Comments on: Not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi military gear and guerrilla talk

By: Sam J.

Sam J. — Tue, 22 May 2018 03:05:39 +0000

“…Imagine this on a large scale — like the self-denunciation sessions during China’s Cultural Revolution…”

It would be madness. I’ve read about 4 or 5 books by people who went through this in China. Really interesting.

I saw this movie and read the book,”First.They.Killed.My.Father.2017″ about what happened in Cambodia. Worth watching or reading. I remember seeing the “pussy hat” march and thinking the perfect foil would be to go around and around them with a bullhorn saying, “Angkor will take care of you”. They wouldn’t understand but it would amuse me to no end.

I’ve done something like this. I went to EST back in…1976??? or so. This was before Scientology sued them and made them strip out a lot of stuff. They took a lot of Scientology and stripped it down into a two weekend shake and bake enlightenment. Very much a part of the human potential movement type stuff. I found it useful though I would be very hard pressed to explain exactly what it was about or what they were getting at. I guess the simplest explanation that I got out of it was that your life is going by minute by minute and the things that happening are just things that happened are just things. They’re not always necessarily personal they just “are” and how you react to these “things” is up to you to decide. A little like the Stoics and Buddhist with a little NLP thrown in for good measure, though NLP wasn’t around yet. There was definitely techniques of brainwashing being used. Very, very long hours and at one point they group hypnotized us. I have no idea what they said at this time. At this point in time they were not on the hard sell, join us type thing. It was all about “shake and bake enlightenment”. Many years later I went back after they had renamed it the forum and it let a really bad taste in my mouth. Lots of pressure to sign up all kinds of stuff which I didn’t.

Some of this stuff can be very good for you to knock you out of your element and get something useful ingrained in your head. The potential for abuse…well it’s very, extremely, high. The military does exactly the same thing. So do tent revival tent preachers.

By: Wang Wei Ling

Wang Wei Ling — Tue, 22 May 2018 01:46:00 +0000

Imagine this on a large scale — like the self-denunciation sessions during China’s Cultural Revolution.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Mon, 21 May 2018 21:13:23 +0000

Interesting point about the various “church” entities, and one I’ve never really considered. I think you’re on to something there, in that I’ve been to many worship services in many different churches over the years, but I will be damned if I can remember any of them really addressing anything truly spiritual or providing much in the way of useful guidance beyond the rote.

Which probably explains why so many of the weird fringe movements are so damned popular and effective. Has organized religion lost the knack for addressing these things, I wonder?

By: Kgaard

Kgaard — Mon, 21 May 2018 20:53:23 +0000

I have a lot of experience with this. I get everything the author is saying and it is THE problem with these spiritual-based hippie retreats and communes. They are all very lefty. That said … a tremendous amount of good can come out of these places. Where ELSE can one really explore the spiritual path? I mean seriously … where? Nobody else does a good job anymore of cultivating the mystical experience itself. Churches are all run by priests, who are basically community organizers, rather than, say, monks — who might actually impart some wisdom.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Mon, 21 May 2018 20:44:50 +0000

Surprising amount of communist-style brainwashing was embedded in a lot of that crap, which the various left-wing forces themselves had adopted from the ecstatic religious cults of yore…

Examine the reported techniques of the Ismaili hashishin conversion and indoctrination process, then compare those to the anarchists, the communists, and all the other “-ists” out there. You’ll find a disturbing amount of congruent similarities, enough so that one wonders precisely where the rational thought even came in for many of these supposedly “rational” sects.

There is a space within the human soul that aches to be filled with the profound and the spiritual. Leave it empty of something like a formal religion, and that void will fill itself with whatever specious bullshit you encounter. Which is why so many areligious types are prone to believe in crystals, new-age healing techniques, Wicca, and anthropogenic global warming…