Rocky

Is that to what you attribute apparent lack of interest here in your book?

It's not an attack. Being on the spectrum (neuro-atypical) is plenty common enough and if you are and if we understand it to be the case, the discussion(s) with you and frustration about your obfuscation can more readily be ameliorated. As to "ones WE are supposing to minister to," that's not how I or (I suspect) most others characterize our interaction with other Greasespotters. My life has meaning and mission, but not necessarily to "Teach one person the Word, if [we] are still able." What gives meaning to a life is up to each life. That said, I would appreciate it and respect you plenty if you could find the personal strength to let yourself be vulnerable on that matter. Willingness to be vulnerable is an indicator of strength, not weakness.

For the record, Mike, are you on the spectrum? I appreciate Twinky introducing the topic, but figured it would be helpful to hear it from you. Thanks.

HNY Twinky, from another dimension... sort of. I'm in 2021, and as I understand it, you're in 2022!.

Now THAT makes sense. The light comes on regarding our good friend Mike.

A book that has been the subject of discussion here on GSC. I love the book. It also reframes discussion about whether salvation can be lost.

Just today, I came into possession (well, borrowed) from my local public library, Viktor Frankl's book, Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything. I would hope that everyone who had been victimized to any degree, whether born into it or otherwise having been hoodwinked by TWI, would be inspired by the Jessa Dillow Crisp's story (linked in the OP in this thread). Frankl, in case anyone needs to be reminded, survived three years in Nazi concentration camps and wrote Man's Search for Meaning shortly after those in the camps were liberated.

My bottom-line on this subject (for now) is that if we think being sucked into TWI is the end of a journey of Dark Persuasion/brainwashing, we need to rethink it. My review of Dark Persuasion (as posted on Goodreads.com):

We can, of course, be deceived in many ways. We can be deceived by believing what is not true, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what IS true. -- Søren Kierkegaard in the epigraph to chapter twelve, The Beleaguered Persistence of Brainwashing, Dark Persuasion. Hopefully nobody these days is unaware of events illustrating this concept.

PatAnswer's answer was/is brilliant! Btw, for those who read fiction (which is a great way to learn about life), This short story by Dean Koontz has key parallels to our experience in twi and, I'm confident, in plenty of other cults.

From Chapter Eight, Flash Conversion of Hostages, Stockholm Syndrome and Its Variants It was the hostages' fault. They did everything I told them to do.... Why didn't any of them attack me? ... There was nothing to do but get to know each other. --Jan-Erik Olsson From roughly 1915 to 1965, governments and universities tried to develop tools for brainwashing. They weren't exactly successful. Torture did not persuade people to adopt political beliefs, nor did it elicit reliable information. Any number of drugs could sedate, stimulate, or confuse people, but they were not effective in interrogations or persuasion. [However] Group pressures, sensory isolation, and sleep deprivation were promising tools for persuading people, but these required time and finesse. In the 1970s and 1980s two unlikely players emerged to demonstrate new techniques in dark persuasion--kidnappers and clerics. While some kidnappers were able to radically change their hostages' behavior, usually this did not reflect the kidnappers' deliberate intention. Rather, the changes were a by-product of what one hostage called "the constant and palpable threat of death." (p. 125) (Jump ahead to p.134) ...when framed from the perspective of life stress and coping, the syndrome is readily understandable, viewed less as a mark of psychopathology and more as an instance of coping under extraordinary stress. Getting close to the abductor is actually lifesaving. Psychiatrist Frank Ochberg ... consultant to the FBI, called Stockholm syndrome an "unholy alliance between terrorist and captive, involving fear, distrust, or anger toward authorities on the outside." [YOU, my people, are THE called of God (unspoken at first), to obey ME, VPW and my lieutenants]. The captive focuses attention on the captors' occasional kindnesses rather than their brutality. [If you LEAVE the household, God won't even spit in your direction... btw, how freakin' paranoid was Wierwille, anyway] This can be lifesaving because a positive bond affects both captive and captor. ... Captives want to survive but are totally dependent upon their captors [see Pavlov's hierarchy of needs]. The power differential between the two is enormous, and to survive, captives must do all in their power to turn aside the lethal anger of their captors. It may be uncommon for FBI agents to speak about child development and regression but Agent Thomas Strentz described the situation masterfully: "The five-year-old is able to feed himself, speak for himself, and has locomotion. The hostage is more like an infant who must cry for food, cannot speak, and may be bound.... The hostage is in a state of extreme dependence and fright. He is terrified of the outside world. [...] Ochberg observed that "brainwashing is deliberate, but Stockholm just happens. It's a shrewd observation. ----- The text in the book has several end notes citing where Dimsdale got the quotes and the insight. I maintain that these passages more than coincidentally point to the cult behavior in the way corpse and paid staff of twi. Obedience is implicitly demanded with severe shame and threats to one's sense of belonging and hence, need for survival. Why do they have armed security? Why do they immediately expel people for what the cult perceives as threats to ITS survival? How does such expulsion impact those who still belong? Does TWI get away with these practices because they craftily and subtly impose these emotional and financial abuses and the constant and palpable threats of harm? And to any leaders of twi spinoff groups, I'd recommend get an education and get a real job. Do GOOD in society rather than the illusory benefit you might provide to your followers. Anyway, Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays.

Aunt Lydia drew a clear distinction, women outside of the "household" were sluts. You girls are special. Does that ring any bells? Vic's subculture emphasized that we were "called out," we were special. People outside of the "household" wouldn't be protected by God. Besides cementing the specialness of the way corpse (and others not as "high" in his hierarchy... yet), that was also the basis for blaming anyone who had anything bad happen to them. Psychological and spiritual abuse.

Aunt Lydia was easily one of the most dreadful characters in The Handmaid's Tale. Thankfully, it was only pretending (and doing so exquisitely well).

My most vivid memory is the pervasive odor of, let's say, the aftermath of digestion. And the need to light candles to dissipate said odor.

Both brainwashing and religious conversion rely on strong group pressure. They target people who are exhausted and dejected from extensive self-criticism, doubt, fear, and guilt. When potential converts abandon their old ways of thinking, they feel relief, gratitude, and zeal. They sense a new beginning with a cleansed life. These aspects of conversion are the same whether one is converting to a common established belief or to an uncommon new one. Churches grow and morph; today's traditional or "heritage" church probably was revolutionary generations ago. Dimsdale, Page 7 Note: American Christianity: the Continuing Revolution

In addition to its origins in torture, brainwashing can trace its roots to traditions in religious conversion. It may seem peculiar that a book on brainwashing discusses religious conversion, but conversions come in many sizes and flavors--sudden or gradual, grounded in belief or convenience, brought about by individual decisions or by acts of State. Conversions are heterogeneous, and some conversions are in fact accompanied by varying amounts of coercion. [...] When conversions are made by personal choice, they are still shaped by social factors, and here we start to recognize some features shared with brainwashing. -- Dark Persuasion, Dimsdale, Page 6.

Dark Persuasion [It] is through this material brain that emissaries of God or of the Devil—dictators, policemen, politicians, priests, physicians and psychotherapists of various sorts— … try to work their will on man. William Sargant, 1957 “Brainwashing was “born” in Pavlov's dog labs in the early days of the Soviet Union, but it didn't appear out of thin air. While Pavlov brought in scientific experimentation to intensify persuasion, brainwashing's roots can be traced to traditional practices in torture and religious conversion.” So begins Dimsdale's exposition of Dark Persuasion. His Table 1 (Common features of torture and coercive persuasion), on page 6 includes eight items. Having spent a year in residence with the 9th corpse, I witnessed and/or experienced several of these items. I can still detail first hand, terror, sleep deprivation, diaries and confessions, isolation from family and friends, secrecy and other such tactics. This book as well as Peter A Olsson's on the Malignant Pied Pipers of Our Time summarize histories of more stark cult experiences than ours. However benign in comparison ours may seem on book/internet forum pages, when taken as told by individuals, ours are still the stuff of cults. And whether any one of us considers the long-lasting effects serious is a very personal and real consequence of having endured life in a cult. I have also noted before (probably on GSC) that every human is subject to getting conned. Having been successfully recruited into TWI or other cults is one of many ways humans are vulnerable to dark persuasion. About William Sargant: “Sargant co-authored a textbook on physical treatment in psychiatry that ran to 5 editions. He wrote numerous articles in the medical and lay press, an autobiography, The Unquiet Mind, and a book titled Battle for the Mind in which he discusses the nature of the process by which our minds are subject to influence by others.” Notes: Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media - Kindle edition by Dimsdale, Joel E.. Health, Fitness & Dieting Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. https://archive.org/details/BattleForTheMind-Sargant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sargant

The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets. -- John Mark Green, poet (as quoted on p238 of Atlas of the Heart) Hmmm... According to researchers, "Self-righteousness is the conviction that one's beliefs and behaviors are the most correct." -- ibid, p239 Wierwille's cult was based on the premise that HIS (VPs) private interpretation of EVERYTHING was THE WAY, the only way that was most correct. That perspective made it impossible build a life and an organization on the greatest of commandments that's why they had to hold it together with spiritual and psychological abuse. Mark 12: 30-31 (NIV) 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.”

YIKES! and thankfully, lived to tell about it.

Glad for the good news.

; many cults stumbled upon its use as well. ----- We've been describing these things by sharing our own stories here on GSC for two decades. Now, a retired psychiatrist has spent time studying the phenomenon and its history. Ultimately, my point is that this book, Dark Persuasion, seems to codify and validate our experiences as such. Notably, the Foundational or Power for Abundant Living class: for example refusing to answer people's questions or even allow the questions to be articulated until the end of session 12... but did anyone remember the questions by then? The WOW Ambassador program, coercing people who had never met to live together for a year and enforcing that commitment with SHAME. Then the ultimate indoctrination program, the Way Corps subjecting people to prolonged sleep deprivation and either being targeted for or witnessing horrific verbal abuse sessions any time a person made even the tiniest mistake or dared to challenge program leaders. These were among... as Skyrider so eloquently spelled out at the top of this thread, the reasons he wrote his story: 1) to send a warning to all those involved in twi and others considering taking classes from this cult, 2) an attempt to differentiate between Scripture-based Christians and twi's lockstep loyalty of servitude, and 3) to expose twi's incremental steps to overthrow one's will and consent. There are no fences with concertina wire to hold them prisoners, but there are very-real doctrines of fear and deception interlocking to prevent escape. Thankfully, tens of thousands HAVE succeeded in their personal journeys of escape from this insanity. Those who remain in it, perhaps cling to the emotional need to belong, wrapping themselves in rationalizations to justify their continued subjection to the cult.

Speaking of Insanity on Steroids, and I hope this isn't too far off of the topic, but I found another book while perusing my local public library's website. I've reserved a copy of the book but thought that an excerpt of this non-fiction title, newly available, might be pertinent to those of us trying to figure out how and why we had become vulnerable to Wierwille's message, his subculture, his (what we now know as) dark persuasion. Some have called it brainwashing. I tried to get that excerpt by way of copy/paste but because I was looking at an Amazon preview, that didn't work. I took pics of the two pages and posted them to Twitter and then tried to insert them using the Other Media button. That also didn't work. But I was able to copy a blurb from the Amazon page where one can buy the book. A harrowing account of brainwashing’s pervasive role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control. Tracing these developments through many of the past century’s major conflagrations, Dimsdale narrates how when World War II erupted, governments secretly raced to develop drugs for interrogation. Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep, and hallucinogens. Cults used the techniques as well. Nobel laureates, university academics, intelligence operatives, criminals, and clerics all populate this shattering and dark story—one that hasn’t yet ended. ----- and very briefly, the preview states: Brainwashing, coercive persuasion, thought control, dark persuasion--all these terms refer to the fact certain techniques render individuals shockingly vulnerable to indoctrination. [...] But it wasn't just the military and intelligence agencies that employed the technique (continued below)

Thanks...

A representative contradiction of twi is that people in the cult DO benefit from the sense of belonging. But they limit both themselves and God when they (when I used to) are (be) unable to tolerate realization of that need for belonging together with the very important and very human deep curiosity that comes with being human. Why can they not cope with that paradox/contradiction? Perhaps because of the fact that, as Skyrider said in the OP for this thread, Btw, what was it that Wierwille told us about fear? Who was he quoting when he taught us that "fear is sand in the machinery of life?"