if you could take a guess as to what you were in a past lifetime - what or who would you be?
in my opinion,(since i don't necessarily believe in reincarnation - i'd guess what i'd like to have been.
) if some of you delved further in this topic and actually know what or who you were, please share.
Ravyn2,
I also have had some supernatural experiences that also can't really be "explained". Mine were with the Ouija board and not past lives, but you may still find it interesting. Look for a thread "haunted houses", for a couple of posts I posted on the subject. BTW, how exactly does the dead communicate with you? (I'll re-read your post to see if you've already explained that part of it.)
Steve
anything that you've regretted, that "if only" you could take it back, you would??
?
Yea, but damn. Ya know? Ya just can't win sometimes.
Steve . . .
if you could take a guess as to what you were in a past lifetime - what or who would you be?
in my opinion,(since i don't necessarily believe in reincarnation - i'd guess what i'd like to have been.
) if some of you delved further in this topic and actually know what or who you were, please share.
I'd be Charles Taze Russel. I'd hang my self early on, and in the process save a whole lot of bullshit for everybody! (LOL)
Steve . . .
anything that you've regretted, that "if only" you could take it back, you would??
?
When I was kid in junior high school I had a friend named Robert Tucker, who shared very similar physical characteristics with me. With looked so much alike, the other kids would tease us by calling me Tucker, or him Lowry.
On a dumb ass whim, he and five others stole a car, lost of control of it, ran it off an over pass and into an embankment. With the exception of Robert’s little brother, everyone died. It was a terrible tragedy and big news in the area we all lived.
The family didn’t live that far from me and a few days after the funeral I decided to go by personally to offer my condolences. As I walked up to the house, a desperate and hurting mother saw my image through the screen door. Thinking she saw her dead son, she gasped, cried out and fell to the floor. There was no consoling her.
I was just a kid, and I meant well, but it was a terribly insensitive thing to do considering how much Robert and I looked alike. I wish I could ‘take that back’, as it were.
That was thirty-five years ago, but it still bothers me when I think about to this day.
so, that spooky season is almost upon us again.
how many of you, will go on haunted house tours or delve into anything spiritistic?
i mean we don't want the demons to attach to us, do we?!
The more I played the Ouija board, the more ‘spooky’ the whole experience became.
One day while working in downtown Miami, I ran into my X-wife (a JW) waiting for an elevator in some multi-level building. She and I had recently ended our short marriage under very hateful circumstances and it made me sick to my stomach seeing her ‘pop up’ like that. I didn’t say a word to her, I just got on the elevator. It was odd running into her there, as it was some twenty miles away from where both of us used to live and work. It seemed almost too much a coincidence. Anyway that night I asked the Ouija board if it had arranged this coincidental meeting and the answer was, "Yes". Hey I’m not saying I believed the answer necessarily, but this is the kind of head games it would play.
Usually, several entities would vie for time on the board in a given session. It’s like they had to compete with ‘each other’ for their time to speak. I remember evenings where as many twenty to thirty entities would ‘come through’. A dead couple by the names of Pam and Frank were regulars on the board and had a great sense of humor about them. It was just like talking with your aunt and uncle on the phone, kinda thing. We also would wright down the ‘names’ during a session sometimes, and then ask to speak to specific individuals later on in the evening at different times. Each had their particular personalities intact as well as their stories (about how they died), even though it may be several hours later when we asked to speak to a specific entity. There’s just no way, in my opinion, that two people using a Quija board could remember so many personalities as well as their individual characteristics, and all in one night’s time (we would refer to the list of names, of course). Try remembering thirty or so people’s individual stories on the way home from a party sometime. You can’t do it very easily. But if you were on a bus with those same people and asked them to restate who they were and a little about themselves, then you could easily remember. In keeping with the analogy, you would be at a greater disadvantage with the Ouija board because you wouldn't have the faces and voices of the ‘guests’ to help you recall who they were, like you would at a real party. This is kinda what it was like with the Ouija. (I don’t know what "they" were, but we didn’t manufacturer them up. Spirits, ghosts, demons, I dunno. Maybe something else we are not aware of, maybe. But it wasn’t my imagination that created them, of that I am sure.)
As time went along, there was one entity that demanded more and more time on the board. It finally dominated the board to the exclusion of all others. It was one of the entities that first introduced itself when I first began using the board, but it stayed somewhat in the background for a long while. And this is where an area of concern should be noted. Up until this time the board was for the most part, mostly just intriguing entertainment. But with this particular entity, the fun stopped.
More next time . . .
Steve
hello folks, it's been awhile since i have posted, hope everyone is doing well!
i have a question, though, if the society is not paying the governing body, or other "big wigs" in ny large salaries, what would be the motivating factor for the society to continue to exist?
i am not saying that money is everything, but if none of the money is going into pockets, then the society must really feel that they are god's chosen channel, or something to that effect.
Inertia . . .
i have a couple of questions that have come to mind as a result of converstations with my jw girlfriend.
1. we were talking the other day and got on the subject of disfellowshipping and i asked her if she thought it was right.
i also asked her about people who had been df'd for something that the wt has since received "new light" on and thus, had been df'd for something that the wt is now teaching is okay.
"The elders are supposed to visit df'd persons once a year."
Hell, then I think I'm owed something on the order of twenty-five visits! Uh, guess I won't hold my breath. LOL!
she was my cousin, my best friend, .
and my childhood playmate.. and she was one of us.. i miss her so much.
ladies.................get your regular mammograms
Im sorry for your loss . . .
Steve
in the last couple of days ive been reading info on the un & wts ...so have been pretty absorbed with the amount of info out there on the wts...
anyway...it hasnt been that long since i left the wts...and a close friend of mine (never a witness) said to me ,twice now, and rather strongly again today...
"its over, you have left, get over it...your obsessed with this, who cares, just get over it before it drives you mad...its really pathetic"
Xena,
" . . . no one, can completely comprehend this religion with all of its peculiarities and it’s idiosyncrasies, in the way that only someone who has actually been an active Jehovah’s Witness can."
I must stand by this statement. The operative word here is, "completely". Surely any compassionate and intelligent individual who, although never been one of Jehovah’s’ Witnesses, could and should be able to empathize with the JW, or former JW, as it were. But not completely. That would be impossible. It’s not a snub, it’s just a matter on social mechanics. It is just as impossible for me, a white male, to completely understand what it must be like to be an African American. I’m intelligent (uh, somewhat anyway) and compassionate, but I could never claim to be able to completely understand their experience. That dose not impede my ability (or my responsibly) to join with others and to be effective in trying to understand my fellow man’s burden and make changes. But I’ll never know what his experience is like in its entirety. It isn’t that I should think my black friend feels elitist because he say’s than I can’t completely identify with him. Instead, I must respect and understand the limitations of the situation.
"Now, as an ex-JW, if you really believe that noone could truly understand, you are transferring that dynamic (elitism) to another place and noone could possibly understand where you have been and they are still outsiders. You then run the risk of being as dismissive with "outsiders" with that as the insensitive neverbeens might be to the plight of the ex-jw. "
I can’t speak for someone else, but for me at least, its not being an elitist to make the statement that someone who has never been a JW can’t completely understand what it’s like to have been one. I’m sorry if it may come off that way, but I wouldn’t be being completely honest with myself, to not recognize this reality. We may have to agree to disagree, agreeably, on this one. My wife who could pass any JW "test" due to her willingness and involvement to help former JW’s along with me with our little ministry (Life After The Watchtower) concedes her limitations to completely "get it".
I think maybe where we’re ‘missing’ each other, is that you may feel I’m diminishing you’re ability to ‘help’. No way! In fact someone who is ‘on the outside looking in’, very often has the more objective view than someone else who is too close. In that way, you and others who have never been ‘inside’ can be of great assistance to those who are hurting and need someone to help show them the way out. Most active Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t even listen to us former JW’s, because we have been so demonized by the Watchtower Society. I like to think of it as a team. Those of us who have come out of the cults with our experiences and those who haven’t been in, but have the skills and compassion, joining forces to help the hurting and the lost. Together we can make the difference.
Steve
in the last couple of days ive been reading info on the un & wts ...so have been pretty absorbed with the amount of info out there on the wts...
anyway...it hasnt been that long since i left the wts...and a close friend of mine (never a witness) said to me ,twice now, and rather strongly again today...
"its over, you have left, get over it...your obsessed with this, who cares, just get over it before it drives you mad...its really pathetic"
Hey Brummie,
That's a pretty good parallel of an analogy. There certainly is mind control in play in abusive relationships (especially where the woman is the victim). They (the victim) have to come finally to the conclusion they have been lied to and abused and have to stop the cycle. It is indeed similar to the JW experience.
I also agree with you that the JW experience is unique unto itself.
Steve . . .
