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rrmoderator
Espiritu:

Just for the record, I am not Mormon and still see very serious problems with Impact as a large group awareness training program without meaningful accountability or professional standards and licensing.

It is essentially group therapy, but without any meaningful safeguards or educational/licensing requirements for its leaders.

Largely for these reasons LGATs have a horrible history of problems.

I couldn't agree more!!

Impacted -

Thanks for responding - and I hope you do take a break and spend lots of time with your family this holiday season!!

After learning about the harm that Impact has caused, and should take responsibility for, I do believe it does more harm than good. I think what it comes down to is evidence. You have (as do many others who went deeper into Impact) so much more evidence than I do - personal evidence - that it's harmful.

So, for me to answer the percentage question, I lack personal evidence that it was harmful. Being fair, at this point and considering all of what people have said here, I would agree with your 99/1.

I think I've already gone into the personal benefits I got from specific processes (feedback, ropes course, buddies). The only one I didn't really go into was the plastic bag meditation. For me, personally, I didn't really get *that* much from it because I already see myself as defined by inner qualities and not things like my looks, my job, etc. I do see some value in it for people who are likely to do that though...

If the processes were used in a smaller group therapy session, run by professional therapists - maybe they would not seem contrived and artificial (can you expand on this re: the trust walk...?) And, I think we can all agree, that's what makes impact a very bad thing.

I think the 3 yr old rape victim is - obviously - a tragedy and not the "fault" of a 3 yr old. I do think that everything happens for a reason, though (again...not an idea invented by Impact). I believe that if this 3 yr old grows up to become someone whose experience of abuse allows them to help others overcome their own abuse, then it had a purpose. Was it ok that it happened to this person? NO! Should sexual abuse, etc. be erradicated from our society? YES! But, realistically, this is not where our society is. It is only through raising awareness, erasing stigma and dealing with dysfunctional family patterns can such things become obsolete in our life.


Peace right back atcha -

E

>>If the processes were used in a smaller group therapy session, run by professional therapists - maybe they would not seem contrived and artificial<<

They are used in lots of other places. Some are part of various youth leadership experiences (one of our teenagers just did a ropes course (with the perch, wall and trust falls) as part of his role as a student body officer), I did a trust fall in an acting class over 30 years ago, a family member in Alabama just did a church retreat a couple of years ago and they did some very similar things..

The Deseret news ran an article on a SLC therapist and Impact grad Paul Mundt (Lift-Off 47 if I remember correctly), a couple of years ago and some other therapists. I've never done anything with him, but I think he's a good guy. Easy enough to find in Google:

[findarticles.com]

So I think most of us here agree that it's not the processes (even feedback arcs, or what in Lifespring we called "the living mirror") that are good or bad in and of themselves -- it's what Impact/Lifespring/Harmony/GLF/Hans and Soloman and others bring to them -- one of "this is transformation" (as opposed to this is an experience you can learn from), this was "given to me by God" (insert Hansian tears looking up at the ceiling tiles), this is our "inside how to be a trainer" secret knowledge (copied from a video/book at Golden Braid), "this is what Jesus is telling me -- he's sitting here right now, if you were as enlightened/pure as me you could see him," "NASA has a reader to play back what crystals have recorded about the true history of the earth," "what Joseph Smith really taught that the church has hidden away was . . ."

I'm sorry I was part of it all for so long. Just seems like such a wasted part of my life now and I still have friends there volunteering every month or two, who keep trying to get me to go back because its become their entire life.

Thanks for the best wishes. I'll probably disappear from here when the kids are all home from school for the holidays -- it's impossible getting on the puter then!

Love and Light (LOL),

---Ed

A visit to impacttrainings.com will show that for the first time in a long time there is no waiting list for Quest. December Quest is now history and January Quest is advertized as "Open." Measurable progress is at hand I think! Who should get the credit? Is it the economy, this forum, folks becoming more critical and coming to their senses? Are there other explanations?

Hey all,

So, Hans and Co.'s latest attempt at a billboard had me giggling in fits. It is their trademark "pretty" blond woman smiling at the sky on a sun-yellow background with the phrase: "TODAY I CHOOSE TO BE" or some such, under her big head. Have they given up on recruiting intelligent people? It isn't even a complete sentence! To an outsider, I would think, the next question would be, "What the hell? Choose to be what?". Alive? An idiot? A mason? A caterpillar? A fry-cook? The whole "just be" thing was lost on me even while I was in the training. They reach for this existential, Buddhist zen-like state of being, while they perpetuate not-enoughism with all of their never-ending "take a look" bull-crap, as well as the aggressive acquisition of personal wealth and training enrollment. It is hilarious and ridiculous how they continue to confuse trite and cliche with profound.

Impacted - great way to express some of my thoughts:

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So I think most of us here agree that it's not the processes (even feedback arcs, or what in Lifespring we called "the living mirror") that are good or bad in and of themselves -- it's what Impact/Lifespring/Harmony/GLF/Hans and Soloman and others bring to them

What is the "the plastic bag meditation"? (I've not been impacted, so to speak).

Espiritu, thanks for commenting and sticking to your guns. I too am bothered by the whole LGAT accountability/BS/give us more $$$. However, I like to hear about the processes; some because I think in the right setting they could be beneficial & some because they give me a laugh, as in "I just don't get it" - why anyone would/could get anything out of it and yet paid money to do it.

Hey bucknduck -

The plastic bag meditation is essentially asking participants to lie on the ground, eyes closed, listening to some kind of spiritual-esque music... Then, someone starts this guided meditation where we were asked to imagine a plastic bag and then imagine to start putting things into it. Things like...our jobs, our social roles, our bodies, etc. Then, focus on what is left. The way I took it was that we are all spiritual beings that are essentially good and that all these other things do not define who we really are.

Personally, I didn't see anything wrong with this meditation. I think it's very useful for people who do define themselves by way of what they do for a living or what they look like phsyically...or anything external that can change on a dime.

I haven't posted here for awhile but I hardly recognize the place. Am I in the right place? Hans ... Sally ... is that you?

Impact is an evil, sick, controlling cult that has destroyed and continues to destroy many people's lives. It is operated by untrained irresponsible manipulative control freaks and provides substantial monetary benefits to a greedy, ego-maniacal couple who make others suffer with their delusions of grandeur. It's teaching are built upon false premises that undermine self-esteem and critical thinking skills. Because of its harmful teachings and extremely manipulative methods, many people and their loved ones have been irrevocably damaged, financially and emotionally (for a start). Impact tears families apart. Many of its graduates are incapable of healthy relationships, have lost the ability to think critically, and have lost spouses and children and other loved ones as a direct result of the methodical mind-fu**. All of its adherents are delusional. They have to be in order to buy into its precepts ... about angels, crystals, portal keepers, Atlantis, etc. etc. etc. Many of its graduates have required intense therapy to get their lives back. Some have committed suicide.

There is nothing good about Impact. It hurts people ... for monetary gain and power and stroking of already inflated egos.

Just sayin'. ...

... because for some reason it seems this thread was getting off on a track that was going to end in a big group hug with Hans and Sally.

This is the cult education forum, isn't it?

Rembember Thumper's sage advice: "If you can't say anything bad [about Impact], don't say anything at all." This forum should be about helping and validating the feelings of those who are trying to recover from Impact's total mind-fu** or who have lost loved ones because of it. People who have been hurt and are still hurting come here for advice and insight and should not have their legitimate hurts invalidated by the false idea that Impact is a legitimate operation. It is a CULT, which by definition is harmful.

If you had such a great experience at Impact and you believe its methods are legitimate, why are you posting here? That's something Hans or Sally or one of their adherents would do ... It's like a Mormon posting about their unfounded beliefs in Mormonism on a website for ex-Mormons who are trying to recover from Mormonism ...

jk.genesis



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2009 02:36AM by jk.genesis.

Impact continues to seek celebrity aura as with the stories of John Denver's planning on taking Impact Trainings. All grads day 2009 included intertainment by a Celine Dion impersonator. Ron Howard should do a movie on LGATs and especially Impact patterned on his ""A Beautiful Mind." This was the Academy Award winning movie about Nobel prize winner John Forbes Nash and his dilusional participation in secret Pentagon espionage. Didn't Hans work for the CIA? Anyway, the way Impact confuses and twists peoples minds would make good grist for the movie mill, and directors of the kind of Ron Howard would be able to make a great movie. How better to tell the true story of Impact and raise the awareness of its harmful and dangerous effect on the human mind?

Impact's home site has the video "impact serves the world". Playing twister with children and transforming into elves are apparently some good things Impact is doing. I am not saying that the people involved in the service don't have an intent to help or didn't do any good. However, let's be honest, the video's design is to convince potential trainees that Impact is a safe, professional place to take your mind and your family. "What a credible organization. Look at the good they are doing. I need that." Well, the video is the semi bright and dull colored wrapping paper over a package of chimp shit, green, and pebbly. A brainwashing, emotionally abusing, finance sucking organization would not survive if they didn't put on a good face and use their trainees as a veneer over their true intention: Get people to sign that fucking waiver and pay $495.00 (before shipping and taxes) so that the Bergers can get money, and be protected by law when an accusation comes their way. That's it. There is no other purpose to Impact. They destroy people in various ways and make it look like a heart dabbed poster of humanitarian service, so why should I give one single.... if their techniques could be beneficial outside the training? I don't, and would rather spend my time admonishing people to get out and stay away, and get real help.

At the end of the video it says the impact graduates are "the change they wish to see in the world." I have never heard a more arrogant, self serving motivation.