Jason P

1)Would you say you were at a major “turning point” in your life when you started attending cult meetings? YES 2)Did you feel you were in an undesirable state when you became interested in the teachings? YES 3)Had you tried other avenues to resolve a problem causing you tension in your life before resorting to the cult’s solutions? YES 4)Did the cult isolate you from your regular peer group? YES 5)If you expressed a different point of view from the group, did the group reprimand you and explain the proper way to think? YES 6)Were you discouraged from analyzing things for yourself, and encouraged to conform? YES 7)Were your decisions about individual actions taken away, and replaced with a strict regimen of group activities including group eating, sleeping, listening, talking, working and playing? NO 8) Do you think the public teachings were delivered with skill by polished, knowledgeable and dynamic speakers? YES Okay, "yes" or "no" is hardly fair with any of those answers so it's skewed. None of them are absolute "yes" or "no" answers, and the "no" one is a multiple-part question with some "yes"es. Hope that helps. I will say that most of the "yes" answers were not things that were demanded, but they sure as hell were expected and to not go along with them would have meant being outside of the "household."

Here's an unpopular suggestion: Maybe the rumors about her aren't true and he thought she was best for the job? I know that was the feeling out on the field at the time - some of us were aware of the rumors, didn't believe them, and thought that she was a very good choice. Edit: oops, you didn't mention the L word rumors. I'm so used to seeing it that I somehow thought it was there. At any rate, putting a woman in that spot was very good for appearance sake and I think he picked her because he thought she was the best. I don't see any conspiracy here. Why attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Of course, I tried to believe the Adam and Eve thing, the ice in space thing and the Peleg thing before logic took over as well, so what do I know?

Sample quote, not picking on any one person because it's a common thought in these parts: So what we're saying when we claim that every word was dictated by God but he chose to only reveal parts of it in each book is: God is a malicious prankster who chose to reveal His will in a series of confusing puzzles that apparently contradict each other at every turn BUT become quite clear if you start with the desired conclusion and work backwards, manipulating meanings of words in the process. And you have to find the one man of God to teach you how he manipulates the words and follow him until death or be weighed in the balances and found wanting. Yeah, I used to believe that too. Is this like the fundamentalists that claim God buried dinosaur bones all over the place to test our faith? Not only is this jokester deity making it virtually impossible to understand his will for certain, but he's throwing obstacles in our way to keep us from ever standing a chance. To hell with him then. I'm better off living by common sense and reason - suddenly I have a pretty good grasp of reality if I leave the fairy tales out of the equation. What kind of stupid god makes life more refreshing and liberating and peaceful and loving for those who refuse to believe in him? If he exists, maybe he should have made his will a little more clear and maybe there should be some actual undeniable benefit to following it. Other than a smug feeling of superiority, that is.

If I had wandered in here when this started, I would have said what Goey said. That should be the final word on the subject as far as I'm concerned. Not to defend the indefensible VPW, but I don't think he meant those teachings to be points of doctrine. He was merely trying to illustrate the "hand in glove" and "no contradictions" theories. I believe he was wrong as wrong can be, but I don't think he meant for these subjects to overshadow the importance of Christ. He was just a lousy teacher and rotten human being so it came out that way.

Absolutely not. I don't freely hand out love, respect, trust or forgiveness unless it's earned. I'm a man - I don't hand that stuff out just because it's expected or demanded (in fact, that's a good way to earn my contempt) or even requested. Earn it or stay the hell away. I forgive easily - all it takes is an admission of error, an apology and an attitude of change. In the case of TWI bigwigs, it would take a public apology (like here at Greasespot or... TWI's website?), but I would be fine with the bastards with just that little gesture. Until then, they can rot in hell. The people who got me in "the word" have apologized time and time again and they didn't even need to - they were just trying to help someone they cared about and were not responsible for any of the abuse. When they realized they were wrong they immediately took steps to change. They have my undying love and respect. I would love to apologize to those that I've gotten into "the word" and/or taught wrongly but they're still in and wouldn't hear it. When the time comes that they're ready, I'll be banging on their door asking for forgiveness. I expect the same courtesy.

I second every word. Once you get the basic ideas it starts to drag a bit but the basic ideas are very funny. I must be very jaded though because I didn't find it very offensive at all - no worse than an episode of South Park except for the profanity and a funny "sex" scene.

I've only heard it once so far but all I can say is holy shiiiiit. Anyone else heard Brian Wilson's "SMiLE" yet? Obviously, Wilson doesn't have the vocal range he used to have but I think it's a beautifully crafted pop album the likes of which hasn't been attempted in ages (to my knowledge, anyway, unless Jellyfish counts). I doubt if Brian Wilson has achieved what he's claimed he wanted to achieve for the last 30-odd years (I doubt if anything could live up to the legend), but this is as close to a real pop/rock symphony as anything I would care to hear. It's not up to the Beatles or even "Pet Sounds," but I'm glad I have it. The swirling vocals alone are gorgeous enough to recommend it but I also love the whimsical, shifting moods and textures and am very happy that the relatively sane Van Dyke Parks and Wondermints (one of my favorite pop - as opposed to rock - bands of the 90s) were there to help Wilson put it all in cohesive form musically and lyrically. Hopefully I won't get sick of it after a few listens and take back my recommendation but at this moment I love this album and think everyone should hear it. I imagine most of the online music shops should have samples - they won't give a sense of the whole but should give a sense of the production and musical values.

I think someone may have noticed I'm gone by now. Everyone I got into that pathetic little scam is still there, I'm sad to say. In fact, the last I heard of any of them they were more zombified than ever and climbing the ladder. Imagine the view...

Hotel? A normal sized living room should suffice nicely these days. But it would still be a 10 hour project to hear a 2 hour phone hookup. How nostalgic I'm feeling - I should have spent the first half of today doing setup for a meeting for 20 other people who didn't really want to be there either... with a crew of 16 or 17. Right about now we should be sitting in our uncomfortable folding chairs waiting for the phone hookup and thinking "in only five hours I can be home if no one calls a meeting after cleanup to blather about how important this day was. I wonder if the fish are biting? I wonder if I remember how to fish?" How spiritually dead we must be. What could we possibly be thinking to give this up?

And I posted at the same time as igout, who is much smarter on these things than I am. Do what he says if my whole "programs on partition D" thing causes confusion. My way works for me but it may not work for you. John's works for everyone every time.

Oops, sorry to mislead you, My3Cents. I also install programs and save all my Windows settings, favorites, templates and what have you to a folder in the D drive. You can also set the "documents and settings" folder on the D drive, which is where a lot of programs stash their settings and whatnots. However, some programs put hooks in the registry and operating system and any methods I know of completely saving them would be more complicated than reinstalling - to MY knowledge; I'm sure someone with more training has a better answer. It just occured to me that the programs I'm talking about here seem to be the ones most paranoid about piracy and activation so I don't know any way around that other than complete backups. As it is, with the way I set things up (programs and all settings on the D drive; all other files on E or F) I can reinstall the whole OS and the few programs (Such as MS Office) that need reinstalling in two or three hours. Sometimes fixing a disaster or trying to get the latest service pack working will take at least twice as long and you still have problems. I set up everyone's computers that way and teach them to save their pictures and music and other files to a storage partition (Move "my documents" to that partition and the battle's mostly won, even for the least experienced). I never spend more than an hour or two fixing the most horrible problems now... so far. Since this started with discussing SP2, I always give people a disc with SP2, a free firewall such as ZoneAlarm or Sygate that's easy to use and install and a free antivirus program (Avast is one that's easy for a beginner - I prefer AVG but get complaints that it's "too hard to use"). I instruct them (if the need ever arises to reinstall) to install SP2 and the firewall before connecting to the internet. Saves a lot of pain and suffering in the long run and I recommend keeping such a disc around. It's over 200 megs for the complete download but it takes maybe 20 minutes to install from a disc rather than waiting for a 90 meg download and getting hit with Blaster and other goodies while waiting.

I'm sure this is the most common answer: Anything I learned from TWI that is even remotely worthwhile would have eventually been learned elsewhere without the horrible mental and financial costs. All I got out of it was a dozen years down the drain and countless ruined relationships, lost opportunities and god knows how much financial destruction. The good news is that twelve years is a drop in the bucket compared to a whole lifetime and I now have such a finely tuned BS meter that the next 50 years should be smooth sailing. Saying anything positive about the experience would be tantamount to saying "well, I got hit by a bus but dammit, I learned to look both ways before crossing the road. Man, am I thankful for that!"

I noticed no performance differences at all the first time. I recently got a new motherboard and CPU, so I had the opportunity to install SP2 on a fresh XP install. I have never seen XP run so well or so smoothly before - once you shut up the security center if you're running things it doesn't recognize. I think it truly is an improvement in this case. My brother's computer was running like hell when he installed SP2 but he's done a million things to his machine (and had a zillion spyware and trojan attacks) and his registry had probably been reduced to semi-digested alphabet soup. I convinced him to do a clean install rather than spend the next ten years trying to fix his problems and his machine is purring beautifully. His and my machines are now the best-running ones I'm personally acquainted with now so I very highly recommend SP2 - especially for people who don't have the desire to become security experts just to surf the internet and manage their checkbooks. I suspect it depends on the abuse your OS has received and if a clean install is not out of the question that is probably the best way of ensuring trouble-free operation with SP2. I always set up machines so everything a person will want to keep goes to a separate partition because a clean install is so often the quickest and most effective way of solving so many problems: "You ran an unknown program you downloaded off Kazaa and your computer's barfing pea soup at you? No, I'm not coming over to fix it. Re-install and stop doing stupid things." That is so often a 2 hour project as opposed to days of sifting through all the accumulated muck to apply a band-aid. In short, rather than uninstalling it I would try it on a fresh install if possible.

Actually, in retrospect I wonder if it's such a terrible thing that Loy was picked. Maybe it wouldn't have crashed and burned like it has and many thousands more would be hurt if someone with more ability had taken over.

Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Complete waste of time, money, heart and everything I wasted on that terrible outfit. Anything worthwhile that can be gleaned from it can be learned much more easily and less painfully and in less time just by living life and applying common sense. Any good is absolutely completely overshadowed by the vile thought and behavior control and abuse. If you want to wreck your life, try heroin. It's cheaper, less destructive and easier to kick. Plus, you will find it easier to explain to others when they ask you what you wasted your youth on. Burn HQ to the ground and turn it back into a farm if anything will still grow in that corrupted dirt. That's the nicest thing I can say about the organization, and don't get me started on its sick, perverted, lying, diseased founder or his successors. And I'm in a good mood right now so I'm holding back.

Snopes is your friend: http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/skyterror.asp Here's the Salon article P-Mosh mentioned, and it's good indeed: http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2004/0.../askthepilot95/ Here's one from the National Review, not exactly a bastion of liberalism and/or terrorist coddling: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/taylor200407211921.asp I'm with P-Mosh on this one all the way. That woman is an idiot looking to gain an audience and these days more than ever fearmongering is the way to do it. I learned to recognize fearmongering over twelve years of observation in a pathetic cult and my BS meter goes beyond the red zone when I see something like this. I hit Google and/or the "what's new" page on Snopes and suspicions are generally confirmed. If you're one of the thousands who's been sending this by e-mail, please read the articles first (and there are more; Google is your other friend) and be sure that what you're sending is accurate. I have seen ONE (1) fear-spreading e-mail that has proven to be true in my years of receiving them and that one had inaccuracies and exaggerations. Amusing observation: Whenever I point out that the latest rumor or the most recent recycled rumor is untrue, whoever's spreading the fearladen crud inevitably asks me for proof. However, the offended party rarely has anything to show to back up the original story. Unfortunately, this story was printed in a "credible" place and was repeated enough that it does almost carry a whiff of reliability. It's the hysterical, exaggerated tone of the thing in the first place that sets off the alarm bells. I truly hope the woman who wrote that and her editor are hunting for new jobs because that was... irresponsible is the nicest word I can think of.

Wordwolf: Amen I saw so many outright lies that I figured I must be onto something great for religious fools to misrepresent it so badly. Anyone ever read the book (don't remember the title or author so help me if you do) that made the claim that twigs were "political meetings" encouraging people to take over their local governments and that "twig" stood for "The Word In Government?" A whole book on the Way and it was researched THAT poorly. The definition: paraphrased from a quote that I've seen attributed mainly to Art Gecko but also other miscellaneous folks. Hence the slight change and no attribution - I'm just not 100% sure (and don't know who Art Gecko is, even though Google's handy...) I'm sure Google would help more than I have.

I can't and won't defend PFAL or TWI but they definitely got the chart wrong when it comes to the Way. How can you see someone who makes such fundamental goofs as these as being credible in the least? But as someone who no longer subscribes to any doctrine or dogma at all, I don't view what I see as silly doctrinal nitpicking as the reason for TWI's culthood. TWI is a cult because of how we were (are?) brainwashed into patterns of behavior and thought, not because of the validity or lack thereof of the Trinity or baptism or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and if you are allowed to pray to them. But I see that I'm definitely in a minority when it comes to that. When I see something that can absolutely only be explained in supernatural terms, I'll think about reconsidering my rejection of the supernatural. I'm not holding my breath. Until then, I think it's all anal hairsplitting and not germane to the real problem. Which is behavior and thought modification. Which is much harder to objectively quantify than points of law or doctrinal differences. Wow. Derail. Sorry. Bad chart, not credible. That's all.

EDIT: Ugh. Never mind my original reply here. I just found that if Mozilla runs across something on a web site it doesn't understand, it hands it to the operating system to deal with without user intervention. This in effect seems to mean that any exploits on the internet that use non-standard code to attack Windows can be passed through gecko-based browsers such as Mozilla and Firefox and accomplish their objectives even without IE. This is not an issue with Opera, as it simply will ignore very badly written code it can't parse or code it doesn't understand and won't run any executables at all (you have to deliberately download it and run it yourself, and Opera washes its hands of the affair at that point). This means that some web sites won't have full functionality but it is either potentially unsafe functionality or just sloppy or lazy coding that the designer shouldn't have been allowed to get away with in the first place. Mozilla, in trying to stem complaints of the browser "not working" on poorly coded sites, seems to have introduced this "feature" (I call it a bug or an exploit) in order to gain more universal acceptance. However, they have in effect produced a browser that is potentially as unsafe as IE and potentially can be exploited to make it even less safe if I'm reading these things properly (since even IE will sometimes ask you what the hell you think you're doing when you click on something stupid). Another edit: Mozilla has a fix here: http://www.mozilla.org/security/shell.html - though a couple Slashdot geeks are saying it's kind of a band-aid and the underlying problem is still there and waiting for hackers to get around. I'm not a developer and don't know if they're full of hot air or not but I'm not willing to gamble on it when I already have a browser that is more usable and enjoyable and is completely free of this issue. Now, the Slashdot crowd are fanatical about free software so anything Windows does=bad (and they're very often right) and anything Linux or Mozilla does=good (50/50). In this case they're arguing that Mozilla has done nothing wrong and it's Windows' fault that people's machines can still be hijacked using Mozilla or Firefox. I call shenanigans and say this is absolutely unacceptable. In my myopic and unlearned view, a browser simply should not under any circumstances be allowed to run executables on a computer without the user having to jump through hoops to prove that they intend for this to happen. In other words, if you kill your own machine through your own actions that's your own lookout but if your browser allows it to be killed through inaction it's a bad browser and should be avoided. For the casual user who just thought he was switching to avoid IE's security holes and doesn't know to go looking for patches for this "secure" browser, this is halfassed in my view. I've been poking around to see how decisions are made on what to include in Mozilla's products and it looks to me like this kind of thing could be a BIG problem again in the future. Firefox is off my machine and I will only recommend Opera until I know that Mozilla's oversight is improved. This was an incredibly stupid flaw to allow in a product that's been worked on for so long by so many people. My original post follows, but I say "You get what you pay for" may be applicable here for the time being so my advice is to go with Opera and deal with the ad or pay the money if you can afford it: Ah, but I keep forgetting one important deciding factor: Opera puts an ad in the corner - doesn't seem to bother most people but it's there. It costs $40 to get rid of it. I first paid for Opera back in when it was 4.something or so and each additional upgrade is $10 or $15 so I've been paying roughly $15 a year for the ad-free version. I am quite willing and able to pay for cool software I use a lot if I prefer it over the free alternatives but if you want or need the free thing and don't want the ads this may be the dealbreaker. Just trash IE, okay?

Hmmmm... guess I'm still prejudiced after several years of Opera browsing. I have seen a lot of raves about Firefox lately so I figured I owe it to myself to give it another shot. First (unfair) impressions after only an hour of fiddling: I haven't got it to do tabs consistently and automatically like Opera does out of the box (maybe I'm missing something here but reliable tabbed browsing is #2 in my list of musts next to security), and the few skins (themes) I've tried so far still don't make it look as "professional" and smooth as I'm used to. Hadn't realized how brainwashed I am by the few mouse gestures I'm used to as well so I must get that working right away. Popup blocking: every bit as good as Opera or even IE with the Google bar I suppose. I really don't know where to go to test this, though, since I never see popups anyway but I haven't seen one yet with Firefox. Ad blocking isn't really an issue for me and I don't even use the Opera tools available for this other than to throw the worst sites into the hosts file. The tricks that Mozilla is borrowing from Opera are getting better integrated now and it's a definite improvement over the earliest betas. Somehow the features feel tacked on though rather than an organic part of the browser. It imported my preferences from Opera very nicely and smoothly. I don't know if Opera imports that well since I have nothing to import from. I doubt it, because Firefox handled it beautifully Sorry, but overall Firefox still feels like a work in progress to me and curiously unfinished in its general behavior. This is just a personal "feeling" though and it's still miles ahead of IE in functionality and security. Important point for Internet Explorer users: Firefox generally DOES behave much more like IE than Opera does. I only use IE when forced into it by a bad site so IE is not familiar or comfortable to me, though. Firefox would almost certainly be the first choice for someone who's trying to break from IE and needs to feel at home but in my case it feels like anything but home. Conclusion so far: It's still a matter of taste and what you're used to. Opera is like moving to a foreign country with alien customs if you're used to IE so if you don't have the patience and/or desire to learn the lay of the land Firefox is a more than suitable alternative and will probably not frustrate a newbie outside of a few quirks. I like the foreign country and have lived there so long I'm not much inclined to budge without strong persuasion. I'll fiddle with it some more over the next few days and try to set Opera aside (oops, I'm typing in Opera right now...) and see if my opinion improves. If it doesn't, I'll check back when Firefox hits 1.0. It just feels like riding a tricycle after years of mountain biking to me. Related subject: I'm trying Thunderbird (Mozilla's mail client) again as well. First impressions are that it's still quite slow and clunky. Since I filter mail with Mailwasher before it hits the client anyway and since Outlook Express has some kickass security upgrades with XP's Service Pack 2 I'm not inclined to try Thunderbird much more at this time. It's getting there though, and it IS a bit better looking than OE. Again though, dammit, it all feels like something whacked together in someone's basement. I can't put my finger on why and I don't see too many other people making the same complaints so chalk it up to old habits dying hard. I'll come back to this one when it hits 1.0 as well. And when I finally decide on a flavor of Linux to play with I'm sure Thunderbird will find a place there pretty quickly. So I imagine my final choice will be Opera with Firefox as a pretty close second choice and Outlook Express (with XP SP2, mind you) with Thunderbird as a quite distant second choice - or even third, with Eudora and other fine clients out there competing. With XP's new security in OE I don't see myself switching in the near future except to experiment. The only reason I can think of for using Outlook rather than OE at home in my case is the calendar feature. And here's a place where Mozilla creams everyone: the Sunbird calendar project, which can be found somewhere around here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ It's VERY beta at this time and doesn't have advanced features that many people need but it suits my purposes just fine. With the open-source nature of Mozilla bringing possibilities of lightning fast improvements, who knows what will be on my machine a year from now? The only safe bet is that IE will still be used for Windows Update and nothing else.

More Smilies: :-? (Blue Oyster Cult Fan) @(*o*)@ (Koala) (or is it Princess Leia?) (_8^(|) (Homer Simpson) @@@@@@:-) (Marge Simpson) :-[x> (Vampire) :-E (Bucktoothed vampire) (Chinese Finger Trap) 2B|^2B (To be or not to be) ~~ (Sad-faced stinky clown with a bowtie on a skateboard who lost his contact lenses - work with me here, okay?)

Actually, while I may not be willing to devote much in the way of resources or time studying them, I am interested in hearing about other peoples' experiences in other cults. It's amazing how much they all have in common and it's good to see how the hooks were baited. It seems that there aren't an amazing number of tricks in the cult book and it's great to be able to recognize them a bit more clearly. Not that I have any intention of ever being a part of any religion of any stripe again as long as I live, but if nothing else my experience and knowledge may help someone else avoid the horrible waste of cult involvement. I wasted twelve years but maybe because of it someone else won't have to. So if someone has a bit of ammo to add, I'm willing to take a look. Plus, it makes me feel a bit less stupid to see how many other intelligent, reasonable people have fallen for similar crap. I'm sorry it happened to them but at least I'm not alone. And at least I can see that recovery takes a lot of different forms and fashions but it does happen, thank Whatever.

Couldn't resist coming back with this funny and informative article, from Slate (owned and/or operated by Microsoft): Are The Browser Wars Back? I'm disappointed that they don't talk about Opera, but that may be a corporate thing: Go ahead and promote the free thing but for God's sake leave the commercial one out of it... oh, and Opera's killing MS in the portable market too. They're tiny but more of a threat to MS than most people recognize. Again, they're both great browsers and equally secure in most respects (we could get into the open vs. closed source debate here but it's not a crusade to me as it is to some).

I much prefer Opera myself, but I think it's just a matter of preference. I don't think anyone could make a great case for one being superior to the other. To me, Opera feels faster and smoother and more "finished" and the customization is more intuitive. A newbie can fiddle with Opera for an hour or so and have it exactly the way they want it, where Firefox needs a bit more knowledge coming in. Though I haven't tried Firefox for a year or so and could be wrong today... oh, and Opera 7.51 is butt ugly out of the box so it WILL take a bit of fiddling to get the clutter out of the way. Just play with the controls for a while. The same pretty much goes for Firefox as well, if I recall - it just seemed a bit more of a way of life rather than a mere browser. Maybe I just read Slashdot and it's regulars proselitize so much that it kind of turns me off. Whichever one you pick (and I can't think of any concrete reason to say one is better than the other in any objective way), there is little or no question that they are both miles ahead of IE in every respect... unless you're talking to someone who likes archaic, broken, insecure junk, that is... and as someone who spent way over a decade with the Way, I feel like I may be starting to throw stones so I'll quit now.

Hello, nameless... You've been told some very useful information and I don't think I have much to add except to say this from experience (on both sides of the fence as dropper and droppee): Unless the person you're seeing is planning on leaving TWI, it can only lead to heartbreak. I wish I could say something else that gives even a glimmer of hope, but although the abuse is very subtle and gradual, it is still the same organization it has always been. In some respects it may be worse than before since it is so subtle. Sorry, but that's the truth and I can't see it ever changing - the relationship won't work in the long run unless you are both committed to TWI and it would only work then UNTIL one of you left the organization. And it's not really a question of "if," it's a question of "when." As one of the most recent "escapees" around these parts, I think I should update you on those questions: 1. What is the policy concerning adultery This question is the same thing as saying "I've been reading stuff on the internet and I'm on to you." That's up to you. But... unless you are dealing with "leadership" that was privy to the stuff that was going on, they are under the impression that adultery was NEVER acceptable. Most Corps are newer these days and most were genuinely surprised to find out what was going on. There was teaching in the Corps very recently about adultery, and it was that it is wrong, wrong, wrong and will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Just an update on that situation. I know people who were leaders for 20 or 30 years who never would have considered adultery ever being anything but wrong and still refuse to believe that there were those who encouraged it. In my opinion, this isn't the best question to ask. "What happened to this Martindale guy?" may be a better question, if you ask me. 2. What is the policy concerning disipline of children 3. What is the there difination of how a wife is supposed to "submit" to the husband? 4. How much of your income is supposed to go to twi. 5. How much of your time is expected of you (going to fellowships, functions etc...) These are all great, though little time is actually "expected" in the last year or two. People show up for a fellowship once a month if they want and no one says a word anymore. Your mileage may vary in your area but this is the general rule in most places now. 6. What is "mark and avoid"? Great question, except this term has not been used in at least two years. The practice has fallen by the wayside so much that I doubt if newer Corps or coordinators have much experience or knowledge of it other than a brief mention of its mishandling in the past - always someone else's fault, of course. It is still a practical reality - if you leave and/or have hard questions or negative comments about Der Veg, you would eventually be shunned and treated as if "Mark and Avoid" is still the policy. The actual word from "leadership" is that it is not a policy and never really WAS a policy ("policy" redefined to the max here, which is a daily Way occurence) and was mishandled in the past. Good question but it will be dodged or explained away if they even understand what you're getting at. I would add this question: 7. What is your understanding of debt? What happens if I want to buy a house or car? Oh, you are against it? How does one go about getting a decent car or escaping the rent rut, then? Hope this helps, but the only advice I could really offer is to pull this person aside and have an honest conversation with them about their involvement in this organization and their plans for the future within or without the organization. I can't help but say that if this person plans on sticking with the cult, the only course that will avoid long-term heartache for you is to make a clean break now. I'm truly sorry to say that but I've been there and seen it countless times. So has everyone here who spent more than a few months in the Way.