E-mail from R.M. of Michigan:

Thanks for posting your evaluation of New Warrior groups. Though I have no first hand experience with the training, I have my suspicions. Let me explain. In June 1996 I had a nasty encounter with a "new age" training racket called Insight Educational Seminars. My wife, whom I trusted, steered me to it, so my defenses were down and I was vulnerable. Insight is a front group and recruiting vehicle for the Movement for Inner Spiritual Awareness (M.S.I.A. -- pronounced "messiah", get it? wink, wink) a California cult run by John-Rodger Hinkens, who came out of Eckankar. Insight traces its heritage by way of Lifespring back to Werner Erhard's notorious est.

It took me a year of psychotherapy, reading, and research to figure out what happened to me & how abusive groups work -- through deception, trickery, & manipulation. I now have a great distrust of any organization that offers to transform my consciousness, especially in a short time for a big fee. Whose interest is being served by breaking down my personality and rebuilding it according to the specifications of some guru? Do I want a bunch of self-proclaimed leaders pronouncing how I must think & live in order to fit their expectations of what a Man should be?

In the process of trying to make sense of my Insight experience, I attended a men's support group. One evening a former member came to tell us that two friends had paid $500 each to go through New Warrior training and drove together to the site. From the moment they got out of the car they were "provoked and hassled" by the confrontational New Warrior initiators. They almost came to blows with their tormentors, then jumped into their car after only 20 minutes and left.

When I first heard this, I thought that their aversive reaction to New Warrior sounded very much like my reaction to Insight. Could it be that New Warrior uses Coercive Persuasion as Insight does? Much later I guessed that these two guys had probably felt appropriate anger against attempted bullying by the New Warriors. I tried to get in touch with them to check out my theory, but failed.

One of the occasional attenders at the men's support group was a graduate of and believer in New Warriors. I asked him about the incident. He seemed strangely unconcerned even though one of the guys had gone to New Warrior on his recommendation. He hadn't even bothered months later to contact the guy to see what had gone wrong. I got the impression that he was reluctant to investigate an incident that might reflect unfavorably on New Warrior practices. It was easier to dismiss his friend as "not ready".

Indeed New Warrior says over and over that the training is not for everyone. This makes it easy to get New Warrior off the hook if somebody has a bad experience.

Later I told this same New Warrior member about my misgivings about his organization. He told me that the training would make me face my issues and I'd emerge a different person. I said you can't "make me" do anything. He didn't reply, but the little self-satisfied smile on his lips seemed to say: "We have our ways." It reminded me of the constant sneering smile on the face of the Insight trainer as he worked the crowd. And it's true; these groups do have very slick ways of "transforming" people into converts & true believers, using guilt, shame, and other subtle forms of social control.

The whole idea of "initiation", the bedrock that supports the New Warrior training, is to me highly questionable, especially for adults in a modern society. John Lee in his workshops for men, as described in "At My Father's Wedding", uses the same term but it means a kind of welcoming and blessing into an all inclusive brotherhood. Lee specifically warns against groups that use shame and guilt to enforce compliance. In New Warrior, initiation means "descending into the ordeal" (their words). I imagine this means they put you through some kind of hell to see if you have the "right stuff" to become a member, sort of like fraternity hazing. Of course nobody wants to fail this test of social acceptance, so the human capacity for compliance goes into high gear and trainees accept whatever test is presented as "for their own good". But motivation is based on fear of being an outcast, and that's the hidden violence behind it.

I have a New Warrior brochure describing a new week-long program for women & men together called Warrior Monk Training-Retreats; some of the phraseology suggests Coercive Persuasion techniques. These are: "very intense", "fast deep immersion", "boot camp for the emotions", and "reality creation technology". Also they mention the input of Arica mystery school trainers. I have seen Arica Institute on a list of suspected groups using Mind Control methods. But I admit these are merely strong suspicions on my part. What is really needed is for some social psychologists to do a participant-observer study of New Warrior training, as Janice Haaken & Richard Adams did about Lifespring training, reported in their paper titled "Pathology As Personal Growth" Psychiatry (1983) vol.46, p.270.