Rocky

I've been here from the start. My understanding is that GSC isn't really about any groups of people being accepted (belonging) other than to validate one's reasons for leaving TWI madness. We're not a clique or even a fellowship. It's a place to speak your mind. Those who rationalize and justify TWI dogmas and practices generally experience something other than validation. Facebook, OTOH, is a place where people can share as a group of likeminded individuals in a community, by choice. Do people sometimes have unrealistic expectations here at GSC? Perhaps. What do those people do about their unrealistic expectations? Other than self-justification, that is. We ALL self-justify.

Yep... that can be fun. :)

Disagree all you want. But you cannot objectively know whether it's elitism or not. People have cited their experience to put their comments in context. Nothing more, nothing less. If someone is commenting on ordination in twi, there's a good chance that having graduated from the corpse will have given them more insight on it than they would otherwise have. Btw, I didn't graduate from the corpse, though I did spend one year in residence. I'm GLAD I didn't put any more time into it than that. I certainly don't think it gives me any status.

It's from the standard GSC style sheet. ;) Elitism? Hardly. Rather, confidence in ourselves and our own experiences. Nothing more, nothing less.

Classic projecting. You have no real, legitimate way of knowing that to be the case. All you can know is what each says on this forum. Reading anything into those words other than those words can only come from how you imagine that person with whom you take issue to be. Bottom line is that you can only know that people disagree with you here. Unless any of them state that they believe they "have more truth than you" or are "he's more spiritual than you" all you really have (that comes from anyone other than yourself) is that they disagree with you. Does that make them right and you wrong? Or you right and them wrong? The way I look at it is that we really can't know which is factually true. Yes, I disagree with you. I also don't care whether you're right or wrong. When I asked you to define "spiritual knowledge," all I know is that you didn't really answer the question. That doesn't mean I know more than you. It might mean that I'm more confident in my own understanding of life that I'm willing to even entertain the question myself. I certainly don't have all of the answers.

Whether subtle or not, it appears TLC's deflections (and they are plenty), seem to give insight into perceptions of gaslighting in twi in the 1970s/1980s. And yes, Oakspear, TLC has every right to express his opinion and have a voice. That doesn't mean others are to be forbidden to pick them apart, does it?

You asked me a question? I thought that I had asked you questions that you decided you weren't going to answer.

Not to mention his pseudo-intellectualist efforts to make sense of "spiritual knowledge." He also did a nice sidestep when challenged on the premise of the entire twit theology. :) You nailed that one.

Now, I can relate to that. All of that. Thanks Steve.

Alas and alak, we get to the roots of the thing. Btw, this might also be the roots/foundation of the concept of gaslighting as we've experienced it in twi. It is inherently human to be curious. To explore. How can that be a bad thing? I gave Wierwille's organization 12 years in which I built my mental framework around his version of the Judeo-Christian origin story and world view. And several more years in which that framework kept me prisoner after I rejected the subculture. It was all a sham. As Twinky suggested, this seems like a tangent from the original question at the top of the thread. But really, I see it as getting to one answer to that original question. Twi isn't as big now as it was in the 1970s because so many people who experienced twi in the 1970s realized, for whatever reason, that Wierwille's flavor of Christianity (or maybe Christianity itself) doesn't provide a fulfilling, satisfying spiritual or otherwise experience. It also brings to life what so many people throughout the last few centuries have observed about religion. Here's one that speaks to me: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." ― Albert Einstein

Well, the first time, you appeared to assume one thing. This time, you seem to assume something a little bit different, that I don't care to know, or that somehow I don't have "the spirit of God" and therefore cannot know. But I do appreciate you seeking clarification this time. I'm not sure you and I could get to a common understanding of what is genuine spiritual knowledge, especially by way of posts on an internet forum. Where I'm coming from is that it has become abundantly obvious that Wierwille was, first and foremost, a self-promoter, a con man. His class was all about, first and foremost, establishing himself as the foremost authority on any and all things spiritual. He built an organization to provide him with an abundant living and plenty of adulation. It was far more about him than about either the Bible or God or Jesus Christ. Discerning whether or to what degree his doctrines and private interpretations -- and they very much were private interpretations -- of the Bible were true and genuine godly spiritual knowledge is a conundrum that perhaps nobody really is capable of achieving. We had to "take it on faith" that the claims he made to set himself up as the only legitimate authority were legitimate. But do you know how many other charlatans make the same claim? Snow on the gas pumps? Never happened. But believing that story was fundamental to taking Wierwille as a spiritual and biblical authority. So, what really is spiritual knowledge... as opposed to utter nonsense ("utter nonsense" being a euphemism)?

You're apparently assuming things not in evidence... like what I do or do not understand. Also, you didn't define spiritual knowledge, or even what you understand it to mean. A reasonable response to not understanding a question (if one is aware the s/he doesn't understand it) is to ask for clarification.

I bet you'd have a hard time getting a job as a joke writer. :) Just because you think it, or are grinning when you write it, doesn't mean the words you write convey the comedy. Btw, what IS "spiritual knowledge?"

From one of your links, "The person being gaslighted will eventually become so insecure that they will fail to trust their own judgment, their intuition and find themselves unable to make decisions." That's a key factor in cults. I don't need examples from actual experience, besides remembering personally dealing with this issue in twi, it's written all over the pages/forums and threads of GSC. It happens. In TWI. As an aside, another book you might find interesting, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), has tremendous insight that everybody who reads this forum will recognize... in themselves, in politicians, in preachers of all flavors, but especially in TWI. From Amazon, "In this terrifically insightful, engaging new book, renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right— a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Backed by years of research, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception—how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it. Turn the page, but be advised: You will never be able to shun blame quite so casually again." I've written about Wierwille having developed a set of doctrines/dogmas/beliefs that specifically were "self-justifying rationalizations." For example, the "lockbox." The concept is universally human. We ALL engage in self-justification to cope with our mistakes and misjudgments, small or large.

No. There are more young people now than there were then. And since it's linked to developmental processes (i.e. growing into adulthood), it follows that there are more young people searching today for the same answers we sought when we were young. But there's FAR more tangible knowledge of every subject available today, and it's more readily at people's fingertips with the WWW, so we would not necessarily be perceiving the trends the same as they occurred in earlier generations. Some do and some don't, just as some stayed in twi and most of us left it when we matured intellectually and emotionally. The same holds for any religious cult, I suspect.

The Confidence Game "Reality is what we take to be true," physicist David Bohm observed in a 1977 lecture. "What we take to be true is what we believe… What we believe determines what we take to be true." That's why nothing is more reality-warping than the shock of having come to believe something untrue — an experience so disorienting yet so universal that it doesn't spare even the most intelligent and self-aware of us, for it springs from the most elemental tendencies of human psychology. "The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence," Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman asserted in examining how our minds mislead us, "but of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct." The machinery of that construction is what New Yorker columnist and science writer extraordinaire Maria Konnikova explores in The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It … Every Time (public library) — a thrilling psychological detective story investigating how con artists, the supreme masterminds of malevolent reality-manipulation, prey on our propensity for believing what we wish were true and how this illuminates the inner workings of trust and deception in our everyday lives. "Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours," Carl Sagan urged in his excellent Baloney Detection Kit — and yet our tendency is to do just that, becoming increasingly attached to what we've come to believe because the belief has sprung from our own glorious, brilliant, fool-proof minds. Through a tapestry of riveting real-life con artist profiles interwoven with decades of psychology experiments, Konnikova demonstrates that a con artist simply takes advantage of this hubris by finding the beliefs in which we are most confident — those we're least likely to question — and enlisting them in advancing his or her agenda. [more at the link at the top of this post] ----- This forum, GSC but especially About The Way, has documented for more than a dozen years the pathology of the TWI subculture (cult), and the founder, his foundational indoctrination seminar (PFAL), his predatory proclivities, and those of his successors and co-conspirators. So, I need not exhaustively list all of the errors and obvious psychological manipulations in Wierwille's "teachings." We know that rather than making valid arguments for his dogmas and doctrines, the main thrust of the FLAP class (sorry, misspelling intentional that time) was to establish HIMSELF as THE authority on everything related to every aspect of spirituality. And we bought it. I bought it at the ripe young age of 20-years old. (First becoming interested in it at 19). I had been previously set up with a framework of religious belief -- Roman Catholicism -- from infancy by virtue of geography and sociology. As almost every teenager, at least those raised in Western Civilization, I "knew everything," so to speak. At least enough to not rely on the wisdom of parents who might have helped me see through Wierwille's bullspit. So, I was ripe for the picking when a fellow airman with an air of confidence -- that he knew the truth -- came along. Anyway, I don't need to rehash forty more years of personal history. The bottom line is that I now recognize the patterns set forth by social scientists and psychologists because of research on human behavior. I don't need to look into Wierwille's heart. I observed his actions and heard his words. And I've read too many stories from others that corroborate what I've learned since I severed ties with the subculture we affectionately called the "Household of God." Right now, I'm convinced he was a con man extraordinaire. He made himself the living he wanted to make. All the cigarettes, Drambuie and attractive young girls he could handle, and the adulation of thousands of sycophants. Fortunately, it IS available to have a live more abundant than we had under the MOGFART.

And denying the need to grieve loss IS pathologically disturbed and disturbing. I'm totally with you there, Skyrider. Definitely

Bam! Nailed it.

Is this analogous to the Schrodinger's cat conundrum?

Isn't that what the singing was all about? Oh... and waysider, thanks for the earworm! :confused:/>

I wish I could take two hours to listen to that podcast. But after just a few minutes of Sam Harris, I don't think I could get all the way through it. But I'll see if I can find something more succinct with Mr. Murray.

Didn't intend any sarcasm. I'm thinking now that perhaps I'm just not reading your intent, unless you specify it as such, to be addressing only people you believe are still in twi who might be reading this thread. Even at this point, I'm just guessing that's what your trying to do. Be it far from me to say what it will or won't take to reach any individual to actually get them to give serious consideration to the fact that they've made life choices that they might want to refute now or in the future. However, before I even left twi, I was (in the mid-1980s) finally buckling down to get my bachelor's degree. I took Sociology 101 as an elective. The one thing I remember most vividly now from that class 30 years ago is that for adult humans to change values (in general) takes them experiencing a significant emotional event. Because I now write about politics (on my personal blog), I can see the application to people's political values. Arguing rational and logical points on any given issue (extremely) rarely causes any voter to change how they look at a candidate or an issue. That's why politicians (especially demagogues) use emotions like fear to motivate.

Sure, we can reference academic material but really all any of us can do authoritatively is tell the stories of our own experiences and those we have observed. Unless I'm missing something.

Great insight. By the way, I had a close friend who had spent years on HQ staff, who then went out WOW, ended up getting divorced and leaving twi. He and I rented a house together for a year in the 1980s. He explored an organization founded on that concept. He went through peer counseling. He seemed to appreciate the insight and change it brought to his life but he never tried to get me to get involved with it. Apparently, the organization is still around. But it's not perfect and I've found critiques of it online also.

Yup. I concur with skyrider's analysis.