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Corner: Spirituality The Spiritual Damages of Ritual Abuse |
Ritual Abuse, Ritual Crime
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The Spiritual Damages of Ritual Abuse
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"How Can I Live with Myself and My Past?"
The Spiritual Damages of Ritual Abuse
or
"How Can I Live with Myself and My Past?"
Yes, I believe I am an inherently good person. Yet, after years of work in therapy and healing, I still believe that I am also evil. This is what I think of as the spiritual damage I suffered as a result of ritual abuse. RA can and often does ruin one's sense of self, not only shattering the personality into many pieces, as with multiple personality/dissociative identity disorder, but it also does a more insidious and seemingly invisible kind of damage.
RA can make parts (or alters) of you identify as evil, so it would seem that you can never live with yourself or never be accepted or loved by any mainstream deity, such as God or Buddha. How often I've said, "They've tainted my spirit, my very being." What the cult really did was take advantage of, and perhaps even cultivate, the "good" parts, because the good parts will forever be torn with horror and rejection of the global self which houses those "evil" parts or alters. That is spiritual damage, par excellence.
If I were all bad, then they'd have less control over me; I wouldn't be so conflicted, fearful of being "found out," and low-self-esteemed. If I were indeed all or even mostly evil, then I'd feel little or no remorse, and hence would be less vulnerable to emotional manipulation by them.
It's been my experience, through years of therapy, soul searching, and time spent relatively recently in a supportive and accepting Christian church, that those who have success in healing are the folks who accept what they've done as their own actions, and not just those of a passive victim.
Listen up: I am not blaming the victim, though it might sound as if I'd just implied this. We would likely never have chosen to do the things we were made to do in the past, and it is not our fault that we were put in a situation where such acts were required for our very survival.
However, the cult tapped into the normal and healthy rage and survival instinct that anyone so trapped and tortured would feel. Then they perverted it. Our abusers drew out our rage, then showed us how to misdirect it in the way they desired (i.e.: harming animals or other non-abusive persons). And now, years later, they've left us hobbled with the grief over what we did, and the knowledge of what we can and indeed have done with such rage.
What I'm trying to say is that accepting the power of that rage, the reasons for its existence, and the results it can have when misdirected is part of the healing process. And I believe acceptance helps us safeguard against harming others in the future when we fall back into that pit of rage. Once we understand our motives and accept them, we can see them more plainly and objectively -- and that makes them much easier to change.
There's yet another basic human instinct which cults exploit: the will to survive. When faced with a double-bind, a "Do this, or we'll kill you" directive, a healthy self will instinctively and automatically do what it takes to survive. However, that leaves us with a seemingly unbearable guilt over having wanted merely to live, to survive. That's why suicide always seems like the answer and the atonement. We want to give back the life we fought to save (our own) as repayment for those who died.
Those parts/alters who most wanted to live are those who did commit the horrible acts in order to survive; thus we learn to most hate the parts of us who have the strongest will to live. Once again, the cult has twisted our very spirit and our basic healthy human instincts to seem like something evil. It is not evil to be terrified or to do anything one can to stay alive when in a seemingly life-threatening, adrenaline-charged, irrational, and surreal situation. It is something which no human being should have to endure.
It is a miracle and triumph of the human spirit that those of us who have suffered through such ordeals have indeed survived, left the cult and are working on healing and perhaps even spreading the news of what cults and RA can and have done.
There was another reason why I personally was profoundly and chronically suicidal over many years. Flashbacks. The cult revealed the so-called evil in myselves. They made sure to highlight the horror of my actions by framing them in vivid ritual scenes so it couldn't be forgotten or put away. Every moment of the ritual was highly theatrical and traumatic. Every moment, not just the moment of the ultimate act, so it was burned into my brain.
One way to take away the power of those flashbacks is to work through the memories with both the "good"' and "evil" parts present (and those parts/alters who fit in between on the spectrum of morality and emotional depth). Share the perspectives: wanting to live so desperately, raging so deeply, fearing the disdain or rejection of a good God or any good person, crying harder and deeper than words can ever convey over the pain and horror that was witnessed and partaken. This mingling, or perhaps integration of viewpoints, helps to ease the dichotomy of good vs. evil. There is good, evil and all things in between in the world and in each of us.
If you chose to travel this far in your healing, you have perhaps found strength and a greater wisdom and knowledge of human behavior than many people will ever find. You will have learned and begun to accept that wanting to survive, feeling angry, wanting safety and protection from a mother or father (who may in fact be one of your abusers) is natural and not evil.
Nor is taking out the immense rage which has been bottled up and misdirected over the year ever a good thing. But it is an understandable thing and a changeable one. The black and the white blur, as do good and evil, and you're left with a spectrum of meaning and possibility. The labels white, black, good, and evil lose their unnatural power as you learn that each act, event, and feeling is something that exists on a continuum of experience and human behavior. Nothing is beyond what any God(s) is capable of imaging or creating in his/her/it's/their power.
I don't claim to know or wish to convince you of what God or a higher power might be -- maybe God is found in the trees, in the particles which make up our universe, in the heavens, or simply and most profoundly in the love and energy we find in each other. We are all a part of the living energy of this world -- all aspects of each one of us. We all have a place on this earth we were born into, and we are free now, as adults, to chose the place where we will learn and grow, away from those things which have caused ourselves and others pain and damage in the past.
-Scottie
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