Posts by Terry

6

THE MAGIC OF BEING FOOLED (and being REWARDED for it!)

by Terry in

(and being rewarded for it).

did you know there are only 6 magic tricks in the entire world?

all illusion, prestidigitation, legerdemain and sleight-of-hand combined merely juggle and recycle these six elements..

THE MAGIC OF BEING FOOLED (and being REWARDED for it!)

by Terry in

(and being rewarded for it).

did you know there are only 6 magic tricks in the entire world?

all illusion, prestidigitation, legerdemain and sleight-of-hand combined merely juggle and recycle these six elements..

Terry

The hardest part to abandon in the JW religion is the thrill of "knowing" you are absolutely certain.

That's a tough one to get rid of.

6

THE MAGIC OF BEING FOOLED (and being REWARDED for it!)

by Terry in

(and being rewarded for it).

did you know there are only 6 magic tricks in the entire world?

all illusion, prestidigitation, legerdemain and sleight-of-hand combined merely juggle and recycle these six elements..

Terry

THE MAGIC OF BEING FOOLED

(and being rewarded for it)

________________

Did you know there are only 6 magic tricks in the entire world? Yes, only six.

All illusion, prestidigitation, legerdemain and sleight-of-hand combined merely juggle and recycle these six elements.

“What are they?”You may well ask.

Briefly, they are:

1.Disappearance

2.Production (something out of nothing)

3. Transformation (one thing becomes another thing.)

4. Motive Power (objects with the ability to move on their own.)

5. Natural Law Violation (levitation, going through a wall, etc.)

6.Transposition (two objects change places)

Yes, all magic combines one or many of these six elements. Beyond that there is only the performance.

The magician is really the agency which makes the magic appear to be genuine.

The MAGICIAN is who really makes the magic APPEAR to be GENUINE.

It is a skilled, practiced performance of effortless spontaneity which brings magic alive.

You are fooled. Why?

_____________________

There is a Science to brain chemistry which tells us:

Your brain REWARDS you when your expectations are defeated by something unexpected! Why?

The human brain squirts an intoxicating substance each time you LEARN something. This is evolution at its best and worst. Most of the time a learning experience will make you more fit to survive. (That's a good thing, by the way!)

(http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/how-we-fool-ourselves-over-and-over-10-06-19/)

Yet,when you are fooled you are rewarded too.

Did you know that? Why?

Because you are confronted with the opposite of what you expected and you survived the experience.

This is reason enough to be REWARDED by the squirt of brain-heroin which pleases your brain so much!

Being fooled is the strange equivalent of a LEARNING process and is PRO survival.

___________

Is it?

In the wild it is. Being fooled by a camouflaged predator can render you dead or half-eaten. Yet, detecting the camouflage and seeing how you were fooled (if you survive) is a learning experience worth being rewarded for. Now do you understand?

What about magic?

Each time you are amazed, fooled, exhilarated and excited by the UNEXPLAINABLE---you are rewarded by a thrilling brain-buzz which becomes an end in itself.

That's why you might love horror movies, working crossword puzzles, and figuring out how a magician does his tricks.

But, hold on!

Remember I told you the real magic was the PERFORMANCE skill of the Magician? It is. The implicit pact of audience v. performer makes that skill work; the pact between you as the audience and the close attention you pay to the words and movements of the magician onstage.

___________________

Here comes an assertion. Be alert and test my thesis:

This is the same setup which also occurs between the BELIEVER and the RELIGIOUS MYSTIC.

The BELIEVER may at first be skeptical, just as the person who sits watching the magician perform "knows" it is all a trick, and not a true demonstration of the miraculous. Yet, the desire to be fooled is implicit in devoting attention and following the words and movements which follow.

A Magician uses misdirection. He tells you where to look and where not to look. It is the art of misdirection combined with the concealment of the ‘fooling’ element setting you up to be fooled.

You use your intelligence to predict what is real and how things work. You have a built in the sensibility of how things will go. The smarter you are the better you are able to overcome obstacles by predicting problem areas and devising a way around them without self-harm.

However!

The magician relies on defying the natural by an arsenal of contrivances which appear natural and ordinary, yet concealing their 6 elements.

Here again is the “why”:

1. The audience wants to be fooled while fighting it by trying to use everyday logic to discover the trick.

2. The trick is designed to take advantage of the expectations and thwart them by built-in defeats through misdirection.

A magic illusion is really an artful lie.

It is artful and designed to work through the hidden mechanism. A coin is just a coin. Right? Wrong! In a magic act, the coin is not just a coin; it is a specially manufactured coin with a device built in.

A card is just a playing card, right? Wrong! It is part of a special deck with hidden aspects the magician can use to achieve his aims.

In other words, your everyday intelligence is NOT AWARE of the artifice that hides the concealed mechanism of a trick.

You do not have the BASIC vocabulary of the 6 elements to inform your observations.

Once you know these 6 elements and how they are used, almost every trick will easily be deductible rationally.

Inside knowledge means Magic becomes commonplace at that point.

Why—because it is so mundane. It is contrived and ordinary. It all comes down to the skill of the performance.

__________________

Religion is a kind of magic trick.

Various skilled magicians through the centuries have used those 6 elements to fool the audience of seemingly skeptical believers by taking advantage of hidden properties which defy expectation.

At the earliest stages of human history, priests, shaman and magi (from which we get the word "magic") were skilled performers. They gained special status from their level of mastery at duping awed witnesses to their hokum.

Magicians were variously called Prophets, Miracle Workers and Demi-gods. Yet, they used the selfsame 6 elements with skill to achieve their effects and rely on the pact to work their magic.

The rest of humanity relied on the STORIES told about these exploits for their vicarious thrills. STORIES exaggerated the exploits into momentous achievements at the hands of a super powerful God instead of contrived magic.

______________

Magic was divided into Good and Evil magic. God was behind the Good and Satan was the cause of the Evil.

Every religious performance of the miraculous begins with elements of the six.

Muhammed is said to have been ILLITERATE, and yet he produced perfect Arabic verses. Concealment is in the misdirection. Was Muhammed in fact illiterate? How would any of us know this for certain? Should we merely accept this premise?

Joseph Smith had plates of gold which he translated using a seer stone. (Yes, a rock with a hole in it!) By sticking the stone in a hat and burying his face in it! He "translated" from behind a curtain, no less! We are told that a great many witnesses actually "saw" these gold plates. Should we accept all this as given? The remaining examples of the original words of Joseph Smith are in awful rural English with grammatical errors and run-on sentences, yet; the modern Book of Mormon scriptures have been artfully "adjusted" and represented in such a way, so that you'd never know that at all! Transformation!

Moses went up on a mountain and nobody was allowed to come near. He returned with tablets of stone actually written by the finger of God himself!

Oh—but wait! Those miraculously produced tablets were broken, (by Moses) and Moses had to replace them by carving some himself! This isn't suspicious behavior, is it? Transposition.

Charles Taze Russell was specially chosen by God to be his mouthpiece by allowing Russell to interpret scripture using Pyramid measurements to know in advance when Jesus would return. There are millions of people today who subscribe to the religion Russell started because they believe this! Or, do they? The story has changed many times and the trick goes on.

Remember the implicit pact?

The audience wishes to be fooled.

Brains are rewarded each time they participate!

That is a reveal!

Every element of religious belief is rewarded when you allow yourself to be fooled!

1975 was my last "reward". By overcoming that reveal I and millions of others got the largest reward of a lifetime.

Fool me once; shame on you.

Fool me twice; shame on me.

________________

What do you take away from this discussion? Have you been rewarded by being fooled?

Is it time to re-examine the process by which you were persuaded unduly through crafty, practiced deception?

Has your mind actually been changed by your misperceptions of these tricks played by expert manipulators?

Only you can answer this for yourself.

It all starts with AWARENESS of the elements—the basics—which you can identify, learn, and be alert to misdirection corrupting your power of observation and nullifying your rational decisions through mind control.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE ME—you only have to become skeptical enough to investigate!

A mind is a terrible thing to waste—especially your own!

31

A True Story: PORTRAIT OF A GIRL and her dog

by Terry in

portrait of a girl and her dog.

(a true story by terry edwin walstrom).

her name was cheryl ann draper and she was about 11 years old the day she begged her daddy, who worked at a gas station, to let her go with him to work.

Terry

This was a heartfelt story I felt compelled to write.

Sometimes it's the only thing we can do.

26

48th ANNIVERSARY of me GOING TO PRISON

by Terry in

i was twenty years old.. as a jehovah's witness, i had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than.

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of armageddon:).

i was engaged to a 17-year-old witness girl i had met at the mineral wells assembly.. what was our future together?

Terry

I have met very few to almost none of JW's aware of the "Neutrality" controversy. I tried in my first book to give the history of Early Christians in how they dealt with the issue (service to Superior Authority) and followed it up to modern times. JW's are pretty much distinct in a quite arbitrary declaration of wrong-headed interpretation of a fairly transparent policy stated in Romans 13.

They turn on and off the spigot of revelation to suit the whims of the leaders. Who it hurts is of no consequence.

Everything which opposes their enLIGHTenment is seen as Satan.

It is quite a morbid policy which wallows in martyrdom to the point of self-aggrandisement.

26

48th ANNIVERSARY of me GOING TO PRISON

by Terry in

i was twenty years old.. as a jehovah's witness, i had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than.

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of armageddon:).

i was engaged to a 17-year-old witness girl i had met at the mineral wells assembly.. what was our future together?

Terry

In my experience, I've only even met one self-identified 'anointed' in my life.

Being anointed is non-testable and non-falsifiable.

Out of my congregation, I'm the only Brother I know who suffered imprisonment. I know for a fact,

the others looked out for themselves by lying.

Ahh, why didn't I think of that?

So simple!

26

48th ANNIVERSARY of me GOING TO PRISON

by Terry in

i was twenty years old.. as a jehovah's witness, i had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than.

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of armageddon:).

i was engaged to a 17-year-old witness girl i had met at the mineral wells assembly.. what was our future together?

Terry

I've discovered over the years that my "Brothers" in the congregation did everything in their power to undermine me with my fiancee', repeatedly asking her out on dates and explaining how I wasn't worth waiting for.

I never got even so much as a "Thinking/Praying for you" card from my congregation in the entire time I was inside.

The moment I re-entered my old Kingdom Hall I was met by the Congregation Overseer who held a Pioneer sign-up form for me to fill out and sign.

Not one single soul asked me about the Brothers still inside or how things had been. The most common comment I got was, "I'll bet it was like going to college being able to study your Bible all the time."

Yeah, sure--how would I know? We never went to college as JW's.

I loved the guys inside. I still do.

I've tried to contact most of them. My dearest ones are now dead or completely indoctrinated.

Sigh. . .

26

48th ANNIVERSARY of me GOING TO PRISON

by Terry in

i was twenty years old.. as a jehovah's witness, i had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than.

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of armageddon:).

i was engaged to a 17-year-old witness girl i had met at the mineral wells assembly.. what was our future together?

Terry

I thank you all for your gracious words of kind support.

I'm thinking about using media to make more people aware of the history of the Watchtower Society's record of human rights trampling.

I'll be talking to Open Minds Foundation in a little while about this very thing.

file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/Open-Minds-letter-of-intent-current.pdf

26

48th ANNIVERSARY of me GOING TO PRISON

by Terry in

i was twenty years old.. as a jehovah's witness, i had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than.

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of armageddon:).

i was engaged to a 17-year-old witness girl i had met at the mineral wells assembly.. what was our future together?

Terry

Thank you. Life is a kind of journey where you think you are setting out to go somewhere, presumably "better."

You are handed a map. You trust that map and head on out.

Along the way, you may endure hardship, setbacks, attacks and many a misery.

BUT THE FACT IS: YOU AUTOMATICALLY ASSUME the journey will take you to a better place.

For me, I discovered some horrifying facts:

1. The "map" was fake.

2. My 'journey' was taking me in circles

3. There was no "there" there!

Really then, after those discoveries--it is a matter of psychological adjustments. Hundreds of adjustments. Thousands of adjustments.

What do you do with all the subsequent emotions?

That is a sorting process which consists of endless trial and error. Mostly error.

I'm pretty much a happy person with a healthy optimism. I've gotten over the bitterness. Mostly.

Now, I see my duty is that of exposing the MAPMAKERS as frauds.

26

48th ANNIVERSARY of me GOING TO PRISON

by Terry in

i was twenty years old.. as a jehovah's witness, i had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than.

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of armageddon:).

i was engaged to a 17-year-old witness girl i had met at the mineral wells assembly.. what was our future together?

Terry

I was twenty years old.

As a Jehovah's Witness, I had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of Armageddon:)

I was engaged to a 17-year-old Witness girl I had met at the Mineral Wells Assembly.

What was our future together? What were our plans? I WAS GOING TO FEDERAL PRISON and she was going to "wait".

_____________________

It is now 48 years later.

Last night (and for the previous three nights) I've been talking on the phone once more with that 17-year-old girl who now happens to be a 65-year-old woman.

What amazing conversations we have had trying to gain perspective and apply life's wisdom to those distant events.
_____________________

We marvel at how naive we were and ill-equipped to deal with anything resembling reality at that time.

The most honest thing I can tell you about those years and events of log ago is this. My heart was breaking and I was trying to do the right thing. I was terribly scared and putting on a brave face. As the song says, "I can see clearly now" and I certainly could not see anything but some kind of "duty" back then---inescapable, terrifying duty.

______________________________

I thought I would cut and past a chunk out of the book I wrote about this experience and let you read it.

This is my way of "celebrating" my anniversary. So, here goes.

Excerpt from I WEPT BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON (A Prisoner of Conscience in a Time of War.)

________________________________________________

THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

I shrugged and marched behind Hajim with time to spare.

An hour lay fallow before me like an empty field before a plow. It was so natural a thing to do. I was obligated and duty called. Jehovah's Witnesses, even in prison, had to preach when the opportunity arose.

Hajim knew this too.

There were only wolves and sheep in this world. Today, Hajim comes as a sheep. The real sheep follows ever so meekly.

Up the stairs into a breeze way, we two figures plodded forward with footfalls echoing as the rattle of bones. The day inched into grayness toward darkness. Shadows gulped and swallowed us into the building's hulking gut. The dark, rectangular man with his shades and thin mustache pushed open a sturdy door and stepped aside inviting me to precede him.

The vastness of the room sprawled inward into outlines unseen and disturbingly monstrous.

There are only two important moments: before and afterward. In between hangs the moment.

One moment the world hangs balanced in space; the next, everything comes unstuck as a passage from life to humiliation.

It happened with the swiftness of a serpent's strike!

The first minute, I blinked to adjust to shadows and black nothingness; the next, I spied the door as it was being locked. Locked? Why?

Some trap was sprung on someone too stupid to beware! This was a consummate betrayal. The brutal urgency of the attack unhinged me to the point I stopped thinking as a human being.

I was fiendishly seized from behind.

The audacious, strong-limbed inmate had shrewdly pounced with such uncanny grace, unwitting me! I dangled in the air aloft as a scrawny marionette. A baffling prodding from behind caught me stupefied. A crumpled thought twisted into horror: Hajim is humping me like a big dog with its bitch: me!

I squirmed and arched my back to fend away his ruinous assault. His hot chest and pounding heart drummed against my spine. A bestial voice exhaled pestilence upon my neck. Low and ruminative pleasure grunts, hound-like, echoed in the room.

"Give me what I want, man or I'll knock you out and take it."

This was not even a threat: this was a certainty. Cold objectivity flooded in upon me. Something inside screamed. Soundless, empty air rushed out of my dry mouth. My hapless heart flailed, rattling in a cage in my chest. My assailant's voice barked provocative commands. “…take you out! Teach you everything…”

Icy clarity seized my consciousness, simple childish thoughts: Wasn't I a servant of God's will?

Why me? Why this?

Adrenaline is a sordid intoxicant, jumbling my thoughts. . . all senses on high alert, thrusting from behind; this vile dance mocked my sense of God.

"You are never tested beyond what you can endure. . ."

Jehovah could make the way out! I spoke as calmly as if I were explaining to a child: "I can't do this. It is against my religion."

Bland, calm Statements. . . as though read from the label of a can. Contents: "religious nitwit with dumb commitment and self-destructive determination."

Muscular arms looped under my pits and steel-fingered hands interlaced behind my head. The lifting power of this monster was extreme!

The baffling impropriety was clear. Only God could end this now. Unconnected thoughts shunted in and out of my head. Abraham raised the dagger to plunge into his only son's chest! The angel stayed his hand. This was that moment… I had placed myself in the hands of the living God. The rest was up to Him.

The rest…God willed.

What excuse was I supposed to make to absolve Jehovah in all this?

I was no martyr--I was a child in the eyes of the law, not even 21 years old.

I was a lamb.

After the incident, I was dazed, spaced out and finally dead calm. Nobody knew Post Traumatic Stress as a natural consequence of extreme shock in the year 1968. Men were expected to tough it out and never indulge in angst or hand-wringing displays. I mean, really—what had I expected? This was me alone in the world discovering what was and wasn’t reality.

A wrecking ball had taken my head off! Disconfirmation of certainty hit me between my eyes. My first consideration was how this was going to reflect on Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was nothing to them but a symbol of the faithful rain dance always ongoing. If I broke and asked to transfer to Alternate Service in the hospital at this point I’d be marked as a loser whose lack of faith brought on his own ruination. I would let my fellow inmates down and become a laughing stock. If I bucked up and brushed it off and took the bit between my teeth and charged ahead—well, it was only what was expected of me anyway. At best, I was somebody who had passed a sadistic minimum requirement test of faith and now, if I so chose, would continue in provisional standing. I relied on prayer and total service to Jehovah until this moment. How had that worked out for me so far? It hadn’t. My ordeal was only what I had done lately.

The cold truth was this: I had no permanent standing with my God or my religion.

All this time, I was on my own. I just didn't know it--until now.