Submitted anonymously
I am so deeply grateful for all of the work, time, patience and passion put into this website. Many of us get off the path of Truth, Light, Love and Personal Empowerment by seeking solutions outside of ourselves. Training inPower claims to lead you to Power and seduces you into believing that Training in Power has the best path to finding it. Training in Power does not deliver. Instead it seduces you into putting your power and love outside of yourself – giving away personal power to a Charismatic teacher and a Charismatic spiritual organization.
In my naiveté, I believed ‘the Training’ would provide a healing, supportive, spiritual structure in which the participants would seek to be kind to one another. Imagine my shock the first time I witnessed Faye raging at the Student Body about something most of us could not understand because we didn’t really know what she was going on about, what she was mad about, only that someone had crossed her boundaries, expected something of her she couldn’t deliver. Who knows really! One thing I know for sure, is that it was an explosion of miss-directed rage intended to teach us not to ever treat her that way (if you knew how it was she had been treated).
I offered to help in Training In Power so many times only to be shamed becauseI was not doing it right. In retrospect I wonder how I wound up staying in Tip. Training in Power is an addictive organization with an addicted Leader. That’s how I wound up here and how I wound up staying. It was all the old family systems repeating themselves. The Training is in utter complete denial of the founders addictions. She just smokes pot for medicinal purposes. Her rages are classic behavior for an active addict. Her blaming of others and paranoia are all symptoms of addiction.
So many of us get hooked into tip through our trauma wounds as Adult Children of alcoholics/addicts or because of our own addictions. Before I ever went into tip, I read all John Bradshaw’s books on Shame. I read all I could on topics like Adult Children of Alcoholics and still I stayed for a long, long time in denial about the founder’s addiction and subsequent addictive behaviour. We don’t talk about the Pink Elephant of addiction in tip. The upper levels are beyond that. They can smoke dope or drink all day and it has no negative consequences.It’s all your fault. All those unhappy little power trainers who make her rage. Just like it was at home when you were a kid. All your fault your drunken Father/Mother/Grandmother raged out of control around you while no one talked about the obvious. There it is right in front of you. Addiction runs tip.
I am back on my journey to Empowerment. Thanks to this website, I’ve been able to get clarity about what happened to me in training in power. I have my life back. I am very grateful to Diane for having the courage to publish her writings and her website. I am grateful for Lesa and all the others who have so courageously shared their experiences in tip. This website has made a difference. We are all searching for authentic power, personal power. Thanks to Diane’s research, I and others who’ve left tip have amazing clarity about what is truly empowering and empowered.
So many of us were taught under a system of Shame and Intolerance. Raised to look to others as the authority in our lives. Empowerment is about looking to ourselves and being the authority in our own lives. No one knows better than me what I most need to do to heal myself. Others may have valuable insight or feedback but they do not, cannot know what I most need to do to take care of me. That is between me and my Spirit and the Life force in this world. My job is to become trustworthy in my relationship to myself. My job (even when I’ve been given the best advice in the World), is to step back and see if that advice meets my needs and works for me in that moment and then choose. My job is to write, star and direct my life. Not to turn it over to any other authority no matter how charismatic they are, no matter how seductive the teachings are, it is my job to question, and discern what works for me and what doesn’t.
Doubt and Fear are often talked about as the enemy when you are in Training in Power. You are just supposed to ignore or dismiss it as meaningless or attack. Going into denial about the doubt or fear you have, is the true enemy. Please do not dismiss doubt or fear ever without first looking to see what’s there.
If you have doubt about what is happening, there is a strong possibility that your Soul is speaking to you. Whispering look, look closer at what’s happening here, is it correct, are you okay with it. Listen to the questions doubt brings. Is your soul speaking to you of incorrectness? Is your soul crying out to you not to sit in silence about abuse. Is it screaming this isn’t right? Is doubt only there because you are afraid that you are right? And if you are right, you might have to act on it, make changes, speak up, leave and that may bring about rejection and abandonment. It is your job, your responsibility and your God given right to walk away from any abusive situation. Whether it’s verbal abuse, in shaming or outright physical abuse.
SHAME is soul-destroying. It is not love. It is never love.
Life is about living, being present in the here and now. I go outside for long walks and I look at the flowers and the trees and it brings tears to my eyes because it is so beautiful and precious. Life is precious. Each moment has magic in it. Everyday I am grateful to be free. I am happy to be alive. I do not live in fear of the evil that lurks around the corner. I am back to being calm, peaceful, grounded, alive and full of life. Lessons in Awareness provides a vital way back out of the trauma of tip. A pathway to true Self Awareness and to true power.
Some may say that tip is the way to true personal empowerment. If that’s true for you then may the force be with you. All I ask is that you not dismiss the cries of those for whom it is not empowering. The voices of those who have indeed found it harmful to their psyche and to their spirit. We have the right to freedom of choice and we have the right to speak up in the hopes that we can offer a path of healing for those that Training In Power has harmed, or may yet harm. I’m grateful that this website and these amazing people have been here for me.