I am very sad to hear about this. Mouthy was a very nice person who was one of the ones that welcomed me and treated me properly when I first started posting. She was a class act all the way.
Brock Talon
JoinedPosts by Brock Talon
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137
Mouthy has Passed Away
by Simon inupdate on mouthy (grace gough)this is graces granddaughter.
i wanted to send an update that today my beautiful grandmother passed away - surrounded by friends and family.
- may 22 1927 - sept 2nd 2016. mouthys_granddaughter.
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Brock Talon
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25
Did Crisis of Conscience find a market or did it lumber along until the copies ran out?
by TerryWalstrom incuriosity.i would think c of c was the grand-daddy of all the ex-jw books.is there any way to know for sure how many copies sold?
over what span of time before the 1st edition ended?
why did it peter out of print if it was a perennial seller?today, every tom, dick, and jasper has self-published the bleeding wound, 1st person singular, true confessional version of their own fall from grace.
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Brock Talon
CreateSpace reports I've sold 498 paperbacks since my first book was published, so that's about 180 a year or about 15 a month. Regarding Kindle, that is more difficult to estimate because of the sales and the unlimited being separate, but I'd say I sold about 50 books a month this last quarter. My books actually sell less over time however, they sold more when they were new and #1 in the JW genre.
For those not acquainted, these are my two books:
Journey to God's House: www.amazon.com/Journey-Gods-House-Headquarters-Witnesses-ebook/dp/B00EEIWUFW
Escape from Paradise: www.amazon.com/Escape-Paradise-Jehovahs-Witnesses-thirty-five-ebook/dp/B00S292JS2/
That said, those reading this should know I wrote my books to help people, not to make money. One woman recently wrote that she quit her free home Bible study because of my book, so that is very satisfying. While I'm no Ray Franz, I've tried to do my part.
Also, it should be said that I could have spent all that time writing, publishing, etc. making money at my job where one good sale would make as much as years worth of selling books. I figured this would be the case up front and wrote as a labor of love. Finally, I have given all of the money I've made so far on those books to charity.
However, I am now writing my first novel (fiction) tentatively entitled "The Redemption Sect". If I ever can finish it, and if it every makes any money, I'm keeping it!
Brock Talon
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Moral indignation against "faders" shows JW apologists are morally bankrupt
by slimboyfat ini came across this weird blog that castigates fading jws for their "cowardice" and "hypocrisy" for not making themselves vulnerable to shunning.
apparently in the view of this blogger jws who discover it's not the truth are morally obliged to play by the watchtower rules and face the consequences of shunning.. http://jwresearchblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/fading-faking-and-lying-as-unbelieving.html#comment-form.
what is absent from the blog post is any discussion of the statement in the july 2009 awake!, that no one should be made to choose between their beliefs and their family.
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Brock Talon
This is an interesting subject to me. I can totally understand why current JWs hate faders: it takes away their power because faders don't play into the Watchtower rules.
But what I never understood was why some EX JWs are so hard-nosed against faders. Let me tell you my run-in with one:
A woman who goes by the name Sue Taylor on Facebook (AKA littlegirlietaylor) read my first book Journey to God's House and friended me to talk about my book She went on and on about how brilliant the writing was, how I had a "gift" and so on. She gave the book 5 stars on Amazon.com with a wonderful review added and took to championing my book on social media as an ex-JW who thought my book should be read by everyone. Of course, that was all very flattering, so I engaged her in small talk using Facebook messaging thanking her. All was good.
Fast forward about 6 months and I released my second book, Escape from Paradise. One chapter in it explains how I faded from the JWs. Well, this woman went beserk about that. She Facebook messaged me a long rambling message of how I was a fake, that I needed therapy, that I wasn't "true to self" and bunches of other insults about me and my family. She Facebook unfriended me and then wrote a 1 star review on the book. She even changed the previous 5 star review for the first book to a 1 star review and changed the review itself slamming the book she had previously praised.
To top it all off, she went on a rampage of down-voting every good review both of my books had, adding in snide comments on other reviews and so on. She even wrote "The Society" about me and then called the Police on me when I responded to her abuse telling her she was out of line. She was so nuts I had to report her to Amazon and they eventually took down everything she did because they could see she was abusing the review policy.
But what set her off was the one paragraph in my second book where I simply stated I chose to fade rather than disassociate myself, explaining why I did it. That simply infuriated her.
Since then, I've watched out for other ex-JWs who resent faders. It's not a lot, but there are some.
To me they seem to resent it that they disassociated themselves or got disfellowshipped and suffered over it and they feel that faders "cheat" the system and don't have to pay the price they paid.
Well, I want to say to any potential fader-haters out there who might be reading this that EVERYONE pays a price for leaving the JWs. Some pull the band aid off quickly, others slowly, but it hurts either way. Faders have many reasons for fading, but don't think they don't suffer. It's just done in a different way. It may be that some faders may suffer even worse than many non-faders.
So if this is you (an ex-JW fader-hater) please, ease up. Just be happy you're out and stop resenting others who may have got out differently than you.
Brock Talon -
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Brock Talon
I dunno. When I gaze at my wife's fine badonkadonk, I be thinkin He put a LOT of work into that spectacular feat of engineering...
Looks like preferential treatment to me...
Just sayin...
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Dan Sydlik
by done4good inmorning warship - he was the only restraint and i'm not saying that lightly.
i know there are a dozen others here who were in bethel back in the early 2000's who know what i'm talking about.
he actually kept me thinking this was jehovah's org because of his sincerity as if the holy spirit was operating in him.
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Brock Talon
Excerpt from my book "Journey to God's House" - Chapter "My GB can lick your GB"
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Back in those days, two other Governing Body members George Gangas and Dan Sydlik were still alive and walked the Bethel halls as well. These two Governing Body members could not have been more different from each other. Now, keep in mind when reading the following stories that Governing Body members were practically worshiped among Jehovah's Witnesses, as there was no one higher on the JW food chain than they were. Besides, it was thought that they had a direct line of communication with God Himself. How could you be bigger than that? It was like hobnobbing with Moses or Abraham.
Dan Sydlik at the time usually played the voice of God in most of the convention dramas. (As mentioned before, conventions were large annual gatherings of Jehovah's Witnesses.) The JWs who ran these conventions often re-enacted various Bible stories through mini plays (called dramas) and everybody in these dramas dressed up like ancient Israelites to make the stories more realistic. Those dramatic stories were retold through realistic sets, acting, music, and so on. It turns out that Brother Sydlik used to be the favorite voice of God in these dramas since he was a large man with a big booming voice, not unlike what it might sound like if you took the actor James Earl Jones and plugged him into an amplifier.
I can practically hear Sydlik now in the drama about Moses and the burning bush: "Moeeeses, Moeeeeses! Do not coooome neeeear heeeere. Remoooove the saaandals from your feeeet."
Dan Sydlik had a very self confident, outgoing personality. He walked powerfully and spoke with authority, even more so than most of the other GB. He also had a wife about half his age, which always tickled us young Bethelites. At least one GB was probably having hot sex in their room, we thought.
One day he gave a special invitation-only "New Boys" talk to us first year Bethelites. In this talk, he mentioned that we all needed to "roooound out our personaaaalities because Jehoooovah doesn't like squaaaare things." He said, "Look at naaaature, nothing is square in naaaature, this shows God loves smoooothness." Interesting I thought. I went up to him after that talk and making my way through the crowd surrounding him, I said:
Me: Loved the talk Brother Sydlik. But, regarding the square things in nature issue, I can think of something square in nature.
Sydlik: [eyeballs me for a second] Ohhhhhhh? Whaaaat?
Me: [confidently] Sodium Chloride. Table salt. It's a perfect cube. [I smile]
Sydlik: [grabs my tie and pulls me closer to his face] Whaaat's your naame boooy? If you're wronnng, there's a job chaaange in it for you! [playing at being mad]
Crowd: HaHaHaHa.
Me: [smiling, knowing he is playing] My name is Brock, sir. And it's Sodium Chloride. [now tickled pink with this]
Sydlik: [letting go of me seeing as I am getting the joke that he's pretending to be mad at me] Har, har, har! Gooood one boy! [walks off]
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I liked both Sydlik and Gangas, as they were real people and did and acted pretty much as they pleased, but in a good way. They seemed completely oblivious to the stodgy, careful, and calculated way many "Bethel Heavies" handled themselves. ("Heavies" meant important people like the GB or the many Bethel "committee" members.) They also seemed to have a genuine love of people that I didn't see in many of the other prominent Bethelites at that time.
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Brock
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BEWARE - More force adding on FB
by JRK inthey are doing it again.. a new group trying to boost membership is adding people without permission.. "ex-jehovah's witnesses aka behind the veil of jw.org" added me this afternoon.
they were bragging about how quickly they grew to over 2000 members.
i quickly exited the group.
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Brock Talon
Tim Nasson force-added me to one of his Facebooks groups, and then blasted me with F-bomb laden rantings multiple dimes a day through it. He subsequently dropped me from the group within a few days.
The reason he dropped me was because he thought I was involved in one of the many mean-spirited fights he picks with random people. So, he left me a vulgar message as he "banned me" from his group, one I didn't consent to join in the first place.
I never really got a word in edge-wise.Not that any of it really mattered.
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Brock Talon
Beauty and the Beast. -
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Thought control - sexual fantasizing is wrong - May 2016 Watchtower
by Listener in>>the bible reveals that jehovah issaddened when people pursue a wick-ed course and ‘the inclination of theirthoughts is only bad all the time.’ (readgenesis 6:5, 6.
) from this we can per-ceive that sexual fantasizing is wrongbecause it can lead to serious sin that isforbidden in the scriptures and is out ofharmony with jehovah’s way of think-ing.the disciple james wrote: “the wis-dom from above is first of all pure, thenpeaceable, reasonable, ready to obey,full of mercy and good fruits, impar-tial, not hypocritical.” (jas.
3:17) beingaware of this, we should be moved toreject entertainment that fuels impurethoughts and inclinations.
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Brock Talon
Sorry Listener, I didn't get your question. I was kind of distracted by that tutu you're wearing in your picture and, um... never mind.
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Honestly, Did Jehovah's Witnesses Do Anything POSITIVE For You?
by minimus ini was raised as a witness and am very thankful that i am out.
having said that, i think my upbringing produced positive qualities in me.
do you believe that anything positive came from your being a witness?
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Brock Talon
Yes. I have a chapter in my book Escape from Paradise called "Good things can come in small minded packages". The premise of the chapter was to explain all the meetings we did and how they helped me in the end. The one that actually was useful was the ministry school and learning how to be a public speaker. I think I started that school at 8 years old and it had a positive effect on me.
By the time I was older and went to college I was able to do effective public communication even though I took more courses on public speaking and even joined Toastmasters. I was always kind of ahead of my classmates in those courses because I was a JW and we all just did public speaking as a matter of course.
The hard lessons I learned from that "ministry school" has paid off for me even up to today. I do public speaking now for my work and I thank in part the JWs for that skill. Yes, I realize I could have learned it from some other place in some other way, but still, I learned it from the JWs.
The other related meeting was the Service Meeting which in part helped me to learn how to overcome objections, create "pitches", practice what you are going to say to "sell" someone, etc.. These are basic sales skills that also proved to be useful to me later in my life, especially at work. I suppose if I didn't need those skills in my job now, I wouldn't notice this, but the fact of the matter for me is I do need them.
So, I do give those elders credit where it's due because good things CAN come in small minded packages.
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Do you cut more slack for XJW's ?
by Phizzy ini find that when i meet people i tend to be very relaxed and will assess them eventually, but i don't want any jw judgmental nonsense, so i allow them a lot of "slack", and take them as they are etc etc.. this has been fine with normal people who have never been a jw, and i have had no problems.. but i find my judgment has been awry with some xjw's, i tend to think that they will have gone through a similar journey to me, and therefore they will have determined, like me, to be a much better person than i was as a jw.. but just the odd xjw has caught me out, and despite giving them many chances, i have found that they are toxic, and simply not the kind of person i wish to have in my life.. i suppose this is down to my naivety, but i just thought that they might have wished to turn out better, not so it seems.. i have to say this is actually the exception, nearly every xjw i know is actually rather lovely, and loving, but not all.
silly me, still hoping for paradise i suppose..
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Brock Talon
I think leaving that very controlling religion just allows people to be who they really are. It's sort of like when people drink too much: some are nice drunks, others mean drunks, some get weepy or horny, others want to fight, curse and break things. The loss of inhibition in either case simply allows people to exercise their id. So I don't assume anything in regards to what to expect when I encounter an ex-JW, they will be who they will be, and my common past experiences with them may mean absolutely nothing.