Quote
Findingmywaytoday
Also, has anyone's life improved from leaving the Soka Gakkai? Has anyone become happier from leaving the SGI?

Absolutely, 100%, on both counts.

[www.youtube.com]

Post $GI cult life, feels like a slave emancipated from their shackles, being given control of your own life back; a journey from ignorance to knowledge. Literally, like night, and day.

I recommend it highly to all current cult members. My only regret is that I didn't leave sooner, but it takes everyone differing amounts of time to walk back into freedom.

- Hitch

Quote
Findingmywaytoday
Also, has anyone's life improved from leaving the Soka Gakkai? Has anyone become happier from leaving the SGI?

I admit I was one of those members who, for the most part, sincerely chanted when problems came up, when I needed major benefits, and nine times out of ten, I received the answers to my prayers--and then some. So I felt my faith was validated and was happy with it. Since stopping the practice, I've noticed that benefits I would have attributed strictly to SGI, well, they are still here. They still come into my life. And then some.

Since stopping activities after realizing the hard, cold truth, I've felt at times like an orphan adrift. Feeling betrayed by the organization I sincerely believed in. The daily discipline which brought me energy and happiness, I can no longer do with a true heart. It's hard to maintain that full-on when you are at cross-purposes. Something's got to go.

But there is a new sense of happiness brewing---the peace of knowing that I have listened to the voice inside and am living true to myself. Relating to the world outside of SGI has given a new perspective and acceptance of people and their own belief systems. That it's okay to have different views! And the world won't collapse if you do! It is still a process and some days are better than others, but one should not live a lie. That is not happiness.

Happiness has never been the sole propriety of the Soka Gakkai.

On another note, I'm throwing out a thought on the Ikeda worship. For what it's worth, the mass push for deification in the last few years coincides with the man's sunset years...He has never received true world recognition for his "greatness", and certainly the Nobel Peace Prize has eluded him. So, where better than to drum up the adulation he so needs before he leaves than with the faithful? He's getting it there in spades. I wonder if that itself would ever be enough.

Quote
shavoy
But there is a new sense of happiness brewing---the peace of knowing that I have listened to the voice inside and am living true to myself.

Consider this: We all have had the "value creation power" within us. Ours to focus and use however we choose. Getting sidetracked by the Gakkai is like the person who doesn't trust the accelerator pedal and brake pedal in their car and depending upon their mechanic to tell them on each and every occasion to use one or the other.

Didn't Nichiren say that the Boddhisattva's of the earth had obtained enlightenment in the distant past? Wasn't Jogyo Bhoddisattva himself enlightened from the past and it was only revealed at that critical point in time when the treasure tower appeared? Where in all of that was Ikea and the great money absorbtion machine in those allegorical treatices?

Each person has the seeds of enlightenment, the organization doesn't control, manage or direct how those seeds sprout. It's all just stage scenery. Once you see that for what it is, then you are set free.

Wakatta1

I enjoy all of your thoughts and opinions. What I am wanting is this feeling of peace. It is so hard to divorce myself from the SGI because my Gohonzon sits in my living room. I am still working on it. I want peace, and in the six years of being apart of the SGI, I felt other things, but not peace. It doesn't feel benevolent. Yeah, I pushed my life, but there was always this lingering sense that if I pushed it too much, then I will get something really bad happening to me.

Has anyone else had this feeling? I don't even participate much, but somehow I have connected chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo to this fear of pushing my life. I can't help but think of the Pearls, where Marianne chanted, and lost her husband is such a horrific way. I also think about Patrick Duffy who chanted, and lost both of his parents. Finally, I think of an experience I read in the WT, where a man chanted, and had a temper, got into a fight, and lost his vision, but still kept his life condition high enough for Kosen Rufu.

Quote
wakatta1

Quote
shavoy
But there is a new sense of happiness brewing---the peace of knowing that I have listened to the voice inside and am living true to myself.

Consider this: We all have had the "value creation power" within us. Ours to focus and use however we choose. Getting sidetracked by the Gakkai is like the person who doesn't trust the accelerator pedal and brake pedal in their car and depending upon their mechanic to tell them on each and every occasion to use one or the other.



Wakatta1

Good point! I also believe that the term: value creation doesn't belong to the SGI alone. Creating value out of what happens to you doesn't just belong to SGI.

I do wish there was an easier way for me to divorce myself from the organization, and the thinking that it has instilled in me. It also has created in me a mistrust of other organizations. Maybe that is both good and bad.

Finally, I am reminded of a district leader of mine who once said that once you know the chanting of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, you don't have to read anything else, because NMRK contains everything in it.

Quote
findingmywaytoday
I enjoy all of your thoughts and opinions. What I am wanting is this feeling of peace. It is so hard to divorce myself from the SGI because my Gohonzon sits in my living room. I am still working on it. I want peace, and in the six years of being apart of the SGI, I felt other things, but not peace. It doesn't feel benevolent. Yeah, I pushed my life, but there was always this lingering sense that if I pushed it too much, then I will get something really bad happening to me.

Has anyone else had this feeling? I don't even participate much, but somehow I have connected chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo to this fear of pushing my life. I can't help but think of the Pearls, where Marianne chanted, and lost her husband is such a horrific way. I also think about Patrick Duffy who chanted, and lost both of his parents. Finally, I think of an experience I read in the WT, where a man chanted, and had a temper, got into a fight, and lost his vision, but still kept his life condition high enough for Kosen Rufu.

Well I am sorry to say that, but your fear of bad things happening is plain superstition. In my understanding the way you define NMRK in that fear is not what NMRK is about. Besides "bad" things happen to all of us no matter if they chant or not its called life. Even form a Buddhist point of view suffering is a fact of life.
My personal opinion is that study is a good remedy agianst superstition. Study what Buddhism is a about - best also from neutral sources. Also study cult mechanisms. You have to rationalise what has happened to you. And most all all allow yourself some time. Detox is a brilliant term to describe the process - it does not happen over night. Also do other activities may it be seeing family and friends more often now, sports or even attend classes.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2012 04:33PM by Rothaus.

Well, perhaps it is called life, but I never became as superstitious as since I joined Soka Gakkai. Perhaps all kinds of things happened to me before, but like many people here, I never attributed them to anything but life. Now, I still attribute everything to the Gohonzon, and also to not chanting. I know this is because of how I was taught to think in the SGI, or at least what I picked up on.

Quote
findingmywaytoday
Well, perhaps it is called life, but I never became as superstitious as since I joined Soka Gakkai. Perhaps all kinds of things happened to me before, but like many people here, I never attributed them to anything but life. Now, I still attribute everything to the Gohonzon, and also to not chanting. I know this is because of how I was taught to think in the SGI, or at least what I picked up on.

SGI-Teachings are NOT Buddhist, they are NOT even Nichiren Buddhism. SGI is IKEDAISM.
We all, or at least many of us, have been in that phase!

Yeah, I know that the teachings aren't Buddhist, but it is good to know that many of you have been in this phase!