Here's an excerpt I from the newsletter cited above:

“What qualities might characterize the leaders of authentic communities?
Here's a partial list, in no particular order: (1) Zero interest in (and zero support of) cultism and its payoffs; (2) No ambition to be the leader; (3) A deep and abiding capacity for being-centered relatedness, as shown by consistently demonstrated integrity and compassion, along with an ability to get to the heart of the matter efficiently and effectively; (4) Exceptionally effective in working with groups, without in any way marginalizing or otherwise shortchanging individual work; (5) Willing and able to see their own flaws; (6) Deep receptivity to inside dissension and outside critical feedback, coupled with a willingness to make good use of such information as soon as possible; (6) An ongoing exposure and uprooting of any cultism, in conjunction with supporting fitting personal work, psychotherapeutic and otherwise, for any members stuck in cultism or other life-negating patterns; (7) No grandiosity, no self-aggrandizement, no exaggerated promises, no arrogance, no bypassing of responsibility, no bullshit; (8) Either in a deeply committed being-centered relationship (as epitomized by mature monogamy) or fully capable of being in such a relationship; (9) Squeaky clean sexual energy, unpolluted by any pornographic or exploitive or otherwise immature erotic tendencies; (10) Fully and obviously committed to their own healing and awakening; and (11) Openness to their community evolving, even if it means their position becomes obsolete or that the community disintegrates.” - Robert Augustus Masters, ”Creating Authentic Communities”

I've really appreciate Robert's writing on this subject, and he is a great bodyworker/therapist/teacher.

Eric

I am the mother of a twenty-year-old son who has joined EBE. He sent me a letter a month ago and out of the blue he disowned me for an undetermined amount of time. I have to tell you, I am shocked. I need to understand ... is it whoever gets to EBE first gets to disown their family? If everyone who joins has to disown someone, doesn't that cut into Daniel Barron's audience? My son and I have always been close. He did not have an amazing life, but he's had a very, very good one. We have always had a great relationship and now I feel like my child has been kidnapped and I am powerless to save him. I have not tried to contact him since he sent me an email explaining that we have an unhealthy codependent relationship and that in order to heal he must not have any contact with me. Is this indefinite? I have read all about "theohumanity" and there is no question that this is a cult. I tried to do some research to find out what Daniel's degree is in. His website is elusive. I actually wrote a letter to Dr. Phil. I never thought I would say that. But I am desperate. And I am just one person. The only really important thing about me is that I was blessed enough to be someone's mom. Does anyone have any insight? Suggestions? Advice?

Hi,

I am sorry to hear that your son has chosen this way of working out some of his hurts with you. So much is missed out on when past hurts are not worked out in person, face to face, over time rather than cutting off. I know first hand.

[moderator note: Don't post contact information or solicit services at this message board]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2008 02:24AM by rrmoderator.

Graphicbydesign,
This response is also to you in another thread on Barron.
First: Do you have also a so-called normal name? Ann, Lisa, or whatever? I ask that because it is important in this matter to be overt and covert, otherwise you will put yourself in the same secretive directions as Barron is trying to do now. My name is really Jos Hoebe and “they” have to know that. If you really want to expose this man and his doing, then be bluntly open and true, to yourself, to whom you write, but also to Barron, etc.

Second: As for what happened with your son: In EBE it is seen that everyone is emotional wounded due to the emotional immaturity of parents and other educators.
This is also when it seems the child had a wonderful childhood.
When the child grows up and starts to investigate his own being and therefore also his past life, he always find that one thing: he is not felt as he feels himself and for sure not at the moment he is feeling what he is feeling.
Barron built on this “happening” his theorem of EBE.
This happening is real, but Barron’s theorem is not, at least it’s practice from it, lacks a lot.
That is seen e.g. in what happens to your son.
In EBE there is a moment you are going to investigate all your dependencies.
A part of the dependencies belongs to our up bringers, parents, friends, partners, etc.
To break the dependency the student is told to quit the existing relationship and to take instead a surrogacy as symbol for that relationship.
It is thought that that surrogacy as the symbol for the real thing in the past can bring the student in an awareness of independency to that past. When done right it will work out that way. The student will be for a certain time into the surrogacy, learns to be free from his past and then will be able to relate NEW to the people he was relating to.
When the student can be and stays that way new the whole relationship will be anew. In cause of the parents, the child will relate anew to its parents and the parents will be able to relate anew to the child.
That new relationship will be that the parents are the parents, the child is the child and what have been, have been, and everything can be related to as if what had happened is an object. No one is involved in it with his emotions, it has become past. Real past. The idea of it is very healthy, the practice is very difficult.

To you I only can say: When your son is a wise one, he will come back to you, but as a free man.
If you can understand this, you will rejoice in it, but the thing is: when he gets free and comes back and you relate to him as if he is not new then he will feel that he has to cling again to the old feelings. Then that is what he will refuse, even more, he will not be able to, and therefore will stop the relationship again and probably forever, because he himself has set himself free from it and doesn’t need the relationship anymore, because he is no longer dependent on that relationship. He then can only relate with you as a free man that knows his past and also knows the way out of that past.
For parents, and for brothers and sisters and very good friends, this is a great opportunity because they themselves can set themselves free from their past, and that is a real wonderful thing.
But it is not easy to come there, because you as parent has not done the same thing as the son did. He went through his whole past and made all his unconscious experiences conscious, relived them and got beyond them. You as parent will not have done that and has to do that right the way your son is coming back the first time.

Barron, as teacher, should teach his students that it works out that way, and that the student can have consideration to the relationships in his past.
All the way, he is free from it, so why not be patience?
He knows how arduous it was and he knows also the parent, brother, sister, friend, have not done the same thing he did?
He himself became “wiser” and therefore has the responsibility to act like that?
To my opinion Barron has to teach his students that too. Because he doesn’t, I say he is a dangerous guy, because he makes his students unconscious dependent on him. He doesn’t really help them to become, be and stay free.

So to me, the only thing we can do, is to acknowledge this, and tell him, Barron, again and again that he has a very great responsibility towards his students and all the relationships the student is in and wants the be freed from.
Therefore it is important for you as parent just to keep on loving your son and wait till he comes back and then relate anew to him.
So you have to become also wiser along the process of your son. Only then you can by then communicate with your son on a different level.
If so, then you will be able also to communicate with him in an objective way on Barron, EBE and the like, and on your own feelings. And then your son could be one that may communicate the falsities in Barron to Barron himself.

We, as people outside the Theohumanity community, will not be able to do that. Barron will not listen to us, due to his own wounds, and so far for now, he also does not listen to his students that would have tried to communicate with him on that. He kicked them out. Shame on him.

So there is not much you can do. You can write dr. Phil, Oprah or whomever, but it will not work out the way you want. Even more, your son, will feel himself not be felt and therefore been hurt and the abyss between you and him will width itself.
What you can do is understanding. Understanding how it works: that is: Everyone is wounded during Childhood, also everyone that has learned to cope with it. Also everyone that will tell he had a wonderful childhood. Also everyone that says he is not wounded. Childhood wounding is a fact.
Another fact is: if one is sensible and a bit conscious of his own situation, he, she, wants to get rid of the impact and outcome of that wounding. He, she, wants to be free, and that’s healthy. To become healthy and free takes time. That’s a fact too, and you have to give your son that time, even all the time for it. You can do that, because you love him. You are not dependent on him. If you are, then that is one of the unhealthy things your son wants to get rid of.

In the meantime, you can try to write and talk (= communicate), with all kinds of people on this topic, to gain understanding on this kind of facts and how society at large could get rid of it. You also could try to get in contact with EBE-people to get more insights yourself about yourself and your own wounding, about EBE in general, and how Barron could be spoken to.
You even could try to write, communicate with him yourself directly.
But whatever you do, you have to try to get another kind of understanding. Another understanding of yourself, your parents, your children, society, etc. That is what you can do. You can do that, because you love your son. If you act from off this other understanding, your son will become back even sooner.

With Love,
Jos

Dearest Jos,

First, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my post. Second, please allow me to introduce myself... my name is Melissa Henry. I don't post personal information on the internet, however, this is definitely worthy of an exception! And it's very nice to meet you, although I wish the circumstances were different. I have read your letter several times and truly appreciate your insight and honesty. I have read all the posts in the forum on this subject and I have read through the TheoHumanity website in an attempt to get my bearings and understand as much as I can about this. I have not purchased any of the books. I believe in responsible consumerism and hate the idea of supporting this misguided man.

I agree with you that there are many good things in DB's work. I am one of those people that grew up in spite of my parents, not so much because of them. I am intimately familiar with awakening as a young adult and feeling as though I was not felt and unhappy with who I was. Turning out as a product of my environment, I wanted to reinvent myself and become an authentic person. The person I knew I was inside that my childhood stifled. I struggled and searched my feelings and beliefs and changed a lot of who I was to align myself with who I knew I wanted to be. It took many years to be comfortable in my skin. Many times extraordinary people come from extraordinary circumstance. I still believe in working every day to become a better, more authentic person. I agree with you that no one gets through their childhood unscathed. My son is incredibly smart and a wonderful person but I am not disillusioned into thinking his childhood was perfect. Introspection, learning and bettering oneself would go a long way in our society. More people should try it!

My dissension with the practice of EBE is (well, many things) that while the student is working on themselves, the
"co-dependent" relations receive this sudden cutting of ties without explanation or education on what is happening. My relationship was cut via E-mail in a letter written in EBEese. After I read it I was pissed! Then I read up on EBE and figured out my son has joined a cult. This is dangerous. Then, like you said, he returns later, all anew, to reintroduce himself on a new level and I would have been stuck at where we left off. If my son had explained to me what was happening in his process and there had been an offering of education on the subject or better yet, come to a workshop or read a book or whatever, I would have been better equipped to deal with this and understand. Fortunately I have you and this forum and the resource to educate myself so that I will have some understanding when he returns.

This is the biggest gamble EVER! This whole thing is gambling with my relationship with my son which is one of the most important and valuable things in the world to me. As it is with most people. After receiving the letter and seeing EBE for what it is and is not, there's an instinct with your children like a mama bear that kicks in. This could have been very ugly. And shame on DB for that. This is where the whole thing becomes a cult. It's as though the students are given a recipe for disaster so that DB is not only right in his prediction of the codependent relationship but now the student has no one left but DB and EBE! That is one of many things that need to be exposed here. I understand that trying to invite DB to sit across from Dr. Phil may widen the gap between my son and I, but it also may close it. And better yet it may close gaps for many many wounded souls and many wounded souls to come. How can DB be exempt from public scrutiny? If his religion is perfect and his heart in the right place then he would have no worries. I would like to commend him on some of his insights and interpretations, but I believe he should answer for his misguidances and arrogance. People deserve to understand all sides of this. Maybe WE should write a book. I would not call DB out for a public persecution, merely an open platform of point vs. counter point and more importantly to give the potential students (victims) a well rounded and educated scope of this study. In my opinion, that is what is missing. If you know nothing about EBE and you are considering signing up for this regiment of self examination, self sacrifice and eventual discipledom (if you will) of Daniel Barron, there is nothing but this forum to tell you otherwise. DB has shown his cards in kicking out the people who questioned anything he preaches. He is FULL of self righteousness, self indulgence and he has a God complex.

Can we learn from him? Yes. Should we follow him? No. Does anybody truly know anything about Daniel Barron, EBE, TheoHumanity or ESH before they sign up, except for what they are told by a follower? No. We cannot let that be. I cannot let that be. Jos, what are your thoughts? I cannot tell you how grateful I am for the awareness of my son's position when he returns. Without that knowledge... I would have most likely destroyed this relationship permanently. I hope to hear from you soon.

Very Best Regards & Love,
Melissa

PS
The "what's your real name" question you asked me... Lisa, Ann?.... It's Melissa Ann. Nice guess.

Eric,

Thank you. I truly don't believe my son could have done this face-to-face. In retrospect he had lunch with me a few times before the "big email" and I think that was his intention. Who knows for sure. Is this how it's supposed to be done? Sort of anonymously? What do you mean you know?

Very Best Regards,
Melissa

Hello Melissa,
I will respond to some of your writing by taking it apart and comment on it thereafter, but first: nice meeting you, as Melissa.
I have read all the posts in the forum on this subject and I have read through the TheoHumanity website in an attempt to get my bearings and understand as much as I can about this.
- That’s very good. You, have to know who you are dealing with.
Turning out as a product of my environment, I wanted to reinvent myself and become an authentic person.
- So it runs in the family. Your son wants that too.
If my son had explained to me what was happening in his process and there had been an offering of education on the subject or better yet, come to a workshop or read a book or whatever, I would have been better equipped to deal with this and understand.
- Yes, that would be a lot better. Barron should tell his students to do that. He should tell them, that it is quite easily to explain, with a lot of examples that the student wants to get out of his wounding. The student does not apologize himself for that, neither does he need approval, but it would be great when he explains his family and friends what he is doing or is going to do. Why not? It isn’t a secret. It is a normal thing wanting to be healthy and whole. So, mr. Barron, I know that someone of your organization or one of “your people” is reading this, so please, take this up in your program of getting people healthy and whole, because isn’t that what you want?
This is the biggest gamble EVER! This whole thing is gambling with my relationship with my son which is one of the most important and valuable things in the world to me. As it is with most people. After receiving the letter and seeing EBE for what it is and is not, there's an instinct with your children like a mama bear that kicks in. This could have been very ugly. And shame on DB for that.
- I understand what you say, but this is really the thing where everyone goes astray. Of course your son is of immense importance and value to YOU, but more to your son himself. The feeling you express is the normal feeling we all have towards our children, I know this myself, I have two sons and I love them, but they are not the most valuable “things” for me in my life. That is me, myself and I and my own growth towards a better understanding of whom I am, What I can be, what I should become, and that I wish my sons too (and everyone). My sons have their own lives and way of living and realizing who they are, what they can be and should become. I only can walk along with them and love them, and support them with what they do and think and feel what the best is for them. I can give them advice, but no orders. They are first free men that have to encounter themselves. The instinct you’re talking about is preciously what we have to overcome or to unlearn. This kind of emotions always leads to violence and worse. That’s where we have to halt ourselves and make the first step towards another kind of being. A being that at least understands that that is not the way. Yes, we love our children, but I won’t kill for them. I am not an animal, but a human being able to go beyond my instincts and unconscious mechanical emotions. I can be a conscious being. And if that is true I have to get rid of this kind of behavior. I have to feel different. The shame is not on Barron in this, but on all of us.
This is where the whole thing becomes a cult. It's as though the students are given a recipe for disaster so that DB is not only right in his prediction of the codependent relationship but now the student has no one left but DB and EBE! That is one of many things that need to be exposed here.
- I agree with you. As Barron does his thing, what is at first a genuine thing, BECOMES a cult, because of it. But the sole thing itself is okay. We all have to understand what has happened to us, how we are deeply wounded and how we can overcome that. Because then we will be able to go in the direction of a real human being. A being of understanding and love. That is what we all want to be. Then we know how to socialize really. Then we can live together in a real society, instead of killing each other because we are hurt in our selfish feelings of vanity and pride. Then we stop making accounts to one and other, because I am insulted. Yes, Barron is making his students dependent on him, but only the ones that cannot overcome this terrible feeling of not been loved, seen, felt enough. They will cling to any kind of surrogacy, if it is Barron, alcohol, heroin, whatever. The intelligent ones will free themselves and will get out of it and take the good things with them. I your son is intelligent, as you say so, he will come back, with a great and new understanding of life and how to live together. Eric can tell you all about it. Also bad teacher can help a lot, for the intelligent ones. For the unintelligent, yes, we have to help them, and only because of them Barron has taken a great responsibility on himself to that. To the unintelligent he will be a father, etc. and he has to learn them a lot. And that whole part, he has to do better. Not secretive, not with lying (as he does with his wife), not claiming something that is impossible (emotional enlightened) and not real (EBE is not a therapy) and a lot of other things. He could do a lot better, and I hope he does, because we really need therapy like EBE. Mankind is becoming mad. Just another few steps and we will destroy ourselves. It’s time for a change. A change in us: to become conscious feeling intelligent human beings instead of dummies that live only by their instincts and violent emotions. That is what we all have to do, and so has Barron.
If his religion is perfect and his heart in the right place then he would have no worries. I would like to commend him on some of his insights and interpretations, but I believe he should answer for his misguidances and arrogance. People deserve to understand all sides of this.
- Yes, you’re right. I hope, by reading all this, that he will understand what he also has to do. And that’s a lot. When he really understands what EBE could be and bring to the world, then he would really guide mankind into a new aeon.
Maybe WE should write a book. I would not call DB out for a public persecution, merely an open platform of point vs. counter point and more importantly to give the potential students (victims) a well rounded and educated scope of this study. In my opinion, that is what is missing. If you know nothing about EBE and you are considering signing up for this regiment of self examination, self sacrifice and eventual discipledom (if you will) of Daniel Barron, there is nothing but this forum to tell you otherwise.
- Again, you’re right and the book we are already writing as on this forum is going on. Would be students could read it and I hope they do. That is the one good thing of forums. They inform ( If you can look trough the bogus). So let us ask Barron directly: Dear Mr. Barron, as you know, I think you are a fraud the way you’re doing now with your work. I think so, because of the things said in this forum and on others like the one Eric is writing on and telling his experiences with you. To me, EBE, could be a wonderful therapy, but you don’t want to have it called a therapy, but a totally new way towards God, or as you name it, Maker. But you also know, that all kinds of ways to Maker, will be exoteric in the end and of no value because of all misinterpretations of would be priests and other glorious people who will make shit of it. So why not start on the exoteric level? Why not start as tool, just to help people to become more friendly human beings? Why do you so insist that it solemnly can be used for enlightenment? The most people are not interested in that, but they are interested in becoming more friendly, more loving, more understanding, more communicative and more able to get beyond instinct and mechanical reactions. Isn’t that the first step? Then EBE, as therapy, could be available to all people and all that people able to take it as a way to Maker, they will do that anyway. And if they come the inner circle, the esoteric, will be there, isn’t it? Could you please comment on this?
Can we learn from him? Yes. Should we follow him? No. Does anybody truly know anything about Daniel Barron, EBE, TheoHumanity or ESH before they sign up, except for what they are told by a follower? No. We cannot let that be. I cannot let that be. Jos, what are your thoughts? I cannot tell you how grateful I am for the awareness of my son's position when he returns. Without that knowledge... I would have most likely destroyed this relationship permanently. I hope to hear from you soon.
- Yes and no. We can learn a lot of him. How it can be done and how it can’t be done. We don’t need to follow him, at best we could be able to understand him, at least his teaching. It would be nice indeed, when his website were more informative to how thing will go along the EBE highway. He could open a forum. He could let people speak for themselves. Now no one can be reached, not even by email. He closed it so much, that now you have to trust “it” to go into it. That’s strange, and doesn’t feel good. So what we can do, is open it ourselves. Anyone interested in EBE can contact me by email through this forum. I can tell them, what EBE is and what they can do themselves and what not, because sometimes you need a helping hand in this. So, let’s do that: open it up. So, Eric, what do you think of this?
In regard to your comment to Eric: you said your son told it by email. That’s a big pity. Probably he shames himself that much, and also feels himself that much anyway dependent in his relation with you, that that was his only way to do it. It will have hurt him a lot to do it, and he could do by mobilizing all his anger, control and self-righteousness he could find in himself. If that is so and if he is intelligent, he will come back the moment he understands his punisher sentinel that hides his feelings of shame and being guilty, and when he starts feeling the terrible feelings of unworthy and being disconnected from the source. Then he will come home to understand his worldly father, mother, brothers, sisters and friends. He will come to check if he can leave them all, as being independent of them. That is the first next step towards understanding the kingdom of heaven. That is where your understanding Melissa comes in.
Love,
Jos

Really really good stuff Jos. Whatever I can do to help this cause please do not hesitate to call on me. And I mean that sincerely.

I want to clarify... when I say my son is one of the best "things" that has ever happened to me, I am speaking of thing as an event not an object. Not as though he is a thing, as giving birth, the event of when you become a parent. That thing.

And I have a question... If you are the most important, you, yourself, first, then I have a scenario...

You and your sons come out of a shopping mall and there is a shooter in the parking lot. A man has a gun and it is pointed directly at one of your sons... would you A) duck and run? B) put yourself between the gunman and your child? or C) something I didn't consider that you have to explain?

Also, how can only the first people to sign up for EBE be salvageable under this regiment and everyone else is disposable? Because the way this looks is that boiled down, in a nutshell, everyone else is co-dependent and worthless. And one more thing, I cannot thank you enough for helping me to understand all of this. I appreciate you very much.

With Love and Best Regards,
Melissa

Jos,

Hello?

Melissa

I'm sorry Melissa, but I have also a company to run, and a lot of times I will be away.

Really really good stuff Jos. Whatever I can do to help this cause please do not hesitate to call on me. And I mean that sincerely.

- I will come to that point in another comment. I now only can answer your letter in a short way, because I have a lot of other work to do that takes all my attention and time. I’m sorry for you in this.

I want to clarify... when I say my son is one of the best "things" that has ever happened to me, I am speaking of thing as an event not an object. Not as though he is a thing, as giving birth, the event of when you become a parent. That thing.
- That I understand, Melissa. You say the true thing: it is an event.

And I have a question... If you are the most important, you, yourself, first, then I have a scenario...
- That seems so, but is not true. Only when you see the scenario as: I first have to grow to be able to conduct my experiences. Therefore I must do first myself in an appropriate way before
I can give others in an appropriate way. I first have to love myself to be able to love others. Why would another love me, when I don’t love myself?

You and your sons come out of a shopping mall and there is a shooter in the parking lot. A man has a gun and it is pointed directly at one of your sons... would you A) duck and run? B) put yourself between the gunman and your child? or C) something I didn't consider that you have to explain?

- When a question is made, one thinks the question should be answered along the line of the question. But what about the question itself? The question could not be answered because of the formulation in the question. To your question: It looks like as it is something real, one could answer, but it is not real. There is no one pointing a gun, so the answer can’t be answered. All this as if questions are only disturbing your mind to put you in a certain self conceiving state of righteousness. The only thing one can do is being aware of things happening and act conscious according the situation. Acting unconscious is acting mechanical, which leads to violence.


Also, how can only the first people to sign up for EBE be salvageable under this regiment and everyone else is disposable? Because the way this looks is that boiled down, in a nutshell, everyone else is co-dependent and worthless.
- I do not understand your question.

And one more thing, I cannot thank you enough for helping me to understand all of this. I appreciate you very much.
- You’re welcom