potato

well hell, freedombound, it's nice that you chimed in with your expectations after flogging me over posting the "wrong" kind of response. this is the "about the way" section. maybe posting in "open" would get you what you want. posting here is an open invitation for people to relate their experiences back to TWI. but here, I'll try to answer your question anyway, in the context of the topic "about the way" and the fact I spent 20 years as a member: 1) Your similar experiences witnessing. similar to what? TWI's version of witnessing was a bunch of BS multi-level marketing. it was so painful that I refuse to witness and I won't go to church because I can't stand whitewashed christian "love". since leaving twi and their hypocrisy, I do, however, make sure I stand up for what I believe is right. 2) Your now current view as to what you expect to see & who you now hold forth GOD''s Word to out of nothing more or less than God's love. I don't hold forth god's word. I do give people as much respect as I can, and love if they need it. I don't expect anything from it, I just hope that if I hold out my hand with empathy when someone needs it, it'll give them the strength to carry on.

of course he did, brother Ham. EVERYONE did once you got through enough classes. we analyzed every conversation, every TV commercial, every christmas card looking for the devil's insidious messages.

I agree frames are outdated, but I can generally navigate them just fine. was the site built to reject all browsers except IE? if so, that leaves us mac usin'/firefox lovin' people out in the cold.

all I got for abouttheway.org is a blank page.

I didn't realize my account of "the valley" and what I learned down there would be considered off topic. I guess I don't really understand what your topic is. you asked what we learned in the valley of human need. I learned my most valuable lessons by leaving twi and learning new ways of looking at people. if that's not an appropriate answer, I'm sorry and perhaps you can make your question more specific.

being in twi was my valley of the shadow of death. walking away from twi was walking out of the valley into the light. it twi, I learned to judge by appearances. since twi, I've decided to judge by the heart. no one is perfect. in twi, I learned to appease arrogance. since twi, I've learned to speak against and abhor it. in twi, I learned that if my believing is perfect, I can be perfectly healed. since twi, I've realized I'm flawed and if there is a god who loves, I'm loved as I am. I cannot heal anyone, or set them free. I can be kind, and I can encourage the fearful. that's all.

great post, Tzaia. the pain from cutting releases endorphins. it's like getting a shot of a calming drug. people use pain to control panic attacks and anxiety. it's not a badge of honor or a celebration of deviance, like self-mutilation. twi abandoned a lot of people with needs because they couldn't be groomed to a degree of normalcy that would be a good witness for twi. twi wanted people who looked good, period. it mattered far less that they wanted to be delivered from something, or that they loved god but had an IQ of 80. those people got weeded out by demanding so much of them that they failed and "copped out" because of their "lack of believing to get healed".

I don't think lcm started out like the rest of us, I think he already had the qualities to be shaped into what he became and that's what vpw looked for: someone who would be his mini-me. men like vpw are astute at finding their victims. they look for men who will blindly follow and women who will adore without question. perhaps at one time lcm had a choice of who he would become, but it was well before meeting vpw. for example, my ex was the man he is now well before twi. he'd figured out how to get people to admire him by being involved in "helping" organizations, a skill he took with him to twi where his desire for admiration would have taken him into the upper ranks if he was smarter and less impulsive than he is, because for a number of years he was being groomed for it, as I was being groomed to be submissive to him. his lack of intelligence and inability to control his impulses saved me from the life of a leader's wife (thank god) but my point is, it's possible that he had a chance at some point in his early life to look at himself and say "wow, I'm a mess, I want to change". he didn't, and sealed his mind against the possibility of needing to change, so at this point he's incapable of it. his mind was made up so long ago and his whole life has been about preserving his self image that to look inside at what he really is would be self-destruction. lcm became the man he is today because vpw needed a man like him. lcm was already the man vpw needed. some of us come out of a relationships like that and find salvation because if we're lucky enough to crash and burn, the turmoil in our minds could be enough to bubble up something that we buried a long time ago that we can hang on to and use to get better. most people don't do that, though. they seal the pain that self-realization would bring back up in their brain and become worse than before.

yeah I don't either. waste of time. there are other people I wish well, fervently, namely the people he victimized.

exactly! the narcissistic ego is extremely fragile, and they put a lot of effort into avoiding anything that contradicts the framework of self they create, while exhibiting an undeniable need for external validation of their creation. I'm sure it's a struggle for him to maintain his self-view as it is, having been pushed out of his rightful position of power, so coming here would be a form of self-punishment a narcissists would tend to avoid.

generally, the prognosis for pathological narcissism is grim, so I expect he has not changed and will not at any time in the future feel responsible for his sins.

ha! classic, Jeff! that's exactly how I was hearing it on my way out the door.

yeah, we don't endorse anyone. wink, wink. nudge, nudge.

I wished I had thought of that!

yeah, I've refused to tell anyone how I voted on anything after that :) ... it used to drive my ex crazy and he would pester me incessantly, since he had to report back to leadership on what I was doing, but I never broke my vow of silence on my vote.

I was ordered by my FC to vote for Bush in 2000. after that, whenever the conversation turned to politics, I stepped away. that was the last year I heard explicit directives from leadership on who to vote for, but I'm pretty sure they continued to guide people toward the "best" candidate with after-fellowship criticisms.

whether you were "in" or just hanging out on the fringe doesn't change the fact that twi was a cult. "leaders" learned to concentrate their efforts on the trusting sheep and figure out who would swallow -- ok I'll stop that analogy before it gets out of hand -- but my point is that twi operated a certain way that made/makes it a cult, and how deeply you were effected depends on how much control certain types of people who operated freely on the inside managed to get over you. actually I think it still IS a cult, it's just operating at a lower level right now. I'd bet money that when the right circumstances fall into place, the cultish aspect of the organization is ready to rear its ugly head again because it hasn't reformed, it hasn't healed, and it's still rotten.

"I also understand the level of effort many people put into TWI. For many, I think, leaving was up there with divorce in terms of trauma...never a fun moment in that exercise" I can vouch for this! what's really kinda funny though is that I wasn't nearly as afraid of leaving my ex as I was of leaving twi, but over the long term twi has made a much better ex than he has!

I heard it explicitly taught that if you don't control your thoughts the adversary will: through tv, your friends, family, kids, what you have in your home. perhaps this rabid doctrine evolved into its ultra-mind-controlling form in LCM's time, but it was taught at RC, LC, and BC level. if you give the devil a toehold, he'll force the door wider. that's why wives were to be absolutely obedient to their husbands, because if the house was dirty or the laundry undone or if they didn't put out whenever hubby wanted or listen to every word out of his mouth with worshipful respect, she'd let the adversary into the family. the man was required to rule with an iron fist for the same reason, to keep his wife in line so the adversary wouldn't infiltrate the family if she became a busybody. the wife also had to control every thought going through her kids' brains lest the adversary get a toehold in their impressionable little heads, too. so yes, it was that easy in twi to let the devil take your mind over and it was an excuse to micromanage the lives of the "faithful". IMO, it was the leadership who were the busybodies.

you were actually one of the people who made me feel most welcome when I was new, RR :) I know you're not the one-size-fits-all type of person. I guess I was pondering the situation more than anything. we have a few extremists here who don't understand why anyone would have a problem leaving or with the way they were treated, then there are those of us who may never fully recover from the damage that was done. I think it's really good to have all perspectives especially when they're given as kindly as you offer yours. I'm just starting to find out there really are some decent folks out there who won't ever understand what it was like for me to be in a mind-controlling cult but still like me anyway. the chains around my soul have been cut off for the most part. at this point I think someday, perhaps, I can look back at it as an experience gone south (god knows I have enough of those anyway) but a year ago I was sure that would never happen. so I wasn't disagreeing with you at all, just musing, but you're right there is a huge difference in perspective between 2 years and 20. I'm pretty sure that getting away from twi was a whole lot easier for me than it would have been if GS didn't exist. I'm also sure that I will hate that organization until the end of my days.

I dunno, RR. for a while it was a lot safer for me to limit honest human interaction with people here. it was online, therefore limited, but I felt a lot safer. out in the real world I felt like such a misfit. I didn't think I'd ever start to fit in, and I've been out now for 2 years and just starting to feel like twi is the past and that I can interact with people in a somewhat normal way. I'm not afraid of running into innies anymore, and I can tell people with some humor now that I was in a cult so I'm out of touch with culture over the past 2 decades, which gives me the perfect excuse to be eccentric.

I'm pretty sure I remember it being there when I used to go there.

vicster supremists.

sorry, field of dreams was not a good movie! that's what I was thinking, too, brother Ham. which actually makes him several degrees lower than Simon the sorcerer, who was probably just a las vegas style magician, while vpw was more of the snake oil salesman disguised as a country doctor slipping toxic medicine to desperate people.

my opinion is that a lot of their time will be wasted with legalistic micromanagement. they will serve twi with gladness (or get their faces melted) and the lord will be lucky to get a nod from the moglets-in-training. ha! I used the twi-ism "face-melt". man I'm glad I don't have to put up with those any more.