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Childrens Schools Ideal For Cult Recruitment and PR
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: July 15, 2022 11:41PM

Some educational projects such as the Waldorf schools and parts of the homeschooling movement are tied to high demand cultic groups (Waldorf is based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner whose organization has been described as cultic.

Children's schools and schooling are excellent venues in which to perpetrate cultic outreach -- and PR.

Parents are anxious people - it goes with the territory.

Parents with children at a school spend consecutive years associating with the school and its teachers. Trusting relationships develop. The teachers and school bureaucracy learn a great deal about a family's social standing and finances.

If a family tragedy hits, this is the time of crisis and transition where recruitment into the cult operating the school is easily done.

Many parents, desperately busy with a multitude of responsibilities, are often subject to time pressure deadlines when making school applications. We often associate cults with weirdo preachers and exotic gurus, not to kindergarten teachers or grade schools.

Public Relations

Providing affordable schooling with a good reputation is a great way for a group to foster stellar community reputation while hiding its own "family secrets". In any controversy, parents of students and school alumni will leap to defend something associated with their own cozy memories.

Examples of cultic set ups tied to children' schooling.

Homeschooling Cults

[www.google.com]

Waldorf/Anthropsophy

Waldorf Critics

[www.waldorfcritics.org]

[parenting.kars4kids.org]

Our Brush With Rudolf Steiner
[www.waldorfcritics.org]

Spotlight on Anthroposophy
[www.waldorfcritics.org]

The Anthroposophical Indoctrination of Students
in Steiner-Waldorf Schools

[steinermentary.com]

[steinermentary.com]

[steinermentary.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2022 11:46PM by corboy.

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Ibn Arabi's description of which Sufis not to follow
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 03, 2022 07:23PM

Before large numbers of Sufi Muslims became economically secure in Western countries, Western wishful thinkers and crooks who prey on wishful thinkers could write any kind of nonsense about Sufism and Sufis. Sufi authors such as Ibn Arabi could be translated and quoted in ways that made it seem possible to contend that Sufism was separable from Islam.

This translation from Ibn Arabi came as a surprise.

[islamreigns.wordpress.com]

From Futuhat al-Makkiyyah*, vol. 3, pp. 482-83, second-half

*Meccan Revelations

Quote

By Muhy al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (rahmatullah alai)

Two Categories of Elder Sufis

The elder Sufis can be divided into two groups, one being of those who well-versed in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, would talk only what conforms to the Qur’an and Sunnah, dyed with the color of the Qur’an and Sunnah, honoring the Divinely-enjoined limits, following the injunctions of the Shari’ah, refraining from re-interpretation in [matters of] piety and abstinence and adopting the safest way to act upon unlike those who mix things. They treat with kindness and never humiliate or insult [even] a sinner. They love those who are dear to Allah and hate those who are hated by Allah. They don’t fear any criticism [when it comes to upholding the truth] in matters of religion. They enjoin what is good and forbid unanimously disapproved things. These are the people who are duly followed and should necessarily be held in high regard. These are the people looking upon whose faces reminds one of Allah the Exalted.

“The second category of the elders comprises of those who go through [different] spiritual states. They [don’t enjoy a stable state and] experience frequent changing in spiritual state. They don’t seem to be strict [adherents to the Shari’ah which we observe in the elders of the first category nor do they seem much careful]. Their spiritual experiences may be endorsed but they should not be followed. If miracles (karamat) happen at the hands of them, they should still not be trusted [in view of the miracles shown] because they seemingly have a kind of disrespect [for the Shari’ah] while the way leading to Allah the Exalted for us is the only Divinely-ordained way of the Shari’ah. Therefore, if anyone claims that there could be any way leading to Allah other than the Shari’ah, his claim will be rejected as false. Similarly, whoever is found lacking in respect [for the Shari’ah] cannot be a worthy man to be followed even if he is true about the spiritual state he feels. However, such a person also deserves respect.”

[Futuhat al-Makkiyyah, vol. 3, pp. 482-83, second-half]

From the book Mansur al-Hallaj – A Life History by Mawlana Zafar Ahmad Usmani Available in:-

US: [www.amazon.com]

UK: [www.amazon.co.uk]

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Re: Westernized Sufi and Theosophical Groups
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 03, 2022 07:34PM

Ibn ‘Arabi, Schuon, and Universalism

[traditionalistblog.blogspot.com]

Rethinking Ibn 'Arabi Gregory Lipton

[academic.oup.com]


Abstract

For over a century, Euro-American scholars and esotericists alike have heralded the thirteenth-century Spanish mystic Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240) as the premodern Sufi theorist of inclusive religious universalism who claimed all contemporaneous religions as equally valid beyond the religio-political divide of medieval exclusivism.

Rethinking Ibn ‘Arabi calls into question this Western image of Ibn ‘Arabi and throws into relief how his discourse is inseparably intertwined with the absolutist vision of his own religious milieu—that is, the triumphant claim that Islam fulfilled, superseded, and therefore abrogated all previously revealed religions.

By exploring how Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas have been read, appropriated, and universalized within the regnant interpretative field of Perennial Philosophy in the study of Sufism, Rethinking Ibn ‘Arabi theorizes Ibn ‘Arabi’s own absolutist conception of universalism in juxtaposition to his contemporary universalist reception. The contours that surface through this comparative analysis trace the discursive practices that inform Ibn ‘Arabi’s Western reception back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conceptions of “authentic” religion where European ethnoracial superiority is wielded against a Semitic Other—both Jewish and Muslim.

Rethinking Ibn ‘Arabi thus argues that in ironically similar ways to Ibn ‘Arabi’s medieval absolutism, contemporary Western universalist constructions of religious authenticity contain buried orders of politics concealing supersessionist models of exclusivism.

Corboy note: (Replacement theology (also known as supersessionism) essentially teaches that the church has replaced Israel in God's plan.)

Keywords: Key Words, Ibn ‘Arabi, Sufism, abrogation, religious pluralism, universalism, esotericism, Perennialism, religio perennis, Frithjof Schuon, Aryanism

Subject
Islam

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Memoir by a 'vertical wife' of Frithjof Schuon
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 12, 2022 08:58AM

Google Search

frithjof schuon "vertical wives"

[www.google.com]


Thursday, July 14, 2022
Maude Murray’s book

[traditionalistblog.blogspot.com]

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Unless you are the kid of a well connected disciple...
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: April 15, 2023 08:18PM

From another member of the CEI message board who spoke of a different group:

Quote

This is an old song

Slave to love
And I can't escape
I'm a slave to love

This is exactly devotees suffer from. Slave to love.
Afraid to lose that love and security.
Even though when you are in it, you will kill and die for that transcendental bliss, it is slavery.
When you are fine sitting with the most horrible emotions, this is where you find freedom.
In the devotee community you have to run from everything. Just chant more. Go to more kitrans.
Silence the inner voice that tells you that you are being abused.
Those poor devotees are not so full within. They fly around midget like bees attracted to a sweet mango.

They want what he has. They think he is a demigod.

If you are full within, why idolize someone this much.

The deeper you go, the more you realize what a clown you were as a devotee.
The only good thing I guess was the love and light namaste attitude.

How does that softness serves you when you roam amongst wolves.
When your own guru is a warewolf?

Your whole life you have to act like under a social credit system so that no one throws you out.

Unless you are the kid of a well connected disciple.
In that case you can do whatever the hell you want.

Basically devotee life is all about chasing the highs and looking for mystical experiences.

How is that called spiritual STRENGTH.

Corboy:

No different than being an addict desperately waiting for your dealer to arrive.

The brain chemistry of servitude is exactly the same whether in the sufi center, theosophy lodge, or being a junkie, arms scarred with track marks.

The traumatic degradation is the same.

Only the clothes are different.

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I'm Waiting For the Man Nico 1967
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: April 16, 2023 10:10PM

Nico gives us the emotions and tensions of the junkie searching for the dope dealer - who is never early, which means we always have to wait.


0:00 / 4:39
I'm Waiting For The Man Nico Velvet Underground 1967

[www.youtube.com]

Have a listen.

Tension to the max, eh?

Now, recall when you waited, waited, waited for the guru to invite you, for the message to arrive.

Waited for the guru to approve of your gift, your work, waited for an in person appointment.

Waited for the guru to pardon you for an offense.

Was your anxiety any different from what Nico sings about?

Are you as a Sufi, waiting, waiting any different from when you were a junkie waiting, waiting?

I'm Waiting For the Man (Murshid, Baba, Sheikh)

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Fake Hafez Literary Colonialism
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: April 18, 2023 11:36PM

Fake Hafez: How a supreme Persian poet of love was erased

That so many of the poems attributed to Hafez are fake reveals a Western appropriation of Muslim spirituality

Omid Safi is the Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center.

Published On 14 Jun 202014 Jun 2020

[www.aljazeera.com]

Faking Hafez

What happens when it turns out that 'translations' of Hafez's poems are not Hafez’s poems at all, but the translator's own?

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee

The Wire 29/Jun/2020

[thewire.in]

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Euphoria Bliss as Ingredient of Trauma Bond Trap
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: April 19, 2023 11:31PM

Quote

Alexandra Stein has pioneered the application of attachment theory to cult dynamics. Briefly put: she shows that the main task of the high-demand group is to re-wire the recruit’s attachment patterning to the disorganized end of the spectrum, where they are in an acute state of arousal amidst the contradiction of needing to devote themselves to the person who is abusing them.

One of the most personally resonant implications of this for me is Stein’s description of how surrendering to the tension of this conflict can seem to provide deep relief, even euphoria. I experienced this very strongly in both of the cults I was recruited into.

Quoting from Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems, p. 38:

Quote

The second phase of a trauma response is dissociation: “detachment from an unbearable situation.” As previously described, in this state, both physiological states of hyperarousal and dissociation are activated: internal energy-consuming resources are simultaneously on full alert at the same time as the person is dissociating to try to shut down and conserve these resources. Imagine the toll on the body that this two-fold unresolvable process must take. Eventually, dissociation – freezing and giving up the failed effort to escape – comes to dominate. Along with giving up the struggle to fight against the group and the fear it has generated, the dissociated follower comes to accept the group as the safe haven and thus forms a trauma bond. This moment of submission, of giving up the struggle, can be experienced as a moment of great relief, and even happiness, or a spiritual awakening.


What little I know of KY/3H0 experience is that there is a strong emphasis upon altered and/or transcendent states. From my personal experience and research on other yoga groups, I know that the line between a “radiant fawning” response and a truly empowering experience can be hard to find. Worse, that line can be manipulated by the group or its leader, by suggesting to the member that their stress response is actually a sign of awakening. Groups in which spiritual practice is particularly intense, demanding, or life-pervading (Ashtanga Yoga, Sivananda Yoga, etc.), are hot spots for this conflation.

So as Kundalini Yoga practitioners consider the conundrum of how effective the practices have been vs the picture that’s emerging of Bhajan and his lieutenants and enablers, I would encourage gentle reflection on the question of “Why were the practices efficient? Why did this work?” Because it’s possible that the euphoria and bliss, in some cases, was not only part of the abuse, but an essential mechanism for deepening trauma bonds within the group.

This is definitely not to say that the practices if they are still felt to be beneficial, should be abandoned. But I believe that everyone deserves to practice without the additional burden of cognitive dissonance. And who knows? Practicing euphoria from a place of real freedom may well be possible.

For the entire article go here:

[matthewremski.com]

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