As I explained in my last blog, Steven Hassan explains in his book, Freedom of Mind, that a cult tries to find vulnerabilities in discarded aspects of one’s authentic identity in order to create the cult personality.

            Although I have certain vitiated the control of any splinter personality over my day to day activities through a variety of means, including reading the books of exit counselors like Hassan, Freedom of Mind gave me some clues as to how I managed to do this, as I only had a certain amount of knowledge during my own self-deprogramming.

            My writing of a memoir called, The Prisoner of San Jose, was probably a very useful implement in my loosening the bonds of Mind Control on my personality.

            You see, in writing the book, I went over many aspects of my childhood, where there were elements, which I discarded or repressed, which probably contributed to my successful recruitment by AMORC and formed the deadly anchors, which bound me to it.

            Here are a few:

            1) Poverty Although my father was born into wealth in Haiti, his uncle, who was caring for him and his siblings after the death of his own father, had managed to co-opt the estate for himself. And my father had to fend for his own and this was not at all an easy path. Since he separated from my mother, who took care of the children, my sisters and I experienced a brutal kind of poverty. Poverty was one of the hooks that AMORC used- because it claimed it had the true path towards happiness and prosperity through identification with the Cosmic.

            2) Religious Aspirations When I was a child, I had initially been chosen to go into the priesthood, a valuable prerequisite to getting into a seminary, which would be a launching ground for a better life. Back then I was very religious and, as a Catholic, I took the church doctrine very seriously, although I was aware of its shortcomings. An example would be confessing your sin to a priest, a very core part of Catholic practice when I grew up. Even as a child, I wondered how saying a whole bunch of Hail Marys could neutralize a serious transgression.  It seemed to me as absurd then as it does now. So, inwardly, although perhaps not fully consciously, I probably aspired to a truer type of spiritual practice. 

            One of the fundamental approaches of AMORC is to constantly bombard the members from the beginning of their association with AMORC with the shortcomings of conventional religious practice.  AMORC claims to be providing a true authentic approach to spirituality but in reality this organization is in many ways worst than the church. So this quest for spiritual path plays an important role in the appeal of AMORC to naïve prospective members. 

            3) Separation of my Parents Unfortunately, my parents separated early. One of the reasons was that my mother was abused by my father, Although in some respects I had a happy childhood, in many ways I came out of a broken home and there were undoubtedly scars. Cults like AMORC tend to fill this gap by providing “true, benevolent authority” like the Imperator, who has been granted a powerful earthly authority over membership in AMORC, the only true and complete path to Cosmic Consciousness.

            4) Class Struggle in Haiti Although I got into the prestigious Faculte des Sciences, an Engineering School, in Haiti and had a very good internship at the government’s Mining Department and some extremely good contacts in the upper professional, class in Haiti, I think I was still insecure. I had come from an extremely impoverished background and, for that reason, the lure of a magical edge provided by AMORC has a special appeal for me.

            These factors- and the fact that I was ardently looking for answers to fundamental questions about human life and its meaning, made me vulnerable to the claims of AMORC and which eventually reshaped my buoyant and competitive personality into a cult identity, which made me cling to AMORC despite the fact that it did just helped me to recapitulate the poverty of my youth, did not provide a really satisfying and comprehensive answer to my quest for God, did not provide me with anything like substitute parents or benevolent authority nor permit me to be realistically economically competitive when I relied on the Cosmic promises of prosperity held out to me by AMORC. But even though these things were not addressed, Mind Control makes you believe in a lot of unreality so while the authentic self struggles for freedom, the cult identity clings to cult membership like glue.

            By addressing this issues in my memoir, I think, to some extent, I began to reawaken my original memories and aspirations and began, at least subconsciously, to recapture elements of my true authentic self that I had abandoned, only to be addressed and co-opted by AMORC in an inauthentic way.  I think that action did help me dilute the power of the cult personality and help restore me to my true, authentic self.