Faithful, I too thoroughly enjoy your posts. I'm afraid your sessions are turning into jwn's own internal soap opera, however. By that I mean that many are encouraging you to continue with them, but I can't share that sentiment.
All I see is you subjecting yourself to, and enduring, three-hour (!) sessions during which you are force-fed false doctrine. Yes, you manage to get in some great points, but you must know that every one of those points is dismissed by these two women. They don't leave and discuss what you said and allow it to change their thinking. You are just providing ammunition for them to choose a different set of jw scriptural garbage to shoot at you the next week.
If you think about how our minds physically work... Even if we don't "believe" or "agree" with a teaching, the very fact that we listen to or read it means it is stored in our brain. The more often the same words and phrases are repeated, the stronger the neural pathways to those words and phrases become. That's why even though my children are adults now, I still remember the words to a song on the kids' tv show "Barney" because they watched it repeatedly. I don't necessarily "want" to sing that song in my head, but it's there. In the same way, most of us on this board could recite the jw-speak we were force-fed over the years but we don't want to hear it anymore. We've all had to make new thoughts to bury that trash talk and weaken those pathways. That's why the borg is so insistent that jws fill their heads daily with jw-speak and never listen to anything non-jw, as they know how our minds work and they use that knowledge to create cult-soldiers like the two women who come to your home. jws cannot think for themselves any longer...and someone might be held off baptism only because part of their brain was still actually functioning and they have to be further indoctrinated to be fully jw. Why are the jws are bent on baptizing little kids without the power to think logically? They don't have to "unlearn" anything and willingly accept what they are being told within their family. Instant jws.
So the false teachings these women share with you do get in your head, and then you think about them to recount them here, which just implants them even further into your brain. Then you think about and strategize how to counter these teachings and that too strengthens the language in your head. And on and on and on. The jws call this "repetition for emphasis" and use it in their teaching methods, but it's really repetition for implantation. That's why jws find cult-speak so effortless and why they can barely have an original thought. That's why they are instructed to read the same material over and over and over again for years and years. That's what rises to the top of their brain to be easily accessed when they open their mouths. All the jw-speak from all the meetings and wt mags and study books just implants and implants until logical thinking becomes impossible.
When I read your posts, it makes me think back to when I studied and how I also deferred to the jws even when the words they spoke made no sense. I was raised to be polite, and I was polite to them. I am pretty intelligent but when I asked questions about their teachings that made no sense, they backed me down by saying (in essence) that I would understand as my spiritual maturity increased. They knew my bible knowledge was minimal, and they readily took the role of teacher and made me the "kindergarten" student. And I let them. (now that's crazy!)
The women who visit you come across with a certain boldness, confidence, and sense of superiority, and you defer to them just as I did. As you say, you allow them to ramble without interruption but that's giving them control. That's what needs to stop, truly, or this will go on for absolutely ever until you are worn down but your head is filled with jw-nonsense even if you think you're rejecting it.
You expect them to have the same thinking about politeness and manners as you do...but really, they are quite rude to you. They are not there having an adult conversation with another adult. They come and belittle you, present themselves as spiritually superior and try to make you think that you need them. That is the cult training kicking in. If any normal person heard that they called you a kindergartener, they would be incensed by that rudeness! Yet you say, mildly, oh it doesn't bother me. It should bother you! It sums up their view of the relationship they have forged with you.
Remember the post when you agreed to write down things they said, and several others agreed it was a great tactic? YAnd when you attempted to do that, you were asked to stop and you agreed. Why? Why do you let them have control? Why shouldn't you be able to "quote them" if they are speaking the truth™ of God? Why indeed? They come into your home and tell you what to do? That's rude, insulting, and demeaning. Don't allow it.
You do not need these two to learn the bible as you understand it more honestly than they've been taught. You are wise to turn away from their books and their videos. I don't understand what do you hope to gain from agreeing to these sessions, that's very confusing to me. Is it an attempt to appease your family members (at what cost?) or an attempt to teach these women that they are in a cult (but they are not able to think for themselves)?
I'm sure those three hours each week could be spent doing something that would actually bring you great joy...so tell them to go away and then go lay down some happy neural pathways instead!
(((((hugs)))))
