The Journey

Giving up is given such a bad rap. We’re continually admonished to “hang in there” and “don’t give up!” Certainly, these words of encouragement are designed to bolster our flagging spirits and push us through to the finish line. It is the “western culture’s” way: to just keep pushing. Often, there is no other choice but to keep going as life’s circumstances may dictate.

But what about when giving up is actually the answer? What about when giving up is the key, the turning point, the solution to the problem? What about the positively empowering, freeing, healing effects of giving up when it is exactly what is needed? I don’t think we talk enough about the positive aspects of giving up.

This concept dances closely with my ongoing reverie about the peace and joy that comes from the loss of hope; yes, I am aware of how intimately these ideas are intertwined. They dance so closely that a middle school class chaperone would certainly disapprove. Although they are similar in many ways, there is a marked difference in my experience of them. The loss of hope has come to me as an experience of submission, of letting go, whereas the act of giving up occurs for me as a willful, conscious and intentional moment of decision.

I’m writing about this again because I recently had an experience of willful deciding to give up that has had a profound effect on my life and how I am living it. I can’t really overstate the effect it has caused. That’s right, the effect, not affect. That wording is intentional because it has irrevocably changed how I move through my day to day and how I will move forward in my life.

I’ve walked through the majority of my life on my own, thus far. I’ve had relationships here and there, but with the exception of only one, I have primarily been on my own, even in those relationships. In the case of that one, it proved a threat to the narcissistic fake-therapist-turned-cult-leader, so as I retreated further and further into his web of lies and coercion, it was eliminated as well.

While I was in the cult which seemed to provide such a tight-knit community, I was more alone than ever. Although we interacted and communicated constantly in that group, we were not only isolated from the outside world but from each other. This condition comes standard in cults as the leaders must prevent close ties (or “alliances”) from forming amongst the members as that can pose a serious threat to their total control.

In the earlier stages of our group forming, the leader outright stated that we (the five members outside of him and his wife) should no longer get together in pairs or small groups to socialize outside of the context of all seven of us being together. He said it would jeopardize the group, as he’d seen it happen in small groups like this before. He said little “special” relationships would form that would be dangerous to the dynamics of our group and to the “circle of atonement” we were creating.

Even while the leader went off on trips for weeks at a time with his wife, having all manner of new experiences, when the five of us remaining behind dared to spend a day together and go to a new restaurant without him and his wife, we were condemned and berated for doing so. We were deviant. We were excluding them. We were engaging in “specialness” as we dared to cultivated our connection with one another–outside of his presence.

I trust you do not fail to see the not-so-subtle irony and the overwhelming hypocrisy here.

[In retrospect, and with a few years of cult education under my belt, I recognize this as classic narcissist cult leader behavior. They must create the illusion of community, which we all so deeply craved, without allowing the conditions of safety that might encourage two or more people to actually speak openly and authentically about their experiences and feelings. Doing so would inevitably lead to exposing the group, and the leader, for what they truly are. And invariably, this is what eventually happens for so many ex-cult members.]

Of course, not a one of us challenged him because to do so was tantamount to challenging God Himself, by this point–along with all the resulting wrath that traditional, Christian religion would have us believe might come from a challenged God. The man had so thoroughly, carefully and intricately intertwined himself into our personal and spiritual lives, into our very pysches, that we feared, on an intensely primal level, to go against him or the group, as our subconscious minds believed our very human survival was at stake. In regard to the overt hypocrisy, it was the classic emperor-wearing-no-clothes scenario.

Therefore, my world became increasingly isolated and brutal over those years. When I found myself in the most special position of all, closest to the leader of all, I found myself in some of the darkest, loneliest, most isolated circumstances a soul can know. Had it not been for my unyielding connection to the life-sustaining power of the Divine Itself, I would have died.

“So what in the hell has all this got to do with my recent experience of giving up??” you might ask. And right you would be to ask. I expound on all of that only to explain what it was I finally had to give up and how it grew to become such an enormous attachment for me.

It was a dream that I finally chose to give up. A dream of close, partnered connection. A dream of living my life in concert with someone else on the hum-drum, mundane, day-to-day level. A dream of letting someone else into my inner world and allowing them to live there with me on a permanent basis. A dream of no longer bravely going it alone (a point in which I once took pride), but instead, bravely linking arms with another soul and going it together. A dream fed by years of isolation culminating in a wave of intense and overwhelming desire to finally, once and for all, not be on my own. A dream of my own nuclear family, even if just a family of two. A dream fueled by grief and years upon years of lost opportunities and lost experiences while under the thrall of cultic coercion.

Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen in love with this dream. Subconsciously, I’d come to believe it to be the antidote to all I’d experienced and all I’d foregone. Without even realizing it, this supposed savior of partnership took ownership of my unconscious, guiding my day to day decisions and shaping my future’s dreams.

In a set of unremarkable circumstances and triggers, my dream came surging into full consciousness accompanied by all of the unseen pain that it was causing. In a crescendo, I came to recognize how deeply this dream had seized my heart and my consciousness, and at the same time, how utterly powerless I am to fulfill it. In my heap of despair, it finally occurred to me that I must let this dream go. I’m not going to lie to you: in its death throes, I felt anguish.

But tugging at the edges of my mind, vying for its due attention, I felt a little something else, as well. I felt an old, familiar friend. I felt relief. And when I saw relief walk in the room, I knew down in my bones that I made the right decision. At that moment, I chose to wholeheartedly abandon the dream of partnership I’d subconsciously created, nurtured and treasured over all these years of isolation and grief.

It was then, and only then, that I began to wake up to all that my old dream was robbing from me. I could not have possibly seen it until I flipped the switch and chose to flat out give up. I said out loud to myself, “I give up on this dream of partnership! I’m giving up on ever seeing this dream come true! You know why? Because it is out of my control, and from now on, I will only pour my heart and soul into the dreams which I can control.” After all, I have plenty of those too.

The shift was palpable and beyond the bounds of the written word to convey. Over the following days, I began to feel freer, lighter and more empowered. I found fresh energy flowing through me. Grief arose, it spilled out, and then I returned to a deeper sense of contentment and a greater level of happiness than I have known in a very long time.

My mind became calmer and my desires and plans for myself became clearer. The ways and means to accomplish the goals that I can control in my life began to emerge in sharp relief. The ways I was waiting, holding back and hiding from my life–in deference to this unconscious prison of longing that I called a dream–took my breath away. Not only had I NO idea the degree to which I was not living my life right here, right now, but there was NO way I ever could have known until I finally gave up.

I didn’t just say, “I give up” in a little self-pitying temper tantrum. (I’ve had those, too.) No, I genuinely gave up on this life-sabotaging dream on a soul-level that I cannot describe but can deeply feel. I knew that it was truly over, then. There is no going back to it. There is genuinely no more “one day” or “until then” left in my mind, where this dream is concerned. There is only right now. There is only today. There is only my present life in this present moment, and now that I have stepped more fully into it, I have to say…it’s pretty damned good! Better than anything I could have imagined for myself. And to think, had I not chosen to give up, I may have missed it altogether.

Look, I’m not making any proclamations about the future, about what will or won’t happen. I have absolutely no idea. That’s the whole point. But between now and the future, there is so much that I can control and a whole hell of a lot that I have yet to do.