Escaping the "Work"

A RECOVERING EX-CULT MEMBER recalled his years of bondage to a worldwide church organization in these words:

All of us could write hundreds of pages about our own experiences. ... [T]hey repeated to us so many things in “The Work” ... that we came to believe were true. ... [W]e went through the streets with our heads up high thinking that we were the only ones who had clear ideas and that the rest were ignorant and didn’t know what they were talking about. Now when I look back, I realize how arrogant I was. Always teaching the “true interpretation of the Gospel,” pontificating as if the only true interpretation of Christian doctrine is that which I had learned in “The Work.”
What a hard shock reality was when I left “The Work!” ... How they lied to me!

I had lived for ten years with people as ignorant as I was, so that I never
noticed my lack of culture in such an obvious way. Even though I had a university career, I didn’t realize how ignorant I was. ...

I never read essential books because they were prohibited. ... I never had the opportunity to appreciate the theater, the opera and concerts because I could not attend public spectacles. And there were hundreds of movies and documentaries that I never had access to.

I could not begin conversations with anyone because I didn’t have anything to talk about.

As you can imagine, my first years out of “The Work” were marvelous. It was like I was being reborn, a Renaissance of my personality. I could not stop reading books; I learned to enjoy the theatre, opera and concerts. The movies opened my mind to new cultures and religions.

The best was that I learned to respect and treat people in another manner. This petulant arrogance and that yearning to be the owner of truth remained forgotten.

Now, I only know that I don’t know anything. Now when I am talking with someone I enjoy the conversation and I am happy to learn something new that I didn’t already know.

Do you recognize the religious organization he is referring to?

No, it's not the Worldwide Church of God. It's the Papist organization Opus Dei.

But the fact that the above very well could have been a description of the old WCG, not to mention other breakaway organizations, is very telling.

Actually, the above anecdote would probably apply, with few changes, to most cultic organizations -- and by "cultic" I am not limiting the field to overtly religious organizations. The same techniques of cultic thought control are applied in some political organizations, criminal organizations, and very notably, in military organizations. These organizations are every bit as cultic as Opus Dei, as the WCG, as Jim Jones' People's Temple.

Here's another example, taken from an anti-authoritarian Buddhist site:

The realization that spiritual organizations are a trap, not a vehicle to transcendence, is not a happy discovery. Most students discover the problem after what may seem like a waste of the most vital years of one's life. Worse, after disillusionment with one's religion, it's not like everything suddenly sparks up beautiful and fresh. For a while, the world seems more barren than before, and confronting the world without dogmatic armor may feel like a painful bore. Disillusioned belief-addicts feel utterly bereft without a devotional anchor. Disillusioned meditators still want to find the peace they sought in meditation. Fearful of throwing away their only connection to spiritual reality, ex-students remain suspended between tarnished beliefs and a dawning skepticism.

Don't remain long in this place of uncertainty. Read something like Thinley Norbu's Words For The West, who makes it very clear that Tibetans want you to shut up, do as you're told, and leave your offering with everybody else's. Or read The Anti-Gurus, John Horgan's review of The Guru Papers. Dispel your delusions and realize that authoritarian dogmatists are not friendly to your freedom.

When people talk about the "commonalities in all religions," they don't know just how true that phrase is.