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I just realized that I've been writing this blog for a while now. Not quite a year. On the other hand, it's only been two months since this blog has become publicly visible.
It's been quite a couple of months. Thousands of page views have taken place. Up until then, the only page views were my own. I had only one comment left by a guy looking for something completely different and stumbled upon my blog by accident.
In these last two months, we have reconnected with some great people, which has made this past holiday season one of the best I can remember.
And the news that this year, many individuals have found their own freedom and independence from the chains of false prophets is icing on the cake.
But one thing has been on my mind. It's that one comment I heard just the other day:
"...you have really got to get a life and get over being at this place. Really, you have been through hell and back, but why keep this up, groaning on an on about what happened to you? Forgive and forget might be something of an impossibility for you people..."
OK, so let's say we have been groaning for the last two months.
Two months?
Our group of ex-cultists have been, on average, involved with the Spiritual Rights Foundation for a decade.
A decade.
Some for much longer than that. In that decade, much happened. Much more than I can explain here and much more than we have disclosed on this blog.
Our lives were centered around SRF - so much so, that many of us participating here lived in church owned housing. We drove cars that the church insisted we buy (and few of us could afford). We wore clothes that were similar in appearance and style. We ate the same foods. We acquired the same interests and tastes.
We have seen happy couples married at the direction of the leadership and bitter, contentious divorces arise when they were abruptly separated by the leadership.
We saw how the leaders, without good reason or judgement and certainly without restraint, take another man's young child, put him (or her) in a hypnotic trance for the purpose of encouraging and demanding that the child become emotionally detached from his father's love. When the deed was done, the child was held up as an example of the miracle of trance and as the result of the spiritual wisdom and psychic skills of the leaders.
We saw fabricated situations of healing and miraculous change. We saw how the leadership will take credit when a health or financial situation naturally resolved in a positive way and we saw how they blamed their followers if it did not.
We saw how a man could be beaten down day by day by the leaders. We saw how they will criticize, demean, insult and debase him until he had no self-respect. We saw how one such member committed suicide.
We saw how a man's spouse would be sexually harassed by the leader. We saw women's breasts fondled in full view of their spouse and asked who's dick she would like to suck.
We saw children go without food so their parents can pay the leaders for enlightenment and wisdom and saw children work at an SRF farm during winter without warm clothes, without boots to protect their feet, without a raincoat to keep them dry.
We saw children lose their parents. We saw parents lose their spouses. And we saw it was the leaders who made those separations possible.
We saw children denied an education (stalling in their development) so they may remain untouched by the world's influence and we saw them flourish when the California Superior Court ordered their return to school.
We sat all night and listened as the leaders kept us entranced with fanciful stories of God, spirit, the workings of the spirit world. And we returned expecting more, deeper revelations but received more of the same.
We sat frozen in fear as the leaders surrounded a member, man or woman, scream as loud as humanly possible, spit flying from their mouths angry at a minor or imagined infraction.
And we stayed while each of us were paraded in front of the group for humiliation, a sort of psychic perp walk.
Since all of us were perp walked for various infractions ranging from minor and inconsequential to hallucinatory, we need the opportunity to disclose and release.
So, if people here express themselves, their outrage, their pain, their need to release the humiliation, then I guess that's what this blog is all about.
And it's going to take more than two months to "get over" a decade of what we saw and experienced.
For once, the ex-members of the Spiritual Rights Foundation have a place (even as humble as this blog) that is truly for them. Truly available for them to express in a manner they require. Truly centered around them and for them. Truly centered around the truth. And truly one they deserve.
There are no fees, no expensive classes, no gurus, no one to tell you to shut up when you need to speak. This blog observes the First Amendment and all who care to participate will have a voice.
Everyone is welcome to participate and speak as they see fit.
All I ask is that the discussion stay on topic and that we don't flame or insult each other. And that you remember that comments may be posted for discussion among the readers.
I notice the above commenter is quite the fan of this blog, with several page views daily. That's great. The news and commentary offered here is the perspective that person needs, I think.
I also thought the full comment that person left could be considered a flame. But after some thought, I realized this person was saying what we all would have liked to say and was able to say what he or she said in a forum that allows and encourages that expression. The comment stays.
I'm glad she never saw any of what we saw. No one should be witness to that kind of madness.
In this forum, we have the life of freedom we wanted for over a decade. We have the opportunity to communicate we needed for over a decade.
We got our new life. The life we wanted - the life of freedom.
And our commenter above may have that as well, with my complements.
Just keep our pledge in mind intrepid commenter: "For all the things I may have done to you, I ask your forgiveness. For all the things you may have done to me, you have my forgiveness."
Would you join us in taking that pledge?
Moving on and healing from the abuses we took from these men, women and organizations takes time and no one can dictate when or how one can heal.
ReplyDeleteWould one tell a woman who was raped, get over it? Would one tell a child who was abused for years, get over it? Would one tell a veteran who has just come home from a terrifying war and is suffering from PTSD
"Just get over it!"
Statements like this not only invalidate the experiences but minimalize and trivialize the deep effects of the abuse and trauma one has faced.
No one dictates to another when or how they should heal. However, we were often told in these organizations (BPI for me and SRF for Mike) that they had cleared the energy out or we had finaly blown the "core picture" and we were done with it.
BAH!
The real process of reframing takes time and when it is done, one can and has encapsulated the experience with a proper definition and has gained tremendous freedom from its effect on oneself.
This is a process which is well know in the field of Psychotherapy under the process of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
For us who have gone through these things and spent many years inside these places, or stuck on their beliefs, the reframing process demands a huge level of cognitive energy.
We litterally have to go through each of our memories one by one and examine them for veracity (truth).
Please, be patient with us, ours is a time consuming, often arduous and intense grieving process.
Please, we are putting our lives on track and moving ahead as best we can.
Please, if it is uncomfortable for you, let us know.
But please, do not ask us to "get over it!"
It hurts us in someways just as deeply as the abuse we faced at the hands of these mentally ill people.
Beautifully said by Mike and the Doctor. I found both your comments very heartening; a valuable meditation that gives meaning and perspective to the pain that haunts us. Too many people want to tell us that we are morbid or obssessive.
ReplyDeleteNO
We are basically healthy minded, responsible people and this is part of our healthy expression. The lies, deceptions, and humiliations of the cult are in layers, layers that are buried under other layers, and so on. It takes focused, meditative work to see these lies and release them. I see great health in what Mike, the Doctor, and everyone participating in this valuable blog, are doing. We are removing lies from our soul with the same horror and joy that we would remove a leach from a sensitive part of our skin.
Use your imagination.
HORROR because of the fear, the shear shock of seeing something that happened to us that we most did not want to happen; the ugliness of embracing and trusting the wrong person, of mistaking love for the motive of hate. The cult desperately wanted us to be and stay blind to the nightmarish trap they had us in. Ignorance is not bliss.
JOY because we exercising our internal skill, we are taking back one part of our soul at a time, we are stepping away from the nightmare and into light.
It was a wake-up call to see Joy write about the severity of her nightmares on her blog. For seven years my dreams were dominated by the SRF cult. I still dream about it, but there has been steady progress, year by year, dream by dream. Thank God for this blog; you can see people getting stronger slowly but surely.
Thanks also, by the grace of God, Mike and Joy defeated the cult in court. That is a very empowering event for me, and I know for others. Mike demonstrated a lot of mental strength in the way he handled the whole case. There is a great sense of being able to speak our truth here.
Steve