Twinky

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?)

Six years being free from the "walls of Zion"...Now that's what I call "Release from your prisons"!

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.

... stop representing the twig as part of twi. ... HQ said the twig was not diverse enough...

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.

...the book, Healing Back Pain by Dr. John Sarno. Within 6 weeks of applying what I had read, the back spasms were 80% better; after 5 months they were completely gone. This book prompted me to delve more deeply into the relationship between emotions and the body, the effect of the dance between the two...

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.

Within 3 months of divorcing the organization I was set on a road of freedom from the deep, deep shame with which I had been plagued for decades. Now, 7 months from that divorce, I am as well as I can remember. I have energy, vitality, and motivation. ...

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!

Day by day I endeavor to stay in touch with my heart and listen to where I am emotionally. I continue to journal, read, pray, exercise ... Relationships (with myself, God, my environment, and people) are what make life rich and worthwhile. Relationships are the fabric of life and give me (and all of us) hope and encouragement, even when times look dim and dark and when it seems the sun will not rise again.

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.

Christians Should be Preposterous

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?

Many corps were drop-kicked into next week for being clueless on their spouse. Yet, donna knew the adulterous activities of her husband. She wasn't dumb or innocent.

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?

Do they even have a clue what Google is and its awesome power?

Are we talking about this same organisation that

- doesn't have an inter-active (or any) link on its website?

- bans its followers from using the internet ?

- likes to keep its followers in complete ignorance of what's really going on?

Yeah, they know what Google is. They just don't want anybody else to know.

QT

GSC is a great place to come, read, "have a coffee" and share with friends old and new. When you hear their stories or they share what they know, you realise that you are not alone, that what happened to you was not unique but part of a wider pattern of abuse in various forms. You also realise that those things that you thought were "off" really were off. When your spiritual antennae twitched and you were told that you were just being "carnal" or "not walking in the spirit" - you realise you were right!

Yes, it would be helpful in some ways to isolate some of the threads so that they stood out more. But with things as they are you get a better sense of the all-pervading - interference (a very mild word) - in so many aspects of life. ...and the double-think (who's read Orwell's "1984"?)

As you've found, some of the threads enrage, excite compassion, bless, heal, help, annoy - and some are just plain froth. Ain't that fun, we all got so serious in TWI! :) As others above says, you can plot stories and the growth of individuals as they come out from the legalism, negativity and condemnation laid on them by TWI.

I spend far more time "lurking" and very little posting. But there are many people here who offer healing words, not just to the individual directly addressed, but to others who read later (like me).

Help and healing come in a lot of different ways and for me at least and it seems many others, GSC makes that available where people are at. Discovering GSC was a real help for me.

Now come on guys. Can you really imagine LCM and Donna resident in a tiny room in Founders Hall? (Or a couple of rooms, given they had kids?) (in a whole wing or at least one floor, perhaps!)

Or in one of the trailers in the trailer park?

If you can't imagine it - why not? :blink:

Always wondered why this was called "the WC Chalet" since no WC except LCM & Donna ever stayed there. Did a tour in residence, nice place, but a bit like walking on eggs (don't want to step the wrong way...) As for being invited to stay over - :unsure:

WW

I did see this post. However my point was that the one-finger salute is a US thing.

The equivalent in Commonwealth countries, ie, originating from the UK, is the V sign.

(My point is a bit of a derail, really.)

Perhaps both signs come from the same "root" - the amputation of digits by enemies determined to stop bowmen attacking them.

It would seem easier, if amputating digits, to remove the first finger first, before removing the middle finger. Don't think in the Middle Ages they were very squeamish and concerned about the appearance afterwards.

I would think, therefore, that the V sign is the older sign. English bowmen were (in)famous for their skill way before 1415 (famous and very skilled in 1066 and all that).

Whether the middle finger sign is based on the same history or has another origin, I really don't know.

Any Mongolians out there got any suggestions?

QT

Bless, you will find a lot of healing just being here, as Bowtwi says. It's not that misery likes company, but when you look and see the horrendous pattern that was being followed (as your own marriage did), you *know* you are not alone. Many of us have been through similar abuse and you have my deep sympathy.

LCM always hated writers and said they were full of ego. (That's probably because he himself had such a big ego.)

You could probably write some really good novels about what's happened (especially after you read some of the horrible stories on GSC), and expose the truth in your own special way. Do whatever it takes to effect your own healing.

Twinky