Posts by Ravyn

83

Did Jesus Christ exist at all?

by Tyler in

some of my comments (and that of others) on other threads have highlighted a basic differance between those of us who belieave jesus christ did exist, and those of us who recon he did not.

i belieave jesus as described in the gospells did not exist.

so i decided to start a thread that adresses this issue face on.

A Common Mistake

by DJ in

as a jw, i was taught the wrong idea of what the trinity is.

the concept of the trinity does not teach that the father is the son.

yes I know the word Catholic means Universal. However, since the Universal Church started when Constantine, the Roman Emperor, declared Christianity the State Religion of the Roman Empire, technically the Church was the Roman Church. Of course you are right about the schism not being until after the year 1000, and the Church had no reason before that to differentiate which 'flavor' it would be. Roman Catholic was only the geographical denomination, unlike today.

Ravyn

93

When Was The Last Time You Set Foot In a Kingdom Hall?

by minimus in

jw
friends

weeks?

months?

years??

Ravyn

Feb. 6, 1997, last time I actually wanted to be there...before Dec. 17, 1995.

Ravyn

2

a lawyer, a rabbi and a hindu holy man.....

by Ravyn in

jw
friends

a lawyer, a rabbi, and a hindu

a lawyer and two friends--a rabbi, and a hindu holy man--had car trouble in the countryside and asked to spend the night with a farmer.

the farmer said, "there might be a problem.

Ravyn

A Lawyer, a Rabbi, and a Hindu A lawyer and two friends--a Rabbi, and a Hindu holy man--had car trouble in the countryside and asked to spend the night with a farmer.

The farmer said, "There might be a problem. You see, I only have room for two to sleep in the house. So one of you must sleep in the barn."

"No problem," chimed the Rabbi. "My people wandered in the desert for forty years. I am humble enough to sleep in the barn for one evening." With that he departed to the barn, and the others bedded down for the night.

Moments later a knock was heard at the door; the farmer opened the door. There stood the Rabbi from the barn. "What's wrong?" asked the farmer. He replied, "I am grateful to you, but I just can't sleep in the barn. There is a pig in the barn, and my faith believes that is an unclean animal." His Hindu friend agrees to swap places with him. But a few minutes later the same scene reoccurs. There is a knock on the door. "What's wrong?" the farmer asks. The Hindu holy man replies, "I, too, am grateful for your helping us out, but there is a cow in the barn. In my country cows are considered sacred and I can't sleep on holy ground!"

That left only the lawyer to make the change. He grumbled and complained, but went out to the barn. Moments later there was another knock on the farmer's door. Frustrated and tired, the farmer opens the door, and there stood the pig and the cow.

Ravyn

As a general rule, don't try to solve puzzles that open portals to Hell.

"does that make me less dangerous, or more dangerous?"-SHAFT

SATAN, OSCILLATE MY METALLIC SONATAS --palindrome(read forwards and backwards)

45

It's my round

by ballistic in

jw
friends

.

if i can just pretend you are all here for a minute.

come on... no excuses - it's my shout.. \_/.

Ravyn

hey thunder ever try Guinness non-alcoholic ? It is called Kalibur and it is very good....I even made a non-alcoholic Guinness with it and a spoon full of that Postum roasted wheat stuff the mormons drinks instead of coffee(it tastes like liquid pretzels to me...)

Ravyn

45

It's my round

by ballistic in

jw
friends

.

if i can just pretend you are all here for a minute.

come on... no excuses - it's my shout.. \_/.

Ravyn

mmmmmm so many choices...... how about a bourbon sour or something sweet--- a Sugar-Daddy shot?

or a pink lady--LOL my mom used to drink those! Or a rootbeer float, or a jaggermeister and coke....

a screaming orgasm is nice too...but it is more of an after-dinner drink.....

I love gin martinis...but I dont like them very dry...and lots of olives and those salty little onions....(maybe I just like olives and onions pickled in gin....)

Guinness, Bass Ale, Dos Equis, Harveys Bristol Cream, single malt whisky(Glenfiddich is my favorite).....

Ravyn of the I can drink almost anything class

36

Fashion Fluff....Questions for the Ladies....

by teenyuck in

jw
friends

since it is friday and i am in a fluffy mood..... fingernails....long/short; painted, bare?

french manicure or nothing?

i had my nails *done* a few months ago and there was a man there getting a full set of acrylic nails.

Ravyn

I can't grow my nails anymore because of the lupus and the meds...but when I was a dub I did have long nails. I never paid someone else to do them tho and I was pretty good at painting flowers or other things on myself. In fact i often got in trouble for my nails...one sister told me once that I would be raped for wearing blue polish. Another time I was counselled because I did my nails half black and half gold vanilla--cut on a bias---looked really hot.

one of the first things I bought when I was ready to leave the JWs was a garter betlt and sexy stockings. Now I only wear pantyhose or tights for convenience, if at all possible I wear regular stockings and a sexy garter. I cant believe I ever thot pantyhose were easier! No more public bathroom stall acrobatics!

Ravyn

14

Baptism in the name of WHO???

by LovesDubs in

jw
friends

i was reading craigsa's post from his mother to his wife regarding how jws are baptized....and they arent baptized in the name of the father son and holy ghost as she so pointedly said twice.

all you jws out there who browse this forum...listen up!!

here are the questions you are asked when you are baptized and the changes to them over the years....do you see fs and hg mentioned anywhere here???.

Ravyn

I also got some warning bells when Craig's mother said that about ebing bapt in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit....first of all ONE name would indicate the belief of a trinity(how else can three only have one name?) But I know for a fact that JWs are NOT bapt in the trinity. Every church I have investigated since I left the Borg would have required me to be rebapt. becoz they did not consider the JW one valid as it was not done properly! The Catholics do not even consider the JW bapt valid!

Ravyn

23

Dark Night of the Soul?

by Ravyn in

http://www.themystic.org/print/dark-night.htm

the mystic's life lesson #28 .

dark night of the soul.

Ravyn

http://www.themystic.org/print/dark-night.htm

The Mystic's Life Lesson #28

Dark Night of the Soul

"Dark night of the soul" sounds like a threatening and much to be avoided experience. Yet perhaps a quarter of the seekers on the road to higher consciousness will pass through the dark night. In fact, they may pass through several until they experience the profound joy of their true nature.

Many seekers would encourage the dark night experience if they knew what it was. However, to one engaged in the dark night, suffering seems unending.

The dark night occurs after considerable advancement toward higher consciousness. Indeed, the dark night usually occurs like an initiation before one of these special seekers is admitted into regular relationship with higher consciousness. The dark night also occurs to those who do not seek relationship but immersion or unity in the higher consciousness. While the term dark night of the soul is used broadly, its general meaning — in the field of higher consciousness — is a lengthy and profound absence of light and hope. In the dark night you feel profoundly alone.

You Can’t Fit In

The dark night usually develops this way:

You, as a genuine seeker, have gone through many significant phases as you progress toward higher consciousness. Your faith is strong. You have kept loyal companionship with fellow seekers and perhaps you have already found a special teacher. You’ve experienced indications of the reality of higher consciousness and yearn to be more deeply in communion with it. You see the principles of a higher power at work in your life. Yet, all in all, you find yourself somehow painfully on the outside. You feel caught between your old way of living, your old tendencies and associations, and this nebulous, unreachable realm of higher consciousness.

You feel an exile in both places. You don’t belong in the old pastimes. in the old empty or numbing way of life, yet you somehow can’t fit in or feel at home in the fellowship of those who talk naturally of the higher consciousness and its reality. They are experienced, they are absorbed in it. They are loving, giving people. But you are unable to live, with full heart and mind, the way they do. They’re able to apply the principles of higher consciousness easily, yet it’s so hard for you. They have manifestations and proofs on a regular basis. You only stretch like a human mule after a receding corncob while pulling the heavy weight of your old tendencies behind you.

You try to be good, and often you can’t. You try to be loving and find at times your heart is hard like stone. Sometimes your projects fall down around your ears. You keep struggling and still you don’t break through. You understand the path is one of joy and yet your life seems to have been barren for a month or two, perhaps longer. Where did that early joy and zest go?

Hanging On

Up to this particular time there was joy, there was delight. But now there is only a hanging on, a dogged hanging on. You persist because you can’t conceive of going back to your old way of life. That seems impossible now. That would be like going to prison, living as if with a transorbital lobotomy.

You deeply want to have joy and fulfillment, easily manifest prosperity, but something’s not working. You don’t know what it is but something’s awry, and your meditations have lost their luster. Sometimes, during rare meditations, you do experience brief moments of peace. Your agonizing mind and heart rest from their turbulence and even these fleeting times of calm are so deeply appreciated. Your light dance of life, which had gone on for some time, is now a trudging in what seems a devastated and alien land.

Your fellow seekers look at you and show their concern. Their words of kindness are valued but you feel you’re somehow incapable of responding well. Your heart is numb. At these times your friends try to cheer you up. They invite you to dinner. You seem to perform fairly well, despite the emptiness you feel inside. What else is there to do? You wonder if you have any right to be in their fellowship at all. You think of leaving town, but where would you go? What good would diversion be?

A number of your friends in the fellowship of this great path know what you are going through for they have been through it themselves. They feel the main thing to do is encourage you to go on. They know if you keep it up and do not quit you will succeed. They know if you quit you will be a self-reject and will return to the old life, forever a foreigner, being neither at home with it nor at home anywhere else. They recognize that your own higher self, out of love, is lifting you up into its embrace. They see you are being drawn into your dark night because:

your inner potential has great stature
your crusty, old ego requires you go through the dark night in order to be transformed.

You Feel Totally Alone

Other seekers, for various reasons, do not have to pass through the dark night. However, the dark night is your way.

Your night is a very difficult time. While others may one day envy you for the marvelous growth you experienced in such a short, intensified period, you will, because of the pain of your experience, always feel profound compassion for those whom you one day see going through a similar night.

Being caught between the old way of life and the new possibilities, your sense of alienation intensifies. Your sense of inadequacy and not knowing what to do next becomes gnawingly constant. You feel you would do anything to get out of this state, yet it is only your ego which is keeping you in it. However, this insight is impossible for you to grasp while going through your long night.

And you feel so totally alone. Sure, you have friends and you appreciate them, but you are keenly aware they are not capable of feeling what you are feeling or knowing what you are going through. Sometimes they seem like clowns, sometimes they seem empty-headed, caught up in meaningless pursuits. They do not understand, you think, how much you are suffering or how you cry out and pray deep into each midnight. You try their advice but it doesn’t seem to touch the heart of the matter.

You begin to enter the dark night in earnest when you feel completely stranded. In the fullness of the dark night you don’t know where you are spiritually. You’re separate from God and man. You do not know where to turn. Your friends love you and wish you well but your condition does not improve.

The dark night is a very private matter. The person in the dark night is generally able to function quite well despite inner suffering. Often your acquaintances never suspect that you are going through the dark night — they probably do not even know what it is. Only people close to you — especially friends along the path — can recognize your pain.

You feel like a hollow person doing the activities of life with no motivation except expediency. Your eyes seem deeper in your head. You are profoundly aware of the suffering of humanity and the cruelty of one person to another. You feel that cruelty and negativity far outweigh love and constructive action.

You Enter Midnight

Alone, and not wishing to be, unable even to express yourself to others, you enter midnight and the greatest intensity of the dark night. Here you have finally come to the time of sovereign solitude. In this precious time, which has no apparent prospects of love or happiness, you clearly perceive that nothing in the outer world has proven adequate to heal your condition. Nobody, not even your dearest friends and loved ones, can make you whole. Even if they have tried, and love you enough to try loving you forever, they can’t give you peace.

You eye your books and consider all the benefit you have gained from these extremely wise vessels of truth. Yet not one book, not one thought, goes deep enough inside you to where the affliction abides.

You look at your possessions, your money container. No material thing has been able to help you. No material means have worked. Nothing, no one, in the outer world has enabled you to come out of this dark night.

In your loneliness, you next — in a seemingly random process — notice that none of your thoughts have proven adequate to your suffering. Not one — even repeated fifty thousand times — breaks the inner storm and lets in light. God and higher consciousness seem so far away that perhaps they are unreal. Neither one has, despite your protracted exposure of yourself, done anything to ease or remove your agony. Nothing appears efficacious. Nothing works.

Clearly, there is nowhere to turn. There is nothing to be done. All actions you considered have been tried. There is nothing to think, nothing to feel, nothing to do, nowhere to go. It seems you have to accept this defeat — or, you can persist in struggling against it. For awhile longer, you go about thinking, feeling, and doing other options that occur to you. But you realize in the midnight of your soul that you have tried every option you know of.

The Peace Comes

Helpless, totally helpless, as well as ever so alone, you abide in this condition. And you accept your predicament. You accept that there is really, except for a murmured prayer to a remote Lord and a remnant of a shredded faith, nothing else left.

Suicide would be absurd. Suicide would be an act of arrogance and vanity. You have grown far beyond such primitive responses to your private agony. No, nothing to do. Nothing remains in this lonely helplessness. There is, without question, nothing you can do.

You abide. You accept your state. How have you gotten to this place? That’s insignificant. Musings and feelings aside, you wait. You feel you may have to stay this way forever, doing the regular day-to-day things, but in this mood of emptiness. Nothing. Nothing.

Then, it happens. A holy presence comes into your room — sweetly, softly. You feel it filling you. Your mind is filled with mellow or bright light. Your heart, your still heart, is permeated with peace. This peace moves through your body like a cold spring of mountain water. It flows in your spine, your brain, and under your skin. Everywhere.

Also, this presence, this comforter, moves like a breeze across your arid mind and numb heart. Then, or a few days later, the fire of joy begins to smoulder. Here, abiding with nothing more to do, your ego drops away! Your ignorant, arrogant, fearful sense of self falls away from you. You stand in light — a new being, a free being — transformed.

Your Ego Sense

Believe it or not, that’s what the dark night is all about: transformation. Your ego, your limited sense of self, your inadequate complex of ideas about who you are had to be dissolved. Your ego was, you begin to see, eclipsing higher consciousness and your true nature. Your old sense of self was inadequate to your new hopes and proper state. Your suffering intensified because of a major misapprehension. You were too used to thinking of yourself based on inputs from your previous experiences in life. On and on through life, you gathered information and responses from the world which indicated to you what kind of person you were and are. These superficial units of related inputs became integrated in what is called the ego — your sense of self, your sense of who you are. As long as you allowed this inaccurate or only partial sense of who you are to dominate, you could not know or abide in your true nature.

Your ego sense is so powerful — you invest it with so much of your thought and feeling — that your attitudes of life become based on an egocentric perspective. The ego gains a progressively greater foothold on your entire life because your basic attitudes about your existence and essential nature are strongly linked with ego.

Then, your ego sense, due to your suffering or your limitations in life, wants to have more power over circumstances and a more pleasant life. The ego sense often becomes motivated to seek higher consciousness and, thus, greater ability to dominate in life. Not always, but often, it is the ego sense which most eagerly pursues higher consciousness. It wants to be in charge; it wants to manipulate events and make life come out more to its satisfaction. But, as long as your ego dominates, it is on a collision course with your true nature and your higher consciousness. There’s going to be a showdown. There has to be a confrontation sometime if your higher consciousness is ever to emerge, if you are ever to know truly who you are and what your human capabilities are.

Furthermore — and this is extremely important, especially in understanding the dark night of the soul — your ego, as it develops from childhood onward, has the conviction that it is the doer. Generally, your ego assumes that it chooses what your mind will think, and chooses what your heart will feel. It feels it selects the various actions and activities you are going to undertake. Your sense of self, being convinced it is the doer, feels it accomplishes anything and everything in your life. Do you see, then, how the dark night develops? A false sense of self has been ignorantly and manipulatively standing in the way of enlightenment.

Additionally, until you are consolidated in higher consciousness, your ego can return and reestablish control if you let it. Sometimes when you’re fatigued or when you have special, new opportunities in life, you are vulnerable to the reestablishment of your ego and its opinion that it is in charge of doing everything. It will again eclipse the higher consciousness until you recognize what has happened. Then you must courageously and consciously reaffirm your true nature, and deal with the upstart, old ego. Otherwise, another dark night phase will again develop.

Attempts of the Ego

A person seeking higher consciousness is, in effect, and with intensity, seeking the transformation of his own ego. He is seeking to end the tyranny of the ego and abide in his true nature, instead of a false nature concocted through experiences and emotional inputs during the process of life. While it is true these inputs have a value in subjecting you to new experiences and so offer unique learning situations, they often give you a delusory sense of self. You are not your mistake. Even a murderer can change and become a new being.

Still, as you progress toward higher consciousness, your ego may not be humbling and daily transforming itself. You may, instead, have a highly developed ego which is sure that it is causing the events of higher consciousness to unfold bit by bit. Your ego, after all, can be very interested in the attributes of higher consciousness, in meditation and association with enlightened beings. Your ego feels gratification and satisfaction in moving on down the road toward higher consciousness.

Your ego may also have the opinion that, because of its grasp of matters, it will one day establish or — by its thought process and feelings —bring about enlightenment and awakening. It is convinced that it will achieve higher consciousness. This is ironic because by the time of the dark night, the ego is the main obstacle; it is the obstruction of the light of consciousness. It stands between you and your fulfillment. In fact, the length of your dark night is based on the truculence and cunning of your ego. It can fight a very lengthy battle if it fears it’s going to be destroyed or will have to give in to something so much greater than it knows itself to be.

Incredibly, your ego wants to be in on the act of enlightenment. Ego wants to bring about higher consciousness by its own dramatic means. Certainly, it doesn’t want to be granted fulfillment by a power outside of itself. Convinced that it is the doer, your ego holds on for dear life — until that event called the dark night of the soul, when your ego awakens to the profound fact it cannot cause or bring about higher consciousness.

Ego cannot, by its will or any other skills whatever, create the wholeness of heart which will end your deep suffering. In a sense your ego recognizes itself — in the dark night — to be the disease. It recognizes that its foothold on your mind and heart has, at an advanced stage on your path, proven a great numbing agent and a high stone wall against the light. Ego stands against the fulfillment of your faith and the realization of your profoundest yearnings. Finally your ego has found something it cannot do and, in the dark night of the soul, it becomes totally convinced it is inadequate. It cannot deal with your suffering or the fulfillment of the heart’s yearning. Nothing it can do, think, say, buy, or travel to, will in any way suffice.

Dawn of a New Life

Here in this dark night, the lifelong ego sense dies: impotent. Having fulfilled its part, now weak and incompetent, it is dissolved — transmuted. From a higher sense now awakening within you, you slough off your false sense of self. You now know yourself to be a different person than you thought you were. Your ego was merely experiencing some of the attributes, some of the qualities, of your true nature, while at the same time obstructing others.

You, in passing successfully through the dark night, enter the realms of higher consciousness. You’ve been cleansed of the most deep-rooted sickness: your ignorance of your true nature and your inadequate, often totally wrong opinion of who you are. You now cease your inner conflict and abide serenely in your true nature. The night is over. The dawn of a new life in higher consciousness transforms your bleak life of the past few months into one with a heavenly nature. You have been delivered of the intolerable bondage to ego.

Henceforth, you will walk the earth seeing others afresh, living a new life, and abiding in your true nature. You have become a son or daughter of higher consciousness. Now your words and actions will be attuned with your true self. Now you express inspiration and comfort.

The dark night has passed. It is over.

REFLECTION

What must the caterpillar do that it may one day fly?

-------------------------Ravyn

16

South Georgia 1980-1987 anyone?

by SpiceItUp in

.

if the towns of eulogna, crescent, st simons island, brunswick are familiar to you then you may have known me.. please email me or respond here.

thanks.. spice

Ravyn

George Pangburn. He is schizophrenic. He ran off with another woman in 1985-86 and because he claimed to be of the anointed he was determined apostate. But after being DFd for about 8 yrs he got around the whole mess by making up some absurd story about my mother being gay and they reinstated him and he is currently back 'in'---but he has been inactive for 10 yrs or so and is a real nutcase. changed his whole history. He now claims to have been in Viet Nam and all sorts of outrageous crap. I try to stay away from him unless he and my stepmother give my mom and sister $hit. He was so idolized by WR cong. He could have started his own religion easy.

I barely remember your grandmother. I would have been older than you, who knows--I may have even babysat you! LOL I was 17-18 when I was there in 79-80.

Terry married Kim Morrison. They have been out for years and years and still live in WR. They had a sick baby and the elders were very unsupportive and suggested they let the baby die and wait for it to be resurrected and they called it quits. The baby is now in college I think and just fine.It has been a couple of years since I spoke to them on the phone.

Yes! Bobby Spires! LOL he was a baby. But I remember he gave me one of his grad pics and I carried it for yrs. in my wallet. Whatever happened to Pam and Lyle Wilkins do you know? He was an elder but she was just barely hanging on in the Borg and I always hoped they got out. Their nephew, Richard Blocker(his real last name was Aides) was my first lust. He was a bad bad boy, part of the attraction I think. My girlfriend was Susan Brown(now Lanier) and I don't remember which one of your uncles she dated...but we used to call them the Rootbeer Brothers....

The other names you mention sound so familliar...but I can't place the names with faces. I have only been to 27 other congregations in 5 other states since WR.

I will email when I have a spare moment...my husband got hurt on the job 2 weeks ago and he is a bad patient now that he is starting to heal.

Ravyn