Worldwide there are tens of thousands of individuals who are former Jehovah's Witnesses (JWS) and by some estimates over one million lives have been affected by the self destructive mind control that has led some to commit suicide, while others suffer silently for years once leaving or being expelled from JWS.

I was in the movement twenty years and have firsthand personal experience and that of working with hundreds of other JWS while I was a ministerial servant and since leaving. In my own personal experience I had reached a point in my life that I felt powerless to direct my life and lived in a state of constant depression. I had done everything I had been told to do. I had pioneered where the need was great, I could count on both feet and hands the number of meetings I had missed in a fifteen-year period. I had gone to all assemblies, I had read all my publications and even spent countless hours researching past Watchtower volumes for pearls of wisdom.  I lived a simple life while still trying to simplify it even more. I felt a pervasive guilt for not pioneering again, even though my family obligations prevented me from that. I had bought into a flawed bill of goods that limited me from making choices there were in my personal and family’s best interests. What follows is a model that can be used to make you proactive and give you a map to follow in your own personal evolution, as you break free from the shackles put upon your mind and soul.

With refined awareness you can understand your personal search process, the steps and stages in it, how you can get stuck and unstuck at each stage can be very freeing and hope inspiring for those who refuse to give up the search for greater clarity and wisdom. Understanding and applying these principles will allow you to test their wisdom yourself.

1. Intentionally decide to seek for deeper, clearer understanding.
 Seeking means the unbridled devotion of our whole attention to discerning
the details and depths of any issue we need clarification.

In your search for clarity you will be faced with the biggest obstacle, which is fear. This emotion is useful in keeping us from taking unnecessary risks that might endanger us. The Watchtower filled your mind with fear. Time and again you were told God would destroy those that would oppose or leave the spiritual ark. This is was a ploy to keep you from ever seeking the love and freedom that comes from having a personal relationship directly with God. God in his infinite love and mercy does not destroy nor castigate those that are pure of heart and seek his loving direction. The JWS have become a full-fledged organization of spiritual tyrants who spiritually abuse their members leaving them with no one to turn to for relief from this oppression.

2. Open your mind and heart to see the unexpected, a new level of insight or understanding about what you seek.  Assume that your current understanding is distorted, incomplete or that you can know more -- that there is always more to know about what you seek to understand.

Understand that you are a product of all the diet of theological beliefs programmed into your mind. Your beliefs are now acting as filters that keep you from seeing through your own eyes. You are looking at yourself, others and life in general through the beliefs of very judgmental and intolerant people who think they are the only ones favored by God. In order to gain greater freedom and clarity you will need to once again look through the eyes of a child. A child does not have all the years of flawed beliefs that keep one from feeling and following one's instincts.

3. Become still in mind and body. Watch, wait, become prayerful, contemplative, and receptive, humbly ready to shiver in the draft of an open mind.

This is a skill that must be cultivated, by doing so, you will learn to be a silent witness without judgment of yourself others and life in general. This will give you objectivity and allow you to see other choices for your life you may need to consider. You are neither your thoughts nor your feelings these are just aspects of your being and they do not have to define nor determine who you are or what you become.

4. Assume that there is always a higher wisdom, which you can access and grasp.  To presume otherwise is to be presumptuous in a small way.  If you are to be presumptuous, do it liberally and open yourself to larger anticipations and discoveries.

Mankind has thousands of years of recorded history of pain and suffering. Feed your mind and spirit by studying others who have been down a similar path and learn from them. Search for a good self-help book. Develop the mindset of a seeker of wisdom by seeking out wise persons. Pray and have faith that God has not abandoned you, he many be leading you towards your destiny if you let him guide you. Take inventory and see just how far you have come from living in a fishbowl thinking that was all life was about, when you were a JW.
 

5. Ask a specific question, or request specific light to be shed on exactly what you need.  The more specific and intense the focus, the greater will be your opening to receive.

One of the most powerful forces known to man lies within you, your unconscious mind; it is your loyal servant. If you ask it specific questions it can search for specific answers. You do get what you ask for so be very careful what you ask for. If you ask it why am I in this condition it may say because you got yourself into it, but if you ask it what would it take for me to overcome this adversity it will now have something to work on. Have faith that the mind will work even when you are asleep or doing other conscious tasks.
 

6. Believe that it is possible to receive wisdom, guidance and even truth in relation to the issue you are wrestling with.  Seek and ask, believing with an undivided mind that it is possible for you to have breakthrough thoughts, no matter what you happen to be feeling at the time.

This may require you to have faith in God or a power that is greater than you. The simple fact that you are alive is a miracle in itself since the odds of you being born are astronomical. You were born with innate talents and resources so start to appreciate and to love yourself. Once you do this you can accept the love from others and from that higher source of power that wants you to find the truths you are seeking to be a whole human being.

7. Wait for as long as it takes.  Wisdom, clarity and resolution come more and more as we dedicate ourselves in an ongoing way to the process of discovery.

As one famous minister says "God's delays are not necessarily God's denials". Before you can find clarity you must overcome your fear. Once you do this things will look different to you, you will be able to see hidden agendas, but don't let this clarity blind you. With greater clarity comes power but don't become intoxicated with power but develop power over power so you can use your inner power in a benevolent way.

8. Burn with desire to know more truth, more deeply.  Allow your deepest desire to know to be kindled into a blazing laser search, scanning everywhere for anything that reveals itself as coming into focus to complete the puzzle of your understanding.

Truth will reveal itself in some places you would least expect. So use your awareness to dig and to mine nuggets of life guiding truths. Create your own inner test for what constitutes truth for you. Listen to your whole being find that inner alignment and resonance to something that feels right to you. Seek out people and situations that create those feelings that nourish your spirit.

9. Find more truth and do not assume that you have "arrived" at perfectly complete understanding.  Continue the exciting discovery of getting to know each answer's deeper and more lovely meanings and applications.

Ten years from now you will think and feel different about your own present truth. This is due to many factors. Understand that truth is relative to time, your own stage of your journey, and to circumstances in your life. Avoid anyone that tells you they have the only truth. There are many paths and many truths being a free willed human being you have the delight of discovery. As Albert Einstein said, " Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal (flawed) hopes and wishes where we face it as free beings, admiring asking and observing. There we enter into the realm of art and science.

10. Be grateful and don't give up!  Thank "Heavens" you get to be here at all, to ask, to seek, to find, and to be nearer to the Spirit of Truth that can prove itself more and more to be oh so true!  Don't give up on your search process, and never stay stuck at one of the above levels.

Enjoy the freedom and the journey to be all of you without the constant judgmental criticisms of people that can only see in others their own flaws and weaknesses and who have no hope of being happy and well-adjusted free human beings. To err is human, to forgive is divine, seek your own divines.