brainfixed

i don't think about what the way international stole from me. i don't think about the bible according to the way international or even other religions according to the way international. i don't think about speaking in tongues or how many were crucified with jesus or where the commas and the wherefores and therefores go or any of the myopic mind numbing senseless things the way international got me to focus upon to make sure i didn't look at the real picture of the way international being nothing more and nothing less than an organization using religion to feed the perversions of dirty old men. i don't think about what route i take to and from anyplace. i don't think about what jewelry i'm wearing beyond if it looks good and feels good. i don't think about what i'm going to do with my free time to "bless" somebody. i don't think about "blessing" anybody. i don't think about hiding my real feelings. i don't think about how wrong everybody else is and how right i am. i don't think in terms of "believer" and "unbeliever". the truth is that something broke through in my therapy after being here and being able to show my therapist the thinking of the way international in action so that she could see what i needed help with. once she saw it, she knew how to help me and she did. i have never been so free. i have never been so whole. i have never been so happy. i have never been so healthy. i have never been so at peace. it is not a big huge secret to have a good life! that was a lie! that is a lie! our lives are ours to do with whatever we want and there's no "adversary" out to stop us except ourselves and those we allow to stop us, but it really is only ourselves in the end. if anybody "out there in internet world" finds themselves constantly fighting off an "adversary" or having to "stand against the wiles of the devil", please get some good abuse therapy and find out inside of yourself that you are your own worst enemy, but that you are also your own best friend when you finally choose to be. yes, people did bad things to you. yes, people did horrible things to you. yes, you got a raw deal from the beginning of your life on until now. i was a little child when these things started happening to me and i carried that sense of helplessness way into adulthood and until very recently. but you see, i'm a grown up now and i can take care of me. even the little child me. and you can, too, if you can get to someone that can help you learn how. and religion isn't going to show you how. religion teaches you not to grow up. religion teaches you to stay a little child led about by every flim flam con artist that comes along. you don't have to give up your beliefs. but you can learn to have your beliefs as an adult fully responsible for your wonderful new life that is free and peaceful and whole and healed and happy. i know because i'm doing it. give yourself a chance! it's really worth it!

what i "knew" of him was from only here and that was too little to even conisder "knowing" him at all, but i am glad to read these words here now, and glad to know how deeply loved he is and how deeply loving he was. i am sorry for your loss doojable and groucho and others who really did know him.

oh yes, this was a big help for me too, and i think that greasespot cafe doesn't get the credit it deserves for letting all viewpoints be put up here, because without all the people that support the thinking of the way international who get to write here, i would never have been able to explain exactly just what about that thinking is so wrong and so painful and so destructive whenever i hear it to the point that i don't read the bible even. because just reading the bible brings out the voices of the way international and i can't hear the bible but can hear only somebody's teaching about what the way international says the bible is supposed to say in the context according to literal usage. i mean, seriously, try explaining that little bit of mumbo jumbo to a professional mental health person and see if it doesn't land you in some deep doo doo where your "understanding of the situation" isn't questioned!!!! and unless my therapist had seen such things actually used around here with her very own eyes, she would still be thinking that i had just over-reacted to what was really being said and done because of the "outside of the norm" abuse that was going on! it was because of here that she also found other places on the internet with even more detailed re-tellings of the abuse. she was dumbfounded that such an abusive cult as the way international has not ended up like jonestown or waco, but she then concluded that the way international got us all to perpetrate the crimes internally instead of externally, until she read here many of the writings about how ready and willing the way international is to get its followers to perpetrate crimes against non-followers if the time comes. she now feels that the way international dodged a huge bullet and didn't end up like jonestown or waco because of the allen lawsuit that shined too bright of a light on things without providing a literal "circle the wagons" scenario to happen. she thinks that if people had gone to headquarters and demanded to see their loved ones or made any other such demands as a group, then the way international most likely would have "circled the wagons" and may very well have ended like waco and jonestown. i don't what to think about all that, but i do know that for me it was my own private waco/jonestown-like event in that something of me died because of it all. but here i am growing again and being able to come out of the mourning stage and see some little green shoots come out of the ashes. and again i have to say thank you.

when i come to greasespot cafe any more i don't feel that punch in my gut about the crap from the way international like i used to, and i don't feel like my whole life is going to stink all to heII from the big old crap that the way international took all over my life and my family's life when I was a kid, either. greasespot cafe really has been a "missing link" in my therapy and it has cut off years and years of that therapy and the pain that i would have lived with during those years because i wouldn't have been able to figure out the things i have figured out because of being able to figure things out here at greasespot cafe. i'd say "send me a bill" but i couldn't pay it, so don't send me one because if you meant to collect on it you'd probably end up spending more money on collection activity than you'd ever get out of me, and i'm not meaning to be rude or unthankful, but i'm just telling the truth. but what i can do is say "thank you" and that's what i'm saying. thank you.

i'm not getting emails anymore when people write new responses on topics i am watching, and i have checked all my settings to make sure they are right.

i know. reading these things now is like reading something from another world or something somebody on crack or meth was spewing while in withdrawls or maybe even overdosing. just not even close to being in touch with reality. but they were the reality i grew up in, and that's just too hard to grasp sometimes. i know that if i hadn't kept diaries that even i wouldn't believe me, and i have to bring my diaries into therapy often to go over what really happened and what didn't because when it comes to the way international, the truth of what they think and do and say is always stranger than fiction, and nobody wants to believe that people actually live like this.

there were so many things that leadership said and peons repeated that made no sense even to a kid, and watch out if you were a kid and said something! wham! right in the face or on the arm or on the fingers or somewhere where it really really hurt with the edge of a wooden spoon. and then they'd tell you you were possessed or something! here are some of the things they said that i just knew were insane: you won't kill a kid if you beat it. you can't get possessed when you're born again because it's incorruptable seed, but you can lose your unrenewed mind and that can lead to a seared conscious and that's worse than possession. (these next few are from one conversation) yes, it's christ in us the hope of glory, but the christ in us is in our spirit, not in our bodies or souls, so what we or anybody else does with our bodies or souls is like doing it to dead dirt, so things like adultery are not really for the truly renewed mind to worry about because it is being done with the unquickened body and not with the quickened spirit. yes, our spirit is in our bodies but even without our bodies our spirit would have christ in us. it is our spirit that is where the life is, where we are born again. no, the dead are not alive. no, your spirit being separated from your body doesn't mean you're dead. it just means your body is not with your spirit any longer. no, it's not the same as being dead because you can be body and soul without your spirit. ok, you're asking foolish and unlearned questions and engendering strife. it's obvious you're not spiritually mature enough to understand these things. i beseech you to renew your mind and study the word and wait until you've had at least the advanced class before you try to lay a snare for your brothers and sisters in christ. and maybe take the beam out of your own eye first. (the next few are from another conversation with a different set of "leaders" in the same area) there is one sin unto death and paul wouldn't say what it was, but we can glean from acts, chapter 5, verses 1-10 that it was lying to the apostles. you're lying to me now. you will be dead by the end of the day. you didn't die because revelation changes, so you must have confessed your sin and claimed forgiveness after i gave you the revelation that you were going to die. i'm glad you received the word of prophecy for your benefit. no, it's not possible that you were telling me the truth because when i discern truth from error i get a certain tingling in my scalp and my vision gets wavy around the person that is lying to me, and that's what i felt and saw when you were lying to me. i think you are a thorn in my flesh. (these next few are from a "counseling" session with a visiting "ordained reverend" called in to deal with the possibility that i had "legion" problems) of course god is not respecter of persons, but he is a respecter of the authority he gives to persons and i am ordained to have authority over you. you are a child and it is written that foolishness is bound in your heart and the rod of correction is the only thing that will drive foolishness far from you. obviously you are like those written about in timothy when you want to be taught instead of beaten because you are ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. when you accuse a man of god of rape you have become vain in your imaginations, and it is written that that your foolish heart is darkened. at this point i can see that you will not be persuaded. i have ceased saying the will of the lord be done, as it is written. these are taken from my diaries. remember i was barely a teenager when most of these things were said or these "counseling" sessions happened, but i knew the adults in the way international were whack and belonged either behind bars or in straight jackets or in some way removed from society so they couldn't perpetrate against children any longer.

i'm sorry about your daughter and i'm praying for her and all of you and yours. i haven't read all the replies here yet but i will but right now i have to run but i wanted to say something but if it's been said already i'm saying it again. here's the thing, whatever is going on with your daughter was going to go on regardless of being in the way international or not, but if you were still in the way international you'd be trying to believe your way out of the situation instead of taking her for decent medical care and loving her up, or if you were taking her for decent medical care and loving her up, you'd be getting the same bs you're getting now anyway, so in or out of the way international, nothing would have changed concerning their treatment of you and your daughter in this situation. so their bs is their bs is their bs is their bs whether in or out of their stinkin' household of bs. however, now you have the freedom to care for and help and love your daughter without any stinkin' bs except some stupid email that is nothing but stinkin' bs because that's all a household of stinkin' bs can produce. :)

i have read many times the apologists for the way international about how even if wierwille or other way international leadership said or implied things that people had the "choice" on what to do with their own lives so why did they do things that the way international leadership said or implied? and i've wondered that a bunch of times myself and i've been very mad at people like my mother because i always thought she had a choice in matters, but then i watched an msnbc program called "the stripper and the steelworker" today and the judge in the "the stripper's" sentencing case said something that has been making me think. he said, "i see no difference between the puppet who pulls the trigger and the puppeteer who pulls the strings." he then went on to give "the stripper" the same 99 year sentence that another judge gave the actual triggerman. one thing i've been wondering and wondering all day long is if this is the case in a court of law where murder is concerned, then could it be the case in a court of law where child abuse is concerned? i mean would it have changed a whole lot of things in my life and a bunch of the kid's lives i knew if leadership knew they could get as much time for child abuse as the parents could get for teaching the parents things like "it will not kill a child to beat a child"? it really makes me think.

i don't want to be the person that must "counsel" everybody from a very narrow, very unlearned, very unsound paradigm that is based upon something i didn't bother to check out for myself in the first place.

i do what i can to keep myself focussed on my tasks at hand whenever i'm in a situation that i might run into somebody from the way international that i ever knew because only one of two things has ever happened in such a situation for me, and it was never just "uncomfortable" but a real emotional trip because i usually run into a perpetrator or a co-victim, and the perps usually turn around and "walk real fast" while looking over their shoulders because i've got a huge "bone to pick" with them, and the co-victims and i just look at each other and re-live too many things.

"most of christianity" from what i've experienced celebrates the sabbath on sunday, believes that when you die it's your immediate judgement and you go to heaven or to hell (or to purgatory) and that satan will live in eternal chains and that unrepentant sinners will live in eternal torment. the thing that got me was that i was raised to believe that "christendumb" had it all wrong and the way international was the only place that had it all right and then here i find out that the way international wasn't just plagarizing some study materials, but had stolen a whole religion! i don't understand this?

david koresh that is. i was watching the history channel's "decoding the past" about cults and the part about the "branch davidians" perked my ears up when they started talking about "the present truth" being one of the "foundational" doctrines of the 7th day adventists, and how david koresh was "hand picked" by the "prophetess" to be her successor, and how david koresh got "special revelation" concerning "the promised land" and all the correlations to the verbage of craig martindale and i thought "sheesh! the way international may have been a bastardized offshoot of the branch davidians!" then i looked up the branch davidians and got a real surprise! on conservapedia i found a list of their beliefs in part and part of that part are these: That the fourth commandment requires the observance of the seventh day Sabbath, and that Sabbath falls on Saturday. That after death, one is unconscious until the resurrection and judgment day. That there shall be a resurrection both of the just and of the unjust. The resurrection of the just will take place at the second coming of Christ; the resurrection of the unjust will take place a thousand years later, at the close of the millennium. That the sinful, including Satan, will be reduced to a state of non-existence. That the second coming of Christ is near at hand. That the millennial reign of Christ covers the period between the first and the second resurrections, that at the end of the millennium, the Holy City will descend to the earth. That God will make all things new. The earth, restored to its pristine beauty, will become forever the abode of the saints of the Lord. The promise to Abraham, that through Christ he and his seed should possess the earth throughout the endless ages of eternity, will be fulfilled. maybe i'm full of bs and maybe the way international was just a bastardization of everything. i'm just saying, ya know?

i take the whole thing off the bible topic and just compare it to every day things like going to court and looking at how things in court work, and seeing how a regular everyday judge in a regular everyday court works with regular everyday people because anybody can see for themselves in such a situation just how much bs is in such a comparison as wierwille to david because anybody can see for themselves in such a situation those that are obviously bsing the judge and those that are probably not going to end up in front the judge over and over again with the same old song and dance. and anybody can see it even with little kids, too, with that "well she did it and so why can't i?" stuff, and parents are always saying, "well if your friend jumped off a bridge would you want to jump off a bridge, too?" this isn't a deep thological question here, or even a deep moral question or anything deep at all, i mean most parents have taught their children by the age of 3 to know the difference between right and wrong and to know that they have to say, "i'm sorry" and change their behavior. it's really all that simple, and the fact that wierwille and the way international makes a whole doctrine and makes it so difficult and full of bs only shows that they're hiding something and that something has always turned out to be their own shameful sin that they are happily, gleefully and proudfully unrepentant of.

here's where victor paul wierwille's hard heart showed again because he couldn't tolerate lamentations any more than he could tolerate charity or anything else that would take the focus and the giving of glory and money off of him and the way international, which is also why he couldn't have anybody looking into the old testament much, or if anybody did, they had to look at it with his "corrections". otherwise anybody would have caught onto his games so quick there would never have been much to the way international except a pathetic hard-hearted s.o.b. that went around drugging and raping young women that may or may not have even been legal adults, and he gave himself permission in his own head to do such things by raping the bible first. so if people want to believe his raped version of the bible, well then i guess people can believe whatever they want to believe, but i can also wonder if they want to follow their leader in ALL his ways and that's why they insist that he must have been right. yeah, i'm kind of on one concerning this bu++hole and his "ministry" this morning. but anyway, lamentations are just plain a normal part of the human struggle with life and death, and like sirguessalot said these particular lamentations were uttered long before jesus uttered them, and jesus knew the words and being that jesus was of the jewish persuasion, i think, he knew the prayers to pray, or the songs to sing, when in deep trouble or deep sorrow or deep doo doo or whatever. for crying out loud, jesus was being murdered! i mean, this wasn't a gunshot to the head type of murder, either. has anybody studied crucifixion? of course, not anybody in the way international because that was taboo to the way international. but crucifixion is not by any means a "simple" or even a "hard" way to die, or even just "cruel", but even saying "unholy" doesn't describe it well enough i think. ya think maybe jesus felt like that maybe god had perhaps just a little bit ripped him off and left him to die alone? maybe just for a minute? that doesn't make jesus bad or weak, and it doesn't make the feeling "true", and doesn't mean that god actually forsook jesus. it means that jesus was feeling some real stuff and it was messing with him something bad. pain and dying tends to do this to people's heads and you can't tell what people will say in such times. so what did it matter to victor paul wierwille that he had to switch it all up like that? what was his game about this? like i said, i think it was just another way for him to keep people from seeing and feeling anything he didn't want them to see or feel, especially if it made people see or feel any shred of humanity one to another.

really, i mean isn't charity the action that comes from the love? all the gobbledy gook that victor paul wierwille came up with to replace the word "love" just to shut down the simple action that comes from loving people, all that so that the followers of the way international would shut their hearts to everybody/every organization except victor paul wierwille and the way international. i mean it got so bad that he even distorted the bible to say "if you don't work, you don't eat" when jesus said "i know you not because i came to you hungry and you fed me not." so charity is the word that belongs there if you look at what jesus said and did.

it freaked me out to start this discussion because i was thinking how totally self-centered and self-righteous i might come off as being and how i was probably going to be ripped apart about doing things "in the closet" or whatever that bible verse says, and how maybe even people wouldn't even try to take pride in themselves and their own goodness but might even be thinking some of the same things i was thinking about when i started this discussion. but even if people didn't think they had anything to blow their own horns about, look at how differently everybody treated me than anybody would have if we had all been still in the way international, and that's something to blow our horns about, at least i think so. but i didn't start this discussion to be about me, but to be about how each of us have found the real truth about "and these three remain, faith, hope and charity, and the greatest of these is charity", and how charity has no boundaries and cannot be defined by religion or societal standards/expectations or even by moral expectations. and charity lives here on this discussion. thank you. i don't even know what to say except thank you. i needed to hear this. thank you.

i never ever ever ever heard anything even remotely as kind as this poem. but i heard "you can't offend a dead man" and "if a man wants to go to hell, well let him go to hell" and "all the women in the kingdom belong to the king" and things like that all the time. and how does that story and those sentiments even compare to each other? it's no wonder i ended up a nut job because i was raised in a cult founded and led by a nut job. sheesh!

i'm putting this discussion here because it has a lot to do with the way international in my life because the way international made fun of charities and giving to charities or doing charitable work so much that i saw a lot of people being very hard hearted about giving and would tithe and give offerings only if they were "operating believing" to get something back from god like he was a geenie in the magic lamp to command or something, not like giving was a gift to the giver more than it was a gift to the receiver, but anyway this also has a lot to do with being asked "where is the compassion" and feeling like i was in the way international again and being cornered and badgered into making myself accountable to somebody else's definition of acceptability and that somebody else had no clue about me and my life whatsoever, and i had the feeling that some others felt the same way, so i thought about what if people had the chance to blow their own horns a little bit? so even though i don't get on here or anywhere else and shout it from the prayer forums or any other forum or anything, i go to hospice and i also go to the "welfare" hospitals and sit with "unclaimed" people that have no visitors or support outside of the hospital staff and stuff like that. it's something i started doing when i grew up after experiencing up close and personal all my life how the way international abandoned sick and dying people after having isolated them from friends and family for decades. and it's hard work a whole lot of the time because people are dying and are very sick and when i'm the only person they have to talk to or am the last person to hear their last words, well that's hard a lot, but it's also a place of honor in their lives that they will let me in like that, and it's like very holy and i get to see glimpses of what i can only imagine might be the closest thing to a supreme being i'll ever get and it's scary and it's holy and it's moving and it's draining and it's hard and it's intimate and it's beyond the sum total of them and me every single time. so that's my horn to blow. what's yours?

the way international still #1 huh? well, the way international needs to be knocked of that spot! :)

the old man kept things apart from himself pretty good, too, to the general audiences, but martindale was too easy to see through and he was too in your face with things. the old man played the dad/grandpa part and let the limb leaders and branch leaders and twig leaders and corps people come off as the the thugs and henchmen, but martindale wanted the power and the glory for himself so much that he couldn't see the old man's "wisdom" in letting the subordinates do the "heavy" stuff. and when the old man did dish out heavy stuff in front of the general audiences he did it like a dad/grandpa would do it, with that old "this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you" blah blah blah stuff and it endeared him to people and made people feel like they had somehow disappointed him and they really deserved being ripped a new one for being such a disappointment to dear old dad/grandpa, but martindale finger-pointed and blamed and glorified himself which did nothing to endear him to people and did everything to show him for being whack. the old man played that "father in the word" stuff like a pro, and martindale couldn't pull it off. and i think like others here have said that it was also because people had grown up a little bit, but also because martindale was too close in age to the people he was trying to push around and too many of those people saw him when he was a nothing and knew he was no "father in the word". i know that martindale came off to us kids like a mean and dirty uncle to steer clear from, but the old man was like a senile grandpa that you respected because he was old and you laughed at because he was senile and you made fun of all the adults because he could make them jump around just for saying jump, but other than that harmless and to be ignored. (but that was then and now i know better.)

this helps a whole lot more than you can guess. and leafytwiglet you ought to get paid for what you do! there's a lot of comfort here everybody and it helps a whole lot and i thank you for it all and i'm glad for it all. thank you.

thanks again for the input. i had to breathe and remind myself i was "safe", but i didn't bang my head against the wall or anything else like that so the panic wasn't so bad this time or i'm "moving on" a little bit or something. this is really the first time i've ever talked about all this with people that were there and that might "trigger" things and i tell you it's as hard as i thought it would be but it's also not as hard as i thought it would, but i think that's because it's not face to face and i know all i have to do is turn off the computer and nobody here can come get me or interfere with my life in any way or anything like that. i still can't comprehend how i could be around anybody that ever had anything to do with the way international in a face to face situation without totally freaking out, and i sitll can't even begin to understand any comfort in having a relationship with anybody that might "trigger" me. maybe some day?

thanks for taking the time to tell me some of your thoughts and experiences because it helps me to see things a different way from how i see them, and i've been thinking about this a lot today and how i like it here because i don't know anybody and don't have to know anybody but i get to talk about it all with people that knew about it all, which means that i don't have to have a relationship with anybody to get to talk about it all, which means that it is "safe" for me, and me being safe is something i haven't done very well so i get very different when it comes to "real life" people, which means that when i try to think about "real life" relationships and people from the way international i just break down into tears and usually have a full blown panic attack. does that make sense? and yes i am getting professional help. but i think i am probably a bit more "fouled" in some way because it was mostly all i knew and i was raised with it all and it defined who i was to the point that i am having to make myself all over again from the very beginning, and i even have to re-parent myself in many areas and some really intense stuff that sometimes i have to do in the hospital for a couple of days so that i won't hurt myself when i do them because it can be very scary stuff and brings up stuff i don't like to think about at all and i have been known to bang my head against the wall until i knock myself out and stuff like that, so i have to be watched when i do some of the work. so now that you all know i'm a real nut job you also know that this is scary for me and i am asking these things because i really am trying to understand how people "move on".

i admit that i've only got to see one brief moment of one brief relationship and that was a moment on a message board to boot, but i've seen other things in "real life" too that i relate to the ex cult thing, like in my therapy and classes they recommend that i don't get into any relationship for at least two years after an abusive relationship and after i've had intensive therapy and classes. even then they recommend that i keep a journal of what i'm attracted to in that other person and talk in classes and groups about why and let the others ask me the hard questions. also they recommend background checks and to talk to former partners of the other person so that if the other person has an abusive past then they recommend that the other person go through the therapy and classes for at least two years before a relationship is started. because this stuff gets into your head in a way that you don't even know and you can't know until you're in the middle of a situation and then probably it's too late to stop and analyze it, and then you're probably doing the same old thing you've always done and the "circle" just doesn't get broken. and i know having been in the way international is not different at all because i've had to also deal with having been in the way international as well as having been in too many abusive relationships (for me it was like the chicken and the egg because i never could tell which came first). i get that communication and working at it is important, but without long-term professional help i don't understand how it would work for the long-term unless it becomes a repeat performance of the relationships found before. and that makes me wonder if that isn't the basis for what people are looking for when hooking up with ex cultists. i don't know and that's why i'm asking the questions. it really scares me because to me it's like putting two ex cons together. the law doesn't allow it because the law knows what's going to happen. and even if it isn't marriage or friendship we're talking about, then it's a church or a "fellowship" or a "research ministry" and there's plenty of examples of those going sour because they're all the same dna of the father that spawned them. and i get that love can cover a multitude of "sins" but i also get "what's love got to do with it?" because the way international started out loving people up and then look what happened. maybe i'm just paranoid or something. oh and i'm not talking about staying with those you were with while in the way international. i don't mean to break up marriages and relationships and friendships. i'm talking about going back to reconnect with people you've haven't seen in years or to hook up with people you didn't know then but have since met because of here or some other ex cult place. and maybe i'm just more "fouled" than others.