Quote
Lincoln
The young people end up becoming isolated within society as their mental outlook prevents them from connecting in a healthy mental and social way with the society they live in.
Amen to this. Most 'Subud Youth' find it increasingly difficult to explain parts of their lives to friends from outside Subud. I've been to Youth Workshops where older SYA (Subud Youth Association - sound familiar!!??) members would give talks and testing sessions on how to talk about Subud to your friends, how to explain about Bapak or how to explain about name changes (Subud members often change their names when in a 'transition period,' another very common cult technique. Members do not pick their own new names but they are given through 'testing' by Ibu Rahayu, acting Subud Leader or a more senior helper. For non-Subud members interested in the subject, sometimes the member is given little more than a letter and told to go and choose six names beginning with that letter. The helper will then 'test' which name is right for them. How can your 'new name' come from God if there's a six-way split over which name you end up with? Ridiculous).
Even now Subud Youth is the hardest part of my experience for me to criticise as it is the part I was most emotionally invested in. It was the part I most wished I could fit in to. Kinda sad, huh? Unfortunately I perceived SYA to be glamorous, mature, accomplished and cool. There are just as many cliques in Subud as anywhere else and I felt a huge pressure to be something that I wasn't, both from my parents and other adult Subud members and indirectly from Subud Youth, whom I often felt painfully isolated from. There were considerable amounts of mixed messages coming from different sources on how young people were expected to behave, and what they were realistically assumed to be able to achieve. No matter what I did, it never seemed good enough... and I carry that pain through as an adult.
I find it much harder to blame Subud youth for their actions even though it is often 'the youth' that are more violent in their criticism of anyone wishing to leave Subud. Certainly not one of my friends wanted to continue a relationship with me outside of Subud - any communication would inevitably result in "Do you want to come to Latihan tonight?" or "Are you going to Congress?"
For me, it just got harder and harder to communicate with non-Subud members. Most of my dreams and ambitions ended up being filtered back through Subud... the loneliness and confusion and split between 'Safe Subud' and 'Horrible Reality,' was most pronounced in my last 6 months of Subud but I think was always present. The rest of the world started to seem so senseless and I ended up requiring more and more testing to make 'sense' of it all, more and more bizarre explanations just to stitch everything together...