Spiritual Deception at the Academy for Psychic Studies

So while perusing the previous SRF website, I ran into the following:

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The Spiritual Rights Foundation All Healing is Awakening unto who you truly are

At SRF everything is designed for you to get to know yourself in a whole new way - as SPIRIT! You are a divine, perfect, spiritual being! The trouble is we've all been conditioned to believe that we are the body/personality, the name label we are wearing, the thoughts and the emotions that flow through us. This is a misperception (sic), and it causes us to experience our lives as being separate from our Source, the God of our Heart 

This is the cause of every form of dis-ease on the planet. If you truly KNEW that you were divine and perfect, a child of God, could you be sick or poor or have anything wrong with you whatsoever? NO! 

You can experience the healing right now by recognizing that what you've just read is true. If you'd like to learn more, come in and get a healing, and you may find life is much more fun than you ever thought possible

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It's an amazing thing, that statement. I have no doubt those people believe what they are saying.  What I have a problem with is that the people who wrote this very statement have their own agenda.

The lure of knowing you are a divine, perfect spiritual being is just too strong to ignore. In the 90's when we were all feeling guilty for, well, just about everything that happened the decade before, it was good to know that we still had value somewhere.

About this time, we were suffering from a hangover from the 80's and accepting that the 90's would be austere and not so self-indulgent (and it was until the dot-com explosion).

Spirituality was in its heyday in the 90's and in the middle of the 90's there was a burst of interest in the Spiritual Rights Foundation from a bunch of fresh young faces from the San Jose area.

Joy and I were two of them. There were a lot more. Too many more.

I think we were drawn in with the lure of finding peace and enlightenment. We did at first. But as we "arose in vibration", we saw more and more abuse. More and more exploitation.

I can't possibly describe it all but all of us who have been there know all of it.

It's a tough thing to sit down and consider how and why I and so many other got into this morass. For me, at least, it's something I have to do. I have to know what it is that drew me in.

A charismatic leader and all the trappings of knowing something new and all the bright and cheery things we thought we could have. Not so much that my own life was so bad, but it was missing something. It was something I just cannot put my finger on. At the time, my job was full of pressure and I was tired of trying to just keep pushing forward. I was ready to gather my knives and Cuisinart and head over to the Culinary Institute of America for a major career change.

I didn't. I got waylaid by some hooligans on the way to the Napa Valley. It was the Spiritual Rights Foundation, Bill Duby and the Witches of Ellsworth - except at the time, they didn't look so witchy and the cesspool of spiritual perversion looked so attractive.

Once in the door, they had me. As I got more and more involved in classes and all the rest, Bill found something in me. I think it was that I knew computers and the internet in more depth than anyone he met. I was plied with a mention of running the SRF web operation, having people around me who wanted to create. Bill even dangled a woman in front of me.

The last part was probably the worst. This gal wasn't evil and actually she is very interesting, engaging and quite a bit of fun to be around. Her only problem was that she was so hooked into the SRF way and Bill, it became obvious that her intentions were less about me and more about pleasing her captors.

The relationship was bizarre. Bill was not at all hesitant to use sexuality to hook in and motivate the men under his control. My relationship with this person was formed in front of the entire church, during a "trance" session. He dragged me up in front of everyone, used his power of hypnosis or whatever you want to call it to pull this gal up with me and "merge" our "auras" into one.

It worked OK for a while as all infatuations do. But the constant attention on our conduct, the frequent interference from Bill, the humiliation of everyone knowing what we did and did not do caused the expected ups and downs in the relationship.

We never really meshed. I can't go into details, but those of you who saw it can fill in the gaps for me. It's a situation that is important to disclose and I encourage people to do that if you like. I just can't do it myself.

I simultaneously loved and hated her. Well, it was more like a cycle. Love. Hate. Rinse. Repeat.

It's no wonder I was in a state of confusion worse than I had ever experienced.

What's the deception?

It was a simple but devious deception: the bait and switch.

What would motivate a young man better than the prospect of getting laid?

Well, having been a young man I'd say.... nothing.

Bill being a consummate con artist knew that too. In my presence, he spoke loud and long about getting me the hook-up and touted his skills as a "spiritual pimp" generously offering up women to his hormone-infested men.

But to the women, he told a different story.

This girl was told to keep her knees so close together, she could squeeze a dime into foil. In my presence, this girl would alternatively ply her womanly skills then complain mightily that I was just trying to get between her legs.


Through it all, the Reverend William Duby proudly boasted to the dazed and battered followers in his perverted "Friday Night Trance Class" only he had the divine ability to manipulate a young man and woman to do whatever the fuck he felt like making them do.  Did I say "divine"?  I meant "deranged".  My bad...

You all know I met my wife at SRF. That is possibly the only good thing I got out of that place. She was there at the time.

Bill made sure she stayed out of the picture. He tore her away from me and "replaced" her personality with a pseudo-personality that worshipped the "relationship" between myself and this other woman.

I had no idea this was happening. Neither did most people. And when I did find out, I was livid. Certainly, I would have gone after Bill if God hadn't beat me to it, striking Bill down with a cardiac arrhythmia in front of the gathered congregation. Well, that was good enough for me.

It was deception just like I describe that ruled the day-to-day life of the Spiritual Rights Foundation. You would be told one thing. Everyone else something completely different. You were always caught unaware, always lacking the information you need to know and always without a clue what was expected and what was and was not acceptable.

No wonder so many people were emotionally devastated after their experience. No wonder so many SRF-arranged relationships failed. No wonder why the rate of suicidal thinking and suicide attempts set a new world record.

Although Bill is long dead, the manipulation still exists. But in a more subtle, quiet way. Some of it is so transparent, the victims could see it for what it is and made their exit quickly.

But far too many remain under their spell. It's not just the only remaining porcine sycophant and boot-licker who still believes.  Many of those who left the cult still believe Rev. William Duby is a spiritual genius and worship him and all the perverted things he said, did and imagined.  Those are the ones who drank the Kool-Ade.  Those are the ones who will struggle with themselves and with the people around them.  


These true believers who believe in the master but not the mistresses are not only victims of William Duby's deception and the attempts of the Witches of Ellsworth Street to perpetuate the exploitation, they are victims of their own spiritual deception.


By worshiping their tormentor while acknowledging the abuse, by diminishing and minimizing the scale and importance of the daily horror of financial, mental, spiritual and physical abuse, these true believers are putting off seeing what they can't face - the truth.

For them, the trauma of realizing how bad things were and the depth of the spiritual deception is more than their tender constitutions can bear.  In a way, it makes those who have departed and faced the pain, the anger and the deep, unrelenting embarrassment of being an ex-cult member through therapy or other means appear far more courageous and more honest.


Honest?


Of course.  In order to deal with Rev. William Duby's deception, you have to be not only candid about the experience you have to be honest about how that experience affected you.  That involves being honest about how you feel about Duby - not just the Witches of Ellsworth.  As many of those who have departed can't do that, they'll remain under the influence of the most poisonous Kool-Ade there is: the poison of self-deception.


To have made the courageous step of not only realizing the emperor has no clothes but saying so as well is the beginning of a journey into a free life without the tether of paranoia and deception from the Academy for Psychic Studies.  That freedom has opened a new world to them - a world of opportunities and not limits, a world of curiosity without trepidation and a world with the freedom and self-determination to maintain assets and earnings for yourself and your family and to maintain your personal relationships without interference.


It is a big step.  It's a step so gigantic and meaningful for the recently-departed of the Academy, it's overwhelming.  It's so overwhelming for them, they continue their own deception for a simple reason: self-preservation.


To acknowledge the ocean of deliberate and purposeful acts of deceit, the acts of exploitation would cause the dam to break and the flood waters to surge and drown them in sadness, anger, embarrassment, frustration and all the rest. To continue the deception in their own minds and refuse to acknowledge the very issues that caused them to leave the wrought iron gate forever or refuse to talk about anything but the happy, blissful memories of the cult may feel like the right thing to do on an energy level but no matter how far you kick the can - sooner or later, you'll run out of road.

I have little hope the recently-departed will see the light, bite the bullet and let those backed-up emotions to come out while they receive the counseling and treatment they will need.  There are many things in play that will keep those who left in the last few years from making even a baby step towards freedom:

• The daily pummeling Bill Duby gave them created a fear of facing up to their own fears.
• The staggering reality they are not perfect, divine beings but no more than mere human beings.
• The shame of having lost so much of their lives to a madman and his witches.
• Exposure to and adoption of the intense paranoia of Bill Duby and the Witches.
• Addiction to making bad thoughts go away with the wave of a hand and the closing of their eyes.

There's no wonder why a small core group of former believers just won't ever see what really happened at the Academy for Psychic Studies.  The only wonder is if they'll ever open their eyes.