Coming Out Again...

When I was 29, in 1997, I met a group of Sufis in a small town in the Midwest. They were loving. They were radical. They had an organic farm and values that I loved. I wasn’t looking for a guru, but I loved the people surrounding him, so I quit my Ph.D. program and moved to be with them. Finally, I had found people who were willing to do literally anything to help the world heal. These were my people, for sure.

I had been an “out” gay man since I was a teenager, but somehow the environment led me to marry a young, beautiful woman. That is such a long story. But I’m grateful that we were together because we had a child who is now 20.

I was immersed, and I always strived to be the best that I could. Unfortunately, my relationship with this guru led me to suppress my thinking, feeling and to generally discard my essential nature. I have many stories of verbal, physical, emotional, sexual abuse during the proceeding 23 years – both that I experienced and that I witnessed. We pledged obedience to him, and we all internalized the belief that everything he did was divinely inspired, thereby surrendering our own agency. This had a huge, long-term, negative effect.

When COVID started in 2020, I found myself with some physical distance. My mother, my wife and my child and I were all sharing a house. I was able to find some psychic distance as well, and after a few weeks I asked my wife if she was willing to pull back from our community.  She was very ready to do so.

Since that day just 20 months ago, we have divorced, my mother died, and my ex-wife and I both have new relationships with wonderful men. I have my body, my critical thinking, and my independence back. I have come to think of the group as a cult, and I have developed personal relationship with experts in the field. I am now on course to complete the Ph.D. I left in 1997, and I will be working to depict my experienced through performance, writing and teaching.

My child has legally changed their name from the one that the guru gave them. We are doing the hard work of trying to remember who we are, and I have done so in a very public way, through a vlog and participation in a variety of podcasts. I am the first of the group to speak out about my experiences, and because of my visible activism, there is now a group of ex-members who regularly communicates and supports each other.

Since the stories of abuse have come out, the group has lost a lot of its community support in our small town and is feeling a lot of pressure on its businesses and projects. People have seen the wizard’s true nature. There have been lawsuits and public statements against the group from local non-profits and university-related groups, and we are on the verge of a major exposé led by some young, local, and ambitious investigative journalists.

It’s scary, very scary. I’m still here in this town, and at any point I might run into someone who is extremely angry at me. I don’t like that at all, but I am committed to shedding light on what happened and to protecting survivors. We need to be heard and believed. Learning to stick to my truth is healing and empowering.

One of the most exciting things that has happened is that we are collaborating with the local women’s domestic violence organization to offer educational symposia. The visibility of coercive control in the media is also helping, and we are working to offer a safe haven here in our little town.

Thank you to #igotout for your support.  We are in the middle of it here, paddling the rapids, trying not to drown.  We could use all the messages of support you can manage.  Love to you and to all of the survivors, and to those who are still trapped who cannot find a way out.

~T Brown