Tag Archives: sam fife’s move of god

Subliminal Suggestions In Religious Music

Hymns from my childhood occasionally pop into my mind, sometimes replaying over and over, like a broken record. One mental trick I use to make repetitive mind music go away is to try and remember the end of the song. Normally by the time I’ve tried to remember the end of the song, it has disappeared from my mind.

After going through a personal situation a couple of weeks ago which opened up some old wounds, this happened with a song I had not remembered in over 20 years.  I tried to use my “end of the song” method, but this song kept playing over and over and would not go away. These specific lyrics were the only ones playing repeatedly. 

“This world is not my home. I’m just a passin’ through. If heaven’s not my home, then Lord what shall I do. The angel’s watchin’ me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”

Suddenly, my mind took a completely different turn.  I found myself actually wanting to look at the differing lyrics of the many songs I was taught to sing repetitively as a child.

“What in the hell kind of lyrics are these, really?” I thought. The lyrics suddenly felt vile and suicidal. I had an urge to examine each word for exactly what they are.

I had never broken down gospel lyrics on a deep level like my mind was now doing. I had always blown them off with an eye roll.

In my teenage years, my older sister and I would get through church by adding “under the covers” at the end of the hymn titles and snickering quietly together. We had been taught about back-masking in secular music while growing up in a cult. For example, we were told that “Another One Bites the Dust” held a subliminal message telling us to smoke marijuana, but it could only be heard if the record was spun backwards. Also, they TOLD us what we “should” hear; literally gave us the sentence then asked, “Did you all hear it?” Well, now we do! That’s called suggestion. When suggestion is used on the mind, of course we hear and see what we are told we are supposed to hear and see.

Now that my mind is free from falling prey to suggestive phrases, I recognize them more.

So then, I recognized that something was terribly off with these lyrics going through my head. What were they suggesting? Christianity teaches that suicide is a sin. Here are seven different accounts of suicide in the Bible. Yet, this song is telling me that Earth is not really my home. I’m just passing through here, and that I shouldn’t feel at home in this world. 

That was exactly how I felt when I was struggling with suicidal ideation. Now, I was hearing these same phrases in a gospel song as if it was okay to leave this world and even feel joyful about it.

How did this affect me as a child repeatedly singing these lyrics? What did it do to my mind in regard to my thoughts and feelings about death? 

Hence, I set off on an exploration to find out how many gospel lyrics hold suicidal suggestions. What a confusing childhood, hearing and singing songs containing subliminal messages about sacrifice and suicide. At the same time, this religion was teaching me that suicide was a sin; a guaranteed ticket to hell.

Now, with clearer eyes, I was seeing the root in the mindset of why many humans might suffer with not wanting to live. How many of us grew up religious and abused and/or neglected based off this type of doctrine? How many of us sang these songs as children, day after day, year after year, sinking them into our subconscious, to live there, even if we felt we had deprogrammed religion but still struggled emotionally?

When I was feeling suicidal years ago, I had a meditative moment while taking a bath one evening.  A voice audibly whispered in my head.

“Suicide is simply a program that was implanted into your cellular system by your abusers and the trauma you endured every day.”

I sat straight up in the bathtub. I had never looked at suicide as a mind control thought pattern infused by abuse. After this realization that I had actually been programmed to not want to live, I never struggled with suicidal thoughts again. My love for this life and its amazing possibilities grew inside of me. My refusal to allow my abusers to win created in me a mighty storm.

Shai Linne is a modern day gospel artist who gears his music toward the younger generation, teenagers and young adults.  He has a gospel album entitled “13 Letters“. It has a spoken intro:

“Uh, soli Deo gloria, (Glory to God alone) uh. Once again. Thirteen letters! Yeah.”

We will focus on only one part of these lyrics: “Thirteen letters!“

The number 13 is a prevalent number with roots in Kemetic times.

We most often see it represented on the backs of the American dollar bill. There are 13 stars above the head of the eagle. 

The Last Supper took place on the 13th day of the month, and the crucifixion occurred on Friday the 13th. The Knight’s Templar, protectors of the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus allegedly drank from at The Last Supper, were all slaughtered, on order from Pope Clement, on, yes, Friday the 13th. Judas was allegedly the 13th person to take his seat at the table during The Last Supper. Matthew says that Judas committed suicide after the crucifixion.

In a non-religious context, the number 13 was recently used in a suicide show entitled “13 Reasons Why“.

“How Great Thou Art” is a popular hymn that has been sung in churches for centuries. Children sing these lyrics.

“And when I think of God, His Son not sparing
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing
He bled and died to take away my sin.”

In this song, the mind is subliminally being taught that without sacrifice, the individual is a sinful human being. Repetitively singing lyrics which instruct gratefulness that an invisible being horrifically sacrificed their own son on behalf of the individual, drives the point home. The individual no longer can deduct that this is, for instance, murder, and punishable by law. Instead the individual praises it.

Believing someone was murdered so that they could live, creates a deep wound of guilt in a person if they question or begin to reason the truth behind this. Instead, the repetitive program keeps them believing they have a responsibility to honor the human sacrifice that was the crucifixion of a man named Jesus.

The popular hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, ends with this line:

“Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!”

Another popular hymn, Amazing Grace, ends with this lyric:

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.”

The key to these songs is the number 10,000.

The number 10000 is used 45 times in the Bible.

Saint Paul said to Corinthians: “for even though you might have 10000 slaves to look after you in Christ, you still have no more than one father”. (1 Co 4,15)

In this verse, Christian followers are referred to as slaves.

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne . . . : and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. [Revelation 5:11]

Indeed, ten thousand times ten thousand angels, which equals 100 million, symbolizes a great number. To sum up, there are numberless concourses of angels, an innumerable company of angels, and hosts of angels—all of whom are allegedly in the service of a God who requires humans should join this army as well.

Ten thousand guardian angels escorted Mary and Joseph during their trip to Bethlehem, for the birth of the Word, according to the visions of Catholic mystic Mary Agreda.

For the Chinese and the Mongols, the swastika cross (sign of salvation in their ceremonies) means the 10000 truths which concern the mysteries of the Invisible Universe, the Primordial Cosmogony, of the Theogony. It symbolizes the movement, the energy, the forward walking.

Hitler, inverting its orientation, used it as emblem of the Nazism.

“The Tao has fathered one, one has fathered a two, two has fathered three and three has fathered ten thousand“, wrote Lao-Tseu.

The song “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” ends with the following line:

“Soon in glory bright, unclouded,
There will be no need for prayer—
Rapture, praise, and endless worship
Will be our sweet portion there.”

The word that is most important to look at is Rapture. What is the Rapture? According to North American Christianity, the rapture is the transporting of believers to heaven at the Second Coming of Christ. In regard to children, the Rapture is rarely talked about in detail. Children are likely to ask these questions:

When will the rapture happen? We don’t know
Is it going to hurt? No, Sweetie!
Do we fly into the sky? Yes. We will be taken up into the clouds.

At an extremely suggestible age, under five years old, when the mind is open to absorb deep into the subconscious, children are shown pictures of humans ascending up into open clouds. When these children grow into adults, they have been so programmed that humans will fly this way, that even as adults, they are unable to critically think into the scientific impossibility of this phenomena. 

There has been an interesting study between fundamentalism’s rapture theology and the connection with alien abductions. In the dictionary, religion includes the belief in the supernatural, leaving out any reference to the paranormal.

Likewise, they cannot logically break down the fact that the Rapture has been being promised to humans by other humans for thousands of years and has never happened. This is a very deep form of  “death” programming when directed at a child, that at any moment of their life, a god could take them, but it will be a wonderful and painless death. 

A child often adopts the adult’s “joy” as a way to comply  and cope with the ideal, however, they rarely feel excitement at the prospect of death, even if there is some kind of heaven promised afterward. Don’t underestimate children.  I knew very well as a child that the rapture concept equaled death for me.

As children we cannot turn the idea of heaven into a tangible visual which we can see. We can only imagine what is suggested to us.  This description of pearly gates and golden floors does not enter our minds when we are children pondering the death which comes with rapture ideology.

One of the most popular religious songs children are taught to sing is “Jesus Loves Me“. The last line of this song says:

“Jesus loves me! He will stay
Close beside me all the way;
Thou hast bled and died for me,
I will henceforth live for Thee.”

Again, we see the reference to human sacrifice. The child is being taught that they should live only for a god, because this god did a very special thing for all humans.  It instructed its own son to die for them. These lyrics anchor the belief that a very special human bled to death, something a child often sees on television or the internet as a traumatic visual that they understand from a pain and suffering perspective. Children are literal and will see it as such, regardless of the way a parent may try and sugar coat the bloody sacrifice of a super human named Jesus.

Have you heard the song “I’ve Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down In My Heart?” Let’s look at the last line of this song:

“I’ve got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus down in my heart.
I’ve got that opposition to conscription down in my heart.”

Conscription is a noun meaning “compulsory enlistment for state service, typically into the armed forces.” This religious song teaches children and adult citizens of our country that they must have opposition to the armed forces. A child is a human who has rights to grow up and freely make this decision. It should be a violation of their human rights to strip their minds of future career choice possibilities.

Children sing this lyric, most likely never being taught the meaning of this word. Evangelical religions such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or Sam Fife’s Move of God, for instance, have a history of teaching against joining the military and/or going to war for any other reason except God.

Cult leader, Jim Jones, used a children’s choir in his People’s Temple, to welcome new members. 

Another interesting concept religion teaches, whether actively or by way of reading the Bible, is that Christians are descendants of a man named Abraham. 

One song that is popular in this concept is “Father Abraham“.

“Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let’s all praise the Lord.”

The origins of Father Abraham begins in the history of the Jewish people in Bronze Age times in the Middle East when God promised a nomad leader called Abram that he would be the father of a great people if he did as God told him. Jews regard Abraham (as he was later called) as the first Patriarch of the Jewish people. Abraham appears in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Let your mind absorb that for a moment. These religions of separatism are actually quite linear in their history and belief. Yet, so many of them are killing one another. All three of these religions teach their children they are descendants of the same man. Which one is the real one?

Here, a child is shoved into subconscious confusion and an automation of trying to figure out or come into compliant acceptance that they are here as Christians to fight WITH the Jews because of this lineage or they are to fight AGAINST them and ALWAYS against the Muslims.

Outside of the Bible, there is no “family tree” lineage proof that all humans are descendants of a man named Abraham. If, in fact, all humans descend from Abraham, the dissection through religion would be the largest example of a dysfunctional family on a global scale.

The song “God Is Love” has an alarming lyric.

“God is love. O God, a man You became;
A cursed man to be, God, You died for me.
Lord, You hung from a tree.”

It is fair to deduct, after researching the many lawsuits against secular music due to lyrics, that religious music is not exempt from having self-deprecating lyrics which dissect a mind’s ability to build its own independent self esteem and trauma free thinking. Singing songs about humans being hung from trees is another form of tonal death training.

Finally, I leave you with the platoon-like cadence that children are taught to sing, while being taught body motions to go along with the programming of being a part of an army for a god.

“I’m In the Lord’s Army“

“I may never march in the Infantry, (march)
Ride in the cavalry, (pretend you’re riding a horse)
Shoot the artillery. (clap hands together)
I may never zoom o’er the enemy,
(spread arms out and pretend to be a plane)
But I’m in the Lord’s Army. (point one finger up to God)
I’m in the Lord’s Army, (yes, sir!) (salute)
I’m in the Lord’s Army, (yes, sir!)
I may never march in the Infantry,
Ride in the cavalry,
Shoot the artillery.
I may never zoom o’er the enemy,
But I’m in the Lord’s Army, (yes, sir!)”

A human’s mind is a complex organ. Everything that it absorbs from birth, and through life, forms the way the human will develop. The subconscious mind is constantly running behind the scenes. It is holding everything it has absorbed since the day it entered this dimension. We can look at scientific studies of how music affects the fetus to understand deeper the importance of choosing tones and lyrics carefully, in a way which fosters a subconscious which is soaking in peaceful, calm and self-loving infusing. 

In all, stay aware of your mind and what you allow it to be absorb. Guard your children and be selective of what they are exposed to as they grow. Allow them the freedom to explore the world safely, and may you explore this world safely as well.  

Your Networking and Your Intent Hold Hands. Here’s Why.

It has been five years since I published my first book, a collection of poetry entitled “Dusted Shelves”. I went into the studio with a great local producer in Seattle, WA, Lance Randall, and recorded Dusted Shelves Poetry C.D., complete with scoring and sound affects. The same year, 2013, I published an interactive journal, “Becoming Gratitude”, designed to reconnect ourselves with mindful awareness of our life. I published these two books while I was writing “Cult Child“, which I published in 2015.

 

When I reminisce on my writing processes recounting my childhood trauma through the pages of “Cult Child“, I realize I was writing it all inside of a very deep emotional triad that my brain was using to keep me balanced.

“Dusted Shelves” was spilling my emotions through organization of poetry written when I was in trauma. “Becoming Gratitude” was helping me every day, stay focused on a positive mindset while I was writing out childhood trauma.

The ability the brain has to work in sync with itself is amazing to me.

Marketing has been a challenge. It has been a process of trial and error, testing and most of all, learning where I will make connections which contribute to my greater good as a person. Having been online from its conception in the early 2000’s, I have, in the past couple of years, felt myself begin to spin with the arrival of fast moving applications like Instagram. Twitter’s fast rise and the plethora of apps being thrown at me to market my writing likewise can overwhelm me. Things seemed to be speeding up faster then I really even felt an inner desire to keep up with.

I set out to understand where I was connecting to my readers. Who could understand me and emotionally feel my writing?

Since my memoir is based out of growing up in a cult, I first gravitated toward the cult advocacy society, where survivors of cults and other mind control groups, tended to congregate. Outside of a few connections who have turned out to be gems, I  learned over time this was not where I was finding the scope of authentic connections I longed for. I walked away from my time in that community learning that the content of my book does not dictate its audience or who will connect with it.

In my explorations, I chose to do a short podcast series entitled Survivor Voices Show. I interviewed strong voices like popular author and marketing expert, Rachel Thompson, owner of Bad Redhead Media and founder of Monday Blogs on Twitter. M Dolon Hickmon, author of bestseller, 13:24: A Story Of Faith and Obsession, Liz Ianelli, artist Survivor993, Cathy O’Brien, best-selling author of Access Denied: For Reasons Of National Security and PTSD: Time To Heal, and my fellow cult survivor, Glori L. Stiner, founder of Move Forward, a cause dedicated to exposing the abuses we children endured growing in Sam Fife’s Move of God cult. I wanted to cover as many mind control and generational abuse based stories as I could. I am pleased with series and am considering doing another one.

I spoke with author Matt Pappas, popular podcaster, sexual abuse survivor and owner of Beyond Your Past. I learned something extraordinary from everyone I talked with. We all had differing experiences when we broke down how our abuses were enacted. We all were even on differing paths in our healing journey. Yet still we all dealt with similar bi-products of the abuse we endured. We experienced Dissociation Disorders, cPTSD, Anxiety, Personality Disorders and a very long list of every day impairments left behind by our abusers. Amazingly, so many of us are thriving and supporting each other as we all are healing.

These experiences taught me that beyond the fences of my journey in this life is something important; that I am surrounded by those who are traveling the same road as me for one reason; because the destination leads to Healing. In the interim of all that I do, this matters to me more than anything.

People who have suffered childhood poly-abuse (sexual, physical, emotional) have the most in common with veterans of war. Yet, the difference is, children shouldn’t have to go to war.

There is no one arena or mold where I fit. I greatly respect and relate to those who have seen the horrors of war and the horrors which can be wrought on a child. I have read many a marketing post about finding my “target audience.” Yet, as I share my journey, what I have found to be an absolute for me is when I stayed rooted in an intent of connecting with survivors, instead of hunting down an audience, I felt the best. It changed my direction. I realized I could funnel small amounts of marketing funds into boosting posts while using my personal energy to really foster positive connections with other survivors from all walks of life.

I believe that as I gear up to release Rise of Sila next year I won’t change much about these connections. My peers will continue to understand me, as they have had the same struggles of abuse even in their teenage years. My story is still the voice of many a survivor, and it is for them, and my own mental health, that I finish this duo-logy.

I usually hunker down between the months of November – February. They are the months of holidays and taxes. I avoid social networking and pound out work. Leading back to the original topic of whether you are running in the right circles for your work, I leave you with this consideration.

Remember you are not just your content, you are also your intent.

Is your content fueled with the intent to connect with those who will understand what you are sharing? Are you rooted in the originality of who you are? Is this shining through your work and connections? If you are struggling to understand who you are, remember that we evolve, and part of who we are is constantly figuring out who we are! When you come into an acceptance of your now, I promise you’ll find your people.

Meanwhile, pound the pages, the canvas, the pavement, whatever you do to purge, create and express. This is the root of your creative intent.

We Are Your Resurrection

There are ghosts in my view. I am traveling hallways. We are coming back for you. Your breath quickens as you wait. Will your heart give in to the ache; the secrets you hold? They rot your insides, you know.

We are your shadow self.

Every deed, word, blow and theft of innocence lurks inside the remnants of your biological cells. You never considered that hell would come from those you desecrated.

When we come, we are a pack without a leader.

We have no need to follow, holding hands side by side, we yell, “Red Rover, Red Rover, come on over!”, and we smile. You taught us to rip at each other’s wrists, remember? Danger as an entertainer. That was your pleasure.

There were the games we played in secret, away from your judging eyes, sneaking moments with quiet giggles. We reserved our spirits from your shattering, scattering into life, struggling through its mores as we held ourselves in fetal positions to survive. Now, we rise.

We have gathered the ashes of our pasts, reconstructed our wings, and we are prepared to fly.

We are the children of your terror. We are the outcasts and sinners, scar bearers and wayward waifs. We are the tattooed tyrants, birthed from your horror, walking our own paths against your wrath. We color our hair bright. We carry ourselves Light. We know each step with precision as we enter this fight.

We are not mercy. We are strength. We are not bitterness. We are valiance.

We are turning your worlds inside out, releasing the doubt you preach from pulpits and podiums and classrooms to children and vulnerable humans. We are Dragons, gathering in the night.

We have been watching you a very long time. You see, you taught us well, but you failed to keep the tide from turning. Now we take everything you forced us to absorb, the intel and verbal hell, battered bones and dissociated minds, childhoods left behind, never to be relived, and create a mighty hurricane, gathering speed every time another survivor speaks their abuser’s name.

We release shame. It is not ours. It belongs to you. Your time to be burdened with your own deeds is long overdue.

I am a lurker in the darkness, mystic of the floated corners where the view is clear up here. I see the past and futures merging. I see the sadness and the pain purging. I feel every heart hurting, from the wicked to the wounded and my eyes can only focus on the cries of the affected, injected by decades of apathetic sociopathy using human flesh in the deadliest fashions.

For those who have a passion for hurting others, it is you I watch, even those who cloak themselves in the mask of mirrored goodness. We are keenly keeping our eyes focused. We are passed hoping. We are ready for war. Are you? How fast will your knees buckle when the first blows come? How long before your run?

No more will we be ruled, organized or contained. No more will we remain silent or compliant.

Associations and organizations meant to capitalize on those who’ve almost died inside and outside are crumbling at their feet. Too long you have preyed on the weak. Your time has come to an end, and no matter how much you pretend, keeping an illusion of control, you are quickly slipping into a sinkhole.

Even as your wrinkled fingers hold the purse strings, we sing.

Even as you watch us still, spinning tales of the ones who tell truths on you, we laugh as your ropes fray. It is your day. Your reckoning has arrived. We have been released from the hive, a swarm, marching with precision. Welcome to your new religion.

One must wonder about the abusive adult whose mind is so oblivious it cannot rationalize, that what you forced us to internalize would return to watch you burn. Yet, into the flames you will run, because the thought of combusting will feel less painful than the torture we will enact. Every item accounted for. Every brick will be removed. Each stone you drove home to build your wall will fall, and in the end what will be left, are more humans, free from your invisible chains, living in happiness.

For now, you shake beneath the hands of a mighty earthquake. In this surge, graves are unearthed and after years of holding still, we now run swiftly, legs strong, to destroy the villainous ones.

You will relax, forget to watch your back, and we will attack, because you deserve to be fought. You deserve to be tested with unrest.

Welcome to the Resurrection.

She Was Raped. They Made Her Apologize To the Church. It Was 1984.

As I am working on writing the sequel to Cult Child, entitled Rise of Sila, I am again having moments of struggle, pain and even avoidance as I write out and re-live more child abuse memories.

Writing out traumatic memories is an intricate process. Telling someone a brief story of our experience is far different than the hours of detailing each ticking second of a memory. When writing, we must recall every possible sound, conversation, smell, surroundings and anything more we can remember, in order to write a book which allows our readers to be inside each experience with us.

As I am writing I understand how much I was never able to make sense of about growing up in Sam Fife’s Move of God cult; until I became a teenager. While my mother remained silent, my brother and sister did not. As I grew older, we had deep conversations, many questions were answered and peculiar situations happened to us which kept us bound together as siblings who, while not always getting along, each held pieces of our childhood shattering in a way that kept us feeling a base protectiveness of each other.

Many sad revelations came out in our conversations.

One explanation would come from my sister. I had a very convoluted understanding of love. I believed it quite normal for an adult man to be interested in teenagers and young girls, who after beginning our menstruated cycles, were now future wife material, able to breed children, future generations for the cult. It made biological sense to me, seeing as how I had been educated, not about sex, but about my duty as a female, which included mainly the honor of being chosen by a man and bearing his children, living for God and being a good wife.

Even worse were the predators like my sister’s rapist. He raped her under the guise of deep lies and promises of a rescue that she could not critically think through. He kept her in a state of hope and fear, a narcissistic criminal who preyed on an innocent and highly naive young girl. She could not deduct that he was married, had multiple children, and furthermore, she had no knowledge yet of what he had done to his own daughter. She was a victim of a very cunning and predatory man.

It would be in later years that I would find out the truth of what was done to my sister on multiple levels. A man named Buddy Cobb was the go to man for The Move of God for over 30 years after its founder, Sam Fife, died in a plane crash in 1979. When my sister was raped, Buddy Cobb flew to Alaska on one of the cult’s private airplanes specifically to “handle” the situation with my sister.

What Buddy Cobb did to my sister was nothing less than abhorrent.

We were sequestered into our cabin. I write about this in detail in Cult Child. They held Elders meetings to decide what to do about my sister. During this time, as a young teenager, I did not understand or have much of a clue about what was going on. No one explained anything to me. My sister would barely speak at all, staying curled up in the fetal position on her mattress in our cabin, usually facing the wall, telling me to leave her alone if I tried to talk to her.

The details of what happened to her will be told in Rise of Sila, but I will share a summary of the horrific shame she was put through. The final decision came down the line from Buddy Cobb. Not only were we to be expelled from the cult, but my sister was about to be forced to do something that no rape victim should ever endure. Decided by the Elders, under the leadership and advisement of Buddy Cobb, my sister was made to stand up in front of a congregation of over 200 adults.

She was forced to ask for their forgiveness. She was forced to confess that she was a Jezebel, a whore of Babylon.

No wickeder of a human could exist after someone as low as her, according to them. She was too much of a sinner to be rescued. She was such a slut, so vile, that it was more likely she would influence the other girls.  This wasn’t just a demon which could be cast out. No, she was truly a problem for the men on the cult.  She would more likely seduce man after man. For the record, my sister later went on to graduate college and be married to the same man for over 25 years, completely opposite what they predicted she would “be”, a girl who would never commit to one man. They were wrong.

With my brother having already run away, my teenage sister “seducing” grown men, me being “rebellious” and too non-compliant (argumentative), we just weren’t a family who was an asset to the cult any longer. With a “heavy heart”, Rick Alloe, my sister’s rapist, stood and confessed that he was weak and had allowed himself to be “seduced” by a teenage whore. They too were “exiled“, so we thought. We would later find out they merely migrated to live near another cult compound in the South, and their family would remain intertwined inside of this cult into the present times. One of the Alloe’s daughters, Debbie, married one of the original cult investors, a man named Doug McClain.

My mother and her best friend made my sister’s life hell. How could she do such a thing, destroy our families like that? Rick Alloe’s wife, Peggy, would never speak to my sister again. Post cult, when my mother and Peggy would talk on the phone, my sister would quietly exit the room.  At first I didn’t really pay it much mind, but as we grew closer, and as I learned more, I understood, and the abhorrence of these women with their cultish, deviant behavior grew stronger.

My older sister was raped and victim blamed in a cult. It was 1984. Now, the unearthing of sex abuse and religious child trafficking is blasting into the news and social media. This is not a new horror. No. It has existed for decades; centuries. Have we simply come into a time of reckoning through the adult victims and the release of technology?

There is no consolation for having been through the levels of child abuse we kids suffered. No amount of restitution would make the pain go away.

Yet, restitution is due the victims all the same. Criminals who quietly stood by, knowing abuse was happening, should be held to their day in court. While the descendants of these rapists and their silent, aiding and abetting leaders want to live comfortably, reserving a false memory of their ancestors, not wanting to face the truth of what their families did to us, we will not allow this hiding any longer.

Before Buddy Cobb’s death in 2017, his granddaughter, Angie, brilliantly pegged him on the abuse. She asks him the same questions in two different scenarios. He gives the same answers, that the abuse is just evil having its day, and nothing happens that is not God’s will. When I first saw this video, I dealt with nausea having to see this man’s face again. His face has haunted me my whole life; the darkness of his eyes; the wicked smile; the arrogance and lack of caring. As a sensory child, my memories of him are filled with avoiding being near him and a crawling of the skin at his presence. While I have struggled to remember many of the eyes of those who abused me, I always could remember Buddy’s eyes, hooded and piercing, seemingly mocking and daring one to cross him.

His children would like us to think that these were the answers of a man who was aged and suffering with Alzheimer’s. Knowing Alzheimer’s as I do, I say that all the more then, he was speaking the truth. One of his children tried to say that the granddaughter was under the influence when she filmed it.  I say even if she was, she still asked the question, and he still answered.  Twice.  In two different settings.

Maybe his mind had returned to what we children experienced and how they as adults handled it, shuffling pedophiles off from farm to farm, working us into exhaustion, beating children and blaming rape victims while protecting criminals. Broken bones and bruises? God’s will. Child rape? Just evil having its day. Regardless of any excuses being given in regard to this video, these responses are those of a man whose mind is extremely sadistic.  The look in his eyes and specific hand movements are psychologically revealing to me.

Buddy Cobb Hand Signal

There are no excuses to be given. There is nothing which can be said that will erase the truth of what was done to me, my siblings and dozens of other children in Sam Fife’s Move of God.

The church is being called to answer. No longer will we allow Christian ritual abuse to be slid under Satanism as if only Satan can be a wicked entity. If there is a God, loving, omnipotent and omniscient, I dare say, he is indeed, a sociopath entity who has fed children to his supposed fallen son, allowing evil to have its day, and that, my friends, according to the followers of the Bible, is simply God’s will.

Christians no longer get to say that this is not “true” Christianity. Yes it is. That is akin to saying a dictionary is not a real dictionary. The Bible is a book. There is no changing it’s existence. There is no changing the horror stories it holds or the sick mind control enacted based on its teaching.

Until humans wake themselves up to what has been done to their minds; to their judgment and sick moralistic ties to a book based out of blood sacrifices, incest, cannibalism (communion), exorcism and child sacrifice, I fear there will be no reprise for children continually born into the generational curse of religions. The after affects of being raised in such arenas leave adults with anxiety, depressions, low self esteem, false senses of wholeness and often a sadistic deviance in regard to children.

No longer will we blame victims for what has been done to them.  No longer will we divert the issue of CRIMINALITY into an issue of religiosity.

As human beings, we have a responsibility to stop allowing adults to treat children like my sister was treated.  Young minds are malleable and often naive. The church must be held to their cross for the foundation they have built which has allowed for this apathetic mindset to exist. The church must be held accountable for the deviance their morality concepts has created; concepts built out of stripping humans from their innate right to be free, think free and not be harmed.

No child is ever responsible for their abuse. There is nothing they can wear, say, do, think, or breathe which ever makes them the blame. There are only wicked adults attempting to hide from accountability.

2018 Alaska Cult Awareness Conference

What an amazing experience, to talk to some Alaskan residents and share our hearts as survivors with doctors, lawyers and other cult survivors.  We have ignited a spark that won’t be quenched.

Click the coinciding .pdf PowerPoint presentations to follow along with the speakers.

Part One – the Early Days by Vennie Kocsis

PDF File:

I Survived the Move

YouTube:

Watch on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/moveforwardinc/videos/231836517505644

Part Two – the Modern Move by Glori L. Stiner

PDF File:

The Move of God cult presentation Glori L Stiner

YouTube: 

Watch on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/moveforwardinc/videos/716126958728186

 

Becoming: A Minute Spoken

3 Tips To Help Deal With Anxiety Associated With Change

I moved this weekend. It has been a challenging transition, as I have had to go through an arduous process for acceptance into my new residence. I was down to the wire with my time window. My anxiety was peaking. I didn’t have a way to have a back up plan for my plan. I had to contend with myself. So, I moved through the process in the following ways.

Tip One: Acceptance

Accept that whatever situation you are in is, in fact, an anxiety causing situation. Don’t deny yourself that truth. Don’t feel ashamed about feeling anxious. Everyone was telling me that it would all be okay. They were right. It was. Yet, in that moment that it was NOT alright, I had no guarantee that it would be. So, I just said “Yeah, you’re right, it’ll be okay.” But I didn’t mean it. Inside I was very anxious.

So, I accepted that yes, this was a stressful situation, and my feelings of worry were valid. Things weren’t set in stone yet. That’s an unsteady feeling for anyone, much less a trauma survivor. My first step of dealing with the transition was to accept that it absolutely was a valid situation to feel anxiousness over. I did not war against this emotion in me.

A step beyond acceptance is radical acceptance. This is when I have accepted that there is nothing I can do to change the current situation. It is in this moment that I breathe a lot. I stay very inward focused on my physical body. I stay aware of tenseness in my muscles, a sign my agitation might be growing. I listen to my heartbeat. I pay attention to my physical feelings as well as my emotions.

Tip Two: Self Soothing

It is great to have people we can vent our worry out with. Yet, I find that most often, doing so can cause my anxiety to rise. For me, the act of too much discussing of my worry and anxiety is almost a fueling of it at times; especially if it’s not a solution based anxiety, meaning there is no specific solution. Only patience is the answer. Now I must carry myself through this act.

During self soothing I focus on my thoughts. I avoid negative thinking like:

  • Nothing ever goes right for me
  • It’s probably all going to fall through
  • Do I pack?
  • This is too much chaos!
  • I’m freaking out!
  • Cry!!!!!

Instead, I live and think as if it is already happening. I packed. I imagined myself in my new space. I jumped on Pinterest and looked at some ideas for my new space. I envisioned the pallet I was going to create. I imagined my art in the walls. I saw myself finishing the sequel to Cult Child and making more art with new surroundings and inspiration.

I had a message telling me for sure I was approved, just a few signatures needed to be finalized. I just didn’t want to have to be left with just two days to move everything. I knew the many trips and hauling in a short time would leave me sore. I knew this was the root of my anxiety. So, I sat with that. I asked myself.

What is the worst that can happen? Sore muscles and back? I listed the ways I would soothe; baths, resting, laying down, hydrating, taking it easy unpacking. I focused myself away from the worry of being left to move in a short time to the fact that even if I get sore and exhausted, it passes and life continues on. I thought about how lucky I am to have a great friend and family to help me.

When I was a child, I wasn’t held when I worried or cried. I didn’t have anyone to tell me that it’s going to be okay! So I can forget to reassure myself.

I radically accepted that this transition was not going to go exactly how I wished it to go. I accepted that I would survive moving with IT, instead of it moving with ME. I breathed and said okay, I’m stepping into this change. I left complaining behind for reveling in the joy of a transition I’ve been waiting a very long time to make.

Tip Three: Celebrating!

When the change is over, absolutely do NOT forget to celebrate yourself. Not in a, collapse on the couch and and say “whew, I got through THAT!” kind of celebrating. No. Take time to sit and really revel in every moment when you wavered and worried and kept going. Laugh with it. Tell yourself, damn I’m amazing. What seems like a small step to some is a major step for us. We deserve to celebrate.

Order some take out if it’s been a while. Buy a new shirt; go Goodwill hunting. Write about it. Make something new as a gift to yourself. Something. Anything. Pause to take a moment and really truly celebrate that you got through that thing you worried so much about.

When I was a little girl, no one ever said, “Good job! Wow!” I wasn’t asked about my hopes and dreams. I wasn’t told I was exceptional in any way. Because of this, I can forget that it is okay to humbly celebrate myself.

How we trauma survivors are able to move through change, or sudden change, is centered within the confounds of our own thoughts. We learn the art of self mindfulness and awareness. We learn to put our needs first in a way which keeps us healthy.

Acceptance. Soothing. Celebrating.

Remember that it is perfectly acceptable to take care of you. Do not shun yourself. Love yourself.

I soothed myself through my transition. Now, as I write this, I am peacefully soaking in my new living room view and the beauty of my city.

Vennie Kocsis is the best-selling author of Cult Child and other publications. She is a also a poet and hostess of the podcast Survivor Voices Show.