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So glad for all of the previous insights!!! Was thinking this a.m. that in '74 I took PFull-of- class at a family camp in NY, then Renewed mind class camp, and a week later took CF&S at an Ohio camp. (The Wow's in southern VA had not signed up anyone else but myself and a co-worker who I talked in to accompanying me to the P-fil camp that year.) Thus, I was hood-winked into plenty of error and idolizings, along with some good Bible, sure. But being clobbered over the head and fire-hosed with vpw's doctrinal slants, and being introduced to such nit-pickings as how many crosses or cock crow

I like to think I wouldn't have gotten involved, either. Truth is, though, it was 50 years ago. I'm not the same person now that I was then. Don't beat yourself up over decisions you made so long ago.

Good morning, GreaseSpotters! This is Charlene chiming in thank Rocky for posting this link to what is in fact my FINAL public talk. For what I say about that: Visit: Charlene's Last Public Cult Talk | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com) I'm here also to thank Pawtucket for risking so much, giving so much, putting up with so much as he's hosted this venue for so many years. Aren't we lucky we can meet here to share our stories, get info, and offer each other support! Cheers to you, brave ones!

Am I the only one who thinks Bullinger's Figures of Speech sound a WHOLE LOT like Harry Potter spells? Condescensio! Hypocatastasis! Asyndeton! Polysyndeton! Expecto-Runaroundem!

Hello Mike. I've kinda missed you round here. Could always rely on you to make a point that would stir up Cafe denizens. Was wondering what had happened to you. You went away to study PFAL more deeply, I think. Well, no desire from me to study PFAL. Oh, I wish you could read it in the original! Maybe try deep-reading the two principal books that VPW plagiarised? I doubt TWI is really "moving back to the original PFAL class." Far too dated.

Oh I’m always aware of that, Rocky ... and I figure I’ll have some fun too by poking holes in ridiculous arguments and pseudo-spiritual nonsense.

Make it the Bodeans and you've got a deal. P.S. Everyone fakes tongues. Every. Last. One. ;)

This might be a good time FOR ME to apologize to all of GSC for SOOOOOO much wasted time.

That vending machine analogy brings to mind the frustration many TWI-believers have to deal with...some folks think it helps to add a little body English to their believing .... visual aid - adding body English to your believing

Mike, what have you learned from your last few years? What specifically have you learned from PFAL that you didn't learn from the Bible itself? It's good that you're hanging out with other people. How loving, kind, patient, and giving, are these people you hang out with now? Apart from the Deadheads, are you hanging out with any genuine, practising, Christians, from churches and other organisations in your area? How do you see Christ working out in their lives? What do they do that exemplifies Christ to the wider population (rather than debating)? I have a hard time seeing

Really? There aren't very many responses to John J's original post on this thread. Here's the main highlight: watch the video then give us you specific impressions.

That's it.

Thank you for the welcome! I have had a few talks, yes. I think they recognize that where we were at HQ, it wasn't the best place in the world to be a child. I'm almost certain that they still believe in a good number of TWI's teachings, so they might have some inner conflict with that. I'm very much not still in. To be quite honest even if I said that I missed a good portion of my summers, I probably would have done similar things to what we did during the play time, just in the comfort of my own or somebody else's home. Minus the bible teachings and some of the games we played outside.

Welcome to Grease Spot, Just A Guy! Sorry I can’t help you concerning your time frame. I left in 1986. The only thing that might be remotely related to your request is to tell you that during my two years of in-residence Family Way Corps training in Rome City I was assigned to day care for a block – my group was called the Cheerful Givers. That was probably one of my favorite job assignments since we had a lot of leeway on designing our own activities and I got into hanging out with little kids anyway. My wife often complains she’s married to a three year old. I am sorry for your t

Dear Annio, Good heavens ... I just read your post about being sexually abused in TWI. I'm so sorry you suffered all that disgusting crap. Please know I'm sending loving thoughts your way and so admire your courage in speaking out. I only wish the guilty ones, especially VPW, had gone to jail. Perhaps in the future a group of those abused might be able to organize and file a lawsuit. But all that seems so difficult. Sigh. Best wishes for your continued healing, Annio. Cheers to you, brave woman. Charlene

The funny thing about this is that it puts George and myself in the wrong generations- it puts George in Gen X and myself in the Boomers. Doesn't mean anything, but it amuses me. :)

Kudos to you Annio for being courageous to share your experiences and views of those predatory pigs...it raises awareness and concern...voices like yours are a secret weapon that those creeps never anticipated...makes me think of a bunker-buster bomb - - speaking out penetrates the hypocrisy and blasts open their depraved subculture...I wish you good health, happiness and recovery.

Rocky, thanks for posting that ! Listening to Charlene is very comforting...As always in her book, blog, GSC posts and this interview, she comes across as being so relatable - which for me demystifies and destigmatizes how people can fall prey to a harmful cult.

I'll see your little dictator and raise you one big fascist

We can call it... wait for it... The ExWay Tree!

Grace – I know what you mean – I have thought the same thing myself many times…but the thing is, we are not all-knowing beings – so we are bound to make lots of mistakes. Actress Helen Mirren said something I thought was profound after winning an award (she’s won a lot of awards : Academy, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy, Tony – so I don’t recall the occasion - but anyway she said) “If it were all truly known and planned and determined, life wouldn’t be worth living, just a giant to-do list waiting to be crossed off…” Something I wrote on another thread( see here ) got into “counterf

This post is golden, Waysider !!!!!!! “I'm not the same person now that I was then.” Wow! There’s something to that – and I don’t think about that as often as I should…A while back I reconnected with an old friend (by phone and email – since we live several states apart now) someone who was a good friend of mine from high school. We went on to separate colleges but still hung out together. It was about two and a half years into college that I got involved with TWI – and when I started witnessing to…and inadvertently scaring off…and sometimes even writing off my non-way friends. Long

T-Bone, yes! I agree with you, and Rocky. Future generations, need to know about cults, like TWI, so they don't get trapped in them. I wish I had known years ago, that the TWI was a cult. If I had known, I would never have gotten involved with it.

The museum idea came to me because of events last year around the country regarding removal of confederate monuments, which became a controversial issue. During a zoom meetup with historians facilitated by the Arizona Historical Society, some of them opposed removal. Others recommended the artifacts be preserved in museums dedicated to putting them in historical context so people now and in the future would better understand the changing times in our country. I'm all for preserving them, despite twi's practice of burning books and other objects they consider dangerous. Putting twi (and o

Not an endorsement of their message, but these gals are much more enjoyable to watch than the Renewed Mind singers.

I left twice. In 1982 I got married without the "blessing" of "leadership" with the added bonus of having failed to secure enough Corps sponsorship to get accepted into the 13th Corps. I got into a few arguments with the Limb Leader over various things and stopped going to Way functions. However, in my heart and mind I still believed it all and just chalked up the problems to bad leadership. Around 1990 my wife and I started considering going back. We were unaware of the turmoil that had been occurring. My oldest step son was about the right age for PFAL so we signed him up and started,

In 1675, in a letter to his rival Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton wrote “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”…in 2021 a verbose post tried to reference that by gravitating towards the optics of what the sum of TWI-offshoots might add up to: If they have seen further into the darkness, it is by standing on the shoulders of sycophants who have had their heads up wierwille’s a$$.

Brandeis made his famous statement that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” in a 1913 Harper’s Weekly article, entitled “What Publicity Can Do.” But it was an image that had been in his mind for decades. Twenty years earlier, in a letter to his fiance, Brandeis had expressed an interest in writing a “a sort of companion piece” to his influential article on “The Right to Privacy,” but this time he would focus on “The Duty of Publicity.” He had been thinking, he wrote, “about the wickedness of people shielding wrongdoers & passing them off (or at least allowing them to pass th

Unruhka, I dont get into these forums much, as I did years ago. I still can't believe you made this post almost a year ago before I noticed it. I know about flashbacks. Not just my own but from several survivor friends. My best survivor friend, the one who helped me break my silence in 2017 (about my 1979 assault). was raped repeatedly by her older brother, also decades ago. In the long process of her recovery, she eventually co-founded a national child abuse fighting organization, and knows a lot. She knew, for exakmple, that despite my assault taking place at age 29, the effects of this cult

It has come to my attention that the Greasespot Poster known as Sudo has passed away. I have not independently verified this but it comes from a source I would trust to announce my own passing. Sudo was a Waydale/Greasespot original, a passionate defender of logic, reason and common sense. He had a delightful sense of humor and not an ounce of bigotry in his body. He loved believers, though he was not one of them. He did not have a hateful bone in his body. Rather, he was someone who sought to help people in their journey, whether that journey was out of the Way or out of religion al

I don't know a lot about the Way International as far as inner workings. I know what I've read and what I experienced as a child. I've lived with what happened since the early 80's. It happened between the ages of 7-10. I came here several years ago to tell my story and was immediately called a liar. Some did support me, but the experience traumatized me and I left the forums. I'm back because I can't believe more information does not exist. I know that at least one incident happened at Camp Gunnison, in one of the rooms with bunk beds. When I found the group on Facebook, I recognized

As I've said before, it took me over 15 years to come to this site and then join and post, and I only pop in sporadically and then post in spurts. The same goes for the R&R Facebook group: I had asked to join two years ago and had made candid remarks in one of the original posts and left it. The good thing to come of it was that Lewellyn Hallett friended me on FB. Prompted by remarks I read here yesterday, and remembering what a total smarmy gratuitous kiss up Michael Fort is, I decided to take a peek today. Sure enough, a Way-style sanitizing has been done of all the comments there. Co

So.......how much divergence of the wierwille-doctrine can you have and still be considered "a wierwille follower?" Muddy the waters all you want..........but if you weren't in "The Way" then you were out of fellowship. As ex-corps, can you throw away all the corps letters and teachings .........and still be deemed in the top tier of spiritual status? If the corps.....er, ex-corps don't uphold the standards that wierwille taught.......then, advanced class grads and ex-corps are on EQUAL footing. Umm...............same goes for ex-reverends. You can't claim reverend s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekL7o8BQkZM

How long before someone posts on GSC......... "I left the Revival and Restoration Group, and here's why......."

On one hand.......splintering does have its "advantages." It awakens some from the cult to break away from the deep-seated bondage and captivity of twi.......and later, they find out that their offshoots encounter the same problems and cultish ways (i.e. geerites, CES, CFF....). One person here at GSC recently posted that s/he had been with twi for 14 years.....and then, with a Geer group for 18 years (before leaving in 2005). So, offshoots can add a mixture of advantages/disadvantages to the mix. Ugh. But on the other hand.......it divides families. For decades, families have been d

Yeah, Raf........it is a blanket statement, because (obviously) none of us have looked into every splinter group out there. But.....the way I see it, a splinter group is one that has people who've split from twi and want to continue in "the Word as wierwille taught them", and/or research the rightly-divided word" utilizing pfal material, and/or band together in home fellowships to embrace the nostalgia of the early days of twi. I'm sure that there are other derivatives "of fellowship" out there who may have drifted to more church-oriented doctrines, but have basic relationships and frien

Absolutely and completely RIGHT ON!!! Thank you Skyrider!