potato

deception was coached. wow year was hell, with carmen and rupp all over us every other minute to get people to take the class, take the class, take the class. we had corps there a bunch of times, showing us how to deceive people into coming to fellowship, telling us not to tell too much because they'd get instantly turned off, had to feed it to them a little at a time as they "matured". twi has its roots in deception, with the "don't tell all you know" doctrine, to keep people coming for more. Paul didn't teach like that, so why does twi? maybe they don't anymore because there is no new revelation since lcm is gone. we were supposed to go into the corps, but my ex was such in a mess of lies during our apprentice year we got called on the carpet. the LC decided to sweep it all under the carpet and told us to go anyway because it was the "only way he's going to grow up" (talking about my ex). we lasted a week in-residence before my ex's deceptions started leaking out and we got the boot. how in the world was living a life under minute scrutiny going to cure a pathological liar? I think that's a good example of leadership having their heads up their arses that they'd send a deceiver to learn to deceive the masses, only with the "truth" instead of his own make-believe. the second time way corps was brought up, I declined to put any effort into going, as I should have done the first time. I was done with living that lie.

oldies: excellent one-size-fits-all advice, twi-style. until you've gone through a divorce in twi with kids, you don't begin to have a clue how much damage can happen. even after you do, you only get to see how much damage happens to you and your kids, not anyone else's. if someone chooses to stay in so they can preserve their family, that's a hell of a lot different from a case like mine, where I had to get away because of twi-sanctioned domestic abuse. even though leaving was the best thing for me and my kids, my ex still did so much damage that it's taken 6 years to get my son back on even footing and he still has a long way to go. you speak like you know the details of copenhagen's life, like you know for a fact he hasn't attempted to communicate to his family and that he'd be better off divorced. your arrogance and lack of compassion are very apparent.

my ex and I lived in a pretty isolated area when I had my children. I was under pretty tight control and went along with too much out of fear. the discipline of children didn't extend to beatings, but only to controlling pretty much every thought and action, with the wooden spoon, hand-slapping, ear-flicking and extended lectures including telling a child what they were thinking. I never agreed with telling a hurt or angry child to shut up and change their mind, or to hit them because they didn't stop crying when you told them to. I always thought comforting and talking was the right way to handle it. my ex didn't agree. he was a conformist, so he flicked my son on the ear and told him to shut up and change his mind whenever he cried. my ex wouldn't stop, even when I freaked out and screamed at him to stop hitting our son for being hurt. by the time he was 5, my son showed many of the problems listed, including bullying and hitting. over the next few years, he also became an accomplished liar, but my ex also actively coached him to lie. after our divorce, my ex and I both left twi but things just got worse. my ex did everything he could to hurt me by using my son. then it turned out my son also has a learning disability. what followed was several years of intensive therapy, thousands of dollars in legal fees, lost career and loss of personal property to fight for my son and I'm very happy to say for a kid with a learning disability, he's pretty damned normal today but I had to fight really hard against my own conditioning and my ex to help my son get where he is. it's still a fight. I anticipate this year's round of legal battles will end up costing close to 15k by the time we're done, but my hope is it will protect my daughter from going through the same toxic games my son has endured. I think twi was the perfect hide-out for my ex because he had permission to commit cruelty to his wife and children at whim. I feel horribly guilty that I ever let myself get maneuvered into a position where I thought the wooden spoon was a good idea (which I'm told is typical victim's guilt), but glad I had the balls to draw a line to protect my kids and fight for my son when I realized how desperately he needed help.

dooj, this is so completely awesome!

the blue book?

where, in any of that, does twi deserve credit? I think that's what I take exception to. I have some good memories from (not of) my years on twi. some very good ones. I had kids. I made some friends. I had some really fun experiences. twi doesn't get credit for any of that. they didn't create it, cause it, and couldn't prevent it when they tried. they did ruin lots of opportunities for me and kept me shackled to a ball and chain I would have dumped 15 years earlier, and I can't think of any of the great opportunities that didn't come at such a heavy price I wish they'd never come my way, because I could have got where I needed to by other means without paying the heavy price.

good heavens. I just threw up in my mouth a little. gag. gross.

I think you're doing just fine. we all process this stuff differently. I myself had to take a "total immersion" approach and embrace my anger... I guess one could say I'd cut part of myself off and locked it away in my head, and all the hurt and anger with it, and reintegrating was really hard and has taken years and I'm still not done. after years of therapy, I think I managed to get to a place where I'm as mentally healthy as I was before I got tangled up in twi, and thanks to some recent developments I'm looking forward to growing beyond that. when I first got here, it was the people who described things in strong terms that helped me the most to realize how bad it actually was, and that I'd better stop excusing what was done to me. that realization helped me leave twi when I was too scared to. the kindness of people like excathedra, doojable, bowtwi, belle, dmiller, rumrunner, and many others were so vital to my survival that I'm not sure I can actually describe how indebted I am to them. I was a right mess back then :) but that's why I'm not so concerned with the good times in twi. every memory of twi has pain associated with it. maybe someday it won't, but that doesn't really matter... I just I hope I don't ever lull myself into forgetting the bad and idealizing the good so that I can't hear a brother or sister's pain.

my god this makes me so angry! I heard that vpw choked up when he talked about his brother for years after he died. if that's true, then vpw entertained a big-time devil spirit. what hypocrites! my grandmother died when I was 18 and it took many years before thinking about her didn't cause intense pain and often tears because I missed her so much. grief is not devilish.

I think the man's ability to minister healing probably had a lot more to do with his relationship with god than his relationship with twi. if god called him to heal people, was twi a necessary part of the equation or did god work in him despite twi? giving twi credit for a person learning something spiritual, when twi's own teaching materials were stolen in the first place... sorry, I don't even know where to start... so I'll just say it's better to credit the man for loving people like christ did, and god for working in him. finis.

trying to attribute healing to twi because of their teachings doesn't make sense. isn't it the bible that teaches healing? twi teaches some bible, right? their version anyway, which includes healing. did they man learn healing from twi, or from the bible? how could twi be responsible for any healing that ever took place, anywhere? genuine healings take place, I hear, all over the place. once at the RoA I thought I'd been delivered from a devil spirit, and received miraculous healing. THAT was a delusion. there was no devil spirit, and I did get temporary relief from what turns out to be a congenital brain structure defect that causes sleep problems and chronic pain, which is exacerbated by stress. the false high of the fake healing and sense of righteousness of being within god's true household produced chemicals which solidified the delusion.

I also like Bolshevik's analogy. it really was just like that. the good times involved being in another state, at least after the first couple of years of being "corrected". it was like taking drugs. we had our own drug culture, our own fix, and well, if someone accidentally got hurt while we were getting high, it was because of their own unrenewed mind. and I don't bother much thinking about the so-called "good times". they were so few, and dampened by the feeling of having to walk on egg-shells lest I fall out of spiritual alignment and harmony. my good times while an innie were mostly with "unbelievers" toward the end of my twi incarceration. I learned a great deal from them about love and acceptance.

once you've reinterpreted the "corps principles" so that they're practical for real life, they're no longer the "corps principles". your "interpretation" is your personal statement of beliefs. why not just skip the middle man and let go of twi's constructs? it's not necessary to have 5 principles to live by, but you can if that's what works for you. life isn't one size fits all.

well said. when you get rid of the voices of the critical mother, the demanding twi leadership, the narcissistic ex-husbands and the unforgiving, selfish "friends" then you can finally hear yourself think.

I don't see any point in trying to live up to "corps" principles. I don't give a rat's patootie about twi's material abundance and I'm not interested in being my brother's keeper.

that is awesome! how many dirty looks did you get?

I think vpw tried, though. I wouldn't be surprised if he envisioned a stronger, more beautiful, absolutely docile to the MOG Way Corps in the future by absolutely controlling marriages within the Corps and how children were raised by Corps. he probably also wanted to live long enough to see the fruit of his vision, based on things he's supposed to have said about death. I also have a hard time believing it, but far away from the influence of HQ there were pockets of people who still had the right to think for themselves. I do believe that everyone one of them was on an elimination list, though, and that if they ever crossed the line of being a simple irritant and became a real threat, they were out the door, ABS be damned. so they retain the illusion that they thought for themselves. it was much different where I was. anyone within 250 miles of HQ in the 90s was in the toxic zone.

as we've found with so many things post-twi, this isn't a question with a black and white answer.

it takes a lot of work to heal from a place like twi. my healing involved a lot of sadness and anger, plus learning how to forgive myself (I don't forgive twi or their bullies. you'll find differing opinions on that here, but I maintain that it's not a requirement to forgive them) so I can move on. I've been attacked and made fun of by a few select jerks (vpw apologists), but everyone else has been very supportive and understanding. I especially like how the vast majority of people here are ok with everyone feeling and believing something that is different and not ridiculing someone who is working through something painful. it was easier to get out of twi than it has been to get twi out of me.

it was pretty typical for lcm to screw things up then blame twi followers. no matter what the real reason was, he'd tell the masses it was them. homos, horny teenagers, whatever. our "lack of believing" kept him from realizing his grandiose fantasies - it was NEVER because they were BS or because HE "missed it".

good heavens, WG. reading that all I could think is what a repressed life that poor woman had! plus, I probably couldn't have ever gone into her house. the fumes would have given me an instant headache.

it would be nice to think that god's intent in that scripture was that parents should recognize their children's unique abilities and raise them with experience and confidence in them, so that they can rely unerringly on their abilities all their lives... instead of thinking god meant train 'em by rote and they'll grow up to robots just like their parents.

and there you have the most compelling reason WayGB has to keep dossiers on each of us, including everything we post here.

ha, if we could become anything, I would be a competent theoretical mathematician, but alas, I don't think brain elasticity stretches that far. no, you shouldn't drive yourself to be something. maybe that's my point: be less afraid of what you don't want to be, and more interested in what interests you until you figure out who you actually are. pay attention to your moods, get to know yourself. I recently had an incident where someone verbally attacked me for expressing a concern, and called me a narcissist, and selfish. talk about cult flashback - and this was someone who is supposed to love me and be supportive. I think they didn't realize that their emotional demand that I think like they do was not only unreasonable, but a horrible emotional trigger. the big difference between now and my response to such things while in twi is that I was able to (even during a crying fit that lasted over an hour, because it really hurt) take stock of my mental processes that led to my concern and realize that the other person simply failed to recognize that I put some thought into it and it wasn't a selfish snap decision. they made the mistake, not me... because instead of assuming why I felt a certain way, they could have asked. big difference between judging and understanding. two years ago I would simply have changed my thinking to match theirs. today I can assess whether what I think is valid on its own terms, or whether the other person is pointing something out that I didn't take into consideration. it's still not EASY, but it's a lot EASIER.

it is possible, yes. difficult, absolutely. you can't erase it, but you can become more like the person you want to be every day. if that weren't true, I would be very different today. we grow new brain cells every day. how they grow depends on what we do. passive wishing doesn't change the structure of your brain. I saw myself becoming my mother and I changed it. my ideals are very different from hers. the way I treat my children is very different from the way she treated me. it took years and years and years to get her voice out of my head, but I did it. and the soul thing... people use it differently here, depending on how they believe. forget twi and their doctrines and think about whether "soul" or "self" are valid expressions for what you want to say. since I'm now a spiritual agnostic, I use them more or less interchangeably and twi can suck it if they don't like it.