At the Spiritual Rights Foundation, the leaders were shown as masters of "havingness". They were the ones driving Cadillacs, with overflowing brokerage accounts, hiding stacks of Benjamins in their mattresses, and having shopping sprees at Macy's while they recited the idiot sayings and meaningless platitudes of the new age psychic philosophy over and over again.
The followers were driving decades-old shitheaps, scraping to make it to the end of the month, lucky to have an old, lumpy mattress and shopped at Big Lots and the Salvation Army while they recited the same damn thing.
I even witnessed a leader screaming at a follower who was balking at providing a luxurious home makeover of the leader's kitchen and living room for free. The leader also helpfully offered several profanities to assist the follower in growing spiritually and increase his havingness.
The leader was so successful in increasing the decrepit follower's havingness, that person immediately prospered from a holy kick in the ass from the anointed leader's spiritual boot. So, if you are open to havingness, you shall receive it when you are asking for it.
So I believe in havingness. I believe it's a misapplied, toxic and misleading word often used to control the compliant and empower the dominant.
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AnonymousJanuary 31, 2009 4:02 PMLooks like there are many SRF people who have a lot to say. I believe this to be very healthy and a natural reaction to what happened to them and others. I hope they can eventually recover and move on the right path of forgetting about there time there.Reply
I'm glad I never gave more than the small sum in the beginning. Mike and Joy, are you both still in contact with some of the people you write about in your blogs? Sounds like they really don't like you know? -
Hi Anonymous,
Yes it is good that people are talking about their experiences, very healthy.
Mike and I are not in contact with the leaders in which we write about. That relationship ends on their end once you start disagreeing with anything they do. They require almost total devotion. Plus I realy did not to be around them when I left once I started to see, realize and get out of the denial phase of what was really happening there.
There are some other people that we have mentioned in the blog that are not leaders and some of them we are in contact with.
A good portion of ex-SRF people we have been reconnecting with and building friendships with. That reminds me I need to send out invites for another get together.
And there are a few current SRF'rs who would like to leave and that are questioning the place but cannot bring themselves to leave.
Thanks for your comments.
I heard from more than one source that our donations and tithes were skimmed from the donation plate each month. Bill would reach into the tithes, pull out all bills greater than $10 and stuff them in his pocket. I once saw Angela drop a thick tithe envelope into the dish during church service. After church service, I saw her carrying the same envelope back to her home. It was just as thick as it was earlier.
In the more than a decade I have been at SRF, there was no charitable giving or charitable works for the community. Ever. And no charitable works were ever discussed or planned. Forget talking about giving SRF's hard-stolen money to charity. It would never happen. They would not even hear of SRF matching the members' donation. The only aspirations to the community I ever heard of were related to making money from the community.
As for Bill, Angela and Robin gathering the staff without coercion; failure to appear when summoned was punished with monetary fines, public humiliation, even temporary loss of ministerial title. I saw all of that happen. The temporary loss of ministerial title was imposed on a minister who was late for a meeting with Bill due to an unforeseen problem on the freeway. She also suffered from MS and was never given accommodation because of her illness. Instead, she was run ragged.
I'll tell you how strong this coercion was: when my wife graduated from college, she invited several ministers from SRF to attend the ceremony. Several agreed. None actually attended.
Why?
Angela called a last-minute meeting of the ministers at the exact time of my wife's graduation to discuss a trivial matter for an hour. None dared say they were invited to a once-in-a-lifetime event and important milestone achieved by a long time student of SRF at the same time of the meeting.
Some ministers apologized to me personally saying that they "had to go" and mentioned that not attending would carry consequences. Serious consequences.
I'm glad your healing, reading and class was of benefit for you. My first few years with SRF was the time of my life (except for the empty promise of getting laid part - at least I got a web award out of it).
But I'm relieved that you were spared the sight of the ugly underbelly of the SRF beast.