Run like hell, the wolves are coming.

I often wonder what I was doing in that crazy place for so long.

I mean, this place lost its appeal to me after a while. Things got boring, mundane. The focus on the whole thing was just plain money. That's all thanks to the nuts who were in charge. At least, when Bill Duby was alive, you'd get a laugh now and then. With the current motley crew at the helm, you wind up as morose and bitter as they are every week. It's just that there was that great numbing session called "healing clinic" once a week to give you that shot of spiritual morphine. And if that wasn't enough, the Monday Night Trance sessions gave you a nice big slam of heroin in your veins.

I thought that I'd had enough. I did stick around long enough to establish a great relationship with a wonderful woman. That woman had nothing to do with the leadership. In fact, she was frequently shunned, demeaned by leaders and membership.

One member, we knew, is a man for whom we had some respect. He carried an advanced degree from a major university, was obviously well educated and was successful. My wife was most impressed with his knowledge and educational achievements. Now when my wife began attending a community college to begin her own higher education, this respected man said derisively "She will find that a college education won't do her any good." He went on to repeat the SRF party line about over-education and how it fills your head with the thoughts of college professors; thoughts that cloud your mind with the unenlightened and demonic information of college.

Well, that just made his stock go down faster than the Dow. He went from admired to disdained in a second.

Still, we soldiered on while my wife continued to attend college. It was a struggle. Not only did she have to attend college, she had to work as often as possible, attend her SRF classes, pay for SRF classes and activities and try to eat at the same time. Not a lot of fun.

When she waivered from her commitment to SRF, they reined her back in saying that SRF is the best place for her and the best thing in her life. We bought it - for a while. And for that while, we felt trapped. Trapped in a crap apartment in a gang-filled, drug-infested slum. Trapped in an organization that would stoop to any depths to exert control over its members. Trapped by a leadership that was dysfunctional and corrupt. We needed a way out. A way to seek our freedom. A way to find the essence of life.

Then when things started looking up for us by way of a modest, but nice inheritance, SRF made a characteristic, clumsy and ultimately fatal blunder: they tried to get their hands on our new home. That's right. We were told to "sell that goddamn house" and get back up to Berkeley, erasing all of our needed gains and eliminating our much needed freedom. In order to take the bad energy off the house, we would be required to tithe 10% of the house's value in accordance with spiritual law and SRF doctrine. And that 10% would be due every year. Every year until we have exhausted our ability to borrow against the house. Then we would be required to sell it to pay our debts and move back into the SRF slum apartment.

At that point, we decided that we had to get out. As soon as the house was closed and all the issues in the contentious probate I had to endure was over, I decided it was truely over for SRF. My wife and I fought bitterly over SRF. When is was over with SRF, we were fine. It's good to be away from all that. My wife has said over and over that the fights were all over SRF and all over the thing they wanted from us.

As far as the leaders are concerned, they can have go enjoy their retirement villa in Marin County for as long as they can. That is, if they can.

Maybe they are depressed and defeated. Fine. Maybe they just had enough. That's fine too. It seems to me that they are looking for one last chance to rape, pillage and plunder. Don't be surprised if they move into that retirement villa with a very large piggy bank under their arm. And that piggy bank has your name, your neighbor's name, all your ex-member's names and the names of anyone who has ever been at SRF written on it.

Bill Duby himself said you can't keep running - the world is round. If these two are running from the problems they created, how much running do you think they can do? And what happens when you discover those problems? Will you be the one to fix it?

Or will you be the ones to suffer from them?