I was thinking about going back for a weekend of ISA and my search engine brought up this cult education site and forum.
My story:
I went about 10 years ago for the initial weekend 'the isaexperience' and about 4 years later for an in-depth weekend for 'isa graduates.'
From reading the posts here, I can see why there are sceptics and concerns about these weekends.
I'd just like to make the following points:
1. I think they are a money-making operation and this money is only for the inner few at the top
2. However, I also think they mean what they say. I think Luis Corboda who ran my courses has genuinely found his calling in this. I think he believes as much as his volunteer assistants do in what he is preaching. I think he is inspired by the context - by this method of seeing the world, which to many is quite helpful and revealing.
3. I would say that they are a one-size-fits-all organisation.
4. For this reason, it worked for me. I have no underlying, deeply-buried horrors in my past that should not be exposed to self-scrutiny and I'm a heterosexual, white male. Had I been anything else, I think I might well have been more concerned.
I am sure I could have easily found it disturbing as there is a group dynamic that forces participants to share their inner-most terrors in public. (Which is probably a bit scary whoever you are but in my case it didn't happen to show up anything too terrible). The general assumption is: Now it's out, you feel better. So let it go. It is what it is.
Clearly for a large number of people this could be hellish and for the few possibly even dangerous.
5. They encourage you to invite friends but tell you not to share any of the 'processes' with people before they come which is why a lot of former participants are apparently so guarded on the subject.
It makes them seem more sinister than they really are, though. Their reasoning is simply that if you are fore-warned, the process is effectively weakened.(And they might not get you through their door with your dollars, of course).
6. I actually knew all about it in advance. My wife told me pretty much everything that she had done - she went about 10 years before I did - and she shared every detail. I had also listened to tapes that were made by the original developer of isa - Ole Larson. I knew what I was getting into and I much preferred that.
If anyone at isa is reading this - let people know first what they are going to be doing, it's okay to trust people!!!
I still wanted to come and I found it more useful because I was fore-warned and not unsettled by the shock of being challenged on several levels.
(Incidentally, my wife found the weekends she did helpful and she never pestered me or even suggested I go, actually).
7. I don't think isa is sinister, either. I think the intention is for you to see yourself - people told me lots of things about themselves that I have long forgotten, but I also took a long look at me, sometimes through them, if you get my meaning. The processes are just you looking at you with other participants encouraged to give you an extra bit of a shove-along.
It was seeing my own inner workings that revealed interesting clues about how I live my life. What works and what doesn't.
Someone posted above that he had felt his life had been severely and negatively affected by this and someone else said that isa takes only credit, not blame.
I think their argument would be: If you had a sudden realisation that some part of your life is built on a lie and it is a profound shock to you and revealed in their discussions with you, better to know it now and do something about it, rather than realise on your deathbed that everything has been for nought.
For me, seeing my own failures and self-lies was liberating. Because I got to say - yep, fair cop. I'll make a conscious decision to change for the better.
8. I actually felt for 3-4 years a glow of genuine happiness and a sense of spiritual connection with the world around me that was quite liberating.
For the last 5 years, I have remembered how I did see the world as a wonderful, joyful place and I keep trying to get back to that joyful state if only I could stop worrying about the mortgage and my family's well-being and the international disasters that seem to be occurring daily and all of that stuff that fills my head (often put there by the media and the internet).
For a while, all of that panic stopped going on inside me and I was just present. I lived in peace.
I went for amazing walks in the countryside with no other need than to grin up into the sunshine and admire the trees and smile benignly and sagely at others with no agenda towards them.
No doubt, like mindfulness and many other similar ideas that overlap on this message; it was about how to live a free, loving and successful life whilst caring for others and forgiving them and myself sleights, mistakes and pain. It was lovely and freeing.
And I'm no hippy, honest!
9. When I think I need to go back for more of the same stuff I think I've failed. I only think of doing the course again when I feel a bit hopeless about my day, which happens about once or twice a year. (So isa joy didn't last forever!)
After all that, the message is really a simple 'life is really joyous if you just open your eyes and stop worrying about stuff and especially stop causing your own problems' - it's not much more sophisticated than that.
But it's not in a book - it's experiential and intentionally challenging.
I certainly won't deny anyone else's bad experiences but I think anybody in the largest range of 'normal life experience' would be able to utilise ISA for benefit and then walk away.
I totally understand that there are a large minority for whom isa would be counter-productive.
Just as someone above stated, Aspirin helps but has side effects.
Well some people are allergic to aspirin and it can kill; that doesn't mean to say it won't help large numbers of people in the mainstream.
If help were only directed at those things that all and every single one of us can tolerate then we wouldn't have aspirin and much, much more besides.
I do think, however, that they should pay assistants for working the whole weekend. They are seriously taking the mickey because the money coming in I believe to be pretty sizeable and the assistants appear to work diligently over long periods of time for nothing.
If you go, don't carry it all the way through to become an assistant - it's slave labour.
I hope this helps the discussion.
My story:
I went about 10 years ago for the initial weekend 'the isaexperience' and about 4 years later for an in-depth weekend for 'isa graduates.'
From reading the posts here, I can see why there are sceptics and concerns about these weekends.
I'd just like to make the following points:
1. I think they are a money-making operation and this money is only for the inner few at the top
2. However, I also think they mean what they say. I think Luis Corboda who ran my courses has genuinely found his calling in this. I think he believes as much as his volunteer assistants do in what he is preaching. I think he is inspired by the context - by this method of seeing the world, which to many is quite helpful and revealing.
3. I would say that they are a one-size-fits-all organisation.
4. For this reason, it worked for me. I have no underlying, deeply-buried horrors in my past that should not be exposed to self-scrutiny and I'm a heterosexual, white male. Had I been anything else, I think I might well have been more concerned.
I am sure I could have easily found it disturbing as there is a group dynamic that forces participants to share their inner-most terrors in public. (Which is probably a bit scary whoever you are but in my case it didn't happen to show up anything too terrible). The general assumption is: Now it's out, you feel better. So let it go. It is what it is.
Clearly for a large number of people this could be hellish and for the few possibly even dangerous.
5. They encourage you to invite friends but tell you not to share any of the 'processes' with people before they come which is why a lot of former participants are apparently so guarded on the subject.
It makes them seem more sinister than they really are, though. Their reasoning is simply that if you are fore-warned, the process is effectively weakened.(And they might not get you through their door with your dollars, of course).
6. I actually knew all about it in advance. My wife told me pretty much everything that she had done - she went about 10 years before I did - and she shared every detail. I had also listened to tapes that were made by the original developer of isa - Ole Larson. I knew what I was getting into and I much preferred that.
If anyone at isa is reading this - let people know first what they are going to be doing, it's okay to trust people!!!
I still wanted to come and I found it more useful because I was fore-warned and not unsettled by the shock of being challenged on several levels.
(Incidentally, my wife found the weekends she did helpful and she never pestered me or even suggested I go, actually).
7. I don't think isa is sinister, either. I think the intention is for you to see yourself - people told me lots of things about themselves that I have long forgotten, but I also took a long look at me, sometimes through them, if you get my meaning. The processes are just you looking at you with other participants encouraged to give you an extra bit of a shove-along.
It was seeing my own inner workings that revealed interesting clues about how I live my life. What works and what doesn't.
Someone posted above that he had felt his life had been severely and negatively affected by this and someone else said that isa takes only credit, not blame.
I think their argument would be: If you had a sudden realisation that some part of your life is built on a lie and it is a profound shock to you and revealed in their discussions with you, better to know it now and do something about it, rather than realise on your deathbed that everything has been for nought.
For me, seeing my own failures and self-lies was liberating. Because I got to say - yep, fair cop. I'll make a conscious decision to change for the better.
8. I actually felt for 3-4 years a glow of genuine happiness and a sense of spiritual connection with the world around me that was quite liberating.
For the last 5 years, I have remembered how I did see the world as a wonderful, joyful place and I keep trying to get back to that joyful state if only I could stop worrying about the mortgage and my family's well-being and the international disasters that seem to be occurring daily and all of that stuff that fills my head (often put there by the media and the internet).
For a while, all of that panic stopped going on inside me and I was just present. I lived in peace.
I went for amazing walks in the countryside with no other need than to grin up into the sunshine and admire the trees and smile benignly and sagely at others with no agenda towards them.
No doubt, like mindfulness and many other similar ideas that overlap on this message; it was about how to live a free, loving and successful life whilst caring for others and forgiving them and myself sleights, mistakes and pain. It was lovely and freeing.
And I'm no hippy, honest!
9. When I think I need to go back for more of the same stuff I think I've failed. I only think of doing the course again when I feel a bit hopeless about my day, which happens about once or twice a year. (So isa joy didn't last forever!)
After all that, the message is really a simple 'life is really joyous if you just open your eyes and stop worrying about stuff and especially stop causing your own problems' - it's not much more sophisticated than that.
But it's not in a book - it's experiential and intentionally challenging.
I certainly won't deny anyone else's bad experiences but I think anybody in the largest range of 'normal life experience' would be able to utilise ISA for benefit and then walk away.
I totally understand that there are a large minority for whom isa would be counter-productive.
Just as someone above stated, Aspirin helps but has side effects.
Well some people are allergic to aspirin and it can kill; that doesn't mean to say it won't help large numbers of people in the mainstream.
If help were only directed at those things that all and every single one of us can tolerate then we wouldn't have aspirin and much, much more besides.
I do think, however, that they should pay assistants for working the whole weekend. They are seriously taking the mickey because the money coming in I believe to be pretty sizeable and the assistants appear to work diligently over long periods of time for nothing.
If you go, don't carry it all the way through to become an assistant - it's slave labour.
I hope this helps the discussion.