Please Help My Best Friend
Date: May 18, 2004 05:55PM
I just joined this forum after seacrhing furiously on the internet tonight. I need some information on helping my best friend, who I have known since I was 6.
We grew up in NYC, and she moved out to California a few years ago. She had just been through alot in her life. She had left the faith she was brought up in, the Catholic church, and was upset from a bad experience she had while attending private Catholic schools as a teenager.
Her fiance, and her moved to California because he works in entertainment. That where his career lead him. She was upset being in a new area, and not having many friends. He was gone on location most of the time, so she would get upset and call me some nights crying and saying she was terrified of being alone.
They had a little girl and she was diagnosed with post pardum depression after her daughters birth. She began hanging around this different group while in California, the very snobby, fashionable group that she began mingling with.
They asked her to come to the Kabbalah Center. They all seemed to be involved. Right before she went, she had become addicted to prescription mediction and wanted to get off of them right away.
I talked to her one day about it, and she said that the Kabbalah was helping her release the reactive behavior in her life, and the evil within her would be gone. She started wearing a red string around her wrist all the time, and when I'd ask her about it, she said it was to keep the negativity and evil eye away from her. I teased her about it and she got very upset.
Thats when I started wondering what she was involved in. I went out to California for a visit, and in her home, she had books about the Kabbalah all over her coffee table. She took me to a class and I wanted to go to see what this was all about. She took me to the Center in LA, and I didn't really see anything wrong with it. I thought everyone was kind of strange for believing some of the things they were discussing but I felt it was harmless, and if she wanted to believe it, then fine.
Later on during the visit, I was watching her house one day while she went to a doctors appointment. During the two hours she was gone, the Kabbalah Center called for her a total of twelve times. Each call they became more frantic in wanting to know why she couldn't come to the phone and where she was at. I began to think something was up, because that was not normal behavior.
When she returned, I told her that they had called. She called them back in front of me, and I could see her going for her purse. She started reading off her credit card number to them over the phone. After she hung up, I asked her why she would give someone her credit card number over the phone, and she said, because she needed new books.
I made a joke of saying she had alot of books already, and she just looked at me. I told her that they seemed pretty persistent in getting a hold of her and asked her what the great urgency was if it was just for books. She said she would have spiritual correctiveness by giving to the Center, and learning more about the Kabbalah.
She began getting very defensive and said that all churches ask for donations. It was nothing out of the ordinary and went on to say how the Catholic church passes a donation basket every mass. Ijust let it go and decided not to push her buttons. I was visiting so it wasn't like I could just get in a fight with her, get in my car and go home.
A couple days before I left, her fiance returned home from location. One night when she went to bed earlier than him and me, we sat out on the patio and talked. He asked me if I noticed the change in her, and I told him I had. He told me he was very upset with her involvement in the Kabbalah Center, but he was afraid if he pushed too hard it'd break up their family.
I was shocked when he said that. This is a girl who would never leave him and loves him deeply. They are a couple who've inspired the rest of us, in our circle, in knowing that love really does exist. I couldn't believe she would take it that far to possibly mess up what she had with him and the family they had made.
He is a spiritual guy and had gone to church on holidays but he really doesn't attach himself to any religion. He told me he went to a meeting once with her, and that he had to wear all white. He said that he felt it was very strange behavior and it reminded him of a cult. He didn't want to go and he wasn't comfortable but he wanted to understand what she was doing.
He basically didn't buy any of their BS, and he started oing research on the internet about the Kabbalah. He told me he found some very disturbing things written about the center, and he wanted her out.
He was even more upset that she was donating their money, without his knowledge or permission. He'd always let her spend the money she had wanted for shopping and was never the boss of their account, but he did not want her donating the amounts she was donating to them.
He told me he felt she was gone, and lost. He started crying in front of me, which really made me realize just how bad this was. This guy never wept in front of others, I've known him for years, and he was always private with his feelings.
I asked him what we should do, and he didn't know. I ended up having to leave before we could come up with a solution. He was afraid that she would leave if he pushed too hard and they had a little girl together.
I kept in touch and each call became more disturbing. She began telling me that the Center wanted her to do different speeches for them at their childrens functions. They have an inner city program that she said she became involved in. She told me how they would tell her how special she was, and that she was a great leader.
She began to ramble on about how the center wanted her fiance to become more involved, and possibly use his influences in the industry to put their word out.
I told her that he had told me he wasn't interested. He had always had christian beliefs, and even though they masked what they were, he didn't want to be involved with them.
I remember him saying once to me,"The most disturbing thing about these people is the fact that when I asked them why they say they aren't a relgion and then teach the way of judaism, they tell me I am wrong." He said he had felt that if their was a manipulation from the beginning and a lie from the beginning, then something was wrong, and there'd be a lie at the end. I agreed. He told me she was celebrating jewish holidays and reading jewish texts.
I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but she tried to deny she was practicing the wish religion and she wasn't a jew. He kept saying to her that their whole system was based of jewish texts and she kept disagreeing. She had said,"The only reason we celebrate those holidays, is not because they are jewish but because they have very high energy and goodness around those holidays."
I kept telling her it's mystic judaism, I had read it on the internet myself, and she kept correcting me. "They predate all other religions, and they are the true codes to the universe. Everyone else is lost," is what she kept saying.
I could sense the frustration that he had being at the house, and as I checked up, I kept noticing that he was diving himself into work more, and he was trying to be on location as much as possible. I called him and told him that he needed to quit going away so much and that maybe this will help her. He ended up listeing to me, and took a leave of absense from work.
He finally talked her into setting a wedding date and they began keeping themselves busy with that. I went back out to stay for a month, because she wanted me involved in the planning process. I was to be her maid of honor.
She began incorporating all these things about the Kabbalah into details for the wedding. Like once they had to change the wedding date they had set after she talked to the leader of the Kabbalah, because they had told her that the last week of July, and first two weeks of August were very bad times to start something new. Her date fell in that time period, so she ended up losing deposits she had put down on the location they had chosen, and chose a new wedding date.
Some of the Kabbalah leaders wanted to start getting involved in knowing details of the wedding. Her fiance finally put his foot down last night. He screamed at her and told her that they could not get married until she quit the Kabbalah. She had been taing this weekend about putting their daughter in the spirituality kids program at the center. He went crazy. He said he wasn't going to let her ruin their little girl the way she has changed.
Maybe he shouldn't have been so harsh and I told him to settle down, but I think he just reached his breaking point.
I have been staying here in California, in a rented him for the past few months, trying to deal with this, and help however I can. Her family is also here visiting. We all thought we were coming here to help plan a big destination wedding, but as of last night, it looks like it has been postponed.
It just really hurts me because I know how excited she was about the wedding. They have so much love for one another, and this is just devastating to everyone.
We all got together tonight to talk with her, while everyone was in town. We confronted her, and she started crying. He was holding her, and telling her he'd help her get better, and she just kept crying. She has been very addicted to pain killers for awhile now, and the Kabbalah doesn't seem to be helping, it seems to be making her worse.
The more we talked, the more we all thought we were getting through to her. She started saying,"I am too afraid to leave. Satan will over take me. The evil will come in again." We thought we were getting her to see that nothing is good if it leaves her in fear, but then she just snapped back and said she liked their teachings and she wouldn't quit..it was helping her.
She was afraid of the leaders, she said at one point before she snapped back. She has this weird belief that they can put curses on her and her family. Her Mom has been ill and she was afraid she'd die.
Her fiance reached his breaking point tonight, and I am afraid if she doesn't stop, he is going to go down there and punch someones lights out, which would not be good for him or his career.
I need to know where to go for her to get her some help. I want to give him some information of places he can call to see if they can speak with her, even if it's by phone. Can someone please help me before I lose my best friend?
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