Rocky

The first three points VERY much describe how people are after years of involvement in The Way International.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18668059-the-obstacle-is-the-way https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43582733-stillness-is-the-key https://goodreads.com/book/show/27036528.Ego_Is_the_Enemy He's written more than these three, but this trilogy are, IMO, the most significant. Highly readable, not overly long or tedious.

Respectfully, my question was for OutandAbout.

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." — Thomas Paine This is for Mike AND everyone who engages with him.

How so? Anything anyone here can do to help you get untriggered?

Have you read any of his books?

I agree with T-Bone (as I quoted the end of his previous comment). And I agree with Socrates on the cause and effect error. A person making such a claim apparently doesn't grasp the fact it is not even close to a valid argument/claim. Unless he does and made the statement to knowingly deceive the listener(s).

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Whether your rape is actual sexual violence or not, TWI is a cult. You may have experienced the rape as emotional or spiritual violence. Make some noise.

Back at you, dude! If only Marcus Aurelius could have heard the (fictional) advice from his adopted grandfather, Hadrian, that Marguerite Yourcenar writes into her prize-winning book Memoirs of Hadrian. “Our great mistake,” she has Hadrian say, “is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.” How much happier Marcus would have been had he been more able to see the good in people, and how much better a leader he could have been had he leaned into their strengths rather than disdained their weaknesses. Each of us would benefit from that advice as well. We have to focus on what we can learn from other people. We have to focus on what is special and unique about them instead of zeroing in on the ways they are not as good as us. We have to be forgiving and patient, kind and appreciative. We have to engage with what they bring to the table, not lament the things they take from it. Then we have to work to make those people around us better…not write them off as hopeless and broken. **** When I TRY to look at the good in you and bring it out, you declare that I post garbage about you. That's sad.

Has it EVER occurred to you to consider HOW or WHY that matters to you at all?

LOL... there YOU go again.

It seems important to me to parse what the question means or implies. Clearly, children in the US can be and are troubled sometimes and to some extent by abusive aspects of their parents' religions. Clearly, said second generation of people adversely impacted by various cults could/would hope for a mechanism for government to facilitate escape from those controlling and abusive religious organizations. But what kind of mechanism could at all be feasible without jeopardizing foundational freedoms (of religion)? Perhaps some kind of education program about spiritual/religious abuse? But even with that, wouldn't there be difficult issues to navigate any or all of which would cause potentially large and vociferous reactionary pushback?

However, this innovative idea (don't forget last year's idea of a revamped/rehashed music festival for young people) is nothing to shake a stick at. Failure ALSO is necessary for learning. They'll learn things from the postcard experiment. BUT... they are likely to get stuck when they decline to innovate the organization's approach to God. They likely hold dear the verse in Hebrews which tells them Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Yet, is the Jesus taught by Wierwille and Martindale the same Jesus of the bible? I remember Loy asking that very question, as if he and twi were the ones who had it right. Put another way, if twi doesn't go beyond the "research" and private interpretation of Wierwille, it just may not matter how much organizational learning or innovation they do. Btw, has it occurred to anyone here on GSC (maybe it has) that despite Wierwille's attempt to link up HIS interpretation as being GOD's actual interpretation of the bible, he actually also declared it to be his, Victor's OWN interpretation, because nobody has had it right since the First Century?

At any moment, roughly a million people are reclining in comfortable chairs thousands of miles above the surface of the planet. Such has been the success of commercial flight. It was not long ago that traveling through the sky was an unthinkably rare and risky adventure. Now it hardly lifts an eyebrow: we board like sleepwalkers, only becoming energized if something gets in the way of our expectation of delicious meals, reclining seats and streaming movies. Eagleman, David; Brandt, Anthony. The Runaway Species (p. 16). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

Perhaps I underestimated TWI. In the 1970s, Wierwille/twi looked to college educated way corps(e) volunteers to adapt HQ to business model operations, albeit immensely more primitive than businesses exist today. With the emergence of the postcard stunt, it now occurs to me (not altogether without suggestions from Bolshevik and maybe one or two others on this thread) how twi may, in fact, be updating its innovation (with the retirement of RFR?) by way of younger college educated (not necessarily limited to twi retained lawyers) people. Data science is a neo-nascent academic field as I understand it. I graduated from college 37 years ago. Data processing was important then. However, for business enterprises (and twi IS a business enterprise even though it might be/likely is organized as a nonprofit business)

If the link is blocked, nevermind, it's just an image of Paine.

Literal translation according to usage... "...since you refuse to examine it, you'll remain firmly encased in the quicksand of your minute and miniscule mental dungeon." Alas, Mike is hopeless. How does he expend his mental energy? Hard to tell. As for me and my house... I look to the wisdom of Proverbs 2:1-5. 2 My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, 2 turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding— 3 indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, 4 and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. God inspires awe. Wierwille, OTOH, inspires nothing. Imagine. Ponder. Consider. What images from the JWST inspire... far more than anything the guy Mike characterizes (as if he knows the heart and mind of GSC netizens) as the anti-hero. Research THIS:

I've thought long and hard about the unquestioned belief in the fundamental morality of TWI. IMO, this is a question for cultural anthropologists. Raised in a culture/society which was overwhelmingly oriented to the Christian church, for many people (specifically ME), is why it took 12 years to be able to perceive the evil of the very concept of a fundamentalist Christian cult and TWI in particular. I left twi when MANY PEOPLE left. That was one key for me. Popped the balloon of belonging to a biblical research, teaching and fellowship ministry. The other main issue for me was having my eyes opened to the depravity of the top dogs. Screw the lockbox, that concept itself IS evil.

Your GSC avatar makes you seem a LOT younger than your FB profile pic does.

Does THIS pattern sound at all familiar?

There you go again, Mike. OWN your own level of communications prowess or awkwardness therein. Also, please tell us exactly HOW you know "you[r] filter for reading me is to look for ways to..." I suspect you don't necessarily "know" what's in his heart. However, you may be able to guess some of it by interpreting his word choice. Please note that (y)our friend Socrates hasn't stooped himself to telling you that you didn't correctly read what he wrote to you. In case you haven't figured it out yet, and I figure you have, I find it just a tad irritating when you refuse to own responsibility for your own dang words. However, please let me know if you need any clarification and I will do my best to be more clear.

I believe Santa Claus IS real. A real storybook style fictional character, that is. Humans are ALL about stories. People have told their own stories on GSC, for example, which are not fictional.

"truths already known spiritually?" Gosh Mike. Really? How would they have become known in the first place?