Blessings and Curses? Do they exist?

ljwtiamb

JW experiences abound with testamonial proof that god's blessing& favor is on them and the org, as well as, opposing curses that afflict their enemies. All sorts of positive things are attributed to god, while anything negative is god's allowance of satan's influence. (I was just as good as anybody at telling these kinda stories!)

Now that I speak with persons in christendom,pagandom & more, they feel just as sure that god (or who/what ever) is blessing their efforts. According to JW doctrine, this is simply impossible, since the witnesses have sole access to the 'true' god.

My question is, how do you NOW explain/resolve what was once evidence of your personal relationship with god and that you had the truth & his favor? Do you still experience such blessings/luck/fortune in your new religion or other post JW life?

Narkissos

Interesting.

Living on as a subject, with speech and memory, implies constantly reworking, re-reading, re-writing, re-interpreting one's personal story.

We struggle with blessings and curses; all the good and bad words people (especially our parents when we were children) have uttered about us. Performative, determining speech. Blessings which eventually prove to be curses and curses which eventually prove to be blessings. We make our way between them, step by step, redefining who we are and the meanings of words. On the way, a few divine smiles and a lot of demonic spooks -- as signs for interpretation and direction rather than phenomena for explanation if you ask me.

logical

I believe they exist from experience. I am cursed. I believe there is more to everything than the physical that we can measure. People's attitudes and behaviour towards themselves and others can affect people, some are unaware of this and others are aware of it, and can use it to specifically curse or bless people. Now I wish someone would remove this curse from me.

LittleToe

Logi:
If you would but know it, you've been blessed

logical

LT:

How have I???

LittleToe

Ya mean you've not counted them, like the petals of a flower, recently?

I agree with what you say about other people affecting us, btw.
Scotland is notorious for curses.

zen nudist

people are familiar with the placebo effect.... but there is also the nocebo effect where a doctor tells someone they have a deadly disease and the person becomes depressed and dies much quicker than anticipated... people can be fall easily into self fulfilling prophecies by focusing their attention selectively to confirm what they anticipate and ignore anything that defies it.

example...to a believe any thing that is close to an answer to prayer is God granting them their request, and if nothing happens, God simply said no... to an athiest, his view is simply that sometimes things happen as he desires. sometimes it dont, no god required.

personally after abandoning the god in the sky model and adopting reality as GOD and me as part of the whole, and trying to focus my desires to the present, many miraculoous like events have happened to my apparent benefit and few tragedies if any.

Balsam

Some people seem to be trouble magnets. I've observed these types of people and see some of it they do to themselves. Some of it is done to them as a result of befriending the people they befriend who use and abuse them. They live in a negative, depressed state of mind all the time even if good things are happening to them. Instead of being happy and feel good when life gives them a boost up they moan and groan about what they will do when they lose it. And lose it they do eventually. Do these people create the world they expereience? Maybe, I'm not certain.

Then I see folks that have bad things happen and they always smile and say tomorrow will be a better day. These folks have troubles too, but their positive attitude draws positive people around them. Good things eventually come they thank God or what ever, they smile and realize that events have turned for the better. These people seem happy and rarely depressed and even appear to be blessed in some ways. Why is that are they really blessed? Just observing people you can learn a lot

Personally I think there is something beyond our physical experience that we can't explain.

dh

i think statements like...

'what goes around, comes around'

are pretty true...

i don't believe in blessings from on high, but i think what we do in life effects what life does to us, some people might call it a blessing if because of their generous nature a person is repayed by others with generosity, i just think it's the circle of life.

and curses... i just think the math is impartial, if you are born blind, you are born blind, it's not a curse it's just that in our species there's a % flaw that comes through to a % of us, and it's just a lottery, like all bad things that happen and are out of human control, in my opinion it's just chance.

some exceptions would be, if i wanted to curse a person, i could keep on making bad things happen to them, in the physical world, but that wouldn't be mystical, it would just be me causing a person trouble without them knowing, and they would feel cursed... anyway.

tetrapod.sapien

My question is, how do you NOW explain/resolve what was once evidence of your personal relationship with god and that you had the truth & his favor?

i now explain it as coincidence. if something good happens to me now, i do not attribute it to god helping me, but rather to coincidence in nature. same with evil. if something bad happens to me, i do not blame satan. i blame myself, or nature. it's like the example of the raindancer. he keeps dancing for rain. when it finally rains, he says: "behold! god looks kindly on my dancing!" and when it goes into a drought he says: "behold! an evil and wicked people you are! i have been dancing like a mad man, and you have been sinning all along, bringing gods disfavour on us!"

Do you still experience such blessings/luck/fortune in your new religion or other post JW life?

no. nature is neither kind or evil. just indifferent.

Blessings and Curses? Do they exist?

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