I’ve Been Accused of Being in a Cult

Cults are an interesting phenomenon, and they definitely do exist. From Charles Manson to Jim Jones, there’s no shortage of examples of these charismatic yet deluded figures leading their followers, desperate to believe in something, off the proverbial cliff.

But the word cult gets bandied around a lot, and often in a very casual manner.

So what really defines a cult? Well, for me, the defining aspect is when the teacher becomes more important than the teaching, and the teachings are defended blindly against the weight of evidence against them.

Now, just to get my side of the story out of the way first – I’m definitely not in a cult (said every cult member ever). As a former science student, the idea of any type of belief, scientific or otherwise, is anathema to me. Beliefs, I believe (hehe), are the opposite of the scientific and true spiritual method of making observations based on direct experience. And direct experience is ALL we ever have access to in determining truth, so using something other than direct experience to guide our lives seems pretty silly to me.

Which is why it is so strange to me that I, of all people I think the least cultish person I know, have been accused of being in a cult.

The cult I’ve been accused of being a part of is the one surrounding my spiritual teacher, Isira, and the organization supporting her teaching, Living Awareness.

It seems that any time two or more people gather around a common spiritual cause, it’s automatically labelled a cult. But what did Jesus say? (another person who was accused of running a spiritual cult) – “Wherever there are two or three gathered in my name, I am there.” This is also probably why Buddhists hold sangha (spiritual community) to be the most important aspect of spirituality – because we learn more from our interactions with others than we ever could just going it alone.

The irony is, I’m only ever accused of being in a cult by people who have never heard my spiritual teacher give a talk. Their knee-jerk reaction is: “Someone’s teaching you something that is not (yet) the norm in society?” – CULT! Anything that is the norm in society – science, politics, medicine, etc – they’re all fine to have teachers for, but nothing esoteric, nothing that isn’t easy to understand. This really is ironic because there is so much more cultish behaviour in these fields than in any spiritual field I have personally encountered. Although I do consider myself lucky in that sense – I had a good, skeptical, scientific training before ever becoming interested in spirituality, so I was always quite cognizant to never believe stuff just for the sake of believing in something.

Which is what I think all cults, spiritual or otherwise, really boil down to: belief. In my opinion beliefs should not exist. From a scientific perspective, a belief is something you form when you say, “Okay, we’ve had this result, we’ve seen the evidence, we can make a conclusion now and stop any further investigation into the matter.” Why would anyone ever want to do that? In that sense I think beliefs have no place not only in science but in society as a whole. They are just psychological crutches people use because the world is so complex and the psychological need for humans to have some guiding principles is so great that we’re quick to latch onto anything that we feel gives us security.

People think we NEED beliefs of some kind in order to function, but we really don’t. Casual beliefs, like the belief in time and space (they don’t really exist the way we think they do, so yes, these too, are beliefs), are fine to have and to use in everyday situations. So long as we acknowledge that they are indeed beliefs, and don’t actually represent the true nature of reality.

I realise I’m asking a lot. Letting go of beliefs is a TOUGH road. The reason being is that our thoughts are so tied in with our emotions. They are inextricably linked to them. So to let go of a belief is not just to let go of a belief, it’s to let go of the feeling attached to that belief. And to do that, we need to experience that feeling in its raw state. Hence the resistance. We often think, “If we could just make sense of the world… if we could just finally get that last puzzle piece that fits everything into place then we’d have a full picture of how the world worked and we’d be *secure*.” We could finally relax.

Well, I don’t think it’s ever going to work like that. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I don’t think our minds really evolved to understand the true nature of reality. They evolved for relatively mundane tasks like picking berries, having sex, spotting predators, etc etc. We’ve done pretty tremendous things with this very limited brain of ours, don’t get me wrong, but in terms of understanding absolute reality – not a chance. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, it’s a logical impossibility for a system that operates within a system to fully understand the system it operates within. This is what Einstein’s theories of relativity were all about – it is all relative to the particular observer, at their particular reference point in space-time.

But this principle applies just as much to our regular lives as it does to what we could call “Einsteinian post-modernism”. I’m not arguing that we completely throw out tradition and culture – a lot of things are here because they do, more or less, work, and serve a function.

Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ve discovered the ultimate answer to something, because, you know, around the corner there’s always something waiting to say, “nah, that doesn’t describe me.” It’s a little bit like women – if you try to figure them out you’ll come up against a LOT of problems, and they will certainly let you know about them.

So what to do in a world we can never understand fully? Well, the same thing we do with women I think. To borrow a quote from the legendary Oscar Wilde: “Women are meant to be loved, not understood.”

Love in the face of not understanding is the key that unlocks all the doors in my estimation. Because when you think about it, love is really the end goal of everything we are aiming for anyway. Everything we do, ultimately, is to find and experience more love. So why not just skip the whole process and start with love itself, the place we’re all really aiming for anyway?

In conclusion, keep using your ideas so long as they are useful, just be careful about turning them into beliefs of “that’s just the way things are”, because sooner or later in this incredibly complex world of ours, you’re going to run into a situation where it doesn’t fit.

And as for my “teacher”? Well, if she suddenly started to not make sense or act a bit cuckoo, I’d be out of there in a jiffy. So far, that hasn’t even been close to happening, so I’m quite happy with hearing her wisdom for the time being.

As always, in love and light,

Will.

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