Headpeeper Part III: How Did I Get Here?

In the last blog entry on this subject I made the final statement of exactly what was the apothecary mix that caused my attraction, enmeshment, remaining and gaining leadership in the cult? 

Well that is quite a mouthful so let me break it down in those parts.

I. What caused my attraction? As the last blog suggests, I believe is it a common angst within every one living. We seek to complete in our personal development what we see as lacking or to fill the inadequacy. So, what was I looking for? An ideal church that practiced New Testament living. That is was a authentic as possible. Why? So that I could say that my drive to please God (a substitute for parents?) could be realized. How does the cult do this? In a study called “The False Transformational Promise of Biblical Based Cults: Archetypal Dynamics (Cultic Studies Journal Vol 7, No.2, 1990), the lure is presented plainly. Biblically based cults focus on universal human vulnerabilities. Basically the guy offers a high degree of validation. Let’s face it we are all looking for someone to say ‘good job’ or ‘your re doing it right’ In a cult situation that Is the carrot offered. ‘If you stay with us, you will realize all you seek in terms of following Christ. What you see in a cult is behavior and at least the conveyance by those cult members that they have or are in the process of achieving spiritual transcendence. The emotional baggage of their past has been lifted and they have received relief from the angst of an unfulfilled life. Morever, this is due to their submittal to subordination and subservience to the leadership. This is at least what is presented to the newcomer. As a result, the fait accompli is completed in that the newcomer is set to expect redevelopment which is ultimately a giving over their personal boundaries and total presentation of self in whatever stage of development has been achieved to those in charge. This is called biblical submittal. In fact, in my case, this was a public proclamation and covenant made by myself in front of the entire cult group that I would submit to leadership in order for them to help me ‘be made over in the image of Christ’ however, their definition of what that is never was defined. Basically, it is carte blanche with no boundaries. In other words, fulfillment of what was sought was promised but what was surrendered amounted to a total emasculation. So the stage was set for the next phase.

II. What caused my enmeshment? It is best explained as a natural progression (regression) of any person development and a re-embedment into the pre-egoic state. This is a deconstruction of one’s self. Once submittal happens in this degree, you are on the hook .Testing of loyalty begins. This is couched in terms of being renewed in the spirit of your mind. Members now strive to suppress critical thoughts, purge themselves from ‘undesirable feelings’ — in fact in my case, we were told that ‘feelings follow decisions’ We were conditioned to intercept or thought-block certain thoughts such as the way we felt about family and friends outside of the cult. So what is the bottom line? One word:  REPRESS. All the struggles we had with our former lives and mode of thinking and relationships were submitted to the mandates of the cult. We could not live in both worlds. The world we knew had to be rejected for the world we had embraced. This struggle is almost always couched in spiritual terms. In other words, one is taught to re-interpret interpersonal struggles as evil attacks that seek to dislodge the new convert from their spiritual growth. Think of it. Those who perhaps raised us or we were raised by are to be thought of as obstacles to spiritual growth and endanger ones’ spiritual survival. What does this evolve into? The entrant now devolves into a pre-egoic state. In other words, all decisions, thoughts of well being and even survival are linked to the archetypal Mother (cult leadership). Ones psychological dependence is complete. the Bible is used to foster pre-egoic functioning of the cult member. The old life is eschewed and the natural development (and rightly so) of one’s mind into a state of autonomy is denied and even seen as fleshly. One cannot be self-determining in a cult and survive it. Even though this is a NATURAL and healthy state of maturity and self development. Finally as this is playing out, all socialization has the cult as its focus and Lynch-pin. One’s time becomes fully occupied by the cult’s programs and goals. Personal goals are subservient at best to the cult’s goals. This can span career choice, mate choice to everyday life such as friendships and even minor daily choices. In a final state, the cults group ethos becomes ones’ private reality and there is no individual reality that is not subjected to the cults evaluation and assessment. 

III. Why did I remain in the cult? Well as a natural progression from point 2 above, all self determination is being eroded and replaced by group think and adulation at every point of personal identity surrendered. As a result, the morph of personal decision making into reliance on the leadership to frame each personal decision in light of cultic teaching is embedded. The result is no decision can be made. Especially ones that entail addressing repressed thoughts, goals and individualization. One sees themself as being deceived or rebellious if any free thought is entertained. Think of it. A person whose entire sense of autonomy is being deconstructed. The actual process of maturing involves that autonomy being realized is blocked; one is self condemned for thinking outside the fold and mindset of the cult. Moreover the looming thought of disfellowshipping involves separation from the one source of stability in their life within the cult. What does this lead to? Further repression and even an acceleration of self-denial and de-construction. The treadmill of self denial, conformity and sacrifice is kicked into high gear. What is the fruit of such a cycle? The need for further validation and even further regression into pre-egoic developmental capacity — the end result is a total elimination of who we really are. 

IV. How did I achieve leadership status in the cult? As long as one ‘progresses’ in the dynamics of the points above, the carrot may be realized albeit only in a tenuous manner. There is never a time that ones’ position is solidified and safe. It has been my experience that the most significant falls of leadership have occurred to those who were perceived to be the epitome of the leadership’s vision. The greatest sin one can make in a cult is to be self-determining. To allow one’s self to receive direction independent of the leadership. To function semi-autonomously from the leadership and to experience natural and healthy personal maturity. When I left the cult’s main seat of power to be an offshoot of the cult and become an extension of the cult, distance was the insulator from daily oversight and it was not always practical to communicate with the main source for everyday decisions. Ergo, I was forced to pray about and make decisions ( that is quite normal state of operation for any type of human life: to reach a state of maturity where one can at least make some decisions on one’s own). As time reeled on (20 years). My maturity continued and in some rare aspects applauded by those who were my leadership. But eventually, the very process of growth undid my progress and made me look either deceived or rebellious. As a result, my estrangement from leadership began and progressed to a point where I was no longer to be accepted as one of their own. Now to be honest, I cannot say I was a fully mature or anywhere near that. I was making some decisions but my conditioned dependence upon leadership was still absolute. So when the final blow of separation came, the degree of disorientation and psychic damage was almost total. My wife and my now grown kids caught in the middle as well as my little congregation. The power wielded against me was unsurmountable and as such I lost everything. The mantra that I had taught all those years now seared into the psyche of my son and daughters as well as my congregants. What was the result of that? The loss of them all. All of them. For me the damage ceased and the destruction complete. For my wife a few years of total dis-orientation. For my children, the damage is still on-going. I have yet to believe that they even know who they are anymore. Whatever life they have is now sourced in the lives of their leadership — they have regressed fully into a pre-egoic state - -total reliance on someone that is driven by their own need for ego-inflation sourced in insecurity.  How am I able to assess the damage done to my children? One has since made it out of the cult and so I am able to see the damage done first hand. They are rebuilding their lives as I and my wife are doing to this day (we have been out 10 years and the one the made it out has been out about two years).

V. A character sketch of my former leader: 

Here is the character sketch of the cult leadership I had lived under for almost 25 years: 

“The natural cult leader has deeply repressed any  awareness of his insecurities and is in ceaseless peril of losing his ego identity to the terrifying reality of his powerful neediness. He must compulsively remind himself that he is worthy, and he manipulates those around him to provide him with the validation he desperately seeks..They bypass the necessary remedial work for authentic ego development and achieve ego-inflation in three ways: a> placing themselves in a position of authority (my leader was a self-proclaimed apostle) b> preserve the power structure of the church (he now has his pre-egoic son running his  estate) and finally c> increases their followers dependence and self sacrifice.” —  from the journal above cited. 

How this plays out: 

“Perhaps the leaders’ most coercive method of increasing followers’ dependence is requiring followers to prove their discipleship by servicing as a living extension of the leaders own ego. Followers are required to mechanically imitate their immediate superior’s personality, including flaws and quirks…all personalities ultimately reflect the persona of the cult’s founder."

In retrospect, I have never met a man who has been so effaced by his own hand and actions. I have never met a man who had so altered himself, he has no semblance of humanity at all. He is a self imposed caricature of life. There is no dimension, no personal emotion only self imposed hate and total deconstruction. He has become an iconoclastic statue in his own realm. 

God have mercy on him and to all that follow. 

V. Recovery?

Well that is food for another blog. Stay tuned.  

Headpeeper Part II: "How did I end up in a cult and why did I stay so long?"

I get the question a lot when I talk to people about my past history. I will begin my meandering explanation below but at the outset I have to say until recently I have always looked at manipulation from the leaders from an external point of view as a main cause. What I have come to realize is that is not fully true and it is a shallow answer to blame others for your own mistakes. No, the answer is much more vast than just playing the blame game. The main truth is ‘No one can do anything to you unless you allow it….’  The condition of my life and entry into the maelstrom of a cult is  more common than you might think. You see, in all of us there is a process or ‘mapping of the human soul’ as Carl Jung put it. It is an experience common to us all so count yourself a part of the human condition with all its possbilities — good and bad.

What I am about to share with you is universal to all of us. Cult or not, there is an element in everyone’s angst of self-actualization and personal ascendance from infantile to maturity. We are a complex animal and what we miss or what is withheld from or given to us at early stages of development continue to linger on through our lives. We cover things up but the basic and raw need unfulfilled or vulnerability exposed and left open is still present under it all. In other words, we get stuck between childhood and adulthood at various stages of development depending on what has happened to us in our lives. It is the human condition. We all have imperfect parents who although they did the best they could were able only to actuate out of what they themselves had. 

What is the reality? 

Given the right conditions, almost ANYONE can be drawn into a place that promises what they have lacked in their own life journey.  What person on this earth had perfect parents? I would venture to say very few. We all arrive at physical adulthood at various stages of mental development .When a cult promises to complete or perhaps re-engineer in that  person to fill the void present from one’s life experience, needless to say it is a temptation to at the very least explore that offer. This is what a cult promises. This is why people get caught in a cult. 

I am no psycho-analyst by any means but see if this doesn’t make sense. I will later tie this into the cult member’s psyche. 

Carl Jung was a pioneer in ,spelunking the regions of the mind. He proposes the following stages of growth to maturity.

 In the below, I will use the term ‘Mother’ to refer to the parenting unit as a whole that encompasses what the child perceives to be the parental unit

Stage I: pre-egoic. Part I:  This is the infantile state of every human soul. It is defined as where there is no separation or delineation between one’s self and their mother. As any infant can be observed, they are totally dependent on the Mother. In the beginning, the mother caters to the infants needs. It is a total immersing of the infant into the caring and loving arms of the mother. Feedings happen as well as diaper changes and stimulus to keep the child engaged and happy. In this state the child is in a perfectly blissful state of being. It experiences the unconditional love and care of the mother (in most instances under normal conditions).

Stage II: Pre-egoic Part II. As the child grows, schedules become more rigid, actions may meet with reproof and as such the child  experiences a conflict of being passive to the actions of the  mother  versus the beginning stages autonomy where the child due to the actions (or lack thereof) of the Mother, starts to individuate. 

So what do we see as the role of authority here in the life of the infant  from their point of view: There are two sides of the Mother:  The ‘Great’ Mother versus the ‘Terrible’ Mother. In the beginning there is nothing but unconditional love but as the life between the infant and mother expands, the Mother begins to impose rigidity and perhaps puts conditions on her love and approval. The more these conditions are experienced by the infant, the more angst the child experiences in becoming detached from the Mother. This is a natural progression of the life of anyone human. We all have experienced it to a certain degree and our experiences are more common than we would believe that they are. 

Stage III: The egoic stage: Once the infant begins to individuate from the Mother, there are two general directions it can flow ( there is a lot of grey area here of course but let’s keep it a general direction knowing there as a wide spectrum of possibilities in those general directions). These directions are still based on the primal orientation and role of the Mother.  The Mother can respond to this stage in two ways to each life experience of the growing child: they can respond in affirmation and positive reinforcement or they do not. Here is the crux: to the degree the Mother affirms the life experiences of the child, the child will either build upon that in their self development or the child will log that as area where some supplement is needed. The end result is either development of self-confidence and healthy sense of self worth or the lack thereof. As the child grows into adulthood, the life experience of the child will have a firm foundation or one that even the child themselves senses is inadequate. 

So what am I saying? 

Given the fallibility of parents in general, the child that becomes physically an adult may under all the facade of self-compensation be looking for something that promises completion or at least resolution to areas that never received the degree of affirmation that they expected.   

In essence, the majority of mankind is looking for transcendence to a state of maturity that somehow and someway was never reached. In other words, we in life are unfulfilled looking to fill a void of simple affirmation that we are ‘on-schedule’ and moving forward towards a whole person body, mind and spirit. 

So take a look again at yourself and ask the question. Could YOU be susceptible to a cult? I would say it is highly likely — given the right conditions. It is the universal condition and it goes all they way back to Adam and Eve — we are all their children. 

Enter the Cult. 

So what was the apothecary mix of circumstances that caused my attraction, my enmeshment, my remaining and my gaining leadership in the cult? 

That is another blog entry…stay tuned. 

Headpeeper: A look into a Cult Member’s Mind Part I - An Introduction

It is as much a confession as it is  a process now. After being out of a dysfunctionalreligious group for ten years, I still look for reasons why I stayed in so long and even led the cause of the group as a pastoral leader. Pastor—hmmm, I wonder if the is even an appropriate title for me now or even for anyone in leadership in the group I was actually kicked out of. Yes, kicked out. What was a cause for such an action on a group that needed members to propagate itself. What was my heinous act? Some would say it was my rebellion, some would say it was my thinking too highly of myself to place myself on equal footing with the Leader. But in retrospect it really wasn’t any of those things. No, it really was:

The sin of autonomy. 

What do I mean by such a phrase? To really explain this phrase, I have to delve in the Jungian dynamic that drives every human soul — everyone of us. Recently, I was given some material by  friend who has dealt with cults and heretical branches of Christianity over the years. In one of the Volumes of the Cultic Studies Journal, there was an artiicle that laid out clearly and succinctly the what has been called the transformational process of a person into a cult member.  What is it that causes the transformational changes? Why does the person who is a regular Joe with problems get tangled and stay tangled in a cult even long after they discover it is not heaven at all that they have found, it is hell. 

Carl Jung in his psychoanalysis of the human mind fits nicely into the explanation of why a person takes the bait, why they allow such abuse and treatment, why they embrace the continued use of it and ultimately when discarded, lose their faith when they leave or are kicked out as I was myself. One thing can be said for sure, there is no parting without some kind of bloodshed for the most part. Those that do are much smarter than I and I only have my own experience to think about. 

So as we take these steps together and I stitch together personal experience with research I have done, please bear in mind that I do not have the  answers, I have only my own story to tell and tell it I shall. 

Again, here are the framing questions:

1> What is Jung's definition of transformational change and how does that axiom apply to a cult member's morphing into a zealot? 

2> Why does a person who is a regular Joe with problems get tangled up and stay tangled in a cult?

3> What drives a person in a cult to allow such change that is so invasive and destructive? 

4> What is the usual fate of the ex-cult member? How do they view life and is there any reckoning in their lives for what has happened to them. 

I can remember that when I  had just been thrown out of the cult, that one of the Leaders told someone I knew with a bewildered and frustrated look on his face ‘Why can’t they (me and my wife), just move on?’ This series of entries will ultimately answer  that question. 

But first some background will be needed in order to apply to my story. So stay tuned. 

A Hole in TIme

It has been about 10 years since I have seen some immediate family. We try to go on with life and have some semblance of normalcy but I have to say it is a temporary thing. 

Somethings you never get over. Somethings never heal. It is the price if love and because it is that force thet holds you, there is no other force that can overpower it.  It continues to think only the good in people, bears a wrong suffered, Hopes all things are possible. It is the hole in time from which there is no other escape. We cannot escape it because there is the presence of love for the missing pieces in our lives and it is part of the deal. 

Recently my wife took. Job and I was glad for her and very proud. For my wife it has been a great struggle over the loss of those she birthed. There have been some conversations over the years but non of them leading to anything good. I was hoping through the job that she could find value in helping people who really needed it. She has been excellent in her performing her duties almost to.a point of fault. She has received several recognitions from her company for her care for patients that have come under her care. She slaved over documentation and ensuring all the paperwork associated with the patients was done thoroughly and all the requirements were met…and there were many. I was so proud of her and to see her face light up when she actually made a difference in someone’s life because she was in it. But it was taking a toll on her. What she once had to deal with the stresses of life she no longer was able to gather it. She tried again and again but each time she had to draw from that place there was little to be found and eventually there was nothing to draw from anymore. It was gone. Her ability to cope with such issues was no longer at the level she once had. It was the hole in time that had taken from her the very life and strength to keep going. I was trying to encourage her to keep it up but I have to say my expectations for her were too high. I forgot about the hole in time. The loss has taken its toll and frankly there is nothin to draw from anymore. It is a terrible thing to see someone have to give up something she loves to do because she just cannot gather enough to continue. 

The Hole in time is some place where you choose to dwell because it is anchored in love. You don’t think love is destructive but it is at times. You cannot forget and you cannot change your mind without leaving something behind that you cannot.ever let go of…your children. That is too much of a cost. 

So here we dwell in the hole in time. There is no escape because we choose not to we cannot forget those once who walked with us. 

So we wait frozen in the Hole in time. Victory has lost it former definition. Now it is defined in being able to live one day at a time. That has to be good enough.