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.

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

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The more I learn about high-demand groups, the more contacts and close calls I recognize in my past and that of my loved ones.

There was that copy of Dianetics on the kitchen table in my best friend’s house in junior high.

​My husband’s tale of the Pentecostal church he attended for a while as a teen. (They kicked him out for asking too many questions. Just as well.)

And as a young professional, my brush with a bootcamp-y Large Group Awareness Training program. (How’s it working for you? Really, though?)

None of those connections ultimately hooked me or my beloveds on beyond-benign groups.

But the one that primed me for my eventual slide into a quietly culty community? I encountered it as a college student.

Higher Education?

Two of the psychology professors at the liberal arts college I attended in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, were practitioners of Transcendental Meditation (TM). Transplants from California, they were part of the TM community just down the road in Fairfield.

Faculty member Dr. C was one of my favorite teachers. A kind-hearted guy, he was part absent-minded professor, part land-locked surfer dude. I remember with gratitude the warm encouragement Dr. C gave me to pursue graduate school, and the glowing letter of recommendation he wrote for me. I don’t remember him talking about TM. But somehow I knew he was part of that community.

It was another psych prof from Fairfield who brought ayurveda into the classroom of my Methodist-affiliated school. Am I a vata-kapha? I don’t know. But there’s a tea for that.

Science and Mystery

Anyhow, I ended up reading about the scientific benefits of meditation — a health practice, mind you, not a religion. There was oodles of data to back that up. Charts! References!

Not that I objected to religion necessarily. I mean, I was deconstructing my own Protestant upbringing in Biblical courses with Dr. God. (For my minor in religion and philosophy, I took all six courses the college offered in those subjects.)

I was interested in “world religions,” as Westerners refer to Eastern traditions. I started carrying around a pocket Tao te Ching. My pleasure reading also included the likes of Fritjof Capra, Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith.

​So Transcendental Meditation might have piqued my curiosity even without the science-washing. The fact that it had some link to the seemingly non-dogmatic, metaphysically sophisticated wisdom traditions of Asia might, if anything, have counted in its favor to college-aged me.

Barriers

I might well have taken the plunge then, if not for the walloping fee I learned was a standard charge to get your customized mantra. As a student this was simply outside my means.

Had I seriously considered it, the private 1:1 sessions that were part of learning TM-style meditation might also have been off-putting.

As for those snickering comments I heard about the flying yogis of Fairfield? I had no idea what such commenters were talking about. And I didn’t suppose they really did either. People often make fun of things they don’t understand. Any derision from small-minded small-towners was more likely to increase my curiosity than suppress it.

MomentumI remained vaguely curious about meditation and what it might offer. But this was the 90s; meditation wasn’t widespread like it is now.

Meanwhile, I prepared for graduate school. The one time I visited Maharishi International University in Fairfield, it was to take the Graduate Record Exam. (The GRE is a standardized test required then for grad school applications.) After graduation, my new degree program took me to another Midwestern state.

There, I also found a spiritual home, in a tradition of seekers and freethinkers that welcomes wisdom from many sources. It focuses on the here and now, including social justice. Ah, that’s better.
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Between the more cosmopolitan college town — with its flagship campus of the state university — and the congregation full of spiritual explorers, I was exposed to a rich array of new ideas and experiences: tai chi, Dances of Universal Peace (Sufi), study of the historical Jesus, earth-centered ceremonies, vegetarianism, yoga, local Buddhist communities, and on.

​In my doctoral courses in sociology, with minor in religious studies, I took particular interest in social psychology, social movements, ethnography, theories of religion, utopian communities and alternative religious movements. (Hmm. Foreshadowing?)

Turning Point

​I enjoyed learning. But the more familiar I became with the trajectory of a researcher — zeroing in on a narrow question in a niche sub-field, and studying it for decades… not to mention the contentious, competitive social environment… and the lack of work-life balance the research-1 university profs around me seemed to have — the less I saw myself being fulfilled in academia.
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Perhaps if I hadn’t received a prestigious Research Assistantship, experience would have led me in another direction. The R.A. work meant I only got to teach once — which was enough to know I liked it, but not enough to know if it was my calling. My research mentor was great, and I appreciated the practical value of her research on society… yet I did not enjoy crunching data, or the other tedium of ivory tower life. I did not feel sufficiently useful to the world doing this kind of work.

Course Correction

My conclusion: it didn’t make sense to invest more time, money and life energy in the PhD track — unless and until I identified a research agenda that I could be passionate about for the rest of my life. So, I left that program one or two courses shy of the dissertation stage. (The consolation prize for these three years of my life? A master’s degree.)

I’m more of an applied person, I told myself. Let me go and do applied sociology in the community. Which is more or less how, in my mid-20s, I wound up in community development and philanthropy.

I liked the work I was doing in the community. It had a greater immediacy to it than the university setting. But I was still restless about my purpose. And curious about what else was out there in the world.

Still Searching

In 2000 I went on a “reality tour” to Kerala state, south India, building people-to-people ties as part of a delegation of North Americans. The trip was organized through Global Exchange, an international human rights organization. The particular tour I chose focused on how Kerala had implemented Gandhian-style community development, with impressive outcomes on many indicators of health, education, and quality of life.
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This nicely combined my social science background, my professional work in community development, and a long-standing interest in Gandhi and nonviolence that I had picked up from my mother.

I thought perhaps I would discover a research focus that would compel me back to finish the PhD in sociology. Instead, this cross-cultural adventure led to my first time in the pulpit. Later that year, at my home congregation, I shared how the Kerala experiment in people-powered development aligned with the very values we affirmed.

Hooked

What felt most significant at the time, though, was an exchange that happened on the first day in Kerala. While we tour participants hung out in the hotel, waiting for jet lag to wear off, another participant struck up a conversation with me. Linda (I’ll call her) wondered if I had a spiritual community or practice. She was an avid meditator herself.

I shared that I had long been interested in meditation. I probably told her about the pluralistic faith tradition I had joined a few years before. As it happened, the method of meditation she practiced drew upon all of the world’s wisdom traditions; I was intrigued.

Linda gave me an accessible little book written by her meditation teacher. Like our tour, it drew on Gandhi for inspiration. After listening about my spiritual journey, she suggested a selection from the Tao te Ching (instead of a Christian saint’s prayer, a common first choice for Americans); I could use it to give this method of meditation a try. Perfect!

I meditated for the first time, that night in my hotel room in Thiruvananthapuram. A new habit was well underway by the end of our two-week tour.
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Primed and Ready

Remember those seeds planted by my encounter with Transcendental Meditation as a college student? They found fertile ground in this new meditation practice.

Like TM, my new discipline was a form of concentration meditation, promulgated by an Indian teacher. It was presented as nonsectarian — compatible with any or no religious tradition. The many benefits of meditation for mind and body were described in a common-sense, science-validated way.

My new meditation practice had something else in common with Transcendental Meditation: it appealed to educated, idealistic people. The founder of the meditation center was a humanities professor, accomplished enough to have come to the U.S. via a prestigious grant program for scholars. His meditation students included many PhDs, medical doctors, and other professionals. One was even an expert on Gandhi and nonviolence.

In his books, the meditation teacher was clear, practical, and warm. Inspirational. Humble. He made ancient wisdom accessible and relevant to life today. The meditation method he taught felt like a natural fit for me. And the people associated with it — like Linda, a socially aware activist and Silicon Valley success story — were smart, caring people. What could go wrong?

The benefits showed up in my life immediately — they were real, and increased gradually. It took years, in contrast, for me to recognize the risks and drawbacks. They were cumulative, too. And almost two decades after I left that community, I am still learning new things about how this involvement affected me.

Enigmatic Ending

One thing haunts me about my brush with Transcendental Meditation. That gentle psychology professor, Dr. C, who was the first person I knew who meditated? He died in a car accident five or six years ago. It was on the highway between Fairfield, where he lived, and my college in Mt. Pleasant, where he worked. When my mother told me about the tragedy, it was hard to grasp that his life had been cut short so randomly.

More recently, I have seen TM referenced in resources about high-control groups. I recall, as well, that Dr. C had been divorced from his first wife. I had the impression she was part of the TM community too. I can’t help wondering what happened on Highway 34. What’s the full story?

Sometimes an accident is just an accident. But there are other, troubling possibilities that now seem quite plausible to me. Was Dr. C happy and in good mental health when this happened? Had his relationship to TM and the community around him changed? (He had gotten re-married — to someone who worked at my college, who was not a Fairfielder, I think.)

Might he have been disillusioned with the community and practices that had grounded his life for so long? (He would not have been alone. There are plenty of ex-TM writings online.) Might he have been depressed, as I became after I moved to California to work for my meditation community? Did he suffer involuntary slips into alternate states, as can happen to people who meditate long or often? What if, during his regular commute through the cornfields, that happened behind the wheel?

I will probably never know. I am sad for Dr. C, for his family, and for the college community that lost a kind soul too early.
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More to Come

More posts are coming, on things like who ends up in high-control groups and why (you may be surprised); accountability, or lack thereof, for leaders; what nobody told me about meditation — good, bad, and wacky; similarities or differences among mainstream religion, fundamentalism, and the kind of groups people typically think of when they hear the word cult; and resources for vetting any group or helper that you might welcome into your life.

Don’t want to miss a post? You can subscribe to get every new post sent directly to your inbox. Thanks for reading!

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

This is a spiral season in my inner life.

Whether in a curling seashell, the unfolding frond of a fern, or the vast arms of the Milky Way, the spiral form compels the movement of sound, green life, and light. It’s easy to see why the spiral has long been a symbol for growth, with its motion of extending and returning, in ever-broadening rounds.

Our lives are like this, too. We drift away from people, places, questions, only to circle back, often, at a later time. We encounter the familiar yet again, but from the vantage point of now. At such times we may discover how much we have changed in the interval.

This is not the first spiral time in my life. In my early 30s I worked for a meditation center. After five years of increasingly deep spiritual practice and community connection, I relocated from the Midwest to the San Francisco Bay Area to support their work full-time. I left the idyllic-looking ashram setting and returned to my prior stomping grounds within a year. Processing that experience was most intense in the following couple of years.


Turning Then
A visceral memory takes me back to that previous turning, as if it was yesterday: I remember pausing on the spiral staircase that led to my meditation loft, gazing down at the home I had created for myself. It was 2007 or 2008. Here I had stabilized myself after sinking into confusion and depression during that year (2005–2006) working for the meditation center.

Being in my own space allowed me to sort through what I still claimed — what worked for me — and what I let go of. In my loft, I posted quotes and images that spoke to me, from any source. I did whatever spiritual practices felt right to ME. No method was required, none off-limits.

I could practice meditation like I used to do, but with no rigid time schedule. I could listen to a guided meditation on Radical Acceptance. I could let my body stretch and unwind as it wanted on a yoga mat. I could play the flute or chant. Every day I listened within for what felt right for me.

Vividly I remember how, one day, while coming down the spiral stairs from my contemplative loft, something new happened. I paused on the steps, as I realized I was not thinking in words. The stream of narration in my mind that was so normal to me I did not even recognize it — it had fallen away. I experienced only immediate awareness of my surroundings, my sense impressions, my feelings. No labels, no interpretation. Just raw being.

When I was at the ashram, feeling crowded (yet alone) in the midst of a tight community, I had longed for a silent retreat; at last I had it, right in the comfort of my own home. Silence is deeply healing. It can reground me in the truth of my experience, my needs. It can put me back in touch with my inner voice.

From all the things you read and all the people you meet, take what is good — what your own ‘Inner Teacher’ tells you is for you — and leave the rest.”                                                                         ~ Peace Pilgrim

As I continued going up and down that spiral staircase, day by day and month by month, I was rebuilding self-trust and inner authority. I didn’t understand then, as fully as I do now, why I needed to do that.


Turning Now
​Fast forward to sixteen years later and another destabilizing experience. Almost by chance, last month I learned of several gut-wrenching allegations about the prolific writer and meditation teacher, now deceased, who had seemed so gentle, wise, and caring.

I say “allegations” not because I disbelieve the story I’ve now heard, but because I am not a judge or jury. And my purpose here is not to delve into those details. Rather, it is to share what I’m learning more broadly at this particular turn of the spiral.

For these new voices set me off looking with fresh eyes at my own journey. Among other steps, I am devouring resources about high control groups. These are sometimes called cults. That word is controversial among some scholars, as the commonly understood meaning emphasizes the extreme. Though I have yet to read anyone actually name a fully benign cult, everyone seems to agree that these groups fall on a spectrum. The public generally hears about only the most far-out examples; many are subtle, and under the radar.

​I do not expect there will ever be a public reckoning over the allegations that have come to my attention about the group I was once involved in and its founder. Regardless, this turn of the spiral has brought me to ask a question I scarcely considered before: was I involved with a cult?

​Even preliminary learning and reflection on the topic has brought me to the sobering conclusion that I was. And though some may be, this one was not entirely benign. Whatever else is true, I know this from my own experience. Because the closer I got to that community, the less whole I was.

Supporting the Savvy Seeker
In this latest spiral movement, I turn back toward my past experience, and to the natural human yearnings that lie beneath the spiritual search — the longings for meaning, belonging, well-being, identity, purpose. These are normal human needs, to be honored and supported.

But one thing is clearly different for me at this time: now the search is not just for myself. I hope that my lived experience, my deep compassion for seekers, and the journeying I have already done and continue to do as a companion to others, might help readers along their own paths.

If my reflections enable others to recognize and avoid the pitfalls that snared me — and to which any idealistic or vulnerable person may be susceptible — my own stumbles in confusion would gain greater purpose.

More than that, I hope to shine a light on effective ways for seekers today to meet those important higher needs.

This is not an easy time to be a seeker. Trust in most institutions has eroded. That includes traditional religious institutions, often for good reason. Freelance (and frequently unaccountable) figures — spiritual teachers, life coaches, personal development gurus and others — attempt to fill the gap. We have access to wisdom traditions from around the world, increasing both opportunities and hazards.
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Ideological polarization and information overload are daily realities. Undue influence is commonplace and conspiracy theories abound. Amid unnerving ecological changes, we can’t even count on weather patterns, growing zones or the bounty of nature that was once taken for granted. For many of us, something feels wrong in our bones.

Is it any wonder there is generalized uncertainty and anxiety? This only heightens the natural needs for meaning and belonging that drive the spiritual search.

My hope is to support those who wish to navigate these times as savvy seekers, finding or creating fulfilling spiritual lives, without getting burned.

Already been burned? I get it. I see you, I respect you, I have some understanding of the need for healing, and I hope you will find useful nuggets here too.

If this piques your interest, I invite you to subscribe and to share this resource with others who might have something to gain.

And if you would like to know more about who I am and what I bring to savvy seeking, continue on.


Why Me? Why Now?
It strikes me as good timing that concerns about my past meditation teacher have come to my attention now. I have enough distance from that time in my life, that community, and that set of spiritual practices that I am able to metabolize new perspectives on them.

As I begin this blog, I am also entering my fifth decade — a stage of both greater trust in my own inner knowing, and greater ease with not knowing.

People have always fascinated me. So have the Big Questions about life. I studied sociology and psychology in college and graduate school, including religious studies and the sociology of religion. I was drawn to building communities that work for everyone, leading to a first career in non-profits and philanthropy.

​Over a decade ago, I began supporting others in their spiritual journeys as a central part of my vocation. I started with curious college students and young adults, worked with other small groups, and since 2016, have served Unitarian Universalist congregations as an ordained minister.

I serve in a post-Christian, spiritually pluralistic, radically love-centered tradition. Unitarian Universalist communities are places of spiritual triage for many who have left other traditions — or who are simply looking for moorings in our uncertain world. Ministering in this context has enabled me to witness a wide range of experiences, questions, needs, perspectives and vulnerabilities that people bring to the spiritual journey today.

Don’t worry, it is not my goal to convert anyone. Not to Unitarian Universalism, not to organized religion in general, not to any particular spiritual practice or path. While Unitarian Universalism is the right spiritual home for me, there is no one right path for all people.

What I do wish for you are plenty of rich, healthy connections to other people, to your authentic self, to our mysterious cosmos, and to a sense of purpose for your life. If that sounds good to you, I invite you to subscribe to be sure and catch future posts.

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