Deep down inside there is as strong primal instinct in me that says, “Survive at all costs.” When it comes down to the line, I will do whatever it takes to protect myself. I learned that at an early age.

I think growing up in the country or a rural area keeps a sense of self-importance at bay in more people's lives than living in a big city, having a famous family, working for a notable corporation, or belonging to the only true religion(s).

We tend to not want to be comfortable and feel insignificant in the universe, but we are. In the first 20 years of my life I spent a lot of time alone, thinking about the universe and how small we were, and learning to live with respect for other creatures, great or small, and that they have as much right to the universe as I do. Naturally this applied to people UNLIKE ME as well. For thousands of years civilizations like ours have learned to respect others around them until they are perceived as dangerous; then we fight to remove them from our presence. Jesus went a step further in showing, what is for many, a better way that is not so dog-eat-dog. (I call it the peaceful, anarchistic approach.)

Greetings friends!

I wanted to let you know how I determine what goes on the front page of this site weekly from now on.

The DEAR LEE column will remain a regular feature and is updated 5 times a week Monday through Friday. Each day the previous one appears at the top of her blog at: http://www.freeminds.org/support/dear-lee/ or just click on the Read more...button at the bottom of each day's post. Feel free to leave a comment or question.

The slideshow on top changes by rotation, and we add new slides from time to time as teasers.

Our regular bloggers' articles show up daily right under the slide show, move down the line as other articles appear, then are archived in the blogs of those individuals, the latest at the top.  People who submit articles that are approved are done the same way. There will be exceptions depending on the news, etc. once in awhile.

We will be doing THEMES from now on, where interspersed among the new articles are previous articles bearing on a certain subject. This week it is MIND CONTROL.  Last week it was the Ray Franz Tribute. Next week it might be Doctrine, or Psychology, etc.

Net Soup changes daily, so if you think you missed some good gossip or the latest in Watchtower happenings, they are found by clicking the coffee cup at the top right that says Net Soup. Don't forget the Freeminds Youtube Channel for updates.

The latest in WORLD NEWS about JWs is found under the NEWS tab at the top, under News 2010. I also still run WatchtowerNews.org.

This rotation will equaint you with articles, life stories, humor, controversy and subjects you would not ordinarily find on Free Minds, among our about 2500 files! To scare yourself, click on the Site Map at the very top of the Free Minds Site, and you'll be lost forever in interesting articles from the last 30 years of Freeminds, Inc. existence!

And no, I don't look like the picture at the top of this blog, just wanted to keep your attention with my mind control tactics! Now go back and read this again and forget the picture, and you'll see how you don't remember anything I just said.

Peace from Dogpatch, the 60s Hippie who infiltrated Bethel as a spy for Russia. But don't tell anyone, it's a conspiracy and the FEDS are after me every day! See my previous blog!

I was not your average child. Sometimes I look back and think I was autistic, wanting to be alone and enjoy nature. Congregations of people always left me empty; probably a hold-over from early grade school where cliques and bullies ran the show... a show I did not want to be a part of. I hated going the the Baptist church with my mom (dad wouldn't go) and seeing the exact same social hierarchies. Men are in love with power.

Sure I had friends; had to make them quickly because we moved about 10 times through my 12 grades. I could get along fine with people one on one, but was not much fan of groups. I was fond of dinosaurs and spaceships, hot rods, technology and nature and archeology (especially Egypt; and later Israel) and just the behavior of people (although preferring to study them from afar).

My real preference was animals, I had about 250 at one time.

QUESTION:

This is another Watchtower major error in the evolution of Judaism/Christian thought.

Hades is NOT the equivalent of Sheol. Watchtower scholarship is so inaccurate for explaining Bible doctrine in the time of Jesus it is pathetic.

Morri S. writes:

I am in need of some expert advise. My daughter and I talked on the phone twice recently, due to my father about her grandfather's battle with cancer. Anyway... that started some emailing... and my sending her some articles and such. For example, about the recent "generation change". She is a surgical RN and so busy so she seldom reads the mags until the study.

I was careful to only use WT literature, quotes, dates, or the NWT bible. She told me she was reading what I send. Alas, we talked again last week about my father, and she then told me we could only talk or email about health or business - no more about religion!

Ray seemed meek because he was never one to attract attention to himself. While I was at Bethel from 1974 to 1980 (a few months after he had left Bethel)  he never stood out to me as anyone special. I found ALL of the GB to be rather uninteresting and uncharismatic, except for Freddy his uncle (for being so weird) and George Gangas (for acting kooky). Ray seemed rather dull and pedantic like the rest, and his talks rather uninteresting. So I never bothered to try and meet him (or any of the other GB - there were 18 when I was there at the end) until my friend Ron McGee from New Jersey was married by him. We got to chat a little. I knew instantly that he was not a man who had a large ego. But he was kind - the kind of man you knew was Christian at heart. Because of this, he had a great number of friends all over the world who regularly enjoyed visiting with he and Cynthia.

What was so interesting to me, and VERY different from schisms in large church organizations (especially cults), is that not only Ray but ALL of those implicated in the 1979-1980 witchhunts at Bethel had no interest in drawing attention to themselves. They desired NO FOLLOWING.

In the topic on the JWN board the other day, entitled Ode to the 192 Page Book, people were wondering why the Watchtower Society printed most of their books in later years (the small ones) with 192 pages. "Belbab" mentions:

I believe the number 192 has something to do with the number of signatures in the book.  192 divided by six is thirty two.

Belbab is right. The main reason is the size of the presses' cylinders and how many pages you can fit on the printing plates. The older MAN presses like I used to run printed 64 pages for each turn of the two black ink cylinders, back to back (2-up, one page on top of the other, upside down). This was the case for decades.

The bindery then had them sewn together (6 signatures) and then cut in half to make two books. It took 6 "runs" of signatures to complete the printing of a 192-page book. We seldom printed less than a million books at a time so it could take days to print a book, or weeks in the case of a Bible which had something like 23 signatures sewn together. New District Assembly releases might be printed in a first run of up to 10 million books!

In response to my article entitled, "Should I Divorce My Jehovah's Witness Mate?" a reader left a comment that I thought I would share, with my response. Her comment is written by B.A.AM , May 26, 2010:

The only comfort I can find in these stories is the fact that I no longer feel alone in this very confusing time.

I have been in a relationship for the last 15 years with a disfellowshipped JW. He was born and raised JW, and his entire family (including ex-wife and kids from a previous marriage) is heavily involved in the JW community. I am a practicing Catholic, and went into this relationship knowing that I could never get married in a Catholic church, and I was OK with it. Love conquers all, doesn’t it?

Being disfellowshipped, he was unable to maintain a relationship with his family. His family never accepted me nor the children born out of this relationship. I always looked at it as “their loss, not mine.”

He immerged himself with my family. He celebrated all holidays, participated in religious traditions and celebrations, and even attended mass with me and my family on occasion. He even started looking forward to celebrating his own birthday. We spent years living with Religion as the white elephant in the room. We agreed to disagree, and it worked. He maintained his beliefs, but did not attend JW meetings or bible study. He expressed that he was not comfortable with religious pictures or statues in the house, I respected his wishes.

Cut to 15 years later, 2 children (baptized Catholic), adultery (on his part), alcoholism (on his part), verbal abuse (on his part)...I decided enough was enough. I decided to end the relationship because it had become an unhealthy situation for me and my children, religious differences aside. Within 24 hours of my walking out the door, he decides he needs to pursue being reinstated as a JW. He claims that he had been living a lie and “walking with the devil” for the last 15 years, and that he needed to now live in “truth”. Hitting rock bottom (a.k.a finding himself alone) served as his wakeup call. He attended his first meeting within 48 hours of my leaving him.

Freeminds.org trata de ayudarte a sanar tus heridas y a proseguir tu vida de una manera más feliz.  Para los religiosos (cristianos) ofrece un gran número de artículos que abordan cuestiones de fe, la Biblia, y la refutación tanto de los testigos de Jehová como de los miembros de otras sectas.

Prueba a usar el MAPA DE NUESTRO SITIO (el enlace que está en el mismo inicio de la página principal;  en inglés). Así verás dónde y en qué secciones se encuentran ¡más de dos mil archivos!

A quien se interese en sanar sus heridas y en la psicología, Freeminds le ofrece la información que dan muchos expertos en cada área, información que se ha visto confirmada por el paso del tiempo.

Para quienes estén privados de sus privilegios, o sufran rechazo, abuso o depresión, el sitio ofrece esperanzas y sonrisas.  Pon atención a la columna diaria (de lunes a viernes) de consejos (en inglés) que da nuestra nueva bloguera, Lee Marsh (la columna DEAR LEE que está a la derecha de la página principal).