I've got compounding problems. To say where exactly they begin is part of the problem. How far back am I supposed to go? How far back do the issues run? How much am I supposed to, or should I reveal?

These aren't relatively new questions either. They are in part what ended an e-mail conversation between myself and a man from the Catholic Center on campus last week. They are what have kept therapuetic relationships taut and cautious. They are what drives me to be vague and elusive on-line at times. These questions also drive me to reveal certain events and information to one person and not to another, which can get confusing when you all sit together and talk to a bunch of people and they all know different amounts of information.

Santeria is only one experience I have had. I did not participate voluntarily, but I had to do it. What was I going to do otherwise? The common line I use to explain my experience is "Chicken blood smells bad." It does, but so did the herbal bath and the incense and the powders. I was scared and humiliated. I can't remember if it was senior year of high school or if it was freshman year of college. All I know is that it was in the spring and I had homework I would have much rather done in place of the initiation rite.

Mom has continously seen it fit to involve myself and my sister in her Santeria practices. I remember being involved little by little around the age of 13 or so. Mom would walk around the house and our rooms sprinkling herbal waters everywhere. Or she would involve me in the tarot card readings not too infrequently. Several years ago, Dad convinced mom to burn her tarot cards. That did nothing to slow her down. She found a different santero and paid out more and more money for rituals, herbs, and readings. When she walks into bookstores she heads straight to the "new age/wiccan" section. Apparently the "magic spells" aren't a far cry from the Santeria potions and lotions. She's got her candles lined up in the kitchen windowsill. They look like candles to the saints, but that's just the guise for the gods that the santeros adopted back when Santeria was developing in the 1500s.

She hasn't involved me since the initiation rite, to my knowledge. I wish my experiences ended there, but they don't.

I am a former cult member. More information on the group here.
I transfered from CSU Long Beach to USC in the spring of 2004, and I found this great Bible study group that was so friendly and open to new members it was amazing. For a long time all I did was bible study with them. Even during the summer months away from campus I kept up contact with them for other Bible study sessions and luncheons. It was in the fall semester in which I jumped headlong into the group, spending at least 8 hours a week doing Bible study with the group.

The woman I had done Bible study with at CSULB emailed me, as she was concerned about the amount of time was I spending with the group and told me that if they were the "Los Angeles Church of Christ" to leave since they were a cult. That sounds really similar to one of the names of the group (Local Church in Los Angeles), so I did a quick Google search on them and found tonnes of negative responses to the group. That was October 4th 2004. I officially left on October 14th. By the 22nd, I was approaching denial and withdrawal.

I am not going to recount everything in my post-cultic experience, but I think I need to put the spiritual attack from a week or two ago into it's correct perspective.

Once I left the cult, it felt like I was dying; God's prescence in my life was oppressive, and I felt like if God continued to be a part of it in any way I was going do die. So, once I told God to get the f*** out of my life, a weight lifted off of me. But soon that wasn't good enough. He was still there and I needed out, I told God that He was dead to me. But that wasn't good enough. I still didn't feel free and I hated God just oh so much. I came to realize that God was suffocating me, and that He was my Enemy. But my new Enemy had an enemy. Are not the enemy of your enemy your friend? Yeah, you can obvioulsy see where my train of thought led me to: more Darkness. I turned to Satan.

But I believe now, I began believing on August 8th 2005.

But now I have to wonder, does my past open me up to Satan's exploitation? Am I somehow putty in his hands? Am I more suspectible to his Lies and Deciet now?

Because I don't want to be.

So you can see how I can just have a spiritual attack and react to it like a pebble in my shoe -- pull it out and move on. Sort of.