feelin' pretty groovy that i'm starting my college 'career' or what have you...with a 4.0. it is great to be back in school...to stimulate my mind in a college setting, get out of my cave for a bit, and maybe even eventually have the accomplishment of a degree.. or two..who knows... less than 10 years ago, this didn't even seem like a real possibility for me...because i didn't imagine it to be.
but, since the good ol' paradise didn't show up...i decided to create my own paradise (quirky and flawed as it may be) !
and this paradise includes educating my self in and out of school, being open to ideas and possibilities, experiencing things for myself, living until i die... .
My mistake. I made an assumption about where you were in your academic career. Then made a fool of myself attempting to articulate the unnecessary.
I agree that 'to spite' a thing takes a lot of energy. It's a costly behavior and may not pay you back. Whereas, 'Living well is the best revenge' both benefits you and is not spite, and isn't Really revenge. I suppose how much cerebral hospitalization or convalescence you require depends on how much cerebral trauma you endured.
feelin' pretty groovy that i'm starting my college 'career' or what have you...with a 4.0. it is great to be back in school...to stimulate my mind in a college setting, get out of my cave for a bit, and maybe even eventually have the accomplishment of a degree.. or two..who knows... less than 10 years ago, this didn't even seem like a real possibility for me...because i didn't imagine it to be.
but, since the good ol' paradise didn't show up...i decided to create my own paradise (quirky and flawed as it may be) !
and this paradise includes educating my self in and out of school, being open to ideas and possibilities, experiencing things for myself, living until i die... .
I chased high GPA, at a great opportunity cost of real-world skill sets, because that's what I thought was most antithetical to the JW lifestyle. I thought having a comprehensive cerebral map of reality was what would heal me fastest of JW bullshit trauma. Having gotten summa cum laude at this great opportunity cost, I submit that this method is NOT the most antithetical to the JW lifestyle, and therefore is NOT the fastest way to be healed of JW bullshit trauma. I submit that real world skill sets that can answer a fellow human's problem, as fast as you are capable, and send them on their way, is actually the thing JWs hate hate hate HATE more than any cerebral ivory tower you can place yourself in. Skill sets, and the knowledge of a job well done, and the knowledge of being appreciated, will get you dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Also, cerebral knowledge does not or cannot leverage the kinesthetic learning of your limbs which have neurons all through them, or muscle memory. Skill sets and a record of aid in distress to fellow humans will do more on a resume or CV than a cold number of the high 3.xx variety. Skill sets will also teach you who you are faster than getting a high GPA. If you are faced with a choice of how much to devote to GPA and how much to devote to real world skill sets (this occurred in my first degree), and your temptation is to go for GPA, you should think about taking the harder road and concentrate on employable skill sets. Let the GPA take care of itself. In the working world you will be dismayed at how much money is made for how little nicety, finesse, subtlety, etc, that isn't immediately related to the job at hand. To put this in one last frame of reference, the investment in high GPA, which is locked knowledge and a lot of cerebral learning skills, depreciates in this economy faster than having modular skills that leverage muscle memory and can be updated constantly as needed. Just imho.
we all remember this passage vividly: from there elisha went up to bethel.
while he was on his way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him.
"go up baldhead," they shouted, "go up baldhead!
I like the aetiologies that deal with volcanism, earthquakes, tectonics. Like the Great Flood was a regional symptom of a local flood, perhaps a memory of a glacial lake outburst flood that got culturally transported, the crossing of the Red Sea was a symptom of tectonic activity that uplifted some area that was under water. Pillars of smoke by day, pillars of fire by night - all these visual images can be given little wheels to roll around ahead of you, behind you, once you get down to writing your 'imma chosen people' national best seller. Disaster is the party application in the hands of an author on a soapbox.
feelin' pretty groovy that i'm starting my college 'career' or what have you...with a 4.0. it is great to be back in school...to stimulate my mind in a college setting, get out of my cave for a bit, and maybe even eventually have the accomplishment of a degree.. or two..who knows... less than 10 years ago, this didn't even seem like a real possibility for me...because i didn't imagine it to be.
but, since the good ol' paradise didn't show up...i decided to create my own paradise (quirky and flawed as it may be) !
and this paradise includes educating my self in and out of school, being open to ideas and possibilities, experiencing things for myself, living until i die... .
The TWS was all about keeping you in a conformist and catatonic zombie state of mind, or in an undifferentiated stem-cell state of ceaseless potential, never learning enough about the intrinsic you to know how exactly to spend your precious dollars and minutes, never turning potential into kinetic action, never turning talents into skills, never turning affinities into driving passions.
I would recommend forcing yourself to go through as many new experiences as the pocketbook allows. The more intense experiences will accelerate you through twists and turns and you'll discover where your cognitive, spiritual, emotional center of mass is. You'll discover what crap you can put up with, what crap you cannot put up with, what goals are essential, who you are as a unique differentiated personality on this planet, and how you can use your unique developed skill sets to make the planet better for the next person.
we all remember this passage vividly: from there elisha went up to bethel.
while he was on his way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him.
"go up baldhead," they shouted, "go up baldhead!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHa53MWg6kg
For God's ways are higher than man's ways.
i remember when i was a mind cleansed(tm) jw i would listen to the talks when i wasn't napping.. on the long tiring drive home i'd say how i ''enjoyed(tm)'' the sessions and felt ''encouraged(tm)''.. .....and yet i couldn't recall a single ''point(tm)'' made.
i couldn't remember what it was that actually made me feel good.. on one occasion i asked the family what they found ''encouraging(tm)'' or interesting.. tumble weed.
no examples.
They should have showed Ben-Hur or Spartacus.
i wake up this mornign to find this on my facebook page... instant deletion.
if 1000 years is as one day...the following is true....if 1000 years is as one day...the following is true..... .
someone did the math, of the 1000 years = one day equation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS
The next world record breaking supercomputer should be named "The Watchtower".
i know the jw's are wrong but if they were right, this is my question...... when the big a comes, there has to be the best person who dies.
the one who lost out on life by a fraction.
the very best one who still did not make it.
Unless something has changed, the equation when I left in 1999 involved two truths: All non-JWs were as good as dead. Not all JWs were as good as saved. So to answer the OP the first JW to be killed at Armageddon would be some flavor of deceitful, etc, you name it, you know plenty of them, and the last JW to be killed, the one who just didn't have enough merit, would probably be along the lines of, 'yes you're ill and yes you say you do all you can for Jehovah but did you really need to miss that one meeting that one time when you did factually have the medical capability of relocating your body into a vehicle, into the Kingdom Hall, but you did not.' Or, 'you did have the medical capability of intruding yourself into someone else's day based on their conversation you overheard on the subway, that one time, but you did not.'
Those shades of choice are the sword of Damocles hanging every day over JWs who might believe in Armageddon. I personally suspect that the greater number of JWs do not believe in Armageddon but do completely fear the social Armageddon of leaving the cult, and so it is faintly comparable.
having this spiritual division between my wife and i over the years has been very draining in many ways.
so much so that i find myself more and more hating everything having to do with the wtbts especially when i just see watchtower literature.
i've kind of always felt that way but it's getting worst.
Caveat: This may be of zero use but it's my response to the phenomena of hating this cult. I'm 40yo and I've been out since 25, and DID at that time have bile like the OP says. I can only say I'm thankfully fortunate to have landed near opportunities for education, but it did help with the bile. Oh, did I have bile... Anyway:
TWS >depends< on you hating it, the TWS, and by collateral association, occasionally JWs.
A cathexis is an emotional investment, which is the basis of a love/hate relationship. The very worst thing you can do to any conscious thing, whether it is a person or corporation, is to un-exist them. One Could just get out, stay out, and never look back and forget anyone still behind bars. You can do that and have no love or hate for anything TWS related. Another option is to get out, stay out, and be purposefully mindful of either helping people get out of their chains, or warning people that there are bear traps that will clamp down on their leg once they get dunked, etc, etc. I don't actually have to hate the TWS, which is what it wants. I can treat it as a naturally occurring virus, infestation, malignancy, cancer, pestilence, famine, catastrophy, accident of history. (Tornado or earthquake would be giving them a lot of credit). For all these things you have passionate physicians, humanitarians, emergency medical responders who do not take the impersonal, unconscious enemy personally. Treat the TWS as an unconscious beast that feeds itself on the lives of its adherents, and is an unfortunate accident of history to be contained, like an epidemic, and don't take it personally. I contend or claim that you can still have an altruistic mission in life where you do something for reasons greater than the personal, where you do not take the problem personally. Such as, 'this is not an offense against me, now, where I am in my mental place, but I recognize it is an ongoing offence against others'.
so i'm now at the developmental stage of adulthood when my peers and i are beginning to reminisce about our childhoods.
if you've ever taken developmental psychology, you know the importance of reminiscing.
yesterday i went to an event about something retro and participants were really nostalgic and just really enjoying themselves.
"I towed the dub party line as I was commanded to do (and subjected to corporal punishment and verbal abuse if I came close to not pretending I loved dubbery). I was rightly terrified to say anything but, "I love being a jw and want to go to Bethel.""
One day I was pioneering in a car group in Halifax PA cong, with another male pioneer in the back seat sitting behind his girlfriend/fiance. His father was a Halifax elder and his father's father was PO in West Virginia. This guy's girlfriend said something mouthy - not the kind of comment that might have defamed him in front of other males, just kind of… mouthy. The next thing I knew he had reached up and was clamping his hand - he worked construction - around her trapezius, she was sort of immobilized, and he was warning something to the effect, 'Don't you ever say that again.' I have no excuse for not reacting. I can say that as a matter of fact, I had never conceived of witnessing wife battery inside a car group, so I do have the defense of not actually believing what I was seeing.
As for childhood memories...
I'm sure many would object to drawing any parallels between the JW stance on truncating, amputating, nay, castrating an ordinary pre-adolescent suite of experiences and, say, female genital mutilation in the third world. But there you go. I just drew the parallel. There is no getting it back. You cannot hot-swap a new hard drive of memories. You can start building up your own set of experiences as fast as humanly possible, you can try to figure out who you are, what you want from life and how you can participate in the things you crave. Those are your options.
