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solea13
Helpme: I got a good laugh from the Scary Mary Poppins trailer. :D

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When I met (Guru X)in 1993, I had been seeing a psychotherapist four times a week for eight years.

Guru X and many others in his community knew this.

It’s clear to me in retrospect that in making my $2 Million and other donations to X I was acting out some of the self-destructive issues that I had long been in therapy in to deal with.

When I told my therapist about meeting Guru X , she warned me I that was vulnerable to potential brainwashing.

In contrast, when I revealed to X the insecurity and anxiety I felt about the prospect of joining his community, he told me how intelligent and bright I was, and how fully capable I was of making a mature decision on my own.

Who was I going to listen to—someone who told me I was weak (my therapist), or someone who told me I was strong (Guru X)?

At the time, the choice seemed clear, however misguided, and I left my therapist and fell deeply into the vortex of Andrew’s community—the amazing people, the happiness, the feeling of belonging...."

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From Jane

Martin, your comments are accurate, certainly for me. I am doubtless that I was a profoundly needy individual who was seeking some "dad" figure to guide and direct me.

(Guru X's) seduction, in my case, was to call upon my desire for "true independence and true integrity." I knew I was a needy insecure person and I wanted relief from it and he seemed to promise real spiritual depth and INDEPENDENCE. Which was an utter lie, obviously.

For him it is ultimately about submission and dependence.

I did actually try to pursue the legal front, which is when I discovered the law regarding undue influence. At the time I think I was in a pretty confused, perhaps traumatized, state and couldn't bear fighting Andrew publicly. I feared he would use all he knew of my life to make me suffer more emotionally. I feared he would bring out all the endless love letters I wrote to him as proof that it was all voluntary. (he saves them) I feared facing all this. Again about two years ago I sought legal counsel and discovered there is a statute of limitations on this kind of case and a judge may have interpreted it as 5 years from "the gift", 5 years from the last "donation", or 5 years from the time I left. It would be difficult to know.

What would be hard to prove, which I believe to be true, is that it should be 5 years from the time you get out from under the spell and confusion of the situation, which for me has taken years!

When I did begin legal proceedings, even threatening a class action lawsuit, where my attorney would gather a group of people in the same situation and bring the case up to date, thereby, circumventing the statue of limitations. X lawyer challenged us and are waiting to hear from us. We'll see what develops. ...

On the prostration front, it is no joke. To be more accurate, at that time I had had 3 knee surgeries and couldn't do the full prostration so I did 1000 push ups each one ending with the full hands over the head, fingers touching his picture. I was one of the few who had to modify the real prostration, but it wasn't unusual if someone was hurt. Yes it is true. The men and women did them separately. At the time I think I was with a group of 10 or 12 women. (we each had our own personal photo). On one weekend a month, Andrew had push up competitions. The men had a world-wide competition. On Sunday night we would find out how many the "winner" had done in how-ever long a time it took. It was actually a time of fun and sport and joy and teamwork, everyone supporting each other. I was in the best physical shape of my life at that time. Emotionally, psychologically, a shell, an empty, individual. I can hardly do 100 push ups now. Besides when I do do them, a lot of memories come back, not always welcome when I am at the gym. By the time you are doing the kind of practice I was, you have proven to Andrew your total submission to him. Folks who are on the periphery don't know whats going on closer in. And by the time I was that far in, I was, as you say brainwashed or at a minimum, so sold on the ideals he set up that I would do what he asked. So yes we did do this. We did horrendous things to each other in the name of surrendering the ego.

We allowed X to break us down and we broke each other down, in the name of destroying ego. we broke each others spirits and hearts and in some who were already too vulnerable and fragile(corboy italics), we perhaps destroyed their spirits.

I AM compassionate of the students because I have seen that it has taken me nearly 8 years to feel comfortable in my own skin, enough to take responsibility for what I participated in, and to call a spade a spade..., ..... X defines the boundaries of what is acceptable and what it is not.

And the concern would be that the boundaries keep shifting until it gets really really dangerous to be close to him.

He always said the closer you'd get, you'd burn, but ideally that should mean you are less and less selfish, self-centered and unethical, not the opposite.

.....I don't look back with pride at the times I peppered my "friends" with examples of their weaknesses in our endless meetings. I am not proud to have participated in rituals that utterly humiliated individual women who were in need of whatever Andrew would call it. There were lots and lots of ways we used humiliation on each other to try to "destroy the ego." What else was destroyed along the way?? No I am not proud, I am responsible for my part. But it is complicated.

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One thing that deserves much closer scrutiny is whether discples remain with abusive leaders by mis-using healing methodologies to suppress their genuine suffering and to suppress their doubts.

These methods include and are not limited to prescription medication, stress reduction, acupuncture, massage therapy, yoga.

Healers consulted by abused devotees may be unaware that the client is suffering chronic abuse. All too often devotees keep quiet and conceal the origin of thier stress--physical injuries.

A body worker or therapist may lack the alertness needed to tell clients, 'For you, the treatment of choice is NOT yoga, body work, or acupuncture. Its to pack your bags and leave, ASAP.'

Like alcohol or tranquilizers, alternative therapies can be mis-prescribed and applied in such a way as to enable suffering disciples to tolerate the chronic anxiety of living in a hurtful community, rather than feel their suffering with full awareness, claim their energy--and leave.

So it is worth asking whether one has used (or told to us use) yoga, bebirthing, acupucture, presecribed medication, etc to numb out and remain in a bad situation longer than they would have, without these palliatives.

Otherwise, one may never comprehend using these methods for numbing conscious awareness instead of supporting conscious awareness could have played an important and unexamined role in causing them to delay their departure.

It may well be that for every abusive leader, there may be a network of massage therapists, yoga teachers and other stress reduction specialists who are unknowingly colluding by assisting suffering devotees to tolerate a harmful situation instead of recognizing it for what it is--and leaving before worse harm is inflicted.

This is part of the social network that keeps a bad guru going.

It is far more than students 'giving their power away to the guru.'

Gurus are kept in power by collusive social networks that go far beyond the student teacher relationship.

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The Anticult
check this out.
(apparently the Mary Poppins books are much less fluffy than the movie)


Michael Katz, Byron Katie's partner...said BK was like Mary Poppins. [forum.culteducation.com]
Mary Poppins was created by writer P. L. Travers.
P. L. Travers (Pamela Travers) was deeply influenced by Gurdjieff. [www.gurdjieff.org]
Gurdjieff method was called The Work.
"He is most notable for introducing what some refer to as "The Work".

QUOTE from article by P.L. Travers: [www.gurdjieff.org]
"The Work, as his method came to be called, had, as it very soon appeared, been only too accurately named..."
By 1924 The Work was sufficiently well established for Gurdjieff to set out on the first of his trips to the United States...
Those who knew the Teacher could gather only by rumour and hearsay that there were other Gurdjieff’s—the healer of psychic illnesses, the one who could cure alcoholism, Gurdjieff the business man, and the Gurdjieff known as “Monsieur Bonbon,” an old eccentric gentleman whose sole mission in life, it appeared, was to dispense candy to local cronies and children..."

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)
by P. L. Travers
[www.gurdjieff.org]
from Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia of the Supernatural 12 vol., (London: Purnell, 1970-1971)
This essay was published by Traditional Studies Press, Toronto: 1973, as a ten page pamphlet