Quote
vlinden
For me, one of the greatest "breakthroughs" of my life was when, sitting by a lake and watching a flock of birds wheeling in perfect formation through the sky, I realized that nature has its own intelligence, and humans have NOTHING to do with creating it. I was at the time involved in a great internal struggle about religion, and suddenly it all dropped away as I saw that life has order, and meaning, and it was here before anything we created -- including religion or cults -- and it was therefore something I could trust and relax with.

I love how you stated that life has order and meaning and that you observed it in nature. The point you just made blows up the whole notion that Landmark puts forward that "Life is Empty and Meaningless". I believe this is a point that can be beneficial if we expound upon it.

Their statement that "Life is Empty and Meaningless" is part of the very foundation that Landmark is built upon. When I was in the Landmark Forum, before my brain got fried, I was able to see their exact point by looking at it through a purely theoretical point of view. But even as I was seeing how they saw things, I didn't really believe that Life is Empty and Meaningless. The Landmark point of view marginalizes everything since the dawn of time and all of humanity and life itself to nothing more than cosmic mush floating aimlessly through space.

To try to build and have a life with the foundation that every thing is empty and meaningless, including the statement, is like trying to build a mansion on an alluvial flood plain without a foundation and pilings. The damn thing is going to eventually fall down if a flood doesn't wipe it out first. To do so is just plain stupid and for Landmark to brain wash people into believing that way is like leading a heard of Lemmings over a seaside cliff and just plain reprehensible.

Zorro,

I'm sure I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before, but it really was my "breakthrough" personally. It put a lot of things in perspective. It didn't give me any great answers, and it didn't make life easier, or give me more "power" or money or success or whatever. I just saw . . . reality. That's all. Reality.

New Agers don't like reality all that much, and as a group they are often blissfully and stridently ignorant as to the materialistic motivations of all their "self help" and crystal worshipping. Their egos want more more more, they want to be powerful and have mystical visions and be special and better and "in" the in group -- all the while deceiving themselves into believing they're on a "higher" plane.

I'm done with all of it.

And get this -- this is really weird. Life has been soooo weird lately. . . .

I know someone who is so deeply into New Age that he's a cult unto himself. For years he's been trying to convince me that he has special powers, higher "guidance" that tells him what to do. And he always follows his guidance of course. Meanwhile, he's been trying to convince me that his "guidance" tells him I'm supposed to have his child. I'm 32, he's about 58 or so by now.

Anyway, I've put up with this madness for various reasons over the years, but lately I've had enough, what with all this LGAT crap in my life.

So I've tried to cut it off with him, cut off communication completely, by insisting that his guidance is not mine, and therefore useless to me, sorry.

So today he writes me an email in which he is apparently trying to make me think I'm crazy. He created a totally fabricated conversation -- it NEVER took place -- during which I apparently had some kind of break down around the issue of having a child with him. This was supposedly some years ago and I have "blocked" it or suppressed the memory. And it "proves" that there is something really deep and meaningful between us, apparently.

It's absolute insane manipulative crap and it's pure cult behavior. Trying to undermine someone's trust in their own self, in their own sanity! I don't have breakdowns, or black outs, thank you very much.

I can't believe it, it's so weird to have this happen now, after all this LGAT mania of the past few weeks. I really feel like the lunatics are running the asylum these days.

Of course I'm done communicating with this freak, but it's interesting to have this happen right now. He's one of the New Age sociopaths (new phony name and everything, alien conspiracy theory, blah blah) I need to cut completely out of my life, I've already cut out another one, there's one left. The story of how I got involved with these people is a very, very long one. Maybe I'll write the damn book one day.

Wacky world, no?

And as for the issue of meaning, and the alluvial flood plane . .

This is a central question for humanity. What is meaning. What is the meaning of meaning? This question can't be answered, and certainly not by Landmark's easy out: There IS no meaning!

As far as I can see, you ARE your own meaning, and that means ALL of you, and everything you touch, and all the complex interconnected webs of your existence, your family and friends, all of your experience. This doesn't mean you DETERMINE your meaning through jargon and mind games. It means you ARE your meaning, at every moment of your existence. Your choices, your words, your love, your experience, your creativity.

I guess part of my problem in understanding LGATs is that, number 1, I like myself, and number 2, I accept my life and everything in it, including the pain and confusion, and number 3, I don't have delusions that blinding ego-driven materialism is beautiful spirituality.

You just don't hear LGATs telling people to become wandering Sanyasi's (probably not spelling that one right) or taking the Boddhisattva vows, now do you? It's not about surrendering to the Spirit like Christ on the cross, now is it?

No, because Hubbard and Erhard were ego driven occultists out for personal power, and they're tapping into that same desire within all these people who get sucked in. They're taking occult ideas and packaging them for a consumer society that wants to consume itself, that hates itself , that doesn't know itself. They promise power, but most people can't handle any power at all. The higher levels of spiritual and occult knowledge have NEVER been meant for the average person.

There absolutely is a point where a person might want to shed their connection with their identity and many conceptions of reality that define our world, but that is an occult practice with a very specific goal -- not at all suited for every day life. People who play with these ideas are like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, putting on the magic hat of the sorcerer and causing all sorts of havoc for themselves and others.

From a website called Butterflies and Wheels--subtitled 'Fighting Fashionable Nonsense.' Well worth a visit. [www.butterfliesandwheels.com]

Study the items. Veterans of this board will see how familiar these gambits are. And--so will our moderators.

[www.butterfliesandwheels.com]

Full page version here:

[www.butterfliesandwheels.com]

vlinden,

Your New Age Sociopath's behavior is an excellent example of "gaslighting" - trying to make you distrust yourself. My new age sociopathic naturopath did the exact same thing, except he was counseling patients and gaslighting them. They all go to the same training camp.

hi vliden;
I would disagree that these LGAT supporters are "almost impossible to anger"... i hear them express their anger in sarcastic and subtle ways...

but then again, perhaps I have to acknowledge that you said "almost"...it is just that in my experience they invariable turn to name calling and put downs, all the while saying things like, "you are entitled to your opinion" and "god bless you"...but certainly their anger is thinly veiled.

regards,
Shad

Quote
Zorro
Yes! You've learned quite well!

If an apologist ever tells me that I will reply: "I am really "positive" that if you don't take your own "racket" somewhere else quickly a situation will be "created" where by there is a distinct "possibility" of me putting my boot up your ass. I am also "resposible" enough that the boot will be of the steel toed "technology" kind so as to prevent me from injuring my foot upon impact! I hope you "got it" as well because I will not repeat myself."

.

*huge chuckles*
hi Zorro, i have been away for such a long time now, sure missed you all...but the above made me chuckle out loud!

i see there are not many trolls around here, they all seem to be over at the Tolle thread...

i just wonder if all the Secret people and Tolle people are not graduates of Landmark/Impact etc. Maybe they just keep shifting from one to the other.???

i don't know -- i am just so amazed that people are so gullible, even after all this time, they just don't "get it" (hah hah), you know what I mean. I'm thinking it is that, like fast food and Dr. Rx'd drugs we basically all just want a quick fix, the "silver bullet" so to speak???

who knows,
The Shad

Quote
corboy
From a website called Butterflies and Wheels--subtitled 'Fighting Fashionable Nonsense.' Well worth a visit. [www.butterfliesandwheels.com]

Study the items. Veterans of this board will see how familiar these gambits are. And--so will our moderators.

[www.butterfliesandwheels.com]

Full page version here:

[www.butterfliesandwheels.com]

hi Corboy, how are things with you?

i will check the above out, thanks!

regards,
shad

Gaslighting

I am in the process of reading a book by psychoanalyst Theo L Dorpat
entitled 'Gaslighting, The Double Whammy, Interrogation, and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Analysis'. (1996) Dr. Dorpat has a chapter where he in which he these forms of therapeutic failure with cult dynamics--and makes use of findings by Margaret Singer, Cialdini and Temerlin.

(The Temerlins were a husband wife team and published some superb papers on how psychotherapy cults work. All are worth looking for and reading)

Dorpat notes that these methods of covertly controlling/therapy subverting communication can be perpetrated without one's being aware of it, and he faced that he had done this to patients and wanted to both clean up his own act--and educate his fellow practitioners--a form of self scrutiny, open communication and consciousness raising outreach to one's profession that distinguishes a true professional from someone running an LGAT.

Dorpat also wanted to get these forms of subtle malpractice on the map because these are not dramatic enough to be legally sanctionable---but can nevertheless subvert therapy. At best, it hinders the effectiveness of an otherwise good working alliance between counselor and client.

At worst these forms of toxic power imbalance can be part of the process of harming the training of professional therapists--and can at the very worst be part of the formation of a psychotherapy cult.

(from Dr Dorpat's website) "In treatment, the psychotherapist is in a position of power. Often, this power is unintentionally abused. While trying to embody a compassionate concern for patients, therapists use accepted techniques that can inadvertently lead to control, indoctrination, and therapeutic failure. Contrary to the stated tradition and values of psychotherapy, they subtly coerce patients rather than respect and genuinely help them.

"The more gross kinds of patient abuse, deliberate ones such as sexual and financial exploitation, are expressly forbidden by professional organizations. However, there are no regulations discouraging the more covert forms of manipulation, which are not even considered exploitative by many clinicians..."

Dorpat writes: 'In both cults and (mismanged-my insertion--C)psychotherapy contexts where the therapist uses indoctrination methods, the cult leader or psychotherapist consciously or unconsciously communicates, (sometimes simultaneously) both the abusive message plus messages which conceal or distort the abusive message.

'Recall what I wrote in Chapter One about a kind of verbal abuse described by Elgin (1980) in which an apparently benign communication conceals as it were an abusive communication which Elgin calls a presupposition.(Dorpat, page 193--author's italics)

On pages 16 and 17 Dorpat gives examples from Elgin:

"If you really loved me you wouldnt go bowling".

(Presupposition) "You don't really love me"

Affects evoked: Guilt, Shame

"Example 2"

"Dont you care about your children?"

(Presuppositions)

"You dont care about your children" ,"You should care about your children, its wrong not to."

Affects evoked: Guilt, Shame Depressive Affect

*(Corboy's note: The reader should keep in mind that these printed dialogue do not include the subtlties of non verbal communciation, such as voice inflection,
or facial micro expression that would convey a shaming or derisive impact. If these dialogues occurred in public, in front of an audience, we can imagine the impact would be heightened.)
If you want this book, go to sites like bookfinders.com or alibris.com and see if any copies are available.

Further info available here

[www.drteddorpat.com]



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2008 11:37PM by corboy.

I never knew anything about this stuff till my bf was recently sucked in a few weeks ago....too bad he will be losing the person who really loves him. I feel so sorry for him. He is so gullable!