Hi Everyone,
I’ve been neglecting cult confessions lately for a related project, but of course, I can’t get away for long. When it comes to cults there are endless topics to explore and I will be back to posting soon.
In the meantime, I wanted to point out a couple of things:
1) A lot of people were upset when the Esoteric Freedom blog disappeared. You will find some of the material from that blog, and more, on the following site: The Truth About Sharon Gans
2) If you’re a “student” who is presently “breaking the rules” because you’re wondering, questioning, whether this group you’ve joined is truly an “esoteric mystery school”, or a cult, you might recognize the people in a photo posted here: http://www.sharonganscult.com/
Thanks for reading and I’ll be back to posting soon!
Words of Wisdom from Channeling Erik:
Poor me. Are You a Victim?
All of us have been victims of something. It doesn’t have to be at the hands of others. I could be losing job after job, being financially strapped, having a poor self-esteem. Well, you get what I mean.
I want to be very clear that surviving is an action word that gets you out of no longer having to “survive.” This is where people hang onto it too long. They tell their story again and again, “I was raped twice and held at gunpoint, and I’m a survivor.” I know these are traumatic experiences. I’m not taking them lightly, but the more you use it to define yourself, the more you’re telling yourself the story that this is still happening to you, and you need to survive.
A lot of people define themselves that way. “I’m a survivor.”
Yeah, but guess what? If you’ve survived, then you’ve survived. Let it go and let yourself flower in the new place you are. You don’t have to stay in survivor mode. You can be held at gunpoint and raped and then come into this new relationship and that story from the past never comes up. That’s because you’re the new flower. It’s still part of your foundation, but it doesn’t feed who you are in every waking moment and in every single decision that you make.
http://www.channelingerik.com/poor-me-are-you-a-victim/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChannelingErik+%28Channeling+Erik%29
Interesting. I think the best part of what’s said above is about coming into new relationship with a traumatic experience. For me the process of writing this story, telling it repeatedly, to many, many people, brings me into a new understanding and relationship to it. Yes, this experience of being sucked into a cult brought me definition — but leaving the group, and continuing to let go of this “secret” is what really brought me home to myself. It’s the shame, and it’s associated isolation, secret keeping, that keeps one imprisoned and defined as a victim. In my experience, speaking out has been the key to my freedom, because it has brought me into a new relationship with this experience.
I was thinking recently about how we are the beneficiaries of all the lives before us who may have dedicated themselves to a single task. Think of how many individuals must have devoted themselves to a cure, an invention, setting right an injustice, the perfection of an art. Van Gogh’s paintings, for instance, which took him a lifetime of despair, a returning again and again and to the sketchbook and the easel to achieve, with little recognition– we take it all in during a gallery visit in the space of an afternoon.
Waking people up to the ever present tactics of deception, to the existence of human parasites, courageously facing one’s actions in the reflection on the page– these things take enormous effort, and they are surely worthy of a lifetime’s effort.
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“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
–Toni Morrison
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I do not see this blog, or any of the others, as a victim’s rant, but as part of that larger and essential effort to set others free. These bloggers are doing their “real jobs,” they are doing what they came here to do.
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” –Harriet Tubman
Hi Gerda, Thanks for your comment, it’s lovely, and for your support, I appreciate it. I can’t not write. I can’t not speak out. When I was silent, I felt victimized. When I speak, out I feel free — in so many ways, starting with reclaiming my voice. I have heard that some “ex-students” feel that it is wrong to speak ill of “school”. I actually feel its wrong not to expose “school” and it’s deceptive, cult practices and abuses of power. We who have been sucked in by the false advertising need to educate and empower ourselves and others. After all, cult practices are cult practices. When you look inside the sausage factory (as my friend Mark likes to call it) “School” is no different than Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Moonies, Dahn Yoga, any other destructive cult (“school” is just the smaller, less successful, cult) This blog, the research and now speaking out has freed me and I feel stronger than I ever have — as opposed to feeling like a victim. I hope my efforts free and empower others, too. I hope others will also speak out.