JavaJane

I was involved in twi from about the age of 12. I was in for 23 years before I left. That is more than half my life when I look back and do the math. It's a lot of lost time. I never got a degree. I have never owned a house. I have maybe seven years of credit history. I'm doing OK. I started my own business last year doing what I love and I am showing a profit for this year as of last week. But I have regrets about that time I wasted. I could have been much further in my career if I wasn't involved in twi. I gave up doing what I am doing now because the hours for a caterer/chef don't work well with class schedules and ministry events and fellowship times. I never went to culinary school like I wanted. But I am doing my best to make up for lost time now. How do you deal with the regrets without getting bitter? Edited for auto correct auto misspellings

I think that good he had a knack of twisting and perverting is what made it so dangerous. There was truth and good in it. But as a whole it was an evil sordid mess that ensnared good people.

Oh... you mean the double entendre WASN'T stiffie? Now I'm confused.

I thought exactly the same thing, Pat. A perfect description of TWI. And I wonder how much of this thought about missionaries was reflected in the WOW program? And now in the WD program? Hypocrisy, much?

Wow... all high tech and stuff.

The more I think about this, the more I think it was a pretty good way to keep people more committed to twi than each other or their family. If there was no love there to begin with and the relationship was based on furtherance if The Word ™ then if one person wanted to leave it was a lot easier for the other to stay. No love there to get in the way (no pun intended.). When we were in marriage counselling, we were told to talk with each other about what we would consider grounds for divorce. Our minister suggested as an example that he and his wife had decided the only reason they would divorce is if one of them decided to leave the ministry. I told him that would not be the case for me because I had already left my family for the ministry and now knew from experience the pain of that loss - what I had done was wrong. I would leave in case of abuse of me or my children. By the look on his face he wasn't thrilled with my answer.

I copied this from a facebook discussion about marriage equality... But that is not what I am wanting to discuss. It's the whole "any two believers can make a marriage work WTF? How many WC marriages were arranged without any love between couples? Did this happen? It appears to with Craig and Donna... were there others?

I have been following his progress on Facebook. And every time I read an update it brings tears to my eyes. So happy that God is so good.

I come here because this is the one place whee I can talk about what happened with a group of people who understand my experiences in a cult without a lot of judgement. And I get most of the jokes.

Or perhaps, "Oh. Sheet. Maybe there is a God. And He knows what I did to His keeds. And all the loshantas in the world ain't going to stop me from going to hell after all. I can tell because my eye got there before me. Oh, sheet."

I spent a lot of time doing my own research at one location I lived in for several years - it was actually encouraged by our limb leader. I remember one of my friends who decided to go into the WC (and still is in) asked me a few years after she graduated (we ran into each other at HQ) if the area we were from was still so "intellectual.". It was the first time I had heard the word intellectual used in a negative capacity. It really confused me. If we were supposed to be part of a research ministry, then why would personal study and research be discouraged? Why would being a biblical scholar be looked down on? This was towards the start of the boringest STS ever at HQ... And being encouraged to "study" and "teach" from books like Born Again to Serve and Life Lines. A few years later and I was out.

Can you add "TWI is the devil."?

LOL!

Like chockfull, I spoke in tongues prior to TWI (as a child, probably 6 or 7 years old.) it happened spontaneously, without instruction. I didn't even know it was SIT until much later. It was just something I did that made me feel better when I was sad. A lot of it was in song. .I still SIT today. Mainly I use it as a meditation tool, a way to clear my mind of clutter and internal noise. The way TWI taught it doesn't really apply for me anymore. It isn't a cure all. I don't even "interpret" anymore. I recently converted to Catholicism, and spoke privately with the priest about SIT. He said there was no need to stop using it in my prayer life, that the church didn't have a problem with it at all. But I shouldn't jump up in church with it, or listen to anyone who said they could interpret it for me.(I wouldn't have stopped doing it even if he had told me too. My time in TWI taught me that I don't need to confirm with every stupid tenent of a religion if I don't agree with it.)

Start wearing a cross around your neck. Dye your hair flaming candy apple red. That's what I did. It felt good.

But.... They never really retracted that teaching to all of the lowly followers at the fellowship level. They just stopped teaching it. The implication to us lowly Advanced Class Grads was that it was an Advanced level teaching and new people couldn't handle it, so don't talk about it. At least that's what my WC leadership told me. It wasn't until I heard someone who had a conversation with Rosie that Rosie thought it was nonsense. But they never made a public statement to that effect... Because that would indicate they had taught something wrong. And wasn't Rosie the coordinator for LCM's class?

T, you and I know each other from "way" back when, so I think you will appreciate this, especially in the context of your last post. About the time I started really questioning twi (about 3-4 years before I actually left) I started having recurring dreams about a house I used to live in when I was a kid. only it wasn't really any house I had ever lived in when I really stopped and thought about it. It was a huge house, bigger on the inside than on the outside... With sprawling gardens and huge rooms with spiral staircases and stained glass windows - it went on and on. And then I would end up in an old dusty room filled with books. And I would start to get scared... And then the demons would come out of the books and I would wake up terrified. I had this dream almost every night. I tried telling myself to take control of the dream and just not go in the house - that didn't work. I'd end up getting into the house any time I opened a door in a dream. Since leaving twi, I still have house dreams, but they are happy now. And the books aren't scary anymore. The house was me, the real me, before I got in the Way, begore my mom even attended her first felllowship. Where I was when I was a child. And the books? All the stuff I had hidden away to make myself a twi-bot. Now I dream a lot about travelling... Lots of good changes. I'm not scared of being who I am anymore. And it is good.. My demons weren't evil, it was just me the whole time, trying desperately to get free.

I think he called them devil spirits because "demon" sounded too cute... Like when they call kids "little demons.". Doesn't sound cute to me.

I remember talking with someone in Way Styles who had a conversation with Rosalie during the filming of the "new" Way Class. Rosalie told her that she had taken "that nonsense" about the first sin of mankind being homosexuality. I was sure they would do some sort of retraction of the error, but they never retracted it to my knowledge... They just took it out. Rosalie apparently thinks its an erroneous teaching, but she never had it changed.

I remember acting like that... Heck, I marked and avoided my own FAMILY. It was really hard running into people like that - it caused major cognitive dissonance - to the point of mental pain. I was afraid of being contaminated (like spiritual cooties or something.) I felt like if they were still ok, they must be operating major devil spirits. I still cared about them, but I was afraid.... And if I did have to acknowledge them, what could I talk about? I mean, the Word ™ and twi was my entire life, my entire universe... Without being able to talk about that, what could I say? And I had no answers if they asked why they were treated so badly. I am so freacking GLAD I am no longer brainwashed. I was an a$$hole.

As someone who was raised in twi, here is my advice: get them to GreaseSpot. Let them poke around are lurk and read. At first they will say (like I did) that it is all a trick of the adversary, lies... Then they will rationalize that all this stuff was before the current BOD... Then they will find the deposition where it is evident Rosie KNEW about MULTIPLE "affairs.". That they have been lied to. They might think it was for their own good... ...then they will realize there are NO CONSEQUENCES for being on GreaseSpot - that their leadership is not so connected to God that God instantly tells them everything we do. And they keep thinking.

When I first started thinking about getting out of twi, I had a realization - that if there were 1/3 of the angels under the devil, then there were 2/3 that still weren't. Why was I so concerned about the 1/3? They were outnumbered 2 to 1. So I asked God to start showing me the good ones. ... Because in twi I only saw the bad ones. Probably because they were what I was looking for. And I don't think any good ones would try to get the attention of someone who didn't want to see them. Anyway... After that things started changing a lot for me. I saw the good in other people more, and I saw other stuff, too. Like when I was pregnant with my daughter I saw an old woman by the baby's room. She was only there for a second. I later saw a picture of her on my inlaw's wall. She was my husband's grandmother! I think she was there as a protector of my family. When I was in labor with my daughter I had a conversation with a beautiful tall African woman who no one else saw. She told me that I just needed to be strong for my daughter during the labor and everything would be fine. She held my hand and have me strength. I think she was an angel. Twi would have said these experiences were devilish. They weren't. Twi was devilish.

Ex, if you wanna talk, PM me. There are evil spirits (and good ones, too) - I've had a lot of experiences before, during, and after my time in twi. A lot can be explained away, some can't. The worst one I had the spirit fled when I called on God to help me. This was prior to my time in twi. I do think that the worst evil is (as was said before) behind the pulpit. Often, as Christians, we are too blindly trusting of those in authority, and at the same time disregard the spirit of God within us that is telling us to flee these evil men. I have more to say, but I have a lot to do today and I need to get going.

I was thinking a lot about this stuff with Seed of the Serpent lately... I had a conversation with our parish priest about speaking in tongues (did that before I got into twi, don't see any need to change it - use it as a meditation tool, a lot like how the Rosary is used.). He told me that the "sin against the Holy Spirit" was the worst sin. And that the sin against the Holy Spirit was to prohibit the Holy Spirit from working in others and yourself. An explanation I had never heard in twi, but one that made sense. And if that is the definition, then vp, lcm, Rosie, and all the rest are guilty of it.

That is the perfect way to describe her! Thanks for that!