One aspect that we’ve been silent about in the blogs connected to the Fellowship Cult (Pathway to Presence) is that of: Where does the aspiration to consciousness go after a cult experience? If we look at the fofblog, we can see that references to the continuation of that search was not acknowledged or frowned at and there is a strong tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater which makes it hardly different to what Cults do: throw humanity and life out. The exposure of my understanding related to the subject was labeled “the pretense to a Joan of Arc role” and ridiculed, reminding us of the old law that the lower eats the higher and the pretense of any one individual to live up to an ideal is attacked viciously by the mob. We do not want to allow each other to live up to ideals. We were not in the fofblog willing to live up to what we had joined the Fellowship for. We are still to afraid to be ourselves and let each other be. We repeated the Fellowship experience, which was to shun people’s spirit and their struggle towards a more conscious life. Parallel to that affirmation was my spontaneous “throwing up” without control or any attempt to control it. The idea of using any work tool was equally alien to me rejecting the attempt as a way of rejecting whatever re-enacted cult behavior. I tried to make effort to love but no effort to put any other tool in practice. That allowed for my unrestrained shadow to also express itself: the shame and every other inferiority complex turned into aggression and extreme positions in relation to others, which was very good in the long run because in getting banned, I was able to deal with some aspects of it. (When we come to study the precise patterns expressed in blogs, we will learn a great deal about interacting and how to help people understand each other without avoiding friction. Friction with love is necessary for diamonds. Not the inhuman tolerance of friction in cults for the sake of the guru, but the necessary friction between people for their own development. I was a victim of my own invention and it works wonderfully well: Getting “exhiled” is extremely painful. If it doesn’t kill one, it makes one grow! We develop inwardly those of us who do not find a community to develop in. We develop in the love we have for the human being, those of us who are deprived of human warmth. We reflect our self in the spirit only to find each human being within our self. Without Dragon and Nigel, that would have been impossible. A community of three is already a family: the original archetype.
After a cult experience it is obvious why ex-members would find themselves at a loss not only in relation to extreme distrust of people but also in relation to their spiritual structures. If we look at my process, I’d been rejecting almost everything until I came to Paul Levy’s texts that are helping reconstruct my own understanding. What I find very appealing about Jung is that he confirms the same structures the System offered and Levy references them in a very practical world. I also find very attractive that he is clear about the fact that WE are each in a process of consciousness. It is a very exiting time to be alive! A source of great joy! (Hopefully Levy hasn’t gone down the cult Way, I know only these texts).
To understand that we, as human beings living today, have acquired RIGHTS as SOCIAL BEINGS that cannot be forfeited from us in no matter what cult or institution, is to be able to actualize our human legacy and project our selves into the future not only as spiritual beings but as social, human beings. The confrontation between religious freedoms and civil rights is the expression of the schizophrenic division in our collective shadow. No cult or institution should legitimately be able to attack the individual civil rights that we have already acquired because these civil rights are the expression of our spiritual maturity. Equality, freedom of expression, individual freedom, the right to live, to work and to participate are not RIGHTS separate to our inner spiritual development and they must be upheld in every institution in the world today. They are the guarantee that the free flow from individual to community is preserved and in that dialogue, that CULTURE will continue to be possible. Culture IS LIFE. Cults will inevitably lead us to destruction. They thrive in the authoritarian paradigm in which no freedom of culture is possible. These RIGHTS are exactly what is catapulted out of cults leaving the members like pariahs without a human legacy. Leaving them like Adam and Eve when they walked out of the garden and we are no longer unconsciously naked. WE, mankind, have fought our selves enough to stand not in Paradise but on Earth; not in God but in the God within each human being; Not in our childlike essence but in our human maturity with a civil standing as much as a spiritual realization of our being. We come to the Public Square not only as citizens but as spiritual beings able to live up to our rights and responsibilities. Laws cannot run independent of our spirituality nor can our spirituality run disconnected from the laws. We are both citizens and spiritual beings and harmony must prevail between the two. When the head runs without the heart, the sex without the head and heart and the body without their integrity, there is chaos and decadence. When they are connected, there is freedom and culture. Families cannot develop in the madness of laws without spirit and spirit without laws. The freedom of the individual cannot come at the cost of the rape of the community nor can the freedom of the community come at the cost of the rape of the individual. Individual and community are the living dialogue of culture. Being “civilized” implies both.
To understand that we, as human beings living today, have acquired RIGHTS as SOCIAL BEINGS that cannot be forfeited from us in no matter what cult or institution, is to be able to actualize our human legacy and project our selves into the future not only as spiritual beings but as social, human beings. The confrontation between religious freedoms and civil rights is the expression of the schizophrenic division in our collective shadow. No cult or institution should legitimately be able to attack the individual civil rights that we have already acquired because these civil rights are the expression of our spiritual maturity. Equality, freedom of expression, individual freedom, the right to live, to work and to participate are not RIGHTS separate to our inner spiritual development and they must be upheld in every institution in the world today. They are the guarantee that the free flow from individual to community is preserved and in that dialogue, that CULTURE will continue to be possible. Culture IS LIFE. Cults will inevitably lead us to destruction. They thrive in the authoritarian paradigm in which no freedom of culture is possible. These RIGHTS are exactly what is catapulted out of cults leaving the members like pariahs without a human legacy. Leaving them like Adam and Eve when they walked out of the garden and we are no longer unconsciously naked. WE, mankind, have fought our selves enough to stand not in Paradise but on Earth; not in God but in the God within each human being; Not in our childlike essence but in our human maturity with a civil standing as much as a spiritual realization of our being. We come to the Public Square not only as citizens but as spiritual beings able to live up to our rights and responsibilities. Laws cannot run independent of our spirituality nor can our spirituality run disconnected from the laws. We are both citizens and spiritual beings and harmony must prevail between the two. When the head runs without the heart, the sex without the head and heart and the body without their integrity, there is chaos and decadence. When they are connected, there is freedom and culture. Families cannot develop in the madness of laws without spirit and spirit without laws. The freedom of the individual cannot come at the cost of the rape of the community nor can the freedom of the community come at the cost of the rape of the individual. Individual and community are the living dialogue of culture. Being “civilized” implies both.
Forfeiting the right to participate as an equal, relinquishing our authority to no matter whose authority is the expression of our self-neglect and denial and guarantees the decadence not only of our own self but that of our society. The capacity of each and every human being to act humanly is already within us. Crime is every inhuman act and each individual that recognizes the inhuman in our societies must be able and willing to expose and fight it, fight it “humanly” but fight it all the way through. People who have not been subjected to the madness of cities must be protected; not only children but entire populations of people who have not been subjected to the madness of cities and mass production. The wild development of the schizophrenic division between laws and religion must be stopped. The city as a center of mass production for the benefit of a few is a haven for lawlessness and mad spirituality. Nature is protesting our madness. The rape of the soul as much as the body has institutionalized itself in the city. Cults are a microscopic mirror of our society’s schizophrenia.
This “consciousness” of our selves as citizens as much as spiritual beings is what cannot develop in cults without laws. It is no coincidence that cults develop seudo monarchies and not democracy. Cults reinforce the traditional hierarchical structures of authority and live in the collective shadow of retrograde forms that have already been overcome. In the cult, differences between people are “religiously” sanctified. If the differences current in society aren’t enough, new ones are invented. Those separations between people are one of the causes of the deterioration of the member’s connection with their own self. The extreme dependence on the guru and the cult’s “lifelessness” for reassurance comes as a result of the lack of reference from others. The repeated dogma and conditioned behavior simply deepens the disconnectedness with their own self. The division into two people such as in the hasnamus is inevitable and suicide is the coherent step at the end of that process: the cult personality finally succeeds and kills the member’s “life” which it has been dismantling from the very beginning.
This “consciousness” of our selves as citizens as much as spiritual beings is what cannot develop in cults without laws. It is no coincidence that cults develop seudo monarchies and not democracy. Cults reinforce the traditional hierarchical structures of authority and live in the collective shadow of retrograde forms that have already been overcome. In the cult, differences between people are “religiously” sanctified. If the differences current in society aren’t enough, new ones are invented. Those separations between people are one of the causes of the deterioration of the member’s connection with their own self. The extreme dependence on the guru and the cult’s “lifelessness” for reassurance comes as a result of the lack of reference from others. The repeated dogma and conditioned behavior simply deepens the disconnectedness with their own self. The division into two people such as in the hasnamus is inevitable and suicide is the coherent step at the end of that process: the cult personality finally succeeds and kills the member’s “life” which it has been dismantling from the very beginning.
The cult is a “cult” to the collective shadow of the members. Their “shadow” remains unaddressed, repressed and replaced by the cult’s life-form which equally employs all centers in unanimous massive behavior. Everyone in the cult is conditioned to live the guru’s shadow life “uniforming” the member’s behavior. In the Fellowship cult we can observe this very clearly: men had to become feminine and women masculine to approve Robert’s un-dealt with homosexuality that simply overpowered every aspect of Fellowship life. Men became the “models” of pretty clothes and women, money manipulators, the feminine was shunned in women and stimulated in men. In the cult, everyone becomes part of the guru’s shadow and is banned if they are unwilling to adapt to it. Those willing to adapt manifest their own shadow’s resonance with the guru’s. No one realizes the extent to which in “giving in” to the guru’s shadow life, they are not only surrendering the possibility of dealing with their own but rendering it impossible for the guru to free himself from it. The guru becomes the worst victim of a cult. He must, in the long run, deal with the shadow lives of each of the members who’ve surrendered theirs to him. In the economy of the spirit it would seem that they trap each other in their mutual shadows for many lifetimes.
The cult replaces the “community” archetype or the consciousness of our collective self for the mass behavior and approval of the guru and his generalized status quo in which “equality” between members is not in relation to their equality as human beings with power to develop freely but only “equality” as indistinct masses without individuality which justifies the generalized treatment of exploiting everyone without discriminating anyone. No one can protest because the treatment is equal to all and in protesting the member is labeled out as wishing more for him or her self than is given to all. The mechanism is extremely subtle and efficient leading to a retrograde of the human condition, a retrograde that has already in many cases, landed the group into collective suicide and its subsequent consequences.
All the freedom!
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