|
In Reply to: Re: support is.. posted by sia nara on June 12, 2008 at 11:57:23:
Even though the question is addressed to me and so I answer, I understand that it really is for anybody and everybody who is an exer visiting these boards. My opinions, of course, are only circumscribed to my own preferences, which have been often seen as a challenge to others but that have also in turn been challenged. Maybe I, unlike you, don't know how to ask questions, or may be it is that asking questions is just not the way to go. Another aspect in this type of communications, in addition to questions, is assertions. Some people like or without problems state absolutes in cases where others would prefer qualifiers or conditionals and so allow exceptions and other possibilities.
With this base I see boards as places with potential to accommodate a lot of topics, as long as there is good faith and a certain amount of basic trust that the participants are not at each other throats. What I mean is that it is possible to feel like "somebody is attacking me personally" when they attack my ideas -- UNLESS I trust the person, in which case I am more likely to think that it is a case of misunderstanding. Trust can be inherent (I know you), or implicit (you are not personally attacking me).
Most of us don't know or have known each other personally but some people do or have so that there is an inherent amount of trust.
The second one (you are not personally attacking me) is only possible by actively accepting that the interlocutor is a bona-fide potential benefactor. In other words, that the person who is answering, questioning, commenting, or providing some information, is doing it with the only intention of benefiting the readership on the topic at hand rather than something else.
One problem is related to the word "benefiting". Some well intended people, and we are very familiar with this, try to shove the good news down the throat of some poor listener to whom they are witnessing. And for the same reason, I have problems with the word "support". We all have our own style. In my case, maybe the Socratic method of asking questions, challenging questions at that, might seem too aggressive for some -- and they may also be too mild for others.
And then your question, what do I personally want or get out as an exer from boards like these? Well, there are a few things related to my past that I don't understand. I don't understand things that happened, people or even myself. A lot of my past is surrounded in a veil, or rather a cloud. And I want to know. Will I? I don't know but I have been in this quest and I have made progress - and a lot of that progress has been by participating in discussions both positive and negative, with other people in these boards. I have learned a lot just by reading. But when there is something I don't understand, I ask. I want to make sense of what people say, so I like to resolve any incoherent assertions.
And here is one problem, I have learned that not everybody take this questioning well. I used to think that they had something to "up their sleeves", I don't any more but I now understand that even if their world is not their coherent to me, it is to them.
So, what do I get from the boards? I have gained a lot of peace. I also wanted to reconnect with some friends, but we had so few in TF and our places were so compartmentalized that unless one was in the US and in the early days, the chances to reconnect other exers are slim to none. After all the Internet is USA-centric.
Another reason is that these boards provide a way for people to maintain the topic of the Children of God, the Family of Love, and their evil deeds alive. Some exers have left the Family but yearn for it because they did not leave, they were pushed away and excommunicated. They are still clinging to some of their basic teachings and doctrines of the Berg the Beast and all of its heads. What do I get from the boards? I get to deal with those doctrines and the people that support them every chance I get.
Some people have an passive attitude about TFI, I don't. I feel sorry for people in it and for people that support those satanic doctrines of darkness and evil, but I recognize the difference between both groups. One is simply blind due to ignorance - they were born in the cult, they accepted the cult, but the second group, even when they say they have left it, they continue their support to the Borg ideas of Berg and so they lie to themselves and to others.
And that is what I get out of these boards. I try to seek answers about my years in the cult and through my participation I try to clean the filth that still exists in me due to that exposure to their garbage. That filth exists in all of us and some more than others want to be clean. I do, and that is what I get out of these boards.
Thank you for asking me. That has helped me clarify and verbalized many of these thoughts. This is also, by the way, another benefit of these boards, and I believe it is not only for me but for all readers. When we verbalized ideas, what we only have as conceptualized thoughts, we give them life in a way thinking alone does not.
