Finding Balance

An older man stepped into the small jacuzzi where I was relaxing after my swim. In spite of showering, the acrid aroma of his stale aftershave along with the residual reek of tobacco obtruded into the steamy air.

I wonder if he's tried to quit? I mused. Surely doctors would have told him to. I guessed his age at maybe somewhere in his 60's or 70's. My imagination stretched into further assumptions, Perhaps he has smoked since his youth. I suppose he enjoys this vice to which he is captive.

Captivity is something I could relate to. I had allowed myself to be psychologically captive to a cult for too many years, and I now loathe the thought of being captive to a vice. Then my mind took another leap.

Vice or not, depending on your perspective, people denied pleasure in a repressive society can easily jump on the treadmill of hedonism, not unlike preacher's kid syndrome. One luxury that brings exultation soon becomes normalized. Then, like a junkie looking for his next fix, the search for the next novelty begins. When that is found, the initial rush fades all too quickly and the item or experience becomes mundane, the behavior habituated. (Habituation put simply: Why the fifth bite of your favorite dish never tastes as good as the first.)

On the cycle goes. Endless.

Walking hand-in-hand with hedonism is the avoidance of pain and the rejection of any negativity. This brings to mind the hackneyed, "get rid of negative energy from your life." I would call it denial. Life is not a bed of thornless roses.

The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, in The Book of Joy, describe eudaimonic happiness which is born from self-understanding, growth, and acceptance of life's joys and sufferings, sadness, and grief. To me, this seems a more realistic approach to life and happiness.

May I never again forfeit my freedom and self-determination to live in a dream world again. 

(See The Experience Machine for the ultimate in hedonism.)

Regaining Confidence

I did something that caused a positive ripple effect.

Upon realizing that, immediately cult-inculcated intuitive thoughts flooded my mind: It must have been the Lord. He must have worked that out behind the scenes. He worked through me to accomplish this. It's only Jesus. What a miracle that He could work through one so unworthy as I.

I'm not falling for that again. No more will I rob myself of an opportunity to strengthen my self-esteem. I am going to pat myself on the back and accept that I had a good idea and acted on it.

Yay, me.

Why didn't we balk at the Mo Letters?

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

Is Japan the missionaries' graveyard?

During my years in the cult in Japan, I spent the required hours out "witnessing," which is what we called distributing TFI produced publications, and audio and audio-visual materials. In its simplest, it consisted of handing a cartoonish poster to someone and requesting a donation. The pricier materials had an inflated "suggested donation." 

Over the course of doing this, in stark contrast to my experience in Christian countries, I was often met with blank, dubious faces. 

"What is your job?" I remember being asked. 

"I'm a full-time volunteer," I would try to explain in my fragmented Japanese 

"How can you do that? What about your children? How do you provide for them?" The incredulity was palpable. 

To answer the standard cult belief, "God supplies our needs," would sound like a crazy person. I would opt for, "People give us donations to support our work."

They would leave the question, "Why would anyone give you money when you could just get a job?" unspoken, yet hanging in the air as they walked on. 

As the years passed and I eventually learned the language, I came to know devout Buddhists. If what I believed was true, these good, kind, sincere people were going to burn in hell if they didn't accept Jesus. Were they the benighted heathen that I had come to save?

Something was inherently arrogant about the exclusiveness of Christianity. To the fanatical TFI member, these lost "Systemite" (members of society at large, as opposed to the "dropped out" cult members) servants of materialism were inferior to them, the "elite army of the Lord."

It was so obviously untrue. 

Japan became my personal missionary's graveyard.

To quote Christopher Hitchens, "...religion teaches people to be extremely self-centered and conceited. It assures them that god cares for them individually, and it claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in mind. This explains the supercilious expression on the faces of those who practice religion ostentatiously: pray excuse my modesty and humility but I happen to be busy on an errand for god.” God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

The Power of Ideology

Researchers occasionally contact me for information in their efforts to poke and prod at the bubble of the Children of God/The Family International cult to try to see what held it together and what it was like on the inside.

The other day I was asked, “Did you get paid for your work?”

What a shocking question. Back in my cult days, I certainly didn’t think of my life from the perspective of earning a living. To think of it that way now drops me into the void of loss and regret. I probably could have earned a respectable living and set aside funds for both my retirement and my children's education had I not given thirty years of the prime of my life to the Children of God.

But alas, it was not to be.

My cult days were filled with service. In the early years, I would get out of my bed—or off of my sheet on the floor—put on a smile, and greet my fellow commune members, then sit down to a breakfast of barely yellow eggs, rice, and water. After devotions, which consisted of reading usually the newest Mo Letter from our founder, David Berg, we got ready to spend the day proselytizing.

From morning till night, we would knock on doors, sell cult-produced publications or products, then come home for dinner. After dishes there was more reading, perhaps some united singing, childcare, and bed. The next day, it all began again.

As the years passed, my work changed to caring for other people's children. But still, the ideology was the same. As part of the “body of Christ,” I was facilitating our missionary cause by schooling and looking after children, which was one of the many ministries that in sum furthered The Family's universal goal of bringing God's Kingdom on earth.

How could I have cheerfully gotten up each morning and faced not an iota of personal freedom? To diligently work, even to the point of nervous breakdown, for no money whatsoever? It was the adhesive of the Mo Letters that held the group together and kept us going.

Each day, we spent hours studying Family publications or our Bibles, which we read through the lens of the Mo Letters and Berg's interpretation. Our conviction drove us. Our united cause drove us. We were part of a worldwide group with an exclusive calling, God's Endtime army. We were to be willing to do anything for Jesus, sleep with strangers to “show them God's love,” beg on the streets, care for other people's children 24/7, whatever it took, to promote the cause.

The intensity and strength of a clear belief system should never be underestimated. It can lead to people becoming “new creatures,” completely different from their former selves, with a new set of values, priorities, and goals. Ideology can overcome familial ties, motherly protective instincts, and it can create slaves out of otherwise rational people.

But what is the appeal? What draws people to cults and other controlling groups? The lure of a strong code of belief and a common cause worthy of fighting for, giving a noble purpose and direction to one's life. What keeps them? Camaraderie and a united goal, a sense of purpose, belonging and being part of something of epic proportions. On top of this, there is the myriad of human tendencies: the false valuation of life in the group, the confirmation bias, social norming, loss aversion, sunk cost, and maybe even inertia. One's sense of what is normal becomes completely skewed.

What of conflicting evidence? What if a true believer is shown proof that his faith is unfounded? It is the nature of humanity when confronted with evidence that contradicts our firmly held beliefs to cling defensively to those beliefs. Faith becomes enmeshed with our personal image. Our beliefs become a part of us and who we are. It would be like tearing out a part of ourselves to give them up.

The only way to “rescue” someone from a firmly held belief is to separate them from the constant input and influence of dogma. To dilute the poison of propaganda by distance and by providing a wide variety of information, some of which will contradict and show other sides to what they have been holding dear. But this must be handled gently, with compassion and understanding, because this is a matter of the will and the psyche, of the very essence of who one is.

Trust must be won. There must be a gradual rebuilding of mental pathways and a growing over of the old habitual ones learned in the cult. This requires time, patience, and the nurturing of a desire to learn.

The Experience Machine*

Imagine you are given the opportunity to plug into a virtual reality machine that would be preprogrammed with all your dreams, creating for you an imaginary life where you can be and do whatever you want. If you have noble ideals, perhaps your world would be programmed so that you, through trial and error, much work and research, discover the cure for cancer. Maybe you would write the greatest novel ever written. Maybe you would go full-hedonism and just lay around on a beach, drinking pina coladas. That would be your entire reality.

You would have no idea that your body was really floating in a vat of liquid with electrodes attached to your brain. Your reality was what you were experiencing in your brain.

Would you do it?

Or what if you woke up today and found out that your life has been lived in an experience machine, and nothing is real? How would you feel?

Is there value in living an authentic life, striving to be honest with oneself? Or is a pretend life better if it means one can be "happy"?

* The Experience Machine is a thought experiment developed by American philosopher, Robert Nozick.

Dear FGAs

I am sure, you, like me, joined the COG filled with zeal and enthusiasm. We were going to make the world a better place - to win the world for Jesus. With the best of intentions, we sacrificed, gave up everything. As the years passed, and more and more "strange truths" entered our canon, our "radical prophet" led us down paths that were harmful to ourselves, and more egregiously, to our children. But we didn't notice, so twisted was our sense of normalcy.

Today, our children are grown. Tragically, some have felt they had to take their own lives. Some struggle, not fitting in anywhere. Some have gained a measure of success. Some have been very successful.

If your children have succeeded, perhaps you're tempted to pat yourself on the back, "it's because of the way they were raised, the opportunities the 'faith life' afforded them." Maybe others realize, like myself, that if they succeeded, it was in spite of how they were raised, not because of it.

Maybe you don't want to look back at your life. "It's in the past," you think. "We should 'forget those things which are behind.'"

But, could that just be an excuse for denial? An unwillingness to face the horrible truth? A resistance to dealing with the cognitive dissonance of the truth clashing with your image of yourself as a "good person"?

How much have our decisions affected the lives of our children? Do they still suffer? How have they adjusted to the real world, after being raised in an environment where their "normal" was anything but normal? Imagine the gut-wrenching feelings of abandonment, of being used, of missing out on a normal childhood. They see their peers, and they can't help but compare their upbringing. Do they wonder how their parents - the ones they loved and admired - their first role models - could have raised them so? What can they say when someone asks them innocent questions like, "Where are you from?" or "Where did you go to school?"

Have you talked with your children about their childhoods? Have you asked them how they feel? Have you sincerely apologized to them for the abuse they suffered, whether it be physical, sexual, or psychological? Or for the neglect - educational, medical, financial or otherwise?

Or do you feel you are not to blame, because your "heart was in the right place"? "God looketh on the heart." And besides, it's all in the past? Or perhaps you and your children have put your personal histories away in a box, compartmentalized, and agreed to never open that box, never speak of it.

It's hard to face, terribly hard on the ego to admit we were part of a harmful organization. We were duped. We were exploited, as were our children. The Family was not the best place in the world to raise children. We failed our children by not protecting them. And by continued association with the group, we were complicit in the abuse others suffered.

To realize that the cause we sacrificed for, that we gave years of our lives to, was nonsense that resulted in harm to the ones we love most in the world is shattering. Horrifying. Paralyzing. It shakes us down deep in our hearts. We can lose all equilibrium.

But it must be done. It must be done for our own sake. To face reality. To learn. To grow. To mature.

And more than even for our own benefit, it must be done for our children's sake. They need parents who love them, who support them, who they know will have their back. Who are going to be honest with them. Who they can trust.

Children naturally love their parents. Imagine the difficulties they must face when talking to their parents who still cling to their own righteousness and to the righteousness of The Family.

Our children need parents who are mature, who face their mistakes, apologize, learn from them, and grow. Let's be those parents.

“The Family is the best place in the world to raise children.”

Every TFI member heard this line repeated ad nauseam, and it's a line that I find most egregious.

Who was the poster-child for Family children? Zerby's “Jesus baby” and Berg's stepson, Davidito. He was groomed from childhood for his job as one of the “End-time Witnesses” of Revelations, to work leading God's children alongside his mother. His care was set up as the example for all Family members to emulate with their own children. He was raised with strict discipline, his life documented for all, and with plentiful sexual contact by adults - because that was "normal" and "natural."

In the intervening years, his name and viewpoint changed. Now known as Ricky Rodriguez, he and his fiancée left the group in January 2001, and he explained his reasons to his mother in an email. “We cannot continue to condone or be party to what we feel is an abusive, manipulative organization that teaches false doctrine... You have devoured God's sheep, ruining people's lives by propagating false doctrines and advocating harmful practices in the name of God, and as far as I can see, show no regret or remorse.”

He could not easily get over his past. His rage against his mother and The Family grew along with the dawning realization of how much he had been exploited and abused. He fell into depression.

He stated, "There's this need that I have. It's not a want. It's a need for revenge. It's a need for justice, because I can't go on like this."

His attempts to find his mother ended in frustration. She was keeping her location secret from him. He had heard she was hiding in the Tucson area. He met with one of his former nannies and a close associate of his mother, Angela Smith, intending to force her to reveal his mother's location.

When he told her of his feelings, he was appalled at her utter lack of remorse and her sincere beliefs that she had done no wrong. He stabbed her to death.

Although like everyone else, I cannot endorse his actions. Yet, I can certainly imagine his frustration.

He called his wife and asked her to call the police because he had done something very wrong. He had killed his former nanny. Then he drove into the desert and put a bullet in his head.

His wife said of his phone call, "He said the hardest thing for him had been that as she was dying, she didn't understand what she had done wrong."

Denial to the end.

"Just get over it" — Words are Cheap

During my brief time in the US, a new friend, who had left the COG about twenty years prior and had since grown into the most wonderful Christian I had ever met, convinced me to try prayer with her prayer group. 

I sat in a chair in the center of the room. People gathered around and laid hands on me. I'd been through this before. Many times. This was commonplace in the cult. Praying the devil out of me for various sins and my failings and weaknesses. This time was supposed to be different.

I was told to "forgive myself." "Breathe out and let go of all of that."

It was just not so simple.

It is not easy to pull out the tendrils that had grown within me for thirty long years. I couldn't "just get over it" and move on. The effect was too much a part of me. I needed time. And what I didn't know then, I needed knowledge and understanding.

I could have compartmentalized, fallen into blind denial, claiming, "it was all in the past," and "Jesus looks at my heart." But I couldn't. I knew it was a cop-out.

I looked to self-help books, but the advice I got to "love myself" went nowhere. "Stand in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say, 'I love you.'" Uh. No. It seemed a stupid, childish bandaid — and impossible. I had messed up my life and my kids' lives. That's a lot of guilt with not much room for "self-love."

Aware that I couldn't stay in this cloudy limbo for the rest of my life, I started to study - mainly audio courses when I drove, did housework, or walked, and those became my salvation — real salvation.

The realization of how I had been used and exploited began to dawn. There was a lot of anger that I needed to get out, and I had no one to tell. I wrote it down in a notebook.

As time went on, I gradually was able to understand, and through understanding began to lay aside the crap that I carried from those years. I finally started to grow and mature — which maturity had been stunted in the cult.

Only through understanding could I begin to find freedom from my past.

Vicious Cycle of Outrage

Who bothers to fact-check? “The catchy, click-bait headline confirmed what I already thought of that other political party, I’ll share it,” subconsciously rationalize too many social network users, unwittingly embracing their own confirmation bias.

On it goes, spreading ill-will like a virus from person-to-person, fed by the cortisol being pumped out by those busy, indignation-activated adrenal glands.

So much negativity.

“Today’s world is such a horrible place, gun deaths, ISIS, terrorism,” the US has even been likened to “a war zone,” by some of the more alarmist types. But is it?

Clearly bad news makes news. Stories about good deeds and calm neighborhoods don’t sell.

But let's stop and take a breath.

Stephen Pinker clearly elucidated in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of our Nature, that the world today is much less violent than it has ever been, even the United States.

Likewise, who can deny that our moral evolution has made things repugnant today that were accepted as normal in the not so distant past:  slavery, public torture and executions, and the subjugation of women, to name just a few of the most obvious. Even animals rights is a thing now; not so when those of my generation were growing up in the 1960’s.

Perhaps even greater than the threat of violence today is the encroaching psychological danger that much of humanity is embracing with joy:  the ever-increasing availability of information and its ability to surreptitiously transform our mindsets. The mind-boggling numbers of television channels, the nearly ubiquitous internet connectivity, the countless radio shows and podcasts - even clothing and bags are emblazoned with brand names - all feeding us with information.

Having the wealth of man's knowledge at our fingertips is a marvelous thing, but the downside is that news outlets, both spurious and legitimate, have a tremendous influence on us via an availability cascade of stories and memes that give us a very distorted sense of reality, danger, and truth. Obviously, the most effective memes and the most attention-getting, share-worthy stories are those that arouse emotion. This incentivizes people to write articles and headlines using more and more emotion-laden terms, in an ever escalating battle of one-upmanship. From hyperbolic memes complete with spelling errors to actual news articles, the more emotion their creators can arouse in their readers, the more widely their piece is apt to be read and shared. Are we nearing a crescendo in this vicious cycle?

One of the daily challenges of the modern world is to be aware of the power of availability to influence us. We naturally deem things that are easily called to mind as being of more weight and importance, especially those that are emotion-laden, but being readily called to mind does not speak to their value. As Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking Fast and Slow, his groundbreaking book on behavioral economics, "A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”

Is it too much to wish that reporters today would take an evidence-based approach in their writing? Surely that would be a positive step towards bringing the world a bit closer to the safe haven of kindness and hope that the majority of humanity strives to embrace.

Written June 2016

"The way to be happy is to make others happy." Just no.

I just wanna make everyone happy.

I don't wanna make anyone sad.

Because I love all day,

And I wanna make everyone glad.

Seriously?

Too many years of such a mantra left me a very easy-to-take-advantage-of, and frankly, sickeningly obsequious, person.

Just now, a man representing my former landlord who is short-changing me for more than $400 came by to explain the finances. I have been waiting for this issue to be resolved for two months. Today, I overly politely mentioned that there was a still discrepancy. On and on went my self-effacement, "I'm not good at math, so I could be wrong, but how is 14 and 25 equal? I cannot understand."

Finally, the guy said he would check again with the landlord. Again, out came the wanting to please and make things easier for others, without a single thought for myself. "Oh, you can just send me an email about it."

Afterwards that stupid song I wrote above came to mind and I came to my senses. What was I thinking?! It would be so much better for me if he were to come here and I could talk to him face-to-face. He probably concluded that I preferred email. Why wouldn't he? Sane people hint at what they want themselves, not what they presume others would prefer.

I do this sort of thing all the time. Giving things that I really like away to people that I think would like them, then later realizing they didn't care at all.

Knee-jerk reaction, wanting to "make everyone happy." Thirteen years out of the cult, but I'm still finding gooey remnants of their twisted unreality clinging to my psyche like hidden leeches.

That one has got to go.

P.S.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for treating others with kindness, gentleness, and respect. To quote Jean Jacques Rousseau, "What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"

The Ragman Fallacy

Throwing things away has been hard for me for years. I felt I almost had a moral imperative to keep things that were still in a usable condition, whether I needed them or not. I was not a hoarder - I didn't have that much stuff - but the consumer mentality was very far from my mind.

"Waste not, want not." "Be a good 'Ragman,'" Berg admonished in his Letter of that name. In it, he went so far as to say, "God will hold you accountable not only for every word and deed wasted, but everything you wasted and threw away which you could have saved or given to somebody else who needed it!"

Is that where this idea came from? More dregs of cult teachings rising to the surface?

Only this past month have I realized how ingrained that attitude of scarcity was. I was downsizing, and I needed to get rid of years of accumulated things.  

First, I wanted to sell or give things away. That worked for a while. Then, when I had no more takers, I started to think... I live in a wealthy country where if someone needs something, they usually just go to the store and buy it. Not so much me. I rummage about and make do with what I have: a daughter's left behind clothes, a son's old track suit, 20-year-old kitchen utensils, etc.  

Finally, the light dawned. If I don't need it, if I'm not going to use it, throw it away. I made numerous trips to the dump, where I witnessed other people throwing things away as if it was completely normal. Something no longer needed? No need to keep it.

Such a basic concept. But not a basic concept for one coming out of years of cult-imposed poverty and scarcity.

This is not to cast aside all frugality. In the cult, we had very few personal belongings. I lived out of a suitcase, and I learned to improvise. Economizing, saving, and avoiding unnecessary waste are still worthy qualities. But no more unwittingly clinging to over-the-top parsimony and being weighed down with unneeded stuff.

Why Education?

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.

Future Flippancy

"Living by faith" has severe drawbacks. Most obviously, future planning becomes a "lack of faith." ("Take no thought for the morrow," you know.)

Therefore, one wonders about how TFI members will live their later years? How will they survive when they are not able to actively fundraise? With no provision whatsoever made for retirement, cult members have come up with some fanciful ideas. 

Plan A: Their children. Most older TFI members have had many children, the large majority of whom have left the group, fought against the difficult circumstances of being raised in the delusional bubble of cult life, and with little education, no diplomas, no credit history nor networks of support have now managed to establish themselves in their home countries or elsewhere. Kudos to them!

What a brilliant idea to live off of them! These falsely entitled parents will simply ask their children to be sure to have an extra room for them in their houses. Then, the parents can travel around (on whose money, one wonders - oh, of course - their kids') and stay for two months with each of their adult children, fit-as-a-fiddle until the suddenly drop dead. It's a good thing they aren't planning on succumbing to any debilitating diseases.

"Oh, really? But isn't that plan just a bit presumptuous?" Yet this is what I have heard from many first generation TFI members.

Wouldn't they be foolish, though, to not to have a plan B? This one hearkens back to the days of COG training for how to survive during the antichrist's reign: "live off the grid." Buy some land (again, with what money?), dig a well (simple), install solar panels, plant some vegetables, and enjoy the easy life of retirement. I think we can all see possible difficulties with this scenario.

To quote the "prophet," Berg:

So let me dream on if I'm dreaming!

I'd rather be glad though insane!

Yielding My Will

Being "yielded" was the ideal characteristic for TFI members. Dictionary.com defines this as "inclined to give in; submissive; compliant." It took me years of being told to "surrender my will to the Lord" to attain to this goal, but I finally made it.

I think the turning point for me was when I returned (to the enormous School Home where I lived) with my fifth baby after giving birth at a little clinic. It was my birthday, and I was filled with joy to have a beautiful new baby. That joy had already been tempered when someone told me at the clinic that the District Shepherd had written to me. Although trying to push it out of mind so I could enjoy the day, I was worried.

For good reason. As soon as I was settled on my bed, new babe in arms, looking forward to introducing my children to their new baby brother, I was handed a 8-page computer printout of correction from that Shepherd. This is the Shepherd who had already put the onus on me for any marriage problems we were having by telling me I was, "not just self-righteous, but really, really, really self-righteous." That 16-page list of my sins and failings, I now see, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

If I had lacked in decisiveness and confidence before, it was nothing to how I was after that letter.

Of course, mandatory public "confession" and united prayer followed, after giving me a week or so to dwell on "what the Lord was trying to teach me." (Shades of Mao and the public confessions required during the Cultural Revolution.) Naturally, I was to do even more intensive studies of the Mo Letters and the Bible as remedy (or was it penance?) for my sins. Oh, not to forget the OHRs (Open Heart Reports), where we wrote our secret sins and daily struggles and victories for our Shepherds to muse over and decide on future dealings. These were ramped-up during times of confession, when "the Lord had his spotlight" on me.

The whole idea was to break our wills and psychologically beat us into submissive, unquestioning, even unthinking, followers. Even more so for women, who were to be obsequious, fawning "helpmeets."

See also: Learned Helplessness