How could I have been OK with the Mo Letters? They were blatantly horrible and overflowed with delusions of grandeur. The cover art was more than cringe-worthy, the writing was embarrassingly juvenile, and the overuse of all caps, underlining, and exclamation points was inane. How is it that we cult members didn't think about our future children looking at them and concluding their parents had been idiots for believing such nonsense?
When I ponder the stranger who is my past self, I marvel. I naturally look back through the filter of my present views, but nevertheless, I remember being embarrassed by the Mo Letters and hoping no outsiders would see the most atrocious ones, but that shame didn't wake me up. Why not?
It was a surprisingly quick slide into the depths of delusion. Upon joining, a requisite was to accept that we were "babes in Christ" and needed retraining in the ways of the Lord. Berg was our "father in the Lord," and on top of that, we were taught he was the Endtime prophet prophesied in the Bible. (Hosea 3:5, Ezekiel 34:11, 23, 24, and Ezekiel 37:24)
Once that foundation of belief was in place it was reinforced by required daily reading of Berg's Letters. By and by, our brains were prepared to accept whatever came from him as the gospel truth. We were to be "new bottles," willing to accept the "new wine that God was giving" through Berg, and not like "unrevolutionary" Christians who he disparaged as "old bottles," the title of a Mo Letter written in 1973. "Old bottle" became a byword in the cult for those who did not eagerly accept the new Mo Letters. Social norming—and harsh corrections—dictated that no one wanted to be accused of that.
In 1975, Berg took this to a higher level with the publication of the Mo Letter, "Strange Truths." In it, he recounted a dream about a fountain of water that he had discovered, symbolic of his source of “the words of life” from God. Strange creatures lived in the water, which some people liked and others looked on with suspicion. Berg concluded that the creatures must be good since they came from “the source” (God), and that people who didn't like them “because they were contrary to their ideas of what the water [the Word] ought to be like” left the fold. Shame on them! Thus the tone was set for the acceptance of Berg's Letters, no matter how strange we thought they were, because they all came from the source of Truth—Berg with his hotline to God.
As the years passed, in obedience to Berg's decrees, the number of people in our communal Homes grew, which exponentially intensified the ingrained human tendency towards group conformity and obedience. (See studies done by Solomon Asch; larger numbers greatly increase the conforming power of a group.)
Complementing the basic premise of accepting any bizarre idea that came from "the source" was our constant state of busyness, giving us no time to raise our heads and think about our situations. I worked to the point of nervous breakdowns in large School Homes, filled to the brim with children packed two to a bed in three-tier bunks. How to educate and care for them, with basically no money and always short-handed, was my ever-present concern—and we always seemed to be playing catch-up.
As if the physical work wasn't enough, like all plebeian members, I lived under the burden of responsibility for righting my sorry spiritual state. I needed to learn "submission" to God, my leaders, and to my husband—to be a good "Bible woman." I was often called in for "talks" with the leaders, excoriating corrections for my many "sins."
My mental bandwidth was taken up with marriage problems, children's needs, my own spiritual inadequacies that I needed to conquer, lack of money, and constant work. When the mind is running multiple programs, our mental processors begin to slow down. I didn't have enough time to take care of all the needs before me, let alone think about the future, or "give place to the devil" by "doubting" the Mo Letters.
We were exhorted to live in the present and "take no thought for the morrow." We had an absolute disconnect from our future selves, and an absolute lack of foresight into our children's or our own futures. Worse, the groupthink of the cult resulted in the deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgments. Thinking was out, the "joy of the Lord" was in.
In the Stanford Prison Study, I wrote that when those volunteers who had played the role of guards looked back on the six days of the study, they were alarmed at what they had been capable of doing. Perhaps even more telling is that those who had been prisoners were also dismayed at their behavior—at how quickly they had been broken into passivity.
The architect of the study, Philip Zimbardo, stated that the issue isn't how a few bad apples can ruin the whole barrel; it's how a bad barrel can turn any apple bad. Situations matter. Average people can, and often will, go along with absurdly incorrect assertions and do stunningly bad things in the name of obedience and conformity. (Hello, Abu Ghraib.)
The cult was the perfect setup for mindless conformity, and that conformity included acceptance of the Mo Letters.
See also: Motivational Influences on Perception
Why does someone who leaves a cult or high-demand religious group need education?
1) To make up for lost time.
For me, it was 30 years of starving my brain for input, only feeding it cult publications and the King James Bible — my poor neglected brain! There is so much in this world to learn, and I learned nothing of much use for those 30 years.
2) To stimulate brain growth and restructuring.
The need to constantly submit to the will of "God" and your leaders, the arbitrary corrections and public humiliations, the ever-present financial struggle, the virtually non-stop work because of "the shortness of time," the utter lack of space to call your own, and the countless other stresses of cult life all compounded to rob the brain of its ability to produce new cells.
To undo this damage, the brain needs stimulation and exercise. And not just any stimulation, but serious concentration and study. New pathways need to be forged, and that requires focused mental effort.
3) To "unlearn" cult intuitions and reactions.
Living in a delusional bubble develops intuitive thoughts and natural reactions that are simply wrong. These need to be "erased" and replaced by more common-sense reactions.
What cult intuitions? For example:
- I brushed off conflicts with a "Let's pray," telling myself that "God will work it out," instead of learning to negotiate and deal with disagreements and disputes.
- I dismissed any encouragement, "If anything good comes of me, it's only Jesus. I am bad." The brain already has a negativity bias, so this one slides by easily without question and can develop into self-loathing.
- I was besieged by guilt if I were to do anything outside of the prescribed behavior of a cultist; that proclivity towards guilt needed to be shed.
Being aware of the multitudinous unnatural, knee-jerk reactions developed during cult years is the first step to laying them aside.
To actually "unlearn" these intuitions, a complete rewiring of the brain is needed. Because neural-plasticity is competitive, we need to put forth effort to learn in order for new connections to be built. In so doing, the old pathways will gradually fade and the space they had taken in the brain will be rechanneled by the new, fresh brain maps. That conscious focus on learning stimulates new cell growth in the particular area of study, as well as vitalizes the entire brain.
4) To understand.
"The unexamined life is not worth living." (Socrates)
I made bad decisions in my life. It is deeply painful to realize yet must be faced. How did this happen? Why did this happen? What can I learn from this experience?
To deny the reality of years wasted is to continue to live in a bubble of delusion.
I recently came upon some information that was quite encouraging. A psychologist named Dean Simonton discovered that what had been thought as age-related cognitive decline was not actually a function of age, but rather a function of disciplinary age, in other words, how long a person has been in a specific vocation or area of study. People who change careers or foci are able to rejuvenate their brains.
Another psychologist, Marian Diamond, confirmed this. Further, in her research on aged rodents, she found that a rich environment made for more synapses, stronger connections, and even more neural growth.
Interestingly,
this finding also ties into research on addiction. Rats given two
water bottles, one with just water, one with water laced with heroin
or cocaine, would generally choose and continue returning to the
drugged water. Researcher Bruce Alexander found, though, that
addicted rats that were moved to new cages containing toys and
tunnels and friends seemed to become "happy" and
voluntarily left the drugs, choosing to drink only from the water
bottle. Meanwhile, the "unhappy" rats, alone and
unstimulated, continued on with their drug use.
In
short, he found that lonely, isolated rats turned to drugs; happy,
social rats had little interest in them. This overturned the
conventional wisdom on addiction.*
Exercise is also a factor in brain plasticity and growth. According to Carl W. Cotman and Nicole C. Berchtold, "Voluntary exercise
can increase levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and other
growth factors, stimulate neurogenesis, increase resistance to brain insult and
improve learning and mental performance... Thus, exercise could
provide a simple means to maintain brain function and promote brain
plasticity."**
Of course, I regret all the wasted years in the cult, but I am heartened that all is not lost. My brain has not deteriorated beyond help. By devoting myself to new areas of study, exercising daily in a variety of ways from walking and climbing to swimming and weight training, and opening my mind up to a vast variety of input, I can still make progress and not necessarily become a doddering old fool.
* Addiction: The View from Rat Park, Bruce K. Alexander, 2010
** Exercise: a behavioral intervention to enhance brain health and plasticity, Carl W. Cotman and Nicole C. Berchtold, 2002
I've already mentioned how being in a continuous state of submission actually causes neural degeneration. As I look back to the period immediately after leaving TFI, I can see what a weakened state I was in mentally and emotionally.
Finding out that the cause I gave my life to was nonsense was a jolt, but the true horror of it all took a few years to realize. At first, I was just paralyzed by the guilt of how my life-choice had affected my children and desperately wanted to do what I could to improve their future prospects. The first step, I felt, was to get them to the US (the country of our citizenship) where they could attend college more easily.
My paper-thin optimism, my willingness to take risks, and my wishful-thinking (in the jargon of the cult, "full-of-faith") attitude was mainly still intact, and I expected doors to open and things to work out for us - as I had felt things had so far in my life. Not so. My time spent in the US that year was the lowest of my life. I learned what it was like to be poor in the US, and it wasn't pretty. I was not prepared for the social stigma nor hardship.
I had no idea how weak I had really gotten and how easy I had become to take advantage of. My "trust everyone" philosophy was sorely tested. My brain was muddled, my self-confidence became virtually nonexistent, and I was a mess. True to the Dunning-Kruger effect, I had no idea how little I knew.
The advice I would give now to my former, just-out-of-the-cult, self would be to not make any moves, not make any big decisions until spending a at least a year or more studying, learning, and planning.
Years later, when I finally made the break from TFI (The Family International, which is the current name for any remnants of the COG), I found concentration very difficult. No longer under the thumb of the group I felt I could return to reading books, a source of pleasure in my youth, but I had a very difficult time reading. I was firstly plagued by feelings of guilt with recurring thoughts that "I shouldn't be wasting my precious time reading fiction when I could be studying the Bible." Secondly, my comprehension skills were shot. I had a really hard time following even the Sherlock Holmes stories I was trying to read through.
Thankfully, the brain is very plastic and can continue to form new cells and connections for our entire lives. Gradually I regained brain function and have been able to learn and study again, but it took time to pull out of the mental haze.
Now I am revisiting some of my favorite psychology courses that I listened to 8 years ago, and I've been surprised at how new they seem to me. Back when I first listened, I had trouble ingesting them. Finally, I have been able to experience the sheer joy of learning that I allowed myself to be robbed of during my years of cult dedication. May it never end.
