Well, I was being sarcastic..... I do like Dr Phil for one thing: sometimes it is therapeutic to imagine him confronting some of the people who push your buttons in life, especially the old culties.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I have done some backpacking along the AT. That was before celphones and also just after mobile internet began to invade. Most people don't realize how "spotty" such access actually is. As soon as you are away from populated areas where there are lots of transmission towers, you are dependent on the odd angles of hillsides that can blcok signals, etc. BUt my most memorable h
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

There is a difference between "judgement" and discernment. Courts deal with individuals, not religions or groups. A church can discern whether some people are going in the best direction for its members or not, and can decide what to do about it (excommunicate? expose and reconcile? etc) but judgement in this life is left up to courts and otherwise up to God. If a number of people
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Lauren, what makes you believe we do not understand the things we criticize? Criticism is not hatred. It is looking at something and seeing what is wrong with it, what can be fixed or thrown out, etc. We all take as much criticism as we give. In fact, criticism is the opposite of hate because it shows we care enough about something to want to pay attention and make it right and we care eno
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

But is it a leaderless cult? This book phenomenon is interesting. It seems to me that one should look for the leaders who are exploiting it, because if you think about other book-based fads like this, they have tended to fizzle after just a while of dominating everyone's conversation. To actually see people making life-decisions: that seems to me to be something unusual for just a book p
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

2012 is most definitely an artificial "prophecy" that has been built on a new-age trend of interpreting the Mayan calendar and has served enough self-interests of the various people supporting it that it has created a kind of market for itslef. Here is a quote from wiki as a debunking start: Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is the basis for a New Age belie
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

If it is really only the books and not some social group meeting, then maybe just getting to a psychiatrist might help? There is a mental process involved in delusional thinking that can be broken with anti-psychotic medication. Perhaps you can appeal in some way to get your husband to some family counseling about the obviously impractical side without running a frontal assault on the books thems
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Splash90, everyone who picks up that magazine should break out in a rash! **LOL** Seriously, Oprah ought to just re-name it "Cult of the Month Club"....... Although she did give us Dr. Phil, so she's can't be all bad....
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

DavidXW, if I wanted to follow the religion of taakatism, would I be asked to join a group? What would I be told I need to do?
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

It is a bogey-man problem, designed so that you cannot challenge them without appearing to challenge the seriousness of that sort of crime.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Stop caring about who is playing the music and just play, that's my advice. From what you say about the effect of marijuana, maybe what Tolle did was give you a kind of pot-free access to the same "no-where-land". Are you at all religious? Do you believe in the existence of a soul, apart from the mind's ego, etc.? If you can accept the idea that the soul is there, rega
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

well, it is very scary that people go to such effort for him. There are so many farm commune type groups to travel to see, why him? I was getting the impression that this is all online work and the farm is the only real location. Are the people who visit the Desteni farm from other countries actually establshing more outposts? I still want to believe it is all manipulation and smoke and mir
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

An afterthought: have you seen a doctor about depression? Sometimes this kind of mental lethargy is a symptom of a loss of interest in the future. You might want to look into that.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

The chatter can ground us. The healthy way to stop it is to be able to focus on something to the degree that you stop hearing the chatter. And what is this about "those who wish to be considered as enlightened"? Enlightened people don't give a rat's ass what others consider them to be! **LOL** really... it is funny that he teaches such self-consciousness... You know,
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

The prayer-group leader mentioned to me that someone he knows has bragged of having "run with" "Gino Perente" as if that name was supposed to get a reaction from him. He never knew who Perente was and had never heard of NatLFed until I told him my cult background, explaining why I avoid certain kinds of activities. He understood the PTSD but when I explained the source, and m
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

This is beginning to strike me as much less of a threat of a growing global cult than a localized threat of a Manson-like group, because Poolman does not have the savoie-faire to get past people who watch his videos, while his little following possibly are being treated like an annoying little bunch of weirdos who do not merit much attention as long as they seem to stay to themselves, as far as t
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

The issue in that article is the set of cult tactics that Scanlon used and that were traced by others, which have nothing to do with the political view of Alinsky and Obanma. I think you know very well that in any long article many things may be mentioned, but the topic of the thread is the CULT problem. There are cults on both right and left, politically, and what distinguishes them is not th
Forum: Destructive Churches

Shakti, this is not about me. It is not about you. It not about saul alinski or adolf hitler. It is about destructive cults inside the Catholic Church. PLEASE STOP POSTING OFF-TOPIC ATTACKS ON ME OR ON WHAT YOU IMAGINE MY POLITICS TO BE. THERE IS NO DISCUSSION OF ALINKSKY, OBAMA, ETC IN THIS TOPIC.
Forum: Destructive Churches

Poolman seems like a classic Narcissist and such people are incapable of "belief" because they work entirely at the level of manipulation. If they are not manipulating others, they are not "alive" in some sense. There are lots of ways to cope with bankruptcy (which some posts above suggest might be part of Poolman's problem) as well as with loneliness, defeat, &
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

That is not true, Stoic. You have deliberately made accusations about the general Catholic church and the Pope (who has nothing to do with, and no authority at all over, any independent American religious organization like CRHP) and when I have been stupid enough to take your bait by addressing those accusations you have used my remarks to misrepresent my interests and to further attack and dera
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Thank you. I think the CRHP group is using a lot of tactics that show up in the business cults. What they do is start out with a false need which they then define and to which the only solution is to join them. Their basic premise is that there is no "unity" and the only way to have "unity" is through their retreats. They train their people to sell their retreats with a vi
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

RRmoderator, thank you. Shakti, please take all those statements outside the CRHP threads as per the moderator above. ( I may start that CRHP topic over to try to recover the discussion from all the disruption by about three people, not just Shakti.) Since there are many valid concerns about the Catholic church as a whole, I think I will just bump this thread up if there are new attacks so
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

A small number of users of this board are destroying every effort to discuss a certain cult within the Catholic Church, the CRHP cult. They are attacking me personally for being Catholic and they are refusing to allow ANY discussion of the highly destructive ECUMENICAL cult that calls itself "CRHP" by repeatedlly posting off-topic insults to the Pope, off-topic discussions of scandals
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Why do you TROLLS keep interfering with discussion of the CRHP """"""ECUMENICAL""""""" CULT? THIS THREAD IS ABOUT THE CRHP CULT.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I lived in Great Barrington, Massachusetts which had a Waldorf school at the time. They were very interested in recruiting me because I had a school-age child. Her best friend switched from public school to that one. When I first moved to Great Barrington there was a real creepy thing going on. Some people would actually sidle up to me and my child if we were in line at the local cafe, etc a
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

This is about the CRHP cult-style retreats. THIS THREAD IS ABOUT THE CRHP CULT. PLEASE STOP ATTACKING THIS THREAD WITH YOUR OFF-TOPIC POSTS. To everyone elese: Please do not be afraid of posting about the CRHP cult even if you are Catholic. Many non-Catholics are invited to these retreats and so you will not be identified as "Catholic" just because you participate in thi
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I can remember well the first couple of stages. Anger maybe not at being in a cult, but in that period before the awareness of cult-hood dawned on me, I was very angry at all the treachery and wasted effort that I saw everywhere. I was in one of those "high-demand" cults that gives people a lot of busy work when they show up to volunteer for a good cause. While they are messing around
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I was just thinking about all the ways we react to cults: discovering we are in one, breaking free, recovering, trying to rescue others, etc. I was wondering if these stages of grief that are pretty familiar could also be applied to cult recovery. I'm not sure if we would start counting the first stage from after we have left the cult or from some point inside the cult where we start r
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

This is about deception. Your bigotry is your problem. I would not go into a thread run by Jews who are upset about some particular cult that claims Judaic heritage and tell them that because I have certain opinions about the Jewish religion and the way they do things that the entire Jewish identity must be a cult and therefore any Jew who comes in here to start a thread on deceptive cults claim
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I think that the idea that no one should assist Catholics to discern cults without attacking the Curch itself is unfair. I think we all should be able to separate the larger "culture" of a group from the question of destructive cults. I am not proselytizing or apologizing. I do think it is important to separate the larger belief system from the cults that exploit it for their ow
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"