Brainwashing is an effective tool and it lingers for a long time but not forever. One of the tools used is faith. You felt you had faith in Jehovah. Now maybe you'll begin to realize that your faith was more with the society than with Jehovah.
Keep yourself busy both mentally and physically. Your faith in the organization has already begun to break down. Time will assist it more. Do not ever read their mindless attempts to keep you brainwashed. Also do not just read anti JW literature. Widen out.
Think also of this if you still believe in Jehovah. Would he want you to be a member of an organization that uses emotional blackmail to control it's members? Or an organization that protects child molestors? That may help you to break down that old faith you have.
Give yourself some credit. In just 4 days on this forum you've come a long way! You've started to think more independently, started to ask some of the right questions. This is a journey to find the "real you", and do yourself a favor -- don't take shortcuts.
There's been a lot of good advice above about where to research. Get the right thoughts into your mind, and they'll eventually displace the Watchtowerlogic that formerly dominated our way of life.
I agree with the others here that mentioned the freeminds website. . . Freeminds.org Good starting point.
In addition, I think that Crisis of Conscience is a wonderful book that opened my eyes to the truth about the "TruthTM". You are doing that. . . excellent.
I am also taking courses available locally. There are probably places you could check out locally that will help with the deprogramming. Ask around. Check at health food stores. Mine "place" is called "Centre for Positive Living". They might have something similar in your area. . .depending how big a centre you live in. Saskatoon has 175,000 people.
You are well on your way, I'm guessing! Keep up the great progress!!!
My email is open, as well, if you ever wanna chat. I'm also on MSN Instant Messanger.
I found that although I could pick apart a lot of the teachings, the underlying "brain washing" was still there. All those excuses that we learned to use for the past organizational mistakes, the fear that I was being mislead, committing the unforgivable sin, etc.
Matthew 7:7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
This scripture really helped me out. I decided that if I prayed and asked that I be shown the real truth, and that God make sure I'm not deceived, then that is exactly what would happen. The only alternative would be that Jesus lied when he made this statement - and I don't believe he's a liar. So I started to pray and ask for those two things AND I did A LOT of research. Get the book "Jehovah's Witnesses Answered" by David Reed - it goes through each of the JW doctrines topic by topic.
