Recently a fellow “Disgruntled” sent me a link to this article: I was a poster child for AA. Then I realized I’m not an alcoholic.   I recognized the story. The author, Tina Dupuy, told it on This American Life.

Turns out Ms. Dupuy was born into a cult called “The children of God” (the name alone is creepy enough). Her parents were, shall we say, inadequate, and she wound up in a group home, essentially raised by AA. She is starting a podcast in February that you, dear readers, might want to check out: Cultish

I certainly will be.

Over late fall and early winter, my husband and I started binge-watching (horrors!) The Leftovers — an HBO series based on the Tom Perrotta novel. One day a percentage of the world’s population disappears — poof, they vanish from car seats, kitchen tables, classrooms and soccer fields.

The Leftovers scramble about in emotional pain, in a constant search; thus a number of cults pop up, the most prominent being The Guilty Remnants, or GR (ya’ gotta love that name). Guilty Remnants take a vow of silence and renounce all worldly possessions, family, friends. They live together, wander around — empty shells draped in white garb — “witnessing”, which means  following people, lurking outside their homes, creepy white shadows, cigarettes dangling & smoke constantly curling up from cold fingers. Unlike “school”, GR does not pretend to care about group members; it’s the end of the world and the cult’s sole purpose is to “Make THEM Remember” …  (ring a bell, self-remembering, anyone …)

The Leftovers humanizes all characters; over time even GR’s branch leader, a revolting character named Patty, becomes sympathetic, almost like-able (she’s very funny) as viewers peek into her history. Other cult depictions — The Master or Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene — portray cult members as off-putting freaks. In contrast, my “classmates” were thoughtful, intelligent, funny, well-educated people, with normal life things: jobs, families, passions, etc. The group’s appeal was in large part due to the company it attracted. We found community through engaging in shared common drive to reach higher and dig deeper. Under legitimate circumstances (say, Graduate school) we would have been in very good company. The quality of my classmates, kept me hanging on far past the “help” expiration date — when “help” turns toxic. When cognitive dissonance started rearing up, I look at all the ivy-league graduates sharing my classroom and shove my questions away — after all, these are intelligent people who wouldn’t possibly join a cult!

We would learn about our fellow students’ “only life things” struggles only when they were “asking for help“, or doing what was known as “being work” – “school’s” confessional process. Personal history, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, ideas, weaknesses eventually become social weaponry, used to put them down, when necessary — the “Help” morphed into character assassination to wear down an already tenuous sense of self: soul murder – death by 1000 psychological cuts and bruises.  It would be inconvenient for “school’s” student body to be comprised of participants with healthy egos and strong senses of self. How do you convince such souls to “evolve” into guilty remnants — “school” cogs, scoffing at “only life things”, following “evolutionary” directives from “The Source” to “awaken” via recruiting new “school” cogs; cult propaganda replacing authentic voice and person hood-wiped away for the “greater cause” of Sharon’s retirement investments.

Such is the nature of ALL cults – they all practice some version of soul murder. When I look back I see myself believing that “school”  was “helping” while it ripped my psyche apart — I was in constant battle with myself. I couldn’t trust my perceptions, thoughts, “negative emotions” — thus I clung to “school’s” illustrious guidance. My “school” experiences only hurt and I remember feeling baffled: why does this hurt? “School” wouldn’t possibly want to hurt me! Like all cults, eventually up becomes down, black becomes white, hurt becomes “help”. Towards my tenure’s end, I may as well have been silent, draped in white garb and smoking cigarettes.

A commentator on this blog recently wrote that I sound like a person who had a Near Death Experience. I had to laugh. Having experienced “school’s” version of cultic soul murder, I now  protect those vulnerabilities fiercely. For our human vulnerabilities and imperfections are what bring beauty and meaning into our lives: emotional connections, passions, relationships. They distinguish individuals from each other. And cults take advantage of them. Now that I know how it feels to walk through life as an empty shell, I drink in my imperfect, but cult-free existence, with the intention of embracing all of those things that define my personhood and give my life meaning, squeezing out as much as possible from every minute and each breath.

Your inner voice is The Source, and your Inner Compass points to true north. Listen to yourself, follow yourself, for as author, Maurice Sendek, told Terry Gross in his last Fresh Air interview, Live your life, live your life, live your life! http://www.purpleclover.com/video/2700-we-can-watch-over-and-over-again-and-it-makes-us-cry-each-and-every-time/#.VpNDB08Q3fi.facebook

Please DON’T let cults like “school” hijack your life. For that dash between dates is yours to sculpt; not “school’s” to mold.

… authentically inspired. Thanks, YouTube.  Enjoy!

… just keeps getting better and better! You will learn soooo much about this illustrious “school” of higher consciousness (cough). But the best thing you will learn is that — no matter how long your tenure  — you can leave. You won’t be alone and there’s VERY HIGH probability that your life will improve if you do leave.

So … once again … I encourage you to visit:

STANDING UP TO SHARON GANS

Hello, Internet-surfing “rule breakers”,

I wanted to let you know that if you’re tiring of the earnest nature of cult confessions, and have read esoteric freedom so many times you couldn’t possibly squeeze another ounce of anti-“school” out of it, here’s something else …

http://neverfeartohatetheodious.blogspot.com

Let me know what you think. Happy 2016!

Thanks, GSR

As a human being, I generally think about various things — life experiences, or relationships, or classes, or musical instruments, or ideas, etc. in terms of comparison. We do that.  “School’s” always presented itself as so beyond human experience, so evolved, floating on such a high level of “fineness” that it bore no comparison to anything in our lowly and coarse “only lives”.

Ironically, since I departed the hallowed halls in 2011, I cannot help (as a lowly human) think of my life in terms of before “School” and after “School”. That tendency is never more apparent than in the holiday season — for between the years of 2006-2011, when my holiday seasons were devoured increasingly by its Christmas party, stress increased in accordance, as did the tension in my marriage, as the group wedged its way into our lowly “only-life” celebration, shoving it on to the back burner for the sake of “evolution”.

So, today is Christmas. We — myself and my little ragtag family, or the ragtag bunch as I like to call us — are roasting a chicken, gonna open presents, then some of us will go see Star Wars. We have a tree because I — as the Jewish person in the house — insist that we get one every year. I also decorate it – the boys really don’t care. There’s no pomp & circumstance, no pretension; and very little stress. I feel worlds away from the woman who let a cult devour all time between work and “class” in service to some elusive “higher purpose” — I love it. I feel so free and am so grateful to no longer be living in a cult coma.

I hope that many of you are feeling the same.

Since leaving “school” in August 2011, Thanksgiving has always been a marker of one more “school”-free holiday season, for which I can be grateful. No more secret, cult-contrived, demands sucking me away from friends and family. No more fighting with my husband as I try to convince him that — as Robert once said to me — “the Christmas Party is when you benefit the most from ‘school’. “

For between the years of 2006-2011, I let “school” hijack my holiday season with it’s infamous Christmas Party … (well, infamous to those of us whose lives have been plowed through by the illustrious “school of higher consciousness” … a.k.a “study of higher consciousness”) That particular year, Robert was “helping” me “school”-style; he looked baffled that my husband would have any complaints about the institution’s annual usurpation of all time between “class” and day job to plan and implement the required “gift to your teachers”.

The truth is that “school” doobies who have un-“schooled” spouses argue with them annually, from roughly mid-November through mid-December about the group’s ridiculous holiday demands. For one of the first lessons “school” imparts is this idea that humans have a skewed relationship to time and to never say “I don’t have time to do x, y, or z”. I remember early in my tenure hearing Robert say, “If you tell me you don’t have time to [FILL IN BLANK WITH “SCHOOL” DEMAND] I won’t believe you.” The “teaching” (cough) is that your time now belongs to “school”. And “school’s” winter tradition is pretty much designed to drive couples apart and destroy families as it steals away the time that should be dedicated to family and friends.

So speaking of time, even after being out of the institution for almost five years, and I still experience my life in terms of before I left and after I left. That comparison never ceases to yield gratitude from me — for having had the experience of allowing a group manipulate five years and $20,000 from me, and recognizing how I gave these alleged “teachers” so much power during that time, I know that, when I left, I crossed a threshold and will never go back; I won’t be vulnerable to that kind of manipulation again.

Time is precious, every breath a gift. I now recognize how my fears made me vulnerable to time thieves and energy vampires. Now that I’m free from them, I want to drink in and squeeze the most out of every moment. Tonight I will celebrate my small, ragtag family with our imperfect, sometimes bumbling, holiday feast. Three souls who’ve come together through some trial and a lot of error  — with (oddly) “school” being the central error, and most life-altering mistake, from which I did, indeed, glean the most benefit.  And, despite the disparate meanderings, seemingly random circumstances that brought three humans together as a family today, we are sharing a Thanksgiving meal and doing the best we can to enjoy this time, which no longer includes a nefarious outside influence with selfish intentions.

Thus, I can honestly thank “school” for a strength I dredged up from the inside out, when I walked away. Knowing now that I prefer to bumble through life, following my inner compass, taking risks and responsibility for them and that  I am no longer searching and vulnerable to cults like “school”.

For when I left “school” I gleaned the most benefit from its lessons (cough). And that, my friends, is something to be grateful for!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours — I raise a glass to your “school”-free holiday season!

Now that I was once duped into and eventually left a cult, I can truly appreciate the brilliance of The Wizard of Oz. It’s message stays current and probably always will. I have to say every ex-member I’ve spoken with — and at this point I’ve spoken with many — grappled with this question: is “school”, aka “the study”, i.e. Robert and Sharon, simply diabolical — brilliantly sociopathic, self-serving and unapologetic social engineers, without any regard for the damage left in their “wake” (cough) or are they “very bad Wizards” — well intended, yet mis-led and mis-informed. We can only speculate.

Maybe the blog monitors can clue us in — yes, I hear there are two (perhaps more). Hi Josh, care to share?

I’ve come to see this question as one of the stages many ex-cult members move through after leaving groups like “school”. It’s simply part of trying to understand a bizarre experience, in which people you admired and trusted, betrayed you in the most convoluted way. It’s part of the looking back, sorting out and reclaiming of your psyche, emotions, thoughts and — ultimately — life.

Like Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and The Scarecrow, if you let yourself work through your cult days — talk to ex-members, repair “unschooled” relationships by revealing the “source” (cough) of odd, dismissive and often cold behavior, visit the sites on the resources page to learn what “school”, aka “the study” really is (hint, it’s not a secret esoteric school with ancient roots) you can find that what you sought from the group lived in you all along and still does; then you can claim it and the vulnerability that led you into “school”, aka “theStudy”, (I’m sure the name will go through another metamorphesis soon) falls away.

If you stay in “school”, aka “the study”, long enough, you start hearing “teachers” say that, unless you do “the work”, “school”-style, you’ll never “build a soul”. Of course, that claim, in and of itself, is fucked up enough to rate its own post. But for now, suffice to say, that, like everything in “school”, aka “the study”, and every other cult, the opposite is true. You go in with a soul — I believe every human is born with one — and “school” beats it out of you with its version of “the work”.

But if you leave the group, step back, and see it for what it truly is, a cult and a con job, forgive those vulnerable parts of yourself, and place the blame squarely on the shoulders of “school”/”the study” leadership, I believe you can unburden yourself and become very, very well acquainted with the very soul the group claims you don’t have. Once that happens, it will guide you and, as long as you’re guided by your soul — not by outside sources, especially nefarious outside sources, you’ll never be vulnerable to soul vampires again.

This halloween, I hope you recognize “school”, aka “the study” as a group of very bad Wizards, at best, and sociopathic con-artists, at worst, (it almost doesn’t matter where the group falls on that scale) and purge yourself of those soul vampires.

This is the second letter to my grandmother I stumbled over recently (click here to read letter #1) and as I transcribe it, a number of things strike me:

1. I left “school” in 2011 and I wrote these letters in 2008 — even in my cult coma, I employed quotations around “school” language.
2. I don’t remember writing the letters, but I must have written the one below after “class”, during the required “hour of silence”. It’s clear that I believed I was violating “school” code by writing a letter to my dead grandmother. I did not ask permission, just communicated out of a pure spontaneous need — what a bad student!
3. In the letter, I struggle to remember what happened in “class” and feel guilty about my faltering memory. “School” often employs character assassination to those who struggle with their memory. It claimed something like your ability to remember, reflects your ability to love. Those who had memory lapses, well, they weren’t really able to love.

But now, I think I do recall the context that triggered letter #2 — one classmate had lost her father. She asked for help; she found she couldn’t simply go through her day and act normally. She wanted to scream it to the world – DON’T YOU KNOW MY DAD JUST DIED. If you aren’t in a cult coma, you recognize this phenomenon as grief.

Cult-Coma-Robert’s “help” consisted of telling her she was “in self pity”. I was astounded by his coldness. In a rare moment of courage, I challenged him, saying, “She just lost her father!” He turned my question over to my “school” cohort and “essence friend” to respond — she explained to me that Robert was saving her from drowning in “self pity”. I guess I didn’t buy it — thus, letter #2 followed:

Dear Gran,

I have no idea if you see or hear my thoughts, but I’m going to keep writing without asking permission. My question continues: should I stay, or should I go? I’m told I could walk out tomorrow; that I am “a free woman; that it is a choice and a privilege to be in ‘school'” . Is it? 

Tonight I saw the full spectrum of what is referred to as the “pendulum”. We start “class” with either Tai Chi, or what is called “body work”. Tonight’s body work exploration was so lovely — can I remember what it was? It was about the idea of being invisible and the “time body”. I felt light and playful and relaxed.

Then we discussed time and perceptions of time — which is fascinating to me. I really do experience time differently. Then came the kabash: the “Non-Expression of Negative Emotions”. This is where I start to wonder. Is that because, Gram, “I’m attached to my unnecessary suffering”, or is it because I’m being brainwashed?

I asked whether A’s expression of sadness was an expression of negative emotion, Robert responded, “You could say, I’m fine. What is it to lie, really? In this ‘work’ it is said, It depends on who — which I — is speaking.”

“But,” A said, “What if I feel the tears well up and the tension?”

“Then you aren’t trying hard enough,” Robert answered.

I don’t think I understand that exchange. What of grief? What of honoring honest-to-God loss and sadness?

I, myself, have been feeling so empty and numb, Grandma and I hate that sense of emptiness and this sense that this life is simply a long and lonely trial — an “experiment”. “School” highlights that sense, Grandma, but not always. Sometimes I walk out feeling light and hopeful. Sometimes I leave “class” with a sense of “possibility”. 

What will I become, I sometimes ask myself. And sometimes the question is what will I become if I leave “school”? Will I ruin absolutely everything?

So we’ve a new “instruction”: “go out and make new friends”. This is the one I felt creeping up and I’ve been afraid of, due to my ambivalence. There’s always been a piece of solace in my “school” exploration which was I’ve not been asked to recruit newbies. Well, that is starting to change and I’m uncomfortable with it –VERY!

If I talk about it with K, or in class, I can guarantee you I will be told to change my attitude, or that I am being stingy. We’ll see — I guess, I’ll experiment. I sometimes sit and stew instead of voicing my objections. We all do. But since we are working on “NON-EXPRESSION” of “negative emotions” many of us sit, and nod, and even smile.

You can see how well I’m doing at this “NON-EXPRESSION” of “negative emotions”. How is one to know oneself if one cannot trust his/her thoughts, perceptions, feelings? I observe suspicion, resentment, blame spewing out. “Some people sit here and don’t want to be here,” Robert said. Yes. That person, as it turns out,  is me and lately that person shuts up a lot — that “set of Is”.

And yet, I observe the required “hour of silence”, except that I pen this letter to you. That may be considered a violation. So I ask you, again, should I stay or should I go? What am I doing here really, if I’m flip-flopping and vacillating, swimming in my ambivalence?

There is so much to do: I’ve got work and a wedding to plan and a stepson to get to know. Why, then, do I stay? Because I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t. I am afraid I will simply fall back into old habits and sink, sink, sink — losing everything. Is that really reason enough to stay? 

I told myself I would reach my second anniversary and I will honor that promise to myself. Perhaps this is simply a state that is temporary. But Gram, I am asking for your help in coming to clarity. If I quit, would it be another one in a long pattern of quitting things, or are my perceptions accurate and my anger justified? Am I allowing myself to be manipulated? What for?

So these are the questions I ask and am afraid to utter out loud. Why all this fear?

I’m getting tired now, Gran and must go home.  But I’ll be back to the page soon. I find great comfort in consulting with you.

Love, Your Granddaughter.

Yesterday I stumbled across some letters I’d written to my deceased grandmother in 2008. At the time, I wrote to her because I was sworn to “school” secrecy, but torn about my illustrious tenure.

It was really something to look back on my “school” induced state of turmoil. Cult experts and mental health professionals call this state cognitive dissonance. Those readers who’ve been inside the hallowed halls, or those who’ve been in other cults, will likely recognize their own versions of cognitive dissonance in letter #1; letter #2 makes it even clearer, which is the next post:

Dear Gran,

Since I can’t talk to anyone one but K about “school”, I am going to talk to you.

What the fuck am I doing?

Or should I say, “am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?” God knows I wouldn’t have a job that pays me 50K/year without “School”. It’s possible that I wouldn’t be married either. In fact, I would probably still be stuck in the same loop I’d been in for so many years and feeling more and more ashamed of myself for it — which, of course, would perpetuate everything.

I find myself thinking, though, what if I were putting that $350/month into my violin lessons instead of going to class. Would I? Have I been suckered into a cult? or is this a real thing? Is “school” exactly what I have always sought?

You know the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” Is this a classic case? I feel so far away from me, or who I believe “me” to be – – which could quite possibly be an illusion anyway.

But I’m sworn to secrecy and sometimes, often times, talking in class, or talking with K isn’t enough. So I talk to you. You are beyond this world and your perspective is way beyond — seems silly to even say so. But my point is who would know. Maybe Sharon’s right — I shouldn’t be wasting my time, their time and yet before Sharon’s appearance (with her big, scary presence) I felt I was getting some real help, some deep understanding, something I can’t get anywhere else, or in any way.

I can’t talk to Chris about it — it wouldn’t even be fair. I can’t talk to my friends. Who do I talk to? How do I possibly know what’s right. Is this “school” good for me? Is it making me more neurotic? Who is this woman and what is she doing with her life?

Well, I can’t even write about it, Gran … I hope that you can give me some guidance from whereever you are.

Love and miss you,

Your granddaughter.

Letter #2