Quote
Ciruela
I work for a software company, and I've been in "crunch mode" since about July 4. As soon as I get this release off my back, I'll be re-entering this discussion.

I knoooowww that feeling.. :)

Well, my release is not quite off my back, but getting better, and I cannot resist a reply to DayDreamer's lasst post, which brings up something I would have mentioned to iamtooch's question to me earlier (if I had had time to reply at that point). inamtooch, I apologize for not responding to your direct remarks to me much earlier.


DayDreamer wrote:

The one that surprised me was a very specific and negative characterization of Chip as leading the workshops - they want him banned from leading workshops. Wow.

Much earlier, on July 7, iamtooch observed/asked:

"Finally, Ciruela, you have been shabbily and shamefully treated by two individuals, not a HAI workshop. HAI was an excuse for them, a pretext, not the author of your misery. The HAI staffers I met would have been utterly appalled and humiliated at what was perpetrated under their colors; have you written a letter to anyone at HAI about this?"

Well, iamtooch, I DID write a HAI staffer about the issue right when it occurred--CHIP AUGUST!!! Chip had been the male leader for both the L1 and L2 I attended and had even counseled me and my boyfriend at the L2. I also choose to write Chip because he does anger management workshops in addition to HAI.

In my email, which I wrote only a day or so after splitting with my boyfriend, I gave my name, but not the names of my boyfriend or his new gal-pal, both HAI interns. I did make it clear, however, what had occurred in regard to the woman having told me--during our checkin at a HAI workshop AND in the capacity of my small group leader--that she had no sexual designs on my boyfriend and basically assured me that it "was not happening" (then or in the future).

I told Chip that I didn't require a reply, but that I wanted him to understand and communicate to others in HAI that I considered this a breech of ethics, in additional to a personally hurtful situation. Chip chose not to reply, so I'll never know for sure what he thought, but I'm guessing he didn't particularly give a damn, especially in light of what DayDreamer is telling us.

HAI is rotten to the core as far as I'm concerned. Too many wolves pretending to be sweet, understanding, enlightened men. Too many of those being officially attached to the organization in some way. The woman who hurt me is an official representative of HAI in my local region. There are two other "producers," and one of them is a man. I've watched this man in action on a number of occasions and have not admired his behavior. Heck, even my own ex-boyfriend (before we broke up) told me that he was concerned about this producer's behavior towards a particular young and vulnerable woman.

Also, the HAI bunch in my area is a real trip to observe in action. One woman I met through HAI is forever "losing her clothes"--she has even posed nude on the cover of the local HAI newsletter. She constantly plays the coquette, teasing all the men into a frenzy. I saw this woman recently at a naturist gathering (but didn't bother speaking to her). Guess what? In the context of a naturist gathering, this gal almost never took her clothes off, opting instead for lacy bras and very, very short shorts. In whatever context, she does whatever is necessary to titillate men, so if the way to stand out in the crowd is to wear sexy clothing at a naturist gathering, rather than being nude like everyone else, that's what she does. I have a lot of anger towards this woman as well, because she teased my ex (even though it was pretty obvious to me that she wasn't really interested in being sexual with him). He couldn't see that, and got his hormones worked up every time she was around.

HAI folks, in my opinion, are not nearly as spiritual, creative, loving, or enlightened as they think they are. They are, however, extremely self indulgent, and seem to conclude that whatever their genitals tell them must be good.

I hope that what we are seeing is the beginning of the end of HAI. It's about time that HAI's self-advertisements of being about love and win/win, etc. were refuted by folks who actually know what it's like on the inside.

Just want to add a couple of clarifications to my previous posting:

Obviously, there are some "she-wolves" (very sexually aggressive women) in HAI, too, although I consider these to be a minority. I still consider the men the greater problem.

When I mentioned the woman who kept "losing her clothes," at HAI events, that probably wasn't the best description, since HAI events are clothing optional. What I mean is that this woman was actively trying to push men's buttons with her nakedness. She and one of her partners (a HAI intern) also do an annual homemade porn movie, which I once had the displeasure of seeing at a HAI party that was billed as an "erotic poetry night."

Personally, watching this woman on screen get humped up the backside was not something I considered particularly "poetic." I hasten to say that I'm not a prude--I actually took a graduate school film course in Pornography once. However, to me, showing a porn movie, even one made by folks in the HAI community, was not appropriate for an evening billed as a night of poetry.

Anyway, I just wanted to make those clarifications, because I wrote that last post when I was very tired and not as sharp as I like to be.

Look, sex... or the suggestive promise of sex... or the breaching of sexual boundaries as a way of getting deep into someone's psyche is almost standard technique from the old practices of Sex Magick to Baghwan Rajhneesh to pre-Landmark [i:a616f4998e] est [/i:a616f4998e] ... est had massive bombardment of extremely kinky sex in it's Six Day program... a subpopulation of the attendees of the old est programs were there to get laid... it was a notoriously sexualized atmosphere... [b:a616f4998e] I was hit on constantly by everything from borderline psychotic women, frustrated suburban housewives, to slimy old Hollywood types who "shared" how much the wanted "to do me" ... say what ? [/b:a616f4998e] IMHO... sexual boundaries are close to the bone of our personal sense of self versus non-self... consider when a human ovum is fertilized, there is a literal fusion of selves at the DNA level... and the sexual impulse itself has this fusing, or merging into quality about it... it doesn't seem farfetched to understand how the manipulation of sexual curiosity and desire can be used to fuse the sense of the individual self to an eroticised organization... I remember all too well a certain women who flaunted her sexuality during the Six Day program, and how addicted she was to the attention, surrounded by frustrated guys hypnotized by this spectacle, and their strange sense of detachment in the middle of all of this, sort of a distant narcissistic haze...
Now I have to question whether she was a plant. ???. It was all to neatly arranged, her "act" was so smoothly integrated into the process, and, how surprised should I be ?, the trainers thought she was wonderful... they never said a peep of criticism to her although her behavior was flagrant... Is this sexual abuse, psychic abuse ?... I don't know what category to put it in... although cults and LGATs seem to be natural theaters for narcissistic grandstanding...

If LGATs like HAI are so honorable why does it - like so many other LGATs mentioned on these boards - need to have these weekends away where so many, if not all, of the conditions are met for thought reform or coercive persuasion.

The conditions are met and the methods used.

People aren't informed about the methods to be used beforehand.

How would they feel if they were informed?

How would making an educated decision affect enrolment?

Just how far would the enrolment fall off if people read this website beforehand, for example?

Tampering with people's minds without their knowledge is definitely not ethical and so far removed from spirituality, which is what so many of these LGATs claim to teach.

It's all about money, money, money.

To get that the LGATs need to keep people doing more and more courses, thinking they need another one to make the great breakthrough they seek. BUT there is always another one.

To get people to keep coming back they need to persuade them to do so. That is where the coercive persuasion and mind control come in.

It is deceitful and exploitative.

How do these people live with themselves?

I'm not so sure that it's all about money... although it may be in large degree about what money [i:55668f8fad] represents [/i:55668f8fad] , ... power, autonomy, respect, ownership... such a majority of these New Age personal empowerment scenes have some form of skewed sexual preoccupation about them, in some cases explicit, in some cases implicit... one must wonder that perhaps the founders of these things and/or their nearby core of lieutenants, the true believer squadron, have had boundary violations or boundary confusions as part of [i:55668f8fad] their [/i:55668f8fad] early childhood development... as if there is an unresolved parent-child, infant-mother fusion drive that is compulsively sought.... I have noticed how frequently over-bonding and over-connecting happens before it is appropriate, in terms of one's personal reality, financial situation, psychological state, and so forth...[b:55668f8fad] Where does this urge to merge originate ? [/b:55668f8fad] Was the infant experience of the nurturing parent unstable ? Was the parent alternately distant, self absorbed, narcissistically engrossed, and then suffocatingly overinvolved with the young LGAT leader to be ? I've heard about this pattern in children of alcoholocs and substance abusers, as well as children of parents with brain injury.... there is some mind blowingly deranged behavior that goes on under the surface of "normal" existence... for example, in one therapy group I witnessed, a man who had come out of the est training experience had become so non-functional that he, very wisely, sought major intervention. Est lingo, est whatever, was just another costume for this guy. It eventually came to light that he was coping, none to successfully, with [i:55668f8fad] profound [/i:55668f8fad] feelings of shame, humiliation, and worthlessness. All the more awful because this was a good and gifted man who was the prisoner of a terrible self image. He finally broke down and confessed that he had given his young son LSD then fellated him. He responded well to therapy, came to understand how his ego injuries had warped his sense of self, reconciled with his son, who he dearly loved, dropped the est schtick, and moved on with his life.

And were the authorities informed of this child abuse? I presume not. :shock:

Love
Kath

No.... because his son had reached majority and had reconciled with his father... in addition, this was in the 1970s... it is hard to imagine how different standards of conduct, child protective services, what was and what was not socially acceptable... it was a totally other world than that of today.... curiously, most of the LGATs originated and thrived in the "anything goes-do your thing-no limits" psychology/philosophy of the 1970s.... and much of the LGAT substructure IS a cultural throwback to that era... when there was a lot, an excess, of sexual and lifestyle experimentation, boundary breaking, worship of anti-social behavior as "anti-hero" rebellion..... which gave rise to the greatest trainer of them all......... Jerry Springer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think nutrino has hit the nail on the head about HAI and other LGATs. HAI is very much about late 60s-early 70s counterculture thought and sexuality. I found that HAI was pretty much run by folks who were ages early 50s to mid-60s, and who had experienced this lifestyle in the past and were nostalgic to revive it as HAI. A lot of the other folks who were attracted to HAI were folks who had either been too young to experience the late 60s/early 70s counterculture or had somehow otherwise missed out on it.

My former boyfriend fell into this latter category. He had married at 22 and spent the late 60s/early 70s as a doctoral student at MIT, thinking about nothing else but getting his degree. When he took me to the party I mentioned in my earlier post (the so-called "Erotic Poetry Night," where the homemade porno movie starring HAI grads was shown), he was so excited all the way driving back that night, talking about how wonderfully unique the experience had been. I told him quite frankly that--with the exception that drugs and alcohol were not allowed--it was like half a zillion parties I'd attended 30 years ago--been there, done that, and quite over it, too.

It still boggles my mind (and hurts like hell) that I lost this guy who seemed so smart, so down-to-earth, and so comfortable to be with to some counterculture LGAT. I didn't see that one coming...

It has occurred to me that much of the present day preoccupation with LGATs, cults, and even recovery groups seems to be an attempt to recover the intense sense of purpose, community, and intimacy that were present during the 60s and 70s.

There is also the element of "anything goes" self-indulgence that permeated counter-culture morality during that time. Today's cultural restrictions and fears of disease may be having the effect of driving a substantial percentage of the population towards any group that promises or provides these "missing" elements.

Many of the 50 to 60 year old age group are indeed nostalgic for the "hippie" era, and I have met many younger people who are fascinated with it as well. In particular, sexual freedom seems to be a very big draw, and any group that promotes this would have guaranteed participants.

It's all part of the pendulum swing. I hate to think that the approaching apogee will be profit driven, but it's looking that way.