Posts by JamesThomas

114

What is truth?

by Heisenberg in

jw
friends

well, i have been lurking on this site for several months and i recently decided to join as a member.

i have made several observations and would like to make a few comments.. first, i am perplexed by the attitude of many on this site that are either former or active (but apostate) jws.

they seem to have a strong hatred for the wts and also for rank and file jws.

JamesThomas

Welcome Heisenberg.

It's obvious you have a healthy uncertainty ;)

What is truth? In the last sentence you made (IMHO) a wise observation towards realizing truth by seeing what it is not: “Don’t believe everything you think. The brain is just as treacherous as the heart.” The rest of your post was just the “treacherous” play of thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Do you see that?

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I would interpret what you are saying as: we will not find truth in thoughts and emotions. The reason for this is that we can simply not find a stable foundational TRUTH in the ever-changing turmoil of mental and emotional activity. Which is why we have kept asking the same questions and getting nowhere throughout our history.

So, perhaps, the remaining question is: is there that which is still and unchanging?

28

YOU 'THINK' YOU ARE FREE when you leave the Org. . . but it can be an ILLUSION

by Terry in

jw
friends

did you know there is nothing more insane than being partly indoctrinated and partly free?.

the level of cognitive dissonance is ridiculous!.

i have told this story before, so i'll shorten it to cut to the chase.. in 1987, i was dating a professional psychotherapist with a view to marriage.

JamesThomas

Terry, rereading my comments to you this morning, they appear pretty insulting. But please know that there was absolutely know sense within me of a personal attack on you. Rather, just a feeble attempt at trying to make – what I consider to be – a very important point. A dynamics that is likely responsible for all man's inhumanity against man and the destruction of our environment. I was just kinda yelling at the whole world to wake the hell up! before we self-destruct.

You are one of the few people who I feel a connection to and feel free to talk to in this way.

Keep up the good work.

28

YOU 'THINK' YOU ARE FREE when you leave the Org. . . but it can be an ILLUSION

by Terry in

jw
friends

did you know there is nothing more insane than being partly indoctrinated and partly free?.

the level of cognitive dissonance is ridiculous!.

i have told this story before, so i'll shorten it to cut to the chase.. in 1987, i was dating a professional psychotherapist with a view to marriage.

JamesThomas

YOU 'THINK' YOU ARE FREE . . . but it can be an ILLUSION

That's all I'm saying.

28

YOU 'THINK' YOU ARE FREE when you leave the Org. . . but it can be an ILLUSION

by Terry in

jw
friends

did you know there is nothing more insane than being partly indoctrinated and partly free?.

the level of cognitive dissonance is ridiculous!.

i have told this story before, so i'll shorten it to cut to the chase.. in 1987, i was dating a professional psychotherapist with a view to marriage.

JamesThomas

“How about false information and disinformation, then James?”

Ya, what about it?

You clearly know that the mind can not even begin to grasp the genuine aliveness and reality of a tree; and at best can only reduce it down to conceptual words and thoughts a million light-years distant from reality. And yet, you unquestionably accept as valid and real what it says about who you and the rest of the universe is??? There, there is your “false information and disinformation,” Terry. As clear as clear can be. You see it don't you.

“You” were embarrassed, because you whole-heartedly accept the mind's definition of “self” as a flaccid-little-shit being drug around by the monkey-mind like a puppy with a chain around its neck.

There is only one way out of this insanity -- and it ain't Jesus -- it's you.

74

Why Do Atheists Struggle So Much Against God Who Supposedly Doesn't Exist?

by Perry in

an athist made this casual statememt on another thread:.

this would suggest to me that there are at least some atheists that do have consistant beliefs.. .

as an atheist, how could he possibly trust the reason that suggests this to himself?

JamesThomas

In my view, what Terry said on page 2 of this thread was paramount.

4

Changing profile picture

by Jeannette in

how does one change the avatar picture to a snapshot from your desktop?.

JamesThomas

I thought that was a snapshot.

You look a lot like my x-wife.

28

YOU 'THINK' YOU ARE FREE when you leave the Org. . . but it can be an ILLUSION

by Terry in

jw
friends

did you know there is nothing more insane than being partly indoctrinated and partly free?.

the level of cognitive dissonance is ridiculous!.

i have told this story before, so i'll shorten it to cut to the chase.. in 1987, i was dating a professional psychotherapist with a view to marriage.

JamesThomas

Programming? What is programming? Isn't it an unquestionably accepting of what the monkey-mind believes and says is real to be our “reality”?

As long as the mind is in the drivers-seat there is no such thing as “deprogramming”. There is only a change of illusory patterns, beliefs, concepts and ideas weaved by the mind (programs).

We were pretty much all once JW's, and now not. Everything may seem to radically change, but we still live the same dream. We only think that we are evolving and becoming smarter and wiser, while all the time unquestionably accepting a group of electro-chemical firings in the brain as the actual subject or self of who and what we are. It's all smoke and mirrors – except for the one undeniably true thing (which is not a thing) in-which we all equally share. But the ruling monkey-mind sees this as silly, unimportant, or crazy. So we won't go there. Only a true and rare revolutionary willing to pull the entire rug out from under their “life” is so willing.

7

Why are the Jesus people so obsessed with spreading their message?

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

are they fearful that they are mistaken, so they must argue with everyone, and try to prove all otehr religions wrong, but their's right?.

i'm not talking about the well-known jw persistence, in which we all once shared.. i'm talking about nearly all brands of christianity, the witnesses and their other branded counterparts.

here are two incidents to demonstrate.. a week or so back, i read in a chinese newspaper of a complaint by two tibetan buddhist women in the city of xining, qinghai province, in western china.

JamesThomas

Why are we ever obsessed with anything?

Most of us here once unquestionably believed the monkey-mind telling us that we had the genuine TRUTH and were one of Jehovah's chosen who would live forever in paradise.

It all comes back to believing that everything the mind tells us is "REAL".

The mind says: “Jesus is your Saviour and the Savior of the world, and so you must spread the word to prove to him that you love him and save others”. – and there you go – simple mind-generated thought becomes our "reality" (which it never is and never can be -- any more than thoughts about a tree, represent a real living tree).

All the worlds woes and chaos pretty much result from the same simple dynamics that many children see. Yet most everyone continually places the monkey-mind as lord and dictator of their universe and life.

Go figure.

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