outandabout

I get most of them. Not that one, though. "Daft" ha ha very British.

No wonder JC Our Passover and JC Our Promised Seed are such good books. By the way, who is Ding Dong?

I can't see past 2012 on the thread even though there is a post today. Just sayin.

That thing on The Soup was funny. Pathetic but funny. I almost feel sorry for them for being so pathetically funny.

And speaking of narcissism, who would ask people to write a book about all the great one-liners he said. (Life Lines) Even my Waybrain thought that was a bit much. One of them was "Life in the fast lane". Hellooo, the Eagles wrote that.

Wow. We're lucky we didn't end up like Jonestown.

That just sounds to totally BORING. That's almost worse than abuse. Maybe that IS a form of abuse. ha ha

Like I said before, being bitter and angry at The Way is a human emotion. God created us with a gamut of emotions. We weren't allowed to have normal emotions while in The Way. We were supposed to be blessed and happy all the time and if we weren't we were not manifesting the renewed mind. Being used and abused for years can make one bitter and angry. Especially if the feeling was suppressed for years. Eventually, the normal pattern is to get over the anger and move on. How long that may take varies from person to person, but in this place we can express how we feel about it and it is very healing. I found validation here, that I wasn't alone in the verbal and mental abuse I was subjected to. Everybody's experience differs but there are basic similarities in what we were subject to. I love to hear other peoples' stories, just like I love Karl Kahler's book. I think he did a great service by writing it.

Hah Per what your wife said, Some of us are hateful and bitter towards the way but so what? Now we can be if we want to. It's part of the recovery. I'm not as much now, but I was ....ed off when I left and this forum was validating and a place to vent. When we were in TWI we weren't allowed any negative emotions. (Unless you were top leadership and you could be "spiritually angry" and yell at people when you felt like it.) And questioning PFAL is very valid. There are a lot of things in there that are questionable. We're free to judge. I got out by writing a letter to the area leader. But I did tell the twig leader. He didn't agree with me but he didn't give me a hard time. Oh and I took the phone off the hook for several days. I told the area leader in my letter not to call us.

The other day I had an epiphany. I realized that I had been a SLAVE. I was used and mistreated and worked for nothing. How the hell did that happen? It's been almost 30 years since I left and I still am dumbfounded to think about it sometimes. Oh yeah, not only did we work for nothing, we paid THEM for the privilege of doing it.

I'm surprised that people are getting fired and dropped when the numbers leaving seem to be more than those joining. It's interesting to hear what's happening now. We don't get much info on that here. Most of us have been out for a long time. I left in 1988 after 15 years. I was totally relieved to get out. I can relate to you feeling less and less happy. I think that's for a lot of reasons. It's a gut feeling that's valid, not unrenewed mind! One thing that helped me was realizing that I was NOT turning my back of God because I was leaving The Way. God's blessings continued. One thing I've found is that I have exposed myself to books, teachings and web sites by other Christian authors and learned a lot. Contrary to what we were told by TWI, there are a lot of learned Biblical scholars out there, some no longer with us but their works live on. I still think that we were exposed to some biblical truths that aren't widely known in most of Christendom but that never meant that we owed The Way our total lives and blind loyalty.

Even VP's blood line was true, so what? We all have blood lines, and I'll bet we all have ancestors who were great.

"Crotch-haven" HA HA HA Thanks for the laugh!

Thanks for the sharing, Collateral Damage. Really fascinating. Hope to hear from you more.

It really was fun once. Long long ago.

I thank God for the Great Exodus of 1986 - 1989 or so.

That means a lot coming from you.

Thus the phrase "Push yourself". If you really are doing what you want, you don't need to "Push Yourself".

Great book. I stayed up late into the night reading it.

WOW So glad I ABSed all that $ that I couldn't spare to help "move the Word."

This thread has triggered some memories associated with what was wrong with TWI. People weren't going to stay if they were being made miserable - which I was. I was in I-Hop as a waitress in the city I was currently assigned. I watched a customer leave the restaurant and as I watched him go, I felt a wave on envy. Here was a person going on about the next thing he was going to do and he didn't have a meeting he had to go to, he didn't have to feel like he had to witness wherever he went....and here I was with all this TWI baggage but I was COMMITTED for life! Because I was CORPS!! I was stuck and if I didn't like it, that was was my fault because I wasn't renewing my mind. That feeling of envy was a red flag that something wasn't right, but instead of heeding it, I continued on in my misery. In the same I-Hop, we had signed up another waitress and she took the class. She wouldn't go to Twig, though. She told me it was because we all seemed so wrapped up in meetings and classes and that's all we did and she didn't want to be like that. I couldn't really argue with her since I saw her point. Yet I continued on in my bondage to TWI. Years later, I was married and living elsewhere and my husband and I were running a small twig. At this point I had managed to get a little less involved and I had learned to avoid despotic leaders. Anyway, I was at work, and realized it was a non-Twig evening and I felt a total sense of RELIEF. Another red flag. How were we supposed to be under all this pressure to get people into something that was a drag? Three years after that, in 1988 I was finally able to leave. I could have sooner, but I wouldn't listen to myself because I didn't trust my own self because it had been buried under my Waybrain.

I witnessed about what the original sin was to a guy on an airplane. OMG I'm so embarrassed to remember that. Geeesh

Yes, Steve We were incredibly arrogant.

How old is she now? Nature might take its course.

Look at his eyes. Speaking of demons. I wonder.