Welcome TheycalledmeJonah:

GOOD that you got a girlfriend and good, good, good (TOV!) that you got involved
with a band in spite of what Craig said.


There may be plenty of reasons Craig did not want you to get involved with a band.

* You'd have a group of friends outside the cult (Bad!)

* You'd have more fun and feel more alive outside the group than inside (Bad!)

* You'd learn something about performance skills and how to establish rapport with and influence an audience. This might cause you to look at Craig and
see he isn't magically charismatic - that he's using the very same bag of
tricks to handle audiences that you're learning as a member of a band!

(Bad, bad, bad!)

For an example, here is a description of how a high ranking Tibetan lama bossed and bullied his student (author of the account quoted below. The author was accompanied by two friends, Tsar and Vinnie. The three of them ran into Geshe Lama Tsetan, the author's teacher.

Nicolai Grozni, the author, was a Westerner who had taken ordination as a monk. The Geshe was Tibetan, a celebrated master of philosophy and logic - and Grozni's religious superior. At the time, Grozni genuinely believed that the Geshe was enlightened and possessed special powers and insight.

From Turtle Feet: A Memoir by Nicolai Grozni -- 137 -139

Quote

Geshe Yama Tseten never showed any sign that he recognized me, so I
was quite surprised when one afternoon I turned a corner and saw him standing
in the middle of the street, arms akimbo, looking at me as if he'd been
anticipating my arrival.

"What are you doing walking around!" he asked, with a heavily exaggerated
Tibetan intonation--covering two octaves in just one sentence.

"Uh, no special reason," I said, taken aback. I was with Tsar, who was
smoking. Vinnie was trailing behind with the chessboard. Geshe Yama
Tseten chuckled in a rather mean way and pointed at Tsar with his lips.

"Who's this!"

"He is from Bosnia," I explained.

"Every day I see you walking around like a headless chicken," Geshe
Yama Tseten said with disgust. "Up, down, up, down. Lead a meaningless life
and die a fool."

"I study every day," I replied in defense.

"Study! What, the alphabet? It's all very good. Very good! Incredibly
good!"

Now Geshe Yama Tseten was shouting and Tsar looked at me, trying to
figure out what was going on.

"What's the difference between someone who has seen emptiness and
someone who hasn't?" Geshe Yama Tseten pressed on.

I was so confused about the situation I had found myself in that I didn't
even pay attention to the question. Was Ani Dawa behind this? It was very
possible. I could see her going to Geshe Yama Tseten's room and asking him
to save me from ruin. I knew that she resented Tsar and was convinced that
he was going to lead me astray.

Geshe Yama Tseten looked at me intently, waiting for an answer. I had
spoken to him only once before, when he'd kicked me out of his room for
alleged disrespectful behavior, but I knew that all of his questions were traps.
He was prepared to destroy me no matter how I answered.

"Even a little kid knows this," Geshe Yama Tseten snickered.

"What's the difference between a person who has seen emptiness and
one who hasn't!" I repeated, buying myself time.

Aside from the obvious answer-one understands reality, the other
doesn't-I had no idea. Difference. In what sense? Unable to calculate what
Geshe Yama Tseten was getting at, I focused my attention instead on the two
dogs behind him who were dealing with the humiliation of postcoital
entanglement.


"There is no difference, is there?" Geshe Yama Tseten laughed. "You
have someone who walks up and down, up and down, busy-busy, very busywGeshe-la
closed his eyes and contemplated the meaning of "busy" with a sour
face-"and you have someone who thinks about the way things are and the
way they appearw-here, he put on a blissful expression to demonstrate what
that felt like-"and in the end, no difference. Very good. You could waste
your life and die a complete idiot, and you wouldn't have to worry about it.
Don't worry, you understand? Dying empty-handed is a good idea. Very
good."

Geshe Yama Tseten turned around, laughed at the adjoined dogs with
disdain-"Huh! Huh hu-u-uh!'-and walked away slowly, with the grace of
a three-ton hippopotamus.

"This guy has great acting skills," Vinnie commented. "Laughing, shouting,
pausing to contemplate, his intonation as well. . . I didn't understand
anything he said, but he looked great."

"Vinnie used to stage plays in nursing homes across Germany," Tsar said,
winking at me.

"Not true," Vinnie protested. "Not across Germany, and not always in
nursing homes."

See?

Vinnie, with his background in theatre arts, looked right through the cloud of gestures and words and recognized that this grand Buddhist lama had....
(drumroll) great acting skills.

Lets ask ourselves what's left of any cult leader when we subtract the acting skills?

When you get involved with a band, you're going to learn acting skills along with teamwork and musicianship.

Learn acting skills and you'll see right through Craig's facade the facade he created via his acting skills.

Cult leaders don't like that.

Have too much fun and friendship, get more vitality outside the church than inside the church -- you're less controllable.

You might even cause others to get up and leave.

Horrors!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2018 07:53AM by corboy.

Cult leaders want to monopolize your entire social network. Why?

Because you come to believe that there is nothing for you outside the cult.

Inside of a cult, we no longer make social connections on our own initiative, certainly not with total strangers. We lose practice in knowing how to give that
extra shove of effort needed to instigate first contact with a stranger and then that second shove we have to give to follow up.

Starting and maintaining social connections in the unstructured busy world
is kind of like lighting a fire in the rain and then keeping that fire going.
Lots of extra effort is needed.

Inside a cult, there's a sheltered environment and structure. Maintaining relationships is probably easier, like lighting a fire in a fireplace. Once it is lit, and with dry wood pre arranged, that fire needs little effort to stay lit. In the group, the pool of people with whom we can socialize is pre selected, which makes social encounters predictable. Many distractions
are eliminated. Inside of a cult, where the leader must be kept pleased and in control, people probably return messages very quickly.

Flaking out/not replying/ghosting is forbidden. Very different from the outside world.

We lose practice engaging with people whose beliefs and opinions are different.

Get used to living within the ready made social network of the cult and our ability to socialize outside of the church, our ability to generate new social contacts and relationships on our own initiative -- those skills get rusty from lack of use. Add in the cult messages that the outside world is inferior or
downright evil and fear of leaving ('exit costs') increases.

Welcome TheycalledmeJonah. Your post was really interesting. Yes. Looking forward. To hearing more from you.

Welcome, TheycalledmeJonah! Good for you! Many people who post here are very regretful that they didn't see the light and leave TLWF while they were still young. I think it's rather interesting that Craig told you that being a musician is not you. That takes some colossal nerve, if you ask me. I don't know you, but IMO the leaders in TLWF only know what they WANT to know about the members. I was in the fellowship for forty years, and there many things no one knew about me. They only know the follower side, the submissive side, the subservient side that reflects back to them what they expect from you and want to see.

You didn't say if your family is still part of the San Diego church. Hopefully, they will be supportive of you either way. That must have been hard for you, being in Shiloh without them while you were still in high school.

Many happy returns for a great new year of finding out more about you and who you want to be in this world.

TheycallmeJonah sometimes I get a little nervous when I learn that someone just left the LW. For me, ten years of false visions, false revelations, false words of knowledge, false wisdom and spiritual manipulation (which the leadership said was the Holy Spirit) almost did me in. But you seem to have the resilience of youth. I am happy for you and your newly found freedom. Keep posting. You might even cause others to get up and leave.

P.S. Any clues about the cup that sits before Gary?



Reepicheep I loved your insight into the hints JRS probably threw out about Martha being evil and voila others started getting the same revelation. I recall a married couple who joined in the 70's and it seemed the man was really into the LW teaching but the wife was sitting on the sidelines. People were judging her including me. But the way I see it now is she most likely saw the red flags and errors in the teaching.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2018 01:39PM by lily rose.

Welcome Jonah. Welcome to freedom. And welcome to your new life.

All this bellyaching about the Apostolic ministry of John Robert Stevens. Regrets that you opened yourselves to the charismatic ecstasy of the living word flowing through him back then, especially in the late 60s and early 70s. JRS carried, indeed incarnated, the presence of Christ. Was the apostolic movement a perfectly organized religious operation or corporation? No. Was it efficiently operated? Oh hell no! But the Spirit and the cross of Jesus moved on us, in us, through us. And the revelation came. And its salvation was immediate, concrete and transforming of our being-in-the-world. And then, when things become too political, the thing to do was back-off. I and my family did. Nobody from "The Walk" coerced us or tried to about anything. Anc today, I miss the weekend circuit runs of Anaheim, Southgate & Sepulveda, the anointing and fellowship flowing hot like lava. And so I thank God for the call on my life to come to southern California back then, to learn of the Holy Spirit and how to walk in the Word of God. We were all advised if you recall,to calculate the cost/risk-benefit. After which we then put our hands to the plow. So I, for one, miss the Apostle, and Brother RD Cronquist, thank them, and I was a nobody, just someone coming to a corrogated sheet metal pole barn with hay on the floor. But the Spirit was there. The body was there, not with all that religious trimming about "ecclesia" and all that-- just people called by Spirit God's Resurrected Christ to taste & see.

All this lamenting about the Apostolic ministry of John Robert Stevens. Regrets that you opened yourselves to the charismatic ecstasy of the living word flowing through him back then, especially in the late 60s and early 70s. JRS carried, indeed incarnated, the presence of Christ. Was the apostolic movement a perfectly organized religious operation or corporation? No. Was it efficiently operated? Oh hell no! But the Spirit and the cross of Jesus moved on us, in us, through us. And the revelation came. And its salvation was immediate, concrete and transforming of our being-in-the-world. And then, when things become too political, the thing to do was back-off. I and my family did. Nobody from "The Walk" coerced us or tried to about anything. Anc today, I miss the weekend circuit runs of Anaheim, Southgate & Sepulveda, the anointing and fellowship flowing hot like lava. And so I thank God for the call on my life to come to southern California back then, to learn of the Holy Spirit and how to walk in the Word of God. We were all advised if you recall,to calculate the cost/risk-benefit. After which we then put our hands to the plow. So I, for one, miss the Apostle, and Brother RD Cronquist, thank them, and I was a nobody, just someone coming to a corrogated sheet metal pole barn with hay on the floor. But the Spirit was there. The body was there, not with all that religious trimming about "ecclesia" and all that-- just people called by Spirit God's Resurrected Christ to taste & see.

acesandates Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> All this bellyaching about the Apostolic ministry
> of John Robert Stevens. Regrets that you opened
> yourselves to the charismatic ecstasy of the
> living word flowing through him back then,
> especially in the late 60s and early 70s.

Yes, many of us did open up to the charismatic ego of one John Robert Stevens. And we bare the scars to prove it. No bellyaches, however. At least with me.

JRS
> JRS carried, indeed incarnated, the presence of
> Christ.
No he didn't. He was a man, completely fallible. His exaltation by the fellowship into God status was the root of much of the problems that walk, and later TLWF, faced. He did, obviously have a gift for preaching. But unfortunately, he routinely used it manipulate the congregation into more and more sacrifice that benefited him personally. .

> Was the apostolic movement a perfectly
> organized religious operation or corporation? No.

Not only was it not perfect, it was barely functional. It simply surrounded and enabled controlling leadership. Note: You didn't remain in a position of authority without echoing the message of the leaders...even if that message changed day by day.

> But the Spirit and the cross of Jesus moved on us, in us,
> through us. And the revelation came.

'The cross' was often the beat down of people for not doing or being what leadership dictated. The cross of Jesus was non-existent. The cross was infused by love. Revelation? Please.

> And its salvation was immediate, concrete and transforming
> of our being-in-the-world.
This is beginning to sound like a press release for the current administration. Wow, that's some hyperbole!

> Nobody from "The Walk" coerced us or tried to about anything.
Your experience was rare. Congrats. The Walk I experienced, and many on this board, was filled with coercion--implicit and explicit. I think being told you were going to be killed for not conducting yourself in a certain manner qualifies as coercion.

> We were all advised if you recall,to calculate the
> cost/risk-benefit. After which we then put our
> hands to the plow.

The risks were veiled. They were only revealed after a person became immersed into culture. Trust me...if from the outset you were told this movement had 'the Apostle to the Kingdom', there were Nephilim resisting his ministry (among them, his wife), we were to pray for their death (or the death of the spirit moving through them, a distinction many of us struggle with)asp)...and that our acceptance, in practice, depended upon our complete submission to the authority structure (the practice of 'divine order')...and that many of us would forgo our own financial security by giving to the 'upward flow"...(seek first to serve the apostle)...very few of us would have become involved.

> So I, for one, miss the Apostle, and Brother RD Cronquist, thank them, and
> I was a nobody, just someone coming to a corrogated sheet metal pole barn
> with hay on the floor.

Your motivation may have been pure. But the motivation of those that used the labor and goodwill of the people was not. All the money that flowed into the accounts of ones like John was not put to the use of building the 'kingdom.' There was certainly a wide disparity between the finances and personal liberty of walk leadership, and the worker bees that populated the organization.

Welcome theycalledmeJonah. You're making bold and necessary decisions in your life. Feel free to express yourself in this forum.
And if you want to become a "F*cking musician"--that is your choice
I would not recommend you naming your band 'F*cking Musicians,'however, but again, that is up to you :)