Norma Silva Multitango
March 23, 2024
Meditation offers numerous benefits, effortlessly enhancing many lives. Yet, this isn't the whole story. Join us as we delve into ‘The other effects of meditation’.
May 16, 2024
May 14, 2024
Not sure what coercive control actually looks like? An expert breaks it down.
Isabella Ross
Mamamia
MAY 14, 2024
Content warning: This story includes descriptions of domestic abuse that may be distressing to some readers.
Conversations about coercive control are at an all-time high.
It comes amid the New South Wales Parliament's decision to introduce new laws to address coercive control. This is a welcomed step in the right direction according to advocates, experts and victim-survivors.
As discourse on coercive control continues, some may still feel a little confused as to what it really is and the impact it has.
Annabelle Daniel OAM is the CEO of Women's Community Shelters, an organisation that works with communities around NSW to establish crisis accommodation for women and kids who are homeless or leaving domestic violence. She is also the chair of peak body Domestic Violence NSW and is an independent member on the Coercive Control Implementation and Evaluation Taskforce. With this in mind, Daniel is well versed in the subject of domestic and family violence, and specifically coercive control.
"Coercive control is domestic abuse. It's about dominating and controlling somebody, keeping them in fear, and intimidating them. It's cutting off a victim-survivor's access to the outside world in many different ways," Daniel says to Mamamia.
"We think of coercive control as the toolbox of all the different kinds of abuse — financial, emotional, physical, sexual. The perpetrator uses these behaviours to repeatedly hurt, scare or isolate another person to control them. That's coercive control."
While some abusive behaviours can seem minor on their own, when they’re used as a pattern of behaviour, they understandably cause serious harm. The abuse can affect every part of a victim-survivor’s life, including their mental and physical health, relationships, employment, and financial security.
It can impact someone's sense of safety, their independence, and self-esteem — and can make them feel trapped, powerless, and alone. It makes sense why coercive control is often referred to as "intimate terrorism."
Coercive control is also a known precursor for intimate partner homicide.
The NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team found that around 97 per cent of intimate partner domestic violence homicides in NSW between 2000 and 2018 were preceded by the perpetrator using emotional and psychological abuse as a form of coercive control towards the victim. It's a statistic that Daniel thinks ought to be discussed more.
Given the serious and dangerous impact of this abuse, from 1 July 2024 there are new laws to address coercive control in NSW. Daniel sees these new laws as a big victory for the state.
"The fact many states and territories are now acknowledging that coercive control is dangerous and legislating it as illegal, is incredibly important. The more we talk about what equitable and healthy relationships look like, the better. These conversations can change and save lives."
Ultimately knowledge is power, so it’s important to be across what coercive control is, and what it can look like.
"Talking about coercive control as part of my work, oftentimes we'll have people come up to us and say, 'I didn't realise I had been experiencing that in my marriage', or even, 'I'm really concerned about my own behaviours, what do I do?'
For anyone who is concerned their loved one, friend, or even a colleague might be experiencing abuse of any kind in their relationship, Daniel says it’s always wise to be aware of what the behaviours are and how to recognise them.
“Keep it in mind if somebody is increasingly cutting themselves off from the people they love and care about, or from activities and things they enjoy,” she explains.
“If your loved one is making themselves smaller around their partner, or if they appear to be in fear when they’re around their partner. Also, if the partner says derogatory things to your loved one or about them in public.”
Daniel stresses that help is available, and no one deserves to experience abuse, violence, or intimidation.
"There are a number of amazing support services available, and the awareness and training surrounding coercive control from first responders in NSW has been really heartening to see," she notes.
For more information on coercive control, you can visit the NSW Government's help page on their website.
If you’re experiencing coercive control, want to support someone else, or you’re hurting someone you care about – there is help available.
If you are in immediate danger, call Triple Zero (000) and ask for police.
If this has raised any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), chat online via 1800RESPECT.org.au or text 0458 737 732 – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service.
https://www.mamamia.com.au/what-is-coercive-control-explainer/
May 13, 2024
Lawsuit alleges religious coercion through meditation in Chicago Public Schools
Chicago public high school students allege they were coerced into participating in a Hindu puja ceremony as part of a multiyear study of Transcendental Meditation's ability to reduce crime from University of Chicago's Urban Labs and the David Lynch Foundation.
Richa Karmarkar
RNS
May 13, 2024
(RNS) — Kaya Hudgins was a 16-year-old sophomore at a southwest-side Chicago public high school when her teachers announced a new mandatory program called “Quiet Time,” a twice-daily Transcendental Meditation practice designed to “decrease stress and the effects of trauma” for students living in high-crime neighborhoods.
“I didn’t think much of it,” said Hudgins, now 21 and living in Texas. “I thought that, you know, it would just be basic meditation. I had no clue about what Hinduism was or what it was about.”
To be “initiated” into the Quiet Time practice, Hudgins recalls, she and her classmates were taken individually to a small room, told to place an offering of fruit at an altar with a man’s photograph and brass cups of camphor, incense and rice, and made to repeat the Sanskrit words a representative uttered. At the end, the representative whispered a unique, one-word mantra into her ear, according to Hudgins, and told her not to repeat it to anyone. The man in the photograph, she would later find out, was Brahmananda Saraswati, or Guru Dev: the master of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Hindu guru who started the global TM movement in 1955.
“It was unusual,” added Hudgins, who said she later researched her mantra online and found it was another name for a Hindu god. “The setting was just dark, and there were objects in front of me. The lady, she rang a bell and had me repeat something after her. It felt really weird.”
This “ceremony of gratitude” as it was put forth by the David Lynch Foundation, the organization behind the $3 million Quiet Time program, resembles a form of Hindu puja, or worship ritual. This practice was “deceptively marketed to public schools as non-religious,” according to Hudgins’ attorney, John Mauck, and serves as the basis of an ongoing lawsuit against the David Lynch Foundation and the Board of Education of the City of Chicago for violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
“There’s no gratitude here,” said Mauck. “It’s all invocation to Hindu deities to channel their energies through the participants. So that’s where it’s not teaching about Hinduism; it’s practicing Hinduism.”
The David Lynch foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
CPS told RNS in a statement, that the district “continuously” reviews its programs “to ensure they are operating as intended and implement changes as needed to ensure students can continue to learn, grow, and thrive.”
Hudgins’ case, which was filed in January of last year and is pending a court date, was granted class action status by a federal judge last month, meaning anyone who reached the age of 18 on or after Jan. 13, 2021, and who was a student between 2015-2019 could have a standing in the lawsuit. During those four years, the David Lynch Foundation and University of Chicago’s Urban Labs, a social and behavioral research initiative on community violence, were testing the Quiet Time study in five Chicago public schools.
Of the more than 2,000 student participants in the program, many, according to Mauck, were told not to tell their parents about it, “especially if they were religious,” he said. And if they did not want to participate or sign the waiver — like Hudgins, who said it went against her Muslim beliefs — students were reprimanded or told that not signing would affect their academic standing.
“I feel like that affected my faith in a weird way, because I felt like I wasn’t committed to my faith, like I wasn’t praying five daily prayers but was required to do the meditation,” said Hudgins.
After a 2019 presentation to the Chicago Public School board by a former staff member, including complaints about Quiet Time from more than 60 students, CPS came to the David Lynch Foundation with a compromise: They would continue the 15-minute meditations during class time but would no longer do the initiation puja. The Lynch foundation refused, instead ending the study and partnership.
Mauck, whose firm has settled two other similar cases, said his legal action has been informed by the 1979 landmark case Malnak vs. Yogi, when a TM course was offered to students at five New Jersey high schools by the World Plan Executive Council, under Maharishi’s purview. After a review of the meanings behind the Sanskrit incantations involved in the puja, the implementation of TM in public schools was found to be unlawful.
Transcendental Meditation movement founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1977. (RNS archive photo)
“Maybe the Lynch foundation thought people would forget about it, and they tried to say it was a different case, different group,” he said. “But it was the same Transcendental Meditation that has a plan and a process and a ceremony. The puja doesn’t really change. Transcendental Meditation is the same everywhere.”
Transcendental Meditation, as described on the David Lynch Foundation’s website, is an “effortless technique” that “allows the active thinking mind to settle inward to experience a naturally calm, peaceful level of awareness.” TM, as compared to other forms of meditation, focuses on one sound or mantra, the repetition of which, proponents say, may cause one to get deeper and deeper into a meditative state of self-hypnosis, thus increasing focus and lessening stress. The foundation’s websites claims more than 450 peer-reviewed published studies on TM documenting its positive effects on stress-related disorders, cognitive functioning and overall health and well-being.
According to those familiar, like former TM instructor Aryeh Siegel, Maharishi initially sought to share this simple sound meditation technique with the world, intent on getting anyone, regardless of religious background, closer to “cosmic consciousness.”
Siegel used to believe in this message. A former TM instructor, Siegel met his wife at the national headquarters during the six years he taught there in the 1970s, along with a group of fellow adherents he described as “pretty normal people.”
“We were smart, young, committed, going to save the world by bringing meditation to everybody,” he said.
But, as TM gained traction, spurred on by its A-list celebrity adherents, like the Beatles and Clint Eastwood, Siegel said he saw the organization shift from its original ideals to a “scam to make money.” As hundreds of thousands of Americans became interested in TM — and paid course fees in the thousands — Siegel said Maharishi’s claims became increasingly grandiose — promising TM could help you fly, levitate, turn invisible — and the movement “became like really, very, very cultish.”
Maharishi died in 2008 and today Siegel operates a website called Transcendental Deception and has written an insider tell-all book of the same title. He hopes to be a resource to lawyers and others seeking to expose TM and what he describes as the “lies” about its religious aspects.
“I don’t have a problem with it, if they’re honest about it,” said Siegel. “How do you not tell people that this is what goes on here. If you want to learn Transcendental Meditation, this is the ceremony.”
Filmmaker David Lynch, who began his own TM practice in 1973, founded the organization in 2005 with the goal of bringing TM to “at-risk populations” around the world, including inner-city students, according to its website. Today, the foundation runs on million dollar donations and testimonies from celebrities ranging from Gwyneth Paltrow to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The research study of which Hudgins was a part reportedly released preliminary results in 2019 that showed a reduction in the incidents of violent crime arrests for students who took the Transcendental Meditation program compared to the control group. But Mauck is skeptical.
“We have been looking after a document, arguing court motions to get further discovery,” said Mauck. “‘How did you come up with this number?’ and then being stonewalled. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s another assertion without a factual basis.”
For Syama Allard, a practicing Hindu and content writer for the Hindu American Foundation, the ordeal rings alarm bells of co-opting Hindu practices, like meditation or yoga, for “negative” intentions. “You can definitely rationalize in your mind or justify doing corrupt, sort of absurd things when you think you’re doing it in the name of spirituality.”
“At what point is something positive being used for some sort of selfish motivation, self aggrandizement or money?” he said. “That’s the point where it really starts to veer off from what Hindu spirituality is really supposed to be about.”
Hudgins, who now works in the makeup industry, hopes this lawsuit will help others in her situation.
“Now that I’m old enough, I can actually see what was going on and I’m actually happy to prevent it from happening to other children,” she said. “I can make sure that other students won’t be deceived.”
https://religionnews.com/2024/05/13/4147609/?fbclid=IwAR2w089ijCpMYdVOWCWBIzQR0tid6Ohlsn55jB6IJGxPXOm8BuTL2Fz6zUE
May 11, 2024
CultNEWS101 Articles: 5/9/2024 (Attachment, Chiropractic, Jehovah's Witnesses, Japan, Dahnworld)
Attachment, Chiropractic, Jehovah's Witnesses, Japan, Dahnworld
PsyPost: Attachment styles predict experiences of singlehood and well-being, study finds"A new study published in the Journal of Personality examined the link between attachment profiles, singlehood, and psychological well-being.
Despite the universal desire for romantic companionship, a growing number of people are choosing to live alone, with a significant increase in solo living from 7.6% in 1967 to 14.4% in 2020 in the United States. Further, around 35% of U.S. adults are not in a romantic relationship.
In their new study, Christopher A. Pepping and his colleagues examined why some people remain single through the lens of attachment theory. While attachment theory is often referred to in explaining relationship dynamics, it has rarely been applied to singlehood."
JSTOR: The Metaphysical Story of Chiropractic
Chiropractic medicine began as a practice built on an approach to the human condition that was distinctly opposed to Christianity.
"If you've considered seeing a chiropractor for a back problem, you may not have thought much about how the treatment could affect your spiritual life. But, as religious studies scholar Candy Gunther Brown writes, chiropractic began as a distinct approach to the human condition that was explicitly opposed to mainstream Christian theology
Brown writes that, before he became the founder of chiropractic, Daniel David Palmer was a Spiritualist and practitioner of animal magnetism. Palmer subscribed to eclectic spiritual ideas based on the unity of God and nature and the idea that humans can restore themselves to a state of harmony without depending on divine intervention.
Palmer claimed to have received communication from a deceased physician who taught him the principles of chiropractic—a term he invented in 1896, combining the Greek words cheir and praktos to mean "done by hand."
Palmer considered introducing Chiropractic as a religion in its own right but ultimately settled on describing it as an amalgamation of Christian Science and modern medicine. He wrote that it was based on adjusting the body to permit the free flow of "Innate Intelligence," or just "Innate," which he explained as "a segment of that Intelligence which fills the universe" (i.e. God) found in each individual.
"Palmer insisted that chiropractic could not be practiced effectively apart from a philosophy which he thought captured the essence of the world's religious and medical systems," Brown writes.
In 1963, the American Medical Association formed a Committee on Quackery with the mission "to contain and eliminate chiropractic."
Palmer's son, Bartlett Joshua Palmer, continued his father's work, leading the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Iowa, which trained about 75 percent of all chiropractors for 50 years. The younger Palmer was more forthright than the elder in his opposition to Christianity, writing that "no Chiropractor would pray on his knees in supplication to some invisible power."
Nonetheless, Brown writes, many patients apparently found seeing a chiropractor compatible with their Christian faith. Often, chiropractors served rural, working-class people, who were frequently suspicious of allopathic medicine."
Japan Times: Japan finds 47 cases of abuse of 'second-generation followers'
"There were 47 child abuse cases apparently reflecting parents' religious beliefs in Japan between April 2022 and September 2023, a Children and Families Agency survey showed Friday.
The suspected abuse cases were found by child consultation centers across the country, with victims temporarily taken into protective custody in 19 of the total cases, while some of the victims, often called "second-generation followers," sought support to become more self-reliant or advance to the next level of education.
The agency plans to consider necessary measures based on the results of the survey, which also covered medical institutions with critical care centers and municipal governments as well as elementary, and junior and senior high schools.
Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting conducted the survey on behalf of the agency using subsidies.
Of 232 child consultation centers across the country, 229 gave answers. Among the respondents, 37 facilities, or 16.2%, said that they detected child abuse cases believed to have been caused mainly by parents' religious beliefs.
Of the 47 detected abuse cases, those in which parents blocked their children's free decision-making by inciting fear through the use of words and images accounted for the largest share. In other cases, parents forced their children to declare in front of others that they are following religions or compelled their children to engage in activities to spread the religions they believe in by intimidating them."
The Chosun: Religious cult links to HYBE spark online speculation
" ... Founded in South Korea in the 1980s, Dahnworld outwardly presents itself as a meditation group but has long faced allegations of being a cult. In the United States, it is known as Dahn Yoga. CNN, Forbes, and others reported allegations in 2010 that the founder and spiritual leader, Ilchi Lee (Lee Seung-Heun), had sexually preyed on young female disciples. In Korea, SBS's investigative program Unanswered Questions shed light on fraud allegations against the organization."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.
Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.
Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.
CultNEWS101 Articles: 5/10/2024 (Geelong Revival Centre, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Transcendental Meditation, Legal, Religious Freedom)
Geelong Revival Centre, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Transcendental Meditation, Legal, Religious Freedom
LifeSite: Student reportedly forced into Hindu rituals at Chicago school granted class action status
Geelong Advertiser: Geelong Revival Centre church leader Noel Hollins receiving medical treatment as leadership change looms
RNS: Why faith-based groups are prone to sexual abuse and how they can get ahead of it
"Leadership changes loom at a shadowy, ultra-conservative Geelong church as former members hit out at the contradictory behaviour of its long-serving pastor.
A controversial Pentecostal Geelong church described by some as a "cult" is facing a forced leadership change, with its 93-year-old founder and long-term leader gravely ill, according to multiple sources."
RNS: Why faith-based groups are prone to sexual abuse and how they can get ahead of it
As Sexual Assault Awareness Month comes to a close, there are a few steps experts say every faith group can take to improve safeguarding protocols.
" .. With more victims coming forward and more research done on abuse within religious contexts, the evidence has shown that when sexual abuse happens in a place designated not only safe, but holy, it's a unique form of betrayal — and when the perpetrator is a clergy member or spiritual leader, the abuse can be seen as God-endorsed.
As the scope of this crisis has been revealed, houses of worship and religious institutions — from Southern Baptists to Orthodox Jews to American atheists — have looked to shore up their safeguarding protocols and protect their constituents against abuse.
But rather than scrambling to respond in the wake of a crisis, faith groups need to adopt policies tailored to their setting and connected to their mission, says Kathleen McChesney, who was the first executive director of the Office of Child Protection for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."
"A high school student recently obtained a judgment in the amount of $150,000 that was entered in her favor and against the Chicago school system, which forced her to participate in Hindu practices, amounting to idolatry in violation of her Christian beliefs.
The Board of Education of Chicago, the University of Chicago, and the David Lynch Foundation were sued by Mariyah Green, a former student at Bogan High School, for mandating student participation in Hindu rituals, despite conflicting religious beliefs. She was granted a $150,000 judgement on October 23 by the clerk of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Bogan students were required to participate in a program titled "Quiet Time," which consisted of two 15-minute periods each day dedicated to the practice of "transcendental meditation" (TM), which was popularized by Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and involves concepts used in Hinduism, such as mantras.
Green, a 2020 high school graduate, told LifeSiteNews in a phone interview that in addition to the 15-minute periods of "meditation" each day, the school sponsored a three-day class to teach students "the way that they want you to meditate."
During the 2018-2019 school year, Green attended the first day of this three-day lesson, which she described as "very uncomfortable." Students came into a "completely dark" classroom with "curtains closed [and] candles around the picture of [a] man," which had been placed on a table in front of them.
"I was actually scared for a moment, like, what is going on? Why are the lights off? Why do the candles light the man? Of course, the picture kind of threw me off because it wasn't [anything] that I had ever seen."
Additionally, Green and her peers were instructed to "repeat a mantra" that they were told to keep "to yourself." After the first day, Green told LifeSiteNews that she was able to opt out of future participation in the three-day lessons by avoiding going to the class, but not the 15-minute periods each day.
Aside from teachers casually asking when she would be returning to the class, she didn't receive backlash for opting out of the lessons. She described them as "nice people, but it was against my religion."
On the other hand, the "very mandatory" 15-minute slots designated for TM were linked to student grades, leaving Green feeling obligated to participate so she wouldn't lose the academic standards required for her to play basketball at the school. During these times, Green said she "didn't do it their way" and "didn't keep the mantra in my head," instead closing her eyes so it "looked like I was meditating" to receive the participation credit."
" ... Over the past few years, multiple lawsuits have been filed against DLF accusing the organization of being aware of TM's link to Hinduism and enforcing the practice of worshipping idols rather than allowing students to read or rest during the 15-minute 'quiet time."'"
LifeSite: Student reportedly forced into Hindu rituals at Chicago school granted class action status
"A former Chicago public school student alleges that her school coerced her into Transcendental Meditation and Hindu practices, including a ritual invoking pagan gods, as part of a program run by the David Lynch Foundation.
A petition for class action status by a former Chicago Public School student, Kaya Hudgins, who alleged that her school coerced her to participate in Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Hindu practices has been granted by a federal judge in a lawsuit against the Board of Education of the City of Chicago and the David Lynch Foundation. Attorneys at Mauck & Baker, representing Kaya Hudgins, received an order from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois awarding class certification to Hudgins and her peers.
The class action lawsuit alleges that while minor students were attending certain Chicago Public Schools that chose to participate in the David Lynch Foundation "Quiet Time" program, they were required to participate in Transcendental Meditation that incorporated Hindu religious rituals, which Hudgins claims on behalf of the class is an egregious violation of their constitutional rights."
" ... Hudgins, by her own declaration, was made to take part in Quiet Time.
"A Chicago Public Schools teacher told me and my entire class to sign a consent form to participate in Quiet Time," Hudgins wrote. "My entire class and I signed the consent because we felt pressure to sign. Our teacher told us that we would get in trouble and be sent to the dean if we did not consent. The teacher also told us that not signing the consent would affect our academics. We also received the same kind of pressure to participate in the Quiet Time program on a regular basis."
Hudgins was 16 years old at the time.
"Additionally, I, like many of my classmates, signed a nondisclosure not to tell anyone, including our parents, about the program," added Hudgins. "My classmates and I were particularly warned by a David Lynch Foundation representative not to tell our parents if our parents were 'religious.'"
"Not only were these minor school children coerced by Chicago Public School teacher into signing a document they had no business signing," shared John Mauck, a partner at Mauck and Baker, 'They were duped into practicing Hindu rituals and Transcendental Meditation during class time and instructed to hide their mandated participation in them from their parents.'"
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.
Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.
Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.
Traumatic Narcissism in Cult Leaders - Interview with Daniel Shaw
Cult Vault: Traumatic Narcissism in Cult Leaders - Interview with Daniel Shaw
October 14, 2022
https://youtu.be/YD7_6jlbQwY?si=aoU70oS8P-U6m0kL
Transcendental Meditation 350 videos archive
Some former TM teachers have described the TM organizations as operating at the upper level as a cult or Vedic sect. Upper level training includes levitation, group mental action at a distance and similar claims not recognized by science. Five day meditation classes cost upto $2,500 and TM has become a big business, with its own University and town in Iowa, and branches in Lower Manhattan ("Global Financial Capital of New York") and elsewhere around the world.
Karen Read and Chad Daybell on Choir Practice with DutyRon and a Special Guest!
Profiling Evil
May 6. 2024
"Focus on Karen Read Case with some discussion on whether the Daybell Case get any whackier?"
Tour of secret JMS compound in South Korea
7News Spotlight
May 5, 2024
This is an exclusive tour inside the JMS compound. Portions of the tour were shown in 'The Cult Next Door', 7NEWS Spotlight’s global investigation into a dangerous ‘religious’ group. They were two young Aussie women, enticed by faith and friendship, welcomed into a community made to feel safe and loved. But things quickly changed.
This is an exclusive tour inside the JMS compound. Portions of the tour were shown in 'The Cult Next Door', 7NEWS Spotlight’s global investigation into a dangerous ‘religious’ group. They were two young Aussie women, enticed by faith and friendship, welcomed into a community made to feel safe and loved. But things quickly changed.
This week, in a 7NEWS Spotlight global investigation, for the first time the chilling true stories of the women who escaped a dangerous cult.
Branded as a religious movement, Providence has been operating in Australia since 1997, and is accused of recruiting young women in local shopping centres and universities then brainwashing them to travel to South Korea to become spiritual brides of a criminal.
Spotlight has uncovered allegations of serious crimes and brainwashing by the outfit which is registered as a charitable organisation in Australia.
7NEWS Europe correspondent Sarah Greenhalgh this week joins the 7NEWS Spotlight team and, in a world first, travels deep inside the secretive cult compound in South Korea to confront the leaders.
“We’ve been investigating this cult for six months and it has led us across Australia, to the US and South Korea,” said Sarah. “When we started, we knew there were serious allegations of coercive control and various forms of abuse, but we had no idea just how sinister this organisation is. What we’ve uncovered now involves the Australian Federal Police.
“Providence was founded in 1978 by self-professed ‘messiah’ Jeong Meong-Seok (JMS). The group claims to be a Christian religious movement with more than 40,000 Korean members and a presence in more than 70 countries including Australia. The ‘churches’ we’ve visited in Melbourne and Sydney are just like those in South Korea – there’s no signage, no lists of services, certainly no standard, ‘open door’ church policy. Instead, the faithful meet behind frosted glass, using secret pin codes for access.
“Providence is a cult. And the impact it has had on so many young women’s lives is enormous.”
Tour of secret JMS compound in South Korea | Exclusive
https://youtu.be/HaKjCE5JCWQ?si=k0bUe3Mzxy_zxyNN
May 6, 2024
Internal Family Systems, Unattached Burdens, and spirit possession
Is IFS implanting a belief in demons into clients?
JULES EVANS
Ecstatic Integration
April 19, 2024
Robert Falconer is refreshingly honest.
He’s a leading figure in Internal Family Systems (IFS) which is the second-most-popular therapeutic modality among underground psychedelic guides (according to a forthcoming survey by University of Michigan - the most popular modality is Somatic Therapy). Bob says that for many years, it has been an open secret within IFS that sometimes - and perhaps particularly on psychedelics - you encounter Unattached Burdens (UBs) which is IFS terminology for malevolent entities, or demons.
He tells me:
Dick Schwartz [founder of IFS] started calling them critters a long time ago. They had a staff meeting at one point, and changed the name to Unattached Burdens, because it makes it sound a little more academically acceptable. This idea is like the third rail, and Dick’s terrified it's going to destroy the reputation of IFS. But I thought it was so important that I wouldn’t shut up about it. It led to me being exiled from the IFS community for a while. Finally [Schwartz] came around and wrote the foreword to my book, and now they're talking about it in Level 1 training.
Falconer recently published called The Others Within Us, with a foreword by Dick Schwartz. It brings this taboo topic of malevolent entities into the light, and shares Falconer and other IFS therapists work ‘unburdening’ clients of UBs. Bob works actively with underground guides in psychedelic culture, and thinks psychedelics open us up to non-human entities, both good and bad (most psychedelic guides agree with him, according to a survey I did which I’ll share later in the piece).
The centrality of this idea in IFS, and the popularity of IFS in psychedelic work, raises three questions.
First, what’s the evidence for whether this IFS ‘unburdening’ (or exorcism) is helpful or harmful to people?
Second, is there a risk of psychedelic guides (IFS or otherwise) suggesting or implanting belief in UBs / demons into their clients? (Spoiler: I think there is, and have found multiple examples of IFS clients who are led to believe they have a UB within them by IFS therapists or coaches).
Third, if Bob and underground guides are right, and psychedelics do open us up to entities (angelic and demonic), how do you inform the public of that risk, and protect them against it? At the least, Falconer has kickstarted an honest conversation on this topic.
IFS was developed by Richard ‘Dick’ Schwartz 40 years ago, growing out of his work in Family Systems Therapy. The central idea is simple: the self is multiple, and is made up of different parts. IFS has developed its own terminology for different types of parts - managers, who try to keep control of the psyche; firefighters, who manage ego-defence, and exiles, who are dissociated, wounded parts of us.
These parts aren’t metaphors, according to Schwartz. They are fully developed autonomous beings. At the heart of all these parts is the Self. Falconer writes:
Self is who the person really is. It’s always the witness…this Self is who you really are, and it is undamaged and undirtied.
The game or process of IFS is to identify your inner parts, give them names, make friends with them, and welcome them into your Self energy so they can all relax and feel safe. There are No Bad Parts, as Schwartz titled his book. People practice IFS on themselves or by seeing an IFS coach or therapist, who works with the parts via hypnotherapy or guided meditation.
IFS has become incredibly popular in the last few years - there are 10,000 people on the waiting list for level 1 training from the IFS Institute, so many that they do a lottery to make spaces available. You can see why it became really popular during the pandemic - what a fun activity when you’re shut away, to work with your internal parts like your own inner Pokemon.
Therapeutically, one can see the value in having compassion for the wounded parts of you. I also think it may be popular because it’s quite basic and easy to understand - at times No Bad Parts reads more like New Age inspirational literature than a serious work of scientific evidence-based therapy. The idea at its heart - the true, luminous Self - owes more to Hindu philosophy than western psychology.
Some psychologists have criticized IFS for its lack of data (despite its motto ‘follow the data’). It’s been going 40 years and in all that time there’s only one small-scale pilot study to see if it actually works for PTSD (in which 92% supposedly recovered from PTSD).
I haven’t tried IFS myself - I have several friends in the therapy world who say they love it - but the main risk I see is that it could make people way more self-absorbed, inward-looking and fragmented. Who has time for actual friends when you have a menagerie of unruly internal parts to manage within you. And these parts are not metaphors according to Schwartz but actual autonomous beings with fully-fledged personalities and their own ‘sacred essence’. It gets even more complicated - sometimes parts have parts! And those parts have fully-fledged parts and so on - ‘it’s parts all the way down’, Schwartz says. Okay…..
IFS demonology
A core IFS dogma is ‘there are no bad parts’. But it turns out this is not entirely true. There are some parts which are not part of your Self. On the plus side, there are ‘guides’ - angelic beings. And there are Unattached Burdens, UBs, or what are traditionally known as djinns or demons.
As Bob said, UBs have been a bit of an IFS secret, only taught in Level 3 training until recently. But a year ago Bob published a book all about UBs. And this book has been pretty influential in IFS, in underground psychedelic culture (where Bob is active) and in the wider New Age / spiritual culture (he was interviewed on the Emerge podcast and the Stoa has launched a talk series dedicated to the topic). Demonic entities are having a moment.
How can we identify UBs? In Catholic teaching, the classical signs of demonic possession are ‘paranormal knowledge, fluency in unfamiliar languages, violent reaction to holy objects, levitation, supernatural strength, and the production of substances and smells beyond what you could possibly expect from a human’. UBs are a little less obvious in IFS. But Falconer identifies some common characteristics.
Most obviously, he says, UBs wish the host ill, expressing unremitting malice. Falconer says they can also be ‘contemptuous and sneering and they say things like, “I’ll never go — you can’t make me.”’ If you ask them if they’re a part of a person, they will admit they’re not, which is very honest of them.
They can often appear demonic - one UB that Bob encountered appeared to the client as a ‘a blood-shot eyeball on goat legs’, another ‘a sexy goat head’, other times they can appear like deep sea creatures. Reportedly (see one of the Reddit comments below) they often have red eyes. Sometimes they have names. Sometimes people have multiple UBs within them ‘organized into local hierarchies with bosses and underlings. For a UB to see you standing up to a boss makes all the difference in the world.’ Yes, not only do you have malevolent entities within you, they might be unionized.
How do they enter us? Falconer says the psyche is porous so it can happen any time, but particularly during out-of-body experiences - trauma, rape, child surgery, black magic. A UB could have entered an ancestor then got passed on (Falconer mentions one case where an uncle practiced black magic and somehow passed the UB on to their nephew).
He says psychedelics open us up to UBs (or demons):
We’re more vulnerable and open to spiritual influence of any kind, good and bad. Before speaking to you I did a very dramatic session with a young woman. She went to an ayahuasca ceremony which was very poorly organised, and group medicine is more prone to have these things get into people. She got something in her and knew something was wrong. She left the place and she had an acute psychotic episode and was hospitalised against her will. Her parents came to take her back from California to the Midwest. They had to have her hospitalised again, because she tried to jump out of the car on the freeway.
What do you do if you get a UB inside you, according to Bob? Traditional exorcism would involve aggressive confrontation between a priest and the spirit - ‘the power of Christ compels you!’ Quite often in traditional cultures, people have been murdered because others think they have a demon within them. This still happens a lot (just Google ‘exorcism murder’), and when murders have occured in psychedelic culture, it’s often because an individual or group decide the victim is a demon or demonically-possessed.
Bob thinks this is unnecessarily aggressive and that in fact ‘UBs love a fight, they thrive on it’. Instead, he tells the UB to go into the light and coaxes the client to ask the UB to leave. He says that as long as no part of the person is afraid or attached to the UB, the UB has no choice but to leave. This, by the way, is what the woman in the aya ceremony did - she repeated the mantra ‘I have nothing for you but love’ and the Thing left her.
So what happens in an IFS exorcism is a conversation between the IFS therapist or coach, the client, the client’s parts, and the UB, through a sort of hypnotic induction. There are several examples in Falconer’s book and you can watch an IFS exorcism in this video as well.
3) Spirits and demons in other therapies
Demonic exorcism is quite far out for a mainstream therapy. But, as Bob points out, most cultures in history have believed in spirit possession. Amazon shamanism is based on the idea of spirits and spirit possession - spirits cause illnesses and spirits cure illnesses, and the shaman is the one who can work with spirits, bringing in the helpful ones and protecting against the unhelpful ones.
Even in western psychotherapy (which emerged, after all, from occultism) demons have sometimes poked their head into the treatment room, and a few fringe therapies have made exorcism the centre of their practice. One example is Spirit Releasement Therapy, which was practiced by pastor and therapist Willliam J. Baldwin, Dr Edith Fiore and others in the 90s and Noughties. I don’t know what happened to Baldwin but Dr Edith Fiore lost her license and took to writing books about past lives, UFO abductions and the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
Then there was the Dissociative Identity Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder fad of the 1980s and 90s. MPD was a very rare diagnosis before the 1980s, but it suddenly became a lot more common. Cases appeared of people with 10, 20, even 100 ‘alter’ identities, which would be uncovered and worked with through hypnotic suggestion, much like IFS. The MPD hypnotherapy movement suggested that some of these alters were actually demons who had entered the client through Satanic ritual abuse.
A key book in this movement was Mind in Many Pieces by psychotherapist Ralph B. Allison and Ted Schwartz (no relation of Dick). Allison speaks of identifying and removing demonic entities in his clients, who had often got in there through black magic or Satanic ritual abuse. They could be removed with the assistance of clients’ magical ‘Inner Helper’. MPD hypnotherapy led to something of a ‘Satanic panic’ in the 80s and 90s, as countless clients uncovered memories of Satanic cult abuse through hypnosis.
Falconer is aware of this fringe history of ‘exorcist therapy’ and writes appreciatively of Spirit Releasement Therapy and the MPD hypnotherapy movement.
Three questions for IFS and psychedelic culture
I have two questions for IFS and a third for psychedelic culture as a whole.
First, what’s the evidence that IFS exorcism is helpful or harmful to clients? Second, is there a risk of suggesting or implanting belief in demons into IFS clients? And third, if Bob is right and psychedelics do open us up to entities (angelic and demonic), how do you inform clients of that risk and protect them against it?
So the first question is ‘what’s the evidence that IFS exorcisism is helpful or harmful to clients? Bob gives us some case studies, all positive and successful, and writes:
while I don’t have statistical analysis, I can have a very firm sense of when we treat it this way, it’s very, very likely to relieve [clients’] suffering.
In other words, we don’t know if IFS exorcism is helpful or harmful because IFS hasn’t done any trials on it. Mitch Earleywine, a professor at the University of Albany, wrote an article criticizing IFS for its lack of evidence, arguing that measuring outcomes through clinical trials is essential and ethical, otherwise there is a serious risk of unintentionally harming clients. Mitch hadn’t even heard of IFS’ concept of UBs when he wrote that article. I told him about them, and he replied:
I have serious apprehensions regarding the expectations such metaphors set, as they could influence the psychedelic experience and potentially reinforce unhelpful beliefs. Given documented concerns about how psychedelics can increase psychiatric symptoms and distress, I would not be comfortable using or recommending the approach. Those who still chose to do so might be inadvertently encouraging distress and dependence. At the very least, they should emphasize the metaphorical nature of this approach repeatedly, and regularly assess iatrogenic effects with formal measures of distress or psychiatric symptoms.
Not a metaphor Mitch!
Second question. Is there a risk of therapists and psychedelic guides suggesting and implanting the idea of a UB to someone?
We’ve come across six examples online, mainly from the IFS Reddit page, where IFS therapists appear to have suggested to clients they have demons within them, often directing them to Falconer’s work.
Here’s one example from Reddit:
I’ve been doing IFS with a very seasoned IFS practitioner for two years. I’ve been stagnant and feeling deeply depressed recently - despite no obvious cause. I’ve sensed for a while a part inside me that isn’t my own. My therapist recommended I read the Robert Falconer book others have mentioned. Last week we uncovered an Unattached Burden which is deeply enmeshed in my system.
Here’s four others, some found it helpful, some didn’t, but in all cases the suggestion came from an IFS therapist or literature. The first three seem to have found it helpful:
This person did not find it helpful and was ‘freaked out’:
Here’s an IFS coach who read Falconer’s book then looked within herself and found a UB:
My point is in all these examples the suggestion of the UB came from the IFS therapist or IFS literature, not from the client themselves.
Since publishing this piece, two therapists have emailed me with more instances where either a client or they themselves were told by an IFS therapist they had a UB inside them - both of them disagreed, and ended the therapy. Here’s one of them who agreed to me sharing their comment:
I follow your blog and wanted to get in touch regarding the most recent post. I recently ended therapy with an IFS practitioner because of a sudden introduction to Falconer’s ideas into our work and subtle suggestion of ritual abuse. I was shocked and saddened after years of working with this therapist and named it. We tried to work through it but I ended therapy because it felt that trust had been broken. I really appreciated your post because it echos exactly my experience and I worry for clients who are less able to state when a boundary is transgressed.
It’s up to IFS what it does with this information, but it seems to me there is clearly a risk of suggesting / imposing the idea of a UB, and clients finding it harmful. In his book, one observer even tells Falconer it looks like he’s making hypnotic suggestions:
Participant 1: Bob, it seems like you implanted a lot of little suggestions, almost like a hypnotist.
Bob: Well, there is a general principle here. These things are often full of pride, and you can use their pride to manipulate them.
In other words, Bob thinks he is hypnotically manipulating the UB rather than the client…
Not another Satanic panic
We have been here before. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of clients of hypnotherapy came to believe they were the victims of Satanic ritual abuse and had demons within them. The MPD movement fed into a Satanic panic in the 80s and 90s, as American families became convinced there was industrial-scale Satanic cult abuse involving the murder of hundreds of thousands of children. This panic turned out to have been implanted by the MPD hypnotherapists, some of whom got sued by their clients and families.
That was one of the major fuck-ups of psychotherapy in the last 50 years, in my opinion, yet Bob mentions the movement approvingly in his book, without any mention of how it implanted false beliefs and spread Satanic panic.
This should be a serious concern for IFS, because there have already been similar law-suits against IFS-trained therapists. In the Noughties, Dick Schwartz trained the staff of a eating disorder clinic in St Louis called Castlewood. He ran IFS training programmes with the directors of the clinic - Marc Schwartz and Lori Galperin - and was listed on the Castlewood website.
Over the last decade or so, clients at Castlewood have brought multiple law suits against Marc Schwartz and Lori Galperin for implanting false memories of Satanic cultic abuse in them - including the belief thay had taken part in murder and cannibalism and that they were infested with ‘dark energy’. Clients at previous treatment centres run by the pair in Kansas City and New Orleans brought similar accusations against them of implanting beliefs in Satanic ritual abuse. The law suits were settled out of court and Schwartz and Galperin left Castlewood and set up a new treatment centre in California, where Dick Schwartz taught in 2019 (despite presumably knowing about all the law cases at Castlewood some years earlier).
What does Falconer think of the risk of implanting beliefs in demons?
Now I can imagine Bob’s work might really help people who already believe they are demonically possessed and are desperate for help. But what about people who don’t think they have a demon within them, but could gain that idea from IFS therapy. Is there not a risk of IFS therapists and coaches implanting that idea through hypnosis or psychedelic sessions?
Bob says:
The big danger is mistaking a part for a UB and trying to amputate it. That causes a great deal of damage. I assume it’s a part over and over again until it’s proven that it’s not.
He adds:
You asked if there is a danger of people finding these everywhere, lots of false positives. Yes, this is real and there are many, many more false negatives because we have been led to believe that this cannot happen and people who think it does are crazy. Our culture is SO blind.
Finally, the third question I have is: what if Bob’s right? What if we do live in a cosmos brimming with angelic and demonic entities, and psychedelics open us up to their influence?
This is a big question, but let me just show some results of a survey I did this week (I’ll share more next week). I surveyed 122 people who work in psychedelics - mainly guides, therapists and coaches. I asked them about their belief in entities. 71% said they believed in them, 52% said they believed in malevolent entities. I also asked what modality respondents most identified with and then could see which modalities mapped with belief in demons - shamanic guides believed most in demons (68%) followed by Grofian, IFS and Somatic guides (61%). 70% of all respondents agreed that ‘psychedelics open us up to the spirit world, in good ways and bad’. 60% agreed that ‘people working with psychedelics should be trained in how to engage with the spirit world’, but only 38% said they felt adequately trained to engage with the spirit world.
This is a conversation the psychedelic and medical communities need to have. Do clients need to be informed of the spiritual risks of psychedelics? Do guides and therapists need to be trained in spirit-protection? Will mainstreaming psychedelics increase the incidence of demonic possession?
A taster from a survey I did, I’ll publish ful results next week
Bob is not too concerned. He is a fan of MAPS’ effort to get FDA approval for psychedelic therapy (MAPS’ lead therapist, Michael Mithoefer, is IFS-trained). Bob says it’s quite easy to protect against demonic possession in psychedelic ceremonies, and also to ‘unburden’ clients if they do happen to get invaded by a UB. Plus he says that nine out of ten entities encountered on psychedelics are benevolent. So that’s pretty good odds.
https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/does-internal-family-systems-implant
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