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I was a member of Alex Horn's group from the Red Mountain Ranch to the Everyman Theatre. I paid $200 per month to be a member, and paid it in cash. Robert Klien and Fred Mindel were my friends and co students. Sharon Gans joined Alex and together started the Theatre. I found Alex's Gym at 24th and Mission, which was turned into the Everyman Theatre. I was there when theatre was built. I took over the job of overseeing of the construction of the theatre after Fred Mindel cut and ran when it became too intense for him. There was physical, mental, and emotional abuse. There were not sex acts in front of adults nor children.
Have you not read the submissions of those former children who were there with you? Memory-- especially early memory-- is an unreliable source for fact, this much may be granted. At the same time, adults can be liable to selective memory when the consequences of accurate memory are too painful or frightening. Why? Because, in your case, if what these former children have reported on this message board is true, [i:4ee26d3ccc][b:4ee26d3ccc]you[/b:4ee26d3ccc] bear the responsibility for doing nothing to intervene. [/i:4ee26d3ccc]
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I never saw any child abused.
Wouldn't you consider neglect a form of abuse? Were there not children in your environment who were deprived of their parents while their parents were busy building the theater or recruiting or trying to sell tickets?
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I know Dave Archer and he has never said that Alex was a true 'Gurdjieffian'.
This is what your buddy Dave has to say about Gurdjieff: [i:4ee26d3ccc]"Gurdjieff was a spy. A real one. His Chief Feature: Intrigue. And spying requires heartless lying. And heartless liars are psychopaths. One man's psychopath is another man's Magus." [/i:4ee26d3ccc]So if you want to agree with Dave Archer's allegation that Alex was a Magus and not a true "Gurdjieffian" you may have to re-evaluate the baggage of probable psychopathy that comes with it. Do you have the guts to do that?
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He has stated that Alex is a magus, a man of power.
Really? Then what do you make of this statement of your buddy Dave Archer?: [i:4ee26d3ccc]"Understand one thing clearly. A Magus does not care about the trail of wreckage they leave behind them, period. CARING is not in their Job Description. Subjective people are THINGS: chairs, step ladders, shovels, dog houses, mailboxes. So make it about you, for yourself only. Do NOT drag your friends and family into a Magus School because you think it's cool, and might help THEM." [/i:4ee26d3ccc]In other words, a magus according to Dave Archer is just a fanciful term for what is called a psychopath. Finally, Dave Archer links the terms "Gurdjieffian" and "Magus" together, "wasthere": [i:4ee26d3ccc]"Gurdjieffian Magus: sly, astute, deep, smooth, foxy, guileful, slippery, crafty, cunning, artful, insidious, vulpine, subtle, tricky, wily, disingenuous, calculating, unfrank, gifted, subdolous, designing, scheming, dangerous, cagy, devious, shady, shifty, shitty, erotic, slick, decisive, covert, furtive, secretive, stealthy, humorous, riveting, magnetic, underhanded, ruthless, predatory, crooked, dishonest, skilled, devising, contriving, quick, silky, haunting, silver tongued, Classics trained, sensate, animalistic, hypnotic, brutal, quote-cribbing, socio-separatist, profane." [/i:4ee26d3ccc]Again, all these descriptions can easily be defining a psychopath-- even the so-called positives.
You say you know Dave Archer and that he never "said" Alex Horn was a true Gurdjieffian. Yet the quotes are from what Dave Archer has written. One has to wonder what your point is in not equating "Gurdjieffian" and "Magus." In light of this you come off sounding terribly glib about this all. Further, can you not admit at this late date that you were in the thrall of a genuine, world-class psychopath? Finally, in The Work 101 you are instructed to make a distinction between "power" and "being," where "being" is defined as "degree of Goodness." Did Alex have "power" or "being?" This is the heart of the problem for any of his victims.
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There was something very real about Alex as well as something demonic.
Yes, psychopaths have that kind of hold over people-- people give in to them in some kind of semi-hypnotic surrender-- in your case you were probably told that this is "waking form Sleep." Tragic, really. The terms "real" and "demonic" have the odor of grandiosity, by the way.
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Alot of the power Alex had was given to him by us, his students. We believed in him. At the time I can say I totally believed in him and loved him.
Yes you "believed in" him and you granted him a lot of his power over you. This is what children do with their parents. If I could hazard a guess about your past-- and at the risk of sounding as glib as you have-- it sounds as though you were the product of a lonely childhood full of neglect and you were looking for a father figure. Adults don't "believe in" other adults, if they are truly adults. What do you really mean here, or has the connection already been made for you?: Alex=Father figure. Maybe this is why you didn't/don't see neglect of children as a form of abuse-- it is too close to your own experience for you to see clearly, like the back of your head.
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He gave me invaluable things. Rather I paid for in cash and force of will for invaluable things
Share with the forum what these invaluable things were and how they have made you a better man. I am sure you gained something and the time you spent was not wasted.
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He also caused great harm and destruction in me.
Share with the forum what the harm and destruction was and how they have scarred you-- what have you actively done to heal-- or has "time" done that for you without any real effort on your part?
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If you were not there you will never understand what those times were like. You can pass judgement on all of us, as I have done. But we all were drawn by something primal in ourselves.
"Something primal," right. This refers back to the notion that most if not all of Alex Horn's and Sharon Gans's victims were the products of an unhappy childhood. This does not need any expansion, does it? Moreover, why were there never anyone of any real accomplishment under Alex Horn's sway? If you can take the measure of a person by the company he keeps, what might this say about Alex Horn given his circle of students?
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We truly wanted to connect with something magnificant and meaningfull. And in some ways we did.
What was magnificent and meaningful about your experience? And how would you conclude with certainty that all that was magnificent and meaningful was connected with Alex Horn's "being"? Putting on an abominably crappy play written by Alex Horn-- with Alex and his wife in the starring roles-- that was longer than Hamlet and Macbeth combined? Putting on another play that mythologized Kennedy and Dr. King that you were forced to aggressively pull strangers to? Or did your foreman's job exempt you from that horrible exercise? And when that young fellow (MI) broke nearly every bone in his body after falling asleep from exhaustion on a high scaffold, you were there to take responsibility for his well-being as well as the accident, right? It wasn't your fault even though you were leading that line of work, right?
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We also connected to something that caused great destruction and harm in ourselves and others. I am sorry that I was part of that process. I apologize to those that I hurt, please forgive me. I believe that I was on the wrong path for those years although I gained greatly and also lost greatly. The gain was not worth the loss.
Yes, when you confuse "power" and "being"-- as you did when you and others "believed in" Alex Horn-- things will quickly degenerate and remain so. It is said that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a correlate with parents and children. Children naturally bequeathe power and goodness on to their mother and father, and do not necessarily make a distinction between the two. How can they? You and so many other of Alex's students simply repeat the process in young adulthood. One of Alex Horn's personal heroes was WC Fields, remember? His favorite line: "Never give a sucker an even break." Alex Horn took complete advantage of you and you bought it.
And now you're sixty-ish and are coming here to this forum to do.... what? Surely not merely to ask forgiveness or make semantical distinctions between "Gurdjieffian" and "magus?" You have come here because you want to finally "leave." Your conscience is bothering you. You can't use the terms "Alex Horn" and "degenerate" or "psychopath" in the same sentence. You have come here to heal yourself-- genuinely. Start with excorcising your past by acknowledging what [i:4ee26d3ccc]others[/i:4ee26d3ccc] have posted here in terms of the pain and abuse they suffered-- and your own complicity. This is not about guilt and this not the Inquisition.
If you want to heal then stop playing games with your own ambivalence. Call a spade a spade once and for all: Alex Horn is most likely the most corrupt creature you have ever met, despite whatever charms he may have possessed. His spouse Sharon Gans quickly became his consort in degeneracy and delusions of grandeur as well. You and the others were living in a fantasy that something magnificent and meaningful was happening, especially if you attribute it to Alex Horn.
If anything was magnificent or meaningful to you it was because of your own character that it was so. This is something to feel good about, wasthere.