Again I was unfriended at FaceBook just because I dared to expose the naked truth

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=211993602160226&ref=notif&notif_t=event_invite

I left the comment below in the link above, but they could not deal with the painful truths I mentioned in my comment, so they deleted my comment and unfriended me, hypocrites. How are they going to help the animals and anyone in that matter if they can’t handle the truth?

The organizations that supposedly help and care for the animals are part of the problem. These people call themselves experts in the care of animals and proclaim to love them and to know what’s best for them. All they do is create the illusion of love for animals and, under the disguise of helping and caring, are part of the cruelty to animals, and they prolong their suffering. I lost complete faith in these organizations, like the Arizona Humane Society, and many of the people who proclaim to love animals. I know they know where the people in trouble who need help and assistance are, but they put their blinders on. They just rescue the animals when the people get in trouble, the law gets involved, and the cameras are on. They do what should have been done long ago to prevent cruelty and suffering; in this way, they look good in front of the public’s eyes and manipulate the public to donate money to their organizations, but really secretly don’t care about the animals or anyone else’s suffering. They don’t fool me anymore.

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/arizona-humane-society-unconsciously.html

ALICE MILLER - THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THINKER IN PSYCHIATRY TODAY

I totally agree with Dr. Alice Miller.  Our famous Dr. Phil is a great example of this phenomenon.  There is a lot of money to be made in all types of therapeutic businesses and treating symptoms.  But, as long as we keep ignoring the root of the problem, we only fix our problems temporarily and superficially.  

---------------------------------//-------------------------------

ALICE MILLER - THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THINKER IN PSYCHIATRY TODAY

 

Interviewed by Diane Connors

The feeling child

 

"I describe pictures of people, use histories of them as mirrors.  And then many come and say, `This is exactly what I felt all my life but couldn't say.'  I don't want to be a guru.  I don't want people to believe me.  I only encourage them to take their own experience seriously."

 

Alice Miller's stories portray abused and silenced children who later become destructive to themselves and to others.  Adolf Hitler, says Miller, was such a child.  Constantly mistreated by his father, emotionally abandoned by his mother, he learned only cruelty; he learned to be obedient and to accept daily punishments with unquestioning compliance.  After years, he took revenge.  As an adult he once said, "It gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware people are of what is really happening to them."

 

Miller, famed throughout Europe, wrote of Hitler's childhood in For Your Own Good:  Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence.  In the same work she lets Christiane F. tell her own story:  "I had trouble telling the letters H and K apart.  One evening my mother was taking great pains to explain the difference to me.  I could scarcely pay attention to what she was saying because I noticed my father getting more and more furious.  I always knew what was going to happen.  He went out and got the hand broom and gave me a trouncing.  Now I was supposed to tell the difference between H, and K.  Of course by that time I didn't know anything anymore, so I got another licking and was sent to bed."

 

Christiane went into the street and became a drug addict.

 

"We do not need books about psychology in order to learn to respect our children," Miller says.  "What we need is a total revision of the methods of child-rearing and our traditional view about it."  The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our lives:  with cruelty or with tenderness and protection.  We often impose our most agonizing suffering upon ourselves and, later, on our children.

 

In 1979 Miller's first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child was published in Germany.  First titled Prisoners of Childhood, its three short essays described how parents project their feelings, ideas, and dreams upon their children.  To survive and be loved, a child learns to obey.  In repressing his or her feelings, the child stifles attempts to be herself or himself.  The result, said Miller, is all too often depression, ebbing of vitality, the loss of self.  The Drama drew wide audiences in Europe and then the United States.  Two more books quickly followed:  For Your Own Good and Thou Shalt Not Be Aware continued to focus on the child but moved into deeper studies of child abuse, attitudes of child-rearing, psychological theory, and treatment.

 

Last summer Miller published Pictures of a Childhood, a collection of 66 water-color paintings, it represents a small fraction of her art.  As she tells us in the book's introduction, Miller started to paint 14 years ago.  "Five years after I began painting spontaneously, I started writing books.  This never would have been possible without the inner liberation painting has given me.  The more freedom I got playing with colors, the more I had to question what I had learned twenty years ago.

 

"It wasn't until I wrote my books that I found out just how hostile society was toward children," she says.  "I have come to realize that hostility toward children is to be found in countless forms, not only in death camps but throughout all levels of society and in every intellectual discipline -- even in most schools of therapy."

 

Born in Poland in 1923, Miller was educated and lives in Switzerland.  She studied philosophy, sociology, and psychology and took her doctorate in 1953.  She completed her psychoanalytic training in Zurich, and as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has been involved in teaching and training for more than 20 years.

 

As her writing progressed, Miller's view of the child became more and more opposed to that of traditional Freudian theory.  Miller at first dedicated Thou Shalt Not Be Aware to Freud on the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth.  "His discoveries of the survival of childhood experiences in the adult unconscious and the phenomena of repression have influenced my life and way of thinking," she says.  "But I came to different conclusions than Freud when I could no longer deny what I learned from my patients about the repression of child abuse."

 

Today Miller has departed from the traditional analytic approach to treatment and from Freudian theory.  Early in his work, Freud believed that the root of neurosis was actual trauma, often violent and sexual in nature, that had been repressed in childhood.  Later he altered his view, deciding that the child is by no means innocent but is born with drives that are sexual and destructive in nature.

 

Why has Freud's Oedipus complex lasted so long? Miller asks.  "Because in the Freudian view the parents, not the child, are innocent.  The Freudian view fits society; it overlooks in Oedipus the abused child and sees him with incestuous wishes that lead to his killing his father, marrying his mother, and ultimately blinding himself."

 

Traditional analysis, says Miller, duplicates the parent-child relationship. with the conventional analyst in the position of power.  But there is hope in therapy if the therapist is a true advocate of the patient.  Respect for the child within the patient and his discovery of his real history must play a role in the treatment process.  The child undergoes a long inner struggle "between the fear of losing the person he loves if he remains true to himself and panic at the prospect of losing himself if he has to deny who he is.  A child cannot resolve a conflict of this nature and is forced to conform because he cannot survive by himself.  Therapy should not repeat this condition."

 

Miller uses the phrase poisonous pedagogy to describe what we inflict on children "for their own good" out of our hypocrisy and ignorance.  She perceives that we instill humiliation, shame. fear, and guilt as we are "training" children.  By encouraging conformity, suppressing curiosity and emotions, a parent reduces a child's ability to make crucial perceptions in later life.  "Children are tolerant.  They learn intolerance from us."

 

While Miller's work is ignored or attacked by the orthodoxy, farsighted therapists often hail it as monumental in its analysis of hidden cruelty and the roots of violence.  Anthropologist Ashley Montagu stated that Thou Shalt Not Be Aware "will undoubtedly prove to be a watershed in the history of psychoanalysis."

 

"My antipedagogical position is not directed against a specific type of pedagogy," Miller notes, "but against pedagogical ideology in general, which can be found also in the permissive theories."  She fears that as a consequence of adults' arrogant attitudes -- including "permissive" attitudes - toward children's feelings, children are trained to be accommodating.  But their own voices will be silenced, and their awareness killed.  And more blind and arrogant adults will be the result.

 

Interviewer Diane Connors, also a psychotherapist, visited Miller in her apartment near Zurich.  Small in stature, Miller radiates a sense of both caution and fragility, and a clear-eyed, unflinching commitment to what she is saying, and an awareness of society's resistance to her work.

 

OMNI:  When did you realize respect for the child would be your central focus?

 

Miller:  I looked from the beginning, I think from my childhood, for the answer to why people behave in such an irrational way.  I always needed to understand and make things clear.  I didn't get much information from my mother, who would say, "It is this way; it is so and so and so."  She never gave me an explanation if I asked.  I was very alone as a child.

 

Maybe I was five years old when I saw a woman with a child.  The girl was three or four.  She fell down and was hurt.  Her mother, who was talking to another mother, slapped the child just because she came crying with bloody knees.  I remember my question then: "This child is punished twice: first by falling down and then by the mother.  Why does she punish the child?  She is not guilty -- she needs her mother's help, not punishment."

 

OMNI:  Why do some professionals deny what you're saying?

 

Miller:  Because they are not allowed to face reality.  You know, it was interesting.  The first time I talked about these ideas was when I spoke to about three hundred analysts on the narcissism of psychoanalysts.  They were so surprised because it was very unusual to hear a colleague side with the child.  First, they reacted naturally, were just grateful, and did not show much resistance to their feelings.  They thanked me and said, "But how did you know it was my life you described?"  And I said, "It was my own life I described."  Many men had tears in their eyes.  Then I tried to publish this article in a German professional review, but the editors refused it.  Resistance was already established.  They sent it back because they had to see everything as Freud would have; otherwise, it is frightening or dangerous.  The International Analytic Society published it in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.  But the German review, Psyche, did not.  It was too provoking for the Germans.

 

OMNI:  What were the provocative issues?

 

Miller:  That neurosis and psychosis result from repressed feelings that are a reaction to trauma.  The child's anger and all the other feelings we don't like are reactions to child abuse.

 

Today we know that we have a lot of child abuse.  It was silenced before.  The child must repress the memory of this abuse and deny the pain in order to survive; otherwise, he would be killed by the pain.

 

OMNI:  Might this happen so early in the child's development that he lacks words, understanding, or permission to express the pain?

 

Miller:  The words have to be found.  A good therapy should help the patient evolve from a "silent child" to a "talking child."  The child couldn't have found the words if the trauma were too early, or the environment too hostile.  But now, in therapy, if you have a therapist who is really your advocate, your conscious witness for when you experienced your trauma for the first time, then you become a talking child.  Therapy exists to help you find the words to tell your mother or father how you felt at that time when they hurt you or how you felt when you could not talk -- even that.

 

OMNI:  What do you mean by advocate?

 

Miller:  One who sides with the child.  Always.  The therapist must not say the parents were disturbed but well-meaning, because he is then siding with the grown-ups.  If the child thinks that the parents who behaved so strangely and humiliated him were well-meaning, he cannot feel his pain, and he sympathizes instead with his parents.  It is a crime to beat a child because the beating is a damage, and you can never change this reality.  A battered child feels humiliated, confused, isolated; and he is made to feel guilty because he is told he is bad.  We are afraid to say that child abuse is a crime because we want to protect the parent from his guilt.  But we really fail to help them when we support their blindness, because in this way we also betray the child in the parent.

 

OMNI:  How do you deal with pain in the healing process?

 

Miller:  Pain is the way to the truth.  By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth.  And throughout your whole life you'll try to earn love.  In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage.  Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty.  "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks.  "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?"

 

So he will continue trying to make her love him.  The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love.  This is much more painful than to think "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad."  Because then you can try to do something to get love.  But it's not true; you cannot earn love.  And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis.

 

There are some treatments where the patients cry a lot - they really suffer - but do not talk.  I saw a videocassette where for one hour the patient relived the pain of birth but didn't talk about it.  Only later did he report on what he had felt.  But in my opinion it is important to speak, to verbalize, during the experience of pain.  Even if the patient felt as if he were in the womb, he should try to talk to the mother and tell her how he feels.

 

The link between feelings and their verbal expression is crucial to the healing process.  But he can't do it without assistance; he has to know someone is there who understands how he feels, who supports and confirms him.  If a child has been molested and the therapist doesn't deny this fact, many things can open up in the patient.  The therapist must not preach forgiveness, or the patient will repress the pain.  He won't change, and the repressed rage will look for a scapegoat.

 

OMNI:  Do you think the child has no history, that a child is born into the world like a tabula rasa on which experience inscribes his or her character?

 

Miller:  No, I don't.  The child comes from the womb with his or her history as experienced in the womb.  But he doesn't come with projections.  He is born innocent and ready to love.  And the child can love - much more than we grown-ups can.  This idea of the child as a loving being meets so much resistance because we learned to defend our parents and to blame ourselves for everything they have done.

 

OMNI: In The Drama you connect repressed feeling with loss of vitality.  Was that your experience here?

 

Miller:  Yes, experiencing the pain of my life gave me back my vitality.  First pain, then vitality.  The price of repressing feelings is depression.  I also had to resist the usual way of learning.  If you are forced to do something, you cannot have fun.  But for me, having fun is the first condition of creativity.  I learned when I played with color.  But I resisted learning about color by reading theories from books.

 

For me, painting, dreaming, and writing have something in common.  I paint as I dream.  I have many impulses and associations.  I never have a plan, a concept of what I want to do.  I do have a concept sometimes, but I cannot realize it because while painting, I start to dream of something else and I forget my plan.  In the beginning, I had a sort of narrative style.  I wanted to tell a story, or a story in myself wanted to be told.  Now it's more like needing this color, this form, this line.  It's improvisation.  I'd say I am painting like a jazz musician.

 

I don't want to make a masterpiece or even good pictures.  Fortunately, I don't need to sell my paintings.  I'm only compelled to work further and further into what is true.  Sometimes I destroy my paintings.  I change and change them, even though they may have been nicer before.  In the end, I'm happy because it's what I wanted to say.  I don't care if someone says it's good or not.  In painting, I feel absolutely free.  I have my palette, my white paper; and nobody can tell me what is right or wrong.

 

OMNI:  Does response to your work differ from country to country?

 

Miller:  Yes.  The Scandinavian lands, Holland, and the United States are most liberal and open.  Most of my books are sold in Germany, but many Germans are still very much formed by the poisonous pedagogy.  Swiss people, too.  So many are not allowed to criticize parents or see the poison of their upbringing.  These people say my work describes the education of the nineteenth century.  They don't realize that they still live according to nineteenth-century values.

 

This response is also a reaction to Hitler's time.  The denial of Hitler is so deep that the German cannot learn from his history.  As a child, Hitler had no witness.  His father destroyed everything his son did.  He could never tell anyone the pains he was suffering.  In Sweden they made a play, "Hitler's Childhood," from a chapter in my book.  The story shows how that child looked for contact, longed for a glance, but was constantly treated like a dog.

 

A reaction similar to Germany's also comes from Japan, but also from Japan come reactions from people who already have become aware.  Their awareness is not damaged by theories like the Freudian drive theory, so these Japanese can face what I write, use it in their reality.  They can realize the ever-present child abuse, and they can really help.

 

Behind every act of violence there is a history.  A history of being molested, a history of denying.  The denial is a law governing us, but it is ignored by society and still not investigated by the professionals.  Yet it holds the keys to our understanding why pure nonsense can be still held in high esteem in our culture, such nonsense as Sigmund Freud's idea that a child would invent traumas.

 

OMNI:  Are there cultures that have a different attitude toward parenting?

 

Miller Despite variations in cultures, abuse is found in almost everyone.  But there are some that are different.  For instance, there are people on an island of Malaysia called Senoi who have a nonviolent culture.  They talk with their children about dreams each morning.  They never have had war.  Our culture is so violent because as children we learned not to feel.

 

OMNI:  Can therapy affect a change?

 

Miller:  Yes, but only if the therapy will come to the pain, which is blocked in our feelings of guilt.  The idea "I was guilty of what happened to me" is a blockage.  Since I discovered that Freud's drive theory not accidentally but necessarily conceals the reality of child abuse, I have looked for a new form of psychotherapy, an effective therapy to be based on the whole knowledge of child abuse available to us today.  I finally found it, and I will describe this concept in my next book.  This therapy enables the patient and the therapist to systematically come in touch with their traumas and pain -- step by step without suddenly breaking the defenses, without moralistic and pedagogical attitudes, and without bringing people into dangerous states where they experience chaotic feelings and are stuck with them.

 

One can find plenty of irresponsible and harmful techniques and mixtures of techniques that don't provide a systematic confrontation with the past.  Some leave people with different mystical offerings or with their unresolved pain.  These patients are victims first of child abuse and finally of therapy abuse.  And they try to "help" themselves by taking drugs, joining sects or gurus, or looking for other ways of denying reality and killing pain.  Political activity can be one of these ways.

 

OMNI:  What advice would you give today to a therapist in training?

 

Miller:  First try to discover your own childhood, then take the experience seriously.  Listen to the patient and not to any theory; with your theory you are not free to listen.  Forget it.  Do not analyze the patient like an object.  Try to feel, and help the patient to feel instead of talking to the patient about the feelings of others.

 

The child needs fantasies to survive, to not suffer.  Believe what the patient tells you, and don't forget that repressed reality is always worse than a fantasy.  No one invents traumas, because we don't need traumas in order to survive.  But neither do we need their denial.  Some of us pay with severe symptoms for this denial.  Study the history of childhood.  Therapy has to open you as well as the patient for feeling in your whole life.  It has to awaken you from a sleep.

 

It is tragic to go to therapy and find, instead of help, confusion.  I have a letter from a seventy-nine-year-old woman saying that for "forty years of my life I went to psychoanalysis.  I saw eight analysts.  But for the first time, after reading your book, I didn't feel guilty for what happened to me.  I always tried, and the analysts were nice people.  They wanted to help me.  But they never doubted that my parents were good to me.

 

I am so grateful now that I don't feel guilty since I read your books.  I now see how terribly they abused me.  It was first my parents and then my analysts who made me feel wrong and guilty."  This insight came from a seventy-nine-year-old woman!  Then she quoted from the last line of For Your Own Good:  "For the human spirit is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath."

 

OMNI:  Does TV violence affect children?

 

Miller:  Children who have really been loved and protected will not be interested in these films and shows and will not be in danger.  But the child who was hurt and humiliated -- maybe at school, not necessarily by his parents - is looking for outcomes, for material; he is looking for an object to hate and on whom to take revenge.  Of course there are people who make a business of the suffering of children.  But the violence doesn't come from TV films.  Its sources are deeper.  Protected and loved children cannot become murderers.  It is impossible to find one person who was not beaten who beats a child.

 

OMNI:  Why does violence beget itself through the generations?

 

Miller:  If you go back you can see that the abuser was always abused.  But in most cases you will not hear it from him or her, because there is so much denial.  If you go to a prison and ask a murderer, "How was your childhood?" he will say, "Oh, it was not so bad.  My father was severe and he punished me because I was so bad.  And my mother was a nice woman."  This is the problem:  You can't find the truth because the person, the murderer himself, will prevent you from seeing his cruel childhood as it actually was.  Because he cannot bear that pain, he kills innocent people instead of feeling the pain of his childhood.

 

OMNI:  Do you think a child can experience abuse in the womb?

 

Miller:  Of course.  Each child has its own experience; some experience real martyrdom.  There was a child born with three ulcers.  It died.  The mother was fifteen years old.  She was beaten during pregnancy as well, and she used drugs.  Nobody knows what a child, even in the womb, has to go through.  We are so ignorant, and we refuse to know.

 

You heard about the McMartin School in Los Angeles?  At this day-care center of more than three hundred children it was charged that many of them were sexually molested.  For seven months attorneys asked the children what happened to them there.  This questioning was torture for the children.  Some of them reported that they helped kill a baby.  The grown-ups found this wasn't true, so they called the children liars.  Eventually charges were dropped against five of the seven accused molesters.  But obviously this was a symbolic way to say, "When I agreed to be sexually abused I killed the child in myself."

 

I want to show how society reacts to children's reports.  Abuse means killing the soul of a child.  We cannot understand the child's symbolic language, so we say the child is lying.  Then abusing teachers go free, and we think that everything is legally correct.  The problem is that children protect the abuser.  Sometimes the abuser is exchanged for another person in their reports.  They perhaps say, "I'm afraid of the mailman because he was bad to me."

 

And the parents know that the mailman had no body contact with their child.  But behind the "made-up" story lurks a father or uncle.  The lie functions to protect the loved person but at the same time expresses anxieties.  Grown-ups say that these are children who invent stories.  But the story is not invented; a real event happened.

 

OMNI:  Can society learn to understand the child's language?

 

Miller:  I hope so.  Otherwise we will commit a mass suicide with the help of technology.  The child's language is often very clear, but we refuse to listen to it.  Children can endure terrible abuse and cruelty from the first moment of their lives, thanks to the technology in hospitals.  The abuse is stored up in the mind, and it can remain active the whole life.  Therefore, a mother maltreating her small baby can repeat exactly what happened to her without having any knowledge, any conscious memories.  But the stored-up memories in her body will compel her to repeat the same trauma.

 

Unless a child receives the warm arms of a person who will console him and tell him with his arms that the shock of birth is over, this child will wait his whole life expecting a repetition of this shock.  One of the first lessons is that you are alone, in a dangerous place, and nobody sees your pain.  But this situation can easily be changed when we acknowledge the newborn as a feeling and highly sensitive person.

 

Very often the child comes into life after a struggle, and we don't realize that he needs consolation and the arms of a mother.  We give him medication, hospitals, and high technology instead.  And we think it is good for the child -- only because we had the same experience years ago and think it is usual.  What really happens in the psyche of a newborn is absolutely not interesting to most people.  That is why I am giving you this interview.

 

OMNI:  What would you like to do now?

 

Miller:  I would like to support people who are confronting child abuse.  I received a letter from a child therapist in California.  He was a consultant for a school.  A girl told him stories of a "hot box," a tiny windowless closet in which the children were locked up as punishment.  He believed her, investigated, and, when he wrote a report about it, was fired.  But he kept on investigating and found these hot boxes used in other schools.

 

Newspapers reported about the case, and his voice and experience were noticed.  He thanked me because he felt supported by my books.  This shows one person can make people aware that methods they never questioned before are, in fact, damaging.  The single advocate of a child can save a life; advocates say a crime is a crime; they don't conceal the truth by calling it ambivalent parent's love.

 

An advocate can help keep a child from becoming a criminal.  The child learns from an enlightened witness to recognize cruelty, to reject it, to defend himself against it, so as not to perpetuate it.  Experiments have conclusively proven that no one learns anything by punishment.  What you learn is how to avoid punishment by lies and how to punish a child twenty to thirty years later.  People continue to believe, however, that punishment can be effective.

 

OMNI:  Can you change this belief?

 

Miller:  I hope so, at least partly.  My life and work concentrate on the problem of child abuse and on the question of how I can transmit what I have learned about it to professionals, parents, and people responsible for law.  It's not easy, because most people learned from the beginning of their lives that the child has to be spanked in order to become as good, human, honest, tolerant as the teachers, parents, ministers, and others around them believe that they are.

 

In England, where I've given some radio shows, interviewers often say, "You talk about the serious forms of violence and brutality in families, but there are also other forms -- spankings, caning, shouting at a child."  The interviewers claim these forms of exercising power are harmless and not serious, and they argue that although they were often spanked as children, they didn't become an Adolf Hitler.

 

I see it as my task to repeat that each kind of beating, caning, and spanking of a child is a humiliation and is a serious damage for his whole life.  A child can avoid becoming a criminal if he has the chance in childhood to meet at least one person who is not cruel to him, who maybe even likes him or understands him.  The experience of love, compassion, or sympathy would help him to recognize cruelty for what it is.

 

Children who lack this experience because there is no conscious witness will see cruelty as a normal way of treating children and will continue with this burden.  They will become as Hitler, Eichmann, [Rudolf] Hoss, and all the millions of their followers who in their childhoods never found anything but cruelty.

 

OMNI:  What about the milder forms of cruelty, such as spanking, shouting, and verbal humiliation?

 

Miller:  The tragedy is that people treated this way - even if they don't become like Hitler - pretend that this kind of treatment was necessary.  They reserve the right to do the same to their children and are reluctant to pass laws forbidding spanking.  In Britain such a law was not passed until 1986, and I see this delay as one of the effects of child abuse there.

 

The ignorance of our society is the result of child abuse.  We were spanked in order to become blind like Oedipus.  We have to become seeing in order to give our children the chance to grow up with more responsibility and more awareness than was available for our generation now producing atomic bombs.
http://www.alice-miller.com/interviews_en.php?page=6

Letter to D

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 believes, just like an immature authoritarian parent forces their small children to listen to them and I 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 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 and 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 some day.

What I see happening with you guys is that you all split from 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

People Unlimited, Inc. My experience with an Arizona cult

Comment by M: "I see that some illusions can be very dangerous even if we recognize them for what they are." -- Sylvie, 2011 Awesome.

Also, read in the link below my comment on an article in the local newspaper about the death of the founder of People Unlimited: My Comment on the Article: Immortality eludes People Unlimited founder
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-comment-on-article-immortality.html

When I posted the blog, letter to XA, I recognize now that I was suffering a little bit from Stockholm Syndrome, and so I kept everyone anonymous when I shared my experiences with this cult as a guest, for about 4 months, in order to protect them. Although I saw them very clearly from the beginning, they were also charming and entertaining. I liked them, and at first, I said to myself: This group believes in physical immortality and wants to live forever! What’s wrong with that? Nothing, right? Well, plenty! When it’s used to control people to make them believe that to be physically immortal, they have to join their group, and then be scared into thinking that if they leave the group, they will die.

I will continue to keep individual names anonymous by only using their initials. I will, however, reveal the name of this charming cult, based here in Scottsdale, Arizona, to warn people of the dangers of joining a cult. This cult works hard at deceiving people, consciously or unconsciously, using deceptive tactics, such as brainwashing and mind-controlling techniques, to regress people to the wounded child that they once were. Then, by keeping them stuck there, they can exploit, manipulate, and use them.

The quote below is so accurate! I have seen it happen so many times, and it came to mind my experience with JB in the cult People Unlimited.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you rarely get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

JB: You are so far out on a limb that I’m sure you’re not interested in what I say and feel. If you had, you would never have deluded yourself to this extent.

Sylvie: I love being out on the limb! I have a better view from there!

I respect you more than you can ever imagine, and I do care about how you feel. But it's your true feelings that you have been so disconnected from for so long, that it would take years for you to get in touch with and discern what emotions and thoughts belong to whom, because they have been immersed with others for so many years.

I am glad this charade is over and I don’t have to pretend not to see what I really see -- THE EMPEROR IS NAKED! I have learned that people are not always what they say they are, because most people live in denial of who they truly are. You all say that People Unlimited Inc. is not a religion. But if I dissect it, that’s EXACTLY what it is, with its brand new, pretty, seductive, and attractive beliefs, plus the brand new, very alluring label. You see, most religions believe in a god that no one can prove. People who believe in God say they feel it, and some even proclaim that God talks to them. People Unlimited Inc. believes in physical immortality, and they claim it's a physical sensation as well. Nobody has ever lived forever, and no one can prove it's possible either. So it's just a belief, much like believing in God, which is very much like most religions. Based on beliefs, like most religions, CB quotes the bible also to provide evidence that what you are saying is true.

I don’t have beliefs anymore. There are things I know, and there are things I don’t know. When we know instead of believing, we will find the courage to be true to ourselves. Beliefs are passed down to us, so they should be received with doubt. To know comes from within.

Every person I've encountered on this planet so far suffers from some type of denial, and People Unlimited Inc. suffers from the ultimate denial -- Denial of Death! Today, I have more vitality than ever before, and I am more immortal and alive than anyone at People Unlimited Inc. Will I feel this way forever? I don’t know, and I am not worried about it. I am going to savor this feeling for as long as I can.

You are the one who joined a cult. If someone is deluded here, it has to be you. I understand that you were very young, in a war zone at the time. I cannot imagine what that was like, being in a war zone and hearing bombs. I hope I never know what that is like. You were a vulnerable young man trying to figure out your path in life when these charismatic individuals, with their seductive beliefs and alluring labels, captivated you. Now, it must be painful to face and feel that you have wasted 20 years of your life on this illusion. It's starting to take an effect on your body and could bring you a premature death. How ironic that death is what you are all trying to avoid. Nothing can affect our mental and physical health more than believing in lies and illusions.

JB: I can assure you that my life is entirely of my own making, and I am very pleased with the achievements thus far. More so now than ever.

Sylvie: I know this is painful and hard to hear, but joining a cult and getting involved intimately with the cult leader that is 30 years older than you, older than your mother (by just a few months), but still older than your mother and allowing her to control and manipulate you, no matter how fun, seductive, and charismatic the leaders are, is not an achievement to be proud of.

If what you are saying is true, you would not be upset by my observations. When people tell me things about myself that are not true and I am sure in my heart that I am right, I just smile and say: Really?

JB: My health is increasing every day, and on a deeper level of the body than you can possibly be aware of. I think you are too insecure to be anything but the “teacher,” and so you just teach, teach, teach, even when there is something huge for you to learn. In fact, the more insecure you feel, the more you act as a “teacher.”

Sylvie: I hope your health is better and you are feeling better and better.

Your words above are pure projections -- who are the teachers/preachers, really? Who preaches/teaches, preaches/teaches, and preaches/teaches in front of a congregation? The more insecure you become, the more you preach and teach, refusing to acknowledge reality and the facts. Children who are preached to learn how to preach, and that is exactly what BB is doing. She came from a family of preachers, and she learned her childhood lesson very well. Her son, KB, has also learned that lesson very well. The only thing that had changed was the beliefs and the brand-new, seductive label. Everything you had written in the last e-mail is just pure projections and transferences of disowned feelings that you and BB can’t admit to. The more insecure you all feel, the more dependent you all become on your congregation that plays the role of the “good child,” so you can use them to project your disowned feelings and insecurities.

JB: There’s a saying – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And you’ve got it.

Sylvie:  I might have little knowledge, but I acquired the proper knowledge! It’s not the quantity that matters, but the quality. Many people develop what I call empty knowledge, which only serves to impress, control, and manipulate others, but has no real value whatsoever. What’s truly sad is that most people carry this poisonous pedagogy and spread it, infecting everyone with it. So again, whose knowledge is dangerous? You are the ones using your knowledge combined  with disconnected truths or lies with small bits of truth to control and manipulate the followers of People Unlimited Inc., keeping them dependent or stuck in the role of a child.

JB: From the emails you’ve sent me, I know you give this same treatment to many people, so I am not different in that regard. You have the same story for everyone, and that is control, plain and simple.

Sylvie: Most people I write to don’t share your opinion. Look deeper and see who is in control and who is being controlled. I just dared to say that the EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES ON. I share what I see and feel, and you are free to agree or disagree with me. If you could see it too, that THE EMPEROR IS NAKED, that would have been great for your health and liberation. But if you don’t see it, then you are going to suffer the consequences of being emotionally blind. What you do with the information I gave you is your business. You can choose to reflect on it or discard it. The choice is yours.

The fears you all feel are the internalized fears of the children you once were, of parents’ punishments, and you are projecting them on me because I triggered them. I, however, am not the cause of your fears and anger. I am just the trigger, because I spoke of the things you don’t want to, or are not ready to look at, because they are too scary and painful to admit, face, and feel. If you continue to project these fears and anger onto scapegoats, they will never be resolved. Only when we understand the roots of our fears, anger, and pain can they be resolved. It starts to diminish and eventually leaves our body completely, and can never be triggered by anyone, no matter what, because it’s no longer inside our bodies to be triggered again and again. We will have no more buttons to be pushed; certain past events might still remind us of past trauma, but they will no longer throw us off base by regressing us to the wounded child we once were. We remain the adults we are now and deal with the present situation lucidly.

You all say it’s good to stir people up and push their buttons. You love to use this slogan, “Face everything and avoid nothing.” I felt this was just a slogan to manipulate the followers of People Unlimited Inc. It did fool me for a little while, but I was aware that it could be just a slogan, like the ones politicians use to get our votes. Now I have confirmation on this, because when someone comes along and stirs you up, pushing your buttons and presenting some facts and realities, you don’t like it, and you get defensive. What are behaviors like this called? Oh yes, it’s called hypocrisy. Also, you guys say that we have to get the ego out of the way. The leaders attempt to undermine the followers' self-esteem so they can exert control over them. However, the ego can be a beneficial trait, as it protects us from being exploited by others -- and again, who has the most enormous ego in People Unlimited Inc., if not the leaders?

JB: Your sisters have made more of an impression on you than you admit.

Sylvie: I have dealt with my internalized sisters, and there might be residue left. If it does come to the surface, I recognize it right away and now know how to handle it. Until today, my ex was the only person who triggered my internalized older sisters, and he was the only one I reenacted them with. Now I am very conscious of my internalized older sisters, and I will be cautious not to reenact them again with anyone else. Now let’s look at you. Aren't you reenacting your internalized mother by lashing out at anyone who questions your beliefs -- just like your mother did to you when you used to ask her?

JB: Without invitation, you saw me in the hospital at my most vulnerable. You’ve abused that intimacy by judging me according to your own narrow agenda. You say you care, but your caring is twisted with judgment. And your judgment is ignorant and banal.

Sylvie: I am sorry if you felt violated by my stopping at the hospital to see you. I thought we were friends. Now it’s very clear to me that if I don’t become a member of People Unlimited Inc., I will be treated like an outsider. This is one of the reasons why this cult can be dangerous. It tries to control and manipulate the members' contact with the outside world. While everyone thought I might become a member, I was treated very nicely. However, when I said I couldn't become a member, I was then treated like a bad person, as if everyone in the outside world was bad. When we are not emotionally blind, it’s very easy to see where everyone is at, at any given moment, and no one can fool us anymore.

I saw your situation very clearly, so I was very aware of the risk I was taking by hiring you to help me on this project. You are a talented writer, and I hope you use your talent to reveal the truth, rather than using it to deceive yourself and others.

Also, you are the one judging me by your narrow agenda. So, who is twisted with judgment? And whose judgment is ignorant and banal? I understand your situation, and it is sad seeing you falling victim to illusions.

JB: You’ve taken me lightly. You’ve missed me completely. You’ve dismissed my own expression as if it means nothing compared to your little corner of knowledge.

Sylvie: I see you clearly, and I understand why it’s so hard for you to acknowledge the truths I am talking about. You are the one taking yourself lightly. If someone is missing something, it’s that you're missing yourself completely, and that is what’s really sad. If we don’t miss ourselves, it does not matter if others miss us or not. So, if I missed you, it wouldn't have mattered if you weren't missing yourself.

Again, look a little deeper and see who is really dismissing you. Your body has been screaming at you to pay attention, and you are ignoring its signals and refusing to explore the real causes of your pain. If someone is dismissing someone, it is you dismissing yourself. You are the one dismissing your own body’s expression as if it means nothing compared to the little corner of your intellectual knowledge.

JB: But you can’t dismiss this: I don’t associate with people who don’t respect me and my life. I know you have problems in your life and that you are trying to work them out by working on other people. But nothing excuses the lack of respect you show me.

Sylvie: Again, let’s look a little deeper to see who doesn't respect themselves. When I debated becoming a member (I can hardly believe I even considered it, thinking I might be of help to the members of People Unlimited Inc.), I came to my senses. I realized that becoming a member would jeopardize the autonomy I had achieved. I am not willing to give up my independence now to anyone.

In my last meeting with BB, she insinuated that if I became a member and I liked JB, she was willing to give him up and let me have him if I wanted him. So who would sell you just to acquire one more member? Again, who is disrespecting whom?

I no longer get tempted or distracted by attractions. I am very aware of what that can mean — the repetition of the past, and I don’t go there anymore. My path is forward, and I won't repeat the past. No matter how seductive and alluring the new label may be, she can have you all for herself. You are a very talented and attractive guy, but I am not about to join a cult just to be with a handsome guy who has a talent I wish I had. I did crazy stuff like that with my ex, and I am not repeating crazy things like that ever again. I did a lot of emotional work, and I finally broke free from the emotional prison I was born into. I am not going to give up the freedom I achieved and join a cult for anyone.

Additionally, who guides and counsels a congregation? If anyone is working on others without solving their problems first, it's you. I also refrain from getting involved intimately with people who unconsciously or consciously choose to believe in lies and illusions, regardless of how seductive, charismatic, attractive, and talented they may be.

JB: I will complete the section of the project I’m working on that you’ve paid for, and that is it. I’ll send it to you and arrange to return the materials of yours that I have. That will be the end of it. You always worried about this process getting interrupted, and now you have created it. The sabotage is yours.

Sylvie: Again, the only life that is being sabotaged here is yours. I know without a doubt that I am on the right path, and this, for me, is just a bump in the road. This project will get done with or without your help; it will just take a little longer. I have made a lot of money and lost a lot of it, and I have learned a valuable financial lesson, for which I am grateful. I made a lot of money, so I could afford the costly financial lesson, and now I am totally detached when it comes to money. I know I can always make more.

Don’t bother finishing the last pages, because I know your heart isn't in it, and I don’t want anyone to work for me unless their heart is in it. Keep whatever money is left as a gift and send along the notes I have sent you, along with what you have done.

I also felt you found my website and thought I was still the wounded child I talked about in my story, and that you all could use, exploit, and manipulate like a puppet -- and that is why you contacted me. That was a HUGE MISTAKE, because I am probably one of the very few people you will ever meet who has truthfully dealt with her repression. For that reason, I am no longer in the victim/child role for the unconsciously repressed people in power positions to use and to project and transfer their disowned feelings and insecurities onto, no matter how charismatic and beautiful they are. I now have proof that my feelings and perceptions were correct. You guys are not safe to be involved with at the intimate level. I made the right decision not to join People Unlimited Inc.

Wishing you much courage and strength to face and acknowledge your painful truths. If you ever need someone to talk to, I will be forever available. Sylvie 

JB: As you wish . . . Here are the notes for the last three sections of the project. If you provide your work address, I will drop the books and letters off there.

Sylvie: Thank you, JB. Don’t worry about the books. You are welcome to keep them, maybe one day you all find the courage to read them and help you all deal with your repression and become a faithful enlightened witness to yourself and everyone that comes through People Unlimited Inc and help you all become more real and not so afraid because when we really deal with our repression and become real, there is nothing to fear.

 Just send the letters to my P. O. Box

I am not in the business of hurting people; instead, I help them become real and free in the kindest way possible. I am not perfect, just like no one else on this planet, and I know I can sometimes be brutally honest; I am accused of that all the time. I apologize for that, but I feel the truth is the best gift we can give to anyone, and we must have the courage to speak it, even at the risk of triggering people’s fears, anger, and pain, and projecting it onto me and blaming me for it. Michael Jackson might still be here with us today if he had someone in his life with the courage to speak the truth to him. This situation showed me that I am becoming a lot better at handling other people’s transference.

Please read "Gurus and Cult Leaders: How They Function." 

Sylvie: Last night I dreamed about you and BB!

I dreamed I stopped by your house for a visit! I wish we didn't have so many differences between us, and we could all spend time together, but for now, that’s the way it is. I know, in spite of our differences, that you are all good people, and maybe someday our differences will be resolved. I hope you are feeling all better, but I still worry about your health and well being, as I think that there are things you need to see in your life and make a few adjustments in your personal life that until you do that your back and health is going to continue to suffer, you have been carrying an emotional load that does not belong to you for tooooooooo many years and that’s why your back is suffering and until you let go of this emotional load and give it back to the right person your health and back will keep getting aggravated, but because your loyalty you are not completely being true to yourself and when we are not true to ourselves our health suffers. When I read Norman’s and Alice Miller’s words below, you come to my mind. 

Saying the truth or being loyal

Dear Alice Miller, feel free to publish this letter on your website if you find it interesting.

In your post "Barbara's Forum 2", you write that instead of understanding, you received personal attacks. I am sorry to hear that, because I was personally attacked as well. Like you, I was attacked after I criticized IFS therapy (in my forum). Why did I have to be attacked? Because I expressed disagreement with a person I was supposed to be "loyal" to?

Criticism is essential when we work to find the truth; sometimes, this truth is more important to me than "loyalty". It is not possible to hold one's own opinion and claim that everyone is right at the same time. There is a difference between the truth and lies, and you have shown in numerous examples that the body also knows it. No postmodern philosophy or eclectic naivety can alter this fundamental fact of life. The truth is not always easy to accept, of course. It is often painful and unwelcome. Besides, it makes us mad when someone else points a finger and says, "You're wrong". But what if he is correct?

You were attacked personally because you "dared" to criticize and to break your "loyalty" in order not to betray yourself and your convictions. Some people obviously thought that this was reason enough to try to punish you. To me, it was familiar because this is what my mother did whenever I dared to question her versions of the truth: to punish me, to try to belittle me.

This was the dictatorship I grew up in, like so many other readers, I am sure. Indeed, this is how my persecutors' mothers had done to them in childhood: punished them for criticism. What other reason can there be for their behavior? Seemingly free from their mothers, they fight their scapegoats in the name of freedom. They were taught that to criticize is a crime against humanity and that they have to always smile with agreement, unless they are treated with the most brutal sadism possible. They were told to keep their opinions to themselves because it is rude to disagree. Such people's rage is understandable. Every child needs her parents to appreciate and listen to her views. What is less acceptable is their behavior and hypocrisy as adults.

N.

AM: I agree with you. Fortunate are the few children who can express their criticism, who are listened to, taken seriously, and understood by their parents. They receive a precious gift for their whole life. But for most children, saying the truth meant mortal danger. They are often brutally punished simply for speaking their minds and expressing their honest feelings and thoughts. As adults, they usually use the same means as their parents did before, without being aware of the consequences. They are blindly attacking everybody who questions their traditional "opinions" given by their parents. Their children can do nothing else but obey and stay loyal. Only adults can take legal action if it involves criminal harassment or severe defamation.

JB: Sylvie – I am feeling better every day, and I’m pleased about it. You’re speaking in code here, and you’re not being clear about what you are getting at. But I honestly don’t think you’ve gone to the depth to understand me or what I have been through. To be very frank with you, your worry feels a lot like a lack of control. I am not controllable, so you might as well give up. I’m hoping you can reflect on yourself and get what I mean about being controlling, because it will free you in ways that would be wonderful for you. I can tell you that for me, this control is totally dull and dead. My not responding to it is the best encouragement I can give you to let go.

Best,

JB

Sylvie: Hi JB, I am glad to hear you are feeling better every day. Thank you for writing and sharing your thoughts and feelings. I understand your feelings and where they come from, even though those feelings are being misdirected. To protect the people we love in our lives, seeing them clearly does not mean we love them any less; to the contrary, we can be more helpful to them and ourselves. You have been controlled and manipulated for many years. Your anger is justified, but directing it at the wrong person does not resolve the issue, and this has been the main reason for your back problems. I am pretty sure that if you had seen this earlier and taken this person off your back, your back would have healed without the need for surgery. I have been trying to help you see it because that would benefit your overall health, and in the process, free you to write my project effortlessly. The fact that you cannot see yourself and the people in your life clearly might affect my project; time will tell. I am totally detached, and whatever happens, happens. Still, of course, I would like you to take this job to the end, because you are a very talented writer, and I can only imagine how high you could fly if you could break free. If you don’t want to deal with me or the material of my project, please be honest with me and let me know. Then, you can finish the last paid pages, and we will be done. You won't have to deal with me anymore. The fact that I cannot express myself freely with you is becoming very uncomfortable, and I am getting tired of tiptoeing on eggshells.  I understand you are not ready to see certain things in your life, and I will give up trying and let it go. I apologize for even trying. I know I cannot make someone see what they don’t want to or are not ready to see, because trying to force someone to see that would be reenacting my childhood drama all over again, so I will let it go.

But please know that if you ever need someone to talk to, I am available forever. Sylvie

JB: Sylvie – speak plainly. Who are you saying is the person manipulating me?

Sylvie: JB, I wish you could figure it out for yourself and I know it’s hard, painful for you to see that you are repeating, reenacting your childhood drama, the first manipulative person in your life was your mother and you freed yourself from her, but you found the mother of manipulation, a more sophisticated, more intelligent, charming and manipulative person to take over where your mother left off and your childhood drama continues, but now with brand new seductive label. I am not going to mention her name because I like her too, but if you don’t get this person off your back, your health will continue to suffer. If you could take a vacation alone, maybe visit your family for a while and spend as much time alone as possible to be with your true feelings and thoughts without the interference of others feelings and thoughts, it might help you see for yourself and sort it all out, so you can see what feelings and thoughts are truthful yours, because when we are in the middle of things it’s hard to see the roles everyone is playing and what feelings belong to whom. Of course, this is just a suggestion. And I can’t be more blunt than this.

Wishing much courage to see yourself and others clearly, Sylvie    

Subject: Received Letters --- Thank you    SAT, 10-31-10 8:59 AM

If you ever gather the courage to see and feel the painful truths behind the beautiful veil of People Unlimited Inc. You have a friend here who will always understand you. You know how to find me.

Best, Sylvie

JB: I’m sorry you feel that way, Sylvie. You are so far out on a limb that I’m sure you’re not interested in what I say and feel. If you had, you would never have deluded yourself to this extent.

My life is entirely of my own making, and I am very pleased with the achievement thus far. More so now than ever.

My health is increasing every day, and on a deeper level of the body than you can possibly be aware of. I think you are too insecure to be anything but the “teacher,” and so you just teach, teach, teach, even when there is something huge for you to learn. In fact, the more insecure you feel, the more you act as “teacher.” There’s a saying – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And you’ve got it.

From the emails you’ve sent me, I know you give this same treatment to many people, so I am not different in that regard. You have the same story for everyone, and that is control, plain and simple.

Your sisters have made a greater impression on you than you admit.  Without invitation, you saw me in the hospital at my most vulnerable. You’ve abused that intimacy by judging me according to your own narrow agenda. You say you care, but your caring is twisted with judgment. And your judgment is ignorant and banal. You’ve taken me lightly. You’ve missed me completely. You’ve dismissed my own expression as if it means nothing compared to your little corner of knowledge.

But you can’t dismiss this: I don’t associate with people who don’t respect me and my life. I know you have problems in your life and that you are trying to work them out by working on other people. But nothing excuses the lack of respect you show me.

I will complete the section of the project I’m working on that you’ve paid for, and that is it. I’ll send it to you and arrange to return the materials of yours that I have. That will be the end of it. You have always worried about the process of writing your project getting interrupted, and now you have completed it. The sabotage is yours.

 JB

Also, read in the link below my comment to an article in the local newspaper about the death of the founder of People Unlimited: My Comment on the Article: Immortality eludes People Unlimited founder
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-comment-on-article-immortality.html

JB's past e-mails

Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010, 10:19 AM

Hi JB,

I was pleased with our meeting yesterday! I am looking forward to going with you on Friday to People Unlimited Inc., but I have to be honest with you that I am a little skeptical. I went to the website, and I liked a lot of the content I read, especially how our beliefs often get us into trouble. I tell people that I don’t have beliefs anymore! There are things I know, and there are things that I don’t know! When we know instead of believing, we will have the courage to be true to ourselves. Beliefs are passed down to us, so they should be received with doubt! Of course, now that I am living my real life, I would love to prolong it for a very long time! But forever! I don’t know if such a thing is possible! I usually say: the first 20 years of our lives, our family screw us up and the second twenty years of our lives we unconsciously and compulsively keep repeating, recreating, reenacting our childhood drama over and over again… for those of us fortune to have courage to explore and look at the naked true and capable of feeling all of our feelings and repressed emotions, we can free ourselves from the vicious circle and if we live until we are 90, we really only get to live 50 years of our actual life!!!

See you Friday, sylvie

RE: Thursday, February 18,2010 10:24 AM

Just after I sent you an email, I got yours. Your skepticism is perfectly understandable, and I’m glad you’re coming to see for yourself. As you say, we spend a lot of time clearing out old baggage, so I say the best is yet to come!

From: Sylvie  Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010, 1:26 PM To JB Subject: Re: I had fun last night!!!

Hi JB, I hope you are having a good weekend. Now that I have had a good night's sleep and can reflect on everything, I have a few questions. As I said yesterday, I had a fun Friday night and enjoyed the singers, dancers, and listening to the things they were saying, because I identified with most of it, NOT ALL OF IT! And I would definitely love to go back on a Friday here and there and spend time with these fun people. As I mentioned to the leaders, it has been a long and arduous journey to reach my current position. Now looking back, I see clearly through the manipulations and can articulate how I truly feel! I am curious how long exactly you have been with People Unlimited Inc? And how exactly were you feeling when you joined the group? Also, have you ever taken a break from the group? Do you like stopping for long periods of time? And if you have taken a long break from People Unlimited Inc., did the old feelings come back? I hope that you don’t feel I am intruding, but I must have an open and honest relationship with the person who will help me write my project. I hope you mean the words   “Face everything and avoid nothing.”  I have shared with you that Deepak Chopra is my favorite charlatan because I really enjoy listening to most of what he has to say. I feel that people like him, who are very articulate and say seductive words and beautiful things that make us feel good, keep us numb, just like a drug.  My experience has been the same as Alice Miller’ as she says in her article “The Longest Journey”  “…It has taken me all my life to allow myself to be what I am and to listen to what my inner self is telling me, more and more directly, without waiting for permission from others or currying approval from people symbolizing my parents.”  

The group People Unlimited Inc. could become the substitute parents and wants their followers to be dependent on them, just like parents/caretakers enjoyed controlling, manipulating, and having their children dependent on them. The more controlling, manipulative, and abusive the families of origin are, the more their children become dependent on them or the more vulnerable they become in adult life to become dependent on charismatic people symbolizing their parents and staying trapped in the type of relationships where one plays the role of parent and others play the role of the child. Another example is the followers of the Secret by James Arthur Ray, who symbolized their parents/caretakers, and the followers, “the good children,” following his directions without question. Two of them paid the price with their lives for this mistake. Another example is religion; it is the all-powerful parent, and the followers' permanent role is that of a child.  Our goal is to become independent adults, stand on our own two feet without crutches.

I am going to share with you, in the link below, three emails I sent to Oprah. I am sure she never read them. However, what I said to her provides an example of what I am trying to convey here, as well as a blog I posted on Facebook about Oprah.

Letters to Oprah

Oprah is more concerned about her image than the truth and facts

Have a good day and talk later, Sylvie

Hi Sylvie, yes, the weekend was excellent. I thought of you and wished you could have been there. I appreciate you sharing your feelings with me about your experience with us at People Unlimited Inc., and I want you to always feel free to do so. I’m in a bit of a rush this morning, catching up on work, but I’ll be happy to share my own experiences and discuss further. I think it’s essential to consider everything so you can truly understand how you feel about us. We actually discussed the parent thing this weekend, how each person has to experience being physically immortal for themselves. Yes, we have great people to lead things, but ultimately, it’s personal; it comes down to each one of us experiencing who we really are. We are serious about ending death, which means ending all the old structures and manipulations and roles people have played with each other, because those are the boxes that turn into coffins. So we’re about being out of the box all the way! I’m glad you’ll be with us on Friday, as it’s an ongoing unfolding of our lives, and you can feel free to ask questions at the events as well.

Talk to you soon!

 JB

From: Sylvie Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 1:55 PM

To: JB Subject: RE: I had fun last night!!!

Hi JB, thank you for writing.

The part I had a problem with was when BB and JS said they needed us, and we needed the group. We need to have both feet in the group, not one foot in and one foot out, and they need to attend all the time. I see that as trying to manipulate people to feel they need the group or vice versa, to achieve the feeling of being alive, immortal; to me, that is a reenacting all over again a dependent relationship, like parent and child, one being in the role of parent (the leaders) and the other being in the role of a child (the followers). I am a great example that we can achieve this feeling without being dependent on anyone or group; actually, we will never achieve freedom and autonomy if we remain stuck in a dependent relationship. Today I feel immortal!  And I am completely alive! Will I feel this way forever? I don’t know, and I am not concerned about it. I achieved this state alone, with the help of Alice Miller's books and website, without being dependent on her or her influence. We do need a true enlightened whiteness, but it can be found in anyone, in the form of a book, rather than in a specific person or group. Whenever you have extra time, read the article “The Essential Role of an Enlightened Witness in Society” in the link below. I will try to share my experiences in events someday, but I am not used to speaking in front of an audience, and it won't be easy for me. However, I see it as an excellent opportunity to practice public speaking. Talk later, Sylvie

RE: I had fun last night!!! Thursday, 2-25-10 9:56 AM

Hi Sylvie – if you can listen to the radio show today, it might just help address some of your concerns – 11:00 a.m. or 1100kfnx.com. I know this is a last-minute warning again. . .

 Best,

JB

From: Sylvie  Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 9:01 AM To: JB Subject: need to clarify something...

Hi JB,

Yesterday I enjoyed the entertainment and listened to everyone's expressions! You're a lot of fun and good people to be around!

Next Friday, I will have to go to People Unlimited and express myself again, as I did last night. Yesterday, I said I arrived at this place of happiness and joy alone. It's true, but it's not the complete truth. Being completely honest is the only way I can be.  BB says that we need the support of other people, which is very accurate; we cannot make it alone without finding the support of another like-minded person, but where I don’t entirely agree is that it has to be at the physical level. I arrived here physically alone, but I received support from another person who could see exactly what I saw and felt, albeit indirectly, through books. And I found this support at a crucial time, because I don’t think I would have survived much longer alone with the Knowledge I always knew. 

I hope you are having a good day and are feeling pain-free. Best wishes, Sylvie

From: JB Subject: RE: need to clarify something...To: "Sylvie Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 11:25 AM

Sylvie – I’m so glad that you found the support you needed, however it came. What we’re looking at now is about being here forever. I don’t think a book is going to do it for any of us in that regard. To live forever, it will take people. This is a big one, because death comes by way of people, too, which makes us not want to go too deep with people. So it has to be the RIGHT people. We also need to be aware of the difference. And that’s a huge thing to get in touch with! But then again, we are huge people, right?

Best,

JB

From: Sylvie  Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 10:24 AM To: JB Subject: RE: need to clarify something...

Hi JB,

Nice to hear from you -- How have you been feeling? You have been on my mind a lot. I hope your pain has not been bothering you too much. I used to suffer from allergies, and I have no doubt that the reason I suffered from allergies was because of my childhood repression. As soon as I made the connection and consciously felt the repressed emotions still in me, from my childhood, the allergies left me. My allergies got really bad! Constantly running nose! Like a faucet! Eyes burning! I could not breathe! It was awful! I am sooooo happy to finally be free from this condition and never have to take another allergy pill. When the time arrives that repression no longer works, the body symptoms get worse and worse to force us to pay attention and listen to the child we once were, and feel the genuine emotions still repressed in us. It reminds me of Alice Miller’s words to one of her readers: “…..Giving drama to your parents will hardly help you. Even if your parents changed, miraculously, the memory of what happened to you when you were a small child will stay unchanged, and will need your feelings of pain and anger to be able to bring you the health and freedom you are looking for. ....”

  ....I went through this illusion for years, writing letters to my family and sending them all books. Still, they could not face, see the truth, and feel their repressed emotions, and at the end, I had to feel my pain of coming from a family that lacks courage and is not capable of seeing and feeling, and I had to feel all of my repressed emotions alone. I remember one day going through my rage towards my family and ripping some of their pictures that I had with me in the States. Like Alice Miller said to his readers, even if they “miraculously changed,” I still would have to feel my repressed emotions, and nothing could ever have changed that. ....

Sometimes I feel concerned that ghostwriting my project might trigger painful repressed emotions, and if you are not ready to deal with them, you will lose interest in ghostwriting my project.

 Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, Sylvie

From: JB Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 03:59 PM To: Sylvie Subject: RE: need to clarify something...

Hi Sylvie – thank you for your email, and I’m glad you enjoyed the radio show. I am doing really well and am looking forward to your project. I’m not afraid in the least. So, pls. Don’t worry about that. The thing that bothers me the most is boredom. And I don’t think your project will be boring.

I’ve been through a lot of tough things both before and after I woke to physical immortality. I went through a lot with my family and experienced a lot of frustration trying to get them to see what I saw. Finally, I gave it up – one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I agree that repression of childhood experiences can wreak havoc in the body. However, I don’t think it’s the cause of all bodily pain. Sometimes we just need extra work in certain areas to rebuild our bodies from wear and tear, such as through sports and prolonged periods of sitting at a desk.

My main childhood-related thing was emotional pain. The more I woke up, the more I became aware of the depression in my body. It used to be a daily battle for me, but I never accepted that I was supposed to be depressed. Quite the opposite, I knew it was a lie, so I just kept going until now. I just don’t feel it anymore. This is great.

I will get you an estimate for the project by this weekend.

See you tomorrow!

JB

From: sylvie Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 10:58 AM To: JB Subject: the danger of gurus

 OPEN LETTER TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE FORUM - MAY 2001

To Steven and all the others:  I'm not a guru.

Hi Steven, thank you for raising the issue of "guruism" and for sharing your concerns with me.  To be a guru-believer and wanting to grow is, in my opinion, a contradiction in itself because a guru sells his "wisdom" at the price of people's authenticity.  I hope that nobody here will need to see in me a guru, especially if you make them aware of this danger to them, as you convincingly did in your letter of May 16 to Anna.

You wonder about my childhood.  Like you, I was a stranger to everybody in my family.  Today, I know for sure that I was unwanted, rejected from the moment of conception on, never loved, emotionally completely neglected, and used for the needs of others.  But above all, I was lied to; I grew up with a perfect hypocrisy.  My parents, both absolutely unconscious of their true feelings, pretended to love me very much, and I believed this (because I so much needed this illusion) for more than 40 years of my life until I started to suspect the truth hidden behind their pretensions, hidden probably to them too.

Suspecting is not yet as much as knowing for sure, but it was the start.  It took me 20 years more to get rid of my denial because I was so alone with the knowledge of my body and my dreams, and a wall of denial surrounded me wherever I opened my mouth.  Writing and painting were the only ways to continue with my search without being offended and "punished" for being a troublemaker.

The reactions to my writing showed me that what I discovered was also true for others.  I felt then less alone.  I began to work with groups of young parents. I found, again and again, the same pattern: the emotional blindness of parents who were afraid of confronting their past traumas and inflicting them unconsciously on their children.  And now we are finding it together on this forum.  Thus, for the first time in my life, I no longer feel like a stranger; I feel like a member of a group of people who think like me, whom I don't need to convince, to inform, to shake, to wake up.  I am here with people who are not scared by what I am saying, who understand me because they have known the same terror, who say so many things that move me profoundly, and with whom I can openly communicate, just as I have always wanted but was not given the chance.

This is more than I ever dared to wish.  Talking freely about one's feelings, without using the well-known conventional defenses, was, in my opinion, possible only in dreams or on another planet.  And now, surprisingly to myself, this became reality.  Unbelievable!

So, please don't see me as a guru; this would again put me in a special position that I no longer want to be in.  I am not your teacher or leader, am not giving advices or imposing anything on you, I am not your mother or grandmother, I am Alice, a sister in pain, like Bent's sister Toril who can tell him: I know what you are talking about, I know dad and mom and the answers they gave us because I can finally feel.  And Bent can say the same to Toril.  I am not the author here; I am one of the people who endured a horror in their childhood, like you, and who enjoy knowing that what they say in English or German, or whatever, will not be received as sounding Chinese to others.  Can you imagine that I had this feeling all my life until recently?  Thank you all for being there.

Alice Miller
https://www.alice-miller.com/openletters_en.php?page=5 

From: JB Subject: RE: The danger of gurus To: "Sylvie Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 2:42 PM

Regarding your last email, we are definitely not into gurus. Gurus present themselves as sort of perfect, which is ridiculous, and they don’t let you get close enough to see how they really live on an everyday basis. We are about a real togetherness, where everyone can manifest their total aliveness, not just a guru. I think it’s great to learn from one another, as long as each of us knows that we actually have to make the moves to live and doesn’t try to live through anyone else.

See you tomorrow, hopefully!

JB

From: Sylvie Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 8:23 PM To: JB Subject: RE: The danger of gurus.

Thank you, JB – Yes! Life is a lot more enjoyable when it is shared with other like-minded people and those who have faced their own personal history and repressions; otherwise, the compulsion of repetition will continue.

 Hopefully, I will see you after tomorrow, Sylvie

From: JB

Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010, 9:07 AM

To: Sylvie

Subject: The Danger of gurus.

So true, Sylvie. We wake up so that we don’t have to repeat anymore

Also, about wondering if physical immortality is an illusion . . . what we are feeling is that the real illusion is that we have to fall apart and die. We believe this is all connected to an old way of living that refuses to change, that doesn’t want to wake up. So, they live in the illusion that there is no other option, which frees them from the responsibility of being truly awake. However, we are taking on that responsibility because we are tired of repeating the old life. We are waking ourselves up.

From: Sylvie  Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 9:44 AM To: JB Subject: Re: Radio show

Good morning JB,

I hope the weekend event was fun. I have marked my calendar for the next month's event! So, nothing will get in the way now.

I am looking forward to it, even though attending a weekend event is like getting both feet in, and I am not too comfortable with that. Throughout my life, I have never entered anything with both feet. I have always kept one foot out, and looking back, I see it was a lifesaver because I have avoided falling into traps.

Have a great Monday, Sylvie

Schiavone: "You see, all religions believe in a god..." Actually, Ms. Shene, not all religions believe in a deity or deities. Buddhism and Confucianism are examples. There are even Jews who consider themselves atheists. But even in secular...ar doctrines, there are illusions, such as "negative" and "positive" feelings in Buddhism and the emphasis of respecting and honoring parents/ancestors regardless of how horrible they are in Confucianism and other secular philosophies. Even if the higher power isn't God, Allah, etc., parents/ancestors take the deity's place in this situation. Living in denial is dangerous, whether someone believes in a god or not.

"Michael Jackson might still be here with us today if he had someone in his life with the courage to speak the truth to him." True, but it would have been much better if he had the courage within him to condemn his cruel and greedy father. (And to a lesser extent, his mother for not doing enough to protect him and his siblings.) Yes, someone could have told him the truth, but it would have been up to him to accept it. In other words, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

Posted by Schiavonne on Saturday, October 30, 2010 - 12:41 PM

Sylvies: Thank you, Schiavone. You are right, not all religions believe in god, but all do have illusions!!! Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and I will change it to 'most religions.' I agree with everything you wrote. You are so right; in the end, it has to be the individual who dares to see and feel their own painful truth.

Posted by sylvieshene.com on Saturday, October 30, 2010 - 12:58 PM