This four-part series outlines how my work and money struggles made me vulnerable to “school”. It illustrates how “school” played my vulnerabilities and celebrates the irony of how leaving school rectified this struggle – I have more work than I can take on right now.
I invite you to share your post-school successes, either via comments, or by writing your own post-school-success story. Someone once told me that, “The best revenge is to live well.” It’s true — school-less life is good!
Part 1: How I came to believe – the set up
The Set Up
Recently I realized that my most life-altering and informative moments have come from mistakes; which begs the question — were they mistakes, or simply life experiences that I needed to have? Were they simply part of the path I was destined to walk? Had I posed this question to my father during his last two years of life, he would have responded, “People do things when they are ready.” This had become his mantra as he approached his departure. After dedicating decades to intellect and academia his incurable cancer had fostered this philosophy which connected head to heart.
During his fading years, I had my own brand of academia, “school”, and I was steeped in the “school” propaganda that one must do everything NOW. In trying to live this creed, my long buried, but constant feelings of inadequacy, and paralyzing anxiety bubbled up to the forefront of my psyche. On top of that, witnessing the death of a thousand cuts drove home the reality of human impermanence. Each day, the disease stole another piece of my dad’s physical ability — his intellect, however, stayed sharp, only bowing to morphine at the end (which drove this consummate academic crazy). After his death, I said to a hospice grief counselor, “We don’t get to finish things.” To which she responded, “No, we don’t.”
I started seeing my life as a bumbling and bouncing from job to job and relationship to relationship. “How”, I asked myself and God, “had I gotten so lost and wasted so many years?” The George Bernard Shaw quote, “Youth is wasted on the young” pummeled my psyche. I wondered, “When will I be ‘ready’? Why do some people get to be ‘ready’ early in life and some people bumble and bounce along as though living in a pinball machine? Why have I been delegated to bumbler-hood?” Even as my father bestowed this philosophy as a final gift, I believed that this allusive state of “ready” did not apply to me.
When I bumbled into “school” in 2006, I had just graduated from a publishing and communications program — an attempt to change my career path. I was confused about what to do next. Vocational counseling would have been a logical next step; instead I found “school” (or it found me). It felt like a God send. Three years later, I had a job that paid decently, a fiancee, “school” guidance and a very ill father — so I was grateful for “school”. Overall, my life had improved considerably. However, my relationship to work and money continued to be a glaring area of weakness and vulnerability. I found the boredom and tedium of the job — copy writer for a software company — nearly intolerable.
“School’s” work and money prescription reads as this: any job will do. This doctrine mirrors its marriage doctrine of any man, or woman, will do. It also mirrored my long held, but unconscious, beliefs that labeled my longing to have, or create, meaningful work as selfish, precious and immature. My inner judges said that meaningful work was for other people; if necessary, I should work in a coal mine and school reinforced those voices.
In looking back, I often feel that God reached into my psyche, scooped out this dysfunctional belief, and placed it center stage manifesting it as a play called “School”, nodding to Shakespeare, the world a stage. Of course my new millennium theater was more sit-com than Shakespearean; even so it called on my ears to listen and my eyes to recognize that something wanted me to wake up. As with so many “school” ironies — despite its claims to be all about awakening — the institution did everything it could to keep me and my colleagues hypnotized. But my ever-present ache fought this, collaborating with God, needling me from the inside, interfering with my ability to falsely present myself as a woman I was not. My tolerance for “any job” diminished with every commute and cubicle-imprisoned day.
Had I some faith in myself, I would have heeded my discontent and made changes accordingly. Instead the dark judges in my psyche condemned the inner dreamers and seekers; they mercilessly dismissed and disregarded those urges. In desperation, I turned to “school” for “help”. “School” doctrine corroborated the judges; according to it, I didn’t know who I was anyway; the human condition is thus and all humans need “help”from “higher beings”. I bought it spending roughly $20,000 over five years, at $350 a month, to have “higher beings” point me away from my inner compass. However, the inner rebels kept whispering “Given the 40-plus years I’ve tripped around the planet, in this body, living this life, I do know something about myself.”
At certain moments their whispers broke through my “school” stupor – like when Robert shamed students in class. At these moments, the inner rebels furrowed their brows and looked at him in puzzlement – why the public shaming, they pressed. What was his intention? Most times, though, I lost their voices in the cacophony of “school” doctrine and judgement.
School targets those who doubt themselves as such. Generally speaking, “school” affirms the hopes and dreams of its newest ( i.e. “younger”) students. The affirmation phase lasts roughly two years, during which “school” positions itself to simultaneously tease out insecurities. At certain opportune moments, “school” seizes on those insecurities and assigns specific roles to students, dismissing anything that falls beyond the purview of these assigned roles. It feeds on insecurities, growing a childlike dependency in its students, crafting lost souls into “school” cogs that keep the wheel spinning.
Its cog-crafting technique includes consistent reminders that any success we experience is due “school”, mostly achieved via “school”-sponsored “aim”. Those of us who buy into this give “school” license to increasingly hold us to its governing principles — principles that benefit “school” because they are really just an increase in “school”-related demands — i.e. the three lines of work — deemed essential to each student’s evolution. If these principles, i.e. demands, damage the students personally — say causing tension in a marriage, or a job — it is always due to flaws within those students; for “school” established its demands to feed its “higher calling”, the institution’s secret “aim”; thus these demands could never be damaging.
School doobies come to believe that if school’s aim takes top priority, then our lives are rightly ordered and everything else should be informed by that. Other elements should fall nicely into place — family, work, friends, health, wealth, personal passions and callings. However, “school” kept its secret and sacred “aim” a mystery to the plebes, even as we worked for and towards it. If anyone asked, “What is the aim of the school?” our “teachers” would infer that the inquiring student was not ready for that knowledge. Increasingly, students would ask for “help”, confessing that he or she was failing in the struggle to meet both “school” and life demands; Increasingly, opening him/her self up to more criticism and manipulation.
Imagine buying into this doctrine, as I did, only to discover after leaving that “school’s higher calling” is to ensure that its invisible Queen, Sharon Gans, could outfit her Park Plaza condo with high-end red bathtubs and such and retire in luxury. Queen Gans appeared in Boston only twice during my five-year tenure; both experiences were surreal and revealed her as creepy, crazy and mean. After leaving I learned that this exulted leader was a two-bit actress, who had been in one movie and married the cult’s former leader, a charming sociopath named Alex Horn.
But, I needed to believe that “school demands” were feeding the betterment of society — however they made me squirm (see recruitment post, i.e. third line of work); that we “schoolmates” were foot soldiers in God’s army, spreading the word far and wide. For initially these governing “school principles” had worked for me and my life had improved; that was the hook. The fear of being “school-less” set in and became the basis of my choices, feeding a sense that without “school” I would lose everything, setting me up nicely to ask for “help” from my wiser “teachers”; certainly those who knew me better than I knew myself would not lead me astray when it came to the important area of work and money. I learned well not to trust or follow my inner compass. But it never stopped pointing me away from “school”.
Part 2: ANY JOB won’t do – how it stopped working
This honest series on work is wonderful. GSR, I hope you are giving serious consideration to a book or at least major article!
I came across this TS Eliot quotation today and it seemed so appropriate:
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
best wishes to everyone.
Hi Grateful, Thanks so much for the nice feedback. I have been intermittently considering publication of some kind … but not really taking the steps that would make that possible. I started to but got quickly swept away by things … life. I’d like to do something with this collection, though.
BTW, thanks for the quote. I can’t think of a better definition for “Identification” … remember that one?
I did not make it much past the trial period so, no, I don’t recall Identification– can you explain?
The best definition I can give for identification is the tendency to view all events, feelings and thoughts as extension of ones-self. For example, a man or woman (as Robert used to say) might become so identified with becoming a good “teacher” in “school” that they unable to see the harm caused by the institution, because it would reflect badly on him/her. That person would not see it, because ” … they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” And cannot see beyond that struggle.
Another clear example of identification, in my understanding, can be witnessed at the many open mics, where people get a chance to perform a song, or a poem. We open mikers can become so consumed by our ten minutes on stage, that we don’t even hear the other participants and/or aren’t able to have normal conversations … we’re too busy in the endless struggle of worrying about our performance and planning what to play, ruminating over mistakes made, reliving moments of glory etc.
Maybe some others can chime in, but I hope that provides some clarity on “identification”.
Thanks for that explanation– very clear. So the idea would be never to identify too much with anything– a group, alma mater, family or partner– lest you start to slide down a slippery slope.
I don’t think I ever mentioned this. A couple weeks before I discovered the cult, I put the question to the Universe: What is evil, really, and is there anything I can do about it? Not long after that I met the person who told me about an interesting upcoming lecture. During a conversation with my tag team of recruiters, before I’d met the Great & Powerful Bobert, that little voice in my head grew louder and louder, till it was shouting “ROSEMARY’S BABY!!! ROSEMARY’S BABY!!!!” And I thought, oh, come on, at worst this group is a bunch of weirdos. And I naively asked Tweedledum and Tweedledee, “Are you guys a cult?” They looked surprised, offended. “We most certainly are not, and more importantly, we are NOT a belief system!” Poor things, I think they honestly believed their (programmed?) answer.
I continued my study of evil, and continue it to this day, and it has brought me here. Perhaps School has is roots in the same methods of mind control:
http://www.sott.net/article/256257-Scientology-the-CIA-and-MIVILUDES-Cults-of-Abuse
Please watch and pass along, as you see fit.
Dear Grateful,
That video was completely creepy. Can you say more about how watching that has shed light on your study of evil? It seems to connect everything back to government conspiracies. My reaction is to dismiss it as a piece of paranoid propaganda. OSG founder Alex Horn was a big proponent of government conspiracy theories. Maybe he was on to something and it is was systematic CIA attack on him that resulted in the California media investigation in the 70’s that drove him out of town…just cause you are paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not out to get you.
Hi there, another version of the Story,
just seeing your comment today, so apologies for the delay.
Sure, I’d be happy to explain how discovering the Belmont cult led me there. And I can also address the “conspiracy theory” issue. So this answer will be long, because it will be thorough, and show what I have uncovered.
As soon as I learned the truth about the group, I started to research different cults and learned how they do what they do. I explored all the links on EsotericFreedom, and this eventually led me to discover the Mind Control experiments performed by the CIA, referred to as MKUltra. Prior to that I had known nothing about them.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol was my most helpful link, and I even spoke to its founder, Fred Burks, a former U.S. State Department translator. He created the website WantToKnow to provide articles from established and respected news organizations that pointed to what I’d call “truths hidden in plain sight”– because most of us are too busy to put the pieces together, or follow up, or realize how diabolical some people really are (Robert certainly opened my eyes to the last one). Fred had a lot of really interesting information to share, and I highly recommend exploring the material on his site.
Prior to stumbling on the cult, I had a developed a strong interest in politics and journalism, dating to attending a Noam Chomsky lecture and thinking, wait a minute, I’m an educated person. How come I’ve never heard of the things he’s talking about? So I started reading Chomsky, I also read two books that proved extremely influential, Into the Buzzsaw, about how journalists would find them investigating stories that made powerful people uncomfortable, and find their investigations blocked, The other was John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman. This book explained how the IMF and World Bank really operate, how they decimated the middle class throughout the world, and how they work hand-in-glove with the CIA with “uncooperative” government leaders (ie leaders who won’t play ball and put their populace into debt). I believe the tactics used by the IMF in 2nd and 3rd world countries are now being turned on the US and western Europe, which is why we’re seeing massive protests in Spain and Greece. I think it’s highly likely that we will see these kinds of protests in the US as the economy grows more desperate. I recommend these books because they will put “conspiracy theories” in context for you. They will give you a sense of the larger picture.
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Coincidentally, I have a relative in private practice social work. Many years ago, she told me one of her clients had escaped from a Satanic cult. Both of this person’s parents had sexually abused her, and taken her to ceremonies where children were killed (or appeared to be sacrificed) and she was in therapy trying to recover. I thought my relative was being taken for a ride by a crazy person; I couldn’t possibly believe this incredible and horrifying story. “Why didn’t your client go to the police?” I asked. “Because they’d kill her. This is not just her parents. It’s an entire network of families.” That story was just too ridiculous for me to believe at that time. She said the families appeared very church going by day, going to Assembly of God churches, but did their Satanic work at night.
However, after talking with Fred Burks, I did learn about a network of Satanic families. Fred told me he had been given a great deal of information from various contacts which he could not include because this information did not have the kind of “respectable” published stories that WantToKnow requires. But he pointed me to a writer using the pseudonym svali, who described her own experience in these networks:
I will caution you, this is not easy reading. You can decide for yourself if you think what svali explains is plausible/reliable. The tactics described for programming people sound very similar to those used in the MK Ultra program.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6119898/Illuminati-How-the-cult-programs-people
Hypno-therapist Corydon Hammond bravely talked about what he began to uncover when he worked with people who had multiple personalities, which seems to support what svali outlined.
http://www.whale.to/b/greenbaum.html
The kinds of things I learned here explained potentially the reason why Woodrow Wilson would say: “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” (Cue the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut.)
That sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? Labeling someone a conspiracy theorist is a good way to shut them down, to make sure that other people shun, ridicule or ignore that person. If I were engaged in criminal activity, I’d want to make sure that it was hidden behind the veil of “conspiracy theory” because people are reluctant to look under that cloth. You can do a lot when people, simply due to the power of their own thoughts and prejudices, refuse to ask too many questions.
If you pull the threads of the Franklin Cover Up, if you watch Mea Maxima Culpa- Silence in the House of God, if you investigate the testimony of Kay Griggs, if you listen to some of the material presented weekly at The Corbett Report, if you study what George Washington had to say about the Illuminati, if you read what Catherine Fitts had to say about her years working for HUD/Jack Kemp, if you read the history books written by Edwin Black, if you study the term “Tax Farmer,” if you read the work Jeff Sharlet did on The Family, if you read the work of Martha Stout and Philip Zimbardo, these all point to the same tactics of manipulation and deception at all levels of society. If you look at American life from the bleachers, you see people who have poor nutrition, who are overworked and have little or no time to ask questions, who are not educated to think critically, who are socialized to support the banking and governmental systems that are slowly enslaving them, who want very much to please their bosses so that they can keep their jobs, who are coming under increasing levels of surveillance. Kind of sounds like a cult, doesn’t it? I’m not saying that we *are* a cult, only that those tactics have proven effective, and so they are employed, often by people who don’t even realize what they’re doing.
There are, and likely have always been, people who are perfectly content to enslave others. And the slaves? At first, they don’t realize they’re slaves. And eventually they do and they try to escape, and eventually they succeed, and they tell others what they have learned. This, in a nutshell, is what a cult is. The more people wake up, the more cunning the slave owners must become. And the harder the slaves must work to awaken and free themselves.
Fractals. Fractals show us that what’s true for the microcosm is true for the macrocosm. The cult showed me a microcosm; further investigation showed me its reflected macrocosm. Same rules, same kinds of systems.
Now that I’ve opened this Pandora’s Box of darkness, here’s what else I can say. There is also an unbelievable amount of light, of love, all around us, at all times. This is what I discovered right before I asked that question, “what is evil, really, and is there anything I can do about it?” We are constantly getting information from “higher levels”– through stories, through intuition, through deep and fearless self-examination. I believe they call things like that C Influence in the group, and it is real. We are in the process of waking up, and shaking off fear, removing our energy from the things that enslave us and enslave others. As we are able to recognize tactics of manipulation, and see that one emperor after another is not wearing any clothes, we are no longer subject to these tactics, and we can choose love rather than fear. We can do this every day, in every decision that we make. As more of us do this, bit by bit, we change our world.
I rather doubt that Alex Horn was being pursued by anything other than a curious newspaper reporter, though he may well have gotten entangled with CIA operatives (Gloria Steinem did, as hard as it is to believe) where he learned how to create a cult. Sounds like he might have been aware that things aren’t as they seem, even while he was a bad, bad actor.
The end!!
I remember hearing Sharon boasting in class that the FBI had a file on her. No doubt the government would want to keep tabs on a shadowy secretive group like OSG. Or it could have been a delusion of her narcistic personality disorder…..
Grateful, I agree with what you say “We are in the process of waking up, and shaking off fear, removing our energy from the things that enslave us and enslave others. As we are able to recognize tactics of manipulation, and see that one emperor after another is not wearing any clothes, we are no longer subject to these tactics, and we can choose love rather than fear. We can do this every day, in every decision that we make. As more of us do this, bit by bit, we change our world.”
I for one feel I’m “shaking off fear, and removing my energy from the things that enslave us and others” I believe every time love wins out over fear changes the world, little by little.