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Lightbearers?

It's like Joseph Smith or something. I mean the cult MOG impression VPW left was branded so deep like Joseph Smith that every jack Mormon who wanted to start his own harem and own land would branch out at the root and denounce the heavy hand of the authoritarian LDS leadership and cite Joseph Smith. I know a fair majority of that R&R group (even though was blissfully unaware of their collaboration and development). They are all complicit in the Way's atrocities and have participated in one way or another for years. Now that it affects them they start an uprising. Not when they were tools in affecting others. Then they were all on R&R - turning a blind eye, enjoying the fruits of all their developed relationships within. What follows next? A means to continue the revenue stream so that slinging BS can continue as a profession. CFFM2. STFFi4.0. Another V2P2 ranch. Gag me with an old wineskin. Oh and the Way? Whenever an enlightened fool arises and departs , there is always another unenlightened fool ready to step up and be another brick in the wall.

Hot d@mn. Seems to be the cycle of human stupidity coming back around for another pass. What have we got here? The "Unpassing of the Matriarch" ??? Sounds like a flow problem. You know, kind of like the Dead Sea?

The happiest thought I had driving out of NK on 12/14/1986, was that none of my children would ever again be exposed to, or imposed upon by a mindless, fundamentalist, destructive cult of personality like TWIt. And, in addition, they'd never become cult bait in their lives. Their normal early childhood development, the positive benefits and fun from socialization with a diverse community of fellow humans, and their PUBLIC EDUCATION sparked the curiosity and necessary determination to make their lives meaningful in reality, and to develope an acute social conscience and awareness of the good helping others brings to community and themselves. None of these legends in their own mind, like moneyhands er al, ever escaped the forced adolescence shoved upon them by Wierwille's Nazi style indoctrination/"training". The normal process of human development according to Piaget, is an 8 course cycle. Adolescence is phase 4, and averages between ages 12-20. The next phase, 5, is Identity Formation, one of the most critical of the phases, since what you are and determine to be as an individual human being is developed during this phase. Average ages for this stage are 21-32. The reason it is crucial to force "volunteers" to stay in extended adolescence is that it prevents volunteers from developing their own individual, unique identity, and thereby a purpose for their being. Wierwille kept "his keeds" in extended adolescence until his "teaching and training" coerced the volunteers to adopt an identity wholly beneficial to WEIRWILLE'S needs and wants above all others, including themselves. People like Moneyhands, Snorky and Patty Fay Roberts, the Fredericks, or the Horneys never made it out of that prolonged adolescence, so they never developed an authentic individual identity of self. Rather, they were taught that "self" was not Christian. Self is ego, pride, entitlement, and WRONG. Losing yourself in "the ministry" or "giving yourself to God", or devoting yourself to "living the corpse principles" forever, is RIGHT. So, wierwille kept his keeds "stoopeed" until their identity was "you're my corps, damnit!". Perfect for "a lifetime of service" to dictor Paul and his minus-try. But, not very healthy for those who accept it and strive to keep it until they die! So, in effect, what you have in this R'n'R cult is a bunch of 20 year olds figuring out that "the man" has been ripping them off for 40 years and NOW they're pissed! Well honey boo boo......too bad! It's too late! You all are in that stage of finding meaning and purpose to your life now that you're retired or getting close. No more sucking off mama TWI's teats anymore either! If you're not retired you will be fired and promptly M&A'd. A 65 year old adolescent trying to figure out the meaning of life after having wasted most of their own. So? What to do? Start your own business.......excuse me......church so you can do the work you've been trained to do. Manufacture "spiritual needs" in peoples' lives that only you and your "Word" can meet. Manufacture false questions, alternative facts, and truthful hyperbole that only YOU and "the Word"can answer and explain. Manufacture a spayshull new nuclear family of "likeminded believers", and make it even more spayshull and holy by calling it "the real household of Gawd". Maintain the exclusivity and exceptionalism of this "household" through complete, direct control of thinking AND behavior. Keep the "household" away from other sources, media, education, and most importantly other "Christians" and all churches! Make them fear da Debbil and debbil spurts, our invisible enemies which seem to be more omnipresent than God himself!! LOL! Again, the only way you can deal with da Debbil is by taking the ADVANCED CLASS! The one for "adult Christians" only! Again, learned helplessness, which makes life outside the "household" unbearable and impossible! Any one see some recognizable patterns here?? i have no sympathy for moneyhands or any of the self-serving frauds who signed that wayspeak much ado about nothing. It's just another tempest in their ever-shrinking TWIt teacup. They don't like not being able to tell everybody they're possessed or how to live their lives, raise their kids, and spend their precious time. Their way Corpse ministers after all. The cream of the crap, accepting "the charge of their faddah in da woid" to protect da woid, da woid, and nothing but da woid until they die! How very noble. How completely misguided and insane. My final word to these turds? Too effing bad! You're too late, too stupid, too dumb, and too immature to change anything. You invited 1400 people to your dog and pony show yesterday morning. That's like one snowflake in a blinding 4' blizzard. Nobody outside that 1400 gives a rat's ass about your minus-try, or your sudden enlightenment. Nobody who has been abused by you Nazis will ever care until YOU fuckers repent, apologize, and make restitution to those you have despitefully used through your years of "serving gawd and the household"! It's been 40 years so far. No one's holding their breath. Crawl back under your slimy rocks and STFU. Bless you!

It also occurs to me that the quaintness and apparent deficiencies in understanding the dilemmas they (the panelists in the video and perhaps also the rest of the signers of the documents sent to the BOD) face is a very sad manifestation of stifling the inquisitiveness of sixty-somethings for more than three decades. The only thing these people seem to know, and the only language they use, is right out of PFLAP and Wierwille's teachings of the Bible. The best thing that could happen to/for any of them is to come to the realization that humanity/society left them behind. I learned long ago (but still, AFTER I left TWI) that I don't know nearly as much as I need to know. Fast forward to recognition that knowledge among humans is growing at an amazing rate (geometric, perhaps) and that I needed to adopt a lifelong learning mindset. That's why I read. But if all one reads is TWI drivel, how can they expect different results? That's not to say I'm better than them... they're still breathing, so they can decide to break out of the box of their mental and emotional prisons and start learning what else there is to learn. So, for The Way Cult, damage control means to cut the R&R leaders off. But for the R&R leaders, damage control may mean they need to break out of those mental/emotional/social prisons. The fact that they have grown dissatisfied with The Way Cult is a good first step.

It was a distraction. Spend all your time obsessing over the "piddly-diddly" and you'll be too busy to notice what's really going on.

The whole development of the weird fetish like fascination with properly aligned and regimented stuff, be it pins, chairs or hair lines, was well...really weird. There's a play on a quote that goes: Those who can, do: those who can't, teach; and those who can do neither, administer. James Baldwin the author said this which is kinda related: "Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it." Add in a little "lead, follow or get out of the way" and there's an idea there somewhere. Early on the activities at the Way were pretty much relaxed and enjoyable. Years pass and with increased "knowledge" and "maturity" you get a passle of poorly packed procedures and pain-in-the-tushes worrying about how straight the chairs are and if the mints are fresh and properly distributed in their little sissy bowls, ready for that unfortunate teacher at the podium whose breath is so atrociously rank that some form of masking is required less, I guess, the front row pass out from the sheer putridity of their breath. I guess - I never understood why anyone would actually need breath mints at that point. Before, I get it. After, I get it. Alone at the podium, speaking to a group....? That's some serious stank. Thus I've pondered - the need for Mints. Perhaps after running my mouth off for 1/2 hour or more some refreshment is needed, the better to remind those I see immediately after of how sweet every word that comes out of my mouth really is. I dunno. Our family has a little saying when we've been working or having serious fun and it's time for a shower, I confess to having introduced it and it seems to live on - average activity produces "1/4stank".....up from there you're at "1/2 stank" and a shower or bath is pending...."3/4 stank" - it's time. "Full Stank" - get the hose, you've reached Discovery Channel status, proceed to the Rhino's Pen. Mints at a podium to keep one's salivary glands at full function - kinda tweezey. Kinda tweezey. All of that stuff would give a stroke to anyone and I don't say that lightly. The worry, the fear that "something" wouldn't be exactly right and the full potential of the moment marred if not terminally damaged to the extent that the person holding forth so boldly in this day and time would what - be peppered so powerfully by packs of daimonion that they'd have to split their brain into two and devote half their believing to flooding their hedge of protection with plugs to fill the holes created by the utter chaos of someone sneezing at the wrong time? Is there ever a right time to sneeze? Or because a door slammed - possibly caused by some poor soul leaving, over come by the breath of the teacher who forgot to write in his notes "use the mints" because he'd had to park his own car and thus so horribly distracted by the walking then forgot to remember the mints? Or something? This kind of paranoid pea-pickin' hardly characterizes a corps like regiment of highly trained, able bodied and fully prepared leaders. If you can't handle the kind of stress produced by improperly placed water glasses, what are you going to do when faced with the big stuff, like the front row not laughing at the right time or worse, laughing at the wrong time? And especially when that should be a no brainer since they've heard it all before many times? In a way it's surprising their weren't more strokes.

If my memory serves me correctly, according to P-O-P he didn't want to do the businessman's class at Gunnison, but that he was talked into it by Bob W. At the time, I remember resenting that class being run for businessmen "who didn't have time", as if their time was more important than others. It cut across all of us, in my opinion, who had to convince everyone else that PFAL was worth the time commitment. I felt it further evidence that there were social classes within TWI. Normal dolts such as myself had to play by the rules but if one made a lot of money, exceptions were made for you. That is so obvious now that the statement I just made is laughable. But in 1984 I was just starting to see this stuff. Sorry, I guess that didn't exactly answer your question. No, I wasn't at the class, I was at home being angry about it.

Home: I'm not even sure I know what that means anymore, Ham. I had one clear idea of where I wanted my life to go. Along came Saint Vic and his demented circus. Like a ringmaster, he dared me to step right up to the hoola hoop toss that would be my success. All you need is believing to put the ball through the hoop. Little did I know the game was rigged. Years later, after I got of his ramshackle tilt-a-whirl called believing, I had to face the fact that the life I wanted may be beyond my ability to achieve my vision for myself. And that my friend is the danger of running away with the circus. You usually wind up behind the elephants with a super duper pooper scooper. SoCrates

Why I got in: I was young and gullible. Why I stayed: I believed twi had the 'rightly divided word' that nobody else had. All others were counterfeit and were deceived by Satan. Was it better once I moved on? Without a doubt, yes!!

yup - i agree some great thoughts on this thread....much of what 100% shared rings true for me too....and similar to Waysider, a girl i was dating got me into the class. ~~ my little pop-psychology theory on people is that we are all driven by a variety of basic needs, desires, etc. - but mapping out how to achieve them may turn out to be a very complicated process. i took the class in 74. what got me interested in it and getting more involved with TWI after the class [as best as i can remember] was the attraction i felt toward the girl i was dating.being that young i don't recall having many - if any - goals in life. ~~ why i stayed in.....in retrospect [referring back to my basic needs/mapping out paradigm] - somewhere along the way of my TWI involvement, my best guess is that i adopted goals, desires, ideals, etc. that were in the constant stream of BS flowing from TWI [whether subliminally or most of the time overtly]. ....not only that - TWI was "gracious" enough to supply a new map and anything else i would need for my journey. need a moral compass? here you go.....need to know what to pack for your journey? forget about it - just believe God [translation = learn to mooch off others]. .....but wait before you decide to order their map - there's more! ....other mechanisms are in place, that operate below the surface to ensure you'll stay on their map. There's a variety of techniques that sneak in below your radar - manipulation, deception, coercion, fear, guilt, shame, etc. ~~ i left in the turmoil surrounding Passing of the Patriarch.....many others did too, around that time ......i think we all witnessed such a serious malfunction in TWI's machinery that had reliably maintained a tightfisted control on folks - and it made a lot of folks step back and maybe for the first time seriously doubt or question "....the accuracy and integrity...." of the organization. ....maybe many of us started reviewing some of our goals and mental maps of how to achieve them and said "hmmmmm, wait a minute - where was i going? where did i want to go? where am i now? how did i get here?" ~~ ....and yes - it's MUCH MUCH better since i moved on from TWI....now i am very aware and involved in drawing my own map and i get to decide what i need on this journey.

Yeah.....thanks T-Bone. One thing I know.......when I'm with my siblings and family nowadays, I enjoy every minute of it. We stay up late and relish the moments. Life is really good.....and I've always said that my "bucket list" is NOT to travel the world and see the sights. My bucket list is to enjoy my wife, my kids, my family and friends all the days of my life. And, I never use that stinkin' term......"earthly" family. Like....twi's "spiritual" family was so freakin' great.....(barf)

I think about that stuff sometimes too. But then I also wonder, would I have just joined another cult that was maybe even worse? I had also begun experimenting with illegal drugs, hard stuff. Fortunately I hadn't fully walked down that path. Would I have turned to the drug culture? I frequently considered suicide, would I even be alive today? I was also starting to lean in to some sexually deviant behavior though I had yet to participate. Looking back I think it was a matter of time. AIDS was around in the 70's, we just didn't know it yet. So again, would I still be alive and if I was, what type of person would I be? It's ironic for me. I now know full well of the sexual deviancy at the top levels of TWI. At the time, as a kid, my perception was that full sexual expression was to be in the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. So I went for that, not that I held to that standard perfectly. So for me, my involvement in TWI kept me out of a lot of stuff. However, true emotional and sexual healing came after I left TWI. By then I was an adult, and there was a lot more help available than in the mid-70's. So, I know what you're saying Skyrider, and I agree. But would I still have figured out another way to screw up my life? I don't know, probably. But that's just me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not pining on the ground, weeping, and thankful for the ministry of VPW. I'm just saying that I think I was a cult member waiting to happen. But that's just me. I do not have fond memories of my stint in TWI, but things could have been a lot worse. For whatever that's worth. Obviously, I'm still confused even over 20 years after leaving!

my young age and my young past made me vulnerable

Don't go alone, but I think you know that.