Released from the weight of seeking perfection

Byron Shire Echo, May 16, 2000
by David Forsyth

I currently reside in the US and received a link to The Echo's website from a friend. In past issues of The Echo there are a number of letters that address the pain, abuse, alienation and dependency perpetuated by cults. As an ex-member of Endeavor Academy in the US and Australia I want to express my views, rather than be a silent witness to further suffering.

It is very difficult and invariably a painful process to free oneself from addiction. Addiction to an idea of perfection leads to inevitable failures and empty successes. This need to believe in a perfect external solution always creates false idols and all idols fall. The intense and unconditional need to believe finds expression in an insane defence that the world is wrong and evil and I am saved and worthy because my teacher says so.

An abusive circle is set up where the teacher feeds his need to control with the student's need to be controlled. Yet how can there be a perfect lover or spiritual teacher or place if I battle the imperfect in myself? Without inner integrity I will look for a solution out there and will jump from teacher to teacher (or lover to lover, etc) always believing that this one now is the answer. And along the way I will reject family, friends, children and 'the world' all for Truth.

Similarly, I will justify acts of abuse, cruelty and hate and call them acts of honesty, true compassion and love. At the Academy I heard claims that all sickness can be healed through the power of love. Yet I stood by as students, diagnosed with cancer, were verbally condemned and evicted for not allowing themselves to be healed. Again and again I experienced and caused humiliation because of the belief that humans are dumb and need to evolve. I have seen what I believed were acts of physical and mental cruelty and manipulation yet found ways to accept these as the mysterious actions of an enlightened mind.

Release from such addiction comes not through blame or anger but through the simple willingness to allow this moment to be okay. What a relief to be unburdened from the weight of perfection or Truth or enlightenment. What a mystery there is in naked humanness and what joy in seeing the meaninglessness of all my ideas.

To old friends I say, thank you for always being there just as you are!