Hello Readers:

Recently, I posted about the International Cultic Studies Association’s study on free speech suppression via frivolous cultic litigation. Here’s a link to the article/interview with Attorney Peter Skolnik, who has been fighting cults for 15 years: ICSA Today Vol. 08 No. 01 2017 – Esther Article

This opposition brief by Counselor Skolnik drives the point home, if you’re interested. Mr. Skolnik’s briefs tend to be more entertaining than most legalese. He hits the mark quickly and accurately.

Thanks for visiting, GSR

In 2014, “school” tried to drag me into some ridiculous legal bullshit. Following Scientology’s Step-by-Step Guide to Frivolous Litigation, a plaintiff I’d never met filed papers in New York. A court server delivered the documents — a chronicle of boring and tedious fiction couched in legalese — to my home in Massachusetts.

You see, this woman wanted to sue someone, but didn’t know who. Another anonymous “evil” blogger had ruffled her feathers. Her problem was not mine to solve, but the-woman-I’d-never-met apparently decided  that I was the “sole source” of the offending blogger’s identity ….did  “school’s” special  sauce make her psychic? … apparently not.  

The papers demanded that I attend a court date in New York City to provide the identity of someone I didn’t know to bolster her “meritorious lawsuit” (cough). The big case went nowhere. I did not cross state lines to say, “I don’t know who you should sue.” I did keep the documentation for posterity. I hope “school’s” counselor milked them for as much as he could get.

In hindsight, I can be snarky. But it’s stressful to be sued even by a complete stranger claiming a ridiculous fabrication, even for information that you don’t have, even from a state that holds no jurisdiction over you, even from a city you haven’t seen in almost a decade. Believe me, the New York courts didn’t care about the expense, the inconvenience, the cost to me, my sanity, or  (ironically) my free speech –free speech being a pillar of democracy, a civil right and necessary for sanity and good mental health — or due process. That’s the point. When cults sue, they don’t care if they win, they just want to stress your pocketbook and your sanity enough to get you to shut up. That’s the Scientology way. That’s the cult way, right Geoff C, Josh L? Perhaps you’d like to comment.

Thanks to a friend, who is a lawyer, who worked his network, I have lifelong, pro bono counsel, from well-regarded global firm. But cults know that most whistleblowers don’t get so lucky. They know how to abuse and manipulate the courts to muzzle critics. After my legal odyssey ended, I teamed up with the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) to conduct a study on frivolous cultic litigation. ICSA just published the following interview/article, with attorney Peter Skolnik, in its journal, ICSA, Today. The interview is one component of ICSA’s efforts to address cultic court abuse.

To learn more cultic court tactics and how to fight them, read: Free Speech and Cultic Litigation

You can also read the article here: Seeing Into the Heart of Things …. another blog exposing “school”.

Okay, that’s all for now, folks. Have “school”-free day! GSR

Fairly recently, a fellow disgruntled forwarded me a link to this New York Times article: The High Price of Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Life

It describes Footsteps, an organization that provides community, counseling, and support for young adults leaving strict Orthodox communities. It describes the struggle of leaving such cloistered sects — operating in comas of 19th century belief systems, think Fiddler on the Roof — without the 21st century survival skills. It reports the uptick in suicides in these communities by those who find they can’t fit into the prescriptions set forth and are thus rejected by friends, family and community because of it, but don’t have the education, skills or guidance to navigate in the world beyond.

Here’s a rhetorical question: what kind of a choice is you’ll be what I tell you to be, or you won’t exist to me? Answer: no choice at all. Cults do this. Cults attempt to flatten human beings into one-dimensional cogs. Cults strip individuals of person-hood & identity. Members exist for the “good of the group” – otherwise known as the top narcissist. It’s an odd phenomenon, but alive and well, as we can see by the orange narcissist occupying the White House, but that’s another post for another day.

It’s also damaging. Even as someone who only flirted with 5 years of cult-i-ness in my adult years (I always had a toe out the door and was never gonna make it into “school’s” elusive inner circle) — I am quite familiar with the feeling described in this quote:

“Even in my lucky circumstances I am left with flickers of superstition and magical thinking, no matter how long it has been since I’ve realized that most of what I was taught as a child is not something I agree with as an adult. And still, every night, I place my hand over my sleeping children’s eyes and I recite the Shema bedtime prayer on their behalf. Every year, I fast on Yom Kippur and apologize for the ways I can’t bring myself to be what I was told God wanted. I do it just in case, or because I’m a coward, or at least because I’m not as courageous as your garden-variety Footsteps member. All of which is to say that I don’t know if it will ever feel normal.”

I can’t imagine trying to grow up under the weight of such oppression.

I don’t know why humans are wired so strangely – control or be controlled. I do know that there are other and better ways to live.

In 2014, a Harvard grad student found this blog and contacted me.  “School” was courting and baiting him. The “making friends” (cough, recruitment) team met with him for many months, almost a year, if my memory serves me correctly.

He told me he enjoyed the people, the conversations, the ideas discussed, etc. But when they extended the super secret, it’s-very-important-that-you-don’t-tell-anyone -about-this-it’s-private … just-for-you invitation, he balked.

The required secrecy prompted a Web search and he found Cult Confessions. We batted a few emails back and forth and I suggested that he contact student affairs … he said, “good idea.”

I have no idea whether he followed up – but those of us trained in “school’s” art of  “making friends” know that Boston’s myriad of colleges and universities make for great cult fishing. A Harvard Graduate student would be quite an asset! Maybe I should contact Harvard’s student affairs office…

Opinions?

Big storm today and I am content as a kitty. Why, because I’m finally able to accept my innate tendencies towards introversion, with moments of extroversion. At heart, I’m a gentle soul, whose natural affinities lean towards quiet, and solitary activities — writing, reading, long meandering conversations about deep thoughts (sigh) and emotional experiences, hanging with my guitar, my mandolin, writing a new song, etc.

When I was a “school” cog, I allowed the hallowed halls to hollow out my soul. It told me “we don’t know ourselves … thus, you must trust that those who’ve been doing the work longer, know you better than you know yourself.” The longer my tenure progressed, the more empty I felt and the things that brought me joy, made my life feel meaningful started draining out of me until I almost lost my ability to write.

I call that indoctrination process Cultic Identity Theft. Thank God, I left when I did. My writing voice returned almost immediately — some internal part of me said, “Damn, I’ve been waiting for you to come to your senses. Now I can finally say my piece.”

Today, six years plus years “school”-free, I want to share the silver lining with you. Every day – and I mean Every. Single. Day. I am grateful to have my life back. Because each day that passes between me and my last day of “school” brings me back to my core self with a new appreciation for that core self and a new propensity to protect those essential elements of my identity. Cults thieve identity, fashioning members into one-dimensional cogs in the wheel.

But, you Dear Reader, can always retrieve your true self. It doesn’t leave you; it lays in wait and arrives when you’re ready. And it’s a joyous reunion when you discard the cult self and return home. At this moment, I’m listening to Patty Griffin, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, sing one of my favorite Patty Griffin songs, Making Pies (enjoy), and feeling inspired by it!

Inspiration became a foreign concept during my illustrious “school days” — something that other people got to enjoy. “Real” artists. Not me. Man, it feels fucking great to reject that cult doctrine and return home. I highly, highly recommend it and I hope those of you who are reading this blog, because you’re wondering if you’ve been recruited by a cult, will honor yourself, see the con for what it is and rejoin the real world soon, with a more deeply ingrained appreciation for your essential self and identity, never to let anyone try to steal it from you again.

That’s all. Happy snow day, northeasterners!

Good morning, Readers:

Two things. Given that I woke up at 4 a.m., which is really 5 a.m., let’s start with Funny:

For your TIAD, Trump Induced Anxiety D/O, I offer you, Impeachara …

And now, NOT Funny:

Psychiatric/psychology professionals know Judith Herman’s work. Most read her book, Trauma and Recovery in college, or grad school.  Cultic studies scholars have all most certainly have read Robert J Lifton’s, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. It is the seminal book. In a recent New York Times op ed, Herman and Lifton teamed up say this about Trump’s demonstrated mental instability :

“…we are struck by his repeated failure to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and his outbursts of rage when his fantasies are contradicted. Without any demonstrable evidence, he repeatedly resorts to paranoid claims of conspiracy… The military powers entrusted to him endanger us all. We urge our elected representatives to take the necessary steps to protect us from this dangerous president.”

Read the rest here:

Then, resist: Indivisible

This is interesting … for those who have been hoping to find a cult, but are struggling, visit:

You may have noticed that our narcissist-in-chief has decided that the media is the “enemy of the people”. Apparently, a component of his “Make America so Great!” agenda. He and his spin-spin-spinsters trot it out. You know the cast and crew — K.A. CONning-her-way, Spicey Spicer, et al. The regime keeps insisting that the president, himself, is our best news source.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but the repeated and blatant disregard for free speech coming from our “president” (oath of office defend the constitution, anyone?) continually stuns me. I asked a history professor friend to weigh in and he said: “Portugal’s Salazar and Spain’s Franco… and of course the Castro boys in Cuba. Manipulating and belittling ‘free’ journalism is a hallmark of dictatorial regimes that truck no criticism.“

When I allowed “school” to slowly funnel my voice and mind into a font of cult propaganda, I experienced first hand the psychological damage inflicted when free speech erodes. The book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism — the go-to guide for cultic-study scholars and clinicians who work with ex-cult members — specifically addresses this: author Robert Jay Lifton wrote: “The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication … the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences and expresses), but also –in its penetration of his inner life – over what we may speak of as his communication with himself.”

Again, I shouldn’t be stunned, but when I see and hear Trump trolls and minions  mindlessly repeating the latest superficial, and baseless, slogan spewing forth from the White House … well, what can I say. A fairly sizable number of Trump voters believe that George Soros paid the millions of Women’s March protesters.

Hey, George, where’s my check?

This song is penned by brilliant, Boston-based songwriter, Jim Infantino. The video is equally brilliant. I’m gonna shut up, because if you listen and watch, you’ll see and hear that there’s nothing to add.

From Wikipedia: “a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, hoping to make the target question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.^”

Sound familiar? It should.