What am I seeking?

St. Augustus of Hippo said: [i:ccd3135c4b]I know what time is until you ask me, then I don't know anymore[/i:ccd3135c4b] -- No saint, I, but it has always seemed a good quote with respect to this business of seeking.

In '64 I had a kind of epiphany (of the William James "Variety") and knew that there was something that wasn't material that I wanted/needed to look for.

Not much help, is it?

But maybe we are all seekers. So often we observe the "gotta have" materialistic seekers who try to have it all. Less often we encounter those who are after something else. Many end up here or in similar "shelters" because they have been hurt, sometimes actually damaged, by their encounters.

My experiences fall into the hurt/damaged recycle bin. But there is still something that is worth seeking. After many adventures (TM, SRF,
[i:ccd3135c4b]etc., etc.[/i:ccd3135c4b]) I met a Zen teacher and gave zazen a go, then Tibetan Buddhism, now Theravada Buddhism.

I like the Theravada, the amorphous nature of mindfulness, the "just as it is" nature of being with myself (no instant answers, no know-it-all pat formulae, nothing but just me -- and less and less of that).

Sorry this doesn't really answer or maybe even address your question, Nativeflower, but it's the best I can do.

Toni, sorry, I confused your answer with Nativeflower to whom I had first responded.

M

Nativeflower ~ I think it is natural to think about your experience and the friends & people you cared about who are still in the group. Your family means well but unless you've personally been through the experience of getting mixed up with a cult and trying to leave it, I don't think you can really understand what it is like for 'people like us.' So they tell you to "stop obsessing" but they don't understand that you need to think and talk about it to deal with it. I think in a lot of ways what we feel and go through can be compared to the grief/mourning process. Not talking about it doesn't make the feelings go away - and trying to hide them all inside can actually make them harder to deal with later on. I was born & raised with the Davidians and for twelve years I don't think a day has gone by that I don't think about my friends & family who didn't leave when we did *sigh.* It wouldn't be normal to just forget about them and pretend they were never a part of my life. You are a whole individual and your involvement with the group is a part of you - as are the feelings you have towards the people you care about who are still in the group. I hope you are able to find someone who understands that, to talk to. There seems to be a lot of good resources here so good luck. :)

Angela:

your comparing leaving a cult with the grief experience is very astute. I've been through both, and they are very similar.

As for "obsessing" over the cult, I think that is normal. You fear getting back into that trap, you wonder how it happened in the first place and you realize that cultees are just normal people in a very abnormal situation and worry about them. It's hard to get past that.

I was fortunate to have a "normal" upbringing and my cult involvement was not of my choice. But it has still turned my life upside down and left me wondering how such a thing could happen. Of course, the cult says that I "created" this by my own thoughts and actions and that nothing can happen that I don't will be to true. They cannot be held responsible since nothing happens by chance and all is the will of god.

I think this is a great place and plan to visit often.

Hello Nativeflower,

It is not going to help your rehab, if you spend all your time thinking about what you went through at the cult. So writing the book is actually counter productive. Seeking a counselor would have the same effect. You will keep mulling over the same experience.

The best thing to do is to hook your mind elsewhere. The thing with the mind is that it always needs to be engaged. If you want to get over something, you can't just not think about it. You need to find something else to hook the mind onto. Get involved with something physical that will keep your body & mind busy, some sporting activity combined with a job requiring lot of physical activity will do the trick. This way you will meet new friends also.

Wish you well. Hope you flower like a Nativeflower in your life,
J.C.

Nativeflower and Campos :

I disagree w/ Campos. I'd hooked my mind elsewhere for 15 years, and unwittingly had some vestigal cultic-magical thinking, lack of bullshit detector (big time!) affecting my life, with disastrous results!

Writing it out, with the love felt for the 'family' relationships in the cult, albeit a skewed society, can help focus on the creative process of writing, as well as leave a legacy to help others who follow behind her.

A classic longtitudinal study of psyhcolgocial adaptation called the Valiant Study, "Adaptation to Life" identified healthy coping mechanisms to life crises. One of the healthy coping mechanisms identified is to turn your hardship into something to help others.

Nativeflower, stuffing it / ignoring it won't help, nor does dwellling excessively upon the mess created. However, writing our your concerns what you missed, etc, as you move forward, IMHO, could be a benefitical process for you and for readers.

Rick & Corboy : Tks for providing this venue for us... helps many!

t :D

Toni,

Your feedback is IMO right -arm, I mean right - on!

Even though I am a second-hand ("smoke")survivor, I am just amazed as to how similar the experience you have had AND what I had with my ex are (of course NOT the same degree!)

Isn't ia amaze (ing) how similar the techniques that are used and results are? (mass production/all-come-out-as little-boxes-quite-the-same) yet they cannot see it...powerful sh...stuff eh?

So hypnotism gets someone to "accept" what they are hearing? SO the truth is, maybe our truths are opposite from what we hear? Being hypnoptised (sorry, sp? - 50 hour work-week)does indeed compromise oneself?

Does this happen with alpha wave TV also? Are some people not awake?

PAX :shock:

Hi ULTAWARE :

I don't know anything about alpha wave TV. What is that?

Yes, the similarity of experiences are amazing! So many conmen/women out there. My experience was not worse than yours, w/ your exspouse, necessarily, just another flavor.

It IS a terrible thing to watch a loved one be sucked into this psychological 'little boxes and they all look just the same' world. Being raised in such, I have no idea what my parents were like beforehand.

Like you losing your spouse to a group, years after leaving my family's group, I watched another loved one overtaken by another group - that was the worst pain of my life. It's posted on another thread.
The combination of loss, my own sanity on edge, - the worst part was knowing from my family experience what a mind F**K was ahead for him, both within the group and from his future (hopefully someday) recovery. In my naive attempts to 'deprogram' him, I'd even brought him back to TM-mecca of my upbringing, hoping to help him make the cult-connection about the disastrous effects. The synapses would not connect.

People get hooked on the high of the group, & whatever 'technique' is used for the serrotonin rush in the brain. Tragicly, as you write of being a smoke-survivor... the second hand effects are terrible unto themselves. That IS a good analogy you used, by the way, smoke inhalation is an injury unto itself, while being actually burned in the fire is a different but related injury.

Good News! Recovery IS possible! AND.. when / if others so choose, they can find an online map for help.

I just wish this was covered in basic psych-101 and therapists' education. Cultic involvement is too accepted in our society.

Quote

Good News! Recovery IS possible! AND.. when / if others so choose, they can find an online map for help.

Just an observation here. One of my earliest encounters with a discussion group of any kind was a.m.t. (alt.meditation.transcendental). Lucky me, at the time I looked in they were still discussing tm. Mostly, now, it's just a roving chit-chat about anything but.

This particular forum, then, was not unlike the US vs El Quida. Those for tm were malignant in their attacks on those against, who were less caustic in their replies, but always kept on the defensive. It was a terrible, terrible place where I learned many, many valuable things, including to think really clearly about what I intended to communicate before I put into words/typing.

The "for's" were far better at ripping up word-usage and sentence structure (and they didn't overlook spelling as a way to dig deeper into your defenses, either) than they actually were at "defending the faith". But what was important for them was to grind down and demoralize anyone not on their best-friends list (anyone who opposed their way of thinking).

Probably, as HH the Dalai Lama has said about Mao Tse Tung, a.m.t. was one of my best teachers in the cult-recovery process. Mao, as HH says, taught him patience. a.m.t. taught me to consider and re-consider just where my feelings were coming from, to seek to articulate the meaning that lay hidden beneath the emotional knee-jerk I had never before recognized for what it was.

I am not sure one needs to go to hell in order to get ready to appreciate heaven. That might be a touch extreme. But taking up even a really weak oppositional position against the defenders of the faith can have it's value.

M