“WHOM SHALL WE GO
AWAY TO?”
How To Deprogram
Yourself From JW Thinking
“If
I find myself in a situation where changes seem hard to accept,” admits one
longtime elder, “I reflect on Peter’s words to Jesus: ‘Lord, whom shall we go
away to?’ Then I ask myself, ‘Where shall I go away to—out there into the
darkness of the world?’ This helps me to hold firmly to God’s organization.”
(John 6:68)
The
comment above is taken from the daily text of Jehovah’s Witnesses dated August
22, 2007. This uncertainty often keeps active JWs from leaving the organization
and inactive members from voicing their true opinions about how they feel.
For
many when leaving the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses there is often a
spiritual vacuum in trying to regain trust in spirituality. While there is not
one answer, there is certain information that might help gain a broader
perspective in what you have come out of, as well as how to avoid putting
yourself back into a similar situation. I have found that many that leave the
JWs either become atheistic or charismatic fundamentalists. Both seem to be
extreme and reactionary to the indoctrination of the JW.ORG belief system. You see,
as a JW you are taught to live life with answers you cannot question. If you as
a JW question the answers, you are disfellowshipped. In leaving the
organization you need to face a simple truth that is, learning to live life
with questions you cannot answer and be at peace.
How can you do that?
The
simplest explanation is learning to think for your self. You see as a Jehovah’s
Witness at each meeting you were indoctrinated to think of every aspect in life
as what Jehovah (JW.ORG) wants you to do. Each hour of the day your
thoughts were programmed to focus on what the organization’s rules and
principles required you to do. In that process you never measured up.
Individuals find they were never good enough elders, pioneers, publishers,
wives or husbands. Why? You were programmed to believe that you were always
falling short of the organizations standards. As a result this kept you with
low self esteem and easy to control.
So
often when Jehovah’s Witnesses have doubts about the organization they have a
phrase that replays in their minds over and over again, “Whom shall we go away
to?” That terminology is ingrained into your brain to work as a type of fail
safe to prevent you from thinking for your self. You are taught in the
organization that the meetings are “education” on how to serve God.
This
could not be further from the truth. Think about what happens at every single
meeting of JWs? Each meeting has
questions and answers. Q and A means that you read a paragraph, and then the
conductor asks a question, you look at the same paragraph and provide the
answer. Is this education? When you are in school or college how does typical
education work? First you do research on a topic, form conclusions based on the
information, discuss this with the class and then write an essay or thesis on
what your perceptions are of the material. A teacher reviews your essay and
then critiques the information to make sure that now you have a learned concept
of what ever the topic was.
In
the JW organization questions and answers are not education but instead
programming. You will find the answers are often the same over and over again with
the ultimate solution, preach (distribute literature) or God kills you. This “programming” becomes
deeply ingrained into your mind to the point that you react automatically
without thinking on a day to day basis. The “programming” is reinforced every few days and as a result it becomes strongly entrenched much like the
grooves on a recording album .
How
do you break these patterns?
Using
the record as an analogy, what would happen if you took a knife and scrapped
back and forth across the grooves in the record? Would it ever play again the same way? So too
with JW.ORG programming, by following certain exercises You can be protected to not fall
back into thought patterns that are self destructive.
To
understand this more completely; think of a thought stated to all JWs. It goes
something like this,
“When you come into the organization one demon leaves you but if you ever leave, seven demons enter into you.”
“When you come into the organization one demon leaves you but if you ever leave, seven demons enter into you.”
What
does this mean?
Basically
if you ever leave JW.ORG you will be seven times worse as a person than you were
before you came into the organization. Is this true? Sadly, in many cases the answer is yes. The
reason is not because you are a bad person, but you have been programmed to
self destruct. Remember the earlier comment, “Preach or God kills you?” Well as
part of your little record that was made when you were a JW you believe in your
subconscious mind that if you are not out preaching for JW.ORG you are
going to be destroyed at Armageddon.
In
addition, as a “worldly” person you are part of Satan’s world and doomed to a
horrible death at the hands of Jesus and his helpers. You think Armageddon is coming at
any minute; so what do you do? Most think, “Well I might as well go out and have
a good time and try all those things that WT told me not to do.” Why? Part of it is
anger, when you realize that you were lied to on so many levels, the other is that you have a tremendous inner pain and you are trying to self medicate.
The
results are often very predictable; 80% of marriages will break up within two
years after leaving JW.ORG, you will probably start smoking, men will grow a beard
or goatee, women will get some type of piercing, usually navel, your taste in
music will change, you will find yourself experimenting with drugs, alcohol, sex and about anything else that the organization told you not to do. For
certain ones, after they get beat up a bit they then think, “I was a lot happier
serving Jehovah!” Like a whipped puppy, they return to JW.ORG to
once again repeat the cycle of living life with answers they cannot question.
Is
this really the better way of life?
Do
you really need someone or some entity to watch and tell you what to do for the
rest of your life to keep you from killing your self or destroying your self
esteem?
The
answer is NO!
The key is learning to think for yourself and break the internal sub conscious programming of the JWs. If you can do this, you learn to take responsibility for your life and view each day as a gift to be enjoyed instead of beating yourself up mentally.
The key is learning to think for yourself and break the internal sub conscious programming of the JWs. If you can do this, you learn to take responsibility for your life and view each day as a gift to be enjoyed instead of beating yourself up mentally.
In
my personal journey I have been approached by thousands of former and current
JWs that all asked the same question, “Where do we go from here?” In defining
the answer to that question I developed a program called, “The Seven Steps”. The information does not use anything that speaks negatively about the
organization. The reason is learning to think for your self does not require
someone to tell you how bad the organization is. I feel that is once again
allowing someone to give you answers that they have developed and as a result
you are playing the same mind games with different leaders.
The
Seven Steps is an email program that asks you to do seven different exercises
and write an essay about your conclusions. You then send in your essay and it
is reviewed to see if you were able to grasp the full picture of the
information provided. You might be provided with previous essays that were
submitted to help you see how others that completed the steps came to their
conclusions. Once each step is completed you then move on to the
next.
I
have personally worked with several hundred people doing the “Seven Steps”; each
and every person has stated that it forever changed their life for the better. So
many find that they are in a form of paralysis mentally after leaving the
organization. After doing the steps they discover they can now move on with
their lives. Many start college, have healthy relationships, become stronger
emotionally and find new paths to spirituality. Understand that the steps do
not point to any one conclusion, if we did that, what would be the point in
learning to think for yourself?
So
the question is, are you ready to move on with your life?
Do you really want to
learn to think for yourself?
Do you really want to know, “Where do we go from
here?”
If
so, then you might be a good candidate for the “Seven Steps”.
The
program costs you $700 for all Seven Steps, you can send payment by check,
money order or pay pal at this link.
