Cult, A Love Story is an award-winning memoir, which intimately and powerfully chronicles one woman’s journey from falling under the spell of a manipulative guru to the hard-won and triumphant break with, and recovery from, thought reform.

“This excellent memoir reveals how a charismatic, manipulative spirit medium can use love for God and neighbor as a hook to drag a small group of devotees into her cynical web of impossible goals for self-perfection. After a heroic struggle for insight, Alexandra Amor was one of the cult members who broke the abusive spell.”

Joesph Szimhart, Cult Information Specialist

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Read an excerpt from Cult, A Love Story

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When my body said, “No”.

I was involved with a cult from 1989 to 2000. For all those years, at every minute of every day, my body shouted at me that the environment I was in was not safe.

It did this by creating tension in my stomach/solar plexus area that was so persistent and energetic that at times the ‘butterfly’ feeling stretched all the way up to my throat. Sometimes it was so powerful that I thought I would choke.

I misinterpreted these butterflies; I told myself they were a flaw, a failing of mine. That if I was a ‘better servant of God’ I wouldn’t feel them. I told myself that this tension/fear I felt was drawing in ‘negative energy’ and that it was something I had to rid myself of lest I harm those around me. I meditated and prayed and beat myself up about my butterflies.

Despite this self recrimination, my body never gave up on me

The butterflies never stopped, not for one day or one minute. Not until I left the cult.

It took me years to realize that my body had been speaking to me, loudly and clearly, in the only language it speaks; sensation. It was saying, “This is wrong. This is abuse and manipulation. This is not a safe environment. Get out. NOW.”

When I was in the cult, I hated my body for the way it ‘betrayed’ me every day by filling my mid-section with anxiety.

Now, I love it for never giving up on me. For never, ever being willing to see me live a lie without objecting mightily. I can see now that my body wasn’t betraying me, it was trying to save me.

Recovery and self-protection

I’ve been out of the cult for more than a decade. Since leaving, I’ve been a bit armoured. Naturally I haven’t wanted to be drawn into an unhealthy situation again. Fool me once, as the saying goes, shame on you. Fool me twice and I’m really an idiot.

So I did what I thought was the best way to protect myself; I kept myself walled off a little bit from people and groups. I stayed very cautious and kept myself safe by keeping a little bit of my heart and soul separate from everything. I think this was a natural and healthy response to being in a cult, but now I see that there’s another way.

My body, my friend

My body will never and has never lied to me. If I can learn to deepen my connection with it, to listen to it constantly and not be afraid of the signals it sends me, I will always be safe. My body will always tell me what’s going on, even if my brain is saying, “Oh my, this kool aid tastes great.”

I have a built-in, on-board, 100% accurate truth-teller and BS detector that will never fail me. I can use my good sense and good judgment when it comes to knowing if groups or people are safe and healthy. AND I can see now, that even when my brain thinks things are a good idea, I can check in with my body and get the whole truth about what is best for me in that moment.

Just as the great oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt, so too there is but one taste fundamental to all true teachings of the way, and this is the taste of freedom. –Buddha

The cult I belonged to didn’t ‘taste’ of freedom, and my body knew that, even though my brain told me a different story.

I get it now. Finally. My body always knows what ‘tastes’ good, and what doesn’t.

What a relief.

–

(Photo courtesy of graur codrin and FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

What do I mean by “doing nothing”? Exactly that. Martha Beck, my favorite life coach and Mormon Church survivor, says that emptying our time is as important as emptying our bladders. We couldn’t and wouldn’t go a day without emptying our bladders, yet we often go days and weeks without emptying our time.

Only when we have some empty time can the healing process we’re going through in cult recovery be fully effective.

Here’s an analogy. Maybe you’ve been to a yoga class which ends with a practice called Savassana. Savassana happens at the very end of the yoga class. All the participants lie down on their backs on their mats, eyes closed, practicing stillness of mind and body. I used to have a yoga teacher who said, “If you don’t have time to stay for Savassana, then don’t come to class. It’s that important.” The theory in yoga is that after we’ve bent ourselves into pretzels and practiced the poses with great attention, our bodies need time to process what has happened.

Just as in yoga class, in cult recovery our bodies, minds and souls need time to process what has happened to us. And we can’t do that if we are constantly filling up our time and our bodies with new information, to do lists and activities. We need to be still, be quiet and be with no obligations, no pressure and no expectation of results.

Yet at times in cult recovery it can be difficult for us to be still. That’s ok. We can be still and mobile at the same time. Any repetitive motion that does not require us to think about what we’re doing can support us to be still in mind and soul and counts as empty time; for example, walking, running, swimming or rollerblading.

The cult I was involved with emphasized meditation as a spiritual practice. Needless to say, when I first left the cult it was impossible for me to meditate given all the negative connotations I had with that practice. And yet, instinctively I knew I had to have some still, quiet, empty time in my life to allow my soul to heal. So I took to the woods. I drove myself, almost every day, the half-hour or so to a huge rainforest park in the city where I live and spent an hour or so walking in the blissfully quiet, soothing, healing woods.

This empty time required nothing of me. I couldn’t do or say anything wrong. I didn’t need to be afraid of judgment or recrimination (as I had been in the cult). I could just walk and let my body and soul repair and grieve and learn to live again.

Empty time is important in every life, I believe. I think it is one reason we get so excited about vacations; they are a chance to have the empty time we crave so desperately.

On your journey of cult recovery, I encourage you to create even 10 minutes each day of empty time. If you are able to sit still in quiet contemplation, great! If not, walk or run or swim. For years my empty time practice has involved staring out the window, letting my mind unspool and my body and soul relax and process what the day has held.

Think of it this way: You can’t fill a glass with new, fresh water if it’s already full of the filth that was poured in their by your cult leader. Strategies we use to empty that glass of the dirty water are therapy, writing, talking, and crying. Emptying your time is another, very important strategy for healing. I invite you to give it a try.

…now that I’ve shared all that, I’ll go have some Empty Time myself!

–

(Photo courtesy of dan and FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

So first let me say, “Congratulations!” If you have left a cult you are one brave and strong individual. Leaving the cult was quite possibly the single-most challenging thing you have ever done or will do. The good news is that the cult experience is now behind you. The news you may not want to hear is that rebuilding yourself is going to take work. But wait! Before I lose you, know this; the rebuilding work is challenging but it is so rewarding and ultimately so fulfilling that you may eventually wonder why everyone doesn’t do it.

Here, then, is a very brief outline of some of what you might encounter in the process of cult recovery. (I’ve numbered these phases below, but they tend to overlap and also stop and start. Don’t take the numbering system literally.)

First, you need to take care of your physical needs. Do you have a job? Do you need a place to live? Are you safe from the cult or do you need to do something to ensure your safety (like moving to a different town/city)? Moving forward emotionally will not be possible until you have answers to these questions and have begun to feel that you know where your next meal is coming from and where you’ll sleep tonight.

When you have what feels like a stable physical foundation around you, the second phase of recovery might be asking yourself questions like, “What is true?” and “Who am I really?” and “Who can I trust?” Depending on the nature of the cult you were involved in questions about God may come up and you may need to think about rebuilding that relationship as well as the one with yourself.

These are deep and important questions and they take time and patience to answer. I encourage you to be especially patient and gentle with yourself at this time (which may be years, if not decades, long). It takes as long as it takes. Often cults instill in members a sense of urgency – that is one technique that contributes to thought-stopping, which is a key element of the control a cult places over its victims – and it may take some time for you to stop feeling like every question has to be answered and conquered now, Now, NOW! I am here to remind you, there is no urgency. Take all the time you want. The universe is in no hurry and it will wait for you.

A third phase you may encounter in cult recovery is what I call the “Information Gathering” phase. When I was a few years into my cult recovery, I came to a place emotionally where I had the strength to look back and think to myself, “What the hell was that?!” That’s when I started to look into the possibility that what I was involved in hadn’t just been a weird meditation group, but something more, something I could define and understand.

If you reach this phase, the internet is a great place to start (and you may be already there, since you’re reading this article. Information gathering in whatever form that takes, is in my experience, incredibly healing. By reading others’ stories of their cult involvement and by coming to understand how cults work and how you were drawn in you will realize you are not alone, you were not stupid or naïve, and that it is possible to heal and to actually benefit from that healing process.

Yes, it’s true, there are tremendous benefits involved in cult recovery. I wouldn’t trade my experience in cult recovery for anything. I encourage you to get the support you need (preferably from a therapist who is familiar with how cults work) and to give yourself the time and space to dive deeply into the process. You’re worth it!

Cult members learn very early on that obedience toward the cult leader is paramount to our continued membership and acceptance into the group. We learn that we must accept what our leader says without question and, perhaps more importantly, cannot pick and choose what parts of the cult’s philosophy to believe; a cult is an all-or-nothing game. (Every cult leader applies this condition to members because it a) stops cult members from thinking and b) trains us to be completely obedient. Critical thinking is not allowed.)

When we leave the cult we begin to learn (or re-learn) what matters to us as individuals, not as a member of an authoritarian hierarchy. We begin to value what matters to us. And eventually, if we work hard at it, we learn that we can value what matters to us even if it means displeasing an authority figure. This is a huge and important milestone for cult survivors and one I continue to celebrate every time it happens in my post-cult life.

Here’s an example: I began searching for a new spiritual community a few years after leaving the cult I belonged to because spiritual community was something I was missing very much in my life. At one point, I took some evening classes exploring a faith that seemed like it might be a good fit for me. The teacher was a retired gentleman, obviously very well read and well educated, who had been a part of this faith since his late teens. He was warm and gentle and kind. He welcomed the group of students I was a part of into his home for the classes and I liked him immediately. This was a good sign, I thought.

Part-way through the series of classes the topic of homosexuality came up and it was revealed that this particular faith believes that the only form of sexual expression should be within a marriage and that ‘marriage’ is defined as between one man and one woman. I was deeply upset right away. I don’t believe that marriage should be defined as being between one man and one woman. I believe that God/the universe/the Great Creator made us all exactly and perfectly the way we are, including those of us who are gay or transgendered, and that we all have the right to express that love via marriage. I left the class that night and wept in my car on the way home, conflicted and disappointed. I wanted so badly to find a new spiritual community and this had seemed like the right one, but I hated it that this particular faith thought there was something wrong with my gay friends.

I continued going to the classes though, wanting to explore my questions further. On the last night of class, the teacher asked if each of the students wished to sign up that night to become members of the faith. All the other students in the class did, but I did not, because of this conflict. I felt that I wanted to continue exploring the faith and to see if I could gain a greater understanding about the issue of homosexuality, and I was not ready at that very moment to commit to something I felt conflicted about.

I could see the look of disappointment on the teacher’s face when I said I would not be joining. He embraced each other student warmly in a hug after they signed their membership cards, calling them “Brother” or “Sister” while I sat, by myself, left out of the celebration. I flashed back to my cult days. The days of working desperately hard to never, ever disappoint our cult leader for fear of being shunned or receiving abuse or any number of other adverse consequences.

But I held on. I held on to my hard won freedom. I realized in that moment that the teacher could be as disappointed in me as he wanted, but I was not now and not ever going to sacrifice a deeply held value in order to make someone else comfortable. I had done that for too long and at too great a price in the cult.

This was a milestone, I realized later. It revealed to me many things. Among them that I had grown a new backbone. That I had learned some of what mattered to me and what I was and was not willing to do to stand behind those values. And also that I had come to know who I was in many ways – something I hadn’t known when I was in the cult. In the cult I was an amalgamation of what mattered to cult leader. It was a good moment, that moment of seeing disappointment in me from an authority figure and choosing to stand by my own values anyway. I look back on it fondly.

In the end, after more classes and discussion I did not end up joining that faith, but even if I had, I would have been proud of my new found willingness to look in the face of authority and say, “I’m doing what’s right for me in this moment. And I don’t need you to be happy about it.”

It was a big deal. Perhaps one only another cult survivor can understand.

Many thanks to Anne Melnyk (Ms. Juicy herself) for the opportunity to write the blog post.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Physical Isolation: This is such a classic symptom of cults that it’s almost become cliche. People who are physically isolated from others in society are much more likely to turn toward the cult during times of trouble, than to turn away from it. If a cult member lives hundreds of miles from the closest town and has no means of transport, he is more likely to second-guess himself if he ever considers leaving the group. Physical isolation also means that cult members are not under the influence of those not in the cult.

Emotional Isolation Part 1: Cult leaders always create an atmosphere of “us vs. them” in the cult. “Us” consists of those in the group; “them” is a very large group indeed – it encompasses everyone else on the planet who is not in the group. By creating this antagonism toward “them” the cult leader can very easily cut a disciple off from her family and friends. As a result, cult members become increasingly dependent on the cult for any and all means of emotional support. Once a cult member really believes that her family is part of “them” then her loyalty is cemented to the cult and the cult leader, which was the objective for creating the “us vs. them” dogma in the first place. As well, by cutting a cult member off from her family, she is less likely to leave the group – especially if the estrangement has gone on for years or decades – because she will not feel that she has anywhere to go or anyone to turn to should she decide to leave. Sadly, this is very often not the case – families that I’ve seen will accept their loved one back into the family without reservation. (When this doesn’t happen, as my friend G pointed out to me the other day, the risk is always there that the cult member will return to the cult because the pull of “us” (the cult) is too strong to resist without the counter-balance of a loving family.)

Emotional Isolation Part 2: When we are discouraged to be in touch with our feelings, and are told that emotions are “bad” or “wrong”, what is created is an inner landscape that is divorced from our emotions. When we become isolated from how we feel about anything it hampers our ability to know ourselves and to know what is true for us. We then replace our judgment and feeling with the rules and rhetoric that the cult leader has insisted we adopt. This is another part of the paradigm of mind control that causes those to belong to a cult to seem zombie-like or cautiously reserved. When members of the cult we aren’t allowed to be in touch with how we really feel about a situation or a person, then we are simply waiting to be told how to feel by the authority in our lives – the cult leader.

Intellectual Isolation: The cult leader’s word matters more than anything. In the cult I belonged to for over a decade, our leader made a point of undermining any and all other authorities on spiritual matters, life style choices, psychological health, physical health, politics and everything else under the sun. Her word was God’s word (according to her) and no issue was too trivial, too large, too well-known or obscure for her to tell us what The Truth was about it. The Truth, capital T-R-U-T-H, was her most powerful weapon; with it she could defeat any argument, any attempt at critical thinking, any objection to her methods of ‘teaching’, and contradict every author, teacher, poet, and saint who was not her. We stopped thinking and simply obeyed, refusing to expose ourselves to any kind of intellectual exploration (new ideas, new philosophies, alternate views of the world etc.) (Sadly, every major religion uses this strategy as well. ‘The only “true religion” or “true word of God” is this one – i.e. the one you’re in now. The others are all false.’)

Community Isolation: This type of isolation connects to the strategy of “us vs. them” as well. Think for a moment of how many communities you belong to and what a rich diversity of experiences, personalities and support these communities bring to your life. I’m a fairly (well…very) introverted person (meaning I recharge my batteries by being alone) and still I have any number of valuable and life-giving communities in my life: co-workers, friends, family, ex-clients, class mates, writing partners, friends-of-friends who I see regularly at parties, neighbors, ex-co-workers, fellow yoga students, parents of my friends, children of my friends, the baristas in Starbucks who know my regular drink, people who have read my book, my Facebook friends….I could go on. Almost, and eventually all, of these communities or connections are eliminated when one belongs to a cult. The cult member’s world shrinks to one community – the cult – and he moves through the world in a bubble of isolation bereft of the many connections that bring such joy to life. He tells himself that he belongs to the only community that matters, but in his authentic heart he knows (though he may never admit this to himself consciously) that he is missing out and that there is a huge void where all that diversity of community should be.

Thought Isolation: It almost goes without saying that first and foremost a cult member is isolated from her thoughts. (That’s why it’s called thought reform.) Every cult leader (and abusive spouse) knows that if you control the thoughts, you control the person. The bars in a cult are not made of steel; they are made of thoughts. Those in a cult are taught to be afraid to think. Thinking for oneself is portrayed by the cult leader as “egotism” or “the work of the devil”. One is encouraged only to think thoughts the cult leader approves of lest one draw in “negative energy”. And so the cult member becomes isolated from her thoughts because they feel dangerous. Techniques are applied (such as chanting, excessive meditating, etc.) to stop thoughts from occurring. I remember that when I left the cult I was involved with I had to consciously practice thinking for myself about practically everything.

Intimacy Isolation: This category goes along with Emotional Isolation Part 1. There is a peculiar but effective maneuver that all cult leaders use. I explain this more fully in my book but here’s the short explanation: In order for cult leaders to have the most control possible over each disciple in their group they will perpetually be strengthening the vertical relationship from each group member to themselves. To do this, the cult leader will make every effort to weaken the horizontal relationships between group members. They do this by breaking up marriages, breaking up friendships, creating and then destroying marriages and relationships, creating estrangement between parents and children, and generally undermining any intimacy that exists between group members. (All the while, the cult leader is simultaneously creating the atmosphere of “us vs. them” – it’s quite the parlour trick!) The result of all this is that each member feels a type of (distorted) intimacy with the cult leader, but no intimacy with anyone else. (How can you be fully intimate with your spouse when the cult leader could declare that the relationship will be terminated ten minutes from now?) This means that the most intimate relationship in each cult member’s life is the one with his/her guru (cult leader). But it is a false intimacy because the cult leader never fully opens up to anyone. The guru-disciple relationship is a very poor substitute for real intimacy but it is all the cult member has.

Spiritual Isolation: And this, my friends, brings us to the most devastating type of isolation of all. Isolation from God / spirit / the universe / one’s higher power / self / whatever term you want to use. Over time and inch by precious inch the cult leader weaves her way into the hearts, minds and souls of her followers as a God replacement. In my case, she said she spoke for God and I believed her. For a human being to step in between another person’s relationship with God is one of the worst kind of atrocities I can think of. For me, when I look back, it was like having my soul violated every day for 10 years. No one, ever, has any right to tell anyone what the truth of their heart is. Or what “God” says they should or should not do. My relationship with God became distorted and twisted and deeply unhappy and dysfunctional. After I left the cult it took me almost a decade to repair that relationship. I was isolated from God when I was in the group because what I was being told was God most certainly was not. And then I was isolated from God after I left the cult because I felt deeply betrayed and embarrassed and thirsted for God but didn’t know how to find Him among all the bullshit I had been sold about who God was. I had to sift through all that crap, handful by handful, until I found what felt right in my heart. It was a very worthwhile journey, to say the least, but very painful.

**
As I write this I am reminded that in the early days of my cult recovery my first therapist shared with me that human beings are social animals. We thrive on contact with other creatures from our species. Cult leaders take that away from their followers; they teach us – wrongly – that we cannot trust one another and that we should not live with open hearts. Connection is so important and cult leaders know this. That is specifically why they use all the above tactics (and more) to isolate us from our friends and family, from our selves, and from God.

To anyone who is recovering from an encounter, be it short or long, with a cult leader I say, be kind to yourself, be gentle, and know that not everyone, in fact probably no one, will ever again treat you as badly as you have been treated by your guru. Love matters. You matter. I know from intimate experience that it is challenging to break the habit of isolation, but approached in safe and conscious ways, connection is a balm to the isolated soul.

One of my all time favorite quotes is this one, the first line from EM Forester’s book Howard’s End: “Only connect.”

When I left the cult I was involved in, that was the question I wrestled with the most. Did our cult leader really have an exclusive, high-speed, wireless connection to the almighty? Because if she did, then I was screwed.

I’d chosen to leave the group and the leader after recognizing that I couldn’t reconcile a number of things:

1. That the guru talked about how essential love was to God but acted in a very unloving and abusive way toward those who followed her.
2. That she used God’s name to do this.
3. That she touted “The Truth” as one of the most holy and essential principles required to serve God, yet she herself lied. I’d seen her do it with my own eyes and I’d further seen her teach others that lying was permissible under certain circumstances.
4. That she said that God would “turn His back” on those who left the guru’s service. (I couldn’t imagine God, the essence of love, turning His back on anyone, ever.)

So when I left the cult I wrestled with these questions for quite a while. Years probably. Until I was finally able to conclude for myself, with my own heart and mind and without influence from anyone, that I did not believe God would ever, under any circumstances or for any reason, have anything to do with abuse, cruelty, lies and coercion.

I realized recently that this dilemma that the cult member faces about God is the cornerstone of why we are willing to put up with so much abuse and cruelty and control. When we fully believe that it is actually God, our holy Father, the guy who created us and knows us better than anyone, who is directing the words and actions of our guru, then how could we argue with what she says? How could we think that she doesn’t have our best interests at heart? How could we leave that God who we love so much?

This is the dreadful paradox of the spiritual cult. The cult leader uses God’s name to ensnare us. And as soon as she has us believing that she speaks for God, we’re sunk. Sadly, it is our love for God that keeps us chained to the guru through health crises, marriage break-down, child abandonment, job loss, loss of freedom and worse.

As long as we believe she is God, we are not free.

(I can’t help calling New York City the Grand Apple ever since falling in love with Debbie Reynolds as Grace’s mother on Will and Grace. Remember Bobbie Adler?)

Anyway, the International Cultic Studies Association has its annual conference coming up July 1, 2, 3 in New York. I’ve been wanting to go to one of these conferences since about 2003 when I first found out about the association while doing my cult recovery work and research. They hold a conference every year, usually in the summer, and alternate between Europe and a North American location.

Each year, the conference presents The Phoenix Project, which is a display of art work by ex-cult members. This art work can include paintings, drawings, plays, works of non-fiction, like my book and other art work. I am thrilled to have an excerpt from Cult, A Love Story displayed at the Phoenix project, and am honoured to have been asked to give an author reading during the conference.

Those who attend the ICSA conference are exactly the audience I had in mind when I wrote the book. They are ex-cult members and family/friends of ex-cult members, and these were the lovely souls I wanted to reach out to with my story in an attempt to increase our understanding about the cult experience and the experience of recovering from a cult.

Stay tuned for photographs and correspondence about my trip and my experience of the conference.

Look out Manhattan, here I come!

The negative effect that a cult leader has ripples out past her disciples to the entire family of each disciple and then further, to their friends and loved ones. And even more sadly, the effect can last for years, even decades. Children, spouses, parents, brothers and sisters are abandoned and left wondering what the hell happened to their beautiful, loving spouse/parent/sibling/child. I’m certain that so many are left wondering what they’ve done wrong to elicit this abandonment. (Answer: nothing).

For this reason, I can say that cult leaders practice a particularly sinister brand of evil.

And, frankly, the only answer I can come up with in response to this problem is love. Love is the fabric of the universe and the thing that binds us together. There is always more than enough love for everyone. And all I can think of to do in response to my cult leader’s effect on my life and the lives of those I love, is to love as much as possible, and never, ever stop. Love my family. Love my friends. Love those I left behind in the cult. And love those who have been brave enough to leave it.

That’s it. Omnia vincit amor. Love conquers all.