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Growing up in Subud |
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Another little Story The text was copied from the book "16 Steps by Harris Smart" which was published in 1988 and is out of print. Harris is currently researching material for another book which is due to be published shortly. Information on this will be posted from these pages and listed on the literature page as soon as it becomes available. | ||
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People sometimes ask me what it was like to grow up in Subud. Well, it was nothing special. It was just part of life. There was breakfast, there was lunch, there was Subud. No questions asked. When I was a teenager, it was much harder. It seemed to me grossly unfair that I should so strongly have the knowledge of what not to do and why not to do it, so strong and certain that I couldn't go against it. I wanted to do everything the other kids did, but I couldn't. I'm grateful for it now of course, but at the time I wanted to go through the grotty bits like everyone else, do what everyone else was doing at the time. I was sent to a co-ed progressive school where sex, drugs and rock-and-roll was splashed in front of my sister and me and if it hadn't been for Subud I would have experienced a lot of things I'm glad I didn't. It was a protection, not a conscious thing, not something that was drummed into me, but something I had and hopefully have still got. Like a lot of people who grew up in Subud, I had to get way from it in order to be able to join it. It happened to me when I went to live with another family. Subud became me, not just something belonging to my parents. It was coming through me, my version of it. Some of the kids came to it peacefully. Some completely rebel and scream and shout about it for a couple of years and then come to it on their own terms. |