FullCircle

I dunno. I wouldn't pay the 120. to find out. Been there, done that. http://cffm.org/doc/mwgp_box.shtml

Hey Bumpty Dumpty :) ((hehehehehe, just gave you a nick name!)) I tried to respond to your pm but it wouldn't let me. Anywho, that is how I see this forum and this thread. Sharing what we learned, even if it's negative, we need to be aware of the negative so as not to get fooled again ((for those of us who believe we were fooled)) There's all different degrees here and we all hear what we need when we need it. The past isn't gone, it still lives inside of me and makes me what I am today. The good past and the bad past all mixed together makes a Full Circle ;) and it is hard and unrealistic for me ((I am only speaking for myself but I believe it to be true in general)) to take and ignore the bad past and act like it never happened and only take the good. It makes for lopsided opinions and people. Balance is the key and something we aim for and will miss and aim again and get it and then miss and then hit the balance again. But you're right about being here and listening and helping to others speak and share is the best thing we can do for each other. So where the heck is the land of Islam? Why did I picture you some place that resembled the Alps?

Nineteen years celebrated in December. We met in 1985 and married 1987, two believers in TWI. Immediate leadership was against it, but then I didn't include them in our plans and I moved out of state away from them and married my husband. Ha. We still love one another. But we married each other for each other and not because of TWI. We left TWI together as well. Hubby told me he was waiting for me to wake up all along and when I said, "I'm outta there," he said, "Halluejah."

Besides, on a whole, from all the places I go to on the net, which isn't many, grant you but still..I find the people at Greasespot on the whole a hell of a lot more intelligent than most.

Because the truth always comes out sooner or later, internet or not.

Thank you Sunesis for your considerate words and your perspective as well. I do agree with you totally. I haven't checked out the extent of how much VP stole from Leonard but one of the first things I asked God to show me when I left TWI was the validity of the claim that VP makes in the class that God told VP that he (God) would teach VP the word like it hadn't been known since the first century. I then went to the local bible bookstore within days or a week of that prayer, a continuous prayer and I found Clarence Larkin's work. He was born and preaching long before VP was born and there I found essays on Fellowship and Sonship, Sonship rights, the administrations and basically the PFAL class in a nut shell. That told me that VP lied, God did not tell him that, IT had been known, just not to me. I won't stand for liars when it comes to spiritual matters, period. To me there is no excuse. But commenting on what you just posted as well, it was if TWI turned God into a magic genie who was compelled to grant our requests as long as we rubbed the lamp of believing. It made God a servant with no will of his own. According to TWI, he couldn't break his own law....law of believing.

I don't entirely agree with that, I think taking a class to learn more about the Bible and hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ is totally different from taking a class in learning Power Point on your Windows computer or a class in college. I have sat through classes in certain churches and all I had to pay for was the book. I could either buy it on my own or through the church. **I only add this and my next paragraph BECAUSE it was a defense of TWI from way back when. Even VP in the old intermediate class mocks those who questioned his right to charge for the classes** It is the motivation behind the class that counts, at least for me. To charge for a class so someone can 'received power from on high' or 'tap into the power of God' to me, even as I type it now sounds more like a marketing pyramid scheme of get rich quick or in this case, get powerful quick. In my ears when I was 18, it sounded great. In my now Crone days, it sounds as plastic and cheap as it is. I don't wonder about it being right to sell God for a price. I believe it was wrong. And I agree, there shouldn't be a class at all. Information concerning the nature of God and Jesus Christ should be free flowing from those involved with the sect to all new comers. Why does the organization push for classes? Google terms like overload, or sensory overload. It is something like going to a hyped up sales pitch where some guy from a podium with a microphone gives a speel about his business changing your life for ever and all you have to do is invest so much money...you sit there through the hype, with hyped up people and it can be quite easy to fall for it. The good news is you go home, and you get time alone to think and mull it over. Now picture the PFAL class the way it was run. It was usually done four nights a week, three hours or less a night, one stinking break, rapt attention to the man with the skinny tie on the video screen. No talking, just sitting there listening to him drone on. All this new information being launched at you in rapid fire. Ask a question, you are told to wait. Ask at the end of the class you are told to wait till the whole class is over. Being in a type of situation where you don't talk, you just sit and listen and your brain is filled with info you never heard before, it overloads your senses. Your critical facilities can shut down and you quit thinking and just start accepting. PERFECT for TWI. It induces you to a state where information is just assimilated. Then hyped up grads greet you and give you a bunch of one liners cheering on the class. They won't answer your questions either. Go to fellowship and read the PFAL books on your off time. When do you really get time to evaluate your involvement and what you heard. It is priming ground to bring in as many as they can. It's effective, it works and it keeps the power where they want it, not in the fellowships but with them.

Okay here again. I may seem a bit hard hearted. Actually I am not but I will admit to being very cynical. If I had been more cynical or more critical in my examination of life in all aspects, particularly here in the issues of spirituality I would not have been sucked in as I was, trading my power and my one on one with Divine for a High Priest named VP Wierwille and his lesser but still higher than me priests known as Leadership, trunk, limb, area and branch. When I left TWI I read profusely about people and their experiences in their cults. One of the major major major issues I struggled with is what I thought I saw and experienced, ie God talking to me, healings for myself (nothing major mind you and the one time I had some thing major, I walked around with an unhealed broken bone). I read a book, wish I remembered the name of it and no it was not Steve Hassan, but another guy who was in the Moonies. The odd thing, the thing that struck me deeply was that they saw 'demons and devils' trying to infiltrate their meetings and ranks and they believed that they also had the power to fight them off. Well *I* knew Moonies were counterfeit but HOW could they think they saw such things and performed such acts as casting out devils since *they* were bogus. I had to ask myself then what was truly real and what did I truly experience and what was just a belief system of what I was taught. I mean if you believe and are taught that the boogy man is under your bed, you will think after a while that you have seen his shadow and heard him moving under there. VP even uses this same analogy in the PFAL with being slain in the spirit. If you think you're going to go down when Pastor so and so does this with his hand or says that, you go down. You are taught what you should experience, you are taught what should happen, you are taught what you should feel and by and large, you do all that because that is what you are taught is going to happen. So I had to ask myself about all the manifestations, about my experience. Was it real or was it a memorex response in having it happen only because I was taught it was to happen. I had to learn to retrust myself and critically examine all that I thought was godly, or supernatural or revelations. I wondered if I could ever trust myself again and be able to trust any experience I had in the future. It was a very tough time but well worth it. I learned you can't dictate how the Divine will work in you. It can't be dictated that they will do this every single time the same way for the same person. You can't dictate how the Divine will not work. You can not regulate, predict or guesstimate or otherwise wrap the Divine up and limit the Divine to how they will interceed and work within each person's life. That is religion, man made and a small box of confinement. I don't think, no I know that the Divine did not design us to be automated robots doing the same thing the world over. Now it goes without saying, but those who would say, "What if the Divine tells you to jump off a bridge." I say, "Give me a break, huh?"

While I am on the subject, let me make myself more unpopular. I have to wonder if the trading of money for a class to get the 'gift' to manisfest power isn't Simonry? You know, Simon who asked Peter to give him the gift (Simon watched the apostles perform miracles) so he could have this power too? Simon was even willing to pay up for it. Did we pay up for it? Did we pay for a promise of power? Is TWI the Simoners and we the Simonees?? Take a class, pay for it and receive power from on high. Isn't that what set TWI apart from other ministries and churches, at least in their claims, We got the power?????????? From where? The Class! Woohoo. Seems to me that the outer court of the temple extended into people's homes where the tables could not be over turned by Jesus, selling the issues of God for a donation at the door. Yeah. Gifts of Healing? Well TWI's definition only works in TWI and not all that well either. In TWI we played God and assumed everyone was to be healed and if they weren't well, they were not believing or didn't know what was available or so forth. I was just in the shower and cringed at the memories of me telling people they could be healed. My aunt who was dying of cancer, a woman whose husband was dying of cancer. OMG, forgive me please.

The revelation manifestations. I think they got more hype than it actually worked. I don't know if the way TWI defined and supposedly used them was the way it was intended to be used either. In the TWI daze of VP, too many of us relied on leadership getting revy to discern who should go where for WOW and what family they should be in. Too many fatal errors were made that way and the thing with Norway wasn't the first and only incident that was squelched. I saw too many people go off half cocked thinking God was talking to them about everything, get your keys, call this person and do that and do this, therefore putting all rational and natural decision making into a realm it didn't belong by making it supernatural. It is also a good manipulation tool to get others to see things your way or to get people to do what you want, and not just TWI did that but Christianity as a whole "God told me," or "The Spirit is leading me," or "The Lord led me." I think it can all border on taking the Lord's name in vain to USE his name and plaster it to a thought or desire of your own to get what a person wants. Most leadership I met in the TWI had no spiritual indepth perception and awareness. I saw too many people come to twig fellowships who were problems, whether they were just mentally ill or spiritually troubled and get passed leadership who just wanted to help them and watched whole branches go sour because of these people. One time one of these people verbally attacked me and I rebuked them in the name of Jesus Christ. The lights in the room flashed and you think leadership was impressed? No. They said something was wrong here. Wrong because I acted like a believer with power from on high. Sheesh. Needless to say that person I rebuked stayed the hell away from me and never bothered me again. ;) Let's not forget and I saw it first hand that leadership traded information on people moving from one area to another area. The leaders talked and they passed off that information when dealing with the person as if they got revy (revelation from God) Cheaters. I had seen that done time and time again. Personally I think a person is either spiritually aware or not. No class, no speaking in tongues, no bible study, no going to every meeting you can will give that to you. Either the Divine gives it to you or doesn't. I had it long before I got to TWI and I have it after. No PFAL class no VP doctrine no nothing gave it to me and by leaving TWI I didn't lose it either. Sometimes I think groups like TWI are the ever ellusive search for the fountain of youth, only they think it's the fountain of spiritualilty and no matter what they do, no matter what doctrine they adorn themselves with, no matter what new and improved class they form or unform, build or demolish, at best the water in that fountain that they persistently pursue will always be tainted with rust, if there is any water at all.

What's ironic, well at least for when I was in, it was all about grace and not works. NO works. Yet TWI is the biggest 'works' oganization I know of. Study, study, study the way mag, study the sunday night tapes, study the collaterals, go to twig, drive a gazillion miles to be at a meeting, do this do that, organize this, show it to someone. And it is the same with their manifestations. It is and was always dependent on the person themselves and never the free flowing grace and spirit of god. It was up to you to work it, it was up to you to study, sit in your private life, to be faithful, to know the word so that *YOU* by your works could manifest better. It was a carrot dangling in front of your nose where you would work harder and harder to reach it and never satisfied. For cripes sake, the book we all said we believed in had God speaking through a jack foot with no problems. Did the jack foot need to move his throat his tongue and study so that God could speak through him? Works and works and more works. If God wanted to speak through us or inspire something he would and without any help from any of us. It was bogus. A supposed spiritual outpouring ruled and regulated because they knew it wasn't God doing it and they had to ensure that no one went off half cocked without rules and regulations for the suggestion of manifesting that they implanted in our minds.

OOOOOOOooh where is Edgar Allen Poe when you need him? The Tell Tale Heart or the Staring Eye?

*nods* yes, red shirt with a red bandana hanging from the back right pocket.

Exactly Chatty Kathy, I see it the same way. It is what will happen because I don't believe that not only will the authorities do anything, they are the primary cause of why this is happening. We are an average blue collar neighborhood, old and established. People with families move here because it is small and a small school district, all in hopes of finding a haven in which to raise their children. The particular street I live on takes great pride in our homes, every year you will see us out there fixing, painting, (and not just painting, but doing the trim work using a variety of three different colors to keep up with the Victorian style) and then garnishing our front porches and walks with flowering annuals that match our decor as best we can. We have a group called "Concerned Residents of insert name here." They have been scorned and mocked by town officials and the police. The police refuse to acknowledge that we have a blooming drug problem here in town, which is odd because now our town has gotten a rep for being bad because of drugs. This coalition of concerned citizens have addressed issues in the school and were told 'it won't be held against their children,' by the superintendent of the schools. There is an established family here (among many others) whose children do drugs. We suppose that is number one reason the police have developed blind eyes. In addition, they are judges and lawyers who buy up property here in town and then rent them out real low and have been attracking and renting to those who are problems, drugs and gang related activity. The officials have created this problem themselves. In addition, new light has been shed about the officials of our town by others that in continuing to raise our property taxes through their so called assessments has indeed raised tax revenue for the town. Some people have sold their houses (or lost them) due to this enormous increases in our assessments and taxes (some people in a single assessment have gone up in value over 20K). The new information brought out was that when a house was sold or lost, the one family who is lawyer/judge has a friend here in the real estate business who is buying up these properties and working with the lawyer and renting them out for even more slum property with rents that attract slum tennants. They have been destroying their own town through greed and lust for power and have brought this upon themselves. This home was supposed to be my retirement (in addition to the few other trusts/funds I have set aside) or my children's inheritance, whichever came first. It won't be any of that if we wait too long and property values go way down. I see it not changing cause the fish stinks at the head and those in the head aren't going to stop anytime soon.

I apologize, it's not crips or cripts or whatever, my daughter just informed me he was a Blood or Bloods? Sheesh, I think I am going to google to see what info they have to distinguish these people.

I am sorry to hear this and truly terrified that this stuff is spreading like an alien invasion. I live in a small town as well. The joke about our small town is that no one comes here unless they have a particular reason to be here. You can't really access other towns easy through us, it would just be easier to stay on the highway and go to whatever town you wanted and then take the exit. A crips was spotted walking down one of main streets. He was identified as crips by the color he was wearing matching a bandana hanging from his back right pocket. I wouldn't know the difference myself but... The only reason for him to be here is that he wanted to be here in this town. You don't end up here by accident. And like roaches, if you see one, you know that there are many more in the shadows. We have begun to look for a new house. It's a shame. This was a lovely little town settled in the 1800's, old victorian homes, everything within walking distance.

Ah it was all bogus. The people in the bible manifested or spoke in tongues, had the spirit to over flowing just upon hearing the gospel taught to them. We had to sit through a three week class, four days a week to have it drummed into our heads that this is what happens and it is going to happen to us cause no one gets missed, doncha know. It was mechanical and it was forced. You move your lips your throat your tongue. You form the words, you do the speaking. Exactly, it was me me me or you you you doing it all along. If we were going to be overflowing, it would have just happened. Then how muchmore mechanical did a suppose supernatural gift become when it was put under a light and tested by how many breaks aka breaths we took during the tongue matched the breaks or breaths taken in the intepretation? Languages are different yet it was measure in that if your tongue was yay long so should your interpretation be yay long minus or add a word or two? No language matches up to the English language like that. So here we have a supernatural phenomenon, supposedly, being pulled apart under a physical linguistic magnifying glass that isn't even being used correctly. What a piece of donkey dust.....fake and made up and carried out by the power of suggestion. Nothing more and nothing less, well okay maybe less. I quit speaking in tongues pretty much after I left TWI. This was after I had spoken about this subject with Cynthia Kisser,Director of the now defunct Cult Awareness Network (before Scientology sued it out of existence). At best I saw it and understood it then to be my own inner thought police. It was that for a couple of reasons. I used to to stop thoughts I did not want to have. Speak in tongues instead. It stopped feelings I did not want to have, so I spoke in tongues instead. So it shut down what ever I had going on via self hypnosis, it was a form of meditation. Oh yes, it worked in calming me down, but then meditation will do that. So will repeating the same scripture over and over again. So will saying the complete rosary. It is NOT that the scripture or the loshanta or rosary is magical or spiritual, it is the ACT of self hypnosis and meditation by using those functions that calms the nerves. I resented finding out that doing the scripture retemories and speaking in tongues was nothing more than me having my own inner thought police when I thought I was doing something spiritual. Some may argue that there is nothing wrong with doing either and that I could be doing worse things. To me, being fooled or duped into thinking I am doing "The Word" when I really shutting myself down, shutting down my own critical thinking processes in the name of spirituality is a slap in the face. I resent that. I would miss speaking in tongues when I first stopped. Hey it was an ingrained habit I fell back on in times of stress. But I also missed biting my nails too when I gave that up and now I don't miss either.

OMG OMG I think I just woke up the whole house laughing eye eye Captaine You are the Queen of one liners

I was apprentice corps (for the second time). All my fellow apprentice corps and myself, along with doing manual labor at the Area Leaders house, papers and 'learning to write letters' were determined to change the ministry as well and make a difference. We were going to buckle down, stake ourselves out like one of those Native American warriors and fight the good fight of faith. We were willing to take a ministry from the secondary will of God and help it move into the being in the PRIMARY will of God. That year was 198-1987. What year is it now? There is the answer. A friend of mine got courageous and came to my door. I lived with the branch leaders. This was just after I had prayed heavily to God about all the problems TWI was having, had had and was continuing to have. I asked him what to do. He said, "Dont' go into the Corps, talk to soandso." She was the very one who banged on my door hours later. She hoisted up her body and said I was just praying and if you repeat this, I will kill you but God told me to tell you not to go into the Corps. I said, "Wow, then it was God who told me earlier not to go in." See I had doubted myself. She almost melted into a pool of relief. She was expecting a much worse reaction from me. So from years gone by, twenty years and from a little town called El Cajon through realistic courageous acts, I repeat, "Don't go into the Corps and if you're there, get out now and start your life the way God would have you to do so."

Bumpy, I am sorry for what you went through since it involved your country and your specific area of TWI when you were involved. I don't know if you knew any of the people involved or who were killed and how well you may have known them. I am sorry for the mental anguish that horrendous episode of hearing of fellow believers being murdered and murdered by another fellow believer. In light of this thread, this does all connect. Even though they were all in another country, the house hold God or the body of Christ, as we so often gave lip service to along with our leaders in TWI, suffered an horrific loss in the murder of fellow believers at the hand of another believer. (I was reading years ago and saw this information posted then so I know as well that Bumpy is telling the truth). No, we did not hear about it in the US at the time. At least not us peons. No prayers offered for the families of those killed, no prayers offered for the family of the murderer and no prayers offered for those 'saints' whose 'immediate household of God' was killed off. A family of God? Fighting for one another, even here the poor guy is shot down instead of being offered sympathy and understanding. sheesh. TWI was no household of God. It did not fight for one another. When situations and conditions didn't fit the bill prescribed by their perfect doctrine, it was all swept under the rug, hearts, souls and lives, all swept under the rug or dismissed and disgraced by one liners, "they were out of fellowship, they weren't believing god, they feared." That is not a body working together to stay healthy, to heal itself when one part hurt or suffered, but instead the doctrine of TWI acted as a hack surgeon eagerly waiting to amputate what ever part of the body that suffered instead of looking to heal it. That is nothing to be ashamed of walking away from. You can't say, and no one can tell you that you abandoned squat when the quack doctors were ready at a moment's notice to amputate you right out of the body the moment you didn't or couldn't work to par for them. I used to go to church. One morning we were greeted with the news that a missionary couple that belonged to our denomionation, that we never met, that WAS part of our immediate family via the denomination, were murdered in their beds one night far away from us. The Pastor cried at the pulpit. We bowed our heads and grieved, some cried. We offered prayers for them families and loved ones and that justice would be done and their murderers would be caught. It did not affect our faith in God and it did not affect the faith we had in the church's doctrine. But then we weren't playing super christian teaching nothing bad can happen to us. We had nothing to lose in acknowledging the loss of fellow believers and we grieved together. Now, that IS a family fighting for one another. No you can't walk away from something that never existed outside of lip service. It was an illusion and nothing more. Bumpy, again I am sorry. Feel free to mail me or pm anytime.

If you can't go beyond what you are taught, then you can't surpass or contradict the man in charge who then was VP. There fore all of us were regulated and contained to stay within the limited knowledge of VP, and then only what he cared to share. Only machines and computers can't go beyond what they were programmed for. Humans can most certainly go beyond what their finite teachers can share. Our five senses and our critical thinking ability were given to us to explore and learn and teach ourselves about our world. Fear those who would take away the validity of that. Or at least, run like hell from them.

I was so waybrained that one Uncle Harry day aka burn the chaff I took my journal of poems, years and years of poems, short stories and all and burned them because they weren't positive or right on with the word. I was so waybrained that when I fell and fractured my ankle, my Twig Coordinator was with me and prayed and although my foot and ankle swelled and went almost black from the bruises, she said healing was coming and I limped around for two weeks like that before I went to the doctor and got it xrayed, found the fracture and had it taken care of. I was so waybrained I left behind good banking jobs to go WOW. I was so waybrained I didn't get to spend the last year with my mom, we lived on different coasts, before she died.

Oh dear. We forgot another imaginary (or definitely overblown problem) and the made up cure. The urgency of the times, the devil trying to take over our country, re write our constitution through the Illuminadi and all other groups like that. The cure? The Way Corps or TWI. We had to stand. We had to witness. We had to believe and do TWI to keep our country free. sheesh.

Hey Holy I was shaking my head at the ex CES people suing Jeff. I was shaking my head at those who insisted they still had the truth from a cult called TWI and now have sunk low to sue another after so much damage has reportedly been done by this group of ex-leaders via visions of snake and spiders thereby alluding someone is evil or under the influence of evil. When does this abusive behavior, self delusional behavior of religious leaders stop? What will they do if those hurt by them decide to sue? Personally I think this action and all the actions that lead up to this suit makes religion look like a three ring circus consisting of greasepainted clowns. OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH we're 'greasespots' but they are 'greasepainted!" I'd rather be a greasespot any day.

*shakes my head sadly and leaves the thread*