Books
Stella: a Universal Struggle
Stella describes how through the process of the latihan, Stella Duigan, a Subud member in Adelaide, Australia, was enabled to recover from the effects of very severe childhood abuse. The book is co-authored by Harris Smart and Stella Duigan.
Many tributes are coming in from within Subud and without, testifying to the book’s power, honesty and inspirational quality.
Andrew Hanibelzs, from Melbourne, Australia, not a Subud member writes: “The path to recovery from childhood abuse and trauma is often a long and tortuous one. There is no easy path. There are no easy answers.
“Stella shows us how difficult, yet rewarding, the struggle for inner truth and reconciliation can be. Stella's story is in many ways the story of all of us. We all need to find peace within. The struggle to do so is universal.”
From Stella
In the introduction to the book, Stella outlines the process that occurred...
One of the strangest things about my story is that in later life when people asked me what my childhood had been like I would always say it had been “idyllic”. How could this be? Part of my story is how we “remember and forget” what happens to us, how we can simultaneously hold in our minds completely contradictory realities.
It could be said that I “forgot” the worst of what happened to me as a child, but that is not quite accurate. It was more that I denied it while it was happening. It was so bad that I blotted it out of consciousness at the time. But it was imprinted on my subconscious mind and made itself felt in later life in the distressful symptoms I have mentioned above, and as this book tells, I would eventually recall it to consciousness.
I did retain some memory of some of the less horrific episodes, but I was able to compartmentalise this aspect of my life, so that it existed side by side with the illusion that my childhood had been “idyllic”. I wanted to believe in the myth of a happy childhood so much that I made it true.
Of course, my childhood was not an unrelieved horror. I found solace in nature, in the beautiful English countryside around where I grew up, and I had some good friends. But I know now that my adoptive parents did not care about me. In fact I was abused in the very sanctuary of the home. But in that same home there were also treasured moments of humour, warmth and happiness, and out of such fragments I wove the fiction of an “idyllic” childhood.
My ambivalence about my childhood, my “remembering and forgetting”, extended even to my main persecutor, my Uncle Ronnie. On the one hand I feared and loathed him, but I also saw him as an attractive personality, a lively, humorous man, more charming and likeable than the other rather dour adults around me.
So, to some extent, I conspired in putting myself into situations that permitted the abuse to occur. I record in the book how in moments of distress I would turn to him as if I had forgotten about the abuse, which would then inevitably occur again.
The way to recovery came for me through the movement known as Subud, and its spiritual exercise, the “latihan”. In Subud we are not interested in dogma or theory but in what we actually experience in following a spiritual path. What is the “proof, the evidence, the reality” in our lives of trying to follow God’s will for us? How can we discern God’s will, and what effects does it have in our lives when we try to put it into practice? These are the directions we try to follow.
At a certain point in my life while I was living in Australia, I “received” through Subud that I had to return to England to “lay the past to rest”. The purpose of this was at first unclear and mystifying and it was only as I “followed” the tenuous indications that the meaning and result of it all became evident. I felt I was living a real-life mystery story. Each day was an unexpected chapter, sometimes a cliff-hanger. I had no idea where the story was going to end up. All I had to go on were a few vague “clues”.
I tell how through many “synchronicities” I was eventually led to the cathartic experience in Glastonbury where I recovered the memory of what had happened to me as a child and began the process of release from the demons of my past.
It is fascinating to me how certain sense impressions – the smell of rubber, the song “Greensleeves” – inexplicably haunted me and finally provided clues to the abuse I had suffered. There were also certain images which continually surfaced in my paintings and which provided a tenuous thread into the dark and mysterious labyrinth of my past, and finally enabled me to discover the secrets buried there.
I offer this book as one testimony to the healing power of the latihan and give thanks to God that I was enabled to find Subud. But for that, I dread to think what might have become of me.
Other Comments
Other comments that have come in about Stella...
“Stella is a story told with honesty and an artist's sensitivity. It's the story of a journey, one that begins in darkness and ends in light.” Emmanuel Williams, California, USA
“Stella is written in a simple, open and moving way, remarkably, without self pity or recrimination. It's real strength is in its honesty. Though the story is utterly compelling (once I started reading I couldn't stop), our feelings are not spared and it is because of Stella's compassion and integrity in its telling that one gladly stays with her to the end. Adrienne Thomas, Lisbon, Portugal
“Throughout the book her courage, humour, tenacity and creativity shine through. Her journey takes her around the world and back in time. She gives thanks to the many people who nurtured her in her quest who far outweigh the cruel few who caused her childhood suffering. It is a gripping story full of hope and compassion.” Mardijah, Simpson, Alice Springs, Australia.