It looks photo shopped to me. The centre of gravity on the end load looks like it would either tip the truck or cause all that stuff to fall off.
cognizant dissident
JoinedPosts by cognizant dissident
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25
Turning the tables on the Elders
by Darth plaugeis ini would love to hear your experiences when this worked out for you.
i had a great turning of the tables when i was 22. the con.
went out to a park for picnics, softball, that sort of thing.
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cognizant dissident
Well, after 4 years as an inactive witness, I had never even received a shepherding call. Then my husband of 26 years suddenly asked me for a divorce because of my apostacy. It was weird, because I was totally tolerant of him remaining a JW and even thought it was good for him. Some people need the structure and social life. He had asked me a couple of years ago, not to talk to him about my "unbeliefs" or question him about JW stuff because it was subverting his faith and I totally respected that and never said another word to him about religion.
Well, after he started spreading it around his congo that he was divorcing me for apostacy (absolute spiritual endangerment), I received my first shepherding call. I was very polite to the elders, (whom I knew socially), made them tea, told them honestly why I didn't believe any more, and told them I was not opposed to anyone else practicing as a JW or interested in destroying their faith (which is true). I told them I was shocked that my husband asked me for a divorce as this was not scriptual grounds by any means. They said they would talk to him about it.
Well, about a month later, I found out my husband was having an affair.....drumroll please.... with the daughter of the elder who made the shepherding call on me! Needless to say, I did not hear back from him after that! Although, to be fair, the other elder did call to apologize to me for how I was treated.
OK, top that story if you can!
Cog
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cognizant dissident
There is no such thing as race. If you want to know what skin color people have you should just ask. Mine is very white. I would like to be more golden brown though. Some of those Asian girls have the most beautiful skin. I guess that makes me prejudiced.
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cognizant dissident
Crazy Heart
Precious
Its Complicated
Inglorious Bastards
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31
HOW do you know what you KNOW you know?
by Terry inremember how certain you were as a jehovah's witness?.
you just knew what you knew was right 100%.
you staked your life on it, didn't you?.
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cognizant dissident
I actually did leave due to scientific research I began while working towards a degree in nursing.
There, we were very much taught to question how we know what we know. Questioning was not only encouraged it was required. As nurses we were liable for every action we took with a patient and had to give a solid reason based on the best scientific data and empirical knowledge available at the time. Nursing also brought me face to face with the blood issue and when I applied that type of critical thinking to the blood doctrine it didn't hold up. The rest of WTBTS theology fell like a house of cards shortly after that. Belief in the Bible as God's word was only a few weeks behind.
Later, I did additional research on other topics, and I also read much of the research that was done by others on JWD. However, I did consider the blood doctrine to be the deal breaker for me as it is a life or death policy. I know family friends, young, beautiful women who have died or nearly died from lack of blood transfusion.
Now, I practice awareness meditation as do many nurses, doctors and psychologists. It is a great form of stress relief and can promote healing in patients. Some people knock it as new-agey mumbo jumbo, however, there are some sound scientific studies which have been done verifying the good health affects.
An even more important benefit of meditation though, is that it gets one very in touch with our experience in the moment. It teaches us to drop the constant story line running through our brains for 99% of the day. If you do it long enough, you soon realize that everything we truly know for sure, we only know through our own experience in the moment. The only way that humans have to "know" anything is through our 5 senses. We see, we hear, we touch, we smell, we taste.
First we experience in this way, through our senses, and then our brains draw conclusions from those experiences and tell us many stories. The big problem with this is that many of the stories it tells us are erroneous. Compounding the problem, is that our parents, our teachers, religious leaders, politicians, and other authority figures in this world also fill our heads with their stories about what we ought to think and believe. And they learned their stories in the same way. Thus erroneous teachings our passed on to generations throughout the millenia.
Whenever we accept a story from an outside authority, we do not really "know" the thing ourselves. Whenever, we read someone else's research, we do not really know the subject as we would if we had conducted it ourselves. Granted, this is not always possible to do and the shortcuts of taking other people's words for things and building upon our own prior knowledge is often helpful, otherwise we would have to relearn everything each and every day. However, it can also be a trap as we ex-JW's know only too well.
When it comes to important life decisions, the bottom line is QUESTION EVERYTHING! Do not give your power over to others. They do not and cannot ever "know" you better than you know yourself.
Cog
The most intelligent people do not have all the right answers, they ask all the right questions.
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cognizant dissident
ps: I agree with you Blue Canary. Child care, done well, is difficult and demanding and should pay more. Unfortunately it has to be cost effective for other parents to hire childcare otherwise they would do better to stay home.
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cognizant dissident
Self-employed bookkeeper. I charge $25 per hour. I'm in my 3rd year of accounting degree. If I graduate and get a CGA designation, I can charge $150.00 and hour and pay someone like me to do all the work for $20. Ain't accounting grand?
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This week's Bible Highlights, verbatim quote: "Jehovah is a Killer..."
by Open mind init's amazing what you notice when you go through the bible again with a changed worldview.
this week's watchtower-assigned bible reading is the opening chapters of 1 samuel.
this little gem just jumped off the page at me:.
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cognizant dissident
Wow, cool chart.
So God is worse than Hitler and Stalin put together, but not as bad as Mao. Interesting. I never looked at it that way before.
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The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness- No need for religion in spirituality
by OnTheWayOut inreading tmj4477's thread about religion after jw's and reading perry trying to counter ak-jeff on a thread about god and suffering, both of these made me want to post some eastern thought that doesn't fall into the category of "religious" but might help nonetheless.. .
excerpt from the wisdom of no escape (with subtitle: and the path of loving-kindness).
chapter 8: no such thing as a true storyin taoism there's a famous saying that goes, "the tao that can be spoken is not the ultimate tao.
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cognizant dissident
OTWO
We're reading "The Wisdom of No Escape", in my meditation group. "The Places That Scare You" is also very good. It's all about confronting our deepest fears and the core beliefs which fuel them, with awareness and insight.
I agree that Buddhism can and has been turned into a religion with its dogmatic factions just like any other religion. One of my favorite teachings is to beware of all the "isms".
There is a saying, I don't know who first wrote it, but it talks about the difference between preaching your beliefs and living them. I think it was written by someone who got very excited to spread the message of their newly found buddhist beliefs to their western family. It goes: "When I am a buddhist, everyone is upset with me, but when I am a buddha, nobody seems to mind."
If we become the living manifestation of awareness in how we conduct all our daily activities, then it will be self-evident and there is no reason for us to lose the essence of the experience by opening our mouths and preaching to anyone.
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To athiests who hate God
by EndofMysteries inquestion, if this is true, in the book of enoch chapter 10:11-12, "all the sons of men shall not perish in consequence of every secret, by which the watchers have destroyed, and which they have taught, their offspring.12all the earth has been corrupted by the effects of the teaching of azazyel.
to him therefore ascribe the whole crime.
if that is god's truth, and your only accountable for your own wickedness and actions, would you feel guilty for your accusations against god?
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cognizant dissident
Assumptions in "EndofMysteries'" post that have not been demonstrated:
#1. Atheists have committed some sort of wickedness they should feel guilty for.
#2. Atheists have made some sort of accusations against God.
#3. Atheists have bad thoughts about God.
#4. Atheists believe lies about God
#5 Atheists have not experienced goodness and kindness equal to that of Thor's or Zeus' or (insert God of your choice here)demonstrated goodness.
#6 God is of the male gender.
#7. That is possible to have all these thoughts about a being you do not believe exists.