Its been some time since leaving the cult and the sense of new found freedom, so vivid when I left, has mysteriously waned. In fact, there are events occurring that bring back an inordinate amount of shame— useless to healing— and guilt and self reproach and a bearlist of other emotions that have been absent since Ive been out. These returning feelings are familiar. They are what I used to feel being bound to a cult and its master, and being sucked into someone elses darkness by my own wish for something new and more and special.
There are new charges against the dark lord, and a small window of time still left for more charges to be laid. These most recent charges against the psychopath guru come from mature women, wise women, women who believed, heart and soul, in his calling and its meaning.
The new American blockbuster, The Sound of Freedom, begins with a horrifying set up. I saw this style of seduction all the time in the cult. In the movie, a womanchild is singled out as special. She is flattered. She is told she is extra special. Enticed by false charms, she is made off with. Whatever you believe about the movie, at the very least, take note of this age-old evil, of the devil that charms the innocent with sweet talk and fawning. Here is where bringing up a woman begins, in her innocence that need not be taught there is any benefit to being liked. In her innocence, there can be a centering in the self that is immune to the need for external approbation. Reject acceptance and accept rejection, as Bradbury wrote. Centering the self in the beauty of ones own being can be conveyed to the innocent, and sweet words of coercion will find no place to land in that childs centre. Centred in kindness. Centred in respect. Centred in humour. Centred in healing the divide. But beware any calling of specialness.
In the motorheads cult, the womenchildren are being flattered by his attention. They are enticed with promises. These kids are given special treatment to confer a significant amount of specialness on their guileless heads. Parents arent allowed in these special meetings. Theyre just for kids. Theyre taught to cook for the motorhead and to serve him and to love him. No stage-parents allowed as the devil in the movie said. A mother is forced away from her child and her influence is eclipsed by a motorheads smarmy blarney. In movies and cults and in the common world, this is actually happening.
Long before any of this happened, I learned of my vocation while sitting in a classroom with a professor who took a detour from the planned curriculum and started speaking about a philosophy and a scientific system derived of that philosophy. As I listened the room filled with an otherworldly light. It shimmered. I heard celestial music. Then and there I knew I had found my calling.
Twenty years later I found myself sitting in another sort of classroom, listening to a backcountry motorhead cum guru. The room began filling with an unusual light. It seemed to be coming from the motorhead himself, a golden glow that made me think of Jesus and halos and glow worms. It was familiar in a mystical way. Perhaps my calling had morphed into something new? Perhaps this guru was what was next for me?
The calling in the cult was a magnetizing mystery designed by the motorhead. It was an urge toward something always known and forever desired. It was all verb and action and lacked any objective definition. I had been devoted to a scientific system. His system was considered spiritual, deep and true and meant to completely transform what I am, if only I choose to respond to it. If only I was given to a greater good, giving myself away in order to become the perfect foundation for a greater reality. It was something grand and ineffable outside of me.
It actually had nothing to do with me.
If only had a brief inclusion in that mystery, riding in tandem with the calling. If only I attend another meeting, another gathering, another wedding, another event, another memorial, perhaps then the calling will shine on me. In fact, his unholy light only wrecks havoc, only catalyzes an increased desire for more, only creates a hunger for something real. Nothing he proffered ever satisfied and always left me bereft, wanting more of I knew not what. Any longing for true communion was never met. And yet, in spite of being unrequited, in spite of a growing dissonance, the desire for what may be beyond the ordinary persisted.
For some women, the calling meant they were wanted in his bed. His reckless calling has become synonymous with his desires, known and moved by the increasing gains he has made as a result of this narrative about the calling. The depth of it. The truth of it. What cannot be understood unless you are in it. The chosen finally learn there is no true love in an artificial landscape made of someones sexual power. There is no real relationship with a psychopath.
I was clueless. In my belief, the calling was meant for anyone who wished for human consciousness to ascend to a higher place, as if we were all bats in a cave and the twilight of humanity being upon us, we were meant to ride out into the coming darkness and….what? Not be afraid as we had been all our lives? To rise above the attachment styles that kept us cowering in relationships? To finally be able to make a difference in our world by tuning our awareness to something deep and true that would completely transform what we were, if only we chose to respond to it. Whatever it is.
The calling descended upon us from his high place, a psychic pull that really could be anything, if only you could imagine it. The intimation was it is very special and everyone had their own particular role to fulfill in this calling. What the roles were only came to light when women started talking about what it was like for them to have sex with the dark lord, or in the language of the cult, to move in the calling when the calling moved toward them.
What I hear from the women, and their husbands, of the abuse they have known at the bidding of his calling, is damnably sorrowful. When they choose to tell the truth about his artificial landscape, I am in awe of their courage and their willingness to balance, through real sacrifice, the imbalance in his folly. His consequence will finally bring balance to the unseen.
I am ashamed—useless to healing— to have been part of a thing so vastly distorted and dark, of a thing that violates the exact teachings the motorhead uses to entice children and women and men. What is useful is remembering my mistakes and revisiting the deluded desires I had for something other than my own true centre.
Now I can imagine my mind and spirit opening towards a different kind of freedom, not from something outside of me, but to something inside of me. Perhaps as James Finlay tells it, it is the freedom of being humbled. Better I say it myself, it is the freedom of being ordinary.
So beautifully explained and described Jess. I hope your words can be a portal to freedom for those still enslaved.
Yep!