Here I explore the first two of five reasons a person involved in a high control group (aka cult) does not comprehend who the leader/group really is — and what is happening to them — as they are pulled in.
But first, let’s set the scene.

A Conflicted Experience

“A cultic experience is almost always a conflicted experience.” So says Janja Lalich, sociologist, cult survivor, and my favorite general writer on high control groups (in Take Back Your Life). She writes this in reference to all the reasons it is hard for someone to leave a group in which they have become deeply involved — even when they have negative experiences.
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The benefits of involvement with one’s group are crystal clear. One is constantly sold on those benefits, and experiences them (the real ones, anyway) directly.
The difficulties encountered with a high control group, at least in my experience, emerge more slowly — and are much more slippery.

It is tough to recognize and name what is happening, while in the midst of a subtly coercive group. Most people leave controlling groups on their own. They often find it hard to put their finger on what they were involved in and why they needed to leave. (TBYL)

It is only now, nearly twenty years after I left a high control group — prompted by new (to me) and shattering stories emerging about the founder — that I have pieced together a clearer picture.

A keen intellect does not protect one. On the contrary, intelligent, educated people are more likely to be drawn into high control groups. I have two graduate degrees. I once learned that based on test scores, I qualify for Mensa membership. I have the cognitive functions (INFJ) that give me all the advantages a person can have in understanding people in all their complexity (and am a 5w4 to boot). Yet, after four years of increasing involvement, when I decided to move cross-country to work for my group, I had little understanding of what I had gotten myself into.
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Perhaps the above helped me, eventually, to pull on the thread and find my way to the truth, more easily than I otherwise would have. But it didn’t keep me from being taken in in the first place. And the same goes for so many bright, caring, idealistic people who were drawn to the same community as I was, and to other groups with soaring ideals and a glow of deep meaning.

​Why is it so hard to see what’s really going on? Why is the most important information the last to be discovered? Why does the gestalt reality of the group not “pop” early on — if it ever does? Let’s get into those dynamics.

Unseen Levers of Influence

The process of recruitment and indoctrination into a high control group typically draws upon some or all of the techniques of persuasion to which humans are almost inevitably vulnerable. I draw here from Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (new and expanded, 2021).

Consider the fixed-action patterns used by animals. A mother turkey will nurture and protect an animal that goes “cheep cheep” just like a turkey chick, for example — even if it’s not a turkey chick. Like when a researcher substitutes, for an actual chick, a stuffed polecat emitting a turkey-like cheep cheep noise. The turkey’s mothering program, and similar automatic behaviors exhibited by a variety of animals, serve their survival most of the time.
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People display such shortcut behaviors too. In the hundreds of judgments and decisions we make each day, we can often save time and energy by following unconscious rules of thumb. If certain “trigger features” are present, we move into automatic mode.

​Humans can acquire fixed action patterns through social learning, as well as instinct. In fact, life today makes it likely we will use these shortcuts more often. There is so much stimulation, so many decisions, so much information overload, that we would suffer analysis paralysis otherwise.

“The form and pace of modern life is not allowing us to make fully thoughtful decisions, even on many personally relevant topics,” writes Cialdini. Thus “we depend increasingly on our shortcuts to handle them all.”

Cialdini drew from experimental research, and supplemented that with his own direct experience as a participant observer among what he calls “compliance professionals”: people who sell things, raise money, market products or services, recruit people, or otherwise influence people’s behavior in a particular direction.
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Cialdini describes seven of the shortcuts that are common in human social life. When a persuader is in relationship-building mode, the favored strategies include reciprocation, liking, and unity. When the persuader needs to reduce uncertainty in a prospect, social proof and authority are highly effective. And when it comes to motivating their prospect to action, a compliance professional most often leans on the principles of consistency and scarcity.

​Hayley Lewis’ sketchnote, above, nicely summarizes Cialdini’s original six levers of influence. The more recently added one is unity. It refers to the experience of shared identity with others, which ties in with feelings of mutual belonging, regard for one another’s welfare, and increased likelihood of shared endeavors.

If we do not understand how such automatic behavior patterns work, we will be more vulnerable to those who do.

Cialdini draws upon the martial art of jujitsu to illustrate how this works. A practitioner of jujitsu can make the most of gravity, inertia, leverage and momentum to conserve her own energy. These invisible forces can enable the martial artist to defeat even a physically stronger rival. Likewise, a compliance professional — or a savvy con artist — can quietly, systematically use the ordinary levers of influence that people usually respond to unthinkingly.

As Cialdini observes, this gives the persuader “the ability to manipulate without the appearance of manipulation. Even the victims themselves tend to see their compliance as a result of the action of natural forces” — and their own free choice — “rather than the designs of the person who profits from the compliance.”

These principles help me understand why my experience in a high control group felt similar to other experiences with groups of people — largely positive experiences — and why I did not recognize that such social principles were being used in cumulatively coercive ways.

Cialdini regards high control groups as a long-term influence situation. When the levers of influence are used over time in a cultic setting, the social pressures exerted are extreme.

It helps me to be reminded that it is human nature to be vulnerable to such pressures. Cialdini told cult survivors and experts (as quoted in Lalich, Take Back Your Life): “We can be fooled, but we are not fools. We can be duped, but we are not dupes.”

Dissonance Dissolved

Another category of proscribed awareness relates to what we may initially see, but sooner or later suppress or settle.

Lalich observes that a “high level of cognitive dissonance … may be present in a cult.” For someone who sticks around long-term, this is most often resolved through “a dramatic change of identity.” (Take Back Your Time)

Like the dissonance in music — where two or more adjacent notes rub against each other — dissonance within a person occurs when the ideas they hold in their mind do not hang together harmoniously. Or, the ideas may be at odds with the person’s emotions or actions.
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It is natural to want to fix that discord. Consider how satisfying it is to the ear and emotions when a musical suspension or dissonant chord resolves into major harmony. Ah, that’s better. Cognitive dissonance similarly nags at a person until it ceases.
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​I remember that nagging experience, viscerally. When I wrote about my journey seven years after I left the ashram vicinity, I put it this way:

“All along with [the spiritual disciplines], with retreats, I found I had an inner tussle between what ‘they’ taught and hearing my own inner voice. I felt a reaction to certain teachings and authority role and always had to go back home and let things settle out to feel what was right for me and trust that.”

I can recall some of the things that bothered me in my early years of affiliation, when I was just a retreat-goer. Some examples follow.

One concern was about the teaching that all people need to reduce their own egos and focus on meeting others’ needs; this seemed like a problematic over-generalization to me, especially given my past training and work at a domestic violence shelter and rape crisis center. Doesn’t this vary from person to person, I asked? Women, for example, are socialized to accommodate others and often need to learn to value their own needs and to set healthy boundaries.

I was told this teaching did not mean we should all be doormats. Stories of tender firmness, when called for, were shared to underscore the point. In time I stopped pressing on this, accepting that the group’s message was a corrective for the average me-centered American; I could interpret it appropriately for myself, or so I supposed.

I was intrigued by many Hindu concepts, and found value in some. But I felt I had been misled as, over time, it became clear that the teacher and his program were not just inter-spiritual or syncretic, honoring wisdom from many sources. Rather, at root, the teachings remained firmly grounded in the founder’s native Hindu perspective.
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While saints and scriptures from the West were liberally quoted too, the underlying worldview was Eastern. Reincarnation was assumed in the teacher’s talks and writings, for example. The issue came up only occasionally, abstractly. So I decided I could just remain agnostic about that question, and set it aside. In other words, this dissonance felt modest enough to tolerate.

​What was more emphasized in the teachings was the idea that the goal of life is Self-Realization or Illumination. Which means, dissolving the small-s self to merge with the large-S Self. I never bought into full-blown God-Realization as MY goal. It wasn’t what motivated me to start meditating, nor did I see it as my personal purpose in life, which was more about making a difference. (And anyway, wouldn’t focusing on MY illumination be self-focused? Which we weren’t supposed to be?)

But I did come to absorb, to some extent, the group’s beliefs about what illumination means — that this is an attainable state for any human determined enough to pursue it wholeheartedly (likely with some grace); that an illumined person has overcome the foibles and temptations that snag most of us mere mortals, and so is a model for others; that an illumined person will be a gift to the world, benefiting those around them and perhaps our human collective in some way. If other people felt drawn to that goal, I felt, fine for them. Different strokes and all that.

I also struggled intermittently with how the inner circle of the community related to the teacher. As my relationship with the group grew, the supposed benefits of us newbies doing likewise were subtly communicated. Experimentation was encouraged so that one might “discover for oneself” if those benefits accrued.

Whether or not one consciously adopted the founder as teacher in a personal way, like a traditional sadhak, the desired behaviors and attitudes were built into regular practices: reading the teacher’s writings before bed, watching his video talks in our local meditation group weekly, getting plenty of video darshan at retreats, and so on. If you continued to participate, you would do those things.

A few years after I came and went from working at the ashram, I tried to explain how continuous immersion in the group milieu shifted things for me. I wrote:

“[I] had experienced an inner dynamic of testing the boundary between others’ teaching and what I take as true for myself. Before I got close, this was fine; I could have my inner rebellions during a retreat, and scribble in my journal, challenge a point or raise a question and hear the facilitators’ response; and then go home to my safe space and listen for what my heart, mind and experience told me about whatever. The lessons were more explicit then — they were verbalized and discussed, were designed as curricula.

But when I was chronically close, the struggle was more ongoing, and confusing. Much teaching was then not so much consciously spoken and heard through the ear, as transmitted through ways of being and absorbed through culture. Not quite visible, but powerfully felt.”

​Either consciously or quietly, cognitive dissonance has a way of resolving. People “tend to reduce the uncomfortable feeling caused by the dissonance by bringing their attitude in line with their behavior rather than changing the behavior” (Bounded Choice by Janja Lalich).

And so, though I don’t remember choosing the teacher as My Guru, whom I trusted as a personal guide, as I continued the disciplines taught by the group — and absorbed their attitudes — gradually I did come to feel more grateful and reverential toward him. (There were artful ways of slipping that in, too. Including the surprise ritual I described here.)

By adopting the group’s program — practicing the behaviors that were taught and modeled — my thoughts and feelings gradually shifted to match those actions. That resolved the most significant of the internal inconsistencies. Even if I hadn’t intended that outcome. And even if I didn’t notice the changes in myself.

In the next installment, I unpack a few more factors that keep the workings of a culty group opaque: Surprises, Blinders and Lies.


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Reading Between the Power Moves … What I Wanted … What I Found

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

Beginning, middle, and now end; I have shared what motivated me as I got involved with a meditation group as a young adult, as well as what I actually encountered when I moved cross-country to work at the ashram. What did I lose?

I did not immediately recognize all the problematic ways my affiliation with the group — and coming close to the center of things — had affected me. I see more now, almost twenty years later. I’ll start here with some of the more obvious things and work my way to the more intangible, core losses.

Money

It would be an interesting exercise to total up everything I spent to participate with the group. I’m not gonna, but it would be interesting. The tally would include books, retreats, donations, my self-funded move from Indiana to California (and my job-funded move back — other people’s money), as well as the savings I spent down while I was working there for poverty pay. I could make an educated guess at the income I forfeited by not sticking with a job at my previous level of compensation. Harder to account for is what I didn’t save for retirement during that period — because there was no margin for that — and the compounded value of that money over years, had it been invested.

Time and Prana (life energy)

This would add up dramatically too. Half hour of meditation per day at the beginning, doubled a couple years in as I added an evening session. Weekly meditation group meetings. Time planning for, traveling to and from, and attending retreats. Time spent volunteering for the organization in several capacities. About a year of my early professional life working for them. And since my departure, years of processing, trying to make sense of my experiences, sorting through what to keep and what to jettison.

Career Momentum

I was one of the luckier ones in this regard. Not only was my tenure working for the organization relatively short, but the position I held there was a continuation of my previous professional life. When I returned home to the Midwest, I then went back to a similar job as I’d been in before.

So I include this category not so much for myself, as for others who spent longer, and left their previous careers to work for the organization. For someone in the latter situation who later left the group, it meant a gap to explain and/or a bigger process of reinventing oneself.

Relationships

Again, I may have been luckier in this regard than some others who moved in close. I didn’t get sucked in far enough to isolate myself from family and old friends; and I returned to live closer to those people after a relatively short time. I did miss significant events in friends’ lives while I was off in another part of the country — I didn’t have the resources or time off as a newbie to fly back for a friend’s wedding, for example.

Probably the biggest impact for me around relationships, during my period of peak involvement, has to do with the sweetheart I was with before I started meditating. I broke up with him after three years of involvement with the group. This would likely have happened eventually anyway — but probably later. Because my assessment of that relationship and whether it was good for me was definitely influenced by the worldview of the group.
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As I was in my final week around the ashram, I shared with a friend from the group who was coming closer: “This year has been much harder than my break-up year with [old boyfriend], which was the hardest year of my life to date. But this definitely tops that. I am so relieved to be done with it.” Both of the hardest periods I had gone through in my life by that time — in close succession — were influenced by the group.
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​Idealism

The group had leveraged my idealism, first, to involve me as a participant in their programs (spending all that time and money — and enthusiastically introducing others to the practices too). Then, they leaned on my commitment, my idealism, my trust in who they presented themselves to be, to draw me out to work for them. “You can help us transform the world!” “Okay, let’s do it!”
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The environment I entered is one that at this point I consider to be unhealthy at best, exploitative at worst. And in the end, I didn’t have much to show for that year of heartfelt, banging-my-head-against-the-wall effort. I didn’t do a 180 and become a full-on cynic. But this experience definitely took the bright-eyed edge off my idealism.

Self-Acceptance

Embedded in the soaring worldview of the group was an aspiration to spiritual perfection — and the belief that it is possible for a human being to perfect themselves through their spiritual disciplines. A couple of years after I left the community in California, I wrote to the then-spiritual leader of the organization, trying to give voice to what I had experienced.

A key theme was the insidious erosion of my well-being, including my sense of self-worth. I quote myself (2008):

“Idealism and perfectionism are a tricky mix … At some point in my CA year, the balance of my thinking shifted toward deficiency rather than the divine within — I kept seeing half-empty, seeing my inadequacies, like how prone to attachment and impatience I still was. Throw in a pinch of self-judgment for carbonation, stir them together over the heat of major life changes, [ashram] subculture … wacky energy stuff, and the death of the one dear friend I had brought with me to CA (my canary), and you have… a near-implosion … as my sense of sovereignty over my [spiritual path] and life began to evaporate — transformed from liquid to gas, molecules careening in that inner cauldron, so like the trapped energy pounding inside my neck and skull.”

Before I moved out near the ashram and started working for the organization, I was able to focus on the positive aspects of the group’s worldview, which spoke to my hopeful heart, in a way that was affirming and empowering in my life. But once I was deeper in, the streak of impossible perfectionism that runs through the teachings and program took over. And it was not good for me.

​Clarity & Groundedness

Here’s what I wrote about confusion in my 2008 letter:

“It was really a grand paradox I faced — a difficulty reconciling all the positives I had experience before and sometimes still did … with some of the junk I encountered, and my energy stuff and wasting away-ness. The term ‘cognitive dissonance’ comes to mind, but I hesitate to use that term, because it does not convey the holism of the experience of contradictory inputs, how it impacted my body, heart, mind, spirit. It was quite confusing, during and after my time there. I ended up unsure of what was real around me — [at the ashram], in myself, in life. Things were not what they seemed, yet I could not fully grasp the dynamics in which I was caught up.”

Beyond the immediate, visceral confusion I felt, my experience with the group also left me with lingering metaphysical disorientation. Which ideas were mine, and which were planted and unconsciously absorbed (even if I thought I’d declined them)? I’m more focused on “practical theology” — how I live day to day — than sussing out formal beliefs. And my foundations haven’t shifted; Love has always been both ends and means for me.
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But sometimes words still come out — whether in casual conversation, in my journal, or in a more formal situation — and I wonder if those phrases, those concepts are really mine deep down, or if they belong more to the meditation teacher and his minions than to me. Deconstruction is a long process that I’m still in.

​Trust

After this dark night of the soul period, when it felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, and the community I thought I knew turned out to be something else again — something I couldn’t quite put my finger on — my sense of trust was frayed. In my 2008 letter I wrote:

“It seemed that my ‘surrender’ to this [spiritual] path, to meditation, to the ways of [the ashram/organization], had led me to chaos. There was in me a creeping distrust of surrender — the surrender to this path that I had chosen and to the spiritual forces at work in my life — and a burgeoning fear that I would not be able to get my [spiritual life] back. What could I trust? What was safe for me now? What was true for me?”

Perhaps most of all, I had lost faith in my own powers of discernment — my ability to accurately read others’ character and trustworthiness. My decision to move out to work for the group was not proving to be a good one; what did that say for my judgment?

This lack of self-trust affected future relationships. When I was back home, on a path of healing, I began earnestly searching for a life partner. Using and trusting my judgment was essential to that process. I took more time than I might have previously; I doubted my head and my gut.
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This impaired trust in my own judgment came perilously close to costing me my relationship with the man who became my husband and co-parent. By the time we met, neither of us was young. And he did not want to waste time with someone who was unable to commit. It all worked out in the end — but it could have gone otherwise.

​Sense of Safety

I’ve alluded to the unexpected, sometimes unsettling “side effects” of meditation that I experienced, starting after I had decided to move out to the group’s location, and intensifying while I was there. (I give this subject more attention elsewhere, because too many people know nothing of the risks before starting a meditation practice; I certainly didn’t.)

In my previous post about that year, I described the overriding experience I had of feeling STUCK and TRAPPED while I was there. In my 2008 letter I observed:

“In the past couple of years [since leaving CA], I have noticed that in describing my inner life to friends, I use the word ‘safe’ a lot. I am usually referring to emotional safety: freedom from judgment and pressure. Not having others around that constantly need things from me, including needing me to conform to their ideas of how things are or should be. The ability to breathe naturally and be myself, be real. Just what I was lacking there!”

Drawing on the new vocabulary I’ve gained from studying up on high control groups, I might now say that I was still shaking off the invisible manacles of coercive persuasion that I had been experiencing ever since I got involved with the group — and especially during the year I worked there.

Health

I also now suspect that the way my nervous system responded to that controlling, unsafe, ever-closing-in environment has had long-term effects on my health. I’ve described elsewhere the depression I fell into halfway through my year there.

Psychotherapist Shelly Rosen* describes a state of “frozen high energy” that can occur when someone realizes that a person or group they thought they could trust is not actually safe for them. The person may dissociate, with fear or pain lodging in the body while the mind/emotions show up as “blankness, a felt absence or forgetting.” On the spectrum of control, my particular experience with my particular group was somewhere in the middle — not the most extreme situation — but Rosen’s description resonates with me. Yes, I and my sensitive nervous system have visceral memories from my ashram year. Still.

​Rosen further lifts up findings from the research literature that interpersonal trauma is “likely to be more traumatizing than many physical events.” The worst part of an interpersonal ordeal is feeling alone and betrayed by people you had trusted.

“In cultic groups,” Rosen continues, “social pressure is constant… Traumatic stress … over-whelms and gets stuck as a result of social and emotional captivity.” Erratic behavior on the part of the cult leader(s) or group — sometimes loving, sometimes critical (in the case of my group, painfully passive-aggressive) — can lead to traumatic attachment.

According to Rosen, “manipulation, coupled with one’s being trapped or immobilized by internalized fears and traumatic attachments, are factors that can lead to the most serious trauma reactions in an individual.” She cites the common occurrence of PTSD in cult survivors — one U.S. study found PTSD rates of 61% for men, 43% for women. That’s significantly higher than for military personnel, post-deployment, cited as 10% to 25%.

I do not suspect that I experienced PTSD. I do wonder about some of the members of my cohort who were in deeper and longer than I was (and who were basically ejected, to boot, so there’s an extra dose of relational trauma — rejection).
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For myself, I see a different impact of the “frozen energy” I experienced once I was immersed more deeply in my group. Cult dynamics, Rosen explains, result “in potentially repeated betrayal traumas for group members, which trigger potent destabilizing nervous-system arousal and harm the psyches and souls of those members.”

​I suspect how this played out for me was in setting off the beginnings of a chronic illness rooted in the nervous system’s response to the perceived lack of safety. It is an invisible burden I live with, that has dramatically affected the quality of my life for a long time now.

A couple years ago, I finally got a diagnosis (which I do not share here), and I have it better managed than it once was. But this condition may be with me for the rest of my life. Though I’ll never know for sure, I think it’s very likely that the onset of this malady traces to my experience of being misled and confusingly cornered by that meditation group.
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I’m done pouring out gratitude for the good things I gained from my spiritual practice and my time involved with that group. A fuller accounting of my experience with the group — the good, the bad, and the ugly — comes out in the red. That’s my truth.

​You can subscribe here if you’d like to receive future posts in your inbox (free). A post is percolating on the role of deception in my group experience.

If you liked this post, here are some other articles you may enjoy 👇
Power & Control in Collectives .… How I Was Primed .… Who Joins Cults

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

Source Cited
*Rosen, Shelly. “Cults: A Natural Disaster — Looking at Cult Involvement through a Trauma Lens” in Cult Recovery: A Clinician’s Guide to Working with Former Members and Families, © 2017 by the International Cultic Studies Association

In my last post, I described why I started meditating, and continued to get more involved in the meditation teacher’s group — until, within five years, I moved cross-country to work for them.

I was looking to contribute meaningfully to their work, and have a new adventure, presumably while continuing to benefit from my own spiritual practice. What did I actually find?

Welcome to the Left Coast

For several months after I first moved out to work for the group, I was just taking in new experiences. Every new job has a learning curve, so I didn’t expect to find things easy immediately. Getting to know my co-workers was interesting. The setting was lovely and different. I was also exploring the nearby community where I lived, on long walks, and settling into an apartment with a roommate. (She moved out around the same time to work for the group.)

​I came in with positive expectations, of course. All my visits to this place had conditioned me to associate it with deep peace, warm community, and learning opportunities. The whiff of eucalyptus trees, the sight of the “golden” hills, the foggy mornings, the beach on the bay — all these triggers and more told me I was in one of my happy places.

In my first months in the office, I remember having a surreal feeling. I was kind of high on the idealism, through the evocative imagery and poetic speech that I was now exposed to even more as I acclimated to my new setting — particularly via the uplifting words of the founder. This high-minded language now was not only part of my nighttime spiritual reading or occasional verbal teachings, but also permeated my workday.

At the Center

Gradually I acquired a different set of lived experiences in that place. I’d been having a variety of weird, sometimes painful side effects of meditation. It started not long after I decided to make the move, and escalated while I was in the energy vortex of the ashram.

I write elsewhere about the dark side of meditation, which I had had no warning about; the important thing to share here is that it interrupted my meditation and got in the way of going deep. So I had lost the thing that I had considered my anchor before I decided to make the move from Indiana to California.

(I still sat down to meditate faithfully each morning. I longed for what I used to get from it, and presumed that this was just a phase. Anyway, I knew that the most basic form of loyalty in that community was doing the practice faithfully; I would be an imposter there if I wasn’t meditating. But it was at best ineffective and at worst, a source of serious pain.)

I also felt like I couldn’t talk publicly about the sometimes difficult or strange experiences that my devoted meditation practice had set off — woo woo stuff was frowned on in that community. And we’d been discouraged from discussing our personal practice with others, lest people lapse into unhelpful comparison. I was cut off from something precious — pining and grieving for it — yet isolated from others by the obligatory silence.

​When I was on my way out a year later, a friend asked me to share how I had experienced the community up close. I wrote:

“The most concise way I could describe my experience is that I have felt STUCK. In [spiritual practice], diminished ability to hear and trust my own inner voice; professionally immobilized; financially squeezed; and socially crowded and isolated simultaneously. I can identify these separate aspects but it all runs together in experience to create this psychological feeling of being TRAPPED.”

Frustrations accumulated in the work I had come there to do. I wanted to support the group’s mission in the wider world. I didn’t come there just to be there. I wasn’t looking for tighter community or more support. I wanted to accomplish something that mattered.

Yet it was hard to get things done. My patient efforts at building relationships with colleagues and creating collaborative processes didn’t seem to amount to much. I would run into walls and just couldn’t figure out how to move things forward; or something that had already been decided through a solid team process would suddenly, mysteriously come undone.

In time I came to feel that I was spinning my wheels and wasting my time. I asked for more work and was assigned some hours in another department, lest I wind up just staring at my computer screen. There was a period later in the year when the refrain “wasting away again in Margaritaville” went around and around in my head in my office at the ashram, voicing my sense of listlessness, loneliness, and inevitability. Oh Jimmy, if a salt shaker was all I’d lost, I’d be just fine. But I seemed to be losing much more — my sense of purpose, my sense of agency, my sense of self.
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I began to have a sneaking suspicion that they hadn’t really wanted all these young people to come out to do necessary jobs, so much as they wanted to lure people further in, to living at the ashram — something I had known from the outset I was NOT going to do.

What else? The leadership culture was very top-down and lacked transparency. Some of the long-timers were speeded up and scattered. (Despite sooooo many years of meditation. Oh the irony!) And the community was conflict-avoidant, often favoring indirect communication. This meant that there was a continual undercurrent of annoyance and … hostility? Something. I wasn’t entirely sure.

The atmosphere of suppressed conflict made for a stressful environment for a Highly Sensitive Person like me, who can hardly help but absorb other people’s emotions. They also had trouble delegating, because they didn’t trust newbies like me; tenure was loyalty and loyalty was the ultimate proof of trustworthiness.
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Rock Bottom

The hardest thing that happened, only a few months in, involved a supervisor assuming that in a conversation with a supporter, I had tried to pressure that person. (In reality, I had been trying to do just the opposite — to ease the sense of pressure she was clearly feeling.) He made a quick recovery when he realized there was another explanation. But the damage was done.

I realized that these people really did not know me at all, if he could so quickly jump to that conclusion. I saw that they were not capable of the kind of basic trust that I had taken for granted in every other job I’d ever had. No matter how many mantrams I repeated to dissolve my hurt, it would not change this basic reality.

I was also forbidden to speak with the supporter. The misunderstanding was left dangling, and others who had been in the loop continued on with a false — and negative — impression of who I was.

In an earlier 3-part series comparing controlling groups with abusive partners, I described other factors contributing to the stuck-ness and trapped-ness I felt. They included: the cessation of love-bombing, mind-altering practices, isolation, paternalism, conditional care, gaslighting, dissociation, undermining self-worth, blurred boundaries, hijacked sexuality, paternalistic attitudes, and the self-centering of the group leader(s) as the ultimate arbiters of truth.

​Why had I come to this inscrutable ashram? What was I accomplishing? Very little, it seemed to me. Nor could I envision any change of functioning on my part making a dent in the unhealthy culture of the place. I’d have to stay put for a good decade before they’d trust me with anything of consequence. Meanwhile, I was just hanging out, out there in the sticks, with only dairy cows for neighbors.

It was after coming home to Iowa to visit my parents over Christmas, then returning to California, that it sank in that all was not well for me there. I became depressed — probably clinically so. I was functional when I needed to be “on” with others, but was sad, numb, dulled inside. I was shutting down.

The low point was when my canary — the dear friend I had brought with me, a sweet sweet creature — died. A vet told me it was caused by a nutritional deficiency. But I felt (I still feel) that it was more; my little songbird absorbed my malaise from that place, and bore that burden in his tiny feathered form. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as alone as I did the day I buried him beneath a pine on the ashram grounds.

A Way Out

What a relief it was when I got a job that took me out of there. The process took months, and at first I wasn’t sure what I wanted. But as I explored one possibility, I started to get some energy back — to get some life back, to get a sense of self and agency back. I started with one option and came to consider many. One way or another, I would make an exit plan.

​Over the months it took to go through the job search process, I said not a word to anyone at the ashram. Not until the way was secure. I wasn’t sure how they would relate to me once they knew I was leaving.

As it turned out, I got a position in the same organization I had left when I came to California. Back I went to my previous stomping grounds, normal work environment, and all the social supports I would need to have in place as I metabolized that bizarre and difficult year.

I didn’t fully understand then what I had experienced, or how it had affected me — I just knew I needed out.

I’ll share what I’ve eventually come to realize about What I Lost, in my next post. You can subscribe to get every new post sent directly to your inbox. Thanks for reading!

If you liked this post, here are some other articles you may enjoy 👇
Reading the Power Moves …… Who Joins Cults …… A Spiral Season

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

It all began so innocently. At an open moment in my life, while seeking purpose on an overseas adventure, a bright new travel companion connected with me, heard my yearnings — and answered them by introducing me to a meditation practice that seemed to meet me where I was.
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I was already primed and positively predisposed toward meditation generally. That night as I sat down to meditate for the first time, I took the first step in a long journey that would lead me deeper and deeper into the cult-iverse.

​Now, over twenty-five years later, I find myself sifting memories. After hearing startling new information recently about the founder — and studying up on high control groups — I am looking at my experience with fresh eyes. Why did I come closer, step by step, to the community that teaches this form of meditation? Why didn’t I see then what I see now?

What I Wanted

It’s hard to remember now, at 50, what I wanted when I started meditating at 26. I was spiritually curious, hungry for depth. I was a restless idealist looking for my calling in life. I had the normal uncertainties and emotional ups and downs of many young adults. The spiritual program I was exploring promised to help me with all of those things.

“Most cults appeal to the normal desires of ordinary people, but cult recruitment tends to increase those desires through a kind of courtship ritual,” writes sociologist and cult survivor Janja Lalich (Take Back Your Life). “The prospective devotee is wooed with the promise of reward, be it personal fulfillment, special knowledge, spiritual growth … — whatever may be most dear to that person at that time. This connection to a person’s innermost desire is the recruitment hook.”

About two years after I took up meditation, I was asked to describe the benefits of my spiritual practice in a letter of support for a grant application. Here’s what I lifted up to the Ford Foundation as the good that they could help foster through their investment:

• Patience for giving my best selfless service to the world
• Detachment from the immediate, visible outcomes of my efforts (a protection against burnout)
• Deepened solidarity with all people and all creatures
• A way to transform anger at injustice into compassionate commitment for action
• Smoothing my cycles of restless energy and inertia, helping me be more steady and emotionally resilient
• Maintaining my high ideals, belief in human potential, and faith in our ability to overcome the tremendous challenges facing humanity
• The wisdom to use my time, energy and skills effectively
• Doing constructive work through my current job, while thinking more broadly about my life purpose and discerning how I might fulfill it
• Integrating universal spiritual values into our social institutions and daily lives
• Building individual capacity for transformation of self and world

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​By the time I made that summary, I had read a bunch of books, gone to a couple of regional retreats and a weeklong retreat at the ashram, was part of a local group that met weekly to share the practice, and was firmly established in my own schedule of daily morning meditation.

So, the above list is not necessarily a snapshot of what drew me in at the very beginning — I was already quite influenced by the worldview of the group when I wrote it. But these are things that I did value at that time. And I whole-heartedly believed that my association with the group, the spiritual practices they promoted, their retreats and so on, were helping me benefit in just those ways.

Getting Established

By the following year, I had added in a second daily meditation period, in the evening. I continued reading books by the meditation teacher, participating in my local weekly group, and attending retreats.

I was certainly experiencing some of the promised benefits of the program. Sometimes I went very still in meditation and found it deeply restorative. Poetic writings I had memorized became saturated with transcendent meaning for me. During daily life, I could more clearly see what was happening in my mind and heart, and make choices with greater freedom.
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I learned useful concepts from teachings that were meaningful to me; this seemed supportive of my personal development. I felt less alone as an earnest idealist in me-first, capitalist America — my good heart and aspirations to make a difference were validated. And I had a new circle of friends and companions, both locally and through retreats.

​The founder and group leaders encouraged other aspirations, too, which I did not necessarily share. Why would I need to become illumined (if that’s even possible)? I’m just a regular person, not yearning to “overcome death” or get off the wheel of karma. I’m agnostic about reincarnation, a linear-thinking Westerner, content to focus on this life. So I simply stayed oriented to the things that were meaningful to me.

Ramping Up

Then the opportunity arose to take part in an intensive half-year program that involved monthly retreats at headquarters, as well as ongoing virtual engagement and group connection.

“Prospective devotees are carefully paced through the conversion process,” Lalich explains. As people move deeper in, mind-altering techniques escalate. Practices such as intensified meditation, chanting, increased darshan (listening to / watching the teacher, whether live or via recordings) and other trance-inducing activities can make participants more open to group influence. “At the same time, indoctrination into the ‘sacred science’ of the group continues” with extended workshops, homework assignments, group activities and the like. (Take Your Life Back)

As I look back now, I see the special program I participated in as just such an intensification. Aimed at young adults at the time, the by-application program tightened bonds within the group while simultaneously ramping up the indoctrination program. In high control groups, such a process typically includes a formal expression of allegiance to the program or teacher, as old ways of thinking and being give way to new conditioning. I did experience something like that (described in the last lesson here) — though I did not recognize it then for what it was.

Going for It

Soon after that program concluded, eager young adults started moving to live and/or work at the organization’s headquarters. Program leaders had floated that possibility during the affiliate program, and encouraged careful discernment by participants.
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I’d already been volunteering for a couple years, where my professional background was relevant to the organization. I came to understand that a job was waiting for me if I felt it was my path to go there. Such a suggestion certainly makes one feel appreciated and valued. But I was content with my life where I was.

​Within six months, however, I’d become frustrated in my job. I felt I was at a dead-end in my career in the local area. I was restless to do something that felt like I was really making a difference. I had benefited from the meditation practice; why not support the group that helped others discover and access its powers? That path had already been laid out for me, so it was natural to consider it.

I was a bit bored too. The college town that had felt so expansive after my small-town upbringing had started to feel limiting after a decade of living there. I began California dreamin’: imagining what it might be like to experience a different landscape, to part ways with the Chamber of Commerce crowd that I had spent so much of my time with professionally, and to live in not just a blue dot — but a blue state.

What sealed the deal was making a piece of art I called my discernment collage. Phrases that any group member would recognize peppered the nature-heavy imagery. And this quote, clipped from an old Utne Reader (in pink below), summed up the moment I was in:

“And the time came when the risk it took to remain in a tightly closed bud became infinitely more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~ Anaïs Nin

Though the idea would have struck me as preposterous when I first started meditating, it almost seems inevitable to me now that I ended up moving out to California to work for the group. I was ready for a new adventure, and they had opened a way.

Next up in my tales from the cultiverse: What I Found, and What I Lost.

You can subscribe to get every new post sent directly to your inbox. Thanks for reading!

If you liked this post, here are some other articles you may enjoy 👇
A Spiral Season …… Who Joins Cults …… Power & Control in Collectives

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.