by Suzanne Cox, Customer Services, Ocean Shores.

I attended a Universal Medicine presentation last Friday night and was shocked to have it hijacked by David Millikan and his camera crew from a well-known television station.

Who on earth is this guy and what was he doing harassing innocent people who were doing no harm?

I really didn’t understand why he was there but I was willing to give David Millikan the benefit of the doubt and hear what he had to say. After a brief introduction about himself all of a sudden he told us straight. We are a cult and he knows it. No questions, no research.

It was amazing to see how quickly he changed the way he presented himself as soon as the television and hand-held cameras popped up out of nowhere. The show was on. Lights… Camera … Action. What a performance. It was a total set up. Awful!

Even though David Millikan didn’t ask us any proper questions, I certainly came away from that event with some questions about him:

• Where is David Millikan’s research?

I would expect someone with a doctorate to know and thus conduct research in a proper way. I haven’t been questioned and had the right of reply. I haven’t seen any research papers into Universal Medicine and its students.

• Who is paying for David Millikan to do this research?

My understanding is it’s a well-known television station.

• What was David Millikan’s actual doctorate in?

One website states it was in the Spirituality of Japanese Flower Arranging.

• Why would a Uniting Church Minister proclaim himself to be a “cult expert”?

My understanding is the word ‘cult‘ was originally first used to pay homage to divinity from the French culte or Latin cultus, ‘worship’, from cult-, ‘inhabited, cultivated, worshipped’, from the verb colere, ‘care, cultivation’.  In our modern day it is referred to as a new religion that seems bizarre or abnormal.

Well if I’m seen as being bizarre or abnormal because I –

• Spend time on a daily basis developing rituals for myself that are based on self care and nurturing;
• Have lost weight and have fewer digestive issues without dieting by simply learning to listen to what feels right for my body;
• Have stopped smoking & drinking alcohol because I listened to my body and did it when I was ready to, and not when someone else told me to stop or not;
• Enjoy a loving and caring relationship with myself, my husband, family, friends, colleagues and broader community;

…then I really don’t mind at all!

Everyone has a choice and this is my choice. To get up every day and love the life I live is a joy and pleasure I won’t swap for anything. I will continue to develop this religious practice forever!

My message to David Millikan:

Ask me anything you like about my religious practices but don’t come into my space pretending to be something you are not. I’ll happily be a part of any proper investigative research to evaluate whether I am in a cult or not, but making the accusation of a cult leaves me with nowhere to go. At that point you immediately discredited me before my voice had been heard. Anything I say from that moment is deemed to be coming from my cult brainwashing. The intention behind the action is silence, not freedom of speech.

I am a deeply religious person and in this democratic country I live in, called Australia, any attempt to demonise my practice without any foundation is an assault on my right to personal and spiritual freedom.

Back off David Millikan unless you are prepared to treat me and any of my fellow human beings with respect and freedom to choose. I will not accept your abuse of our basic human right.