damurf

Thanks, the program basically saved my life. I am certain I would have been dead or locked up for good by now had I not taken that path. I know others who have used church or something of the sort to clean up but in my case it wasn't working. I tried about everything else.

I had a pretty bad drinking problem when I was with TWI, I tried several things to get a handle on it but to no avail. I did have a Limb coordinator even suggest that I go to AA. After leaving TWI I still struggled with it off and on for quite a while, I tried marijuana maintenance for several years which helped to curb my drinking and my life was certainly better than it was with drinking but I never really dealt with the things necessary for my emotional and spiritual well being. It also conflicted with my job because of random drug testing which was a major source of stress so eventually I ended up drinking again and that is when things really got bad. I ended up with a divorce and my life spiraled out of control for several years. I was looking at a prison sentence and numerous other legal entanglements, so I ended up in rehab. I had totally given up at this point and figured I was just going to die this way. But for some reason (God most likely) I decided to give it a shot and do the 12 step thing. I by no stretch of the imagination did it perfectly, I did about everything wrong as far as what others would recommend but apparently did a few things right. I cleared out a lot of my wreckage of my past and learned to forgive myself and others. I learned what humility really meant. I give a lot of credit of where I am today because of AA and the 12 step program and see nothing wrong with it from a biblical perspective, there are many principles in it that go right along with things that I have learned even in TWI. But a person has to give it a chance and not look at all the things wrong with it, the people in it are pretty messed up so they have plenty of flaws. But if a person is really seeking a relationship with God then it can certainly work for them.

It has been read in secret by the Senate and only has been disclosed to the public recently. It is an agreement made by major corporations to keep control of world trade. The "good" they claim it will do is only overshadowed by the profits that it makes for those companies, particularly those who have patents like Big Pharma so that they can sue companies abroad for infringing on their patents. It is several thousand pages and it is still coming out with what exactly is in it.

You can add someone to the group if they are on your FB friends list, just have one of your facebook friends add you that is in it or add me as a friend and I will add you. Try to find me under David Murphy, we will likely have a few FB friends. I did have Ralph G on my friends list but he didn't like my politics, I am thinking that he is a bit of a zionist or something, lol. But yeah, it looks like Ralph D is kind of running things in there to some extent from the impression I am getting, maybe not but that is just what I was told by a friend that spends a lot of time in there. I have other things to do with my time than to spend it in a group rehashing past events.

I have to agree, I sense a lot of pain in your story. I too grew up with an alcoholic father and am a recovering alcoholic myself so I am very aware of the dangers involved with all of that. I hope that you can find what you need to be healed of the pain and resentments of your past because it is the only way we can truly be freed of it. In response to what you said about my WOW brother, the point I was trying to make was how they were telling me to mark and avoid those who weren't coming to Twig or whatever...like they would somehow poison my thinking because they were no longer standing with us. I think that the fruit that came out of that whole time period is evidence to what their intentions were...the ministry turned against itself and it really wasn't much of a ministry at all but a money machine. The things that were going on at the time that I finally got out only make me glad that I never tried to hold on because it was evident to do so would only be delusion...however delusional it was to begin with

No big, sometimes a mistake in identity can be a good thing! lol

Thanks! We aren't robots or clones so it is only right that we would disagree at least on some subjects. I have learned to listen to those who I may disagree with just to get a different point of view. It sometimes will even sway me from my own opinions because I am more able to see it from a different angle. I learned a long time ago that things aren't necessarily as they appear, so one has to be willing to change their minds about things or at least teachable or we end up becoming dumb and stubborn.

It was intended to focus more on the disillusionment rather than to be a discussion on politics. I knew that political discussions weren't really part of this forum, I just got to thinking about how in many ways things were similar. The disgust I had/have for the current situation of either one because of the corruption and the deception used on masses of people is practically overwhelming. I just felt like I need to do as much as I can to dispel the darkness and educate people around me as to what I see is going on. Thanks!

Thanks Waysider

I have had political inclinations most of my life in some form or another but a few years ago I became pretty disillusioned at the sad state that our country had become. After 9-11 our government has passed a series of laws and acts that have seriously compromised our freedoms, we get searched at airports and the government can look in on us at about any time even to the point of the FBI is allowed to enter our houses without a warrant and search our homes even when we aren't there. We can be indefinitely detained without any charges and not allowed legal representation, recently there has been a bill passed that seriously limits our freedom of speech to where we can't protest within a certain radius of any Secret Service, we can be detained. When they passed the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) with it's provisions that they can detain US citizens indefinitely without due process and even execute them if they deem necessary it was a wake up call to me. I was suddenly posting things about it constantly on Facebook and anywhere else I could find audience. It opened my eyes to other things as well, to understand what has happened to our government and the blatant disregard for what our Constitution says about limiting government. I then became interested in Ron Paul and the Liberty Movement. I found that the folks who were involved in it thought very much like me and had the same desires for our country...for it to be free. I have been a Libertarian basically since I even knew what it was or first heard about it. Not so much because they believe that drugs should be legal (which at the time was an incentive as well) but because they believe that government's role in our lives should be as minimal as possible. That the Federal Government's job was to protect our liberties...and those liberties according to the Constitution are given to us by God and not the US Government. So, I got involved and ended up becoming a county coordinator in my county and then a delegate. If any of you were paying attention at all you might have seen that we were receiving a lot of resistance. The corporate news media was blocking him out and distorting the facts like he wasn't even in the race. This only fueled my belief in what we were/are doing is right. He would show up for a rally and there would be thousands there and the media would report a couple hundred. One rally in California had over 10,000 and I was at three here in Missouri that were over 2000. We weren't too successful in our district and state conventions but we did move some of the platform to be more liberty oriented. The point of my writing this was how I was so disillusioned in our government and basically just gave up hope for it to ever be any better...until now. I now believe that there is a chance that we can change things. We aren't using money and fueled by Wall Street like most of our government is but we are a small group of people who are lighting fires and making our voices heard. After reading some of the stories on here and learning about how things were in our government really sickened me, just how money and power can corrupt so many things in our lives. We have to be careful ourselves so as not to be corrupted with it by accepting bribes or whatever you would like to call their hand outs so that we keep our mouths shut. The government bribes us in many ways with all it's social programs making us dependent on them so that we think that they are oh so good to us only to make us slaves to the very system that we think is good. I think that TWI did that to many of us as well, it gave us a feel good feeling and got us to pay our hard earned money into a beast that was bleeding us dry. It is like a black hole just sucking the life out of us and the will to fight is eventually drained from us. This is my rant, it may not be suitable to post here by it's political material or maybe it is...it is only my opinion and what has been going on with me. I truly love what our country has been and I think that it can still be but the forces of evil are very much driving the bus right now and they have a lot of money behind them pushing us to pay our taxes and be good citizens so that they can protect us from harm. I seen a video where Jesse Ventura was saying that when they tell us that they are protecting us then we need to watch out because we are going to lose our freedom.

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I recall when I first got involved with TWI and one of the believers was getting into some life insurance MLM and was referring to the structure being just like the ministry...I should have known then that there was something wrong, but I was very young then and didn't know much about MLMs other than there seemed like there was something wrong with them because of the promise of making lots of money and all you have to do is get some underlings to get more underlings to get more underlings. Most people that I seen get involved with MLMs rarely got past the initial cost of the "start" package. I shy away from anything that someone starts some sort of pitch on to sell me on, if something is worthwhile it sells itself.

Thanks OprahBuff! I have wondered the same thing...if I have ever met someone that is here. I looked for clues in their posts and possibly some of the places they said they were and when. Seemed like we all spent a lot of time moving in TWI and that I was always helping someone move their things. I lived like a gypsy by choice anyway so it seemed like I fit right in, lol. Thanks for the warm welcome once again and I will be posting more after this crazy week...look forward to getting to know you all!

Thanks for the warm welcome, it is truly appreciated. I will hopefully have more time to spend in here after this week...have a lot going on with life events!

I think that the security should be given back to the airports, the whole 911 thing is a sham in the first place with giving up so many civil liberties for some temporary safety and that the reason we have been having these problems is because of the government's involvement in the Middle East. The reason that we have the Constitution is to protect us from the government and not the other way around, the government has taken several of our Bill of Rights from us with the (un)Patriot Act and the NDAA and telling us that is is for our safety against terrorism, True enough that we have had a threat of terrorism but does losing our civil liberties really worth it? I think not and I would like to have them back. Searches without warrants or that you even have to be at home to have the FBI or Homeland Security to go through your things, indefinite detention and/or execution without due process, looking in on our internet and cell phone activity and endless searches of our persons at the airports are all are part of our safety? What have we become? The Land of the Free...thing of the past!

Thanks Twinky! I found the threads very helpful in understanding what was really going on. Seeing that so many here were deeply involved and then to find out the facts about what happened made sense to me yet was pretty disturbing that I bought into the thing as much as I did. I can only imagine how those that were a lot more involved than I were had to have felt and face up to how they had been duped. Most of my TWI experience was pretty good, people seemed to genuinely care and I think that for the most part they really did. But towards the end it became very cold a lot of the time. It just really wasn't doing it for me and the more involved I got the less good I seen in it. It wasn't something I was consciously thinking and I would shrug off negative things I would hear from other believers but it became more and more difficult to ignore the elephant in the living room so to speak. People that I had a lot of respect for were criticizing things they seen and heard and I would see evidence of it from leadership. I guess I can be thankful that my alcoholism saved me from TWI because I just withdrew from it before I would have been "Marked and Avoided" or whatever.

II struggled with it for most of my life really. I also had issues with other substances and would juggle them or try to come up with the right "chemical cocktail" in order to manage it. I tried about everything I could think of but it always found a way to come around to bite me in the foot. Eventually the problem got so large that it consumed me and my life spun out of control and the legal system intervened. I gave up the fight and surrendered to the fact that I no long live that way and made some serious changes. So far I have made it a little over 6 years and life is good, much better than I had expected and thousands times better than my life was with it. I just couldn't go on like I was and had given up hope that it would be any different, Thank God I got to the place where I had a choice because my options got very limited and my world got really small. It wasn't easy but it was well worth it.

Lol, Thanks!

I have been on here for a few months, lurking mostly and reading the posts on different topics. What prompted me to do some research on the internet about TWI was last Thanksgiving I was invited over to a neighbors house for dinner with a friend of mine. They live just around the corner from me in a somewhat rural setting. After we got there chit chatting with different people that were there I couldn't help to notice how diverse the crowd was there but I never gave it much thought, just noticed that they were all quite different and wondered what brought them all together. But then I was introduced to a guy (whom I had met 15yrs ago or so) and then the bells started going off. As we were eating I noticed a book shelf sitting along the wall next to the table and there it was...all TWI literature and books such as JCNG and JCOP and a leather bound Holy Spirit book that you had to be at Living Victoriously to have received. I had been out of TWI for quite some time, probably since around 1992. I got married (to a non-TWI) and had a daughter, was working on trying to get some sort of career going doing something to support my family. TWI was getting way too religious for me and the changes I was making in my life just weren't fitting into what was going on so time went by and I drifted away. I had occasionally wondered what happened to some of the friends that I had in TWI, some I really grew close to and loved. I was a WOW in 86-87 and things were getting pretty messed up then and I had an issue with alcohol that I was battling so I was on my way away from TWI as it was or I would have eventually been marked and avoided. I was also an Advanced Class grad and got to hear the stupid tapes that LCM had made about the "Fog Years" or whatever. They pretty much left a bad taste in my mouth and didn't really make me feel like things were on the up and up. There was the rumors that I would hear on the field too but more of my concern was where I was heading and I figured it just best to walk away...so I did. The recent reminder just made me wonder what had happened since I left. I was quite shocked to hear how it all went down and couldn't stop reading the posts for a while, like I was obsessed or something, lol. But in a way it doesn't surprise me knowing how things were getting towards the end. It sort of matches everything else I have known in life to be a fraud and not like I had thought they were in the beginning. I have become pretty skeptical about everything, the corruption seems to be everywhere and it is hard to find anything honest and real in this life. I still believe in humanity to some extent, as far as community and helping others in need. I have learned that things are quite different than TWI was telling me. I was told to avoid someone that was my WOW brother because he had a drinking problem yet I was encouraged to help non-believers come to the fold...didn't make much sense. Why would I put more energy into someone I don't know whether will believe or not as opposed to someone who obviously needs my help? That is just an example of some of the .... they were saying...there is much much more. My behavior at the time wasn't so great either so the best thing for me was just to walk away and try something different which I did. The journey I have come has been interesting. I try not to regret any of it because it is all part of where I am today. I have learned that the dark parts of my past help me to help others and I have learned to embrace some of the unsavory things about myself so that I may be better equipped to help someone else and to move out of where I am at. The world teaches us quite differently. Anyway...a little about me