Author Topic: Fresh blood  (Read 21413 times)

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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #90 on: January 27, 2005, 10:42:00 PM »
The 90?s was not an era of an ?Amish? sort of life. On the contrary, some at seed were professionals and, believe me, ate out at expensive restaurants, purchased expensive homes, etc. However, the real money, big money of the 90?s was in the inner circle and the businesses they had webbed. Basically, the inner circle, which were some of the key staff members and A. (as you can imagine) had connived themselves into business that were worth more than you could ever imagine. The money they were making from just simply being presidents and vice presidents of businesses was enough to keep them happy for the rest of their lives.


By the way if you haven't figured it out . ..this seed thing, even the word of it, is meaningless and disgusting to me. ..  can u believe i allowed a bunch of money hungry strangers to run my life?? what a joke... they are white trash at its finest to me... or better yet . . .ignorant asssholes that many did not even have a high school a joke ?
(to be continued)
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #91 on: January 27, 2005, 10:45:00 PM »
Hey cleveland, can you call me now i need o talk to you?  give ur e-mail so i can give u my number
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #92 on: January 27, 2005, 10:48:00 PM »
wrightwwAThotmailDOTcom

Does that make sense to you?

Use @ for AT and . for DOT

I'm doing this just so I don't get my email on a thousand list for spam. Probably too late.

Or choose a user name here and I can Private Message you...
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #93 on: January 27, 2005, 11:02:00 PM »
cleveland, i sent u an e-mail. sorry to dissapoint u . did u get it?
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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #94 on: January 28, 2005, 11:31:00 AM »
Quote
On 2005-01-27 19:42:00, Anonymous

By the way if you haven't figured it out . ..

(to be continued)

"



Please do so..... :grin:  

By the way, we really are collectively interested in hearing your story. Please choose a username and tell us more...
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #95 on: January 28, 2005, 01:45:00 PM »
Looking back on what I?ve written so far, I?d like to elaborate on two points about the 90's:

1)   I really have nothing against anyone who made money in the group, just as I?m sure much of corporate America would have little problem with the ?business as usual? mentality, even if perhaps business tactics were probably not always Kosher. Actually, all the business politics of the 90?s were not my thing since, once again, I was not in the ?stew.? As far as I was concerned, those problems that did emerge as a result of business, were really the "business" of those involved in business themselves.

2)   The second item I would like to clarify is simply that I lost my ?objectivity,? on the last few lines of my post, so I will retract the last part of my post, at this time and look for more accurate words to discuss the powerlessness associated with listening to others for over 20 years when it comes to personal lifelong decisions (Thank God, I often listened with a deaf ear, especially the last years).

(to be continued)
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #96 on: January 28, 2005, 04:11:00 PM »
Now to move on . . .by the  90?s, I really believed that these were my friends for life. I was wrong. During all those years, I had gained the ?illusion? of confidence since in robot-style I had accomplished outside successes, but deep inside I was a little boy that had never grown up enough to simply say, ?No. I don?t agree with you.? And I do mean that I could not stand up to the ?inner core.? So then, ?Why was I still around the group to the end ?? The answer for me is very simple. I was afraid to say to staff, ?I do not want to live around you people. I want to live on my own.? Fear, fear, and more fear . . . It has been only in the past several years that I have been happy on my own. The 90?s for me was a time where I could taste the freedom that I had so longed for all those years, but it took a decade to even start my own journey.

    Yes, there were positive aspects of the experience, but I sold out my sense of self for over 20 years. Did the seed save me from total destruction? I really don?t know how to answer that except to say that in the 80?s a few people I knew died of AIDS and drugs. Could it have happened to me if the Seed had not come along? Possibly, and if that is the case there is a part of me that is grateful as I appreciate others in my life that have had an impact on who I am, but I totally disagree with the conditional love style promoted at that place. It is so ingrained in the ?Do or Die? culture many promoted (including myself at the beginning) that to this day some believe that you should not forgive those that have stood up to you as if they had betrayed you. The funny part, is that the unwillingness to forgive others and understand different points of view were two of the most damaging consequences of the ?brainwashing.? Recently, I woke up and it occurred to me how ?well? they trained me to criticize and judge others without really looking in the mirror myself. Wow!! The scary part was believing that there was this ?truth? or ?justification? to not forgiving others, especially to hold grudges to the grave.


 I do not want to be that person that is afraid of what THEY think. It just doesn?t work for me anymore. I realized that the last days of the seed taught me lessons about myself . . .how I had allowed myself to be ?conned? that there is a  hierarchy of human beings, that some really are better than others,  that some are so strong that they don?t need to be loved or they don?t need to cry or desperately seek shelter when they feel alone. I was supposed to be O.K. the whole time, and now I realize that I am me, the me that I was not for years and years because I did not fit into the mold that others insisted I fit into . . .
   I can see too how I was like some of you, especially the artists, who can see beauty in so much around us, but that did not count since (as it has been reported) it meant you were not good enough. . .It seemed like centuries went by and lived in fear of letting the group know that I was gay. Wow! That was a big one since only very few were interested in really listening to my story, that part of the story. I always wondered what type of ?therapy? I was being exposed to that did not embrace talking about everything about me since I was told that I really shouldn?t bring that up in the group or if I did it was to be brought up in the context of that ?IF it weren?t for The Seed? I would have ended up being gay . . .but the truth is that because I was not what others in power really accepted as good enough when it came to masculine stuff, then I was not good enough, tough enough to be part of the inner core, essentially I was not smart enough either, of course. (to be continued)
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #97 on: January 28, 2005, 04:44:00 PM »
Welcome Anon,
  We almost wound up in the same soup together (though I doubt I would have stayed) I'm really not sure why my mom sent me to Straight instead of the Seed, but she did it in 1980. So I'm guessing we're about the same age and from the same area. And I spent most of the last 20 years living in and around Ft. Lauderdale, often wondering what the hell was going on w/ The Seed.

  I once ran into a couple of seedlings at a doughnut shop. They were buying around 4 dozen doughnuts, I think, and that's the clearest idea I had of how many people were still in there.

  I'm starting to get an idea of what life in The Seed post `70's must have been like. At the same time, I've gotten to know a few people who's entire families were very much pro Straigt, long after they all graduated or whatever. Some of these people to this day, 20 years and more later, still have that to deal w/ from their families.

  A good friend pointed out not long ago that one valid category or variation on the TC theme is whether they focus more on controling the client or the family. I think The Seed focused a lot on the client, even discouraging family contact. Straight did it a little differently. Us kids just had to suck it up and go along because they had such a firm hold on our parents. Very few former Straightlings are really pro-program today, though some are ambivalent.

  Anyway, welcome, glad you happened along here and I look forward to learning more from you.

If you ask the Government for the right to assemble you deserve to be told no .
 

--Jim Lesczynski, Manhattan LP chair, on "unorganized" gathering @ Central Park

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"Don\'t let the past remind us of what we are not now."
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #98 on: January 28, 2005, 05:01:00 PM »
Anon - I am so proud of you my friend for being yourself. Even after all of these years. Since at the Seed we needed to conform at any cost, it was difficult enough to deal with 'normal' heterosexuality, but to be at the Seed and know that you are gay? And not be able to talk about it, much less except yourself? I can imagine that this caused a lot of pain. As for me, since I don't fit that 'good at sports, tough-guy' mold either that was the standard endorsed by the Seed (and my whole school experience up to college)I can totally sympathize. So I too wondered, how come I am not good enough? And you must have too. All of those years.
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Offline marshall

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« Reply #99 on: January 28, 2005, 09:43:00 PM »
Anon, thanks bunches for your info on the seed circa 90's. BTW, my reference to being amish wasn't related to the financial aspect but rather towards the rigid division of male / female roles. (women expected to sew, cook, clean and men expected to do work such as carpentry or automotive...such as cleveland described.) Staff or inner core being wealthy is also really at odds with my experience in the 70's. Group staff lived very simply and received only a small stipend as I recall....or at least that's what we were told.

So what may have started with misguided idealism ended up being all about money? That figures. This seems to happen over and over in our society. But, if I understand you all correctly, the later seed was at least all voluntary, so no-one was coerced into joining or staying. The whole enterprise just strikes me as sad and pathetic now. The evolution of the seed in many ways parallels that of the synanon organization, though it never prgressed to a full-blown religion. The turning inwards or imploding into itself...where members never really leave their program, is very similar.
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Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. You must climb towards the Truth. It cannot be \'stepped down\'

Offline GregFL

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« Reply #100 on: January 28, 2005, 11:08:00 PM »
anon, thanks so much for that post.

You must have been tormented having to hide your sexuality all those years. But on further thought here, so did the hetero people...they in effect castrated everyone mentally.

You however must have felt you had a big secret that wouldn't be accepted.

I hope those that feel all lovey dovey about what the seed did for them understand what you must of gone thru for 20 years.

Welcome thru all that crap, and welcome here. I would love you to choose a username.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #101 on: January 29, 2005, 12:25:00 AM »
Let me address Greg?s comments on sexuality. I will never forget my first day at The Seed, I was seventeen years old. After the intake, the search, etc., I was walked upstairs by a staff member, and with his arm around me he said in a gentle, yet matter of fact way, ?Oh by the way don?t worry about being gay. We were all gay before coming into The Seed.? At that moment, I really thought, ?Wow, maybe they have some magical cure here, or I will undergo some transformation that will cure me of this problem.? Remember, it was 1980, and many were just starting to come out (a few years before Madonna). For several years, I tried my best to repress it believing the dime-store responses I was being given in the back office every time I had a ?problem? with the gay issue. Usually my ?problem? would service after struggling for weeks into my head because I had fantasized about some movie star or another guy in the group. By the way there weren?t many around to fantasize about although several strutted their stuff as if they were hot shit. As time passed, I continued to pray and use all the tools on every wall downstairs and upstairs. . .and I even remember when I would spend the night at the building, I would read all of those inspirational signs hoping that some day soon, maybe by the time I turned 25, this would go away because THEY said it would, and I was told by more than one staff member, ?Do the right thing, and the right thing will happen?  or ?Be grateful; you have no real problems.?  The feelings I?m describing were from 80-85 (the more repressed years for me.)  After that I went to school, even though I was persuaded several times not to go since ?I did not have a clear purpose as to why I wanted to go.? Thank God, I bit the bullet on that and did not listen to a fucking thing in relation to going to school since I ended spending 4 years in college and 6 more years in graduate school, which for me represented the doors to intellectual freedom, something they definitely tried to repress, but it was O.K. for some selected members that had received staff?s blessing to pursue their careers (few and far between in the 80?s). Anyway, school was an eye-opener for me; it was as if I lived a double-life. I was alienated by staff for the first few years of going to school, and my intentions were questioned several times as to whether I had made the right decision. They basically treated my career goals as Mickey Mouse compared to some of the more ?gifted members.? Looking back on all that mumbo jumbo, ?gifted? meant you came from some family with a large inheritance or social status, such as the town knew who your grandparents were in Cleveland or something.  To be honest, by the time I was in school and working for several years, the roles switched some for me because I felt I had infiltrated the cult of the brainless when I was at home with the guys I lived with or sitting in the group. . .actually, at times it was laughable to see how one-dimensional many of them really were, but I plugged along anyway. I liked to think that the reason I continued to follow was out of ?loyalty,? but in reality it was the fear of the unknown. This was all I knew from 17 on and leaving for me felt like jumping off a cliff. Despite the critical thinking graduate school demanded of me, when I was at home or in the group, I was emotionally the 17 year old that walked in many years ago, especially when I was confronted by those with power. So back to the gay thing, well as became more and more poisoned with school, I started to come out to one of the guys on the football beach outings. He was married, and we ere very close friends, actually I felt a strong brotherly connection to him, and he accepted me. It was like our secret. He really was the best thing at that time for me because it was like I came alive from knowing that someone knew. See in the 90?s there were cliques. Even though for years we said, ?At The Seed there are no cliques and no best friend, and the best friend you will ever have is Art,? there were people grandfathering certain people to move ahead. . .at all levels. So for a long time my football buddy was the friend that knew, everything. That empowered me a great deal. . .I felt that it did not matter that I was invisible to many, what mattered was that someone knew I was gay, and we talked about everything . . .we would be playing football, and I would tell him what I loved about guys (in detail), and he would tell me what he liked about sex, etc. Later more people found out, little by little, and finally one person, who had special status with Art came out of the closet, and then it appeared to be ?O.K.? by the late 90?s for many if you were gay since the blessing came from the top. The 90?s were in many respects problematic and suffocating (in terms of Seed politics), yet more liberal on social issues: everyone ?had? to be a democrat and ?had? to be pro-choice and ?had? to think it was O.K. to have sex before marriage as long as you had received the blessing, something I certainly did not receive on many issues. As good as that all sounds though, there were many undercurrents of hypocrisy to the new liberal ways and the only thing that really counted, when push came to shove, was if you were one of the ?shrewd?  money-makers.

(to be continued)  by the way, I don?t know how to pick a user name Greg.
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #102 on: January 29, 2005, 12:45:00 AM »
Oh, just click on the "Register" link in the list to the left and fill it out. You don't have to use a real email address or anything else if you don't want to. Down side is just that you'd have to ask one of us to change your password if you ever lost it and you wouldn't get notifications for private messages or for watched threads.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.
--Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright

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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #103 on: January 29, 2005, 11:51:00 AM »
"didn't contribute financially to the Seed itself".


there were yearly donations offered at Christmas time, and those that were financially prosperous were definately thanked "status-wise" for there generosity.
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