Lazaris: Friend or Fraud?

Forum Storm

Steve used this most-favored status as a way to bully other members in the Forum. He became particularly nasty in February, 2000, in a discussion about Elian Gonzalez. Ted challenged Steve about his acidic remarks towards those who disagreed with Steve. Katie and a few other people jumped in to lend support to Ted and were quickly silenced by Peny. Meanwhile, Steve opened a thread to talk about the wonderful hot chocolate that Peny had sent him. Three or four of the Orlando Gang, including Peny, jumped in to the Hot Chocolate thread and it became like a mutual-admiration society. None of the Orlando Gang challenged Steve on his bullying in the Elian thread, choosing instead to chatter merrily about the pleasures of drinking hot chocolate from expensive chintz china cups.

Those of us who were paying close attention were dumbfounded. Over the years we had seen "the gang" jump all over posters for far less than the kinds of insults and judgments which were being hurled around in the Elian thread, but nary a word from any of them for days. It became more and more difficult to excuse the behavior of Peny and the Gang. A member who had never posted wrote a post critical of Steve. She was immediately pounced on by some of the regulars. Katie did her "good forum" thing and joined in thrashing her for committing the high crime of speaking the obvious. Steve sarcastically suggested to her that she open a new thread to talk about how much she hates Steve. Ted took the suggestion to heart and opened a thread to discuss how to handle disagreements in a civilized manner. Peny responded by pointing out that Ted thought he was more fair than everyone else and used a prior post of Ted's as evidence that he was not very fair at all. The prior post was about Cuban Americans wanting the U.S. to fight their battle against Castro. Ted expressed annoyance at this attitude. Peny had accused Ted of racism and Ted explained that he was against this particular attitude and not against Cuban Americans per se. Peny had also projected many left-wing attitudes onto Ted in this post, which Ted explained were inaccurate, but those posts were ignored. So the Disagreements in the Forum thread quickly lost it's focus - it became Ted apologizing for his terrible better-than attitude.

Then, in April, Steve wrote to Peny in the Forum that she had no business offering her opinion about the Hillary Clinton / Rick Lazio campaigns, since she didn't live in New York. No one responded for several hours. Then Peny posted somewhat indicating that she had had a codependent relationship with Steve. Or rather, she suggested that Steve had forced her into a codependency. The Lazaris Material - and common sense - indicate that codependency is mutual - it cannot be forced on anyone.

In this post Peny did not directly address the issues, or even mention Steve, but stated that she had thought that she had gotten over her issues with her dead, repressive aunt, but apparently she hadn't. (Strange when you consider that Lazaris has stated that Jach and Peny both are beyond creating problematic relationships.) Also that her enneagram was deteriorating. (Enneagrams are personality types - each type has it's corresponding negative side, or deterioration). We were stunned and confused by the vagueness of the post. But we didn't respond. We wanted to see how the Orlando Gang and other posters would treat this new development. We didn't have to wait too long. Within five minutes there were numerous posts from the "Gang" saying how vulnerable Peny was and how wonderful it is that she has such a handle on the situation. Then the conversation turned to how everyone in the Forum was codependent with Steve. Never mind that some people were complaining about his behavior for quite some time. Never mind that many forum members had never posted to or about Steve.

What followed was a feeding frenzy where all of the Orlando Gang, and many others wrote in to tell their tales of woe about Steve. And how they were so sorry to have enabled him, that he never really had anything valid to say about crystals, and why the rest of us thought so much of him was a mystery to them. Close friends of Steve posted, divulging private information about Steve, making vague allegations that he is a very disturbed person, and stating the end of their friendships with him.

Meanwhile, Katie emailed Steve to see how he was holding up through all of this. Steve wrote back and copied Peny on the Email. Katie immediately wrote to Peny out of concern that she may have offended her. Peny wrote back saying she doesn't blame us for being angry and that the Orlando Gang had been chomping at the bit for a long time to reign him in, but Peny wouldn't allow it. She apologized for that in her private email. But she never mentioned it in the Forum. On the contrary, one of the more vociferous of Peny's minions wrote that he had always wondered why we all respected Steve's opinion's so much, but chose not to speak because he didn't want to "play parent". This from a gang member who was relentless over the years in his quest to ferret out any signs of negative ego in the forum and snuff them out quickly, who never missed an opportunity to point out how someone was "in negative ego". She also acknowledged Katie's right to be angry with her for all of this and encouraged her to keep writing.

As the sycophants - from Orlando and elsewhere - were busy assassinating Steve's character, a few people wrote in to say that, while they acknowledged Steve's abuses, they also admired certain qualities of his. The Orlando Gang told these people that they were codependent with Steve and demanded that they get their act together. Overwhelmed, the posters admitted to their alleged codependency and marveled at their blindness to it all. We began to feel a sense of outrage, and our trust and belief in Peny's stellar nature began to unravel.

Ted couldn't bear to watch any more of this and wrote to Peny and the Gang suggesting that they had not owned up to the negative impact they had and they were foisting the blame on others. Peny responded by accusing Ted of helping Steve abuse people in the Elian thread. When Katie wrote back to ask Peny to stick to the facts, Peny responded by telling Katie that she had, "thrown her spirituality out the window", asking why "this woman" hates her so much, saying that tears were running down her face, and asking for help. In one post she wrote "Shields Up, we are under attack!" We each wrote one or two more posts in this discussion. That night scores of posts were written to and about us, including one from an Orlandor implying that Ted is an alcoholic. Similar false allegations were also being made about anyone who even hinted at defending Katie, Steve, or Ted.

We were kicked out of the Forum. Our friends were harassed continuously for weeks following. They either left the Forum or caved in and admitted their "codependence with Katie and Ted", who were deemed to be "unsafe". We were barraged with emails telling us to go clean up our messes, insulting us, name calling, judging, and accusing. One forum member sent out a bulk email to a list of our friends warning them that they would be breaking the law if they continued to communicate with us! All this, because Katie asked Peny to stick to the facts. It was never discussed or mentioned by anyone that Peny had inaccurately accused Ted of supporting Steve's abusive posts in the Elian thread.

The barrage was so intense that we received correspondence from several friends informing us that they couldn't continue to communicate with us due to their loyalty to Lazaris. There was great fear that somehow by continuing our friendship, Lazaris would abandon them, as Peny had insinuated we had been abandoned, as though Lazaris the loving would actually abandon anyone due to a dispute. Don't they promise to love us forever and a day, as long as there is light? There is no disclaimer on that promise, "as long as you don't piss Peny off". More unraveling.

When questioned, most of these people admitted that they hadn't even read all the posts, and had no idea what started all this. They were just going along with the consensus in the Forum, and were terrified that they might become the same kind of targets as we had, or that they might somehow lose the love of Lazaris. Those who had read the posts could never give us one fact, one word, or sentence, or paragraph in which we had been abusive as charged. A few have since admitted to us that upon review, we did nothing wrong, and apologies have been offered. It took months before some of our friends had the courage to actually go back and read all the "offending" posts.

One friend recently told us that they considered the entire episode to have been a "spiritual massacre of epic proportion". This friend also found it miraculous that no one had committed suicide over the events. On the surface, such a thought might seem ludicrous, but upon reflection, why is it? If we had no other basis for our spirituality, and no other sources of feedback and communication other than the Forum, and no ability to objectively evaluate these events or the stellarness of Jach and Peny and Lazaris, we just might have lost our base and done something drastic. Who knows? We did experience a lot of pain and grief, especially over the apparent loss of some friends, not to mention the possible loss of our relationship with our dear Lazaris.

We hope you read this Jach Pursel, and we hope that the truth of the mess you have created somehow seeps through your arrogance and contempt for the sincere people who have placed their faith in you and made you rich.