Have you, like me, suffered spiritual abuse?
If so, how did you heal? What helped you?
And, what is your spiritual practice and/or belief now?

I'll start with some definitions of spiritual abuse that I found helpful. This first is from a talk by Ken Garrett for the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), "Regaining Your Footing: First Steps of Recovery From Spiritual Abuse":

"Spiritual abuse is the use of inappropriate, excessive influence, pressure, coercion, or control to change a person's beliefs, feelings and behaviors. The control of behavior and decision-making results in the member losing autonomy and freedom, and instead experiencing heightened vulnerability, manipulation, coercion and bullying by abusive leaders and the system they build...
"Spiritual abuse happens in any group that exists so its members can explore and grow in a metaphysical or spiritual atmosphere, studying spiritual theories (love, wholeness, faith, enlightenment, etc.)...
"Spiritual abuse is distinct from other forms of abuse in that it is totalistic in nature: it is control of behaviors and thoughts and emotions."

Michael Langone, Ph.D., discussed spiritual abuse in another talk for ICSA, "Leaving and Recovering from Cultic Relationships and Groups":

" Spiritual abuse occurs when someone is treated in a way that damages them spiritually. As a result, their relationship with God -- or the part of them capable of having a relationship with God -- becomes wounded or scarred."

Another aspect of spiritual abuse is the promise of attaining a direct mystical experience (such as enlightenment, Christ consciousness, etc.) but the promise comes with a built-in requirement that is either next to impossible to fulfill, or one in which the member can't ever tell if they have fulfilled it. Some examples might be the enjoinder to "be humble," the "no illicit sex" rule, the exhortation to "work always for your salvation," the requirement to "conquer the mind," and so on. The effect is to divide the member internally into "good" and "bad" selves, and to distrust one's own inner voice, intuition and conscience. (My paraphrasing from Stephen Gelberg's "On Leaving ISKCON")

Some signs of spiritual abuse are listed by Dr. Langone:
-lack of joy
-profound sense of missing your best friend
-disillusionment about God and spiritual things
-uneasiness, lack of trust, or even fear of those who care about "God things"
-cynicism or grief over "good news" that turned out to be too good to be true
-tiredness from trying too hard to measure up

Doug and Wendy Duncan describe the pain of spiritual abuse in their ICSA talk, "Reawakening Your Spirituality After a Cult Experience" as including these "obstacles to spirituality":
-anger at God
-fear that God has forever left us
-inability to see God's love and mercy
-inability to trust our instincts, discernment or anyone in authority
-uncertainty about who God is and what a healthy concept of and /or relationship with God would be


What has helped you to heal from the devastating effects of spiritual abuse? I'll share some things to consider that I have found helpful.

Gillie Jenkinson, Ph.D., talks about how the cult's beliefs are introjections. "Like a lump of unchewed or undigested food in your gut that doesn't nourish and also isn't eliminated but takes on a life of its own." We've swallowed these beliefs and behaviors whole, without critically thinking about them or examining them. They are often negative and manifest as "shoulds". Part of our healing, then, is to examine these, keep what nourishes us and toss out the rest.

Doug and Wendy Duncan speak about the need for us to heal the "emptiness of the soul" after we leave a cult. They offer a list of tasks to guide us:
-find a safe place to process and to rethink and rebuild your belief system
-learn to trust your mind
-rethink and go through the cult's beliefs; salvage positive aspects and identify cult-induced fears
-identify triggers and redefine them
-explore healthier views and teachings about God


So much of this is still a work in progress for me! I've experienced all of the aspects of spiritual abuse I've listed, and much of the signs and obstacles as well. It was very helpful to look at cult introjections because so many of them were mindless or based on what seemed to be near-superstitious thinking when I examined them.
There were many to examine at first; now one will crop up from time to time into my awareness to be dealt with.

I'm still working through what is for me a healthy concept of God, and what does my relationship with God look like now. I've basically quit the morning rituals that I practiced for years and I'm not sure what will replace them. I'm coming to realize that in this day and age there may be no one organization that can offer a packaged answer to the concept/relationship question. At least, maybe not for me, nor for those of us who have suffered spiritual abuse. Maybe the answer for us lies in creating an individualized, personalized belief system cobbled together from bits and pieces of teachings and practices from various spiritual traditions that we've found to have deep and profound personal meaning. I'm keeping an open mind...

And that leads me to the last question and the one I am most interested in seeing your answers: have you been able to create for yourself a meaningful spiritual life and relationship with the Divine?

If so, would you please share it?

Found this interesting passage in The Road Less Traveled, the chapter titled The Welcoming of Grace, by M. Scott Peck:

"For the journey of spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While the words of the prophets and the assistance of grace are available, the journey must still be traveled alone. No teacher can carry you there. There are no preset formulas. Rituals are only learning aids, they are not the learning. Eating organic food, saying five Hail Mary's before breakfast, praying facing east or west, or going to church on Sunday will not take you to your destination. No words can be said, no teaching can be taught that will relieve spiritual travelers from the necessity of picking their own ways, working out with effort and anxiety their own paths through the unique circumstances of their own lives toward the identification of their individual selves with God.

"For when we truly understand these matters, the journey of spiritual growth is still so lonely and difficult that we often become discouraged. The fact that we live in a scientific age, while helpful in some respects, serves in others to foster discouragement. We believe in the mechanical principles of the universe; not in miracles. Through our science we have come to learn that our dwelling place is but a single planet of a star lost amid one galaxy among many. And just as we seem lost amid the enormity of the external universe, so science has also led us to develop an image of ourselves as being helplessly determined and governed by forces not subject to our will -- by chemical molecules in our brain and conflicts in our unconscious that compel us to feel and to behave in certain ways when we are not even aware of what we are doing. So the replacement of our human myths by scientific information has caused us to suffer a sense of personal meaninglessness. Of what possible significance could we be, as individuals or even as a race, buffeted about by internal chemical and psychological forces we do not understand, invisible in a universe whose dimensions are so large that even science cannot measure them?

"Yet it is that same science that has in certain ways assisted me to perceive the reality of the phenomenon of grace...For once we perceive the reality of grace, our understanding of ourselves as meaningless and insignificant is shattered. The fact that there exists beyond ourselves and our conscious will a powerful force that nurtures our growth and evolution is enough to turn our notions of self-insignificance topsy-turvy. For the existence of this force (once we perceive it) indicates with incontrovertible certainty that our human spiritual growth is of the utmost importance to something greater than ourselves. This something we call God. The existence of grace is prima facie evidence not only of the reality of God but also of the reality that God's will is devoted to the growth of the individual human spirit. What once seemed to be a fairy tale turns out to be the reality. We live our lives in the eye of God, not at the periphery but at the center of His vision, His concern...We are hardly lost in the universe. To the contrary, the reality of grace indicates humanity to be at the center of the universe."