Belle

Angelina Jolie IS beautiful and I do think they are her real lips. Good taste Tom Strange :)--> karmicdebt, nope, it is far from going out of style. Maybe you're looking at old photos? Just last week there was a photo collage of all the different actresses getting the poison shot into their lips and cheeks.

Methinks y'all are pretty darn funny! and, Bob, you are being a sh1t! I'll get you for that! I wanna talk about me Wanna talk about I Wanna talk about number one Oh my me my What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see I like talking about you, usually, but occassionally I wanna talk about me I wanna talk about me

Rascal says: That Wascally Wabbit talking about how we were conned into thinking TWI was a love and light and helped facilitate that illusion thereby luring others into the dark belly of the beast.

AMEN, SISTAH! That should go in the gems thread! Do you mind if I copy it over there? :)-->

Sky & Radar, I, too, remember that teaching. We were to give anything and everything above our NEED to TWI. To many of us that meant, no cable TV, no nice brand new car savings - just enough savings to buy another piece of sh1t, no private school for the kids - public school is just fine, no brand new clothes - Starvation Army is much more economical.... Live like paupers and give everything you can to TWI. He11 they aren't any better than Benny Hinn when it comes to their teachings on giving!

KEWL! I'm a careful reader!!! :D--> I do believe in the spiritual realm, I just don't know exactly what I believe about it at this point.

HEY! They were just following How@rd @llen's advice, weren't they?? ;)-->

Zixar, I am soooo sorry!! It IS emotionally and physically exhausting. Drains everything out of you. It's never easy. Please feel free to e-mail me if you need to vent or talk with someone who's been through it recently.

Shellon, yes it is and I suppose he knows who I am now. :D--> The WAYGB aren't the only ones who can keep records, e-mails and whatnot for years.

I'm not so sure about that, Oak. :o--> GAWD! I can't believe I'm about to disagree with YOU! I think we're all different and we were all susceptible to different levels of influence and manipulation. I do think that some people could be genuinely, clinically considered brainwashed whereas others were just plain stupid. (I think I'm in the stupid category, fyi) How someone would determine which is which, I have no clue and obviously the "deprogramming" attempts as they were carried out in the past were terribly wrong. I do know of a few "interventions" that have been successfully carried out with college kids getting involved with cults other than TWI. The family and a trained professional, like Steve Hassan, and perhaps some former upper ups sat down with the kid (with HIS permission) and discussed the cult, beliefs, the family, the "authentic self" of the kid, etc. and helped the kid see what was going on in a bigger picture sort of way. Not deprogramming but something that grew from deprogramming. Again, we're all different and this technique works with some but not with others. I honestly don't know if it would have worked with me when I was getting sucked in. *shrug*

Yes, Chris Jordan / Napkinlady's research paper on debt is phenomenal. It's very well put together and follows all of the TWIt research keys. Rico Spaghetti tried to dismantle this teaching in his tape to the wc that was never shared outside the corps household in our area. I have notes on it. I'll have to see if I can find them.

:o-->

Lianne, I'm reading "The Power of Now" right now!! It is an awesome book, Schwaigers! I also highly recommend, if you haven't already read it, Steve Hassan's "Freedom of Mind: Enabling People to Think for Themselves" It talks about our "authentic self" and how it's compromised in cults and how to get back in touch with our "authentic self", as well as drawing that out of people we are able to be in contact with who are still trapped in a cult. I also happen to like Tom Strange's signature "I'd rather have something to regret than nothing to remember" and think of it at times when I'm tempted to not do something because it's new, scary or so very different than something I would have done in TWI. Extremely sage advice here, too, I think. I realize that it's not necessarily the making the decisions that's a problem, but rather the thought processes leading UP to the decision. Is it possible for you to leave the Bible and God completely out of your decision making process for a while? Not turning your back on God, but making decisions based solely on common sense or "gut feeling" (for lack of a better term). I think if you could do that, you would find that your decisions DO line up with God's will and that you are much more capable of making right decisions and taking care of yourself and your family than you give yourself credit for. I was told and treated as if I was incredibly stupid, ignorant and lazy while I was married and in TWI. I was not trusted to make major decisions and was chastised anytime I did or said something my ex or leadership disagreed with. I began to believe them and when I got out and divorced I went through a very rough time. I second guessed myself a lot --- A LOT!! I probably wore my parents out asking their advice and not feeling very confident in my ability to make intelligent choices. They helped me heal immensely by beginning to ask me what I thought the right decision would be and other probing questions. Then they would tell me if they agree with my decision or not (which 99.9% of the time they did agree with me). Eventually I began to trust myself and now I can see that I do know what's best for me and I do a pretty darn good job of taking care of Belle. (Her house isn't always clean and she sometimes makes bad decisions, but they are hers and never nearly as bad as TWI made her feel that they were.)

I never heard of them till I got here. The most I ever heard about the early years of TWI was from Mrs. W's book and then a video from the 70's or early 80's on the bus trip we took to hq a couple of years ago.

WW, that ....ed me off when I FIRST heard it! I just got more and more angry when I would hear TWIts use the fact that the almighty mog spoke excathedra (forgive me ex, for taking your name in vain) on this topic and if he said it, then, by golly, that's the way it is....the rest of us just weren't spiritually mature enough to see it. Oak, I shared the same things with my ex and our branch coordinators and was quickly dismissed and shut up for having the wrong "motive of heart". I was just trying to find something wrong with what TWI was teaching and I was too stupid to come up with this stuff on my own. Nevermind the fact that I was right! Don't know why I was surprised or even still miffed about it. They always changed the subject back to my motive of heart or the fact that I could not have possibly come up with the things I did on my own. Signed, Belle-igerant One

WB, I think they look disgusting! I can't imagine shooting poison into my body just to acquire characteristics that someone else says makes a woman beautiful. Personally, my body is already too high maintenance! LOL! I sure as heck don't want to add any more required tune-ups to it. If my body was a car, I never would have bought it.....

Thanks, Chas! You wouldn't happen to know how one goes about donating their body to science, would you?

AMEN Long Gone! I am really going to try and control my rant impulse on this. I've been through an extremely similar situation. I am saddened by the fact that Terri's dignity - the reason she didn't want to live like that in the first place -was totally compromised by her parents. Do you really think that Terri would have wanted the whole world to see her in that state on all the major media outlets? I'm saddened that the parents had to demonize the husband in front of the whole world, just because they didn't get their way. I'm saddened and sickened at all the scumbag politician's who decided to get on the Terri bandwago just because they felt it would get them good press. Frankly, I'm saddened that both sides had to be subjected to Jessie Jackson's BS. When will we get rid of this freakin' carpetbagger?

Hi TaylorCompany, Welcome to the GSpot! I can't remember now who wrote this, but it's very sage advice: I highly recommend getting Steve Hassan's book on Freedom from Bondage: Helping People Think for Themselves.....or something along those lines. It is VERY helpful in how to speak to people "in" a cult to help remind them of who they were before they got involved and how to talk to their "authentic self". It's got good advice on the kinds of questions to ask and how to ask them, etc. It was invaluable to me and now my therapist has it. :D-->

Well, they put faithfully abundant sharing - not tithing, but abundant sharing - as a requirement for many of their classes and all the programs they have. I have tapes of craiggers screaming his head off about people not giving and having bad things happen to them. It's emotional and spiritual blackmail, imo. Toad, thanks for sharing what you know and I'd love to know more. I do think what he is suing about is a very specific incident and not necessarily the entire time he was in. I'm not one for supporting evil people, but in this case he seems to be the lesser of the two evils and I'd love to see him take the TWIts for a bundle.

Xena, I don't remember the scripture references, but your question brings to mind the verses that say that every good gift is from above, God has not given us the power of fear...; if a son asks his father for bread he wouldn't give him a stone; my yoke is easy; all things are lawful to me; we are no longer under the law; the fruit of the spirit. Remember, Jesus did say that divorced were granted because of the hardness of our hearts. That means that someone in the marriage has a hard heart - It's not necessarily the one asking for the divorce. I think God's will is for us to be at peace and to be able to spend time giving Him the love and praise that He deserves. We can't do that if we're beaten down, oppressed and being abused. Like Bob said, if Abigail lived in our culture and our times, she would most likely have divorced. And, if you still believe in TWI's administrations, if she lived in the Grace administration she probably would have divorced. Remember, too, that we don't know anything about Paul's wife (at least I don't) for all we know he could have been divorced... I can't say what God's will is in individual situations, but I can imagine that it IS His will for His kids to be happy and peaceful and if a marriage does not provide that and can not be repaired, then divorce is the only way to resolve it.

Do shaved, tattooed cats get to go trolling for treasures? I'm with you on the mind pictures, Cindy! It's painful just reading about what you guys have to contend with.

Remember that you are only seeing one side of the story thanks to the biased media. The woman was brain dead, there was absolutely no electronic activity going on in her brain and there was absolutely no way she was going to recover save a miracle. As Moony mentioned the video was years old and selectively edited to show what the parents wanted people to see. Literally hundreds of doctors examined her and all of them agreed that she was brain dead and would be nothing more than a vegetable her whole life. That's not how I would want to live. I also would not want my family paying ungodly medical bills and living in denial for years that I would some day go back to who they once knew. I realize we all have our own opinions. My familiy has been in the position of having to decide on life support and, thankfully, we're all in agreement that when it's our time to go, it's our time to go and none of us want to be kept alive by man's machinery when it's obviously our time to die. I'm terribly sorry for her family and I know they have a lot of healing to do, but I also pray they will find peace.

Oooohhhhhh! Flat Stanley is getting ever closer to coming to visit me! I can hardly wait!! :D-->

Telescope? I have a dog who says they make excellent chew toys....especially if Mom takes too long while we're in there.