My3Cents

Because they didn't use string to line up the chairs on the Titanic.

Almost everytime you grow or accept something good in your life, it means giving up something else. When you go to college, you give up life in your hometown and some of the friendships that go with it. When you get married you give up living with your folks, or by yourself or with roomates etc. The point is even when the place you're moving to is a good one (and giving up the way is a good move in my opinion) there can be a feeling of grief for what you're giving up. It's OK to feel BOTH ways. Feeling are just what they are. There was a good book about this by Judith Vorst (if memory serves) called Necessary Losses.

RAF, He made a bigger deal about it when he was around than he did on teaching tapes.

Sunesis, Any idea what she does for work? Did she ever make a career out of that video stuff she was doing at HQ?

Sogwap, That's called growing up. Welcome to adulthood.

To fix itself, one has to assume it's broken. I don't think it's broken. It's a system of controling people, milking them of their money, time, even jobs and family in many cases. The folks at the top live the life they want to and until recently could have sex with almost any follower that they could badger into bed. Absent the sex they can still do almost anything they want. Of course they have a few more legal bills but they have the bucks to pay for it. This is exactly what the founder designed it for. It's not broken. Oh, I'll admit that they SAY they do a whole bunch of cool stuff with the Bible but they don't. And when I found out that I'd believed what they SAID so much I didn't realize what they DID for a real long time, I felt hurt, angered, ashamed at myself, disappointed and all kinds of other emotions. And that's why I left. But they don't seem to care about the people that leave. So I'd say it's working just as it was meant to.

Don Wierwille once got very angry at me for something we disagreed on. Later when it became obvious I was right he sort of appologized. By that I mean, he excused his anger as being "spiritual anger". It didn't occur to me later that if it really had been spiritual (ie from god) then it wouldn't have been wrongly applied. That's how brainwashed I was.

I remember talking to Schoenheit about his research in the summer at ROA and Corps week, and I believe it was published in the fall after that. I was out by end of 1986 so that would put it in summer/fall of 1986.

I miss knowing I was right about everything. I miss being able to judge everyone else (at least those "below" me). I miss being able to speak on behalf of the almighty. I miss understanding what the afterlife is like. I miss being able to blame everything that went wrong in my life on something (and often on something someone else did or didn't do). I miss being able to sort everything I experienced as either right or wrong.

If it was working a day ago, something must have happened. Typical scenarios are 1 - physical damage - you'd probably see this, becaues the slidey thing on the case won't slide or the disk inside won't spin freely. If the case is damaged but not the actual disk inside you can perhaps rescue the disk and put it in another case. By "you" I mean someone who's familiar with this process whether they actually reside in your body or not. 2 - operator error. Some elves came in in the middle of the night and reformated your disk (unlikely given the error you mentioned) You (sorry, I mean the elves) would have been prompted about "Do you really want to do this" 3 - magnetic damage. the disk got to close to a magnetic source (refrigerator magnet, audio speaker or something) and got wacked. In this case perhaps an disk salvage operation can recover your data if it's valuable enough. These services are not cheap and are usually done on hard drives. Cost is hundereds to thousands of dollars. 4 - best for last - your floppy disk is OK but the drive is broken. If it reads other floppies than this is not true, but if you haven't tried other floppies do so. Sorry I haven't got better news.

Just my 2 cents (and one for inflation) The Schoenheit paper was basically a word study showing that adultery was not a good thing according to the bible. John did uncover lots of examples of adultery with muckety-mucks. He mentioned them to people he felt comfortable talking to about it but that stuff was not in his paper. On another note, to say that this stuff was "taught" gives a slightly different impression of what life was like in the way under vpw. I'm not exactly sure how to explain it to folks that weren't there, but I'll try. There was not as much "from the pulpit teaching" about lifestyle stuff (other than witnessing and tithing) like there apparently was under craig's later days. Most of the sex stuff was just a cultural thing. If a question was raised, a scriptural rationalization was given. But to say "it was taught" makes it sound more weighty than it was. Also the culture was that vpw didn't give any evidence of applying scripture to his own life. He never gave examples of making a decision where he wanted to do X but read the bible and decided to do Y. More of the examples were he decided what to do and looked for verses to back it up. (This was apparently how the research was done too but that's another topic). So there was an "understanding" that if you were spiritual enough you just lived and everything was cool. It was obvious he didn't run or eat like he told the corps to do. He didn't moderate his drinking or smoking. He certainly didn't give up any of his money toward any cause. (I know he didn't own much in a legal sense - but it was obvious he CONTROLLED a lot of cash and it mostly went toward building his empire in a way that added to his own creature comforts.) I guess what I mean by that was there was no practical distinction made between money spent on things that were good for vpw personally and money spent to "move the word." Again this wasn't "taught" though there were some scriptures thrown around to justify it if a question were ever raised. BUT if a person raised too many questions it was obvious that that person was not very spiritual and even ostracized (though not in any official way like the later M&A - they usually just were made uncomfortable enough to leave of their own accord which made it easy for us to say they were possesed.) vpw didn't even appear to spend a lot of time reading the bible. One woman I know, who cleaned his house, said that he would often prep for a Sunday night teaching by spending only about 15 minutes pulling together a bunch of verses. The sex stuff was not as obvious (at least to me - which may say a lot about my powers of observation or my sex drive at the time) but it sure fit in with the culture vpw propogated, of do what you want and as long as the word is moving it's all OK. I left in 86 I think it was, and apparently craig got a lot more meddlesome after a while.

Rascal, With all due respect. I think you missed the point. Everything you did you did because you believed it when they told you how to... It's a subtle but powerful distinction. It puts the responsability on you not them. And I'm not singling you out. It was the same for me and for all of us. Whatever they told us isn't the point. The point where we gave away our power was when we chose to believe what they told us and act on it. Hard as it is to get out of the way, it's harder to get the way out of you. You can't do that as long as you believe you did anything because of them. You have to realize you did it because you chose to respond to them in the way you did.

I don't think Craig's failures were at all typical. They were/are pretty extraordinary. But it's common for people with a fundamentalist view of things to see the world as black or white with no variance. Reminds me of a president who said something to the effect of "If you're not with us, you're against us." If you believe that people and actions are either "on the word" or "off the word" then there is no room for a whole range of motivations from mistaken, to misguided, to deliberatly evil, to narsacistic. Nor is there room for complicity or responsability. With this belief you loose site of how a person can be a victim of another and at the same time can have done things (or neglected to do things) that prolong that victimization. This is a very comforting way to view the world for many people. That is why they follow and/or lead in organizations like the way. Logic is futile to changing those world views. People change when they feel more comfortable changing their views than sticking with the old ones. Mike, I wish you the best.

Vickles, Do you remember what he was like as a person? I knew him at HQ probably just after that. My impression was he was like a droid. No imagination, always played by the rules, wasn't intentionally harmful to people, but didn't understand people's emotions either (which is often how a leader hurts people). 2 incidents come to mind. #1 When the way was deciding to go with Betamax or VHS for its PFAL series on the field, his analysis showed that Betamax was technically superior and so they went that way. He was correct. But he ignored the fact that the world was going with VHS which meant there would be more VHS machines on the field. Thus there was always a hassle to get equipment to run classes. #2 He had been director of a lot of way videos. They were very stilted. One time I saw a new one (can't remember the name) but the directing showed a bit more warmth and feeling. I complimented Joe on this thinking he had matured in his craft, but it turned out it was directed by someone else. (The brother of Sunesis if I'm not mistaken - but that's another topic.) From the way's point of view, Joe would be an ideal president. But I doubt if any changes will be made anytime soon.

It's been said that a woman gets married with the expectation that her man will change over the years and a man gets married with the expectation that his woman won't. And they both get disappointed.

If Dr. Laura said it, I'd do the opposite!

Thanks Insurgent, And of course I respect your privacy about the details.

My wife married a non-christian. But she wasn't in the way. I was. So I suppose by the way's standard that makes me still born again, but by my standards I'm not a believer or a christian. My personal opinion is that people from a fundamentalist belief system (which the way was) tend to look at lables and outward things [like someone claiming to be a christian or not] as more important than they need to be. Having said that, the advice I'd give wwjesuslaughat is forget about lables and decide for yourself if marrying this person feels like the right thing to do. Could you respect him and his beliefs (or lack there of)? Could you continue to practice your beliefs like you want without that becoming an issue for either of you? Could you respect yourself and be proud to be his wife? Don't know if you'll have kids but if that's possible you have to discuss what that means to the two of you. And expect him to answer these questions about you. If the two of you can't even talk about it then it will become a problem down the road. Not all problems are deal breakers, but some are. I wish you all the best.

The question to ask about that painting is what was eve doing before the serpent distracted her? Just picture adam and eve in the same positions but with eve's head turned the other direction.

I was in when the 2 drink limit was started. vpw started it saying there were too many problems with leaders drinking too much. [Never mind that he was one of the worst - though he seems to have been the kind of alcoholic who could drink a lot and not show it too much and he always had others to drive for him] However, as with all way "guidelines" my experience was each leader did with them what they wanted to. Some didn't even mention them, some did but enforced them only when they felt like it, others made it a gestapo kind of thing, and others make a mockery of it by using a 40 oz cup and calling it one drink. In my field positions from 1975-85 (approx) I almost always reported directly to a limb leader. When I got together with the limb leader and his direct reports for leaders meetings and such, there was always drinking. My initial question was directed at any innies or folks who were recently in to know if that is still common.

Just curious. I haven't been involved since the mid 1980's but back then a lot of top leaders got quite drunk a lot. I've known limb meetings to be taught by a leader when he was soused. Numerous drunk driving incidents and many more drunk driving situations that did not cause incidents (by luck). It seemed a very popular passtime that after a meeting leaders would get together and get plastered - and I mean getting drunk, not just having a couple of drinks. Is that still common?

Vickles, Anyone with access to your account (username & password) could have changed it. That would include your ex. As noted above NEVER answer emails that talk about problems and ask you to email back a password. Legitimate sites that keep your password NEVER ask for them in email. And if you do get an email asking you to log on and correct something NEVER click the URL in the email. Always open a new browser and type it in clean. That way you know you're really going to ebay, or yahoo or whatever. When you forget a password, there are 2 ways that sites usually handle this. Some sites email you your existing password or let you see it by answering a test question. Others RESET your password and email (or let you see) the new one. Usually when that happens the new password is quite random. Don't know which way yahoo handles this but if it's the latter that may explain the changed password.

There were also people in those early corps who were abused, and even had nervous breakdowns. I agree that it got worse with the bigger corps. But I don't think it was just because of size. VPW, as evil as he was, could also be charming. As his influence and personal involvement diminished - because LCM took over the corps, because it moved to Emporia and Gunnison etc - then more of the nasty stuff and less of the charm was left. Also vpw himself got more and more legalistic and would put up with less disagreement as he became richer and more powerful. In the days of the early corps, everything from dress codes to tithing and certainly time management of self and others was a lot looser. I actually think a lot of the legalism and abuse came from vpw, but a lot didn't. It came from others who were hungry for power. But it all was allowed by him. The further you got from hq the more things differed depending on the personality of your local leadership. That's why some on this thread never saw what others did. If you could put classes together, and keep the numbers flowing then you were pretty much able to do what you wanted.

Shaz, Dogs aren't as stupid as people. And they don't care so much about being "right" - only about being fed and happy. On another topic: I had an experience with Don W once where he got mad at me for something. It later turned out that he was obviously wrong. In a semi-appology, he explained that even though he was wrong, his anger was "spiritual anger". He didn't realize that if you belived his premise (that one could walk by the spirit and be right)his explanation just proved how wrong he was. My conclusion about him (and I didn't know him past the mid-80's) was that he was a nice guy but not any great thinker, and not at all a dynamic leader. He was, after all a public school principal or something - not exactly rocket science. Till his daddy bought him a college.

The problems is that people look at a verse of scripture about something happening in a day. Then they look at a sentance from a textbook or scientific report about something happening in millions of years. It seems to them that those statements while contradictory are equivalent at some level. So they feel justified in choosing the one they feel fits better with all their other beliefs. But those are not equivalent statements. They come from very different places in very different contexts. Behind the bible verse are a whole lot of decisions people made about canonization, translation, archeology etc - not to mention belief. Behind the scientific statement are a whole lot of ways of looking at facts and testing theories and research. You can't just take one statement out of context, say "I like that one so the other I reject". They are not equivalent. The best analogy I can think of is if I'm arguing with my teenager about why he can't come home after curfew and not liking my decision he says "You're sick, Dad!" Then I go to my doctor for a physical and after reviewing the tests he says "You're in good health, not sick at all." Those are not equivalent statements. They each have a context around them that I reject at my own peril. I know this was a bit off topic. Sorry.