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prayer, but without a genuine opening of the heart and body, these partial openings to
other dimensions of consciousness can lead to dangerous delusions, especially in an
environment of moral relativity. Not inherently destructive, these states of mind constitute
an essential part of our humanity, but they can be misused terribly in such conditions of
psychological captivity when our capacities for independent thought have been crippled or
dismantled. Unfortunately, because of their misuse in the group we tend now to distrust our
connection to these prayerful spaces even though we are out of the grip of the group.
In such a state of mind, the leader‟s sexual activities were “dreamstuff,” not real. The
emotion and shock that came with discovering his sexual involvement with many of his
followers led first to denial, then gradually to reverting to these altered states of mind to
deal with the doubts. As for those who were not able to handle the doubts, we assumed
they had failed this particular “test” of the strength of their vision.
Anger. Western culture teaches repression of anger as a virtue for all, but as an imperative
for women, unless they care to be categorized as difficult bitches. Women are taught from
early days to be nice, to adapt to others‟ needs, and to stifle their own anger. In the best of
circumstances, it takes a long time to come to know anger as a legitimate bodily signal, a
safeguard against hurt, boundary violation, and disregard of what we value. Once the
functioning of this critical signal has been stifled, its radar effectively dismantled, the
woman (or man) is vulnerable to being used and abused without even registering what has
happened. Instead, a dull sense of flatness, a depression, chronic fatigue or hypoglycemia,
rigidness or fear sets in --all more adaptable, and acceptable, forms of the surging animal
rage response to mistreatment. These veiled reactions won‟t provoke the perpetrator to
inflict even greater harm.
Anger was well regulated in our group, perhaps even more than sexuality. Not expressing
negative emotions (mainly by suppression) and non-identification (for us, a form of splitting
from the body) formed the two pillars of the prevailing system of thought. To be told you
were negative was the ultimate behavior control, disguised as helping you to work on
yourself. This ploy could be used to prevent certain conversations and to stifle questions,
doubts, concerns --or simply to put you in your place, to get a power hit. If you allowed
yourself to get upset, that was a sure sign you were not advancing satisfactorily. A placid
stoicism became the acceptable modus operandi. Outrage at abortions recommended,
children deserted, triangles condoned, the terminally ill threatened for late payments,
insinuations that a member dying of AIDS got what he deserved (for violating the no sex
task), the celibate guru unmasked as sexually active, the money spent on the paramours,
the snubs, the evasions, the control --the legitimate outrage at all of that behavior was
successfully stifled by the central idea that negative emotion implies weakness.
Meanwhile, few noticed that anger was virtually the only negative emotion that was being
controlled. Other clearly negative feelings, such as fear, disappointment, and sadness, were
tolerated, as were most forms of passive aggression (lateness, condescension, ignoring,
forgetting). Passive aggression was raised to a high art it was, in fact, a major tool in the
arsenal of covert, crazy-making control devices that played on the self-doubt instilled
through the many assaults on identity. As we look back, it seems so obvious that all these
violations against human dignity were going on in the name of work on ourselves. We were
having normal, healthy reactions to them yet, gradually, we learned to doubt and discount
those reactions as pathological indications of a lower state of consciousness until we no
longer had a reliable inner monitor to guide us. Having given up our own capacity for
thought, we became more and more dependent on the worldview of the leader to determine
our outlook.
We also had a wealth of teaching stories from the patriarchal traditions of the world to draw
on for explanation of the silencing of our own perceptions. We read or heard stories such as

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those of the wise teacher who causes his students pain and suffering in the short run, so
that in time they may prevail against adversity or develop the qualities needed to succeed
in their quests. We put ultimate faith in this teacher, handing over to him our judgment, our
perceptions, and ultimately our lives. He hitched a ride on the deeply embedded image of
God, an archetype perhaps that we all carry. Our culture has given us only male figures to
occupy that position, and also has exaggerated the analogy of man and God to the extreme
by suggesting that man is God for woman. Despite our conscious efforts to deny this, the
prejudice runs deep in our Judeo-Christian roots and, we believe, contributes in no small
way to the dynamics of coercive control exercised most often by men.
Intuition. Intuition, in the sense of vision and a feeling for truth, represents another
“feminine” quality that was derogated and denied, another quality to which women seem to
have easier access. Intuition serves as a navigational tool, along with anger and bodily
sensing, that contributes to a unique feminine way of knowledge. In our group, intuition
was perhaps the leader‟s strongest suit. A florid visionary, often he would give reports of
spirits‟ visitations to him in dreams or waking episodes. He also took to prophesying,
envisioning events to come. His intuitive ability to size up a person or a situation was also
uncanny and greatly contributed to the exercise of his folk-art form of guruship.
Intuitive vision in members, however, was condemned as imagination or fantasy, a
detrimental state of mind. He discouraged dwelling on visions, classing them as part of
distracting mind activity (much as it is in other mindfulness practices). Only he was
permitted legitimate visions. One of us recently attended a workshop in which we were
asked to visualize a “spirit guide.” No such figure came. Only a plastic, visquine sheeting
appeared like a veil on the field of inner vision, effectively blocking any further sight. We
had internalized a far-reaching program to ignore any perceptions other than the tangible.
This program, of course, built strongly on the one already laid down by our culture, which
rejects the reality of anything imperceptible to the five senses. For some of us, our
attraction to him as an intuitive visionary was an attraction to a projected part of our own
selves, a part with religious sensibilities that found little validation in our families,
classrooms, or jobs. While we had access to the visionary through him, he defined the field
of allowable perception for us and ultimately determined the validity of our perceptions.
Reports of auras or visions would be labeled “the instinctive center” --another derogatory
term, characterizing the body as the chief enemy of awakening. Although he often spoke of
spiritual beings working directly with his followers, he clearly had sole proprietorship of
visionary realms, and so established himself as the direct connection to the Divine.
Conclusion
Though we are loathe to acknowledge this, in our community, both men and women, like
battered women in a scene of domestic violence, lost their judgment and were held by fear.
Robbed of intuition, body knowledge, sexuality, and anger, we were vulnerable to assault of
the worst kind: spiritual and psychological assault. With physical abuse, you register the
blows, see the wounds. You know you have been hit. You know why you ache when you
wake up in the morning. With the more intangible psychological or spiritual assaults, you
don‟t know what‟s happened to you. You have been raped, used --mind-fucked, to use the
coarse but perfectly descriptive term --to cater to a trusted caretaker‟s needs. In the name
of your own good, you have been used to satisfy his drives for pleasure and power over
you, to absorb his smiling, hidden hostility. In this situation, you aren‟t sure why your heart
aches with emptiness, your limbs with exhaustion, and your gut with anxiety. You begin to
carry an unnamed fear.
This is the fear of the battered woman and the dedicated disciple, the fear that keeps you in
thrall to a destructive man. You begin to believe his propaganda with a visceral certainty as
a means of survival. Although anyone outside the circle of your relationship or community