Tag: cults

  • Enjoying LIfe together

    Yesterday I spent creating two Mitten Tree Ladies…who are so full of, (as one woman put it,) exuberance.  I love the fabric and the feelings these ladies have.  Their spirits are imbued with self power.

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    And working with sweater fabric has been a new challenge, but I love the way it adds a new dimension…the feeling of winter.

    IMG_7249
    This Evergreen batik fabric was a challenge, just to see what colors would go with it.  I put down the white and black and greys and whites and was surprised it would go….and the brights flowed too.  I add colors by feeling and never know what will be allowed and what will have to go.

     

    As I was waiting for the above pictures to be downloaded on to this site, I was reading in David Hawkins book, Power vs Force. 

    "Force is limited, whereas power is unlimited.  Through its insistence that the ends justify the means, force sells out freedom, for expediency.  Force offers quick, easy, solutions.  In power, the means and the end are the same, but ends require greater maturity, discipline, and patience to be brought to fruition."

    "Great leaders inspire us to have faith and confidence because of the power of their absolute integrity and alignment with inviolate principles.  Such figures understand that you can't compromise principle and still retain your power."  David Hawkins

    What really caught my eye, is that Force Sells out Freedom…and it will justity any means to get what it wants.

    Acting out in this moment of time, to ensure a peaceful end…really?

    Is not your life created by each step in time?  

    It is insane to think that all the steps of force will in the end deliver a relationship of empowerment.  You can't steal power and have a strong individual left standing.

    I have seen families in the FALC, and even those who have left the church behind, but not the force driven relationships, force their children…by not letting them have their freedom.  

    It has shown me how it was so imperative that I give my children the power to make their own choices.  That is freedom.  Letting them decide…especially when it went against my values or viewpoints…or basically against me. That was when it mattered most.  And I let them.  I not only let them, but had to do so willingly in complete agreement, that yes, they are allowed to go against me.  In fact, if they feel so drawn to, they must…they have to follow their own inner feelings, NoT Mine.

    My earlier mothering instincts were to force them to do as I did…yet after I gave my self the power to walk differently than my parents, it would have been hypocritical to not let them do the same.  And they did.

    It takes great discipline and patience to watch your children grow into their own maturity and lives…but what freedom and joy to allow them them to be free thinkers and free movers, to not be attached at the hip of me….doing and saying and being…Like puppets on my string.

    I truly believed in my own freedom and my authentic power…and that belief powered and gave me strength to give the same to my children. 

    It really does take great patience and discipline to stay in the mode of freedom of choice and empowerment…allowing them to be free, for you can't know if they will freely chose to be with you.

    "If you love someone, set them free….If they come back to you their yours…"  You will then have two free spirits enjoying life together.

     

  • Being on a Leash.

    As I listened to the rest of the book, ""Sway" The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior…by Ori Brafman, I learned more about the nature of being human and the irrational reasons we do that which we do.

    What I love is that all humans respond similarly; that no one is immune, that our bodies and brains are all equal…and we all fall victim to the irresistible pull of irrational behavior…it is in our nature.

    Our brains work the same way when prompted and can be fooled and are tricked more often than not.

    The example of a world renowned Violin Player playing his violin in the Subway…on his 3 million dollar violin, will go unnoticed, for he is out of place.  Our minds will not consider the inconsiderable, unless we challenge it or perhaps force it to go against the irresistible pull to go against what it 'knows'.  And it knows that famous Violin Players are in concert halls not in subways.

    In this case the violin player is out of its normal environment…so we fail to see him.

    I was also enthralled with the dynamics of groups and how we fail to act as an individual within them…unless one Individual stands up…we will move as a group, swayed in the same direction.

    I know this works in a cult.  And any dissenters are quickly shunned into silence…for in order for a cult to work, there can be only one leader and one view point…a cult is not a free society…you are ALL to move as ONE.

    When raised in a cult, you use the same model for your family; the parents are the leaders and there can be no dissenters present…ever.  Those who dare speak against the parent are quickly removed from having any relationship with those inside.

    For you are a threat to the force of One.  ONE family…not one individual within the family….the family comes first before your individual needs.  You are not allowed to do for Self.

    A dissenter isn't allowed to come in whether as a voice of a child within the family or an outsider.

    A dissenter brings gifts of discord and discord brings disagreement and disagreement opens the door that weakens the group and will lead to the empowerment of the individual.

    And dysfunctional families and cults are NOT interested in the power of the individual…keeping the Group together is the pull which leads to incredible irrational behavior. 

    The very thing that an abused child needs is kept from them…empowerment, being an individual, owner of her feelings…etc.

    An empowered child will not allow further abuse.  

    An empowered individual will not stay within a cult.

    Only victims are not empowered.

    This fear based irrational behavior of parents clinging tightly to the family group, lead to children having to push back in order to heal…or remain powerless inside.

    What my mother said she wanted was for me to heal, but she wanted me to do that within the structure of an abusive family.  It is like being a free spirit within a cult.

    The dynamics of a dysfunctional family is that there is but one leader, one voice and one choice and there is no room for a second opinion or feeling or expression or an equal power.  The very structure is based on Victim and Abuser.  

    This structure will not stand if there is empowerment or a dissenting vote.

    What most dysfunctional families want is to remain the same while allowing the adult children to heal.

    Each time I have written HEAL, what flashes through my mind is a dog heeling….keeping him on a loose leash…walking beside you.

    This is what freedom looks like to a dysfunctional family…they still want you to remain on a family leash, obediently walking while the parent holds the leash.

     

    IMG_6985

    Life just isn't the same being on a leash…

     

  • Beyond what the mind can hold

    I am re-posting an older post…I found it while looking at various posts.

     

    Glancing through the book “Truth vs Falsehood” by David Hawkins, I read this headline, “Cultism”…so here it is.

    “Cults ensnare the unwary by their specialness and false promises.  Members have ‘insider’ status and a special ‘lingo’.  The group leader is charismatic, seductive, and courts the intimate, who is flattered by the attention. The leader is very ‘special’ and treated with adulation, which is quickly turned into control of members, including especially their money and sex lives, as well as lifestyles, diets, clothing, etc.  Members must take allegiance and break off relationships with family or even spouses and often associations or groups.”

    “The group often forms a geographic, restrictive enclave and develops a group paranoia as well as a characteristic “cult glaze” (cal. 120) as though in a hypnotic state (the effect of isolation and brainwashing).  Once detected, that glaze is easily recognized (the “programmed cult look,” as one observer described it.  There is a flatness and automation style to rationalization where content is like a “party line” that is parroted from having been programmed. Cults especially target celebrities and exploit them as showpieces.”

    “The influence of the cult leaders is so strong that large groups of people will willingly kill not only others but also themselves (e.g. Heavens Gate, Jim Jones, Islamic terrorists, suicide bombers, Aum Shinrikyo subway gassers, Bolsheviks, Nazi party, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, White Supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, liberationists etc.”

    “Another characteristic of cultism is proselytizing and insistence of following the party line of a pseudo-religious group belief system by which individuality is scorned or even threatened.  Leaders are very power-oriented, and control plus paranoid egoism are dominant themes.”

    “Sometimes a spiritual leader will calibrate as integrous early in their career but then will fall victim to the seduction of prestige, money, sex, or the adulation of followers.  Then the original spiritual group degenerates into a cult, or a spiritual technique becomes actually trademarked and then commercialized and marketed by hired publicists. In that case, the technique calibrates above 200 but the organization itself falls below 200 and becomes primarily a marketing organization that trades on the original concept or exclusive technique. The technique is thus only taught for a price and ‘trainees’ are forbidden to reveal the secret teachings (which are usually merely a few simple phrases or sentences with a general application to ‘improve health’, “attract abundance”, “increase love life,” “be more popular”, fulfill your potential success”, “attract a mate”, etc) Some of the promoted techniques can be found in any fortune cookie, e.g. “One smile can change your life forever” (cal. 350), or “Success goes to one who is kind.” (cal. 360) 

    “The true value of such workshops is not the magic of the central concept or technique, but the disciplined practice of actually applying it with regularity in the daily life instead of merely quickly dismissing it as “I already know that.” The value of training workshops then lies in the learning of the value of steady application and actually putting a valuable tool into practice and steady focus, e.g., the “faithfulness” of A Course in Miracles workbook.”

    “Another expression of cultism is the cultification of splinter groups from traditional religions, e.g., the far-right “fundamentalism” most prominent and visible in Islam, Christianity and ethnic variations of worldwide religions.”

                         David Hawkins

     

    While I know when you are in the midst of a cult, you can’t see the forest for the trees, but when you step out and find your own freedom to be an individual to feel the open space where the programmed mind used to be, it is mind blowing.

    Most feel and think that a cult is this small hidden special group, but if you look around within many religions, you will see what they are doing to the individual, they are controlling it.

    Any organization that tells you what to wear and what not to wear, what is acceptable and what is not, what you can and cannot do with your own body is a cult.  Albeit a milder level for perhaps your religion hasn’t asked you to kill, yet.

    In my childhood religion, there was a phrase that could erase all sins and we literally believed in its power.  “Your sins are forgiven in Jesus name and blood…”  By believing in this phrase, ‘there was no sin to great to forgive’.  All transgressions against others were deleted. 

    With this phrase, many criminal behaviors are washed away without ever needing the police, the law or the court of the land.

    It is insanity at its best and what happens to the victims of these crimes?  Who is there to protect them, when it is known and approved to have pedophiles preying upon the children, and the only consequences are they have to ‘confess’ and be ‘forgiven’?

    Where are all these sins?  Do they really believe that Jesus is carrying the weight of all the tortured children?  Is he indeed that forgiving, to allow the children to suffer while the adults get a new cloak that is whiter than snow?  Come on people wake up the sins are living in your midst, they are the abused, the confused and the broken. 

    There are no magic words that will take away the physical act of abuse on a child’s body nor erase the terror and the shattered trust and innocence….

    The most evil words that I can now hear are “Your sins are all forgiven…”  For what it means to me, is that the monster has been blessed to abuse again.

    When will the people in the cult wake up and see the bleeding children?  When will they understand that the words spoken are destroying the spirits/souls of the children among them?

    As they sit in the pews singing “Bless be the tie that binds us…” I want them to know, they are the chorus in a ring of child abuse!

    I wanted to believe that my family was an oddity that we were not the popular way within the church, yet I fear that I was the tip of the iceberg and what lies beneath is beyond what my mind can hold.

     

  • What my mind can hold.

    Glancing through the book “Truth vs Falsehood” by David Hawkins, I read this headline, “Cultism”…so here it is.

    “Cults ensnare the unwary by their specialness and false promises. Members have ‘insider’ status and a special ‘lingo’. The group leader is charismatic, seductive, and courts the intimate, who is flattered by the attention. The leader is very ‘special’ and treated with adulation, which is quickly turned into control of members, including especially their money and sex lives, as well as lifestyles, diets, clothing, etc. Members must take allegiance and break off relationships with family or even spouses and often associations or groups.”

    “The group often forms a geographic, restrictive enclave and develops a group paranoia as well as a characteristic “cult glaze” (cal. 120) as though in a hypnotic state (the effect of isolation and brainwashing). Once detected, that glaze is easily recognized (the “programmed cult look,” as one observer described it. There is a flatness and automation style to rationalization where content is like a “party line” that is parroted from having been programmed. Cults especially target celebrities and exploit them as showpieces.”

    “The influence of the cult leaders is so strong that large groups of people will willingly kill not only others but also themselves (e.g. Heavens Gate, Jim Jones, Islamic terrorists, suicide bombers, Aum Shinrikyo subway gassers, Bolsheviks, Nazi party, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, White Supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, liberationists etc.”

    “Another characteristic of cultism is proselytizing and insistence of following the party line of a pseudo-religious group belief system by which individuality is scorned or even threatened. Leaders are very power-oriented, and control plus paranoid egoism are dominant themes.”

    “Sometimes a spiritual leader will calibrate as integrous early in their career but then will fall victim to the seduction of prestige, money, sex, or the adulation of followers. Then the original spiritual group degenerates into a cult, or a spiritual technique becomes actually trademarked and then commercialized and marketed by hired publicists. In that case, the technique calibrates above 200 but the organization itself falls below 200 and becomes primarily a marketing organization that trades on the original concept or exclusive technique. The technique is thus only taught for a price and ‘trainees’ are forbidden to reveal the secret teachings (which are usually merely a few simple phrases or sentences with a general application to ‘improve health’, “attract abundance”, “increase love life,” “be more popular”, fulfill your potential success”, “attract a mate”, etc) Some of the promoted techniques can be found in any fortune cookie, e.g. “One smile can change your life forever” (cal. 350), or “Success goes to one who is kind.” (cal. 360)

    “The true value of such workshops is not the magic of the central concept or technique, but the disciplined practice of actually applying it with regularity in the daily life instead of merely quickly dismissing it as “I already know that.” The value of training workshops then lies in the learning of the value of steady application and actually putting a valuable tool into practice and steady focus, e.g., the “faithfulness” of A Course in Miracles workbook.”

    “Another expression of cultism is the cultification of splinter groups from traditional religions, e.g., the far-right “fundamentalism” most prominent and visible in Islam, Christianity and ethnic variations of worldwide religions.”
    David Hawkins

    While I know when you are in the midst of a cult, you can’t see the forest for the trees, but when you step out and find your own freedom to be an individual to feel the open space where the programmed mind used to be, it is mind blowing.

    Most feel and think that a cult is this small hidden special group, but if you look around within many religions, you will see what they are doing to the individual, they are controlling it.

    Any organization that tells you what to wear and what not to wear, what is acceptable and what is not, what you can and cannot do with your own body is a cult. Albeit a milder level for perhaps your religion hasn’t asked you to kill, yet.

    In my childhood religion, there was a phrase that could erase all sins and we literally believed in its power. “Your sins are forgiven in Jesus name and blood…” By believing in this phrase, ‘there was no sin to great to forgive’. All transgressions against others was deleted.

    With this phrase, many criminal behaviors are washed away without ever needing the police, the law or the court of the land.

    It is insanity at its best and what happens to the victims of these crimes? Who is there to protect them, when it is know and approved to have pedophiles preying upon the children, and the only consequences are they have to ‘confess’ and be ‘forgiven’?

    Where are all these sins? Do they really believe that Jesus is carrying the weight of all the tortured children? Is he indeed that forgiving to allow the children to suffer while the adults get a new cloak that is whiter than snow? Come on people wake up the sins are living in your midst, they are the abused, the confused and the broken.

    There are no magic words that will take away the physical act of abuse on a child’s body nor erase the terror and the shattered trust and innocence….

    The most evil words that I can now hear are “Your sins are all forgiven…” For what it means to me, is that the monster has been blessed to abuse again.

    When will the people in the cult wake up and see the bleeding children? When will they understand that the words spoken are destroying the spirits/souls of the children among them?

    As they sit in the pews singing “Bless be the tie that binds us…” I want them to know, they are the chorus in a ring of child abuse!

    I wanted to believe that my family was an oddity that we were not the popular way within the church, yet I fear that I was the tip of the iceberg and what lies beneath is beyond what my mind can hold.

  • Morale within a Cult.

    What I am finding so intriguing or mind bending as I contemplate Evil, is that Evil is literally defined in the eye of the beholder, there seems to be a personal preference accommodation, not an official Evil standard we all go by.

    I was going to say that we all believe killing is wrong, but in war we say it is okay. Well, okay for us to kill, but not be killed. We swing and spin in our definitions…

    Evil seems hard to pin down so that all looking at it will agree, there seems to be a viewpoint that changes evil into good and good into evil.

    This has to be what divides us that we can’t even agree on what defines evil in humanity.

    What also makes it hard is that you can be raised in evil and not know it, and be told anything outside of your home and church is wrong, and you believe it. Fearing what you don’t know.

    You believe it until you don’t believe it and then you find it hard that you ever could have believed what you believed.

    Life after cult is an incredible ride, it has such fluid openness and freedom, a sense of being an individual unattached and unfettered, a free spirit.

    Free spirits are bad for morale within a cult.

  • Mask of High Morals.

    When I looked up the meaning of Evil it said “profoundly immoral or wrong.” And when I looked up the word Immoral it said ”contrary to accepted moral principles.”

    And, Moral is defined as “relating to issues of right and wrong” or “derived from personal conscience: based on what somebody’s conscience suggests is right or wrong, rather than on what rules or the law says should be done.”

    So evil is breaking the moral code.

    What happens in a family where the moral code is twisted, if right is wrong and wrong is right?

    When a child breaks that code, instead of being right, the family actually sees them as evil, for they broke the family’s moral code.

    I am surprised that evil is actually defined more by morals or immoral behavior than actual rules and laws.

    Discerning evil is harder when what you call normal is evil and good is a foreign concept.

    Evil is actually only a personal affront to your own morals. And the morals are personal to you.

    Morals, “according to common standard of justice: regarded in terms of what is known to be right or just, as opposed to what is officially or outwardly declared to be right or just.”

    What is known to be right or just, not what is an official right or wrong.

    My teachings of evil or my awareness of morals were defined by my parents and my mother’s religion, the churches conscience was my mothers.

    Evil is going against the morals…and if the morals themselves are evil, then what?

    Raised in a vaccum of evil morals all good becomes evil.

    Imagine living up to evil morals…where the gold standard is far beneath its value, where bad is seen as good and good bad.

    It seem perposterous, incredibly insane, to not recognize evil, the evil of the norm. But when your evil was defined by a limited cult of religious fanatics, you are then raised to see anything outside the walls of the churches morals to be wrong.

    The church wore a mask of high morals.

  • Life of Freedom

    The leader of my childhood religion will be laid to rest today, yet his teachings will live on within many of his devote followers.

     

    His word and guidance led my mother’s life, which in turn greatly influenced mine. 

     

    Born into this religion, it was what I was raised upon. Like food for the body, this controlled my mind.

     

    What is unreal to me is that I didn’t know that my mind was controlled until after I left the church, for while I was there; insanely I felt this was my choice.

     

    It is not a choice if you are not given an alternative.

     

    Inside the walls of this religion you hand over your mind and your body. 

     

    It owns them both, like a robot you then march forward. 

     

    A good Christian soldier mindlessly unquestionably and in Faith walks on, blindly following where the preacher leads.

     

    Your inner guide is replaced by the spoken word in church.

     

    This spoken word from the preacher overrides all individual choice, and in fact individual choice is seen as the devils urgings.

     

    The only way this system works is that a child is born into it, before it has power of Self, it is programmed and brainwashed into believing the message of the church. 

     

    The children are the seeds of the next generation.

     

    It isn’t so much the elders of the church that keep this system going, but rather the children which are crafted into little Christian soldiers before their minds ever know a free thought.

     

    Bending and twisting the free spirit into a controlling mindless Being is the only way this insane religion will work.

     

    No one in their right minds will hand over their body, their mind and surely not their soul.

     

    Oddly enough, the preacher man believes he is saving souls and perhaps he is, saving them for his own good. 

     

    They are giving up their lives for the cause.

    The sheer volume of children that are born into this religion boggles the mind.

     

    I had thought that the children were the residual affects of the sin called “No Birth Control.”

     

    But it is more insidious than that; it is where the power comes from, it is how the army continues to grow from inside the walls.

     

    Being born into captivity the little children seldom escape to live a free life.  For inside the cage lives their parents and family members. 

     

    In order to be free, you leave them all behind seemingly puppets on the preachers string.

     

    As many mourn his passing today, I will mourn the thousands of little children stuck inside the cages of their own minds, who may never know a life of freedom. 

     

     Outside the box 2

     

     

  • We are Free.

    Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond

    ~Jeffrey Borenstein

     

    Yesterday it dawned on me that in our communities, many of the folks who are against government taking more and more rights away from us, offer little freedom to their own children, and many are within the confines of strict religious cults.

     

    Where they are told what to wear and not wear, what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, what to believe and not believe, where individual freedoms are extinct.

     

    Is it only odd to me that these folks held prisoners in their religion, are claiming they stand for freedom, that these parents who dictate life to their children, fear the loss of freedom?

     

    Do they even know what freedom is?

     

    Most are baptized as children into this religious prison, made to comply with rules and have never know a day of freedom for they were born into captivity.

     

    How can people who have never been free speak of maintaining their free rights?

     

    What rights are they afraid of losing? 

     

    How can you stand up for freedom while being held a prisoner in your own life?

     

    Is this only preposterous to me?

     

    What some think of freedom is really being free to move around their cage.

     

    An animal born in a Zoo doesn’t have a clue what it would be like to be free.  How it feels to live with out fences.

     

    We are only as free as the space between the fence and us!

     

    And when all fences disappear, we are free.