No one joins a cult on purpose. No one signs up for a bible study thinking that in a year their only friends will be in that community, all of their money will be going to the church, and that not only will the phrase “pandas aren’t real,” make sense to them, they will fully believe that pandas are not real.
People join bible studies, yoga schools, or meditation classes. Indoctrination happens slowly.
A shared language is created – the words destiny and consciousness suddenly have a deep meanings that none of your friends outside of the class can ever understand. The teacher is charismatic and kind. He listens to your problems and hopes. He tells you that you are special. You feel seen and accepted in a way that you’ve never felt before. He doesn’t ask you for your money, yet somehow all of your money is going towards the next experience, the next immersion, the next retreat. Each one, a bigger high.
The books you are reading are opening your mind to a whole new world. You stop watching TV and movies, not wanting to lower your vibration.
Your friends are concerned, but you can see that they are immersed in the evils or low vibration of the outside world. They can’t understand. You are creating a culture that is better than the painful and unbalanced world.
Sure, there are some problems, but you are assured you are only upset because you have not fully realized your potential yet. You are reminded constantly of your weaknesses and your past. When you realize your true higher consciousness, this will feel like the utopia it is. There are people who have left the community, and you know it’s because they can’t handle the depth of this work. You keep praying, meditating, chanting, doing everything you can to dispel the resistance within yourself.
Leaving is no easy task. You joined thinking that you were going to become a yoga teacher, but ended up in a circle jerk with a teacher who has completely rebuilt her face with plastic surgery. After you leave, you learn that her history and credentials are as false as her face. You have no money left, and your closest community, now shun you. The outside world seems strange and foreign. You feel guilty as you drink a beer and watch the latest marvel movie. Conversation with coworkers and old friends feel min-numbingly mundane. Aren’t they concerned with the deeper meaning behind all of their actions? Are you wasting your life, destroying your consciousness? What is true?
Now imagine you are a child raised in this sort of feedback loop. You are rewarded for pleasing the people around you, and any disagreement or anger is a sin. Sins could lead to you losing your family. Love is conditional. You have no self outside of your community.
This is what many Christian children experience (though this is not limited to Christianity).
No matter how much work I do, I don’t know if I will ever believe anyone will love me. Every time I disagree with someone, I fear they will cast me out of their life forever. It is hard for me to speak up when someone crosses a boundary. I feel a deep shame about existing.
The mind knows better, but the body carries these beliefs.
We all have cultural conditioning we need to relearn as we become adults. Religion adds an extra layer of existential struggle, because we haven’t been given a self to grow from. When the only self you know is one that was programmed through fear, isolation, manipulation, and authoritarianism, it is hard to know what is actually true, and who you are. It is hard to break habits of chronic guilt and shame, and even more challenging to feel that you are worthy of anything good in this life.
I am here to tell you that you are worthy. You are absolutely worthy of respect, love, and acceptance. And you are worthy of having boundaries with anyone and everything that does not serve your healthy self. Stop making yourself small. I write this to you, and to myself.
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