Rocky

Is it also any wonder way corps(e) escapees (the longer they complied w/Wierwille's cult isolation, the worse it was) had NO idea how to make a living without starting their own spin off? Of course, doing so only kicked the can down the road. Without repudiating the entire cult mindset, those leaders who started their own (i.e. Victor Barnard) made it worse for themselves, their own families, and those who fell in with them on the back side of the cult journey.

All of THAT is about Mike. It's a set of reasonable inferences and conclusions based on more than two decades. NONE of what Mike "contributes" on GSC furthers discussion. I say my brother Skyrider nailed it.

1) How is any of this quoted section FURTHERING discussion? 2) "We are supposed to WAIT..." ??? 3) Did you take Skyrider's suggestion at all (yet) to consider how you're apparently acting as a provocateur? How has your "contribution" to GSC discussion over now more than two decades furthered ANYone's understanding of God? Has ANYone provided written feedback on GSC to indicate or suggest your comments have been helpful in any way?

Some? Pretty much everyone here.

A friendly reminder.

Who would have thought it could be Napoleon Hill, the Think and Grow Rich author, who could synthesize a scripture such as "you shall know them by their fruit" into such obvious insight to separate the "wheat from the chaff," so to speak, in Wierwille, Martindale, and the cult they built? Synchronistic events/occurrences, perhaps to find such insight without opening a bible?

I perceive a perhaps second meaning to Wierwille's "sanctification," more along the lines of isolation so he (and his successors) could have you and me delegate our personal sovereignty (decision making responsibility and authority) to him and his freakin' cult.

Well... "I'm thinking" is a reasonable way to start that comment. We obviously cannot PERCEIVE everything going on, even in the natural realm. Personally, I don't attribute the current understanding to whether or not humanity is separated from God (or god) or not. How can we understand something we cannot perceive? We can only imagine. As such, we're just guessing. In my current world view there's nothing wrong with imagining or articulating what we might imagine, as long as it at least sort of fits with what we understand of the two greatest commandments.

THE (unspoken) choice always was to belong to the group (cult) or don't.

Food for thought...

Mike hasn't engaged so much in this forum this week, but I found this and figured it would be wonderful food for thought for Mike and any others who may engage in discussion with him.

The isolationism The Way International subjected us to (and each of us willingly, if unwittingly, allowed) cut each of us off from wonderful humanity and culture. A few short weeks ago, we lost David Crosby. I always knew I loved CSNY music, familiar from my teen years. One of the last of his (and their) contributions to humanity was this song: And the passing just a few days ago of a giant of a musician and contributor to enriching humanity, Burt Bacharach at 94 years old. Listening to popular music with wonderful messages for more than 60 years, I learned to appreciate his work while a school child. However, the isolationist mindset and conditioning of twi suppressed my appreciation for his music for many years. Dionne Warwick made many Bacharach tunes recognizable by hundreds of millions of people. But she wasn't the only one. This one, sung by Neil Diamond, is or should be familiar to many here on GSC. It's a Bacharach tune. Both of the songs I'm posting in this comment relate to the need for us, as members of the human race, of humanity, to NOT let our consciences be sedated. Selah.

Indeed, besides considering how with the experience of living for a while (decades perhaps) a person can better recognize the traps cult leaders set up, with those years of experience, there are people who learn to exploit the vulnerability of youth. That's sad. Perhaps it's behind the call, in education circles, to teach critical thinking skills. However, it occurs to me for a young adult to fend off those who would exploit, emotional/mental health skills are necessary additionally. It's not so easy to raise children who immediately recognize their own vulnerability. It also occurs to me the academy has or should have room for more disciplined study of the phenomenon.

Ageism, really? A man must do the work with that faculty he has now. But that faculty is the accumulation of past days.... No rival can rival backwards. What you have learned and done, is safe and fruitful. Work and learn in evil days, in insulted days, in days of depression and debt and calamity. Fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows. -- Emerson, Journals and Misc. Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cited in Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives, by Robert D Richardson.

I just went to see what's on Hulu. I found this. Not a fundamentalist Christian cult, but a cult nevertheless. Stolen Youth: Inside the cult at Sarah Lawrence Half the battle in pulling together a creatively successful true-crime documentary is, surely, finding the right story — one that can hold our interest and can, potentially, generate insights beyond the simple facts of the case. But the other half, the filmmaker’s approach, matters every bit as much. In narrating the famous tale of a bizarre ring of extortion that bloomed at Sarah Lawrence College in the early 2010s, “Stolen Youth” director Zach Heinzerling certainly has his subject. But with a startling rawness and directness, Heinzerling’s work makes a case for itself as an unusually sensitive and strong outing in its genre. Those familiar with the case of Larry Ray, a parent of a Sarah Lawrence student who moved into his daughter’s housing at the Bronxville, N.Y., liberal arts college, may have learned about it from coverage in New York Magazine, which ran a lengthy feature on the story in 2019. One of that story’s co-authors tells Heinzerling’s cameras that reporting on Ray was surprisingly easy: “Everyone in his life is a player in this game, and he needs an audience.” As applied to a circle of unformed young people curious about the grown-up in their midst, the game Ray plays is one of domination, brainwashing them into needing his approval.

Incredibly insightful.

I realize you know this, but you wouldn't today BE the man you are without having lived through twi's cultishness. You today, no longer in your youth, have insight from the experience... so you can share that experience and help many keep from taking the same path.

I wonder if it's from dopamine or adrenaline.

Who is Samuel Gray Anderson?

Ya think? He probably didn't word it as such in his own mind, but yeah, the end result would be the same.

Every person thinks he's correct about pretty much everything... at least at first. With a humble (and in the words of Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, calm/confident) outlook, the person can be willing to embrace his uncertainty. This is something Wierwille seems not to have been capable of, for the most part. Perhaps this is something he re-evaluated at the end when he was willing to express his wish to have been a better man.