefs - - - and rebuild my entire belief structure. (An exceedingly painful process) It took me nine years of therapy to examine my beliefs. I didnt know when I was getting into therapy that the jw philosophy was notever going to work for me again. I have lost everything, starting with my marriage almost seven years ago, (because I did not want to be a submissive doormat-of-a-wife anymore). It did not make sense for me to go in service anymore, since I no longer believed the jw philosophy. Instead I saw people of all religions having loving relationships with their families and spiritual experiences within their churches and with their god. These people were happy - - - and I was miserable and lonely.
Since my disfellowshipping, my children will not speak with me, nor will two "fleshly" jw brothers. This year especially has been very painful. I lost my job, due to layoff. I moved out of my apartment since I could no longer afford the rent. At this present time I feel like I am a pile of ashes. Nothing is the same. I feel so alone.
Then I remembered the Phoenix, the great bird that rose from nothing out of the ashes to be a magnificent creature! And I know that I will rise out of the jw ashes and I will be magnificent in my new life!
We all will be magnificent in our renewal!
ESTEE <-------- of the "still-better-off-on-the-outside" class
The Phoenix
A mythical bird that never dies, the phoenix flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the landscape and distant space. It represents our capacity for vision, for collecting sensory information about our environment and the events unfolding within it.
The phoenix, with its great beauty, creates intense excitement and deathless inspiration."
The Feng Shui Handbook, feng shui Master Lam Kam Chuen
The Phoenix Bird
In the Garden of Paradise,
beneath the Tree of Knowledge, bloomed a rose bush.
Here, in the first rose, a bird was born.
His flight was like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous,
and his song ravishing.
But when Eve plucked the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
when she and Adam were driven from Paradise,
there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub
a spark into the nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith.
The bird perished in the flames;
but from the red egg in the nest there fluttered aloft a new one
the one solitary Phoenix bird.
The fable tells that he dwells in Arabia,
and that every hundred years, he burns himself to death in his nest;
But each time a new Phoenix,
the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg.
The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in color, charming in song.
When a mother sits by her infant's cradle, he stands on the pillow,
and, with his wings, forms a glory around the infant's head.
He flies through the chamber of content, and brings sunshine into it,
and the violets on the humble table smell doubly sweet.
But the Phoenix is not the bird of Arabia alone.
He wings his way in the glimmer of the Northern Lights
over the plains of Lapland,
and hops among the yellow flowers in the short Greenland summer.
Beneath the copper mountains of Fablun, and England's coal mines, he flies,
in the shape of a dusty moth, over the hymnbook
that rests on the knees of the pious miner.
On a lotus leaf he floats down the sacred waters of the Ganges,
and the eye of the Hindu maid gleams bright when she beholds him.
The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him?
The Bird of Paradise, the holy swan of song!
On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of a chattering raven,
and flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees of wine;
over the sounding harp of Iceland swept the swan's red beak;
on Shakespeare's shoulder he sat in the guise of Odin's raven,
and whispered in the poet's ear, Immortality!
and at the minstrels' feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.
The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him?
He sang to thee the Marseillaise,
and thou kissedst the pen that fell from his wing;
he came in the radiance of Paradise,
and perchance thou didst turn away from him,
towards the sparrow who sat with tinsel on his wings.
The Bird of Paradise, renewed each century
born in flame, ending in flame!
Thy picture, in a golden frame, hangs in the halls of the rich,
but thou thyself often fliest around, lonely and disregarded,
a myth ---
The Phoenix of Arabia.
In Paradise, when thou wert born in the first rose,
beneath the Tree of Knowledge, thou receivedst a kiss,
and thy right name was given thee - - - thy name,
Poetry.
by Hans Christian Andersen
Edited by - ESTEE on 2 January 2003 23:47:9
