By the way, that "article" about Michael Beckwith by his friend Alex Benzer is beyond a puff-piece. Its also intellectually dishonest, highly manipulative, persuasive, directional, and is a PR piece to try and get more members for Agape in person, and online. For example, he says: "you're not required to practice anything, perform any rituals, or subscribe to any kind of d
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

@ buffman, Good point about getting people to "laugh" to replace the feeling of being "manipulated". That is deliberate. Owen Fitzpatrick actually admits to modeling many professional comedians to hone that skill. The advanced persuaders all model/copy the best entertainers and comedians, they use it as part of their charisma mask. Its really beyond dangerous what they are
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Owen Fitzpatrick is doing far more than the public can perceive, except those who are trained in this area. His entire page is loaded with material, top to bottom. With guys like this, there are always at least 2 levels of communication going on at once. The basic text, and then everything else. Often the basic text is the misdirection, even though it may convey some general information. The
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Another taste of even a supposed legit NLP persuader like Owen Fitzpatrick, and how that compares with guys like James Ray. Owen Fitzpatrick says he met various Gurus in India, and discussed NLP processes with them. Now who knows if that's true, or some kind of Story. But there is truth to it. All the big gurus spend a lot of time meeting with advanced persuaders from all over the worl
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

This is a special message for a few of the NLPers and weasels who are running around trying to deflect this advanced persuasion stuff away from NLP, and how James Arthur Ray uses parts of it. Those folks are lying right through their capped bleached teeth. Its all there in black and white. James Ray has directly mimicked and copied a number of people, almost like a robot, people like Tony
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Glad to hear you think Erickson was a good guy. Keep up the good work in exposing the crooks. I'm just trying to sort out within myself who's a crook and who's not, I guess.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Unforunately, you'd have to read a large chunk of the Byron Katie thread to get a sense of what was said about how the Milton Erickson material fits into this. Dr. Erickson was great, as I have said in that thread many times, he probably was a genius, a real one. He was also a licensed MD and hypnotherapist. Erickson would be outraged by these crooks running around and trying to screw with
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I think you've misunderstood Watzlawick's story. I've also read this book. Watzlawick asked Milton Erickson whether Erickson was Don Juan, and Erickson said no. I don't think Watzlawick ever had any connection with Castaneda except from reading his books. I personally consider Erickson to be an amazing psychotherapist, and a basically ethical one too from what I've rea
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

The Real Secret: Additional Resources for Journalists and Concerned Citizens Well, here are additional resources The Anticult, in addition to mentioning Cialdini's book, mentioned another one Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control (Hardcover) ~ Dominic Streatfeild (Author) We had a discussion on the RR.com forum years back on Manipulating the Room Environment.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

There appears to be some new information posted on the Janaki blog? Its written in red, in the middle of the page, linked below. Its about how one of the houses in Barstow, the basement was filled with boxes of books of this kind of material. Now of course, the trained eye can see the direct copying, and slight modifcation of various techniques, as has been shown many times in this thread
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Tsukimoto wrote: Quote--"In the guru and in the community at Kripalu, thousands of seekers sought the perfect Dad and Mom." --"Orphans bring a tremendous amount of idealization and projection into their relationships with their teachers. We fall in love with our teachers and with our communities, and as a result, we do not see them at all clearly." --"With our
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Yesterday I committed a typo. That friends, is what lack of a good nights sleep can do to someone) I wrote: QuoteSo perhaps we can suggest that archetypes do* merely adorn our lives, as gilded paint or stucco embelllishments do when placed on the surface of a house. I actually meant to write: '...archetypes do not merely adorn our lives, as do gilt or stucco decorations on the surf
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

American Tantric Dissimulation--Hiding the Actual Source of Influence From the RR.com message board, I would like to add a further comment to Chapter 43 on Janaki's blog--Am I Whacky? To Janaki: Just wait. Sooner or later the inevitable guru apologist (s) will arrive and claim that its only our own craving minds that cause all the trouble. No, friend. The problem is not our crav
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Stever Robbins gets technical...about using Ericksonian language patterns in German, which has different grammatical structures. ___________________________________ QUOTE EXCERPT: "Much of early NLP was based on the work of Virginia Satir, a family therapist; Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy; Gregory Bateson, anthropologist; and Milton Erickson, hypnotist. It was Erickson'
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

The thing with these advanced NLP-style persuaders and conversational hypnotherapists...like the Stever Robbins type of guys, (there are many many of them out there...) First off, anyone who has been immersed in it for decades, has a profoundly different way of looking at the world, and at people. Very serious intellectual arrogance is part of that system, as they generally are very intellige
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi derren84 My original point in posting this was to point out that: A) Certain people in the seduction community, who are successful in using these techniques, are behaving in a way that is at best abusive and disrespectful towards their victims, and at worst quite possibly criminal. B) Certain people in the seduction community are taking advantage of damaged, insecure people (in selli
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

You can learn to do cold reading without even knowing you have learned to do it. Read what this person has said and read the whole article. She said she had actually picked up the cold reading technque through cultural osmosis. (google cold reading to learn more. Also google 'yes set' its a common sales technique to break down resistance and it can be done to you over the phone. Also g
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I agree with much of what Steve Salerno said above, but some parts need more refinement. One of the things which has been mentioned in this thread many times, is that those who SELL these advanced persuasion techniques EXAGGERATE what they can do, so they can charge more money for it. Its the scammers, scamming the wannabe scammers. That is why one should never purchase any of their products
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Meadow is right on the money. There is so much information there, it will take a lot of time to go over all of it. Notice the embedded commands right in their advertising blurbs, and how the Byron Katie Story is told in the images. Byron Katie did do some stuff for cheaper or even "free" for a while, that is to build things up. Every group like this offers some stuff for "free
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Additional Platinum Posts BK work is NOT the same as cognitive therapy--an excerpt from a lengthy and detailed analysis Quoteothers who promote The Work often say...its like Cognitive Therapy? That is a salespitch one can see in many blogs promoting The Work, its a marketing strategy, trying to associate itself with CT. First off, The Work has nothing to do with CT. Nothing. The
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Welcome, 'jchpiper' You shared something of yourself here by mentioning your ability to recognize when youve been the binder. 1) It is rare to see respectful non-coercive use of power being modelled in this society. We tend to learn from witnessing and experiencing what our parents and adult care providers did for us or to us. Recognizing one doesnt want to behave this way is th
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Is this one of those numerous hypnotherapy "experts" consulted...who happen to sell the Byron Katie Work? note, she mispells the work Erickson, from Ericksonian hypnotherapy, and also includes age regression. Perhaps its time to make a masterlist, of all the hypnotherapists who also sell the BK Work, embedded and enmeshed with indirect/direct conversational hypnotherapy. Paige
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Could the Four Questions be a 'Yes Set?' Or a sort of no set, designed to throw someone? I would strongly advise interested persons to consider, for their own long term well being, to do some reading from non BKI sources, on a technique termed 'yes set'. This can be enough to induce a light trance, even when used on onself, sitting at a computer terminal. Many perso
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

This post by jgf75 needs to be looked at a bit closer, its very revealing. That jgf75 post was addressed here previously, and it is full of errors, with false information about hypnotherapy, and actually serves to expose an agenda. The first question is, who might jgf75 be? Its clearly someone who is doing some spin-doctoring for Byron Katie, as instead of dealing with the careful
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

QuoteThe AnticultThis is about the posts being made by jgf75 on the guruphiliac forum. jgf75 is just playing word-games with the Ericksonian Hypnotherapy ideas. jgf75 says he is calling these people involved and ASKING them what they are doing! LOL! please, call Stephen Mitchell, Stever Robbins, and Byron Katie and ask them "what they are doing". Anticult, there is another post by
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

and by the way, the FACT that Byron Katie in her suppressed book A Cry In The Desert, directly copied the CACTUS metaphor used by Milton Erickson has already been proven. Erickson used the cactus in very specific ways in many of his teaching stories. Its obvious BK copied him, which is yet another reason they killed that Cry in the Desert book. (the Desert was also Erickson's main metaph
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Beware the internet sock puppets...when the fire gets too close to home, and their constructed Stories... ;-) over on the Guruphiliac forum, jgf75 is making some interesting comments. jgf75 again wants to continue to create smoke and distraction, by saying that the posters moderate this forum? Are you kidding? People post anything they want, moderation is up to the moderator, not the pos
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Well Anticult, I agree that criticizing Erickson is not directly related to this thread and I am surprized that you haven't started a specific thread on Erickson. I say 'you' as you obviously have vast knowledge in this area. Not that you should be required to as I'm not sure how much time that would require. We will have to agree to disagree on whether Erickson was a great
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Jay... I think a more detailed critical analysis of Erickson, would be better in another thread? I don't want to go off-topic of Byron Katie. After all, BK at most does only a tiny part of methods taken from that area, and warps and perverts them. I think just focussing on the BK part is more appropriate for the thread. It seems BK took some elements that sprung from him, 2nd or 3rd g
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

It is not clear from Haley as to whether the golfer existed or not, although he seems to have meant it that way. I've also seen this story/case refered to as a tale. Reading Erickson he suggests that he did hypnotize people to do unusual acts, like climb a mountain or a guy he instructed to drive out of town and lie in a ditch when he felt tired. Whether they are true or not he obviously
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"