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No problem or offense taken, dmiller man. We buy things off the shelf, unwrap them, read the instructions and go from there. Usually the goods are good to go as is, some are less than what's advertised and still others, disappointing. Some things are downright destructive especially if used counter to their intent. When I get to the "things of the spirit" I might wonder how a loving Father could give something bad to a child. Therein is a single strand of reality that efffects our lives, I believe - that we often don't know exactly what we need. (We barely make it through life recognizing to our own satisfaction who we really are, what we should really be doing and where we will ultimately end up) We do to a degree but not always completely and as in other things, we don't know...what we don't know. So we are faced with a series of moments that are always poised in a balance that will go either way - we think. How would we know, how will we know? How can we? Followers of religious traditions speak of "faith" as something unseen and therefore unknowable in memory. Without recall we have no context to properly evaluate our present knowledge. If we were explorers setting foot on this terrain for the first time we'd be learning everything fresh and new. "What's this??"...."I don't know - what is it???" Through the remembrances of others though we have a shared knowledge. In reality my faith is based on fact, somewhere at some time, be it events or the revealed images of the future. So I can in fact understand my faith in things I haven't experienced directly - through the shared knowledge of others. We do that in every realm of our lives. Is it so unusual that we would do that in other things, "spiritual" things? (he asked). "Trust" is a first step towards enlightenment, a corny word these days but one that we desparately need in our vocabularies more than ever. Jesus said if our eye be filled with light than our whole bodies too! The eyes of understanding being enlightened - understanding is different than knowledge. And in fact Ephesians quotes to us that following understanding a whole range of knowledge will open up to us. Yet, we typically reverse that - that through an abundance of knowledge we will piece together understanding and then we will "walk with all power" and be hmmm, all we can be. People want to know know know and it seems there's never been a lack of people to teach teach teach, and so it goes. Me-Help books pile high only to be shoved aside to make room for more, the latest and the greatest, the last-one-you'll-ever-need-to-buy books, volume 1. Reserve your copy of vol. 2 now! Knowledge is necessary but without understanding we only have part of the whole. One first, then the other and out of it all, wisdom, a past, present and future that is coherent. Or something close to coherent at least would be nice. The power, whatever it is, is always there. It's never the goal. Out of it all comes the open vision of life as it really is and will be. Simple trust. It's no more complicated than that, that a loving Father will behave and relate to us as He has in the past with others, now with us in our own individual lives. So I speak in tongues.

So that he could prove he never dreamed.

yes i would concur i think god is very loving

I'm with Java. :) Telling me how wrong I am, how controlled (e.g. stoopid) and how TWI is ruining my life just pushes me further into the grasp of TWI. My parents loved me and never talked about TWI or expressed their concerns to me - though I did find out after I left that they had considered hiring a deprogrammer but were afraid it would backfire (and it very well might have). What they did do was love me and encourage anything non-TWI related that I expressed interest in. They reminded me frequently of good times I had before TWI and the things I did well and did right prior to my involvement with TWI. My mother sent me a book about girlfriends and it really pierced my heart. I realized I didn't have those kinds of good friends anymore and I certainly didn't have that kind of fun with the "friends" I had in TWI. I couldn't talk to TWI friends about anything and everything like I could my "real friends" I had dropped. Some people may have nagging doubts about TWI and just need an excuse to leave - others aren't so uncomfortable with things enough to do something about it. Some are too scared to do something about it. Those who have been on staff forever don't see how they can survive in "the real world" and, for them, yah, it would be extremely difficult to adjust to making your own decisions and to get a job with the out dated skills of being on staff. "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still" is true. They have to really want to leave and come to that conclusion on their own - nothing you or I can say will change that. That's why so many who were kicked out join up with the offshoots. They didn't want to leave.