waysider

Strawman argument. You've twisted Hassan's words to make it look like he said something he never said. Could it be you get so riled up about this stuff because you just can't accept you were duped like the rest of us?

"How comforting and secure it is to know that YOU get to decide which posts are thoughtful and which topics are useful. This place is just as one sided as any other." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ John You, also, get to decide which posts are thoughtful and which posts are useful...... for you. As to being one-sided, it depends on your definition. I would probably say it is "biased", rather than one-sided because both sides are, indeed, presented. It is, after all, an anti-Way site. Still, you are given the opportunity to present your case, a luxury that is not afforded on many other sites.

"What, you didn't get enough in rez?"

This is very good, skyrider. My wife and I were talking just the other day about the difference between some of the other social media sites and GSC. On FB, for example, if someone disagrees with a thread you start, you just "zap" them. POOF! They're gone. No room to disagree or express your logic for doing so. Just a click of the mouse...the thread is gone. Here, people disagree all the time but there are rules to follow. "Your Mama wears combat boots" just doesn't 'get it' here. This is an element that was sorely missing in The Way. In FellowLaborers, for example, if you disagreed with some aspect of the program, you had to be very, very careful about how you expressed your disagreement and with whom. I'm sure it must have been the same way in The Corps or on HQ Staff.

No. (my personal belief) I think it happened when he convinced us (in session 7?) that there was danger in giving considered thought to what he was pitching.

If this seems obtuse, I promise you, that's not my intent. I like Cheech and Chong.... always have. But, I find a bit of humorous irony in recognizing they made their fortune by making fun of the people who helped them make their fortune. Confused yet? I see a correlation of sorts when I see people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, foregoing needed medical care for lack of affordable health care, etc., promoting propaganda intended to benefit the very segment of society that plays a depriving role. Now, I don't mean to turn this into a political discussion of my point. I'm only throwing that out there as a matter of opinion. That's all it is, just an opinion. It makes me wonder, though, if what I'm seeing is, perhaps, somewhat of a Stockholm Syndrome, on a large scale.

There seems to be a multitude of "extreme opinion" radio and television personalities who have welcomed the opportunity to take up the mantle in this regard. There is easy access to all types of opinion. One needn't look too far to find one with which they agree.

Remember that Paul Simon song, "Still Crazy After All These Years"?......Still Attracted To Nuttiness After All These Years (On GSC).

"Sleep deprivation, mind-control, isolation, restricted communication, etc. were factors" Absolutely! This is the sort of thing that may have been missed by believers who never moved outside the local level or maybe spent a hitch in a free-wheeling sort of W.O.W. family. But, these are, indeed , the sort of things that constitute cultic experience. Add to these a charismatic leader, proprietary knowledge and a sense of elitism and you have a recipe for trouble. Not every cult has every trait. In fact, a group can have these traits without any "religious" affiliation. I, too, can clearly remember Wierwille saying, "They consider us a cult because we don't believe that Jesus is God". He was wrong. People considered us a cult because we displayed the characteristics of a cult, not because of our stance on the Trinity..

That description of a TWI potluck potbless kinda reminds me of that song by Lucinda Williams called "You took my joy...and I want it back".

Exiled from the world....what a strange concept.

....and SOWERS is carrying the torch. Put it in a new jar, slap a cool label on it and pretend no one will notice it's the same old, same old.

If I had to venture a guess, it would be that he plucked them from somewhere amongst the writings of Eli Stanley Jones. The Way Corps, after all, was really a bastardization of Jones' Christian Ashram concept. (Jones is also credited with coining the phrase, "Fear is sand in the machinery of life.".)

"It's addressed (or not addressed) to me.">>>>>That was/is a huge get-out-of-jail ticket in TWI and it's derivative forms. You have to do at least 2 things to make that work. First, you have to accept dispensationalism. Second, you have to ignore contextual meaning whenever it interjects conflicting thought. I remember, as a kid, we would take an ordinary pen and bet someone it could write any color. "Make it write green", they would say. So, we would pick up the pen and, one by one, spell out the letters GREEN.

I don't know their origin. I do know, however, that they were also the FellowLaborer's princples and are now the principles of V2P2's posse. HERE

"As far as plagiarism goes, who cares? God doesn't." Really?? God doesn't care about stealing and deception? I must have missed that lesson in Sunday School. "It's God's word or it isn't." So much of what VP taught has been shown to be inaccurate, misrepresented and twisted to accommodate his dubious agendas, I would have to conclude 'it isn't'. Actual errors in PFAL

....."and pray for God to send you billionaires... BORED BILLIONAIRES... who will be "blessed" by the errors you unwittingly teach." Maybe not even 'unwittingly'......Surely, those jokers over at V2P2's truck patch are aware of the error they propound.....and, yet, they continue to teach it.

What's that old adage? "Doing the same crazy thing over and over, hoping for different results." Pickles in a jar labeled "Peaches"

I venture to say that some people who have benefited and some who continue to benefit from GSC have never posted at all, but, rather, have found their answers in simply reading and giving careful consideration to the content.

Have you tried to grab her by the scruff? This is what mama cat does when she relocates her kittens. Some cats will assume a submissive attitude if you do this. Grab her scruff, lift her and put your other hand underneath for support, simultaneously.

Would that include such things as "Christ's eyes behind your eyes, Christ's ears behind your ears, etc....as taught in the Advanced Class? Doh! It just dawned on me that this is, in essence, not much different that the channelling that mediums claim to do. Except, this variety involves Jesus Christ instead of dear old Aunt Agnes.

I'm not trying to resurrect a VP debate but I honestly don't see how anyone, who is aware of the sordid and perverse lifestyle of Wierwille (one he carefully hid from the unsuspecting general public) can honestly say he was a Christian leader, whose lifestyle was worthy of emulation. Does that mean it's acceptable to seek out female followers (by the dozens), administer date rape drugs and then sexually molest them? Then, he deliberately recruited other upper leadership to share in his lifestyle. Really? That's a worthy example to be followed? That's what it means to represent God? It baffles me how anyone can rationalize that by saying they learned some cool stuff in a class that has long since been proven to be the product of deliberate plagiarism.

So, then, this raises the question, "What is it that makes you trust one source over the other?". Incidentally, I don't want this to become a political discussion but here are some sites that might help you sort out facts and statistics. They, of course, aren't gospel either but do give a good starting point. HERE HERE HERE HERE

I'm not sure if it's gullibility or skepticism or a combination. There's quite a difference. Both require a healthy dose of inquisition. That inquisition seems to be what is lacking. People seem to want to accept the latest theory on Obama or health care or medical quackery or gun control statistics or whatever as if what they're being told is the gospel truth. There is no excuse for that, not today, not with so much information at our fingertips. Instead, people apparently want someone else to spoon feed the answers to them. If you want to stay healthy, it's in your interest to know what's in that spoon. Blindly accepting it, without inquisition, it is gullibility. Rejecting it, in light of conflicting validation, is skepticism. A lot of the issues that are at the forefront of current controversy are not 'yes or no', 'black or white', 'either /or' type issues. Maybe that's where the problem lies. People want to accept whatever set of statistics or facts support their belief whether or not the statistics and facts are leading to a valid conclusion. The credibility of the source is always subject to scrutiny. That's how propaganda works. And, propaganda is really what is driving this current bandwagon trend. Years ago, during times of war, airplanes would drop leaflets of propaganda for people to "consume". Resources for validating the information in them was limited at best. Today, we find ourselves in a different set of circumstances. There is too much information. We need to sort through it with a critical eye toward accuracy and adjust our opinions if warranted. That's what critical thinking is all about. How does that play out with one's background and biases? I don't know. That's what this thread is about.

Yeah, for certain, ex-wayfers lay no claim of exclusivity on this stuff. People from all walks of life and diverse backgrounds are drawn to it, like flies are drawn to that stuff that draws flies. It just seems to me though, that ex-wayfers seem to be especially vulnerable. That's just my perception. No hard core scientific study or any such thing. Could it be because we were conditioned to think of everything as having a "spiritual meaning", with spirits waiting to snap you up if you lost your focus? I'm not trying to prove or disprove anything, just wondering if others have had similar observations.