Disqualifying the Positive

Years ago, after I left The Way and ended up at Yale Divinity School, I went on a quest to find "My Truth." It was a rather calamitous search because I forgot my flashlight. Instead I brought a pick ax and a saw, determined to unearth and dissect every morsel of reality I could find.

The problem was that after the brainwashing of the cult, I assumed reality must be a pretty grim business – you know, “nasty, brutish and short.” I didn’t dare to look for anything positive because, to my way of thinking, that would be a lie. In other words, if it was to be true, it had to be hard or bad or both.

One might attribute this attitude to my Jewish heritage (no disrespect intended.) I think this tendency to think negatively is all about control. If you’re negative and it comes true, then at least you predicted it – you think you’re in control. If you’re wrong and something good happens, then you don’t mind being out of control because it’s good.

Anyway, my error in “disqualifying the positive” was quite costly to me. I nearly lost my children, not to mention my mind. I was under the mistaken impression that for something to be Real, it had to be negative. Wrong! It’s taken me years to believe that I can be positive and still have both feet on the ground, that I won’t float away to some unseen Oz over the rainbow and be overtaken by the wicked witch. It’s taken me years to accept the good life has to offer. Years!

I could begrudge the time lost in the slough of despond, in my descent into hell. But that’s been very rich ground for my seeds of personal truth to grow. Today I count my seedlings, weeds and flowers and cherish them all. Good and bad. I don’t discount the beauty anymore because I’m no longer afraid that it will be snatched away from me. It’s not only around me. It’s inside of me. I’m positive about this and, finally, I’m not afraid to say it.

Mother's Day/ Mother's Years

I'm sitting here in the library with my twenty-five year old son who is watching the Lakers/Jazz playoffs on the TV. It is something he would do with his father who is a great basketball fan. My daughter was watching it, too when she was here half an hour ago. This is not something I would choose to do in my spare time but it is something I've grown to love and accept - that my children are quite separate and still quite connected to me.

We don't have to love the same things, though we share a history and a present that is hard to match. My son heard the whole book of Genesis during the first month of his life, as I read to him between breast feedings. His younger sister spent the first two weeks of her life in a psych ward (because that's where I was, having just left the cult.) We had many rocky years between then and now, fighting through custody battles and the back and forth between residences. During their early years, I was living at a theologically liberal divinity school; their father remained involved in the fundamentalist cult. My children not only travelled between houses but between worlds.

Now, grown, they are (if I say so myself) extraordinarily open-minded and balanced individuals. They grew up learning to read between the lines and not think in terms of black and white/ all-or-nothing categories. How could they with one foot in their father's world and one foot in mine? Neither their father nor I proved to be "right." The only rightness in either of our parenting was in how we loved our kids.

In my limited view of this life, love seems to be the one thing that overcomes all cognitive distortions - it allows for nuances, for differences and similarities. It doesn't judge. I could wax poetic and quote I Corinthians 13 but I'll let that go for now. The Bible is too confusing when it comes to love; too many fights and wars "in the name of love." Actions are the things that matter. And the actions of my grown children, coming to see me and hanging out, not just today but many days, for many years, remind me of how lucky I am. Years ago, I could never imagine such peace.

here we go again

so I changed the format again from one of the extraordinary blogspot templates. Easy as one-two-three. I'm just wondering what the fine print says and if I've unwittingly signed up for a secret society that uses the number "897" for a code name. That's another "distortion," I suppose. It's called paranoia. When you think the world is conspiring against you to jam you up, then it's time to stop and take stock. In the cult, EVERYTHING was a conspiracy of the devil and we had to be on high alert ALL THE TIME. (Please note the capital letters used for emphasis. This too is a distortion because even though we believed the milk was contaminated by non-organic substances, we were, in fact, correct. It was.) Sometimes, as Freud said, "a cigar is just a cigar."

Suffering From Reality

So I’ve been thinking of changing my blog again. I mean the whole thing. I’m bored with it so if I’m bored with it, why shouldn’t everyone else be? It’s gotten too serious – I’ve gotten too serious. I need to lighten up. Maybe throw in some photos of kittens (I don’t own cats) or post a picture of my last trek up Mt. Everest. No, I think the problem is this. My focus has become diffuse – that is to say – I don’t have a particular topic I’m writing on, except REALITY.

Can we narrow that down?

How about to a cult-survivor’s reality?

There are certain ways cult survivors see the world that “Normal” reality-survivors don’t. For instance, I tend to distrust ALL authority figures based on my bad experience in the Way, where the Prophet/Teacher/Doctor didn’t know his @#* from his elbow. Now that’s a distortion because there ARE (a few) authority figures (even in the ministry) who are sincere and upright. My minister happens to be one of them.

Also, as a former cultist, I tend to think that those in authority should be PERFECT or they’re total flops. That’s a cognitive distortion (to use Burns’ term) known as all-or-nothing thinking. Just because my minister happens to have a few flaws, say, he is obese, does not mean he is a bad person. He is actually a very intelligent and kind and thoughtful person.

So I’m back to where I started, kind of. But I think I’m going to change the name to “Suffering from Reality.” Is that too much of a bummer? I want to be bright and cheerful and helpful but even the Buddha’s first noble truth was that “all life is suffering.” To be alive is to suffer. But reality can be tolerable, if not downright fun, if we just know how to detach from our crazy thinking patterns – ie, thinking patterns learned in the cult.

One caveat – you don’t have to have been in a cult to suffer from these cognitive distortions. Everyone’s thinking is warped in some way – otherwise we wouldn’t be the loveable humans that we are. So keep thinking and keep reading and keep suffering from reality. Maybe one of these days, we’ll see that suffering is thriving simply by virtue of staying in the game. You go, girls and boys.

A Missing Hero

I just heard about the polygamist cult in Texas. How my heart goes out to those girls and women. I was not born into my cult. I had the good fortune of parents who rescued me when I was ready to leave. I can only imagine what it must be like to be raised in such an environment.

A few years I attended a workshop of SGA's (second generation adults) - people who were born into cults. I was invited because I joined at such an early age - 14. Still, I found myself sorely out of place. While the issues we confronted were similar - child sexual and psychological abuse, my experiences did not happen in the context of a cult. My experiences occurred in my family and neighborhood.

Trauma is trauma and recovery is recovery. But children born into cults face an unique and daunting hurdle. And that is to blossom into a self which is utterly at odds with their family, community, religion and even their own identity. They literally have to remake themselves.

I so respect the courage of that sixteen-year-old girl who went to the authorities to report the abuse in her cult family. She now seems to have disappeared. No one can find her. If it were me, I'd be hiding somewhere, holding on for dear life, afraid that the demons will overtake me. Hopefully, she hasn't done anything drastic.

I know of a sixteen year old who reported her father for psychological and verbal abuse. She reported him after he threw a slipper at her. Her father is now in prison. And she took her own life after going to the authorities. Her love for her father and guilt was that great.

I pray that that brave girl is safe. I pray that her courage extends to herself and her own survival as much as to others. A hero, may she get the help she needs and deserves.

On Losing the Fear

Now that my ankle is almost whole, I’m back at work again. I work in the infirmary of a maximum-security prison for the mentally ill. I missed working with the inmates – running coping skills groups and “doing” counseling. It’s actually great to be back.

What makes it really great is that we have a new team leader – a young psychiatrist who excited about being there, too. He believes in respecting the inmates as human beings and giving them skills, support and hope that they can improve their lives. Just what I believe. I’m looking forward to working with him.

Yesterday, I was at a mental health conference and happened to sit with this doctor at lunch. We got to talking about the difference between working with the mentally ill violent offenders in a prison versus a state hospital (were he had worked before.) How did he do it without the help of corrections officers, I asked.

He smiled and replied that he had a team of “bouncers, bikers and marshal arts experts” who kept things in line. If a patient got out of hand, these men were at the ready and strode into danger as a fireman runs into a burning building. These men were fearless.

“Studies show that criminals seek out victims who show fear. Predators can sense vulnerability,” he said. I can attest to that in my own history – from being a child who was molested to being an adolescent who was raped to being an adult who was sexually abused. It’s the “sitting duck syndrome.” The more afraid or vulnerable you are, the more likely you are to be a victim. Makes sense.

But how do you get over fear when you’re afraid? How do you find the courage when you have no confidence? How do you stop being a victim? How to be a butterfly instead of a caterpillar? (I sound like Lion from “The Wizard of Oz.”)

Well, if we follow the example of those “mental health technicians” in the state psychiatric hospital, then we see that preparation and fitness is a big part of strength. We also see that carrying yourself with supreme confidence – that going INTO the direction of your fear and not running from it – is key. It also doesn’t hurt to have a faith in something greater than yourself to carry you through.

With this in mind, I am facing the world with my story, determined to bring hope to victims and closure for the victim part of myself. In the dead of night, my dreams tell me I am still afraid but in the light of day, with eyes open, I can face my fears and share my truth. That’s what I’m working on these days, since being back to work.

100 monkeys?

So, thanks to some of you out there in Bloggersville, I found out what the 100th monkey is. It seems there were some scientists on a tropical island and monkeys were running all over the place. The scientists decided to try an experiment – they put sweet potatoes on the beach for the monkeys to eat. One monkey tried one, then another monkey tried one, then another and another but the sweet taste of the potato mixed with the grimy dirt and sand did not make for an appetizing meal. Until….

Until one day, one monkey decided to wash it in the ocean and then eat it. Behold, a sweet sweet potato! Good news travels fast, even among monkeys, it seems, so once the word got out about potato washing, everybody was washing their potatoes. But it seems it had to reach a critical “tipping point” before ALL the monkeys partook of the secret.

Before anyone could say “monkey’s uncle,” the news had magically traveled to other islands and other monkeys were washing their sweet potatoes as well. So by the time 100 monkeys had heard about this, the whole South Seas were awash with washed potatoes and smiling monkeys. That’s the story as I understand it.

But I have a few questions about it. First of all, how does anyone KNOW there were 100 monkeys and that the 100th monkey was the ONE who tipped the scale? Second, what about the law of exponential increase (I’m not sure that’s what you call it but it’s about generations - an older monkey teaches baby monkeys and those babies teach their babies and so on and so on?) The 100th monkey effect seems to imply that the phenomenon occurred lickety-split but it actually took years (according to wikipedia.org.) My last question – where did the monkeys on the new islands get the sweet potatoes? Did scientists plant them there. too? Did one monkey swim to another island with a bagful of potatoes or did they take a canoe?

I know, I know. I’m sounding cynical again. Listen, I have nothing against 100 monkeys washing sweet potatoes or 2,000,000 people trying to save the world. (Oprah and Eckhart have at least that many tuning into their webcast.) The world certainly needs saving. But to cite some unscientific “proof” as to how it will happen is, in my opinion, just one more example of magical thinking clothed as spirituality. It’s not rational. And it’s the stuff of cults. (see Lifton’s work on mind control) Each one reach one makes sense to me but that’s been around a LONG time (see the Bible.) A New Earth is nothing new.

Sorry. I don’t mean to detract from a very exciting phenomenon – a spiritual awakening on the internet. But what about the poor souls who don’t partake, those who live on islands without the proverbial sweet potatoes, or those who are too old or too dumb or too skeptical to wash them in the ocean? They will forever be in the abyss of white potatoes and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Or perhaps God, like the scientists, will intervene and drop those sweet orange morsels from the sky. One can only hope. Til then, I’ll keep trying to engage my brain and look out to sea for a better idea. Perhaps one will come to me.