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January 18, 2004
What Odysseus and others are
remarking on my posts I must say gives me a lot to think about. I must say
that those past two weeks have brought more uncovering of what was really
going. So I want to take back my criticism of Ambu and Odysseus. Also I
have understood that this forum is a place to express. And now I agree
that this whole terrible subject needs strong expression, it is shaking me
completely up and giving me sleepless nights. I appreciate Odysseus'
valuable remarks and I will continue to bring my thoughts to make things
clearer. These past weeks have been extremely disturbing for me because I
am confronted with horrible things going and even more with my own
self-delusion and self-betrayal. But I see it as a healing process for
myself and hopefully for many others. So I will take up the challenge :
the doubts, criticism and pulling apart of my points of view, then and
now. So I am in a strong inner process and some of my first remarks on
criticism and morality in the forum are no longer valid.
I am learning, Amlearning.
The question why I did not make a
public scandal at the time of my splitting up was that - believe it or not
- it took me so much courage to leave. Actually, I was very scared and
afraid then and I had to undergo therapy myself to get some of the fears
and worries cleared. It made me not sleep and I was afraid of vajra hell (
you remember, I was raised with Catholic hell a lot). Well here I am at a
point in my story, and you may think this is only an excuse or mostly
self-justification which I am sure you will detect traces of anyway, but I
think that by telling my story it could help to understand some of the
psychology which keeps up abusive systems, but on the side of the people
fooled.
I found Amlearning's quotation
very useful. The expression soul murder I have from a German book on
sexual abuse and incest in families. What does it mean: maybe it would be
better to call it first psyche murder. What happens, and what makes it so
destructive and hard to heal, is the fact that abuse and incest work by
sneaking into the trust of the child. Most abuse is done within families
or by friends and other close people who have relationships with the
family of the victims or are even working with the children they abuse.
They abuse the trust, the
innocence and the dependency of the children to be able to abuse them. In
the case of incest the children are completely trusting in a way which is
completely unconscious: it is a mixture of biological drive (of
self-maintaining) and true emotional love. And there is another mechanism
in function: loyalty, which also works well blindly. Members of a family
and also of groups automatically develop bonds. The more dependent a
person is, be it physically like in a family or be it psychologically as
in groups or relationships, the stronger the bonds. The horrible thing is
that everything can establish bonds. Even to be a victim, it binds the
victim psychologically to the perpetrator. This is so horrible, that just
reading this will cause nausea. But it is a proven fact. Battered children
and women very often psychologically cling in an extreme way to the
perpetrator. In the victims' therapy this is one of the most difficult
issues for the victim to confront: that there are often feelings of love
towards let's say the father who has abused his own daughter. Hard to
take, isn't it. Even for a professional. Because it touches our deepest
emotions and fears.
There is another flaw in our
psyche: we cannot really make a clear distinction between
biological/physical fear and psychological fear. This creates a lot of
problems. If you are scared "to death" you actually feel as if you are
going to die. Remember your childhood: there was shadow behind the
curtain, there was a story in a book, you trembled and called for mama.
But there was no real physical danger. Fears always has a connection to
the lifesaving part of our biological/ psychological system. This bonding
mechanism is abused by the perpetrator.
Also there are important aspects
to mass psychology phenomena. People are drowning in the stream of the
group's unconscious psychology. This means, be it families, religious
communities, nations, or any other type of group, belonging to a group
unconsciously pulls you in to the specific values and codex of this group.
It is a collective thing, and ultimately, the purpose of the group or the
values of the group don't really matter. It is a strong drive within man
to belong to the group and not get thrown out because when we are born we
are completely dependent, with our bare life belonging to the group, the
family, or even just the mother. As babies we automatically try to do the
best we can to adapt in a way that we are accepted and alive. Dependent on
the psychological mechanisms of the family we grow up in a healthy, open,
and trustworthy family. But in so many cases this does not happen. Parents
have their own problems and there are many families where there is an
atmosphere which is potentially dangerous for the child, perhaps even
physically dangerous, but in most cases emotionally and psychologically.
Many children "think" they will only be accepted if they completely
surrender to the family system of their parents. They try to figure out
what would be the prerequisites to be loved. So they try desperately to
fulfill this, not knowing that they have a birthright to love just because
they are here.
So there starts one of the many
vicious circles: ideally parental love should be more or less
unconditional so the child feels well. (Of course in the limits of common
sense, parents are not saints. Freud said children don't need an ideal,
perfect mother but a sufficiently good one). But so many parents are not
able, and the extent to which they are able or not varies greatly, and
also the effects it has on the child is dependent on the psychological
strength of the child. So in a very brief and by far not complete manner,
I try to make this point about spiritual groups: why do people go out and
seek spiritually? In most cases, I suppose there is a combination of
emotional need and spiritual hunger. But look at children. For them it's
the same. And when we are seemingly adults, the inner child is looking for
something which has been missing. The real horror is that abusers (be it
dictators or false gurus) know exactly how to manipulate the people in a
way that they trigger people's needs and get control over them, to get
power. Actually, religion and mysticism have always been abused by
manipulators to get the people. One half they get to believe them, and the
others they oppress by rude methods. Power - sex- money: the trinity of
power.
I will not go into the psyche of the perpetrator here. I am interested in
how people like you and me got entangled, and how it comes that others
still are, and how to free ourselves and give information to others about
what's going on. The brainwashing effect of manipulating the emotions and
even more so the spiritual needs of people is very, very strong. Once you
have entered into this world it takes a lot to get out. Because the
spiritual and emotional needs are so valuable but they get poisoned,
almost unnoticed, quietly, sneakily, and the true emotions are spun into a
cocoon of true things, of lies and manipulation. I said in my last post of
how much many of us are willing to sacrifice in order to attain
liberation. And as I painfully have to confess to myself, in some ways I
still was under the influence of some long-lasting vein in my brain. Well
you woke me up. Thanks for it.
I have to stop here for the moment and will come back later and will also
try to give answers to some of the raised questions.
Oscar.
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