The truth is that things are the way they are, and messages posted are just message people posted, and people's interpretation of those messages are just their interpretations - no more, no less. The only things you can get here are people's ideas of the truth - or more accurately what you think of them through their messages.
Introspection
JoinedPosts by Introspection
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41
O.K., Who Is CONVINCED That They Have The REAL Truth?
by SpannerintheWorks inand if you do, it shouldn't be too difficult to convince us of that!
i mean, you accepted it as the truth, .
can you convince us that you do indeed have the "real" truth?
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45
Have You Ever Experienced God?
by Blueblades in.
with all the confusion between both camps when it comes to discussing god,the bible,and jesus,including the various doctrinal matters,a friend of mind told me none of it matters to him because he has evidence of god's existence through his personal experience with god.. when i asked him about it he said he couldn't explain it that i would have to experience it for myself.i told him it has never ever happened to me.. have you ever experienced god so that you could lay to rest all the why for's of things and just settle down and go on with the rest of your life and face death with confidence knowing beyond a doubt that you will be with god when you pass on.. blueblades
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Introspection
Have you ever experienced God so that you could lay to rest all the why for's of things and just settle down and go on with the rest of your life and face death with confidence knowing beyond a doubt that you will be with God when you pass on.
Well, you know you are framing the question with some assumptions there. Some people don't think of God as separate so there is no being "with" God. But regardless, there are a couple of interesting points here.
I imagine a lot of people are interested in laying to rest all the questions they have in their mind, what I would suggest that people look at is simply who has these questions? What I finally found is that it is the ego that asks these question, even if the ego is putting on a spiritual face. However, at the same time I realized that what they call the ego is not an entity in itself, it's simply the complex of conditioned behavior that we have, there is very much an impersonal feel to it.
This leads into the second point, where you mentioned facing death with confidence. In a sense, you already died when identity drops away - which is what renders the ego as simply a bundle of conditioning and not a solid entity which one can call "me." (if nothing else we can see it changes all the time, even if only in small ways) Now this may sound kind of weird or even spooky to a lot of people, but I can tell you that there is simply no suffering then even if you feel pain - because these states just pass naturally, there is no hanging on to any kind of identity which would perpetuate it through resistance. You end up flowing through life quite effortlessly because you're basically in harmony with life, not in resistance to it. In that sense you die in every moment anyways, but you are born as something new at the same time - just two faces of change.
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Is god laughing at us
by SpiceItUp indo you ever wonder that there is a god and he is just looking down at us and laughing his arse off.. "look at those stupid humans.....mwuahahahahahah.....now time to get some popcorn".
reminds me of a joke i read somewhere:.
god is planning his vacation.
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Introspection
Assuming you're serious about the question, it's clear that it's a projection from what we've been taught and/or what we've learned. Who is wondering if God is laughing at us?
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32
You might think that I need help that I have been brain washed.
by garybuss inthis was in my e-mail this morning.
******the reason why you left the truth, the truth and not the "truth" like you people believe, is because you have no humility and no love.
when people like you commit something wrong and get disfellowship you can't say to yourself "i was wrong, i messed up, me and only me," you can't say that because is much easier to go around blaming others for your own mistakes.
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Introspection
Oh you can just smell the insecurity..
I would say there's a difference between making the truth your own (which sounds like an awkward statement anyway) and making your own the truth. In actuality, the witnesses just makes their own the truth, as fragile as it is.
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Introspection
I think I will just go to observe and not partake...
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Introspection
It's a good thing there are so many bugs...
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15
Are you superstitious?
by JH in.
so many silly superstitions exist and many people really believe in them.. for example, if you break a mirror, you will get 7 years of bad luck.
some people are afraid of friday 13th, or seeing a black cat, and so many more superstitions.. are you superstitious, and about what?.
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Introspection
I'm not superstitious .. atleast I don't think so. Do you think I'm superstitious? Maybe some people out there think I'm superstitious, maybe they're right!! You never know???
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7
How Much Have You Changed As Far As Concepts?
by Sentinel inmost of us were still floundering as we faded away, were disassociated or disfellowshipped.
we were no doubt quite unhappy, unsettled, and felt like we "belonged nowhere".. when i first got out, i was so hurt to the core to realize that the "truth" was a lie, and i was so disillusioned about myself and my belief structure, that i couldn't even take my bible and open it and read without falling apart in tears.
gradually, as i struggled to heal myself, and learned to love and trust myself and others, i began thinking again about where i was in life, and what i really wanted to get out of this life, and what the future might hold.
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Introspection
I'll answer the question in the body of your message rather than the topic, because although I have changed conceptually none of those are the biggy - for example anyone can read a book, but that doesn't mean they are free even if they understand the ideas in it.
The one thing that actually changed and not just conceptually is that I stopped identifying with concepts arbitrarily. What I mean by that is anything from a formal world view whether religious or secular, or even the idea of being free itself. Consider this: If you are really free, why would you spend much time thinking about the fact that you are? We are the body that we walk around with and do stuff with, but most people don't spend an inordinate amount of time going "wow, a body!! I got four limbs and twenty digits, I can grab stuff with the hands and wriggle my toes and move in all sorts of cool ways" all the time. You're free to use your body, so you just use it. Furthermore it just goes to show that none of the body parts are the cause of your freedom, YOU use all parts of the body freely. So I see using the mind in the same way, I'm free to use my thoughts but none of them are the cause of that freedom, you might say the freedom is the space in which the thoughts can move around in.
(edited for typo)
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47
Jehovah's Witnesses Feel Superior To Others. What About EX-JW's???
by minimus ineveryone knows the smugness that jw's have.
"everyone is going to die except us because we only have the truth.
" do you think that ex-witnesses continue this same smugness once they get out and realize what really is the truth?
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Introspection
Minimus, I'm not trying to give you a shot, in fact I'm not quite sure what you mean but I guess you mean making fun of you or something. In any case I'm glad you don't feel strongly that I am trying to do that, the confusion probably just has to do with my weird writing style. (or lack of one) I'm not that familiar with the situation(s) you are speaking of so I am just making some general observations here.
My point is just that there's going to be people who are into feeling superior, and in a way you can get caught up in their game, if you react to their smugness or whatever. But I was drawing a contrast between being interested in the truth about Jehovah's Witnesses and being interested in feeling you're so much better now because you have a better world view, you are well educated or whatever. Even though the witnesses might be messed up, people who have this ego trip going might have had that going all along, hell maybe they contributed to what was there in the organization when they were still in. The attitude of being superior is a personal thing, it doesn't inherently exist in information which you might read or whatever. So I suppose it may have something to do with the real reason why someone leaves - you might not want to be a witness anymore because it's not the truth, or you may not want to be one anymore because you want to feel superior in some way, and the elders in your hall had their own trip going so you try to make it big somewhere else. Anyways, I suppose I just tend to ignore that when it comes up, I mean why waste your time right? Even if they have some other information to share that's mixed in with their own inflated sense of self I can take that info and leave them, I'm just not interested in how great they think they are. My attitude is sort of like, what does their puffed-upness have to do with me? After all, someone who is full of themselves is just in their own world, I'm more interested in the real world. This is not even to say that someone like this might be stupid or be very mistaken about many things, because as we've already discussed it could be an intelligent, educated person - but the thing I've noticed about an egotistical attitude is that you have to constantly put energy into maintaining it, defending it and so on - what a waste! I guess for me, I can't be bothered to care if someone else thinks they're better than me. Anyways sorry for rambling on, I hope that clears it up.
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47
Jehovah's Witnesses Feel Superior To Others. What About EX-JW's???
by minimus ineveryone knows the smugness that jw's have.
"everyone is going to die except us because we only have the truth.
" do you think that ex-witnesses continue this same smugness once they get out and realize what really is the truth?
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Introspection
I understand what you're talking about Minimus. Of course this is what I am talking about when I say they are looking for something better rather than what's true, because there is focus on 'my views are better than yours' - whereas if you just want to know the truth, why do you even bother staying there? In that case you are satisfied with feeling superior rather than really knowing what's true, and that just means you're really not interested in the truth at all, maybe just in being a smart guy.
Then again, why even care if some people got their own ego trip going? Sometimes there might be something useful that comes out of it too, I'm sure there are when you got smart and well educated people. But I mean if you're not in this game of wanting to feel superior or inferior with them, all of it just becomes so much nonsense, it's irrelevant to you.
(edited to address to Minimus)