Belonging to a group promoting love and success in life was a good idea, I thought. Charisma and promises to make one’s life better was very enticing.
“You want blessings for your family, don’t you? You certainly wouldn’t want to leave them out! How can you pay for blessings only for yourself and not for your family?” These were the words spoken to me after I had paid the expected $10 to cover prosperity and protection for me for the month, in 1976. “Buy one for each of your children, your siblings, your parents and grandparents…and don’t forget your cousins, aunts and uncles! And what about your friends? $10 each for a whole month! They are all worth it, aren’t they?”
Well, close to two hundred dollars per month later, I said meekly, that we couldn’t afford it all as my husband and I struggled to support our three children while dealing with unemployment. The response from this so-called spiritual leader was criticism about how we weren’t using our blessings of prosperity. We were doing it wrong. It was our own fault. Apparently, we needed to buy extra blessings along with our regular ones to get us on the right track. And by the way, the best way to bring money into our lives was to also invest an additional $100 dollars a month with our leader to ensure our future and raise our consciousness to a higher level of prosperity thinking. Without his protection, who knows what would happen! Did we really want to find out? Did we want to take that chance? He made it clear, only he could protect us from the cruel world of those who would do us harm and did not have our greater good in mind.
We were a part of a movement to spread love. We were to spread the message that for $10, one could buy blessings and miracles would happen. To qualify for these blessings, one must join and come to the weekly meetings and hear the leader speak his wisdom about the mysteries of the occult (which he claimed was his own, but I discovered, was taken from other’s books). Oh…and the meetings also cost $10 a week.
We were told that “a fool is soon parted from his money”, and to watch out for people who would take unfair advantage. We really shouldn’t trust anyone but him, because he knew all the secrets about how everything really worked. He said he was teaching us, but he was a talented double-talker. Though the public was aware of us and we often had protestors, and sometimes the media or authorities outside our meetings, we were not allowed to talk to them for any reason.
We were required to call him every day to listen to a recorded message. If we didn’t, he might call to scold us and get us back on track. I dreaded making the call, because sometimes he actually answered. If he did, it was to berate us about our misdeeds or our mis-thoughts he claimed to have intuited.
Finally, after several years, I noticed some of the original members were now no longer coming to the meetings. My sense of dread grew strong. I could no longer ignore it. I opened my eyes and realized I was the fool soon parted from my money. He had told us what he was doing all along, but we were all so deep into his illusion, we didn’t hear or see the truth.
I decided to stop paying and to stop calling. I stopped answering the phone. There were close to a hundred members at this point, though attendance was dropping off. Maybe he wouldn’t notice if I stopped going to meetings. I could just sneak away. After thinking about it awhile, I decided to stand up for myself and own my decision. So, I gathered my courage and called this leader to tell him I was quitting. He picked up the phone. He told me that now that I knew the truth, I should just go ahead and leave. The tone in his voice filled me with dread, but my children and I left and went out on our own. The father of my children decided to stay.
I spent the next year looking over my shoulder, expecting his inner circle to come after us since we no longer had his protection. I found out later, many more left after I did, and his crusade of love began to fade into the background.
It took me more years than I care to admit, for me to find the courage to stand up for myself and leave that situation. I was confused, dismayed, disappointed, and very alone. I wasn’t sure if I was crazy for thinking this wasn’t a good situation, if I was being stupid and foolish to turn against his program for success, or if I was being strong, vigilant, brave, and practical getting my children and myself out of there.
That whole experience opened my eyes and I started seeing how this plays out in other scenarios day after day. In many so-called spiritual traditions, naïve, unsuspecting seekers of wisdom are invited into (in some cases tricked into) situations and mindsets that serve only one purpose, and that purpose is certainly not for the benefit of the seeker. The benefit only lies with the leader and maybe his/her chosen few. The poor seeker ends up disillusioned and skeptical at best, broken and lost at worst. Or even dead. Yes, dead.
