---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote:
This post is a superb example of why I said it really sucks to be Barry.
Either he believes the delusional crap he wrote, or he knows it's crap but
stupidly expects others to believe it.
I'm going to start with a particularly embarrassing Barry-goof. He writes,
"According to Judy, he told her he was 'near suicide' several times; does
anyone suspect that he didn't tell that to anyone else because he perceived
that as *her* weakness and samskara, and was 'tailoring' his spiel to her to
make her feel 'special?'"
Barry, in a post of December 9, 2011: "I don't think he was in any way faking
the excesses of his early days on this forum, and how close he was to the
ragged edge of insanity or suicide."
IOW, Robin told us all right from the start that after his cult's collapse, he
had been "near suicide." So much for his not telling anybody else but
"tailoring his spiel" in private to me to make me "feel 'special.'"
The rest of this post of Barry's is similarly preposterous and wildly
illogical.
The idea that Robin gave "different stories" to Ann and me is ludicrous. He
never told us anything different from what he said in his posts to everyone on
FFL, and the public "story" he told about himself here was rock-solid
consistent.(*)
And it wasn't just "a few emails." I was in near-constant communication with
him starting at the end of December 2011 throughout his tenure here and beyond,
including the periods when he wasn't posting. (Ann and I were in near-constant
communication with each other as well. If he had told us different things, we'd
have known it.) Pretty difficult for a person to "fabricate in the moment" and
still be entirely consistent between two people privately and the membership of
FFL publicly.
No "cult indoctrination/recruitment" went on in his emails with Ann and me.
What a stupid thing to propose. Robin had left his cult-leader days far behind
(Ann herself had been the one to bust him publicly at the end of that period).
And sorry, Barry, but it's entirely possible to have a genuine relationship
with a person via email.
However, Ann has been explicit that even with their emails and her personal
experience with him 30 years ago, she only knows about 10 percent of him. I
know somewhat more about the Robin of today because we exchanged more emails,
but there's more of him to be known than any one person could fathom (with the
possible exception of his best friend, who has been in constant "live" contact
with him since his cult-leader days). Ann and I knew him better than the rest
of the folks on FFL, but that's the case with anyone who has extensive email
communication with another forum member. There are several FFL members with
whom I've exchanged emails whom I know more about than the rest of FFL, and I
suspect the same is true of Ann. Not a thing "cultish" about it. And neither
Ann nor I would dream of saying "only we really know him."
Neither Ann nor I think of his "beliefs and theories" as "oh-so-fabulous."
We're both quite skeptical of many of them. Again, Barry makes the dumb mistake
of confusing "X says..." with "What X says is true."
Barry can't even get Robin's name right. His middle name is Woodsworth, not
Woolworth's (apostrophe "s" sic).
I could go on, but this should be enough to clue in anyone here who's inclined
to give credence to anything Barry says about Robin (or Ann or me, for that
matter).
Why is Barry so fanatically obsessed with Robin nine months after he left FFL
for good? IMHO, it's because Barry realizes deep down that Robin is about 10
times the person Barry is: smarter, funnier, vastly more interesting and
insightful than Barry could ever dream of being.
And I'll do a little more speculating: I think Barry's "friendship" with the
therapist who specialized in NPD was in fact in the context of a therapeutic
relationship: the therapist was treating Barry for NPD (obviously
unsuccessfully).
Goodness knows this current post bears all the hallmarks. Talk about making it
up as he goes along!
(*) The one exception was the whole business about Robin having "struck his
students." Initially, Robin denied having done so, but the denial was
Clintonesque. As he later said, he didn't deny the truth, he denied what he was
accused of--having struck his students during seminars. He confessed at
considerable length in January 2012 to having done so in private, residental
gatherings early in the days of his cult, before he ever gave any seminars.
Further, Ann (who is supposedly "near-psychotically" devoted to Robin) recalled
one incident during a seminar in which a participant was apparently struck
(LordKnows later confirmed this). Robin had genuinely forgotten the incident,
blocked it from his mind because it was so painful. But he didn't contest Ann's
recollection.
I might also note that Robin's "story" of his cult days was unsparing in its
self-denunciation of how badly he'd behaved and how many people he'd hurt,
hardly the sort of thing one would make a major point of--and repeat many
times--if one were attempting to recruit new cult followers. He was tougher on
himself than anyone else here.
Dear Judy, again I give you full marks for bothering to respond to someone who
has absolutely no interest in the truth and whose highlight of his life, indeed
his mission, is to make up things about people and situations. Or maybe he just
really believes what he writes. Either way, I didn't read his post but caught a
whiff of it from your response here. For me, it doesn't matter what imaginary
world of demented fantasies, both about himself and about others, this poor man
survives in and I have no interest engaging this imbecile on any level. You are
correct, Barry's is a nightmare life but unfortunately he also tries his
damndest to make sure he "shares" his nightmare with the rest of us. I find him
toxic to the extreme. I am going to leave it at that because I don't think
putting one's attention on people like him has one iota of worth, there's
nothing positive that could come from it. Moving on to more interesting
subjects...
