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A la prochaine
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I have been thinking about my years in TWI and how much I actually disliked my time there.

And I have finally come to the conclusion that of all my 25 yrs. in TWI I actually felt as if I was in a cage.

First 3 years - People telling me how blessed they were because they had found the cage and were living abundantly within the four walls of the cage.

My WOW year - First taste of being CAGED in - HATED IT TREMENDOUSLY, but thought there was just something wrong with me and that I would somehow adjust to my new living quarters.

My Way Corps In-REZ - TRAINING TO LIVE IN THE CAGE and TEACH OTHERS HOW TO ENJOY THE CAGE AS WELL. That lasted only one year... I had to leave... The cage was smothering me.

My years after - Trying to live a 'I'm so blessed 'cause I've put myself in this cage and loving it' lifestyle.

It has only been in the past few years that I have come to realize how much of this CAGEING crippled me, my life, my relationships, my spirit.

Edited by A la prochaine
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And I have finally come to the conclusion that of all my 25 yrs. in TWI I actually felt as if I was in a cage.

(((A la)))......so glad to see you free-wheelin' again. :)

For me.........in-rez was more like an invisible fence and our corps name tag monitored the current. After a few zappings..........one knows exactly where the boundaries lie and stays put.....or digs some holes and by-passes the system.

:biglaugh::biglaugh:

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(((A la)))......so glad to see you free-wheelin' again. :)

For me.........in-rez was more like an invisible fence and our corps name tag monitored the current. After a few zappings..........one knows exactly where the boundaries lie and stays put.....or digs some holes and by-passes the system.

:biglaugh::biglaugh:

...after a few zaps... VERY WELL PUT SKY!!!

I got to thinking about this whole 'cage' thing because I have in the past few years looked into personality types.

When tested, I came out as a certain personality type which contradicted all of what TWI taught me I should be to be a 'true' believer.

No wonder I thought I was going insane :confused:

Don't have time right now...but when I do, I'll come back and type up some of the personality characteristics.

Revealing to say the least :unsure: !

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Ala,

Re:"It has only been in the past few years that I have come to realize how much of this CAGEING crippled me, my life, my relationships, my spirit."

I guess most of us here have had to come to grips with that realization (uh, except those that choose to live in denial and have super-glued the WayRose-colored glasses to their faces).

I sometimes wonder what I could've done had it not been for the diversion into cultdom.

Regret is a mother$%&@er isn't it?

Ah well, we're still alive anyway. A shame we wasted so much of the "ride" though...

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A La, I remember a teaching where craig talked about oppression as being in a submarine with the walls caving in. I sat in that teaching and started crying because that's exactly how I felt. Funny thing is, everyone else, thought I was crying because it was such a "moving" teaching to me and inspring me to be "bolder" in my stand for TWI (not for God).

I'm not sure which personality test you took and I can't remember the specific name of the test, but every time I took it before TWI I was an ENTP and by the time I had become entrenched in TWIt doctrine I was an INFJ. Pretty telling.

I went from craving and loving interaction and companionship with others to preferring to be by myself or at least invisible if I had to be out in public.

I went from looking forward to learning how others think, live and whatnot to judging folks because they weren't interested in TWI and "the more abundant life". :rolleyes:

I started being unhappy and unsure of TWI and not really all that excited about it when I had "come back" after a 6-month hiatus. I started to see the hipocracy, the verbal abuse of people and the control leaders were exerting over the lives of people. I just plugged along and ended up giving up my own apartment to live with another "believer" and from there got married. During the first six months of our marriage I was starting to feel the bars of that cage strengthening and moving closer together. I was stuck because my ex bought everything TWI taught and demanded of us hook, line and sinker. I felt like the enemy in my own marriage.

The longer we were married and the more pressure TWI kept putting on our lives and our time, the more those walls of the submarine were closing in on me. It just got worse once I found WayDale and tried to pry those bars apart and pump air into that submarine from within.

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I'm not sure which personality test you took and I can't remember the specific name of the test, but every time I took it before TWI I was an ENTP and by the time I had become entrenched in TWIt doctrine I was an INFJ. Pretty telling.

I went from craving and loving interaction and companionship with others to preferring to be by myself or at least invisible if I had to be out in public.

I went from looking forward to learning how others think, live and whatnot to judging folks because they weren't interested in TWI and "the more abundant life". :rolleyes:

Jung-Myers-Briggs test.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Edited by WordWolf
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Caged....that is exactly how I felt.....

You must do abc...behave in thus and such manner....like only this ...eschew that....give up this....don`t like certain people.....(the list was endless) or risk being outside of God`s favor and protection.

We were molded into these unrecognizable characters....

I couldn`t be me, I couldn`t like the activities that had always interested me......I couldn`t be with the people who were important to me....I couldn`t live where I wanted to....

The bars on the cage ...the bars that imprisoned us were forged from scriptures that we learned to love.

Our love for God, our instilled sense of duty to him is what created the seemingly insurmountible obsticals that prevented us from escaping the snare to freedom.

The worst part was when we were forced to do great evil, feeling within the every fiber of our being the wrongness of it.....but it was necessary in order to observe your duty to God, and renain faithfull to his ministry

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Wordwolf, Belle,

The test I spoke of earlier was exactly this. It was called True Colours.

"The theory behind True Colours is not new and traces back to Hippocrates theory who identified four different types of human being; the Sanguine, the Choleric, the Phlegmatic and the Melancholic. In more recent years it was Carl Yung, in his 1921 release of Psychological Types, who again described these differences as a fundamental basis for understanding human beings.

When his work was translated into English in 1923, it had a profound affect on a woman who had been studying differences in people for years. As a result, Katherine C. Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs-Myers, developed their well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Their theory basically states that what appears to be random variation in human behaviour is actually quite orderly. As a result, they identified and characterized 16 different types of people.

For the past 35 yers, Dr. David Keirsey has been refining the work of Myers-Briggs and in his landmark book, Please Understand Me, defines four different types of human beings. According to Dr. Keirsey, these four types of people are different in fundamental ways; they want different things, they have different motives, preferences, aims, values, needs, drives, impulses and urges. They think differently: they cognize, conceptualize, perceive, understand, comprehend and cogitate differently.

These differences create natural barriers to interpersonal communications.

Dr. Keirsey observed that:

"Man's Pygmalion project has been to make all those near him just like him. Fortunately, this project is impossible. To sculpt the other into his own likeness fails before it begins. Remove the fangs of the lion and behold, a toothless lion, not a domestic cat. Attempts to change the spouse, offspring, or student or employee, can create a change, but the result is a scar - not a transformation."

I've just copied about 1/2 a page of the introduction to the test I took.

Now, with all that having been said, when I took the test, this is what I found out about myself.

YOU WILL CERTAINLY SEE WHY MY EXPERIENCE IN TWI FELT LIKE BEING IN A CAGE TO ME.

My personality types are sensory perceptive people, and above all, they must be free to act. Action or "doing" carries its own reward. They do things for the joy of doing. They choose to be impulsive, - act upon the idea of the moment. This is the free spirit, who takes pride in freedom beyond all else.

(OH MY GOD... THIS IS EVERYTHING TWI WAS NOT!!!)

The words and phrases that best characterize them are:

Urge or whim - Impulse is to really live - Take off for 'somewhere else' (can you see me on the WOW field...stuck in one place!), - Thrive when outcomes not know - Test the limits! - Great in a crisis - Needs variations (TOOK PFAL OVER 25 times while in TWI)- Enjoy randomness - Waiting is psychological death - Do it now - Joy in doing - Clutter is acceptable (hahahahahhahahahhah TWI would eat their shorts), Specific goals unimportant - Generosity, sharing.

Ya I know... I sound flighty as ever!! And I suppose, that is why in TWI, I felt I needed to squelch these 'tendencies'. In the test, the personality is examined even closer and you realize that being like this in not looked upon as a negative thing, but rather has some wonderful qualities, as all personality type do and should be nurtured and respected for who they are.

Well, that's all the gab for today.

enjoy

TWI to me = Living a stiffled life.

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LOL! Well, now I'm an ENFP. :) Does that mean I'm still in recovery or that I've overcome?

An ENFP is certainly NOT cut out for the cult life! :biglaugh:

They ... are a major asset in brainstorming sessions. Followthrough tends to be a problem, however; they tend to get bored quickly, especially if a newer, more interesting project comes along. They also tend to be procrastinators, both about meeting hard deadlines and about performing any small, uninteresting tasks that they've been assigned.

ENFPs hate bureaucracy, both in principle and in practice; they will always make a point of launching one of their crusades against some aspect of it.

Close enough is satisfactory to the ENFP, which may unnerve more precise thinking types

I'm Sanguine Choleric on the other one.

A la prochaine, you only sound flighty to the OCD anally retentive mini-mog's. ;) Sounds like we have a lot in common and that is the total antithesis of what TWI tried to make us into. I know I felt like I was ignorant, irresponsible and would be able to learn and benefit from the structure of TWI. Little did I realize that the "structure" consisted of those metal bars you talked about.

As Popeye says, "I am what I yam" and I'm learning to like that person. :dance: Warts, procrastination, spontaniety, sloppiness and all.... :who_me: Would that TWI would have embraced the uniqueness and special talents, gifts, views and personalities all of us bring to the table.

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speaking of post-twi tests, very shortly after i left, i took a career aptitude test in an effort to figure out what to do with my life. at the end of the self-administered test (it was LONG--2-3 hours), it spit out a list of career possibilities. and number one on the list? a minister!

i think i'd get a much different result if i took it today, because i'm sure my answers were still very way-brained.

(i didn't pursue the test's recommendation, by the way.)

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Belle,

"... I know I felt like I was ignorant, irresponsible and would be able to learn and benefit from the structure of TWI. Little did I realize that the "structure" consisted of those metal bars you talked about."

Thank you Belle for those words.

I was frustrated in so many respects while in TWI trying to ram my being into one of those caged boxes that everyone else seemed so comfortable in.

I was always screaming...What's wrong with me??? I just don't get it??? I don't fit.

So unfortunately, I shut-up and put up and decided that I needed to change. So, inside I slowly started to die. I started to come apart bit by bit, putting all the things I loved (or didn't even know I loved) aside and became content.

That's a scary place to be.

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....

I was always screaming...What's wrong with me??? I just don't get it??? I don't fit.

So unfortunately, I shut-up and put up and decided that I needed to change. So, inside I slowly started to die. I started to come apart bit by bit, putting all the things I loved (or didn't even know I loved) aside and became content.

That's a scary place to be.

A la prochaine,

That interior death you speak of...the sonambulistic stupor of just walking through life because you're not really alive, and became somehow content in the living death...

that really struck home for me today. And makes me realise from reading all the posts here, and the words from you and Belle on this thread...I'm not as far back into life as I intend to be.

I felt for a long time like a fish on a line, too tired to fight the hook anymore. I think the similar feeling of being whipped against the bars of a cage also applies.

My choices may be imperfect now, but at least they are mine and I take responsibility for making them.

regards,

qt

P.S. and it feels pretty good :)

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QT,

Thank you for that post.

True words.

The choices I made were extremely life altering.

Quiting high school in order to move and be able to take PFAL was celebrated in TWI. I was hugged by a corps person and told how proud they were of me because of the stand I had taken.

I finished high school through night school and then started college. Again, I quit college to go WOW. EVERYONE was so proud of me, but it seemed they were proud only because they had another number on their WOW sign-up sheet.

No one sat me down and said.. Look, you've started something ... maybe you should finish this before starting another thing. NO... it was ... college doesn't give you the answers in life...but WOW will.

say no more.

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Rascal,

The bars on the cage ...the bars that imprisoned us were forged from scriptures that we learned to love.

That pretty much sums it up for me. This statement is the travesty of it all. :(

Travesty: 1. Make (person or thing) ridiculous (intentionally or not) by grotesque representation.

Polar One,

Glad I could make you laugh.

I know for many years I laughed or made a joke, or tried to make others laugh, because I didn't know what else to do to cope in certain situations. In TWI, if the joke happen to fall upon the wrong ears... I quickly HEARD about it. My "UNSPIRITUAL" attitude was not tolerated. :realmad:

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"My choices may be imperfect now, but at least they are mine and I take responsibility for making them."

BINGO!!! That's exactly how I feel. And yes, after six years of freedom, I have certainly made some mistakes... duh. But the consequences come and go a lot faster when you don't have someone throwing them in your face over and over and over again, long afterward. Personal freedom is a wonderful thing.

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I read in another thread where I LOVE BAGPIPES had been reading this thread and others in tears today.

I always feel it a healthy thing when I hear of this happening.

Tears are good. For so many years I wept myself to sleep, unhappy but not knowing why.

Now at least I know why the unhappiness existed and I can change and better my life because of it.

Thanks GS for being here.

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I have been thinkinG ABOUT THE tITLE of this thread...over a few days...I keep thinking about how "God did not give up the spirit of fear...blah blah" (good verse but misused) It was used against us to disguise the trap..

Ya know like dont be afraid of being trapped in this "holy" cage....such mixed messages is what made it so difficult to sort ones way out of that cage.

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WW,

Interesting observation.

What you wrote reminded me of what Rascal had said:

"The bars on the cage ...the bars that imprisoned us were forged from scriptures that we learned to love."

I remember I was in-rez and I was on dining room set-up...strings and all. Anyhow, being on that crew, we often got done early and were able to have a bit of time to ourselves before our work shift was done.

Now, if you know anything about me... I LOVE MUSIC. I refer to myself as a music junkie most days.

So, this no music thingy for 4 months almost killed me. In a cage and with no music.

So there I was in my room, alone and I happen to put on a clock radio. Along comes some sr. corps person. They say... YOU know there's no listening to music. I said, 'Yes'. She walked away.

The next thing I knew, some big corps branch leader hauls me into Pat Lynn's office. It was over.

I was told I was immature, irresponsible, that I didn't belong, that I needed to prove that I should be there...blah blah blah blah blah. I responded with this:

I feel like i'm a triangle trying to fit in a square.

That's the only thing I could come up with.

I was outta there in less than a year.

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