I am Sylvie Imelda Shene and I like to share more information that I had shared with Ryan Van Velzer, but he chose not to use for some reason. I didn’t take interest in the group. I knew they were a cult and I never was interested in the group. I had hired People Unlimited writer, Joe Bardin to help me with my book and he invited me as his guest to the meetings. I went just out of curiosity. I attended the meetings for a few months just to see how they operated, but when they started pressuring me to become a member, I declined, I challenged the leaders by expressing that the members dependency on the group was a danger to their mental and physical health and that can cause premature death and it was very ironic because death was what they all were trying to avoid. And Bernadeane told me to get the F out and never go back. I wrote a blog, February 2011, title “People Unlimited, Inc. My experience with an Arizona cult” that everyone is welcome to read.
Also if people are interested in the psychological mechanisms of why people become cult leaders and why some people become victims of cults. I suggest people read my book A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions.
Here is a little excerpt from my book that might help you understand these psychological mechanisms Sadly we live in a society where most people are stuck in childhood without realizing it, endless playing the role of the "good obedient child" and like little children fall prey of charismatic people that cast themselves in the role of parents figures over others and exploit them to feed their adult perversions and expensive lifestyles.
“…The fact that the attendant uncritical and irrational expectations of healing and ‘salvation’ can lead to the establishment of totalitarian sects is borne out by the crass example of mass abuse at the hands of the exponents of ‘feeling therapy’ as described in detail by Carol Lynn Mithers in her book Therapy Gone Mad: The True Story of Hundreds of Patients and a Generation Betrayed (1994). But this study was possible only after the community she describes had disbanded, something that frequently takes decades. Today we know that such groups exist and that members of sects are done irremediable harm before they become aware of the fact.”65
In another book, she [Alice Miller] goes on to say, “The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulations that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care without anyone involved actually realizing it. At first glance, it may seem as if what goes on in cults and cultlike therapy groups takes place on a different level from the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents. We assume that in the former instance we are in the presence of an intentional, carefully planned and organized form of manipulation aimed at exploiting the specific predicament of individuals. … First, they had learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of the helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims. From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the childrearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhood.”66
Most people who search for answers never actually find them, because people suffering with their own repression are the ones who practice traditional therapies. Since the beginning of human history, priests, teachers, gurus, psychics, doctors, philosophers, and psychologists have all duped people into thinking they could provide real assistance when it was never possible because the healers were also victims of their own childhoods. Alice Miller saw the promise of psychotherapy to help people understand why they behave like helpless victims as adults and also to help them take responsibility for their actions. But she was disillusioned when she realized that practitioners couldn’t treat patients effectively as long as they failed to deal with their own repression. The people who write self-help books and lead 12-step groups and otherwise claim to heal people are for the most part little children themselves, afraid to speak the naked truth that could actually lead to true liberation. “I don’t see the path to growing but rather the repetition and continuation of the child’s dependency on illusions,” Alice Miller writes of traditional healing methods. “Growing and healing begin when former victims of mistreatment start to confront illusions about the “love” of a higher power and without blaming themselves for projections. They allow themselves to feel their authentic emotions without moral restrictions and in this way become eventually true to themselves. But the 12 steps continue to keep the ACA [Adult Children of Alcoholics] in the former dependency of the child: fear, self-blame, and permanent overstrain. A person who has eventually painfully realized that she was never loved, can based on this truth, learn to love herself and her children. But someone who lives with the illusion that she was indeed loved by the Higher Power, though she has missed to feel this love, will probably blame herself in the old manner for her lack of gratitude and will tend to demand the love from her children. By so doing, she will pass on the blame to her children if they don’t behave in the way she wishes them to do; she will pass on the blame, together with the lie that she learned in her so-called recovery.”67 It is the major flaw in most human therapies that they are themselves grounded in the fear of the parents and the repressed emotions of traumatic experiences. It’s why therapy so often doesn’t work, and it frustrated Alice Miller and encouraged her to find a new way. “Sometimes for decades on end, clients and analysts remain bogged down in a maze of half-baked concepts,”68 she writes. Whether or not a therapist has been freed of his or her own repression is what will determine the success or failure of a given therapy.’ From the book A Dance to Freedom, page 130, 131 and 132
Also, readers might like reading the article by Alice Millers published on my blog under the title “Gurus and Cults Leaders How They Function”
“While the ideas of immortality burned brightly within (Charles Paul Brown), the living of it often eluded him.” Joe Bardin, People Unlimited
“There are many cults on this planet, but the largest one is the cult of death.” Bernadeane Brown, People Unlimited
These two quotes above by the leaders show that they lack the courage to face the facts and evidence. It takes courage, to be honest with oneself and others intelligence alone is not enough, but it rather helps to create seductive theories, lies, and rationalizations to create a smokescreen to hide the painful facts and truth from oneself and others.
Dear D,
Our meeting at Starbucks was very revealing to me.
I am going to finish my thoughts now because at the time I was forced to listen to your beliefs, just like an immature authoritarian parent forces their small children to listen to them and me then I took the role of the tolerant parent and listen to both of you and after we run out of time and we had to leave and I never had the opportunity to finish my thoughts and observations, so I will do it now in writing.
At the moment I was forced to listen I was saying: that I don’t have expectations of what the project I am working on will bring me in return. I am doing this project out of love and is my gift to the world if my gift is well received and gives me back compensation for my hard work, of course, I will enjoy it. This project is my baby to the world and like every parent should have children for love and not for what their children might give them or do for them someday.
What I see happening with you guys is that you all split from the People Unlimited, Inc cult not because you all came to recognize the illusions for what they were, but because you all became a powerful mirror of the leaders of People Unlimited, inc. and the reflection came to be so strong that the leaders at People Unlimited, Inc. and you guys could not handle it and became a power struggle and you guys had to leave, split, but still carry inside the same illusions and now you all are trying to rebuild a new cult based on the same believes and illusions of People Unlimited, inc, the only difference now is that you guys will be the leaders.
I wish you all much courage and strength to get through it when all the illusions you all chasing burst.
Sylvie
No comments:
Post a Comment