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Do You Think There’s A Safe Way To Join A Cult?

I really want to know

2 min readJun 25, 2021

You could argue that almost any group activity can turn into a cult. Members come together for some kind of healing, and the ensuing improvements feel miraculous. The urge to deify and make rigid the parameters of success could tempt anyone, right alongside the desire to monetize the process.

Having personally experienced loads of trauma — a chaotic childhood, addiction, abandonment — when I landed upon the promise of meditation, I was primed and ready. Of course, I wanted a life without anger, full of compassion, love, and goodwill.

Beyond any cultish elements, contemplative practice can have drawbacks, from exacerbating mental illness to increasing anxiety. If you want to dive deeper into that, check this out:

Meditation May Make Your Anxiety Worse-Here's Why

After my husband ended our marriage over the telephone, I signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I'd been…

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But the cultish elements are problematic. Particularly in spaces we enter to recover from trauma. If you’re like me for the decade after my divorce, you’re more vulnerable than you know, and for longer than you imagine is possible. Even my sacred escape of yoga was rocked by…

I'm still mulling over a memoir written by Dianne Lake, who helped put Charlie Manson behind bars after being part of the Manson Family cult in the 1960s. She goes into the reasons why she joined the Family and how she saw Charlie begin to unravel…

Curious…

No safe way.

A resolution of an existential crisis that resulted from being inducted into a cult without my knowledge or permission at six weeks of age. And the lifelong unanswered and unanswerable questions it engendered that battled for my heart and mind as it stole my soul.