Posts by freemindfade

8

I feel blessed

by vinman in

i just wanted to express a simple thought.

having awakened 11 months ago , i feel blessed to have awakened at this special time.

i feel so vindicated.

How many Watchtower properties still to sell in Brooklyn yet?

by Gayle in

jw
friends

does anyone have an accounting of those properties?

which properties and possible value of sale?.

sounds like that the watchtower may want to sell quickly?

There are more, also some of these building may already be sold just the hand over closing is not for a while, hard to say. I used to know someone intimately involved with the sales, but it wouldn't make any sense for me to speak to them about it now.

27

FMF: A Wake Up Story

by freemindfade in

sorry for the length of this, i hope anyone stopping by to read will take the time and read it.

i haven't included any things i would consider "apostate" specifics about doctrines, or major scandals.

it's just a general layout of the path i took to becoming an exjw.

freemindfade

One thing I forgot to mention in my OP, also part of my awakening was the international convention in New Jersey. That was the weekend I realized how different the organization was and where it was heading. Giant screens, emotional videos, just the whole feel of it turned my stomach.100 years of kingdom, and there was no magical wonderful feeling there. You hear all these stories of international conventions and how they changed peoples lives, it was just another convention, except outside and hot as holy hell. It was the last disillusion, and nail for me.

5

Watch the GB lie

by jonza in

just a short clip i made of gb members contradicting (lying) about the child abuse issues.

freemindfade

love this I was hoping someone would do it thank you

27

FMF: A Wake Up Story

by freemindfade in

sorry for the length of this, i hope anyone stopping by to read will take the time and read it.

i haven't included any things i would consider "apostate" specifics about doctrines, or major scandals.

it's just a general layout of the path i took to becoming an exjw.

freemindfade

Yep. Counting time always felt wrong to me, not even the going out as much as "counting time", like really what is that?

I think it boils down to there being one or two things that get you started. One thing that gives your true self permission to start approaching it rationally. And your right, you can't pick the thing that will do that for someone else. For instance, if years ago someone had told me about the UN debacle, I would have written it off, honestly it would not have got me thinking. For another person, its everything. Its the one thing that opened the door. But once you get started its like having the blinders removed.

Now I sit at a meeting and I have no idea how I ever did this. The sheer amount of nonsense at meetings is staggering to me, but it was always there, but when I walked through those doors my reason turned off and was handed over to an organization. Never again.

27

FMF: A Wake Up Story

by freemindfade in

sorry for the length of this, i hope anyone stopping by to read will take the time and read it.

i haven't included any things i would consider "apostate" specifics about doctrines, or major scandals.

it's just a general layout of the path i took to becoming an exjw.

freemindfade

Sorry for the length of this, i hope anyone stopping by to read will take the time and read it. I haven't included any things I would consider "apostate" specifics about doctrines, or major scandals. It's just a general layout of the path i took to becoming an EXJW.

As a fully awake exjw, I have seen that the way each individual comes to wake up is unique to them, but also share similarities as well. It seems though that each path really depends on the individual. I wanted to share my story a little more in detail because there may be someone out there going down a similar path I took, and they could benefit from hearing another story of waking up.

I was born in, 3rd gen witness, family was sort of a witness legacy if such things exist, I would call it a cult within a cult, and I always admired the unity of both, my family and JW. I was never a great witness, I never missed a meeting, personal study was crap, I was a persuasive witness I think because I come across like an easygoing person, not a Christian zealot. But I always had apathy for field service, I did it, but was happiest when it was over. I always had “worldly” friends, in school and later in my work life. I didn’t socialize much with them outside the “truth”, however more than most witnesses would be comfortable. I was always struggling to find happiness from the religion, and never really experiencing the peace, joy and all these things everyone seemed to exude. No matter how good I progressed, I always seemed to be kept away from being an MS. I was pushed and praised and on and on, but nothing was every good enough. At the point I was finally offered that position, at my “spiritual” apex, inexplicably said “no thank you”.

I didn’t understand what was going on, what was I doing? I was in a really cool hall, I sort of always had a double life but I kept from breaking any serious biblical laws, but the “world” always appealed to me, and I forever felt guilty for this. Like it was something I needed to cure and couldn’t. So I said no. I started living a true double life, pulled out all the stops. Yes I was and still am a pretty bad dude sometimes. So when it comes to waking up, I never could make the truth feel right, I could never be happy, I felt depression from guilt and pressure, I lived my life feeling that I did just enough to get by, but when Armageddon came, Jehovah was going to kill me, because I wasn’t really that good of a witness. Living your life with that thought is a real bitch and I am sure many can relate. I felt I was a pretty good human being, but a bad witness. I always had the impending feeling of “I’m not getting in” but still living a life of captivity and denial.

The Beginning of the end: The Bible

Here is where my real wake up took off. I was never good at personal study, and at this time was doing family worship with the pioneer wife regularly. I found that I actually do have a great interest in the bible, and even now I can say I still do and always will. Some of you who know of my being an atheist now may find that surprising, but it interests me. Before I even knew what that words exegesis or eisegesis meant, I was starting to take an exegesis approach to the bible. Doing a lot of external research. This was the start of my waking up.

While exegesis is the process of drawing out the meaning from a text in accordance with the context and discoverable meaning of its author, eisegesis occurs when a reader imposes his or her interpretation into and onto the text.

I started doing al lot of thinking and research on the flood, and other things followed. Through Exegesis, which I will didn’t know the meaning of, my faith in the bible was falling to pieces. It didn’t freak me out, I found it exciting to learn knew things about this book I was taught to believe I knew everything about, that I ever needed to know. Many specific things got me going. One was realizing that the witnesses (who I still had 100% faith and trust in) had inserted the name ‘Jehovah’ all throughout that Christian/Greek scriptures. I thought, ok maybe it was in there somewhere, but there is no way it could have been used every time they said it was. I researched it in their own literature and my head was spinning. There is no concrete evidence it was in any of those places, but how could they teach something I had believed all my life as fact, when it complete guessing and presumption. I wont get into everything I was picking apart, but the bible was unraveling for me.

The next phase of waking was when I started bringing these things up in family worship as legitimate questions. Our family worship turned into a horrible fight every time, after a few times, we just stopped. Then my excitement for learning knew things turned into dread. I started to feel the censorship. Merely by asking a question that went against the established understanding clearly I was dissenting. My doubts increased. The more I dug I became fully confident the bible was riddled from cover to cover with inaccuracies, that the ideas and meaning and harmony was manufactured by the religion, in this case the Witnesses. It wasn’t true. At this point I would call myself agnostic, I was too impressed by our world and life to write off creator, designer, architect whatever you want to call it. I felt the witnesses were just another misled religion, trying their best to make it make sense to them, and their efforts were really for the best and intentions all good.

My wife ratted me out to CO and elders because of my questions during family worship. Even though it was agreed it was private and I was trusting her with my thoughts. Keep in mind at this point I had not read a single things “apostate” or TTATT related. I had talked myself out of the bible while still a JW, and “God” or “Jehovah” was on shaky ground, at the very least I felt the witnesses had it all wrong. After she ratted me out, I felt the censorship more and more, the inquisition, the fear of thinking for yourself. I got really disturbed by this. I had basically become an EXJW without fully being awake. So I was good going through certain motions, started reporting time without going out, and continuing my research. I never thought the witnesses were harmful, but I was feeling so frustrated and freaked out by my realizing I didn’t have freedom. The religion was captive.

The real wake up.

I had started looking up things online about bethelites. Stories, experiences etc. I lived in Brooklyn and had bethelites in my hall, a lot of heavies too. I was invited to everything, graduations, special meetings, unveilings of new parts of tours, I found many bethelites very odd, and had seen and heard some strange things. I found it very strange that the hall that the GB attend in Brooklyn heights was full of wackos, and GB worshippers. I never attended that hall myself, but had met plenty of people from it, and they were so strange! The hall had relatively a lot of publishers. We once had a brother from the hall give a talk in our hall, it was easily one of the most disturbing, strange, and crazy talk I had ever heard. Our hall was not strange, it was awesome. This brother who serves in the same hall as the GB was asked to never come back to our hall again. When I say he was insane, I am not making hyperbole. He was nuts, he said crazy things. The whole hall was stunned.

So I was out, mentally, or so I thought. I just went along with it. But inside I was out, I didn’t think there were any more levels of waking up for me. That brings us to the now famous tight pants talk. My wife and I were attending at this very odd meeting in the Brooklyn assembly hall. I recall as Tony’s talk went on, I was burning with livid fury, I felt like I was on fire inside my body, the more he talked I could feel part of my body pulling me to stand up and walk out and part of me paralyzed. When he mentioned the part about if a brother isn’t a ministerial servant and so on, I almost said something out loud, and was at war fighting storming out and staying put. So after that I was like something is very wrong, time to open that last box of sins, apostasy.

My whole life apostates were the scariest thing you could do, not drugs and illicit sex. I felt it was a no turning back things, not because it would wake you up, but because Jehovah would never forgive you, or that you would burst into flames or something. From the time I was very young though I never understood the prohibition, I always thought, “we have the truth”. “We go to peoples doors and convert them with the truth, what is so bad we can’t even look at it or we’ll lose out faith”? It honestly always bothered me, and not because I wanted to read these things, I felt they were probably all lies, but why need to have such a strict prohibition. How could apostates be so powerful to convince you this isn’t the truth. I thought apostates probably just had a different version of the religion they wanted to promote and they were not successful like the witnesses. But, to me I justified it like so many things, "is it worth getting killed by the big J at the big A just because I don’t understand? No." its not so don’t worry I thought.

After Tony Morris’s rant, my bible research, giving validity to my doubts and so on, I figured it was time to see what was out there from other exjws. Needles to say I found out there is a deeper level that needed to be woken up. Keep in mind I had no faith in the bible, didn’t believe the witness had the truth, and still what I read threw me into the same spiral everyone seems to share, the obsession, the anxiety, the anger, the sadness, the confusion. I thought I was awake but I had to go back and go through this and realize I was wrong about one major thing. The witness religion is harmful! Extremely. I had lost my faith and still not realized this. I began reading about cult tactics and it was like a nightmare realizing that you are in the stepford world, of the Truman show, or something. How? I am too stubborn, too rational for this. Then I really felt that captivity, 8 million people captive. My family, my good friends. Captive, there was now a fine line between me and losing them forever.

From there I had to go through the challenges that have come with it sense. But I just wanted to share my path.

You have a rational mind, whether you think a god gave it to you or not, I am not here to debate that, you have it to protect you. Why would a god you believe gave you a rational mind, give you an irrational religion to follow? I know you think you can find rationality in the JWS, we all did because especially us born ins, its what we knew. But I am telling you that you will make irrational exceptions for your religion. The witnesses aren’t unique with that. We think that an Islamic extremist that blows them selves up in a crowd is just “crazy”. They aren’t, not the way you might imply anyway. They are making irrational choices because their religion has cognitively conditioned them to think it is rational. It works.

Whatever path you take, read peoples stories, there is variety, and similarity. It can be a comfort. The major TTATT areas that I didn’t go into will affect people differently, some will say “this is the thing that did it for me” and some one else will say its something different. But its not important which thing opens your eyes, its just important you open your eyes.

If the Jehovah’s witness religion was founded and carried out on ongoing lies, scandal and extremism, would you want to know?

In some ways I think for years, I just didn’t want to know.

8

How the college educated/employed "weak" JW's will soon be "used"

by ToesUp in

jw
friends

once these laid off bethelites are released from their duties, where will they go?.

how many will turn to their "spiritually weak" families for a place to live, a meal or financial aid?

the ones who have been criticized over the years for attending college and getting a good job may soon become an asset to the ones who have been relieved of their duties .

freemindfade

Very true cognac. I know many who are going through life and calling everything a miracle when it's their family removing every obstacle, paying their way, keeping them from living on the street, etc. Not one but many.

But it's always miraculous!! No its not. It's enablement from people who hope to get paradise points with the desert god. Or who are just realists keeping these people from living out of a car. No miracles!

447

Does Anyone Still Believe in God?

by LaurenM in

do any of you ex-jw's still believe in god?

even with the new rebranding/softening of this religion, i still don't see how people can believe in him.

the god of the old testimate is an angry murderer who approved rapes and slavery and killed thousands of men, women and children.

freemindfade

I believe in truth and facts. If that doesn't fully answer the question I have failed.

20

Large Increase in Trolley Witnessing

by The Searcher in

when the org implements its bethelite "genocide" and demotes many members of the "worldwide order of special full-time servants of jehovahs witnesses" into lowly regular pioneers, many more trollies will have to be found in order for such ones to rack up their required monthly hours.. how many are actually going to be shocked by this into waking up?

.

freemindfade

I would think the org would manipulate ways to stretch hours, and make it easier to appear there is growth. The carts are a good example of this. Instead of grueling door to door, just stand and drink coffee, and take selfies for 8 hours. Shit, if they had this when I was a teenager I probably would have got a lot more hours lol , lets be honest though, no I wouldn't.

What I wonder, is a lot of super zealous people find an hour "out" in what used to be the RBC, RDC, and now LDC. I know because my pioneer spouse used to rack up her hours doing medial work for the RBC in new york city. It was quite the supplementation to her hours, also many other pioneers did likewise. I mean wouldn't you rather count your jesus panda petting points that way instead of pissing people off at the door?

But with the construction rumors, a lot of people could be losing their hour piggy bank. They will have to go in real service more now. I expect they are going to make it easier and easier to count hours from here going forward. Lets face it, if this was our grandparents cult, the hours would not be so much. They busted their asses.

On a side note, once my wife was so excited for making her time for the year, two of our elders, (one of which was a heavy at bk bethel) came to her and said basically she counted to much of her time in RBC, and she didn't make her time. She was utterly crushed. I felt so bad for her, and disgusted at the petty rules of this cult. Just like jesus would have done right?

8

How the college educated/employed "weak" JW's will soon be "used"

by ToesUp in

jw
friends

once these laid off bethelites are released from their duties, where will they go?.

how many will turn to their "spiritually weak" families for a place to live, a meal or financial aid?

the ones who have been criticized over the years for attending college and getting a good job may soon become an asset to the ones who have been relieved of their duties .

freemindfade

yyyyyep.