Quote
lthomas
For your gohonzan it's 30 dollars and you get a year subscription of the world tribune with it. I began to protest but she told me if I did not get it now then I never would. I got it anyway even though the decision was never mine, because I was clinically depressed then
This was actually quite disrespectful of your "sponsor".
I believe the prime objective for anyone leaving SGI is to get a clear outllook on life again, its a shame if their SGI-experience draws them away from buddhism but to my mind that is secondary as one should become "clean" again.
@ lthomas: Yous said you have a history of depression. In the case that you were discouraged by SGI to seek professional assitance, please make sure that there is a person still out there that can assist you on a professional level. We all went through similar phases when we decided to leave - depending also on the time one was in the cult. Especially if one was in the cult for a long period of time the loss of all attachment figures can be one of the hardest parts.
In my case what I found hard was to accept that the world is not to be devided into black and white, wrong or right anymore. As Billy Joel once said " Shades of grey is all I can see" --- hey and its okay. Compassion to my mind also includes to accept (to a certain degree) other peoples opinion, I can even accept the doctrinal issues on which SGI is based on, even though I have a different opinon. On the other other hand issues of doctrine are pushed to the background in SGI and newbies are not even properly taught anymore on what SGI is based on. What I can not accept are the cult mechanisms at work in SGI, which at a closer look turn out to be disrespectful to anyone how has a slightly different outlook on life and to whom mr. ikeda might be nothing else but a charlatan.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2010 06:10PM by Rothaus.