Posts by zen nudist

28

What is your passion in life?

by Samdownunder in

jw
friends

i was just thinking about how so many were so caught up in the dubs for so many years, and at the time we probably would have all felt that the truth and spreading the good news was our passion.

so what is your passion now?

what makes you tick and excites your senses and captivates you?

zen nudist

Zen has taught me that all passions are harmful to some degree, so my passion is to stomp out passion

I realize there is an insane paradox involved, but it is my hope that it will work itself out

Life seems to ride a paradox.

All energy seeks balance, but complete balance means death to any living system, just as surely as being ripped apart...so there is a delemna, to stay alive one must strive for something inbetween balance and flying apart... a sort of island of dynamic stability which I call the eye of the storm...and the idea of surfing comes to mind.... one must move with the storm to stay in the eye, one must ride the moving waves to stay above the water in surfing... to acheive the fleeting goal of satisfaction or contentment... which I find to be the ultiamte goal for anything we do... think about it, when you are completely satisfied, you have a temporary freedom from want, need, desire, anxiety and dis-ease... and what moves us other than losing that state of mind?

Passions are often programs desired to acheive a state of satisfaction, but they often make one travel around the world to find what they could have found by simply turning around.... Passion's roots meant a desire so strong it pains you, compassion meaning with passion, means aiding those with passion to free themselves from it.

a fundamental cause of dis-satisfaction seems to be our own inner ideals which we adopted from others and crafted by combining with our own ignorance of reality which tells us that reality is flawed but our ideal is not.... we then use our ignorant ideal as the gold standard that reality must live up to for us to find satifaction, which of course means that many are never satisfied as their ideals were not based in reality but a rejection of it.

16

The good samaritan and apostacy.

by avishai in

there are so many examples of jw unkindness to df'd ones and apostates.

one that really jumps out is one i've heard about a single df'd mother with small kids broken down outside a kh, and no one stopped to help her.. the jews and samaritans came from the same background.

they had several different beliefs and the jews no doubt considered them apostate.

zen nudist

I once pointed out to an elder that if Jesus was our guide, that he spoke with the most apostate being

in the universe, Satan, and even debated scripture with him....why it was that Apostates were banned, when

that was not Jesus' example?

he looked at me with thunderous anger and said--- you are skating on THIN ICE.

At which point I realized a big part of the game, let those NOT baptized think they can ask ANY question, but treat those who are baptized as if they will lose their eternal life just because they still have questions... once you were in, you had made a commitment to end your own thinking even if you made that commitment in gross ignorance...which was OK by them, as they counted on it.

59

How Many Here Left The Organization? How Many Got Kicked Out??

by minimus in

jw
friends

just curious.....

zen nudist

Read Subliminal Seduction in 1980s, swore to myself if I caught the GB using them I would be out...then I found what I thought were

real subliminals, my ex saw them too, so I kept my promise to myself and we picked up a book called ARMEGGEDON DELAYED which had nothing new in it, but for the very first time I was not mentally trying to make excuses for JW theology or BS [belief systems] and saw what a sham it was... my ex and I started discussing all our doubts over the time we were in...and discovered there was a mountain of them we had been hiding from ourselves, only seeing them one at a time and having a tunnel vision caused by being ENTRANCED.. now that the spell was broken, we saw what was always there to see...

Because my ex had many family members in we wanted to just be quietly inactive...but a year later they started harrassing us and threatening us... when they could not get us to testify against ourselves, they lied and told everyone that I officially quit when I had done no such thing, although I was a hair away from it.

79

Would the world be a better place without religion?

by micheal in

i understand we all need guidance and some people need hope, even if it is not real.

but personally, i believe religion has caused so many hideous crimes against humanity that it is something we would all be better off without.. it really is too bad that religion has capitalized on humankind's need for a divine being to only abuse and control its fellow humans.. so, what do you think?

would we be better of without religion?.

zen nudist

I find it is not religion that is the problem but any belief which holds that humans are only as valuable as the ideas they hold rather than being valuable for simply being human.

Buddhism for example, recognizes that all sentient life is valuable no matter what stupid ideas may be infesting it at the moment... those ideas are seen as a sickness which can be cured.

but most religions hold that ideals and ideas are more important than the people that hold them, making the containers of wrong ideas evil by infection and worthy of death or worse.

you will never ever hear of an Agnostic holy war as no one will ever justify the murder someone while admitting they don't KNOW THE WAY.

29

I knew it! Star Trek is real!

by drwtsn32 in

jw
friends

transparent aluminum

zen nudist

The transporter has a JW element in it.... if you are murdered by a laser like reader on one side, is that copy of you, really you on the other?

as far as I can tell from normal physics, its just a copy and the original you is toast.

24

So What Is The Watchtower NOT All About?

by Englishman in

jw
friends

"ready for every good work," 12/1.

"god is love," 7/1.

"remain in my word," 2/1.

zen nudist

the bible definition of christians were those who followed "the way" as preached by the Apostles, not people just people who cant help saying Jesus every other sentance or two....nor those who believed Jesus was their new god....

when I was a JW from 1980-90, I found Jesus mentioned a great deal and given 2nd billing with 1st billing being given to God of course, which seems to be no different from any other cult or christian church thinking its not a cult [to me they are all cults].

those who have escaped one cult to another cult think this is a wedge they can use to help JWs leave one cult and join their new cult... just changing one set of Belief Systems [BS] or more BS.

get over it, JWs are as christian as all the other pretending to have THE TRUTH.

4

Not sure if this belongs in this subheading...

by CeriseRose in

but i really don't know where to put it if not here.

just an interesting bit of things that i'm reading.

now, please remember that i had no bible knowledge prior to jws and they 'got' to me just as i was hitting the years where most people go to university to expand their knowledge.

zen nudist

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com

has a very large list of such books. including THE JESUS MYSTERIES, PAGAN CHRISTS, and others which document the more than a dozen older than Jesus god man myths which parallel his story so closely it is more than a bit suspicious.

25

Why Does God Permit Wickedness?

by undercover in

how many times did we, as jws, see that question?

how many times did we read or recite the same ole bs about allowing wicked people to try to rule themselves and failing?

god's soverienty was brought into question and now he'll give satan and man so many thousand years to give it a try.

zen nudist

the other problem which occurred to me is that we have NO counter example of God's way being better than anything humans can invent... after all the game is rigged, if JWs are right, God allowed humans to try every conceivable government to show that we cant do it without him, but left us in a crippled state where we could not possibly have a fair shot at it.

and giving no example that God's ways are any better. the Jews certainly provided no great example of humanity under divine rule, and JWs have far too many mental problems and other problems to be an example that following God's ways produces better people, the only thing I have found about JWs is that they are better liars about themselves then others... they hide their faults and flaws better by working hard to pretend they are doing God's will in public while doing the exact same things as everyone else behind everyones back.

as to why permit wickedness... who says God is perfect besides the authors of the bible who also report that a mere man made God repent of Evil [exodus 32:14]

5

Created to die

by Tashawaa in

the witnesses teach that jehovah created man to "live forever" in a paradise earth.

this was lost to man (i'm not forgetting eve .

so his dying wasn't from eating from the tree of good and bad, it was from not eating from the "tree of life".. adam & eve were not created to live forever.

zen nudist

not long after leaving JWs it occurred to me that the first lie in the bible was not told by the serpent...

what did the serpent actually say which was a lie?

many answer that we would become like god[s], but note, that Jehovah says this is true...not a lie.

that we would not die from eating of the tree.... note that this too was no lie, Adam did not die from eating from the tree, as was rightly pointed out he was not made to live forever and he was simply allowed to live out his days without any divine intervention to prolong them...

but that made me realize that the first lie was actually told by JEHOVAH.

in effect he told Adam, if you eat this poison, you will die, and when Adam does eat it, why lookie here, he does NOT die,so God tells his audiance, that he must take steps to prevent Adam from living for ever....and starves him to death by preventing him from eating from a totally different tree.

or more simply, I tell you, look, if you eat this you will die...you eat it, dont die look at me and I shot you. (^_^)

11

How can an 'impersonal force' feel hurt?? (Isa 63: 10 NWT)

by Tyre in

but they themselves rebelled and made his holy spirit feel hurt.

he now was changed into an enemy of theirs; he himself warred against them.

*how can an 'impersonal force' feel hurt??

zen nudist

how can an all knowing god feel hurt?

if there is an all knowing god, that god cannot possibly feel what humans feel in our ignorance of reality by our comparison to false expectations.

the bible god is far too human, far to ignorant.