I want to recommend all to take the time to absorb the wisdom corboy has accrued in regards to destructive cults, false religions, unproductive pshychiatrists/psychologists and his ability to discern and know that our personal relationship with God is what spiritual life is all about. He is very wise and has alot of answers to many of the question. I thank God for corboy and the blessing he has been to all on this site. His willingness to take the time to share. Thanks!:)

I certainly second that! Corboy has set a prime example of what can be done with pain - learn, heal and share what you know to help others. I personally cannot thank Corboy enough for the PMs that really got me through some tough stuff.

First, treat me as a cautionary example. A person can be anything they want through words and be totally different in person.

Last year I attended lectures by some people whose material I had liked when I read their books. They were wise and helpful--on paper.

In person, they were appalling. Both, in different ways, fit the profile for severe narcissistic personality disorder. And both turned out to have been liars--I verified that when I fact checked their backgrounds. Dangerous people can write excellent books, yet be disastrously unqualified to function as teachers.

So I try to be of service in the areas where my strengths are concentrated. And I am in therapy, to extend those strengths--and become more accepting of myself and other people.

I can often talk better than I live. And because I was burned by an unqualified spiritual teacher, I dont want anyone to think I am something I am not.

If I were more of an extrovert, I could have been very tempted to try being a fake guru. Part of me senses how attractive the role can be. (Shudder)

So, if my info is useful, use it--but always check it against your own experience. The best 'teaching' reminds you of what you already know.

sorry that I thought you were a 'boy' ..and no matter what you mentioned it holds nothing to the spirituality that shines through you and your wisdom and gifts from above. Just once again proves that a truly spiritual person is honest, forthright and humble..you are very special and working extremely hard for God on this site and I know and am praying for not only your needs to be met but for you to attain the desires of your heart and I already feel you are on your purpose and destiny though all of the pieces of the puzzles may not all yet be in place..my prayers are with you and for you..please post spiritual surprises..you deserve it and I will pray for all the help you have given me and many others to come back to you 7x..god bless YOU..

I see it as a choice between serving reality versus serving illusion.

My bogus spiritual advisor said something that (sadly) he failed to live up to himself, but I found to be 100% true:

'If you cannot be honest about the things of this world, you cannot be honest about spiritual matters, either.'

Excellent advice. It is a tragedy that the guy was so scared that he chose to serve a charismatic, but fictional self, intead of putting his ultimate trust in the God he was vowed to serve as a minister.

Even when we find out that a spiritual teacher or group has been phony, if something real was triggered in us, that's what's worth hanging onto, even while we expose the deceit and lies perpetrated by the teacher or group.

I dont trust Gurdjieff--But he had some good stuff mixed in with his BS. One of his statements which was true was;

"No sincere effort is ever wasted.'

This does NOT excuse the harm that crooks and bad groups perpetrate. Jesus said, 'Temptations there are and temptations there will be. But--woe to the one through whom those temptations come.'

If you love people you must never lead them astray or give them misleading directions--period.

But when we feel tortured by the sense that we have been had, have wasted our time, found out that the person we trusted as a servant of Reality was living a lie... if in the process we managed to elicit something wise and real within ourselves--thats what is worth salvaging from the wreckage.

We can hold deceitful groups and teachers accountable for the real harm they do, and still know that we made ourselves real because, UNLIKE OUR BOGUS TEACHERS, we were honest in relation to the process.

There is a great existential psychologist, Viktor Frankl. (Author of Man's Search for Meaning). Frankl was sent to Auschwitz. His parents and pregnant wife were killed at the selection center. Frankl was allowed to 'live.' He was warned by fellow prisoners that his hangdog expression put him at high risk of being terminated, and he was told he would have to project an appearance of vitality to improve his chances of survival.

Frankl responded to his ghastly environment by deciding to become curious and compassionate--ask what helped his fellow prisoners master themselves in this shattering, horrible place.

Frankl emerged with the experiences that enabled him to create the branch of existential psychology known as logotherapy. He wrote his famous book. He died, about the same week as Princess Diana and Mother Theresa, at the age of 92.

Frankl used Auschwitz to transform himself and created a form of psychotherapy that pushed beyond psychoanalysis into new territory. His achievement does NOT in any way justify Auschwitz. The place was evil. Auschwitz turned Viktor Frankl into a hero, but it was still an F on humanity's report card.

People have triumphed over bad groups and emerged as moral and spiritual giants. This does not redeem the bad group; the survivors redeemed themselves.

They get the A's while the cults should get F's.

I know about Frankl etc. and your post was absolutely honest and true about these experiences and if you read Margaret Thaler Singer's book "Cults in our Midst" she said and I quote from the book..Cult members seem to have a stamina almost beyond human comprehension. And after they leave cults , former members clearly have a boundless spirit and unbeatable will to heal themselves, reclaim their independance, and come out on the positive side of horrific experiences-a spirit and a will that I can only admire and uphold, more and more with each person that I meet. She has counseled and interviewed more than 3,000 current and former cult members and their relatives and friends.

What the enemy and the powers of the darkness meant as a curse turns into a blessing through faith and believing in the power of God. There is a God in everyone's heart that they are born with and a spirit of God inside that can transform anyone. All experiences are perfect for those who get them and sometimes I have hung on by a thread of God and thought I was getting more than I could handle but when we cross through the Valley of the Shadow of Death he shall be with us and when we come out we then can see the truth and can share it with others..what a gift we can all share on this site and feel the love for one another..

My love thoughts and prayers go out to anyone on this site for God is uniting us to do a mighty good thing here..Everybody who writes is a contribution whether we agree or disagree..literature is always there but God is in us to discern the truth and noone else can do it..we are all unique and different but connected in love of each other..may you all have a peaceful day and keep believing in God's ability to transform us all..

Corboy,

I tried to send you a "private message" but your box was full. I have noticed you mention Zen a few times on the boards here, and was wondering if we could have a conversation about Zen practice.

I've had a very hard time with my practice since my boyfriends LGAT exerience, and even harder still since all the reading I've done on spiritual abuse and the dangers of trance. I was hoping perhaps we could talk about how you reconcile these things. Please feel free to email me, or if you feel this is an appropriate topic for the public boards, we can discuss it here.

Thanks,

Lori

LoriS,

You are not alone. My ND and I discussed Zen and lots of other stuff, all the while he wa using LGAT technology on me. As he twisted a lot of really beautiful concepts into something ugly, I just completely avoid anything pertaining to meditation, Buddhism, holistic, and a host of other things. I keep telling myself to look at the intention of the person doing the teaching, but it's hard, because I thought he had good intentions, but he did not.

Hope

First, just to let you know, I am not a qualified Zen teacher and have barely managed to begin stablizing a practice.

I think its a matter of discovering the difference between genuine practice vs what some have called 'Black Zen'--where the intellectual part of Zen is used to mind-fuck people.

Someone at our practice center said, 'Its 1950s Zen (Alan Watts Zen) when people talk about it. Its real Zen when you actually have sitting practice.'

The mind-fuck Zen mostly originated with people like Watts who read their way into Zen. Watts himself tried practicing with a Zen master and gave it up in frustration after a few months. He wrote his first book on Zen when he was 19, after reading his way into it. Watts had no emotional maturity and went through a series of wives the way other people tear through a six pack of Coke on a hot day.

You cant do Zen unless in the context of the Zen precepts (ethics) and unless you see your practice as assisting all beings to awaken. You dont do it just for your own pleasure and will never do anything to distract or darken the minds of others.

Zen was an advanced practice for people who grew up in a stable Buddhist culture in which it was assumed that everyone, including monks knew to be ethical and reliable. It was NEVER a license to do your own thing or screw your way through life.

So, if someone uses Zen to manipulate people, its no longer Zen.

It used to be that people were not allowed to join a Zen monastery until they sat outside for days, to prove they were serious. (In old Japan monks were exempt from paying taxes and being drafted, so the monasteries were very tough about screening out people who wanted to use a monastery to escape life's burdens.)

I didnt want anything to do with spirituality after finding out I'd been burned. I was working with a therapist at the time. X has a way of creating a quiet, still atmosphere of mutual respect in his counseling room. It caused me to get in touch with myself and I realized for the first time what it was like to get steady respectful attention from another person. It caused me to begin understanding what I was inside, apart from the usual noise in my head.

One day, I realized that the atmosphere at our Zen Center and another buddhist group I went to resembled the atmosphere in my therapist's office.

It was an atmosphere that supported my own healing, because it supported insight. It was an emotional 'flavor' I'd somehow learned to recognize--something that helped strengthen my gut feelings, and seemed to boost my street smarts, empath and emotional IQ.

As best I can say, the atmosphere of true Zen practice is incompatible with manipulation--it supports your insight and helps you wake up--it wont put you under.

Every time I try to do sitting meditation I am always a little reluctant. I take that as a good sign, because thats how I knew it is challenging me.

If I loved sitting meditation and found it easy and pleasant to do, I would suspect I was using it to hide from my own shit.

Dont know if this helps.

I have not yet begun working consistently with a teacher, so thats another reason why I am not qualified to give advice.


There is one book, very old fashioned, that may help--Hara: The Vital Centre of Man by Karlfried Graf von Durckheim.

Unlike Watts, D studied Zen for 10 years in Japan--sit down practice, the real deal. He ties a basic concept in Zen to Western spiritual vocabulary and ties it also to body work.

Things began making more sense when I understood how to center my breathing in the abdominal core--it literally develops both insight and strengthens one's boundaries. Its a concept so basic to Japanese culture that many teachers omit it because they dont have to think of it any more. So Durckheim may supply a helpful missing link.

I don't believe in meditation in a group. I believe pray/mediatation is a private session alone in a room by yourself connecting to your creator. Through prayer and meditation I myself and many others have been able to be led by the spirit and to the truth about people, places and things. All the wisdom in the world cannot compete with the wisdom I and many others receive from God.
All groups and group activity must be approached with alot of caution. I am not against groups but never myself have I believed in cliques as a child or groups per se because I believe we are all created unique and different and we should be led by the one who created us to our perfect destiny. I trust no man to led esp in a group. Even in Christianity there are many false prophet and teachers and many false churches esp in the born again movement. I believe your personal relationship with God is the key. I do enjoy ministry TV and can sit and be alone and learn but discern God's truth. God is loving and kind but we do have rules and it's pure common sense as stated in the 10 commandments and the general universal rule..do unto others as you wish them to do unto you..the powers of the darkness are always there and easily come in when we are desperately seeking..I suggest to get whole in spirit but meditation should be a solo act. Once in a meditative state anyone can hypnotise you as i went to school for that but never used it. I don't believe in it..i don't like it. programming someone's mind..our minds should be programmed by our Creator which I call God..that's my opinion on meditation.