Beyond Belief (14 page)
Authors: Cami Ostman
By the third day, I felt safe only within the doors of the Principle Life Study Centre. The moment I walked inside, I felt sated and complete. When I left, I felt alone and separate from those still inside, who were quickly becoming my surrogate family. It was as if an invisible thread bound me to the Study Centre and pulled me back whenever I stepped away. The people inside were innocent, open, and interested in me as a soul—not because they wanted anything from me. They didn’t care if my films were good or if I was an accomplished artist or if I was pretty. These new friends liked me purely for my heart. They saw me as a vessel who could carry out God’s will. Inside, I didn’t have to strive; outside my life consisted of an unfaithful boyfriend, a brother I couldn’t heal, and, with the completion of
Soul Searching,
the dissolution of creative connections with friends I had been working with for the past two years.
I started to feel that if I could do what God wanted me to do, I would no longer be judged by Him or by other people, because I would no longer have to figure out the difference between right and wrong. God would tell me through His words and I would simply follow.
This, I believed, was my chance to save my brother as he had asked me to do that night in the forest. And—with all my connections so tenuous now—this was my opportunity to belong to a new family, one that would never reject me, as long as I followed the rules. The feeling of relief was enormous.
On my tenth day of studying, I learned the answer to the Centre’s most important question: Will Christ come again?
The answer? Yes. He already has come. In the book of the Revelation, an angel came from the East carrying the seal of the
living God. Therefore, the Messiah would arrive in the East, in an Asian country. We were told he could not appear in Japan because the Japanese had started too many wars, nor in China because they were Communists, so he would come to Korea. Actually, he had already come to Korea.
While it seemed like a jump in logic that the Messiah was living somewhere in Korea, I had read from studying the Divine Principle that the human heart—when connected to God—could possess a “knowledge” greater than logic. And as the mindless ecstasy I felt while watching the videos was as powerful as any drug I had tried—and having no explanation for this other than the possibility that what I was learning was true and right—I chose to suspend my disbelief.
Anyway, what did I have to hold on to outside of these new teachings? If believing the Messiah had returned to Earth via Korea was all I had to do to become a better person and save my brother, I could do that. I could put my questions and my logic aside.
A
FTER A WEEK OF
study, I asked Roderich how I could do God’s will. What did God require of me?
“Give up everything you own, Yolande. Come and live with us. Pray for your brother every day, and the spiritual world will heal him.”
These were exactly the words I needed to hear. It was as if I had swallowed a large effervescent tablet, like a slot machine was wrought into action. I gulped and felt the fizz fill my chest as my cogs began to turn. Now I knew my purpose. I was eager to leave behind my life of striving for the trappings of success in a world that changed whenever I began to understand it. I wanted to give up art and romance—which now seemed like myths to me—and live my
life for the sake of others. Here was my chance to become the fairy-tale swan girl who saved her brother through years of pain and sacrifice. I believed God had prepared me for this moment of decision since girlhood. I believed I had been exposed to my brother’s suffering so I would become determined to work toward the healing of all the world’s mentally ill. Didn’t Jesus tell one young man if he gave everything to the poor he would find “treasure in heaven?” I loved the concept of giving everything away, of just being a raw human available to do the will of God. Besides, if what I’d been learning was true and we had to create the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth in three years, there was no time to hesitate.
“I’ve decided to move in,” I told Roderich the next day.
A
FTER AN INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOP
the following day, my membership was approved. A day later I arrived at the church center with just a small duffel bag. Within eleven days of accepting Roderich’s first invitation to study, I’d left behind my brand-new apartment along with all my ambitions, friends, and family. On inspection by my elder sisters and Spiritual Father, most of the contents of my bag were discarded, since my clothes weren’t modest enough and my books “belonged to Satan.” Thus, stripped down, I began my new life.
E
ACH DAY FOR ME
as a new initiate was scheduled from early morning until lights-out. I awoke at 5:00
AM
to catch a bus at 6:00 that carried me from our house in West London to a 7:00
AM
meeting across town in the Study Centre. After each meeting, I was sent out to beg for money until 7:00
PM
. In our morning sermons, I
learned that every penny given to God was a penny snatched from Satan, and that we should use any means necessary to procure as much money for God as possible. “Any means” included “Heavenly Deception,” or even stealing if we could do it without being caught. Acquiring money was how we supported the building of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even though I knew the church had multiple businesses, it never occurred to me this money might actually help pay the substantial bills of the church’s real estate around the world.
My devotion to the church and my desire to save my brother kept me going all day every day with barely any breaks. From my starting point at the Study Centre each morning, I asked for contributions from everyone I encountered as I moved about the city. Carnaby Street and anywhere in the London Underground were particularly lucrative spots. While holding out my
One World
magazine, I asked every person who passed me for a donation for homeless children. Although this line wasn’t strictly true, I justified the “homeless children” claim by telling myself that all people were homeless children until we created the Kingdom of God on Earth.
We were allowed £2 each day for lunch, but in order to save all my earnings for the church sometimes I took discarded fruit from a street market, and once I took a bag of chips from a garbage can.
Every night before going to bed, I took a cold shower to punish myself for having lusted after men in the past. Some nights I was so tired I fell asleep in the middle of my bedtime prayers. One such night, a sense of ecstasy awoke me deep in the middle of the night. As my sisters slept around me, my heart radiated with love that pulsed in and out simultaneously. The sensation was so powerful it seemed to beam like a floodlight to the farthest corners of the room. I believed this was God’s love—and proof I was in the right
place. My last thoughts before falling asleep again were prayers for a healthier, happier world, and for my brother to be cured.
Roderich said God gave me this feeling to encourage me to continue living this life, and I felt sure he was right. For once in my life, I was never alone. I was working toward a better world. Moment by moment, I became more attached to my new persona and more divorced from my old self. I now wore garments that covered my neck, arms, and legs for modesty, and shaved my head to evict the spirits that my House Mother told me were clinging to it. I gave myself to all of this wholeheartedly.
A
LTHOUGH
I
HAD LEFT
my old life behind, I was reminded of it at times. Occasionally when I was out begging I encountered friends I used to know. I ignored them completely and walked around the streets of London in a state of spiritual bliss, certain that—with each penny I received—I was transferring the world’s power back to the good side.
Once, an old friend saw me begging. She approached me but I turned away. In despair she fell down and grabbed my ankles.
“Yolande, don’t go back to those people,” she pleaded. But by then I was certain I was one of “those people”—and my past friends and family were not a part of my new life.
I walked away from my friend, ignoring her tears, believing her to be trapped in a Satanic realm to which I, thankfully, no longer belonged.
S
INCE EARLY CHILDHOOD
, I had longed for a fairy-tale world where families lived happily ever after and even one small girl could
change reality for the better. The girl in “The Six Swans” stayed silent despite the burning nettle stings she received while sewing her brothers’ suits. In the years to come, I too would withstand pain without a word of complaint. I would overlook shocking facts about Reverend Moon and the Unification Church. I would strive to give up my personal desires, expectations, and beliefs. And I would stay the course, making allowances for divine necessity, certain that my brother would be healed. My only concern during all this was my fear that, like the girl in the story, I wouldn’t finish in time—and that Adam would be left with one snowy white wing hooking him to his enchantment forever.
“My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live.”
. . . And [Jesus] took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment.
—Mark 42:5 (King James Version)
I
sat perched on a high stool in Aunt Helen’s kitchen, pulled my brown hair back into a ponytail, and waited, senses heightened, as Uncle Jack meticulously prepared to pierce my ears. He placed a white hand towel over my shoulders, like a barber might. He zipped
open the black travel case holding his sterilized surgical tools, and methodically set them on the counter. He ripped open a new package of rolled sterile cotton, tore off two small pieces, and soaked them in a bowl of rubbing alcohol to swab my left earlobe, then my right, before promptly discarding the barely used cotton ball onto a specially designated dish. The process of using two cotton balls seemed at once both impressively expert and a tiny bit silly. How dirty could my earlobes have been?