potato

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cman, I like that... I am the cookie jar. we are earthen vessels after all. isn't being dead to the flesh a synonym for keeping your parts in balance? then we don't neglect our mortal part but don't let it overwhelm our spiritual part so that by being hungry or proud we forget God. I don't think flesh restricts our spiritual part since it's part of us. I think it can work perfectly because it's cookie jar sized spirit.

real... I went through a process of becoming real. like the velveteen rabbit, only it was loving myself that made me real, and I learned to do it after I accepted being loved by others. this did not happen in twi, it happened once I started to step outside twi. so yes, I mean something beyond the literal meaning of real, because I had to integrate parts of myself that I'd broken off to survive and I became real instead of a fake projection of whatever I needed to be to survive. this is very true. I changed and my closest friends resisted because the transformation scared them so completely. change to that degree is difficult and I found it more like a pendulum swing where the center ends up someplace different than it started... a lot of adjustments involved wild swings well outside my normal modes of thinking. I plowed ahead with it even believing I'd lost my best friends, and they eventually adjusted and one even said I was more Potato-y than when I'd started, which to me means I found myself by putting myself back together and becoming real. with this person, I believe the lying is protective. the immediate benefit of lying is approval, with never a thought that not following through with his promises will bring disapproval. somehow that part doesn't compute. in the face of disapproval he resorts to denial of responsibility, blame, and if those don't work, more placating lies. I would be very stunned if he changed even a little, but I'd be happy to see a change. I would be no good at providing support during the change though, because I'd assume any apparent change was just more BS.

not by me. your posts make me think, which is something I like to do a lot of since leaving twi. if I wasn't so perpetually sleep deprived I would spend even more time thinking than I do now. your previous posts made me think about someone I know who lies pathologically. lies come out of his mouth as easily as the truth and have for as long as I've known him, over 20 years. in twi he got a lot of ego stroking for being a workman of the word and only 1 person "discerned" his lying but never attributed it to devil spirits. another caught him in a significant lie and was confused by the true man vs. the false projection he'd built in her mind. I tried to figure it out for a long time. naturally twi would have him possessed by some hardcore devils spirits, mainly lying spirits and charming spirits, but interestingly enough none of the leadership saw anything amiss. after considering for several years, he just looks broken to me. there seems to be a gap in his ability to reason and plan that leads him down the wrong path more often than down the right one. consequences have no meaning and are met with disbelief and denial. so, could he have a knot or knots in a chakra and could he "heal" by combing it or them out? it's hard to believe that he could change at this point because he seems so utterly broken and without empathy that becoming a real person seems out of his reach, even if he realized it and wanted to change. thoughts?

busted! I don't have one in my house! since I got married, mr. potato keeps asking for one, so I guess I'll have to keep some sour cream and chives on hand just in case it results in a sad fatality.

if I remember rightly, he did mention GS and prophesied that anyone reading it would become possessed

therefore if it was true we'd better keep our noses out of it.

really excie, please. I got so creeped out just now. I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

naturally this oversight occurs behind the scenes, so they shouldn't hear sirens.

has anyone here ever tried microwaving a twinkie?

I left a little over a year ago, and my understanding at the time is that's how it worked. if someone wanted back in, they first have to talk to the SC. if a twit witnesses to a cop-out and convinces them to come back, they can go to the local fellowship but I'm pretty sure that it gets reported upstream so everyone can keep an eye on things.

I guess the only way to protect the urban legends that doctrine was built on was to keep people from having access to information. it's also easier to protect your exclusivity to information so as to appear to have invented or obtained by revelation that which you pass your subordinates.

I agree with you. I thank God for them. thank you for your post, I appreciated reading the whole thing.

I think my depressive states stemmed from the same types of things. abuse by leaders brought on the worst depressions of my life, and my general depression was a result of my upbringing and marriage. getting help for my mental state brought about my divorce, then I left twi, and I'm happy to say my mental state is so much better. it takes a hell of a lot of work to change it, and although medication didn't work for me very well, there was one point when it made a big difference and I'm glad such medications are available. I kept it a secret from twi people though. didn't want to be a big stumbling block.

something Belle said reminded me of when LCM went off on the internet and how evil it is. as a SAHM, I went looking on the internet for a a job in the late 90s and actually landed myself a sweet writing gig working over the net. one day, my then-husband came home and told me that our FC told him that I should stop working on the internet. did anyone else get the trickle-down on that teaching?

ok, I've given it a little thought. in the bible God has taken the role of parent (father) over master. so... children don't know what's available. they learn it over years. their parents teach them, they also learn by trial and error, and they ask for a lot when they know the answer is no, just to make sure. parents are supposed to be the example, then the sounding board, as kids grow up and figure out more and more what works for them in their lives, comparing, one would hope, to moral guidelines taught them by their parents (I'm fuzzy on this one because I didn't get that kind of teaching at home). over time, kids check in less and less with their parents about what's ok because they learned to make decisions for themselves. they're autonomous, but their parents' voices are still in their heads for better or worse. still, no one knows or understands everything or knows about everything. even our parents have a couple of decades of experience on us all the time, and they're not even God. so why would God expect us to get it all the time, and expect us to ask before he gives? I don't think we have to know everything that's available for God to give, but once we do know it makes it easier. I think twi kept us children so we always have to ask and we could never become autonomous.

I fell in love. according to twi's class, it was wrong for me to have a relationship with the man for several reasons... 1. my divorce wasn't final 2. he wasn't in the "household" and 3. sex outside of marriage is wrong. I sat through the class like a good little twit and felt so condemned because to be a good christian, I'd have to give up someone who'd become my best friend, plus it was just an awesome change from 20 years of being humped by my selfish ex-husband to being loved by someone who actually cared about me. so I got ....ed at God, because if these people were teaching his "word" then he was ultimately responsible, and I took my grievance to his feet. I told him all I could see by following that stupid prissy class was a wasteland of loneliness and why should I give up this relationship that made me happy? I got an answer, a loving, freeing one that helped me take my first steps away from twi.

I find that very little of what God has given me, have I asked for. he gives it because he loves, like I feed my kids meals or do their laundry or give them hugs. I shouldn't wait for them to ask for those things. I'm not constantly looking in the cookie jar to see if God has something for me because I think he'll just give me a cookie when there's one for me. I know the bible says ask, but I don't understand what it means by ask because my experience is different. my most vivid memory of asking for something was after the new twi biblical family class and how condemning it was to me. I railed on God and asked him why he would want me to give up something wonderful that they were teaching in that class was wrong, and I got an answer. it was one that helped free me from the twi prison. but I didn't ask for anything, just for an answer.

ooo, I didn't know about this. why is it that cult leaders seem to have a penchant for expensive vehicles?

amen, rascal. I was married to someone who obsessively read the bible and knew the pfal teaching topics and collaterals by heart. he loved to posture before twi's leadership and show off his ability to "work the word" (read: impress people of authority with his ability to handle twi doctrine). he has very little love in his heart for God or anyone. he used the "word" (read: twi doctrine) to control me, hurt me, and impress other people. the pharisees who Jesus confronted were masters of scripture, but they were men of the flesh. people like that are pretty common in religion, it seems. in my experience, the more someone says they know spiritual things, especially regarding how things should be done, the less love they have for God.

I took and helped run PFAL dozens of times, took the intermediate class at least a half dozen times, advanced class twice, went to advances, taught at fellowship at least a hundred times, set up study nights, read all the books over and over (except rise and expansion, what a snooze that was) and filled dozens of notebooks with study notes... so f-ing what? I don't see all that activity makes anyone more knowledgeable of the Word. all I became knowledgeable of was Way doctrine. I can hate twi and love God. the two are not mutually exclusive. that's one system of belief. there are others. I agree that maybe you need to go back to twi. you sound like RC material to me.

except they deleted my posts and blocked me! I must be too dangerous :D

Hammie, you're too funny. but seriously, I have replied to people asking such questions with my personal experience, that I waited and waited for the apology or some hint of accountability and it never came, just excuses, so I left. and I include a link to GS.

ala, I'm very sorry you lost someone. I didn't realize when I replied earlier. there were things I could have said because I just watched someone very dear to me lose a battle with cancer. the twi indoctrination regarding death could have colored my last days with this person. the loved one I lost was a good person, someone very close, and it is a tragic fact that the death was too young. twi is a devilish organization that teaches you to think evil of people at times when they need to be loved, and I'm so glad I was out of twi and where I belonged, loving instead of judging.

I do remember a teaching, but I don't remember which MOG it was, if it came down from a corpse night or on the wow field or at one of the roots, but I do remember one of them specifically saying that if you're on the word your body will just wear out and you'll just die in your sleep. the teaching either intimated or explicitly stated that if you get off the word, the devil can kill you as he pleases.