Thanks for the post Elsewhere. I can relate to your feelings. Excellent advice!
startingover
JoinedPosts by startingover
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Just because things are bad now does not mean things will always be bad
by Elsewhere ini was thinking that i would like to post this in hope it will help anyone out there who might have the same problem.. after leaving the wts, one of the most difficult things i've had to get over was depression and anxiety.
for many years before and after i left the wts i would fall into terrible depressions or experience terrible anxiety about.... whatever.
you name it and i could become seriously anxious about it to the point of being paralyzed and unable to address the situation.
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GOOGLE EARTH
by snowbird ina dear poster .
i had no idea that you could enter an address and actually get a picture (not a diagram) of the area.. this is awesome and scary!.
agreed?.
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startingover
Another neat site is Bing Maps, type in your address and click on birds eye if it's available.
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Does anyone here believe that Jesus never existed?
by Newborn inif so...why?.
i don't know what i believe so i'm just curious.
/newborn.
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startingover
I think there might, and I emphasize might...have been a man named Jesus who the stories were based on. Just another one of the many messiah figures that existed then. Surely if a man, an actual son of god existed that did what he is claimed to have done, you would expect lots of evidence from many sources. From my research, it just doesn't exist.
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wife took it pretty well i guess...it's over...
by oompa ini guess it only took three years, but they were hell in so many ways for both of us...she was not happy and lived in denial as much as possible...i was not happy and lived in a bottle as much as possible and glad that is over for me....but it was one of the saddest things i have ever experienced in my life....as was the visit to my parents before i told her....but yes...she said she kind of expected it...was thinking something was going to happen soon as she noticed i had more and more trouble saying i love you back to her when she said it on the phone at the end of goodbyes...and when i was leaving the house...i had noticed it for over a year and it was killing me..... i told her how sorry i was for changing so much again....and that she still walks on water...and is a great person and so pretty....and that she will be ok because she was happy single before me for many years and had all she needs for that again...her closeness to jehovah and her freinds in the congregation...she is very close to both and will be ok i hope...it was very surreal....very calm...very sad.
my bitterness and disdain for wt rules came through when talking to my parents and i was very open about how i feel as to their upcoming shunning of me, and how it feels to my son since he was just 17....and how the fear of losing them had kept me trying in my marriage for the past few years...dad was firm in his position of future action....mom said they will still always love me...and will still talk to me until i get dfd.....oh how this hurts.....dad said there is a name for people who only live for themselves and deny god but could not think of what it was....i told him i was not living just for myself...that i am a good person and there are values from him and the bible i hope i always have....i cry so hard as i type this and tell you just so you can know how painful this is....i told him i so loved the rule of treating others how you want to be treated and have always done that...even allowing myself to be wronged on so many occasions to keep peace....... he said that was a good rule....i agreed and said it was a big one too....and that while i could do it...treat him the way i would like to be treated...he would not be able to!.......left as i became emotional...big hug from mom, but i just barely put an arm on dad............oompa.
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startingover
Oompa, you have a PM
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Pastor Deacon Fred preaches to thousands of Atheists... Funny stuff.
by whereami ini'm sorry if this offends any religious folks out there, but this is some of the funniest satire i've heard.. enjoy :-).
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=necgkqlftpo.
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startingover
Thanks for the post! I discovered this site listening to him http://www.bettybowers.com/index.html
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WTS attends as a NGO to OSCE in July- 4 branches present!
by yknot inso i was just cruising www.extj.com/foro.
mary received a interesting bit of osce information via a brother (peter) from germany....... http://www.extj.com/foro/showthread.php?t=14643.
here is the pdf she has uploaded..... http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2009/07/38763_en.pdf.
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startingover
Shameless bookmark
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Spirituality?
by startingover inas a jw, i'm sure we all realize now that our "spirituality" was gauged by your meeting attendance and how many hours you put in field service.
to jw's it seems to be a mechanical thing.
as a jw i could relate somewhat to the word because of what it meant in that scenario, but now that i'm out and an unbeliever i cannot relate to the word in any way.
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startingover
Thanks for the comments, and especially the link Nic. I think I lean towards Terry's comment: "I prefer the term AESTHETIC instead of SPIRITUAL"
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Spirituality?
by startingover inas a jw, i'm sure we all realize now that our "spirituality" was gauged by your meeting attendance and how many hours you put in field service.
to jw's it seems to be a mechanical thing.
as a jw i could relate somewhat to the word because of what it meant in that scenario, but now that i'm out and an unbeliever i cannot relate to the word in any way.
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startingover
As a JW, I'm sure we all realize now that our "spirituality" was gauged by your meeting attendance and how many hours you put in field service. To JW's it seems to be a mechanical thing. As a JW I could relate somewhat to the word because of what it meant in that scenario, but now that I'm out and an unbeliever I cannot relate to the word in any way. Sometimes I see posts where the person's "spirituality" is not connected to any religion and possibly without belief in a god. I cannot understand that, I have need for the concept, period.
In doing a search using the word, I came up with this:
Definitions of Spirituality on the Web:
- spiritualty: property or income owned by a church
- concern with things of the spirit
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - Spirituality is matters of the spirit, a concept tied to a spirit world, a multidimensional reality and one or more deities. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality - Catholic spirituality means that, once one has accepted the faith (fides quae creditur) by making a personal act of faith (fides qua creditur), then one lives it out through spiritual practice. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality_(Roman_Catholic_Church) - Concern for that which is unseen and intangible, as opposed to physical or mundane; Appreciation for religious values
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spirituality - spiritual - religious: concerned with sacred matters or religion or the church; "religious texts"; "a member of a religious order"; "lords temporal and ...
- spiritual - concerned with or affecting the spirit or soul; "a spiritual approach to life"; "spiritual fulfillment"; "spiritual values"; "unearthly love"
- spiritual - lacking material body or form or substance; "spiritual beings"; "the vital transcendental soul belonging to the spiritual realm"-Lewis Mumford
- spiritual - a kind of religious song originated by Blacks in the southern United States
- spiritual - apparitional: resembling or characteristic of a phantom; "a ghostly face at the window"; "a phantasmal presence in the room"; "spectral emanations"; "spiritual tappings at a seance"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - spiritually - in a spiritual manner; "the ninth century was the spiritually freest period"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - Spiritual - Spirituals (or Negro spirituals) are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_(music) - Spiritualities is a term, often used in the Middle Ages, that refers to the income sources of a diocese or other ecclesiastical establishment that ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualities - spiritual - An African-American folk song, or a song in that style; Of or pertaining to the spirit or the soul; Of or pertaining to the God or a Church ...
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spiritual - Having to do with deep, often religious, feelings and beliefs, including a person’s sense of peace, purpose, connection to others and beliefs about the meaning of life.
www.mdanderson.org/patients_public/about_cancer/display.cfm
Considering the above, it seems the word is always tied into religion or believing in invisible beings. Is it something other than that to some? Using the above definitions it's no wonder I have no need for it.
Comments?
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Hotel California - is this Eagles Album Single for Christians?
by JWoods init came on the car radio this morning, and reminded me that this was probably the big single of 1977 - just about the beginning of the end time for me with the jehovah's witnesses.. now, you might understand that as a doubting elder with many deep issues at hand (it was the ray franz era of disenchantment for many elders)...i never heard much from them about the lyrics.. however - listening to it today, i can see where a "good" dubbie might find it to be at least as demonized as the smurfs cartoons.. and yet, very ironically, looking at them then and now, i always viewed it to be a sort of pop-social commentary on the california celebrity scene.. stretching it a little, you could almost compare the traveler's nightmare experience to getting trapped into the jehovah's witnesses - thinking it was a safe haven but then finding out that "you can never leave".. "we haven't had that spirit here since 1959".
"in the master's chamber they gathered for the feast".... yes, i can apply a lot of this to the cult entrapment experience..
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startingover
From Wiki:
Interpretation
The song's lyrics describe the title establishment as a luxury resort where "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." On the surface, the song tells the tale of a weary traveler who becomes trapped in a nightmarish luxury hotel that at first appeared inviting and tempting. The song is an allegory about hedonism and self-destruction in the Southern California music industry of the late 1970s; Don Henley called it "our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles" [ 5 ] and later reiterated "[i]t's basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about." [ 6 ] In 2008, Don Felder described the origins of the lyrics:
"Don Henley and Glenn wrote most of the words. All of us kind of drove into LA at night. Nobody was from California, and if you drive into LA at night... you can just see this glow on the horizon of lights, and the images that start running through your head of Hollywood and all the dreams that you have, and so it was kind of about that... what we started writing the song about. Coming into LA... and from that Life In The Fast Lane came out of it, and Wasted Time and a bunch of other songs.": [ 7 ]
The abstract nature of the lyrics has led listeners to their own fanciful and unrealistic interpretations over the years, including some claims, spread by word of mouth and internet, of Satanic aspects. Other bizarre rumors suggested that the "Hotel California" was referring to a hotel run by cannibals, the Camarillo State Mental Hospital, or a metaphor for cancer. These claims have been consistently refuted by the band. [ 8 ]
The term "colitas" in the first stanza of the song is a desert flower, also known as Antelope sage or Colita de Rata [ 9 ] . Both Don Henley and Don Felder have repeatedly and publicly stated that Colitas are "heady desert flowers." [citation needed] Others assert that "colitas" is a Spanish term for "little tails" or "little bottoms", and a reference to the buds of the Cannabis plant. [ 10 ]
In a 2009 interview, Plain Dealer music critic John Soeder asked Don Henley this about the lyrics:
On "Hotel California," you sing: "So I called up the captain / 'Please bring me my wine' / He said, 'We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.'" I realize I'm probably not the first to bring this to your attention, but wine isn't a spirit. Wine is fermented; spirits are distilled. Do you regret that lyric?
Henley responded,
"Thanks for the tutorial and, no, you're not the first to bring this to my attention—and you're not the first to completely misinterpret the lyric and miss the metaphor. Believe me, I've consumed enough alcoholic beverages in my time to know how they are made and what the proper nomenclature is. But that line in the song has little or nothing to do with alcoholic beverages. It's a sociopolitical statement. My only regret would be having to explain it in detail to you, which would defeat the purpose of using literary devices in songwriting and lower the discussion to some silly and irrelevant argument about chemical processes." [ 11 ]
According to Glenn Frey's liner notes for The Very Best of Eagles, the use of the word "steely" in the lyric (referring to knives) was a playful nod to band Steely Dan, who had included the lyric "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening" in their song "Everything You Did."
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How do you know the Bible is from God?
by cognac ini really want to believe it, but, sometimes it is very difficult to figure out how it can be from god.
i mean, in the old testament, he seems horrible in some instances.
the adam and eve thing doesn't make to much sense to me.
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startingover
Something I have never been able to wrap myself around is the idea that god, this all powerful being chose to convey his all important "requirements" for pleasing him though a vehicle such as the bible. Surely there is a better way. This book has been interpreted in thousand of different ways.