brainfixed

oh sure, the devil made them do it. that lets them be totally unaccountable. now i understand even better why the mind altering fixation on "devil spirits" in the way.

here is something to think about and maybe not really something to write here about, but it might put the "good" times into a different light for somebody, not everybody and not particularly anybody that has joined in this discussion, so it's one of those "if the shoe fits" things, so i'm not saying the shoe does fit or anything. and it is definetly hypothetical because the rules here would never allow it to happen, so all that being said: what would happen and what would you believe and how would you feel if one day you came here and a dozen or so people had come forward with what happened to them at the hands of somebody in the way you just knew that you knew that you knew would never harm a fly? and what if those stories were supported by several eye witnesses? and what if the abuse included being drugged and raped or children being molested and otherwise abused? what if what is written here about the "dr" and craig and others was also written about the "good" people you knew in the way? the "good" people you let babysit? the "good" people you told your sister or daughter they could trust? what if the perpetrator was your spouse or your sibling or your parent or your child? like it or not the "dr" and craig and all the other perpetrators of abuse actually allowed to be named here were not such "monsters" that even their closest friends and loved ones could wrap their minds around seeing these people the way they are portrayed here, but that doesn't change the fact that these people did what they did and that they did it methodically and purposefully and knowing it was wrong and institutionalizing that wrongness and abuse to the point that their followers would hear about it and deny it until it just couldn't be denied any longer or even still denying it. and like it or not that kind of institutionalized wrongness and abuse will make accomplices and co-consipirators and co-perpetrators out of the best of people when in the thick of things. and like it or not people will hide their own participation and even perpetration from yes even their closest friends and relatives, and yes even themselves once out of the institutionalized setting. and like it or not their closest friends and loved ones will never admit to believing one iota of anything that might be said about them as a perpetrator. how could they? after all he or she was such a "good" person.

exactly. thank you.

it was not my intention to say that anybody that had good times are delusional or in any other way inferior because of them, and it was not my intention to say that there were no "real" good times. but it was my intention to say that thinking the way was a "good" thing because of the "good" experiences was a huge part of what kept people staying, and because of that it makes the way an abusive system. it is good to see that there are people that can separate their good experiences from the way itself, and those that can do that have come alot farther along their journey of healing than they themselves may even recognize, but there are people that are still in or are still yearning for what the way "gave" them in "instant" families and "instant" friends and "close knit fellowship of like minded believers". and that's what i was talking about because people can get stuck in their journey of healing because they can't separate their genuinely good experiences and look at the way for what it really is. and when i look back all i have is being forced to be a way twiggy and before that being forced to take sides between my mother and my father, and in all this looking back it's not pretty at all and the absolutely worst part for me was when the "good" times got so mixed up with the abuse. understanding that for abusers this is on purpose and part of the cycle of abuse has helped me a whole lot and has helped me to truly know "good" from abuse, and i think that knowing such a thing would help others so i started a topic about it. but if the shoe doesn't fit then please don't wear it because i wasn't trying to force it to fit but i was trying to share some things that helped me and maybe would help others that might just be wearing one of those shoes. but just because what one has to look back at is an abusive system doesn't mean that's all one had or has now, and my therapist taught me to take "snapshots" of situations and explore them apart from the whole, which helped me to see my own strengths and weaknesses so that i could see my own self worth in it all an build from there so that today i can look back and say "i survived and changed my path against all odds and that makes what i had and what i have to look forward to something wonderful and worthy".

jeeze! really? jeeze! what? was he standing beside himself whispering in his own ear saying "you know you're a better man than to be raping that precious young woman that trusts you to represent god" and yet didn't stop himself? well, that sure does describe the absolute control an abuser has over him or her self. anybody who thinks that the "dr" was anything but a cold and calculating and methodical and purposeful abuser, well you need to read the above sentence again and again until you get it that yes the "dr" knew exactly what he was doing and knew it was wrong and even apparently had conversations in his head while he was committing atrocities that he was telling himself it was wrong, but did it anyway. jeeze!

yes, bolshevik, it would, and this is a typical sentiment stated over and over again about abuse is that the physical abuse didn't do as much damage as the psychological and emotional and spiritual abuse, and especially the afterwards stuff when somebody comes along and just dotes on and on about the abusers.

something i learned from my current therapist was about the "honeymoon phase" of the abusive relationship being more than just the "good" times. what i have learned about this phase has helped me to break free from my own inclinations towards accepting abuse as a "norm", and i had never ever had anybody put the reality of this phase to me the way my current therapist has, so this information was news to me and i don't think many "helping" agencies touch on the realities of this phase. here's the thing, though, is that the "honeymoon phase" is not just a period when things are "good", but it is also the period that the abuser uses to pull the victim even closer to him or her and to keep the victim accepting the blame for the abuse. this phase is a calculated phase, too, and, in fact, all of the phases of the cycle of abuse are calculated by the abuser. no abuser is "out of control" when it comes to the abuse. the proof of that pudding is watch what happens when the police or other "outsiders" come around. the abuser stops everything and turns on the charm, but the minute "outsiders" aren't looking on, the abuser starts in again. so what has this got to do with the way international? everything because the way used the "honeymoon phase" like the professional abusers they are, and yes they are "professional" because they get paid well for abusing people even if that pay is called "abundant sharing" or "tithing" or "blessing leadership" in some way. but i am always reading about "the good times" in the way and it has taken me this long to get it that of course there were "good times" or otherwise nobody would have stayed around. but i am also always reading about how those "good times" were related not to the way but to people who were trying to do their best regardless of the way. but in these same people were found that when the chips were down, they "stood" with the way and against their supposed "friends" and even bore false witness and m&a'd their "friends" with a screaming spittle filled asschewing to boot. so now whenever i am tempted to look back at any of my way experiences with fond memories of the "good" times, i also check myself and look at those "good" times with more understanding that they were there only to bind me tighter to the abusers, and even if they were "genuinely good", in the end the participants turned on me if i didn't agree with the way. and maybe the participants came back later on and apologized to me, but that does not discount the fact that the "good" times were all part of the charade, part of the dance called "the cycle of abuse".

and one more thing is that the only other people i've ever heard such a thing come out of their mouths is abusers when they're trying to get to the honeymoon phase.

something my brother used to say was "if you've got wish in one hand and s*it in the other hand, what do you have?" and i think that's all of what "dr" wierwille ever had, and i don't think that he ever had anything "on the godly straight and narrow", and i base that not only on what i read here, but also on what my brother and sister used to say about the goings on at hq, in the motorcoach and at emporia. my brother also used to say "little stalks have big ears" but he forgot it when he and my sister "discussed" the things they saw with the "dr". craig is a whole other story i think because craig seemed to have been made into what he ended up being, and i don't remember anything but good about him and donna coming out of the mouths of my brother and sister, but i don't know personally about either the "dr" or craig or donna so maybe i'm just full of it, too, but how many victims and witnesses does it take before a person begins to understand these were not "godly" people at first, in the end or ever? i know the "dr" said that all the time because i heard it right out of his own mouth so often that i couldn't believe nobody got it that he was telling us all straight up that he was conning us, so it probably is on his headstone because i believe he was very proud of the con job he pulled off from the very beginning. why else say something like that? billy graham has never said any such thing, but jim bakker and jimmy swaggert and others of that ilk said it because they knew they weren't what they knew to be. so it's right back to having wish in one hand and s*it in the other. and how was it that "wish" was such a dirty word to everybody but the "dr"? yes he was a con man from the getgo and he knew it and was quite proud of it.

t-bone you just said everything i've been trying to say and said it very well, and i was just wondering how i could better explain what i was trying to say and there you are doing it for me. thanks! :) my biggest goal in life is to stay on the sane side of perception, and perception is supposed to be reality, but that's a very personal reality and i guess that personal reality is really the only kind of reality there is, but then why have traffic signals or money or all the things that need be perceived as one and only one thing for everybody? i don't really know much of anything but i wonder about everything and that's the fun of life for me, but it's also the hardest thing to do sometimes because i always push myself to make a determined effort to make sure i'm being as real as possible with my own thinking.

i got to ask my questions of coworkers today and they pretty much said what you said, so i guess that's it then. but i never wanted to be in the cult and always knew that the minute i was an adult and could walk away without anybody forcing me back then i'd be gone and never return, so because i was pretty much forced into the way's insanity i am very jumpy about anybody with a belief system to sell me, which is why i wonder the whys of those that aren't.

these are good questions because i don't know anymore about how i do deal with such things except to say that if it smells like bs then i stay away from it, and does that mean i don't have any "faith"? i don't know because i never really understood "faith" as a kid because it became "believing" and that made me in control of everything which is were i got the idea of the "magic wand".

ok, i'm talking about what is and what is not yet and what will never be and what may be and what never was and what was, like hopes and fears too. and specifically talking about religion and abuse, about how these things plant fantastical things in the minds of the followers and victims that just aren't tangible or even believeable but these things get the followers or victims to think these things are tangible and believeable and even have happened, are happening or will happen, and worse yet these things get people thinking that the unbelieveable and intangible things have, can, will and are happening because the followers or victims are making them happen. in therapy it's called "magical thinking" and it's almost the same thing as believing=recieving or the laying on of hands or s.i.t. or heaven or hell or angels or devils because it's like having a magic wand or something and a person thinks that they have all this "power" to induce things and make things happen just because they waved some magic wand like prayer or s.i.t. or "abundant sharing" or because they did or did not "believe" the right doctrine or something. and i don't understand how after being in a cult and seeing how false all these "magical" things were how is it a person keeps trying the same things over and over again when a person knows it didn't work out the first time? and maybe i'm just being dense.

ok so i got to thinking from reading in doctrinal about heaven and hell and the discussions also included discussions about preachers who raked in the dough using heaven and hell as either promises for giving or threats for not giving. i immediately thought of the way and then i wondered why people that had been in the way and got out would yet again give themselves over to the same types of manipulations of their fears and hopes, so i thought about this and thought maybe i'd just ask the question straight out. in therapy i spent alot of time going over my fears and figuring out which were based in reality and which were based in fantasy, and after i did that i went over my hopes to figure out the same things. what i found out was how easily manipulated i was by both my hopes and fears, and how i perceived life through fantasy because i felt reality was too terrible. it took a couple of years for me to sort through it all and come to grips with what actually is versus what i fear or hope what is or is not. from there i learned that fantasy can be good as easily as it can be bad, like with space exploration, medical progress, even flying when good, and cults and porn and most abuse when bad. i figured i can't be the only person to have to face such things after being in a cult, and i can't be the only person that came to the conclusion that religion is mostly a fantasy jerk fest, so i wondered how it is that people that came out of the way fall for the same old stuff again and again? i'm not asking for asking's sake, but i'm asking because i don't understand and i would like to understand. i mean no offense at all, and i am certainly not judging anybody. i simply don't understand and i would like to understand.

for me it is a mental health thing to stay anonymous because in "real" life whenever i got around former way people i felt constantly bombarded with way thinking and it drove me nutso, and then once i became a member here and started talking so much i saw how much i've bottled up about the way and how easy it was to "stumble" over things that just smash my very last nerve, so it's that i just can't take too much of discussion about the way or even anything that resembles my memories of the way without the ability to back away and breathe. and it would be very "cleansing" for me to just put out there all the names and locations and experiences from when i was forced to be involved in the way, but i know that there will come the day when i am all done with all of that and i will not want all that poison to have spilled over on my mom and brother and sisters, because even though i am very mad at them right now i don't want that anger to stand for all the world to see and think of when they think of me and my family. i have also wanted to try to be friends with some people here but i really don't think i would be a very good friend in the state i am in right now, but that might change, but i still wouldn't put my name out here for what i've already said.

i just woke up from a dream about one of my old "friends" where she had walked into a community room in my complex and started barking orders at me as if i were beneath her, so i turned around and got right up next to her and told her to never speak to me in that manner again or i would beat the living hell out of her and tell the other women in my complex that she was playing with their men so they would beat the living hell out of her, and i had her literally cornered while i was so up close and making it very personal. as soon as i let her out of the corner she ran screaming to management "help me! she's going to kill me!" and tried to get me arrested, but i knew she was going to do that so i acted all pure and innocent when the police arrived and they ended up taking her to the hospital for a few days to adjust her medications. my "authentic self"? i tell you that i "authentically" wouldn't put up with her "friendship" nowadays, and i "authentically" wouldn't try to justify myself these days either. but i don't go around beating up people or cornering them or anything like that either, so i just stay away from poison people as much as possible, so in "real" life (or am i dreaming now?) i'd probably just ignore her like she hadn't said anything. i didn't used to be able to make such premeditated choices about what i would do "if", but after learning how to listen to myself i also learned that being violent was not who i wanted to be at all but thought it was who i had to be because i was never shown any options when growing up so i didn't know any better choice. now i know me better and now i know i am not a violent type even if i have violent type dreams, but i do have powerful emotional reactions, but being human i can choose how i handle those emotional reactions, and i do as best as i can and in "real" life i no longer have inclinations towards violence. so if this all made sense i'm glad, but i'm going back to bed now, so good night.

CP3. in hindsight it says it all. i mean, who wants a dirty mouth to move the way's "word"? and any innuendo that can be read into this may be read into this as far as i'm concerned. nasty mother's sons! and that was a knee jerk reaction but i'll be damned if i make any apologies for it or be ashamed of it because the apologies and the shame don't belong on my shoulders but on the way international's shoulders!

oh i'm so glad you brought this up because in therapy i learned that "god's still, small voice" is none other than my own self, so it was absolutely shocking for me to comprehend that i am my own best counselor and my own understanding functions quite well when i listen to myself, and at first that took sitting still and sifting through all the other "counselors" that had programmed stuff into my head and by force habituated me to listening to them instead of me, but after awhile of practicing this i have found that i am beginning to recognize my own voice and i'm not second guessing it so much these days.

pics of craig from after i got out are scary, and even more scary is that when i was a preteen i thought he was cute. :o

thanks. :)

ok you don't see why i'd say that, and i'm tired of trying to explain because i obviously am not explaining it good enough and what does it all matter in the end anyway, and does it really have anything to do with the discussion any longer? so all that being said i think i'm going to contemplate these "choice" thoughts (haha) i've had and see if i can say anything else relating to the original discussion here. whewie it's been a funny ride discussing this. :)

just when i was wondering how i was going to stay on the topic of discussion you came along and said "There ya go. It is difficult, particularly if that process is going to mean a change in who we "are", as opposed to how we look, or act". here the question for me is how much of my "authentic self" is genetic, and if it's even a little more than "not enough" then i have to ask how much "genetic memory" shapes what i feel is my "authentic self", but science has yet to recognize "genetic memory" as a viable premise, so what do i do now? :) i am genetically and environmentally predisposed to have a middle level intelligence, lots of anger, multiple addictions and a whole lot of what seems to often end up being impoverished and physically and mentally ill and just barely getting along in life, but until i worked very hard at changing these seeming unavoidable "results" in my life, that's where my life was at. and there's something that i think has everything to do with "(re)(un)covering the "authentic" you" because choice is at the base of even feeling like i have an "authentic self". so now i'm thinking that maybe when i talk about the way stealing my soul that maybe i am talking about the way limiting my choices? i don't know, but it seems to be coming around to this very point.

ok so it turned out that my day was testy and ok bolshevik i'm sorry for the knee-jerk reaction and i want you to know it had nothing to do with you but everything to do with how that word was used against me in my life. if i keep having knee-jerk reactions will i then become spastic, and if so then will i pass that along to my offspring and then their offspring will have jerky knees? i'm trying to be funny here, but most of the time my funny isn't funny to anybody else. also i get the feeling that here yet again i am going through the "normal" stages of talking about my experiences in the way.

i keep messing up that quote a part of something then respond, then quote another part and then respond to that part, so i'm going to just say what i'm thinking and see if it comes out ok. socks said a whole lot of what i was trying to say and said it with some good humor moments. thanks socks. i also want to say that evolution must consider the individual in all things or the general theories fall apart because evolution starts slowly in most cases, which means that it is in the individual instance where a mutation first is seen. i am not aware of very many instances where "evolution" pops up suddenly in a group of things, but it is usually a few here and there in a generation that show the "evolving" changes, and as more generations of those individual things come into play, then so do more instances of the mutations, and this is evidenced today with such things as the generations of survivors of such things like hiroshima and nagasaki and love canal and chernobyl. and this is also evidenced today when conditions and instances often "skip" a generation like with twins or allergies or illnesses. and there are forced "evolutions" all over the place and that is evidenced today with things like birth multiples where it seems like just one instance that was "forced" by artifcial manipulations, but then has anybody studied what that one instance has done genetically to those offspring and if those offspring are suddently genetically predisposed to birth multiples, and if so then how many generations will it take for the birth multiples to become the norm? like socks said it is difficult to change things effectively at the genetic level, but the exception is writing onto the individual genetic code for the next generations, which is evidenced today with things like specific breedings in animals to produce specific results in the next generations. but even with this it is known that after so many generations without more manipulation then the change will drop off and revert back to the "natural". so lots and lots of time is absolutely the key element to "evolution", and time is uniquely "human". which starts a whole nother discussion that has a whole lot to do with understanding what's so different about humans, which then has a whole lot to do with the human mind. the physical attributes of the brain do not account for the thoughts of humankind. oh and i also want to say that once you talk "luck" and "lifestyle" then you are actually saying that evolution does not account for the thoughts of humankind.

to me either the species protects and furthers itself or it doesn't, and even scientists disagree on the actual nuances of evolution, so to me this is an incomplete discussion and there can't be an "arguement" towards one way of thinking or another because it is incomplete. and so i wonder now if you are throwing things out for discussion or if you "believe" that what you say is the way it is? and i ask this because it helps me to know if i'm treading on your "beliefs" or if you're just discussing things and kind of playing a "devil's advocate" with me?