"You shall know them by their assertion of truth, their contempt for considered reflection and their fear of debate”

As a professional in the organization Training In Power: A Spiritual Journey of Service, you are ethically obliged to take seriously the matters brought forward by members and ex- members alike. In your professional life these obligations extend into legal as well as ethical areas. If you promote the training organization as an educational body and certified discipline yet fail to add the fact that it is a church, a belief system a religious practice, you are not fulfilling your professional requirements minimally.

If you do not let the public, education body, potential student know the risks of this training and the current scrutiny it is under by ex members, you run the risk of misrepresentation. If you advertise the training as a mental health organization, you had better have the legal papers to back such claims. If you are unwilling to discuss the issues brought forward and outright disregard your peers, who are professionals like you in the Social, Educational, Professional and Health fields, then you are not only showing a lack of professionalism, you are also promoting ignorance and blind submission to an ideology, one that is above and beyond current professional decorum, and is culpable.

To dismiss or disregard stories of abuse and slander as well as severe mental cruelty among other things, or to be unwilling to even read these honest writings of your peers shows a lack of professionalism and outright censorship.

If you were to disregard evidence in this way in your professional lives there would likely be serious consequences for such negligence. Emotionally based belief systems that will not allow questioning or opposition undermines the very fibers of the institutions you work for and study at. This blind negligence further undermines democracy, freedom of speech, and critical analysis, all of which are constitutionally intertwined with your professional status. Opposition is welcome discourse in most educational and professional institutions. You may as well throw your professional credentials out the window when you throw out logical debate.

If under pressure your reaction is to repress rather than open discourse, this fits the scathing, if realistic, definition of ideology in John Ralston Saul's book The Doubters Companion, A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense -

 

"Tendentious arguments which advance a world view as absolute truth in order to win and hold political power....Which is ideology (as opposed to fiction)?  Which not?  You shall know them by their assertion of truth, their contempt for considered reflection and their fear of debate."

Submitted by Lesa

Dismissal of Ex-Members 

You are a beautiful spiritual warrior doing the best you can. Just because you are an individual, doing your own journey and minding your own business, doesn't mean you can ignore what is going on around you, spiritually, emotionally or physically.

Trainers say it is their own journey and that they have not experienced what ex-members have experienced, and to each his or her own. That you have not had a bad experience with a priest, parent, physician, leader or teacher does not mean you can dismiss other’s experiences. What would you do if someone came to you and reported that your incredible doctor was hurting people? If you use Training in Power standard responses, you might defend his character and say to them “you are not allowing this doctor to be human”.

You might say his clinic does much more good than bad, so leave it alone. You might say "I have been helped" or “I have not had that experience” and indicate you don’t want to talk about it any more. These deflective responses stop the real issue from being addressed. You might then avoid the person who brought the subject up. You might even be rallied to battle by your group, with all the people that begin to come forward to speak out.

The many ex-members of Training in Power must be saying something. The number of brave people who have dared to go public with their observations are only a fraction of those who have left; many ex-trainers are either in fear or just want to put it behind them as fast as possible. The fact remains that Trainers themselves don’t want to talk about it. Many don’t return phone calls, emails.

What Trainers believe: It’s been said often that ex-members are angry and misguided and by speaking out they aren’t letting trainers do their own journey in peace. Ex-trainers are even said to be “trying to take them out”, the training that is, because they are (sadly) possessed with evil. It is said that what ex-members do is very very bad karma.

All these things have been said to or about ex-members of the training, and they have been said by the founder (in many upper level lectures), who often repeats ‘they just couldn't take it, this type of training’.

It is a fact, although sad to us ex-members, that trainers, in their camaraderie and united silence, will not discuss issues with ex-trainers. It is a tragedy to close ranks against those who have spoken so freely, yet use the very same critical analysis ex-trainers bring up to then make changes in the organization. Ex-members are dead canaries. It is an insult to good people to cut off dialogue by simply saying it is not your experience, not your job, to each their own.

Trainers, when it does become your experience, when you do begin to feel an incorrectness or realize an error, when you do come to your power to exercise your right to disagree, and when you do this where will you go to be heard? Who will you tell and what will happen to you when you are dismissed? How will you feel then?

Before there is a common good that promotes growth there must be a willingness to listen. There must be an attempt at receptivity, respect, kindness and inquiry. There must be a mutual awareness of humble value, that the teacher can learn from the student, and that the student is a sovereign nation, not to be made over into the rules of another nation, but lifted to their own individual expression of power.  Submitted by Diane

When Religion Becomes Evil

Here's an interesting set of distinctions that delineate the difference between healthy and dysfunctional forms of religion, taken from Brother Anansi's customer review of When Religion Becomes Evil by Charles Kimball:

Five warning signs of corruption in religion:

1. Absolute truth claims
2. Blind obedience
3. Establishing the "ideal" time
4. The end justifies any means
5. Declaring holy war

Five signs of integrity and dynamism in religion:

1. Dynamic and relational truth and ongoing learning
2. Critical thinking and honest inquiry
3. Making the best of every time and leaving the determination of the end time to heaven
4. Both means and end are important and linked
5. Declaring holy peace

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