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REALnothings
... I still deal with these extraversion/introversion issues and uncertainties in myself and with my behavior. ...
... So much karma/energy had been generated by my relations with the group, though, that For at least a week or two I felt like someone who'd just withdrawn cold-turkey from a prolonged period of psychedelic drug use.

It's interesting that you put it this way, REALnothings ... I too have been dealing with these issues ever since. Largely because, after Nexus, I was still looking for a way to continue what I saw as beneficial about the group: stretching out of your comfort zone = transcending limits. So I've been a sucker for those philosophies (e.g., Tony Robbins, Byron Katie, Abraham-Hicks) ever since. Your description helps me see their whole "culture" in a new light ... and highlights why it's been so hard for me to accept my introverted self.
Also, as you said, upon leaving I felt as if I were going through withdrawal ... or as if I had unplugged from a life-support system. Kinda gasping for air. It took me years before I wasn't thinking about them every day, even though I've had no contact.

Laarree, it's still fascinating to hear about the origins of what Bayard was doing. And yes, I'm also glad to hear from ex-members.

Thanks, you two, for your replies. Good to feel part of a community, of sorts.

I think these groups are confusing mixes, as you suggested, hara, of the healthy and the unhealthy. I admit that I tend to eschew confrontation, and the idea of "move toward your fear" terrifies me. It would be good, I think, if I could practice that more. However, trying to force such habits through these groups only succeeded in traumatizing me. Some short-term sense of trauma might be acceptable, enroute to real transformation, but these groups did NOT work for me, even leaving aside their legitimacy...

I guess that's really all I can say about it right now.

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laarree
... He said he faked being crazy, hoping he would get put in a psychiatric institution instead of in jail. This happened, and then he escaped from the institution and came up to New York.
... Of course, this led me to joke for a long time about how I was in a cult founded by an escaped mental patient. And you guys were too. :-)

How much was he actually faking? ;)
Seriously, while I don't believe in mental health labels, I have a hard time fathoming the motivations of one such as he.

Does anyone know what's with all the names?
The man's given name is Gavin Barnes, isn't it?

Where did "Bayard Hora" come from? When I Google the name, I find a famous scientist shares the name. Is that just a coincidence?

I looked at something recent, which identified him as "Bayard Barnes"...

Anyone know about this?

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REALnothings
Does anyone know what's with all the names?
The man's given name is Gavin Barnes, isn't it?

Where did "Bayard Hora" come from? When I Google the name, I find a famous scientist shares the name. Is that just a coincidence?

I looked at something recent, which identified him as "Bayard Barnes"...

Anyone know about this?

His birth name is Bayard Henry Barnes--this was verified by the court documents I alluded to in a prior post. Gavin is an old nickname that he went by for a long time, until c. the very early 1980s. He eventually had people call him Bayard upon his request (this is during the Direct Centering days), and when he married Fran (Frances) Hora c. 1981 (one of the "elders" in WHUM and his girlfriend from his pre-Direct Centering, unlicensed primal therapist days), he adopted her last name for reasons unknown, and it's also unknown to me when or why he reverted his last name back to his original Barnes. I actually attended their wedding in Nyack in Rockland County, NY, in the back yard of her parents. I don't know what his current marital status is, but Fran has stuck with him by far the longest of anyone, since the early 1970s. I believe she originally was one of his "patients" in his primal therapy group(s). She is the woman Frannie depicted in most of the pictures on [www.wayimmune.org]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2008 01:42AM by laarree.

For a short story I'm writing, of which my time at Bayard Hora & Associates is but one part, I tried to remember more specifics of my experiences there. Can anyone comment or add more? Thanks.
***

The next morning we gathered at 10 AM in the Course Room, which was behind the hall room we’d been in the previous evening for registration. Bayard sat on a dais, a small table beside him bearing a bottle of Evian water and a flower in a vase, and talked about what we should expect in the next twelve hours. Then the course actually began.

I wish I could give you a dramatic narrative of my experience there. The fact is, though, that all I recall are isolated impressions. I’ve long speculated on the reasons why I don’t recall many specifics. I think the experience likely became early on a prolonged trauma, which my mind has repressed. Furthermore, the ongoing intensity in the group was of an exponential level in comparison with "normal" experience, a level which does not yield a linear, temporal sequence of memories. It all feels "piled up" inside me.

There were frequent “milling exercises”, where we walked around and then made eye contact with someone and worked with him or her for a certain sequence of communications. There were other exercises for which Bayard called someone up to the dais and worked individually with the person.

My initial lift began to wear off quickly, and was replaced by a sense of fear, as the exercises revealed a confrontational character. The Course was also, I soon learned, one of the notorious ones whose volunteers and staff did not let participants leave. Doors were locked and even bathroom privileges were hard to come by. One man who felt very threatened begged to leave, and a great commotion arose as the “lieutenants” and he scuffled physically. He was finally allowed to go, but without even a partial refund.

The initial Course was advertised as a life-panacea, until you had taken it, at which time it was re-imaged by Bayard and his cohorts as the “first step” in a sequence, completely insufficient by itself and a mere prelude to the truly powerful, 3-day Intensive.

So I took the Intensive, too, at a camp in the Poconos a few weeks later. Somehow I was motivated, although my experience in the first course was scarcely uplifting, not only to sign up for the Intensive, but to become a volunteer in the Course offices 5 mornings a week! I believed the promises about transformation, and decided I would do anything, and spend as much money as I could get my hands on, for the results promised. Once they started coming through, the money spent would be a drop in the bucket.


I didn’t fare any better, as far as experienced transformation, in the Intensive than I had in the initial Course. One time I walked out of the hall in the rain, intending to quit, for the process seemed to result in an endless humiliation for me. But I wasn’t even successful in quitting, and I wound up signing up for yet more future offerings. (And they were several hundred dollars each! The Intensive may have cost close to a thousand!)

It is hard to find the actual motivation of this character—and I was him! I think my fervor was due to a great sense of inner need, and a sense of shame at any prospective failure.
And I wanted the things of the world that were being promised. Not a shiny new car, not sexy women, per se, not money in the bank—none of those crass things, but rather, “things” that seemed much more benign: things like "empowerment" and "the capacity to get results“.

Bayard had a Director of Vision Realization. Could I maybe just sit down with her? Could she just feed my information into the one of the computers everyone at the office worked on, and come up with, well, my vision, realized?

No, it was not that simple. One had to be outrageously proactive--aggressive. The inner circle of Bayard’s associates, when I saw the way they behaved in the offices on non-course days, shocked me! What I perceived as full-out temper tantrums were approved, even encouraged behavior. I would want to run for cover when a “prince” or “princess” of the inner circle let go with a load of rage about not receiving the materials for a pre-course facial treatment in time, or something.



Things happened that decidedly tried my trust and plunged me into a crisis of values. For example, in one of the courses, a good-looking, charismatic young man who was one of the “darlings” of the group came up to me and said in what seemed a guileless and disarming voice, “Hey, why don’t you be in the ‘fighting’ Course with me?” I was touched that he wanted my company, and on that basis of that, went over to the Registration and signed up (and they rang bells and everybody cheered me, another of the little adhesive rituals).
And then, when I was on “volunteer staff” myself for the first time in a course a week or so later, we had a little volunteers’ meeting during a break and were told, “Now each of you has a quota to sign up at least two people for a course! Just go up to someone and invite him or her to “be in” such-and-such an upcoming course with you!” The young man’s words had been 100% con. How did I trust a single word any of these people said?


So it went. I got more and more confused. The confrontational aspect was a feature of members' interactions, whether a course was in progress or not. I remember several people gathering in the kitchen one morning. One of them wanted to make an egg for breakfast. Ordinarily, everyone's diet consisted solely of the organic fruit and nut butters.
As the woman brought the eggs out of the refrigerator (I’m not sure why they were even there) and began frying up some butter, another group member said, “You’re letting us all down by eating an egg!”
“I just had a longing,” the offender said.
“She’s right, you’re letting us all down!” said a dark-haired man with glasses, raising his voice. Don’t you care?”
“We care about you!” said the first woman. “You know what eggs do to your system!”
“Look, it’s my breakfast!” the egg-desirer came back, raising her voice now as well.
“If you don’t put it away, I’ll tell Bayard!” shouted the dark-haired man. Several others, hearing the noise, also gathered around.
“They’re right, Ann. You become the weak link that’ll break the whole chain! Put them away.”
Ann finally saw the light, put the eggs away, and began peeling a mango instead. I returned to my cleaning work, cowering at what I’d seen.

When I saw people in the group out in public, they would always greet me with a direct gaze and a strong voice. At first I enjoyed these meetings, but then I realized the greeting would inevitably be followed by “How are you doing?” and if I replied something like “Pretty well, I guess,” my words would bring, “Why do you have to guess? Don’t you know?”
“Well, all right. Pretty well.”
“Why only pretty well?”
“Well, I guess I’m having a bit of a hard time.”
“Why are you having a hard time?
“I find this directness difficult.”
“Why do you find it difficult?”
“I guess I’m not used to it.”
“You guess?”
“I’m not.”
“You need to sign up for the course on 'Absolute Responsibility!'”

I was taking as many courses as I could, and the only thing that was changing was that my feelings of humiliation and inadequacy were increasing with each failed effort to “get it”, and the enormous energy infusions of many prolonged, intense exchanges a week, in courses and out, were pumping me into a continual altered state.

One morning when I went to gas up my car on Staten Island where I was living, the proprietor found my MASTERCARD on a list and confiscated it. I had charged up too many courses, and my parents, who had agreed to make the "investment in my future” at first, had not been informed and did not pay. Now my capacity to even sign up for more courses was finished. But by this time I'd already left Bayard Hora & Associates.

Wow, REALnothings, thank you for such a vivid and detailed description. It rings so true, and I had forgotten, and now it's so helpful to look back on it from my current perspective ... that one about "How are you doing?" is priceless! If I didn't know it to be true, I'd almost think it was satire. And the eggs. And the facial, etc. But wow! It's amazing to think what we put up with, what so many well-meaning people get drawn into, how being smart has nothing to do with it ... getting so caught up, it might be hard to understand from an outsider's perspective: so if it was like that, WHY did you sign up? But you did, I did, and it really helps me to read about it how it happened for others.

Hi Everyone!
I can't begin to tell you how elated I was to read all of your posts here about Direct Centering. For me it's been almost 25 years and no one that I hang out with now can begin to understand what it was like being a part of whatever that was. While I was waiting for my registration information to be approved by the Rick Ross people, I started to write a draft of my personal experiences with direct centering, at least what I could remember. A great deal came flooding back to me once I opened the gates. I'll be posting it a little later when I get home to my computer. How did I come to find all of you? At the emmys last Sunday, someone I knew from Direct Centering was nominated for a directing award. He didn't win, but I recognized the name and that I once knew him. I googled him, then Direct Centering, then Immunics. Only you guys could understand how I felt when I saw the photographs of Fran and Gavin and Keely. I'm guessing that Keely probably is the only assistant from the early 80s that remains. Anyway, I wrote a rather lengthy story about my experiences, and I didn't totally trash DC. I have fond memories afterall. I've long forgotten the unpleasantness of it. I'm hoping that once you all read it we can reminisce (or commisserate, now that was a popular term in those days!! I was a giant commisserator back then).

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andyb4
Hi Everyone!
I can't begin to tell you how elated I was to read all of your posts here about Direct Centering. For me it's been almost 25 years and no one that I hang out with now can begin to understand what it was like being a part of whatever that was. While I was waiting for my registration information to be approved by the Rick Ross people, I started to write a draft of my personal experiences with direct centering, at least what I could remember. A great deal came flooding back to me once I opened the gates. I'll be posting it a little later when I get home to my computer. How did I come to find all of you? At the emmys last Sunday, someone I knew from Direct Centering was nominated for a directing award. He didn't win, but I recognized the name and that I once knew him. I googled him, then Direct Centering, then Immunics. Only you guys could understand how I felt when I saw the photographs of Fran and Gavin and Keely. I'm guessing that Keely probably is the only assistant from the early 80s that remains. Anyway, I wrote a rather lengthy story about my experiences, and I didn't totally trash DC. I have fond memories afterall. I've long forgotten the unpleasantness of it. I'm hoping that once you all read it we can reminisce (or commisserate, now that was a popular term in those days!! I was a giant commisserator back then).

If it's been 25 years, I most likely knew you. Re: the Emmys--you mean Michael Engler, who was nominated for "30 Rock". I briefly shared a loft with him, his brother and some others in Soho back in 1980 -- we were all DC assistants. This is when Michael was still attending NYU, before he went to grad school at Yale and on to his successful stage and TV directing career. Michael's pal Allison Burnett from back then is also in Hollywood, but has published an excellent novel, "Christopher", vaguely based on the early 1980s time period of his life, and includes a sharp satirical chapter about a New Age cult called "the Weekend" that his protagonist gets involved with based on you-know-who. It's a vivid, lightly disguised mini-portrait of life at DC. [www.amazon.com]

Welcome to this little sub-community of ex-Bayardites. I was hoping somehow that the two or three threads devoted to discussing him and his ever-evolving cult in this forum would attract (through the magic of Google) some more folks here who still are privately digesting their experiences of being under his influence.