The Author
Born in Barstow, California, Steve Sanchez grew up in a spirited, dysfunctional
family living at various times, in Los Angeles, San Diego and the Azores.
He married and became a father at age 21. Shortly thereafter, Sanchez
joined the Spiritual Rights Foundation/Academy for Psychic Studies that
was, unknown to him, a cult. He eventually became a minister with the
academy and started his own branch in San Jose.
Sanchez left the cult in October 2000, after years of psychological struggle.
In an effort to heal, he began writing Spiritual Perversion to share his
experience, raise awareness, and advise others about post-cult recovery.
Sanchez now runs a successful construction business and lives in Albany,
California, with his daughter Claire and wife Prema. He also has a new
baby daughter.
A talented musician as well, Sanchez recently recorded an album of original
guitar music called, “Stories and Visions on Guitar.” For details,
click here.
Why
I wrote Spiritual Perversion
I started writing Spiritual Perversion after
I had written a thirty-page Declaration requested by my lawyer. I was
engaged in a court case to get joint custody of my daughter. My lawyer
didn’t ask me to write thirty pages of course -- it was just that
once I started writing, I found a profound need to fully define and express
the injustice of what had happened. She told me she only needed five pages,
but I kept on writing. I wanted to plumb the depths of the story and all
its psychological and spiritual meanings. I wrote to face, to understand,
and to decode all the mind control and abuse I had endured. I wanted to
write an intensely honest account of the strange things we do under extreme
duress, whether it reflected well on me or not.
I love writing. I always need to be doing something creative in my life. For four years, writing this book was my creative passion. I wanted to write in such a way that the reader would get the full impact of the experience. I found I could only write two to three pages a week. Rarely did I do more than this, but rarely did I do less. That seemed to be about all I could handle. It was emotionally challenging and disturbing to recreate many of the scenes in Spiritual Perversion. But it was always rewarding.
I had to balance my writing with the rest of my swiftly evolving life. I hired a writing coach named Naomi Rose. This is one of the best things I ever did for myself. Naomi is a professional writer and was extremely sensitive, appreciative, and insightful to what I was writing, and the process I had to go through to write it. Every week I brought her the two or three pages I had written, eager to read them and discuss them with her. It was a wonderful time. No matter what else was going on, we had this meditative and creative time together to do our work.
For more than two years I met with her every week. At a certain point it became all-important to me that I, and therefore the book, should find spiritual redemption. This urge became incredibly strong and I found myself acting on it and praying from it. I didn’t want to write a story exclusively about darkness. I wanted to show how a person could face it, come out of it, and love again.
In the cult we had studied various New Age authors and disciplines, so I was familiar with many different healing methodologies. For a while, after I had left the cult, I wanted to become a Buddhist. I read great wisdom from the likes of Thich Nhat Hahn and the Dalai Lama, and learned many great things. But these teachings didn’t fit for me as a practice. Then I thought I was an agnostic, but that didn’t last very long. I had an aversion to organized religion, but gradually I got over it. I love all the Buddhist and Eastern writers I read, and continue to study and learn much from them. In my heart though, more than anything, I love and adore the life of Christ.
I wanted to write this book because I had a choice. I could choose to ignore what happened, or I could delve into the depths to reveal and understand it. I could deny it, retreat from the darkness and the fear of humiliation; or I could grab the beast, turn it over, and expose its dark, slimy yellow underbelly. The more I delved, the more I found its wet tendrils extending into myself. The more I discovered, the more I needed to track them down and expose them to the light. Thus, I wrote each and every episode until I had no more compulsion to write. I came to think of them as strains of gold that had to be mined to their fulfillment.
As I did, a weight was lifted from me and I began to yearn for the spiritual love of God to fill me again and to restore my strength. I kept following the urges of God from inside, until my life took shape, in all aspects. Of course, I faltered: I took two steps forward and one step back. I would despair and get angry, but I continued to persevere, recover, and understand.
I recently read the following passage in a book my wife gave me called, The Yoga Of Discipline, by Swami Chidvilasananda. It deeply moved me: “Almost everyone on earth is afraid of being verbally attacked. A verbal attack can be so destructive. It can scorch the heart to such a degree that one may never again feel strong enough to live confidently in this world. It can turn aspiration to cinders and dust. Yet, what obliges a person to absorb such an attack? And what happens when he does?”
drawings by Steve Sanchez
