Dignified choices

I have come to this forum from that of Focus, where I saw that there is an enormous amount of posts about Damanhur but I have neither the time nor the inclination to read them all. There was a link that brought me here, where I believe there is less confusion and as a good  ‘blogger’  I have decided to leave my testimony.

I spent three years in Damanhur following the dream of knowledge, a dream that I did not manage to realize. At the beginning I battled to save the Temple and I would say that I know Damanhur well.

At first I thought there would be space for my inner world and research but after a while I understood that this space did not exist. I left the path, the Meditation course and the citizenship. It wasn’t easy because I had invested all of myself in it. I had to ask my family to take me back after they had unwillingly accepted my choice to go there, until I found work and become autonomous again. I believe that having lived an experience ‘totally’ once you choose differently it is somewhat difficult: your dream collapses and at the beginning perhaps you feel that you have wasted your time but later things change.

For me the years in the community helped me to understand my path towards freedom much better, and for sure it did not pass in Damanhur’s direction. But I decided to enter and I decided to leave and I have nothing to cry about as regards the experience.  I do not feel I was brainwashed or taken advantage of. I have respect for other people’s choices and apart from a few at the beginning, no one looked for me, and no one threatened me or obliged me to do anything. I had no interest in contacting that reality so I did not do so. I would like to start by saying that I do not want to take anyone’s side but in general I feel “to spit on the plate you have eaten from” only the day before, really lacks dignity.

How can you ask people to believe that someone after ten or twenty years wakes up and says “I was in a dangerous cult and full of suffering!” Have the decency to live the experience as a motive for personal growth and not as an instrument to demonize someone. Otherwise what were you doing all those years, sleeping? Damanhur is not a closed order, the outside world is always there under your nose. It was that world which helped me to realize that I was no longer free to live that life and I decided to change direction. But why blame someone? I find it an infantile gesture.  I have good memories of the Damanhurians (almost all of them). I knew  ‘Falco’ Airaudi, and I believe him to be a friendly guy who is tenaciously holding on to his dreams, certainly very involving, but I never felt obliged to him in any way, not even to the oaths I swore and when I decided to leave I went and looked him in the eye and told him so. It was a cordial dialogue and in the end we said goodbye man to man, each of us to his own destiny with head held high.

Certainly he has money, but I do not think that is a crime. I did not know enough about what went on to know if he was hiding criminal activities but if someone does know for goodness sake report him to the police!*  If not please stop talking about it. Have the courage to examine yourselves before you examine others and if you think you have thrown away part of your precious lives at least have the dignity to assume the responsibility for it.

Regards

Ienax

Posted to www.cesap.net 2008/03/13 00:58 under the title ‘Dare dignità alle scelte’.

*Oberto Airaudi has recently been accused of tax evasion amounting to 4 million euro by the Italian Financial Police.

DIO Editor

Ref: Dignified choices

Hi there and welcome to the forum

All testimonies are useful, even yours, which one feels is true even though you only spent three years in Damanhur.

It is important that everyone writes what they feel and experienced because in that way one can understand better how the pathological Damanhurian mechanisms work on people. Meanwhile, seeing as I spent twenty years in Damanhur I want to say that your critical opinion with regard to us is extremely heavy.

You are one of the few fortunate people who managed to understand in time, or better intuit what Damanhur is and you escaped without being too compromised.

You felt it but you did not understand.

Three years is really not enough time to understand the Damanhurian reality.

You see, when I left I could not even bear to hear people talk about Damanhur, writing in this forum has cost me a lot, exposing everything may appear rather undignified to you but it becomes a duty when you understand that entering  or leaving Damanhur is not just a question of personal choice but, and I will not refrain from saying so, a conditioning. It is a deception that people feel they have been subjected to when they finally understand it all and decide to leave.

There are things that you do not know, that you have not lived, that do not burn on your skin. For me the thing that continues to burn is the silence of the many Damanhurians who continue to suffer, who haven’t completely understood, who can no longer liberate themselves because they are subject to a strong system of control and are deceived by the many lies written by a particular person, i.e. He who commands.

It is probably true that If I had only spent three years in Damanhur I would also have written something like you but I was there a lot longer and I cannot turn my head and look the other way.

Mappamondo

Posted to www.cesap.net 2008/03/13 01:30 under the title ‘Re: Dare dignità alle scelte’