Testimony of Daniella. Uruguay

(She was in New Acropolis for 11 years, from 14 to 25. She spent 7 in the "Internal Circle")

My name is Daniella Scuadroni Rudawski, and this is a true story, told from my experience and subjectivity, but you can find similar material on the internet, and some things much more worrying than what I lived.

This is a story that will be told somewhat out of chronological order, but ordered emotionally.

A jolt of freedom

After almost a year of thinking about it, turning it over, changing my mind and even several meetings with the branch director, on October 2, 2014 I left the New Acropolis cultural association.

I had planned to leave in December, when the pace of "the school" (as it is called internally) calmed down, and I could abandon my duties without leaving my brothers and sisters with an overload of unfinished work. But my anxiety and discouragement did not let me continue, despite the immense duty I felt, no longer toward the institution, but toward my companions, who had nothing to do with my loss of love for "the Ideal."

At first I had a thousand things on my mind, from reproaches to the institution's leaders to reproaches to myself for my loss of will and devotion, after eleven years of mental and emotional exhaustion, and several of depression.

That week I had my volunteer tasks in the cafeteria on Thursday (I used to do different tasks from Monday to Saturday, several hours a day). I remember that clearly; I think the reason is that I have replayed it in my mind over and over. One Thursday would be my last shift in the cafeteria, so the week before I devoted myself to informing all the leaders and heads of sectors whose schedules my departure could affect, so they would have time to reorganize the hours assigned to me and so no one was left overloaded.

I remember hugging, my eyes barely wet but my heart in my throat, a kind and genuinely good companion, and when he looked at my face he got serious; I don't remember if he asked me if something was wrong or only inquired with his look.

My first feeling was a jolt of freedom!

I cried because I was abandoning my family, I cried for having failed them, and I cried because I didn't know what I was going to do with my life from that night. But I also cried because for the first time in my adult life (I entered the institution at 14, I was leaving at 25) I felt that I could breathe.

The next day I dyed a streak of my hair fuchsia, I went out on weekends with friends without fear that anyone from New Acropolis would cross me on the street and think ill of me for going clubbing, I dressed without hiding my extravagant tastes, and I slept more and better than I had in a long time.

I still suffered; I was lost. I remember that after a few years of being in that place my mother stopped being comfortable with my attendance and asked me "what would you do if New Acropolis ceased to exist?" to which I proudly replied "I would found it again." For many, many years (a third of my life to date) I could not imagine a life other than the acropolitan one; I considered the branch director my second mother, the Living Forces my brothers, and every new member a responsibility, an enormous responsibility, because in the forging of the "Ideal" in the soul of each new member lay the seed to change the world... and to create a new... and better one!

How easily I had lost my purpose and ambition... and yet how wonderful it was to feel that I was discovering things about myself!

I gave myself permission to feel whatever I felt and to think whatever I thought, without anyone giving me a moral lesson or trying to remind me of "the teachers of wisdom."

How beautiful it was to dance, dress, walk, get drunk, kiss and have sex without guilt.

I was never in a very high position within the institution, and despite the opinion of the director at the time (who thought I led a double life for going out with friends at night in my twenties) I felt that I took the preached moral teachings more seriously than many leaders — to be kind, honest, good and devoted.

I never lied or hid my somewhat extravagant personality, although, for some reason, many believed that I did.

Not being alone anymore

The feeling I have today (June 2021) is one of deep loss, because although I have done many things I loved, time, years, age and mental fatigue have limited me from doing other things I would have loved to do at 17.

But at 17 I was already in the course to become a Living Force... but let's go further back. At 12, as a very innocent, extroverted but shy adolescent, with an ambiguous ease and difficulty in making friends, I fell into a deep depression. A depression my family did not know how to handle properly and simply ignored. Years ago I ask myself what would have become of me if, instead of entering a "School of Philosophy in the classical way / International Cultural Association / School of philosophy, culture and volunteering, etc.," my mother had taken me to a good therapist who would have helped me feel less alone, less suicidal and face the bullying at school.

But that is not what happened. In the arduous search for a sign (after a dream I had of a monk dressed in white, and considering that my grandmother and mother always influenced me toward the esoteric) I passed through metaphysical groups, esoteric conferences and gnostic courses, until I arrived at a place where for the first time I felt at home.

All the topics discussed (philosophy, alchemy, Atlantis, the mysteries of ancient Egypt) made me feel destined to be there, and I did not hesitate for a moment. I was a solitary, melancholic, kind and extremely innocent teenager who hated herself for hating all the teenagers her age, with whom she could not connect. In my pubertal egotism I considered myself smarter and more capable; I turned my resentment toward my cruel generation into a sense of superiority and tended to get along better and feel a connection with adults, or with marginalized adolescents similar to me. In New Acropolis I was well received, understood, sheltered and felt that for the first time in my life I was surrounded by good people who wanted to change the world.

At 14, after several conferences on the themes already mentioned, in October 2003 I began the first-level course or "probationism," the entry door to the philosophy course, to become a member of the institution... to be part of it... not be alone anymore.

The story inside

I took the course, began volunteering in the maintenance sector, and always offered to do more and more volunteer hours; I also signed up for every internal or external course that opened, which over the years gave me a professional outlet and many useful life skills... but New Acropolis became my life.

I began to disconnect from friends, to show gestures of contempt toward my mother, and as I said earlier, to develop a sense of superiority, fostered by the teachings received.

This is VERY important, and it is what (I believe) many of us fell into, because we were convinced of it: What I did was not FOR ME, nor for the institution, it was for all humanity, so if you loved your mother, your friends, etc., it would not matter if they did not understand you, if they questioned you, if they mocked you — they were simply too ignorant to understand your mission, a greater good, a good for all humanity.

I was "not laying a brick, I was forging a cathedral," and whether I cleaned a bathroom, ran the cafeteria or taught a first-aid course, none of that mattered per se; what mattered was helping to build this new world, what mattered was being part of the story: "And already old, to look from my winter at all the good I forged in my youth, and to know that I have humbly been a bridge, oh God, between humanity and you," says the Anthem of New Acropolis.

However, I always managed to keep some close friendships outside, and, sleeping little, I made some new friends as I entered adolescence, which, obviously, was not well regarded and was always judged in New Acropolis, although I never quite understood why.

Heroicity

Since I was a child I always loved superheroes; I always loved defending what is good and just (as a big fan of Superman and Captain America, the nerdiest superheroes in the world).

And that is how I wanted to be; I imagined myself as a knight-errant who slays dragons, I admired the stories of Quixote's heroic madness, and I felt represented by every similar metaphor.

It was the typical profile New Acropolis wanted to attract... in men... in "gentlemen."

Realizing that what was expected of women was to become "Ladies" was a harder blow than I could describe in a few lines. At 15–16 years old, femininity seemed unnatural and ridiculous to me: who would want to wear long dresses and faint in the tower of a castle when you could go out to kill monsters and give your life with blood on your face to serve justice?

I wanted to be a heroine; I wanted to be strong and brave, not beautiful and delicate... and yet, with all that mental baggage I already carried, the idea of becoming a lady felt like such a terrible test that I considered it the true trial by fire I had to pass.

So I learned to wear dresses, to cross my legs, to wear make-up, to laugh less loudly, not to speak openly about inappropriate topics or tell coarse jokes. I learned to cook, to wash, to arrange flowers and to dress more appropriately to be a "Lady." It may sound absurdly exaggerated, but you cannot imagine how hard a test it was... It was my test of sacrifice, of heroicity for "the Ideal."

The ideal

But it did not turn out as well as I had planned; I suppose there was always something rebellious in me, or perhaps the problem lay in my complete inability to understand unspoken social rules, a problem that today makes me see what my issues had been in adolescence as well.

When I wanted to be feminine I was "sexy" or something. When I wanted to be honest I was accused of having a "double life"; when I begged the director to tell me WHAT TO DO TO DO THINGS RIGHT, after telling me I was doing them wrong she told me she could not tell me what to do.

I spent many years selfless for the Ideal, accepting the opinions of leaders or older members as truths, or, upon admitting to myself that they were wrong, I repeated to myself like a mantra a phrase said in some class: "the ideal is perfect, idealists are not," and thus forced myself to smother anger, to silence my opinions and to accept... to accept everything including public humiliations such as being criticized for repeating a plate of food (me being overweight) or having polished the floors poorly (while in charge of maintenance), all these experiences occurring under 18 and while volunteering in every activity, receiving criticisms or sometimes shouts in front of everyone present.

It is necessary to clarify that being "scolded effusively" in public, even in front of newer members, was a common thing, not only for me but for most with whom I lived, even leaders, by others of higher rank (since the institution is a hierarchical and pyramidal system).

But none of that mattered. The Founder of New Acropolis, JAL (deceased in 1991), wrote in one of his books: "The ideal justifies the cradle and the coffin: for an Ideal one lives, and for an Ideal one dies."

If one was capable of dying for the Ideal, living in its service was the least one could do.

The pink cancer or AIDS

Let's return to the formative years.

There was a very decisive moment in my service, and it was when I was helping in the Secretariat of Scholastics or Bedelía for the first time, at 16 years old, and long before becoming a Living Force (the internal group in the institution). I was tasked with organizing Bastions (articles written by the founder) and while doing the work some caught my attention and I read them; one was titled "The Pink Cancer" and spoke in a denigrating, discriminatory and definitive way against homosexuality, explicitly stating that "homosexuals are not accepted in New Acropolis," and accusing them of the existence of HIV.

Well, I am a cisgender heterosexual woman, but at 16 I was not very sure, given my almost zero sex-affective experience and considering that I had a strong tendency toward "masculinity." After reading that article I clearly remember making a decision: "I am heterosexual." It was not a discovery, it was a radical decision in which I did not even allow myself to think of being anything other than a cis straight woman, because otherwise I might be expelled from New Acropolis, and by then the school was my life and I could not imagine anything without it.

But it was not only that: many discriminatory jokes were made and, as I mentioned, gender roles were rigidly defined, so that article made me form very strange prejudices in my mind, because I had a poor understanding of sexual diversity, and yet I maintained friendships with gay and bisexual people whom I loved deeply, so I forced myself to look at them with pity for their ignorance, without losing the bond but occasionally expressing the "unnaturalness" of their nature.

The leaving

Within New Acropolis I experienced continuous corrections about how to think, dress, live and even sneeze. I experienced a kind of virtual espionage because I was judged for Facebook photos or comments in virtual forums. I heard many phrases like "an acropolitan has to get used to loneliness." I also experienced moments of mystical ecstasy, years later clouded by the fear of never experiencing them again.

But what broke me was a specific moment; it must be clarified that from my internal rupture to my departure four years passed, and from my departure to my current release six have passed (I suppose that is how traumas are processed).

One weekend I went camping with friends and acquaintances, where we played live-action role-playing, a very innocent game where you take a fictional and supernatural character and embody it within the framework of a story, often with costumes, and one of those nights we drank, between 16 people, 6 liters of alcohol.

In a Facebook photo I was tagged taking a sip from a bottle; I was about 21.

The return from my vacation was very strange; I felt I was flying above the clouds, I was doing everything right, having healthy friendships, breathing the air in a wooded campsite and returning to fulfill my duties as a Living Force. Until, upon my return, my world collapsed.

The director told me she was thinking of expelling me from the Living Forces because she had seen pictures of me in costume, drinking from a bottle and doing "anything." I don't remember more details; in my head it kept echoing "expel from the Living Forces."

A leader, the head of the Women's Brigades, the body of the Living Forces to which I belonged, told me when the matter was discussed, as I tried to explain that the vacation had been innocent, and she replied, "a lady must not only be, but appear to be."

"Expel from the Living Forces" — I had never considered being anything else; I wanted to be a leader in the future, I wanted to open a New Acropolis branch in another department of the country, make a living from jewelry (my trade back then) and teach martial arts (my passion always reproached)... or whatever! But in my years there, it was the first time I was confronted with the possibility of not being in New Acropolis, or of not being a genuine part of it (in my view).

"Expel from the Living Forces" kept striking the director's words in my head; my mother noticed I was deeply depressed but I could not tell her what was happening to me — we were always encouraged to keep a lot of secrecy, because people "outside" would not understand it, they did not even know of the existence of the Living Forces, and surely they would be angry if they knew why I was so unwell.

I made an appointment with a psychiatrist, because I noticed that in my mind the options were to feel better or to die, because I could not imagine another life, because I was convinced that serving the Ideal was the only important thing a human being could do, and that if I was doing it poorly then what was the point of everything? I had made a promise from "my immortal soul" with my knee on the ground before a banner, to serve the Ideal, and I could not fulfill it.

I begged the non-existent gods not to exist and that my beliefs in reincarnation were a lie, but those superstitions also kept me alive, because I did not want to die knowing I would be reborn with the possibility of living that agony again.

"Expel from the Living Forces..." continued to hurt, but with time it no longer resonated so loudly, and each time the sound of those words, after taking antidepressants and stopping them, after going to therapy and stopping, after trying again to be a selfless Living Force... and leaving... those words no longer meant a threat.

Leaving the Living Forces...

A jolt of freedom.

Finishing

I want to clarify, to conclude, that these experiences are only a small part of what I lived in those 11 years, but I could mention a thousand more.

How the leaders of the institution would interfere in personal life, an internal article the director wrote speaking against role-playing games after my experience. The derogatory comments about people who had left New Acropolis, as if they were weak or as if their "soul had died." The indirect but extremely clear insistence on not having children, and the secrecy in countless activities which, if they were less "secret," might not have such a strong impact on those who took part in them — like being blindfolded and going through tests for an entire night, which included being placed at the edge of a dune and when you heard "jump" doing so without hesitation; I am ashamed today to have felt so proud at that moment, when I jumped happily without doubting even for a second, not caring what was below.

Daniella Scuadroni Rudawski, July 2021