When our innocent aliveness is sung to, touched, and then cynically exploited by a predatory person or group---the worst injury we suffer is to being resentful and terrified our own capcity for aliveness, because we may experience that innocent aliveness as something that could be fooled and tricked into betraying us--like a 2 year old child who has innocently let a burglar into the house.
Our inner child needs to be accompanied by an inner parent.
Legitimate spiritual practices show us how the inner child and inner adult can and should function collaboratively.
Predatory spiritual groups try to split the inner child from the inner parent, usually by devaluing adult critical thinking--just the way child molesters try to isolate children from adults who could protect them.
When a predator instills shame, shame disables adult critical thinking and makes it hard for us to apply critical thinking to a situation where someone has harmed us.
What I think has happened is that in many abuse situations innocence is left unprotected because a predator has tricked us into devaluing our adult instincts, which leaves our inner children isolated and unprotected. And certain organizations do very select recruiting, and target us when we are at vulnerable times in life--exactly those times when it is most difficult to activate adult critical thinking skills, and when, without realizing it, we are feeling like motherless children.
When our adult faculties have been distracted or disabled, and our innocence is left unprotected, then thrilled and seduced, all too often, we emerge from such trauma feeling afraid of and perhaps even enraged at the innocence in us that was so seducible, that let itself be thrilled by a molester. We dont realize that before this occurred, our adult selves were tricked into self doubt/manipulated through group pressure, chanting, dancing, stress into a state where [i:b91cced183]we could not protect our innocence[/i:b91cced183] from the ones who aroused that innocence, then molested that innocence.
So we may risk hating and fearing that sweet, alive childlike part of ourselves, choke off our aliveness and then stay on guard, afraid ever to trust again, hope again, thrill again, aspire again.
This is only my guess, but perhaps recovery means discovering a way to feel compassion for that innocent child in us who was taken advantage of, turned on. Thing to do is create a conscious link between that inner lively, innocence (to which the cult gained access and then [i:b91cced183]thrilled and exploited[/i:b91cced183])and our adult discernment (which the cult gained access to, and then [i:b91cced183]confused and disabled[/i:b91cced183], leaving our inner child unprotected and accessible to exploitation).
That way, we link the best of both functions: the playfulness, liveliness and 'beginner's mind' of a child, with the 'street smarts', patience, and critical thinking skills of an adult.
Exploitative cult leaders prey on the innocent child that lives within us all. What they do is seduce and manipulate our inner children and simultaneously disable our inner 'adult'--by witholding information needed for informed consent, using confusion to shame us into mistrusting our critical thinking.
Any situation where you're made to feel ashamed or a 'party pooper' for asking questions and doing research---where you're told 'Dont be close-minded, just trust your feelings' --thats a set up thats designed to confuse and distract your inner parent--and could then be used to coax your inner child into the molester's get-away car.
A legitimate spiritual teacher shows us how to combine the vitality and plafulness of the inner child with the alertness, prudence and critical thinking of the inner adult.
I saw a situation that may symbolize how child-self and parental adult-self can productively collaborate:
A mother was with her two children--a baby in a stroller and her 2 year old daughter. They had to cross a street, with a timed street light. A big pile of cars waited impatiently. In the middle of the cross walk, the two year old girl, who had no sense of future consequences, no sense of danger, decided to test Mom's limits and she refused to keep walking. She was doing what all 2 years olds need to do--test limits.
But Mom, as an adult, saw things her child could not see--that the light was 10 seconds from changing to red, and that cross walk was not a good, safe place to have a temper tantrum.
Without getting mad at her child, Mom protected her child by picking her right off the ground, and carried her to safety. Child and Mom were both 'doing their jobs'. The kid was testing limits, and Mom was making sure the child stayed safe while testing those limits.
We need to preserve both our inner functions--the vitality and playfulness of the inner child, and the long-term wisdom and 'Bullshit Detector' of the inner adult/parent. The inner adult will know when its time to get out of the room and carry the child to safety, even when the child is feeling thrilled and wants to stay put.
The inner adult is there to ensure that the inner child's playspace remains safe--and a cult leader is someone who would try to trick that inner adult into allowing that inner child to be exploited.
One thing that makes such recovery difficult is that we get so many messages from the culture that being spiritual means regression, means rejection of critical thinking. Feeling is exalted at expense of intellect, when in fact the two need to function collaboratively, not one at the expense of the other. This pre-existing bias to exalt emotion and devalue criticalt thinking and fact-checking can be easily exploited by predatory persons and groups.
This paper on traumatic abuse in cults by Daniel Shaw may provide some resources.
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Dan Shaw was in a group that manipulated ecstacy through yoga and adoration of a guru, rather than by LGAT methods. His take is many people feel bliss and relief because thier suffering is sealed and suppressed by an artificially produced mood state within the group, and devotees defend the group and its leaders quite fiercely because they dread that if their bliss, purchased by idealizing the leader's propaganda, is disrupted by scandal or exposure to disillusioning reality, the suffering previously suppressed by bliss and denial will come back to torment them.
Some gurus exploit this dynamic by predicting that anyone who leaves will suffer all kinds of ghastly consequences, so it becomes a terrifying self fulfilling prophecy unless the individual is fortunate and given convincing explanations for why this is happening. That is why so many who are booted out by brutal groups and gurus will continue to idealize their tormentors--the minute they stop idealizing their abusers and see them as merely human, all the unfinished business they suppressed through idealization will come back and haunt them--along with the trauma of being ejected. Its a double whammy and many people are terrified to face it.
Basic thing to remember is that the people who orchestrate ecstacy in these exploitative ways are actually unable to allow themselves to be intimate or vulnerable in any genuine way. That may be why they constantly demand intimacy and vulnerability from their followers--for through our vulnerability, these predators temporarily experience a vitality that they are unable to summon within themselves by honest means--they can only steal it from us.
We actually have something these predators do not have--which is why they keep recruiting.