Nutrino asked:

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Does their vocabulary grow or does it shrink ? Are they emotionally fuller and deeper, and comfortable with their emotions, or do they become emotionally "grey" and simplistic.... do they have the confidence to allow themselves heartfelt expressivity or do they emote in programmatic ways ? Do they appear to be fully thinking for themselves or does it seem like some else is thinking for them ? Does their language show spontaneous use of imagery, metaphor, and analogy that indicates a free flowing internal imaginative process, or are only certain images and analogies repeated over and over ?

Great questions.

In my experience, the effect of an unethically managed LGAT has resulted in people with severely stilted emotional expression.

There is a noticeable lack of humour, and also in their inability to relate to people outside of those that have gone through the same LGATs.

Us-versus-them is often present in the "thinking".

Another thing that stands out is simplistic reasoning, which is mostly summed up by that omnipresent phrase: "you create your own reality".

That phrase is one the LGAT leaders love to use because they put themselves in a win-win position. If your life is going well, it's because of us, but if it is going badly, it is because of you - "you create your own reality'.

It is certainly one of the most over-used thought-stopping pieces of loaded language. It covers almost anything with it's black and white interpretation.

Brad, you nailed that one on the head.

Maybe heading a bit off the subject, but I thought I would post this here anyway: What a LGAT does to a person's emotions - summarised in a 'conversation'...

So, I'm working late on a Saturday afternoon (17:00) here in South Africa, having driven to a city about 50 miles away from my girlfriend. So, I phone her up to ask her about her day.

"Hi. How are you?" I ask.

"Fine," comes the reply, the flat affect of someone whose mind has been messed with very much evident.

'What have you been up to?" I ask.

"Nothing much," is the answer.

Then, a loooong pause. "Just relaxing."

Interesting, because she has no time to spend with me. Interesting, too, because when I phoned earlier in the day she wasn't at home.

It leads me to think of the child-like state many of these victims of unethical LGAT leaders are reduced to. Ask a child how school was and you get a one-word answer. Ask for details and again you get a one-word answer.

'Anything exciting?" I ask.

'No, nothing,' she answers.

'I'm just trying to interact,' I say.

A pause again.

'Well, enjoy your day," I tell her.

'Thanks,' she answers.

'Okay. Bye. I love you,' I say.

'Thanks,' she says. The relief that the call is over is evident in her voice as she puts the phone down.

It is all too clear to me that she feels threatened by my view that her so-called guru is a fraud, especially as I have proved at least 50 lies he has told her. BUT we are dealing with someone whose mind has been messed with and I wonder where that beautiful woman I know has gone.

I know she is inside there, but how do I reach her?

Her emotions are dead. She trusts no one anymore, least of all herself, and they say these 'human potential' seminars are about empowering oneself!!!!!

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Brad69
It is all too clear to me that she feels threatened by my view that her so-called guru is a fraud, especially as I have proved at least 50 lies he has told her. BUT we are dealing with someone whose mind has been messed with and I wonder where that beautiful woman I know has gone.

I know she is inside there, but how do I reach her?

Her emotions are dead. She trusts no one anymore, least of all herself, and they say these 'human potential' seminars are about empowering oneself!!!!!

The LGATeers from the Dark Side have an arsenel of insidious technique for (what is known in some circles as) [b:dbc6a18fd9] belief installation [/b:dbc6a18fd9] .... I have to say, on a personal level, that I was a little horrified and disgusted when I caught on to a senior NLP Trainer toying with some of these patterns... not enough to qualify as grossly unethical... but skating on thin ice in my opinion... and it did become clearer than it had been to me in the past that the temptation to misuse hypnotic methods is hard to resist... and at some point in the seminar, he clearly knew that I was on to his game, although I did not say anything overt... he became uneasy and avoidant around me, sheepish, as if to say "hey, guy, I have bills to pay" ... there is no possible doubt that the LGAT industry has caught on to the grubby, cruddy fact that those who manipulate best, profit most. This turns from merely compromised tacky salemanship to something akin to [b:dbc6a18fd9] Evil [/b:dbc6a18fd9] when the techniques are used ruthlessly to undermine a subject's beliefs in his or her own autonomy, and create an inapprropriate, irrational bond between the Guru figure, or the Guru's organization, and the [b:dbc6a18fd9] depotentiated subject [/b:dbc6a18fd9] .... it is also unnerving to consider that many people out there have an unconscious wish to surrender their autonomy and live in a state of "directed bliss" where an authority figure creates the structure for them... this infantile regressive drive is often hightened in times of great anxiety, as in the post 9/11 world... in other words, many seekers enter these contexts with a pre-formed intention of "going on an extended LGAT bender" much like an alcoholic or a heroin addict organizes his life around alcohol or opiates.... and probably like the heroin user who has the surface explanation that he "can quit whenever he wants" and "heroin is putting him in touch with his creativity" or "look at all the jazz greats who used heroin" ... the hard reality of addiction is carefully rationalized as an "at choice" behavior.

Brad,

that post reminds me of my wife before she walked out on me. I called her the day before she left and we spoke briefly because she had nothing to say. She was very guarded during her conversation and as I was saying good bye I told her I loved her and her response was nothing. Usually it was "I love you too." The next day she left me. I really hope your girlfriend see the light and this works out for you.

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nutrino
It isn't all that important what any social phenomonon is labelled, whether it be a "LGAT", a "cult", a "multi level marketing operation" ... the crucial thing to watch is how it affects the emotional and intellectual texture of the participants.

I completely agree with this statement. I do have experience with an LGAT that works with young adults who have a criminal history. They teach them wilderness skills. These young adults have to learn to rely on the people around them and themselves. This is an example of an LGAT that is a healthy LGAT which has accountability in many ways other than just through themselves. They have accountability to parents, and to govt agencies, (thought not all govt agencies are perfect :wink: ) and accountability to many counselors, therapist and psychiatrist. One of the problems with mkp and LGAT's is no TRUE accountability to anyone outside of their "organization".

I found this site (or someone mentioned it), and I have been reading and studying the site. IMO this is a good site. After I read some on the site I realized I was making all the wrong mistakes with my husband. After "following" their suggestions, it started helping the communication between my husband and I. I feel that those of us "fighting" for our loved ones can use all the help we can get.

[www.freedomofmind.com]

Steven Alan Hassan, cult counselor and mind control expert is a Nationally Certified Counselor and licensed Mental Health Counselor and has developed a breakthrough approach to help loved ones rescue cult mind control victims. He is a former member of the Moon cult. Ex-cult members and others seek him out for specialized counseling to help them recover from symptoms other mental health professionals are not trained to address.

Hassan has been at the forefront of cult awareness activism since 1976 and is the author of two critically acclaimed books – Combatting Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988) and Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000).

There is an interesting article on NWTA at [www.geocities.com]

Also, see (linked off of the article), a man's experience of NWTA at [www.geocities.com]

Another article:

Shadow of Initiation
by Dale Roads
Mircea Eliade says modern efforts at initiation indicate our lack of spiritual knowledge rather than being initiatory. In my experience of initiation efforts in the men's movement, the New Warriors are a clear example of this tendency.

I am deeply disturbed by what I have heard from men who have gone through the New Warrior training.

"New Warriors is the real men's work; all other forms of men's work are too soft" and other statements like those are repeatedly New Warriors.

As I have interacted with Warriors, I watched them begin to recognize how they had been taught to project their shadow onto others, to separate themselves into exclusivity to hide their woundedness, and to find their power in anger.

As these teachings started to fail, these men entered into true initiatory experiences. They had no idea of what was happening to them because the experience of being in initiation is so different then what they had received in the New Warriors training. In order to maintain the integrity of the true initiation these men would have to leave the New Warrior network. Often these men were scorned by their former brothers for not continuing to participate in New Warriors.

Our western ideas about initiation are confused. Our culture says initiation is a beginning. Initiation means death. Death to the warrior stage of development of being caught between the poles of victim/victimizer. We want to skip the death that leads to the initiatory rebirth into the terrain beyond the warrior. The idea in the west is to have power over others. In initiation cultures power has to do with knowing self and using that power for the benefit of the community.

Another misunderstanding is that initiation is an achievement. The false idea is that initiation can be earned like a degree. In my experience initiation is a gift. I do not have control over initiation. I can not buy it, win it or display it like a trophy. I can choose whether to accept it gracefully and with courage or to be dragged through it screaming, kicking and crying.

The seduction New Warriors offers of becoming an initiator is strong. I have seen men become New Warrior Initiators, only to have it fail their own development because of a lack of knowledge in the New Warrior Network about what is initiation. Culturally we have the idea that an initiator is someone who does something to the initiate. We do not understand that an initiator is only a guide that points to an open door to the other world. The initiator hopes the initiate will be able to return with the gift of self and self's relationship to the world. An initiator is less a manipulator of circumstances and more a follower of the dictates of a sequence of events that are controlled by something far beyond himself.

There is a confusion around the difference between what is a leader and what is an initiator. At the local men's council meeting one of the New Warrior "initiators" talked about not wanting to be a leader anymore. That his leadership had brought him to a dead end. Later in the meeting another man spoke in a mythological manner about how destiny, that he called the "little man" had caused his wife to have three miscarriages. She was about to carry the fourth pregnancy to full term. He spoke that because of the miscarriages caused by the "little man or dwarf of destiny" he now heard the inner voice saying, "This child about to be born is a blessed child." As this man stood crying about his trials and joys, the New Warrior Initiator, who stated earlier that he does not want to lead anymore, said in a loud Warrior voice, "Around here we kick the little man's ass when he does that sort of stuff to us." In this statement he was reflecting the New Warrior training that we need to be in control of and fight with our own destiny.

This man is a New Warrior Initiator. He is beginning to see that what he knows is a dead end for him. Yet, he can not stop. He is still leading other men into the dead end of trying to kill off that little voice that is totally out of our control. That "little man of our destiny" is the initiator and the inner voice is the guide. Every time I have fought "the little man", I have abandoned my own initiatory process.

Often I have been sucked into following inflationary personalities who needed to teach me something in order to maintain their inflated self. I did this because of my own confusion around leadership. In our culture we are initiated into giving ourselves away to institutions and leaders that are unconsciously serving their inflation rather than the needs of others. The longer I crawl my path the more I know that I can not really help anyone else. All I can do is attend to the difficult task of being just myself. What I have seen of the results of New Warrior training is exactly the opposite of this.

There is a new cycle of initiation that is emerging from out of the ground into our midst. The question is how much we will have to suffer before attending to it's quiet ways.

Dale Roads lives in Gnawbone Indiana with Sandra and their four children. They co-direct a retreat center dedicated to family, helping young people towards self-knowledge and assisting adults in completing unfinished portions of old initiations even as new ones come rolling along. He can be reached at 5685 East Mount Liberty Road, Nashville, IN. 47748

And another article:

BEYOND CONFORMITY AND GROUP THINK
by Andre B. Heuer
The scent of their cigars reached me at the same time as the cacophony of their voices. "You're a asshole." One shouted "No shit, I'm the biggest asshole you've ever met." They bumped chests and roared. As this mass of loudness passed, I heard insults and derisive remarks about everybody and anybody. I could not tell one man from the other. They lacked any recognizable individuality. I was reminded of the behavior of the young teenage gangs in my city. It was disconcerting to see them walking through the middle of the hall to their seats at a men's gathering.

At a recent men's conference I mentioned that I had returned to my religious tradition and started a men's group. The main point of my sharing was that as men we need to return to our families, people, traditions and institutions. We, men, needed to do this in order to recover parts of ourselves and to do men's work. I was told later by a man that I was a crazy goddamn motherfucker for what I had said. I felt defensive and hurt. What was so terrible in what I had said? I didn't understand. Later I found that it was my comment about returning to my religious tradition. The same day several men thanked me for my remarks. They were fearful to share about their return to their religious tradition. They felt that they would be put down by some men in leadership positions.

My experiences are examples of the crippling conformist, group think found in parts of the men's movements. I am not alone in my experiences. Many men have shared with me their own experiences of such behavior.

The identification with a group of men is an early step in the normal stage of development for most men. It is one step in the quest for manhood. However, it can also be a replication of one of the more self-destructive aspects of the culture of men. In the men's movement, this happens when a man over identifies with a men's group or organization. They begin to see themselves as different from other men not in their group. They experience themselves as belonging to a group that truly understands manhood. The danger of this thinking is that men not in the group become implicitly or explicitly thought of as not being "real men". An example of this behavior is found in some men who identify with the archetype of the warrior They identify men not involved with warrior energy as "soft men." These conformist groups create their own unique social structures, inside jokes and language. A man is expected to conform. He faces a negative response if he doesn't.

The cost of this approach - depending on the rigidness of the group structure - is the loss of individuality, a locked-in group identity, and the loss of opportunity to learn from men outside of the group. The effect is that it creates a moral superiority that lowers the value of other men. This gives the okay to treat men not in the group with contempt and suspicion. I have heard men admit that they find it hard to accept or communicate with a man who hasn't been initiated into their group. Some men have admitted to doing or at least seeing the ostracizing and undermining of men who were not part of their group.

I have heard the stories of hurt and pain caused by this behavior within the men's movements. Some of us have seen it. Many of us have been afraid to name it. This behavior is evident between feminist and masculist men, warriors and non-warriors, and academic and non-academic men. There is plenty of conformity and group think in the men's movements. I believe this conformist, group think behavior is one reason for the decrease in men participating in the men's movements. Many men have matured and no longer need the restrictiveness of such a group. Furthermore, the insider and rigid nature of some men's groups is not inviting to men. Men have already known the hurt of being rejected by groups of rigid men. Why would they risk the possibility of being hurt again?

I have been fortunate in my life to have been loved by men whom I feel exemplify manhood. The men whom I admire have taught me that one does not become a man by living up to the images of manhood given by others. They were men who took a radical step. They broke the rules of the culture and their peers. They did not try to meet the expectations of a group. They listened to their own hearts. They were men who invited stillness into their lives, and heard their "man soul." These men demonstrated their manhood by their choices and their lives. They were self-directed but not self-centered. They had their own community and yet were open to others who were not. These men enjoyed giving and receiving love. They lived full and passionate lives.

If men's work is to flourish we must grow beyond the conforming group stage. I believe we need to encourage the stage of manhood in which each man stands with others in his own soul and identity.

Andre Heuer D.Min. LICSW teaches, consults and writes on men's issues. He has done his work in prisons, treatment centers, churches and social services organizations. Andre is a member and volunteer at the Twins Cities Men's Center. He has published several articles and his chapter on "Men and Goodness" will appear in April in the book Men Healing Shame ed. Schenk; Everingham by Springer Publishing Company. He can be reached at 5609 Vincent Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55410. (612) 920-5914.