Hi Recoveryingtoo, i think it is great how you have found these different things to help you recover. To hear you say that there is a cult expert near by but that they wouldnt suit you is fantastic because is shows you are finding your own opinion and an awareness of your needs. It can be easy to leave a cult and then fall into following someone else - what they say you need even if it doesnt he
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi there I was really touched by your post and have been thinking about it quite a bit. I can't believe what you have been through and I think you must be really brave and strong to have survived all that. I hope that there can be some good that comes out of it all for you, one way or another. My heart really goes out to you and I am amazed at what the human spirit can take. I didnt have
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Tom Thanks for your encouragement and for sharing your own experiences in such an open way. I really liked your lack of pretension and I found your story really interesting. It seems that you had an experience similar to Tolle did, except you have remained humble and human about it which is refreshing. So many people who become 'spiritual' become superior too, which you didn'
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi everyone I am interested to hear of others' experiences in finding themselves/learning how to be grounded after leaving a cult. For me, I had become all consumed by the cult's definition of who I should be and also I had the habit of always looking outside myself to an external measure of whether I was good enough. This way of living gave me a lot of anxiety and a disconnection f
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Wanderer What a fascinating post! I found it really interesting and intend to direct others I know to read it too. It has given me a whole other perspective on Tolle. I remember being quite taken by his story that he would sit on parkbenches in ecstasy and people would gradually approach him. It implied he had no interest in becoming a teacher, but that others were so drawn to him that he fe
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi everyone, I have been so impressed with the quality of the ideas coming thru in these posts lately - how refreshing it is for me to hear from people who have clearly spent a lot of time thinking thru and getting to well imformed and healthy views of these tricky topics. I have been guilty of looking (on more occasions than is healthy) for the 'answer' - the one thing or one approac
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I am realising that I am still under the influence of my old cult's belief system which is scary. Im finding Steve Hassan's book really helpful right now to identify what happened to me. I just wanted to fix it, make it all change, but I havent been able to do that. Im now thinking that by understanding what happened and how my ideas changed to those of the cult, I may be able to get so
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Why do I want to follow? Well, it must be because I was repeatedly taught in my group that the student needs a teacher to take them to enlightenment. This is a sticking point for me because I see it is not just in my group but in Hindu and Buddhist non cult literature that we need a teacher as well. I am afraid that if I do my own thing and dont take on a teacher that I will just become egoti
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi everyone Thank you for your replies and that you tube video Keir - it was good. Hey Tsukimoto, thats quite some list! It did make me think. The thing is I cant just make myself believe that its ok to find my own path and I dont have to do anything for God. I always want to know 'the truth' and who can I believe now, after being duped for so many years and ending up in a worse state
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Anticult and Keir Thank you for your replies. It helped me not to feel so alone. I have not had great luck with therapists (the ones I tried did not understand cult issues and minimised mine) and I live in a country far from America where I have not been able to find a cult specialist therapist or excult member gp. However I am thinking of putting up some flyers or ads to see if there are any
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi everyone I am feeling very alone today and struggling with a fear that is gripping me, as it so often does; the fear that "I am doing something wrong because I am not praying, meditating or serving people" I feel so guilty and frozen with fear. It is really hard to choose what to do, because I really feel I must do something that is a spiritual task, and I keep thinking that by d
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Sallie Thanks for sharing your experience. And thanks also Tsukimoto for your last post. I relate to what you went thru in relationship to that woman, Sallie. Boundaries have been a focus of a lot of learning for me in recent years too, and unfortunately a lot of that learning is experiential rather than just reading and theory! The good thing about these experiences with others is that you r
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Tsukimoto Yes I too think that every quality serves and limits, if you like. One person may be empathetic and sensitive to others needs making them a good listener and perceptive. On the negative that quality may mean they are shy or have difficulty taking their own place in things, focusing too much on others wants and needs. Another person may be much more socially confident, be able to hav
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Sallie Im not sure if I would use the word 'selfish' to describe the CIM followers myself, but I can see what you mean. Because they see all things except a generalised view of love and oneness to be unreal then they would not believe our human everyday problems are actually real. Of course people take this belief to different levels, not everyone would be so extreme. I did meet a &
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Good questions, quackdave. I am indeed attempting to answer (a) at the moment. I would be interested to hear some of your story of what you have been thru, should you feel like putting it out there. Or perhaps you already have, I am still finding my way around this board.... Cheers Pegasus
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi everyone I have made some inroads into being more flexible on the need to know 'the truth' and I also see now that life teaches us as we go. I know now that we learn thru experiences and that way of learning necessitates 'not knowing', trying, experimenting, often getting it wrong and then adapting. I could see that for learning to ride a bicycle, say, but now I also see
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Kier, Sallie and Tsukimoto Thanks for your great advice. Sallie those were powerful words and it was good for me to hear them. When I left my cult, I was very alone and wanted to find some likeminded people. I didnt know I had been in a cult at that stage and I still felt that the way for me to relate to people was by discussing spirituality. I wanted to have real connections with people
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

How do we follow a path and do certain activities like prayer meditation etc, in order to get somewhere spiritually without becoming caught up in a perfectionistic attitude? What I mean by this is that we usually do these recommended spiritual practices in order to become something close to perfect, dont we. And if we stop doing the practices or dont do enough of them we then think we are not goo
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

That is a good point Anticult about the marketing and moneymaking aims; true just becos something is out there, everywhere doesnt mean its the truth. Thanks for your welcome quackdave. Yes I am not used to being free to choose what I do or how I think. Also I was taught not to trust myself or my own sense of things so it was easy for me after coming out of my group to naturally look to other g
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

HI everyone I am relatively new here and I am trying to de-brainwash myself after having my life dominated by a guru based cult from age 18 to 30. After I left my cult I tried to find out what true spirituality was. I went to groups incl Tolle and Course in Miracles and read new age books as well as some schools of psychotherapy. I thought that Tolle for example was legit because he was prop
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I have been thinking about disputing my cultic beliefs and separating the good from bad in what I absorbed from my group. I would say that I am pretty good at identifying what I am feeling and thinking and needing; I can observe myself fairly well, so you would think that would be an advantage in this introspective process. However today I am noticing something unexpected: I feel as if there a
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Jupiter Thanks for sharing you feelings, I was touched by your words and really relate to what you are saying. Altho I wasn't born into the cult I was in, I joined it age 18, left university and went straight overseas leaving my home country for years. I lived with others in the group and it was my whole life. When I left I was discommunicated and can not talk to those in the group who f
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi everyone I have found all the replies on this thread very interesting and helpful, thanks sallie, tsukimoto and watching4amorc. Best wishes to all over Christmas and I hope to continue reply in more detail when some of the Christmas busyness is over, Cheers pegasus
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi Sallie Thanks for your reply. You said that cults give practices that they believe will appease God. I hadnt thought about it like that before, but I guess that is true. Certain practices were crucial or else things would be very bad after death. I understood it as a belief that I will go backwards spiritually speaking which would mean basically more suffering/bad things would happen to me if
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Hi everyone I was involved with a guru led group/cult for a number of years from my late teens. The group had strict rules about how to live and their form of prayer/meditation and so called service based activites dominated my time. It was considered spiritually bad to associate with anyone outside the group and also extremely detrimental to leave the group and stop following their version of
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups