ASK ERIN is a question and answer column addressing all things psychic. It can be found exclusively on this website www.aschoolforselfandenergyawareness.com and all questions are answered personally by me, Erin.

Please feel free to email your questions to erinlassell@comcast.net. If it is a personal question about yourself, please include your real name. I will not use your real name on the published version of the answer.

I have been in practice as a clairvoyant reader and teacher since 1986. I have literally done thousands of clairvoyant readings and taught over a hundred classes in this time. This column is an opportunity to share some of my insight and experience with the general public. I would like to hear metaphysical questions that are most important to you.

Thank you for reading and thank you for participating.

                           

NEW Ask Erin October 2011 

Question:  Why do people join cults?

                                     From Individual to Follower

Transcending and learning are very positive reflections of a moral life, but spiritual progress also makes a person vulnerable.  The mental pioneering of striving to create an enlightened, less materialistic life style may set a person outside the protection of society, especially if he or she decides to collaborate with a group. Practiced narcissists watch for group transformation and prey upon attempts at progress, making it difficult to come to new possibilities without encountering these unscrupulous predators.

People don’t set out to join cults. They set out to form a family or join a community. The innocence of their original intent helps to keep them in denial if their like-minded group sprouts a narcissistic leader intent on morphing them into submissive followers.

The red flag sign of being a cult member, the shutting down of critical thinking, is manipulated so slowly by a narcissistic leader that when the idealistic individual sacrifices his or her uniqueness for the sake of the group, she doesn’t understand this is happening or she doesn’t interpret the shift as something against her own will. If a calculating leader emerges from the group-turning-cult, the part of the brain that could identify this danger is otherwise occupied with the roaring enthusiasm and unbridled faith for new Utopian objectives.  The seeds of conformity and control begin in the excitement.

                              Suppression of Critical Thinking

Anyone can be manipulated.  No matter what your circumstances you are never above it.  Our brains are divided into many regions. One of these regions functions on automatic.  If the automatic part of the brain becomes the most relevant and the analytic parts are suppressed, the transfer of individuality over to the group consciousness happens without realization.

Once a person has unofficially become a member of a cult (because it will always be unofficial and without true consent), her logic is suppressed while her self esteem is repeatedly broken down and replaced by the need for approval from the group and its leader.  The independent validation of the uniqueness of one’s self is suppressed by false urgency and the apocalyptic philosophy of a practiced narcissistic leader. The leader of a group-turned-cult also manipulates using peer pressure tactics to threaten exclusion from the group, resulting in constant anxiety. The fall from the illusion of grace becomes a dreaded nightmare to be avoided at all cost.  The culture becomes fear-based. Individual members gradually become more and more obedient as they desperately seek to be one of the few who will “change the world.”  Their former selves, who possessed autonomy, can hardly be recognized. Although the glassy eyed look of a cult member is obvious to an outside observer, members don’t realize they are trapped. They think they are privy to enlightenment and information that the main stream rejects.  And this might even be partially true, which further complicates the entrapment.

                                       Emerging of the Leader

Daydreaming about a less oppressive and more joyful world is universal.  But the space between life as we know it and something better is huge and formless. Predators lurk in this space between imagining a more positive reality and the manifestation of it.  They leap on this transition because they know it is where they have the best chance of reigning. It is ironic that the leap towards betterment is the breeding ground for people who have no heartfelt intentions, but it is in the space of breaking down convention where controllers do their best work. Everyday norms might limit us, but they also keep us safe. Predators study this dissolving space, learn to step into it and mold it to suit their needs.

Moving conventional norms forward momentarily creates a power vacuum.  Power vacuums are almost never predicted, so the void created by the wake is easily exploited by spiritual opportunists.  And, as it turns out, there are a lot of people who specialize in spiritual exploitation.

The leaders who choose to step into these vacuums are typical, yet illusive.  They all use similar techniques to create gradual submission under a cloak of lovely spiritual progression. They never answer questions about their own personal process, mostly because it is assumed they have evolved above personal problems. This allows them to become more powerful over the group.  If the leader is questioned, a common retort might be that the leader is acting as a “reflection” for his follower. The goal of a leader is to always make the follower into someone who has to process. Whatever she thinks she sees in the cult leader is supposedly just an issue mirrored back.  It is an irrational but effective tool, perhaps because it is irrational.  It stops the individual from realizing there is something wrong with her situation because it forces her to internalize everything.

Another tool of a cult leader is a thick, gentle, parental-priestly facade. This goes well with steering the conversation away from himself and on to the members.  An experienced cult leader has a lot of good truthful, progressive information that he gradually mixes with irrational information, urgency and charisma until he attains a singular irrefutable status.   When this chaotic possession is combined with peer pressure, isolation, urgency, sleep deprivation and the stripping of boundaries, an individual gradually transforms into an obedient member without ever making the conscious decision to do so.

Members don’t leave  cults  because they don’t think they need to, and because if they leave, they think they will lose the path to enlightenment and they will pay the ultimate price of losing their soul, not realizing that they have already lost contact with themselves.  No one who is brainwashed thinks they are brainwashed. They think they are on a journey to awakening. They don’t see themselves as controlled by a predator who has taken over the jurisdiction of authority and answers to no one.

When you dare to dream that something better is possible and then take the step to actualize your dreams, everyday norms that keep us safe are by definition dissolved.  These norms are seen as barriers to something new and the group consents to their removal.  To the individual, the removal of the boundaries seems like an innocent sacrifice to create a society that is way ahead of its time, like creating great art. So in the zealousness to blow the lid off of convention, the group dismisses outside authority, forfeiting the protection and scrutiny it might have to offer.  The new subgroup becomes a closed society. Amidst the excitement of something new, something better, individuals become a collective run by a narcissist, who is never seen as a narcissist unless the spell is broken.  He is seen as an evolved spirit who has transformed limitations eons ago making him light years ahead of his time. The individual truth seekers are eventually hooked because they fail to see they are actually controlled by an ordinary man with dangerous goals, who both intimidates and inspires.

                                      Energy Manipulation

Cult leaders also intimidate using their knowledge of energy manipulation.  Vince Bugliosi in Helter Skelter writes of Charles Manson’s ability to stop wrist watches at will.  Apparently Charles Manson could actually do this and once did it to Mr. Bugliosi. Even though all this takes is an incremental knowledge of how to move energy and concentrate, when it worked, Charles Manson scared people with the results.  He made people think he had supernatural powers, which added to his imagined stature and mystical allure.

While the trick of stopping a wrist watch is useless unless you are trying to make someone late, people were convinced this made Charles Manson superior and made them more likely to lose the ability of independent assessment.

A cult leader also channels countless out- of- body beings.   Out-of-body beings magnify any pre-existing charisma and ability that the cult leader has to rally people’s emotions.  Out-of- body- beings, like the in-body cult leaders they attach to, also have no one to answer to and absolutely thrive on raw emotion.  Slipping people into an irrational frenzy is relatively easy once the cult leader magnifies unfiltered emotion with out-of-body-beings. They are an irreplaceable piece to the puzzle.  They add to the illusion of power by creating a negative chaotic tornado of energy. Often people mistake out-of-body-beings for a positive sign that they have witnessed something special.  Before they become apocalyptic, out-of-body-beings cast the illusion of light.

                                           Breaking the Spell

The moment a person realizes that his or her individual thinking has been dominated, it becomes possible to awaken herself from the spell.

All cults eventually ask their members to give up common sense and ethics.  Being asked to cross these lines can trigger the critical thinking necessary to initiate separation.  Doing something wrong can awaken a brainwashed soul. Once ethics are reawakened, an individual authentic inner voice starts to come back.  The realization that harm may come to others is the strongest antidote to a cult coma.  If a person does not snap out of the trance at this point, deprogramming is much more complicated.

Whether a person leaves a cult of his or her own cognition, the ending is always bad and the scars are deep.

                                       Collective Progression

We live in a world that collectively progresses extremely slowly. New, good information has to be glaringly obvious for a long time before everyone accepts it as the norm.  The results of changing so slowly range from frustrating to catastrophic, but the snail’s pace is one ingredient that actually helps to suppress the formation of cults and lessens the playgrounds for narcissists. Guiding ourselves forward, collectively or individually, is not humanity’s strong suit. Becoming brainwashed before we land in a new, better version of reality is a huge risk. A strong sense of right and wrong saves us during these transitions.  Ethics are the voice of the soul.  They are the maturity that saves us from being consumed and losing ourselves as we seek the next level of power and wisdom and  contemplate what is possible.