Billy-g, thank you for your message:
Quote
By the time my friend had witnessed the charming bait strike a women on the course hard across the face and then jump on top of her when she fell to the floor, in a true show of absolute rage (to help this other woman of course), it was too late. The damage had been done. The abuse had been administered, the brainwashing had been achieved and the fear had been instilled. It’s absolutely sickening and it is absolutely undeserved.
I've been wanting to reply to this for some time, but wanted to think things through first, because this is one of the most serious and unfortunately, common, problems with Inquest and I didn't want it to get lost in other issues.
What you are describing (a woman being hit hard enough to knock her over, then being jumped on, usually with a lot of abuse being screamed at the same time) is the standard process used to "help" people with a history of being abused to "get their contracts". It happens on most inquests. And you are quite right to describe it as "rage", because this is not a shallow act that the trainer taking the role of abuser takes on, they are told to "carry the energy" of the abuser, and this gives them full license to go as deep into rage as they can, because its not really "them". They're just "carrying the energy".
The trainers are very practised at going into rages. Inquest also has a formal anger process, where people are put in the dark with the music of beating drums, and taunted by shouted insults and sometimes slaps and pokes from the trainers, to hit the floor with sticks and scream. The process goes on for two hours, and during that process usually at least a few people vomit, and some pass out or have fits.
The trainers do this process themselves regularly, supposedly to "clear" their own anger so that they can be "neutral". In my view, all they're doing is practising tapping into a primitive rage. And this primitive rage is what you see in the contracts process, when the trainer attacks the abused person trying to get their contract. Primitive, but also controlled at the same time, controlled enough that they stop when the person "gets the contract". At least, in those that I have seen.
When I say "trainer", I should actually say "assistant trainer" - those people one step down the hierarchy from Wendy and Buster. Since Quest seminars is such a small organisation, there are only four of them, two of whom are Wendy and Buster's daughters, the other two are men, one of whom is either married to or living with one of Wendy's daughters (hard to tell, because Wendy conducts her own "commitment" ceremonies which are apparently more binding than regular marriages.)
The quest theory is that the person under attack has to fight back in some way until they have proved that won't take it any more or that they survived or whatever. As I said somewhere earlier, a lot of these women become the most loyal quest devotees, claiming they have escaped the 'pattern of abuse' that dominated their lives before. But then a few months later you hear that they have been abused again. Maybe not all, but certainly some. So rather than breaking the pattern of abuse, I would say they have only found a new abuser, one called Quest, to supplement whatever problems they originally had.
I don't know what it felt like for the people who got physically attacked, but I know it was traumatizing to watch. And it left me very frightened and careful not to annoy the abuser-trainer. Relatest back to what Brad was saying about fear...
Anyway, Billy-g, is your friend totally out of quest now? Is he/she okay and do they read this board too?
It sounds like your friend was recruited by one of the assistant trainers, in a really calculated fashion. I find that particularly repulsive. I can forgive the person who recruited me because they didn't know better and thought they were doing something good for me, in a fit of enthusiasm the day after quest, but I would struggle to forgive being recruited by someone so high up in the hierarchy, in the long-term calculated way you described, because they sure as hell know what kind of sh*t they're getting people into. And I hope your friend is not feeling stupid in any way for being recruited, all four of those assistant-trainers are extremely well-skilled at putting on a good impression and finding all the right buttons to push in people, your friend was recruited by a real pro. :evil: