Third (or fourth? or fifth?) time’s the charm…

At the time I am writing this, I have just turned 50 years old.

I am four-and-a-half years out of my last group. Or two-and-a-half-years out of the other group. And twenty-one years out of the second group. And twenty-two years out of the first. And somewhere in there, there was another almost group. Or two.

During the last four-and-a-half years group-free (or two-and-a-half, but that one was pretty light, so I’m going with the four…), I have spent most of my available waking hours researching narcissistic abuse, narcissistic personality disorder, undue influence and cultic abuse via YouTube, Podcasts, Blogs, Interviews, and Books. And I continue to read and listen and learn. Thank you to Everyone who shares their stories and their insight. You saved and continue to save my life.

This is the first time I am trying to write about my experiences.

In all of my thinking and learning about cultic abuse processes, and in reflecting on my own experience, I have only one insight I think is worth sharing: anyone can get conned into a cult. All we have to do is care about something. Doesn’t matter what that thing is. It can be a person, a faith, an activity, a goal. It can be our family, our politics, our religion. It can be our health, our fitness, or our finances. All we have to do is care about it.

And that’s the con-person’s in.

When we care, and another person can convince us they care about the same thing, we stop seeing that person critically. We start seeing them in the frame of our supposedly shared value. Any gaps in what they say or do, we fill in with the value we think they share with us. Any inconsistencies in their actions, we see as an outlier, a mistake. We focus on the goal we think we both have.

And that’s our blind spot. That’s where we can be abused, for years, before we see it.

Here’s the story of my blind spots, the things I cared most about, and the abuses I experienced from leaders and teachers and gurus, and from community and ‘friends’. Trigger warning: brief descriptions of sexual harassment and assault, physical assault, gaslighting, psychological abuse, slander and shunning included in the following narrative.

Group 1 was my second tai chi teacher.

I trained with him for 6 years. I taught the advanced students in his class for the last three of those years. For free.

The last month I studied with him, I used my savings to travel to Hong Kong, to study alongside him with his teacher and the ‘tai chi family’ there for the whole month.

The trip was lovely, except for one thing – my teacher did not introduce me to anyone. My tai chi brother, who had traveled to HK the previous year, noticed, and began introducing me – as his ‘big sister’ in the form. The sifu – my teacher’s teacher – corrected him, thinking he made a mistake, since this tai chi brother was 20 years my senior by age. And my tai chi brother said, “No, she taught me form. She is my ‘big sister’.”

At the last dinner of the trip, the whole community gathered. The only other English-speaker at my table was my teacher. He took the opportunity to say something sexually inappropriate to me in English, and smile deviantly, wagging his eyebrows at me.

I was shocked. This was the first and only time he had treated me this way. After six years!

I confronted him when we were back home, at his girlfriend’s house – where he lived. His answer to me was, “So, I am attracted to you!” He was more than 30 years my senior, and had never been inappropriate with me or anyone else who studied with him, that I knew of at that time.

And that was it. Six years of training and dedication and work, gone.

“Lineage” was a verbal blessing from the teacher. I didn’t get it. I lost my practice community. It took me three years to be able to practice that form without feeling that teacher in my skin, as I had learned that form from watching him. He was my internal image for my practice.

Eventually I won that internal battle, and can now practice that form only focused on my own body and my own experience. I no longer see him in my mind’s eye.

I learned later, however, from my tai chi brother, that this teacher had quietly done the same thing to three other senior level women who studied with him. Each of us had been assistant instructors, for free. Once he made it impossible for us to continue to train with him in this way, giving none of us lineage, he gave lineage to his girlfriend, and made her a paid teacher at the college where he taught. All four of the women he abused and dismissed were senior to her.

Decades later I realized he likely did this to get rid of us; that he threw out our practice and our dedication and our skill. None of it mattered to him. Our life path and life practice did not matter to him. Our contribution did not matter to him. The lineage didn’t even matter to him – he threw out amazingly skilled and earnest practitioners this way. Only his nepotism mattered to him.

That hurt. In recovering from this first group abuse experience, I learned to turn inward to claim my own practice, and I learned to walk away from abuse.

But my story isn’t over.

During the time I trained with this tai chi teacher, I had also begun to practice ‘zazen’ meditation regularly at a local Rinzai Zen meditation center.

I practiced six days a week, on the cushion at the ‘zendo’ or meditation hall by 5:15am every morning. I did this for three years. I considered taking vows and becoming ordained as a nun, to live my life dedicated to meditation in a monastery with my abbot’s teacher, the roshi. I started to attend week-long meditation retreats, on the cushion by 4am, with ritual 5-minute rest periods, ritual meals in silence, meditation during dharma talks by the roshi, silent work periods, and brief one-on-one meetings known as ‘sanzen’ with the roshi about a ‘koan,’ or question, to meditate on.

All was well, until my third week-long retreat. I went into my one-on-one meeting with the roshi, kneeled and bowed, then sat kneeling, waiting for instruction. The roshi looked at me, waggled his eyebrows, and then began pumping the stick in his hands like he were masturbating. This roshi was 94 years old at this time.

I glared at him. He rang the bell, signaling me to leave. I bowed out and left. I went into the zendo, sat down on my cushion, and thought to myself, “F-ck this sh-t!”, and I bowed out. I bowed to the attendants at the door, to let them know I was leaving. I went to my dorm, I packed my car. On my drive out the driveway, I stopped at the administration building, to let whomever was overseeing the retreat know that I was formally leaving, and would not be back.

The overseer for this retreat turned out to be my abbot.

I told him I was leaving. He said, “May I ask you why?” I told him. He put his head down. I said, “If you can tell me how that is part of the practice, I’ll stay.” Silence.

I left.

I continued to meditate at my local zen center for a few weeks. Many practitioners disappeared at that time. I went back months later, and only the abbot and myself and one other new person were there. After that, I never went back.

Twelve years later, another abbot-level monk, who had practiced with the group for over 20 years – reached out to me, and asked me if I would meet for lunch. We did. He asked me why I had left. I told him. He then told me that 43 women had reached out to him in the 20+ years he had been a monk. That he had tried to fight it internally. That the other senior level monks fought him, and wanted to cover it up. That the roshi threatened to leave them if they kept bothering him about his abuses of women.

Eventually, they had outside investigators from other sects interview all the women who had complaints, and they tallied the results. The New York Times ran a piece, and linked the internal report in an online archive.

It was another 9 years before I read the article. My nervous system blanked out after that conversation.

And, I had just entered another group – a qigong and meditation group. I was physically unwell, and emotionally beaten down by several family situations and a failing emotionally abusive relationship, and had just begun to take a “medical” qigong class for healing with a local teacher.

And the practice helped my health. The community built up around this teacher became an instant surrogate family. And yes, they also love-bombed me.

The teacher and the administration of their ‘institute’ – which was really just this one teacher – did hard sells on intensives and special courses, with a narrative about how the teacher was going into silence soon, and may never come back to teach again, and this was the only chance to study this special material with him.

And that special material? ‘Sacred sexuality’ and ‘gender’. This teacher created a narrative mythos of ancient Daoist nuns and monks doing ‘sacred self-cultivation’ – aka masturbation – practices, and then gathering once a year to ‘exchange energies’ for their health.

I wasn’t interested in the sexuality material, but was heavily encouraged by senior students to attend the week-long training, because it was such a special opportunity, even if I wasn’t sure about it at the time.

I liked these people, and they were ‘kind’, and they were my surrogate family, and replacement community for community lost with the last relationship failure, so I signed up.

Suddenly, the 7-day training was going to have a special additional 3-days for those who wanted to do a teacher training in the material as well – but those 3 days would happen before the 7 days, so we had to decide right away, to be able to attend those 3 days first.

Again, the pressure from senior-level students.

Okay, okay – I signed up. And took all ten days.

By the end of the summer, I had gone from a fringe community member attending one class a week, to a fully invested, certified teacher in three of the five modalities they were then certifying students in, and teaching in the ‘guan’ – the school the teacher created before leaving on a year-long silent retreat. The newly minted ‘teachers’ would teach, and pay the rent for, and clean, this school for free, while the lead teacher was on retreat – which turned out to be for two years.

Many, many subtle abuses and twists happened before the teacher went into silence. Then more during their silence, from remote communication and a surprise meeting. Then a mass exodus of students and closing of the ‘guan’. Then a dramatic return to teach, announcing a new school and a monastic track. And expanded courses – medical qigong, season-based qigong, yoga configured to traditional Chinese medicine theory, poetry class, a ‘sacred’ theater class, and separate ‘male-identified’ and ‘female-identified’ gender classes. And a new teacher training track for future ‘sifu’s.’ We were going to “create a new tradition.”

They declared the sexuality material – which had been a rarely-taught side-practice before – to be the “center” of all of this new lineage’s practices.

My involvement in this group occurred over 5+ years. I certified in three modalities. I taught for the ‘guan’ for free. I ran the book club. I co-hosted the teachers’ lecture series for the ‘guan.’ For free. I paid my rent, and I cleaned. And I cleaned when other teachers no-showed for their monthly cleaning shift. I was dedicated.

And over my 5+ years in this group, strange things would happen. A student would be asked to leave “for accusing me of wanting them sexually”. We would never hear from the student, never see the letter of allegations. The teacher would never deny the allegations. The inner circle of senior teachers would put up their hands and make frowning, appalled faces, implying that the allegations could never be true. The teacher declared they had had to dismiss this student for the teacher’s own safety.

And we accepted that.

Another student had an acute mental health crisis during a week-long intensive training, and similarly, disappeared without a word of explanation from the school.

During the teacher’s 2 years away in “silence”, one of the ‘guan’ teachers found an online posting of a class taught by our teacher in another state – while they were supposed to be being silent. This ‘guan’ teacher shared it with the rest of the ‘guan’ teachers. I saw no problem with the fact they were teaching elsewhere during their silence – it was their silent retreat, and they could manage it how they saw fit. Other ‘guan’ teachers were alarmed by the “betrayal.” Our teacher came out of silence to scold us, and declare they would not keep their promise of returning to teach because of our “betrayal” of them.

And the ‘guan’ teacher who shared the online teaching announcement with the rest of us? Dismissed, and disappeared. And she became extremely ill when she left. And would not talk about what happened.

Despite this, when they came back to teach after their two-year leave, I accepted everything, and jumped in fully. I applied for the monastic track. I joined the ‘sifu’ teacher trainee track – to certify in all the modalities this teacher had created to that point. I attended all the classes, and all the subjects. All the special events, and all the retreats. I did all the assignments and all the reading. I did work-trade and checked students in, processed payments, encouraged newcomers.

Interwoven in all this, came the micro-harassments. A hypersexualized stare from the teacher. An invitation to travel with them, implicitly alone. A declaration from the teacher one morning after being their demo partner for a martial arts exercise the night before, that “I felt you wrapped around me all night!”

And then, the kiss. The teacher pressed up against me from behind one day, during the break between classes. They slid their mouth and face along my neck, parting my hair from my neck, and then slowly kissed my cheek, then slid themselves out and walked away like nothing happened.

In the healthy adult world, when one is interested in a relationship with someone, one initiates a conversation, and expresses that openly, and then ASKS if the other person is interested. So, a conversation seemed obvious to me at that point. But no conversation was forthcoming.

I was so deeply invested at this point, and believed so much in the apparent goodness of this teacher, that I told myself the teacher must be doing this because they are sincere in some way.

But they wouldn’t make space for a conversation about the kiss. Which I thought was odd. So I kept asking for a conversation. And they kept agreeing, then cancelling. For fourteen months.

And then I watched them lay on top of another student, rest their cheek on the partially exposed breast of that student. Watched them gaslight her, tell her it was all in her head. Watched her withdraw from the community, and move away.

I kept asking for a conversation. They put me off. One time we did talk, and they spoke in riddles, and then announced, “Maybe I’m not your teacher.” Shortly after that, when I asked for clarification on a partnered exercise we were doing - a slow-motion push-hands exercise – the teacher sucker-punched me in the liver. I staggered, started to gag. The teacher simply stepped back with an utterly dispassionate expression on their face. I felt a dripping sensation internally for two days, and almost went to the emergency room.

I asked them why they did that. They answered, “I didn’t even hit you that hard.” Total gaslighting, completely avoiding answering my question.

And yet, even then, I stayed. For eleven more months.

I kept asking for a conversation. I watched friends be harassed and humiliated. Then the teacher’s partner started to sexually harass, and then sexually accost me physically – not letting me go from a hug after a workshop, pinning me to them and rubbing up against me like we were making love, while the teacher turned to watch.

And I kept being the diligent student – because I was going to be so good and so sincere that they couldn’t criticize me; so they would trust me and talk with me about what was happening. I continued to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they had some sort of sincere, good intent. I thought my sincerity could induce them to be sincere.

Finally, 11 months after they hit me, 5 years and 3 months into my training with and teaching for them, I confronted them after class one evening, and told them all I had observed. Told them there was a better way. Told them I couldn’t tell what they wanted from me, and asked them what their intent was in coming on to me. Told them I gave them the benefit of the doubt that they were being sincere in some way, but that I couldn’t tell in what way.

They stammered. Told me I had to come to a staff meeting. I told them, no, it was none of the staff’s business. I considered it a private conversation between the two of us as equal adults.

A few days later, they pulled me aside after a teacher trainee meeting, and took me to a back room and chastised me for an hour. They declared, “either I have an unconscious attraction to you…” Pause. I did not respond. Then they shouted, “You’re having a fantasy!” I told them I was not, that their actions were their actions, and I was simply asking them what their intent was, so I would know how to understand their actions. They fumed. This second conversation ended in an impasse.

That night they emailed me. Demanded I come to a staff meeting, because I had “become an atmospheric hazard in the school.”

I said no. Then I said yes. I assumed my colleagues of 5+ years, who were the staff, would be honest and honorable. That they would hear me, hear the actions of this teacher towards me, and appropriately call them to account.

They did not. The director of the school told me, and I quote, “The fact that you have so many questions is delusional.” I asked the teacher and staff whether this was what they had been doing to students who brought forth examples of this nature – sexual harassment and sexual assault – they bring them into a staff meeting and tell them, quote, “the fact that you have so many questions is delusional,” end-quote?

The director answered me, without hesitation, Yes.

Not believing what I was hearing, I asked again. Again, the group shouted together, an unabashed, Yes!

At the end of the meeting, I asked two more times, whether they would do this in the future, because this was going to come up again.

Again, the director said, Yes.

The last time I asked, my teacher of 5 years and 3 months said directly to my face, “Yes! When needed!”

I received a letter of dismissal signed “The Staff.” And that was it.

5+ years of training, dedication, sincerity and hard work dismissed.

Former colleagues shunned me. One told me, “That sounds like a personal problem to me and you should keep it to yourself and be more mindful of other people’s practice.” Another screamed accusations. Another told me I was another woman trying to get attention. Several turned away when they saw me in town, as if they were going to be physically ill.

For nearly two years, I went into self-isolation. I was terrified, and in full PTSD alert all the time. I stopped going out, except for work and the grocery store.

Almost two years after this, and just before the pandemic, I started to feel like I could go out again, talk to people, risk running into members of my former community.

Then acquaintances of acquaintances reached out to me. Three more people were fleeing, and asking for help.

I said no. I was too traumatized.

Another set of acquaintances of other acquaintances reached out. They had heard…Would I be willing to talk to them?

I said ok.

I met these strangers. One who had started to study just before I left, who knew me briefly, and two whom I had never met. The one who had overlapped with me, knew I had practiced with integrity. As I walked into the room where we all met for the first time, this one came up to me, put their hands on my shoulders, squeezed them tightly, and without asking anything about what happened to me, said, “I’ve got your back, for life.”

It was the first time I had had any support from someone who had been in the group since I left.

I looked in the faces of these three people. Their eyes were haggard. We talked.

One said, “How does it feel knowing you were in a cult?”

In all the years I had had to reflect, on this group, on the previous two groups – decades – the word ‘cult’ had never crossed my mind.

In the next couple of months, they helped me connect with a local trauma therapist, and with support groups, and new online resources, like ICSA and Janja Lalich. They recommended films and interviews as they found them. They moved back to their hometowns – they had moved out to study with this teacher, and had only been involved for 6-12 months each, at most. They recognized I was more shattered, that I had spent years under this person who had traumatized them severely in a fraction of the time, and so they remained in touch, supporting me through some of the hardest days.

Since this time, I learned from many other former students how the practices had become more explicit, more abusive – sexual assaults, genital contact and genital exposure, sometimes ritualized in group, sometimes one-on-one. And emotional abuse, gaslighting, and community slander of those who left.

It was very painful, for all of us.

On my own, I continued my research, diving more deeply into lectures, interviews, and books by cult abuse specialists – Daniel Shaw, Alexandra Stein, Janja Lalich, Matthew Remski, Steven Hassan, Margaret Singer, Michael Langone (in the order I found them) – and podcasts, lots of podcasts – Mormon Stories Podcast, A Little Bit Culty, Culty Crew Podcast, Lessons on Leaving, IndoctriNation, Navigating Narcissism, Uncomfortable Conversations – listening to heartfelt testimonials of people waking up to the abuse in their groups, to their values and their pain in their loss, to their trauma and grief, to their isolation and their slow crafting of their lives after leaving.

I am slowly recovering my nervous system health. Slowly and gently reclaiming my movement practices in little steps. Gently walking away from ideologies that gaslight-away experience, feelings, facts.

At the beginning of this essay, I mentioned 4 or 5 groups. And so far, I have only mentioned three – the tai chi teacher, the roshi, and the qigong teacher.

For 12 years, I prayed in a small community. Much happened there that was beautiful, and much happened there that was also not healthy for me. It ended with a difficult conversation with the spiritual leader of that group. That leader asked me if I would be participating in the next summer’s prayer retreat. I said I was thinking through some things before I decided. He asked me what things. I said I didn’t want to talk with him about it. He asked me four times. Three times I said I didn’t want to talk about it.

The fourth time he asked, I answered. I spoke the truth, plainly.

I told him his actions had hurt me.

He said, “You have an expectation.” I said I did not have an expectation. I had a need.

He fumed.

He said, “No one can make you feel anything” to dismiss any responsibility for his actions that caused me to hurt. I asked him if any of his actions that I named were not true. He was silent.

We hung up. And he took me off the email list. After 12 years of praying together, most of those years, weekly. Done. Dismissed.

That was a year-and-a-half after I left Group 3, the qigong group. 5 months before the pandemic began.

I lost both communities. Then lockdown. Then my workplace closed by governor’s order. Then I got a new, very emotionally difficult and stressful job focused on covid. Then I got vaccinated, and went back to my previous work.

And now, as things slowly open up, and a new global health emergency emerges, I am slowly discovering myself again. When I turned 50, I had very few people to invite to my birthday dinner. And it was okay. I came home, and could feel a clearing, not just of the people who have left my life, but of my need to try to relate to them, as ‘below’ them, so they could feel ‘above’ – the only way they would relate to me at all.

I have needs. And interests. And thoughts. And values. And integrity. And self-care. And quiet. And responsibilities. I am slowly, cautiously, exploring new ideas for my future: career paths and creative expressions. And slowly, bringing into form, what I have to say.

And another simpler lesson I learned from all this: don’t go into trance in a group with ‘a leader’ whispering things to you. It can mess with your head.

Thank you to all the brave and honorable people speaking their truths, and giving a platform and clarity to the research on the methods and reasons for cultic abuse. Thank you.

And to all the people who cover up for abusive leaders, teachers, gurus, clergy – you are endangering future members, students, followers, faithful. Please speak the truth. Please believe the people who come forward in your community. Please support them and REPORT THE ABUSER AND THE ABUSE TO POLICE, PROMPTLY.

We should all be mandatory reporters.

~Cedar Rose

A note on reporting: the roshi led three zen centers for over 40 years, and lived into his 100’s. One woman who was assaulted by him in sanzen spoke to the NYT and allowed the printing of her name and photo. She states that the roshi groped her breasts during her one-on-one meeting with him for her koan practice. Ten years after I left. He would have been 104 or 105 years old. He lived to 107. According to the internal report led by the senior monks themselves and linked in the NYT article, he is estimated to have sexually assaulted at least 200 women over 40 years as a roshi. If the senior level monks had been mandatory reporters, this would have been reported decades prior to my time there, or the woman in the article’s time there. If I had understood my individual experience as a group experience early on, I may have reported before she got there. My abbot did not report. Indeed, he and the other abbots and abbesses endangered me and others by covering up the fact that they KNEW the roshi was a sexual predator. All to protect their status in the hierarchy under this man. There are now at least 20 zen centers world-wide from teachers given permission to teach by this roshi. All who knew, and did nothing. The one former monk who reached out to me and had fought internally to address the abuse, left the group, and no longer lives as a monk, and does not teach.

A second note on reporting: I attempted to report the qigong teacher’s sexual assault and physical assault of me to the local police. I was told the events were too old to investigate. I was told the reporting officer’s sergeant would not allow the physical assault to be reported because it happened in a martial arts class, and would be my word against the teacher’s, regardless of the fact that it was a ‘soft arts’ exercise in slow motion and we did no sparring in the class. I was told directly by my reporting officer that anything reported more than 3 or 4 DAYS after the fact, would not be investigated, and that this police department did not normally take reports ‘just for the record’. It had taken me over two years to feel stable enough and strong enough to report. I told her that in situations like this, where the abuse happens in a high-control group, unless the crime is severe – like a murder or violent full-penetration rape – that would likely never happen, and that I hoped their department would educate themselves on this, so they can address these kinds of situations in the future more effectively.

At the time of this writing, to my knowledge: No police investigation of the qigong teacher has been done. No police reports were ever filed against the roshi. I have heard that one of the 20 current zen teachers of the roshi’s lineage has or had at some point a statement on their website acknowledging the abuses by the roshi. The tai chi teacher and his girlfriend are still teaching at the college. And the spiritual leader continues to lead prayer circles and prayer retreats, and has never expressed any consciousness nor remorse for his treatment to me.