Symptoms/ Dreaming about dreaming

My whole life is spent dreaming about problems with dreaming.  My unconscious

leaks too much into consciousness. This is what makes people crazy—unwarranted,

unwanted, yesterdays spilling into today...people won’t go away when they’re gone.

In the night dreams of the day emerge and in the day, the dreaming interferes,

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jerking back the steering wheel of the mind as it wanders off toward an embankment. 

Is it that the master wiring is backwards, or is my mind fused with an anti-self from an

opposite anti-world?

I dream repeatedly that I masquerade naked in public. I’m ashamed, not, because I

am wrong  but because I have been beaten senseless for failing to cover myself. 

Nakedness leaks from the way I talk: the wrong timing, to the wrong people. I say I

don’t care what happens and then I’m so sorry. I’m a dreamer in conflict, as all

dreamers are,  and half of the time I don’t give a damn.

Of late I dream of a successful good man with heart, a tough mentor, in power

because he knows how and when to play by the rules, rules that I do and don’t give a

damn about.... Maybe if I had more energy.... He gives and withdraws opportunities,

he prizes my creative potential and intuitive powers.  He seems to be a male love, a

part of myself working in the world, my future. I believe he may want my mystery, my

anima.

Then there is the forming dream, an idea not yet formulated into words. I may dream

it tonight.  It has to do with something that occurred today: 

It was the middle of the day—Monday in early July, not a time associated with musts

and shoulds—unless one indulges in shoulding on themselves about vacations not

taken due to money not accrued.  I was having a bad clothing day.  Realizing, with a

sudden wakefulness, that I absolutely needed red, I imagined my gorgeous daughter,

Swan chiding me for my taste in colors, saying “what happened to the purples,

fuscias and blues you used to dress me in? Why are you in browns?” as if her I’d sold

out.   It’s true, I am drawn down to earth these days, like my breasts and this leaden

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feeling in my body. I was having a brooding sort of day, feeling a bit left behind as if

left out, imagining Swan at a beach party out there on the west coast, or, better yet, a

picnic where lots of women my own age who were doing exciting things with their

lives, making derisive jokes about men, or maybe I was feeling left out of artists and

writers colonies and they were going on long walks and retreats or maybe doing a

Thelma and Louise without the bad ending.  

That morning I had put on the gaudy little jumpsuit thing that my husband, Roy  said

was “nice” having overlooked the fact that I’d slept in it because I was having a

nightshirt crisis as well.  I’d asked him, “How can you say that?  This makes me look

rolly-poll,” and he’d demurred lovingly that, well, I did look that too, but that still I

looked nice the way I was.  

It was a nice gesture but I wondered how he could say that and decided it was that

he never truly looked at me. So, clothing misfit, I was driving Roy’s black Toyota

pick up, having cleaned it, swearing and talking to myself earlier.  I drove the truck,

which smelled like stale cigarettes although he said he didn’t smoke, to the copy

store, after dropping off my 12 year old freckled beauty of a son, Julian, at the mall to

buy himself 60 dollar shoes that we couldn’t afford.  

I decided to make a little exercise out of doing boring detail work which I avoid and

then usually act out when I finally get around to it. I decided, kind of like a mother

giving her child a talking to in the car before going into a store, I decided to practice

acting right in Staples.  I did good—didn’t interrupt or draw attention to myself. As a

result I ended up just waiting and waiting and waiting.  So much for being demure.

After all this business, I was just driving out of the parking lot, when I saw Renee, the

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principal of Julian’s elementary school, from which he’d just graduated.  I impulsively

signaled her and then got out of the car as Renee stopped in her tracks into the

store.  I told Renee I’d been wanting to talk with her for some time.  The short of it

was that I wanted Renee to know what a regimented shit Julian’s teacher had been. 

Then, just to seem balanced, I added thoughtfully that the teacher had achieved the

academic goal of making her students ready for junior high.  But the key word was

“making.” The teacher, Mrs. Neal, had squatted on their souls, I told her. Renee got

the gist and must have liked something about me because she hugged me than,

apparently taking this matter gravely into her heart and she agreed, saying that after

all, “if she destroys their sense of self, she does them a greater disservice,” or

something to that flavor. I went on to say that all the pounding of math and language

skills into their tired sculls means nothing if she ruins them. 

Hmm, I was mulling, as I drove away, seeing the clear light of one true thought,

through the weeks and months of shoulding on myself for not doing and saying the

right things at my job where I’d taught art and English.  Here’s the rub:  I draw out

and preserve their imaginal potentials, but I’m sloppy, impulsive and emotional.  My

job ended when my contract expired because of it.  Now here’s this hollow, wired

woman, cropped and forced all for a specific and premeditated effect.  And here am I,

in my pajamas, dreaming out loud all day long, swearing to myself.  And here is a

culture which will not abandon the prim and prickly schoolteacher who will produce

stilted, unhappy students who are so terrified about not doing the acceptable thing,

that they don’t even know they are unhappy.  Fearful and self-conscious children who

are not conscious of their true natures, but only of what they can and can not get

away with in the monetary world.  

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I concluded that I am simply in the wrong era.  I have stirred their soul fragments,

magnetized them, showed them how to hunt for and call up the splintered pieces of

their minds, shaken the walls of their ‘can’ts’ and ‘shoulds’, loosened them,

screaming into poetry, plastering the papers with pains and color.  I have infected

them with my own love and respect for the creative process.  

I felt the tightness in my jaw and neck begin to go fluid. 

I thought that it must have been a Goddess, who bore the Earth for all beings to

create and bear life upon it so that it could flourish in sound and color and smell and

touch. We all come here with seeds of creativity and if we don’t help them grow, they

poison us.

That teacher is so unfeeling, so dead. It’s the culture that is turning me into a failure. 

I am a failure by their terms. I keep going. My co-workers had written to her in their

goodbye note: “be good to yourself”. It sounded so clichéd but it translated into the

message:  “don’t buy what you can’t use.  If the clothing doesn’t fit, return them—go

naked if you must, at home until you find the comfort zone that is your inheritance

and until then, lay low and wait. 

1984 in the commune kitchen

I’m sitting on a bar stool at the big wooden kitchen counter.  I feel happy.  I am at

peace with every single person in the community that is left here, even if it is only

approximately 25 out of the original 350.  If I left now I would feel complete with what

the extreme highs and lows that I’ve partaken in here over the last thirteen years,

having married for two years and raised an exceptional 10 year old girl and two boys,

ages five and 4 months from my second partner who is my husband now.  

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True, my first marriage was a disaster that led to that awful nervous breakdown that

people in the community refused to recognize in 1974.  Michael, the man who started

the community, told me that there was no such thing as a nervous breakdown . . .

that I was making it up because I was choosing to be weak. . You are what you think

you are and you can totally control your thoughts . . . be positive . . . stop being

negative . . . Or you can take your miserable family and leave.  

But my brain synapses were firing irregularly, shorting-out thoughts, blocking my

memory from one minute to the next, as I ranted and raved at my family and

neglected out of sheer oblivion, my first child.   I awoke each day during that blackest

period of my life in disbelief that God had not taken me in my sleep, for I thought that

if anyone were that unhappy surely they would simply fade away.  That was after I

received orders by “the boss” to get a full time job (in a state school for deranged and

retarded patients) when my first child was six weeks old.  I lived in the living room of

the Turners Falls house with my baby and due to the hustle and bustle of living with

25 others in the same house, I never slept.

But I was allowed to come through it, thanks to Dicky, who made it his mission at that

time to pull me through.  One day he showed up in my bedroom.  “I like you.” he

stated firmly and simply.  I decided not to tell him that I was finished as a person.  Let

him think what he wants, if he doesn’t know already that there is nothing worth liking

in me.  “Come on, change your clothes.  I’m taking you out.”  He took me to Howard

Johnson’s, one of my least favorite places up until that time.   He ordered me a

fudganana and made me eat it all with him.  All he said, over and over was, “You

know...I like you.”   No come on, just a simple statement.  I enjoyed myself so much

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that I began to spend as much time as possible with him, pretending to be likeable,

deceiving him in his fantasy that I was a fine human being.  The more I pretended

that this was true the less the blackness held me.  One day he told me that he’d

talked with my husband, Toby, who was only my husband in name by now.  (It was

over as soon as I became pregnant.)

“Toby told me that if I could make you happy, that he wouldn’t mind if I moved in with

you.”  Thank you Toby- you cared enough about me and our daughter, Swan, even

after my verbal attacks on you, to encourage my happiness. 

These various people who have become caricatures of certain qualities and

idiosyncrasies no longer intimidate me.  I love these people.  They are my family. 

They are mythological archetypes; intense in their insensitivities as well as their

talents.  I’m afraid to leave.  What will I do without them?  Who will I become?  Can I

take them with me?  Will they cherish and maintain what we have built?  We worked

so hard to establish something lasting and deep...I keep asking, Will you visit me? 

Will you write?  Will you come see me?  

Nobody seems to share me fears.  Why should they; they are not leaving.  Only a

few people try to get us to stay.   I’m deeply pained by the realization of the group’s

social dysfunctionality and numbness.  Of course there will be no farewell party,

we’ve never approved of people abandoning ship- after all we all took a vow of

“lifetime commitment” when we joined in the old days when we thought this was our

lives mission- to save the world through our example of living together in harmony- a

goal we never met.

Only now, in retrospect do I see their pain- and the possibility that they felt their world

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was inevitably slipping away like sand from the shore into the ocean.  I have to go.

Out into the ocean of life.  I long to be part of the world that I threw away thirteen

years so long so many lifetimes ago.   I tell people who ask me why I’m leaving the

same thing I told people when I left society to join the community; “I want to do

something progressive.”

My Recovery From Cult Mind-Control

Ultimately we have no choice but to feel what we are feeling…anon. 

Coming out of Denial 

Years ago the media coverage of cults that was ignited by the Branch Davidians

made me feel it was time to reconsider the morbid and confusing thoughts and

feelings regarding a 15 year detour I began in 1971 when I’d taken a vow of lifetime

commitment to a new age religious commune. 

After finally leaving in 1984, I found and followed a thread back to my former

intellectual and freethinking self, when in 1990 I finally went to college. The years

spent stranded and mysteriously stuck in a commune left me anxious, amnesic, and

panicky. College presented a new path in which I re-framed my prolonged hippie

years as not only unhealthy but devastating. It was there I began to face the fact that

I may have been in a cults and not a utopian community. And that I had been

damaged by mind control. 

The seventies and eighties were largely years of denial of hippie values in which

yuppies became the new wave. Some of us more stubborn idealists, however, had

tried desperately to keep the flowers alive and the incense burning. Ironically, we

found that in pursuing our dreams, we had to take measures that were, in practice,

against the very values we’d espoused. 

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Hopefully, some of my misery, along with the untold miseries of many others who

would like to forget their detours following the sixties, can now be turned to valuable

lessons: If we come out and stop defending our youthful follies, the psychological and

educational co 

Community could benefit from a close look at the undermining subtle forces that can

and still do, attract and trap dissatisfied, intelligent young people in lifestyles that

deter them from pursuing productive lives. 

I have come away from the experience, learning some of the same lessons as

Malcolm X learned (re. Elijah Mohammed’s Black Muslim Cult) 

“. I realized how very dangerous it is for people to hold any human being in such esteem,

especially to consider anyone some kind of ‘divinely guided’ and ‘protected’ person...I’ve had

enough of someone else’s propaganda...I’m for truth, no matter who tells it...I was hypnotized,

pointed in a certain direction and told to march...Well, I guess a man’s entitled to make a fool of

himself if he’s ready to pay the cost. It cost me twelve years. [Malcolm X p.366]” 

I spent thirteen years in a new-age religious commune that proclaimed itself to be

self-sufficient and utopian. Much of the mainstream media looked favorably upon our

illusion of being “alternative” and “progressive.” But like any dysfunctional family, we

showed them only our bright side, minimizing our faults or denying them altogether. 

When I left the commune at age 32 with a husband and three children, we were sent

into culture shock; all except the infant. Had I been he, with what I knew then, as that

newborn, I might have tried to crawl back into the womb, regardless of how confining

it had become. 

In an effort to liberate myself from the past, I needed to understand what had

happened to me. However, the cult experiences could not generally be found in

writing or on film. None-the-less, I did find enlightening similarities in the movie, “Split

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Image.” In this film Peter Fonda is a charismatic cult leader, un-unnervingly

reminiscent of our own group’s founder. 

Many ex-members, I found, tend to romanticize their experiences, feeling perhaps

too guilty or humiliated to face the fact that they have been duped. This may, in part,

explain why there has been such a dearth of accounts until now. Enough silence. 

Defining Cult Mind-Control 

I found a book, (Combating Cult Mind Control by Stephen Hassan, a professional cult

de-programmer) which dealt with some of my issues. A phone conversation with him

helped me to realize that the post-commune panic attacks I was experiencing at the

time, were the by-products of mind-control. Hassan had immediately asked me

whether the group had used any techniques, which he labeled thought stopping. 

I recognized this strategy when I recalled the years of sermons on the necessity of

avoiding negative thoughts and analytical thinking. I now know that this practice of

thought stopping is a misuse of the Buddhist teaching which stresses detachment. A

little bit of truth, taken out of context, can certainly do a lot of harm! 

Many times I was told to “stop using your brain.” When I caught myself thinking

critically, I rationalized that I was falling into old, stuffy, “conditioned” thinking, and

that I needed to “drop my conceptions” into order to see the “deeper truths”. 

“Drop your conceptions” was a command that was drummed into my mind daily and

nightly in the endless sermons called “meetings”. (As a hypnotherapist, I now know

that such repetition of concepts, especially late at night, is one trick of hypnosis.) 

When I worried about the direction that the community was taking, I would tell myself

that “Michael Rapunzel,” whose last name was self-changed from Metalica, was

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someone who I came to believe, saw more, than I could see. 

This was another “fact” which he stressed through glorious accounts of visions, at

countless meetings. He was so theatrical and powerful. I remember one time when

he was emphatically stressing his message, and pointing inadvertently at a light bulb

above his head, the bulb actually burst. He simply looked up, turned, and left the

room, letting the incident speak for itself. With his dramatics, Michael helped us

believe that we could do anything we put our minds to, from altering the weather to

saving the world. 

The sticky thing is, however, at the time, it appeared that we actually did change the

weather. We practiced applying something we termed “thought force” in order to get

things to happen. One time we were going to have a rock concert outdoors on our

property and the rain was ruining it. We all stood in a circle, joined hands and sent

“thought-force” to stop the rain. Not only did the rain stop within minutes, but also a

rainbow appeared replete with a dove. 

The Charismatic Leader  

Our leader was perfectly suited to fill the psychological and mythological vacuum

which white middle class America had fostered. The aftermath of the psychedelic

revolution left us ready to participate in a new society. The challenge was to convert

our beliefs into a viable lifestyle. We would need someone strong and dynamic to do

this. No, he wasn’t a stern goose-stepping fanatic. He was an ex-hell’s angel with

silky golden hair, sculpted features and an explosive personality. To us he

encompassed a diverse range of expressions from the humorous and bawdy to the

ethereal grace of a prophet. He was Jim Morrison with a spiritual mission. 

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Michael had an impressive habit of voicing what I was thinking before I could say it.

This made me very careful about what I would think, especially about him. 

Over time I think all 350 of us, seemed to be more or less ruled by fear. When

Michael would enter the room, everything would go silent, no matter how animated or

dynamic we were moments before. We simply felt foolish, ashamed to speak without

being spoken to first, in front of the Master. 

But, if Michael liked what you said, he might bring it up in a meeting. It was quite a

breakthrough for me, for instance, when he asked me to repeat a funny story to the

whole group, who, for the most part, never before listened to me. He also was able to

understand people and use that understanding to either heal or undermine them.

Sometimes he did both. When he would take me into his confidence all my fears

would be allayed. I recall his simple reassurances, mixed with a stern fatherly

warning while he looked deeply into my eyes and told me, for instance, “You are a

beautiful person, Laura. But your worrying about yourself keeps you from attracting

people and opportunities and ultimately from manifesting what you want.” This was a

revelation, which spoke to my innermost desire to be seen, and convinced me that he

knew me, as one member typically told the press in testimony, “better than I knew

myself.” 

I’ve since learned, that in such instances of adulation, not only is a person attempting

to satisfy the infantile need for a parent’s approval and praise, but the need to be

seen by the world as valuable and appropriate. But a therapist is not meant to have a

space in its title: the rapist. A guru, however, can become such. In a cult, when the

father figure is considered by members to be a direct prophet of God’s will, his or her

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approval becomes absolutely essential, while disapproval is unbearably shaming. 

In order to successfully repress all criticism of the new system, it becomes necessary

to revamp members’ thinking entirely. The means now justifies the ends. Intimidation

and threats are seen as fatherly disciplining for the good of the cause. Suspending

criticism of shocking and rude behaviors on the part of the leader and his cronies,

especially behaviors involved in violating people’s boundaries, is seen as being

open-minded. For example, a promiscuous rampage by the leader becomes a

demonstration of the true spiritual balance of male and female. Or he is sewing seeds

to carry on his vision. For the group, his lust is divine love. 

I recall one of hundreds of instances where he demonstrated his charisma and

insight. A schizophrenic visitor who had lost control of her facial expressions was

standing catatonically in the middle of the driveway of one of our houses. The group

had ignored her because of her weirdness. Michael was speeding by the driveway,

but upon spotting her, he suddenly told the driver to turn the Cadillac around and pull

in. He jumped out of the car, and strode toward her. Members nearby watched

approvingly as he lovingly embraced her and showed her what she was doing by

mimicking her expressions. Everyone loved her at that moment. At first she looked

confused and then suddenly smiled and stopped the wincing. The power of the group

approval was intense. I read in Hassan’s book of similar instances of what one cult

called “love bombing.” Apparently this too, is a device of mind-control. Michael had

psychic power, not spiritual power. 

The Road to Mental Illness 

“Rise about your logical brain and your carnal desires,” was another maxim that I

heard again and again. How to do this was never explained. “Be strong.” The implied

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overemphasis on willpower was nothing new, just a more extreme version of the

same patriarchal styles of thinking we thought we were breaking away from. 

Over the years I began developing a growing dread of my own thoughts. The

constant over-stimulation of the collective group energy, along with the taboo against

thinking, made my mind buzz compulsively. Eventually I developed obsessive-

compulsive behavior. 

The philosophy of overcoming limitations taught me to feel guilty and antsy if I wasn’t

constantly working, meditating, or “teaching” someone. I also had to constantly fight

paranoid feelings. Since I was told always to be “myself,” (i.e. like Michael) I learned

to never hide my feelings. This was a catch-22 because then I was accused of being

weak and immature. 

I became hyper-vigilant of my thoughts. Over time every critical thought was replaced

with some reference to something “Michael said,” and so therefore “it must be true “. I

would tell myself, “Michael knows more than me. I have to be open....” This then led

to extreme self-consciousness, and it created a pressure in me that made me feel

like a walking time bomb. As a result of this overwhelming pressure I ultimately

began feeling as if I’d lost track of my soul. 

Recently I viewed a film on the state of mind of a long-term cocaine abuser. I was

struck by how accurately the imagery portrayed how I’d felt after years of abuse in

the commune: The world looked gray, lifeless, and one-dimensional and the person

saw it through a fog. In the film it was a flat city in the distance. The woman described

a complete loss of emotional feelings, as if she were moving in a dream or

underwater. How well I understood! Having lost all feeling other than craving for my

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drug (Michael’s approval) I had become the mindless follower who was completely

open to the absolute will of the group as dictated by a charismatic leader. 

I was so confused that I was completely open to being told what to think, in order to

get out of my misery. Through Michael I could reach that higher plane to which he

was privy. A simple nod or look in my direction would bring a promise of fulfillment. A

touch was a blessing. However most of the time he frustrated not only me, but

everyone. (Confusion and frustration are also hypnotic devices.) 

The punishment for failing to be spiritual was shunning from the leader on down. It

was not uncommon to pass members in the higher ranks along the road and be

treated as if I were completely invisible. A simple “hello” on my part was not

acknowledged. Trying to break through the barrier was met with scorn, as when I

called out hello to Michael the first time I saw him, and he turned quickly in my

direction asking his cronies who said that. When he pointed in my direction he picked

up on my nervousness and called out to me “What’s your name? You are deceitful.”

This was another hypnotic devise utilizing shock and humiliation. 

A Little Bit of Truth Can Do A Lot of Harm 

We were a macrocosm of the problems we had encountered in our families of origin,

and a microcosm of society itself, and in many ways we were more extreme. 

What is so confusing in cults or in groups with cult-like tendencies is that there is a

strain of truth, which resonates with spiritually aspiring people. It sounds right, and

may even feel right but.... Most cults teach some kind of meditation or focusing—fine

and good in their proper context. New Age religious cults tend to pervert the

principles of the human potential movement. One of these beliefs is that true

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knowledge resides within. This is a beneficial idea, when influencing a person to be

in touch with their intuitive knowledge—“know thyself”. However, when information

outside of the cult is discouraged as being irrelevant or destructive to spiritual

development, a kind of spiritual fascism begins to set in. 

When I was trying to figure out whether my group was a cult or not Hassan

mentioned “information control.” Many, many meetings focused upon the dangers of

being “influenced by the negativity of the outside world. If one left, or expressed

disillusionment with the group, he or she was accused of having been influenced.

(Not unlike being influenced by the devil.) For years and years, this idea that I was

being influenced by evil powers, kept me from leaving. If they could make me want to

leave, what could else could they make me do, once I left. 

When the psychological abuse became too obvious, Michael reminded us again and

again “as bad as it gets here, things have gotten much worse out there. You don’t

know because you don’t have access to this information. He was out there in the

“real world” relating more than we were because he was stronger, and also he was

psychic and had previewed the massive Earth changes, (land rising and sinking)

which only our group or those working in our behalf, would survive. “People will

literally stab you in the back while you’re walking down the street.” All forms of

intellectual discourse and stimulation were absolutely taboo. In fact, in the early and

more primitive days of communal life, it was common to find classic literature used as

toilet paper in the outhouses—our hippie style of book burning! 

My Breakaway and Recovery 

Spiritually “correct” thinking and behaviors, such as males being strong, and women

being nurturing, was reinforced by acknowledgment and privileges from the leader.

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Michael once said to me that it had been statistically proven that men were superior

to women. That was one of the times when my own thinking broke through. Due to

my Jewish upbringing I was very sensitive to and detested prejudice against any

group. I began to laugh at him in my mind, while not bothering to be baited. I knew he

would try to overpower me if I argued. The next time I stood up to him I was warned

that I would be thrown out. It was when he began bullying my boy and when I told

him that he was “not being effective,” he demanded that I admit that his kids were all

well behaved. The opposite was true and I knew it. I disagreed openly and got my

first warning from him that if I kept it up I would have to leave. I realized then that

there was more keeping me there than Michael and my dependency switched from

him to the group. After all, there were a lot of benefits to living communally: it was

cheap, I had near-free child care, we had eighty acres of land replete with orchards,

vegetable gardens, poultry and eggs, and swimming ponds. If I was sick I didn’t have

to worry about bills. We had built huge energy-efficient homes. 

Like many well-intended young adults, I had wanted desperately to do the right thing.

I still believe that Michael, in the beginning, did too. I believe the commune began

with noble intentions. Perhaps Michael truly had had the visions with which he

inspired us. But he was not mature enough to take charge of a group that would

ultimately grow to include 350 people. It was as if the public- relations-director of a

huge industry had suddenly become the C.E.O. 

Eventually, as the members began to outgrow him, and Michael could not uphold his

position he turned to desperate measures. He became a heavy cocaine and alcohol

user, and then began carrying guns. He bought pit bulls and a boa constrictor, which

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he kept in the basement of a community house, full of families. Peter Caddy, founder

of Findhorn, came over from Scotland to beg him to leave the group. (We’d had an

exchange program with Findhorn in the more pure early days.) Instead of letting go

and leaving Michael hung on and continued in his role, now as the abusive father.

Although we were originally straight, the deteriorating situation eventually led to many

instances of substance abuse. 

I began breaking away when one evening he tried to force-feed my six-year-old son

and I could not dissuade him. I used psychology on him, talking to him like a child,

saying that although I understood what he was trying to do, he might get better

results if he tried some other approach. This was a very delicate situation in which I

felt he was too upset and I was trying to tactfully tone him down. I think he was drunk.

After I out-reasoned him, he swore at us but left in disgust. I finally snapped out of my

twelve-year trance because, however meekly, I had stood up to him. I decided then

that I had an obligation to leave. My maternal instinct was the one impulse that could

not be eclipsed by mind-control. The last straw for me was when, at a meeting,

Michael praised the bravery of the Jim Jones Cult for their suicides. “What Loyalty!”

he exclaimed ecstatically. After the meeting I went around interviewing members

about whether they felt disturbed by Michael’s adoration and praise of Jones’ actions.

To my horror, this inquiry was met with mute blandness, as if my concerns were

superfluous. Yet, I still had to wonder, as I’d done for so many years, whether or not I

was over-reacting, for I’d always been blamed for this “weakness.” 

Making Meaning out of Trauma 

I am still uncovering the co-dependent issues which influenced an intelligent middle-

class girl on her way to college to not only drop out in the late sixties (many of us did

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that) but to stay so long when it felt so wrong to do so. 

Perhaps my years of denial in the commune were part of my being forced to come to

terms with my “Peter Pan” complex. In trying to salvage some meaning from all of

those lost years, I think of the popularized myth of “the Hero’s Journey.” In this myth,

the hero, as a foolish youth, arrogantly rejects the security of home and familiar

relationships, and goes off on a search for his or her true self, only to return later in

life as a profoundly changed person. On this journey he or she incurs many scars,

being physically or emotionally mutilated. Out of necessity, the sojourner usually

gains specialized knowledge and seemingly magical survival skills, developing

character and wisdom through learning to face hardships and suffering. The

journeyer’s return enriches the community, often through bringing back some form of

teaching, counseling or healing. 

I now have much more appreciation and understanding for the world for which I

believed I was both too good and yet not good enough when I left it. I am a Master’s

level substance-abuse counselor, hypnotherapist, and bonafied adult: someone who

has stopped the blaming. As I continue my education through spiritual and religious

studies, I encountered concepts, which reminded me of some ideas, which were

taken out of context in the community. These ideas were that thinking is an activity

that can be monitored, controlled and changed at will; that positive thoughts are to be

chosen, while negative ones are to be observed and transcended. Yet I find these old

ideas refreshing in new ways. When I first started investigating mind control, five

years ago, I had forgotten that indeed, I am not a victim, but rather someone who has

taken the dangerous journey through the depths of inner hell and come out whole. I

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can change my thought habits, not because someone says this is spiritual, but

because it empowers me to do so. What a relief this is! I no longer need to think of

myself as an abandoned or abused child does. I have journeyed far and now want to

make a meaningful contribution to the larger community I once scorned.