"Everything I did from where I slept each night, to who I was allowed to sleep with was decided by the head of my commune. I was encouraged to keep a diary, and then turn it over to the leaders every night, so they could comb through it for signs of dissent. I was only allowed to listen to cult-sanctioned music, and I was only allowed to watch movies with happy endings,"
"By the time I was living in Japan, I was in my mid-30s, and I'd been part of the cult for 20 years. I was indoctrinated by a young hippy couple when I was 16, and persuaded to run away from my family and join a sect of the cult near my home town in Canada. I was a lonely teenager and desperately searching for some kind of meaning."
"By 1991, after two decades in the cult, my faith was weakening. It was becoming clearer to me that Berg was wrong about the world ending in 1993. A whole series of events that were meant to directly precede the Second Coming hadn't happened, and Berg who lived in secrecy and communicated with his followers by written prophecies kept issuing increasingly unconvincing excuses."
In 1991 the narrator lived in a 200-person commune in Japan that belonged to the Children of God. Commune leaders controlled daily life, including sleeping arrangements, relationships, music and film, and required nightly diary handovers for scrutiny. The leader David Berg lived in secrecy and issued written prophecies that predicted the world would end in 1993. The narrator joined at 16 after being indoctrinated by a couple and ran away from a small Canadian town. Warm welcome initially gave way to two decades of strict sexual regulation and growing disillusionment as prophesied events failed to occur.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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