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“I really believe that the only way I did it was I disassociated,”
It's a defense mechanism. A holdover from when we were prey. If fight-or-flight is no longer an option, and something is about to harm or kill us, our brains shut down the nerve impulses from our bodies. That way we can't feel it when we're being eaten alive.
Dissociation is responsible for out-of-body experiences, near death experiences, astral projection, and a whole slew of other neurological special effects. It can cause memory gaps, too.
Over two decades Raniere had successfully ruined the lives of several people who tried to expose him, usually through lawsuits, private investigators, and criminal complaints in several states.
Seems like Rainiere took notes from the Scientologists.
“I would try to mirror back the words that you used so that you felt listened to and heard. And you wouldn’t even clock that, if I did it well,” she said.
This is basic 'active listening'.
Amway
Amway is also a cult, or edging into cult territory.
Amway people are weird. They have this Stepford Wife sort of sameness to them.
For emphasis he traced a triangle around the structure, which, it must be said, looked an awful lot like a pyramid.
Hmm. What a coincidence!
est,
I know someone who went to one of their meetings.
The meeting was 2 - 3 hours in, and a woman attempted to leave and find a restroom. Participants were told one inside the meeting, they would not be able to leave.
The exit doors were all locked, and had security guards at them. The woman was compelled to return to her seat. The est facilitator proceeded to shame the woman until she wet herself.
morbidly wealthy,
Those are two words that I've ever seen combined like tat. 'Morbidly wealthy'. It doesn't even make sense, but it *totally* makes sense.
I think 'pathologically wealthy' might have been a better choice.
“They used to joke about our family, saying that we were like the Flanders in The Simpsons because we got along so well.”
The Flanders' family life gets dark every once in awhile. Ned is a control freak with a lot of anger issues. He's stuck using an unhealthy coping skill-diddly-ho.
Rod and Todd are raised in a way that isolates them from their peers. They are extremely dependent on adult guidance. They have very little risk-taking experience, and poor judgment.
(Barbara Bouchey, who studied NLP for years before she took her first NXIVM class, told me that this more insidious type of hypnosis hadn’t been part of her experience.)
That she knows of, anyway.
There, at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, a woman named J.Z. Knight taught people how to discover their own spirituality and find their purpose in life.
J. Z. Knight's seminars have devolved into her being drunk & spouting right-wing, racist, diatribes at her clients.
Raniere convinced Vicente that Ramtha’s founder was a crackpot
This is probably the only truthful thing Rainiere has ever said.
