Yesterday, I had an incredibly healthy exchange with a divorced mother who had toured the Center for Purposeful Living and decided it might be worth her time. She even enlisted to join the Center for Purposeful Living after her tour.
However, for whatever reason Joanna White, my estranged biological mother, from the Center for Purposeful Living advised this person to see the thread over at FACTNet. The divorced mother noticed my posts on the subject and decided to contact me directly via this web site’s contact form. She asked me to, “… share your experience with me before I make this leap of faith.”
I assumed that she had read the FACTNet thread and the posts here before contacting me so I wrote her this reply:
If you contacted me via this method then you've probably read mine and others articles on this subject. The articles on my site combined with the posts on FACTNet should be ample information on the subject for you to make a fairly certain determination as to what you should do.
However, I will point out that Joanna White is my mother and that I no longer talk to her and haven't talked to her in any way, shape, or form for well over five years now. I wouldn't want you and your son's relationship to end up like my former mother's and mine. That would be a tragedy that you should avoid at all costs.
In other words, don't do it.
That’s as strong as a statement I could make on the subject to a divorced mother. Plain and simple, my mother was divorced when she fully engaged in the Center of Purposeful Living and look what it did for her. The cult meant more to her than her family and for that I can’t forgive any person, especially a relative; certainly a parent.
I also find it interesting that this person is admittedly weak emotionally and spiritually at the moment and that the Center for Purposeful Living has decided to prey upon her; which is typical of any cult (preying upon the weak).
Her response to my straight forward e-mail was very, very interesting:
I thank you for your quick and sincere reply […] A long time ago, in my youth, my sister and I became involved with another cult, "The Disciples of Christ" and their dogma seems eerily familiar to the [Center for Purposeful Living]. I just wanted to be sure.
She thanked me for my honesty and for reminding her that her number one responsibility was to her son and not a cult. I asked her to, “… not jeopardize your family for the Center of Purposeful Living like my mother did.” In a later e-mail she stated, “Had I not been told about factnet.org and researched more, I would have jumped in two feet and blinded eyes.”
I’m not quite sure why my mother would tell a Center for Purposeful Living recruit about the FACTNet thread unless she wanted to be pushed out of the cult or if there is some other sinister realm of logic afoot (driven by the guru, Derwyn Lackey). But, referring people to their dissent isn’t going to help them at all and allows myself and others to help those too weak to remove the wool from their eyes.
Yet another person has been saved from certain doom by the Center of Purposeful Living simply because they did some research and a little communicating.