(snip)...The Way's culture was hierarchical, structured and controlled by a central authority. We would say "its the Word" but in practice the central authority of the organization as the Way Corps took prominence in the hierarchy, was Dr. Wierwille.
There are many ways to do the same things, but in the Way we got stuck doing things one way - his way. His preferences and ideas drove the direction most of the major programs went in. That approach continued with Craig and proceeded to fail in lesser hands as it became possible for us to look over several years and see how it all worked out.
It could change, even today with De Lisle or whoever's in charge - but inertia'spreeeeeeetty well got them going in a set direction and way of doing things so I wouldn't hold my breath. Then again, anything can happen. It's up to them.
I'm sure if they made some cosmetic changes, moved the furniture around a little and said some nice things, show PFAL a few times again, there'd be some people flocking back.
A great point there, Socks…you using the word “inertia” reminded me of something I found on Wikipedia regarding mindset
“A mindset may be so firmly established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools. The latter phenomenon is also sometimes described as mental inertia, "groupthink", and it is often difficult to counteract its effects upon analysis and decision making processes.”
I heard something on the news the other day about an investigation left on autopilot…This idea fascinated me so I found a definition of autopilot
"The literal meaning of autopilot is a device that steers a ship, plane, or spacecraft by itself, without a person. However, the expression “on autopilot” has developed a different meaning. Here are some typical uses of the expression “on autopilot,” which should make its meaning clear:
He wasn’t thinking very hard, he just did his job on autopilot.
Instead of driving to school my brain was on autopilot, and I started driving to work!
By the third week of her campaign for mayor, Quimby was making all of her speeches on autopilot.
As you can tell from the examples above, to do something on autopilot means to do it without focusing on it, without thinking about what is happening."
In a sense I can think of a certain mindset as being on autopilot. Where I’m doing something, going through the motions without really thinking about it.
I agree with you - things could change – but that depends on if top leadership is willing to make the effort to change the direction of the existing mental inertia. That's a pretty tall order.
A great point there, Socks…you using the word “inertia” reminded me of something I found on Wikipedia regarding mindset
“A mindset may be so firmly established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools. The latter phenomenon is also sometimes described as mental inertia, "groupthink", and it is often difficult to counteract its effects upon analysis and decision making processes.”
I heard something on the news the other day about an investigation left on autopilot…This idea fascinated me so I found a definition of autopilot
"The literal meaning of autopilot is a device that steers a ship, plane, or spacecraft by itself, without a person. However, the expression “on autopilot” has developed a different meaning. Here are some typical uses of the expression “on autopilot,” which should make its meaning clear:
He wasn’t thinking very hard, he just did his job on autopilot.
Instead of driving to school my brain was on autopilot, and I started driving to work!
By the third week of her campaign for mayor, Quimby was making all of her speeches on autopilot.
As you can tell from the examples above, to do something on autopilot means to do it without focusing on it, without thinking about what is happening."
In a sense I can think of a certain mindset as being on autopilot. Where I’m doing something, going through the motions without really thinking about it.
I agree with you - things could change – but that depends on if top leadership is willing to make the effort to change the direction of the existing mental inertia. That's a pretty tall order.
Autopilot is something humans do without conscious thought. That's what habits are. Much of what we do every day is done without conscious thought.
1.autopilot - a cognitive state in which you act without self-awareness; "she went about her chores on automatic pilot"; "too much of the writing seems to have been done on automatic pilot"; "she talked and he dozed and my mind went on autopilot"
automatic pilot
unconsciousness - a state lacking normal awareness of the self or environment
In terms of 1) inertia, 2) automatic pilot and 3) unconsciousness..........imo, those apply to the underlings, NOT the leadership.
As socks stated above.... "The Way's culture was hierarchical, structured and controlled by a central authority. We would say "its the Word" but in practice the central authority of the organization as the Way Corps took prominence in the hierarchy, was Dr. Wierwille. There are many ways to do the same things, but in the Way we got stuck doing things one way - his way. His preferences and ideas drove the direction most of the major programs went in."
Wierwille was the CENTRAL AUTHORITY OF TWI and he was not on autopilot!
The doctrines of wierwille were instilled thru the subtle , gentle arm of the "re-education camps" [pfal classes]..........1) We have NO friends when it comes to "the word," 2) Your family, friends, co-workers and church leaders may forsake you....but this "word of God" will never forsake you, 3) If there are places in the Bible where this "word" is wrong, I will tell you, 4) The law of believing is the greatest law in the whole universe, 5) All the women in the kingdom belong to the king, 6) This "word" [that I teach] takes the place of the absent Christ, ......etc. etc.
But the pfal-doctrine was not enough to sustain wierwille's authoritarian structure.
Wierwille needed trained "instructors"........younger men and women, peers leading peers.
Wierwille was the author, abuser and enforcer of The Way Corps program......the next generation "Gestapo police force" that followed orders from central command [Wierwille]. The corps would be sent forth as disciplinarians of wierwille's doctrines, not as disciples of Christ. Rigorous, manipulative exercises were deployed within the corps training to eliminate self-identity and reformat us to the collective will of our "masters." When dissidents arose, wierwille and his top lieutenants quickly spotted the threat(s) and major confrontation erupted.....much of it, for public consumption. Isolation. Immersion. Intimidation. Indoctrination.
Corps were induced with the poison of wierwille's psycho-babble and pathologies:
wierwille's claim of snow-covered pumps on a sunny day to sanction his God-given calling
lock box secrecy, sexual favors to the man of god was a woman's gift of servitude
hot-blooded, vein-popping confrontations to corps.......yet, no devil spirit cast out
years of youth......talent, labor, money......stolen to prop up wierwille's bankrupt soul
in the end......wierwille "wished" he would have been the man he knew to be ---- ppfffttt
Rather than go down this road of "inertia"...........might I suggest the words of DWBH
on page 1 of this thread.
~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~
"I left the TWIt gulag in December, 1986 after 16 years in the cesspool. I "graduated" from the Way corpse in August, 1976. I was in that thing Johnny the drunk Townsend called the Yak Twig after Chairman Geer the bus driver destroyed TWIt with his putsch paper about some legendary, supposedly benevolent "patriarch" who was put one step above Saul of Tarsus as this man-o-gawd (MOG) for this our day and time and hour and minute and nanosecond.
I bought that purulent horse manure too, UNTIL I returned to your little mud hole in new Knoxville. I was on staff there from 1979-1986, when I left. That's where the truth and FACTS regarding dictor paul wierwille and his cult of perverted personality disorders began staring me in the face. Slowly but relentlessly those FACTS were oozing from the belly of that beast daily. The cognitive dissonance and abject immorality of what dictor and his boyz in da hoods were doing was horrifying. Truly and wildly against everything our Lord Christ stands for today. Psychopatholigical, alcohol-driven madness which literally killed innocents and drove a significant number of others to suicide! ALL in the name of "God's rightly divided Word" lived "in the renewed mind in manifestation" with complete and total allegiance to the MOG, "The Teacher", wayfers' "Father in the Word".
Unlike you de Liar, I did not bury my head or heart in that TWIt toilet. It did not take me 28 years of blatant foot-kissing and personal compromise to realize that something IS very rotten in TWItville, Ohio! So wrong that, no authentic Christian could ever in good conscience before the Lord stay there and continue to poison the waters of life for the genuine Christians who wanted just to love God and serve the bread of life to those in need.
And yet, here you are in 2016 agreeing to preside over that fraud of a minus-tray as if nothing bad enough ever happened that you must repent of before God and His Church, and ask for forgiveness from BOTH! That should be your number one task. But, I'm sure YOU don't "see the need" to do that, because you'd never agree to be pwesident if you even hinted at doing this right thing.
This after 28 years at the vortex of sin and spiritual illness that your precious headquarters continues to live and promote. That means you were there during dem fawg years. That means you signed da forehead's loyalty oath. That means you went through and SUPPORTED, the homo purges, the ending of the ROA and the WOW program due to "homo infiltration". The screaming, spit-filled propaganda and hate speech against all us possessed cop-outs, non-stop every day for years. The public humiliation and destruction of ANY & ALL opposition or perceived "rebellion" against his MOGship. The incredible fascist, neo-Nazi malignant paranoid narcissism which eventually threw out any bible and replaced it with "genuine spiritual suspicion" as the main rule of "faith and practice". The "no debt" lunacy. The fun enforcement of "mark and avoid". Taking the "prevailing word" and locking it up behind the newly constructed walls of Zion that you morons consented to. The remake of dictor's PFAL into an even more incoherently insane WAP class. The pathetic Way Disciples program to replace WOWs. The overt and persistent pathological serial rape and sexual assault that Da Forehead's perverted "father in the word" taught the boy to do so well, and with rabid enthusiasm. And, your pal Ros-a-lie also participated in enthusiastically as well with dictor paul himself, and Howard and Don, and literally scores of other MOGs including members of my corpse which she was in-rez with when she began in the Family Corpse II in August, 1975! Male and female Monsieur de Liar! Ask Ms. Lombardi-Martindale about that! Denial. Obfuscation. Outright pathological lying. Blame shifting and finger pointing is what you've been taught to accept and demand. That's what you accept with your revisionist history of Da Forehead's two "settled" serial rape and sexual assault charges, along with Rosie's whitewashed version of her own admissions to the criminal sexual behavior of the Da forehead and others that are in the sealed settlement documents. If you know all this after 28 years and you're still there, my de Liar moniker fits you quite well Monsieur! And, you'll wear it with PRIDE I'm sure.
Unlike the far more kind Skyrider, I'm not wasting one nanosecond of my Christian prayer life on you, or any of the rest of you hypocritical, whited sepulchers. You are anti(against)-Christ in words and works. You are vain babblers, ever learning yet never coming to the knowledge of the truth. You are an insult to the Lord who bought you. You are a false teacher. You and your rosie suffer from the root of all evil.....the love of money. You preach for filthy lucre's sake. You plagiarize the plagiarizers. You bow your knee to Baal. You are anathema to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Heavenly Father. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your "ministry" is a sham and a fraud. You serve the god of this world. REPENT! Ask God for forgiveness and apologize to those whom you have despitefully used. You have raped and plundered The Good Shepherd's precious flock. Their blood is on your hands. You cannot fool God! You cannot hide from the Righteous Judge either. You return to your own vomit, day after day, year after year. The blood of the righteous which you have shed screams through the ground against you. My only prayer for you is, "May the Lord have mercy upon your souls."
Thanks Skyrider for getting us back on track...gee I wonder if Mike B or Raymo ever read that first page...well, here's a second chance
When new people come to GreaseSpot Café for the first time......and read "the other side of the story"........I'm sure, for some, that it is jolting. Surely, it wasn't that bad, was it? And, if you thought it was THAT bad.....why did you stay all those years? Why do you attack Dr. Wierwille's work and ministry?
Those are valid questions.......yet, some refuse to stick around for further discussion or answers. They have their reasons for how twi changed their lives for the better and cite a couple of claims to the affirmative. BUT.......those who stick around for a lengthy discussion generally admit a list of things that they, too, disapproved of when it happened. We've seen these types of discussions time and again over the course of nearly 20 years.
Just the FACTS........1) nearly 550 clergy have LEFT twi speaks volumes, 2) over 3,300 way corps have exited and moved on with their lives, 3) serial plagiarism of wierwille's "research" has been widely documented, 4) sexual abuse and predation by wierwille, martindale, don and howard testifies to twi's moral/spiritual corruption, 5) hoarding over $64 million of assets/investments in this non-profit organization (cough, cough), 6) books, articles and testimonies that detail the trappings of a cult, 7) the untoward secrecy that lies within and how twi treats its employees like slave-labor, 8) full-time corps fiasco......no debt-policy, no-pregnancy, 15-minute time management fill-in sheets, 9) favoritism to certain staff and corps.....while others got "retribution assignments," 10) AND.......then, you realize the twi-revisionist history in play that EVERY WIERWILLE STORY OR EVENT has been altered, fabricated or sensationalized for marketing wierwille's mystique image......there is this gut-wrenching awareness that you've been scammed by a man with pathological issues stemming from his childhood.
Read Mrs. Wierwille's book......without the rose-colored glasses.
Seems like, unwittingly......she reveals the myth behind the man.
In all my years with twi......never saw wierwille walk by the spirit of God.
NONE of the big 6 manifestations. Not one!
Even his "speaking in tongues" was suspiciously repetitive.
In terms of 1) inertia, 2) automatic pilot and 3) unconsciousness..........imo, those apply to the underlings, NOT the leadership.
As socks stated above.... "The Way's culture was hierarchical, structured and controlled by a central authority. We would say "its the Word" but in practice the central authority of the organization as the Way Corps took prominence in the hierarchy, was Dr. Wierwille. There are many ways to do the same things, but in the Way we got stuck doing things one way - his way. His preferences and ideas drove the direction most of the major programs went in."
Wierwille was the CENTRAL AUTHORITY OF TWI and he was not on autopilot!
The doctrines of wierwille were instilled thru the subtle , gentle arm of the "re-education camps" [pfal classes]..........1) We have NO friends when it comes to "the word," 2) Your family, friends, co-workers and church leaders may forsake you....but this "word of God" will never forsake you, 3) If there are places in the Bible where this "word" is wrong, I will tell you, 4) The law of believing is the greatest law in the whole universe, 5) All the women in the kingdom belong to the king, 6) This "word" [that I teach] takes the place of the absent Christ, ......etc. etc.
But the pfal-doctrine was not enough to sustain wierwille's authoritarian structure.
Wierwille needed trained "instructors"........younger men and women, peers leading peers.
Wierwille was the author, abuser and enforcer of The Way Corps program......the next generation "Gestapo police force" that followed orders from central command [Wierwille]. The corps would be sent forth as disciplinarians of wierwille's doctrines, not as disciples of Christ. Rigorous, manipulative exercises were deployed within the corps training to eliminate self-identity and reformat us to the collective will of our "masters." When dissidents arose, wierwille and his top lieutenants quickly spotted the threat(s) and major confrontation erupted.....much of it, for public consumption. Isolation. Immersion. Intimidation. Indoctrination.
Corps were induced with the poison of wierwille's psycho-babble and pathologies:
wierwille's claim of snow-covered pumps on a sunny day to sanction his God-given calling
lock box secrecy, sexual favors to the man of god was a woman's gift of servitude
hot-blooded, vein-popping confrontations to corps.......yet, no devil spirit cast out
years of youth......talent, labor, money......stolen to prop up wierwille's bankrupt soul
in the end......wierwille "wished" he would have been the man he knew to be ---- ppfffttt
Rather than go down this road of "inertia"...........might I suggest the words of DWBH
on page 1 of this thread.
~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~
"I left the TWIt gulag in December, 1986 after 16 years in the cesspool. I "graduated" from the Way corpse in August, 1976. I was in that thing Johnny the drunk Townsend called the Yak Twig after Chairman Geer the bus driver destroyed TWIt with his putsch paper about some legendary, supposedly benevolent "patriarch" who was put one step above Saul of Tarsus as this man-o-gawd (MOG) for this our day and time and hour and minute and nanosecond.
I bought that purulent horse manure too, UNTIL I returned to your little mud hole in new Knoxville. I was on staff there from 1979-1986, when I left. That's where the truth and FACTS regarding dictor paul wierwille and his cult of perverted personality disorders began staring me in the face. Slowly but relentlessly those FACTS were oozing from the belly of that beast daily. The cognitive dissonance and abject immorality of what dictor and his boyz in da hoods were doing was horrifying. Truly and wildly against everything our Lord Christ stands for today. Psychopatholigical, alcohol-driven madness which literally killed innocents and drove a significant number of others to suicide! ALL in the name of "God's rightly divided Word" lived "in the renewed mind in manifestation" with complete and total allegiance to the MOG, "The Teacher", wayfers' "Father in the Word".
Unlike you de Liar, I did not bury my head or heart in that TWIt toilet. It did not take me 28 years of blatant foot-kissing and personal compromise to realize that something IS very rotten in TWItville, Ohio! So wrong that, no authentic Christian could ever in good conscience before the Lord stay there and continue to poison the waters of life for the genuine Christians who wanted just to love God and serve the bread of life to those in need.
And yet, here you are in 2016 agreeing to preside over that fraud of a minus-tray as if nothing bad enough ever happened that you must repent of before God and His Church, and ask for forgiveness from BOTH! That should be your number one task. But, I'm sure YOU don't "see the need" to do that, because you'd never agree to be pwesident if you even hinted at doing this right thing.
This after 28 years at the vortex of sin and spiritual illness that your precious headquarters continues to live and promote. That means you were there during dem fawg years. That means you signed da forehead's loyalty oath. That means you went through and SUPPORTED, the homo purges, the ending of the ROA and the WOW program due to "homo infiltration". The screaming, spit-filled propaganda and hate speech against all us possessed cop-outs, non-stop every day for years. The public humiliation and destruction of ANY & ALL opposition or perceived "rebellion" against his MOGship. The incredible fascist, neo-Nazi malignant paranoid narcissism which eventually threw out any bible and replaced it with "genuine spiritual suspicion" as the main rule of "faith and practice". The "no debt" lunacy. The fun enforcement of "mark and avoid". Taking the "prevailing word" and locking it up behind the newly constructed walls of Zion that you morons consented to. The remake of dictor's PFAL into an even more incoherently insane WAP class. The pathetic Way Disciples program to replace WOWs. The overt and persistent pathological serial rape and sexual assault that Da Forehead's perverted "father in the word" taught the boy to do so well, and with rabid enthusiasm. And, your pal Ros-a-lie also participated in enthusiastically as well with dictor paul himself, and Howard and Don, and literally scores of other MOGs including members of my corpse which she was in-rez with when she began in the Family Corpse II in August, 1975! Male and female Monsieur de Liar! Ask Ms. Lombardi-Martindale about that! Denial. Obfuscation. Outright pathological lying. Blame shifting and finger pointing is what you've been taught to accept and demand. That's what you accept with your revisionist history of Da Forehead's two "settled" serial rape and sexual assault charges, along with Rosie's whitewashed version of her own admissions to the criminal sexual behavior of the Da forehead and others that are in the sealed settlement documents. If you know all this after 28 years and you're still there, my de Liar moniker fits you quite well Monsieur! And, you'll wear it with PRIDE I'm sure.
Unlike the far more kind Skyrider, I'm not wasting one nanosecond of my Christian prayer life on you, or any of the rest of you hypocritical, whited sepulchers. You are anti(against)-Christ in words and works. You are vain babblers, ever learning yet never coming to the knowledge of the truth. You are an insult to the Lord who bought you. You are a false teacher. You and your rosie suffer from the root of all evil.....the love of money. You preach for filthy lucre's sake. You plagiarize the plagiarizers. You bow your knee to Baal. You are anathema to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Heavenly Father. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your "ministry" is a sham and a fraud. You serve the god of this world. REPENT! Ask God for forgiveness and apologize to those whom you have despitefully used. You have raped and plundered The Good Shepherd's precious flock. Their blood is on your hands. You cannot fool God! You cannot hide from the Righteous Judge either. You return to your own vomit, day after day, year after year. The blood of the righteous which you have shed screams through the ground against you. My only prayer for you is, "May the Lord have mercy upon your souls."
I see my role as "consultant", with personal experience.
The facts speak for themselves...anyone can interpret or align them as they wish but in order to get to the "truth"....the facts must be established without bias or prejudice.
To the degree we can do that, and I allow for a certain amount of bias as part of keepin' it real.
In the Way there was brain freeze on understanding the relationship between fact and truth - truth was "The Word" and there was no truth beyond the immutable spiritual truths of God and His Word. Facts were treated like the children of a lesser god, the terminal bits of reality that come and go with the winds of doubt and fear, never to be trusted.
In the Advanced class the teaching went that the revelation manifestations revealed (God willing) the "truths or facts concerning any situation about which it is humanly impossible to know anything about".......if memory serves and it seems to be, today. So there was a value to knowing "THE" facts of something, but typically that could go be devalued quickly if those facts were inconvenient or well, didn't serve someone's interests.....cause if you think about it God was either a NOT REVEALING ANY FACTS by those revelation manifestations in A LOT OF situations over the years or those facts being revealed were being ignore - or missed. Or both.
- And a brief aside into inertia and auto pilots - it's worth considering "that expectation (is understood) to influence perception"....if you ever learned about Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle it helps, or has helped me to understand a little better how that works in the day-to-day realities of life and how to deal with "truths and facts" and the cross-life of the spiritual and physical. I picked it up in learning programming and dealing with random logic and how predictive modeling assembles scenarios, stuff that says "what might happen", which all makes my li'l geek brain twitch with excitement. I'm just a low level logic junkie but had the opportunity to work with some bonafide Brainiacs so it helped. I think. Anyway, I would agree with skyrider's hierarchy there and how it relates to the authority structure of The Way Inc.
As to inertia - the Way really shows how long something can coast on past energy and go on seemingly forever while not really doing anything to produce new outcomes....but organizations very often do that - they just keep going with or without new energy, in the direction they are pointed until something shifts them into a different direction.....since the earlier generations are so protective of the status quo....it's likely to continue as long as some of them remain. Time does go on however.
So - when I was in the way I understood there to be a valid path for facts having a necessary and legitimate place in hmm..."The Word"....if only because the Bible is a book that must be translated and interpreted (ie "rightly divided" in PFAL) and Jesus Christ was a physically living savior who perfectly lived God's will and intents in what He did, said and taught....and I'm a physical human being whose life/pneuma is now holy/hagion and living a life fueled now by and with eternal realities and "truth" that is in fact, "LIVING FACT"....and the redemption and salvation of man has happened is being lives in a physical plane - so if facts are to be avoided we end up with a lot of halo's and no angels under them.
So, long winded way to say that ..... in the Way years we kinda never knew what was going on AS A GROUP without validation from Dr. Wierwille or the nearest extension of that authority. Individually we might do like what I did - I participated, learned and deferred to his authority and decision making in many situations and attempted to execute on the greater vision and plan of the Way Nash as it was brought down from VPW or his designees.
To me, them's the facts. Everyone may interpret them differently but there's no debate that what VPW said was what was done. That's why I don't subscribe to the theory that "the Way was fine until Martindale/Geer/Finnegan/Whoever screwed everything up".......His main guys all learned from him and acted in complete alignment with his wishes.
**** Compared to how I later learned and worked in professional organizations, I'd rate his mentorship about a D plus - he mostly trained others to continue what he was doing and when he felt they'd moved or deviated EVEN THE SLIGHTEST bit from his individual wishes he'd - well, sometimes he'd literally break down into tears and end up yelling at all of us because apparently we didn't care and wanted to destroy him and his life's work or something. I write that and I don't mean it in metaphor or exaggerate - he acted that way many times. And there's no way a growing young man of 20 something can't experience that and wonder if it's how we're all supposed to end up - and realize that no, that's his weaknesses, not mine or ours.
Anyway, I do value the time and work that Dr. VP Wierwille put into the Way, the PFAL courses and my overall exposure to his life. I did learn a lot and I grew up myself through that exposure but in hindsight I was never nearly as close to him as I might have wanted to be or even thought I was, for lots of reasons - some mine and some his, as El Presidente' Deluxe of the Way.
When new people come to GreaseSpot Café for the first time......and read "the other side of the story"........I'm sure, for some, that it is jolting. Surely, it wasn't that bad, was it? And, if you thought it was THAT bad.....why did you stay all those years? Why do you attack Dr. Wierwille's work and ministry?
Those are valid questions.......yet, some refuse to stick around for further discussion or answers. They have their reasons for how twi changed their lives for the better and cite a couple of claims to the affirmative. BUT.......those who stick around for a lengthy discussion generally admit a list of things that they, too, disapproved of when it happened. We've seen these types of discussions time and again over the course of nearly 20 years... (snip)
There is so much thought-provoking stuff in what you’ve said, Skyrider !
I entered the Way Corps program toward the latter part of my 12 year involvement with TWI. “Fortunately” I was in residence when the $hit hit the fan (pause for special effects ) – the night Chris G read “The Passing of a Patriarch” and then all the commotion that followed after that. I think it took the firsthand
experience of a collapsing house of cards to jar me awake (mentally speaking). Maybe it was that jarring effect that helped to shatter the rose-colored glasses I wore for 12 years – I started having serious questions and doubts about wierwille, the ministry and even PFAL.
The Way Ministry – like a house of cards, was built on a shaky (and shady ) foundation and will collapse if a necessary element is removed. That’s why it needs continually propping up – and covering up by lies for it to continue in its decrepit “life” of using people. The more wierwille and his work is scrutinized the more one will find the treacherous, deceitful, exploitative and abusive basis for The Way Ministry. That all reflects the nature of its founder. wierwille plagiarized - he stole the work of others - and lied about it - saying it was his own work - so as to garner the respect and allegiance of others. I went into the way corps thinking I was going to learn the best way to serve God from THE man of God - and come to find out I was serving a con man...he's dead and gone but the con lives on.
" Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta." - vpw, every time, including when he was making a point that he could actually speak in tongues at will/ whenever he wanted. Either God was sending him, verbatim, the same message EVERY time, down to the last syllable, or vpw was faking it.
" Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta." - vpw, every time, including when he was making a point that he could actually speak in tongues at will/ whenever he wanted. Either God was sending him, verbatim, the same message EVERY time, down to the last syllable, or vpw was faking it.
He confessed that, on at least one occasion, he faked it by reciting something in Greek he had memorized. From the account of this occasion, he seemed to be proud of himself for being able to pull off the deception.
Sky, you make numerous excellent points. Including that while Wierwille was alive, he was making the policy.
I see the inertia and autopilot at work when new splinters break away and rather than actually figure out new thinking (new light) on God's word and will, they just cannot break away from Wierwille in their minds... three and a half decades after he's gone.
The Way Ministry – like a house of cards, was built on a shaky (and shady ) foundation and will collapse if a necessary element is removed. That’s why it needs continually propping up – and covering up by lies for it to continue in its decrepit “life” of using people. The more wierwille and his work is scrutinized the more one will find the treacherous, deceitful, exploitative and abusive basis for The Way Ministry. That all reflects the nature of its founder. wierwille plagiarized - he stole the work of others - and lied about it - saying it was his own work - so as to garner the respect and allegiance of others. I went into the way corps thinking I was going to learn the best way to serve God from THE man of God - and come to find out I was serving a con man...he's dead and gone but the con lives on.
Yeah, T-Bone........if followers would only scrutinize [ aka - research ] ..... 1) wierwille's background and 2) the plagiarized work.
Ain't it ironic.........folks who CLAIM to cleave to wierwille's research will not research wierwille's background and deception!!
" Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta." - vpw, every time, including when he was making a point that he could actually speak in tongues at will/ whenever he wanted. Either God was sending him, verbatim, the same message EVERY time, down to the last syllable, or vpw was faking it.
I know, WordWolf........that's why I said it was suspiciously repetitive.
In all honesty and nearly ashamed to admit it......when I first sat thru the pfal class, while in college, this repetitiveness jumped out at me. Seriously, I listened intently in those last couple of sessions of pfal whenever wierwille displayed out loud his speaking in tongues. Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta. And, a few minutes later, he spoke again....... Lo SHANta ma-la--ka-SI-kelo SHONtai. What did I hear? Maybe THREE (??) very slight diversions from the first.
The reason many of us can still recall verbatim this.........is because his "Lo SHANta" was always so repetitive.
I swear that wierwille finished teaching those last segments of that PFAL '77 Live Class at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana......by repeating his staple "Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta" to demonstrate it, AGAIN, to one and all.
Sky, you make numerous excellent points. Including that while Wierwille was alive, he was making the policy.
I see the inertia and autopilot at work when new splinters break away and rather than actually figure out new thinking (new light) on God's word and will, they just can break away from Wierwille in their minds... three and a half decades after he's gone.
Rocky......I agree with you.
The inertia and autopilot at work in these new splinters is recognizable and tangible. These corps are NOT LEADERS......they, too, are underlings. Some of these guys who were 16th, 17th and 18th corps........yeah, guys like DeLisle, Rupp, Rico and Ed Horney......were/are underlings. Do they make major decisions? Do they establish groundbreaking policy? I would suggest that Rosalie and Donna carry the mantle of power now at the mothership. All these other splinter cult leaders are sucking wind.
How many times here at GSC have we discussed the moving of boundary lines? LOTS, right? Yet, these people splinter away from what they deemed as the "absolute power of the directors in twi"........and then do not take the time to investigate and ruminate how they got deceived?
What if we were to hypothesize that wierwille's deception runs even deeper?
Moving the boundary lines of.........what constitutes "the word of God" and power from on high.
Moving the boundary lines of.........prayer life and speaking in tongues.
Moving the boundary lines of.........how Jesus Christ functions today as the head of the Body.
Moving the boundary lines of.........dispensational doctrine to suppress the author and finisher of our faith.
Moving the boundary lines of.........all that constitutes living valiantly for the truth.
Etc. etc. etc.
All those big truths of life........and yet, wierwille diverted our attention to 1) way tree structures and its false allegiance, 2) renewed mind mantras of mind over matter, 3) carnal-minded teachings and misdirection on pre-marital sex/adultery, 4) cherry-picked scriptures that kept us knocking doors and not investing in our lives, education and fulfillment, 5) unbridled adulation to wierwille to extremes, 6) "moving the word" via his pfal-class (ppffftt), and 7) ....were we really "speaking the wonderful works of God" via speaking in tongues and delivering prophecy to believers present in those twig meetings, month after month, year after year???
Hamster on a wheel..........hamster on a wheel. Sigh.
I agree with Socks regarding this, as I was an eye-witness, like Socks, to the manner in which VPW conducted himself and ran the organization:
" … I don't subscribe to the theory that "the Way was fine until Martindale/Geer/Finnegan/Whoever screwed everything up".......His main guys all learned from him and acted in complete alignment with his wishes."
I agree with Socks regarding this, as I was an eye-witness, like Socks, to the manner in which VPW conducted himself and ran the organization:
" … I don't subscribe to the theory that "the Way was fine until Martindale/Geer/Finnegan/Whoever screwed everything up".......His main guys all learned from him and acted in complete alignment with his wishes."
Hey kiddo! What's for lunch - millet and carrot - raisin salad? (I say that but I learned how to cook organically grown millet so it's not the consistency of drywall mud and given it's a gluten free "grain" I've played around with it, even working on trying some of it in my whole grain sourdough recipe's.)
Your book fills in some blanks for me of the timeline in those early years when the Southeastern Way Home outreach was coming up and online into the Way Corps and the introduction of Martindale from Oklahoma into the mix. There's a couple things in there that open up the "inertia" of The Way.
Given that we got involved with the Way within a year or two of the final version of PFAL going into the can in 1967 and he died in 1985, he taught, trained and transitioned his "team" of close followers in a short window of about 17-18 years during which a lot of the work was to memorialize his legacy and heritage into the brand of "The Way". Allowing for a couple years transitioning in (California and New York) and a couple years of ill health at the end restricting his ability to move and travel freely - there's a sweet spot of productivity of about 13-14 years. In that time frame we can see the main players and how they were positioned - and positioned themselves - to be part of VPW's core/Corps leadership.
While VPW ran the show, he called the shots and we did it as he directed. He allowed for others to contribute yes but it was always within his aims and goals, his view of the future. He created the system of controls that allowed for a Martindale to take over and do as he willed, without recourse or oversight. Somehow he assumed that he would always keep a guiding hand on the rudder of influence - but when push came to shove everyone after him ran it exactly as he had, with complete autocratic authority within a theocracy and one man at the top who wore the title "God's Man for Our Day and Time".
Yup, the millet is long gone, but the gut reaction lingers. Ugh. In case you don't know, that's an analogy for the "Word" that VPW fed us, amounting to a con of Himalayan proportions. And I should know. I've actually been to the Himalayan mountains … in May 2009.
Socks, eye-witnesses willing to give their two cents are few and far between. I get "fan mail" through the Contact page on my website from former Wayfers either defending VPW and "shame on me," or from some too afraid to speak up or out due to relatives still in TWI or due to their own weariness … which I totally understand. Who wants to put themselves out there for criticism and hate mail, which I get now and then. But I knew that going into what I did ... publishing my story in a book.
Wake up people, Wierwille set this whole thing in motion from day one. It was never "pure" but got corrupted later on. He was out to set himself up as "the answer man."
Yup, the millet is long gone, but the gut reaction lingers. Ugh. In case you don't know, that's an analogy for the "Word" that VPW fed us, amounting to a con of Himalayan proportions. And I should know. I've actually been to the Himalayan mountains … in May 2009.
Socks, eye-witnesses willing to give their two cents are few and far between. I get "fan mail" through the Contact page on my website from former Wayfers either defending VPW and "shame on me," or from some too afraid to speak up or out due to relatives still in TWI or due to their own weariness … which I totally understand. Who wants to put themselves out there for criticism and hate mail, which I get now and then. But I knew that going into what I did ... publishing my story in a book.
Wake up people, Wierwille set this whole thing in motion from day one. It was never "pure" but got corrupted later on. He was out to set himself up as "the answer man."
PLEEEAASE.
Sigh.
Yeh, millet is one of those things I look at and think "now what can I do with this?"....it does have a huge positive affect on my gut, which I loved when I discovered it. I was born with a stomach ulcer condition, at least it's one of my earliest memories as a toddler - my stomach hurting terribly suddenly for no apparent reason - course I was all of about 3 at the time, so what did I know? Diagnosed as "gastritis" then as a peptic ulcer I had to be careful in the 50's and 60's what I ate and I learned calming and meditation techniques before I was 10, anything to deal with the ups and downs of the condition which could curl me up into a ball for hours when it acted up. I turned to drugs in my youth for the usual social reasons but found pot and methamphetamines took the edge off and a blend of the two could normalize me under almost any conditions. My friends from that era that are still around all have a story or two about how I stayed "high" all the time, and it wasn't until I was prayed for and healed following an auto accident, that I came around. Self-medication of the worst kind - and years later when my kids were getting into music I cried on the floor with them when Kurt Cobaine ("Nirvana") killed himself with a shotgun to the head...they really liked his music and I'd come to appreciate his unusual chords and lyrics and we'd connected on his music, but he suffered from stomach ulcers and god knows what other conditions and it was known the pain he was in sometimes and his use of heroin. I completely understood where it had taken him and and how he'd chosen to end it, anyone who's been down that path knows what it's like to just want the pain to stop and to know how to do it but you just don't want to do it anymore..... It made me so incredibly thankful for the deliverance God and Jesus Christ brought into my life and I told my kids about my own experience with it..........and millet? Millet still has a very settling affect on my stomach, of "well being"....I feel great when I eat it, and of course it's bio-nutrition is good for acting against stomach peptic ulcers.............I get why most people don't like it, but it's one of those foods that does so much good for me I had to figure out how to cook the dammed stuff so it would eat better. Funny how stuff can be so different between different people.
I appreciate your candor and effort ms penworks. I told someone recently to check out your book first hand, and that you are entitled to your story and your insight - it's YOURS and provides a view from your vantage point that no one else has and that's important. There are things we may not agree on and I often find myself the odd man out with a lot of people because I am a fully feathered and nested Christian and my faith is for and with no one but God and myself, and those close to me. I value honesty. I find over and over through the years that whether others believe the same as I or I with them is less important than if we love life and live our lives to the best truth we know. I'm really glad we still share a friendship - the wife and I send our best.
There are still people out there who will go to their graves (some have already gone.) insisting we were part of some noble cause.
Well, my life's cause was and is as "noble" as I thought it to be. I will go to my grave saying exactly what I did and was trying to do my whole life with the message of God and Jesus Christ. I've done a lot of things, partnered with a lot of people - hell, today I pretty much did zip other than pray for some people which in and of itself is no small thing, to me, but I don't spend every day with the best efforts expended or doing them with the best or right people for that matter. My life is what it is - but I am a HELLA lot better for what I've done and learned than if I hadn't. In the big circle of life that sucks some ways and rocks in others - mostly it rocks.
If I face my Creator at some point and He says I've been weighed and found wanting, I'll accept that - what else is there to do? In the meantime, I'm full speed ahead until you hear otherwise.
There are still people out there who will go to their graves (some have already gone.) insisting we were part of some noble cause.
Yeah, waysider........I hear you.
It all comes down to the difference between.......1) we and 2) me.
Nothing "noble" in the twit-cult as an individual.......only groups: twigs, branches, WOWs, corps, staff, etc. The mandatory wearing of nametags....gave specificity to the GROUP you represented: (to name a few)....... 1) adv class grad, 2) wow or wow vet, 3) corps, 4) college division, or 5) staff.
Cult indoctrination is only achieved by groupthink mentality.......that is why The Way, Inc. moved in herds, in groups.
Group meetings, group weddings, group counseling, group confrontations, group readings of "Bedside Manners"......lest we forget, "the man of God's" time was valuable, therefore HE rarily had the time to meet with an individual one-on-on. And yes......wierwille said this to the corps when he was getting pushback on those group weddings in 1981. [Yet, wierwille had the time later that night to spend with an alcohol-enriched corps girl one-ON-one in his motor coach.] ........pppffffttt.
The Lord looks on the heart of each one of us, individually. The Book of Psalms vividly displays the Lord's heart to you and me.
There are still people out there who will go to their graves (some have already gone.) insisting we were part of some noble cause.
11 hours ago, skyrider said:
Yeah, waysider........I hear you.
It all comes down to the difference between.......1) we and 2) me.
Nothing "noble" in the twit-cult as an individual.......only groups: twigs, branches, WOWs, corps, staff, etc. The mandatory wearing of nametags....gave specificity to the GROUP you represented: (to name a few)....... 1) adv class grad, 2) wow or wow vet, 3) corps, 4) college division, or 5) staff.
Cult indoctrination is only achieved by groupthink mentality.......that is why The Way, Inc. moved in herds, in groups.
Group meetings, group weddings, group counseling, group confrontations, group readings of "Bedside Manners"......lest we forget, "the man of God's" time was valuable, therefore HE rarily had the time to meet with an individual one-on-on. And yes......wierwille said this to the corps when he was getting pushback on those group weddings in 1981. [Yet, wierwille had the time later that night to spend with an alcohol-enriched corps girl one-ON-one in his motor coach.] ........pppffffttt.
The Lord looks on the heart of each one of us, individually. The Book of Psalms vividly displays the Lord's heart to you and me.
I agree with Waysider…and I like the dichotomy that Skyrider mentioned (“we” or the group vs me the individual) - and that got me thinking on how I’ve readjusted my values scale over the years since I let TWI.
I don’t know if trying to live a good, kind and honest life can be considered a “noble cause” but I can say with a clear conscience that’s something I’ve tried to do all my life. And that’s probably what frustrated me the most in trying to be a successful sales rep for TWI.
I bought into the supposedly noble cause of “moving the Word over the world” but most of the time I felt like a failure because of my inability to get people signed up for the class. You’d think (using my personal scale of values) being friendly, helpful and sharing stuff about the Bible with all who crossed my path would count for something – but I can’t even begin to count the number of times leaders would stress we should spend 80% of our time with the 20% who want to “move the Word”. Which in way-speak meant (depending on what level the 20 percenters were at) take the class, go WOW, go way corps, go in some program…it basically means you should motivate people to do whatever TWI says is “doing the Word”.
Talking about how I let TWI’s priorities outweigh my own scale of values is not to say my whole time of involvement was a totally bad experience. Life is too short to paint my experiences in such broad strokes. I met a lot of good, kind and honest people and had a lot of good times too (usually good times didn’t revolve around official TWI functions…like when some of us went up to a little bar in Albion not too far from Rome City. And I don’t know how many quarters I pumped into the Juke Box and waited and waited and waited for Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On” to play. Finally, as we were about to leave, the song came on and our little group of wayfers went nuts on the dance floor. Yeah – good times…btw, I also learned there how to get the most bang for the buck abiding by the 2 drink limit rule – by “discovering” Long Island Iced Tea…yowzer the good times!!!).
Honestly, it was the good people (some were in leadership positions) and sweet times that made life in TWI bearable. But it was the a$$holes (some who were in leadership positions) along with the corporate agendas and insidious machinations that made life in TWI almost intolerable.
Quote- WordWolf replying to Mike B- [There's some who claim it's evil for us to expose what vpw and lcm did- but those same people are not outraged that they did it. To them, it's worse to expose vpw as a plagiarizing rapist who drugged women than for him to have drugged and raped the women. I'm NOT exaggerating.]
Me- Yes, keep the image/idol sacred, do NOT pull it off the pedestal. Protect the abuser not the abused since he is 1) their HOPE, they have too much invested in "the way" and 2) re: connecting to the suffering caused by him, they are afraid, mind-controlled, and disconnected in basic ways from human need, love, empathy, suffering, their own and others.
Quote- Mike B- I believe we were taught more Truth than any other organization on the planet, and I still believe that to be true. "
Quote- WordWolf- [Due to vpw plagiarizing some quality Christians, I believe we were taught some Truth while in twi, but not everything we were taught there was Truth or truth. Furthermore, there's plenty of quality Christians who've never heard of twi, vpw, or anyone connected with twi. vpw did his best to put forth that himself was some great one, that ALL the quality teachings he had were from him, and that all Christians everywhere else were flawed and INFERIOR to twi Christians. I believe all of that was error- to say the least. The idea that God wasn't relying solely on a plagiarizing rapist to get things done is rather comforting- and rather sensible, IMHO.]
Me- THANK YOU, YES with a few additional thoughts. If I may share, it is still very painful to me that I was totally duped for 35++ years by certain men (and women) who damaged my life and my family's lives so effectively- vpw et al, then chris g and co, with their "their rightly dividing The Word", etc. Yes God rescued me when I was lost, thru the way ministry; yes I learned some invaluable unique truths. Yes, the community and programs were places where I could initially gain some attachments and safety in my recovery from previous traumas, until they were no longer safe places, and re-traumatizing occurred. So several things are coming up, if I may share and process further:
1) brokenness- the sexual abuse/promiscuity, the mental abuse plus the emotional neglect, and the Cultic dogmatic withdrawing mindset caused severe brokenness in my life, in my marriage, and then in my children's lives due to the dissolving of said social/spiritual community, divorce, and their father's brokenness.
2) Posts re: emotional/mental vulnerability to and total acceptance of a "benevolent" father figure's views/life style/culture; resulting auto-pilot, lack of focus, mind control, self-sacrifice, ETC. Also, for those with an intellectual background perhaps, the whole "mathematical exactness and scientific precision" promise drew us in. What a deception. So you teach me (over and over again), I receive it repeatedly deeper and deeper...
3) Naming vpw as a plagiarizing rapist- good! And I would like to attempt to en-capsulize the man with the additional names of deluded/deluding, extremely narcissistic, extremely controlling, power/money stealing, psychopathic [i.e. a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one's actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies], plagiarizing rapist.
4) It has been a LONG HAUL to find and actually trust God my true Father and Jesus my true Lord, Savior, and Friend. But it has been worth it. SO WORTH IT.
5) Breaking soul ties and attachments based on deceivers' truth mixed with lies, their abusive leadership, and my naive trust/shortsightedness- it's still a journey out of trauma victim realities.... E.g. I loved the "Victim to Victor" blue book chapter and (supposed) author... Now I say YES! to GOD"S TRUTHS AND DELIVERANCE, and NO! and to the plagiarizing poser!! I was a victim who thought I was wrong and you were right. But no longer. Think I will read DWBH's words until they sink in-
"... you hypocritical, whited sepulchers. You are anti(against)-Christ in words and works. You are vain babblers...You are an insult to the Lord who bought you. You are a false teacher... You preach for filthy lucre's sake... You bow your knee to Baal. You are anathema to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Heavenly Father. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your "ministry" is a sham and a fraud. You serve the god of this world. REPENT! Ask God for forgiveness and apologize to those whom you have despitefully used. You have raped and plundered The Good Shepherd's precious flock. Their blood is on your hands. You cannot fool God! You cannot hide from the Righteous Judge either. You return to your own vomit, day after day, year after year. The blood of the righteous which you have shed screams through the ground against you. My only prayer for you is, "May the Lord have mercy upon your souls."
Yup, the millet is long gone, but the gut reaction lingers. Ugh. In case you don't know, that's an analogy for the "Word" that VPW fed us, amounting to a con of Himalayan proportions. And I should know. I've actually been to the Himalayan mountains … in May 2009.
Socks, eye-witnesses willing to give their two cents are few and far between. I get "fan mail" through the Contact page on my website from former Wayfers either defending VPW and "shame on me," or from some too afraid to speak up or out due to relatives still in TWI or due to their own weariness … which I totally understand. Who wants to put themselves out there for criticism and hate mail, which I get now and then. But I knew that going into what I did ... publishing my story in a book.
Wake up people, Wierwille set this whole thing in motion from day one. It was never "pure" but got corrupted later on. He was out to set himself up as "the answer man."
PLEEEAASE.
Sigh.
Penworks..........thanks again for publishing your story.
The fact that you have received hate mail and criticism thru your contact page on your website......validates "the cult-like mentality" of many who became obsessed with wierwille's myths and mysticism. The repetition of classes, teaching and programs has indoctrinated a zealous following of loyalists......no matter what. Clearly, the academic field has a protective/vested interest in plagiarism and anyone who claims to do research ought to understand the destructive impact that plagiarism imposes. Wierwille's plagiarism was theft.
Far more than just plagiarism, though.......wierwille has been charged with unethical, ungodly and criminal activity by a swath of the ex-twi community. And, rightfully so. As your book depicts the currents of manipulation, deception and exploitation moving beneath the surface and pulling seaward. One person's story of swirling relationships and judgments swept you away from standing safely on shore.
Thanks again for the hundreds/thousands of hours you put into writing your book, Penworks. I know that it is one of those books that I will pick off the shelf from time to time and read, again, its salient truths. All the best to you and yours.
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skyrider
The announcement that you, Jean-Yves, will be twi's next president has reached GreaseSpot Café. Knowing you from those early days in Quebec City, and your WOW year in Toronto.......I am not surpr
DontWorryBeHappy
Thanks Skyrider! Another tremendous series of posts from a long-time GSC stalwart. Honest and forthright with volumes of FACTS to substantiate your every word. A reason your continued presence he
Twinky
And that would be God being kind to them... Chocky, your "news footage" well represents the wreck of Wayfers' lives after TWI and the "road to Damascus" that opened our eyes to the evil of TWI.
T-Bone
A great point there, Socks…you using the word “inertia” reminded me of something I found on Wikipedia regarding mindset
“A mindset may be so firmly established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools. The latter phenomenon is also sometimes described as mental inertia, "groupthink", and it is often difficult to counteract its effects upon analysis and decision making processes.”
I heard something on the news the other day about an investigation left on autopilot…This idea fascinated me so I found a definition of autopilot
"The literal meaning of autopilot is a device that steers a ship, plane, or spacecraft by itself, without a person. However, the expression “on autopilot” has developed a different meaning. Here are some typical uses of the expression “on autopilot,” which should make its meaning clear:
He wasn’t thinking very hard, he just did his job on autopilot.
Instead of driving to school my brain was on autopilot, and I started driving to work!
By the third week of her campaign for mayor, Quimby was making all of her speeches on autopilot.
As you can tell from the examples above, to do something on autopilot means to do it without focusing on it, without thinking about what is happening."
In a sense I can think of a certain mindset as being on autopilot. Where I’m doing something, going through the motions without really thinking about it.
I agree with you - things could change – but that depends on if top leadership is willing to make the effort to change the direction of the existing mental inertia. That's a pretty tall order.
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Rocky
Autopilot is something humans do without conscious thought. That's what habits are. Much of what we do every day is done without conscious thought.
1.autopilot - a cognitive state in which you act without self-awareness; "she went about her chores on automatic pilot"; "too much of the writing seems to have been done on automatic pilot"; "she talked and he dozed and my mind went on autopilot"
automatic pilot
unconsciousness - a state lacking normal awareness of the self or environment
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skyrider
In terms of 1) inertia, 2) automatic pilot and 3) unconsciousness..........imo, those apply to the underlings, NOT the leadership.
As socks stated above.... "The Way's culture was hierarchical, structured and controlled by a central authority. We would say "its the Word" but in practice the central authority of the organization as the Way Corps took prominence in the hierarchy, was Dr. Wierwille. There are many ways to do the same things, but in the Way we got stuck doing things one way - his way. His preferences and ideas drove the direction most of the major programs went in."
Wierwille was the CENTRAL AUTHORITY OF TWI and he was not on autopilot!
The doctrines of wierwille were instilled thru the subtle , gentle arm of the "re-education camps" [pfal classes]..........1) We have NO friends when it comes to "the word," 2) Your family, friends, co-workers and church leaders may forsake you....but this "word of God" will never forsake you, 3) If there are places in the Bible where this "word" is wrong, I will tell you, 4) The law of believing is the greatest law in the whole universe, 5) All the women in the kingdom belong to the king, 6) This "word" [that I teach] takes the place of the absent Christ, ......etc. etc.
But the pfal-doctrine was not enough to sustain wierwille's authoritarian structure.
Wierwille needed trained "instructors"........younger men and women, peers leading peers.
Wierwille was the author, abuser and enforcer of The Way Corps program......the next generation "Gestapo police force" that followed orders from central command [Wierwille]. The corps would be sent forth as disciplinarians of wierwille's doctrines, not as disciples of Christ. Rigorous, manipulative exercises were deployed within the corps training to eliminate self-identity and reformat us to the collective will of our "masters." When dissidents arose, wierwille and his top lieutenants quickly spotted the threat(s) and major confrontation erupted.....much of it, for public consumption. Isolation. Immersion. Intimidation. Indoctrination.
Corps were induced with the poison of wierwille's psycho-babble and pathologies:
Rather than go down this road of "inertia"...........might I suggest the words of DWBH
on page 1 of this thread.
~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~
"I left the TWIt gulag in December, 1986 after 16 years in the cesspool. I "graduated" from the Way corpse in August, 1976. I was in that thing Johnny the drunk Townsend called the Yak Twig after Chairman Geer the bus driver destroyed TWIt with his putsch paper about some legendary, supposedly benevolent "patriarch" who was put one step above Saul of Tarsus as this man-o-gawd (MOG) for this our day and time and hour and minute and nanosecond.
I bought that purulent horse manure too, UNTIL I returned to your little mud hole in new Knoxville. I was on staff there from 1979-1986, when I left. That's where the truth and FACTS regarding dictor paul wierwille and his cult of perverted personality disorders began staring me in the face. Slowly but relentlessly those FACTS were oozing from the belly of that beast daily. The cognitive dissonance and abject immorality of what dictor and his boyz in da hoods were doing was horrifying. Truly and wildly against everything our Lord Christ stands for today. Psychopatholigical, alcohol-driven madness which literally killed innocents and drove a significant number of others to suicide! ALL in the name of "God's rightly divided Word" lived "in the renewed mind in manifestation" with complete and total allegiance to the MOG, "The Teacher", wayfers' "Father in the Word".
Unlike you de Liar, I did not bury my head or heart in that TWIt toilet. It did not take me 28 years of blatant foot-kissing and personal compromise to realize that something IS very rotten in TWItville, Ohio! So wrong that, no authentic Christian could ever in good conscience before the Lord stay there and continue to poison the waters of life for the genuine Christians who wanted just to love God and serve the bread of life to those in need.
And yet, here you are in 2016 agreeing to preside over that fraud of a minus-tray as if nothing bad enough ever happened that you must repent of before God and His Church, and ask for forgiveness from BOTH! That should be your number one task. But, I'm sure YOU don't "see the need" to do that, because you'd never agree to be pwesident if you even hinted at doing this right thing.
This after 28 years at the vortex of sin and spiritual illness that your precious headquarters continues to live and promote. That means you were there during dem fawg years. That means you signed da forehead's loyalty oath. That means you went through and SUPPORTED, the homo purges, the ending of the ROA and the WOW program due to "homo infiltration". The screaming, spit-filled propaganda and hate speech against all us possessed cop-outs, non-stop every day for years. The public humiliation and destruction of ANY & ALL opposition or perceived "rebellion" against his MOGship. The incredible fascist, neo-Nazi malignant paranoid narcissism which eventually threw out any bible and replaced it with "genuine spiritual suspicion" as the main rule of "faith and practice". The "no debt" lunacy. The fun enforcement of "mark and avoid". Taking the "prevailing word" and locking it up behind the newly constructed walls of Zion that you morons consented to. The remake of dictor's PFAL into an even more incoherently insane WAP class. The pathetic Way Disciples program to replace WOWs. The overt and persistent pathological serial rape and sexual assault that Da Forehead's perverted "father in the word" taught the boy to do so well, and with rabid enthusiasm. And, your pal Ros-a-lie also participated in enthusiastically as well with dictor paul himself, and Howard and Don, and literally scores of other MOGs including members of my corpse which she was in-rez with when she began in the Family Corpse II in August, 1975! Male and female Monsieur de Liar! Ask Ms. Lombardi-Martindale about that! Denial. Obfuscation. Outright pathological lying. Blame shifting and finger pointing is what you've been taught to accept and demand. That's what you accept with your revisionist history of Da Forehead's two "settled" serial rape and sexual assault charges, along with Rosie's whitewashed version of her own admissions to the criminal sexual behavior of the Da forehead and others that are in the sealed settlement documents. If you know all this after 28 years and you're still there, my de Liar moniker fits you quite well Monsieur! And, you'll wear it with PRIDE I'm sure.
Unlike the far more kind Skyrider, I'm not wasting one nanosecond of my Christian prayer life on you, or any of the rest of you hypocritical, whited sepulchers. You are anti(against)-Christ in words and works. You are vain babblers, ever learning yet never coming to the knowledge of the truth. You are an insult to the Lord who bought you. You are a false teacher. You and your rosie suffer from the root of all evil.....the love of money. You preach for filthy lucre's sake. You plagiarize the plagiarizers. You bow your knee to Baal. You are anathema to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Heavenly Father. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your "ministry" is a sham and a fraud. You serve the god of this world. REPENT! Ask God for forgiveness and apologize to those whom you have despitefully used. You have raped and plundered The Good Shepherd's precious flock. Their blood is on your hands. You cannot fool God! You cannot hide from the Righteous Judge either. You return to your own vomit, day after day, year after year. The blood of the righteous which you have shed screams through the ground against you. My only prayer for you is, "May the Lord have mercy upon your souls."
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T-Bone
Thanks Skyrider for getting us back on track...gee I wonder if Mike B or Raymo ever read that first page...well, here's a second chance
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skyrider
When new people come to GreaseSpot Café for the first time......and read "the other side of the story"........I'm sure, for some, that it is jolting. Surely, it wasn't that bad, was it? And, if you thought it was THAT bad.....why did you stay all those years? Why do you attack Dr. Wierwille's work and ministry?
Those are valid questions.......yet, some refuse to stick around for further discussion or answers. They have their reasons for how twi changed their lives for the better and cite a couple of claims to the affirmative. BUT.......those who stick around for a lengthy discussion generally admit a list of things that they, too, disapproved of when it happened. We've seen these types of discussions time and again over the course of nearly 20 years.
Just the FACTS........1) nearly 550 clergy have LEFT twi speaks volumes, 2) over 3,300 way corps have exited and moved on with their lives, 3) serial plagiarism of wierwille's "research" has been widely documented, 4) sexual abuse and predation by wierwille, martindale, don and howard testifies to twi's moral/spiritual corruption, 5) hoarding over $64 million of assets/investments in this non-profit organization (cough, cough), 6) books, articles and testimonies that detail the trappings of a cult, 7) the untoward secrecy that lies within and how twi treats its employees like slave-labor, 8) full-time corps fiasco......no debt-policy, no-pregnancy, 15-minute time management fill-in sheets, 9) favoritism to certain staff and corps.....while others got "retribution assignments," 10) AND.......then, you realize the twi-revisionist history in play that EVERY WIERWILLE STORY OR EVENT has been altered, fabricated or sensationalized for marketing wierwille's mystique image......there is this gut-wrenching awareness that you've been scammed by a man with pathological issues stemming from his childhood.
Read Mrs. Wierwille's book......without the rose-colored glasses.
Seems like, unwittingly......she reveals the myth behind the man.
In all my years with twi......never saw wierwille walk by the spirit of God.
NONE of the big 6 manifestations. Not one!
Even his "speaking in tongues" was suspiciously repetitive.
Ugh.
.
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socks
I see my role as "consultant", with personal experience.
The facts speak for themselves...anyone can interpret or align them as they wish but in order to get to the "truth"....the facts must be established without bias or prejudice.
To the degree we can do that, and I allow for a certain amount of bias as part of keepin' it real.
In the Way there was brain freeze on understanding the relationship between fact and truth - truth was "The Word" and there was no truth beyond the immutable spiritual truths of God and His Word. Facts were treated like the children of a lesser god, the terminal bits of reality that come and go with the winds of doubt and fear, never to be trusted.
In the Advanced class the teaching went that the revelation manifestations revealed (God willing) the "truths or facts concerning any situation about which it is humanly impossible to know anything about".......if memory serves and it seems to be, today. So there was a value to knowing "THE" facts of something, but typically that could go be devalued quickly if those facts were inconvenient or well, didn't serve someone's interests.....cause if you think about it God was either a NOT REVEALING ANY FACTS by those revelation manifestations in A LOT OF situations over the years or those facts being revealed were being ignore - or missed. Or both.
- And a brief aside into inertia and auto pilots - it's worth considering "that expectation (is understood) to influence perception"....if you ever learned about Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle it helps, or has helped me to understand a little better how that works in the day-to-day realities of life and how to deal with "truths and facts" and the cross-life of the spiritual and physical. I picked it up in learning programming and dealing with random logic and how predictive modeling assembles scenarios, stuff that says "what might happen", which all makes my li'l geek brain twitch with excitement. I'm just a low level logic junkie but had the opportunity to work with some bonafide Brainiacs so it helped. I think. Anyway, I would agree with skyrider's hierarchy there and how it relates to the authority structure of The Way Inc.
As to inertia - the Way really shows how long something can coast on past energy and go on seemingly forever while not really doing anything to produce new outcomes....but organizations very often do that - they just keep going with or without new energy, in the direction they are pointed until something shifts them into a different direction.....since the earlier generations are so protective of the status quo....it's likely to continue as long as some of them remain. Time does go on however.
So - when I was in the way I understood there to be a valid path for facts having a necessary and legitimate place in hmm..."The Word"....if only because the Bible is a book that must be translated and interpreted (ie "rightly divided" in PFAL) and Jesus Christ was a physically living savior who perfectly lived God's will and intents in what He did, said and taught....and I'm a physical human being whose life/pneuma is now holy/hagion and living a life fueled now by and with eternal realities and "truth" that is in fact, "LIVING FACT"....and the redemption and salvation of man has happened is being lives in a physical plane - so if facts are to be avoided we end up with a lot of halo's and no angels under them.
So, long winded way to say that ..... in the Way years we kinda never knew what was going on AS A GROUP without validation from Dr. Wierwille or the nearest extension of that authority. Individually we might do like what I did - I participated, learned and deferred to his authority and decision making in many situations and attempted to execute on the greater vision and plan of the Way Nash as it was brought down from VPW or his designees.
To me, them's the facts. Everyone may interpret them differently but there's no debate that what VPW said was what was done. That's why I don't subscribe to the theory that "the Way was fine until Martindale/Geer/Finnegan/Whoever screwed everything up".......His main guys all learned from him and acted in complete alignment with his wishes.
**** Compared to how I later learned and worked in professional organizations, I'd rate his mentorship about a D plus - he mostly trained others to continue what he was doing and when he felt they'd moved or deviated EVEN THE SLIGHTEST bit from his individual wishes he'd - well, sometimes he'd literally break down into tears and end up yelling at all of us because apparently we didn't care and wanted to destroy him and his life's work or something. I write that and I don't mean it in metaphor or exaggerate - he acted that way many times. And there's no way a growing young man of 20 something can't experience that and wonder if it's how we're all supposed to end up - and realize that no, that's his weaknesses, not mine or ours.
Anyway, I do value the time and work that Dr. VP Wierwille put into the Way, the PFAL courses and my overall exposure to his life. I did learn a lot and I grew up myself through that exposure but in hindsight I was never nearly as close to him as I might have wanted to be or even thought I was, for lots of reasons - some mine and some his, as El Presidente' Deluxe of the Way.
Edited by sockshe he, reasons? I got reasons.
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T-Bone
There is so much thought-provoking stuff in what you’ve said, Skyrider !
I entered the Way Corps program toward the latter part of my 12 year involvement with TWI. “Fortunately” I was in residence when the $hit hit the fan (pause for special effects
) – the night Chris G read “The Passing of a Patriarch” and then all the commotion that followed after that. I think it took the firsthand
experience of a collapsing house of cards to jar me awake (mentally speaking). Maybe it was that jarring effect that helped to shatter the rose-colored glasses I wore for 12 years – I started having serious questions and doubts about wierwille, the ministry and even PFAL.
The Way Ministry – like a house of cards, was built on a shaky (and shady
) foundation and will collapse if a necessary element is removed. That’s why it needs continually propping up – and covering up by lies for it to continue in its decrepit “life” of using people. The more wierwille and his work is scrutinized the more one will find the treacherous, deceitful, exploitative and abusive basis for The Way Ministry. That all reflects the nature of its founder. wierwille plagiarized - he stole the work of others - and lied about it - saying it was his own work - so as to garner the respect and allegiance of others. I went into the way corps thinking I was going to learn the best way to serve God from THE man of God - and come to find out I was serving a con man...he's dead and gone but the con lives on.
Edited by T-Boneformatting and bunch of editing
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WordWolf
Even vpw's " speaking in tongues" was repetitive.
That's understating the case, if anything.
" Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta." - vpw, every time, including when he was making a point that he could actually speak in tongues at will/ whenever he wanted. Either God was sending him, verbatim, the same message EVERY time, down to the last syllable, or vpw was faking it.
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waysider
He confessed that, on at least one occasion, he faked it by reciting something in Greek he had memorized. From the account of this occasion, he seemed to be proud of himself for being able to pull off the deception.
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Rocky
Sky, you make numerous excellent points. Including that while Wierwille was alive, he was making the policy.
Edited by RockyI see the inertia and autopilot at work when new splinters break away and rather than actually figure out new thinking (new light) on God's word and will, they just cannot break away from Wierwille in their minds... three and a half decades after he's gone.
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skyrider
Yeah, T-Bone........if followers would only scrutinize [ aka - research ] ..... 1) wierwille's background and 2) the plagiarized work.
Ain't it ironic.........folks who CLAIM to cleave to wierwille's research will not research wierwille's background and deception!!
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skyrider
I know, WordWolf........that's why I said it was suspiciously repetitive.
In all honesty and nearly ashamed to admit it......when I first sat thru the pfal class, while in college, this repetitiveness jumped out at me. Seriously, I listened intently in those last couple of sessions of pfal whenever wierwille displayed out loud his speaking in tongues. Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta. And, a few minutes later, he spoke again....... Lo SHANta ma-la--ka-SI-ke lo SHONtai. What did I hear? Maybe THREE (??) very slight diversions from the first.
The reason many of us can still recall verbatim this.........is because his "Lo SHANta" was always so repetitive.
I swear that wierwille finished teaching those last segments of that PFAL '77 Live Class at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana......by repeating his staple "Lo SHANta ma-la-ka-SI-to la SHONta" to demonstrate it, AGAIN, to one and all.
.
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skyrider
Rocky......I agree with you.
The inertia and autopilot at work in these new splinters is recognizable and tangible. These corps are NOT LEADERS......they, too, are underlings. Some of these guys who were 16th, 17th and 18th corps........yeah, guys like DeLisle, Rupp, Rico and Ed Horney......were/are underlings. Do they make major decisions? Do they establish groundbreaking policy? I would suggest that Rosalie and Donna carry the mantle of power now at the mothership. All these other splinter cult leaders are sucking wind.
How many times here at GSC have we discussed the moving of boundary lines? LOTS, right? Yet, these people splinter away from what they deemed as the "absolute power of the directors in twi"........and then do not take the time to investigate and ruminate how they got deceived?
What if we were to hypothesize that wierwille's deception runs even deeper?
All those big truths of life........and yet, wierwille diverted our attention to 1) way tree structures and its false allegiance, 2) renewed mind mantras of mind over matter, 3) carnal-minded teachings and misdirection on pre-marital sex/adultery, 4) cherry-picked scriptures that kept us knocking doors and not investing in our lives, education and fulfillment, 5) unbridled adulation to wierwille to extremes, 6) "moving the word" via his pfal-class (ppffftt), and 7) ....were we really "speaking the wonderful works of God" via speaking in tongues and delivering prophecy to believers present in those twig meetings, month after month, year after year???
Hamster on a wheel..........hamster on a wheel. Sigh.
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penworks
I agree with Socks regarding this, as I was an eye-witness, like Socks, to the manner in which VPW conducted himself and ran the organization:
" … I don't subscribe to the theory that "the Way was fine until Martindale/Geer/Finnegan/Whoever screwed everything up".......His main guys all learned from him and acted in complete alignment with his wishes."
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socks
Hey kiddo! What's for lunch - millet and carrot - raisin salad?
(I say that but I learned how to cook organically grown millet so it's not the consistency of drywall mud and given it's a gluten free "grain" I've played around with it, even working on trying some of it in my whole grain sourdough recipe's.)
Your book fills in some blanks for me of the timeline in those early years when the Southeastern Way Home outreach was coming up and online into the Way Corps and the introduction of Martindale from Oklahoma into the mix. There's a couple things in there that open up the "inertia" of The Way.
Given that we got involved with the Way within a year or two of the final version of PFAL going into the can in 1967 and he died in 1985, he taught, trained and transitioned his "team" of close followers in a short window of about 17-18 years during which a lot of the work was to memorialize his legacy and heritage into the brand of "The Way". Allowing for a couple years transitioning in (California and New York) and a couple years of ill health at the end restricting his ability to move and travel freely - there's a sweet spot of productivity of about 13-14 years. In that time frame we can see the main players and how they were positioned - and positioned themselves - to be part of VPW's core/Corps leadership.
While VPW ran the show, he called the shots and we did it as he directed. He allowed for others to contribute yes but it was always within his aims and goals, his view of the future. He created the system of controls that allowed for a Martindale to take over and do as he willed, without recourse or oversight. Somehow he assumed that he would always keep a guiding hand on the rudder of influence - but when push came to shove everyone after him ran it exactly as he had, with complete autocratic authority within a theocracy and one man at the top who wore the title "God's Man for Our Day and Time".
Peace n love!
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penworks
Yup, the millet is long gone, but the gut reaction lingers. Ugh. In case you don't know, that's an analogy for the "Word" that VPW fed us, amounting to a con of Himalayan proportions. And I should know. I've actually been to the Himalayan mountains … in May 2009.
Socks, eye-witnesses willing to give their two cents are few and far between. I get "fan mail" through the Contact page on my website from former Wayfers either defending VPW and "shame on me," or from some too afraid to speak up or out due to relatives still in TWI or due to their own weariness … which I totally understand. Who wants to put themselves out there for criticism and hate mail, which I get now and then. But I knew that going into what I did ... publishing my story in a book.
Wake up people, Wierwille set this whole thing in motion from day one. It was never "pure" but got corrupted later on. He was out to set himself up as "the answer man."
PLEEEAASE.
Sigh.
Edited by penworksadditional info
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waysider
There are still people out there who will go to their graves (some have already gone.) insisting we were part of some noble cause.
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socks
Yeh, millet is one of those things I look at and think "now what can I do with this?"....it does have a huge positive affect on my gut, which I loved when I discovered it. I was born with a stomach ulcer condition, at least it's one of my earliest memories as a toddler - my stomach hurting terribly suddenly for no apparent reason - course I was all of about 3 at the time, so what did I know? Diagnosed as "gastritis" then as a peptic ulcer I had to be careful in the 50's and 60's what I ate and I learned calming and meditation techniques before I was 10, anything to deal with the ups and downs of the condition which could curl me up into a ball for hours when it acted up. I turned to drugs in my youth for the usual social reasons but found pot and methamphetamines took the edge off and a blend of the two could normalize me under almost any conditions. My friends from that era that are still around all have a story or two about how I stayed "high" all the time, and it wasn't until I was prayed for and healed following an auto accident, that I came around. Self-medication of the worst kind - and years later when my kids were getting into music I cried on the floor with them when Kurt Cobaine ("Nirvana") killed himself with a shotgun to the head...they really liked his music and I'd come to appreciate his unusual chords and lyrics and we'd connected on his music, but he suffered from stomach ulcers and god knows what other conditions and it was known the pain he was in sometimes and his use of heroin. I completely understood where it had taken him and and how he'd chosen to end it, anyone who's been down that path knows what it's like to just want the pain to stop and to know how to do it but you just don't want to do it anymore..... It made me so incredibly thankful for the deliverance God and Jesus Christ brought into my life and I told my kids about my own experience with it..........and millet? Millet still has a very settling affect on my stomach, of "well being"....I feel great when I eat it, and of course it's bio-nutrition is good for acting against stomach peptic ulcers.............I get why most people don't like it, but it's one of those foods that does so much good for me I had to figure out how to cook the dammed stuff so it would eat better.
Funny how stuff can be so different between different people.
I appreciate your candor and effort ms penworks. I told someone recently to check out your book first hand, and that you are entitled to your story and your insight - it's YOURS and provides a view from your vantage point that no one else has and that's important. There are things we may not agree on and I often find myself the odd man out with a lot of people because I am a fully feathered and nested Christian and my faith is for and with no one but God and myself, and those close to me. I value honesty. I find over and over through the years that whether others believe the same as I or I with them is less important than if we love life and live our lives to the best truth we know. I'm really glad we still share a friendship - the wife and I send our best.
Edited by socksOh.....that "what now"....
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socks
Well, my life's cause was and is as "noble" as I thought it to be. I will go to my grave saying exactly what I did and was trying to do my whole life with the message of God and Jesus Christ. I've done a lot of things, partnered with a lot of people - hell, today I pretty much did zip other than pray for some people which in and of itself is no small thing, to me, but I don't spend every day with the best efforts expended or doing them with the best or right people for that matter. My life is what it is - but I am a HELLA lot better for what I've done and learned than if I hadn't. In the big circle of life that sucks some ways and rocks in others - mostly it rocks.
If I face my Creator at some point and He says I've been weighed and found wanting, I'll accept that - what else is there to do? In the meantime, I'm full speed ahead until you hear otherwise.
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skyrider
Yeah, waysider........I hear you.
It all comes down to the difference between.......1) we and 2) me.
Nothing "noble" in the twit-cult as an individual.......only groups: twigs, branches, WOWs, corps, staff, etc. The mandatory wearing of nametags....gave specificity to the GROUP you represented: (to name a few)....... 1) adv class grad, 2) wow or wow vet, 3) corps, 4) college division, or 5) staff.
Cult indoctrination is only achieved by groupthink mentality.......that is why The Way, Inc. moved in herds, in groups.
Group meetings, group weddings, group counseling, group confrontations, group readings of "Bedside Manners"......lest we forget, "the man of God's" time was valuable, therefore HE rarily had the time to meet with an individual one-on-on. And yes......wierwille said this to the corps when he was getting pushback on those group weddings in 1981. [Yet, wierwille had the time later that night to spend with an alcohol-enriched corps girl one-ON-one in his motor coach.] ........pppffffttt.
The Lord looks on the heart of each one of us, individually. The Book of Psalms vividly displays the Lord's heart to you and me.
.
Edited by skyridertyping before coffee...typos
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T-Bone
I agree with Waysider…and I like the dichotomy that Skyrider mentioned (“we” or the group vs me the individual) - and that got me thinking on how I’ve readjusted my values scale over the years since I let TWI.
I don’t know if trying to live a good, kind and honest life can be considered a “noble cause” but I can say with a clear conscience that’s something I’ve tried to do all my life. And that’s probably what frustrated me the most in trying to be a successful sales rep for TWI.
I bought into the supposedly noble cause of “moving the Word over the world” but most of the time I felt like a failure because of my inability to get people signed up for the class. You’d think (using my personal scale of values) being friendly, helpful and sharing stuff about the Bible with all who crossed my path would count for something – but I can’t even begin to count the number of times leaders would stress we should spend 80% of our time with the 20% who want to “move the Word”. Which in way-speak meant (depending on what level the 20 percenters were at) take the class, go WOW, go way corps, go in some program…it basically means you should motivate people to do whatever TWI says is “doing the Word”.
Talking about how I let TWI’s priorities outweigh my own scale of values is not to say my whole time of involvement was a totally bad experience. Life is too short to paint my experiences in such broad strokes. I met a lot of good, kind and honest people and had a lot of good times too (usually good times didn’t revolve around official TWI functions…like when some of us went up to a little bar in Albion not too far from Rome City. And I don’t know how many quarters I pumped into the Juke Box and waited and waited and waited for Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On” to play. Finally, as we were about to leave, the song came on and our little group of wayfers went nuts on the dance floor. Yeah – good times…btw, I also learned there how to get the most bang for the buck abiding by the 2 drink limit rule – by “discovering” Long Island Iced Tea…yowzer the good times!!!).
Honestly, it was the good people (some were in leadership positions) and sweet times that made life in TWI bearable. But it was the a$$holes (some who were in leadership positions) along with the corporate agendas and insidious machinations that made life in TWI almost intolerable.
Edited by T-Bonerevision
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annio
Quote- WordWolf replying to Mike B- [There's some who claim it's evil for us to expose what vpw and lcm did- but those same people are not outraged that they did it. To them, it's worse to expose vpw as a plagiarizing rapist who drugged women than for him to have drugged and raped the women. I'm NOT exaggerating.]
Me- Yes, keep the image/idol sacred, do NOT pull it off the pedestal. Protect the abuser not the abused since he is 1) their HOPE, they have too much invested in "the way" and 2) re: connecting to the suffering caused by him, they are afraid, mind-controlled, and disconnected in basic ways from human need, love, empathy, suffering, their own and others.
Quote- Mike B- I believe we were taught more Truth than any other organization on the planet, and I still believe that to be true. "
Quote- WordWolf- [Due to vpw plagiarizing some quality Christians, I believe we were taught some Truth while in twi, but not everything we were taught there was Truth or truth. Furthermore, there's plenty of quality Christians who've never heard of twi, vpw, or anyone connected with twi. vpw did his best to put forth that himself was some great one, that ALL the quality teachings he had were from him, and that all Christians everywhere else were flawed and INFERIOR to twi Christians. I believe all of that was error- to say the least. The idea that God wasn't relying solely on a plagiarizing rapist to get things done is rather comforting- and rather sensible, IMHO.]
Me- THANK YOU, YES with a few additional thoughts. If I may share, it is still very painful to me
that I was totally duped for 35++ years by certain men (and women) who damaged my life and my family's lives so effectively- vpw et al, then chris g and co, with their "their rightly dividing The Word", etc. Yes God rescued me when I was lost, thru the way ministry; yes I learned some invaluable unique truths. Yes, the community and programs were places where I could initially gain some attachments and safety in my recovery from previous traumas, until they were no longer safe places, and re-traumatizing occurred. So several things are coming up, if I may share and process further:
1) brokenness- the sexual abuse/promiscuity, the mental abuse plus the emotional neglect, and the Cultic dogmatic withdrawing mindset caused severe brokenness in my life, in my marriage, and then in my children's lives due to the dissolving of said social/spiritual community, divorce, and their father's brokenness.
2) Posts re: emotional/mental vulnerability to and total acceptance of a "benevolent" father figure's views/life style/culture; resulting auto-pilot, lack of focus, mind control, self-sacrifice, ETC. Also, for those with an intellectual background perhaps, the whole "mathematical exactness and scientific precision" promise drew us in. What a deception. So you teach me (over and over again), I receive it repeatedly deeper and deeper...
3) Naming vpw as a plagiarizing rapist- good! And I would like to attempt to en-capsulize the man with the additional names of deluded/deluding, extremely narcissistic, extremely controlling, power/money stealing, psychopathic [i.e. a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one's actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies], plagiarizing rapist.
4) It has been a LONG HAUL to find and actually trust God my true Father and Jesus my true Lord, Savior, and Friend. But it has been worth it. SO WORTH IT.
5) Breaking soul ties and attachments based on deceivers' truth mixed with lies, their abusive leadership, and my naive trust/shortsightedness- it's still a journey out of trauma victim realities.... E.g. I loved the "Victim to Victor" blue book chapter and (supposed) author... Now I say YES! to GOD"S TRUTHS AND DELIVERANCE, and NO! and
to the plagiarizing poser!! I was a victim who thought I was wrong and you were right. But no longer. Think I will read DWBH's words until they sink in-
"... you hypocritical, whited sepulchers. You are anti(against)-Christ in words and works. You are vain babblers...You are an insult to the Lord who bought you. You are a false teacher... You preach for filthy lucre's sake... You bow your knee to Baal. You are anathema to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Heavenly Father. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your "ministry" is a sham and a fraud. You serve the god of this world. REPENT! Ask God for forgiveness and apologize to those whom you have despitefully used. You have raped and plundered The Good Shepherd's precious flock. Their blood is on your hands. You cannot fool God! You cannot hide from the Righteous Judge either. You return to your own vomit, day after day, year after year. The blood of the righteous which you have shed screams through the ground against you. My only prayer for you is, "May the Lord have mercy upon your souls."
AMEN.
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skyrider
Penworks..........thanks again for publishing your story.
The fact that you have received hate mail and criticism thru your contact page on your website......validates "the cult-like mentality" of many who became obsessed with wierwille's myths and mysticism. The repetition of classes, teaching and programs has indoctrinated a zealous following of loyalists......no matter what. Clearly, the academic field has a protective/vested interest in plagiarism and anyone who claims to do research ought to understand the destructive impact that plagiarism imposes. Wierwille's plagiarism was theft.
Far more than just plagiarism, though.......wierwille has been charged with unethical, ungodly and criminal activity by a swath of the ex-twi community. And, rightfully so. As your book depicts the currents of manipulation, deception and exploitation moving beneath the surface and pulling seaward. One person's story of swirling relationships and judgments swept you away from standing safely on shore.
Thanks again for the hundreds/thousands of hours you put into writing your book, Penworks. I know that it is one of those books that I will pick off the shelf from time to time and read, again, its salient truths. All the best to you and yours.
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penworks
Hi, Skyrider. I appreciate the kind words and best to you and yours, as well.
A big thank you to readers of Undertow. Many thanks for taking time to do it!
And thanks to Pawtucket for keeping GSC open all these years …
Cheers.
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