Free at Last

Religious Cult Survivor Manipulated to Relocate

2011-12-01T23:34:00.000-08:00

Part 4 of April's interview.....

http://mindi.authormeanders.com/2011/11/religious-cult-survivor-vs-the-true-church-part-4/

you can follow all of the subsequent articles via the links on M.E. Anders blog.

GO APRIL!!

Religious Cult Survivor Forbidden Critical Thinking

2011-11-24T23:25:00.000-08:00

Part 3 of April's interview....

http://mindi.authormeanders.com/2011/11/michigan-religious-cult-survivor-part-3/

Religious Cult Survivor Burns Irreligious Artwork

2011-11-17T23:21:00.000-08:00

Part 2 of April's interview..

http://mindi.authormeanders.com/2011/11/michigan-religious-cult-survivor-part-2/

Religious Cult Survivor Belittled by Fundamentalist Pastor

2011-11-10T23:11:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to April G's (a friend and distant supporter) interview with ME Anders, I'll post the links to subsequent parts as they are published.

http://mindi.authormeanders.com/2011/11/michigan-religious-cult-survivor-part-1/

Sons of Perdition - Movie

2011-06-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1296893

Wikipedia page on the movie

Sons of Perdition

2011-06-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent movie, I have watched it four times now and it portrays exactly what young people face when they suddenly find themselves on the outside of the world they grew up in. Warning...if you have left a cult with your young children, and they have struggled to adapt to a completely new way of life, you will need a box of tissues whilst watching.....

The documentary Sons of Perdition follows three young men who run away and live in exile from polygamist Warren Jeffs' church, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The runaway boys — Joe, Bruce and Sam — face many challenges, compounded by their almost complete lack of knowledge about the world.

Directors Jennilyn Merten and Tyler Measom talk about life for young people in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128084530

Free at Last

2011-01-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

It is with a sense of enormous relief bordering on disbelief that I can finally tell you that we have managed to sell our portion of the farm we co-owned with members of the sect/cult that we escaped from in 2007.
After nearly four years of legal wrangling, threats, abuse and intimidation the antagonistic party has capitulated making the way clear for an agreement, and settlement was reached this morning.

I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of both of us to thank those of you who have given us your personal time, professional advice, support and friendship through what has been a truly harrowing experience.

We can now put this episode behind us and move on with our lives.

Thank you again and all the very best for the 2011

'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!'

Old negro spiritual and Martin Luther King Jr

The half life of abuse

2010-06-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

I am finding it increasingly hard to understand why after more than three years out of the cult that we cannot shake the bond of sadness that seems to have filled our every day.

You would think that we would be filled with optimism and hope, thrilled with all the possibilities that life holds…but we are not. Despite all that we have done to sever the past from our lives it seems like we have continued to carry this weight on our shoulders, the weight of all the hurt and disappointment, the weight of grief and loss, the radio-active half life of abuse, and we have just settled into a rut of sadness, we are very sad people.

I can begin to understand in-part why, when I read though the writings and blogging of other former cult members, no matter their circumstances or past, that many describe feeling whole again after ten years.

I know that I stopped getting pissed off on a daily basis by the thought of our [former] pastor and his family roughly two years out, though I have to say that even seeing a car of the same make and colour as his on the freeway can get my heart pumping madly within seconds, and the irritation of the ongoing legal battle with former and cult members fizzled out after three years, similarly I would have a fair amount to say if we met by chance.

Now however we seem to have drifted into a malaise of sadness, unable to lift ourselves out of a general despondency fuelled by our children still showing signs of trauma, seemingly never ending frustration with our situation, continuing overwhelming debt …

Maybe it does take ten years before you just start to feel happy about yourself and your situation and you can wake up in a good mood each day

I tried out a couple of mental health questionnaires on three separate websites recently and to my disappointment I discovered that I am suffering from depression…disappointed because it’s another thing to deal with, relieved in a way though because it answers why I have been feeling to crappy recently.

I have found the last six months incredibly difficult….my wife and I got so completely wrapped up in trying to help our eldest son with his drug addiction and keeping him in his job that we simply stopped thinking about doing anything for ourselves, we stopped making time for ourselves, to replenish our own sense of who we are and what we need to do to continue our own recovery.

I have been running on empty for a while now, so close to exhaustion with no reserve of self-confidence or self-assurance that when pushed into a corner by the smallest and often most trivial things I have responded out of the pure frustration or fear of the moment.

As I have grappled with the unknown and tried desperately to maintain stability in our family, I have unwittingly become more and more controlling, trying to restore a semblance of order or degree of predictability.

I didn’t realise that I was becoming a real pain to live with, increasingly negative, pessimistic, grumpy and condemning, risk adverse and very dark in my outlook, planning to the N^-th degree to avoid the frustration and disappointment that was hurting so much and just making it ten times worse.

One of the things that has caused me a great deal of anxiety recently is that there has been a stark contrast between my life at home and my life at work. I enjoy being at work a great deal, I’m lucky to have a job that I enjoy as much as I do; what’s the maxim…find a job you love and you’ll never do another days work.

Home on the other hand had become a place of frustration and tension, so much so that I recently started to feel physically sick as I approached our suburb on the way home.

The speed of my decline had profound effects on our marriage as my attempts to regain control over the course of our future became reminiscent of our [former] pastors micromanagement of our day to day lives. My wife became very distressed as I triggered her again and again with my actions and attitude becoming almost a regression to how I was in the cult days, struggling to keep my head above water as I seemingly drowned in fear and panic in the face of uncertainty. I have to say that there were many days when life just seemed wildly unpredictable and there was a kind of cloud over us that seemed very similar to the dark days of cult life.

I did not respond well and I could not see a way out. My wife and I came to the cliff of divorce and looked over the edge and both of us were terrified.

I started with a new shrink, and in one of those penny drop moments when you realise something that has been staring you in the face all along, but was obscured by the problem itself, it occurred to me that my job as an engineer is all about accuracy, order, planning and execution, risk mitigation through design; I spend all day making sure everything is properly organised, well articulated, documented and thoughtful.

Yet at home it seemed chaotic, unplanned and random…with two teenage boys being typical teenage boys, everyone in the family hurting to some degree, debt and dissatisfaction, fear and frustration, the threat of recurring drug addiction….I couldn’t find a way to control so much of it, as much as I tried, unconsciously, to use the techniques that have worked so well at work you cant turn your kids into an exercise, it's not possible to drive your family like a well crafted project.

But I tried to, and it caused a lot of friction in my relationship with the rest of the family, I found that I became very critical of just about everything at home because it didn’t line up with the ideal in my head, didn’t conform with how I thought it should be, and as such

My dilemma was why couldn’t I bring home the success of the workplace, how was it possible to be so successful at work, travelling the world, winning industry awards and yet our family life was going down the toilet...I can’t live with that kind of contradiction in my life. I realised that I was causing myself a lot of unnecessary anxiety by trying to treat the two worlds the same when it’s impossible to do so.

Work is work and home is home and I thrive on the two being separate entities yet I tried to use the tried and tested techniques of industry to cope with personal crises'.

So what has this all got to do with abuse I hear you say? My take on it is that we are all still woefully inexperienced in managing our own familial affairs because of twenty years of hideous interference, there is still so much to rebuild in our family structure. We are all still very sensitive to being dictated too, as is apparent when I become dictatorial. We feel threatened when pushed into uncertainly as is apparent by my reaction to our sons struggle with drugs.

On reflection I can see it's not 'what can I do to make family life better', it’s sometimes 'what I stop doing that will make things better'. If I can ensure that my love and compassion cannot become smothered by fear or frustration, that my peace and understanding does not become buried by a lack of self esteem or that an optimistic view of the future does not become obscured by a dim view of the past.

I guess this post is a collection of thoughts on the lingering effect of cult attitudes and how they can propagate irrational behaviour years after leaving, having said that I am becoming clearer on the view that NO MATTER WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH, NO MATTER HOW MUCH SHIT YOU HAVE ENDURED, YOU CAN EVENTUALLY MAKE SOMETHING GOOD OUT OF YOUR LIFE.

From father to son pt1

2010-02-22T05:40:00.000-08:00

Our eldest son is going through a dark time at the moment. Of our three children, he experienced most of the abuse from our [former] pastor and his family and cronies, as I have said in the past, when we could see that matters in the group were going awry we protected our youngest two as much as possible, however our eldest had already reached the age where he was considered by the leadership to be old enough to start grooming him for his calling in the Kingdom of God.

Our [former] pastor and his sycophantic bitches had already started physically abusing him into unquestioning obedience behind our backs, in the presence of group members who I thought were our friends, and who said nothing to us. Our [former] pastor had already started to sow the seeds of parental mistrust, while his sons embarked on a regular tirade of humiliation and belittlement.

Now that we are out of the group he is exercising the freedom and choice that was once denied him, with worrying consequences. His quest for fun knows no bounds and is a priority I his life.
When we left the fellowship nearly three years ago now he saw the rapid rejection of everything we had believed in, and the rigid boundaries which had bordered every part of his life very quickly came tumbling down.
It must have been just as confusing for him as it was for us to suddenly find him self with a limited understanding of what is acceptable outside of an inflexible and conservative doctrine.
The first thing that was apparent was that he has no intention of being controlled again or pushed into circumstances where he feels threatened. To address this he has built up great physical strength and can fight his way out of situations he does not feel comfortable with, this has led to a string of fights at various parties, which he has invariably won, leaving several people out cold, and as such he has developed a reputation to go with his build.

We have gradually come to realise that the time in the group and since has had a much more profound effect on him than we had first realised, we had no idea that the last year had been so tough for him.

In the last year he has thrown himself headlong into an apprenticeship which he loves but has struggled to keep up with what he perceived was required of him, taking no holidays, working a great deal of overtime, all the time trying to keep pace with his more experienced colleagues…yet inwardly trying to come to terms with a tough and demanding working environment in the mining support industry.
The understanding of the structure of authority and responsibility has been hampered by his inability to read people effectively, a skill that is shot to pieces after being deceived and abused by someone we looked up to and taught him to respect. He has real trouble reading peoples intentions and direction because his concept of authority wedded to trust has been buckled out of shape, and should that authority be exerted on him harshly in the workplace he will simply shut down and go within himself.

We are amazed that he has held down his apprenticeship for the last year. On reflection he might have benefited from a year just taking it easy with regular shifts at Subway or KFC, but he wanted this opportunity so badly and begged us to let him leave high school a year early to pursue his dream, how could we refuse him that after a life of living in a hyper authoritarian nightmare.

Since leaving the group, he has seen the effects on my wife and I, the pain and anguish we have been through has been almost unbearable for him to witness, and as such the added impact of our trials and tribulations has had on his own journey has weighed heavily on him.

Argument by argument and disappointment by disappointment he has cultivated a root of bitterness that is eating him up. He often talks about bumping into various cult leaders and making their next stop the emergency dept of the local hospital, asking them if they still think he is worthless as he pounds their faces to a pulp.

He uses heavy drinking and drugs as a tool to dull the pain and anxiety he is experiencing. He is having trouble sleeping and finding a sense of peace, and little wonder; we have been using professional help to tackle the mental health issues that we have had to face over the last three years, but he has been reluctant to take advantage of the same kind of help, many times offered, preferring to tackle it in his own way with his own peer group.
I can understand the way he has gone about it, leaning to the validation that he gets from his own friends…they however have not been bought up in the same environment or under the same kind of pressure. While they are using substance abuse as a form of recreation, he is using them to self medicate.

His inability to relax is not helped by the fact that he has had no references throughout his life to point the way, we never relaxed when we were in the cult, we were always working our butts off, always seeking to use every minute of the day for the benefit of the kingdom of God……As a family we lived on a constant adrenalin high driven by fear of condemnation and rejection, never safe in the knowledge that our position in the group was secure, yet never knowing how to leave……we never had a family holiday and the vast majority of our outings were curtailed because of commitments to the group…he has never learned to just relax and do nothing…he would have thought it was a sinful waste of time.

When you see your son staring into the open jaws of a drug addiction you ask yourself a lot of questions, what could I have said, what could I have done, where did I go wrong?…this last question has an obvious answer for me and thus within that answer the other two questions find their response.
A lot of fathers could put their hand on their hearts and struggle to identify sound answers for all three questions. The difference here is that I know where I went wrong, and not only have I not said and done the right things, I said and did a lot of the wrong things.
I put my family into second place whilst promoting what I believed, or was told, was the will of God for our lives. I did as I was taught that the needs of God are more important than the needs of my family, and if I was obedient to the Holy Spirit and his direction, the needs of my family would be met in the kingdom building process.
I put the needs of our fellowship above the needs of my family pushing my sons into a kingdom driven agenda, espousing the doctrine of our [former] pastor…and they suffered because of this.
They were deprived of time with me; they grew up with a father who was mostly home late at night, busy on Saturdays and involved in the meetings for most of Sunday. They were compelled to participate in errands and tasks for the fellowship when all their school friends were out having fun and worst of all I was not there for them when they were humiliated into obedience by the fellowship elders and leadership.

I feel largely responsible for the poor self esteem, self doubt, grief, anxiety and anger issues that my son is battling with. I was not there when he needed me, when I was there I was pushing a harsh agenda…and after we got out, when he needed help to adjust to his new life, I was struggling with my own crisis and trying to find a way for the whole family.

I have laid in bed night after night worrying about this with so much coursing through my head that when I shut my eyes in the dark it seems like the lights are still on, as parents we seem cursed to suffer the twin pains of discipline and regret, obliged to embrace unconditional hope and still hang on to the slender thread of truth that we want to believe is still running through the conversations. And so as the sun starts to set on another junkie in the making I shiver as I recognise the lengthening shadow of ‘the loss of control’ creeping over our family after a three year respite, pulling us back to uncertainty and our worst fears.

I’ll write more later…

One step froward, no steps back

2010-01-30T21:58:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we moved house, finally leaving the region where the cult is based.

It has taken months of planning to ensure a quick transition during the school holidays so the kids are not too disrupted. We told them five or six months ago we were planning to move in January so that they could get used to the idea; as unpopular as it was. During the last six months I have felt that I was the embodiment of the devil himself for pursuing such a ‘cruel and uncaring agenda’.

Even our nine year old daughter, launched one morning, into an impassioned presentation on the merits of democracy and how that three of the family members did not want to move (emboldened by her effective and persistent lobbying) as opposed to two members of the family who did want to move (the parents!!!!) and that I was being (hideously) undemocratic, [pictures of the war on terrorism running rampant through my mind].

It was a bit of a tall ask to get them to move only a couple of years after the last uprooting which had been to escape the cult, they have built up an enviable network of close friends, joined sports clubs, developed early morning surfing habits, settled into new routines and now we’re on the move again, but as I have said before it is time to make the move that we did not have the strength or the finances to make before.

As December approached we enrolled our middle son into the local college hoping that we would indeed be in the area by the start of term, my wife handed her notice in to her employer without a leaving date or indeed a job to go to and we started packing in the hope that we would find a suitable house to rent in the area we had chosen.

January came and after traipsing through umpteen small and badly kept houses, worrying about the fast approach of February and the balance between choice and urgency we found one that ticked most of the boxes and applied.

A few days later on the morning of a job interview that my wife had arranged, we learned that the house was ours and by lunch time the company that had interviewed her offered exactly the job she wanted with the hours she had hoped for.

It seemed like everything was coming together, she raced down to the child care centre to book our daughter in for after school care (something we had identified early on as both a problem due to the scarcity of places and potential show stopper if we couldn’t find one) and managed to secure the days we needed…it really did start to feel like it was our turn for good luck…then literally within minutes we got a call from our eldest son who had failed a random drug test at work with a massive reading and had been laid off without pay effective immediately.

Well at least twenty years in a cult prepares you for crashing down to earth!!! it’s a familiar feeling and I remember standing in the kitchen at work with my head literally spinning, waiting for what seemed like forever for a very, very strong coffee to come out of the machine, wtf, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about.

Well that was three weeks ago now, the move went well, the kids all warmed up to the idea when they saw the new house and we have been here for a whole week without the cat running off so things are looking good. We broke the lease early on the old house and two days after we notified the realtors seven couples came through and the house was rented again immediately saving us a pile of money. My wife finished her job last week and starts her new one ten minutes from here, next week.

This is the first change I have had to sit down and gather my thought and find that I marvel at the feeling of being so far away from the cult, the town where all the bad memories can trigger an anxious heart, and knowing that we don’t have to go back there again. It’s one of those feeling that you have no understanding of until it lightly slips into your life one morning in bed when you realise that they will never find us, we won’t bump into them at the shops, we are free to move as we please without looking out for certain number plates. IT'S A CRAZY, GIDDY SENSE OF RELIEF AND SAFETY AND I HAD NOT EXPECTED IT TO FEEL SO GOOD.

We have had some good talks with our eldest son (I completely failed to live up to his expectations when I did not explode on learning of the failed test) about his use of drugs, which as we have rebuilt his trust in us, and more and more of the truth seeps out, is actually a problem with which he needs real help, (Hmm those years working in the rock’n’roll industry coming in useful at last).

We have known for a while he was in trouble and despite our best efforts he has landed himself in hot water, I guess the time was going to eventually come when, if he did not listen to our sound advice on his own journey of self discovery, he was going to have to answer to someone else, in this case his employer.

Initially I thought it was a shame that it turned out like this, but on reflection I have changed my mind. His employer has enforced a strict regime of regular tests to ensure a progressive drop in drug levels and two consecutive clear tests before he can return to work, so we can all see what’s going on now…it’s no longer taboo. The loss of income, separation from the camaraderie of the work place and the various detox methods courtesy of Google have all added up to a pretty unpleasant experience which I hope will reinforce the incompatibility of illegal drugs and a stable lifestyle.

This is hopefully the beginning of the healing for him during which we can openly talk about and deal with the pain and hurt of our time in the cult and the residue that still exists in his heart.

I guess I can look back on that day a few weeks ago when we got the new house, my wife got her new job, we sorted out the child care situation, the drug bust on our eldest and since then the old house being re-rented and see them all as a pearly string of real positives.

My mum says on the phone that its really good that everything is working out, but what I know she means is “isn’t it good the way the Lord is looking after you” but she is kind enough not to say that to me. Our Theological friends are thrilled that we’re doing so well and know that we know what they think but they are also kind enough not to push their beliefs on us, our Hindu friends say its Karma and that we are reaping what we have sown, my wife’s shrink says that when its time to move and you can sense that in your being, and you move with your feelings, then the universe will conspire to help you.

I still have trouble with the whole concept of God and divine intervention, just too confronting to think about, none-the-less part of me wants some kind of explanation for how well everything is working out and how good it feels, so in my own juvenile way I will settle with “the force is with us” that will do for now.

Stranger in a not so strange land

2009-11-06T23:47:00.000-08:00

Starting this trip to Africa I wasn’t sure how it would work out when I got back to London for the first time in seven years. The first overseas trip without everything pre arranged with the consent of the inner circle, confirmed with prophesies and scripture, approved of by the elders and sealed by an alignment of scripture.

I speculated about what it might be like and how I might feel, and pondered at length what I wanted to get out of it, and whilst I thought it might be a way of picking up where I left off twenty four years ago by reconnecting with the past, on arriving in London I very quickly realised that there is no point in doing that and it was not what I needed or wanted. There is little to be gained by doing this…everyone has moved on with their lives, many haunts of my past are now redeveloped or lie derelict and it would be remiss to ignore the last twenty five years, cult or no cult.

It has been a revelation to come back with fresh eyes, see again in a way that has eluded me for years and with a new sense of value the places of my ancestors, walk the streets and towns where they came from, eat where they ate, drink where they drank, sleep where they slept, pray where they prayed.

I’m one of a long line and it feels good to be back in touch with that line again, a black sheep come good again or I suppose even a lost sheep come home.

Visiting my father’s grave, which until now I had only seen photos of, was like filling an empty void, laying flowers and having a chat was reconciliation, breaching the chasm that opened up after his death over ten years ago. It was a beautiful clear day, shinning sun and it grew into a magical time for me.

I didn’t feel like I was seeking the ghosts of the past, it feels like I’m walking with the spirits of my ancestors, I don’t feel so alone in this walk, this shedding of shame.

Catching up with a bunch of friends, some of whom I had not seen for over twenty years, all of whom were my good friend before everything went so horribly wrong, was a remarkable experience, a real highlight of my year.

We have all moved on and had our own trials and tribulations to face, some have stared death in the face, some have lost more than they care to recall, yet to pick up as if it were only a matter of months since we had last seen each other taught me about another facet of love which I have not seen in my life for a long time, friendship which has stood much more than the test of time and which endures with more than enough compassion and understanding to wash away any of the unwise words I have spoken in the past.

I feel very wealthy to have friends like these, this is the part of my past that I longed to reconnect with and it has far exceeded my expectations, I feel like the size of my world has grown appreciably over the last few weeks and the increase in love shinning in my direction has a lot more colour.

The complete break from my normal routine and the opportunity to step out of the stressful environment of life as I had let it become at home has been of more benefit than anything else and has given me a time to focus on the way forward from here.

A space to meditate, to think ahead without a salad of pressing issues clouding my vision, and I find that, surprisingly, I am more positive about the future than even I would have thought possible.

For the first time in a long time I have mapped out my priorities, my goals, my dreams for the future in a calm and free flowing way, in a way that would have been impossible whilst still within the cult and I have discovered a new determination to change

My family is now my number one priority…..and it feels strange that I have never articulated it in this way…..it has always been a priority but since we left the cult there has been a constant flow of other priorities or goals which the family seemed to bend around.

Now it is my number one priority around which everything else will have to fit.

Who was it that said that people do not plan to fail, they just fail to plan….

I’m under no illusions though that this is not going to be easy to pull off, its easy to come up with a shiny new plan in isolation, I have to go home and fit in with the way things are at home, the reality of the way our life is at the moment, and try not to loose the way I feel at the moment.

The reality will be overcoming my own inhibitions, anger, frustrations and putting some kind of plan into practice that we all agree with. If I have any chance of building a stronger family and becoming a better man then I need to face my character floors.

This trip has turned out to be something quite different to my initial wonderings, reconnecting with my distant family, reconciliation with my ancestors, feeling the love of my dearest friends, regaining an inner peace that eluded me for years; the treasure I have unearthed whispers to me “IT'S MORE ABOUT REJOICING IN WHAT WE HAVE, THAN MOURNING WHAT WE HAVE LOST AND IT'S ABOUT EMBRACING THE FUTURE THAN TRYING TO RELIVE THE PAST"

I am confident we will find a way to fix our current issues because we have to, and we can.

So where to?

2009-10-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

Whilst in Johannesburg I had time to visit the Apartheid museum. I found this to be a very confronting experience. Given where I am at the moment my antenna is already pretty sensitive to issues of oppression, denial of choice, authoritarian rule, and absence of liberty….all in all anything remotely unfair or unjust.

The museum is a powerful record of Apartheid, how it came to being, its course, its collapse and the aftermath as the nation sought to rebuild itself. The sheer volume of material builds a graphic and compelling history of events which you cannot fail to be deeply moved by, just when you think you have reached a new low the next montage numbs you into even deeper disbelief. The resilience and tenacity of the South African blacks stands out a mile, what they had to endure leading up to and during apartheid is difficult for most, if not all of us to comprehend.

The life of Mandela is charted in a separate exhibit which reinforces the history and dovetails with Biko and others…..all in black and white in a museum of harsh concrete, steel, bare brick, corners of dimly lit metal, reinforcing the sense of injustice and inequality.

The museum is the best example of architecture supporting the purpose I have ever seen, time and again walls converge to force you into single file and through a narrow door, defying all convention for public space, floors at incongruous angles deny you comfort in the space

After turning a sharp corner you eventually reach the part of the museum recording the first election, by which time your own emotions are screaming for relief, as the museum bursts into colour recording the majority of the nation as they are at last given the freedom to express their own choice in a vote of seismic consequence.

When I got to the section on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission I found myself literally paralysed in awe.

Mandela’s choice to avoid splitting the country with an investigation driving retribution and prosecution, and instead choosing to uncover the truth on a premise of amnesty and forgiveness (however politically expedient it may have been) was one of unfathomable grace from one who had discovered the depth and value of grace and power of reconciliation.

I found myself repeatedly aghast as I read the testimonies of death gangs, relatives vanishing into a mist of lies and deception, mass beatings and torture, permanent disfigurement, trauma beyond comprehension, soldiers weeping in open confession, hit squad leaders begging for forgiveness. I clearly remember seeing a grief stricken and tearful Desmond Tutu on the BBC closing reconciliation hearings because no one could take any more of the truth for that session.

As I was walking round I was mindful that Mandela had originally gone into prison for being convicted of acts of criminal violence, and for refusing to denounce acts of terrorism as a valid mechanism in their fight for freedom. Judgement aside, what struck me was his transformation from an active bomber with blood on his hands to this guiding light of ‘the truth and reconciliation process’…..it is a remarkable transition, which lets face it, had plenty of time to take effect whilst he was incarcerated on Robin Island, time to ponder clearly played a big part in the change of perspective.

I wondered how I could make that kind of transition, or even how I might journey to the place where I want to forgive our [former] paster and his family, reconciliation will never happen.

Yesterday we visited Soweto which was not at all how I imagined it would be.

The Hector Peiterson museum once again took my breath away in an unpleasant way. When we got there the power was out, we still went in, and in the absence of video clips and newsreel segments we started to read the printed eyewitness accounts of the student protest, vast black and white photos of the students, their banners, their cries to be heard, one after the other accounts of the build up, the shooting of Hector Peiterson, the photo of him being carried away with his sister screaming…. extraordinarily moving. I remember quite clearly seeing all this on the news back in 1976, kids my age struggling for a voice; it was probably one of the events that caused me to become more politically aware.

Eventually the power came back on and the museum sprang into life with a series of the most shocking news reels and interviews on dozens of monitors, which was interrupted by the arrival of two school buses full of students. As they buzzed around with their shrieks of excitement mucking around like typical kids it was as if the posters has come to life, and I found the idea that someone could open fire on these kids, kids just like mine, just overwhelming, and with tears welling up I went outside for some fresh air.

Outside I met our tour guide supplied by our hotel, and who we had got to know over the course of the day, and who had bought us to the museum. I had noticed that he seemed to know everyone in Soweto, after a little prompting he admitted to being a friend of Hector Pieterson, being involved in the uprising and loosing many friends in the aftermath of the uprising.

He told us some amazing stories; it’s not often that you get a chance to go to a place where an historic event of such seismic importance to human rights has taken place and get to spend the day with a participant.

I was very impressed with his candour and genuine nature which belied a dignified bravery and the accumulated wisdom of having lived though turbulent times, experiencing the very worst that a government can deliver to its people.

This is the second time in a couple of day that I have been confronted by the recovery of someone who has experienced infinitely more injustice and abuse than I have and their ascension from despair to dignity and strength is inspirational.

TO BE FREE IS NOT MERELY TO CAST OFF ONE’S CHAINS, BUT TO LIVE IN A WAY THAT RESPECTS AND ENHANCES THE FREEDOM OF OTHERS

Nelson Mandela.

Home is where the hurt is

2009-10-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

I am one of those people, who through their own carelessness don’t know where home is.

I left the

back in 1985 to join our [former] pastor and his cult, moved around Europe for a few years doing ‘kingdom building’ work and settled here in

Australia

in 1988.

When I married the first thing I did was to bring my wife here to start a family at the heart of the mission which was based in

Australia

. We have built our family here and we are all now Australian, our kids have grown up here and apart from “mission” trips overseas know no other way of life.

Since we left the cult in 2006 we have grown increasingly home sick for the

, it’s a feeling of forced separation, almost as if we were kidnapped from our home land and transplanted into someone else’s Promised Land.

Don’t get me wrong, I love living here in Australia and I know we can’t just up and go back, it would be unfair on our kids in the extreme, I have a great job and we have some very dear friends here. To start again from scratch after being away for over twenty years would be foolish, counter productive and selfish.

I know this is our home, yet I can’t shake this feeling, I miss London so badly at times it hurts.

Last year my wife had a chance to go back to the UK for a month to stay with her family for the first time since leaving the cult, a great time of reconciliation and healing which did her a lot of good. She told me when she got home that the feeling of empowerment and liberation that she got from just being able to walk onto a plane and just fly away from all the crap without having the whole trip prearranged by our [former] pastor’s wife and approved of in the perfect will of God was just wonderful.

I was really pleased for my wife to be able to make that trip, and, in a way happy for her to make it without me, we needed time to find ourselves again amid the trauma of that time. Since then however I have yearned to be able to go back and reconnect with the land of my father, my home, my family and my friends.

I am writing this on an aeroplane on the way to Africa to present a paper at an international renewable energy conference in Johannesburg, then I fly to Paris for a bunch of meetings, then on to Manchester in the

for another conference. This is related to my work and I’ll have my boss with me, he and I get on very well and I’m glad to have him with me on the trip, it is going to be very hard work with a packed schedule and a lot of travelling.

After Manchester I’m driving down to London for two weeks holiday with my mum and sister and then wider friends. This trip has come together so rapidly that I can still hardly believe that I’m getting an all expenses paid trip to Africa and Europe with two weeks in London….it just seems surreal.

And so now with me too, the feeling of just walking onto a plane and leaving the country, despite our predicament, and flying back to the UK felt daunting, strange, the sense of anticipation tempered with reservation is an unfamiliar feeling. The prospect of weeping as we land at Heathrow with my boss sitting next to me is not an idea that I relish, yet I cant help but think that returning to the UK and spending some time with family and friends, some of whom I have not seen for twenty years, for the first time since leaving the cult is going to be overwhelming.

It has come at a good time, a welcome pit stop on the dusty road through the wilderness en-route to some kind of healing. This year has been a tough gig so far and I need some space to find myself again…the ‘me’ I abandoned, the ‘me’ I jettisoned in order to ascend to greater heights, only to find there was no air to breath at that altitude. I need some time to be still, time to reconnect with my past, my heritage, old friends from before it all went so horribly awry, all the things I was told to leave behind and forget about.

I will not be wearing the Christ tinted glasses that I have worn on previous trips, the ones I used to repeatedly alienate my relatives and friends. I am walking with new eyes, tinged with some sadness but in expectation of a brighter future.

When I joined the cult I sold and gave away all my possessions and left the country with just a backpack, trusting in God for my needs, yes this is what I was told to do, and looking back it is one of my biggest regrets.

After coming out and starting to rebuild my life I find that I have very little in the way of material possessions that connect me with my life before I willingly surrendered to fundamentalist indoctrination.

There are however a few boxes of photographs and slides that I stashed away in my parents loft and which have remained there for the last twenty years because they were too heavy to move…one of the first things I will do when I get home will be to jump up into the loft and bring them down. I’m travelling very light in the hope that I can bring the whole lot back to

Australia

with me.

I started to jot down a list of places to visit, all my old haunts, slow walks through markets, by lakes, sitting under familiar ancient oak trees, good pubs….I hope they are still there…and as I look down that list I can see it has unintentionally become a guide on how to pick up where I left off twenty two years ago. That was not the intention but that’s what it looks like.

I don’t imagine I will be able to achieve a huge amount in two weeks but it will be the first steps and I think a good place to start will be at the resting place of my father, which I have never seen…..we need to talk

The mechanics of control

2009-09-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

My wife works for a local accountant and a couple of weeks ago cult members booked them selves in for an appointment at the office where my wife works, knowing that they would see her and she would be responsible for processing their accounts. Most of the cult members that used this accountancy while we were in the cult have continued to do so since we left. They come in and make their presence felt by allowing their kids to run around, by being loud and ensuring that my wife will make eye contact.

This is their way of showing off how well their accounts are going. If it were not for the fact that we spent 20 years in the same cult and were aware of how the group accounts are done, we probably would think they are doing well; the point is we do know what is going on and it is ridiculous to think otherwise.

Booking an appointment is their way of saying that they are still around and no matter how we try to ignore them they can still make their presence felt….”I will come in and you will serve me and I will benefit from your service…you see I can still make you serve me”.

Being in a cult is all about control, the exertion of control by a few, and to continue to attempt to exert that kind of control is pathetic

Some how their booking had slipped through without my wife spotting it and the effect was devastating; she became very distressed at being confronted and after the intervention of management they were asked to take their business elsewhere….much to their annoyance.

Whilst we are glad of the push back which I am sure will have really pissed them off it highlights the fact that these people will not give up with their need to control, their need to prove that God is still blessing them and their mission continues.

A week later I was contacted by the ex-cult members who co-own our property, wanting to make yet another half baked offer on our part of the farm. Despite making it perfectly clear on several occasions the only contact with us must be via our lawyer they called me up at work. I let it go to message bank, only to hear that they wanted to go to my wife’s office to drop off the offer documents and uncollected mail from the farm. They followed the call with a text message.

I texted back stating that they should only contact us through the lawyer, again!, and that under no circumstances will we enter into any discussions either via phone or email, and that they must not go to my wife’s office…..they texted back a little later.

I am thinking which part of “you must only contact us through our lawyer” cant they get into their fucking heads. Today a week later they texted again requesting a meeting……..it defies explanation.

They cant help themselves, they just cannot accept any other way of conducting matters than the one they have chosen themselves, it is all about them and what they want to say, the point they need to make, its all about making sure that we understand what they want.

It seems to have very little to do with actually respecting our wishes and going through normal and widely accepted channels of communication such as lawyers and solicitors.

The whole reason I want to use the lawyer as the single point of contact is to put someone between them and us, and not have to deal with their manipulation and abuse. I want the lawyer to act as a filter…there is no way that they would even think about saying half the rubbish that I know they would try on us if they knew it could end up in court. Probably why they are trying so hard to create a back channel.

One thing that this has highlighted is that the longer we are away from them and the more we understand about what we went through, the more we recognise the dynamics that were in play, the worse it appears when confronted with it again. I thought it would lessen as time went on but it seems to be getting stronger, the feelings of revulsion and trauma over the last couple of weeks have been astounding, to the point where it is making us ill.

It is a form of psychic collapse, where we are triggered into recalling the events of the past in such a vivid way that we are drawn into the trauma anew and then respond out of the trauma. I guess this is something we will eventually grow out of as our recovery progresses and we come to terms with the past…..I didn’t think this kind of thing would still be going on nearly three years later.

We both recognise now that it is time to change our mobile phone numbers and email addresses, for my wife to find another job and for us to move as a family further North.

I have not been able to drive back to the town where we lived for a long time, it just brings back too many memories and I come out re-traumatised every time. My wife drives back in there every working day and I am at a loss as to how she manages to do that, clearly it has an effect.

It’s time for us to make a substantial move and put significant distance between the past and us, the move that we should have made when we first got out but did not have the strength to pull off the first time. We have the time and where-with-all to do it properly, its time to move again.

The last eight months

2009-08-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

The last eight months have been quite a journey. A journey that I tried to journal whilst we were going through it, but which I found too painful, confusing, frightening…..depressing.

I am not one of those people who can quickly analyse and encapsulate the essence of the moment; I need time to figure it out, much of this blog covers what has happened in the past, albeit recent past, but none the less after I have had time to digest the events.

The last eight months has seen my wife and I come a hairs breadth from separation twice…I was looking for an apartment and we were making plans for me to move out…..we were lost in a sea of pain and bewilderment, unable to find each other or ourselves. It seemed as if we could not understand the pain we were going through and we could not understand why the other person did not understand either.

We were both suffering from depression and disillusionment, we were both withdrawing in on ourselves, despite improving our understanding of where we had come from and where we wanted to go, the gradual realisation of where we had been and what we had done, and our fears of the effects it has had on our kids just became too much to handle.

Coming to terms with the effects of twenty years of abuse has been overwhelming for both of us, like Hell…..in some ways worse than actually being in the cult in the first place. It seemed at times as if healing was deliberately avoiding us and we were unable to see the way ahead.

I had to face up to some challenging aspects of my own personality, I had become depressed and angry because of what I perceived as a sense of powerlessness to effect change in our lives.

Even though the reality was that we had completely changed the course of our lives by escaping from a cult, we both felt that now after two years of not being in the cult there should be some kind of change in the way we feel, but it eluded us. Why did we both feel so lost and empty, why did we feel so cheated and defrauded, why did we continue to feel so awful?

I became immensely angry, anger at our inability to progress the legal action against cult members who hold us hostage over our jointly owned property and anger at the deteriorating relationship with my eldest son.

My wife began to interpret my emerging anger as a continuation of the frustration and feeling of entrapment that we had experienced in the cult. Therefore, she felt that nothing much had changed from the time we were in the cult, I was still desperately unhappy, irritable, anxious, unable to express love and affection, unable to empathise, restless, unable to find peace.

My outbursts of frustration served only to re-traumatise her as she became less and less able to deal with conflict between my sons and I, and she was sliding deeper and deeper in a rut of hopelessness.

She likened the environment to that of ongoing domestic abuse with all of the oppression that goes with it. I was horrified to learn that, it cut me to my already wounded soul to think that I had become an abuser of the one person that has stuck with me through thick and thin, and yet we could not escape the cycle of abuse, regret, alienation and frustration.

We tried marriage counselling but we could not find anyone that understood our pain or the causes behind our situation. The counselling approach was generic and the advice although well intentioned just did not help. After three sessions of pouring out our hearts, our fears, our pain, the advice we got was to separate for a trial period. I found myself going along with advice that I did not really believe was right or sound and certainly did not believe would make the situation better.

My eldest son on hearing I was on the move offered to move with me, which I found very touching, even as we were going through the rough together, (me a wounded father and he a 17 yr old blossoming into the full on fight for independence and self determination), he wanted to stick by me to keep me company which was like a ray of light into an otherwise dark landscape.

Suffice to say I dug my heels in and did not move out. We agreed to continue with counselling but I refused to go back to that particular councillor and we started to look for another, and thankfully…..during the search we had enough heart to heart conversations that we found a bridge back to each other.

My impression was that through all the venting and exposure of raw emotions we started to find the mutual understanding that we had progressively dismantled during the ongoing struggle, we found a way to begin again and work with each other to rebuild our marriage.

On the train to work each day I started to listen to ‘Beyond Anger’ by Thomas J Harbin read by the author, within a few chapters I started to recognise traits within myself that I had never before attributed to anger, soon I began to realise how much anger I had been keeping bottled up and how it was manifesting itself through every minute of the day. I was shocked to find out that I was much angrier than I had originally thought and that there was a good chance that most of the people who knew me had recognised it.

I had stopped seeing my shrink a few months before, but upon recognising the situation, I started again specifically to tackle anger as a priority, with the aim of saving my marriage.

With the help of my shrink, a methodical analysis of the factors that I felt were making me angry surprised me. There were family frustrations, financial problems, lingering guilt about so many years spent in a cult……you know all the normal things!

The one issue that was causing the most anger…by a long shot, and to my surprise an issue that I had almost considered background noise was the ongoing legal struggle with our farm. These days the whole issue seems to have quietened down and we only hear from the other parties every couple of months with little change at all in anyone’s stance. I had almost grown used to not expecting change and tried not to think about it, unconsciously reducing it to a recurring itch.

When we got married, we used to live near Heathrow Airport, under one of the landing flight paths with large jets going overhead every two minutes. Anyone who lives there eventually tunes out the aeroplanes and all the racket they make, you hear it but you don’t acknowledge they are there and so effectively you don’t recognise them intruding into your day. Sounds weird but it happens naturally and it is only when we visit the area that I am astounded how anyone can possibly put up with it.

It was only when my shrink and I started to talk about the subject of our farm in depth that I felt my blood pressure rising, I could actually feel the levels of anxiety going up, and as we worked through how it was making me feel I recognised it was a much bigger problem that I had realised.

I think that we become so tiered with the ongoing crap from the other parties and their juvenile approach to finding a solution that I had started to tune out the noise, I heard it but did not acknowledge how much anger it was causing and so did not recognise the symptoms.

After discussion with my shrink, during my first session back it became quite clear that If I was serious about saving our marriage, improving my relationship with our kids and, in short preserving my long term mental health and well being, it was in our interest to simply walk away from the property and all the stress and anxiety and thus anger that it was generating in my life.

Our home, the only one we have ever owned, the cradle of so many hopes and dreams,15 years of hard work, all the equity we have, the home where the kids grew up…..walk away and forget about it. Chances are we will never get anything out of it while the cult members are involved so just walk away, start afresh and forget about the whole mess.

What a relief to realise what we knew all along, yet funnily enough needed to be told. It seems like that when you go to a shrink….you spill your guts and bleed all over the place, then he tells you the most important bit, the solution…and low and behold it’s the thing that you knew…but had forgotten, the simple and obvious thing that you had lost sight of.

A Banking friend of mine advised me that a wise investor never throws good money after a bad investment he just recognises it was a dud and moves on……”a bad investment”…..that is a very helpful way to think about it, strip off the emotions, look at it objectively and do what we have to do. We stopped paying ongoing land rates, council charges, property insurance, had the power disconnected, resolved never to go to the property again, made our lawyer the single point of contact in all matters, blocked the email addresses of all the other individuals involved and resolved to just put it out of our minds.

It took a while but it did make an impact on how I felt, and of course after a while it was surprising to see how much of a difference it made, or conversely how much of an irritation it had been.

There have been a few attempts by the other parties to contact us, which I just refer to our lawyer, a few half hearted attempts to find a solution, which usually crash and burn for one reason or another related to their immaturity and inconsistency.

All up though it has made a huge difference to my life to be free of the anger generated by the perception of continued attachment to the past.

Its only property and money at the end of the day, health and well being is worth far more, and yes I know that sounds cliché but I suspect it only sounds cliché to those who have not had to face loosing both.

The anger curve is not something that you pass through once and then move on to place of happy thoughts, it is a relentless pilgrimage which forms part of the healing of each trauma and injury that cries for attention.

You can be at different stages on the curve on differing issues simultaneously and it can all add up to one massive heart ache.

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.

Paulo Coelho

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

2009-05-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

I recently read in a book 'Beyond Anger” that down through the ages many cultures have used the burning and burial of objects and writings as a powerful ritual for ridding ones self of trauma, afflictions and the flotsam and jetsom of the past. A statement of making a new start and leaving some things well and truly behind.

Last night I had a burning ceremony where I incinerated a stack of photos of our [former] pastor and his family and my KJV bible filled with notes on their misguided teachings whilst humming 'Burn down the Mission' by Elton John.

It was surprisingly satisfying and I felt quite good afterwards, I enjoyed seeing their faces bubble and warp as the pictures burned and curled up, I hadn’t expected that.

It is also surprising how much effort is required to actually burn a bible and how long they go for....smoke everywhere!

This morning my manager invited me to attend the Governor's Prayer Breakfast as his guest, at Burswood on June 19th. An opportunity to join with our leaders in prayer for the well being and protection of our nation etc etc....I have accepted.....this seems strangely ironic to me that the invite comes the morning after I burned a bible in a flower pot in my back garden and then put the cold dead ashes in the compost bin!

Is this God having a laugh?

On the way home, reflective as I was, and thinking that I had had enough irony for one day, my eldest son enquired as to the goodness of my day and I recounted the tale of my managers invitation, adding that I did not know anyone who had actually burned a bible and maybe God was sitting there chuckling to himself...”ha ha thought you would get away with burning a bible did you, I'll fix that, I'll get you invited to a freaking massive prayer breakfast....you cant screw with me, I'm God!”

My son replied with ease in his voice, don’t worry about it, and told me that he and some of his mates from the college, presumably the ones that think the law, like the bible, should be viewed as a rough guide rather than....you know, actual law, and feeling a need to use the scriptures for something sacred had used pages from their pocket study bibles to roll extra long joints (just the right kind of paper he enthused) presumably, (and I'm using an opened mind here) in homage to Bob Marley.

Any particular book I asked inquisitively but not wanting to know, he replied that they had collectively smoked the book of Exodus! Mmmmmm, more than one way to use sacred text to reach a trance like state I suppose...that is a revelation.

Irony...is abounding around me.

19/7/2009

Well I went to the prayer breakfast exactly a month ago today. After a couple of years now of making a conscious effort to avoid matters Christian, not looking for a challenge, not wanting to think about Christ, salvation or a divine purpose to ones life, I found myself in the most obviously mainstream Christian environment, replete with a prayer room and banner waving warriors.

In the main hall was the Governor, the Premier, the opposition leader, members of most parties and a thousand professionals professing an affiliation, expressing a common ideal and sharing a common menu, in many ways it was familiar; I though….I know this language, this is familiar territory.

Before we were all seated, my manager, someone I have come to respect greatly (and growing friend) told me of some of his experiences in life that have strengthened his faith as we discussed where we are at spiritually at the moment.

He related to me that some years earlier he had suffered a massive heart attack and whilst in the hospital had died on the table of the emergency dept. While he was dead, he had risen out of his body and walked into a room, which was identical to a classroom at his old school, and seated at the desks were about thirty people whose faces he could see clearly but none of whom he knew. After a while of studying their expressions, he found himself rapidly drawn back to the emergency dept table as he was revived and bought abruptly back into this life.

Being bought back to life after such a long time dead, and having had an experience of something while away that he was willing to share, he found himself with a constant stream of doctors and nurses who wanted to hear his story

He told me that since that event in his life (or event in his death); every now and then, he meets the people he saw in the school room, and finds himself in a position to have a positive and sometimes profound effect on their lives, he uses it as a compass to assure himself that he is heading in the right direction, albeit after having made the decisions, sure in the knowledge that he has a path to walk.

A month after hearing this story I still find myself avoiding Christianity as if it were the swine flu, reinforcing the notion that life would be easier if I do not let God into my life, life seems easier and less complicated if do not think about it.

It’s the questions that will inevitably come that I am afraid of; If God is real, and he loves me, then presumably he wants something from me and I’m obligated to do something….and I’m not ready to be obligated yet, I want to be free. I have spent twenty years bound up in fear and uncertainty, twenty years obligated to a cause and people I now despise.

I am finding it very hard to unlearn some of teachings of the cult, I cannot understand the notion of knowing God and still being free to do what I want to do, how would that work? I think that if you are aware and accepting the authority of God then presumably you would be aiming to please him with your actions, living your life to honour him, how does the song go? “I am not my own, I have been bought with a price”, so then do you ignore him and do whatever you want to do, when you want to do it? Then turn to God in times of crisis….that just seems like fare weather faith, feel good Christianity…..I’m not interested in that after all we have been through.

Amid all this turmoil, something within me reluctantly senses that people who have spiritual fulfilment are fortunate and that I am missing something important. A tiny voice deep down somewhere secretly hopes that my face was on one of the people that my manager saw while he was dead.

The meditations of my heart.......

2009-02-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

1/12/08

I have started to spend time in meditation again after a twenty three year break. I wanted to start to invest some time in my own well being, spend some time looking after me. I have put everyone before me for what seems like for ever, now its time to reinforce myself and my perception of where I fit into our lives.

I particularly wanted to avoid anything with spiritual connotations; I just don’t feel like a spiritual person. I don’t want to have to wrestle with a sense of spirituality.

I don’t want to have to make decisions about the right way or the wrong way, I don’t want to be obligated to God, under pressure to perform or conform. Maybe one day I’ll feel different, I could imagine that some time in the future I will embrace spirituality again but at the moment I can’t even visualize how I would get to that place or what it would be like.

At the moment this is just about calming down, learning to relax again and trying to find a find a way through extreme anger.

I have found a method of meditation based on sound scientific principles with proven and quantifiable results rather than spiritual devotion or mysticism. It’s a principle of relaxation and meditation devoid of religion or faith and that appeals to me right now.

1/2/09

After two months I reckon I have made some good progress, I look forward to my times of meditation, despite the inevitable rise to the surface of all the buried and undealt with trauma, I have opened my heart to change and the benefits of personal development instead of resisting the challenge of dealing with the abuses of the past

I have been thinking a lot about faith and belief recently and how, if ever, I might find my way back to having a relationship with God, and if I even want to.

I didn’t actually start out thinking that I need to find my way back to God; It began with this growing feeling inside, becoming aware of a love within for the people around me, a sense of beauty in the love that our closest friends have for us, the kindness that many people have shown to us, the genuine compassion that some of our friends have displayed through their appreciation of our friendship with them, and also a kind of new love for creation, that kind a crept up on me, suddenly I am moved when I am not expecting it, I can go down to the beach and find myself breathless at the sheer beauty of the complexity of creation.

Fronting up and facing the buried hurt of the past and dealing with it makes you pretty sensitive, I find myself very moved when I see acts of charity, love, compassion, the kind that the world needs a lot more of, I find myself confronted or angered by conflict and violence, I become emotional in the presence of sincerity and honesty and truth, the success of the underdog in the face of oppression, the triumph of justice, the righting of past wrongs.

I think what’s happening is that I am becoming more aware of the facets of life that ultimately lead to an awareness of God.

And herein lies the big question….I ponder on who God might be and I find that I cannot comprehend the idea that the savior I thought I knew is the only way to God.

I find that I cannot comprehend the notion that Jesus is the only way to God, that everyone who does not turn to God via Jesus is damned to hell and eternal separation from God.

All the loving people, full of compassion and love and beauty and creativity…the very essence of God himself, all lost because of ignorance….I don’t see that at all.

Is that how a loving creator treats his beautiful and beloved people? Is that how an eternal and omnipotent deity sifts the gems of his creation…Is that what it’s really all about?

Fundamentalism aside, how can it be that only one religion has the answer and all the others are wrong?

I JUST CAN'T HELP BUT THINK THAT THE WHOLE NOTION OF THIS KIND OF FUNDEMENTALISM, THIS KIND OF EXCLUSIVITY, THAT JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY TO GOD, IS THE PRODUCT OF PROTECTIONISM AND CONTROL DOWN THROUGH THE GENERATIONS OF CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT, AND THE GROWTH OF THE INSTITUTIONAL FAITH MODELS WE HAVE TODAY. THE GROWTH OF REVENUE AND THE SPREAD OF CONTROL OVER THE FLOCK.

I’m leaning to the point where I can see that there are aspects of God in every religion, there are elements of commonality in all the major faith movements,

Compassion would be the first thing we could all agree on.

The notion that all the major faith models lead to the one same God (I’m going to go out on a limb here and exclude Tree Worship) is something I can palette at the moment, and having said that I would probably go for a predominantly Christian model, I just can’t condemn my Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic friends and I am not so arrogant to think that there is nothing I can learn from them.

Quite the opposite, I find that my life and the beginnings of my new spiritual outlook on this life are much richer for sharing with them.

Yeah big deal some may say, well this is coming from someone that has spent 20 years in a fundamentalist, right wing, Zionist cult.

Still working backwards - moving forwards

2008-12-27T19:26:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of months I have fallen behind in finishing posts and getting them up to the blog, so I’m going to be finishing some of them off and posting them where they belong chronologically, at the time where I started them.

Those of you subscribed to the RSS feed or using an aggregator like Google Reader will see a discrepancy between the ‘posted’ date of the respective posts and where they appear in the blog……now you know why.

While some of them may not be the most riveting reading, they are part of the journey and go towards painting the picture of life and recovery after cult membership.

They include:

Still climbing

The whole thing is the whole thing

Don't mess with the family

Freedom not revenge - pt 2

Til interference do us part

2008-12-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

Looking back on nearly twenty years of marriage we can both see now that from the day before our wedding onwards until the day we left the fellowship our marriage was subjected to a criminal degree of interference and manipulation by our [former] pastor and his family, not only on a spiritual level but also on an emotional & personal as well as financial level.
We have barely made a single major decision throughout those nineteen years without their approval, input, interjection or advice; and this has influenced every facet of our family life from; ‘the order of service’ at our wedding ceremony, when it was right for us to have children, when we were allowed to build a house of our own through to the micro management of our daily routine, length of the working day, hobby activities suitable for someone with our position in the fellowship and so on until the day we broke away from their gravitational pull and left the orbit around them that we had occupied for 19 years as a couple and later as a family.
The long and short of it is that now we are free of their meddling and intrusion it is like having to start all over to find each other again.
In the aftermath of coming out of the cult and while we try to rebuild our own sense of who we are, we are also trying to find each other and rebuild our marriage almost from the ground up. It seems like there is so much about each other to which we have become insensitive.
I have said before and I’ll say again…if one person in the family is suffering emotional disorder, that’s bad enough, but when most of the family are wandering in a traumatic wilderness looking for healing and understanding….that is a very big deal.

With so much of the spontaneity and originality washed out of our marriage as we strove for conformity and acceptance in the eyes of the cult leadership, we have gradually forgotten what it was that attracted us to each other, character traits that once seemed precious or dear have been gradually and totally eroded under the stress and tension of cult living.
As we both strive to rebuild our own sense of self identity, rediscover the music, literature, the films and pass times that remind us of who we once were and who we long again to be, it is vitally important that we rediscover what we originally loved about each other’s personality and foster those things that connected us in the first place. Otherwise we are in danger of rebuilding separate lives which have been pushed apart by the conditions of the last twenty years and have little in the way of commonality in tastes and aspirations to connect them in the present.
WE HAVE BOTH DONE WELL WITH OUR PSYCHOLOGISTS OVER THE LAST YEAR, BUT WE BOTH AGREE THAT IT’S TIME TO START SEEING A MARRIAGE COUNCELLOR SO THAT WE CAN WORK TOGETHER AT ERADICATING THE YEARS OF LEARNED PATTERNS WHICH FITTED PERFECTLY WITH BEING IN A CULT BUT WHICH NEED TO GO AS FAR AWAY AS POSSIBLE IF WE WANT A HEALTHY AND RESPECTFUL MARRIAGE.
Many would probably say that if we were committed to each other we could manage this on our own, that love would find a way, and of some this may be true, but amid everything else that we are dealing with at the moment we both feel that we need help.
Having made the initial enquiries and setting up the first appointment I think we are quietly hopeful that this will be another step forwards that shame has not been able to hinder, and that someone else’s experience and wisdom will help us move closer to healing and wholeness.

We don’t want it to be ‘til interference doth us part’

Temptations from santa

2008-11-25T19:47:00.000-08:00

I found this the other day, and coming out of a cult obsessed with following the perfect will of God and being aware of the paramount importance of knowing what God wants you to do at any given moment, it made me laugh until I nearly peed my pants.

Turning the corner

2008-11-15T21:51:00.000-08:00

This week it kinda feels like we have turned a corner, tricky to quantify, but it is starting to feel like we have started to take back control of our lives, sitting in the drivers seat again instead of being driven.

Perhaps if I explain what has changed you might be able to see where we are.

Coming out of the closet as it were and fronting up to my colleges at work that we had come out of a cult was a huge deal for me and their understanding and response was so reaffirming that it really did take a few weeks for me to realize how empowering it was. After that experience my wife was moved to do the same at her work place and again the response was very positive with others telling the most extraordinary stories of profound hurt and loss that put even our experience into perspective. Suddenly their comments that once seemed cliché or trite became the most powerful testimony of endurance and faith. How does the saying go…a problem shared is a problem halved? It is amazing what people bottle up inside, even people you think you have figured out.

Coming to terms with shame is the mountain that you eventually climb and only when looking back suddenly realize how high it actually is and how far you have come. I thought that shame and sorrow were the same or at least inextricably linked but I know now that it’s not so. You can still feel the injury of the past wrongs and mistakes without feeling the shame, it is liberating to release the dread of shame, almost as if the half of your being that was dealing with the shame has suddenly become free to deal with the rest of the pain. The isolation and insecurity of inferiority is replaced with the reassurance of acceptance and respect like a slow release vitamin pill that works 24hrs a day.

Preparation for the court case is going well and we both feel very positive about the actual process of going through with it. In a way it has been to our benefit that it has dragged on a bit because we both concede that neither of us would have been able to go through with this last year, it would have been way too much to cope with. Now however we both feel more able and willing.

Spending time at the Supreme Court has removed a large chunk of ‘unknown’ from my mind. I felt like we were on a hot and dusty road trip and everyone on our legal team knew the destination and exactly what it would be like when we got there and I was in the dark about even where we were heading. I sat in on a civil case and spoke to a couple of clerks and administrators afterwards and they were just great. They took the time to explain everything and made sure I understood, reassuring my troubled mind. I feel a lot less daunted, I’m totally up for it now…bring it on!

My wife has gone to visit her family for a month in the

. It was quite stressful getting her sorted out to go and actually on the plane, but now she’s there she sounds much much better, more relaxed, and more peaceful. She needed to prove to herself that she could just jump on a plane and completely get away from the circumstances that have been dogging her for nearly two years now. She knows this will not be a cure-all. She has not seen any of her family since we left the cult and there is a lot of crying and holding to catch up on. She still works in the town we lived in whilst in the cult and for her to return every working day is a constant reminder of the past, plus having cult members coming into her office, she never had the chance that I have had to start afresh with a new job and new surroundings.

To fly to the

for a month, taking our daughter and leaving me and the boys behind would have been out of the question whilst in the cult and for her to do it is like a raised index finger to the cult leadership. It’s quite an accomplishment for her and a great exercise in self esteem building; a welcome opportunity to break the routine.

Having time to think has helped me regain perspective on a number of issues and I realize that a great deal of the anger that brewed within me has faded away.

I find that our [former] pastor and his family are fading away into the distance of my memory and they do not trouble my thoughts anywhere near as much as they used to. This could be partly due to the fact that they are in significant financial trouble (I find that satisfying), could be due to the fact that we are starting to recover from the post traumatic stress disorder that we are both being treated for, could be because we have both been able to shake the burden of shame. Either way both my wife and I feel like the [former] pastor and his family are becoming objects of pity rather than anger and frustration, they have a sickness and a darkness about them which is so apparent. Seeing cult members or hearing about what they are doing radiates a sort of trapped desperation, a small world of limited possibilities, and there is nothing about it to be admired or recommended, it is pitiful.

I REALISED THIS WEEK THAT THE REPORT FROM YOUR PSYCHOLOGIST TO YOUR DOCTOR IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS A NEWSPAPER REVIEW OF YOUR LATEST CD OR NOVEL. IT IS BETTER FOR YOU IF YOU DO NOT READ THEM.

I read mine the other day and for a while I was quite shocked to realize what a state I was in when I started treatment, some of the symptoms I presented I had not even heard of, but then I turned it around and congratulated myself on all the things I have overcome and how far I have come in the last year.

I feel pretty good about how far we have come as a family and where we are now.

Freedom comes on many different levels and on increasingly more levels we are becoming free….at last.

Still climbing

2008-11-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

Our [former] pastor taught that group members should only take out insurance policies that are required by law i.e. car insurance, house insurance required by mortgage lenders and so on. He taught that it is better to place your trust in God than any government or institutional scheme that covers you for accidents or unforeseen circumstances. A life lived in the kingdom of God and centered in his perfect will would be devoid of serious accidents or unforeseen problems. Yes looking back it is hard to believe that we and other sensible adults believed it but hey there you go…it’s all part of cult living…believing in bullshit with all your heart.

Seems like however far away from our [former] pastor and his teaching we move there are still reminders popping up to show us from where we have come.

We have gone twenty years without private health cover and now that we need it we are paying heavily for the years we were uninsured. I have been chastened and humiliated recently for supposedly trying to milk the government system until I needed better cover, then finally jumping for private cover. Applying for quotes has raised a few eyebrows and I’m at the point now where when I’m asked why we have not bothered to get insurance up until now I just come straight out with it and say that ‘We were in an extreme religious group that did not allow private health cover’. I figure if I have already raised someone’s eyebrows then I might as well see if they will go any higher! They usually can go an extra few millimeters. It’s quite entertaining sometimes.

On a more serious note it is really annoying to be pushed into this corner and we are going to pay very heavily if we need to make a claim.

We have got superannuation funds with nothing in them because our [former] pastor taught that God would make a way in his perfect will for our lives and that we should trust him to plan for our future and use everything that we have at our disposal (including loans) to build his kingdom here on earth now. In reality it was the kingdom of our [former] pastor that was being built and God had nothing to do with it.

Income protection insurance will be the next one to tackle, and to those of you who think that exercising faith would be the better option, all I can say is, that was exactly what got us into this mess and I’m not going to try and balance faith with practicality or sensible responsibility any more. Besides faith in what?

Faith that God will help us dodge the system by keeping us fit and healthy…..I don’t think so. I’m already suffering the effects of years of being physically over worked, fatigue from prolonged periods of stress and the effects of bad diet as a result of poor cash flow.

Evidently faith has not helped so far so why should it suddenly kick in now?

Why should faith be a better or more Christian alternative to being responsible or wise? Wouldn’t a more faithful approach be to invest in private health cover, income protection, life insurance (for the benefit of your dependants) and alike and then trust God that you will be able to afford them.

Look…the faith side of the question is immaterial for me at the moment because I have become a faith free zone and the last thing I want to think about is my degree of trust in a greater being or creator…..maybe some other time, I still have a long way to climb before I get out of this big hole I fell into.

A point of interest

2008-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

I sent this thought to our [former] pastor’s office last night, should give him something to think about and no doubt open the bible at random a few times so that God can tell him what a naughty boy I am!

10/11/08

[former] pastor,

As you may (or may not) be aware over the past eighteen months or so MDV & VDV have attempted to broker various deals whereby they would purchase our one third of ‘Address withheld’ and DC’s one third of the same property.

Looks as if that has all fallen by the way side

To date and despite ample opportunity, they have refused to address VDV’s complicity in the fraud that you committed whereby our money was transferred under your instruction into his property in Colorado to settle your debt with him, and all without our knowledge or permission.

MDV and VDV’s refusal to address the issue has thrown up an interesting legal dilemma whereby our insistence on retaining in full all of our rights to pursue the matter has hindered the DV’s from finding a workable solution.

As a result of the protracted delays we have commenced proceedings to gain a Supreme Court injunction in leiu of partition whereby the courts will order the liquidation of the property and dispersion of funds by an injunction.

The point of interest to you is that we have all of the evidence we need to prove the course of our money under your instruction, and your involvement in the arrangement, and given VDV’s complicity, we are about to place ‘The Fellowship’ and you and your interesting and unorthodox business practices at the front and center of a court action in the Supreme Court of Western Australia.

You may want to have a long and hard think about that, and the impact this is going to have on your family here.

And then reflect on the fact that I gave you many chances to conduct yourself in an honest and honorable way.

The rest I am sure we can leave to your vivid imagination. I doubt that even VDV & MDV are stupid enough to lie under oath.

Insufficient maintenance

2008-10-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

This is about Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance….except that it’s really about the lack of maintenance…..and the motorcycle is really my head……and I couldn’t muster any Zen.…at all…..no Zen!

Until about two weeks ago I thought I was doing quite well and had everything under control, all the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit quite neatly into my pretty little head suspended in a warm brew of adrenalin, of course at that stage I hadn’t quite noticed that I had become a real bastard to live with and my family was getting a bit peed off with me.

I mean isn’t it normal to feel just a bit distracted with post traumatic stress disorder, your marital harmony being sucked into a super massive black hole, a pending Supreme Court action, mountainous debt, ongoing crappy emails from spiritual nutters, telling your work mates you spent twenty years in a cult and wrapping up $19M worth of contracts and tenders for a world’s first tech project……isn’t that what everyone deals with…huh?….Seems normal to me!

Well as I said everything seemed to be going alright (sort of) until our projects team at work wrapped up the contracts and tenders and I breathed a massive sigh of relief, it’s just that my taking the pressure down a notch didn’t actually stop where I expected and I found myself deflating uncontrollably until I was completely two dimensional (read flat), the wheels fell of my wagon and I was crying all the way up the freeway on the way to work (crying behind Rayban sunnies not recommended when driving into the sun).

An explanation to my extremely understanding but until then unsuspecting manager produced a completely unexpected but very welcome week off work and it was back down the freeway in tears (note to self: do not listen to Mariah Carey when feeling vulnerable) [note: most would say “do not listen to Mariah Carey full stop”!]) (note from self: yes but I only have 1CD and I only play two tracks) ( note: yes that’s what they all say!) - to begin the rounds of shrink, doctor, lawyer and accountant while I try and figure out what I actually think about a lot of things, where we are now, where we are heading to and how to avoid putting former cult leadership into intensive care.

I can make light of it now because after a few days of enforced rest it feels a little less claustrophobic and right at this moment I am making a concerted effort not to try and deal with some things, and then to only deal with one thing at a time, but the reality is that I was so worried about my wife having a break down that I may have overtaken her on the road to nervous exhaustion.

The anger and adrenalin that has fueled me since we left the cult is finally running out. The sheer volume of pain and hurt that we have endured as a family over the last year and a half has at last snapped something inside, the ember at the center of my soul is fading and it is bewildering, I just don’t know how I feel right now, but I do know now what it means to cry from a broken heart.

My doctor as part of the psych test asked if I had a substance abuse problem, I answered that given time and the correct chemicals I would be willing to develop one…the pain has driven me to my weapon of last resort….humor, which in the circumstances could be quite beneficial for certain people I would like to see feeding through a tube.

I have resolved to gradually work my way through the things causing me the most anxiety and later this week I will spend a day in the Supreme Court to see how they conduct proceedings, what the place looks like on the inside, what it sounds and feels like.

Mindfulness is apparently what it’s all about.

I am pretty bad at relaxing; you could even go as far as saying those twenty years in a cult has caused me to completely forget how to relax. In the first stages of cognitive change therapy I tried to get back to basics and spend time doing nothing – just relaxing, telling myself it was ok, there is nothing wrong with nothingness I would repeat as part of my mind would beat the other half into a corner, but it made me feel uncomfortable to the point where I gradually slipped back to my old ways of filling the time with what I felt was more important.

I have always had huge lists in my head of stuff I want to do and things I want to read, all prioritized and scheduled to fit with various opportunities; I just preferred the feeling of doing something rather than the discomfort of doing nothing.

Before I got into Christianity (and then a hyper authoritarian cult being the lead balloon of faith and nothing like Christianity) I flirted with Buddhism and learned how to meditate; when I eventually opted for a more mainstream approach to faith I simply transferred what I had learned into that arena and changed my focus. To be honest I just found Buddhism irritatingly non specific.

I am now making more time to sit quietly and just think about stuff. Our society places a high value on achievement and doing things and it seems to me that I have been so busy being busy that I haven’t left any time for contemplation and reflection. We need to place more value on stillness and allowing ourselves to rest our minds instead of equating it with laziness or slackness.

I’m going to have another bash at meditation and give my troubled mind a rest.

The last thing I need in my life at the moment is the ambiguity and uncertainty of mysticism; I need tangible outcomes based on an element of certainty, supported by a healthy dash of scientific research; and requiring a complete absence of faith.

I don’t need a guru by which to measure myself or a deity to worship, I definitely don’t need a spiritual teacher to help me discern the difference between good and evil, eternal salvation or damnation, I do not want to connect to the cosmos, be at one with the universe or traverse the width and breadth of inner space.

Someone told me once that ‘Metropolis’ is where the works of man prevail and ‘Wilderness’ is where the works of God prevail (not sure what that means for Suburbia, maybe spewed out for being luke-warm!) anyway I find myself in a bit of a wilderness at the moment, and lets face it the wilderness is not what it used to be.

“Whether it’s Christ wandering the desert for forty days of soul searching and temptation or Mad Max aiding a group of settlers under a post-Apocalyptic siege, time spent in the wilderness has always occupied a special place in the human narrative, representing an opportunity for transformation and spiritual renewal” Christine Jackson

So back to mindfulness, a concerted focus on the ‘here and now’, not preoccupied with the past or worrying about the future, can’t change either by worrying.

I’m here with my cuppa and we are free of scrutiny and micro management,

I can hear the fridge and the kitchen clock and we are free to think for ourselves.

We have control over our lives, we can steer our own course, and we are free to choose.

I can hear the roof creaking in the morning sun and a distant train and we are completely free to be who we want.

They don’t know where we live, we don’t see them every day, and we are not beholden to justify our actions or report on our financial standing.

I can feel the air fill my lungs, I am healthy and I am strong and no one is forcing a spiritual agenda down my throat.

We are free, we are recovering, and we are taking back control of our lives.

It true to say that “what you focus on grows” and perhaps a concerted effort to emphasize the present in the light of our past and constantly recognize our state of (albeit day to day) freedom in the light of bondage past will accelerate our recovery and appreciation of where we are.

Those who have known imprisonment have a deeper understanding of the true value of freedom and they recognize the brilliant facets which elude those who have always known freedom.

It is a real pain in the arse that we still have to fight our way to freedom with our property and actually take cult and ex-cult members to the Supreme Court. I have not read on any of the blogs or websites that we have looked at over the last two years, of people who leave a cult and then still engage with them two years down the track. I am sure that it would be easier if we didn’t have this thorn in our sides that aches and bleeds on a regular basis, my hope lies in the legal process that we will eventually get the freedom we seek and begin the steady, progressive and uninterrupted road to full and final recovery.

Down the drain

2008-10-05T06:10:00.000-07:00

This week we heard that the company owned by our [former] pastor’s son and which he used as the business ‘front end’ for cult activity here in Australia, Europe and America has gone into receivership with debts in excess of $3million.

It seems that the [former] pastor has abandoned his family and assets here, preferring to stay in Germany with his new wife and those loyal to him and his teachings whilst everything here goes down the drain.

The family’s 43 acre farm and the engineering company are up for sale and he has left his sons here to fend for them selves.

We have often wondered if their works would ever catch up with them and over the last 18 months we have tried to prepare ourselves for the time when we would have to face the reality that they may find a way to hold onto significant wealth whilst we as many before us struggle for years to make up for lost ground.

Looks like we won’t have to worry about that any more.

Coming out & coming down

2008-10-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

I was going to call this post ‘Shame and how to overcome it’ but as I try to figure out the implications of what I have done it’s kind of taking on different meanings.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a leadership development course run for my employer by a consultancy specialising in culture change within corporate entities.

On the first day as we all got to know each other better the facilitator spent about 45 minutes relating his ‘life so far’ story in a sort of trust building exercise. He told of his ups and downs in life as he trained for the Olympic time trials as a national champion swimmer, how he overcame serious illness, disappointment and failure, how he navigated the depths of despair and loneliness, and the beneficial effects of strong leadership around him on his journey spanning thirty years. It was an inspiring tale of mistakes and successes and I have to say that his story struck more than a few chords with me, there were many points where I could identify with our trials in life as we continue to struggle with the effects of post traumatic stress disorder and the ongoing (seemingly endless) legal battle with the various cult and non-cult parties. In his story I found myself thinking...yes that is what I would want for my family or I hope I could do that for my kids and occasionally…mmmm that is where I have stuffed up.

At the end of his story we were asked to talk for a few minutes on our background and what we were hoping to get out of the course, I listened to other people talk about their position in the company, responsibilities and aspirations in leadership, what they wished for their staff and how they hoped to encourage, motivate and lead them into a more productive and fulfilling career.

After a pause I stepped in and started to talk about my hopes for the course and related how I felt privileged to be on a course where I could learn about positive and empowering leadership skills, because before joining this company I had experienced the very worst that leadership can possibly be…….and went on to explain that for over twenty years my family and I had been trapped in an abusive hyper-authoritarian cult. That we had lost a great deal of money and could possibly loose our home, that we were preparing to go to the Supreme Court and that we were both seeing shrinks. No one in the room had the slightest idea that this was the case. I went on to detail the environment we had endured and how in comparison working in a company where I am appreciated and valued seemed like moving from dark to light. I voiced my gratitude for the respect that all in the room have shown to me over the last 18 months and how for me this employer and this workplace seemed like Nirvana; and that in the interest of team building I wanted to share my story.

When I stopped speaking you could have heard a pin drop and for a fraction of a second I thought...shit maybe I have gone too far.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. For a long time I was concerned that if anyone at work found out that my wife and I had spent twenty years in a cult they would think less of me…irrational I know but never the less it existed as a real concern in my head. I knew my work was valued and I was getting on well with all my peers and I guess I have just reached the point where I liked them enough and trusted them enough to tell them what were dealing with

On that day, with that combination of people (all of whom I have the greatest respect for) in that room at that time I just reached the point where I thought that there was never going to be a chance as good or as easy as this to tell where we have come from and how much I am enjoying their company.

The response was overwhelming, I completely misjudged the outcome…I’m not sure I really knew how it would turn out but I think I had erred on the side of caution big time…and I am delighted to be proved completely wrong, I found out why I like these people so much. ... when you actually reach out and talk to people loads of them are dealing with crap, whether its failed businesses, loosing huge amounts through bad investments, failed marriages, abusive relationships, sickness you name it there is always someone struggling with seemingly insurmountable odds.

I said at the beginning of this post that I’m still trying to figure out the implications of what I have done….that’s true.

My wife and kids all said that I came back from the course noticeably different, more as ease, relaxed, less agitated and I do feel different. I waited a week or so to see if it would wear off or fizzle out but it hasn’t, life really does feel different and I have been trying to figure out why.

(Apart from the first night home when I laid in bed thinking ‘Oh God what have I done, oh my God what have I done!’)

It’s strange because many people said that they admired me for being brave enough to come out and say something like that, yet bravery was the last thing on my mind, (is it still bravery when you trust the people you’re talking to?) I was just worried they would think I was a massive idiot….and there in lies what I think has changed.

Shame has been the biggest hurdle I have had to face since we left the cult. I have found it very very hard to come to terms with the often overwhelming shame that I have felt deep within as I look back at where we spent the last twenty years of our lives.

I have felt a huge sense of responsibility for all that I have dragged my family through and whenever I was confronted with the results of the trauma, the demands of my wife or kids, hardship, frustration I felt horribly guilty and would jump to a defensive position, fighting back, driven by shame.

Now that I have faced the uncertainty of speaking out about the past to a group of people whose opinion and friendship I value, and it has been received in a positive light I feel strangely reassured. My worst fear was not realised and shame has somehow lost its grip.

My shrink says it is a ‘watershed moment’ in my recovery and I guess I’m gradually realising what that means.

Twenty years in that kind of environment seriously dents your self esteem, and trying to rebuild it when everyone close to you is going through a similar crisis is less than easy. This seems to have had a profound effect on how I feel about myself, as I sit here I do feel more assured, a greater sense of empowerment, quietly confident about the future, certainly not ashamed for the past mistakes and not ashamed to tell the story.

So there you have it ‘Shame & how I stumbled on how to overcome it’ its about coming out of the closet and coming down to earth.

Freedom not revenge - part 2

2008-09-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

25/9/08

Below is an email from H the Spiritual patriarch and driving force behind the ex-cult members, to us regarding our enquiry to establish who is paying into our mortgage account

His words in red, my comments in black:

when I received your last email, forwarded to me from MC, I had the impression that you were somehow upset.
When I think back how long we know each other and how many things we have done together, the situation we are in now becomes even more strange to me.
We all have experienced many wrongs in the past, but we had also a lot of good experiences, we should not forget.
When people are coming out of any organisation, church or group or whatever, they are very often treated badly or are persecuted somehow. If we would not have experienced things like that, we would have never come out of it. But we did. And that shows me, that God has something new for us.

I can tell you that I am experiencing a lot of new things which I have never known before. It was worth all the hassels, just to receive the new things God has prepared.

That is the most ridiculous premise I have ever heard. You expect me to believe that you think it was worthwhile putting your wife through a nervous breakdown, have your family spiritually abused over eighteen years, loose a huge amount of money and then leave the cult with you daughter and son in law still stuck in the cult just so you could experience new heights in the Lord. You must be insane not to mention totally self absorbed.

It begs the question that if you have received new revelations in the Lord and you are bathed in all the new things that God has prepared for you, why are you treating us like this?

Promoting your own spiritual authority and depth of experience does nothing to impress me; it is the actions of righteousness that we want to see.

From my point of view nothing justifies twenty years in an abusive and controlling cult. I do not need to experience the depths of pain and despair and loose twenty years of my life to appreciate the wonder of God. I do not need to see the wrenching pain and fear in my wifes eyes in order to have a full understanding of the peace of God, I do not need to experience the discovery of the physical abuse of my kids by my pastor in order to love them more.

The important thing is, I think, try to leave the past in the past, forgive as we are forgiven and do it better.

Yes wouldn’t that be convenient if you could forget about how you have treated us and never have to apologies for the pain and bewilderment you have caused everyone

No situation can be changed if at least one part acts differently. God our Father has shown his love through sacrificing his Son on the cross. He made it very clear through Jesus that he is our heavenly Father and we are his Sons and Daughters, his children.
Let us try to act as Sons, not as little children.

So you still cling to the teachings of the cult do you? you still want to hold on to the authority you had in the cult and now you want to try to use that over us on the outside of the cult. I will never allow you to rule over my family like that....never.

God with us and in us, and it should be possible to create a change in the whole situation. Not in revenching or something like that, that is Gods job, but in acting differently in a way as nobody would expect it. I don’t know now, how in detail but I think and believe God will give wisdom for that. Let,s try to do it different.

What you want is for us to stop our legal action so that you can take up the position of mediator between all the different parties and maintain control over the situation as spiritual and familial broker while we all get smothered by over bearing paternalism. So far in this affair you have acted in an entirely predictable manner and based on my experience indealing with you over the last twenty years I see absolutely no change in your approach to us or the situation, I see no change in you.

Take these words as out of my heart; leave my poor English aside and try to recognize my intention in that matter.

Looking at you actions to date and knowing your past record I can see your intentions quite clearly

If we do it Gods way, he will give wisdom and will strengthen us and it will make a difference.

Yes hallelujah lets do it your way, lets all sit down and open the Bible at random…God will give us a word and you can interpret it for us all….I don’t think so!

Let’s have a start in us in our hearts. Christ is living in us. We have got everything we need.
Be encouraged and let us act in his way.
God bless you
H

I simply do not trust you to do anything other than what is in your best interest, it has been like that since the day I first met you., and I have seen nothing to date to make me think otherwise,

Don't mess with the family

2008-09-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

29/8/08

Today I got a call from the mortgage lender for our part of the farm. It seems that our mortgage will fall into arrears next month if we fail to make a monthly payment, not surprising really!

Since February 2007 when the joint owners (cult members and their relatives) of our property refused to allow us to redraw on the equity we had in our property and started screwing us around with the purchase of our share; we have been unable to pay the regular monthly mortgage payments, forced instead to tackle the huge tax debts and personal debt that we were left with when we pulled out of the cult.

By holding back on the monthly mortgage installments we were effectively redrawing our equity bit by bit as the level of mortgage debt gradually started to work its way back up to the original agreed loan. (Agreed between all three parties on the titles).

Because all of the debt on the property held by the cult members and ourselves exists as a common mortgage (the ex-cult members being debt free) and all three parties act as guarantors for the common debt, every time we failed to make a payment the other parties received a letter from the bank to notify them that we had missed an installment, in this way we hoped to keep their attention focused on finding a solution to the continual posturing and blocking tactics they have both employed.

When our mortgage reaches the original level of debt next month and then falls into arrears, they will be called upon by the bank to act as guarantors and start to cover our repayments which will be extremely difficult for them to do.

If they fail to make their own payments as well as ours, the bank will foreclose on the entire loan and start recovery proceedings, and we will all end up in court.

26/9/08

This week we discovered that the loan has indeed fallen into arrears and someone has been making payments into our mortgage to keep the bank from commencing with a default proceeding which they began without informing us.

This is a string of emails between us and the ex-cult members:

I have been in contact with our bank regarding the status of the two loans on the property and have found that someone has been making deposits into our mortgage account such that it is now up to date.

Can you please confirm if this has been organized by either you & D or H or anyone else acting in co-operation with him, or if it has been done by MDV or VDV?

We would appreciate knowing who is making these payments.

M’s reply

It has been a while since we’ve spoken, I hope you are all well.

The payments have been made by H and the rest of the family corporately. We prayed long and hard about the situation and came to the decision that to send the property to auction now would be a mistake. With the property market and the fact that it would be a foreclosure the bank would settle for a fraction of the value at auction and all of us would lose out significantly. I can understand you position entirely and know that you wish to free up your equity as soon as humanly possible, but I know that you understand having the loan foreclosed and the property auctioned is a gigantic mistake on all our behalf. We as a family believe, make that SINCERELY believe, that a positive solution which benefits all IS still possible. I know that after everything that has gone on in the past this may seem like a distant dream to you, but as it say’s in Hebrews somewhere faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen, and this matter is VERY not seen. We have committed (hopefully with your blessing) to making the repayments until a time where a positive solution can be reached. Be that our purchase of your portion, which is still a very real possibility (finance is being investigated currently), or a joint amicable sale for a reasonable price (upon conversations with MDV, also a very real possibility).

I write this in an effort to give you hope that the end is in sight. We hope that you will feel uplifted and not that we are trying to excerpt some kind of control over your actions or plans. This is merely what we believe to be the best current option.

As the new year dawns may you be flooded with fresh joy and hope, a solution is in sight, one that will allow us to all move on and hopefully begin to rebuild relationships that have been damaged by all of this.

Kindest Regards to you and your family

MC & DC.

My thoughts:

Seems to me that your family has become the next replacement for the [former] pastor’s family, myopically focused on their own sense of righteousness and forcing their version of the truth and what’s best onto others with no regard for the abuse they foster. H has become so obsessed with his version of the truth that he can lo longer see who is getting hurt by his exertion of control.

He is starting to display the key signs of a cult leader in the making.

We all suffered enough under a family that was completely obsessed with its own righteousness and was prepared to enforce its vision for the future and its own version of the truth onto everyone regardless of who they abused in the process.

It’s starting to look as if your family as a whole is willing to take up that role now that we are out of the grip of the [former] pastor.

‘H’ is so adverse to accountability and desperately maneuvers to keep the matter in the hands of the family and out of the hands of the unbelievers (as he refers to lawyers). ‘H’ remains unaccountable by keeping the whole situation out of the courts.

Do you suppose that your prayers are ‘perfect’ and the answer you get from God is the perfect will of God in this matter, no doubt ‘H’ opened the bible at random to seek Gods will in the matter and you all yield to his interpretation of the truth.

When will this end? When Guru ‘H’ finally gets what he wants, and until then you all yield to his vision because it is too hard to stand up to him

One of the main reasons we stayed with the fellowship for so long was because we were afraid of loosing all of the money we had invested into fellowship projects as well as our property. Now we realize that freedom is more important than money;

That fear still exists in your family and that it is the main reason why you cling to the property.

Your expression that it would be a huge mistake to sell the property now demonstrates that you measure the value of the outcome only in financial terms with secondary concern for the welfare of those outside your family.

It would not be a mistake to sell the property and dissolve the current relationship because everyone would then be free to move on and build their own lives in liberty.

You invest your faith into an outcome measured by financial gain and measure Gods blessing in those terms (prosperity teaching), we seek freedom for all the parties to live without the burden of being joined at the hip to others with a diametrically opposed theology.

If you are concerned that your actions as a family could be construed as maintaining control then view these actions in the light of not being able to access our equity for my mothers surgery and then her suffering a massive heart attack or MDV not being able to do what was best for his family and feeling so threatened by you and your interference that he moves off of the property.

Maybe you should all be praying about your motives and how they translate into actions, if you feel there is a discrepancy between your intention and everyone else’s perceptions then do something about it.

You deny freedom of choice, stifle the right to self determination and stem accountability to preserve your family vision because you have no faith or vision for the future beyond holding on to the ‘holy place’ as you see it.

If you push me into a position where I am forced to fight for my family’s freedom then I will do so with every legal instrument available to me regardless of H’s scriptural interpretation of lawyers.

Your aim is to stifle progress until you are satisfied with the financial outcome; our aim is progress towards freedom

Resisting change and working to maintain control over the status quo is not an exercise in faith and displays no vision for the future.

If you had faith you would be willing to turn the matter over to the courts and trust God for a fair and equitable outcome.

Freedom not revenge

2008-09-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Ok here we go with the next letter form H. After failing to receive a reply from me for the last ditty I think they are assuming that we are on the war path driven by vengeance and a thirst for blood. Nothing could be further from the truth, it’s all about freedom which does not seem to register with them. H is still pushing the spiritual unity aspect via which he can intimidate us, I have known these people for over twenty years and I know exactly where they are coming from “We are all one in Christ therefore I can impart to you my vast spiritual understanding and enlighten you in the area of your errors, you need to stop and come under my guidance and the covering of Christ so that we can seek his will together” and that just triggers me like you can’t imagine, this is exactly what we want to get away from, this is exactly the claustrophobic embrace that makes us cringe with revulsion.

Recently, when I prayed for You, the following words became very strong in my heart.

We should forgive each other as we are forgiven from OUR heavenly Father through OUR Lord Jesus Christ.

I ask You, forgive me wherever you think I have done wrong to You. If there is something to deal with specially, let me know and talk about it.

I have forgiven You.

God Bless You

Again this letter went straight to our lawyer and I will not reply

My thoughts:

When I read your email the following words became very strong in my heart…@%&$ off!

I don’t know what it is about Christians that makes them think that they are the sole authority on forgiveness. Is it because Christ set the ultimate benchmark that they believe that all knowledge and wisdom pertaining to forgiveness rests firmly with them, and therefore they have the right to dictate to everyone else why, how and when they should forgive? And the consequences should they fail to forgive.

I really don’t see where you have the right to dictate to us about forgiveness. The whole reason we got into this position is because we have forgiven too many people for too many things that should not have been brushed over and excused.

I needed your help to pay for my mother’s surgery, you refused to allow me access to my equity in my property and you left me high and dry when we had little room for manoeuvre or time to act. She suffered a huge heart attack and underwent emergency surgery and I do not forgive you for that.

From now on I will decide if and when I am going to forgive someone and if the very next day I decide I don’t want to forgive them then I will take the forgiveness back. It will be my decision why, who and when I am going to forgive and for what reasons, and I don’t need to be pushed or bullied by you.

Somehow your preaching does not match up to your actions. You preach forgiveness whilst maintaining control, yet neglect freedom and liberty. You preach holiness and unity in the spirit and yet crave prosperity and financial gain.

I do not subscribe to you brand of theology or the way you push your black and white way of interpreting the scriptures onto others.

And another thing, I would really like to know what you needed to forgive us for.

The whole thing is the whole thing

2008-08-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

I have written previously about the health impacts of being in a cult.

A strange thing happened to me this week while I was having a back massage from our workplace occupational therapist. Before he got started I commented that I had had a lot of trouble with my lower back in the past and that I had recently tweaked it again and please stay away from that area.

He asked politely if I had recently experienced a change in financial position and could it possibly be impacting on my feelings of self worth and my ability to support my family.

I was staggered, I mean that is just so spot on that my head was spinning…how could he possibly have known that ….no one at work knows what’s going on and how could he so accurately predict the cause…and even more surprising how could that possibly be linked to lower back pain?

After giving him a very brief insight into our financial position he went on to tell me about a modern study carried out by Ryke Hamer in which a series of exhaustive studies of a multitude of people over a long period of time by a combination of physicians and psychologists had established patterns of illness linked to distinct changes in life balance and circumstances.

The author had apparently been diagnosed with testicular cancer a year or so after his son had been killed violently; he speculated that the emotional trauma he had endured by the incident, their loss and ongoing court battles had affected his health and he went on to orchestrate a huge study involving many professionals and hundreds of subjects over an extended period.

The long and short of the story is that they established links and mapped the impact of various types of trauma on the health of the victim or those close to them. I was gob smacked and proceeded to ask him what he thought about my wife who has experienced prolonged trouble with her shoulders and the problem is progressing into her neck.

Knowing nothing of our circumstances he said that arms and shoulders relate to relationships and that it is likely she is experiencing distress in relationships that are important to her and given that it is manifesting itself as an increasing neck problem it is likely that it is starting to trouble her deeply in her heart.

Well let me tell you...Flabbergasted is not the word…I was floored….how could this possibly be so true?

I speculated that modern medicine is finally proving in its own methodical way what some cultures have known for thousands of years; that the mind the body and the spirit are inextricably linked and the whole thing really is the whole thing.

Here are the web links that he gave me.

Look I don’t know much about this sort of thing and I don’t have the time to go looking for it but it made me stop and think.

I’m not advocating anything from these people or their methods but here is some easy to find stuff.

The New medicine – Ryke Hamer http://www.newmedicine.ca/

The Biology of belief – Bruce Lipton http://www.brucelipton.com/

Bowen Therapy

Into the hands of the unbeleivers

2008-08-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Below is a letter we have just received from the father and controlling influence of the ex-cult party who own one third of the farm that we co-own with the cult members. This is after a visit I made to our property to check everything is ok. Our house has been broken into and one of the shower screens in the main bathroom has been smashed up. The lawns have been completely wrecked by a pair of horses from the ex-cult party who have allowed them to roam freely over our property and defecate profusely over the brick paving and verandah area…how lovely!

After your last short visit at the Farm I have thought for quite a while about what you have said. Especially about your intention to bring the situation before the Supreme Court.

We should take a solicitor as you guys have done so already. In that way we would do exactly what God tells us not to do.

You know 1 Cor 6 specifically 6/6. One brother seeks his right against his brother and that before unbelievers.
How should or could God bless a step like that when we would knowingly go against his word and will. Wouldn't we step out of Gods protection, giving us into the hands of Unbelievers, with all consequences?
I can’t imagine that this is the way. Please think about it, there are for sure solutions which are right in acc. to God and his word. Isn’t that what we really want to do?
His will should be done.
I hope I get an answer this time. Don’t take my words other than to think about and think about again.
God bless you
H

I just gave this letter straight to our lawyer. I will not reply.

My thoughts:

I just don’t know how we can reach agreement with this kind of attitude.

I know now why they have steadfastly refused to engage legal representation. I have speculated for a while that they were trying to obstruct proceedings by making it difficult to keep them informed of progress in a legally correct manner via which they could consider their own position with the aid of proper and considered advice.

This is also why they continue to refuse our requests to conduct all correspondence through our lawyer and continue to sent email after email and call us on the phone.

Looks like their stance is borne out of a misguided fear of God and the legal system and a move to keep the whole process out of the eyes of the courts thus avoiding accountability for their past behavior.

This is precisely why we have handed the whole matter over to our legal team who will now drive progress. We will follow their advice to the letter. We just can’t make any more decisions in the face of this kind of belief system, we have just had enough, its too stressful having to make decision after decision, there is to much emotion tied up in the proceedings. We need a clean, impartial, legally sound solution.

‘H’ repeatedly refers to me as his brother in the Lord so that he can excerpt his self assumed spiritual authority over me as it was when we were all in the cult. Hurling scripture after scripture and never missing an opportunity to serve correction where he sees fit, I have repeatedly stated that he is not my brother in the Lord but he just keeps on as if I am misguided.

The line “giving us into the hands of Unbelievers, with all consequences?” refers to falling out of the ‘Perfect will of God’ and suffering Gods wrath, a cornerstone teaching in the cult which it looks as if H still holds on to, despite getting the bulk of his family out of the cult years ago.

At this stage in the legal process his emails can only help our case.

Re-assessing the past

2008-08-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Recovery brings a lot of re-examination of the past, reassessment of events in a new light.

My wife and I were talking recently and we were both struggling to remember good times whilst with the fellowship, but of course there must have been good times otherwise we would not have been enticed to put up with the ongoing crap, maybe they were happy times that were just good enough to help us excuse the ongoing abuse, the point is that now that we have embraced a new set of values since leaving the fellowship, everything looks different.

A lot of what we did, places we went to, people we worked with, situations we endured was because of the theology and principles we have since utterly rejected.

It feels as if we were cheated; the memory of times which seemed fulfilling now seem tainted by the knowledge that what seemed meaningful at the time, was to all intents and purposes quite pointless.

It is very painful go through boxes of photos or looking at memorabilia from the last twenty years only to find that the good memories they once evoked are now feelings of anger, disappointment and loss.

I can look back at projects which were once a source of pride in what we achieved together and now I wonder about why we did it…the goals now seem worthless, the achievements seem hollow and the time seems wasted.

So now it feels like we are de-constructing the last twenty years in that fellowship, looking for some meaning and achievement…what did we do in the last twenty years that we could talk about without feeling shame.

I know I’m personally finding it hard to find anything in our efforts as a fellowship that I value or would readily use as a testimony of how God really blessed us; it just seems like all that we achieved as a group was just through sheer brute force, by throwing huge amounts of man-hours and money at the situation.

Whilst gazing back in bewilderment at our time in that group, four things stand out like shining lights to point the way and provide beacons of hope in an uncertain future.

The first is our marriage which I have always thought was the best thing that happened to me. The second, third and fourth things were the arrival of our kids, they are like lights of hope to me, they point to the future and all the opportunity it holds for great things, despite all we have been through they are a testament to resilience and energy.

Our kids seem like three constant values in a sea of variability; to me they are like the three lanes of a highway moving side by side in the same direction towards the future, despite all that they have been subjected too their future looks clear and free with all of the opportunity that life offers just there for the taking.

They are the three jewels that link our past to our future and as we gradually shed the baggage of the last twenty years they remain the treasure that we will hold precious and carry forwards with us.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I decided to start seeing a psychiatrist again in an attempt to try deal with what seemed like a growing mountain of stuff I just couldn’t deal with on my own; I just reached the point where I couldn’t go any further without help and advice, the effects of the past becomes overwhelming after a while, too much to deal with at once and it seems like you just cant take a step forward. My wife was doing well with her shrink so I thought it would be prudent to take the plunge and enrol in a mental health program.

I had a good idea that if I committed to a program of cognitive rehabilitation it would be painful before it got better and to a degree I was right, I have to say that after six weeks I feel a lot better equipped to stick with this long term, but I am fully aware that I cant just drop twenty years of programming overnight.

It is at its least very irritating to keep finding yourself saying the same stupid things in your head and at the very worst a difficult struggle with subtle and insidious brain washing.

I am under no illusions, this journey will be painful and bewildering and embarrassing and will highlight shortcomings in my own way of doing things, but it is the only way forward.

My wife is quite astute and makes up for a lot of what I lack and she noted:

Being in the presence of our [former] pastor and his family was a bit like lowering yourself into an acid bath again and again, slowly peeling back the layers until you became raw. Now with all the nerves exposed it is time to put on a new skin, one layer at a time, rediscovering all that we surrendered, all that we laid down for the cause, all that we should have held onto in-order to protect ourselves.

The heart of the matter

2008-05-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

Since Christmas I have been working on a new website/blog which is intended as a warning about the cult that we were in for 20 years as well as a resource for those who have been fortunate enough to get out. A place to specifically highlight the activities of our [former] pastor and his family as well as share the truth and solutions that point towards healing and wholeness.

Whilst I have compiled the site and gathered together the resources that have helped us so much I am confronted with enormous anger and frustration as I recall the abuse and exploitation of so many willing and faithful families and individuals. It is hard to resist the temptation to depart from the path of balanced analysis and launch into a multi faceted diatribe filled with spiteful hatred. I have rewritten some pieces many times because they trigger a burning desire to destroy these people…but this I know is misdirected anger and will only drag me down to their level of self absorption.
I realise now that the creation of this kind of site cannot be borne out of burning hatred and a lust for destruction but out of something that I could not have considered a year ago but now stares me in the face as the next hurdle I must jump on the road to recovery, that of forgiveness.

I don't think that I could tackle an open disclosure of all that went on inside the fellowship whilst we were inside and which probably continues today without first confronting forgiveness.
Writing this now I am torn because I do not want to have to face the issue at the present time, it feels painful to think about it, yet I can fully imagine that once I have forgiven them I will eventually find peace about the past and a renewed hope for the future, maybe I will be able to fully understand the forgiveness from above that I cling to.
Part of me does not want to forgive and maybe part of me believes that they do not deserve forgiveness.
It seems to me that to deny them forgiveness is to deny myself forgiveness, how can I deny my forgiveness of their actions and yet at the same time rely on forgiveness from above myself.
Classic 'Yancey' dilemma.
Forgiveness does not equate to a pardon and I believe they will bare responsibility for their actions until they seek forgiveness for themselves; perhaps that is where the answer I seek actually lies, I can forgive to secure my own peace of mind, I can give the forgiveness that is mine to give, but a pardon is not mine to give, a pardon in the eyes of the law is not mine to give, a pardon in the eyes of God is not mine to give.

I have given this a lot of thought but in doing so find that; as I write I am not ready to forgive….I am actually a long way from forgiveness.
I tried to read the Yancey book 'What's So Amazing About Grace' but eventually gave up half way through because I could not see a way of applying his teaching to my life, I can see the merits of forgiveness and the need for it, yet as I read, and tried to find parallels in my life I could not find a way to implement it. It’s as if there is a gap in my understanding, there is a mountain of anger to deal with first, there is a great deal of spiritual abuse and hurt to be worked through and a new outlook on life to be found.
As I have read about grace and forgiveness and I have learned more about the value and benefits of its dispensation, I have also come to realise that forgiveness is not a clinical step that one takes, like uttering a few words without appreciating their value in the hope that it will become real further down the line. In order to forgive with meaning you need to forgive with understanding, and I realise that I am not ready to forgive.

I don’t harbor hatred and mull over vengeance day by day, I don’t seek vengeance…I seek justice. I seek recognition of the wrong done and the day when justice will be dispensed on the perpetrators. I work not for vengeance I work for the day of reckoning when our [former] pastor and his family will answer to the law for the crimes they have committed against those who trusted them, and then eventually they will answer to a higher standard.

I can see that by pushing myself to do something I am not ready for was applying pressure on myself to conform to something which I thought was right but which I didn’t feel was something I was capable of at present. By admitting that I am not ready to forgive I am not saying I will never forgive, I’m just saying that I don’t know how to at the moment and I’m ok with not knowing how to, I’m not going to let it bother me, it will come eventually and by putting it to one side I feel I am taking the pressure off of myself.

Don Henley said that ‘The Heart of the Matter’ took forty years to learn and four minutes to sing.
I don’t think he is making a statement about arrogance or hardness of heart, I think he’s talking about healing and enlightenment, the path to forgiveness, the journey we must make to the place where we can comprehend the true value of forgiveness and give it willingly, freely and without condition.
I can speculate what that place might look like for us, I have been somewhere similar, but right now we have a lot to deal with first.

excerpts from 'The Heart of the Matter' – Don Henley

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again
I've been tryin' to get down to the Heart of the Matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

These times are so uncertain
There's a yearning undefined
...People filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness
How can love survive in such a graceless age
The trust and self-assurance that can lead to happiness
They're the very things we kill, I guess
Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms
And the work I put between us,
Doesn't keep me warm

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I figured out, I have to learn again
I've been tryin' to get down to the Heart of the Matter
But everything changes
And my friends seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

There are people in your life who've come and gone
They let you down and hurt your pride
Better put it all behind you; life goes on
You keep carrin' that anger, it'll eat you inside

I've been tryin' to get down to the Heart of the Matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

I've been tryin' to get down to the Heart of the Matter
Because the flesh will get weak
And the ashes will scatter
So I'm thinkin' about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

Rubberband man

2008-05-08T05:49:00.000-07:00

Coming out of 20 years in a highly controlled environment with an abundance of spoken and unspoken rules and regulations, living under hyper authoritarian leadership and building your life around a performance based ascension up the spiritual ladder of pseudo salvation has a profound effect on your outlook on life, your perception of other people’s opinion of yourself and your expectations of other people.

As we have endeavored to restore some semblance of normality in our daily lives, whilst battling against the hurtful intransigence of cult members I find myself resorting to control techniques not dissimilar to our [former] pastor in a desperate attempt to gain control over flailing circumstances.

It seems like we can never get away from these people, like they always have their hooks in us, whatever we have tried legally has failed to yield an advance and we end up back at square one again.

The feeling of entrapment is palpable and despite our constantly reassuring each other about our being free from the cult and its control, the reality is that we still have this farm and its joint ownership with cult members hanging round our necks.

I find we can go for a while and forget about it, but then the legal mess rears its ugly head and screams for attention like a demanding brat.

During those times I find myself becoming more rigid and inflexible, reaching for control over every other facet of our lives, trying to bring order and discipline into the rest of our existence in the hope that it will somehow balance out the anarchy inflicted upon us.

This is clearly flawed and is having a very negative effect on our family. I find myself being an absolute bastard to my sons over the most stupid things, intolerant of their typical teenage behavior, ignorant of their point of view, snappy, demanding, rude… not very me.

After all we have been through as a family I find myself resorting to exactly the same techniques that our [former] pastor and his family employed so successfully.

It’s as if I am trying to restore order and compliance to a higher standard by authoritarian rule...sound familiar?

When we were in the cult we were taught that our homes were an outward reflection of our inner spiritual state, and our homes were subject to impromptu inspection. The [former] pastor’s wife could turn up unannounced and inspect the state of the house and garden. The [former] pastor and his family were obsessed with outward appearance and display, not only of individuals and their families but also of properties or ongoing projects and these were often used as a judgment or indicator of spirituality and character.

This caused untold tension in the young mothers as their toddler turned their houses upside down...or the bedrooms of teenagers that looked like a hurricane had recently landed, and placed an undue emphasis on show rather than substance, what complete foolishness that teaching is!

I can see now that whilst I am not as fervent in my application of that particular piece of rubbish theology it is still firmly planted in my head that it matters that everything is neat and tidy and reflects control and order.

In an attempt to learn my way out of this point of view, my shrink has suggested that I put away my ongoing list of all the jobs that need to be done, my sticky notes of all the things I want to do, and instead sit still and do nothing. Do nothing....and learn that it is OK to do nothing; it doesn't matter if I achieve nothing for that short space of time...you wouldn't believe how that thought scared me at first....how hard it is for me to do nothing.

After so many lost years, so much to make up for, and so much to learn...to sit still and do nothing seems like an impossibility

And at a familial level I need to learn to appreciate that it’s OK if my family does nothing, if we have time when we do nothing important, if we have time when we just have fun, that’s OK, that is healthy.

My shrink has told me that I have to spend a whole day playing video games with my kids; and later another day watching movies, drinking beer, burping and ordering pizza.

(Part of me can’t believe people pay for this kind of advice) but the reality is that these things would have been unthinkable in the cult environment from which we have come from, just completely unimaginable.

So to do them and not feel somehow guilty that I am neglecting a dozen justifiably important things that need my attention is quite a challenge. It doesn’t matter if the house doesn’t get tidied up and I sit around watching movies all day. I don’t know how many times I must have said ‘I can relax when we have tidied up” or ‘I can sit down when I finish this off”, always a goal in front that has to be achieved, always something more important than family time…..that’s the reality of a performance based salvation driven by the notion of complete self sacrifice for the greater good, sacrifice of ones own goals and needs to focus on God's needs and the needs of the Kingdom of God.

You will NEVER get there, you will never be satisfied that you have achieved something worthy, there will always be something else that’s next on the list. It is always just out of reach.

Letting go and not equating the act of 'letting go' as a kind of surrender or failure seems to go against much of how we think as a society today.

The idea of letting go of the situation with the sale of our farm, of unleashing the lawyers and stepping back seems impossible to me right now, but in reality it is what everyone has been advising me to do for a long time, and perhaps if I had just let them wade in a issue writs left right and center, this would have all been over by now.

Letting go of the notion that I can rectify everything by becoming more controlling over my family and everything we do is certainly a wise approach...no one would argue with that....ever heard of “cant see the wood for the trees”?

I am finding it a real challenge not to resort to the comfort of control when I feel that my family or I are threatened

That's how hard it is to unlearn 20 years of harmful teaching, to confront head on the rigidity and inflexibility that has become so ingrained and find a new approach, a new way, a new path of flexibility, willingness and acceptance, to become seriously chilled as my kids would say.

A new kind of birthday

2008-04-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

It was my birthday the other day.
I lazed in bed for an extra long time, we took our time about breakfast, I went surfing with my sons in the brilliant sunshine on a vast beach and it was great. Chilled for the rest of the day with the family and we got together with some friends in the evening, friends I really love to be with.
It was the first time I can remember that I was with people on my birthday who genuinely wanted to be with me and I really wanted to be with them, they appreciate me for who I am….no pressure to be someone other than myself...they love me for who I am now despite what I’m going through.
No interference in the day, no pressure to perform, make some kind of fresh commitment to God for the fulfilment of my holy calling in his heavenly kingdom here on earth or a pledge of obedience to the leadership of the fellowship for the coming year, no pleading with God for a new revelation, no dressing down in public about the (so called) spiritual failures in the previous year, no working our nuts off to produce a party for the same old people that no one really wants to attend and no accepting presents that everyone in the fellowship has been forced to contribute to (even if they could not afford to).

I got the day I wanted with the people I truly wanted to share it with.
I can’t tell you what it feels like to have a birthday like this for the first time in over twenty years;
I had forgotten what it feels like…it’s like a breath of fresh air.

Bathe in the stream

2008-04-08T02:53:00.000-07:00

I want to try and explain where I’m (we’re) at and why I’m not posting as frequently now days, we haven’t fallen of the perch or anything, we’ve just come trough a bit of a sticky patch during which I just did not need to be posting at the same time, and we needed to care for ourselves.

The legal hustle continues (it been a year now) as we try to wrestle with cult members for freedom to sell our property, and the ups and downs of that threw both of us into a bought of depression, unusual in that we both went down together…normally one of us can hold the other up and we get through, but this time we both hit the deck together. I totally did not see it coming and it was our friends who helped us through. Fortunately we have a very understanding and energized lawyer who has been great.

These last few months have been a headache with all of the legalities to wade through, I have written a fair bit about it but I just can’t post it at the moment, I think that given recent events it is only a matter of time before the cult leadership or remaining cult members will find the blog, traffic to the blog is such that it ranks in Google now under a number of search categories and it would be legally irresponsible and damage our case if I post too much detail. We also have a ‘cease and desist order’ to comply with and now know that the cult leadership have engaged an Attorney…I will post them when the time is right.

This is frustrating for us because we value the feedback we have been getting from many of you who have been following our journey; it’ll just have to wait. I expect the shit to hit the fan in the next month or so…let’s see how we go.

We have both become very conscious of how lucky we are to have our family in one piece and we want to try to make up for some of the lost opportunities and interference. Amid all the frustration and adjustments we have been facing we have been spending a lot of time with our kids, not only trying to keep things as normal as possible, but trying to reinforce a stark contrast with the way things used to be. We were under a lot of pressure to perform and produce results, often to the detriment of our kids. They suffered not only by our limited availability of time but also our limited finances. They missed out on a lot and we want to make sure that the time we have left with them before the two eldest eventually spread their wings and leave home are times we can look back on with fond memories. Ensuring that we make time available for them, we want them to know that we think they are special and we love them very much.

Those of you who know what it is like to raise teenage boys will appreciate that this is a challenge in itself without the added complication of their entire lives been bought up in a cult. Yeah well I’m sure we’ll get there eventually.

I treasure just spending time with them (and believe me when I say that it has taken me a year to calm down to the point where I can do that without thinking of half a dozen more important things to do…unlearning the cult ways is more of a mountain to climb than you think).

My wife is seeing a shrink who specializes in cult exit therapy; she was a brilliant find and came highly recommended by my shrink. (Who I haven’t seen for a while). It has been great because when she comes home she tells me many things they talked about so I get to share in her recommendations. It has been tremendously helpful as we both work through her advice together.

I have recently come to the realization that there is so much to deal with that it is simply not possible for me to write it all down, I was trying to work through it in the way that has helped me so much up till now by trying to encapsulate the essence of it into the blog posts, I was trying to stay on top of every little detail, record every little gem of wisdom, read every article I could lay my hands on, keep up with every blog we have subscribed to, listen to every piece of good advice and it was getting to the point where I was getting stressed about not being able to keep up with it.

Sounds stupid I know but when you acknowledge that you need help and you suddenly get access to all this wisdom after being so immersed in a culture that focuses so heavily on the teachings of one man, you just want to gorge yourself on it and you become afraid of missing something that might be really helpful.

By getting so hung up on it I was bringing more stress into my life at a time when I just don’t need anymore, then I heard a comment from Leo LaPorte on the This Week in Tech podcasts where he was discussing Twitter and email and I found it particularly poignant.

”There is an old way of thinking that you some how have to keep up, that is really what is getting in your way, you can’t… give up, release, let go;

However if you bathe in the stream of information you get plenty, email is a good example for me, for a long time I had this crazy notion that I had to answer all my emails and find time to read it all…You can’t! You can’t! give it up, do the best you can, read what you want, take what you want, wade through this stream without holding on….works for me!

What happened to me was I got burned out…it was too much, it was a problem…and now I’m just relaxed and I just love it, the key is not worrying about missing something…and I don’t feel like that’s giving up…it celebrating, its letting go and it’s celebrating…These are birthing pains, we are still using old mind sets to try to absorb this information and try and make sense of it”.

Leo LaPorte – TWIT 138 talking about Twitter and emails.

So that’s what I’m going to do…bathe in the stream of truth, swim in the pool of freedom and float downstream in the flow of healing without trying to hold on.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

2008-03-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

My wife’s shrink asked her to write down ten things that she really wanted to do, as an exercise to try and start rebuilding a sense of hope and a positive vision for the future. We all tried it, even the kids, and my wife and I started to realize how being in such a tightly controlled environment for so long we had both lost the ability to dream for the future, the ability to hope for nice things, a vision for our way of life in years to come..

We had squashed so many of our own desires in order to aim for the group vision; we have sacrificed so many of our dreams because there was not enough room for them within the cult framework, that we had basically stopped ourselves from dreaming for ourselves as a family.

Without realizing it we had numbed ourselves into a state of hopelessness, we don’t hope for the future in the way many people do because for so long we have buried our dreams, giving preference to the so called ‘Will of God’ for our lives. Die to self and sacrifice our plans to serve God, lay down our needs and focus on the needs of the Holy Spirit! All the time being guided by our [former] pastors’ superior spiritual awareness and ability to streamline us into the kingdom of God. Streamline us into his family wealth creation program more like!

Yeah bullshit I know…I’m embarrassed to admit it now, and looking back I can hardly believe that we went along with it. We allowed ourselves to be raped spiritually and financially not to mention emotionally.

For many, many years I have not walked through department stores or shopping malls because I was afraid of the continual disappointment of seeing something I would like but would never be able to afford, and I’m not talking about expensive things, just everyday things, or what I would have considered luxury items like books or CD’s. Store flyers or circulars would go straight in the bin because I knew they would be full attractive pictures of special offers that were good value but we would never be able to afford, and I am still doing that today. I just don’t know how we are going to get out of the financial mess that we are is as a result of being in a cult for twenty years…I can’t see a way out, and I am afraid of hoping for nice things in case we can never afford them. I just don’t need any more disappointment at the moment and recklessly adding to what we endure already seems irresponsible.

During a recent conversation with an exit-therapy specialist she commented that she had never seen ex-cult members fall over financially because they were absolutely amazing with their money. After years of having to give the bulk of their income and time to the cult leadership, they had learned how to make every penny count and could leave most people standing when it came to being thrifty. This is true but my goodness it can wear you down.

Depression…that was something I didn’t see coming, but then it didn’t surprise me when we both came to the realization that we were both suffering the effects of depression. The process of trying to sell our part of the farm is still dragging on and now we are receiving threatening and abusive letters from other cult members. It just seems like there is no end, when will we find a solution? It just becomes harder and harder to imagine that we will ever find a way to get away from these people. I try to imagine a positive way forward but there are other triggers that piss me off. I walk down the street and I see all these beautiful houses going up around us and I can’t see that we will ever own our own home again. Even if we get this mess with our property sorted out by the time we pay off all the debts left by the cult I don’t think we will ever catch up.

Yesterday I went to my daughter’s birthday party at the local Fun Factory. I am 46 years old, I have a 16 year old son and 14 year old son and my eight year old daughter and that was the first birthday party I have been to from one of my own kids, I have missed 37 birthday parties from my own kids!

In the cult the family was so far down the priority list and our time was so micro managed from above that it would be inconceivable for me to take time away from work to attend a birthday party for one of my kids, and if by chance their birthday fell on a Sunday we were forbidden from celebrating a birthday party on the Sabbath. Add to that; that kids parties were carefully managed by the leadership and were an almost exclusively female affair.

When we went to the Fun Factory I could not stop myself from feeling jealous of all these fathers with their toddles and kids having fun and enjoying their company. Whilst we had a great time I was left with a profoundly sad feeling as it became apparent that all those lost opportunities in my life are gone forever and that part of our lives will never come back. I feel like I’m grieving and it makes me so fucking angry.

Whatever I try to rationalize of the past or however I persuade myself that revenge is fruitless I want our [former] pastor and his family to admit what they have done, I want them to acknowledge the immense pain and suffering that they have caused us with their unthinkably gross abuse of our trust and loyalty.

I believe that the perpetrator of abuse is always responsible for their acts of abuse, even if they were deluded when they committed their acts. No matter how noble the cause or how justified and driven they felt to live to a higher standard, and impart that standards to others, they must always bare responsibility for the abusive acts and its outcomes.

I know there is almost no chance that our [former] pastor and his family will ever admit that what they did was wrong, no chance, and I know that if we were to sue their arses into the next world it would not help to heal the damage they have caused us and others, money is useful but its not that powerful.

If they were to admit that they have deeply wronged many of us and ask for forgiveness that would go a long way to helping us move into the future with at least the knowledge that they themselves have acknowledged the abuse, but while they continue to claim to hold the spiritual as well as moral high ground and threaten us with legal action because of our so called ‘destructive vendetta’ against them its hard to imagine that will ever come to pass.

Recently the Australian Government said ‘Sorry’ to the Indigenous members of our society for the atrocities and abuse of past administrations, Sorry for the events that lead to the stolen generation, Sorry for the way that the aboriginal culture has become marginalized and degraded, Sorry for all of the injustices that have led to the awful state of affairs we are faced with. I don’t want to get bogged down in the arguments from those in support and those against the ‘Sorry statement’, but what I will say is that I have visited remote aboriginal communities and I have seen first hand the conditions. These are a people who have been horribly abused beyond what many of us can even comprehend. They knew that just the word Sorry wasn’t going to be a fix’all, it will take a lot more than words to put things right again and many events of the past are well and truly beyond repair. But the word Sorry was what was needed. They needed to know that the Government of today was prepared to acknowledge that what was done to them by past administrations was completely and incontrovertibly wrong, they needed to know that the government recognized that the abuses of the past were enormous and needed urgent remediation. They needed to hear the newly elected leader of the new government apologize, to say Sorry.

Prime minister Kevin Rudd said Sorry six times in an address that stopped the nation and marked the date as Sorry Day, and seeing the picture on TV as he spoke the magic words, of hundreds and hundreds of crying and grieving mothers who had lost their children, crying and grieving children who had lost their parents, sobbing elders who had seen their communities destroyed, moaning aged men and women grieving the loss of their culture and identity, I cried with them, I sobbed from the bottom of my heart.

I can partly understand what they feel, I know now what it is like to loose all of your hopes and dreams for the future, I know what it is like to have your identity taken away from you, I know overwhelming anger and pain, I know the trauma of having your family abused and spiritually and emotionally torn apart and not be able to fix it. And I very nearly found out what it is like to have your children taken away from you.

And I saw the extraordinary release as they heard their abuser acknowledge the wrongs that had been perpetrated against them by his peers.

I’m under no illusions that we will ever get any kind of apology or compensation from our abusers. We will have to fight tooth and nail to protect our character as we prepare for the Supreme Court over our land sale, with the cult members being so clearly driven and supported by the cult leadership it will inevitably end up in the whole cult story coming out in court. Part of me says ‘bring it on’ given the chance I will sing like a canary; reliving all the crap it’s the effects on the family I am not looking forward to.

Sorry would go a long way. Sorry would make us consider alternative ways of resolving this mess, Sorry would bring a halt to the Supreme Court action, but why would people who are convinced that Jesus Christ is on their side ever say sorry.

Who was it who said…..Sorry seems to be the hardest word!

I saw the actor Michael Cain being interviewed the other night and he was asked the secret of his positive attitude towards life and he told a story of how he was playing in the west end of London when he was unable to make a planned entrance onto stage because a chair was blocking a door from opening. When being reprimanded by the director he was told to work with the difficulty, if it’s a comedy fall over the chair, if it’s a drama smash the chair in anger but “work with the difficulty”. He has applied that maxim to life and claimed that in whatever situation you find yourself in, if you can approach every problem as an opportunity to learn something and better yourself, then half the battle is won!, just that simple shift in attitude can completely change your approach and often the eventual outcome.

I’m still working my way through Phillip Yancey’s brilliant book ‘What’s so amazing about grace’. I just can’t speak highly enough of this very gifted and talented commentator and this book is exceptional. I tried to read it when we first got out of the cult but just couldn’t cope with it at the time. A year later I have worked through enough to be able to appreciate the depth of the work. I can see as time moves on and our time in the cult gradually recedes into the distance, we know a great deal more now than we did then, and I am grateful for that, but acknowledge that If we knew then what we know now I think it would have completely overwhelmed us and I for one would'nt want to think about where I’d be emotionally right now.

Rebuilding hope for the future is a gradual process, a gradual learning, a gradual reawakening, a painful re-living and a necessary journey.

I hope we can figure it out.

Our rights

2008-03-09T01:52:00.000-08:00

I said in an earlier post:

"It is one thing to get out of a cult; it’s another thing altogether to get the cult out of you"

My wife and I have both been struggling lately with the nagging reminders in our inner ear of the way of things according to the principles of our old fellowship and our [former] pastor. It hasn’t been the same for some of the theology because the message of grace has disproved much of it, whilst a lot of the rest just doesn’t ring true.

But I can still hear the [former] pastors voice and that of his wife, loaded with xenophobic racism and the narrow minded prejudice that they interpreted as single minded purity, and whilst I can discount its validity, it’s their principles of daily living and the falsehoods they propagated to maintain control that are proving hard to dislodge.

It's as if we have been programmed, to behave in certain ways, well actually having said that it is actually programming. We were exposed to these principles 'day in - day out' and they were constantly reinforced by the [former] pastor and his family, to the point that the attitudes have become so deeply ingrained, that it's proving harder than I bargained to shake them off. All to often I find myself naturally falling back to the ways that have been a part of our lives for over twenty years and which have formed the foundation for so much angst.

I'm talking about attitudes towards work and the family, authority, questioning conduct or teaching, accepting opinions, assertion, social interaction....all the guide lines that we all use as boundaries to build and preserve our self confidence, to know where we are heading, what we want in life and how we are going to get it.

When we were in the midst of this kind of culture I remember we fought against it in our own personal way, refusing to adopt many principles in our own lives, yet many around us did embrace them more fully and employed them rigidly when interacting with us. As a consequence many have become second nature to us without realizing it.

I guess it was that rebellious streak within us both that reasoned against much of the accepted way of things and that eventually paved the way for our, exit yet if I look to some of the pivotal events that made us realize it was definitely time to get out as soon as we could, like the school bus crash back in late 2005, I then realize that we have been struggling to get some of these principles out of our heads for nearly two and a half years!

I’m beginning to understand why many articles on exit recovery say you should allow yourself 3-4 years to get over the abuse, it must be because of the time it takes to rid yourself of this kind of dross.

All of the below comes from my wife's shrink. When she first showed me the list I had the same reaction as her, we were both shocked and surprised how accurately it described the culture of the group we were in and how every single premise listed had been espoused many, many times by our [former] pastor and his wife. I hope you will find them as helpful as we have.

Thank you Dr K. Thomas for the wonderful simplicity of your guidelines. I certainly had not taken the time to articulate them like this; they have become my new mantras.

First the lie....then the truth.

You should never put yourself first. You should consider the needs of others before your own, do not be selfish.

You have the right to put yourself first, sometimes. Your needs are as important as other peoples needs, you are an important person

You should respect other people’s ideas, especially if they are in authority. They probably know better than you. Keep your opinions to yourself. Just listen and learn.

You have the right to have your own opinions and beliefs. You have every right to express your opinions and ideas to anyone.

If you cant convince yourself and others that your feelings are reasonable, then your feelings must be wrong.

You have the right to feel whatever you are feeling. You are totally responsible for your feelings. Your feelings are never wrong.

You should never interrupt teaching sessions and ask questions; otherwise you will expose your stupidity to other people.

You have the right to ask for information or have things clarified even if it means interrupting.

It is shameful to make mistakes. You have to have a right answer for everything.

You have the right to make mistakes. Mistakes are just feedback. You do not have to do everything right.

You always have to be logical and consistent. If you are in the perfect will of God it will flow with divine assistance.

You have the right to change your mind or decide on a different course of action

You have to be flexible and fit in with others.

You have the right to follow your own plan and choose to fit in or not. You have the right to protest against anyone not respecting your rights.

You should never question the leadership's actions. They have good reason for being that way and it is rude to question them.

You have the right to ask for an explanation of people’s behavior, especially if it infringes on your rights.

Do not rock the boat. Things will get worse.

You have the right to negotiate for change.

Do not burden people with your problems. When you feel bad, keep your feelings to yourself.

You have the right to ask for help and /or emotional support.

If someone takes the time to give you advice you had better listen and follow it. They are probably right.

You have the right to ignore other people's advice. Others do not necessarily Know what is best for you.

You do not need to be rewarded or praised by others for doing something well. Be modest when complimented

You have the right to receive acknowledgment, recognition and enumeration for your efforts and achievements.

Practice humility. People do not like show-off’s. Successful people are secretly disliked and envied.

You have the right to put yourself forward in a positive light. You are not obliged to listen to humiliation our unwarranted criticism from others.

You should always accommodate others. If you don't they will not like you or be there when you need them.

You can say NO to requests.

You should always have a good reason for what you say and do.

You have right to not have to justify yourself to anyone.

It is not nice to put people off. If questioned you should always give an answer.

You have the right no to respond to a situation

You should be sensitive and anticipate the needs and wishes of others. You should figure out what others want even if they unable to tell you what they want.

You don't have to be a mind reader or play the guessing game. You do not need to take responsibility for others lack of clarity and/or communication skills.

Don't be anti social. People are going to think that you don't like them if you say that you would rather be alone instead of being with them.

You have a right to personal space even if others want your company.

Don't make a fuss if things don't turn out the way you wanted. Be grateful for what you get.

You have a right to get what you pay for. You have a right to protest if you don't get what you pay for or are given false information.

You should always try to help others especially if they are having difficulties. You should try and make others people's life easier for them.

You have the right NOT to take responsibility for someone else's problem/s.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stay safe, love to all of you who have been so kind to us in our journey

Cult....defined

2008-02-26T05:52:00.001-08:00

Mike recently left a comment on ‘In sickness and in health’ and I felt it needed a proper reply.

Mike, you have raised a very important point here, I agree with what I think you’re implying and that is many people brandish the word ‘cult’ around these days and it has been applied to many and varied cases, to an extent there is a degree of confusion about its meaning so it’s important to have a look at what the consensus is among theologians, thinkers and victims alike.

When we left the group we were involved with I know that I personally took a couple of months before I started to use the word ‘Cult’.

We knew things were horribly wrong within the group whilst we were still in it as I have already explained; I actually refrained from doing a lot of internet research, basically because I was preoccupied with trying to get my family out in one piece. My wife on the other hand did a lot of reading on the net and was familiar with terms like ‘spiritual abuse’ and ‘hyper-authoritarianism’ but to be honest I don’t think we started to Google ‘Cult’ until we were already out.

It took me a while to come to terms with the idea that it was nothing more than just our group going haywire under the control of a psychotic narcissist.

I kind of went through a stage of rehashing old reasons for the behavior of the leadership and key individuals, finding rational explanations for certain events and excusing appalling behavior with floored theology. It’s true when people say that “you can get out of a cult but the hard part is getting the cult out of you!”

As time went on and we learned more it started to become apparent that we had escaped from a cult and a particularly nasty one at that, then you become enveloped in the most horrible shame and grief. Shame because of the thought that you have been completely deceived and duped; how could I have been so utterly stupid? How could I have led my family down this path? And grief over all the lost opportunities, lost years, lost dignity, lost innocence.

It is quite overwhelming and takes a long, long time to come to terms with as you try at the same time to rebuild your shattered life, wondering if you will ever be able to trust a spiritual leader again, wondering if you will ever be able to pray again.

I don’t use the word ‘Cult’ lightly and I certainly don’t use it for dramatic effect or to garner pity. It is a definition that fits perfectly for the group we were in and were fortunate enough to leave and it’s a definition that still causes us grief, embracement, shame, self doubt and profound sadness for some of the past friends we have left behind. People who once trusted us as friends now despise and slander us.

All of the definitions of the word ‘Cult’ that I have seen are clinical, precise and sterile explanations of the minimum or bare elements of a mechanism that thrives in this material and hedonistic society we live in.

None of the definitions capture the painful, horrifying, chaotic, ugly, loveless, dehumanizing, disgusting, lonely, fearful traits of bondage so prevalent in cultic groups.

There are literally dozens of reasonable definitions of the word ‘Cult’ on a multitude of websites but this is the best definition of the word that I have come across, and it comes from http://www.cultfaq.org/cultfaq-perspectives.html

Sociological definitions of the term 'cult' ...

...include consideration of such factors as authoritarian leadership patterns, loyalty and commitment mechanisms, lifestyle characteristics, [and] conformity patterns (including the use of various sanctions in connection with those members who deviate).

Source: Ronald Enroth, "What Is a Cult?" in A Guide to Cults and New Religions, e.d. Ronald Enroth (Downers Grove, Ill,: InterVarsity 1983), p14

Theological definitions of the term 'cult' make note of the reasons why a particular group's beliefs and/or practices are considered unorthodox - that is, in conflict with the body of essential teachings of the movement the group compares itself to.

Professor Alan Gomes points out that

[t]he word cult has an established history of usage, long before the secular media or social sciences got hold of it.

Note that historically cult has been a religious term, not a sociological or psychological one.

The term cult suggests an absolute standard of evaluation, which sociology - by its nature - can not provide. It is therefore well suited to describe theological heterodoxy, which is determined by an absolute, objective and unchanging standard.

Source: Alan Gomes, Unmasking The Cults(Zondervan, 1995)

Christian apologist Robert Bowman defines a cult theologically as

A religious group originating as a heretical sect and maintaining fervent commitment to heresy. Adj.: "cultic" (may be used with reference to tendencies as well as full cult status).

Source: Robert Bowman, A Biblical Guide To Orthodoxy And Heresy.

That definition is not limited to Christian groups. Other religions also deal with such movements. For example, Alan Gomes notes that

[c]ults of Islam include the Sufis and the Nation of Islam. While these groups claim to be Muslim, they deviate fundamentally from the teaching of Islam, from which they are derived.

Source: Alan Gomes, Unmasking The Cults(Zondervan, 1995). Quoted here.

By way of an example, here is a look at a theological definition of a cult of Christianity:

A cult of Christianity is a group of people, which claiming to be Christian, embraces a particular doctrine system taught by an individual leader, group of leaders, or organization, which (system) denies (either explicitly or implicitly) one or more of the central doctrines of the Christian Faith as taught in the sixty-six books of the Bible.

Source: Alan Gomes, Unmasking The Cults(Zondervan, 1995). Quoted in this extended look at the theological definition as seen from a mainstream Christian point of view.

Other definitions that we have found include the following:

A cult of Christianity is a group of people, which claiming to be Christian, embraces a particular doctrinal system taught by an individual leader, group of leaders, or organization, which (system) denies (either explicitly or implicitly) one or more of the central doctrines of the Christian faith as taught in the sixty-six books of the Bible.

http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c09a01.html

Often in our minds we think of a cult as a group that worships Satan, sacrifices animals, and takes part in evil, bizarre, and pagan rituals. In reality, though, most cults appear much more innocent. The specific Christian definition of a cult is a religious group that denies one or more of the fundamentals of Biblical truth. Or, in more simple terms, a cult is a group that teaches something that will cause a person to not be saved if they believe it. In distinction from a religion, a cult is a group that claims to be Christian, yet denies an essential truth of Biblical Christianity.

http://www.gotquestions.org/cult-definition.html

This site also has a good definition of what is and what is not a cult.

http://www.essortment.com/whatisdefiniti_rjli.htm

As does http://www.religioustolerance.org/cults.htm

Every cult can be defined as a group having all of the following 5 characteristics:

It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members
It forms an elitist totalitarian society
Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma
It believes 'the end justifies the means' in order to solicit funds
recruit people
Its wealth does not benefit its members or society

http://www.xenu.net/cic/definit.html

...and the list goes on.

I hope this gives a clearer explanation of where we are coming from when we use the term 'Cult'. It is intended to be an accurate portrayal of where we have come from and its frequent use is borne out of bitter experience.

Thanks for your comment mike.

backdated post

2008-02-17T02:48:00.001-08:00

I have finished off a post which I started last year and posted it into July 2007 where it belongs chronologically. its called:

In sickness and in health

Strength, loyalty & compassion

2008-02-09T23:38:00.001-08:00

This is a bit long but hear me out.

"People who end up in cults are normal people. They are usually intelligent, open-minded and honest. They're willing to make sacrifices for the greater good of the group. They're interested in self-improvement and in the improvement of the world. The best kinds of people, in a way, are targeted by cults. Their very decency makes them desirable as cult members."

Dr J W West, Professor of Psychiatry, University of California

I found this the other day and started thinking about the qualities of the fellowship and our [former] pastor that attracted us to the group in the first place, and then further to our qualities that they tapped into and successfully exploited to keep a hold on us for so long.

A Psychotherapist friend noted that we were both Strong, Compassionate and Loyal people and because we placed such importance on those attributes, our [former] pastor and his family were able to exploit our strong desire to put these qualities into action in our own lives. Conversely now that we are out of the cult we have to make sure that we do not allow those qualities to tie us back to the cult that we do not let them stop us from letting go.

Then I found this on A Former Leaders Journey

Bob suggests that, at some point in time, "the system" was working for us; while we may be questioning it now, there was a time when we were getting some kind of perks or rewards from it. Bob suggests that until we, as individuals and groups, honestly deal with the areas of our lives that made us enjoy the system at one point - and repent or receive healing in those areas - we will only replicate the same dysfunctional patterns and attitudes in whatever structured or destructured group we ended up joining or creating. Robert C. Girard

Since New Year we have been engaged in discussions and negotiations via Lawyers regarding the sale of our farm which we co-own with both cult and ex-cult members. The cult members finally came up with the money to buy us out after keeping us waiting for over eight months, during which time we have begun proceedings to go to the Supreme Court to obtain a court injunction to auction the entire property by court order.

Since we began the process way last year we have discovered that the particular cult member (VDV) who is buying our part of the farm was complicit in fraud with our [former] pastor where by they stole nearly seventy thousand dollars from my wife and I via a bogus property sale (detailed in earlier posts for those of you with enough patience). Given that the cult member’s offer of purchase had fallen into default automatically due to his inability to get finance on time, he was required to make a fresh offer, so we made acceptance of his new offer subject to rectifying the fraud that had been committed by him and our [former] pastor. Well you can just imagine what a storm this caused; we were immediately threatened with proceedings for damages inter alia meaning among other things, the cult member withdrew his interest in the purchase of our property throwing his brothers costly financing arrangements into disarray and leaving the third party of ex-cult relatives reeling at the thought of the whole thing collapsing in a heap. I made it quite clear that if he pulled out after keeping us waiting eight months I would immediately sue him for damages as well as immediately applying for an Supreme Court injunction for the sale of the entire property.

One of the ex-cult relatives, the father in law, stepped up as a mediator to open up an indirect channel of discussion between my wife and I and the cult members to try to find a solution. This went well for a while but we reached the point where there was not an adequate mechanism to tie the previous fraud to this sale, so we decided to drop the matter but included in the deed of sale with VDV the cult member that “we reserved our rights in all matters pertaining to the previous property sale including matters pertaining to fraud and misrepresentation”. The point being that if VDV the cult member who had protested his innocence all the time in all matters related to the fraud, truly had nothing to be afraid of he would not have a problem signing the deed of sale. Knowing that he had changed his story several times throughout the proceedings and failed to provide simple evidence that would clear him of any involvement, we all began to wonder about his innocence. This became a MAJOR sticking point and we stood our ground insisting that from our point of view it was a deal breaker. We flat refused to surrender our rights of further action related to the fraudulent transaction. Everything fell apart in the space of a morning with lawyers flexing their legal muscle; my God these guys are worth the money if you or they get pushed into a corner.

Finally I decided to call one of the cult members MDV directly to explain some simple facts that were getting drowned out through all the legal speak and to reiterate some points of sale that we both agreed on but had been misinterpreted by their lawyer.

I was surprised how I could do the thing I dreaded the most.

During the five minute discussion I had to stop him from exploding three of four times by stopping the course of debate and forcefully making the points that were mutually beneficial. We both made our points clear and set a new course for settlement of the sale.

The long and short of it is that next week VDV is putting in a fresh offer which has no clauses or prejudice, and thus fully preserves our rights to pursue any course of action we see fit related to the fraud, at a later date. We would still be able to do that if the sale didn’t go through so at least we might able to rely on his insatiable greed to sell our property.

Whilst talking to MDV (cult member) a few things struck me almost immediately. His voice was filled with frustrated anger and the sheer arrogance of his tone and stance was unmistakable. It was a stark reminder of the fellowship and their attitudes that we had left. The second point is that they don’t know us anymore: we have changed so much from the people they thought we were that they can’t predict what we will do next or our reasoning, yet at the same time we have been able to gauge their tactics reasonably well because we have known them all for the last fifteen years and they are still true to the teachings and ways of the cult. We have of course been completely demonized and their contempt of us was loud and clear during the discussion. They still think that they can bully and threaten and walk all over us. They still fail to recognize boundaries or other people’s opinions.

I even got a lecture from the ex-cult father in law – mediator who felt compelled to tell me that “not all lawyers were Christians and that he had a strong feeling in the Lord that our lawyer was not 100% on our side” That’s just Christianese for I don’t agree with your approach and I havnt got the guts to tell you straight up so I’ll wrap it up in this little statement that demonstrates that I am spiritually superior to you and during all this stress I have a reliable line of contact to God himself…..yeah right…get stuffed!.

Now the point I’m trying to make here (at last) is that I have to be careful that I do not let them tap into my qualities which they have successfully exploited in the past to keep me engaged. As far as Compassion and Loyalty go, I feel nothing towards the cult mentality or methods, however I am a strong minded and persistent person and my thirst for justice is formidable. There is a danger here that I could become so obsessed with righting the wrongs done to us that it becomes my next consuming mission and could have detrimental effects of our family.

If and when this sale finally goes through it will mark the end of our financial connection to the cult we left over a year ago and we will finally be Free at Last, we want to move on with our lives and start to live again without the ghastly specter of re-engagement with cult members on the attack.

We need to find that break point and let it be a ‘marker’ in life that we passed a point of no return, the beginning of a new period in our lives, a chance to breath.

And for any of you who are considering re-engaging with members of the cult you have left I can only suggest that you only do so with a lawyer and if you hold the legal high ground. If you do not have both those things, then I thoroughly recommend that you do not re-engage at all. If you push these people onto the defensive you will just be wasting your time. The accelerated discussions and legal wrangling of the last two weeks have been hell and it has placed a tremendous strain on my wife and I and our kids and it’s not over yet, the stress of recollection and re-engagement with no end in sight is appalling.

Look I don’t want to bore people with all this legal crap I’m not going into such detail about abstract dramas like trying to sell a property cos I want pity, what I’m trying to highlight here is that leaving a cult is not just a case of stopping talking to a bunch of people and maybe moving house and then spending the next couple of years trying to re-evaluate your entire life and put it back together, there isn’t always a chance at a clean break.

Our [former] pastor has tied everyone it to such tight knots emotionally; financially and spiritually that everyone is fighting for their lives whether they’re in or out of the cult and it’s bringing the very worst out of everyone. We left the cult a year ago and have been trapped in ‘not quite free at last’ limbo for over a year now and I have so had enough.

Mind control made easy

2008-01-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

I'm in two minds (pun) as to whether to post this or not because in one way I think it belittles the enormity of spiritual abuse and it's profound consequences, however it does accurately portray many, many aspects of the group we were in. Contrary to what we were taught, there was nothing special or individual about our group, our mission or our leadership.
I hasten to add that our [former] pastor did not claim to be God, just a High Priest, Prophet and Spiritual King of Australia, in the line of Melchizadek (Christ being the Great High Priest - over the High Priests), whilst his wife and sons claimed to be literal 'Sons of God'.
And whilst none of us were ever asked to commit murder, we all did our fair share of character assassination which can kill people from the inside out, (just like a microwave oven). Some crimes were excusable like tax & stamp duty evasion and fraud which are still being carried out in the group, and I would not be surprised it that would stretch to lying in court to defend the Kingdom of God.

Have a look at this spoof, it lasts 12 minutes, make of it what you will, comments welcome.

can also be viewed on YouTube (better quality!):

Mind Control Made Easy

Reap what you sow

2008-01-27T04:01:00.001-08:00

About ten years ago there was a family in the fellowship, the husband of whom held quite an important and trusted position in the group. Because of his building ability, tradesmen’s skills and his close attention to detail he became an intrinsic part of many high profile projects within the fellowship. He and his family had been members of the group for about seven or eight years when it became apparent that they were gradually falling from favour with the [former] pastor and his family.

The husband had reportedly become un-cooperative and the [former] pastor’s wife claimed that she had been told by God that this guys wife had secretly had an abortion, something which they vehemently denied. This accusation caused them very considerable distress, and as the [former] pastor rallied the faithful to him, I remember my wife and I being amazed at the stories that were coming out of how this couple had been so conniving and deceitful. Their character was completely undermined and I felt betrayed by people I thought we knew and trusted.

Eventually the strain was so much that they left the fellowship and the only times we saw them again was in the mall, looking sad and lonely. This was used as an example of how it goes for people who ‘fall from grace’ (as it was termed by the leadership) and loose their place in the kingdom.

Some time later the family engaged a lawyer and delivered a notification of summons to our [former] pastor in an attempt to recover over $100,000 which they claimed had been fraudulently taken from them and diverted into something related to the [former] pastor’s business activities.

The elders of the fellowship got together with the [former] pastor to put together a response to the law firm which ended up being about six or seven pages long. In it our [former] pastor engaged in a systematic and thorough assassination of their character, twisting the truth (something I know now, but did not fully appreciate at the time) to create a completely false version of events, agreements and intentions. He turned the whole situation on its head and crafted a tale which made this family look needful, selfish, inadequate at planning their lives, incapable of handling their debts and financial responsibilities and unable to control their growing children.

He then painted a picture of his benevolence and how the whole fellowship had worked tirelessly to try and help this family in every way possible to ensure their well being as they passed through a difficult period in their lives.

He continued to paint a financial picture in which he claimed that the cost of this help to both him and the fellowship was in excess of the sum mentioned and that this family really should examine their own motives and take responsibility for their own inadequacies. How deeply unfair it was that they were badly treating the fellowship that so kindly sacrificed so much of their time and personal finances to try to help them along.

To cap the letter off it was signed by six elders as well as the former pastor, attesting that the letter was a fair and truthful account of events and that the fellowship would defend the claim vigorously.

Needless to say the Lawyer dropped the case and nothing was ever heard again.

Looking back, in the blinding light of hindsight, seeing the past the way I do now, I can clearly recall that the letter was an awful denegation of faithful and trusting people who had been treated appallingly and were now being rubbished to make them fade away. It painted completely the opposite picture of their actual attributes, that of kind, friendly, caring people who loved the Lord and genuinely believed they were doing his will. It was a very gross distortion of the truth and was engineered to turn the tables and shift blame.

The reason I remember so clearly how the letter was written and with hindsight I understand how unfair and unjust it was is because I wrote it together with the [former] pastor and I was one of the signatories. I am not proud of my actions.

Many of you will recognize the similarity between this account of the past and the way that we are being treated now by current cult members.

In the last week, a recovery action by a local debt collection agency acting on my behalf, attempting to recover over $12,000 in unpaid invoices from the [former] pastor’s son has completely collapsed after nearly a year of proceedings.

The turning point came when the recovery agent made telephone contact with the [former] pastor’s son to notify him of a court summons. He then proceeded to completely assassinate my character with such vigor, painting a picture of me as incapable of organising my life, being deeply in debt with the Tax dept, trying to sell my house to pay my debts and being completely lacking in compassion and understanding, I had walked away from his, a once dear and close friend and now I was trying to turn against him by demanding money that was now owed to me.

He did such a thorough job that the collection agent negotiated a pathetic deal for $2000 on the condition that I would drop all claims to the company and would guarantee no further legal action.

When I called him for an update he notified me of the deal, negotiated without my consultation or consent, and became agitated when I refused to take the deal. He informs me he will not pursue court action and if I want to go that way I need to organize it myself.

At almost exactly the same time, within the same week, the case of trying to sell our farm has degenerated into a personal attack on my character and I am being threatened with legal action from the cult member who wants to buy our part of the farm. I will write more on that situation later, the point is that this week the two cases have simultaneously shifted from the factual to an outright attack on my character and this is without a doubt a concerted effort by the cult to bury us. Yes you could say that we might be scaring them or pushing them into a corner, but the effects of their slander is that suddenly my legal team are beginning to wonder who I am and can they trust me. It is also having a profound affect on our family. There have been a lot of tears and we are both well and truly back in the very, very angry part of the curve. It feels like justice and fairness will never come, like we will never get an outcome that will somehow vindicate how deeply we have been wronged.

As I was trying to calm my devastated wife I told her “we knew it would be like this, we know how they work, they cannot do other wise, they see themselves as the Holy ones and we are the dogs who returned to the vomit, they are the true sons of God and we are the anti-Christ, they are building the true church of Christ and we have fallen back to Babylon. For them to admit that we are right would be to admit that God is wrong”.

I know this is how they work because I have helped them do it to others and I know their train of thought. I am reaping what I have sown; it really is true, “what goes around comes around’.

I am only getting back what I have served to others.

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

Joni Mitchell.

On the cards

2008-01-24T05:29:00.000-08:00

Recently I was visiting a weekend market and I saw something I had never seen before; there was a small stall in one corner offering Tarot card readings, behind two sets of old portable hospital screens a man was unlocking the future of those who were willing to pay. I am quite tall and I could see over the screens as the man laid out the cards and interpreted their meaning, building a picture that expanded as each card was laid out one by one with their meaning explained in the context of the previous cards and the participants comments and affirmation. It was intriguing to see the psychic as he tried to tap into a higher power to discern the future, and help his customer blend inner and outer realities.

My initial reaction was one of dismissal, ‘How could an intelligent person believe in that, isn’t it amazing how far people will go to find a way in life’ and then in a flash it struck me, this is exactly what we have been doing for the last twenty years. The method of taking readings as taught by our [former] Pastor was little more than tarot readings but instead of using elaborate picture cards to build up a picture, we allowed him to twist passages of scripture produced from the random turning of pages in a bible.

So there’s the answer… given the right circumstances intelligent people will believe almost anything! And the next time I am feeling so dismissive or judgmental I will look back at some of the things I have done in the name of the Lord.

Wise men still seek him

2007-12-30T01:26:00.000-08:00

It’s coming up to the first anniversary of leaving the cult and I can’t help but take stock of the last, almost unbelievable year.

It was during the Christmas 2006 holiday that we first told some friends outside the group that we were convinced that the fellowship had evolved into a cult and that we intended to get out. Their response affirmed our greatest fears and they were lovingly instrumental in guiding us through the next month as we quickly and quietly rearranged our lives to make the break, whilst playing a charade with other group members.

We’re spending the New Year with the same dear friends again this year plus my Mum and sister have come for the holiday which is great. I had not seen my sister for five years and my Mum for 18 months. It's been quite a year for them as well, our coming out of the group bought a lot out into the open. Whilst they suspected things were not 100%, I don’t think they had any idea it was a s bad as it was, it has been a lot for them to come to terms with as well.

We’re going to dream up a kind of ritual to celebrate one year out, something special to celebrate freedom from tyranny and fear, a place to pause and remember how lucky we are.

We have all made significant progress in the last twelve months and as time moves on, the pain of the last twenty years seems to be moving further into the distance.

I wanted to make some important decisions, before we go into the second year, knowing that we were decisive and achieved something in the first year, and that alone is indicative of my failing patience, which my shrink assures me is an essential ingredient in the soufflé of life, our new life. A combination of my appetite for justice and a thirst for revenge yearns for tangible results, hungers for certainty in a landscape marred by the taupe like consistently uncertain actions of cult members.

When will our new life begin? We both agree that our recovery must not be contingent on the outcomes of all the various legal actions, yet trying to navigate a path between moving on and not forgetting is fraught with disappointment and the ‘clear and present’ danger of becoming trapped in the angry part of the recovery curve.

We both feel a lot better having made a few of the bigger decisions and for me it’s all starting to feel a lot more do-able. We both recognize that it’s very unlikely that we will get any of our money back, but also gladly acknowledge that you just cant put a price on freedom or having our family intact and we would much rather have that and financial hardship than screw our family to save the money.

I look at who we are now, the kind of people we have become and I’m pleased that we seem more grounded and content with who we are, much of the internal conflict, the struggle with external abuse has gone. I’m proud of whom we are becoming as a family, and I’m sure that where I am now is part of a journey and not the mould for the future. I have become a harder person, judgmental of organized religion. Having said that I do not intend to become the professional career soldier who returning from a hideous war, witness to atrocity and outrage will never again support war or those who start them. I was the willing ideological, true believer, eager to fight for the mother land, for truth and justice; could I become the cripple, exposed to the toxic spiritual defoliate, and shuffled into the shadows, out of the bright lights and exuberance of a worship seminar?

I am trying to fathom where God is in my life at the moment, where I am in God’s life, how I gauge my spirituality, my relationship with him, where do I see myself in another years time.

We were invited to church this morning and I tried to find a reason within myself to go but I guess I’m wary of what I might feel, I’m just not ready to confront scripture and the demands of Christianity yet, I’m sure it will throw up a million questions which I just don’t want to wrestle with right now…and I don’t really see why I should have to…the world isn’t going to end tomorrow (contrary to what we have had rammed down our throats over the years).

What I think I’m trying to come to terms with is a huge void in my comprehension of God, as if the foundations of my belief in God or my relationship with him have been ripped out from under the house and now it’s hovering just above the ground, not fixed to anything, drifting in the breeze. I find myself drawn to faithful people, and in a strange way am envious of their satisfaction with their faith, yet I do not feel equipped to drop anchor and stay.

I’ve been looking at many aspects of belief and faith, other faiths, where they lead, how they include or exclude, their aspirations, how they treat each other, how we treat each other. It’s akin to rebuilding a new foundation in faith and understanding, re-establishing all the reasons why I believe, what I believe and what I want to do with my faith.

A friend of mine Andy blogged In Murdoch we Trust on a new site he had found. In a tongue in cheek attempt to figure out where I am heading I went on the www.beliefnet.com website just to make sure I had not inadvertently become a candidate for another religion altogether.

The Belief-O-Matic faith calculator states:

Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic™ knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic™ will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.

Well how could I resist: and between not understanding the questions and feeling a bit rebellious, I got the following results.

The first attempt I was 100% compatible with ‘Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestant’, second time I was supposed to be a ‘Mormon’ (Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints)…no thanks! and the third time I tried it I was definitely an ‘Orthodox Quaker’…..make of it what you will….doesn’t look as if I’m going too far away from where I came from….relax you guys I’m not going to flip into Zen Buddhism.

I will leave the last word to Susan Maushart cos she has consistently made me laugh through 2007

After years of feeling guilty about feeling guilty I now discover I’ve been in denial about denial. I guess there’s no sense in crying over spilt milk, as the bishop said to her breast pump. Yet the more one learns about psychology, it sometimes seems the more anaphylactically nutzoid one becomes – and if you think that is projecting, you’re probably right. Which just goes to prove that I’m probably right. (Susan Maushart)

My own private Everest

2007-12-02T01:30:00.000-08:00

I accept that there will be good days and bad days, and that getting over the effects of massive change disorder and deep psychological trauma (the diagnosis of my shrink) is not a five minute thing. I have come to terms with the fact that there will be times when both my wife and I are down at the same time and it’s during these periods that we have to pause for a moment and try to recognize where we are and what we are going through and develop an effective method of climbing out of the hole together. If we can, like sportsmen who need to pump themselves up or calm themselves down at a crucial point in the game, develop a ritual or use a technique to identify the moment and trigger a distinct change then we will fair better I think. I’m still dogged by periods of depression and self doubt, it drifts in and out like a thick fog and haunts me like a recurring tooth ache in the heart, at least I have learned to recognize it when it starts instead of gradually succumbing to its inevitable paralysis, doesn’t make it any less painful though. This past bout was bought on by writing to our [former] pastor, and I know its not right for everyone to do this, but believe me when I say that I just needed to get it behind me.

It was a huge thing for us to re-engage with our [former] pastor even if it was only via writing, with a lot of pain and emotions in the air, it was a great relief to get the until now unspoken matters out into the open and yet, as I suspected would happen, the deadline for payment has come and gone with no reply or payment. We know that we were never going to get the reply that we wanted deep down, they would never apologize or acknowledge the abuse, for to do so would incriminate them on just about every level, expose their liability not only to us but dozens before us, and by admitting fault they would have to have to face up to the fallibility of their teachings.

Similarly the negotiations on the sale of our property have become completely stalled by the party still in the cult, and will almost certainly end up in the Supreme Court in the New Year.

You can have all the bravado in the world and threaten what you like, but actually going through with it is something quite different. We will go through with the Supreme Court action and I’m sure it will be a character building exercise, but I’m not looking forward to it.

When I replied to our [former] pastor and his son, with both letters, I made a real effort not to resort to the tactics of abuse that were used against us over the years, yet at the same time I was torn between not sinking to that level but wanting to use every thing I could muster to defend my family and state our case. It was very important to me to make it as easily understood as possible, It was something that I needed to get out of my system and whilst it was a great load off my shoulder, it did stir up huge anger and disappointment. Inevitable I suppose.

My wife and I were discussing the other day about how long it might take for the anger to subside and I speculated that it would take until it doesn’t bother us anymore to talk or think about the time in the cult. Sounds a bit like one of those circular formula in a spreadsheet that just throws up errors all the time, I think what I mean is there will eventually be a time in our lives when the trauma seems so distant and insignificant that we will look back at it perhaps with wonder that we managed to find a way through, having said that we know that as long as there are triggers that keep on prodding us, the anger will never subside.

We recognized recently that the important thing for us to do is plan our future around the freedom that we have acquired and not make our perception or measurement of success contingent of resolving these financial issues. We need to plan our future around never seeing these funds again (which is more than likely going to be the out come), and then if somewhere down the line the situations do get resolved with a good outcome, then it will be a bonus. You just can’t keep going through each day saying that things will get better or easier if we get our money back. It creates an intolerable level of tension and keeps all the negotiations, discussion or planning in the ‘imperative’.

It seems to be all about setting the boundaries and expectations for our new life and shaping what we want our future to look like.

I am amazed how sensitive to abusive techniques we have both become, after what we have experienced you can see it a mile off and what simply staggers me is how many accepted business practices these days have their roots in humiliation and abuse.

I have said in multiple posts that I want to try and identify where we went wrong when we were sucked into the vice like grip of our supposedly trustworthy spiritual advisors and I heard something the other night that kind of tied many of my thoughts together. At a recent high school prize giving night our sons’ principal spoke of the desire within all of us to fit into a group and be accepted by those we admire, and how this desire can become overwhelming if it is denied or if there is real need for affirmation in the individual.

Coming out of a abusive cult can certainly dent your ego and generate one hell of a desire for affirmation, take my word for it! Last week I learned a huge lesson; At work it started to become ‘in your face’ apparent that I was becoming the meat in someone else’s sandwich as two members of management position themselves for the shining light of glory on a high profile project that I am involved in. I have commented to my wife on occasions that one of these members of staff regularly employs traits similar to that of our [former] pastor (though nowhere near as evil) and perhaps in my willingness to please and my need for acceptance I had started to propagate the right circumstances to be taken advantage of, and I’m willing to accept that I should have been more vigilant and a tad wiser. I allowed myself to become a pawn in someone else’s struggle to maintain influence and position. It came to a head last week when one manager started to abuse me in front of other staff members and I could not believe the rush of fear that came over me, it felt like so many situations that I had been forced into by our [former] pastor and I thought “I’m not going to allow myself to be another doormat”, so rather than engage with him in front of others I simply and sternly said “in your office now!’ and left the area. Once in his office I stood my ground and made it clear that I was distinctly unhappy at becoming his lever in an inter-departmental power play. Suffice to say he made his position quite clear and I eventually returned to my desk, a couple of hours later I think he had almost forgotten about it and certainly the next day after having time to think it through he had certainly moved onto something more important. I on the other hand was a wreck and it took me days to get over it. After years of being in a tightly controlled and abusive situation with little or no room for manoeuvre, I simply have lost the ability to stand my ground and vocalise my opinion in matters of authority. In the grand scale of corporate management our spat was insignificant, yet for me it was like climbing Everest with all the re acclimatizing that goes with it.

So now I’m back to the point about setting boundaries, stating my position with my manager is on a par with writing to our [former] pastor and his son, we are setting the boundaries of our new life in order to protect ourselves from a repeat procedure of the past twenty years. Even if I do feel like a dog running around pissing on all the things I hold dear, so that all the other dogs understand where my territory starts and finishes. It’s time to drive and stop being driven, time to lead instead of being led and time to take a rest instead of being herded along like a dumb sheep.

Time to get used to the rarefied atmosphere at the top of the mountain!

This is interesting give it 10 minutes: http://lessons-from-camelot.blogspot.com/

Intervention

2007-11-25T01:23:00.001-08:00

This is currently one of my favorite songs, ‘Intervention’ by ‘The Arcade Fire’ from the album ‘Neon Bible’. I’m not sure what these guys have been through but the lyrics have a definite resonance for us.

The King's taken back the throne
The useless seed is sown
When they say they're cutting off the phone
I'll tell em you're not home

No place to hide
You were fighting as a soldier on their side
You're still a soldier in your mind
Though nothing's on the line

You say it's money that we need
As if we're only mouths to feed
I know no matter what you say
There are debts you'll never pay

Working for the church
While your family dies
You take what they give you
And you keep it inside
Every spark of friendship and love
Will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan, 'we'll cry alone'

I can taste the fear
It's gonna lift me up and take me out of here
Don't wanna fight, don't wanna die
Just wanna hear you cry

Who's gonna throw the very first stone?
Oh! Who's gonna reset the bone
Walking with your head in a sling
Wanna hear the soldier sing

Working for the church
While your family dies
Your little baby sister's
gonna loose her mind
Every spark of friendship and love
Will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan 'We'll go at it alone'

I can hear your fear
It's gonna lift you up and take you out of here
And the bone shall never heal
I care not if you kneel

We can't find you now
But they're gonna get you back somehow
And when you finally disappear
We'll just say you were never here

Been working for the church
While your life falls apart
Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart
Every spark of friendship and love
Will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan 'we'll go at it alone'
Hear the soldier groan 'we'll go at it alone'

See: http://www.arcadefire.com/

The letter ~ unsent, finally sent

2007-11-24T00:48:00.000-08:00

I have been chasing over $12,000 in unpaid wages from a company owned by our [former] pastor’s son for nearly ten months now. And let’s be clear here, this is not a months wages from a building site contractor, this is wages for my professional engineering on a $4 Million project built by a Pty Ltd engineering company.
Here and again in reverse order are the letters leading up to my reply directly below.

My fourth letter - 23/11/07

SP,
This is part of the explanation for our departure from the fellowship, an explanation which I’m not sure that you are ready to understand yet. We left without explanation because the spiritual and emotional welfare of my family is more important to me than worrying about whether you would be offended by our leaving, and because I could not guarantee that you would not become verbally abusive to my wife and children, something which has since proved itself to be a valid concern.
We can no longer be part of the fellowship because it has degenerated into an environment which features the regular abuse of its members in many forms.

“It is possible to become so determined to defend a spiritual place of authority, a doctrine or a way of doing things that you wound and abuse anyone who questions, or disagrees, or doesn’t ‘behave’ spiritually the way you want them to. When your words and actions tear down another, or attack or weaken a person’s standing as a Christian - to gratify you, your position or your beliefs while at the same time weakening or harming another - that is spiritual abuse”

The classic signs of a hyper authoritarian fellowship include:

1. Multi-level authority/government hierarchy;
2. Absolute authority of the leadership;
3. No real accountability of the leadership to the corporate body;
4. Hand-picked sub-leaders, based on their demonstration of submissiveness to the ultimate leader rather than on the basis of their leadership skills, spirituality, and anointing and appointment by God;
5. Pervasive abuse and misuse of authority in personal dealings with members;
6. Paranoia and insecurity by the leaders;
7. Abuse, misuse, and inordinate incidence of "church discipline;"
8. Personal materialism, covetousness, and self-aggrandizement by the leaders;
9. Members and/or sub-leaders must make a "spiritual covenant," sometimes a signed covenant agreement, pledging their total commitment and financial support to the leadership and church/ministry;
10. Partitioning of the group into smaller groups that are led by internally "raised up" lay-leaders who have not been anointed or appointed by God for leadership within the church;
11. Financial exploitation and enslavement of the members;
12. Inordinate attention to maintaining the public "image" of the ministry;
13. Doctrinal demeanment and devaluation — the requisite of espousing and teaching "sound doctrine" is demeaned and devalued;
14. Theological incompetency by the leadership, especially with respect to the rules of hermeneutics and Bible exegesis employed in the formulation of doctrine, giving license to twisting and adulteration of Scripture in order to provide proof-texts for unorthodox and invented doctrines;
15. Spiritualism, mysticism, and unproven doctrines;
16. Abuse and misuse of prophetic giftings as a means to dominate and intimidate;
17. Devaluation, disallowance, disregard, and displacement of the true Fivefold Ministry within the church;
18. De facto legalism, or works mentality, and its resulting loss of the "joy of salvation," though "freedom" is forever preached from the pulpit and the church is constantly touted as being a "safe church" by the leadership;
19. Esotericism — hidden agendas and requirements revealed to members only as they successfully advance through various stages of "spiritual enlightenment," i.e., unorthodox, unproven indigenous doctrines;
20. Isolationism — corporate and individual, especially with respect to exposure to outside ministry sources;
21. Performance-based approval and promotion system of members predicated on "proven" "loyalty" (i.e., submission) to the leadership;
22. Devaluation, suppression, and non-recognition of members' bona fide God-given talents, abilities, gifts, callings, and anointing, as a means of subjugation;
23. Requiring members to perform menial tasks, such as cleaning toilets, setting up chairs, and acting as the leader's personal valet or slave, as a supposed means to humble them and teach them to "obey their leaders;"
24. Constant indoctrination with a "group" or "family" mentality that impels members to exalt the corporate "life" and goals of the church-group over their personal goals, callings, and objectives;
25. Members are psychologically traumatized and indoctrinated with numerous improper fears and phobias aimed at keeping them reeling in diffidence and an over-dependence or co-dependence on their leaders and the corporate group;
26. Corporately, there eventually develops an inordinately high incidence of financial, marital, moral, psychological, mental, emotional, and medical problems, including sudden deaths and contraction of "incurable" and "unknown" diseases;
27. Lack of true personal spiritual growth and development, especially in terms of genuine faith and experiencing the abounding grace, forgiveness, goodness, blessings, kindness, and agape-love of God;
28. Members are required to obtain the approval or "witness" of their leader(s) for decisions regarding personal matters;
29. Frequent preaching from the pulpit regarding not getting out from under the "spiritual covering" of the leadership;
30. Members departing without the prior permission and blessing of the leadership leave the group under a cloud of manufactured suspicion, shame, and slander;
31. Horror stories frequently told by leaders about individuals or families who left the group without the prior permission and blessing of the leadership, and the terrible consequences and curses they suffered as a result;
32. Departing members often suffer from various psychological problems and display the classic symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

I do not think that you can deny that we saw many of these things in the fellowship and that your parents employed nearly every one of these techniques as well as regularly using secrecy, public humiliation, negative reporting, ridicule and exaggeration to control the group and build their personal wealth. Anyone who tries to leave the fellowship is threatened with spiritual damnation and the certain peril of their children, consequently a culture of fear pervades everyone. The fellowship is a cult.

One day you will have to come to terms with the truth that your fathers ministry is abusive and controlling and your parents are responsible for bringing a great deal of trauma and distress into many peoples lives. They have taken large sums of money deceitfully and used deception and exaggeration to further their business enterprises. They have plundered the bank accounts of willing and committed people in order to live their ‘faith’ lifestyle, and one day your father will have to answer to the Lord for all the families that he has fractured and destroyed. Just look at the ********, ************ and the ***** families.
As a direct result of your father’s teachings the fellowship has become a breeding ground for fear, narrow mindedness, intolerance, discrimination, racism and bigotry and you have used that system with all of its rules and regulations on many occasions for your own personal gain.

Quite what possessed you to abuse (my wife) over the phone at work before Easter I cannot imagine. Whilst on occasions I may not have agreed with your opinions while we were working together, I always held your family in the utmost respect and have never spoken to your wife or children harshly.
The fact that you would threaten her, belittle her views and opinions and then falsely accuse her shows how low you are prepared to stoop and what disgusting contempt you have for women.
This is a perfect example of why I have not contacted you personally since we made a break from the fellowship. I cannot trust you to conduct yourself in a civil manner, you are too self involved to consider someone else’s perspective.
With you it is so black and white, people have to be 100% in support of your aims and aspirations or else they are in opposition….’all in’ or ‘all out’ with no in-between.
We have all seen how vicious you have been to members of your own family in order to achieve your goals and how ruthlessly you pursued someone else’s wife to satisfy your own need for a bride.

When we started working together on the (engineering project) it was with the aim that all in the fellowship would benefit from our hard work, that we would all have a business that would be able to support our work as a fellowship, a financial engine for all of the other projects that we had planned. Gradually it morphed into a family (your family) affair and then after that to just your personal company. You have willingly taken peoples tithes and the time they set aside to serve the Lord for your own personal gain, and you have maneuvered yourself into a sole position of complete managerial and financial control with accountability to no one, over a company built up from the sacrifice and commitment of the people you now exclude.

Why bother accusing me of throwing away twenty years of friendship?
The truth is that you threw away a little bit of our relationship every time you humiliated me in front of the rest of the group, every time you belittled my professional opinion, each time you neglected to transfer my wages and I had to ask to be paid, each time I stood at the checkout of a store only to find that you still hadn’t transferred them into my account, every time you shouted at my kids.
You expected us to give more and more to your projects, to sacrifice our family time and personal funds in order to support your vision yet you had no intention of making any such sacrifices yourself. You eroded my goodwill every morning that we got to work two or three hours before you managed to drag yourself out of bed, each time we were expected to make another sacrifice for your business, yet you always seemed to have limitless funds for your family, every time that I struggled to put food on our table yet you had enough for another computer or games console or childish gadget.
The bottom line is you and your family have exhausted my patience, goodwill and willingness to support your vision. There is nothing left in your favor and so it’s over! I don’t need to throw away twenty years of friendship because you did that already and there is nothing left. I didn’t dump you; you dumped me a little bit every day.

In the absence of any statements from you concerning spiritual direction I can only deduce that you intend to continue in the same direction and with the same goals as your parents, and unfortunately there is nothing in your behavior that convinces me that you will not follow in the footsteps of you father and use the same principles and techniques as him.
Similarly in the absence of any direction from you concerning the way that the group will function financially or how you intend to repay all the loans and goodwill given to you, we can only take the past few years as a guide of how the financial affairs will continue, and that is an unacceptable pattern to follow.
We are no longer willing to compromise our faith to work with you or any of your family. I grew tired of making excuses for your behavior and turning a blind eye to your bigotry because you are supposed to be a ‘chosen one’, one day you will learn that respect must be earned and is not a birth right.

Selling your company is probably the best thing in the circumstances, you will now have to face the consequences of your actions; if you are selling it off then you can sell it with debt to your creditors. In your email you said you could not help me financially, I don’t want your financial help, I want my wages that are owed to me, there is a difference, and if you think you can flick off $13,000 of debt with a four line email you are sadly mistaken.
Your company was built on a foundation of abuse, exploitation and fraud and has no right to survive, it will be a tough lesson for you to endure, but hopefully through it all you will come to realize the true value of grace, restraint, compassion and friendship.
You would do well to get some professional help through the inevitable trauma that you will have to work through and I would suggest that you take time to re-evaluate your faith and shed as much of your parents’ flawed theology and twisted teachings as possible.
In the mean time please stay out of our lives; we have endured enough for the Kingdom of our [former] pastor.

Wondering what comes next

His reply - 23/11/07

Dear wondering what comes next,

Sorry for not replying earlier to your emails. But I have been under a lot of pressure lately trying to get things down on the farm sorted out. It is not possible for me to give you any money even if i wanted to. [my company] is currently being sold to be able to pay out the [bank] debts. I will not be able to help you financially as I am struggling myself to make ends meet. If anything I would need some help. Are we still friends? It doesn't look like it the way you dumped me.

SP

My third letter - 11/11/07

SP,
It’s nearly four weeks since I wrote to you (7/10/2007) requesting a resolution concerning my outstanding invoices D245 & D246 which cover outstanding wages for my work on the [engineering project] between 15/8/2005 and 19/1/2007, totaling $13,245.10 Inc GST
To date I have received no reply by either post, email or phone indicating that you intend to address this matter, despite emailing, faxing and posting my previous invoices.
Throughout I have been mindful of your personal and business circumstances which I understand are now much improved, but am still disappointed that you continue to avoid the issue, I would have thought that the least you could do is acknowledge the situation needs resolving and that given the fact that you have had the benefit of these unpaid wages for nearly ten months now, it’s time to settle the account.

I put a tremendous amount of effort into building your company and developing the [engineering project], way above and beyond the call of duty and have previously affirmed that I will not charge you for all the Saturdays which I worked or the $15,000 worth of phone bills I personally accumulated over the four year project (2003-2006 inclusive), I will leave those with you as my contribution to the project.
You have gained a great deal from my commitment and dedication in the past and I had hoped that you could have at the very least afforded me the courtesy of responding to my letters and invoices. I understand you are planning a trip to America in the New Year with your whole family as well as.

If you have enough money to undertake a trip like that then you have enough money to settle your outstanding debts with me. I have been patient enough over these outstanding debts and advise you now that if these funds are not paid into my account by December 1st 2007 I will pass these debts over to a collection agency with interest at 10% backdated to January 2007.
Attached again are invoices D245 & 246 together with a breakdown of the hours and wages I received. My account details are on each invoice.

You can as ever respond by post, email of phone. If you continue to choose not to then you have until 1st December 2007 and not one day more.
It would be a shame to pass this to a debt collector but with your continued silence you leave me no choice.

Wondering what comes next

My Second Letter – 7/10/07

SP,
Please note the email below (attached) which I sent to you on 29th May 2007. It is now 7th October 2007 and I have not received payment of $12,041 which is outstanding on the wages owed to me for work on the [engineering project].
Please provide details of when and how you intend to settle this outstanding debt. I am willing to come to an arrangement of installments if it will help you manage your cash flow more effectively.

Wondering what comes next.

My first letter – 29/5/07

SP,
Attached is the invoice for the first BAS period of 2007 during which time I was still being paid by [your company]. Also attached is a summary of wages I received from [your company].

When you and your father asked me to reject the employment offer from [State Power utility] and start working full time for [your company] back in August 2005, a salary of $1500 per week not including GST was offered and I accepted.
I understand that circumstances financially during the development and building of the [engineering project] were sometimes stretched and that it was not always possible for you to pay me on a regular basis, and I was willing to live with that to help the progress of the project along.
When I left [your company] back in January 2007 I did not press for settlement of all outstanding monies because I felt that you needed time to get the project running to full capacity, settle your existing debts and stabilized a working cash flow.
I have not heard from you in over three months now and I do not know how the project is running at the moment or where you stand with your debtors, however I want to make it clear that I still expect to be paid the outstanding sums which I am owed by [your company].

In Summary:

Hours worked: 3081 hrs (not including Saturdays) 15/08/2005 until 19/01/2007

Wages paid inc GST: $111,709.63

Wages owed inc GST: $123,750

Wages inc GST outstanding: $12,041

Since the beginning of the project in 2003 I have spent over $15,000 on home and mobile telephone bills for calls directly related to [your company]. This figure does not include handset repayments, line rental or overseas calls to our families. It does include 50% of the internet plan fees.
As you can see, when you take into account the time given to the project on Saturdays (for which I have not charged) and the amount spent on telephones, we made a significant contribution to project as a whole.

I do not doubt that you have the integrity to settle you debts and I am willing to wait until you have sufficient funds to make good, however I want these outstanding monies of $12,041 to be paid to me in full by the end of September 2007.
You have my bank account details and you can pay the outstanding amount in installments if that is more convenient for you.

Wondering what comes next.