last month, my best friend of four years and boyfriend of six months came home from a jehovah's witness convention.
he'd been acting strangely the entire weekend and i knew something was wrong.
i initiated a discussion and he said, "essentially our relationship is wrong and i'm not supposed to be with you.
Thanks for sharing your story, sad as it is.
What immediately came to mind when you said "This wasn't my best friend. . . . this wasn't the man. . . ." is that you came face-to-face with his reacitvated cult personality which is a real and separate personality from the person you fell in love with.
Read Hassan's Combatting Cult Mind Control for a better understanding of what happened, and go from there.
Best of luck,
BOC
i thought it was high time to introduce myself (without my name of course).
as my name would suggest i have been reading your intriguing post, thoughts and discussions for some time now.
around 3/4 months to be exact.. i guess to start with it would seem fitting to give a little background on my current situation.. i'm a born-in, but have over the last few years found that through a number of varying occurences, (some of which i may discuss in future posts) that my 'zeal' has gone from regular field service and meetings to no service in over a year and very sporadic meeting attendance.
Welcome!
what a joke the campaign is.....the sheeple are so blind.
what does this have to do with what jesus taught us to do.
i feel like i was campaigning for a politician.. next thing your going to see on the website is a donation button visible to all vistors without having to log in just bypass the middle man.
This is a good question, one that actually popped into my mind today.
Was walking near Central Park in NYC and saw a trio of JWs standing smiling with two carts advertising the new website and that very thought ran through my mind: "Really? This is what Jesus wanted? Would Jesus stand silently smiling next to a cart on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the world?"
Stupid. Crap.
i just wanted to put links to my watchtower threads all in the same place for my own benefit and future reference.. i wrote these 4 articles almost 20 years ago just after i left the watchtower and before i had encountered any ex-jw books or websites.
they were all based on original research of old wt publications and the nwt bible.. my explanation of why they got it wrong about blood using only the nwt.... i still think this line of reasoning is devastating to the blood doctrine.
i have yet to hear a rational response.. the gospel contrasted with the watchtower doctrine of the ransom.... i wrote this when i was an uber-evangelical.
Will check these out later.
I believe I've read the parousia one already. . .. . Good stuff from what I remember.
Evidently, you thought yourself right out of "the truth."
What a shame!
today at work a co-worker of mine and i were having lunch at a nearby establishment.
he is what you would call a c&e christian in that he basically attends church only for the christmas and easter services, though he definitely says he believes in god.. he said that he just recently caught an episode of a crime/forensic show that featured a man from new jersey named john list who was also known locally as the "bogeyman of westfield.
" list became infamous for murdering his entire family consisting of his wife, three children and his mother on november 9, 1971. see below link for more data.. on the tv show the narrator commented there were a few reasons why he did it.
Interesting conversation! Shows you how little people actually think about this stuff.
today i was at the meeting (i go there about once a month now).
in the service meeting they had a part where they interviewed the secretary of the congregation.. so one question was: "why are the service reports so important?".
our secretary explained that the reports are important, because the elders can see, who is spiritually weak.
But wait! That's not what it says here:
http://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/who-saved/
How will people know that not even all JWs will be saved with this kind of misleading information on the Internet!
recently a jw friend that my wife & i knew 3 years ago added me on facebook, after i accepted the request she invited me to a dinner that her and her husband are holding next month.. i imagined that she was unaware of our apostasy, so i declined the invitation on the basis of not wanting to ruin her dinner after the rest of her guests fled at our presence.. i'm never sure how old friends will react when i tell them that i'm no longer a jw.. usually their response is "..... permanent-silence......".
her response went something like this, " we are all out!
everyone that is coming is out we all look forward to seeing you guys so much" it turns out that there will be 6 people at the dinner all friends of ours from a congregation that we attended a few years back.. they have all left the organization recently.. pretty crazy experience..
This is possibly the best experience I've read on this board!
Awesome!
to all bodies of elders.
the congregation secretary should arrange for this letter to be retained in the congregation permanent file of policy letters.
he may also wish to update the congregation copy of the index to lettersfor bodies of elders (s-22) at this time as well.
Why the italian logo?
The Watchtower is a branch of the Mafia.
apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.
they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.
WITNESS MY FURY -
apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.
they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.
Consciousness is produced by the brain (which is part of the body), so when the body/brain dies, consciousness goes on.
So the answer to the question is no: consciousness does not end with the death of the body.
