Out of curiousity, how can you know about Tarot if you've never had a reading? Because you're a Christian and you have an inherent belief that it is demonic and wrong. That is precisely my point. You don't know it, so you don't trust it. Same as most Subud members. Here's a scientific experiment for you: my mum is highly suspicious about my own spiritual beliefs and always has been, and yet she recently asked me to read the cards for her. She had tested some things with helpers that she hadn't told me about. Turns out my reading was IDENTICAL to her "testing." This has two conclusions as far as I'm concerned - one, that the power of God and the ability to interpret our situations is the same for anyone who sincerely wishes to use it, or, perhaps more logically, I know my mum as well as the helpers do and we all know instinctively what would be best for her. This is why any form of divination - testing, tarot, runes, reading tea leaves or whatever - works extremely accurately when an emotionally sensitive and aware person is doing the work for others, but falls apart miserably when it comes to trying to find our own path. Hence the conditioning that testing could someone work alone, and trapping us in the cycle of constantly having to ask other people to "ask God" on our behalf what the heck to do with our lives. Hence living by chance. The accuracy of tarot is exactly the same as testing - around 40%.

I don't believe that ANYBODY can see the future. "How is it for me if..." and "What should my attitude be..." are just more forms of divination. I'm not going to argue about this!! Testing is the most dangerous part of Subud - it's more dangerous than at least putting your faith in a representative system which can be learned by anyone and is not the sole preserve of those who have been ordained by God (i.e., helpers) to control and distribute answers on the lives of individuals. Of course I'm choosing to see things in my own way here. I labour the point of tarot as I feel it marks the greatest hypocrisy in all of Subud - since I was a young girl I was advised to find my own religion and belief. I found Buddhism and Paganism - which I responded to hugely because of their emphasis on learning through story and myth. Yet those all-too-human helpers were personally uncomfortable with this and chose to make it very clear that they didn't approve. Even those who had come into S. through the Gurdjieff movement!! I don't quite see the connection between, "Bapak said... find your own path to God," and "you can't do x and y because Bapak said..."

Excuse me if I don't come out of the whole thing with a huge headache and a one-way ticket to crisistown. It simply makes no sense to me, why everyone should feel so afraid of certain things. Could it be that Bapak said that the ONLY way to liberate yourself from the lower forces is by doing the Latihan, and nothing else? Everyone is terrified of the Nafsu, so much so that I have never met anyone who has really understood what it really means. I can leave Subud because I'm not scared that the second I stop asking every action of my helpers that I will descend rapidly into a place where my body and mind succumb at once to the darkness of the world. I can leave because I can see the similarities and the good things that were in Subud are also everywhere. I can see them in the two "forbidden" systems I had to give up to stay in Subud - martial arts and paganism.

I'm not going to keep attempting to justify my own recovery journey nor play this exhausting ping-pong game of "if you just trust God everything will be okay." I've no interest in the Quakers, I've no interest in joining any other sect or NRM or organisation right now. What I need is to learn to have faith in MYSELF, trust my own feelings, and not be told what to do because I'm scared of doing something wrong. If God wants to communicate with me I'm right here. Everything else... well, that's for me to deal with in my own time.

TO THE MODERATORS::



Please can the last post I made be deleted along with this one. Thanks.

Jupiter.

Good on you for those observations.

Now if you'll just give up Tarot.......
I do not say that from a Christian perspective particularly.
After all, most Christians would say we are both going to Hell, so why worry?

You can be scientific about life, and get on with it in a normal human way.

Without the nonsense.
And that would seem a much better way to cope.
If you don't want any other ideas from anyone, in or out of Subud, fine.
I can't possible forsee your future, and I don't want to, and maybe you can't see mine, except in as much as I have a lot less years still to live than you should expect to, and a lot more lessons I won't be learning and unlearning than you have so far, most likely.
I think you need friends, and I hope you find the right ones now. Waht about your husband? He's there for you isn't he?

I am not going on to make any more excuses for Subud in response to all those comments you make, because you are right in so much of them. If you are wrong, or I am, then it has to be a matter of lessons learnt from life.

I am sure I will write more on Subud matters here and ther, but you don't need any from me, right now, if ever.
Peace,
Bronte

I suppose you simply don't understand what I'm saying.

In leaving my cult, like all the other cult survivors, I struggle with adjusting to life on the outside of the cult. I am used to making my decisions in accordance with a general cult consensus on what life should be life. Surrender to God. Don't eat too much. Don't sleep too much. Don't get involved with anything we don't approve of. Don't trust your instincts because they're probably the result of the Nafsu (demonic lower forces, for the rest of you - "Setoniah," or material force, literally means Satanic).

I am not a dualist. I don't believe in Heaven and Hell. I'm an astrophysicist by nature and marine biologist by training. Quantum theory lends itself quite nicely to the beliefs that Subud does not believe in. I am trying to deal with the contradictions in Subud - "follow your own path," and simultaneously "don't engage in x, y, z behaviour." There is less scientific evidence out there than you think. Physics is as contradictory as religion. This isn't about belief, it's about getting through every day without losing a battle with self harm or anorexia. It is about setting up boundaries with parents who don't want to talk to their daughter now she has chosen this dark demonic road. This is about brainwashing and abuse, and control, and lies. This is about having no past because my father burned ALL of my art, photographs, writing and personal belongings when his enterprise went bankrupt. To destroy his link to the lower forces.

This is about me overcoming the bullshit that I've been told all my life - the bullshit perpetuated by people like you. People who are hurt, wounded and deeply caught up in a complexity of doubt but who cannot let go of their own justifications of the lifetime of lies and destruction they are about to leave behind.

I don't see any point posting on RR.com anymore. This doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. I'm needed in the real world, so: to the friends I've made - you know where I am, and please do keep in touch. Maybe I'll be back when I've found salvation. Or at least when I've thrown off all these demons on my back and learned how to finally be "truly human".

There is a remarkable book by Joyce Colin Smith entitled 'Call No Man Master.'

She became involved with and practiced Subud when Pak Subud arrived in the UK and Bennett had become interested in it.

Joyce has a chapter on this in her book. She found the practice powerful and was quite experienced in these matters. But she chose to leave.

1) Pak's wife felt entitled to shoplift items from stores as if being wife of guru made her some sort of queen who was entitled to just take what she wanted without payment.

2) Joyce was perturbed that many who had been practicing latihan for some time found themselves overcome and tormented by overwhelming lust. Stable, sober middle aged persons, many in long term marriages, found themselves struggling with sexual cravings. This happened to Joyce and she felt this was alien, out of character for her. She described feeling mightily attracted to another man in the group and it took every bit of self control at her disposal to stay faithful to her own husband and not given in to these cravings. Others in the group did give in and this had disruptive effects. At this point, Joyce described a sort of powerful sexisness eminating from Pak Subud himself.

It was this increasingly fraught environment that persuaded Joyce Collin Smith that it was best to get herself out of there.

As I read the account, I was puzzled that everyone took Pak's word for it--that his preceptors in Indonesia had told him to go and teach.

No one seems to have bothered to examine his bonafides and what his actual background was. Who had he studied with in Indonesia--what had his actual reputation been, and did he go to the UK for altruistic purposes, or to avoid
some sort of trouble in his home country?

Tragically, Joyce later got entangled with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and reported that exposure to TM had left her suicidally depressed, unable to write fiction, after she'd successfully published several novels. Other artists told Joyce that they too had lost pleasure in thier creative processes after doing TM.

It turned out that Maharishis lineage claims were murky---and as with Pak, it had never occurred to anyone to fact check his lineage.

It would have made sense if Pak Subud had begun by ministering to the emigre Indonesian community in the UK, and for Maharishi to have done likewise with the emigre Hindu community in the UK.

But...both these communities would have understood the importance of lineage and known how to make the necessary inquiries.

A belated thank you to forum members who commented on my article on Adult Children of Cult Members. Please feel free to [private message] me I look forward to your input helping me understand adult children more fully!

John M. Knapp, LMSW
[KnappFamilyCounseling.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/06/2007 06:58AM by rrmoderator.

So I thought it was finished. But not quite.
If a scientist believes that the law of conservation of energy means nothing can be created or destroyed, then all this effort has some benefit, it becomes part of our lives, both the good and the bad.
And if the conservationist believes that bullshit is good fertiliser, then my exchanges will have provided lots of fertiliser for the garden of life that is Jupiter's. Maybe I got some from the other direction too.
As for that news about that Indonesian Guru, not to mention the Indian Guru, well, if they were totally faultess, it would be too much to bear.
And it is such a pity that some of the most horrible things that happen in history were started and controlled by some really horrible men, and possibly women, not forgetting Hitler, Stalin, Mao, lots of religious leaders, and other rulers. Wouldn't it be nice to blame them on the nice people-Oh, I forgot, some are blamed on the nice people.

Some people tried very hard to inspire people to behave in a caring and co-operative way. They got admired by hopeful followers, and called fakes and all sorts of things by everyone else.
The best of them is believed to have been crucified, and by officials of that Great Civilisation, Rome!
So they weren't perfect.
But do we have to prefer the mass murderers just because they had more people under their thumb than naive, idealistic, unscientific spiritual gurus? After all, lots of people still admire them. They have to.
And what will do more good for the survival of humanity in the long run?
Violence and total selfishness?
Or idealism, and attempts to persuade people to care for each other, and understand each other more, and be better persons than they started out as?
Live! Think! Do!
That seems to be Jupiter's unwritten motto. Good!
Peace! (Now Please!)
Bronte

My God I hope Jupiter is still willing to read ths!

I have been found guilty by her of writing bullshit!
OK!!

Well, I do not want to espouse here yet again the "bullshit" of my religious background, not for it's own sake, nor hers.
I also do not want to either offend or be in any way unhelpful or disrespectful of her person.
I write here because I remain convinced that, given a litle time, and a few alternative ways of thinking about the things that have caused the pain and confusion, to all concerned, there might yet be a glimmer of a way out of all that. Right out!
Oh, I know I have read that it's being dealt with. But it all has to go, in order to get fulll value out of life. And at 23 years old, it's about time that was what was happening.
Every bit of energy spent on regret, biutterness, hurt, self pity it harmful and use;ess. I amlearning that, still. But I have moved on from being totally IN it. I do not feel a need to be angry at the things that went wrong. And I am not going back for more.

I must comment on not the indivuduals who controlled people, in their various patronising ways, in all sorts of groups and religions, but on where life might be leading us. IN fact, on where the life of those wierd and wondeful "gurus" might be leading us.
Hopefully, science come into play again here. The scienceof humanity itself.
And if it's all bullshit, then sorry, it still one of my hopes for the future.
I really believ that the next step for the development of all humanity is in the spiritual side. In the mental, emotional and spiritual. Not the material on it's own. Not the religious.
But in the wholeness of every human being, aware, more fuly alive, more fully human.
If that sounds like I got it from a Scientolgy manual, a Gurdjieff book, an esoteric tome on Tibetan Buddhism, or Thoesophy, I didn't.
It just seems that all the crazy religious, mystical, wierd and wonderful people, offering their religous and pseudo-religious wares today, are like the precursors to the great scientific breakthroughs of the last two or three centuries.
There is something big to come out of it all, in new areas.
And scientists with a soul are going to be at the forefont of it all.
Try it, Jupiter.
There is a great future for you.
Leave all the negatives bihind.
It's not easy, and I never managed it.
But when I wish you luck and success, I have, at the highest, ideas like that behind my thoughts.
Peace
Bronte

*Bashes head against the wall*

Bronte, I didn't say you were speaking bullshit. I said you were perpetuating it.

You still really have no idea of my own particular views, faiths, beliefs, interests... nobody does. Because if it's not "Subud," it must be somehow wrong. You're not saying anything different to all the helpers I've grown up with. The only difference is that they were around all the time, to say the same on every word I ever said, to turn round and tell me:

"You can't read tarot / do martial arts / take a yoga class / go with your friends to Beltaine festivals, because those things are against God / the Latihan / the evolution of the soul. You can't wear jeans / buy certain books / eat Chinese with your friends at Camden market because that is the Material Force choking you. You can't go out with a certain guy because it is just the Animal force deceiving you. You can't be a scientist, because physics is wrong. You can't go running, because an interest in health and fitness is just for the weak. You can't volunteer in a Buddhist centre, because the Buddhists just want to go sit under a tree and meditate and in order to be truly human you have to live in the world."

No, that wasn't Bapak who said those things - just my parents, or the helpers around me. Those things and THOUSANDS of others, all of the time. Remember I grew up in a Subud house. Remember, I grew up in a Subud house with parents who saw themselves at the centre of the Subud universe. There were always people coming and going, who "just felt" to raise their, um, concerns about my welfare. My father nearly disowned me when I cut my hair short when I was 16. Two years later he burned all my personal belongings when his company was taken over by other Subud members, who got us evicted from our house so they could buy it cheap and sell it at a profit. Those same people sold all my personal belongings - including my piano - and kept the profits. Anything they couldn't sell went to their new Subud house. My old towels, our old kitchenware, ended up there - to just be casually used by anyone, and if I dared make a squeak about how weird it was to see my own personal towels being used by anyone who stayed at the house, I was just told that's what happens when businesses collapse, and that I shouldn't be so attached to material possessions.

How can any sane and rational person NOT think this is organisation is full of utter BS!?

What you say about anger is precisely the same. I quote from Bapak:

"Once you arrive at your own wisdom, of course you will have understanding, and you will be able to verify it through your own actions and experience. If your inner feeling has been really cleaned, so that you have no feelings of dislike and no feelings of jealousy towards anyone, and you don't feel different from anyone else, this cleanness of the inner-feeling is like a mirror. Whenever you are with people, they will like you, and love you, and feel close to you."

This is a man who said women should wear make-up to not bore their husbands. That the role of women is to cook, and clean, and be beautiful - "man is channel and woman is vessel." That the woman has no role in the world, aside from raising a family and maybe running her own little art company. That animals are not equal to man and therefore the concerns about animal welfare aren't important. That people from China are all poor because they eat too much rice which is grown in wet soil and therefore their souls are wet and lacking in human fire. That members should "donate" lots of money to build Bapak a big compound, to start their own bank, to run dodgy enterprises which cause members to lose all of their savings and end up homeless, "Because Bapak dreamed it."

The lies of statements like this are at the heart of my total loss of self esteem. That you are only worthy of the love of others if you are perfect. That if you have a poor "inner feeling," you will be unwanted. That if you follow your own moral compass you will end up lost (I believe that all people are born equal and that eating meat is wrong). That if, in fact, you have any extraneous emotion whatsoever, you will be condemned to a life of misery and an eternity of staring over your shoulder at your own bones, or whatever. You seem to believe something similar - that there is no role in human society for anger. That someone who is angry at 22 years of manipulation and lies is obviously nothing but a storehouse of demonic energy. That she can have no desires and ambitions of her own. Incidentally I CAN believe in the rationale of both Science and God all at once.

Do you want to know what I REALLY believe, Bronte?? That all this rubbish, all the crap from Bapak about there being worms on Jupiter thousands of km long (there aren't - if he had seen them from his "ascension" in 1925 then the Voyager spacecraft would have seen them too), that all the Gurdjieff stuff about sacred dances, that all the spout by Jung and Crowley and Maharishi and all the helpers and Oprah and Fred Hoyle and, well, you know, ANYONE who SAYS for definite that something is definitely true, is quite probably wrong. I believe, not in these MYTHS, but in the value of having myth in society. I believe that it is the stories themselves which have the ability to illuminate our lives. That, if the stuff that "Bapak said" was told as just a story, as a set of beliefs from a dying culture, then I wouldn't be so damn angry at them. I don't believe in Santa Claus but the myth of it has a great value on earth - that Christmas is a time of charity and giving, and it's because many people believe it to be the birth of someone who was prepared to give their life to end all suffering on earth. I don't believe in Cerridwyn or Astarte but I'll still light candles for them when I feel vulnerable - they are not physical entities, but myths which represent an undiscovered part of ourselves. It is the same with Tarot - it is a system of archetypal representations, a map of the human condition. Each different deck has come from a different person - one who has their own interpretations and ideas on what each archetype chooses to represent. I find this far more useful than the kind of "rules for living" laid down by the insufferable "in-Subud-there-are-no-rules-but-Bapak-said" brand of helpers who took my childhood away. At least I can get the benefits from it without being asked to sacrifice anything for its cause.

If people stopped acting like every new silly and inconsequential thing that they believe in is absolute truth, or nit-picking with each other trying to get the moral high ground over some philosophical low point, and choosing faith like people choose what novels to read or films to watch, then this whole world really would be a much safer and interesting place to live. I've learned far more about the human spirit from reading Huxley and Tolkien than I have from reading another tedious collection of Bapak's yakking from the 1950s which bears little relevance on my life and point of view. The value of myth is to highlight a beautiful - or unwanted - quality of life and put it in the context of overcoming adversity. Cults, NRMs, Gurus, prophets... they just yak, preach, intone, undermine and encourage abuse in those who do not understand. Myths cannot be misunderstood. Stories are written, as stories, and viewed as such, so the abuse does not occur - but they still communicate precisely, without any contradiction or ambiguity.

If everyone in Subud turned round overnight and said, "oh yeah, sorry for all the abuse J, we didn't realise that we were barking up the wrong tree. Now lets all meditate and worship God together, without you being hauled up in front of the national dewan for doing the wrong thing in an exercise which is supposed to be totally unique and individual in an organisation which is supposed to exist without any dogma or specific rules," then my feelings towards the organisation would be very different indeed.

As I've said, or hinted at a million times - I'm not angry at God, and I still believe God can be present in the Latihan, as He is supposed to be. But I DO still think Subud is bullshit, I'm angry at the situation which has turned good, intelligent and creative people into paranoid, unemployed, lonely people who can't hold down a job, marriage, mortgage or any kind of interpersonal relationship and yet still use the justifications of Bapak that they are much, much better people than those who want to just work for someone else without running a business (the biggest crime I think you can commit in Subud!!), who just want to go about their ordinary business without being judged or judging others, and who want to choose the free will to trust in their own actions without having each choice voted upon by spiritual committee, and who don't think that standing in a circle asking questions about the spiritual significance of a gluten allergy or what it means to walk like a flipping Mexican.

I'll face my creator when the time comes and willingly accept any punishment for the beliefs I hold which are misguided. I'm still pretty sure that it's less misguided to prefer peer-reviewed scientific rationality than the words of someone who said that he turned into a white tiger at night.

On that note...

Om shanti shanti shanti.

Jupiter.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2007 01:38AM by Jupiter.

I don't think I believe in the Subud your parents were in any more than you do.

Such cruel arrogant hypocracy exceeds any of the sins of my life.
I hated all the control, emphasis on judgement, and emphasis on business, from the start.

I was told by a friend the other day that I make up rules for everything. Far from true. I have never managed to live by the rules. I wanted to, because I'd been taught a lot of rules in Sunday school.
Among them was that I should try not to cause suffering to others, and try to care for those who are sufferring. Well I don't. Or should I say, I can't. There's little any one can do in this area, except one on one.
But when I saw the control-freaks in Subud had hurt and destroyed the harmony annd peace of mind of everyone I could know in my subud group, I spoke up. Then I really found out what control freaks are. They can't tolerate me in subud!
But I have got over that enough not to spend all my energy on anger.
And I don't give a damn about what Bapak said about anger. From a purely human point of view, it has a place in life, but it should never be my life, nor yours. Neither should all the othe so-called negative feelings, which obviously plagued me disproportionately.
So if we can get past them, we can be effective. So I have taken some of my life back by denying those Unholy helpers contol of the majority of it. I got called a nutter on the SubudLife web site because I called them hellpersons and similar. Well they can be. I was made one once, at Bapak's virtual insistance. That's history! I am OUT of the Subud organisation. You are in your family, so you feel you are entangled in Subud, despite being out of it in reality. Well, keep on asserting your independence. Your life is yours, not theirs. I should be having arguments with your parents and friends I think. I'd disagree more with them than I do with you.
I'll hope you get something of value from me. I am truly sad that you, so young, are so torn apart by the horrors of the Subud, from which, for my self at least, I have distilled some of the finest wine my life has. The rest is dross.
Peace,
Bronte