What's Growing in Zen's Garden?

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One nice summer afternoon when I was about ten years old; my twelve year old sister and I were aimlessly killing time in our suburban backyard.  Dad was out getting the essentials for a backyard barbecue and mom was next door visiting with our neighbors.  Hearing an odd whistle we looked toward the gate to see it was the local paperboy, wanting our attention.  My sister walked over to talk to him, to see what he wanted.  I ignored them and kept playing with the dog.

Just a few minutes later I heard my sister scream loudly, and not a good scream either.

Dashing around the corner of the house I could see the paperboy attacking my sister, and ripping her clothes off as she desperately fought him off the best she could.  I understood all I needed to in that moment, and without thinking much about it I grabbed a stock of firewood off the woodpile and ran to help my sister.  So intent on his goal, the paperboy never saw my approach, or what hit him.  I smacked him as hard as I was able to with that piece of firewood, right up alongside his pervert head, laid him out like a wet sack on a slab.  Just then, the kid’s luck ran out as our dad walked around the corner to see what all the commotion was about on this nice summer afternoon.  We didn’t have to tell dad what happened, he could see for himself.  I’ll never forget the look on that kid’s face when he looked up to see my hulking father standing over him.

I was certain sure he was gonna kill that kid and bury the body under the woodpile, but he didn’t.  In fact, he didn’t even call the cops.  He knew this kid, and his parents, so for reasons I didn’t understand then, and still don’t; it was all hushed up, and nothing was ever done about it – like it never happened. 

But it did happen, it’s happening still; every day around the world.  Whether its teachers having sexual relations with our children, or pedophile priests abusing & violating young boys with the tacit approval of the pope; child abuse in all of its ugly forms is rampant throughout this world and for the most part the subject is still being ignored and swept under the carpet, and I still don’t understand why??

Perhaps the very worst form of pedophilia is when it is done under color of authority or righteousness, such as with teachers, pastors and priests.  Those who hold themselves up to be admired and respected in positions of trust: who then prey upon our vulnerable, defenseless children are the very lowest and despicable form of the deviant pedophile. 

It was thru my morning emails the other day when I first read about what is now a breaking story across the alternative media world: Zen Gardner’s admission that for nearly thirty years of his life he was one of the leaders of the child abuse cult known as Children of God, aka The Family, aka The Family International.  It has now been disclosed that Don Fergusson, aka “Zen Gardner” rose in the ranks of the cult being one of it’s leaders, and their media chief in charge of “Image Management” and public relations, in other words, a professional liar as well as pedophile.

His job was to conceal the ongoing child abuse, and paint a rosy picture of the cult as wholesome.  It appears that he did such a good job he even forgot the depth of his own depravity because he now claims to have had no knowledge of the child abuse, and claims he himself is a victim.  C’mon Don, that’s just cowardly dude!  You don’t rise thru the ranks over 30 years to become one of the leaders without knowing exactly who was doing what to whom and when.  You don’t become media chief in charge of image management unless you know the ugly truth, and are in fact totally complicit in it.  Your job was to hide the truth from the world, dress it up as something healthy & wholesome.  If you are now admitting you were there for all those years, fess up in full, it’s good for the soul brother; and right about now I’d say your dark soul needs all the help it can get!

With a background in cult child abuse you’d be prone to think such a person would do his best to limit public exposure of any kind; but instead Don learned a few new agebuzz words & catch phrases, maybe thumbed thru “Be Here Now”and turned himself into Zen Gardnerthen went hunting on the internet’s alternative media cadre with his website so appropriately named Just Wondering?  I’ll bet a whole lot of people are doing just exactly that right now, wondering WTF? 

It took me a little while to get my head around it the morning I first heard.  I’d just opened my email after pouring my first coffee of the day.  Still rubbing the sleep from my bleary eyes, despite what I read, my mind was seeing that Zen & family had been captured by some south American cult!  I guess that’s how much I didn’t want to believe it.  You see, almost four years ago now I was contemplating starting a blog, and was a somewhat frequent visitor to his site.  After I’d commented on a few articles here & there, Zen emailed me saying he liked my style.  When I told him I was thinking about writing a blog, he encouraged me to write something, and submit it.  He posted my first article, and many more afterwards; he sent my stuff to other editors, I got noticed because of Zen. We became friends.  In time I had to walk away from Zen, as I could no longer overlook his loose affiliation with the truth in a few matters; & now I wish I’d never heard his name because then I wouldn’t have this ugly feeling about one who was once a friend. 

That happens a lot with this guy.  For a while there, a nice little cyber community seemed to hang out at Zen’s site, and it was kinda fun.  Then gradually I noticed some old timers just dropping away into oblivion, even as new personas would crop up to exchange thoughts in the ‘garden’.  I dropped away as well, so did a lot of others.  This one goon would show up real brash &bold, and funny at first.  Before long this goon started making comments that were beyond rude, they were sexist and possibly even racist in nature, and Zen encouraged him, they became buddies.  That’s when I left, when I saw thru a crack in Zen’s facade and caught just a glimpse of the man behind the keyboard.

The Zen Gardner franchise is little more than an online cult.  He has his favorite followers who adore him and keep his commercialized website active with mindless chatter.  It was a while after I cut ties with “Zen” that I began to notice that he never really writes anything new or significant.  Every post he ‘writes’ is just re-hashed variations on stuff he’s already posted.  He moves the paragraphs around a bit, sticks in a different image or two, changes the title; and that’s about it.  He’s not the leading cheerleader for the age of Aquarius; he’s a cyber pied piper preying on the recently awakened spiritual seekers hungry for knowledge and leadership; and he is abusing them as certainly as he did those children of godall those years ago.  It kinda makes me wonder just exactly what Zen is growing in his garden?  Just wondering?

I spent a while reading thru 75 some odd comments following his “My missing years” post and as expected, all but one lone commenter only had words of love and forgiveness for their spiritual guru.  That says a couple of things.  Obviously Don is only posting the favorable comments from selected followers, with but a single dissenter.  Seems kinda suspicious.

 Beyond that however lies a much deeper truth about how cults work and perhaps reminds us that the word Fan derives from and is a shorter version of fanatic.  There was a very rambling comment from a woman who claimed to have been borninto the COGcult which seemed to be her way of claiming impartial status or something, yet even she echoed the diluted admission that not every child was abused, and not every leader knew.  Brainwashing, simple as that.  Happens all the time.

 It happened to someone I love, so I know very well indeed just how twistedly convincing pedophiles can be in justifying their diddling deeds.  They are masters of deception, like a chameleon; blending-in to seem part of the normal environment, so their prey never sees them until it’s too late. 

I don’t care if the man walks on water and feeds the starving; doesn’t erase what he didin his past, doesn’t make up for or balance it out in any way.  As one of his adoring fans put it “Your karma is clean Zen“.  Do you now see my point about the brainwashing?  I wonder how many of his avid followers spent a single hour researching the COG, looking for the complete truth.  The first few minutes was enough to turn my stomach; how much could an avid fan tolerate?  Probably not much would be my guess.

Child abuse is a stain on your soul that may just be permanent for all I know, but I’m reasonably sure that coddling comments from the brainwashed kool aide drinkers won’t balance that kind of karma.  Almost a third of those 75 comments seemed to come from other cult abuse victims who totally understand and forgive.  I told you is was rampant all over the world!!  They have to live in their little bubble world of “it never happened” in order to function at any level day to day.  I suppose it is the only way they can keep a bit of sanity about them. 

Using their own words, those 74 readers with positive comments seemed to say with a sense of unison, that “what Zen has done for the spiritual community makes up for all those long years of committing child abuse, and covering it up.”  Where do these people acquire their sense of values from?  I am all about the power of forgiveness as a tool for spiritual growth and development.  Forgiveness; as in a victim of child abuse may choose to embrace the vibration of forgiveness, is kinda up to the individual who was abused to hold any value or merit.  Forgiveness by brainwashed fans holds neither!  I’m just wondering how quick to forgive those fans would be if Zen sexually abused their children.  Would it be OK on account of how much Zen has done for the spiritual community online?  Or is it more a factor of time, as in it was all so long ago who cares?  I suspect that for every life he helped ruin, someone somewhere cares, damn it!

So, the story is out there now, Zen Gardnerused to be a leader in a child abuse cult. It is simply never OK to sexually abuse children, ever, period.  Everyone knows this!  There are some who will attempt to convince us that pedophiles have an illness.  Bullshit! Pedophiles are sexual predatorswho prey on every child they are able to.  There is no rehabilitation or healing from that mindset because every one released from prison offends again.  Predators, simple as that. 

Do you know what happens when a child abuser gets tossed into prison?  They are pariahs who are subjected to random beatings around the clock by other inmates; and that’s just for openers, it gets much worse.  I understand they get a vivid idea of how it feels to be helpless and abused in all the worst ways.  What goes around-comes around as they say.  Even societies worst criminals hate pedophiles, because they are predators, not just ill.  Pedophiles in prison are so outcast they often must be kept in solitary for their own protection.  I say they deserve no protection, toss ‘em all into gen-pop, then put it all on pay-per-view.  That includes Zen Gardner.  No sympathy for the devil here.  I sometimes catch flak for speaking my truth without filters, “it’s just how I roll.“  When it comes to those who prey upon children, the gloves come off, and in Zen’s case especially. 

As far as I am concerned “Zen Gardner” is a confessed child abuser, liar, a fraud, and a deceiver who re-invented himself as a star to take his lifelong predation global via the internet.  Zen Gardner, global predator.  Has kind of a ring to it.  If it were up to me I say he’s lost his Earth privileges, and needs to be immediately put aboard a rocket and shot into the sun; but that’s just me. 

Alas, the halls of power here and abroad are filled with sociopathic pedophiles and no matter how much exposure the subject gets they almost always stay in power, nothing much ever happens to any of them.  The same with the clergy.  It’s as if they’re under some kind of protection.  See what we get for sweeping it under the rug for a generation or two…it becomes close enough to normal that people just don’t seem to care; and if that isn’t just a little spooky to you, I submit that you need a checkup real soon!