Posts by HappyGuy

25

Tangerine Dream play the Devil's Music

by HappyGuy in

jw
friends

i guess one of the things that i hold most against the senile octagenarians who run the wtbts and tell us things like "rock music is from satan" is how much music i either missed out on or felt guilty about listening to.

i love music.

everyone who knows me can tell when i am not listening to enough music.

HappyGuy

I guess one of the things that I hold most against the senile octagenarians who run the WTBTS and tell us things like "rock music is from Satan" is how much music I either missed out on or felt guilty about listening to. I LOVE music. Everyone who knows me can tell when I am not listening to enough music.

I will never forget the first time I heard Tangerine Dream. It was like being in a dream world. It was astonishingly beautiful.

Then a "mature brother" heard the music one day at my house. "WHAT is THAT?" So, I get the Tangering Dream album cover, Phaedra, and show it to the "mature brother".

I was accused of being demon possessed. The "brother" took my album outside, made a great theatrical spectacle of praying that the album could be destroyed, and burned it.

I was then "counseled" by the elders not to listen to "the Devil's Music".

I remembered this because I just signed up to Pandora Radio and made a station called Patrick O'Hearn and one of the tracks that I just LOVED but couldn't place the artist was by Tangerine Dream.

51

help me please

by recovering in

jw
friends

my mom just called (she is an active jehovah's witness) she basically has very little to do with me.

however she want's to come and visit me and my wife on christmas day .

she lives in another state and wants spend the night.

HappyGuy

I dont know. My mother is a JW and she would NEVER say such a thing to her children.

I think you say "mom, we would love to have you but as you know we have our religious beliefs and just like we would never ask you to put aside your religious beliefs we ask that you not ask us to put our religious beliefs aside".

11

The emperor's new clothes? JW know there's something wrong but no one dares admi it/

by artemis.design in

jw
friends

HappyGuy

Yes, we actually believed all the crap.

I still shake my head in disbelief that I believed so much of that stuff as being literal. I can remember explaining the "truth" about the necessiy for Armageddon by starting with Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden and saying "Imagine that you have front row seats to the scene in the garden of Eden..."

I don't know what you mean by "deep deep down".

Now that I can think about all these things logically I cannot understand how or why I ever believed them. It is like I woke up from a dream.

20

The show must go on..

by outofthebox in

jw
friends

i was reading in the spanish forum (http://www.extj.com/foro/showthread.php?t=15396) that an old sister died from a heart atack during the memorial, but that didn't stop the ritual.

i remember a lonley very sick sister calling for help to the kh during an emergency, and the elders told her, they were busy in an elder's meeting.

she almost died and was rushed into the hospital by 'worldy' people.

HappyGuy

I was ill from overwork and stress and I had double pneumonia. Missing meetings was hard on me because I had always been zealous. I had been missing a lot of meetings and had double pneumonia. I wanted to go to the book study and asked my 5 year old daughter (a VERY sweet and gentle little girl) to go with me. She was sitting on my lap and squirming and climbing all over me and the chair. I am easy going so it didn't bother me. I wa also VERY sick. The book study conductor stopped the meeting, glared at me and said in a very cold, stern voice "BROTHER XXXXX, can you PLEASE make your daughter behave?" I started to explain that I had double pneumonia but my daughter got upset and I couldn't beleive that ANYONE would be so ignorant to a sick person, so I said "I'll fix the problem, we will leave". My car was blocked in and no one would let us out so we sat in the car for about 45 minutes, my daugther kept asking me if she had done something wrong. I said "No sweetheart". When the meeting ended I went to the door and asked for people to move to let us out. No one did. At the next meeting the elders asked to see me to discuss my "behavior" and I told them no, if they needed to examine someone's behavior it was the book study conductor's and read them scriptures as to why an ill person should be helped with their child and not berated.

49

Ray Franz Views of "Information Control" by WT Society Agree with Hassan

by flipper in

jw
friends

having read ray franz's " crisis of conscience " 3 years ago -before i read steve hassan's 2 books on mind control - my wife and i thought it would be good to re-read ray's " crisis " book again now that we know more about the workings of " cult mind control".

we just finished chapter 2 and i noticed striking similarities i thought i would share.. notice this quote in " crisis of conscience " on pg.

28 & 29 by franz , " thus numerous factors that are relatively common knowledge in many religious organizations are known only vaguely , if at all, by the vast majority of jehovah's witnesses.

HappyGuy

So, I left the WTBTS. My children had been raised from birth and they were devestated that daddy was no longer taking them to meetings. My ex wife tried to continue but it is hard with smalll children.

I lost my marriage and my family and myself. I don't blame my ex for this. I kind of lost my mind and did very terrible things. I have no idea why I did them. Recounting them now it is like describing a movie of someone else's life. I became someone I do not know, nor do I wish to know. My heart is deeply hurt to this day over this.

It is funny, but it was my father who helped me find myself. I remember being at my parent's house crying saying "I dont' know who I am" and my father had tears in his eyes and hugged me and said "We know who you are, stay here with us for a while". I was 46 at the time. My father, the stern, autocratic, unfeeling man who gave me such a hard life is the one who helped me find myself, my true self.

My father died not long ago and we made peace with each other before that. My father explained some things to me that now that I know them I think differently about my childhood. My dad was a Marine and he was tough on me because he knew I was very senstiive and my father believed that the war in Vietnam was never going to end and he did not want me to die in Vietnam and he was toughening me up so that I coudl survive it. My father told me that just before he died. It makes sense now that I think about things that happened, knowing that. Vietnam ended before I turned 18, so my father was wrong about the war never ending but I don't think he could foreee that a General Abrams would come along and with the war.

The WTBTS stole my childhood from me and tore me from my family. I spent all my time with my "brothers and sisters" at the KH instead of with my parents and siblings. I really regret that. I am very curious about things and I love to study and learn and read and I never got an education thanks to the WTBTS and I resent them for that. So many decisions that I made were made to "put Jehovah first" and the decisions were bad for me and my family and we all suffered for them and i despise the WTBTS for that.

Anyway, that is my lame attempt at explaining my thought process in leaving the WTBTS organization.

49

Ray Franz Views of "Information Control" by WT Society Agree with Hassan

by flipper in

jw
friends

having read ray franz's " crisis of conscience " 3 years ago -before i read steve hassan's 2 books on mind control - my wife and i thought it would be good to re-read ray's " crisis " book again now that we know more about the workings of " cult mind control".

we just finished chapter 2 and i noticed striking similarities i thought i would share.. notice this quote in " crisis of conscience " on pg.

28 & 29 by franz , " thus numerous factors that are relatively common knowledge in many religious organizations are known only vaguely , if at all, by the vast majority of jehovah's witnesses.

HappyGuy

I bought severl interlinears and concordances and foreign language dictionaries and started studying. I read mythology and history and anything relevant.

Needless to say I only convinced myself that the WTBTS organization is a fraud. I also convinced myself that the Bible is not the word of "God" and that the creator is not the creature described in the Bible and Christian teaching. I know these last two points are controversial and I don't want to argue about it, I am explaining how I feel about it and what I came to believe. If anyone wants to know what I believe you can PM me and I will try to explain. But briefly I came to the conclusion that humans cannot understand the nature of the creator because the creator is outside our universe and we are within the universe and we have no frame of reference to understand what the creator is. The claim by some that they can describe to me in detail who and what the creator is I find presumptuous. To use an illustration, it is like asking a line to explain a cube to you. The line cannot comprehend the cube because the line is 2 dimensional and the cube is 3 dimensional. How can the line understand that which is in another dimension?

Some think that the creator is zero dimensional. I tend to agree with that. Because no matter what number dimension you assign to the creator there is another dimension higher than that so you have a paradox that cannot be resolved. Zero dimension is a strange place but if the creator is zero dimensional then all other dimensions can spring from the creator. The math behind this is a bit esoteric and I don't want to argue about it but it makes sense to me.

In my studies, when trying to reestablish my faith, I found some very interesting books about the ancients, how they were matriarchal and the women were the spiritual leaders and the healers and the community leaders and the men did everything external to the community like trade and hunting and diplomacy and warfare. I also read that women have a layer of brain cells that men do not have and these brain cells give women their empathy, nurturing, and healing abilities, along with their innate spiritual abilties. I believe now that male / female in humans is not gender but species. I think that women are a higher species than men. Anyway, if you read the stories in the OT where the warfare against the Goddess worshippers is described and you see the genocide committed against the priestesses and the Goddess worshippers, what the OT is describing is the end of the matriarchal world and the usurpation of the female led spirituality by a patriarchal world and a male led religion. The Yahwehists were despicable people, guilty of sins that to this day make my skin crawl. I believe now that the OT was an attempt to rewrite history to cast the Yahwehists in a new light to justify their horrible crimes.

After two years of pretty much non stop studying and praying with my wife and children and a lot fo soul searching I realized that the reason I never found the love that Jesus showed for the leper in the WTBTS organization was that their organization is not based on love but is based on conformity to a man made rigid power structure. And the reason that I felt guilty was because I could never be "spiritual" because the WTBTS does not teach us how to be spiritual, it only teaches us how to be Watchtowercratic (the WTBTS calls it "theocratic" but it is actually Watchtowercratic).

It was EXTREMELY painful to come to the realization that all the major decisions in my life had been based on lies. It was more painful to realize that "God" is not what the Bible and the Christians claim.

So, I left the WTBTS. M

49

Ray Franz Views of "Information Control" by WT Society Agree with Hassan

by flipper in

jw
friends

having read ray franz's " crisis of conscience " 3 years ago -before i read steve hassan's 2 books on mind control - my wife and i thought it would be good to re-read ray's " crisis " book again now that we know more about the workings of " cult mind control".

we just finished chapter 2 and i noticed striking similarities i thought i would share.. notice this quote in " crisis of conscience " on pg.

28 & 29 by franz , " thus numerous factors that are relatively common knowledge in many religious organizations are known only vaguely , if at all, by the vast majority of jehovah's witnesses.

HappyGuy

My car was blocked in and no one would let us out so we sat in the car for about 45 minutes, my daugther kept asking me if she had done something wrong. I said "No sweetheart". When the meeting ended I went to the door and asked for people to move to let us out. No one did. At the next meeting the elders asked to see me to discuss my "behavior" and I told them no, if they needed to examine someone's behavior it was the book study conductor's and read them scriptures as to why an ill person should be helped with their child and not berated. I told the brother in question I would never step foot in his house again.

I had seen many examples of dishonesty in the WTBTS. Remember the convention parking scam? The convention facilities tell renters that they do not have to charge for parking but if they DO charge for parking then the facility gets a cut. The WTBTS started the parking ticket "arrangement" to avoid having to pay the cut of the parking fees to the convention facilities, telling them the lie that they don't "charge" for parking. I sing and I know the manager of a convention hall who was stumbled over this fraud. I asked him why he would not let the JWs use the convention hall any more and he explained the parking scam to me. I knew about the parking tickets of course but I always thought they did that for "efficiency", that is what the WTBTS always said anyway. I learned that any time you hear the word "arrangement" you can know that a fraud is being committed on someone.

Then they announced the new "arrangement" in paying for the literature. No longer would we pay for it at the counter, but everyone would make a donation. That sounded fine, then they said "you are required to make a donation to cover the cost of the literature using the same prices you would have paid for it at the counter". HUH? A "mandatory voluntary" donation? Also, they said that we were required to ask householders to make a voluntary donation to the "worldwide work" after telling them that the literature was free. HUH? Guilt the sheep into donating money "voluntarily"? Are you on crack?

I had felt guilty for years because I really wanted to demonstrate my love for God and really wanted to be a spiritual person but I felt like I could never meet the standards that the WTBTS set for me. I always felt deficient.

After the initial love bombing I never saw what I considered to be real love. For me love was epitomized by the story of the leper and Jesus. The leper reaches up and touches an Orthodox Jew (Jesus) and says "If you want to, you can make me clean", and Jesus says "I WANT TO, be made clean". Most Orthodox Jews would have run away screaming but Jesus with tears in his eyes touches the man and heals his leprosy. For me this is what love is. I never saw that from the WTBTS.

I learned that the motivation behind the "Mandatory, voluntary" donation "arrangement" was the new ruling that literature sales would be taxed and not the "efficiency" that the WTBTS claimed. I also learned that the WTBTS filed as a friend of the plaintiff in a court case brought by a prominent member of Christendom over the tax issue. HUH? I believe that was Tony Alamo, but I don't remember for sure.

Anyway, I suffered a shipwreck of faith and it pained me to my core. I cried constantly, my heart was so broken my body physically ached. So, I thought that maybe I was wrong and I started studying the Bible to renew my faith. I figured if the WTBTS really had the truth then I would see it in the Bible and could restore my faith.

I bought severl interlinears and c

49

Ray Franz Views of "Information Control" by WT Society Agree with Hassan

by flipper in

jw
friends

having read ray franz's " crisis of conscience " 3 years ago -before i read steve hassan's 2 books on mind control - my wife and i thought it would be good to re-read ray's " crisis " book again now that we know more about the workings of " cult mind control".

we just finished chapter 2 and i noticed striking similarities i thought i would share.. notice this quote in " crisis of conscience " on pg.

28 & 29 by franz , " thus numerous factors that are relatively common knowledge in many religious organizations are known only vaguely , if at all, by the vast majority of jehovah's witnesses.

HappyGuy

This post is in response to flipper's comment "yet she just wanted to know what led to you exiting the cult. What your thought process in leaving, that's all."

I have said some of this before, but I will repeat it because I am not sure who has/has not read those other posts. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, just answering Flipper and Baba Yaga's question.

This isn't easy for me.

I had a very difficult childhood. My father was very...not sure what the right word is...emotionally, mentally, and spirituallly abusive to an unbelievable degree. Physically too but that part I could handle.

I loved God ever since I can remember. I don't remember a lot about my childhood before the age of 9. My aunts have told me that my mind did that to protect me from things that were done to me. I don't know for sure.

I started reading the Bible at the age of 9. my mother had one of those big King James family Bibles, leather bound with engraved gold lettering. She bought it in 1957 for $50, can you imagine? Anyway, I read the Bible constantly, and in there I found a friend my father could not keep from me (I was not allowed to have friends), Jesus.

I loved God very much and searched for Him. I went to a few churches, went to some Campus Crusade for Christ retreats, didn't find God there.

When I was 15 I had a near death experience after being shot in the head (I shot myself) and on the same day there was an invitation to the Memorial on the coffee table. I hitchiked to the KH.

Of coruse the JWs "love bombed" me and I was in a very fragile state emotionally. I desperately needed someone to love me and I needed to find God.

I was baptized 3 months later, I was 15. I was very zealous, I witnessed to the entire school, 1 on 1. I had been a well known thug before getting baptized so it was easy for me to get people to listen to me. LOL. Also the principle of the school let me witness about my transformation at the school assembly.

I am gregarious, senstive (flipper says overly so, perhaps), big hearted, generous, and empathetic. Seeing others in trouble or seeing injustice done bothers me a lot.

I preached a different message than the WTBTS, I preached God's love. I refused to sell magazines or ask for money in service. I usually just took a Bible. I gave a lot of Bibles away.

The top down power structure always bothered me. As did the pecking order, someone explained this beautifully: R&F JWs at the bottom, then MS, then elders, then the PO, then the CO, then the DO, then the branch people, then the Governing Body. This always bothered me.

My grandfather gave my favorite cousin the full set of Studies in the Scriptures when we were 12. I read them constantly and loved those books.

I had seen the lack of love so many times and this always bothered me. Once I went to a book study meeting with double pneumonia because I had been working very hard and missing meetings and I needed encouragement and I took my middle daughter with me, a sweet, loving child, she was 5. My daughter was squirming a lot, she was sitting in my lap, and climbing all over me and the chair. I am easy going so I didn't care. I also had double pneumonia so I was just trying not to fall out of the chair. The book study conductor stopped the meeting, glared at me and said very sternly "BROTHER XXXXX, can you PLEASE make your daughter behave?" I started to explain that I had double pneumonia but my daughter got upset and I couldn't beleive that ANYONE would be so ignorant to a sick person, so I said "I'll fix the problem, we will leave".&nbs

49

Ray Franz Views of "Information Control" by WT Society Agree with Hassan

by flipper in

jw
friends

having read ray franz's " crisis of conscience " 3 years ago -before i read steve hassan's 2 books on mind control - my wife and i thought it would be good to re-read ray's " crisis " book again now that we know more about the workings of " cult mind control".

we just finished chapter 2 and i noticed striking similarities i thought i would share.. notice this quote in " crisis of conscience " on pg.

28 & 29 by franz , " thus numerous factors that are relatively common knowledge in many religious organizations are known only vaguely , if at all, by the vast majority of jehovah's witnesses.

HappyGuy

Good points you make. I think Happy Guy and everybody needs to understand that ALL Jehovah's Witnesses were at one time mind controlled , even Ray Franz, so he was misled like others to write crap that the WT society approved. But we all gotta give Ray credit that when he finally learned of the scam that is the WT society- he did something about it, took a stand and manned up leaving the organization in spite of losing friendships. That took a hell of a lot of courage. Just like what Barbara Anderson did. Standing up for what is right when you know people are gonna shot you down - is an extremely difficult, yet courageous thing to do. I admire the hell out of Ray Franz and Barbara Anderson. We need more people like them in this world !

And I did the same, as did you and everyone else on this board. When we saw through the lies we left and we lost friends, family, and perhaps even livelihood in the process. We all stood up for what we considered to be right. Any honest person would do the same.

I think you are making a bit of a leap to continue to insist that Franz was totally fooled. I also don't buy the "he was just a regular guy who just happened to be appointed to the Governing Body". I don't think it works that way. I'm not saying you are wrong about that, but I don't think you can state that as a fact.

I really don't understand what is so wrong with my saying that I think it is unwise to believe everything Franz says just because he says so.

Other people on this forum have said the same thing, or words to that effect, and you didn't flame them.

49

Ray Franz Views of "Information Control" by WT Society Agree with Hassan

by flipper in

jw
friends

having read ray franz's " crisis of conscience " 3 years ago -before i read steve hassan's 2 books on mind control - my wife and i thought it would be good to re-read ray's " crisis " book again now that we know more about the workings of " cult mind control".

we just finished chapter 2 and i noticed striking similarities i thought i would share.. notice this quote in " crisis of conscience " on pg.

28 & 29 by franz , " thus numerous factors that are relatively common knowledge in many religious organizations are known only vaguely , if at all, by the vast majority of jehovah's witnesses.

HappyGuy

flipper,

So now you want to talk trash about my character? I dont have a chip on my shoulder.

My point of view is very clear. I don't beleive everything Ray franz says just because he says so. I said nothing about anyone else, I hold this opinion because Franz was on the governing body, the group responsible for the brain washing.

I have read too many posts on this forum where "facts" were being given based on Franz said so. The only thing I said was "is it wise to put such stock into the writings of someone like that?".

My words were twisted and it was made to look like I was accusing EVERY ex JW on here of being a liar. I never even came close to sayiing that. So, if the following is not an attempt to twist what I said and misrepresent it to appear that I was accusing EVERY ex JW of being culpable and not trustworthy, then you tell me what is meant here. I see clearly what the poster was trying to do. Actually, never mind. It is obvious to me that some on here believe this Franz character in the same way that they took everything the WTBTS said as the gospel. I don't share that opinion. Now you want to lecture me? I think maybe it is you who are a bit big for his briches.

Do you not believe that some of the Governing Body really believe what they have been taught, and really believe what they have aspired to become?

There are ex-JW's on this board.

There are ex-Ministerial Servants on this board.

There are ex-Elders on this board (actually, I believe there are a few who are active. Yes, this is true.)

There are ex-Bethelites on this board (and plenty of them! Thank you all for being here!)

There are ex-Presiding Overseers and ex-Circuit Overseers on this board.

At what point do you personally draw the line, Happy Guy? Who is responsible for your cult experience? How far up the ranks does a "Brother" have to go until you consider him to be completely without redemption?