My Life in a Cult

[Gimpy]

Hi Jack.

I think you gave yourself plenty of clues concerning why your folks stayed with whatever group they were with here:

And there were no other requirements of any kind. No need to be nice, to be kind, to be caring, to love one's neighbor, to be a good citizen, nothing at all... except to be devoted in mind, and contribute your money to the cult.

Devotion, by the way, was defined as intellectual agreement with the proclamations of the cult.

And I have to ask, did you look up the word 'spellbinder'? Have you read up on psychopathy here on the forum? As MC mentions, the topics been well discussed. Its as if you're presenting papers here, or reciting something you've gone over and over and over again. (A distancing technique maybe?)

As a side note: Did you ever ask your parents why they stayed with it? My parents stick with the Methodist Church out of pure habit, and a mild fear of dying, btw.

And is there a reason you won't name the cult they were in? The impression being given is that your dancing around it on eggshells or something. Any reason why?

 

[Laura]

Continuing with my own story, I already referred to the major price of the cult my parents were involved with: complete abdication of one's own thought, will, emotions, experience, intuition, judgment, friendships or anything else that might decrease devotion to the cult leader.

I'm guessing that they imposed this injunction on you, as well?

Why would someone pay such a high price? With this particular cult, the reason is simple. The promise, clearly stated a hundred different ways, is that with enough devotion, all your problems would instantly disappear. If you had a health problem, a money problem, a work problem, anything that troubled or confused you, all of that would simply vanish in an instant - the instant that you were devoted enough.

That's pretty much standard for all the mainstream religions and even not-so-mainstream ones. That's also the standard operating procedure for the New Age Fundies, as I think of them. It's the "get your head in the right place and you'll create your own reality" thing. And, of course, this means JUST getting your head in the "right place" and has nothing at all to do with DOing in a conscious way.

In short, it comes back to the issue of the NT book of James: Faith vs Works.

The one thing the cult couldn't fix is that there would still be some mean people in the world, because they hadn't yet chosen to be devoted enough, but you'd be free of any problems having to do with them.

Yup. They never do the research that shows that there are pathological people that can't choose otherwise, and that this is an expression of the duality of the Universe.

And there were no other requirements of any kind. No need to be nice, to be kind, to be caring, to love one's neighbor, to be a good citizen, nothing at all... except to be devoted in mind, and contribute your money to the cult.

Devotion, by the way, was defined as intellectual agreement with the proclamations of the cult.

Yup, Faith vs Works again.

This led me to the questions: why were my parents willing to risk the integrity of their inner lives for such a promise? And why did they stay with it for more than a decade of failure to meet the promise?

There could be any number of reasons for that, including the possibility that your parents had been pathologically wounded themselves. Lobaczewski talks about Selection and Substitution of premises which amounts to a kind of dissociation:

During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man’s flawed personality, whether one’s own or someone else’s? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim? Any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor if life’s joys appear to be available for the taking. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket killjoy.

Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called “happy” times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This, in turn, leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means. A nation’s enrichment or involution regarding its psychological world view could be considered an indicator of whether its future will be good or bad.

During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient facts. It is better to think about easier and more pleasant things. Unconscious elimination of data which are, or appear to be, inexpedient gradually turns into habit, and then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. The problem is that any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusions; it further leads to subconscious substitution of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones, thereby approaching the boundaries of psychopathology.

Such contented periods for one group of people - often rooted in some injustice to other people or nations - start to strangle the capacity for individual and societal consciousness; subconscious factors take over a decisive role in life. Such a society... considers any perception of uncomfortable truth to be a sign of “ill-breeding”. {...}

Information selection and substitution: The existence of psychological phenomena known to pre-Freudian philosophical students of the subconscious bears repeating. Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible: including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from the subconscious, which considers it inexpedient or disturbing. This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration, which may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all the advantages which could be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration. A conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be extremely harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.

We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback goes deeper into the resulting reasoning and from its database thus deletes and represses into the subconscious just that piece of information which was responsible for arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in direct proportion to the actual significance of the repressed data. An ever-greater number of such repressed information is collected in our subconscious memory. Finally, a kind of habit seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advantageous to the person.

The most complex process of this type is substitution of premises thus eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly more comfortable conclusion. Our associative ability rapidly elaborates a new item to replace the removed one, but it is one leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes the most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious. Such substitutions are often effected collectively, in certain groups of people, through the use of verbal communication. That is why they best qualify for the moralizing epithet “hypocrisy” than either of the above-mentioned processes.

The above examples of conversive phenomena do not exhaust a problem richly illustrated in psychoanalytical works. Our subconscious may carry the roots of human genius within, but its operation is not perfect; sometimes it is reminiscent of a blind computer, especially whenever we allow it to be cluttered with anxiously rejected material. This explains why conscious monitoring, even at the price of courageously accepting disintegrative states, is likewise necessary to our nature, not to mention our individual and social good.

There is no such thing as a person whose perfect self-knowledge allows him to eliminate all tendencies toward conversive thinking, but some people are relatively close to this state, while others remain slaves to these processes. Those people who use conversive operations too often for the purpose of finding convenient conclusions, or constructing some cunning paralogistic or paramoralistic statements, eventually begin to undertake such behavior for ever more trivial reasons, losing the capacity for conscious control over their thought process altogether. This necessarily leads to behavior errors which must be paid for by others as well as themselves.

People who have lost their psychological hygiene and capacity of proper thought along this road also lose their natural critical faculties with regard to the statements and behavior of {pathological individuals}. Hypocrites stop differentiating between pathological and normal individuals, thus opening an “infection entry” for the ponerologic role of pathological factors.

Generally, each community contains people in whom similar methods of thinking were developed on a large scale, with their various deviations as a backdrop. We find this both in characteropathic and psychopathic personalities. Some have even been influenced by others to grow accustomed to such “reasoning”, since conversion thinking is highly contagious and can spread throughout an entire society. In “happy times” especially, the tendency for conversion thinking generally intensifies.

The situation is physiological in many cases, as Lobaczewski suggests elsewhere:

We know today that the psychological mechanism of paranoid phenomena is twofold: one is caused by damage to the brain tissue, the other is functional or behavioral. ... {A}ny brain-tissue lesion causes a certain slackening of accurate thinking and, as a consequence, of the personality structure. Most typical are those cases caused by an aggression in the diencephalon by various pathological factors, resulting in its permanently decreased tonal ability, and similarly of the tonus of inhibition in the brain cortex. Particularly during sleepless nights, runaway thoughts give rise to a paranoid changed view of human reality, as well as to ideas which can be either gently naive or violently revolutionary. Let us call this kind paranoid characteropathy.

In persons free of brain tissue lesions, such phenomena most frequently occur as a result of being reared by people with paranoid characteropathia, along with the psychological terror of their childhood. Such psychological material is then assimilated creating the rigid stereotypes of abnormal experiencing. This makes it difficult for thought and world view to develop normally, and the terror-blocked contents become transformed into permanent, functional, congestive centers.

If you will search the forum for the term "primitive defense mechanism", you will find some further discussion on how these things get started in early childhood.

Barbara Oakley, in her book "Evil Genes" gets into some of the more recent research that describes aspects of some of these "congestive areas" of the brain:

A recent imaging study by psychologist Drew Westen and his colleagues at Emory University provides firm support for the existence of emotional reasoning. Just prior to the 2004 Bush-Kerry presidential elections, two groups of subjects were recruited - fifteen ardent Democrats and fifteen ardent Republicans. Each was presented with conflicting and seemingly damaging statements about their candidate, as well as about more neutral targets such as actor Tom Hanks (who, it appears, is a likable guy for people of all political persuasions). Unsurprisingly, when the participants were asked to draw a logical conclusion about a candidate from the other - "wrong" - political party, the participants found a way to arrive at a conclusion that made the candidate look bad, even though logic should have mitigated the particular circumstances and allowed them to reach a different conclusion. Here's where it gets interesting.

When this "emote control" began to occur, parts of the brain normally involved in reasoning were not activated. Instead, a constellation of activations occurred in the same areas of the brain where punishment, pain, and negative emotions are experienced (that is, in the left insula, lateral frontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Once a way was found to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted, the neural punishment areas turned off, and the participant received a blast of activation in the circuits involving rewards - akin to the high an addict receives when getting his fix.

In essence, the participants were not about to let facts get in the way of their hot-button decision making and quick buzz of reward. "None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones." {...}

Ultimately, Westen and his colleagues believe that "emotionally biased reasoning leads to the 'stamping in' or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associationg the participant's 'revisionist' account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. 'The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data,'" Westen says. Westen's remarkable study showed that neural information processing related to what he terms "motivated reasoning" ... appears to be qualitatively different from reasoning when a person has no strong emotional stake in the conclusions to be reached.

The study is thus the first to describe the neural processes that underlie political judgment and decision making, as well as to describe processes involving emote control, psychological defense, confirmatory bias, and some forms of cognitive dissonance. The significance of these findings ranges beyond the study of politics: "Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,'" according to Westen.

It may be that some people have extremely sensitive genetic substrata that make them particularly sensitive to this "brain pain" and thus, even though they are quite intelligent, they simply cannot tolerate the suffering they experience if they do not "think as they were taught to think" under some particular situation as a child or during some particular event when their thinking processes were formed or re-formed. On this topic, you might wish to have a look at my article on Transmarginal Inhibition. Also, have a look at this one: Transmarginal Inhibition: Chronic Fatigue and Childhood Abuse Linked in CDC Study

These are the areas I'll explore next.

As you can see, we have been considering these issues for a long time. If you explore the forum, you'll find a lot of material on these topics.

But I understand that this is cathartic for you. You obviously have a LOT of emotion attached to this topic, so we don't expect you to be totally rational about it and that's okay. As I mentioned in another thread, I think I'll create a forum called "The Swamp" for people to let off steam, to get things off their chest in whatever way makes them feel better.

But I wonder, is both the carrot and stick necessary for a cult? Are there some cults where there is no promise at all of anything positive for compliance, just the demand that everything is given up of one's own mind?

Well, as Gurdjieff said:

"The whole trouble is that you are quite sure that you are always one and the same," he said. "But I see you quite differently. For instance, I see that today one Ouspensky has come here, whereas yesterday there was another. Or the doctor—before you came we were sitting and talking here together; he was one person. Then you all came. I happened to glance at him and I see quite another doctor sitting there. And the one I see when I am alone with him you very seldom see.

"You must realize that each man has a definite repertoire of roles which he plays in ordinary circumstances," said G. in this connection. "He has a role for every kind of circumstance in which he ordinarily finds himself in life; but put him into even only slightly different circumstances and he is unable to find a suitable role and for, a short time he becomes himself

The study of the roles a man plays represents a very necessary part of self-knowledge. Each man's repertoire is very limited. And if a man simply says 'I' and 'Ivan Ivanich,' he will not see the whole of himself because 'Ivan Ivanich' also is not one; a man has at least five or six of them. One or two for his family, one or two at his office (one for his subordinates and another for his superiors), one for friends in a restaurant, and perhaps one who is interested in exalted ideas and likes intellectual conversation. And at different times the man is fully identified with one of them and is unable to separate himself from it.

I.E. Emotional thinking as described above.

To see the roles, to know one's repertoire, particularly to know its limitedness, is to know a great deal. But the point is that, outside his repertoire, a man feels very uncomfortable should something push him if only temporarily out of his rut, and he tries his hardest to return to any one of his usual roles. Directly he falls back into the rut everything at once goes smoothly again and the feeling of awkwardness and tension disappears.

This is how it is in life; but in the work, in order to observe oneself, one must become reconciled to this awkwardness and tension and to the feeling of discomfort and helplessness. Only by experiencing this discomfort can a man really observe himself. And it is clear why this is so. When a man is not playing any of his usual roles, when he cannot find a suitable role in his repertoire, he feels that he is undressed. He is cold and ashamed and wants to run away from everybody.

But the question arises: What does he want? A quiet life or to work on himself?

If he wants a quiet life, he must certainly first of all never move out of his repertoire. In his usual roles he feels comfortable and at peace. But if he wants to work on himself, he must destroy his peace. To have them both together is in no way possible. A man must make a choice.

But when choosing the result is very often deceit, that is to say, a man tries to deceive himself. In words he chooses work but in reality he does not want to lose his peace. The result is that he sits between two stools. This is the most uncomfortable position of all. He does no work at all and he gets no comfort whatever.

But it is very difficult for a man to decide to throw everything to the devil and begin real work. And why is it difficult? Principally because his life is too easy and even if he considers it bad he is already accustomed to it. It is better for it to be bad, yet known. But here there is something new and unknown. He does not even know whether any result can be got from it or not. And besides, the most difficult thing here is that it is necessary to obey someone, to submit to someone.

In the case of this forum and QFS, that "someone," that "teacher", is a group of people who are all seeking the same goal: to awaken and get over themselves, stop thinking emotionally, etc.

If a man could invent difficulties and sacrifices for himself, he would sometimes go very far. But the point here is that this is not possible. It is necessary to obey another or to follow the direction of general work, the control of which can belong only to one person. Such submission is the most difficult thing that there can be for a man who thinks that he is capable of deciding anything or of doing anything.

Of course, when he gets rid of these fantasies and sees what he really is, the difficulty disappears. This, however, can only take place in the course of work. But to begin to work and particularly to continue to work is very difficult and it is difficult because life runs too smoothly." {...}

Helping people to get rid of their fantasies about themselves is one reason we have a recommended reading list and most of the books on that list are modern psychology books. For example, if you read Martha Stout's "The Myth of Sanity," you will better understand what Gurdjieff was talking about when he discussed the many *I*s concepts and buffers. Castaneda refers to them as "the predator's mind." Lobaczewski and Oakley, as we have seen above, have a more clinical view.

"And what is it that they most of all desire to preserve? First the right to have their own valuation of ideas and of people, that is, that which is more harmful for them than anything else.

This is pretty clear from the texts I have quoted above. It is also clear from this - and from psychological research - that your question:

Are there some cults where there is no promise at all of anything positive for compliance, just the demand that everything is given up of one's own mind?

actually describes what Gurdjieff was doing, what Castaneda was doing, and, in fact, what we propose here. It is also describing the work of some psychiatrists as Dabrowski and Stout - as a cult.

The problem is: you can't analyze the way you think (or the way anybody else thinks) with the way you think. You have to gain accurate information about your machine and then you have to utilize that information to calibrate it. It's almost impossible (never heard of it happening) to do that alone.

They are fools and they already know it, that is to say, they realized it at one time. For this reason they came to learn. But they forget all about this the next moment; they are already bringing into the work their own paltry and subjective attitude; they begin to pass judgment on me and on everyone else as though they were able to pass judgment on anything. And this is immediately reflected in their attitude towards the ideas and towards what I say. Already 'they accept one thing' and 'they do not accept another thing'; with one thing they agree, with another they disagree; they trust me in one thing, in another thing they do not trust me.

"And the most amusing part is that they imagine they are able 'to work' under such conditions, that is, without trusting me in everything and without accepting everything. In actual fact this is absolutely impossible. By not accepting something or mistrusting something they immediately invent something of their own in its place. 'Gagging' begins —new theories and new explanations which have nothing in common either with the work or with what I have said. Then they begin to find faults and inaccuracies in everything that I say or do and in everything that others say or do. From this moment I now begin to speak of things about which I have no knowledge and even of things of which I have no conception, but which they know and understand much better than I do; all the other members of the group are fools, idiots. And so on, and so on, like a barrel organ.

When a man says something on these lines I already know all he will say later on. And you also will know by the consequences. And it is amusing that people can see this in relation to others. But when they themselves do crazy things they at once cease to see it in relation to themselves. This is a law. It is difficult to climb the hill but very easy to slide down it. They even feel no embarrassment in talking in such a manner either with me or with other people. And chiefly they think that this can be combined with some kind of 'work.' They do not even want to understand that when a man reaches this notch his little song has been sung.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

"And what is it that they most of all desire to preserve? First the right to have their own valuation of ideas and of people, that is, that which is more harmful for them than anything else.

This is pretty clear from the texts I have quoted above. It is also clear from this - and from psychological research - that your question:

Are there some cults where there is no promise at all of anything positive for compliance, just the demand that everything is given up of one's own mind?

actually describes what Gurdjieff was doing, what Castaneda was doing, and, in fact, what we propose here. It is also describing the work of some psychiatrists as Dabrowski and Stout - as a cult.

The problem is: you can't analyze the way you think (or the way anybody else thinks) with the way you think. You have to gain accurate information about your machine and then you have to utilize that information to calibrate it. It's almost impossible (never heard of it happening) to do that alone.

They are fools and they already know it, that is to say, they realized it at one time. For this reason they came to learn. But they forget all about this the next moment; they are already bringing into the work their own paltry and subjective attitude; they begin to pass judgment on me and on everyone else as though they were able to pass judgment on anything. And this is immediately reflected in their attitude towards the ideas and towards what I say. Already 'they accept one thing' and 'they do not accept another thing'; with one thing they agree, with another they disagree; they trust me in one thing, in another thing they do not trust me.

"And the most amusing part is that they imagine they are able 'to work' under such conditions, that is, without trusting me in everything and without accepting everything. In actual fact this is absolutely impossible. By not accepting something or mistrusting something they immediately invent something of their own in its place. 'Gagging' begins —new theories and new explanations which have nothing in common either with the work or with what I have said. Then they begin to find faults and inaccuracies in everything that I say or do and in everything that others say or do. From this moment I now begin to speak of things about which I have no knowledge and even of things of which I have no conception, but which they know and understand much better than I do; all the other members of the group are fools, idiots. And so on, and so on, like a barrel organ.

When a man says something on these lines I already know all he will say later on. And you also will know by the consequences. And it is amusing that people can see this in relation to others. But when they themselves do crazy things they at once cease to see it in relation to themselves. This is a law. It is difficult to climb the hill but very easy to slide down it. They even feel no embarrassment in talking in such a manner either with me or with other people. And chiefly they think that this can be combined with some kind of 'work.' They do not even want to understand that when a man reaches this notch his little song has been sung.

This is an important point. Gurdjieff's whole deal was that people can't think. The tests Oakley cites, and others (e.g. Dabrowski and Izard's work on emotion) show that people use emotional thinking all the time. In fact, they hypothesize that because thinking came relatively late in the evolutionary game, that it is actually subservient to emotions. The Freudians (there's a cult for ya!) called this influence the "unconscious" but their thinking on it was pretty twisted by Freud. Anyways, in short even when people think they are thinking, they're usually only doing so in service of some emotional-instinctive part of themselves. And as Gurdjieff said, the only way to escape the "prison" of your own mind is to have someone who has already escaped guide you out. Of course, this doesn't work on pathological types, because they are by nature narcissistic, egotists, etc. They can't questions themselves. And they're the ones who rule the cults. They've "got it made" because they use the ruse of teaching people to think, when really they are just deepening the programming. But the process is similar, if not the results, in a group like Gurdjieff's, or ours, or students of any of the psychological theorists we recommend, who actually deliver what the promise.

 

[Jack]

I just realized it might help if I changed the subject of the thread, e.g. "my experience escaping from cult thinking." This will make clear that my goal is not to replace the existing threads, but to discuss my own experience. In some other forums, if the first post is edited to change the subject line, the thread shows up with that new topic. I'd like to make a change like that to reduce confusion, if the change itself wouldn't introduce more confusion.

I'm attempting to discuss my own experiences in my own life with a cult that's been only mentioned in passing, not discussed here. I want to discuss what I was subjected to in the cult and other cult-like abusive situations, and then compare it with the broader and wiser perspective of this forum's view of human nature.

My primary purpose is to shine a light on the twisted claims and thought processes I'd been through. The light consists of my publishing, even anonymously, the lies. This way, other people who are sincere about the truth can reinforce my learning that the crazy part of my past was the cult, not myself. I imagine that the discussion might help others as well, but this is mainly my effort to find a sane mirror for the crazy circumstances of my life.

The particular insidious twists used by the cult of my childhood haven't been discussed here. (I've carefully searched, several times.) I wanted to focus on what is true of cults in general. Doing it this way helps me challenge the cult's claim to be something special and unique. I'm not trying to keep anyone from figuring out what the cult, and I do plan to say the cult's name, and explore the unique aspects of its history, in a later essay.

As I mentioned, the cult was about dominating members' wills through manipulating their intellectual responses. As that was the nature of the cult, fighting it on its own battleground involves using my intellect to reclaim my right to my own will. I'm sorry that my presentation of the cult's point of view comes across as pompous, aloof and pedantic, but that accurately reflects how the cult was. Later in my story, my own personal experiences and emotions are far more heartfelt. The cult's limited view of human nature is of people as abstract ideas to be manipulated. This really was a fuzzy monochromatic picture, a boring drone saturating my earliest years when I learned to talk. If it's difficult to read a few pages, imagine how hard it was to grow up immersed in it for one's first decade.

At that point in my story, it will be natural to switch my storytelling style from the fuzzy monochromatic droning of the cult's point of view to a full-color, surround-sound, high-def presentation of my own experience as a real human being. :)

I'd like to tell my story in mostly chronological order, so what my parents said later in life would come later in the story.

I've read most of the forum's material on psychopathy. I haven't yet read the material from searching on the word "spellbinder." I'll likely do that homework this week. I apologize I didn't acknowledge the reference earlier. I continued with posting my own story because I don't need to look up anything else to know what happened next in my own life as a child.

A.I., you posted while I was writing this.

And as Gurdjieff said, the only way to escape the "prison" of your own mind is to have someone who has already escaped guide you out.

That's what I'm seeking help with here.

Now on to what Laura had to say.

 

[Jack]

Continuing with my own story, I already referred to the major price of the cult my parents were involved with: complete abdication of one's own thought, will, emotions, experience, intuition, judgment, friendships or anything else that might decrease devotion to the cult leader.

I'm guessing that they imposed this injunction on you, as well?

Yes, which is why I am eager to dissect those claims and get help replacing them with healthier ways of thinking. I've done and continue to do a lot of hard work along those lines. But I see the forum as a very significant resource for me to accelerate the process with several people involved based on ground rules of objectivity.

I had realized a while back that Faith Vs. Works does apply to the cult, but then I'd lost that train of thought. Thanks for reuniting me with that discovery. If I run a bit I think I can catch the caboose. :)

This led me to the questions: why were my parents willing to risk the integrity of their inner lives for such a promise? And why did they stay with it for more than a decade of failure to meet the promise?

There could be any number of reasons for that, including the possibility that your parents had been pathologically wounded themselves.

[/quote]

I think that's part of the truth. They had painful experiences with the Depression and WWII that they only briefly mentioned and made clear they didn't want to discuss. And I suspect they might have had a profound disillusionment when their successes at the roles of breadwinner and homemaker didn't lead to endless bliss.

Lobaczewski talks about Selection and Substitution of premises which amounts to a kind of dissociation

These excerpts help me find a clearer perspective. I find the phrase "lost their psychological hygiene" to be a kind of lighthouse in the storm. There's also the uncomfortable realization that rather than having lost it, my parents might not have had much psychological hygiene in the first place. I wonder whether the evidence might show that my parents may well have both been pathological narcissists and one may have been a full-on psychopath. But I feel it might serve my growth to first debunk the cult's claims.

I don't know what the diencephalon is. A quick web search showed me that it's a region of the brain. Is it important for applying these concepts that I understand the nature of the underlying brain structures? Or are these psychological explorations more like driving a car where most of the time, the structure of the engine isn't relevant information?

search the forum for the term "primitive defense mechanism"

Thanks. I'm developing a sizable stack of homework here and I look forward to going through all the material.

The Barbara Oakley quote refers to bypassing intellectual structures entirely when "emotional reasoning" occurs.

And that makes me wonder if I'm on an unproductive track. If the entire intellectual argument in favor of the cult and other abusers is just a house-of-cards, after the fact excuse to justify emotional reasoning, maybe dissecting the arguments' logic is a waste of time. Perhaps the real issue is to recognize "emotional reasoning" for what it is, and address the real emotions that aren't discussed rather than the false "reasons" that are discussed. Or, maybe both intellectual and emotional tracks need to get taken in parallel.

I'd read the original article on transmarginal inhibition, but not the one with the medical connection. More homework to look forward to.

But I understand that this is cathartic for you. You obviously have a LOT of emotion attached to this topic, so we don't expect you to be totally rational about it and that's okay.

I really appreciate that.

As I mentioned in another thread, I think I'll create a forum called "The Swamp" for people to let off steam, to get things off their chest in whatever way makes them feel better.

As soon as the Swamp is ready, please feel free to toss in this ogre. (A little green Shrek smiley would go well here.)

But if he wants to work on himself, he must destroy his peace.

My peace has been destroyed for me, so that part's already done.

The problem is: you can't analyze the way you think (or the way anybody else thinks) with the way you think. You have to gain accurate information about your machine and then you have to utilize that information to calibrate it. It's almost impossible (never heard of it happening) to do that alone.

Which is why I'm here. At least I got that much right. ;)

Thanks for throwing some ropes into the swamp.

 

[Laura]

Part of your homework now includes making six more posts so you can get into The Swamp.

 

[Jack]

Some days, medical symptoms limit how much thinking I can do. Today is one of those days. Continuing these discussions on a daily basis is very important to me. I hope I can make some progress today. But I am not sure how much I will be able to do today. If I make less sense than usual today, please go easy on me. If I feel I am not clear headed enough to make much progress, I will come back tomorrow.

 

[Jack]

The transmarginal inhibition and abuse/CFS connection articles really hit home. I had already come to believe that my spiritual and physical issues are interlocking, and I hope to work here on sorting them out.

More tomorrow on the rest of the homework.

 

[Jack]

I will tell a little more about the cult and see if this is enough for anyone to guess which cult it is. Tomorrow I'll reveal the name.

According to the cult, only the cult leader understood anything worth knowing. The best everyone else could do is to study and intellectually agree with what the leader said.

Therefore the cult had no priests, ministers, pastors, etc. Each local congregation has two readers. The cult's headquarters prepare a published list of reading citations every few months. The weekly readings consist of alternating excerpts from the Bible (King James Version only, of course) and the cult leader's main text. The citations can be anything from a single phrase, as in, start at this word and read up to the comma then stop, or a few sentences. The cult text allegedly explains what the Bible really meant if only it wasn't so imperfect, since it didn't come from the cult leader.

Cult members are encouraged to buy an official pair of books (Bible and text) from the cult, including numbered tabs and chalk to indicate where to read, with daily study of the week's excerpts. Where a sermon would go, the cult's church service has a line, "The following citations comprise our sermon," and read all the excerpts. If the cult member did their homework, the official readings should simply reinforce what they had read at home.

The service also includes hymns, mostly classic hymns of the Christian church with new words by the cult leader about how wonderful it is that we can follow this path to know God's thoughts by knowing the leader's thoughts.

This is incredibly boring for kids, so there is Sunday School to indoctrinate the youth. There is also a Wednesday evening testimony service. In this service, members are welcome to state how understanding the leader's words made all their illnesses and problems instantly disappear, as a way to encourage faith through intellectual assent.

The cult does not offer wedding services, funeral services, pastoral counseling, etc.

If people have troubles that continue, they can pay the same hourly rates as a psychiatrist to see one of the cult's freelance explainers. The explainer will assist the person in reading the texts from the cult leader until the person's mind agrees and all the person's problems instantly vanish.

I can see the appeal for intellectuals who are uncomfortable with their emotions, but want to feel they are doing something spiritual. It's certainly one of the most intellectual of cults. And one of the few good things about it is that it did help me develop good study habits.

More tomorrow.

 

[Laura]

Some days, medical symptoms limit how much thinking I can do. Today is one of those days. Continuing these discussions on a daily basis is very important to me. I hope I can make some progress today. But I am not sure how much I will be able to do today. If I make less sense than usual today, please go easy on me. If I feel I am not clear headed enough to make much progress, I will come back tomorrow.

I will tell a little more about the cult and see if this is enough for anyone to guess which cult it is. Tomorrow I'll reveal the name.

Jack, this doesn't make much sense. First you say that you will not be making much less sense today and then you continue to post. That is not external consideration. In fact, you are not even considering yourself.

Then, you begin your post as though it is a guessing game for the other readers. Again, that is not external consideration.

There is an almost frenetic, "racing thoughts" flavor to your posting that suggests to me that you might want to consider professional, psychological counseling, not a forum such as this which is really not set up to provide the kind of counseling you may need. You have made it very clear that you were brought up in a cult, that you were very wounded by this, that there are issues about your parents, your health, and frankly, we just aren't equipped or qualified to deal with your issues here.

I hope that you will make the choice to at least consult a qualified counselor for a professional opinion as an adjunct to your own research into the topic.

 

[Jack]

Thanks for changing the subject line of the thread.

I hope that you will make the choice to at least consult a qualified counselor for a professional opinion as an adjunct to your own research into the topic.

Thank you for the suggestion, Laura. I'm already doing that. My hope has been to be able to find reinforcement here for what I discuss on a weekly basis with a qualified, licensed cognitive therapist. Her personal perspective is mostly Buddhist, but her work is based on the professional standards of therapy and social work.

I was able to find good counseling about a year and a half ago. My involvement is funded by a grant from a charitable organization since I meet their criteria. These sessions are my first experience of ongoing counseling.

In that time I have been helped by two wise, compassionate, well trained, experienced professionals in cognitive therapy, at the same counseling center. The center's primary specialties are grief counseling for the bereaved, and emotional support for those facing severe medical situations. Those both happen to be relevant to me at this time. They are also well equipped to help me examine the issues I've brought up on the forum.

I did tell the therapist in this week's session that I had found an online discussion forum where the works of Gurdjieff are discussed as a personal growth tool. I told her my hope that this online forum could be a way to explore some of the issues of my life. I told her my desire was to talk these things over with other people who are keen to identify and overcome conditioned reactions.

Her reaction was that the forum could be a positive addition to my one on work with her. She suggested that for my safety, I should be sure to not include any details that would let people identify me individually. I believe I've been cautious about that.

The therapist also said that I should also discuss with her what I learn about in the online information. This will let her and me discuss how it supports or contradicts what we are already talking over in the personal sessions. I will do that, and I think I should probably take along your message I'm replying to now. I think that she'll consider your suggestion here, that I not rely on the forum as any kind of substitute for professional help, as a very positive sign.

When discussing some of the cult history with the previous therapist last year, I referred in passing to some of the ponerology material from this site. I described how I saw some ways that material relates to my life experiences. The therapist suggested that I realize that much of what I'd been subjected to could be termed "unrighteous dominion," and we talked that over. His use of that phrase was very helpful to me.

There are some additional professional resources I want to use when I can afford them, for both help with emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing, and for resolution of the medical issues. I believe that I have enough information about what might be helpful, I simply don't have the funds for them yet.

I have seen threads here discussing some of the symptoms and treatments that I believe might be relevant to my situation. While I have no expectations that this forum will provide any cures for me, I do hope that I can learn from what helped or didn't help some other people. If that turns out to not be the case, that's OK, I already have several leads worth following as soon as I have the funds. It does look to me that some of the material from the health forum here could really be useful for me when I can afford to implement it.

My goal is to participate here in a way that is healthy, positive and safe for everyone involved. If I ever do anything that doesn't fit with that goal, I would really appreciate any guidance that helps me reach that goal.

I hope that I can appropriately use the forum as a tool to explore my issues in a way that lets me grow as others mirror, comment, question, learn and share what they know. I also want to not cause overwhelm, or take away from what is more important to discuss. I also hope to add comments and questions that will help others reach more objectivity about whatever they want to discuss.

If it's most helpful for me to reduce my involvement, or to curtail what I discuss here that comes from personal pain, I'll accept any guidance about how to be more considerate.

If I should take some time off, or back away from the personal material to discuss more objective facts, I could do that. (I have an engineering background in online video, so I could, for example, provide a technical perspective on the threads about computer backups and about TV technology.)

In fact, you are not even considering yourself.

That is indeed my major issue in this life. I've been taught by many experiences that I deserve no consideration, and that any attempt to mention my own needs or pain is always an imposition and affront upon others. I'm attempting to learn what is a realistic amount of consideration to give to my own thoughts. I'm also attempting to learn what is realistic and appropriate consideration to give to the concerns of others. I'm attempting to learn how to be considerate of both myself and others.

"racing thoughts" flavor to your posting

My mind's almost always racing like that, except for very occasional experiences of inner peace. It comes from the attempt to figure out what is the right information that would make me not have be shunned and rejected by those I try to love, who are about to deny my request for help with my physical pain because that might challenge their belief in the cult. The more physical pain I experience, the more this program runs. Lately I've had a lot of physical pain without medical relief, so this program has been triggered a lot.

I'm aware that the program is a reactive program of a hurt child, a program which I haven't been able to overcome yet. It's tremendous progress for me to even be able to see that this is what is going on, but I obviously have a ways to go to be free of it. I'm very sad and sorry that it's caused consternation here.

I downloaded but have not yet opened your meditation materials. My only previous exposure to meditation training audio is the Roy Masters material. If your material is quite a bit different than his, then maybe I should meditate for a week, and then find out if I can resume the discussions here with a calmer mind.

If you think that continuing the discussions along with the meditation are a good way for me to use your material, then I'll do that. If you think it would be better for me to take a meditation break then come back, I could do that.

What do you advise as a next step that is helpful for both me and for the forum?

 

[Nawd]

Hope you come back Jack. Please give more information as to the name of this cult. It could help us help you better.

 

[Laura]

Jack, first thing I would do, if it was me, would be to read Mark Hynam's book "The Ultimate Mind Solution" and share it with your therapist. There are some quizzes in there that might be helpful.

Then, the next thing I would do would be to listen to the audio introduction of our breathing/meditation program (the text is posted somewhere here in the forum in case you want to share it with your therapist), and if it sounds interesting, then watch the video. If that is interesting, then do the whole program one time and see if you like it.

Then, come and report back. You need to stabilize. As Gurdjieff would say, your horses are running away with you!

 

[Jack]

I have the audio and video so I'll start with them, look for the book, and find out if I can gain some clarity over the weekend. I'll check back next week and let you know what I've learned. Would very much appreciate being remembered in the prayers of those who believe in prayer.

 

[Jack]

After I took a deep breath...

Laura, thank you so much for your breath training material.

I wish I had listened to the breath training material before my first post here. It would have made a world of difference. In addition to the breath material, I had some very positive time over the weekend with truly loving and supportive friends. I hope that my calmer, more reflective mindset makes what I write here more useful for the forum.

May I suggest that it in the material for new users, the breath training is highlighted? Could there be a suggestion that new forum members practice this deep breathing for a few days before posting, as a way to help them bring calmness and clarity to their minds? At the risk of projecting my own situation, I imagine it might help others who are also walking bundles of stress. It might also help first posts be more thoughtful. In any event, I am deeply grateful.

The pace of your talk is, itself, soothing. At times you sped up when you mentioned a sidetrack topic. When you decided to not pursue the digression, you then returned to the main pacing. If you take the fastest, most excited digression pace in your talk, and speed it up about four times, that is how I had imagined your voice when I read your work. (After all, smart people talk fast!) I felt desperately left behind, anxiously scrambling to catch up. I am glad to discard that unpleasant imagination.

Now, when I read your material, I get to toss out that unhappy scenario. I get to replace it with thinking of the calm, kind, gently explaining voice on the recording, patiently pausing for me to, literally, catch my breath. I now realize that even when you have long postings, I can read them slowly. I can take the commas as where you would pause for breath. I can pause for breath there, as well, if I've forgotten to breathe while reading.

Realizing this, I have an opportunity to consider what training I had around the idea that there is no time to explain; yet at the same time, everything must be explained at once. I can recall that throughout my past, there were many people who were anxious to not be revealed as dishonest or hurtful, They used fast, aggressive speech as a way to shut down my thought, and put the "predator's emotion" of anxiety into me. And I realize that I don't need to repeat that any more in my own life. I can choose to breathe and speak in a thoughtful way. This will help my writing too, as I choose words that can fit into a calm, relaxed breath.

I was fortunate enough to be in good choirs in high school and college, both at school and at church. (This was after the family left the cult and attended more mainstream churches.) I learned in choir how to breathe from the diaphragm. The training is not new to me, but it is a very timely reminder that I can use proper breathing at any time, even when there is no conductor in front of me.

I will have intermittent use of this computer throughout the day, so I will have more to say a bit later. My purpose of this post was to thank you, thank you, thank you for the kind, calm, helpful reminder of how I can breathe deep and stretch gently.

After some more reflection, I will follow up on some of the specific things you discussed in the overview talk. One thing I do need to ask right away is about the side effects of tetanus and tremors. Are those only side effects of hyperventilation techniques, which you don't recommend? Or are they potential side effects of the "pipe breathing" technique? Because of concern about those side effects, I joined you in the breathing count but did not do the airway constriction part of the exhale. I want to know more about that full technique's safety before using it.

Should I take these comments and questions to the e-e forum?