QuoteLincoln 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 Associ
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering... It will be two years this month since I started this thread, which means two years and nine months since I first made the decision to permanently leave Subud. How am I doing now? Well, I still periodically get nightmares, not of Subud but of people being hurt or killed and me being unable to help them. If I don't check my emotions I tend to fee
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Quotejazz3manI would particularly like to talk to you about what happens in latihan. I am concerned for my friend as I feel that this practice is perhaps not as spiritually safe as its members suggest, nor that experiences necessarily come from God. What do you think? There have been some good answers to this question but I will add mine too. Apologies for repeating what others have said. In t
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

QuotepacificaHi Jupiter I'd be grateful if you wrote a little about "exit anger". I think I'm experiencing a lot of that myself. Some of it, I think, is directed at myself, at the fact that I could make excuses for so long, and that it took so long for the cognitive dissonance to collapse, leaving me with a truth that had been staring at me for a long, long time. Pacific
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Yeah, bullshido.net is a brilliant site. I absolutely love martial arts but my experience in a different (non-martial art, but in some respects similar) cult makes me extremely wary of dedicating myself to anything. I've never studied TKD but I spent about a month in a different Korean dojang and when they told me I would make black belt within a year I looked them up on bullshido and found
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I love everything that others have written here. I apologise for taking my time in replying. It struck me today that for most people (Muslims, Christians etc), a love for God is just that: it is love, pure love. Natural faith requires no validation or expression of gratitude, it just exists, it is a feeling that arises within you: Love for God. Subud is not a mature spirituality, it is th
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

It's been a while since I came back here. It's been about two and a half years now since I left and my perspectives have changed a lot. I do regret / feel differently to a lot of the things I wrote at the start of this post - 2007 - 2009 is a very long time to sit and think about things. I had a lot of friends in Subud and I'm disappointed that I've lost them. I have calle
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Well, I was born into mine, and I can honestly say it has torn us apart. My dad is on his third wife (all of which he met through the cult), my mum has been really entrenched with them and gets huge workloads shoved on her year after year, for which she gets nothing (she's unemployed) - my sister never joined and hardly ever talks to us. We lost our home, all our income (they started busines
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Thanks Yasmin, Actually... I'm doing okay. I sometimes go through these really bleak phases. Mostly, things are going pretty well... recovery is just so long and can be slow. Ah well. I've achieved so much in the last year, so much to be proud of. I wouldn't have been able to do any of those things if I were still in the cult cus all my time would have been spent following someone
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I guess I figured out why this hurts: I WANT a normal life. I WANT ordinary friends, to do stupid things with, like go bowling or camping or just sit back and have a laugh. I always told myself that I didn't want that, to protect myself. If I want to be alone, if I only want to be around those with the same views as me, then I'm safe. Even now I get torn up when someone I respect disagr
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I've seen environmental groups becoming extremely cult-like, especially the ones that insist on things like vegan lifestyles (not bad in itself but bad when it is 'forced' upon you by the people you work with), or passionate rejection of ordinary social values as being against 'mother earth.' The fear of climate change is probably quite suffocating for some people, I can
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Ignoring the conspiracy theorists for a while, thanks to Keir, Elias and River Song for your comments. You know, I LOVED Subud before everything happened. It was two years ago now, I'm not as angry and hurt any more. Before those things happened to me, I hadn't had any bad experiences in Subud either. Until my entire group turned on me, I would sit and have tea with them twice a wee
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

I left the cult I was born in a little over two years ago, and went through a terrible time afterwards. This year, since March at least, has been pretty good. What I've had is as close to recovery, is as close to a normal life, than anything else I've ever known. Trouble is, there's something really painful about normalcy and I've been thinking about this board a bit lately.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I think I know what your friend means about making up rules for living. Even if you can't live by someone else's rules, I think we each have a tendency to create our own - a rigorous system which is both flexible and unbreakable. Without having our own rules for ethics, morality etc., we can end up as messed up as, well, the people that surround us in Subud or any other cult and faith s
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

*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 differen
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

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
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

TO THE MODERATORS:: Please can the last post I made be deleted along with this one. Thanks. Jupiter.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

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 alway
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I'm surprised it's taken me so long to read this. As usual, I can relate to almost every word written... FF I often get that feeling of surreality, too. Like my life has taken so many stages. My parents were always a part of the "entourage" Corboy has described, even if it weren't maliciously abusive it was still such a total mind-f*** that obviously really instilled
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Toni, Your friend makes some brilliant points. Whilst I did agree quite a lot with the ICSA analysis of second generation adults,I also think that this essay makes a hell of a lot of sense, and really resonates with me. I know exactly what it means to feel so sorry for a parent, for being a victim and being drawn into a cult because it was a place of safety, that you just want to care for the
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

yeah, well, all "world sacred symbols" can also be found in the metaeder. just like every scientific constant can be divided into an elemental counterpart. or every deity ever dreamed up can be woven in to the tarot. and how the great pyramids of giza are sewn into the kabbalistic tree of life. it's these kinds of bizarre "revelations" that keep people trapped in cults an
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Pacifica, I'd like to thank you for the objectivity of your reply. I have come to all the same conclusions as you've expressed here - that both my parents were essentially wounded children, that they (and their friends, helpers, enterprise partners) were just simply incapable of seeing their children growing up, having wounds of their own, and so forth. Even now my mum still half be
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

FF, I too have days where it just crushes me. I still have my mum phoning me up and begging for me to come back, I still have people trying to control me sometimes and sometimes it just feels like everything is over. I too have had a not too brilliant day with it. I've had dreams like the ones you've described too - normally I just have nightmares but lately I've had some posit
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Becker and Freedom Fighter, I just wanted to reach out to both of you so much. I miss my sister also, I miss my mum and dad and my cousins and my friends. My mum works for her cult, she works full time, often up to 16 hours a day in the busiest times, throughout the whole year, and gets paid in a year what my husband makes in a month. But they are a registered "charity," and she is a &q
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Bronte, You're really struggling with this one, aren't you? The way I hear it, you desperately want someone to validate the pain you're in with Subud, but you don't want to undermine the experiences you've had which truly do come from God. I think that everyone who joined or truly believed in ANY kind of teaching did so because we were truly, truly, truly looking
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Bronte, I agree with what you're saying, I really do. I just don't understand where you're coming from. I've heard this - the words you write - from people in Subud everywhere I've been. You've been an isolated member for nine years, you've had trouble with the administration, you've seen and witnessed so-called "helpers" commit atrocities whi
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" I believe that Subud IS just like all the other groups out there. I do not believe that anybody is born evil. I do not believe that evil is an entity, nor that goodness is an entity, nor that there are forces of lesser and greater spirituality which seek to deceive or confuse us. I believe that Bapak was prey to the same processes a
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

"I wish I could make some kindly, helpful, comment to Jupiter, which would enable a calm and positive outlook to develop, so only a constructive future would arise for him/her." This is for me, the crux of the matter. You obviously haven't read my posts carefully enough. I'm married, I have a mortgage, I've completed a Masters degree, I have a Ph.D lined up,
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Do you really expect me to reply to that?
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I've written most of this before, but I was born in Subud, an eastern religion based on Sufism whose early membership came from Bennett and Gurdjieff. I'm 3rd generation, and my parents met through the group - my mum claimed to have a vision of a man standing in her room and laughing at her. She described it to a friend who said it sounded like my father. They were married ten days late
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families