UUUHHHMMMMMM......no. I never really paid attention. I was always daydreaming about some hot broad or other, usually sitting somewhere in the same meeting, or else wondering neurotically about something or other, or else thinking about some philosophical issues or issues involving the aesthetics of music or else the psychology of religion, or something else like that. I was probably wondering when I was going to have mad sex with some lonely housewife whilst preaching upon her the good news when her hubby wasn't home... Oh well, never had that pleasure.... But actually LISTENING to these people, even as a half-hearted believer? NO. I was always a believer of my own brand of reality anyway, and I am more faithful to it than any of they were to theirs.
wenaolong
JoinedPosts by wenaolong
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Did You Ever Really Listen At The Meetings?
by minimus intoward the end of my meeting attendance, i started to pay attention (as best as i could) to what was being said and that was truly the final nail in the coffin.. when you actually decipher the "reasoning" of the "truth", you can't help but see things clearly..
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It is very mind boggling to me that very few of us.......
by asilentone inhas never been a jw and has never have had any connections to the witnesses in the past and still post here..
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wenaolong
Very true. I know more about the JW religion than I ever did while I was one. Yet try to share that knowledge with a current JW and they cover their ears and go "lalalalalalala"...
Yes, I have recently met one in a Chinese language class here in Taiwan. I walked away like Satan's own Son when I was 17, on philosophical grounds, after being "brainsoaked" with this stuff for my entire life until then. I have happily refitted myself so that my life is painlessly blissfully JW-free in every way, from my psychological baseboards to the way I say things (no JW-isms... heheh, you know 'em when you here 'em...).
And that brings me back to the Finnish lady I met, also an international student. I sensed something about her, but couldn't pin it on anything, so I blew it off. Then she gave a powerpoint presentationi on Christmas since our current chapter covers the topics associated with holidays. Well, you can bet that I perked up when she mentioned "Saturnalia". All her other information, all the way up to Odin, was on point, but nothing crisply said "JW in the HOUSE" like her saying "Saturnalia" with a Finnish accent whilst speaking an otherwise all-Mandarin presentation. Funny how JW nomenclature sort of has a life of its own, isn't it?
Well, we had a brief talk afterwards, because she noticed that I had mentioned that I grew up in a sect of Christianity that didn't celebrate anything, including Halloween, though other Christians did, as did I since I was Satanic in nature (as I duly mentioned). She came up to me and asked me, and that is what started our conversation. The funny thing is, I didn't even care after she said Saturnalia. I figured she just stumbled on the term and said the Latinate word as it should be said, and didn't assume she was JW. I was free from caring, in fact. But she couldn't resist getting into a convo with me when she smelled JW on me. Haha!! Of course, she went "lalalalalalala" when I mentioned rather important issues of theology which the JW line cannot handle, but that's as much as I expected. Haha!! I know she'll masochistically come back for more philosophical spankings later on anyway, and perhaps a little erotic maintenance (not that I'd indulge, you know how nasty repression-venting sex is on a psychospiritual level!).
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Fade to white
by Sojourn inever since i was a kid, i felt so lucky - so lucky (i know, i know) that out of all the religions in the world, i happened to be born into a family that practiced the one true religion in all the universe.
it seemed much to good to be true, but i always thought it was such a happy coincidence.
my immediate family and grandparents were jehovah's witnesses.. .
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wenaolong
Congratulations. Welcome to the club. I beat you by a year, btw... (Literally turned my back on them when I was 17, and do you want to talk about a talent for DEFIANCE? I was Satan himself)
But it is about quality, not quantity, as you figured out. It's about essence, not form. "Jehovah" was a symbol foisted upon your mind by others, but the essence REALLY WAS alive in you, and still is. Perhaps some day you will relive with that essence in a healing way, in a way that no one will ever be able to touch in a foul or misguided way ever again. I hope that you do. I have, and it is beautiful, because unlike the saccharine you were force-fed against the grain of what should have been the natural course of your unfolding enlightenment in the flesh as a spirit being here, you will earn on your own the real truth, manifested in you 'realer' than ever, sustained by the capacitance of the sculpted psychical and spiritual muscles in you that you now are free to develop, and they will power your new wings when you are ready, when you are ready.
Welcome to YOUR world. You chose it, you co-created it. Now YOU decide what to do next.
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need some help
by mada inhello everybody,i am mada,18 years old,i need talk with a jehovah's witnesses..i have some problems..and some questions..i began study bbile about 10 months ago,i am convinced this is the true.but,i hav some problems...
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wenaolong
I agree with most here who say that your "problem" is that you are studying with Jehovah's Witnesses... I was born into a family of them, and walked away from my "problem" when I was 17 years old after carrying them around like a monkey on my back on and off for that entire time, usually in an absent-minded way as I went on about my inherently "worldy" way of life and being (since I happen to be a being in the world, hence a worldy being...). Hehe, I say walk away while you are AHEAD!!
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wenaolong
Define "conspiracy" and define "theorist" and then, pray define "conspiracy theorist". Give a good definition too. Is it definitive or merely pejorative? Does the meaning of "theorist" here exist on par with meanings for that word when we speak of say "string theorist"? How about "conspiracy"? What does it mean to be a conspiracy? What exactly IS a conspiracy. What will be a conspirator, then?
If you think about these terms carefully enough, you may find that you have a very interesting question after all. But let's see, I wouldn't want to steal your thunder, since you've put out a very provocative question and no doubt have something to say on the matter yourself...
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Overpowering feeling to know all the answers
by gutted inright now i am feeling this immense weight that i need to be able to refute every single wbts doctrine/belief/organizational procedure etc.
i feel i need to know this not for myself, i already know the org is bullshit, but to see how i can help others or if i'm questioned by family/friends.
i'm in the process of reading in search of christian freedom and it's good to see the difference between the first century "organizational structure" and how it is today in the org.. perhaps as stated by other posters i am still in the mindset that i need to "convert" people to my new way of thinking.. have you guys felt like this, or still feel like this now?.
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wenaolong
Of course I felt that way, to an extent, at one time. It's a sort of "depressurizing" you are going through as you escape the pressure of self-imposed submission to mind-control. In defense, your mind is compensating in the opposite direction to make sure this "doesn't happen again". Try to learn for yourself what it might mean to "feel normal" before defining your whole psychological existence around the Watchtower, whether for or against. Either way, you rotate around them (or anything outside you for that matter, also just as shaky a way to form an identity).
I did a mental experiment once: I imagined that all religions where just coping mechanisms for fragile minds which exist like wisps of delicate smoke inside the fagile containers of brain-pudding that we call our skulls. In a world like this, we all want to feel good about being here, or about hating being here, or WHATEVER we want, and we basically are as desperate and daily in our going about this as chimps climbing trees or ants gathering bits of food. In the end, we get what we get out of it, pass on what we pass on, then die a deep sleep of a death (one of the few things JW-ism has gotten correct in this hypothetical point of view). Remember, this is a hypothetical scenario, designed by you, without need of permission from anyone, because you are managing your own mind using all your present faculties, which are fair use as I see it (pretend that they are, as long as used in good faith, at the very least, or you limit your options drastically).
Ok, in that context, can you easily see how some of these rather sad yet tragically beautiful beings will sometimes agglutinate into groups so as to benefit from the consolation of suffering and celebrating together? Can you then see that like all bell-curve-shaped phenomena, some of these groups will be rather jacked-up awesome and some will be rather pathetic, cess-poolish kinds of affairs? Awesome cults/sects on one end, really shady/loserish ones on the other, and some big, massive, titanic, or just plain mid-sized/functional/economy ones in the middle. There will be odd ones, collector's ones, broken ones, scrapped ones, and you can imagine that many a part has been pulled from the scrapyard.
Okay, in this gloriously tragic affair, you have a limited amount of time to decide what you are going drive with through this entire life, however long or short, whatever the reality of it may or may not be in the end or on the most metaphysically inscrutible levels. Whatever "the" truth is, you are making this decision, that's for sure. Shouldn't you be in charge of that decision, shouldn't you make it well? Now look, you just traded in your old junky car, which you came to hate most things about, but now you are on foot and deciding what you are going to do... Do you now frantically search for another car? In the meantime, what about all those "other poor fools" who are still driving around what you consider a lemon? Should you spend your rather limited time (as far as you currently know) trying to talk them out of driving that thing around? Is it really that pressing? After all, WHAT will you do in the meantime? What is going to save YOU? You are still in this absurd comedy/tragedy... so..... now what?
I'll just start it there. Let me know if you find this helpful. It can have many twists added to it or else extended as is into many scenarios. Many other methods of imaginative liberation exist as well. See my post about why I left the 'organization' 17+ years ago when I was as many years old if you like, it tells a story in itself. It's in the board below.
RE: Is This God's Organization?
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Is This God's Organization?
by monkeyman inis this gods organization?.
after 50 yrs in, 25 as some type of servant in responsible position, i am beginning to wonder.. .
to me, gods organization should be exactly what the bible says.
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wenaolong
I was an unbaptized publisher in Oklahoma City more than 17 years ago, when I was a young 17 years old. Before I turned 18, I literally walked away from an Elder in the parking lot of the kingdom hall on some service day or other. He took a domineering tone with me that I couldn't take from any man, and it was because my "qualities" were questioned with respect to my worthiness of baptism (since when does anyone decide for me when I am ready to be baptized? That should have been between two beings: myself and the Holy Spirit). I really couldn't have cared less what any of "the organization's" rules were, or what scriptures they might want to quote or misquote. When I think I have a spiritual connection to God, I don't need any man pretending to stand in the middle of that, no matter what his reason. I was a man at that time, and I was making a decision as a man. When another man decided he was more fit to decide that for me, I came to see that man and the group of men who were under his thumb in a new way. I took a stand and walked away, simple as that.
There was a lot more than this involved in my decision to leave, and it boiled down to some questions of faith which could receive no satisfactory answer from a full panel of elders in the congregation. They all sat at a long table with me on the other wide end (trying to surround me I guess, to feel safer). I asked them point blank by what right had God to "test" me about anything whatsoever? Further, even should I be tested, what makes it right to test me on the basis of decisions made by others, decisions which not only had I not made, but which have impacted my ability to make any decisions on my own in a proper and fairly uninfluenced manner? In the same vein (metaphysically), what makes any sense about God extending a specific duration of time in which evil activities may flourish upon a world? What does any of that "prove"?
Now, before anyone here thinks that they can give me better answers than the elders there who sat across from me as though I were being inquisitioned (but rather it was they from my vantage), or thinks that I haven't seen all the answers that the watchtower (c) has offered, please do carefully consider for yourself, as an independently thinking agent, what makes YOU think YOU can know the answers to those questions. If you can't come up with something that makes sense on your own, and if you must spew doctrinal verbiage that like a parrot, don't bother droning about it. I like people who think, not people who repeat others mindlessly (or even mindfully).
So, there you have it, sir. I used my own independently thinking mind, exercised it to the max in every way, every day, on every matter that crossed my path, and I found paydirt and acted on it accordingly. Have I found ALL of the answers to the universe and my place in it? As a matter of fact, YES I have, but it didn't come easy, and rare is the man with my talents of intellect or integrity of character sufficient to pull it off. Rarer is the man who has these traits and exercises them all the way to the goal, which is Englightenment. You have taken a VERY long time to find yourself reaching this point that you have reached, but even for you "it's not too late" (a pithy inversion of the JW line taken for those not yet included in the harvest, heheh. I mean by this not too late to escape the "harvest").
You seem on the verge of thinking, for example, like this: What if we are WRONG. What if there is no "God" at all, or at least not as we know it? What if there are just a bunch of pretentious know-nothings on the top of a control-intensive cultish religion who have the same question circling around in the back of their heads, but either dare not think about it, or else have drowned their minds in presuming the contrary, or else, frighteningly enough, may have even decided that they don't know and don't care: they have a LOT of power over MANY people and their resources!! What if you waited around for some theoretical year, such as a good 120 years after the year 1914, and found that the end hadn't come yet... Would you then have to decide that there is some VERY old person who is walking around "who saw" the events of 1914 and has yet to pass away? Or, would you rather have to wait for some "new light" on that matter, reinterpreting that passage in a way that keeps the JW point of view/way of life "in the Truth"? Is Jehovah big enough to let you ask these and many other intelligent, worthwhile, very meaningful questions to yourself without throwing a hissy fit? I could find questions like this that push the bounderies of JW belief-system-reliance psychology all day and all night and yet those questions would just linger there, getting no answer from anyone unless I found the cojones to explore and answer them for myself (I only raised a few "doctrinal" questions to the elders and they couldn't handle it, and disliked my "attitude").
It comes down to your questions in a big way. Who are these people, you ask? Shouldn't there be a rather shiny, peculiarly "JW/THE TRUTH" quality emanating from at least a sizeable majority of them? Shouldn't you FEEL good by being around them (instead of hemmed in, as I imagine you do)? Shouldn't these qualities shine forth in some reasonable proportion to the really TALL claims being propounded by these folks (or merely stomached by the majority of them who are "sheep" by their own admission)? I think it is not at all cynical to look at matters in these ways, especially if you are being as honest and clear-headedly simple about it as you can be. "Jehovah" (or whatever) supposedly gave you a mind for a purpose, and it wasn't to be some tool which if used to its maximum potential (as it wants to be used) would simply at most if not all turns put you in grave danger of butting heads with the designer of that equipment. It shouldn't be a deathtrap designed as a tempting toy, now should it?
Especially when you consider that you are a "spiritual babe" in this context (compared to the other contenders in the story), or else some other vulnerable being thrust into an already damaged and hellish world which is sadistically pillaged and raped daily by the third smartest, most magnificent being in the entire universe other than which none but this could have been, so that this angelic being, in spite of all his magnificent attributes and ready access to wonderfully direct and wonderfully valuable information about God Himself and everything else under God, somehow preferred to bypass all that in order to recklessly commit the most blatantly stupid kind of suicide imaginable. Yeah, I'd think that you shouldn't then be equipped with a faculty which in all lights should lead to good questions and good answers when put to proper use if in the end it was really unable to do anything except "lead you astray" and down false roads doomed from the beginning. What kind of "non-robotic" will is this that we are supposed to have if it can be governed by nothing other than the raw choice of abdicating itself in the face of no reasonable alternative? No reasonable alternative not because it was able to reason out alternatives, but precisely because it was fundamentally unable to do what it was supposed to be able to do. What kind of "reasoning faculty" is that? What kind of choice is it to be made when I have to pit my will against the single most powerful will in this and any universe? It doesn't even take a moment of thought to know that I am doomed to destruction or worse, so how in the HELL could such a mighty and magnificent being as "Satan" ever be so abhorrently stupid, or perhaps "blind" to the obvious? What the hell kind of "choice" is it other than suicide to pit oneself against God, which by definition IS the essence of the universe as something than which nothing else ever could be at all? And this dimwit has a case? OTHER "angels" are "watching to see the outcome"? WE are supposed to be so gullible as to believe the outcome to be as the self-important Jehovah says it is, but the ever wise and God-close ANGELS are still waiting to see proof of some sort? What kind of kangaroo court is this anyway?
Why wasn't the idiot who rebelled against his own existence by being so fundamentally stupid just edited out of the glorious story on the spot? Why should it have had options to mess with other's free will decisions? What makes being tempted to do something that there is not a single good reason to do in the first place be any sort of fundamental "test" anyway? Let's see, I eat from this here tree that GOD said not to eat from, or I do what a SNAKE says? What kind of idiot is this? AND HE decides my fate through his deformed DNA? What a JOKE!!! And just because this God is supposedly so generous, He's going to put me through ALL THIS just so that in the end, I'll get a chance to believe whether or not all these rediculously ad hoc stories are true which I hear through mutilated, absurd-sounding accounts, and decide based on that rather than my five God-given senses plus the crown of reason by which I SURVIVE AND MAKE SENSE OF MY WORLD EVERY SECOND OF MY EXISTENCE BY DEFAULT of NATURE AND BY DESIGN of GOD, whichever or both.
So I hear stories, and have no way to make any better sense of them than the third most magnificent being in all physical and metaphysical aspects of the God-created universe/reality as such, and yet I'm supposed to make a BETTER decision? Yet the story is already stacked according to the side that is supposed to win (according to the story), so I'd have to be "stupid like Satan" to choose his fate, yet was he stupid by design I wonder? Do you every day do things even one one-millionth as stupid for no apparent reason other than a whim (and where does that whim come from?)? Do you for instance smash your foot with a hammer every once in a while, simply because you can? That's small compared to being in Satan's position and going "forget this, I'm better than you", don't you agree? We'd think someone that smashed his foot with a hammer every once in a while was a mentally defective genetic mishap, be we are supposed to think this metaphysically superior and awesomely glorious being had his functions operating properly? I don't think so. This whole story reeks of a stupid scam, as it always has been.
These lie peddlers are no better than the ancient ones who began this confidence game. They figure they'll sell you on the worst junk that they can get you to buy, so they can have the maximum profit in the short run and in the long run. They'll reinterpret with new light as the game goes on, I suppose they figure. They probably do this to themselves if they are really sold on this nonsense. But what do you get out of it? If you are honest, you were sold on this stuff out of a mixture of YOUR desperation and their oversold confidence, but nothing much else. All the rese was high-pressure salesmanship and then the "dollar bid" mentality except that you were bidding time rather than money, and you won't even win a dollar in the end.
What do you say to this?
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2012 Prophecy
by brotherdan innow, i know that the 2012 issue has been blown out of proportion.
and i know all the reasons that believing in them are wrong.
but has anyone else noticed a growth in this type of conversation?
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wenaolong
What makes JW's believe they have "the" truth again? I forgot.