Elizabeth: Exit Story
Elizabeth: Exit Story
Hi Everyone,
I submitted the following as a Letter to the Editor to the Nisqually Valley News this week. I don't know if they'll print it, but I wanted to add it to the database of former students' experiences. I've been reading EMF for a while, and I appreciate the insight, support and information that this site and everyone on it provides.
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Visiting my childhood home, I am contemplating how I drifted from the happiness of childhood to the turbulence of young adulthood, to becoming a student of an Ancient School of Wisdom for the past 20 years.
My steps beyond the master teacher, known as Ramtha, are enlightening in themselves--although others would call them by a more familiar term: cult recovery.
In my opinion, my cult recovery has been un-traumatic because sometime in the past 20 years I have processed through the reasons why I was vulnerable to being harvested by this cult in the first place. By the age of 19, I was lacking basic joy in my life. I grew up in a densely populated city and from my perspective the world around me did not look sustainable. I felt the world was headed in the wrong direction. I was very troubled by that, and it was too big a problem for me to solve. I did not feel part of society, I was always watching it from an outsider’s eyes. I felt very different from everyone around me, and I was critical of what most people’s lives were about. So I was disturbed by the world, I was disturbed by society, I was disturbed by my peers, I was disturbed by my family. I was ill at ease with everything, and I was highly critical of everything around me.
Despite spending the past 20 years in a cult, I developed an understanding, acceptance, and fondness for the world, and myself. Now when I see problems, I also look for ways to contribute to solutions. I see myself as part of this world. I find great virtue, intelligence and compassion in those around me. So this past autumn, when the rug of my imaginary friend was pulled out from under me, I did not return to the 19 year old version of myself minus my safety blanket. I got myself back with all the burdens of my disturbed self lifted.
Do I credit the ‘knowledge’ ‘taught’ by Ramtha for my progress? Absolutely not. It was from going back to college and learning critical thinking. Even more importantly, while at college I was exposed to and surrounded by people whose minds and integrity I learned to respect. I began to be open to different opinions. I became skeptical when, for instance, fundamental concepts of physics were disregarded in favor of Ramtha’s latest unreliable explanation of how electrons really have a positive charge. “Ohhh... that’s why ‘those’ scientists don’t know the super-science we are being taught.” (gag) I was carefully studying the experiments and theories that led to the conclusions of fundamental physics principles. It was not some mindless indoctrination, unlike what Ramtha would have us believe. Learning physics, math and biology is a thoughtful, engaging process.
I established trust in the scientific community, as imperfect as it is at times, and it drove a wedge in my implicit trust in the ‘master teacher’ that was constantly making nonsensical, unsubstantiated, scientific claims. With less of an attachment to RSE, I drifted away from Yelm and the influence of the RSE Thought Police. Over the past five years, working in Austin, San Francisco and New York City were further extensions of that, and it has been a long time since my world was hemmed in by Yelm’s city limits, where I was once fearful of even working in Olympia.
So now I am back in the home where I was a little kid, and I have the incredible good fortune to have a parent who is still alive and healthy, and my childhood home is still standing and beautiful. New Yorkers, I always found so... self-centered, materialistic, and uninspiring, I now find hilarious, boisterous, and very welcoming. It has taken me a very long time to appreciate the beauty of tons of people crammed together in a city, working, socializing, tolerating (and yes, being regulated by a government--sorry but sometimes, it’s a necessary evil). For the first time since I was very young, I feel like I belong here, I have something in common with these people. I am from here and I am a part of this thing around me.
Only now, out of RSE, do I feel the connection that I was missing and it has taken coming back home to see it. When I was fully immersed in RSE, the only thing I felt connected to was the small RSE community; that was the size of the world in which I felt safe. Everything beyond it was perceived as threatening, unstable and misleading. Developing knowledge and trust in science was a gradual process that helped me to grow beyond that ignorance, which led to questioning other mythologies taught at RSE, which led to more information... Along the way I began to see the larger community, and this society, as something worth being part of.
If I had been more isolated by the social conditioning at RSE, and then dumped back into the person I was when I was 19, with the same issues but without being able to rely on JZ Knight’s plagiarized-and-then-copyrighted wishful thinking techniques, and 20 years had gone by... wow, that would be traumatic. I think I would be in a major depression and feeling quite hopeless. To all of you that are in that place... I don’t even know what to say, it sounds insufferable. I can only offer that relying on others for help, experiencing the “milk of human kindness”, and following that biological urge to give to others (Something I believe we all have), is a good way to participate more fully in our own lives.
To all the Yelm locals who have treated those of us who are/were caught up in the control of this ‘school’ with kindness, tolerance, and support, please know that by offering your friendship to Ramsters, even in passing, you may be helping to bridge an important connection to the outside world. Please continue to reach out to “those weirdos.”
Wherever I go now, I will know I belong. This is my generation, this is my life. I’m not forever trying to make it something perfect, in fact, I think the pursuit of happiness is a madness-generating spiral. I’m the opposite of what I was straining to be in RSE, and I am the happiest I have ever been.
I submitted the following as a Letter to the Editor to the Nisqually Valley News this week. I don't know if they'll print it, but I wanted to add it to the database of former students' experiences. I've been reading EMF for a while, and I appreciate the insight, support and information that this site and everyone on it provides.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visiting my childhood home, I am contemplating how I drifted from the happiness of childhood to the turbulence of young adulthood, to becoming a student of an Ancient School of Wisdom for the past 20 years.
My steps beyond the master teacher, known as Ramtha, are enlightening in themselves--although others would call them by a more familiar term: cult recovery.
In my opinion, my cult recovery has been un-traumatic because sometime in the past 20 years I have processed through the reasons why I was vulnerable to being harvested by this cult in the first place. By the age of 19, I was lacking basic joy in my life. I grew up in a densely populated city and from my perspective the world around me did not look sustainable. I felt the world was headed in the wrong direction. I was very troubled by that, and it was too big a problem for me to solve. I did not feel part of society, I was always watching it from an outsider’s eyes. I felt very different from everyone around me, and I was critical of what most people’s lives were about. So I was disturbed by the world, I was disturbed by society, I was disturbed by my peers, I was disturbed by my family. I was ill at ease with everything, and I was highly critical of everything around me.
Despite spending the past 20 years in a cult, I developed an understanding, acceptance, and fondness for the world, and myself. Now when I see problems, I also look for ways to contribute to solutions. I see myself as part of this world. I find great virtue, intelligence and compassion in those around me. So this past autumn, when the rug of my imaginary friend was pulled out from under me, I did not return to the 19 year old version of myself minus my safety blanket. I got myself back with all the burdens of my disturbed self lifted.
Do I credit the ‘knowledge’ ‘taught’ by Ramtha for my progress? Absolutely not. It was from going back to college and learning critical thinking. Even more importantly, while at college I was exposed to and surrounded by people whose minds and integrity I learned to respect. I began to be open to different opinions. I became skeptical when, for instance, fundamental concepts of physics were disregarded in favor of Ramtha’s latest unreliable explanation of how electrons really have a positive charge. “Ohhh... that’s why ‘those’ scientists don’t know the super-science we are being taught.” (gag) I was carefully studying the experiments and theories that led to the conclusions of fundamental physics principles. It was not some mindless indoctrination, unlike what Ramtha would have us believe. Learning physics, math and biology is a thoughtful, engaging process.
I established trust in the scientific community, as imperfect as it is at times, and it drove a wedge in my implicit trust in the ‘master teacher’ that was constantly making nonsensical, unsubstantiated, scientific claims. With less of an attachment to RSE, I drifted away from Yelm and the influence of the RSE Thought Police. Over the past five years, working in Austin, San Francisco and New York City were further extensions of that, and it has been a long time since my world was hemmed in by Yelm’s city limits, where I was once fearful of even working in Olympia.
So now I am back in the home where I was a little kid, and I have the incredible good fortune to have a parent who is still alive and healthy, and my childhood home is still standing and beautiful. New Yorkers, I always found so... self-centered, materialistic, and uninspiring, I now find hilarious, boisterous, and very welcoming. It has taken me a very long time to appreciate the beauty of tons of people crammed together in a city, working, socializing, tolerating (and yes, being regulated by a government--sorry but sometimes, it’s a necessary evil). For the first time since I was very young, I feel like I belong here, I have something in common with these people. I am from here and I am a part of this thing around me.
Only now, out of RSE, do I feel the connection that I was missing and it has taken coming back home to see it. When I was fully immersed in RSE, the only thing I felt connected to was the small RSE community; that was the size of the world in which I felt safe. Everything beyond it was perceived as threatening, unstable and misleading. Developing knowledge and trust in science was a gradual process that helped me to grow beyond that ignorance, which led to questioning other mythologies taught at RSE, which led to more information... Along the way I began to see the larger community, and this society, as something worth being part of.
If I had been more isolated by the social conditioning at RSE, and then dumped back into the person I was when I was 19, with the same issues but without being able to rely on JZ Knight’s plagiarized-and-then-copyrighted wishful thinking techniques, and 20 years had gone by... wow, that would be traumatic. I think I would be in a major depression and feeling quite hopeless. To all of you that are in that place... I don’t even know what to say, it sounds insufferable. I can only offer that relying on others for help, experiencing the “milk of human kindness”, and following that biological urge to give to others (Something I believe we all have), is a good way to participate more fully in our own lives.
To all the Yelm locals who have treated those of us who are/were caught up in the control of this ‘school’ with kindness, tolerance, and support, please know that by offering your friendship to Ramsters, even in passing, you may be helping to bridge an important connection to the outside world. Please continue to reach out to “those weirdos.”
Wherever I go now, I will know I belong. This is my generation, this is my life. I’m not forever trying to make it something perfect, in fact, I think the pursuit of happiness is a madness-generating spiral. I’m the opposite of what I was straining to be in RSE, and I am the happiest I have ever been.
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Beautiful, thank you for posting. I feel this will open a lot of eyes.
Keep the greater good at heart.
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Thank you Elizabeth for sharing you wonderful articulate letter.
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Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
What a lovely, well balanced, down to earth and informative story, Elizabeth, which I am sure will be of great help to many who are struggling to free themselves from the miasma of RSE.
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Thank you Elizabeth for your story, it is a eye opener. Since being out of school and into a new career I have had to push my self out of my RSE mindset, I am starting to feel more acceptance from society, and not the outcast I felt when I was in school!! There really is a world full of kind and wonderful people, we just have to accept this and not accept all the horrible things told to us by JZ, (ooh the whole world is out to get you, be afraid)
I am happy you have found your way back home, one day I will find my way back home!!! My home is very lovely!!!
I am happy you have found your way back home, one day I will find my way back home!!! My home is very lovely!!!
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
mi·as·ma
/mīˈazmə/
Noun
A highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor: "a miasma of stale alcohol".
An oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something.
Thanks, Wofthesun, that's a great term. And I have appreciated all of your stories on this forum as well, it's an honor to contribute.
/mīˈazmə/
Noun
A highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor: "a miasma of stale alcohol".
An oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something.
Thanks, Wofthesun, that's a great term. And I have appreciated all of your stories on this forum as well, it's an honor to contribute.
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Hey Elizabeth. Welcome and thank you. Isn't it awesome when you break away from fearing doubt and logic as being your monkey mind trying to keep you from reaching your potential. When you don't have logic and critical thinking abilities, it allows one to stay ensnared in predatory groups like the R$E cult.
Welcome back to the land of the living. Enjoy your stay.
Welcome back to the land of the living. Enjoy your stay.
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Great letter and insight from someone who has left Yelm...the land of the living dead.
May your new life be everything you truly want it to be .... without all those stupid disciplines! :shock:
May your new life be everything you truly want it to be .... without all those stupid disciplines! :shock:
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Thanks for the warm welcome! It is great to be back, after my 20 year vacation to the land of the living dead. Yes, RSE did a great job training us to fear logic and doubt, to strive to be 'above' compassion, and to waste great amounts of our lives on stupid disciplines. If I had not lived through it myself, I would not believe it was possible.
I still cringe when I think of my friends lost in that cult, knowing how air-tight that belief system can be and how everyone on the outside looked so caught up in their 'limitations.' A couple of people I talked to gave me a version of: "I'm not surprised. You were always using that 'logic' and 'thinking' stuff. It was very predictable that you would leave, you need to learn to turn that off. You are a great runner to me, I better turn it off also, or else I might end up like you, on the Outside." Sigh.
I still cringe when I think of my friends lost in that cult, knowing how air-tight that belief system can be and how everyone on the outside looked so caught up in their 'limitations.' A couple of people I talked to gave me a version of: "I'm not surprised. You were always using that 'logic' and 'thinking' stuff. It was very predictable that you would leave, you need to learn to turn that off. You are a great runner to me, I better turn it off also, or else I might end up like you, on the Outside." Sigh.
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Welcome Elizabeth,
Loved your story. It is a story that people will listen too. Very down to earth. I always said yelm is like a cage.
Loved your story. It is a story that people will listen too. Very down to earth. I always said yelm is like a cage.
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Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Elizabeth, it has been a joy to get to know you. You are so brilliant and hilarious! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. I hope it gets printed and helps others at least see things from your perspective. It is very well-written, and demonstrates the sharpness of your mind.
Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Thanks for your responses. My LTE may get sidelined for a while in the NVN, but I was inspired to post it on EMF after talking to a neighbor recently. She's not affiliated with RSE but when she transferred to the Yelm area, she wanted to look into what it was, since it has a big impact on people in this town (she's a firefighter). When she described what she'd read about RSE, I realized she had been on EMF.
Up until then, I had thought of EMF primarily as a resource for former RSE members and family, but I realize it's got a much wider audience among Yelm locals or anyone that's curious about RSE. So I hope the message gets across from here, and it can shed some insight into anyone that needs it, present or future.
Up until then, I had thought of EMF primarily as a resource for former RSE members and family, but I realize it's got a much wider audience among Yelm locals or anyone that's curious about RSE. So I hope the message gets across from here, and it can shed some insight into anyone that needs it, present or future.
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Re: Elizabeth: Exit Story
Thank you Elizabeth
'So God Made a Cult Leader' by Anthony Goldberg
I have also posted this Video link on our EMF video page.
Welcome to EMF and > THANK YOU < for sharing you RSE exit story with us.........
David
'So God Made a Cult Leader' by Anthony Goldberg
I have also posted this Video link on our EMF video page.
Welcome to EMF and > THANK YOU < for sharing you RSE exit story with us.........
David
But he has nothing on at all, cried at last the whole people....