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[igotthisguitar]

BRAINWASHING OR ENLIGHTENMENT
A memoir...

Being inside the Dahnhak center with my Korean friend we immediately feel otherworldly. An enormous, striking mural covered one wall-a sunlit North Korean mountain range depicting the alleged birthplace of the Korean founder Dangun. Community members smile and continuously act friendly to me, a complete stranger. Their white hanbok (white is a symbol of purity) mysteriously bear the number 4335 in the center, which I later found out is from the Dahnhak calendar. Some members of Dahnhak tell me in English, ��Wearing this outfit helps one to focus. My friend leaves and I put one on. An outpouring of loving attention from the master instructors to me was offered and I began to feel like one of the group.



The Dahnhak (Dahn for short) retreat provided a vigorous workout. We began by playfully slapping our lower parts of the stomach (��Dahn-jon"), then stretches, neck and shoulders warm-ups, followed by rigorous Tai Chi style exercises, capped off with a pleasant meditation and soothing massage. I am sore but relaxed and happy.

After the session, my friend reappeared for Dahn's customary tea and social time. I have always heard that close relationships naturally form amongst people with a shared purpose: in this case the quest for enlightenment. Here experienced teachers begin to get to know you: what makes you tick? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Are you emotionally wounded?

But I am getting ahead of myself. An outgoing and upbeat friend of mine decided to recruit me to become a member to join Dahn. The founder of Dahn is Seung Heun Lee, who named himself Ilchi ( a finger pointing to the truth ). He has authored numerous popular books on the subject and launched hundreds of Dahn centers and other businesses and organizations internationally. Ilchi has a vision of the brain as a natural medicine chest, and as the means to spiritual enlightenment. He wants us to believe that his Dahnhak and Brain Respiration programs hold the key, not only to healing and enhancing the brains of adults and children, but to world peace. Healing the brain takes patience and understanding and the Dahnhak and Brain Respiration, programs developed by Ilchi Lee, appealed to me as a continuation of the very brain science that had helped me as a very depressed and awkward child.

Seeking enlightenment through Eastern exercise and meditation is not unusual, but the used car sales approach to enlightenment at the Dahn center started to jar my sensibilities. Instructors pushed community members to purchase ever-increasing levels of enlightenment courses, costly healing products, and Ilchi's books Many people have reported getting in over their heads, softened by the loving environment and the fantastic workouts. After all, what's a few thousand, or tens of thousands of dollars, for spiritual ��enlightenment?�� The costs run: $1,500 to take ��New Human Training". $3,000 for a ��World Lifetime Membership". $10,000 for ��ealer School training. For $20,000, you can receive an ��Ancestor Liberation Ceremony". Can't afford it now? Sign up for a Dahn credit card and pay later. And pay, you will; Dahn does not issue refunds.

All who join Dahn are expected to fervently recruit new members to reach a goal of 100 million Dahn healers and 36,000 centers by 2010 (10,000 more than McDonalds). According to Lee, 100 million enlightened Dahn masters are needed to effect a shift in global consciousness toward world peace. Thus, with a sense of urgency, a growing number of Lee's devotees give up their former lives, their careers, families, and friends, their hopes and dreams to become �� ... new humans, to fervently raise money for Lee and his business partners to heal the planet and prevent imminent collapse.

But am I getting ahead of myself again? I delighted in exercising during those peaceful days with my new friends. Smiles brightened our faces; we shared jokes, and this was where we wanted to be Monday to Saturday. Each new person in Dahn gets a peaceful, ��love-bombing Our teacher, who was required to live in the center, always offered kind words of encouragement. Members reciprocated by bringing gifts of food and plants-always appreciated by grossly underpaid Dahn teachers. We held frequent going-away parties, as Dahn relocates its teachers about every six months, despite the teacher's and students' selfish wishes. Dahn doesn't want their teachers becoming too attached to any person or place. All devotion must be reserved for Ilchi Lee and his goals.

After my second month and in spite of my doubts, I wanted to believe my now irritated friend's assurances. Like most people, I still resisted believing I had been manipulated to take the wrong path to my true destiny. I agreed to take ��him Sung training at Dahn. We each paid around $300, to stay four to a room at a hotel, to take our first big step towards enlightenment. Instructors insisted that we keep our experiences secret. No one was to find out how we screamed through the night into morning or wrote a five-year plan to devote ourselves to Dahn, and then told our deepest pain to an assigned partner and in the end, reduced to tears.

I started to ask community members questions and they were shocked. ��Eastern philosophy should not face critical probing, my instructor insisted. I was gently asked if I wanted to relocate away from my friend to a Buddhist temple where ��ahn masters have been known to do a thousand or more devotional bows a day. Ilchi Lee teaches that knowledge is gained through physical pain. I don't want that so later I am ordered to close my eyes for continues dream instruction. I hear the same voices awake or in my sleep: Be quiet!, I begin to realize that I have been involved in a destructive group that took a total of six months out of my life. I am going to leave for good, but it won''t be easy. My friend, angry that her dreams of our studying together in Sedona, Arizona, are gone, tells me, You're not ready for enlightenment. If mindless conformity and loss of individuality describe enlightenment, then she is right. When I close my eyes I imagine I am with her, at Moak mountain where Ilchi Lee claims he found enlightenment. Her eyes brightening, she asks,

��don't you feel the energy of the mountain vortex��

Julie is on her way to study journalism in America
The writer is now teaching English outside of Seoul.
He wishes to remain anonymous.

Contact [email protected]

http://www.lifeinkorea.org/m_page/read.php3?readnum=159&sec=S#an

[Satori]

Brainwashing, or more accurately, an abusive cult.

[mateomiguel]

that sounds exactly like the church of scientology! read all about this incredibly successful money-making scheme here: http://www.xenu.net/

[taobenli]

Creeepy!

There is a "Dahn yoga center" in the university district of Seattle, where I live. About a year ago, my Korean teacher suggested that we go to a Dahn performance on campus for extra credit...I was curious and went. It was very new agey, with all of the expensive ways of buying enlightenment that the journalist described. One of the old Dahn leaders spoke, and was very charismatic and radiant, but the performance got ever more cult-like. The dances were crazy, like people possessed. I had to leave the performance early...it was just too much.

[fusionbarnone]

Went shopping yesterday and was struck by a heavy-headed feeling(bi-aural beats liken to your own heartbeat) to realize the supermart's xmas muzak was laden with subliminals. Regardless of medium used albeit visual, audio,etc ,subtle pursuasion is an alive and well and an exceptionally big business, here on corporate earth.

If you read Sutphen's conference presentation "Battle for your mind", I am sure you will find the presentation transcript makes for intriguing reading. According to the above, subliminals aren't ostracized within law. Santa must be really working those elves this year.

And interestingly enough, religious orders(tax exempt) are the biggest subscibers(alongside boring big business) to companies specializing in "enhancing" a congregations' "receptiveness". Tele-evangelism has yet to embed itself into the Korean psyche via television or the Church of Scientology, Unification Church et al, have attempted to reach a greater audience via this popular medium for that matter(the money would literally roll in).

Whilst in China, I consolidated research toward a doctorate in advertizing looking at/into mental hardwiring adjustment/ pursuasion (brainwashing) through post-hypnotic induction and encoded transonic carriers(non-shortwave) capable of bypassing the cochlea dispersed at 1,800 words per minute within a soundmask(any cd, radio, television). Figured it would be great if people could become superstars in their careers/lives/personal goals(including memorizing an entire years worth of uni study within a week; theoretically) without subscibing to Tony Robbins and co.

These technologies aren't new either especially if you consider that techniques have supposedly been down pat for over 20 years. Even the Russians invented the first(known) brainwashing machine called the L.I.D.A. which has since the disolution of the Cold War, is apparently up for patents world-wide(if it hasn't been done already). As an aside, the russian mob was rumoured to have tried to "engage" the services of this machine on their enemies(fellow mobsters) and as the writer later noted "even the russian mob prefer bullshit to bullets".

[mateomiguel]

sorry fusion, your post doesn't make sense. You sound like a classic paranoid schizophrenic.

[fusionbarnone]

My apology's for the rave. Spent a year in graduate school studying adverts and sublim stuff.

Sure it could sound like a paranoid delusion apart from the 10 years I spent studying with the best(hypnotists primarily) in the field who were occasionally hired by govt. outfits as consultants(not that I personally gave two hoots about who they worked for). The general public needn't worry themselves.

Where I mentioned muzak: in 2001/2002 I bought and tested that guys products(Dick Sutphen who's supposedly the most experienced in his field) bi-aural scripts. To be honest changing one's conscious state(also achieved through watching tv too) did little more than give me a heavy head just like I described in the previous post. As Sutphen stated in his transcript there is no law to stop this from happening(unwanted subliminals) in marketing and should be banned and civil libertarians seem quite aware of this. www.ctyme.com/bwash/bwash.htm - 67k

Attempting to understand some of this useless information required multi-disciplinary study as well. I spent most of my time researching present day education (best single resource: The Underground History of American Education) in order to customize subliminal tracks. Thus, school teachers/parents/socio-economic location has more to do with "choices" or a propensity/inclination toward cultish membership as a final and most obvious conclusion.

There are excellent sources(books) that explain the advertizing industries or cults(anti-subversive) development in this field and that is where my studies were supposed to go. However, the combination of technologies purchased and combined had far too many standing patents to make money outside of consultancy. Got the parchment(PH.D) and a lot of research useful only in conjunction with an MBA in marketing/advertizing. Nice degree though.

So in that respect, this line of study can be seen as useless outside of conspiracy theory chat sites(unless you have a conjoint biz degree specializing in advertizing and 20 years in the business). Those who are/seem to be making money are hypnotherapists of the New Age variety pedalling their wares on national tv/radio.

Studying in China(observing patients both chinese and foreign in a chinese hospital) was an eye-opener. Once attended an xray session(nothings private in China) on a shackled prisoner(prison was located near the hospital in a slum district) escorted by four guards. I would'nt have been nosey like the local chinese except my wife who is a state registered nurses aide/physio-therapist, called me over to see this poor guys xray in progress. WTF looked like an octopus (one in the chest one smaller in the lower back) with moving tentacles and backbones. Can talk about it now because we're out of China. Freaky.

Anyway sorry for sounding like a paranoid schizo(that's why I've reiterated the "practical" uselessness of these types of study; people will just think your whacked) but the average person has to be careful of cults and remain aware of their modus operandi. BTW: The LIDA info came from Denise Wynn's book "the manipulated mind".

[Satori]

[fusionbarnone]

Kia ora tena koutou katou koro. Thanks for the correction(Satori: jap translation: to live in the moment) but I assume you harbor doubts surrounding my academic relevance. My business is not English, therefore out of 6 langauges I tend to make the odd mistake whilst typing within windows of sub-ten minutos. Analism does not make money in the world of precious stones, mortgages, international investment, per client company incorporation/tax haven consultancy. Haere ra.

Y tambien...mateo migual. Como dijisti para mi? Estas loco y no yo puedo intenderte.

[Satori]

Kapai!

[patchy]

This sort of brainwashing is of the very worst sort:


Reaching Over Korea's Divide, a Helping Hand Holds a Bible

December 19, 2005
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

SEOUL, South Korea - In from the freezing cold on a recent Sunday morning, sitting on the heated floor of a cozy apartment in northeast Seoul, the North Korean defector seldom looked up at the South Korean missionary who had been trying, for the last year, to convert him to the Christian faith.

The North Korean mechanically checked the messages on his Samsung cellphone and restrained his two daughters from using hymn sheets as telescopes to peer at the half-dozen North Koreans in the home church.

When the South Korean started strumming his guitar and led his congregation in a hymn, the North Korean's lips barely moved, even as a young man next to him raised his hands, palms up, and intoned, "Can't replace the Lord with anything!"

After the service, the North Korean said, "Even when I pray, I'm not sure it comes naturally."

Perhaps realizing that the South Korean missionary, Peter Jung, sat within earshot, the North Korean softened his words.

"When you've had the kind of life I've had, it's difficult to believe in anything," said the North Korean, who, fearing for his relatives in his hometown, asked that he be identified only by his surname, Park. "It's even difficult to believe in myself."

Mr. Jung made no attempt to hide his frustration after Mr. Park had left, holding himself "responsible" that the North Korean, after a year, had yet to "feel the Holy Spirit."

"If I can't spread the Word," said the missionary, who spent 16 months in prison for proselytizing in China, "God might as well put a stone around my neck and throw me into the ocean."

As the two Koreas have moved closer in recent years, the complicated relationship between defector and missionary has come to symbolize, perhaps more than anything else, the yawning gap of a half-century of division. While the North remains Communist, the South has grown into the foothold for Christianity in Northeast Asia.

With a nearly 30 percent Christian population, the South has the world's second largest missionary movement, after the United States, with 14,000 people abroad. An estimated 1,500 are deployed in China, evangelizing secretly and illegally among Chinese and among North Koreans living in China - a population that various estimates say ranges from 10,000 to as many as 300,000. South Korean missionaries shelter North Koreans and have brought thousands here to the South; others train them to return home to proselytize, as well as smuggle Bibles into the North.

For the South's missionaries, converting people from the North, where Christianity first spread before the peninsula's division, dovetails with their dream of a reunified peninsula. "Oh Lord, please send us, for our brethren up North," reads a verse in the most popular hymn among missionaries working with defectors, "Evangelical Song of Unification." It is also part of a larger dream of spreading the Gospel along the Silk Road back to its source.

"Only when we open up China, with South and North Korea as one, will we be able to go back to Jerusalem," said the Rev. Cho Gi Youn, the manager of missions at the Christian Council of Korea, whose missionary school graduates 300 students a year.

Behind these movements, though, are personal ties between defector and missionary, complicated by a balance of power tipped in the South Korean's favor and the inevitable mix of religion, politics and money.

To the North Korean defectors, some South Korean missionaries seem more concerned about brokering deals to smuggle them out of China and using them in Seoul as publicity tools against North Korea. To South Korean missionaries, who have risked their lives to evangelize in China, some North Korean defectors appear ungrateful. Although no precise figures exist, only a fifth to a third of North Korean defectors ultimately convert to Christianity, according to most South Korean missionaries interviewed.

It was a year ago that Mr. Park and Mr. Jung, now both 38 years old, met in Seoul through a mutual friend. The missionary had just returned here after spending several years in China. The defector had arrived here with his wife and two girls after spending several years in China.

Although the defector's wife had converted to Christianity in China, he remained ambivalent, despite his friendship with the missionary.

"There are missionaries who look like con men to me; they're just interested in taking money from defectors in China," said Mr. Park, who fell victim to such a swindler before making it out of China. "But Peter even went to jail to help North Korean defectors. I wonder how can he love so much that he would put himself in jail for us?

"He's a pastor, he's a good friend, we're the same age, so I go to church," the defector went on. "But if you're a Christian, you have to feel from the bottom of your heart. Even though Peter is right next to me, I still haven't felt that. But I'm very, very grateful to him."

Peter Jung became a missionary after spending a chunk of his childhood studying and sleeping in the local church where his mother sent him when his father had drunk too much. He studied theology in the 1990's, just as South Korea's missionary movement was furiously growing, and decided that there was only one place to spread the Gospel: China.

From 1997, the missionary worked in northeast China, near the border with North Korea, evangelizing among Chinese and North Koreans there. China views the North Koreans as illegal economic refugees and often deports them to the North. Typically, Mr. Jung would be in charge of taking care of a couple of defectors, sheltering and feeding them.

"After they'd settle down, I'd start teaching them the Lord's Prayer," the missionary said. "But it wasn't easy to change their hearts into Christians."

Mr. Jung was more cautious than other missionaries, refusing to send North Koreans to smuggle Bibles across the border and sing hymns inside home churches. Still, in mid-2003, he and his colleagues, as well as several North Koreans in their care, were arrested. After he was released from prison, Mr. Jung was deported here.

It was around the same time that Mr. Park, the defector, found his way here. In the North, he lived in a town along the border with China, not far from the Chinese city Yanji. A member of the Korean Workers' Party, he said he had been assigned to work at a mining company but never went.

Instead, Mr. Park made money in the growing unofficial trade between North Korea and China. A strong swimmer, he smuggled people back and forth across the Tumen River, charging about $60 for the 30-minute swim and sometimes making as much as $1,000 a month. He often bribed a North Korean intelligence official to protect him.

At the time, while most people in his town counted themselves lucky if they ate three meals of corn a day, he and his family ate chicken, pork and rice daily. He said that he liked the freedom and opportunities in South Korea, but that he missed his relatives and the power he had back home.

"Here I'm just a follower, but over there I was a leader," the defector said. "It's not because I was a party member, but because capitalism is creeping into North Korea, if you have a lot of money, you can have power."

But in the middle of one night, in 1999, the friendly intelligence officer woke him up. He told Mr. Park that he had been implicated in a case and warned him to flee to China. With his wife, seven months pregnant with their second child, Mr. Park swam across the river, barely making it to the other side. A month later, he returned to North Korea one last time, to get his older daughter and money for a lattice machine for his wife.

In China, a missionary couple arranged for his wife to be admitted at a hospital, and visited often. Mr. Park's wife delivered safely and persuaded him to name their second daughter Mary as a reflection of her new faith.

In South Korea since late 2003, Mr. Park recently started a job as a real estate agent, hoping that will give him the experience to buy land one day. His wife, busy with two jobs, entrusts him to attend Mr. Jung's home church every Sunday.

"There are times I'm tired and I don't want to come here," the defector said. "But my wife says it's good for the children."

"My wife was never a party member, so it was easier for her to accept Christianity," he said. "I was a party member for 10 years, and they indoctrinated us with the party ideology. When I hear Christian preaching, it sounds similar to the party teachings. Christians praise God, but North Koreans praise Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il," the founder of the North Korean state and his son, the current leader. "At least, they are mortal and we can see them. In Christianity, they ask me to praise the Lord, whom we cannot even see."

At the home church on Sunday, the missionary, in his sermon, counseled his congregation that winning the lottery or marrying Julia Roberts would not bring eternal happiness. Only God's love would.

"In North Korea, there is no God," the missionary said. "There is only Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. But there are North Korean defectors who have stopped worshiping them and have gotten the Holy Spirit. It's a miracle that they come to believe in God as quickly as they do."

After everyone had left, though, the missionary said he knew he had not won over Mr. Park. He knew that Christianity reminded Mr. Park, as well as other defectors, of "North Korean ideology."

"It's understandable," the missionary said. "We can only pray that he'll meet the Holy Spirit one day. Only God knows where and when that will happen."



I hope they leave North Korea alone. I like the fact that North Korea is relatively untainted by all this sanctimony and is a Christian-free zone (except for Billy Graham).

[igotthisguitar]

A shameless "pseudo" religion, Scientology can likely most accurately be described as a money sucking SATANTIC KULT.

Lest we be deceived

Tom Cruise's Mom 'Dead' to Friends
Friday, April 27, 2007

By Roger Friedman

Tom Cruise: Runaway Mom 'Dead' Now to Friends

It hasn't been a great week for Tom Cruise, PR-wise.

Perhaps inspired by Cruise's Scientology fundraiser in New York last week, both the Star and US Weekly are featuring Cruise and wife Katie Holmes on their covers. The subject of their stories: a possible divorce, brought about by Katie's frustrations with Scientology.

While Cruise should be worrying about what's left of his career, instead he seems to be digging his heels in deeper when it comes to his religious devotion. He doesn't seem to realize that a whole new generation now associates Cruise with Xenu, aliens and science fiction.



On top of this, word comes to us from Marco Island, Fla., where Tom's mom, Mary Lee Mapother, lived for nearly two decades until exactly a year ago.

As I've reported before, it was roughly a year ago that Tom's mother left her Florida home for Tom's Beverly Hills manse and never returned.

This was a shock to her longtime second husband, Jack South, who accompanied her on a trip to see new baby granddaughter Suri. After going west with Mary Lee, South went south and east.

He returned to Florida alone.

Since then, with perhaps one exception, Mary Lee Mapother has not once contacted her many friends in Marco Island.

"She just vanished," says a friend. "It's like there was a death."

Jack South, friends say, has been consoling himself with his children from his first marriage, and with friends who can commiserate with him.

What happened to these people sounds a lot like what happened to Holmes' former friends � including her "Dawson's Creek" castmates � when Holmes went out to be interviewed by Cruise in April 2005 for "Mission: Impossible 3" and never returned home.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,268977,00.html