Way too high. Still think I was sold a bill of goods. If you were blessed, you were blessed, and those stinkers just kept trying to sell what you already had..
If you weren't, you weren't. I think some were not, and would never be no matter how much positive believing/justrenew your mind Wierwillian psychology was shoved down their throats.
I dunno, in a lot of ways I am "blessed". Other weaknesses and problems were never solved, even with gargantuan effort.
Well, I'm "blessed" to know I can't fix EVERYTHING now.. heh heh.
A lot of us DIDN'T spend years in therapy after leaving TWI. I'm sorry about what happened to you, but I'm not ashamed it didn't happen to me. On the balance, my association with TWI was a positive thing.
That *blessing* that folks recieved was really just part of the bait in the trap imo....
We just kept thinking that we were just SO blessed that we kept dragging others in with us....their wealth to be extorted, their lives to be coopted, their youth to be squandered.....their children to be sacrificed.
In hind sight, I really don`t think we were all that blessed ....we simply THOUGHT we were *blessed*....because we were TOLD we were *blessed*...alla that renewed mind crap.
The fact that while we were recieving our suppose blessings and education towards access to God, that the lives of our sisters and brothers were routinely being requisitioned and destroyed without compunction by those we trusted, leads me to believe that the ministry, it`s leaders AND it`s *blessings* were counterfit.
I just don`t think that God would operate that way....
Think about it...while wierwille is telling us to our faces to *give our all for his highest* declaring the purity of his heart and service to God...piously leading us through the scriptures...he goes back to his motor coach to seduce, that failing top drug and rape our sisters...got any objections??? Fine you are hereby declared posessed...get the hell outta the ministry....can`t let our dirty little secret out to the great unwashed masses that couldn`t *handle* the spiritual truth of the grace we have in Christ....baaah.
The blessings are as counterfit as wierwille himself.
Ex, Personally. I do not think that it is so much that the blessings are *worth it*...rather a need for folks to cling to the belief that they were *worth it*.... in order to avoid having to come to grips with the fact that we were fooled, we were used, we were stolen from....and when every bit of value extorted from our lives, tossed aside as so much trash....that we spent a huge amount of our lives involved in something that produced great evil and harm to many.
It is very difficult to accept the fact that we were not what we thought we were...*God`s elect*, *soldiers on the front lines of the great spiritual battle*....(shoot, truth be known, I think that we were tricked into serving on the wrong side)....that is a very tough reality to face....easier by far to cling to the hope that the percieved personal benefits somehow made it Godly....
For me TWI had more positive expereinces than negative ones. Having been out for 8 years and gotten over the unpleasant times, I do not really regret my association with TWI. After having been in for a couple of years I knew it was time for me to move on, but I made the choice to stay for about 20 years. Why? For the friendships I had made. No doubt TWI made it more difficult for me to leave with their fear teachings of losing rewards and becoming 'a grease spot by midnight'. But bottom line it was the friends I did not want to loose.
It had always been difficult for me to make friends and TWI provided an immediate, seemly endless supply, of them. This quickly took care of a very pressing concern in my life. I no longer felt unloved and an outcast.
I also very much wanted to be married, but not being able to make friends prevented that from happening. No problem. I met a woman in fellowship, got married, and had a wonderful daughter. What could be better?
I never experienced, or heard about, the disgusting reprobate hehavior of leadership presented by so many here at GSC. There was no real hurt inflicted on me and my family. That is why I use the word 'unpleasant' to describe some of my experiences with TWI. And up until Martindale announced "the word was over the world", stopped the ROA and WOW, declared we were now "living in the land of the prevailing word", and the began 'cleansing the household', I enjoyed being a part of the fellowship.
My daughter was born and raised in TWI and her only negative comments are the restrictions placed on her during Way Disciples. She wanted to spend more time with her school friends, but because she was the only child, and could only go out 'two by two', her play time with buddies was non existant, except when they came over.
I also feel TWI helped me very much in raising our daughter and being a good dad. In all the fellowhips I was a part of it was emphasized to be very forgiving of our children, to shower them with praise and affection, to be very protective of them physically and mentally, and for them to be involved in school activities. Discipline was emphasized but not to any great degree, and when disciplined, children were to be built up and forgiven.
The way I look at it, I made the choice to join TWI. No one held a gun to my head and said stay. True I had a very over whelming need in my life to make friends, but it was my decision to be a part of TWI. If I had lived in a larger area I may have made the choice to join a gang to feel accepted by others. Or I could have become involved with drugs and alcohol to ease the pain. For whatever reason I chose TWI. And it was a much better choice than a gang, alcohol or drugs. Maybe not the best choice of alternatives but by no means the worst either.
But then again what were the alternatives? I had gone to shrinks and group therapies once a week, or more, for 6 years. 6 long years of spilling my guts to some guy or woman and getting no results. 6 years of giving my hard earned money to people who did not help me. I also joined volunteer groups, civic and veterans organizations, trying to overcome this shyness I had. But to no avail. TWI was just another avenue in my quest to become more competent in my personal life and have friends. And it did just that. Abundant sharing expensive? Ha...compare that to paying out of pocket for a shrink.
Our TWI experience is a matter of perspective, obviously some better than others. You could compare it to living in the United States. If you are a white person your perspective is probably quite good. You have had the opportunity of living the American Dream. But if you are an American Indian, had your land stolen, been lied to many times with broken treaties, had your spouse and children murdered, 'given' a piece of land to live on, then had it 'taken back' because there was some value found on it by the white man, your perspective might be a little different. Or if you are a black person living in the United States as a slave, or in the South when the KKK was strongly supported and active, and your children could not attend white schools, your perspective is probably much different than mine.
Some people who post here did see and receive the worst possible treatment from TWI. It is shameful and I wish it had never happened. That is not the experience of everyone though. If they had not come around I really do not know what I would have done because I was running out of options. I had grown up in the church, attended christian schools, been to shrinks, belonged to charities and civic groups. but received no help. Traditional church, mental health, and groups society had to offer did nothing for me and were out of the question any more. Thankfully I did not choose gangs, drugs, or booze.
May I remind this thread that TWI IS A CULT of infamous structure.
Some blessed.
Some bleed.
All for the purpose of one who holds the keys we think opens the doors.
I had a great time at the beginning, but then began to find out about TWI little by little and after TWInty years worth~~~ oh well the truth of TWI speaks for itself and FOR ALL WHO WERE INVOLVED!!!
Not everyone in the Catholic Church were sexually abused.
Mike Jackson is one great performer, but would you buy his cd's?
when i grew up in the catholic church, nothing really bad happened to me, like with my little altar boy brothers. also terrible stuff regarding my mom being coerced to staying with a horrible human being. and having baby after baby....
Not everyone in the Catholic Church were sexually abused.
Exactly. And even though it is a far more evil cult that TWI, many still are involved. Why do people remain when for decades the church allowed their leaders to o be pedophiles? To me it is impossible to understand how anyone could continue to support a group like this. But many still do, so they obviously are deriving some good from the group. I do not support TWI today, but can not deny my experiences were far more good than bad when I was involved.
Dunno STL, drugs or booze would be a heck of a lot less embarassing to explain away the lost decades of my life ;-).... Folks can understand and empathise with that a little better....but tell em you were in a religious cult though, and whoa nellie...they think you are NUTS!
I wonder, at the age we were when we became involved, if twi provided a false haven ...a false sense of security for anxious, confused, youth....we learned to control our thoughts and pretend that the problems didn`t exist.
I found that once exiting twi, my spouse and I both were faced with the very SAME issues that we had before entering. We were/are forced to deal with the issues of alcholism, anxities, abuses and traumas from our child hood.
The problems never went away during those decades, they were just hidden.
I don`t think twi was really any better than drugs or booze, it was just one more coping mechanism for folks needing help and had no where else to turn....
I wonder if rather than actually helping us, twi provided a false sense of security and hope....delaying the recognition of the issues that we needed to address...in reality, involvement might have prevented us from addressing our troubles in a healthy manner.
Dunno STL, drugs or booze would be a heck of a lot less embarassing to explain away the lost decades of my life ;-).... Folks can understand and empathise with that a little better....but tell em you were in a religious cult though, and whoa nellie...they think you are NUTS!
Prior to being M/A by TWI I pretty much knew I would one day be gone and used to wonder how to explain my years with a cult. At first I did avoid telling people what I did with 20 years of my life, but now if anyone asks I just tell them I was in a cult. In casual conversations sometimes I just volunteer the information. I really have not received any negative responses either. Apparently to most it is a non issue.
quote:
rascal quote:
I wonder, at the age we were when we became involved, if twi provided a false haven ...a false sense of security for anxious, confused, youth....we learned to control our thoughts and pretend that the problems didn`t exist.
That says it better than I have been able to sum up my time with TWI. Controlling my thoughts about any problems or concerns was of the utmost importance to me. Denial was the name of the game with me. And denial fit in so well with TWI's mode of operation. We were told, "do not confess any negatives because it was negative believing." And of course negative believing would lead to fear, and we all know what fear led to---disease, death, and whatever unimaginable things that had not yet happened to us.
quote:
rascal quote:
found that once exiting twi, my spouse and I both were faced with the very SAME issues that we had before entering. We were/are forced to deal with the issues of alcholism, anxities, abuses and traumas from our child hood.
Exactly....same problems only twenty years later because they were never dealth with, only pushed under the carpet in the disguise of "positive believing." In the past 8 years I have been able to deal with many of them. For one thing they are not of such supreme importance anymore. Getting older has put a different slant on my perspective of what matters in life. Change still demands hard mental work but it seems to come a little easier because the anxiety is not there to be perfect. Somethings I just do not see as problems anymore.
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TheSongRemainsTheSame
Exce
I'd like to just say something,
well i guess i just did
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excathedra
thanks dear song
i'm in a bad mood
and i'm so tired of all the sheet
but i'll be nicer tomorrow maybe ?
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DaddyHoundog
Hi all this is a very good tital and hope to read some good posts. Maya be I will later to but now I got to get some sleep.
Daddy - not ww
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Ham
The cost..
Way too high. Still think I was sold a bill of goods. If you were blessed, you were blessed, and those stinkers just kept trying to sell what you already had..
If you weren't, you weren't. I think some were not, and would never be no matter how much positive believing/justrenew your mind Wierwillian psychology was shoved down their throats.
I dunno, in a lot of ways I am "blessed". Other weaknesses and problems were never solved, even with gargantuan effort.
Well, I'm "blessed" to know I can't fix EVERYTHING now.. heh heh.
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GeorgeStGeorge
Excie,
A lot of us DIDN'T spend years in therapy after leaving TWI. I'm sorry about what happened to you, but I'm not ashamed it didn't happen to me. On the balance, my association with TWI was a positive thing.
You're in my prayers.
:)-->
George
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rascal
That *blessing* that folks recieved was really just part of the bait in the trap imo....
We just kept thinking that we were just SO blessed that we kept dragging others in with us....their wealth to be extorted, their lives to be coopted, their youth to be squandered.....their children to be sacrificed.
In hind sight, I really don`t think we were all that blessed ....we simply THOUGHT we were *blessed*....because we were TOLD we were *blessed*...alla that renewed mind crap.
The fact that while we were recieving our suppose blessings and education towards access to God, that the lives of our sisters and brothers were routinely being requisitioned and destroyed without compunction by those we trusted, leads me to believe that the ministry, it`s leaders AND it`s *blessings* were counterfit.
I just don`t think that God would operate that way....
Think about it...while wierwille is telling us to our faces to *give our all for his highest* declaring the purity of his heart and service to God...piously leading us through the scriptures...he goes back to his motor coach to seduce, that failing top drug and rape our sisters...got any objections??? Fine you are hereby declared posessed...get the hell outta the ministry....can`t let our dirty little secret out to the great unwashed masses that couldn`t *handle* the spiritual truth of the grace we have in Christ....baaah.
The blessings are as counterfit as wierwille himself.
Ex, Personally. I do not think that it is so much that the blessings are *worth it*...rather a need for folks to cling to the belief that they were *worth it*.... in order to avoid having to come to grips with the fact that we were fooled, we were used, we were stolen from....and when every bit of value extorted from our lives, tossed aside as so much trash....that we spent a huge amount of our lives involved in something that produced great evil and harm to many.
It is very difficult to accept the fact that we were not what we thought we were...*God`s elect*, *soldiers on the front lines of the great spiritual battle*....(shoot, truth be known, I think that we were tricked into serving on the wrong side)....that is a very tough reality to face....easier by far to cling to the hope that the percieved personal benefits somehow made it Godly....
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Stayed Too Long
For me TWI had more positive expereinces than negative ones. Having been out for 8 years and gotten over the unpleasant times, I do not really regret my association with TWI. After having been in for a couple of years I knew it was time for me to move on, but I made the choice to stay for about 20 years. Why? For the friendships I had made. No doubt TWI made it more difficult for me to leave with their fear teachings of losing rewards and becoming 'a grease spot by midnight'. But bottom line it was the friends I did not want to loose.
It had always been difficult for me to make friends and TWI provided an immediate, seemly endless supply, of them. This quickly took care of a very pressing concern in my life. I no longer felt unloved and an outcast.
I also very much wanted to be married, but not being able to make friends prevented that from happening. No problem. I met a woman in fellowship, got married, and had a wonderful daughter. What could be better?
I never experienced, or heard about, the disgusting reprobate hehavior of leadership presented by so many here at GSC. There was no real hurt inflicted on me and my family. That is why I use the word 'unpleasant' to describe some of my experiences with TWI. And up until Martindale announced "the word was over the world", stopped the ROA and WOW, declared we were now "living in the land of the prevailing word", and the began 'cleansing the household', I enjoyed being a part of the fellowship.
My daughter was born and raised in TWI and her only negative comments are the restrictions placed on her during Way Disciples. She wanted to spend more time with her school friends, but because she was the only child, and could only go out 'two by two', her play time with buddies was non existant, except when they came over.
I also feel TWI helped me very much in raising our daughter and being a good dad. In all the fellowhips I was a part of it was emphasized to be very forgiving of our children, to shower them with praise and affection, to be very protective of them physically and mentally, and for them to be involved in school activities. Discipline was emphasized but not to any great degree, and when disciplined, children were to be built up and forgiven.
The way I look at it, I made the choice to join TWI. No one held a gun to my head and said stay. True I had a very over whelming need in my life to make friends, but it was my decision to be a part of TWI. If I had lived in a larger area I may have made the choice to join a gang to feel accepted by others. Or I could have become involved with drugs and alcohol to ease the pain. For whatever reason I chose TWI. And it was a much better choice than a gang, alcohol or drugs. Maybe not the best choice of alternatives but by no means the worst either.
But then again what were the alternatives? I had gone to shrinks and group therapies once a week, or more, for 6 years. 6 long years of spilling my guts to some guy or woman and getting no results. 6 years of giving my hard earned money to people who did not help me. I also joined volunteer groups, civic and veterans organizations, trying to overcome this shyness I had. But to no avail. TWI was just another avenue in my quest to become more competent in my personal life and have friends. And it did just that. Abundant sharing expensive? Ha...compare that to paying out of pocket for a shrink.
Our TWI experience is a matter of perspective, obviously some better than others. You could compare it to living in the United States. If you are a white person your perspective is probably quite good. You have had the opportunity of living the American Dream. But if you are an American Indian, had your land stolen, been lied to many times with broken treaties, had your spouse and children murdered, 'given' a piece of land to live on, then had it 'taken back' because there was some value found on it by the white man, your perspective might be a little different. Or if you are a black person living in the United States as a slave, or in the South when the KKK was strongly supported and active, and your children could not attend white schools, your perspective is probably much different than mine.
Some people who post here did see and receive the worst possible treatment from TWI. It is shameful and I wish it had never happened. That is not the experience of everyone though. If they had not come around I really do not know what I would have done because I was running out of options. I had grown up in the church, attended christian schools, been to shrinks, belonged to charities and civic groups. but received no help. Traditional church, mental health, and groups society had to offer did nothing for me and were out of the question any more. Thankfully I did not choose gangs, drugs, or booze.
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TheSongRemainsTheSame
May I remind this thread that TWI IS A CULT of infamous structure.
Some blessed.
Some bleed.
All for the purpose of one who holds the keys we think opens the doors.
I had a great time at the beginning, but then began to find out about TWI little by little and after TWInty years worth~~~ oh well the truth of TWI speaks for itself and FOR ALL WHO WERE INVOLVED!!!
Not everyone in the Catholic Church were sexually abused.
Mike Jackson is one great performer, but would you buy his cd's?
Wether, whoops, whether ya had a good time or not
TWI is TWI
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excathedra
thanks all for the replies
thanks for your perspective stayed too long
when i grew up in the catholic church, nothing really bad happened to me, like with my little altar boy brothers. also terrible stuff regarding my mom being coerced to staying with a horrible human being. and having baby after baby....
much more
i hate the catholic church
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Stayed Too Long
Exactly. And even though it is a far more evil cult that TWI, many still are involved. Why do people remain when for decades the church allowed their leaders to o be pedophiles? To me it is impossible to understand how anyone could continue to support a group like this. But many still do, so they obviously are deriving some good from the group. I do not support TWI today, but can not deny my experiences were far more good than bad when I was involved.
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excathedra
count yourself lucky stayed too long
as far as catholics, you got me
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coolchef1248 @adelphia.net
gee i don't usually say negatives but.. stayed in too long ... maybe you should consider a therapist again or did i read you wrong sorry if i did
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Stayed Too Long
Please be more specific in what I posted leading you to believe I should consider a therapist again.
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rascal
Dunno STL, drugs or booze would be a heck of a lot less embarassing to explain away the lost decades of my life ;-).... Folks can understand and empathise with that a little better....but tell em you were in a religious cult though, and whoa nellie...they think you are NUTS!
I wonder, at the age we were when we became involved, if twi provided a false haven ...a false sense of security for anxious, confused, youth....we learned to control our thoughts and pretend that the problems didn`t exist.
I found that once exiting twi, my spouse and I both were faced with the very SAME issues that we had before entering. We were/are forced to deal with the issues of alcholism, anxities, abuses and traumas from our child hood.
The problems never went away during those decades, they were just hidden.
I don`t think twi was really any better than drugs or booze, it was just one more coping mechanism for folks needing help and had no where else to turn....
I wonder if rather than actually helping us, twi provided a false sense of security and hope....delaying the recognition of the issues that we needed to address...in reality, involvement might have prevented us from addressing our troubles in a healthy manner.
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Stayed Too Long
Prior to being M/A by TWI I pretty much knew I would one day be gone and used to wonder how to explain my years with a cult. At first I did avoid telling people what I did with 20 years of my life, but now if anyone asks I just tell them I was in a cult. In casual conversations sometimes I just volunteer the information. I really have not received any negative responses either. Apparently to most it is a non issue.
That says it better than I have been able to sum up my time with TWI. Controlling my thoughts about any problems or concerns was of the utmost importance to me. Denial was the name of the game with me. And denial fit in so well with TWI's mode of operation. We were told, "do not confess any negatives because it was negative believing." And of course negative believing would lead to fear, and we all know what fear led to---disease, death, and whatever unimaginable things that had not yet happened to us.
Exactly....same problems only twenty years later because they were never dealth with, only pushed under the carpet in the disguise of "positive believing." In the past 8 years I have been able to deal with many of them. For one thing they are not of such supreme importance anymore. Getting older has put a different slant on my perspective of what matters in life. Change still demands hard mental work but it seems to come a little easier because the anxiety is not there to be perfect. Somethings I just do not see as problems anymore.
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