Not welcome to ask too many questions...

I have been part of the cult I am going to tell about for 21 years.

From the age of 24 until I was 45; when it finally became clear to me that the people involved in this organization were there either for their own private individual economic and or social advantages, or (as in my case) in need of an efficient and professional mental health help rather than a brainwashing cult.

 In my youth, I have always been fascinated by philosophy: I was yearning to understand why some people encounter, apparently without any reason or fault, so many difficulties and hardships.

When I joined the organization, I was eagerly studying the doctrine so I started asking the older leaders as many questions as I could possibly think of.

However, other than the obvious answers I could find on their papers (internet was not available at that time), I wasn’t given any answer. I was simply told that I was arrogant and that I should chant (pray) longer hours than what I did in order to find the answers.

Suggestions to care about my husband rather than study was also implied in this sexist cult.

As a consequence, after a few years I stopped asking myself too many questions and I simply tried to follow what I was told.

In spite of this, I have always been considered arrogant and with a ‘bad character’ by the leaders of the cult.  

Perhaps due to the fact that I was someone who still liked to speak out clearly and to tell the truth…for example, when I noticed that people were praised and given leadership positions according to their surname (i.e. their place in society) or because they flattered the leaders, rather than according to their true faith or devotion.

This was contrary to what I read in the doctrine: that every human being has a Buddhist nature and is therefore to be praised.

In the late nineties my family fell into pieces, my husband and I split.

We had two children.

I got “the chance” so to speak, to ask for guidance from a leader who had an important position in the organization.

When I told him my problems, he didn’t show the least bit of empathy or understanding about my situation.

My feeling was that he was standing up for my husband’s mistress, as she was a friend of him, rather than taking an impartial position and encouraging me to find a way out for myself and my children.

Moreover, while I was there, asking for guidance, a door of the room we were in was open. In the room next to ours, his assistant was there taking notes.

Was he taking notes of what we were saying?

It looked so.

However, the guidance was supposed to be a private moment.

My privacy was not being respected.

Of course, I did not dare ask why the door was open, nor to see his assistant’s notes.

It didn’t even come into my mind I could have had the right to so.

~Cristina