Welcome to indoctrination, a weekly conversation series about protecting yourself from systems of control.

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Hi, everybody. As some of you may know, over the past couple of years, I've done several

webinars and video lectures on a variety of topics

that also come up on this podcast. There is unfortunately a lack of qualified therapists who specialize

in working with cult survivors and their concerned family members. And since I can only see a

finite number of clients myself, I wanted to share insights from my 30-plus years of doing

this work with as many people as possible. So, in pursuit of that goal, I've made all of my

recent video lectures available on my website, rachel Bernsteintherapy.com. You can find a link to the

page in the show notes of this episode. There you'll find my lecture

from the most recent conference of the International Cultic Studies Association, my quote,

living in freedom, unquote, series for survivors and their family members, and my recent

lecture entitled, Why Did I Stay? Which examines the many reasons that people

have difficulty leaving high control groups. We plan on adding more video lectures in the near future,

so if you have topics you'd like to hear me cover, please feel free to reach out to us and make suggestions.

Hi, everyone.

Lynn Short was an active member of the modern occult group known as the New Gnostic Society.

She was in it for 17 years. She and her husband were missionaries for roughly nine years until leaving in 2018. The new Gnostic Society was conceived by a man

in Colombia, named Victor Rodriguez, who in the late 40s proclaimed he had awakened his consciousness and was now

the god of Mars. His faith is a hodgepodge of turn-of-the-century occultist theory,

New Age thought, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, and indigenous spiritualism, to name a few.

After realizing the teachings and the culture of the group were the main reason for her suffering,

...