Hey NB, How close are you to the Sonora desert, and the sacred toad.
Brokeback Watchtower
JoinedPosts by Brokeback Watchtower
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24
May 1 2018 my Ayahuasca Experience
by new boy init has been over a year and a half since my last ceremony.
which was way to long.
my son came up from scottsdale for the ceremony.
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How Religious Fundamentalism Hijacks The Brain- Psychology Today
by Brokeback Watchtower inhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201810/how-religious-fundamentalism-hijacks-the-brain.
in moderation, religious and spiritual practices can be great for a person’s life and mental well-being.
but religious fundamentalism—which refers to the belief in the absolute authority of a religious text or leaders—is almost never good for an individual.
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Brokeback Watchtower
Brain shrinkage is not a good thing it happens but you want to slow it down to improve the quality of your life, the older you get the harder it gets to change ones thinking especially after many hours listening someone rattle about an invisible deity and what really ticks him off, and you got to warn the wicked or be blood guilty bull shit 5 hours a week to keep up your spiritual strength.
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WT Study October 2018....spinning ''layoffs'' into ''reassigning'' ex-Bethelites ''to the field''
by RULES & REGULATIONS inwt study october 2018. maintain inner peace despite changing circumstances.
lloyd and alexandra learn that they have been reassigned to the field, they at first felt sad.
after all, they had been serving at bethel for over 25 years.
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Brokeback Watchtower
When Ryan and Juliette were informed that their assignment as temporary special pioneers had come to an end, they felt dejected.
Well duh it a temporary assignment, which means it won't last forever(yeah!) How in the world is this on a par with making Bethel you home for a couple of decades and being given the boot with in a few days pack your bags and try to find a place to stay with a roof over your head? Apples and oranges?
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WT Study October 2018....spinning ''layoffs'' into ''reassigning'' ex-Bethelites ''to the field''
by RULES & REGULATIONS inwt study october 2018. maintain inner peace despite changing circumstances.
lloyd and alexandra learn that they have been reassigned to the field, they at first felt sad.
after all, they had been serving at bethel for over 25 years.
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Brokeback Watchtower
It all attitude, I tell ya, attitude!
When Ryan and Juliette were informed that their assignment as temporary special pioneers had come to an end, they felt dejected. “We took this straight to Jehovah in prayer,” Ryan says. “We knew that we had a special opportunity here to display trust in him. Many in our congregation were new in the truth, so we prayed that Jehovah would help us to set an excellent example of faith.”
7 How did Jehovah respond to their prayer? Ryan recalls: “Immediately after the prayer, the negative feelings and worries that we initially experienced disappeared. The peace of God was guarding our hearts and mental powers. We realized that we could continue to be useful to Jehovah if we maintained the right attitude.”
The way things are going it looks like many more will have a special opportunity to display trust in Jehovah as the Watchtower corporation shells out big time for all the harm they brought to children under their care in the courts.
I'm sure their trust in corporate Jehovah will really be stretched out for some to the breaking point up the road ahead. Jehovah's Witnesses active membership looks like it is getting ready to take another nose dive.
And also take a tip from Ryan, prayer can help calm your nerves temporarily,(but no guarantees for lasting relief from jittery nerves is temporary, unless you want to pray every time you get to feeling a little queasy about the whole thing and see how long you will be able to get relief, eventually you got to face the truth that you have been royally screwed by this bunch delusional but sniffing assholes.
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WT Study October 2018....spinning ''layoffs'' into ''reassigning'' ex-Bethelites ''to the field''
by RULES & REGULATIONS inwt study october 2018. maintain inner peace despite changing circumstances.
lloyd and alexandra learn that they have been reassigned to the field, they at first felt sad.
after all, they had been serving at bethel for over 25 years.
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Brokeback Watchtower
I can give them a little credit for at least acknowledging to a small degree that a lot of people have been given the boot after many years at bethel. It's a start.
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Simon's Forum Is More Than Just a Forum!
by Atlantis infriends:.
simon's forum is much more than just a forum where we come to expose the watchtower.
it is a place that simon wanted people to be able to come to, to receive help, support, or find a compassionate listener.. this forum has exposed the watchtower more times than any forum on the net.
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Brokeback Watchtower
I've been on this sight for 18 years and I can say this is the place I go to find out what happening with the Watchtower corporation. I think that is saying something about Simon and his hard work.
I'm sure the Governing Body has visited this site(but only after a lot of prayer to Jehovah their corporation sock puppet) It definitely is a place for people to connect with fellow unbelievers and pass on note worthy information. I raise my glass to Simon.
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The downfall of the Governing Body
by john.prestor inin a book i read a while back by the sociologist randall collins he says truly powerful people don't get angry because they get what they want in other ways, and he shows a picture of two runners where the one who's losing looks at the girl that passes her rather than ahead at the finish line, guess she doesn't wanna win the race after all.
i want to apply these to the governing body and their actions, the pattern of their actions, in printing all the hateful rhetoric against people like us and why l'm pretty sure, pretty damn confident in fact, it's all downhill from here... thanks to them and them alone.. the moment you let somebody get in your head and let them stay there they beat you, they win, they establish power, we got in their heads, they know we present a threat to them, we won't shut up, we're more brazen than we used to be, we're in the news, we're on tv, we're online we're at conventions we're in the kingdom halls, hell we're just about everywhere.
yeah, we don't have this completely down yet, sometimes we come on too strong or do something stupid, and i'm pointing the finger at myself here too, but for the most part we know how to fight this battle: we drag them into the light when they wanna hide in the dark like jackals lurking in the woods sneaking up on weak and wounded deer.
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Brokeback Watchtower
I want to say I appreciate all the different view points expressed. It is good to considered other's perspectives on the subject.
I just think from my own perspective which I admit kind of biases me towards their complete and total annihilation as a corporation. I recognize that or leave space for that happening. That being said I don't think the Governing Body in the driver seat of Jehovah's Chariot bodes well for the corporation's financial survival, they have shrunk their brains to make it this far in the cult they are in such denial over their F&DS delusion nobody can snap them out of it, and they project their own evil onto their victims,,, need I go on and on about how stupid these guys are????That being said if they are not removed from power these guys will drive it off a muched deserved financial cliff.
I kind of look at it as a sort of Yin and Yang thing. I should cast some yarrow stalks, I Ching to see what state of change this GB is in but I'm too lazy.
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How Religious Fundamentalism Hijacks The Brain- Psychology Today
by Brokeback Watchtower inhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201810/how-religious-fundamentalism-hijacks-the-brain.
in moderation, religious and spiritual practices can be great for a person’s life and mental well-being.
but religious fundamentalism—which refers to the belief in the absolute authority of a religious text or leaders—is almost never good for an individual.
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Brokeback Watchtower
People need myths to live by,but the fundamentalist myths and interpretation of myth needs some serious rework to stay relevant to modern day life.
Improper interpretation of scripture and making that interpretation of scripture a mandatory belief or else become shunned and cast out of the group is where an abuse of authority happens and unknowingly forces the convert into a thought pattern acceptable to the leaders.
Force beliefs in order not to be destroyed by the Deity lends it self well overt coercion by fear for one's life. A brain operating under this type of stressful situation causes brain damage, or controlling ones thoughts and emotions by means of implanted fears shrinks the brain:
A neurologist has published a new book in which she asserts that religious fundamentalism could soon be classified as a mental illness. University of Oxford neurologist Kathleen Taylor says that it’s not only religious fundamentalism that could be categorized as a mental illness, but other forms of extreme or radical beliefs as well.
The Times reports that Taylor says people who have fundamentalist religious beliefs, cult members, and even people who think it is a good idea to beat their children could soon be viewed as mentally ill and received corresponded treatment to cure their illness. Taylor explained:
One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology — we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance…I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness. In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm.”
Her new book, The Brain Supremacy, delves into the issue of religious fundamentalism but it also contains a warning about the development of new technologies that have the possibility of altering humans’ brains to such an extent that the idea of what is considered “good” or “bad” could be permanently changed:...……
In addition to the possibility of religious fundamentalism being treated as a mental illness in the near future, other scientists have found a link between shrinkage of the hippocampus, a large and significant section of the brain, and those who hold deeply religious or spiritual beliefs. In a study entitled Religious Factors and Hippocampal Atrophy in Late Life, lead neurologist Amy Owen wrote that deeply spiritual people with no religious affiliation as well as born-again people affiliated with various religious groups showed atrophy in the hippocampus:
Significantly greater hippocampal atrophy was observed for participants reporting a life-changing religious experience. Significantly greater hippocampal atrophy was also observed from baseline to final assessment among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again.
There have been numerous studies that link religious experiences with less depression, but a more recent and widespread study by bioltechnologist Tom Rees found that religious belief did not ha
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How Religious Fundamentalism Hijacks The Brain- Psychology Today
by Brokeback Watchtower inhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201810/how-religious-fundamentalism-hijacks-the-brain.
in moderation, religious and spiritual practices can be great for a person’s life and mental well-being.
but religious fundamentalism—which refers to the belief in the absolute authority of a religious text or leaders—is almost never good for an individual.
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12
How Religious Fundamentalism Hijacks The Brain- Psychology Today
by Brokeback Watchtower inhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201810/how-religious-fundamentalism-hijacks-the-brain.
in moderation, religious and spiritual practices can be great for a person’s life and mental well-being.
but religious fundamentalism—which refers to the belief in the absolute authority of a religious text or leaders—is almost never good for an individual.
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Brokeback Watchtower
In moderation, religious and spiritual practices can be great for a person’s life and mental well-being. But religious fundamentalism—which refers to the belief in the absolute authority of a religious text or leaders—is almost never good for an individual. This is primarily because fundamentalism discourages any logical reasoning or scientific evidence that challenges its scripture, making it inherently maladaptive.
It is not accurate to call religious fundamentalism a disease, because that term refers to a pathology that physically attacks the biology of a system. But fundamentalist ideologies can be thought of as mental parasites. A parasite does not usually kill the host it inhabits, as it is critically dependent on it for survival. Instead, it feeds off it and changes its behavior in ways that benefit its own existence. By understanding how fundamentalist ideologies function and are represented in the brain using this analogy, we can begin to understand how to inoculate against them, and potentially, how to rehabilitate someone who has undergone ideological brainwashing—in other words, a reduction in one’s ability to think critically or independently.
How Religious Ideologies Spread
Similar to how organisms and their genes compete for survival in the environment and gene pool, ideas compete for survival inside brains, and in the pool of ideas that inhabit them. The famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has used this insightful analogy to explain how ideas spread and evolve over time. In his influential 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, he refers to ideas as “memes” (the mental analog of a gene), which he has defined as self-replicating units that spread throughout culture. We are all familiar with many types of memes, including the various customs, myths, and trends that have become part of human society.
As Dawkins explains, ideas spread through the behavior that they produce in their hosts, which is what enables them to be transmitted from one brain to another. For example, an ideology—such as a religion—that causes its inhabitants to practice its rituals and communicate its beliefs will be transmitted to others. Successful ideas are those that are best able to spread themselves, while those that fail to self-replicate go extinct. In this way, some religious ideologies persist while others fade into oblivion.
It is easy to see why religion quickly spread through culture once it emerged. When humans gained the cognitive capacity to reason and plan for the future, they became aware of their own mortality. The realization that oneself and all one’s loved ones will someday die is naturally terrifying, and this existential fear perfectly set the stage for anxiety-reducing ideas, like ones that offer a never-ending afterlife. But religions are complex ideas, and the psychological effects they have on minds go beyond just relieving anxiety.
Essentially, the brain is a biological computer, and an ideology is a set of coded instructions, or “cultural software,” that is running on the brain’s hardware. Esteemed philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett insightfully described how ideas can control minds when he said, “The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.” In this regard, it is often not the brain that controls the mind, but the memes that compose the mind that control the brain. This is especially the case when the meme is a religion...…….