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Only if you choose to see it that way.

Everything to do with the human condition has limits. No such thing as "unconditional inclusion". Lia and Dylan learned the hard way. Inclusion has it's minimums too....we're seeing a lot of that. We could use more inclusion rather than less.

The crux of the issue here is not whether cancer is spirit possession or is not spirit possession. The heart of the matter is whether Wierwille made the claim or didn't. Clearly, he did. No supporting statements are needed. It's on page 22 of the Advanced Class syllabus.

Tell me cancer is a devil spirit without telling me cancer is a devil spirit. Advanced Class, page 22 "They *(devil spirits)* lodge in your physical body - as diseases that have a life of their own." *Parentheses* added for clarity

I'm surprised you haven't. Below are post by people that have. This is from the first 20 of 86 pages in search. Many of the post had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Now. Mike, how did you manage to stay out of the loop?

Your last sentence seems to be a sticking point for all of the splinter groups. They can’t seem to admit “I was wrong” pursuing the TWI cult and its goals and idolatry. It is interesting the conversation is progressing to the topics of “Love” and “Fear” or “Courage”. These are more common tangible virtual desirable characteristics. Any religion should accomplish the goal of helping the individual to form the best possible version of themselves with respect to developing virtue. In the TWI cult and splinter cults all the effort goes in to propping up the leaders as larger than life as opposed to developing virtue as an individual. It is pretty clear when you examine facts Wierwille was a narcissistic preacher with a sex and alcohol problem who founded a cult of personality as opposed to being de frocked by his denominations slow moving judicial arm for attacking their missionary work and having an affair with his secretary. The facts and human behavior patterns are undeniable. Whereas imagined snowstorms on gas pumps are certainly called into question. I guess there was a part of me that believed the snowstorm story and so I stuck it out with the group for a few decades. But the cognitive dissonance adds up over time and people do not buy the snake oil after a time. Truth comes out. Despite all the whitewash effort which actually represents a bulk of their activity. Want to be a TWI leader? Here is your assigned paint brush and area to whitewash.

If I were attempting to explain NPD to someone preoccupied with devil spirits, to someone whose teeth are stained red with Kool-Aid, I might not use the terms narcissism and NPD. Those terms would be ineffectual and distracting for someone who has fully absorbed. Rather, I might describe NPD as possession and oppression by python spirit, deceiver spirit and charmer spirit -- bullshonta lingo any duped grad could understand. Any advanced class grad would get it, but not really, because the "teaching" on devil spirits is throughly shallow and superficial and contrived.

Yeah, but only the ones who have since forgotten or weren't paying attention in the first place.

My take is he made it up as he went along, as you will notice with supporting the subconscious in PLAF, then claiming there was no such thing in the advanced class.

So personality disorders are devil possession? Now, where have I heard this before? (Looks up page number in Advanced Class syllabus.)

Yep. This is an obvious, actual fact. Beleeef has nothing to do with it. Once seen, it cannot be unseen.

From The Book of Charlie If all the trappings were stripped away, leaving only my true self, who would I be? Am I living fully as that self in every moment? And when it ends, will my story have meaning?” Over the past half century, scientists have studied the relationship between fear and courage, and what they have found tends to confirm the wisdom of the ancient philosophers. Psychologist S. J. Rachman, in his seminal book Fear and Courage, concluded that fear has three components. A feeling of apprehension. A physical response (like a pounding heart, a queasy stomach, a knot of anxiety). And a change in behavior to escape the fear and quiet the response. Courage, Rachman continued, is a deliberate decision to override the change in behavior that is part of fear. The courageous person faces fear, rather than try to escape it. In other words, without fear, there is no courage. One who senses no danger feels no apprehension. One who feels no apprehension has no desire to run away. Lack of fear, in Rachman’s terminology, is not courage. It is simply ignorance of danger. Stoic philosophers have regarded courage as one of the four most important—cardinal—virtues, along with justice, prudence, and self-control. Von Drehle, David. The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man (pp. 134-135). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. I'm fully aware a discussion of fear would fit well in the doctrinal forum. However, I believe fear, just like love, was and probably still is central to the dogma around which Victor Wierwille built his subculture. Which is why I include it here. In PFLAP, Victor taught "fear in the heart of that woman killed her child." I wholeheartedly now believe that to be false doctrine. Without fear -- and facing it head on -- there is no courage, according to SJ Rachman. Intuitively, that makes far more sense to me than anything I ever learned from Victor. Frankly, it was a mindset influenced, if not directly inculcated from Victor Wierwille, that set my emotional and economic growth and progress back probably 30 years or more. That is, even though I began my journey to eradicate my waybrain 30 years ago and less than 20 years after I was tragically mis-programmed with fundamentalist CRAP. I believe now that Victor Wierwille was completely off the mark from the very beginning.

Asking for clarification: now we are looking to Victor Wierwille's beliefs unrelated to biblical anything as to what's true or even godly? Frankly, at this point, I reject the Wierwille-ist framing of the issue. I believe Victor (who wasn't a winner, IMO) latched onto an entrenched but anachronistic religious concept that served (serves) to foster/highlight the divisive nature of the Wierwille private interpretation cult. IOW, I believe, for the most part, the devil spirit influence/possession framing became (sub-)cultural hegemony which served to enable "leaders" to control everyday believers.

Let's get Mikey to try it. He hates everything.