chockfull

I think that changed after LCM dismantled the Research Dept. Nowadays there are 7 or 8 reviewers and/or reviews for every Way Rag article all from Way Pub. Some of those are focused solely on "does it line up with proven/published ministry works"? Others of course are grammar/style reviews. If something is questionable it is flagged and the original author has to change it. There are other reviews of personal anecdotes and incidents that many times are flagged and required to be removed - the reason given is like "we want to make sure it translates to a world wide audience". In reality it is simply removing any personality.

Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the movie "The Matrix". Morpheus talks about the red pill and the blue pill. If you take the blue pill, things go back to they way it was and everything is fine. I think all of the people left in TWI have taken the blue pill. But Neo takes the red pill and finds out the harsh reality - all those people living in blue pill land were in suspended states with plugs going into the back of their heads. I feel like that with the deprogramming stuff - like "how the h did I ever survive having those plugs into the back of my head with strings pulled by the puppetmasters?" I would much rather face the reality that life is difficult and you have to work hard to get anywhere with anything than the delusional Stepford-like Way-World where life is beautiful all the time. And if it's not, you just change your definition of beautiful and keep confessing away. What PUKE!!!! Give me the harsh reality of life and I can live it with all I've got

Rico lives in his own private fantasy world, where he is Jesus.

Haha. I read all the PooP. Probably one of the most narcissistic narratives I've ever read. Actually, just finished a James Patterson novel - "Private Games". The narrative of the psycho killer with delusions of grandeur who was the main antagonist in the novel sounded a whole lot like Geer.

Yeah probably the most outstanding of those was the ones they called the "Galatians Tapes", or whatever the ones were for Adv. Class grads he taught about Geer after the "fog years". Prior to that I don't think I had ever heard the "f" word used as every part of speech in a single sentence.

I wonder how he's doing as a part time real estate agent? http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-linder/12/2a1/a6a

So Rozilla openly admits that TWI is no longer considered a cult because she has the personality of a soap dish. Good Glad the old girl is coming to terms with herself. The next step is where she admits that as a result of that, the STS teachings, all classes, magazine articles, and Way Productions also have the personality of a small soap dish. In fact, either "vanilla" or "elevator musack" could describe the resulting impact.

I guess it just goes to show you can't run a cult of personality without the personality.

When I say the thread topic I thought it would be about Rosie and Donna - keeping the torch lit for each other. How do they do it? Sit around and talk about the days they can run off together - with all the money? johniam immature? who would ever believe that? johniam, have your wife smack you in the head for us.

Well, JP and Sherry are in CFF - the brother / sister thing - Sarah is JP's sister, married to Kevin, who runs CFF with Wayne. Little V2P2 is JP and Sherry's son. I heard that Kevin was not happy at all with V2P2 starting SOWERS but had to back off due to the family aspect. All those guys don't have the same vicious nature Rosie does. No, V2P2 is on his own - with financial backing from elsewhere.

I'm sure CFF is "waiting at the doors trying to pick off anyone they could". They have no reach into mainstream Christianity, and rural Ohio isn't exactly the thriving Mecca of potential converts either. Wayne and Kevin have to put food on the table, and as a pattern it seems people who worked for TWI for decades seem ill-equipped to survive in the normal business world. Ironically, Rosie has only herself to blame. If she would have been a little nicer to Wayne, instead of raking him over the coals and getting him kicked out of TWI, and of course John Shroyer before that, and the Wierwille kids, there would not even be any CFF. But you can't change the spots on a leopard, neither can you change the vicious nature of Rosie. Donna's delusional. So by force of logic then, her own kids are doomed to die because Craig left TWI? Oh, but never forget the power of rationalization. He was kicked out, so that's different. Also, about 98% of the Way Corps have all left TWI, and judging by Ning pictures they are all reasonably alive and kicking with families the same. Even the severe douches don't seem to be dying off. Face it Rosie. You are your own worst enemy. And nobody's afraid of you anymore.

Ahh - taking me back to the endless hours spent bored to tears re-stringing the chairs in the big top auditorium at the Rock of Ages 3x per day.

If their premise is true, then all the communication they need to hear from me is both middle fingers extended !!!

skyrider, No wonder you were cast out. Such free-thinking initiative is not the stuff that stepford wives are made of :)

To be very frank about this, I was not exposed to any of this type of information while in TWI. Why? Some of it was hidden and swept under the carpet by higher ups. The little that did filter through in analyzing my reactions and mindset, I honestly did not confront the information head on. I rationalized and thought that people were inflating facts because they had an agenda, that some were outright lying, and that some people had deep-seated problems that TWI was not able to help them with. My thoughts were anything other than actually confronting the facts and the truth about the situations that TWI was complicit in and many times responsible in ways that could be prosecuted under manslaughter or depraved indifference. I believe many people currently in TWI do this consistently and have this viewpoint today. It takes a lot for people to face the truth. Usually it's only prolonged incidents of seeing where TWI really cares nothing for their lives that people start to wake up to the fact that these people in spiritual authority over them are abusing them. And usually only after it hits close to home do people wake up. When you look at the actions of normal people around a suicidal person there are attempts to help. With TWI leadership the attempts are to distance themselves from the person and incident, to blame the person, to assign blame to another individual for their lack of believing. This is not a normal reaction for a member of the human race, little less the higher standard of a Christian lifestyle that the Bible teaches. Shunning a person with problems is about as far from the good Samaritan teaching that Jesus taught you can get. With these suicides, those involved and those around those incidents should know that Jesus taught it is better for a millstone to be hung around someone's neck and them drown than to harm these little ones. All the teachings they have about the bema and awards stand - that is rationalization avoiding a just God. With the payback these TWI leaders have coming, their "gold medal" is going to be "cement overshoes".

Sometimes I think it's the little things that show the most. The overall drive to "burn the chaff" getting rid of "old man things" promoted by TWI. It's the dispensing of one's identity and the substitution of the group identity. Of course people by nature will get rid of things attached to bad memories, but this is different. The whole symbolism manipulated by the terms "old man" and "new man" in TWI's use are very unhealthy. There is strength in heritage, family, past accomplishments, memories. When you combine the over-emphasis on "likemindedness" - an ingrained "group-think" with the complete lack of care of the individual shown by TWI, it's a very damaging combination.

I know that the concept of memorizing small snippets of scripture is not a new one. However, I had a relative that attended a Navigator's Bible camp growing up, and part of their curriculum involved packaging up little note card packets with a holder for themed verse memorization help. I had thought I heard from somewhere that VPW (or Glenn Clark who he lifted most of his family camps ideas from) had taken the idea that originated with the Navigators to print up retemory packets for sale in the bookstore. Then those became the standard and norm for their different programs (Way Corps, WOW), and eventually spilled over into additions to all the PFAL / WAP classes. The link between the Navigators and VPW's printing and coining the term "retemories" maybe isn't 100% traceable (unless someone knows differently). However, just looking at what was out there at the time the Navigators (founded in 1933) utilized this practice and supplies in their camps in the 50s and 60s well before TWI ever thought about it. One more idea out in the Christian world that was taken by TWI, and a word made up and attached to it - "retemories" - and VOILA - VPW just invented a new unique method for memorizing scriptures that other Christians don't have. Plagiarism and ego was prevalent throughout so much of what that man did...

Weren't the invention or commonization of retemories something TWI stole from the Navigators? Check out the top left hand corner selling "verse packs". http://www.navigators.org/us/resources

The personification of "believing" is a crutch of losers. My "believing", your "believing", everyone's "believing". You'd think everyone has their own personal little man beside them who is "their believing". It gives people a built-in excuse. Why didn't you pass your test, son? "My believing" wasn't there. What a load of cr@p0la. It leads right in to indoctrination, as getting "your believing" there for whatever endeavor wouldn't involve actually studying for the test, but doing things to "build your believing", like SIT, attend PFAL, twig, make a bigger commitment to God. Just study for the test, and pray to God. He'll be there with you. The whole "my believing" spiel puts things more in the realm of THE PROMISE, and the mind exercise daydreaming stuff that never accomplished anything in the real world. Without the view through loser colored glasses, you can actually watch "Rocky" and enjoy the gritty story about a boxer coming up through poverty and lower class surroundings and through hard work and determination making something of himself. He put in the work. His "believing" didn't. And the story line is much more plausible that the guys sights WERE set on giving the champ a great fight coming out of nowhere. The truth is fights at top levels would require some more experience. To win those, that's why there was a "Rocky 2, 3 and 4". Went as far as his believing took him. What a crock! The "Rocky" series were good movies, and Sly looked a whole lot better before all the designer steroids. And VP was a loser plagiarist.

I agree. The hoax was as simple as first establishing an extreme fundamentalist view of scripture, then transferring the absolute unquestionable nature of scripture to the teachings and opinions of a man. The result was you have "God's unquestionable source on earth - this man God's spokesman". In actuality that arrangement is the one Jesus Christ is supposed to be in. So VPW and/or the current TWI leader of the time replaces Jesus Christ as the source of God's will on earth. That is the basic underlying definition of a cult, or to speak of it in TWI terms - "the spirit of antichrist". When you add in to the mix the man being a conspiracy theorist, things get really wacky.

It is kind of weird. Marrying your dead friend and collegue's wife. They both are probably prisoners on the same culdesac. But you have to expect a lot of weirdness connected with TWI.

Very true. The whole "re" prefix reeks of lack of imagination - re-search, re-education, re-petition, etc. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

They bill it as "a lifetime of Christian service". This covers all their leash shortening tactics, which are many. Now required are submitting for approval yearly meeting schedules, schedule weekly phone calls to review Vision and Direction goals and progress as well as feedback on weekly schedules that are required to be turned in, and there are requirements for the number and types of meetings necessary between the local fellowship, leadership (fellowship coordinators), higher levels (branch coordinators, limb coordinators). Of course vacation time for staff is very limited and requires multiple levels of approval. Oh, and the counting and recounting of people attending fellowship. It was instituted that you couldn't actually report a person as no longer attending fellowship prior to obtaining approval from the Trunk office. There are other "leash shortening" restrictions - marriage of course is one, during LCM time pregnancy was a restriction as well as a pet policy, you cannot own a "distributorship" (i.e. sell things on the side for additional income). You spoke of required attendance at Corps hookups. This was instituted by LCM - prior to that it was just whoever wanted to dial in and all the groups were announced in the meeting. He wanted the undivided attention of everyone for his sessions where he dropped people and ran their names into the mud with libelous statements. In the Rosie era, this stopped, to be replaced by rudimentary teachings on fundamentals including a "practical" sharing spot to be filled with inane babble in a parent->child tone teaching people about frivolous things such as reading can labels, bowel movements, and other such nonsense. These would teeter on the verge of being so stupid that everyone would object to just being borderline enough where some idiot would write in and say how much they learned during the bowel movement teaching. LCM hookups were fear driven. Rosie hookups are boredom driven. Very frequently I've witnessed Corps not even listening to the hookups and just talking throughout the whole meeting due to mind-numbing boredom. Oh, and God forbid you had a schedule conflict. Out of town business trips would require that you attend one of the available make-up calls, and if those were missed there were the requisite reproof sessions regarding your spiritual priorities. Oh, and Corps files. It was decided that nobody gets to see those any more - not returned after the 10 year mark like previously. So whatever slanderous statements, erroneous judgements, and blind malice that would work its way into there was forever preserved for all eternity. Local leadership also would keep "files" on Corps, and a common way to get rid of people would be to just bitch about them every week on your call with your leadership. This of course served the purpose of taking any focus off of you and diverting it to a common scapegoat. This type of activity served to develop people in leadership positions that are very adept at that - choosing scapegoats and kissing @$$. In fact, if I had to choose two "leadership" qualities common to Corps leadership currently, those two would be forefront. Yes, the Corps has gone from a long leash to a short choke chain. Those that remain show undying loyalty and complete lack of imagination. And a lot of fear. You see, after being employed in that kind of environment and in it for years, people going out into the business world don't know how to cope. The paradigm LCM showed of bragging how he could be the CEO of a major business and then when forced to back it up doing nothing more than slinging boxes at UPS in a part-time college student position is one that pretty much would play out equally across the spectrum of current leadership. In a climate where choosing scapegoats and kissing @$$ isn't valued as much as producing tangible results, leaders who have been trained up in "how they do things at HQ" are woefully inadequately prepared. The short choke chain micromanagement is an insult to any intelligent and qualified leader. In business people migrate away from that type of culture - usually to grow beyond their previous manager. Only by manipulating and playing on people's love for God and desire to serve is it possible for TWI leadership to replace God with a person and substitute the person's will for God's in one of the greatest scams of all time - bilking people out of money, time, education, energy, and their youth. No, the Corps is not a "lifetime of Christian service", it is a lifetime of servitude and meniality and being subject to the whims and wiles of false prophets and false teachers. (I won't include false apostles because they don't even have enough vision in any direction to qualify). The Corps is nothing more than a scheme for Christian exclusivity, and the pattern plays out as long as people are stupid enough to allow themselves to remain under the authority of those running it.

Of course you were referencing indoctrination. It's just that the basic definition and tenet of education is that there is a knowledge transfer from one who HAS knowledge on the subject to one that HAS NOT. They are not qualified to educate on any front. And of course, threads take turns that go beyond the thread starters initial thoughts :)

Where they will have PFAL on playback loop. Just in case you haven't sat through it a mind-numbingly amount of times already.