One can only hope this is true.

My husband and I recently had our entire lives tossled upside down because of the Sterling Institute and the hold Justin has on some of our friends (and yes, they know Justin Sterling personally and have been active in his organization for well over a decade, paticipating in the brainwashing of everyday folks just looking for some meaning in life, which Justin will sell to them for the low, low price of $795 for two lovely days of deprivation, discomfort, emotional abuse, and having your essence, your personality, completely changed to accept Justin's sick, twisted misogynist views which he teaches in his so-called seminars). Of course, it's our own fault... for believing these people when they suckered us in, told us we were part of their family now, treated us like gold... until the day came when my husband emphatically said he is not doing the weekend (after we found out what it really was about). Even after we found out about their involvement in Sterling, we stayed friends with these people, only to have them never call us again because we don't buy their Sterling crap and have encouraged other common friends not to do the weekend and provided THEM with information from this website.

At any rate, I have lately spent some time perusing the internet for information on the Sterling Institute of Relationships, and in all fairness have read every word on the Sterling Institute's website, www.higherpurpose.com. However, over the last three days, I've noticed that the website ISN'T THERE!!! Could it be true, that this jerk's ugly organization and his filthy little band of misogynists and submissive women have finally been disbanded???

Maybe it's true... maybe the Sterling group has finally started to crumble. Now that this site is here as well as other sites, the truth is out and Sterling's days are numbered. Hopefully.

I personally have made it my mission to approach everyone I know who might consider doing "the weekend" and inform them of what they might really be getting themselves into. They'd be giving away all sense of self and lining Justin's already-gold-lined pockets with THEIR hard earned cash.

Everyone I know who has ever done the Sterling men's weekend or women's weekend promptly divorced their spouse after attending one of Justin's stupid little seminars, then turned around shortly after and married themselves a Sterlingite. They can sit around all day and spew sterlingisms at one another. What a lovely life that must be (NOT!).

If anyone has any information as to what happened with www.higherpurpose.com, please post here. Thanks!

Quite interesting. In Internet Explorer you get a message that the page cannot be found ... just like a non-existent site. However, this is actually a real web page that is being served by their web site and not your browser generating an error. The same page comes up blank in Firefox and Opera (I'll save you the technical explanation).

Their higherpurpose.com domain name is still current, and doesn't expire until 11th July 2008.

Their web server is still accepting connections for web pages and email, amongst other things. Definitely not dead.

The latest Internet Archive copy of their site is available at [web.archive.org]

So, in summary, as far as the web site goes it hasn't quite bitten the dust yet. Just giving the impression of having done so. More fakery I guess.

John

You know, the thought had not occurred to me about it being "fakery". Wouldn't that just be a typical LGAT maneuver?!

Maybe they're revamping their website. Still, I had a moment of hope there... I just want my friends back. Of course, I am not sure now if they ever were true friends, but they seemed like such good people. Having them in our lives did change us forever in a good way. I know now they belonged to Sterling the whole time, though, and kept it secret from us.

Because of the institute's history of people getting divorced particularly after the husband does Sterling's weekend, I feel certain now that these "friends" (supposedly who did not judge us... spare me) saw me as an overbearing wife (and I am... big flippin' deal, nobody else's business, and mostly that's just a facade) and saw my husband has a no-balls loser (which he is not by ANY stretch of ANY imagination) and were trying to save him from a "masculine" wife (hubby works and has his career, but I have had mine a little longer and make more money which really gets under the skin of sterlingites). I guess I am still having great grief in my heart over this situation because we truly embraced these people as family, and we truly loved them. We still do, which is why we are grieving so deeply. We do not embrace others easily, my husband and I ... we have both been burned by people before and thought we had found a trustworthy circle of friends.

We were so terribly manipulated. I miss what once was, at least that illusion of great friendship and comraderie. I doubt we will ever open ourselves up again like that, because you never know what's around the corner. We had never heard of this group before except people mentioning it peripherally to make fun of it! I didn't think it even existed anymore, but oh, they exist. They're out there, and they're out there in big numbers.

What boggles my mind is how intelligent, professional, educated, supposedly WISE people get sucked into these things!!! Usually when you think of someone getting sucked into a cult or other dangerous/questionable group, you usually think maybe of teenagers, college student-age people, not educated professionals in their 40s and 50s! This just goes to show you that this kind of cancer just permeates our society, and there's no one to hold these groups accountable for the damage they cause.

I got sucked into SGI in the 1990s, but only because I was seeking Buddhism. I didn't practice a long time, maybe 3 years, and when the church and laity had their split, I just kind of stopped. But I never felt threatened, was not given a hard time by ANYONE when I left the group, but supposed true lifelong friends I made through my affiliation with Soka Gakkai stopped calling me AND stopped taking my calls when I dropped out. I figured.. eff 'em if they wanna be like that! I moved on.

I know I've rambled on the boards a lot lately about Sterling and the friends we've lost, and I appreciate the support and information everyone here has given us. I am just ... sad. Grief-stricken. Angry. Confused. I was like semi-normal before... now I'm a mess, and I've only READ ABOUT what we almost got pulled into ... I haven't even done the bloody weekend, have never met Justin Sterling..... er, I mean, Artie Kasarjian ... yet his evil touch has reached beyond his group and has negatively impacted our home life, my career (I work in the same building and for the same corporation as our "friends" and encounter them several times a day), our family dynamic, our spiritual practices, everything. I was just hopeful that the absence of Sterling's website was a positive sign that at least one bad LGAT was finally circling the drain.

I still have hope they're circling the drain. At least the group and the poison it spreads... I wish no ill will to Artie or any of his followers. I just wish they'd see the light and we could have our life back... make our former illusion a reality.

Interesting that the more intelligent of the population get suckered in by it, complete with swallowing the redefinitions of words such as 'integrity'.

Whereas a tradesman, I suspect, would simply tell 'em that they were "full of it" and walk out the door.

Oh the irony.

John

I found out why their website was down. They changed the name of the website back to what it was a long time ago. It is now www.sterling-institute.com. Still, it's a colossal waste of electrons. They just had a men's weekend this past weekend in Oakland, and I stayed home and prayed that very few, if any, of the men who attended "bought into" the crap Justin spews at people, the lies about relationships (that S.O.B. has no special insight about what goes on in the minds of women... he gets his ideas for his weekends... get this, all you pro-Sterling jackasses that adhere to Justin's crap ... FROM WATCHING SOAP OPERAS!!!

I hope people will stop attending LGATs all together and have never understood their appeal. You want large group awareness training that will change your life??? Go to church. Or get a job working in corporate America. But do not, by any stretch of the imagination, attend an LGAT.

I just did my weekend three days ago!

Why? My future father in law asked me too when I asked him for his blessing to ask his daughter to marry me. So I did it for LOVE and his approval. I actually graduated and survived the entire weekend only b/c I never quit anything. By graduating the weekend gave me the right to speak to my father in law in absolutes, something I have never done to any man. I respect people’s opinions and beliefs and therefore would never expect them to follow mine. My future father in law picked the wrong man to send to Sterling.

I returned home and gave my father in law an ultimatum. You see I had my father “trust” me and paid for the weekend as a birthday gift to me. I now feel that I have totally disrespected my father, his father, and any honorable man in my life.

My ultimatum - I have told my father in law to pay back my father and explain why he owes my dad this money.

I just did my weekend Nov 3-5, 2007 and I have still not heard anything from the future father in law. One thing is true that Sterling said though "there is nothing like the love of a woman". I have my woman standing beside me on this ultimatum and I hope her father realizes he is playing with fire.

I’ll update soon…

Quote
Captian Canada
II just did my weekend Nov 3-5, 2007 and I have still not heard anything from the future father in law. One thing is true that Sterling said though "there is nothing like the love of a woman". I have my woman standing beside me on this ultimatum and I hope her father realizes he is playing with fire.

I’ll update soon…

I look forward to seeing your update. I take it you went to the Oakland weekend Nov 3-5? That was the one they tried to get my husband to attend. We stopped 2 other men from attending, as well. I am curious as to how the turnout was? Were there a lot of men there? I am hoping that the turnouts are getting smaller and smaller.

Our former-friend works the men's weekends... the women's weekends... and is a "mentor" for young men in the Young Men's Weekend which is put on by a group called Leadershipworks (www.leadershipworks.org). There is no fiscal or corporate connection between Leadershipworks and Sterling, but ... Leadershipworks is run by men from Sterling, and the "values" they teach to young men are the same damaging teachings from the Sterling Institute. I know two of the men who call themselves "mentors" for Leadershipworks, and I can tell you, at least one of them has said damaging things to my son about me and to a friend's son... telling the boys that all women are whacko, and not to ever repeat to their mothers the awful things the men say about the women/mothers (even if the mother is their only parent/authority in the home) and that they are to never reveal to their mothers or any female anything the men say or do or anything that happens on the weekends. The young men are taught that women cannot be trusted, and they are offered the opportunity to discuss their sexual needs/experiences in great detail. The "mentor" in question even questioned my 19-year-old son (while trying to "gain his trust" via young men's weekend style) about his girlfriend and whether or not she performed oral sex on him and asked for the explicit details of their sex life. These "mentors" explain to the parents of the young men's weekend attendees that their sons will seem withdrawn and sullen after their weekend but not to worry, that it's just part of the immense changes that have taken place. What they purposefully "forget to mention" is that their minds have been altered. Plus, they have the boys build a sweatlodge on Saturday and then have a sweat ceremony in it on Sunday... ask ANY Native American... you CANNOT charge for ceremony. Yet this man has the audacity (hugest egomaniac I've ever met) to call himself a "lodge leader" in our local native american spiritual community. The cost of the young men's weekend is $250, plus they will continue "follow up care" (more brainwashing and degradation of female authority figures) and "mentor" your young man for only $1,500 a year. This so-called Native American spiritual leader is raping the Red Road for profit. He has set up some crap Buffalo Indian Camp or some shyte like that for the young men ... and charges also for THOSE ceremonies.

We left this lodge because the so-called community spiritual elder is an LGAT monger and rapes the sacred ways to fill his pockets and the pockets of other men. He should hang his head in shame. He has been asked to stop using his lodge for recruiting purposes, but he has refused. As a result, many people in the local spiritual community have stopped sweating at his lodge, except for his other Sterling cohorts and perhaps one or two others. He has put his Sterling beliefs ahead of the spiritual needs of the People. How dare he call himself "following the Red Road in a good way"!!

Justin Sterling does not practice true native american spirituality, nor do his adherents. Of that I am sure.

I will keep sweating at other lodges and praying for these people, in hopes that the Creator opens their eyes and makes them stop what they are doing. They are disrespecting Native American spirituality in the most heinous possible way and cannot see it. It breaks my heart because I know they will pay a high price for what they do.