Dear Jupiter, I wish I could encourage you to just do what you want. Be Normal. Be yourself. No one can tell you what is right for you. Go and visit your friends, choose whatever friends you like. Enjoy your life. It is yours, not mine, not any one else's to dictate, limit or control. You can choose to let people hold you back, or you can ignore them. You can do what you want with your ab
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

"So...be polite and respect the intentions of this thread. If someone dislikes what we are doing, they are free to go elsewhere" My "treatment" of Jupiter was as respectful as Icould manage, given that I have twenty times the life experience that she has in Subud, but not one tenth of the sufferring she experinced at the hands of controlling, manipulating, power-hungry S
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Sanebiker stated: "Weak, mentally and emotionally challenged people who need a swift kick in their posterior, not a pity party to enable their weakness. Consider it shock therapy" I suppose that you'd do that for the invalid whose body did not develop properly, or the accident victim, maybe yourself if you came off your bike. You'd get someone to kick you well again, would
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

No matter what faults Subud has it is not appropriate to relate Jupiter's experiences in Subud to the Gurdjieff movement. Subud is not a "Gurdjieff type group" ABSOLUTELY NOT, never was, never will be! That is just a wrong statement to make. It should be left separate. A study in the most cursory way will show any diligent researcher that Gurdjieff and Subud merely had a coinci
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Dear Junebug Thankyou for defining what it is that I wanted, and got, and can develop, not because of association with your exgroup, but what I want in life, no matter where I go next or where I have ever been THIS is your comment "I feel that I am free. Free to read what I want. Free to relax. Free to live my life the way I want to without GUILT! And, without the constant anxiety of tr
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

OK I am not AMORC peson, in any way. But my own life of spiritual training has been accused of being a cult thing. ie. Subud is a cult. And one person on the anti-Subud site described it so. Therefore I asked her to define a cult, which she did not do. I do not feel trapped by the founder of my own chosen "cult", even if ghe people there disagree with me about how thingxs should be
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

As no one seems inclined to answer my question, I am going to consider the anti-Gurdjieff comments as lacking in essence. And anyone else who reads them should too, if there is such a a lacking in responses to my challenge here.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Well, ....... Since you asked.................. No, Subud is not pedantic about spelling at all. It would be in line with a non-dogmatic, "You are You and God Love's You" approach if I am right, wouldn't it? In any case, I don't mind if you want to send-up my contributions to this topic. The pain remains the same, so does the gain. No pain, no gain they say. I
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I still do not think that a comparison even with fremasonry is appropriate. Sure, both Subud and that organisaton look like they are advising their adherants to pay respects to the One Creator of the Universe ( I am not a Fmason, so can't use correct terms). But I can still worship God just as I did when taught how to in my childhood, at a Church of Christ. I worship God the same way that
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

mxkitty Why do you think your information is relevant? All the literature available on death cults like Jonestown showed they were headed into disastrous mind control. All the literature on Subud that is referenced by members is fully available to anyone who is not a member, even when it is described as being for "members only". Hence, reasonable conclusions about it's intenti
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

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, becaus
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

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, gi
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

The Gurdjieff people here where I live apparently, so I was told, decided not to invite me to join them, decades ago, because I had got into "something else", as people will notice from my other postings here, if they feel the need to check. My background was inclining me away from the complicated methods of extreme intellectual aproaches, as they seem to be for the clever intellectual
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

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
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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 wan
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Jupiter, you wrote:- he inability to make my own decisions, so I resort to tarot and other things that could scientifically be described as "living by chance." I'd really rather just have strength in my own self esteem and trust my instincts. God knows how I'll manage that, though... .....Well, I think you have your own answers. Tarot is considered wrong by any religions.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I may have found in myself a very challenging response to the things that mattered to me by reading this thread from Jupiter. I also find myself being torn away again from things, beliefs, that mattered to me. Everyone dealing with so-called cults has a burden to carry. And the line that children of these groups have a greater burden than the parents who made the decision to join may be tru
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Took an exit counsellor & years of self-work to get me out. That was quite an admissin. ANd it comes from yet another ex-member. Just thought you'd all like to know.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

For it is the leader who is the main focus of the group, who orchestrates its actions and moods, who carries the burden of responsibility for its success or failure, and it is his direction that largely--though not entirely--permits such moments to occur. That is where the trouble lies. That statement is made into a reality by many. But it is not really the fact of Subud, because we were su
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

And thaks for that too Jupiter. Plenty of people will simply say "If you do not give you life to Christ, you are not saved. So Subud, and all else, is wrong. I may have been seeing things in sbd differently because as a child I went forward in church and gave my life to Christ, who kept His side of the bargain, as I wandered the byways, and still do. Some will simply say I turned my b
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

OK Jupiter, so your people were Gurdjieffians. I know it was so for many early on there. That's one more reason why things did not work out for so many people. Thinking too much! I was trained, as a child, in the basic Christian beliefs. So I "tried" to find them all fulfilled in my "next step". That does not make a connection between the two belief systems, just their
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Subud is in no way a "Gurdjieff Inspired Group" That is just Soooo Wrong! It just happened that people who followed him heard of Subud, and decided that was a "next step" for them Hence John Bennet joined Subud. Then he left Subud, wandered around the mystical pathways available to him, and died. As we all eventually do. The poeple, or rather their successors, he led in his
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I am not going to offer debate on points where we disagree now either. I want to join the others, who know less of our little organisation than you and I do, in congratulating you for getting your own independence, and hope it it going to be a continuing growth for you, overcoming the feelings of inadequacy in every area. We do have a mutual reason for being here on this forum. I ask you to
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

PS I am not struggling with any more than the fact that, for me, you are throwing the baby out with, the water, by labelling Subud a mere cult, like all those other notorious cults which have domineering exploiting leaders. As to yourself, and assessing my attitude to you, and finding myself superior to you. No Way! From reading what you have written, I do not feel I need someone else to hel
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Yes. Why not be open, and really let's see the facts, not just the anger? If you have any benefit at all from the religious beliefs of Christianity, which I claim too, then a suitable response might be that you have found some help from caring people. If you really think ALL the Subud people you know, or ever could know, treat you badly, then that's how you will always find people tre
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I have read with some horror the sad story of "Jupiter", who was vastly distressed by a life-long and family-wide encounter with Subud. I have, at 62, had a life time of Subud, and feel most upset that those experiences can not be adequately addressed by Subud people through your site. When I first heard of Subud, in 1961, I believed it was a contact, or an awakening
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups