Leaderboard

The first rule of way corps training is: you do not talk about way corps training The second rule of way corps training is: you better remember the first rule

Quite a bit also depends on your own background and how supportive that is. TWI will adjust its strategies to deal with individuals' insecurities.

Wow. Are those twins wrapped in cellophane the 472nd Way Corps?

PFAL/TWI is very far from being "inert." It 'erts people all the time, in so many ways. And like cellophane, or any other form of plastic round the face, we know how suffocatingly dangerous it can be. And by and large it's unrecyclable. Just like most of PFAL is unrecyclable into either its constituent parts or into use elsewhere - in life or church settings. It's just landfill waste.

I remember being able to buy 7up (I loved it) from a vending machine for a nickel (or maybe a dime), when I was a kid. But I'm confident my parents never put any of it (or anything with caffeine) in my baby bottles. However, years later, decades really, the realization of tooth damage from Diet Mt Dew, and progressively becoming sensitive to consuming anything with sugar in it opened my eyes just like when I left twi I could see much more clearly and learn so much more.

In some sense the overt and covert operations of TWI were entwined. Indoctrination is not an overnight process. Usually, a person does not knowingly join a harmful and controlling cult. The road in may best be described as a subliminal acclimatizing process – where a newcomer finds something - or someone attractive in the group and so they make themselves mentally adjust to the prevailing ideas, attitudes, and behavior to fit in. To someone who has never had the experience of being indoctrinated into a harmful and controlling cult – the stuff they read about on Grease Spot Café probably sounds preposterous and almost unbelievable. It’s understandable that people who have never been in TWI – never taken any of their classes or participated in their programs find all this stuff so astounding - and that anyone would buy into it. To understand how TWI-followers get to the point of being unaware of wierwille’s licentious and malicious nature is to understand how a sexual predator can be hidden in plain sight. It is by masking his nature in the guise of a man of God, a teacher of the Bible. It all started with the PFAL class – which had vague and misleading directives like “as long as you follow the two great commandments you can do as you full well please” and the dubious justification of David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba saying “technically all the women of the kingdom belonged to the king”. I believe part of wierwille’s tactic was to run certain ideas up the flagpole to see if it was given a positive reaction. Like with PFAL, if you sat through the whole class and didn’t balk at anything – then everything is cool. If you stick around and continue to come to Twig fellowships – that’s even better! Then you’ll probably be encouraged to take the class again – for review – no charge this time, of course. Then on to other classes that continue to reinforce the idea that wierwille is THE authority on Bible stuff – and anything else in life. Thus, if newcomers respond favorably to the initial “experiment” of malignant ideas, then many other soft-sell tactics come into play which subtly persuades them to buy into more of TWI’s ideology…And realistically there’s no one cut-and-dried method for ensnaring folks in a harmful and controlling cult. There are so many variables to consider like one’s personality, social needs…usually new recruits are young and naïve so critical thinking skills are not really developed…and the road to indoctrination is not shock therapy but rather a gradual immersion… …it’s like a prolonged seductive intoxicating “romance”…a cult luring neophytes to take bigger and bigger sips of the Kool-Aid…using manipulative tactics like love-bombing, the subtle influence of peer pressure and groupthink......claiming to provide solid answers about life, having a purpose, God, politics, marriage, finances…whatever! ...sadly, those with low self-esteem (like myself) are often drawn to a cult-environment where they seem to be readily accepted – people with low self-esteem are usually easier to break mentally / emotionally. “Fortunately” for them the cult is there as just the perfect supportive environment they’ve been looking for – and along those lines a cult member can learn to feel superior to those not in the cult – an us-versus-them mentality develops and a cult follower starts isolating themselves from family and friends not in the cult – and eventually the new social ties within the cult satisfy a basic desire we all have – to belong…...a TWI-follower's personal boundaries are softened and eventually encroached by certain upper leadership who have a penchant to take advantage of their own position of power and authority. Sometimes I recall the awkward social interactions shortly after my wife and I made our exit from TWI official (we had sent letters to LCM and the Rome City campus coordinator – informing them we resigned from our corps assignment and would no longer associate with TWI. And it’s not like we didn’t give them a chance to explain things – since several months earlier we had written them and asked very specific questions about the issues we were concerned with - but all we got for a response from LCM was "I hope we can win your trust again"). I was also done with the hemming and hawing over current issues, dubious policies / procedures, the “spiritualizing“ of situations and everyone assuming PFAL was the silver bullet for this complicated catastrophe – that was the usual gist in previous phone conversations and letters to our corps brothers and sisters and sponsors. What’s really painful is remembering the various responses from most of our fellow corps – most were a bit taken aback by our official exit. Some of the backlash rhetoric we heard: “you’ve been tricked by the devil”…”you’re entertaining devil spirits”…”you’re copouts”…”possessed”…”you have chosen oblivion”… …mind you, this was in phone conversations and letters… …I imagine if these were face-to-face conversations – they might have looked at us like we were from another planet.

Speaking of wierwille’s schemes to invert Christianity – a big one that stands out to me is how he stood the simple idea of prayer on its ear… he changed everything about it as far as the uncomplicated version one finds presented throughout the Bible. wierwille introduced a new model for prayer. Remember in PFAL – I think it was even a listening with a purpose question in the class syllabus. to receive anything from God what must you know? wierwille listed 5 things. The first one was – you must know what’s available…I wonder where he got that idea. It wasn’t from the Bible. As a matter of fact, the Bible indicates that’s NOT a prerequisite: Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us Ephesians 3:20 KJV The Amplified version is even more emphatic about us NOT needing to know what’s available: Now to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly more than all that we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or dreams], according to His power that is at work within us, Ephesians 3:20 Amplified Another one on his list that I find repugnant is you have to have your needs and wants parallel. Who says?!?! It sounds like another salesman’s gimmick. What if I don’t need or want what wierwille says I need or want?

Thanks, Rocky! Don’t know about being divinely inspired…but I will say this – it’s either a blessing or a curse the way this silly stuff just pops into my head…and I mean it’s lightning fast! I can look at a picture or movie scene – like the film Fight Club – I used in the starter post…immediately off the wall stuff comes to mind – like what if going into the way corps was a weird Twilight Zone-esque coming of age story – a person’s transition from being young and naïve to being an adult and going into a cult’s leadership training program. It's not that I think my stuff is awfully funny – I just have to make fun of something so awful…maybe like gallows humor…I strive to be sarcastically on point. no brag – just fact – I have always had a very active imagination…you shove something in front of my eyeballs and it’s like giving a little kid a bunch of crayons and saying you can go ahead and draw all over that wall…and when it’s something supposedly “sacrosanct” about TWI – that’s like giving the kid a bunch of crayons and yet forbidding him to draw on the walls…that’s the flash of rebellious inspiration I get hit with…but then it takes me a long time to refine that for my target – which in this case is about The Way. Oh, and I don’t mean to bogart this thread - all Grease Spotters are welcome to participate – that would be even more fun…Bolshevik discovered my nasty habit on another thread - Being on-call and other misadventures - and he asked about the rules, boundaries and what not. And I told him “Rules…schmules…there ain’t no rules here…just don’t get political or QAnon-esque. My formula is I look for unusual pictures then I try to come up with the story behind the picture…Feel free to do what you want…I just start these things to amuse myself and I get tickled when someone else participates”. I say again – calling all Grease Spotters – get your crayons out – this wall is for you!

I think the lockbox thing that wierwille promoted was a bad idea…it was like putting yourself in solitary confinement for a crime you did not commit.

I remember the time Craig berated one of my corps sisters over her new hairdo. What immediately came to mind was something wierwille use to say: when you point a finger at someone else there are three fingers pointing back at you.

There was an uneasy silence over some of the things wierwille said and did while I was in the way corps…it was like the elephant in the classroom…no one mentioned or wanted to discuss the inappropriateness or depravity of it I guess because it made some of us feel uncomfortable and would show us at odds with the acceptable way corps culture.

Severe narcissism is an arrested development at a young age, is my understanding. Which is why I mentioned juvenile stage. I believe VPW'S cult was his way of using people to worship his inner world, to acquire narcissistic supply. Religious language is used to describe that battle of appeasing the inner critic, the metaphorical tyrannical parent of that underdeveloped baby. I think it's there in the Wayspeak. LCM is imitating his twisted relationship with VPW in his "teachings". IMO.

Oh yeah – you nailed it Bolshevik! An alarming aspect of TWI-follower’s/big PFAL-fans’ fascination with demonology is the amount of control it affords cult-leaders. They elevate consequences for disobedience to the most frightening level. TWI-leadership used the fear of devil spirits, fear of getting possessed and fear of the power and influence exercised by those supposedly “born of the seed of the serpent” the way some parents use the boogeyman to frighten their kids into parental-approved behavior. To NOT follow TWI-guidelines or even worse to recklessly oppose TWI-leadership is to risk punishment from Satan’s minions. That’s something wierwille/Craig did to keep us trapped inside their theological box. We didn’t need to fear what the adversary could steal from us or do to us since wierwille/Craig already stole... or sabotaged our greatest asset – the ability to THINK and CHOOSE.

He slowly reads the verse and injects so many tangents as he reads it, how do you truly follow it without giving in? . . . Immediately frames it in us versus them (senses versus the spiritual) . . . A heavy, condescending, cadence, . . . You're just waiting for the body slam like it's a wresting match

I might explode.

There was this thing in some Monty Python skits, where a woman would say nothing all through the skit, while some strange problem appeared, and was eventually dealt with. As soon as the crisis was over, she spoke up- and started the whole thing rolling again. Everyone looked at her with anger, and she burst out, crying "But it's my only line!" So, without her line, she had nothing else to do there, so even if it was bad, she had to say it or she was useless and irrelevant. Even if the line was useless or worse. "They all just cannot let go of telling people they have the truth. Sheesh.... just go and live life!" But, but.....it's their only line!