Wow, this thread went crazy! That's great!
Try the kwan yin vow...
Integ, what is that?
Once we have grown up, perhaps we naturally move to a different type of communication with God... a *knowing* type. Instead of our communication being one-way, perhaps it starts to become two way? I'm not talking about hearing his booming voice... but rather you just become more sensitive to your surroundings... more compassionate.
upandatom, I find it ironic that I was thinking almost exactly the same thoughts when I was on my way in to work this morning. I was thinking, maybe I don't have to exactly talk to him all the time, just kind of be aware and sense a powerful, loving presence? Kind of like a companionable silence with an old friend.
I have discovered...(and I wasn't the first in this discovery"!!) I am a whole being with no need of an "external" god who judges me as "not good enough"....that is an unhealthy human thingy...the judgments....the condemnations....
Estee, I totally agree with you...that's a wonderful place to be! And eminently frustrating when other people are trying to motivate you by guilt! Then you try to explain God's love to them and they're like, 'well I see that you're spiritually weak right now.' Well I say go to hell! lol
Consider when you were a little child. You would wonder at the amazement of such little things as putting a leaf in a running stream and know that you were loved by God. You didn't know much about God at that time except he was there because in your little mind God was only as far away as a hello. As we grow older logic sets in and we feel that if we are not good enough, or we have done something wrong the guilt and fear sets in and we no longer feel that closeness with God. Through the teachings of the organization we loose that closeness. Yet God is still just a hello away. God has not changed we have.
cat1759, I'm really sorry to hear about your father.
It's funny, but things kind of happened differently with me...when I was little I never (well I still haven't) sensed God's presence from nature. LOL I actually thought of God as a superhero in red and yellow, with a friendly grin and a beard, with a big J on his chest. Ha ha...until my Gramma told me it was bad that I thought that way...I think that was the beginning of me distancing myself from "Jehovah" and I started thinking of him as a distant, cold entity. Later in my preteens, though, in some depressed and desperate moments I prayed earnestly and felt love and peace that I'd never felt before...but I wasn't able to reconcile that with the guilt I still felt from the org. until the last year or so.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. ((((cat))))
quote:
Analyze what is within yourself. There might be a Bible within you, there might be a Qur'an within you, there might be a Jesus within you, there might be a book and a story within you. . . We cannot say that they are wrong and we cannot say that they are right. . . Therefore understand and correct yourself
Thanks, Hamas, I really liked that quote. I read somewhere else about writing your own Bible, and I've been trying to think about my own beliefs lately and maybe writing them down and collecting them. I find it a comforting thought.
just in jwland they always told you that unless you were a jw he wouldn't answer your prayers. WRONG!!!!
Rockon, I totally agree with you. I've known "worldly" people who felt closer to God than I have. That's not an accident or a mistake. It's so arrogant to believe God would choose Jehovah's Witnesses to the exclusion of all other people.
Thanks for your experiences, too, Ros. It's really great to hear from all of you, even the skeptics!
