Tzaia

I've been "de-Wayed" long enough to see my part in getting "Wayed."

Honey, that's not an erection, that's my "spiritual awareness."

I've only been able to talk openly about what I've been doing for God since July 2001 when I started going to a regular church on a regular basis. Over 20 years of essentially being ashamed of what I had been involved with and not wanting it to be common knowledge, lest I lose credibility.

I'm really enjoying the book and have also seen how various organizations, including TWI, use censorship to maintain control. TWI's stance on psychology, psychiatry, books to read, and music to listen to kept people from delving too deep into the ramifications of what TWI was doing to the members. Even the (supposed) lack of organizational "membership" was a tact used to make people believe what TWI was doing was outside the box of religious organization structure. Once, as I was being lectured to about our abundant sharing practices, I wondered out loud to the lecturer that it was strange that an organization that has no membership sure had a lot of information about its non-members that is was sharing with other non-members and that I certainly didn't appreciate it. It seemed the deeper one got into the organizational structure of TWI, the more one was indoctrinated by groupthink and took on the characteristics of the leader. You've got to wonder how many of the splinter/leaders feel they could've held TWI together if it had been them and not LCM at the helm?

No doubt about their sincerity. I think most people at the higher leadership levels who have truly stepped back and taken a hard look at what they believe(d) and what their role in TWI was, have seen the damage of belonging to such a structure. So far I've only seen 1 person at the higher levels of leadership who has stepped that far back. Everyone else is trying to recapture the glow of whatever time frame they believed were the "glory" days and rebuild the ministry based on that perception.

I'm not saying it didn't happen all over, I (personally) saw less of it once I got about an hour away. It seemed to be more rampant among those who had gone WOW and kept going back WOW and those who went into the corp. The rank and file of us who had kids and were just living weren't like that. I guess I got a reputation for not being approachable. I saw it happen with others. It simply didn't happen with me.

Good for you for going back to college. I'm wrapping up 3 of the best years so far this decade having done the same thing (a bit younger, tho). I met my husband in TWI. I'm extremely grateful for that and the 2 children we had. I'm also grateful that I didn't buy into the whole thing lock, stock, and barrel. I was a misfit among misfits and I didn't care. I don't have any regrets about TWI. It was, for me at the time, the best thing out there. The escalation of the "requirements" under LCM, and the various shrill rants on tape and in written correspondence made it increasingly difficult to justify staying in, so we left. We hooked up with a splinter for a while then left that. We did our own thing in home fellowship, but found it too was lacking in terms of what we could do for the kids, and it was emotionally draining due to the constant rehashing of all the "wrongs" committed by TWI and the splinter, so we joined our kids at the local church. Once I was able to move beyond the belief that "like-mindedness" and absolute truth was imperative, it was easy to assimilate into larger body and back into society.

Keith, my husband was a college WOW in Bloomington in the mid 70s. Others: I haven't read the book and probably won't. It seems as if most of the major abuse took place in the upper ranks - not that the lower ranks didn't try. Although it seemed to me that the closer you were to a limb, the more structured things were. When we went from living down the street from limb headquarters to over an hour away, things lightened up considerably. I talked to our corp grad branch leaders about the sex thing and they said they were unaware of what was going on with leadership. As far as the teaching about sex in the corp was that penetration wasn't allowed, but other means of pleasuring one another were ok. I thought it was a pretty fine line, but since I wasn't so "spiritually developed", I just called it wrong.

Not necessarily. It's a personal webpage put up on someone's account. The ~ydl indicates the user's account name. You could send an email to ydl@itech.net and presumably it would go to the person who put up the website.

I didn't realize it was "their" kitchen table. Sorta reminds me of the documentary "The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews". Is this picture of the table the equivalent of the Way Corp experience (since I have no idea)?

The name is not all that recognizable. I think it's more along the lines of delusions of recognition.

Preventive Believing? How in the heck do you know if you have prevented some catastrophe?

Are you sure it's not spelled "sorers"

Which is entirely reasonable. In my opinion, there's 2 types of research that is predominant - one to prove I'm right, and one to prove you're wrong. Each one begins with a premise. The problem comes about when, during research, we are confronted with the inaccuracy of the premise. Do we reexamine the original premise, or do we jump through hoops to defend the premise? I don't have a problem with admitting I'm wrong or changing my mind based on facts that are presented to me. I struggle with "because I said so." As much as I can, I try to remove bias from my research.

From the movie "Downfall" The film begins with a clip from a video interview with the real-life Traudl Junge (Hitler's personal secretary), who wonders why she decided to work for Adolf Hitler and states her anger at her younger self for not realizing what kind of a monster she was dealing with. Young = inexperienced Older = deluded or delusions of grandeur Now = Learn from it.

It looks like to me that the people who are more affected had more invested. I stayed nominally involved in TWI for years before the actual break. I figured there were things I could learn, but it was necessary to personally detach from the hurtful stuff, much as you had to do with the bad boy chef. Personally I enjoy gifted people who can be difficult, because there is much to learn from them once you get past the ego. The funny thing is that once I got past VPW's highly inflated sense of self, there wasn't much I could glean from him in terms of having a relationship with Jesus - at least your chef taught you something.

This caught my eye: "Signs, miracles and wonders do not necessarily follow those who hold degrees from major universities." Shortly after this: "Victor Wierwille is a graduate of the University of West Florida, BS magna cum laude" Would he have a different perspective if he were summa cum laude?

I hadn't heard that one, but now that explains why people didn't help out when I was laid up with them. I used to get them so bad I would end up at the immediate care center because I would puke so much I dehydrated.

The only thing I burned were extra copies of TWI stuff. I kept a copy of everything. I remember JAL telling me he sold all of his stuff, to which I replied "HOW COULD YOU expose other people to that garbage?" I did overwrite SN tapes with other stuff and used a hair dryer to warm up the labels so I could peel them off.

It's been a looong time since I took the class, and I only sat through it twice, but my memory is that somehow he had risen above using the scriptures to support his own beliefs and that his beliefs arose by an "honest" approach to the scripture (no ax to grind, etc.) The first time I started seeing that he wasn't really doing that was when I read the "Order My Steps in Thy Word" book.

Wow, a real page-turner, if you're into things like that.

So you are saying VPW was guilty of the very thing he condemned other organizations of doing (proof-texting) and not letting the word stand on its own merit (taking things out of context)?

Probably not using the word "available".

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. If only (fill in the blank). Can't do a thing about the past. The future is up for grabs. It's only too late once you're taking a dirt nap.

I have been reading Bart Ehrman's works for a couple of years, and have been listening to his lectures. I have to say that I find little to disagree with him about, which has messed with my faith considerably. My faith was based largely on logic and facts that I found in TWI. Now that I've stepped outside the premises, I struggle with the lack of either in the face of historical evidence when combined with the largely dishonest approach to scripture that TWI embraced. Now I understand why ignorance is bliss and why Christians are told to avoid certain things.