sleepy

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Posts by sleepy

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  16

  Am I going to be Df'ed, should I be?

  by BritBoy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i am an ex jw and i just left quietly.

  i was in bethel and started seeing huge holes in the borg.

  i was also a non practicing homosexual (undeclared at the time).

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  sleepy

  Hello brittney, I mean britboy.
  There was an elder in one of my prevoius halls who left about 4 years ago and every one knows he is gay and living with a bloke.
  Nothing has ever been done about it.
  It really depends on your congregation and the local witnesses as to whether anything will happen.
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  3

  Jesus and giving to charity

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when it was brought up in meetings or at get togethers about why we didnt do more for charity as witness the answer usually was that we should concentrate on the preaching work as it was so important we didnt have time for anything else .also there's nothing we can do for this old system why bother.. compare that to jesus who according to the society had just three and a half years to do the ministry .. what do you think of when you think of jesus .. well i think of him healing people .. did he say sorry love can't help you today , got to preach?

  you know if i heal you your going to die anyway ,so why bother?.

  no he felt pity for people and healed them , even though he knew they were doomed to death.. how much of the gospels is taken up by accounts of jesus charitable deeds.

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  sleepy

  When it was brought up in meetings or at get togethers about why we didn’t do more for charity as witness the answer usually was that we should concentrate on the preaching work as it was so important we didn’t have time for anything else .Also “there's nothing we can do for this old system why bother”.
  Compare that to Jesus who according to the society had just three and a half years to do the ministry .
  What do you think of when you think of Jesus .
  Well I think of him healing people .
  Did he say “sorry love can't help you today , got to preach”? “You know if I heal you your going to die anyway ,so why bother?”
  No he felt pity for people and healed them , even though he knew they were doomed to death.
  How much of the gospels is taken up by accounts of Jesus charitable deeds. Lots.

  Any way another point if Jesus knew what diseases were why didn’t he teach people how to cure them , or how not to catch them .It would have saved thousands of years of suffering.
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  21

  How can we know if a spirit world exists?

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the only way we as humans can examine the universe is through our brains.. theres nothing we can do about it.

  all senses and experiences are taken in by or bodies and interpreted in our minds.

  we can not know of anything that our minds can't take in.. for example if we were all blind and no humans had eyes and the part of the brain that interprets vision we would have no concept of seeing or even the existence of light.. this creates a problem, how can we know whether things exist outside of our senses.

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  sleepy

  Ah how silly of me.
  I've just realised that the idea rolling around my head is similar to the old separate soul or not debate.
  You see some people believe we have a soul separate from our bodies that can think and reason without it, and that if the body dies the soul lives on.
  Others believe that what seams to be the soul, consciousness is linked to the workings of the brain and cannot exist without it.
  What you believe can change your perception of what reality is.
  If the soul or consciousness is separate from the physical mind and doesn't need it to operate then reality can be defined as in relation to yourself , your soul. So whatever happens in your head is real and the outside world can be interacted with but is not necessary.
  If the conscious is part of the brain and only exists as part of it then the external world defines what reality is. So in that case reality is independent of us ands is something universal that we all must fit in with and which our mind only reacts to.
  What is boss, the consciousness or the information we take in.

  I was just thinking anyway , if no humans existed and we were no other conscious beings , in what sense could the universe be said to exist. It liked before we were alive and after we are dead as far as we are concerned there is no universe, there is nothing.

  I don’t no where I am going with this
  Just thinking aloud.
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  16

  Do you still think like a witness.

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  one of my customers asked me today whether i celebrate christmas and birthdays almost automaticly i was about to say no.. then i realised i'm not a witness anymore.. i didn't really want to go into a conversaion so i just said those things didn't bother me.. so what things are here stuck in our minds like that ,that are hard to get rid of?.

  do you sill have a feeling arrmagddon might come , even though you don't mentally bleive it ,does it still effect you?.

  have you realised yet that you are not going to live forever and in fact you will die?.

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  sleepy

  One of my customers asked me today whether I celebrate Christmas and birthdays almost automaticly I was about to say no.
  Then I realised I'm not a witness anymore.
  I didn't really want to go into a conversaion so I just said those things didn't bother me.
  So what things are here stuck in our minds like that ,that are hard to get rid of?
  Do you sill have a feeling arrmagddon might come , even though you don't mentally bleive it ,does it still effect you?
  Have you realised yet that you are not going to live forever and in fact you will die?
  We may know its not true mentaly but how deep a hold does it have psychologicaly?
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  21

  How can we know if a spirit world exists?

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the only way we as humans can examine the universe is through our brains.. theres nothing we can do about it.

  all senses and experiences are taken in by or bodies and interpreted in our minds.

  we can not know of anything that our minds can't take in.. for example if we were all blind and no humans had eyes and the part of the brain that interprets vision we would have no concept of seeing or even the existence of light.. this creates a problem, how can we know whether things exist outside of our senses.

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  sleepy

  I wasn't suggesting that I beloved what the shaman taught, I was just expressing their idea.

  It turns out according to this book anyway that hallucinations are very little understood. The only drug that has been properly tested is LSD and that is only a pseudo hallucinogenic like alcohol. That means that the person knows they are seeing things that aren't real.
  There are other drugs that make you see thing you do think are real and react to, a bit like a vivid dream .But in dreams our bodies are paralysed which stops us reacting.
  No one really knows how we see anyway, that is how the brain creates images that we can experience.
  Even in "normal" vision our brain creates bits which aren't there for example it will fill in a blind spot.
  No one can know if the world really "looks" the way we see it could just be like the computer making sense of information that does not have a look , your cd-rom has no pictures on it just information on how to recreate pictures .That would mean vision only exists in our heads.
  When we are drunk we cannot longer interact properly with everyone else properly so that indicates that the drunk is in error. So we could define what is reality as being able to interact with everyone else.
  But then you get to quantum mechanics were the observer effects what is being observed.
  Things don’t happen or have properties until they are “measured” this would suggest that reality is the result of observing things.
  This is were it all gets too confusing for me .Better think harder.

  So what I am trying say is what is reality, what is in our head or only what is in our head due to it being taken in by our known senses?
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  21

  How can we know if a spirit world exists?

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the only way we as humans can examine the universe is through our brains.. theres nothing we can do about it.

  all senses and experiences are taken in by or bodies and interpreted in our minds.

  we can not know of anything that our minds can't take in.. for example if we were all blind and no humans had eyes and the part of the brain that interprets vision we would have no concept of seeing or even the existence of light.. this creates a problem, how can we know whether things exist outside of our senses.

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  sleepy

  All this reading about hallucinations reminded me of a time when I got drunk.
  I remember comeing home and lying on my bed , and then the room spinning bit started.
  But then something really strange happened , I started hearing voices and strange noises in my head .It sounded like people whispering and objects buzzing past my ear.
  Rejecting ideas of spirits and all that what exactly was happening in my head?
  Was I hearing noises and misinterpreting them or had I become more attuned to subtle sounds.
  Anyway it sound similar to the effects of some of the drugs shamen take.
  So what happens when we get drunk or are high on drugs?
  We usualy think of it as loseing grip on reality , but the shamen think you are getting closer to it.
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  21

  How can we know if a spirit world exists?

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the only way we as humans can examine the universe is through our brains.. theres nothing we can do about it.

  all senses and experiences are taken in by or bodies and interpreted in our minds.

  we can not know of anything that our minds can't take in.. for example if we were all blind and no humans had eyes and the part of the brain that interprets vision we would have no concept of seeing or even the existence of light.. this creates a problem, how can we know whether things exist outside of our senses.

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  sleepy

  Yes thats it Shamanism.
  Apparently many of the plants used by native south american indians are being used by pharmaceutical companies right now to cure diseases.
  Some are very complicated concoctions requiring plants to act as catalysts for other plants to take effect and also needing intricate preperation.
  These combinations of plants are said to be revealed to the shaman under the influence of certain drugs.
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  16

  dumbing down made us witnesses

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've almost forgotten why i thought jw's were the truth.. there i was thinking about it as i drove in my car yesterday trying to remember why.but i couldn't.. prehaps its because there was not one reason but a hole host of things that seamed to fit at the time.. i cannot remember a point when i started to doubt, but i did read a lot of scientific books which helped tune my brain a little bit.. i also noted that the maganzines (w&a) were very small a had very little content i found this very strange as i noted that science writers went to great pains to prove a point where as the societiy seemed happy with a few lines and a quick conclusion.but the society expected people lives to depend on its information.. but i wanted to know why i believed to avoid making the same mistake twice.. so after consideration i've come to the conclusion i was under the influence of misinformation by the society and had asumed these people knew what they were talking about and were unbaised and always checked their facts.. now i know better and will make a goal to always research myself to a higer than "normal " level before i except unusual things as true.. so i belive i was a witness due to misinformation , but this problem effect us all in many ways, how do we know we are being well informed when we read something?.

  well there is a majour problem in the fact that a lot of people find reading boring , we enjoy being entertianed and to learn can be hard.

  i have had to force myself to read things i didn't enjoy in order to understand something important.i am glad after that i have done it ,but i didnt enjoy it.. yes people read little and prefear it when everthing is given to them on a plate.. i belive that lack of education and a lack of a critical mind coupled with the dumbing down of society in general will lead people into religious traps and pseudoscientific errors.. we must encourage education and the desire to learn in our children.. the dumbing down i see in society worries me.

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  sleepy

  I wonder if the education systems in different countries effect the likleyhood of people becoming witnesses?
  Or even maybe the social "class" you are born into.
  My parents are deffinatly "working class" acording to victorian ideas.
  I wonder if most JW's are?
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  21

  How can we know if a spirit world exists?

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the only way we as humans can examine the universe is through our brains.. theres nothing we can do about it.

  all senses and experiences are taken in by or bodies and interpreted in our minds.

  we can not know of anything that our minds can't take in.. for example if we were all blind and no humans had eyes and the part of the brain that interprets vision we would have no concept of seeing or even the existence of light.. this creates a problem, how can we know whether things exist outside of our senses.

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  sleepy

  I just bought a book today on sale.
  I thought it was about something else as the title is "DNA and the origins of knowledge" I didn't notice the bit at the top that said "The cosmic serpent".
  It turns out that the bbok is dealing with how primative peoples claimed to get knowledge of the healing properies of plants amongst other things by having hallucinations due to drugs.
  The primative peoples belived they were getting into contact with a spirit world.
  The aurthor is developing the idea that the drugs are helping people to use unused parts of the brain.
  I don't know what it has to do with DNA yet but I've only read 3 chapters.

  I'm sceptical at the moment but will read the book through as it is quite interesting.
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  2

  Calling Russell maurice ,Phillip larn

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm looking for some friends of mine who left the "truth" several years ago.. they are in their late twenties .. and are originaly from west wales.

  anyone know them ?

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  sleepy

  Still looking.