Twinky

How interesting! So PFAL colored glasses must be pink or red, because they certainly made the Red Thread disappear!

Ach, no-one'll buy it if they don't like the notes. Who buys used Bibles with personal notes in anyway? Did you put a disclaimer in it, saying "DO NOT contact TWI"? Can understand it was hard for you to do, have the same problem, also your pondering if it was the right thing to do. If you can still hear LCM preaching, though, cast your mind back to "traveling light" and getting rid of those bad old reminders. If anyone does buy it, they won't have the yelling sessions locked into their brains. Maybe they'll just see Bullinger's notes and it'll spark something for them there. If you're still anxious, buy it back (consider it a donation to Goodwill) and toss it in in a furnace.

People have been M&A'd for so much less. So very much less. Yeah, he'd still be Pres (over what??). Just wondering now if (wherever he's living) he's bought himself a house - with a mortgage!

Aw gee, the more I hear the less I like. So glad I'm not there now. (Guess what, I've got a life. And I'm in charge of it.) Still sorry to hear this about HA, though.

I also met HA a lot of times, and he was *always* very kind and considerate. Grandfatherly. Liked him a lot. No "bad vibes" at all. Thought he was very honest, and that he took time and thought for the believers. He really helped me at a time when things were very difficult, and extended facilities and aid to me in a way that simply "wasn't done" but definitely met my need. A good example to follow. Also thought he had been sorely abused - especially by Chris Ge-r. Of course then I hadn't heard all the stuff about VPW. VPW said HA was always with him. Which makes HA a colluder... (and also subsequently with LCM). I don't have too much difficulty in dealing with the allegations against VPW nor the legals against LCM. I do have some difficulty with thinking that HA was a part of the cover-up. :( Anyway, wasn't it "Uncle Harry" who was the greatest Christian layman"? Or what epithet was applied to him?

Y'know they didn't just control "negative" emotions. Early in rez we were preparing for a big w/e. We'd set up tables, clothes, all sorts of things and the lobbies did look nice. A sp.ptnr had sent me some flowers (how kind!!) and would be in. I was excited about everyone coming in (therefore it must have been early in rez) and whatever this big event was, and went skipping joyfully down the corridor - only to be called back by the Corps Coordinator and being reproved and told, "Dignity - have more dignity". Thought then that was a sad response to being excited about the believers coming in - I thought (but pushed the thought away real quick) of David's wife Michal despising him because he was joying in the Lord and dancing in the street. Sad, or what?

Only six years??! And the little lassie's sentence was - a lifetime??

Unreal!

A mean attitude is a mean attitude. If you started out with a bad attitude, probably the "discipline" of WC made it much worse. The mean things that were said to me sometime echo in my mind, wish they didn't, and still make me angry. They weren't true about me, but they betrayed such a poor attitude from the person saying them, from the time we first met - before we both went WC. He was hard then and is concrete now. Too busy thinking about the specks in their victims' eyes and consistently overlooked the beam in their own eyes. How nice and friendly it can be on the outside!

(This is just an aside. I really liked that link to the Torah discussion that somebody included. Jewish/Rabbinical thinking about a topic. Research, in fact. Obvioulsy with so much being now available on the internet, such "tools" are easier to access. No doubt there is a hard copy available of similar material. Never heard mention of it from The Teacher or The Fairhaired Boy. :blink: Funny that.)

Sunny I did learn all the stuff you describe about Worry from TWI (except the 100 years bit, which I learned from my mom). But as Oldiesman says and I think you too - TWI coupled it with Fear and got us focussed on a double dose of negativity. TWI also discouraged us from looking at things realistically so that we could do positive things where possible to alleviate what might make us worry. They brushed over "What you can know by your five senses, God expects you to know" (hey that's a different thread) and in later years it seems everything came by revelation...

Jeepers, but this is a strange thread. Without having read it all in depth can I just add (a derail really) - was the real Challenging Counterfeit VPW? ( :unsure: ducking for cover). Discuss (WordWolf?? )

Pen, paper, knife and ... something else, with you at all times. Oh yes, nametag. Did you floss your teeth? Did you do your deep breathing exercises? Oh and (from PFAL) - "What you can know by your five senses, God expects you to know" ... but we still know better

Good thread, this. Quiet Thinker: Too right about the "research" - if individuals' work showed something a little different, they didn't have the spiritual understanding. If you asked a question you weren't "meek" enough. Actually most of us probably really were meek enough to the Word, just not meek enough to TWI dogma. ILB: Great post. "Disabling thinking" - maybe we should all wear "Disabled" badges instead of name tags? :blink: My brain has done more thinking and pondering real spiritual issues in the last few months than for years in TWI.

Does the sense of loss go away? My father died over 30 years ago - and I still miss him. The grief is not so sharp. The sense of loss diminishes. Don't know if it vanishes. Still would rather he was here to talk to.-+ I grieved greatly and for far far too long when I first left TWI. Now after only a few months hanging around in GSC the grief and misery have all but gone. Already it seems like a different life. But there are serious deficits as a result. Need to claim the reward of Job, here: get back more than you lost. Someone on another thread said, eat the fish and spit out the bones. If there is "fish" that you can eat from your time in TWI, enjoy! For example, some of the people I knew at TWI post here and friendships have been renewed. Making new friends also. Some of what TWI taught was right - but some was wrong. Still spitting out bones on that. Any choice anyone makes has an "opportunity cost" - if you do this, you can't do that - not without perhaps a lot of backtracking. If you marry A, you can't marry also B. If you train as a doctor, it's a major upheaval to re-train as a ... fashion designer. If you buy a new pair of shoes, maybe you can't also buy a coffee at GSC. Is the sense of loss your opportunity cost? Replace what can be replaced. Some is much harder. Highway Like your posts. Yes, we were complicit - CONplicit perhaps - as in CONNED. Belle Me too. How do you replace some losses? God through his son JC is the healer of broken hearts (karaoke, anyone?)

Good one! Hope, Congratulations on the great escape. Have a drink (or 3) to celebrate.

Well, I have to say I quite enjoyed RoA - once I got past my first one, which was also my first time at HQ and I was apprentice Corps. Couldn't understand why I couldn't go to some of the meetings (working, kitchen duties, washing up, etc, all regular appr Corps duties!!) My second one, I was in IO and appeared to be "overlooked" and not dismissed so that I could get ready for Corps meetings. Taking the view that I'd be in trouble if I missed going and in trouble if I stayed (with nothing to do) in my "job". I went to the meeting. I really quite enjoyed the set-up for RoA whilst in res. It was quite good fun though very hard work. Later as with many grad Corps, I ended up doing toilet cleaning. Which could be quite good fun and an opportunity to laze around and (did I say laze?) meet up with field folks. What REALLY got to me was the set-up for other events. I think for an Advanced class (perhaps LCM teaching it live, really can't remember) we were on duty from about 6 am and one night we didn't finish until 1.30 am - bed for a few hours and then ready to start again at 6 am. (The joys of being on Beverage Crew.) Part of our task was to take drinks to other crews like AV, who were working so hard (and we weren't?) late at night getting ready for the next day (not knocking you, AV, glad to bless your lives with a cuppa Java). It made it hard to do things like laundry so that you could appear in clean clothing when facing the public. I do remember crying from sheer exhaustion and I was thought pretty weird by the CC. He must have said something though, because one of my Corps sisters not on such an intensive duty offered to do some laundry for me. Most events, Easter, Pentecost, etc, were like that. Too intense. Lovely to meet people and energising, but getting ready to bless them - - By contrast RoA was quite relaxing.

Belle Brill that you are so good. You sound thrilled and enthusiastic about life again. Stopped the rot in your own soul. Grow 10 years in one - you can really see things differently here at GSC. Beginning to think that in some ways it was "regress 10 years in one" at TWI. Sending you a PM.

Unreal!! So it's "representative" enough when everybody is in their teens and 20s?

Bagpipes - exactly. Thank you for sharing your story. You have suffered a great deal and it's wonderful to hear how you are healing. For anyone out there with back pain, I'd endorse the recommendation of this book. It really does help. You will also recognise other "tricks" your body will try to get up to, to get you to pay attention. Likewise, except they kicked me out and I wallowed in mindblowing misery and guilt and shame, and discovering GSC and what TWI was really like set me free. The truth shall set you free... Very quickly too. See your energy levels rocket! It's stunning to keep a journal and look back on it and see how you grow in mind and body from day to day. Makes better reading than my Corps journal. Wonderful people out there who would have helped before if only sufferers had eyes to see and were not blinded by TWI "truth."

I always hated ABSing by check. Aren't we supposed to give so quietly that the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing? God keeps account not the TC. God sees the heart with which the 10%, 15% or whatever is given, too. God loves a cheerful giver, but He rewards the cheerful giving not the amount.

Belle, I like it!! Now you'd think, wouldn't you, that if people come in (join) and they have professional skills (that have good earning potential) TWI would encourage people to stick with those skills. Then those people would earn big bucks and could ABS more. But no, TWI belittle the skills base as "worldly" and generally sneer at professional qualifications except perhaps as Way Builders (and I'm not looking to pick a fight with any of them!). Then when the income of the person drops so much they say you aren't believing God enough... How preposterous is that? Perhaps people believed God and therefore they acquired those skills - to help and bless? But no, if not taught by TWI such skills are obviously of no value. Hello Dr and Mrs Peeler. You are not alone.

You mean there is still an in-residence Way Corps? Do they (both) share a room?

I remember LCM sharing one time that there were times Donna would go to him and warn him about something that was going on that he should know about - things that were happening to him or concerning him. (In a way, that's an admission that he *didn't* know it all, just once in a while.) I think he held it up as an example of how a married couple should work together and take care of each other. Well we saw that in the fog years, didn't we. And we saw that with all the adulterous stuff. Anybody remember that article she wrote in the Way Mag about The Art of Followship? So are we to infer that wives should all permit their husband to have adulterous affairs? Have we burned all Donna's writings as well as LCM's?