mankkeli How do you stop your brain from thinking if you did stay?

by life is to short 65 Replies latest jw experiences

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  life is to short

  I have not read all of your posts as the pages have went on for so long, (and as you have pointed out it shows how many people have viewed them thus you are must be right.) Your thought from what I have read is to just stay and shut your mind off. Go out in service and stay to keep the peace to keep your family. Oh sure there are problems in the religion you admit but the pain of leaving is so much that people are committing suicide over it and so it is so much better just to stay and shut you mind off, just go with the flow.

  How do you do that?

  Sometimes I wish I could have done it, just lived in that little bubble but I had so much pain inside the religion it was unreal. I was a reg pioneer, elders wife, was at Bethel, etc. I lived the truth with every ounce of my being, I gave my all. One thing I found was that I was never able to really fit in. I was never included in the lives of the members. I was always an outsider as there is so much intermarrying in the religion and I never intermarried. My husband came in in his early 20's and I my parents were only truly around the "truth." The elders did not like them so I was discarded as unworthy. I thought I would show the elders that I really did have a true love for Jehovah but the elders never believed me no matter how hard I tried.

  All the elders body's in every hall I have been in have been related to each other. Fathers, sons, sons-in-law all in the same body.

  When my husband who was an elder at the time had a heart attack at the meeting, no one even offered to take me to the hospital much less call an ambulance. No one came up to the hospital after the meeting expect just one elder, no one called the next day AT ALL. It was a MAJOR HEART ATTACK! He very well could have died the doctor told me. Yet the next week the body had him back conducting the service school even though he was still not feeling well as none of the others on the body wanted to do it and they were all related to each other.

  I have meet for feild service and have been told that the car groups have all ready been formed by you guess it family memebers together and there was no room for me. This happened in all the halls I have been in not just one.

  I have been so suicidal inside the religion that I used to day dream of slitting my wrists while pioneering to see if anyone would notice.

  I passed out once in field service and the sister I was with just left me to wake up on my own.

  When I found this board everything clicked and made sense as to why I have suffered depression so much my whole life.

  I know have critical thinking skills I never had before. Not just from this board but from thinking for myself and realizing that everything the religion said was not always true.

  As far as the lives of Richard Dawkin's and Stephen Hassen have you read about the lives of your guru Charlies Taze Russell "he couldn't even keep a marriage responsibly." Or have you read of the life of Judge Rutherford? "Was he an exemplary figure to follow." I do not mean for you to check the sight here or from the WT's literature about Charlies or the Judge but to really check it the facts from outside sources, to use the brain that Jehovah gave you to truly think for yourself?

  So I was just wondering how do you stop your mind from thinking mankkeli since that is what you are recommending so many to do?

  LITS
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  cedars

  LITS - I am a stranger to Mankkeli's thread (having not read it) so I have no idea what he/she will say. My only answer to your question is: you're right, you can't possibly switch your mind off completely. In any case, worshipping God based on the bible requires loving him with your whole heart, mind and soul. How can you devote your entire mind to his worship, when this worship has been appropriated and re-directed through the hallways and corridors of a faceless organization?

  I attended a meeting recently for the first time in many months. I found my mind wandering all over the place, and briefly considered whether I could simply "switch off" and "go with the flow" since many of my family are still inside. The simple answer is - of course I can't. I am a full-grown man with the right to freeness of thought, and I will no longer allow a deeply flawed human organization to influence me otherwise.

  Cedars
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  mankkeli

  Life is short - Thank you for expressing the details surrounding your hurdles and difficulties in clear terms, I wish I had met you in the middle of this distress, your story could have be re-written differently, infact you would have remained and moved on perfectly well. When you realised that things were no longer adding up in the organisation all you could have done is to slow down or limit your participation momentarily, It is just a reminder that you need to take things easy, we often get exhausted and feel tired even in our secular obligations and all that is needed to bounce back is to get refreshment and reshuffle where needed, not a sudden withdrawal or an inaugauration of attack on the organisation.

  You could have reminded yourself that Jehovah has not promised us protection against physical attacks neither has he promised to shield us miraculously when disaster strikes, Job's example could have strengtened you in this respect. remember that the issue of universal sovereignty has been raging for some 6,000yrs and our loyalty in this regard will not only strenghten us but serve as an example to others while making Jehovah's heart rejoice. Endurance would have been implored in this regard, although our hope for the future may be mocked and seemed fading in the face of too many distress but what matter most is not a human perspective of seeing matters but how Jehovah looks at things.

  Take heart, you could still consider some of these things and see if there is a way to get back.
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  N.drew

  life is too short. Peace! I for one appreciate the Bible Study Program offered by Jehovah's Witnesses. So may I say THANK YOU for your years of pioneering. Nobody but a pioneer can understand the miracle that full time service really is. Thanks to your husband too! I auxiliary pioneered for two months in a row, and did not work a paying job at the same time. It was near impossible. I hated it. They say I hated it because my mind wasn't right about it. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (I did not make that up. haha!) I know you are not making JWs look bad on purpose by sharing your experience. I know what you write is possible. Unbelievable, but possible, because I saw similar behavior with them. May Jahesua comfort you.
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  mrsjones5

  Damn you're cold Manny. What LITS is trying to say is she felt she didn't matter to anyone inside the bOrg. It wasn't a matter of being tired. It's a matter of never feeling appreciated or that she even mattered to anyone at the hall. People want and need dignity, to be appreciated and made to feel that they are of worth. Why should LITS had to put up with that kind of crap for some pie in the sky god? And who are you to say that she should just suck it up and carry on basically telling her that its all in your head and your feelings and needs don't matter.

  You're no better than those jerks LITS knows at her hall. Cold to the core.
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  NewChapter

  LITS---I never heard your story. It's horrid. Halls are often dominated by one family, and it makes everyone else miserable. I remember a sister being very upset because her daughter was having a lot of health problems and the family was under stress, yet no announcement was ever made. However one woman in the favored family was also experiencing health issues at the same time, and her status was updated in great detail at the beginning of every single meeting. She ate some applesauce. She watched some TV. She accepted some visitors. It was ridiculous. I was in the hospital for 4 days once, and the elders knew about it, and after i'd missed a week of meetings, some sisters showed up while they were out in service. They "missed me at meetings!". I was baffled! I told them I'd been in the hospital very sick, and wasn't ready to return. They had no idea. "Oh, I guess you fell through the cracks" one of them said. WHAT?

  Now I will allow the Manker to continue blaming you, as JW's are so adept at. But you are superior to it, since your mind is now free and informed. Take what it says with a grain of salt. The only way you will be able to prevent your lovely brain from thinking now that it is informed is to bang it repeatedly with a hammer. Which is my theory about what happened to the Manker. What a beastly person to blame you for the behavior of others. guess you didn't have enough faith. GAG

  Aren't you glad to be FREEEEEE???
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  mankkeli

  life is too short- You need to remind yourself that Stephen Hassan would use all techniques at his disposal to diagnose your situation and come up with a syndrome that will make you rely on him. Stephen pays his bills by convincing you that you are in a cult, so that you can buy his books and keep his business running. I'm not attacking him neither I am underminning his effort, I am only explainning the reality in clear terms.
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  mrsjones5

  Clear as freaking mud. Now you're really talking out of you ass Manny.
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  cedars

  For anyone who missed the irony:

  Stephen Hassan would use all techniques at his disposal to diagnose your situation and come up with a syndrome that will make you rely on him. Stephen pays his bills by convincing you that you are in a cult, so that you can buy his books and keep his business running.

  Let's recycle that particular piece of diatribe into something that is actually truthful shall we?

  The Watchtower Organisation would use all techniques at their disposal to diagnose your situation and come up with a syndrome that will make you rely on them. They pay their bills by convincing you that they are the only path to God, so that you can spread their books and keep their business running.
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  NewChapter

  Do you think it's a robot?