Diary Entry #1
When I tell people about the wretched events that occurred within the religious environment I was born and raised in, the looks I get are absolutely priceless. Most of the time, I can predict with uncanny accuracy what people are thinking when they’re listening to my incredible stories. Their eyes and oddly-shaped facial expressions are always a dead giveaway. You know that look… when the eyeballs open wide, the eyebrows pull up towards the top of the forehead, and the mouth opens quickly, desperately holding back the words that thoughts have already released. In that brief moment, which is usually a rather uncomfortable four seconds, it’s clear that their brain is struggling to figure out the appropriate response to the sheer incredulity of the information that I’ve just shared. I’m a sensitive bloke and can feel their thoughts bouncing between their left and right temples, fighting desperately to reject the truth of my troubled tidings. And then I witness their time-honored grimace, the infamous frown on the faces of the souls that I’ve unburdened on.
Sometimes, I can tell that my favorite four-letter word is on the tip of their tongue when I share my memories of teenagers being brutally beaten in a place of worship by adults who subsequently paraded these young people naked in front of a congregation of men, women, and children. I reveal to my listeners the blood-curdling sounds each victim hollered when they were struck mercilessly by the strong arms of holy men; and I describe the God-awful snapping sounds of a leather belt, stripping the soft pubescent skin from young bodies. I let my listeners know that I was only a kid myself (I had not yet reached the age of ten) when I heard these things; and try my best to convey the terror that ripped through my juvenile interior when I thought that my little black behind might be next in line.
After sharing all of this information, most people don’t want to hear more about my stories. Some lift their hands up and shake their heads in sync to signal that they’ve had enough. But I’m in a zone by then and all I want to do is release. And when I’m done, I hear their breath make that familiar sound – that brisk inhale when one is temporarily shocked by something they’ve seen or heard. I always know what’s coming next and wait patiently for the questions that are asked without fail. Why? For what reason? Who ordered these beatings? Where were the parents?
All of them – the ones I share my stories with – want to know the answers to these questions, and the puzzled gleam in their eyes is a sign that they’re expecting me to provide a suitable explanation, or something to help them understand the cruelty and violence and pain. What they don’t know is that I’ve been asking the same questions since my childhood and have not yet found a satisfactory answer. So I repeat the answers that I’ve always given: these kids were punished for allegedly violating a sacred tenet; these heinous things were carried out and supported by a community that was practicing their faith; this brutality was rationalized under the auspices of religion and in the name of some angry God in the sky.
After the dead silence passes, I want to shout out loud that there’s a lot more to share – more beatings, sexual abuses, the shunning of my family, forced-fasting, constant fear and shame, denigrations, life on other planets, tales of UFOs, spirit-possession, kundalini awakenings, sacred rituals, speaking in tongues, messages from mediums, absurdities, ironical beauty, and mind-boggling mysteries. But I don’t mention anything more. The conversation (which is typically one-way) ends until I find the courage to take up the gauntlet once again, to share my religious stuff with my next unsuspecting “victim.”
Many years have passed by since the flogging of these youngsters. There were more beatings of kids and adults. But I was much older and had tasted the sweet fruit of critical thinking on more than one occasion (thanks to my dear father)... and I liked it! At some point in time, it dawned on me that I had a choice in how I wanted to live the remainder of my life. I no longer wanted to remain in the religious environment of my youth. I had had enough of a narrow-minded approach to life and rejected my enviable status as a favorite of the Most High God, a savior to the world, and an emissary of the divine. It became a silly notion to me that my people were the only ones who would survive the next destruction of the world by fire. The exclusivity, the Machiavellian strategies of the religious hierarchy and VIP’s, the insular behaviors, the questionable belief system, and the never-ending wait for the miracles of the Spirit in the secular world, destroyed the old me while creating the foundation for the new me.
It took a while – some say too long – but I left the religion of my youth and only looked back when something, some person, or some event triggered the memories. More than fifty years later, my much older mind does not want to remember certain parts of the younger version of myself… how I was thinking and feeling when I was completely powerless over the decisions made by the adults in my religious world. As a child, there was nothing left for me to do other than absorb the body blows, deal with the mental/emotional trauma, and live through the madness. And that I did.
Yes, I grew up in a cult. I didn’t always describe it this way. In fact, I avoided this description for a long time, even after I left it and had come to terms with the offbeat aspects of my upbringing. For a long time, however, I preferred calling my religion a spiritual order because, in part, this is how my parents and community characterized it. The other reason I favored this term is because I was constantly asked about my faith (I wore a fancy yarmulke at that time) and it was much easier and classier to respond that I was a member of a spiritual order rather than a crazy cult. This made me feel better about myself and helped me avoid the looks of astonishment and disgust that most people display when you disclose your membership in a demented denomination. Truth be told, not every aspect of my religion was bitten by the cult bug; some of the teachings, rituals, and practices were enlightening and uplifting. But these things were overshadowed by the unquestionable authority of the leader, the iron-fisted cruelties of her minions, the physical and mental abuse, the “keep outsiders out” mantra, and the sheepish behaviors of the members.
My community would often point to the “real” cults and declare that we were not like that. And, looking back, they were right to some extent. The elders pointed to:
I recall the first time someone described my religion as a cult. It was a strange feeling. My first reaction was to vehemently deny it. There was an intellectual and emotional rebellion in my brain and abdomen, and I fought unsuccessfully against the label and all the negative connotations that came with it. “Cults are for stupid people,” I said to myself. “I am not stupid and I was not brainwashed and controlled.” “I’ve got a Bachelor’s Degree, a Masters, and I’m an articulate son-of-a-bitch,” I continued. “I’m a vegetarian for Christ’s sake!” I added, as if this really made a difference. I truly didn’t want to be viewed as a dumb-ass, but realized that people in cults don’t really believe they’re in one. And I can only say this now that I’m on the outside of my experience and have had the precious opportunity to look back and look inside with a new pair of eyes. This look was both painful and liberating, helping me to see and appreciate what I was and what I am now. Over time, I recognized that the facts were overwhelming and I succumbed to calling my religion a cult. But truth is not an easy pill to swallow. Every now and then, I revert back to the spiritual order designation, but I’m catching myself more and more. It’s really weird to compare the differences in my mindset before and after I left my religion – the things I didn’t see at the time I was in it versus the things I was able to see after I left it. It’s fucking scary! Who was I then? I plan to go back to this very interesting dichotomy at a later date.
I’m asked quite often how I survived the cult experience, as though I had a ten-point strategy and super-effective tactics on how to endure the craziness. Sometimes, it’s forgotten that I was born and raised in myspiritual order cult and that I knew nothing other than what I was taught; it was woven into every aspect of my young life. It was omnipresent and its tentacles extended to my home, school (the leader of my religion started a private academy and my dad was the headmaster at one time), and my place of worship. My world, as odd as it was, was my world; and even though my young mind knew at some level that something was not quite right with the eccentric behaviors of the adults and the cruel treatment of the members by the leader’s religious mobsters, I accepted my environment without question. I did not see it as crazy.
Kids go through some of the worst shit in life and their resiliency is simply amazing. But that does not mean that all kids are resilient, that all of them survive, and that all of them become healthy, productive citizens in a world that appears to be quite neglectful of the compelling need to raise children in loving and nurturing environments. Yes, I think I was resilient. And how I survived is definitely a miracle. But what about the kids who don’t survive? What about the kids who are in cults at this very moment, experiencing cruelties and absurdities within a fanatical religious environment? Some kids are being brainwashed as I’m writing these words and will never recover. They could be living under the same roof as the next Koresh, Manson, or Jim Jones, or they could be anticipating the next beating and naked parading like the abused kids in my religion.
Who or what is protecting kids raised in cults? This is the most important question in Diary Entry #1. Can the parents who are members of a cult protect their kids? If they can’t or won’t, the children will experience horrors at the hands of those who are fanatics for “God”… and the irony is that these fanatics may be their own parents. We like to believe that kids are protected by their legal rights. But do they really have rights if there’s no way to enforce them? The truth is that their rights only exist to the extent that their parents and community adhere to these rights. Kids (and perhaps the elderly) are the most vulnerable beings in our world, and unless we – the collective – demand enforcement and accountability, their defenseless bodies, minds, and souls will always be red meat for the two-legged extremist vultures on planet earth. Sadly, in a fanatical environment, kids must find a way to go through these experiences and hopefully come out of it with few scars. It seems that hope is the best we can do at this stage of our psychological evolution. But the scars can be prominent and long lasting. Some kids will only come out of it with a modicum of sanity. Some will be permanently damaged. Some, like myself, will survive and share the pain and the insights.
In closing, I ask how many of us are out “there”? Those, like me, who survived and thrived. Where are you? Connect with me! Will you join with me in sharing our pain, agony, and liberation? We are adults now and we have a story to share with the world. No one can tell our story but us. What cult were you in and what were the tenets? What was it like to be different than the other kids in your community? Who were the heroes and the monsters? When did you figure out that you had to get out, and what set of circumstances supported your departure? Did you leave voluntarily or escape? How did you survive? Tell me your story. I’ll continue with mine with Diary Entry #2.
Sometimes, I can tell that my favorite four-letter word is on the tip of their tongue when I share my memories of teenagers being brutally beaten in a place of worship by adults who subsequently paraded these young people naked in front of a congregation of men, women, and children. I reveal to my listeners the blood-curdling sounds each victim hollered when they were struck mercilessly by the strong arms of holy men; and I describe the God-awful snapping sounds of a leather belt, stripping the soft pubescent skin from young bodies. I let my listeners know that I was only a kid myself (I had not yet reached the age of ten) when I heard these things; and try my best to convey the terror that ripped through my juvenile interior when I thought that my little black behind might be next in line.
After sharing all of this information, most people don’t want to hear more about my stories. Some lift their hands up and shake their heads in sync to signal that they’ve had enough. But I’m in a zone by then and all I want to do is release. And when I’m done, I hear their breath make that familiar sound – that brisk inhale when one is temporarily shocked by something they’ve seen or heard. I always know what’s coming next and wait patiently for the questions that are asked without fail. Why? For what reason? Who ordered these beatings? Where were the parents?
All of them – the ones I share my stories with – want to know the answers to these questions, and the puzzled gleam in their eyes is a sign that they’re expecting me to provide a suitable explanation, or something to help them understand the cruelty and violence and pain. What they don’t know is that I’ve been asking the same questions since my childhood and have not yet found a satisfactory answer. So I repeat the answers that I’ve always given: these kids were punished for allegedly violating a sacred tenet; these heinous things were carried out and supported by a community that was practicing their faith; this brutality was rationalized under the auspices of religion and in the name of some angry God in the sky.
After the dead silence passes, I want to shout out loud that there’s a lot more to share – more beatings, sexual abuses, the shunning of my family, forced-fasting, constant fear and shame, denigrations, life on other planets, tales of UFOs, spirit-possession, kundalini awakenings, sacred rituals, speaking in tongues, messages from mediums, absurdities, ironical beauty, and mind-boggling mysteries. But I don’t mention anything more. The conversation (which is typically one-way) ends until I find the courage to take up the gauntlet once again, to share my religious stuff with my next unsuspecting “victim.”
Many years have passed by since the flogging of these youngsters. There were more beatings of kids and adults. But I was much older and had tasted the sweet fruit of critical thinking on more than one occasion (thanks to my dear father)... and I liked it! At some point in time, it dawned on me that I had a choice in how I wanted to live the remainder of my life. I no longer wanted to remain in the religious environment of my youth. I had had enough of a narrow-minded approach to life and rejected my enviable status as a favorite of the Most High God, a savior to the world, and an emissary of the divine. It became a silly notion to me that my people were the only ones who would survive the next destruction of the world by fire. The exclusivity, the Machiavellian strategies of the religious hierarchy and VIP’s, the insular behaviors, the questionable belief system, and the never-ending wait for the miracles of the Spirit in the secular world, destroyed the old me while creating the foundation for the new me.
It took a while – some say too long – but I left the religion of my youth and only looked back when something, some person, or some event triggered the memories. More than fifty years later, my much older mind does not want to remember certain parts of the younger version of myself… how I was thinking and feeling when I was completely powerless over the decisions made by the adults in my religious world. As a child, there was nothing left for me to do other than absorb the body blows, deal with the mental/emotional trauma, and live through the madness. And that I did.
Yes, I grew up in a cult. I didn’t always describe it this way. In fact, I avoided this description for a long time, even after I left it and had come to terms with the offbeat aspects of my upbringing. For a long time, however, I preferred calling my religion a spiritual order because, in part, this is how my parents and community characterized it. The other reason I favored this term is because I was constantly asked about my faith (I wore a fancy yarmulke at that time) and it was much easier and classier to respond that I was a member of a spiritual order rather than a crazy cult. This made me feel better about myself and helped me avoid the looks of astonishment and disgust that most people display when you disclose your membership in a demented denomination. Truth be told, not every aspect of my religion was bitten by the cult bug; some of the teachings, rituals, and practices were enlightening and uplifting. But these things were overshadowed by the unquestionable authority of the leader, the iron-fisted cruelties of her minions, the physical and mental abuse, the “keep outsiders out” mantra, and the sheepish behaviors of the members.
My community would often point to the “real” cults and declare that we were not like that. And, looking back, they were right to some extent. The elders pointed to:
- The Peoples Temple cult, whose leader, Jim Jones, initiated and was responsible for a mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.
- The radical views of the Branch Davidians, whose leader, David Koresh, identified all the women in his cult as his spiritual wives and amassed an armory of weapons, which sadly concluded with the deaths of men, women, and children.
- The Heaven’s Gate cult, whose leaders, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, convinced thirty-nine members to commit suicide by ingesting cyanide, arsenic, and a mix of other drugs, in hopes of boarding a nearby spaceship after their deaths.
I recall the first time someone described my religion as a cult. It was a strange feeling. My first reaction was to vehemently deny it. There was an intellectual and emotional rebellion in my brain and abdomen, and I fought unsuccessfully against the label and all the negative connotations that came with it. “Cults are for stupid people,” I said to myself. “I am not stupid and I was not brainwashed and controlled.” “I’ve got a Bachelor’s Degree, a Masters, and I’m an articulate son-of-a-bitch,” I continued. “I’m a vegetarian for Christ’s sake!” I added, as if this really made a difference. I truly didn’t want to be viewed as a dumb-ass, but realized that people in cults don’t really believe they’re in one. And I can only say this now that I’m on the outside of my experience and have had the precious opportunity to look back and look inside with a new pair of eyes. This look was both painful and liberating, helping me to see and appreciate what I was and what I am now. Over time, I recognized that the facts were overwhelming and I succumbed to calling my religion a cult. But truth is not an easy pill to swallow. Every now and then, I revert back to the spiritual order designation, but I’m catching myself more and more. It’s really weird to compare the differences in my mindset before and after I left my religion – the things I didn’t see at the time I was in it versus the things I was able to see after I left it. It’s fucking scary! Who was I then? I plan to go back to this very interesting dichotomy at a later date.
I’m asked quite often how I survived the cult experience, as though I had a ten-point strategy and super-effective tactics on how to endure the craziness. Sometimes, it’s forgotten that I was born and raised in my
Kids go through some of the worst shit in life and their resiliency is simply amazing. But that does not mean that all kids are resilient, that all of them survive, and that all of them become healthy, productive citizens in a world that appears to be quite neglectful of the compelling need to raise children in loving and nurturing environments. Yes, I think I was resilient. And how I survived is definitely a miracle. But what about the kids who don’t survive? What about the kids who are in cults at this very moment, experiencing cruelties and absurdities within a fanatical religious environment? Some kids are being brainwashed as I’m writing these words and will never recover. They could be living under the same roof as the next Koresh, Manson, or Jim Jones, or they could be anticipating the next beating and naked parading like the abused kids in my religion.
Who or what is protecting kids raised in cults? This is the most important question in Diary Entry #1. Can the parents who are members of a cult protect their kids? If they can’t or won’t, the children will experience horrors at the hands of those who are fanatics for “God”… and the irony is that these fanatics may be their own parents. We like to believe that kids are protected by their legal rights. But do they really have rights if there’s no way to enforce them? The truth is that their rights only exist to the extent that their parents and community adhere to these rights. Kids (and perhaps the elderly) are the most vulnerable beings in our world, and unless we – the collective – demand enforcement and accountability, their defenseless bodies, minds, and souls will always be red meat for the two-legged extremist vultures on planet earth. Sadly, in a fanatical environment, kids must find a way to go through these experiences and hopefully come out of it with few scars. It seems that hope is the best we can do at this stage of our psychological evolution. But the scars can be prominent and long lasting. Some kids will only come out of it with a modicum of sanity. Some will be permanently damaged. Some, like myself, will survive and share the pain and the insights.
In closing, I ask how many of us are out “there”? Those, like me, who survived and thrived. Where are you? Connect with me! Will you join with me in sharing our pain, agony, and liberation? We are adults now and we have a story to share with the world. No one can tell our story but us. What cult were you in and what were the tenets? What was it like to be different than the other kids in your community? Who were the heroes and the monsters? When did you figure out that you had to get out, and what set of circumstances supported your departure? Did you leave voluntarily or escape? How did you survive? Tell me your story. I’ll continue with mine with Diary Entry #2.
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