Are you involved in a cult and do not know it?

Most individuals are highly averse to finding themselves completely alone, because society views aloneness as a proof of total social inadequacy.  This type of aversion solidifies the necessity to fit-in at all costs.  It is like an obligation.  As a result, many men and women incessantly do whatever it takes to belong.  They have to become a part of something.  They allocate a significant volume of their time and energy searching for those places where they are given the possibility to share common grounds with others.  So they join organizations of all sorts, clubs, gyms, political parties, social circles, churches and even cults.

All cults have one attribute in common.  The leader, or guru, perpetually creates an environment of co-dependence among his followers.  He also covertly promotes the fact that all members must run by him every single aspect of their lives, if they really want to reach a state of enlightenment and, ultimately, be able to make the right decisions.  This has two major consequences that are utterly dreadful.  First, all followers need to separate themselves from anyone who is not a part of the group, since no valid answer can be found outside of the group itself.  Second, all followers need to separate themselves from everything they intrinsically are, so they can allow the guru to control all decisions that pertain to their lives.  That is how healthy and joyful interactions with parents, relatives or friends are destroyed.  Why followers of a cult aren’t able to see what is going on?  Unfortunately, they elect to imprison themselves inside a highly rigid point of view that makes them fascistically righteous and, consequently, in denial of the guru’s true intentions.  Because of this sense of righteousness, there are many people who are involved in cults, and who do not know that they are.

Wait a second!  That really resembles what I experienced during my corporate years!

::: Are most organizations cultish?

Corporate culture is a negation of any employee’s specificities and personalities.  It is an essential piece of programming that needs to be deeply entrenched inside the minds of the workers to create control and homogeneity.  Anyone who does not blindly embrace his or her employer’s corporate culture automatically becomes an outcast.  In other words, you are either in or you are out.  And if you have decided that your capacity to function properly depends on having a job, you’d better be in!  But what does it mean exactly to be in?  Until eight years ago, I was working for one of the top internet companies in the world and, from the very get-go, I was quite disturbed by the cult of personality that was constantly cultivated around the CEO.  To put him on a pedestal at all times was the most suggestive aspect of the company’s culture.  But this fabricated mystique was not solely limited to the promotion of a supposedly distinctive persona.  Employees were actually conditioned to consider him as an intrinsic part of their family, more so like a father figure, who only had their absolute best interest in mind.  Professional emancipation was only possible through his guidance and his delegation.  And the consequences on people’s personal lives were horrendous.  How many times have you given your job the priority over your loved ones?  To justify why you could not attend your kids’ soccer game on Saturday, did you invoke the importance of your professional responsibilities, the irrevocable trust that the organization had placed on you, or simply the fear to lose your job if you failed to deliver?  In other words, did you force yourself to become self-righteous to fascistically impose series of justifications on your own self and others, so you would blindly fulfill what was expected of you?  Did you divorce your entire self so you would step inside a minuscule box and conform to your supervisor’s expectations?  When you are involved in a cult, you cannot exist, since you must systematically remain under the control of your leader.  The dynamics in place inside most corporations are very similar.  And the carrot is the paycheck.

To join a group, whichever it is, gives you no other choice but to agree and comply.  After all, the finality of joining a group is the ambition to find common grounds and share similar judgments.  Besides the utter need to feel surrounded by others, people join groups because they want to feel understood and supported at all times.  But does it come with a price tag?  Well, you must format the way you think, so you can adopt the single thought that your peers have already established, and without which no common ground is possible.  From time to time, you may have a few glimpses of clarity.  However if you have already decided that the group is an essential part of your life, you have no other choice but to numb yourself, so you can dismiss the fact that you must endure the dreadfulness of the group’s dynamics.  To irrevocably embrace a group dynamic is a negation of your ability to be aware.  By discarding the reality, you avoid being exposed to the mediocrity that characterizes all relations with your peers.  Your life is then all about complying, conforming, formatting of self, enduring and losing all senses of self.

To be a part of an organization limits your right to express your viewpoints freely.  To be accepted, you must constantly contain yourself and remain within the limits of what others have decided is tolerable.  You must relate and be palatable, and it is achieved by walking on eggshells at all times.  You cannot upset anyone or the system in place.  To maintain the status quo, it is your duty to cease to exist.  Because of your ego, you may pretend that you still exist and have a say, but in reality you are malleable, controllable and docile.  You have to obey the leader, whether he or she is organic or imposed.  And if you think that what I have just described only applies to organizations, may I invite you to obverse how most relationships function?

::: “Since you’re not in anymore, you’re out.” 

There is a great misconception about cults.  Cults do not necessarily equate to compounds, David Koresh-like gurus and sexual orgies.  However, there are many organizations out there that function like cults and consequently create great damages in the lives of their members.  In times of economic and societal turmoil, the level of desperation skyrockets and, as a result, individuals become attracted to places that promote inner harmony, consciousness, awareness, recovery and healing, as well as the assurance to finally be successful in all areas of life… given that they strictly follow what the leader -let’s call it guru- preaches.  What initially sounds like the promotion of self-empowerment is often times a covert instrument to completely alienate people.  How many times have you joined a group, thought at first that it was bringing you the answers that you were requiring at the time for your life, before realizing that it was definitely not for you, and ended up absolutely resisting the idea of leaving it?  Do you remember what motivated such resistance?  Did you project yourself outside of the group and realized that you would be unable to face the real world again?  Or maybe were you too fearful to end-up alone and chastised for having left?

Very valuable information can be obtained from many places, and that also includes churches and cults, but the trick is to remain fully aware of what is going on at all times.  And the latter is a major challenge, especially for someone who has already been sucked into the structure and the ideology of the organization.  Cults tend to attract the lost souls of this world, the insecure ones, those who desperately want to fit-in but cannot find their spot inside a conventional social circle.  They are the preys of choice, and they are very easy to brainwash.  The recipe is fairly simple: reassure people by telling them everything that they need to hear about something that they absolutely resent about themselves.  They will always come back to you because, in their minds, they think that you are the only one who can really see them.  For example, tell a very unattractive man that he can have any woman that he wants because his spiritual energy is through the roof.  Even though it is a blunt lie that is systematically verified outside of the cult, the cult becomes the only place where he can let go of his personal insecurities.  Consequently, he makes the cult the sole answer to his life.

A cult is a place where the leader systematically constructs an environment of co-dependence between himself and his followers as well as among his followers.  This strategy infers that they must separate themselves from the outside world.  A follower unconsciously separates himself from everyone he has known prior to joining the group, because he judges that others are far from being what he thinks he has become since having embraced the philosophy or ideology of the group.  For example:  “I have now reached a high level of spirituality and consciousness.  These people are not a part of my group, therefore I know better and they do not, so I am going to cut all ties with them unless they join.”   This is why healthy and joyful interactions with parents, relatives or friends are annihilated.  To speed-up the separation process, most cults impose their own vocabulary, often times composed of acronyms and barbarisms that the outside world cannot comprehend.  Finally, an environment which is based on co-dependence is also used as a powerful tool, so those who are indoctrinated have no choice but to feel an intense void if they were to leave.  Remember that in our society most people resent the idea of being alone.

–

rself?

At the end of the day, most groups and organizations need to format your brain, so you can become a part of the mold.  And “groups” are not limited to churches, religions and cults.  You can include school systems, governments, political parties, theories and doctrines of all sorts, and corporations.  You have the power to know what works best for your own life, and as a result grasp here and there whatever can contribute to enrich it.  Danger arises when you are lured into some type of fantasy world, in which you start to give all our powers away to others.  So are you ready to be fully aware of your choices, and keep all your powers to you