brainfixed

i like this question a lot because it was the very question that kept me from really being able to look behind the curtain of the way international and seeing the little man playing a big god like creature, and it took a whole lot of therapy to unravel the tightly wound dogma thinking in my brain, and it was very hard work and very scary work and it didn't feel good at all and lots of times i threw up and cried and screamed all night long because it seemed like i was ripping away any shred of possiblity that there is a god at all, but in the end what happened for me was that i came to a quiet understanding of things that brought me lots of peace. the first place my therapist started with me was to start thinking as if there was no god at all because i was so tightly wound up in my brain that everything was god this and god that and the adversary this and the adversary that, even to the point that i have read here many others were at that i believed it was god's favor on me for my great believing that i got all green lights on my way to work, or the best parking spot in the shopping center and really crazy thinking stuff like that. oh, and the really really crazy thinking about when the unbelievers won out over the believers and i tried to explain that it wasn't their god winning over my god, but their believing was bigger than my believing and how my god honored their believing because he was a just god and couldn't go against his own word and all that way international nonsense that was squeezing my brain almost until it popped! so my therapist worked with me a long long time to get me to the point where i looked at things without there having to be any spiritual beings involved at all but just that things happen by chance or by hit and miss. once i got to that point she asked me if i could then find places where there might me actual divine intervention. and that's when i began to understand that looking for the signs of god at work was the opposite of faith, and that it was really a need for proof that god was working before i would believe for another work in my life. once i came to this understanding, i also came to the understanding of what people were trying to say to me when they were saying that god had a plan for my life or that god was in control, or at least my perception of what they were trying to say. but what i think those things mean is like what it says in the bible about god could have raised up children from the rocks. see, if it takes us to do something to get god's work done, then is he really god? like in a human family, the children don't go around worrying about how the bills get paid or how the food gets bought or how the laundry gets done. for the children, it just all happens without them thinking about it all. as the children grow and learn, then they might participate, but they don't get a full understanding until they are out on their own and make their own mistakes. no matter how well parents prepare children for being adults, until a child has bounced a few checks they don't really get what it means to keep a balanced check book. so what i get from all of this is that according to the bible and many other holy books, as long as we are here, then we are still children, so we won't have an understanding of many things and we really don't need to worry about so many things because there's just not much we can do about them, anyway. what is that saying "the best laid plans of mice and men"? i'm going to look it up. here it is i think that says it all.

great discussion! being "out in the cold, cruel world" is not what the way international said it was going to be at all. it was for awhile because being in the way international crippled me so badly that interacting in any normal manner with people outside of the way international was pretty much impossible, but then life does have a way of going on with or without me and i could either learn to go on with life or stand still and throw way international temper tantrums and curl into way a international psychotic ball of way international paralyzing paranoia about "seed boys" and "being out from under the umbrella" and all that way international jargon designed to steal, kill and destroy every last chance a person has of existing in a sane state in a world that really is far, far better than anything the way international had to offer. i chose the latter, thank you very much, and now i am happy as a clam and am making friends and finding joy where the way international left only false "family" built on snitching and a$$ kissing for leadership and fear. out here away from the way international, nobody's looking into your life that closely, nobody cares to, either, because everybody pretty much gets it that life has hard places and everybody needs a friend. i remember one guy that used to freak out totally when that title song from "cheers" used to come on, you know the that goes "Making your way in the world today Takes everything you've got; Taking a break from all your worries Sure would help a lot. Wouldn't you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name, And they're always glad you came; You want to be where you can see, Our troubles are all the same; You want to be where everybody knows your name." he said it "advertises the old bird's imposter for true fellowship with believers in twigs" and he wouldn't allow anybody in his twig to watch cheers because of it. that freaked me out for a long time and when i told my therapist that i was afraid of going to bars because of what that guy said, she pointed out to me that the song didn't have anything to do with bars, but with simple human interaction with people that liked each other and gave each other a breather now and then, so what that guy said had done for me was to rob me of my ability to allow myself to be in situations where i could relax and be with people that liked me and wanted me around and would give me some breathing space. so it goes along with what what's being said here and it all shows how far from christ the way international is and demands its followers to be.

the things that come up over a cup of coffee at the cafe! great stuff! either one day this week or last week dr. phil had a program about a man that would go into fits of rage over the littlest things. the man said he couldn't help himself and asked dr. phil if there was something wrong with him. dr. phil has this whole institute that helps him out a lot that does brain mapping and he asked them to map this guy's brain, and of course this guy's brain showed that he had "hot spots" in the lobes of his brain for impulse control, which meant that this guy had little impulse control. the dr. from the institute explained that the brain of the man had been so long in the habit of not controlling impulses that it had actually worn holes through the lobes that control impulses. i know that's probably a great oversimplification of things and that it was probably put that way for lay people to understand, but the images of the man's brain against a normal brain showed the hotspots and the actual "tracks" (they were more like grooves) on the man's brain. but what i'm trying to say is that there is a physical reality that goes on when people get stuck on a "one track mind" like in a cult or any other closed-minded situation where certain thought patterns are repeated over and over and over again. on the good side of things, it's the same "science" behind "positive affirmations" and such that people practice to help themselves build better self esteem or get courage to do public speaking and things like that. in other words, repeating thoughts and thought patterns over and over and over again actually physically changes the brain, and doing it long enough will permanently change the brain. i just thought that this was very interesting with the turn the conversation has taken. another intersting thing is that the dr. from the institute said that even though the man's brain had permanent damage there were things that could be done to start his brain on a new track around the damage. that was very encouraging!

very nice points here and i got some new things to think about about, too, which is very nice too. i am having so much fun getting new thoughts! it's like shopping. :) what is the most satisfying is that my mind isn't getting seared or distorted or all dark and foggy like i was told it would do if i didn't "stay my thoughts" or "steel my mind" and all that way international brain washing cult speak. in fact what is happening in reality is that i'm getting better and better at thinking for myself and thinking on my feet, so it's really like my mind was terribly sick with some awful disease when i was in the way international thinking patterns, but now that my mind is free, it's healing itself and becoming what it was supposed to be all along, and it's doing it quite rapidly from what i'm told, but it did take a while to get the process started, several years in fact, but now it's going good. i'm still amazed at how greasespot cafe was the thing that helped me the most to get over the last real hurdle of the process. i used to think that all the talk about how much the way international hated this place was a bunch of bravado, but now i know that it's the plain truth because right here is where people have their first taste of real freedom when it comes to talking about being victimized by the way international. there's just no place else like greasespot cafe to speak my mind without having to stop every couple of phrases and explain myself, which means that i always lost the full effect of speaking my mind because i wasn't really speaking my mind but was instead stopping to explain the way international's mind. but here i just said what i thought and people said what they thought back and that was that and that was what worked at the point i was at in my healing. and boy oh boy what a thing that was for me to be able just to say what i thought totally unfiltered, undiluted, and unthreatened. anybody in the way international that might be reading this, try it sometime! freedom of thought is not possession or anything like it! but i'd wager that the type of "likeminded" stuff of the way international is as close to being possessed as a person can get because it's not the person doing the thinking, but somebody else thinking for the person. right now that verse about the truth setting you free is in my mind. i know that for me that freedom was for my mind as well as my body. yep, freedom of thought is a holy thing now that i think of it.

i don't get to come around every day all the time, so when i do get to come around it's like a whole bunch of years have happened sometimes because the conversations have gone into overdrive or something, so i'm like a little lost or something and have to read and read and read to catch up. but lately i've been noticing that when i come back after a few days to a week or more that i have to stop and think about some things that are said and what they meant in the way international otherwise i can't follow the discussion at all! and for a minute i was wondering if i was going completely nuts or what, but then i realized that maybe my mind is beginning to run on a new track and i was like, yay! so one of the whole discussions that is like this for me is the forgiveness discussion and i don't want to get that one going off topic with this thing that's happening with me, so i started this new discussion, but reading through those pages of things people were saying didn't make any sense to me until i put on the way international filter and read them again and then i went "oh, ok. i see why this is so important from this angle now." because outside of very fundamentalist religious groups most people don't have such a hard time understanding forgiveness and certainly don't discuss the nuances of the concept for days on end. so that's just one example that's the most recent for me, but there are others. so my point here being that the mind starts to heal and starts on a new track that isn't so bound up and on a fever pitch, and that's a good thing that is like taking a nap but being awake and getting things done. it's pretty nice.

bringing the end of life/hospice aspect into this discussion makes it a totally different discussion i think, because it's a totally different phase of life and even jesus lived one way and died another way, in that during his living years he spoke harshly and quite unforgivingly to the evil doers, but during his dying time he spoke those words of "father forgive them for they know not what they do". what made the difference? well, he was dying. his work here on earth was done. there was nothing left for him to do but ask his father to forgive them. and look at that, too, that he asked his father to forgive them and that he didn't say "i forgive you". so with jesus being the accepted example in this discussion then in our living years we must do what we can to stand against and point out and save ourselves and others from evil, but in our dying time we give ourselves and our work over to our father. jesus also said to "turn the other cheek" if someone smacks you on one cheek. but did he say to keep turning the other cheek? if you look at that "70x7" quote, you could interpret it that way. again, jesus being the example you would have to look at what he said and did in certain situations, and he didn't say and do the same thing in every similar situation, either. but i think the real question here is not about forgiveness, but about being and staying a victim, and the question might be phrased "if i forgive somebody, does that mean that i stand there getting my cheeks whacked 70x7 times??????" to me that's a big DUH! NO! but what do i do, then? smack the person back? depends, really, and that's something that each person has to determine for themselves, and even jesus didn't do it the same way every time. there was at least one record of jesus getting good and pi$$ed off and throwing things around in a scene that would have had him arrested in today's "temples", so what was he really trying to say? sometimes we have to think for ourselves. oh GASP!!! there's just not a "cookie cutter" answer here, and not in any culture is there such a pat answer. it's hard to know what to do. but forgiveness isn't our job i don't think, because how can it be? all we can offer the person in the form of "forgiveness" is to let them get away with what they pulled or are still pulling. well that's just plain old stupid. but do we have to exact a "fitting punishment" at every turn? not hardly. i think we have to look at many other things to grasp things in this "forgiveness" thinking because all it really means to a mere mortal is to let go of things that burden us for our own good. but forgiveness is for the good of the person who is being forgiven. see? us mere mortals simply can't do that while we remain merely mortal, but as we get closer and closer to immortality, well then we get a glimpse of what it all means and then we get the chance to try on our wings, so to speak, and soar with the eagles above all this mortal ooze of life and then we can fathom forgiveness and all it really entails. but in our living years? i don't think it can be done in reality.

i think this is the most profound thinking a person can reach after being in such a black and white fundamentalist legalistic cult as the way international. i also think it follows with a vast majority of the writings of any holy book that in the end say what the bible says and that is to work out your own salvation because it is all between you and your maker in the end. i like this discussion a lot!

congratulations! will you be using this education to help with cult exit therapy? have you learned anything you didn't already know about cults and cult exiting and living life after a cult? i have a billion questions about this from the point of view of someone that was in a cult and got out and are succeeding in a field that was so dissed and hated in that cult. wow!

i think this is probably at the crux of things more than any intellectual argument could be, really, because if you took all the details of each man and take them apart the way it's done with vpw around here, you could probably render each one just as slimy as the next if you really, really, really wanted to look that hard and make that much of a case. but i do have to say that with vpw it doesn't take looking very hard or making much of a case because he put his own "fruit" out there publicly and proudly rotten, and went somewhere called "to hell in a handbasket" and took a whole lot of innocent people with him.

for me then i wonder why take just one of the many thousands of preachers and teachers and ministers and evangelists that could be accused of plagiarism? i don't think that it is just plagiarism with wierwille on this forum at all, but i think that the plagiarism is one level of his dishonesty that even when confronted with it, he held to it as if he did no wrong, and there is a huge difference between out and out plagiarism and repeating the same thing over and over again. i mean you seriously could not have but one church with but one preacher if every time someone preached a sermon that had been preached before it was called plagiarism. what victor paul wierwille did was steal the work of others, put his name to it, sell it as his work, and built a whole cult saying that god had revealed things to him that had not been revealed since the first century church. now that's out and out plagiarism. but borrowing the syntax and even words of others when preaching? that's done all the time in churches throughout the world. in the very article you cite it also says and you really have to make a difference here, too, between preaching and biblical research and teaching. victor paul wierwille himself was the one that started everybody down the rabbit hole of "saying what you mean and meaning what you say" and making sure everything "fit like a hand in a glove" and all that "jot and tittle" stuff about where commas go or don't go, or how many were crucified or what day jesus died, etc., to prove to everybody how right he was and how wrong everybody else was based on their errors, so when he made such an eggregious error as plagiarism, it was a very big deal indeed because the man that made a boat load of money on the idea that he was the only one that got it right was really, in the end, the only one that didn't have a clue but had stolen everything he had "right". so really, plagiarism isn't the issue at all, but the "gateway drug" to the real issue of the man behind the drapes, red or not.

i think what got me going with this discussion is that in the way international they were always doing this kind of thing, comparing victor paul wierwille to the other "newsworthy evangelists in the world", and of course victor paul wierwille came up smelling not quite so crappy as he would if he had to stand on his own two feet, you know that stuff the way international always did and maybe still does, "look over there at that out in left field screw up, won't ya? do you want that life or do you want the life in the word with us? huh? do ya? what do you think? do you really want to try it out there with those screw balls?" but the thing is that there is no comparison at all whatsoever because victor paul wierwille was a charlatan and a sexual predator and huckster and an evil doer from the getgo and he never intended to serve the lord with all his heart, soul, mind and body, but instead intended to serve his lusts that popped up whenever they popped up with whoever was convienient when they popped up, even if they were underage or he had to drug them to "convince" them it was "consensual". now if anybody can find even a hint of this kind of activity going on with mlk or billy graham, then and only then can a serious and viable comparison be done. otherwise it's the same old lame stuff of the same old cult days from whence i came when i had to have some straw to grasp at to help myself believe it wasn't all so bad as it was.

so what about a comparison of vpw to billy graham? why does the vpw to mlk thing have to go around about once a year?

skyrider are you trying to make a viable comparison between vpw and mlk?

the problem with talking with anybody that is still in the way international is that they have to shut out all voices but way international voices to remain in the way international, so unless they are already looking for a way out of the way international, there's not a thing anybody can say, except for the spirit that works within each person. but if somebody was at a point of considering things, i would ask them "the things you see going on around you all the time in the way international, if you take those things and put them in the setting of any church, would you point at those things and say "see! that's what's wrong with religion!"?"

hi calavicci, i'm glad you're here and you'll be glad, too. here's how i just put it just a few minutes ago about how i feel about being out of the way international and out of the thinking of the way international, so enjoy yourself and your life and maybe even invite your wife to come along and have the times of your lives starting now and feel what you feel and love what you love and hate what you hate and know that you are just right the way you are! :)

very nice leafytwiglet about the things you do now that weren't "allowed" in the way international. i started this discussion because something crossed my mind about the way international and it hit me how long it had been since i had even thought about those things, but what a nice turn in the conversation to discuss what i do now that i could never have done in the way international! i revel in my feelings. i think that's one of the things i enjoy the most about being away from the way international. if i cry, i really cry hard and feel the tears deep in my soul and let the tears do their job and wash away the residuals of whatever i am crying about, and afterwards i find myself feeling cleansed and much better than before. (and just saying "residuals" without thinking of leftover devil spirits is fun!} and when i laugh, i laugh out loud and from my belly and sometimes i laugh so hard i snort and tears roll down my cheeks and what a good time i have laughing! i entertain the "dark" side of myself. if i "think evil" of somebody, i listen to that and think it through and see why i'm thinking that way and usually i am saving myself some real trouble and often some real pain by recognizing behavior patterns that i always did recognize but when in the way international i squelched down as "thinking evil". if i enjoy a good drum solo or a good back-beat i really enjoy it and let my body get into it and give myself over to the music and let my soul travel where the music takes me, but in the way international i would have been "marked" as "out in left field" or "entertaining devil spirits" or something like that. and i study death and things about death and even help people die with comfort and without fear or loneliness. can you imagine what would have happened to me if i even tried something like that in the way international? the richness of life with the colors and depths added and without it all being black/white/gray and two-dimensional because of fear of the shadows is profound and so much of the time i feel like a tuning fork that's just been tapped and i'm vibrating with life all over. talk about joy unspeakable!

wasn't that cereal called familia? i used to make it come out my nose.

yah belle, the way international puts a real understanding in the phrase "can't see the forest for the trees" doesn't it? i remember watching an some old tv show and somebody said that a courtroom wasn't about presenting evidence and letting it speak for itself, but it was about how well a lawyer could argue his or her points concerning the evidence, and that made me think of the way international because nobody involved in the way international ever cared about the truth or about reality, but they only cared about how well their particular version of things got "received", so the arguments and nitpicking were neverending and abusive. life is so very much better without it all! lol excathedra!

i thought i was the one being offensive by pulling that quote and i wanted to make sure that nobody thought i was trying to start in on somebody in a new discussion so i did an overexplanation thing. see how things can go sometimes? it is ok and i'm sorry i made you feel like you were offensive. reading what others are saying there were so many excuses to abuse, weren't there? why i fell for them is one of the things that keeps me going back to therapy again and again because it just bugs the heck outta me because i have a thinking mind and i didn't fall for much in the way international, but to this day i am always wondering if i've given offense or caused someone else to "stumble in their believing". that's not my responsibility!!!!!!!!! why in the he!! did i ever fall for thinking that it is???? if i'm working with a child, then i know better than to tax their understanding, but when i'm working with adults, dang! they'd better be able to think for themselves! yes there are some exceptions, and it's not the ones most of us think are the exceptions because those most of us think are the exceptions would be pretty POed if we treated them with exceptions, but most adults in this world prefer to think for themselves, and those who don't really are not the type of people i want to have in my life because they tend to suck the soul right out of me. so when i find myself not thinking for myself i get really really upset and reach right down into the root of it and get it out of me but quick like and figure out why. and trending back to way international thinking is not thinking for myself.

oh yes! just reading this took me from zero to rage in about 5 seconds!!!!! now i'm back down to about 1, but oh man life is pure he11 on what people don't tell you!!!! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!

you haven't bored me and you always say in a few words what others take many words to try to convey, so that's a pretty good gift you've got there, and you make it funnier than chit, too, so that's another pretty good gift you've got, so i'm like jealous of you! :)

well it was clear in my mind that the reason i did not include the name of the person that wrote what i quoted was so that nobody would think i was talking about what the person wrote or the person's point of view or anything like that, but something must have happened between my mind and what i wrote or something, so let me say it maybe a better way, ok? for the purpose of this discussion, i don't suppose to know or even want to know or even really care to know what the person that wrote what i quoted was thinking or trying to communicate because all that matters for the purpose of this discussion is what i thought about when i read what was written. now that being said, please recognize that i am isolating that itty bitty part of another discussion from its whole context for the purpose of not associating it with its context so that i can have a completely different discussion about what that itty bitty and very isolated part made me think about, and what it made me think about was the old way international mind set of "you can't offend a dead man" and the others i mentioned. if that isn't clear enough now, i don't know how to make it clearer. and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion that i took the quote from in the first place. excathedra, that's like the very second thing i thought about when i read that statement! how interesting that you and i picked up on that! :)

i borrowed this quote from another discussion and i didn't include the name of the person that wrote this because i don't want to zero in on the person or anything like that, but i want to talk about what this made me think of, and that was the excuse to abuse that the way international used that i hated the most, and it was that old "you can't offend a dead man" ..... this excuse has its partners and they are the old "out in left field" or "out from under the protection of the household" or "out of fellowship" or "unrenewed mind" or "seared conscious" or even "possessed". so i have studied just a little bit about the decaying processes of bodies and i will tell you something and that is that being "nothing more than an ant farm" is really being a big deal! imagine what life would be like without ants or flies or maggots or dung beatles or rats or vultures or all the things that cycle decaying and dead things! you can argue that this is divine design or evolution all day, but you can't deny the extreme importance to life for humankind of an ant farm! and that's the problem with all those excuses the way international uses to abuse--the way international teaches people to devalue, detach and in the end destroy.

it is a new day every day for me and i am pleasantly surprised every morning. yes i will enjoy it and hold on to it! oh, i don't mean that i'm grown up in the way that i forget to play and laugh, but in the way that i am no longer helpless and cannot make my own choices and am a victim of fate decided by others for me. thank you excathedra.

to be me