Donna Lamb: Excerpt from “From Dream Come True to Nightmare: My Aesthetic Realism Experience”

This is the section of my story that includes being shunned while in the cult Aesthetic Realism, founded by Eli Siegel, which I was in for 32 years, from 1969 to 2001. The entire article was published in ICSA Today, Volume 12 – No 2 – 2021.

I suffered several major falls from grace, but especially in the earlier years, each time I fell, I believed that no matter how miserable I became, I had to take my beat downs and stay the course. I had to “keep my mind right” as I called it and not even entertain the thought of leaving Aesthetic Realism. For as weird as it seems now, I had come to believe that to betray Eli Siegel was the worst thing any human being could do because God had sent him here to save the world, and I would be selling out all humankind if I left. I believed that any person who abandoned Aesthetic Realism – which was the ultimate betrayal of Siegel – gave up all hope of salvation and would burn in everlasting hell. Even though I sometimes felt I was already living in hell right here on earth, I still didn’t want to spend all eternity in the other one down below!

In what I have since learned is a common pattern in cultic groups, my falls from grace became more and more severe. I was subject to public lashings from the leadership, joined in by other followers hoping to escape my fate. But I still showed up for work at the Foundation each morning and dragged myself through yet another day, surrounded by people who couldn’t wait to sink their claws into me. Eventually, I was deemed too toxic to be kept on staff, and I was fired from the Foundation.

If that weren’t enough, my roommate told me that, because of her immeasurable love for Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism, she found it unthinkable to allow the likes of me to remain under her roof. She gave me a two-week deadline to move out, knowing full well that I had almost no money and that no other consultant or associate (as teachers and teachers-in-training of Siegel’s philosophy were called) would let me move in with them either. By the skin of my teeth, I found someone who had a tiny bedroom to rent out in her sixth-floor walk-up in the East Village. I also found a part-time job that paid more than my fulltime salary at the Foundation. So I went from being seen with considerable respect within the organization to being branded a saboteur.

The only time anyone spoke to me was to give me criticism. The rest of the time I was ostracized. When I entered the building three times a week to attend classes, something resembling the parting of the Red Sea took place as other followers moved away from me as though I had the plague – while trying to pretend they weren’t even aware of my existence. No one made eye contact. After I sat down, a virtual moat of empty chairs formed a ring around me in every direction because if anyone sat near me, other Aesthetic Realists might interpret it as a sign of approval. People were also afraid that if they sat close enough, I might lean over and say something to them, and others might mistake it as their being friendly to me, which could land them in hot water for consorting with the enemy.

I understood all of this very well as one who had helped part the Red Sea and form a moat around others in disfavor. It is beyond my writing abilities to describe just how excruciating this shunning was, so I’m not even going to try. And, it brings up a question you probably can’t help but ask: “Why did she stay?!”

Frankly, by then, I was in such a bad place psychologically I can’t tell you a whole lot about what I was thinking – other than for the most part, I wasn’t thinking. I was basically on autopilot, a zombie just walking through the motions, doing what I’d been programmed to do throughout my many years in the group: go to class, sit there, and take whatever was dished out. And while I was there, my body was present, but most of the rest of me was absent. That was the only way I could get through it.

I do know I no longer felt motivated to stay because I saw Aesthetic Realism as magnificent and needed by the world. Those words rang hollow. No, what kept me from leaving at that point was I simply couldn’t bear the thought of the other followers, whose approval I craved almost as much as air itself, thinking of me with complete contempt. For it is almost impossible to describe how filthy, disgusting, degenerate, and depraved we saw anyone who left Aesthetic Realism as being. Take all the worst people throughout history you can think of, roll them into one, and you have what we were conditioned to think of people who left.

I used to believe, for example, that while Hitler was evil because he wanted to kill all Jewish people and did succeed in killing six million (plus about five million others) in the Holocaust, a person who left Aesthetic Realism was even worse because they wanted to condemn every person in the entire world for the rest of time to live out their lives deprived of the knowledge they most desperately wanted and needed. There was no greater evil than that!

So even though I was already the lowest of the low within Aesthetic Realism, that was nothing in comparison to the sheer, utter contempt people would have for me after I was gone.