Minister in the training evaluates it's problems in 2004
Submitted by Jennifer
April 21, 2004
From: (Senior Minister)
To: US board and Diane’s Letter Committee
In reading the documents that Diane sent out, I was in agreement with a few items that she mentioned in the personal notes of her document. Most of what she wrote in the document has not been my experience of the work or function of the organization of Training in Power. I did, however, feel that although we do know about certain problem areas, that we have not been actively correcting these areas. I will highlight below, what I feel needs addressment from what was alluded to by Diane in her writings.
My relationship with Faye, Jan and other senior people in this organization is important to me. I ask for very tight confidentiality on the contents of this document. If you use any of my information I ask that it be incorporated in such a way as to not identify me as the sole provider of the information. I will stand behind my comments openly if asked to and yet I do not want to have my comments viewed or taken out of context by anyone. Far too often people are accused of attacking another when they are actually speaking truth in this organization or outside of it. I would prefer to have the ability to clarify my comments, if needed, before being accused of attacking and then being dismissed for them. This type of thing does happen within this organization and is one of the areas that need to be corrected. I would be happy to lend clarification or site specific events, if needed by the committee. I am available in any capacity that will assist us in moving forward as a more healthy organization over-all.
1. Confidentiality is still a problem. I have found that we do have a problem in this area with senior people, including Faye. There is no a clear cut definition or boundary in place for the organization, which states exactly when and to whom private information may be shared. Often it is shared under the guise of a ‘need-to-know’ basis, however this is a gray area because who defines the ‘need-to-know’?
2. I agree with Diane’s comments that people have had their reputations damaged because of accusations that are made without enough tangible evidence being presented to support the accusations. People have been accused of abuse, theft, soldier gathering and so on. When in truth, there was no supporting evidence except that of an energetic viewpoint. Reading energy is very subjective and can be very inaccurate. I would like to find a way that allows for a full investigation on a suspicion before any public announcement or sharing of the accusation occurs. Our laws support the idea that we are innocent until proven guilty yet in this organization we are guilty until we prove empirically that we are innocent. Even then, just because someone saw it in energy, we are forever suspect even if we did not do whatever we were accused of.
3. I would like to support Diane’s suggestion that TIP find a way to make the organization seem less of a ‘Hotel California’ were you can enter but you can never leave. We are an educational system and no other educational system requires a full lifetime agreement to be involved with the organization. What this will require is finding a way to allow people to be assessed on their vibrational status before they can resume the power portion of our training.
4. We are supposed to be an organization of people who are supportive of differences in belief systems, religious and otherwise. I would like to find a way to educate people to allow others their journey without judgment. Faye has made a huge attempt to train people in this area and we as an organization need to find a way to support her efforts here beyond working the focuses in meetings.
5. Everyone knows that Faye has a hair=trigger temper and everyone knows how hard she works to hold it in. I wonder if we could find a way to support Faye as she prepares to become more of a public official by aiding her to work with an image consultant and anger management specialist.
6. Diane alluded to a problem with Faye’s right hand person. I am assuming that she was referring to Jan in this statement. First we need to find out for sure if it was Jan that was being referenced, and we need to find a way to address a long time problem with Jan’s management and training style. Faye has been alerted to the problems in this area for a long time and I believe that she feels stuck on how to make the changes that need to occur. Jan is aggressively passive-aggressive, manipulative, retaliatory, destructive and all of this is done in such a nice way. She continually over-rides, bypasses or ignores the policy and protocol that has been put in place in the organization. This leads to others thinking that they too can override rules they feel they want their own way. Most if, not all, of the senior people of this organization, including myself, have been hurt by Jan’s lies and actions over the years. I have witnessed Jan destroy people’s reputations and careers or progress in the organization just because she felt threatened by that person or didn’t like them somehow. This has gone on since I began the training. I reported this in the survey that was done several years ago, as did others. I finally breathed a sigh of relief once I became a Senior Minister, because there was nothing Jan could do now to interfere with my role in the organization. She had interfered so many times before and now she no longer could. Her training methods are not effective. For years I have watched people thrown into doing tasks or being trained into teaching Level ll, without adequate preparation. I have seen this happen and then as a follow-up they are made wrong, by Jan, for having been unsuccessful at completing the task they were thrown into.
She is not a trainer. I have had to train almost everyone she has worked with here in Canada and have heard over and over that Jan never trained them or taught them anything and that they always felt something was wrong with them because they didn’t understand how to do something, even after Jan had worked with them.
One of the most difficult things to deal with here is that Jan rarely, if ever, has taken responsibility for being wrong or for her lies. My experience has been that she always places the blame on the other person or makes another person the scapegoat to draw attention away from herself. Although Faye knows that Jan behaves in this way, there is little difference between her behavior now and 12 years ago when I first met her. I have witnessed Faye’s perspective about someone change once Jan has dissed them to Faye.
What I would like to see is a way to channel Jan’s energies elsewhere. If she were to remain in the role of Trainer and Educational Manager, I would like to see her be the recipient of a course in management styles and techniques. Perhaps we could include all of the senor people to participate in this and I do feel we need to find a way to address this directly with Jan.
Many individuals have come to me seeking advice on how to confront Jan and they all fear doing so because of the retaliation that will occur over the coming months. Thus, effective confrontation never occurs. We’ve simply all learned how to play the game with this person’s abusive dynamics until we no longer feel we can be affected by her. That unfortunately leaves many people behind us still fearing for their careers in this organization and of course our reputations are always open to attack. I want everyone to understand that I do not have a personal ‘hate-on’ for Jan. Jan is a long-time colleague of mine and I have a great love and respect for her. I just don’t like her behavior.
7. Diane spoke about many people working hard for no pay and she felt this was incorrect. I believe that we all agree that there is a great imbalance here and I believe we are working on this area. I do see one area of education that could support the efforts being made here already. I see that we need to educate people that being ‘of service’ is not about volunteering for TIP. Volunteering for this organization is one area where a person can place their service hours. Still, many do not have the time to afford to spend on volunteer efforts for TIP. Often people are made to feel guilty for this and I know of some people who have chosen to leave behind the training that they love because they feel they are expected to volunteer, run meetings and teach for TIP. Many of these people have been of service in other areas. They work in hospitals, with street kids, in mental health facilities, with the elderly, with children and so on. All of these and many other jobs are jobs ‘of service’. We are to be ‘of service’ to Spirit and God/the Universe, not an individual nor an organization in specific. I feel that if we correct this area we will have a correction to our volunteer areas in the organization also. We need to award value to everyone’s time and effort regardless of who they are or what they do. Our current structure is in a state of change and hopefully we will correct the great imbalance that Diane speaks of.
8. Mostly I see this as a great time for healing and an opportunity for us to grow from here. We have been functioning as a dysfunctional family and we have been way too familiar with each other. In over familiarity there is a loss of respect that needs to be regained. We need to continue to remind people that we are a group of like-minded individuals yet are not all the same. We need to remind people that just because we go to classes, meetings and healing groups together that it doesn’t mean we know each other. In truth, very few people truly know any one of us, including Faye. When we know people by association only, we then tend to build up a fantasy or story around that person about who they really are. It is this fantasy or story that gets rattled apart when people begin to deal with us on a daily basis and begin to see who we really are. This has worked against Faye so often. People build up a story about who she is, never really getting to know her or to understand who she is. They when they become involved with her they tend to make her wrong for not being that perfect person whom they created in their mind’s eye. I have seen her raked over the coals for not being other than who she is. If we were able to teach people that we need to get to know a person really well, to even begin to see them, we would be doing this organization a great service. We would be helping people to learn to see Faye as a human who teaches a beautiful system of power and who has an amazing ability to walk and live in spirit. I do not know how we can teach people this but I feel we need to find a way.
I hope that this input offers some assistance in coming to understand where some of Diane’s angst comes from. In her letter in response to my email to her, she said that I know of what she speaks and that I know what she has been speaking against for years. I do not personally know what Diane has commented on over the years and yet I have awareness that there are areas where change must happen. I feel if we work together we can really move forward with what matters, rather than spending time fixing what happens as a result of unfinished business.
Sincerely,
(Senior Minister)
Comments on this letter from Diane
In this letter, xxxxx responds to the "Lessons in Awareness" document sent to the Board critiquing Training in Power when I resigned. Although this is the most direct communication I have seen at a high level in the training, it is important to demonstrate the group thinking that still holds the abuse in denial. When faced with the problems in the training, trainers often say things are changing in the organization. Yes, there have always been changes. Meanwhile, so much hurtfulness. One must ask why it took a 124 page document and a high level resignation to get to the point where someone in leadership could finally speak (albeit from a plea of tight confidentiality at the risk of the very dismissal I experienced) about some of these major long standing issues. I appreciate this well-meaning and truthful letter, but it does not get close enough to underlying abuse within the training.
Xxxxx acknowledges problems in the organization, especially with Jan’s behavior, yet does not recognize that Faye’s behavior has been just as harmful. Both Jan and Faye have a root dynamic that justifies and protects their abuse of others: they feel they are right and others are wrong, without question, and therefore cannot be addressed without some kind of retaliation. This behavior has caused years of pain and suffering to many.
I can understand the value of a top level trainer who is patient, waiting for students as well as Faye to get the healing they need when they do, but in the case of a top level leader, the mental health of students are at stake. Regardless, if the training is truly effective, one must wonder how Jan, who must be by now getting close to 20 years in the training and in the highest level, can be so unwell. Jan’s damage to students and to the organization was staggering, even early on, and yet she was elevated to Senior Minister and Education Manager, as well as permitted to attain and continue in the highest levels of training. But to scapegoat her only protects the root cause.
Xxxxx says that Faye is pure and lives in spirit. As we know and have witnessed countless times, this teacher publicly or privately stonewalled, dismissed, discredited, gas-lighted, shamed, seduced, ignored, raged at, denigrated, made accusations of theft and soldier-gathering, and humiliated students. She judged students without fair representation, told students of hidden sexual abuse they perpetrated on their own children and accused fathers she didn’t even know of sexual abuse. This 'psychic' style is passed on to her teachers.
Who is to say what it means to live in spirit here, and who is to say what purity is, but each person deserves basic respect, courtesy and fair representation. Each person who received this treatment or witnessed it done to others deserved to voice an objection. Each student who gives their trust to an organization dealing with mental health deserves to receive basic, sound advice, at least most of the time, and to have an avenue of accountability to protect themselves.
Students are conditioned to trust that Faye has the bigger view of where we’re all going. As the one and only knower of this big picture, she has created a huge license for abuse when students such as Xxxxx trust that abusive behavior has a grander reason. Faye basically states that she is leading an experiment on planet earth (it is not stated who set this experiment up) to wake up as many as she can. Inherent in this directive is the implication that if we don't do this training (which is said to be not for everyone) we fail ourselves, fail planet earth and fail the universe who wants us to succeed.
Xxxxx does not yet connect that Faye at the root of this my way or fail energetic power-over in the training and that the training itself is set up as a power-over structure. If it wasn't, these problems would have been addressed years ago, and the damage to many innocent people could have been prevented.
Many good people have been hurt by this structure, and we’ll never know the full extent of the harm done to those who left in silence with no outside support network to understood their cult experience. This is far beyond an anger management problem.
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