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First Thought


shazdancer
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In the Advanced Class of PFAL, Wierwille taught that the first thought was from God, the second thought from the adversary.

In the Corps, one of the principles was "to acquire an in-depth spiritual perception and awareness." Wierwille used to exemplify this to us by dropping little "hints" that he was receiving revelation. AND that we weren't measuring up because we weren't. Looking back, it seemed more like Wierwille's "first thoughts" were more involved with his own insecurities and need for ego strokes than anything godly.

In turn, his "Corps nazis" seemed anxious to demonstrate that they, too, were operating "all 9 all the time" in their areas. I think that a lot of the horrendous decisions made on the field by unqualified leaders were the result of this thinking by leaders that they were operating revelation, and that their close connection to God Almighty empowered them to speak to every problem, such as marital problems, alcoholism, mental illness, and abuse.

So, "how 'bout it?" any more stories about leadership "heavy revvy" that wasn't?

Regards,

Shaz

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hmmmmm first thought eh shaz ? i should have gone with my first thought and punched a few noses

--

this story is not mine but i'm sure Ted won't mind since he's told it before

rock of ages (or corps week) on stage. he falls while performing. ol' craiggers ministers to his heart and Ted is muttering it's my damn leg

or something like that (sowwy ted)

the point being NO HEAVY REVVY

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First thought...scheesh! What a hokey doctrine that was. It was a recipe for disaster...every waytree climbing wannabe was walking around pretending to be receiving specific information from the Almighty...Did you ever see one of em sit down on the ground and start drawing in the dirt with a stick (like Jesus did)?...I did! icon_eek.gif

One of my most vivid "revelation" stories was when I was driving to the advanced class and I hit a deer and totalled my car!...I got to a phone and called Emporia to tell them what happened, and then hitch hiked the rest of the way. During one of the sessions, Wierwille made me stand up in front of 500 people and then used me as an example of somebody who WASN'T LISTENING!!! Needless to say, it was a real buzz killer...on top of that, he claimed that "God had told him" about some putz that had hit a deer because he wasn't listening...never mind that I had called it in and the secretary had relayed the info about my accident to him...he claimed he found out by REVELATION! I knew he was lying because the secretary had already informed me earlier in the day that she had told him...but of course, I sat there and drank the koolaid with all the other glassy eyed cultists...putting my trust in the grifter. icon_cool.gif

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Just so you all (Sunesis, Exxie, UH, etc) sleep better tonight, this is one of, if not THE FIRST pfal doctrine that lcm threw out after his big "my way or the highway" proclamation of 3/8/89.

John Lynn had been the biggest "teacher" of this doctrine, having taken something that was taught in PFAL and MADE IT HIS OWN. In order to help discredit JAL, to whom many corps folks were loyal, lcm debunked this teaching as devilish...and even went so far as to say that he thought that vpw hadn't gotten "that concept quite right."

I was on staff at the time, and simply saying "well, my FIRST THOUGHT was......." could get you reported to the "old wineskins" department. icon_eek.gif There were lots of items like this...as the TWI RE-wrote history (the subject of a current thread.)

ror

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That's so weird, ROR, given that LCM was at one time the Primary Bastardizer of this concept. But it makes sense, a knee jerk prideful reaction against something he'd already proven by example would get your foot in a sling in a heart beat.

VPW's basic teaching on this included one two letter word - "if". If God has something to tell you that's useful it will be "first". It's not "first thought" revelation, that's Craig's bastardization, where the first thought you get about something is supposed to be from God. In other words what qualifies as guidance is what you come up with in your brain first cuz after all God's going to be there if you're "really walking" icon_eek.gif and of course every nutbag that listened to Craig wanted to display their highly developed Walking Skills. Net result - whatever pops in to your brain is what you do. I was in Florida the first time I heard this on a tape of his and we had a long discussion over it amongst those of us that listened to it. It sounded like a recipe for suicide but some people liked it - you don't have to actually do any work to be right, you just have to have a thought, which was a lot to ask of some people anyway. The people I saw trying to live this way would let no logic, planning or argument dissuade them from whatever they came up with.

I can picture VPW now, snappin' his fingers and going on about this. "You gotta be sharp, baby! Really sharp on the Word, or you'll get hoodwinked on this everytime and the adversary will beat you! God talks, you listen, God's always first, always there with what you need, just don't you get in a hurry! You just walk (snap snap) and you know that Word inside and out and when God gives you something, you got it! You just reach up in to that cookie jar and you got it! If there's no cookies, there's no cookies so stop stewing baby! (snap snap) That's right, don't tell me!" (wipes nose) Hahahah ha! I love you!"

The whole thing has to be tapped down to some kind of realistic expectation IMO or you just end up acting like a jackass. The last thing I need is some dumwit out of the 58th Corps telling me to put my butt on the line because they think they had a coherent thought, a challenge in itself after 2 years at Empooria, Gunnysack or Tinnitus or Prom City or wherever they got put through the wringer at by the latest assigned Coordinator with a stick up his or her hiney.

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Oh gawd,

I spent so much time chasing my tail with that ridiculous teaching.

You ever try to figure out when your first thought is? I mean, when's the starting time?

If you've been thinking about a particular issue for awhile, when does your "first thought" get to happen? "Gee, was it that, or did I think of something before that?"

And what if God isn't giving any revelation that day. What's your first thought then?

And remember, if you get it wrong, the only other possibility is that it's from THE DEVIL!

How farking stupid could it get? Evidently, pretty stupid...

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Oh Gawd...just thinking about this stuff has me in stitches. icon_biggrin.gif:D--> icon_biggrin.gif:D--> icon_biggrin.gif:D-->

It makes about as much sense as drawing your decisions out of a hat. Why didn't we come up with a "revelation dart board"...put on a blind fold and throw the dart at a map...oh yeah, they DID do that!...that's how we got our wow assignments. icon_biggrin.gif:D-->

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Socks,

Thinking about VP's version a little bit, if you're "reaching up into Daddy's cookie jar" and He doesn't have any revelation for you, is your mind just going to go blank? Really, I don't know as I've ever been in a state of having NO thoughts whatsoever, well, barring a few incidents of over "medication"...

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Mr H. quotes:

quote:

Yep.. ole craigers couldn't come up with a new concept if it bit him in the a**. He just gave the first thought nonsense a new name- "genuine spiritual suspicion".

Dunno- some of my first thoughts about some things, like the guy in india who was supposedly healed, were, "this is full of s**t" Maybe it works sometimes!


icon_biggrin.gif:D--> icon_biggrin.gif:D--> icon_biggrin.gif:D--> icon_biggrin.gif:D--> icon_biggrin.gif:D-->

I nominate Mr. H to teach the Foundational Class on Understanding TWI!

JT

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quote:
The whole thing has to be tapped down to some kind of realistic expectation IMO or you just end up acting like a jackass. The last thing I need is some dumwit out of the 58th Corps telling me to put my butt on the line because they think they had a coherent thought, a challenge in itself after 2 years at Empooria, Gunnysack or Tinnitus or Prom City or wherever they got put through the wringer at by the latest assigned Coordinator with a stick up his or her hiney

LOL, very L

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quote:
put on a blind fold and throw the dart at a map...oh yeah, they DID do that!...that's how we got our wow assignments.

Don't forget the massive quantities of drambuie consumed when they did this. I'm sure that's how they got revelation on who was to live with whom and where they would go.

I can't believe we actually thought our assignments were from God. I knew of one couple who were shacking up together and had kids together. They decided that if they were assigned to the same place as WOWS, it would assure them that God wanted them to be together. Of course, they weren't and ended up getting moved half way into the year.

Two weeks in to my WOW assignment, I knew that it wasn't from God. My WOW family coord was an alcoholic interim corps guy. I told him that he was worse than my obnoxious, drunken father and that God wouldn't want that for me. The guy ended up getting booted because I narked on him. If it was revelation in the first friggin place, why didn't God tell the MoFos???

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Man, have I done some pretty dumb things thinking it was 'heavy revy'... icon_rolleyes.gif:rolleyes:-->

And the funny thing was when I was doing this I really thought I was being speeerrriiittttual, if you know what I mean..... icon_eek.gificon_eek.gif

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Dunno George. Guess that's why you gotta be sharp. (snap snap) Now Hope'll be snapping and snorting for days. icon_eek.gif

Reading Shaz's post on this reminded me of how convoluted this whole thing is. It's like you say, at what point do I NOT have a thought of some kind? My brain's always on, hopefully. I got thoughts. Then there's "revelation". What's that? We got your definitions but it's the nature of the processes that evade any clear description.

VPW came up with the soft-answer "it's a knowing, you just know". Which cycles back to the snapping and popping you-gotta-be-sharp-baby stuff.

Given the number of sharp-as-an-avocado things that have been done over the years in WayWorld you'd think they'd give it a rest.

One good story Shaz, is my own. Years ago after taking the Advanced class I was at a gig with the band I was in at the time. Some grads came, we were having fun, good night. A guy came to me and asked me to pray for him. Nice guy, haven't seen him in ages, but really nice guy. So I said sure, and closed my eyes and started to pray. As I put my hands on his shoulder I went whoa! Now this part is true, take it as you will. I "saw" lungs, like human lungs. I've seen pictures of lungs, the human body, that kind of stuff. I knew what they looked like I guess. But these were lungs, and it kind of scared me. So I'm praying and prayed for his lungs and for his lungs to be healthy. I didn't really know what to do, should have just let it lay. There was no "first thought" or 10th thought, just these lungs. So I went off and slowly this image of his lungs I had in my head sort of drifted off and when I tried to think of it, it wasn't clear and "real" like what I thought I'd "seen" before.

The next day he went into the hospital, sicker than a dog and he had a respiratory problem. I felt really bad, he was in for awhile. So why it happened that way I have no idea. Best guess, I stayed in touch with him and continued praying with him. He got better, he was in the right place.

Nother, I had a poobah once telling me how my marriage was screwed up. Marriage - the happy hunting ground of the Way. I'd mentioned to this guy there was a couple that argued all the time and it looked like one of them had a "special friend" they were always hanging out with - I'd walked in on an "awkward" situation in one of the trailers with one of them and their "friend" that seemed kinda cozy. I wasn't sure what to do, figured this guy might know. I got a speech about how couples sometimes needed space, that arguing was normal, that when my marriage "deepened" I'd see that.

So I had to ask, what deepened is that, how so? And he went in to how my marriage was "shallow". So I had to ask how so and he mumbled around and just said he "knew".

I blew up, finger in the chest style. "You know? You KNOW??? What do you KNOW??? Tell me what you KNOW so I can KNOW TOO!" I detested that sly "I'm tapped in here" innuendo that implied the person had some kind of inside scoop from God, but without any actual information or proof to back it up. The guy was a complete jackass and backed off.

This same guy advised two people I later knew that they shouldn't marry the people they wanted to marry. Both couples married and have long marriages still thriving and are doing quite well, as opposed to the many disasters he's presided over. Apparently he doesn't follow his own advice because he's still married, last I knew.

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Yall are bringing bad memories.

There was a "Heart" meeting or something like that in Withita Kansas. And I think it was the Craiger asking for people to SIT. Well guess what, more than one openened their mouth at the same time and the whole room got dressed down for not listining to the spirit. Only one person would have revelation at a time. I still remember the yelling and thinking how out of place that was.

O well I just figured I was a pee-on and didn't deserve better.

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This is the sad part for me.

God told me something very clear when I was taking the pfal class for the second time. about a "leader" . I aksed him and he hedged and hawed and "kind of admited it was true but in his past.

serious stuff . so I went to the corp leader who was related to the clergy in our area by marriage.. they ripped me a new one how could a baber in the word , who did not take the advance class recieve such revelation? I was called evil and a person who caused division and shut up very fast...ashamed at the very boldness of myself to ask. the leader in question was very good friends with the clergy and at one time lived with them..

A few years later what God had told me proved to be completly and dangerously true... people got hurt badly because of his problem.

this is why I will never ever deny the LORD or the Saviour who guides and directs my every move and thought if I listen.

reveleation isnt difficult it is the willingness to hear it that is so hard to do. God will always love and protect us. God is honest God is truthful and God does not care who anyone thinks they need to impress, or if you took the advance class or not.

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Thanks, everybody, for your insightful (and humorous!) responses.

I remember Wierwille chewing us out in Family Corps once because none of us "discerned" that one of the guys in a band we'd just heard was supposedly "born of the wrong seed." 'Course, Wierwille had discerned it. And of course, he didn't use that knowledge for anything useful, except to belittle us with it. Hmm, didn't he teach that there had to be a profit to revelation?

Dear Hairy,

So you totalled your car, made it to the Rock anyway, and Wierwille just used you to show off how much "revelation" he got, huh? Huh??? He shoulda been applauding you for busting chops to get there!

'Course, if he lied about you, it could be that he lied about other times that God supposedly spoke to him. Ya think?

Dear socks,

Oh dear, now I've got that image in my mind of Wierwille snapping his fingers. "Ya gotta be sharp, people!" And of course, he was about as sharp in the love of God department as a blunt instrument.

Dear exy,

It's been so long, I can't remember when that wasn't my first thought in the morning!

Regards to all,

Shaz

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yeah well, if it makes any difference to anybody...

when Jal first went on the road after getting fired from TWI, one of the first apologies he offered had to do with the whole "first thought" doctrine."

It was wrong and bad and totally bogus and he knew it, and it was one of the first things he apologized for, among others.

Hairy, you probly remember.

icon_smile.gif:)-->

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