i just found another verse on this-the title of the section is perfect!
colossians 2 (new international version) .
freedom from human regulations through life with christ .
Good question: the answer though is a simple one.
They are taught not to read the whole Bible just the parts that the WTS wants them to read.
Which means most have not read the Bible entirely and if they did they went and asked an elder or looked at a WTS publication for clarification.
LH
hi everyone, i have been a longtime lurker to this website, but i have never posted.
so here is a little bit about myself:
i was raised a jw, got baptized at 13, became a regular pioneering right out of high school, i was used extensively at the hall and on assemblies, came from a nice jw background.
No matter what happens with your family always know that you are doing the right thing for you and your life. If they cant understand that then try to not let it get to you. I know its hard but you have friends and your soon to be husband. As my husband and I learned relatives are people that you had no choice to be related to, family is people in your life that you love and trust. Make your own family. If your parents truly love you and not some version of you then they will still love you no matter what. When my mother found out that I wasnt Christian she told me that she would pray for me because she thinks I am going to hell. I know that she loves me otherwise she wouldnt pray for me. I may not agree with her but I know that she cares about me.
LH
a few weeks ago she asked if we still believed it was jehovah's organization.
i hadn't heard from her until this morning.
i asked her to show me from the bible only where it says that this is j's organization.
I agree with changling. I to have a MIL that is a die hard JW and no matter how much proof we have given her that she is wrong and that the organization is wrong she still wont listen. Its sad because deep down we care about family but unfortunately when you come up against someone who is like talking to a brick wall all you can do is climb over and move on. Something I learned along time ago is that you cant control other people's decisions but you can control how you think, feel and act.
LH
astro-travel or out of body experience....your spirit/soul leaves your physical body to visit the spiritual world or astro-plane .
there is no hard proof and information is based on personal experiences.
i'm not too clued up on this, but one friend of mine says you meet a guide ( he/she has to earn your trust???
Astro- travel can be done in several ways and not always with a guide. Depending on who you study it from sometimes guided meditation is considered astral travel. However the way I was taught was that there are several kinds: ( I am not going to list all of them because I really dont want to write a novel)
1. Guided Meditation - a form of astral travel done with a speaker or music giving direction to a person or group of people who mentally walk the instructions given. These are often done as a training technique for other types of astral travel as well as a way to help focus the mind.
2. Shamanic Walking - (there is a better name for this but I cant remember it off the top of my head.) Where one after meeting an animal spirit guide is then shown or taken to places and things in order to teach a lesson.
3. Astral-planeing - The act of one falling asleep and then in dream mode (this requires lucid dreaming btw) falls asleep and then wakes themselves on a astral plane and and explores to learn things and to meet others.
4. Astraling - The act of mentally walking around ones plane of exstistance out of body.
I have done all of thee above and all the rest (with the exception of the "little death" style which is unsafe and unhealthy since it requires the person to put their body in a coma). Guided meditation is by far the easist and safest. I was taught that when astral traveling to always leave a thread of myself attached to my body so that I could find my way back. While it is hard to prove the reality of it I have known people who have gotten lost while trying it, lucky for them they found their way back.
LH
ok so in a previous post i told all of you a little bit about my inlaws and what they put my husband and i through.
i asked all of you if you thought it was ok to keep them cut off and out of our lives, if it was the right thing to do.
many of you posted and stated that you thought my husband and i were doing the right thing and i thank you all for making me feel better in my decision.
So we went as a whole family to meet with my FIL and the grandparents at Starbucks in the inlaws town (its about a 20 minute drive from our place). We meet in the afternoon while MIL was at church so she wouldnt be there. Apparently from what I gathered and then what was relayed to me by my husband who translated there has been a huge misunderstanding. My MIL parents (eg my husbands grandparents from Germany) had been told as I knew they had a bunch of lies about my husband and myself. Also apparently the email that came from my husbands Aunt all those months ago was false. Apparently she spoke for the grandparents without telling them what was going on. So we spent almost three hours chatting with my husbands grandparents straightening things out. We will see what falls out over this. The grandparents now do not believe my MIL and believe us. My FIL just stated that everyone has their own problems and is attempting to be the neutral party. They are all spending the next week in Hawaii so we will see what happens. They all now know about our youngest daughter. The grandparents were thrilled and proud, my FIL was happy and upset at not being told at the same time but was wise enough not to say anything this time around. The grandparents told my husband that my MIL would like to hear from him from time to time to know that he is ok. So we will see. All in all the meeting was fine and the grandparents accept me and the kids and my husbands decisions.
LH
ok so in a previous post i told all of you a little bit about my inlaws and what they put my husband and i through.
i asked all of you if you thought it was ok to keep them cut off and out of our lives, if it was the right thing to do.
many of you posted and stated that you thought my husband and i were doing the right thing and i thank you all for making me feel better in my decision.
Thank you Velta. I have heard that god works in mysterious ways and the longer I am alive the more I believe that. The first phrase you said to me about truth, well you have no idea how much that helps. Thanks
LH
i just saw the eighth post by botheyesopen.
i noticed aliciaj, dogaradodya, chicken little, cognac, hypnotic, mochalatte.. some have been welcomed and some have not.. .
we have so many i can't keep up so.... .
*waves hand and then realises that you all can't really see it* Hi everyone! Yes I am a newbie (wow its been a few years now since I have had that title).
LH = DK = *shrugs* its really both
ok so in a previous post i told all of you a little bit about my inlaws and what they put my husband and i through.
i asked all of you if you thought it was ok to keep them cut off and out of our lives, if it was the right thing to do.
many of you posted and stated that you thought my husband and i were doing the right thing and i thank you all for making me feel better in my decision.
Ok so in a previous post I told all of you a little bit about my inlaws and what they put my husband and I through. I asked all of you if you thought it was ok to keep them cut off and out of our lives, if it was the right thing to do. Many of you posted and stated that you thought my husband and I were doing the right thing and I thank you all for making me feel better in my decision.
So here it is now several weeks later and we get this phone call from my step-dad. Not only is it weird that he is calling us (usually it my mom) but he wants to talk to my husband. So I hand the phone to my husband and he gets really quiet and an upset look forms on his face as he listens to my step-dad talk to him. Then he writes down a phone number and says good bye to my step-dad and then hangs up the phone. He turns to me and tells me that his dad called my parents asking to speak to him. My step-dad aware of our not speaking to my husbands family wisely tells my FIL that he will give my husband his phone number and my husband will call him back if he so chooses. My husband then tells me that FIL said it was urgent. So here we are thinking that someone has died or is dieing or something horrible as my husband calls his father back. Turns out it really wasnt that urgent. Apparently my husbands grandparents are in town for three days from Germany as a stop over before heading on to Hawaii and they want to see us. The first thing that I think of is that email that my husbands aunt sent us after her visit almost two years ago saying that no one there of the family wanted anything to do with us till we apologized to MIL. My husband tells this to my FIL and then tells him that we will only see the Grandparents if MIL is not there (since she is the one thats the worse of the two). FIL states that we could meet while she is in church (he doesnt attend, not sure if he ever joined or he faded) tomorrow afternoon. My husband says he will think about it and hangs up.
So we know this is trap, we know something bad mojo wise is going to happen, and yet after talking it over we feel that we need to give the Grandparents a chance. I know meeting with them (yes in a public place where we can just walk away and leave if need be) is the right thing to do but I am freaking out! Every time I have come into contact with any of my husbands family they have done and said things to hurt us and try and destroy us (like his mother one time tried to get us thrown out of our apartment.) Yes I know most of it is from MIL but they all listen to her.
All I want is to live my life with the family that I have made in peace.
LH
ok i will try and make this story short because its not my intent to go on a huge mil bashing spree.
september of 2004 i meet my now husband.
while we were dating he told me that he wanted nothing to do with his family because they were jw's and he was disfellowshipped because of them and his now ex-fiancee.
Ok D&D is Dungeons and Dragons. They have my email, and my husbands. I know this because otherwise his Aunt would not have been able to email us when she visted last year and his sister has both of mine, this I know because she emailed me claiming that my husband was bi-polar and manic depressive because she was just diagnosed as such and therefore he was as well and needed to seek professional help. (My husband is not even remotely close to being either.) (I personally believe that she just has mental issues due to a horrible childhood with her mother and wont do anything about coming to terms with it.) So they can contact us. I know they blame me for all the evils of everything in the world and frankly I dont give a rats a**. They can live in their little delusional world. My husband believes that JW's are no where near the "truth" and has embraced the religion that I follow with open arms.
I am glad to hear that all of you think that we have done the right thing by staying out of contact with them. It helps easy my mind. Oh and for the record even if we were in contact with them I would NEVER leave the kids alone with them. After hearing from both my SIL and my husband about how physically abusive my MIL is I would NEVER trust her with the kids.
DK
ok i will try and make this story short because its not my intent to go on a huge mil bashing spree.
september of 2004 i meet my now husband.
while we were dating he told me that he wanted nothing to do with his family because they were jw's and he was disfellowshipped because of them and his now ex-fiancee.
Ok I will try and make this story short because its not my intent to go on a huge MIL bashing spree.
September of 2004 I meet my now husband. While we were dating he told me that he wanted nothing to do with his family because they were JW's and he was disfellowshipped because of them and his now ex-fiancee. My husband had alot of hate inside of him because of them and I knew it wasnt healthy. Because of this I encouraged him to at least try again one more time. After the fiasco with his family during our wedding I was all for ignoring them along with my husband. Well couple of months after we married is when we moved. We didnt really want his family's help in moving but we needed it. So while I was at work his parents came over and helped him move most of our stuff. While they were helping apparently my MIL went through our things. One of the things she found was some D&D books of my husbands. We both like to play and see nothing wrong with it. Well a couple of weeks after we moved in my MIL calls several times in one day asking if she could speak to her son about something important. She was very rude to me on the phone (she always has been but this time it was worse). These calls come the day after my SIL telling me that my MIL is upset because her mother might be dieing. I thought that my MIL calling might be about that so I called my SIL and asked her if she knew anything. She didnt and offered to call my MIL. Five minutes later my MIL calls and starts screaming at me over the phone as to how horrible she thinks I am, that I am manipulating her daughter (because I had a question?) and that I have lead her son down the path of darkness. She then asks what my religion really is (I never told her before this, didnt think it was her business). I tell her and she begins to tell me that I am condeming myself and my children and her son to hell(I thought they didnt believe in hell). She screams at me for 20 minutes and then states that she does not want to be a part of our lives till we learn the truth and walk in the light again. Then she tells me to have my husband call her as soon as he gets home. (He was at the store during this getting things like milk and diapers.)
My husband comes home to find me in tears and proceeds to call his mother. She then screams at him calling him worthless (not the first time) for marrying me and then tells him the last thing she told me about not being in our lives. My husband yells back sticking up for me, tells her off and says great we didnt want you anyways and hangs up. Then comes the phone call two days later from my FIL. He tells my husband that we are devil worshippers and that WE need to apologize to MIL. Since all this happened we have had no contact with them. Any of them, because after this several months later my husbands aunt who he has not seen in years comes to visit from Germany. We went over to the IL house to say hi to her and then left. After that his aunt tells us in email that she and his relatives in Germany want nothing to do with us unless we apologize to MIL. Well a year goes by and we move out of town several miles away. We told no one from his family keeping with the they dont want us in their lives and we dont want them thing.
In August I gave birth to our daughter. We kept the pregnancy and birth a secret from his family because we did not want them involved for several reasons, one being the fiasco my IL's pulled when our son was born. So here it is Yule/Christmas is upon us and I am wondering if we are doing the right thing by keeping them out of our lives.
LH
