CULT LEADER(ship)
Hone your senses (before you're in too deep)
Hello everyone,
I am coming to you, writing this article on a New Moon in Scorpio.
What better time to be writing about this kind of topic.
Scorpio is the Huntress - the one who sees (hunts) what is playing out in the underworld and undercurrent of society. The one that is deeply in touch with the shadow and the unconscious.
Having a Scorpio stellium (and in particular, my sun being conjunct mercury, pluto and Lilith), my role here is often to see and communicate (third house stellium) what I am seeing play out in the shadow realms of both individuals and society as a whole. Not to mention the shadow hunting I do on myself (I need to consciously schedule breaks to allow my mind to redirect itself, as it is almost a full time preoccupation).
This article comes to you, after seeing the posts (and then starting to watch) the Netflix series, Escaping Twin Flames.
Having tracked patterns of Cult Leadership for some time now AND having worked on overcoming a lot of my OWN oppressor patterns within leadership, this series came as no surprise.
In saying that, I couldn’t get past the first episode.
Seeing so called “Teachers” and “Leaders” consciously manipulate their students through coercion and control for profit and self gain, is really uncomfortable to witness. Particularly, considering these two supposed “teachers” (they’re nothing but puppeteers) manipulate their students into positions where they actually put themselves in harms way, had my whole body contracting in discomfort.
In the first episode, we see these two cult leaders convince one of their students that a criminal, who had just served in jail, who she had never met, was her “twin flame”. They were willing to suggest that she pursued a relationship, that was harmful to her, in order to take her funds and prove that they were successful in supporting her to find “love and union”.
This documentary serves an important message.
It is uncomfortable to watch, but it is important - particularly since there has been a surge in people pursing careers in the coaching industry in the past decade, due to a rise in discomfort in people serving corporations + a rewilding of people from the 9-5 hustle.
Being mostly unregulated, the coaching, wellness and spiritual healing industries have attracted a lot of people who, in the midst of crisis, are seeking answers. It is the perfect industry for those that are wanting easy cash and have the ability to shelter and armour themselves from human emotion and empathy in the name of a quick dollar.
As someone who has been teaching in this industry for 10 years now, I have experienced my fair share of this. I have trained under multiple teachers and leaders who have exhibited and have run businesses that have been deeply coercive and controlling - which is one of the qualities of Cult Leadership.
I have analysed - both in others AND myself, many patterns which I will speak about today in this article.
These leaders are usually highly influential - they know how to access the parts of you that are wanting to be saved. (Ahem- religion is often the greatest example of this & why we are also seeing many spiritual leaders turn to more dogmatic christian teachings at this time… being “saved” and having your sins wiped clean… it sounds appealing right?!).
I would love to have all of the fuck ups I have made as a teacher, cleanly erased from my memory and my life.
The truth is - its not as “easy” as that, if you want to have a clean start. It requires grit. It requires you to get REALLY fucking honest with yourself about where you have fucked up. To forgive yourself, yes. But also, to admit where you went wrong. To course correct and change your behaviour. To look at your own shadows.
Studying under a number of prolific leaders who have exhibited Controlling, Cult Leadership Styles, I have had to deeply reflect: Why are these people coming into my life? Where am I also exhibiting these qualities? What can I change in my own business in order to lead with more integrity and not repeat the behaviours of others that I am seeing?
Working with Internal Family Systems and “Parts Work” has been a powerful exploration of this for myself, as a teacher.
I am constantly self reflecting and working with mentors to provide me with reflections of my leadership. Not to mention the work I do, mostly with parts work, in my own space, to integrate any shadow behaviours I have as a teacher.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a Somatic System that was designed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. It is a transformational Somatic Tool to support you to understand the different elements and aspects of the Self and how they play out internally. If we look at our internal world as a reflection of the entire universe itself, we can see that we are comprised of many different aspects, patterns and systems that are both Universal and Soul-Centric (individual and shaped by our upbringing and family, environment and more). It is a powerful process of learning how to come into contract with our different parts - for self awareness and transformation. I personally LOVE using IFS as a process to help me to understand how and why different parts of myself show up and act out. It is a particularly powerful tool for leaders.
An example of how I have used this to dismantle UNHEALTHY shadow behaviours in my own leadership, is to work with Somatics to understand the aspect of myself that unconsciously likes to control others. Another resource for learning about how to work with our unconscious parts (and why they often rule the show), is Carolyn Elliots book, Existential Kink.
I have many different processes and Somatic practises I use to work with my different parts. These are what I teach in my body of work, SOMAMYSTICA® which is a body of work which explores Somatics for healing and self transformation.
As teachers and leaders in the “healing” industry, we absolutely MUST be open to seeing unhealthy and corercive cult-leadership patterns around us and also, within us. Having awareness on how our own inner oppressor plays out, against ourself (and others) is a chance for us to grow and becoming more empathetic, caring and human + community - centric.
I have definitely exhibited Cult like qualities in my leadership in the past. The ways that I altered this, came through other leaders reflections - I saw myself in others behaviours and I course corrected. This is how we grow. And this is the reason that I can write about this topic now.
I want to share with you, here, what I have learned on my path of studying Cult Leadership and how you can pick up on these behaviours, so you don’t get sucked into them, like I (and many others) have done.
But first, lets define what a CULT is.
What is a cult?
The word CULT is derived from the word CULTURE.
In this respect, it is not, be definition, inherently harmful.
As leaders, we can create positive culture, too.
However, some sources DO define cults as CULT-ures which have coercion and control at the centre. CULT-ures whereby there is some kind of Leader or Leadership Organisation at the core, which capitalises off manipulating it’s audience and community.
A few good resources on CULT leadership include The Cult Education Institute (CEI), Combating Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan, The BITE model of Authoritarian Control by Steve Hassan, The Courage to be disliked by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga, CULT TRIP by Anke Richter and more.
I had a guest speaker come into the SOMAMYSTICA® Practitioner Training and speak about Rewilding from CULTS. If you would like the lecture, you can subscribe at the bottom of this page for access to the lecture.
Let’s move onto my analysis of CULT Leadership.
Leadership qualities of a CULT leader.
I am going to do my best here to list and speak about all of the qualities I have witnessed within CULTS (cultures, based on models of manipulation, coercion and control).
Aside from the well documented qualities, like there being a self appointed leader/s at the centre of the organisation, these are some of the Somatic & Energetic aspects of a CULT leader that you may notice.
PLEASE NOTE, that one of the key indicators in discerning whether you are engaging with someone that is controlling you, is your bodies response. CULT leaders thrive on clients who are in a fawn response. A fawn response is a trauma response, that has us in a disempowered, people pleasing state. It develops, from childhood, from having a parent/s or someone around us, that we had to adapt to/please in order to be accepted. I really recommend reading Peter Walkers work on Codependency and the Fawn response if you would like to go more into the origins and roots of this trauma response, as it is at the core of the exploration of how CULTS operate.
CULTS cannot operate and exist amongst empowered individuals. They are vampiric and they feed off disempowered individuals, who are in a trauma response, and who are looking for an external influence to save them.
Learning to work with undoing your own trauma influences so you can make more self empowered decisions, requires Somatic Intelligence. Somatic Intelligence is the core, central teaching of SOMAMYSTICA® which was birthed, to support individuals to know themselves + live from a state of inner intelligence (as opposed to living a life where you are constantly making decisions based upon what others want and need from you).
When learning to discern whether a teacher or leader has your best interests at heart, it is important to start being more aware of your body.
Is your body contracted or open in the presence of that person?
This requires the spaciousness to breathe and sense into your body.
If your body is contracted, you can learn the tools to discern why. This is what we do in SOMAMYSTICA® - the body knows.
Aside from listening to your own body, here are some of the other qualities I have noticed that CULT leaders utilise to capitalise on their clients confusion.
Quality #1 - Using Ambiguous spiritual language
Using ambigious, intangible, spiritual language that doesn’t make sense.
For example, just take a look at the Netflix documentary, Escaping Twin Flames.
How many times do you screw your face up, thinking, “Ha- that makes no sense”
They do this for a reason.
It keeps you in a state of confusion, whereby they can manipulate you more easily. When you are internally distracted, wondering what the f*** someone is talking about, you are not in your centre. You are in your mind. That’s where the mind games begin.
Quality #2 - Using transcendant language that bypasses the self
They will tell you they are doing what they do, for the greater good of humanity. That it is “not about them”. That they are selfless. They will make you feel like you need to do the same- to transcend the self. Reason being? When there is no self, you quite literally lose your self and centre. Without a sense of self, there is no capacity to question what someone is doing.
Quality #3 - Blame and Shame
They will get you to internalise what you are feeling and turn it back around on yourself.
“Find the lesson”
“It’s just your projections that you need to work on”
Again, look at the Escaping Twin Flames documentary and the “Mirror process” that they get their participants to do. If there is no external situation to blame and they get their clients to internalise blame, which creates shame, then they never have to face the possibility of being questioned by their clients… because they will just turn it back around on them. This leads me onto my next point…
Quality #4 - The inability to self reflect / look at their own vulnerablities
They are not open to conversation with you. They are not open to self reflection. They are not open to admitting their f*** ups, their faults, their vulnerablities… and that is because they have a Messiah Complex - they often, deep down, believe that there is nothing wrong with them….And if they are “vulnerable” it is not true vulnerability - it is usually an act, because they are too afraid to give up control, which is one of the root patterns here with Cult Leaders- there is a deep insecurity and fear of being perceived as vulnerable. Usually, because they have had a controlling parent as a child and they did not learn or were not allowed to be themselves.
Quality #5 - The Leader does not have a mentor/healthy reflections to show them their own vulnerabilities and weaknesses
In fact, they wont look at their own weaknesses. There is an invincibility program within CULT leaders that has them believe that they do not need to self reflect and do their own work. These people are happy being leaders. They are not happy being led. There is a resistance to being able to take advice from others. They usually DO NOT have a consistent mentor… and if they do, it is not someone that has the capability to really call them out on their BS.
Wow, I feel like I could go on forever here. I may even add to this article later. But for now, I will leave it here.
Thankyou for being here. I hope this was supportive for you. My desire to write this, is my desire to see more people empowered - less vulnerable to falling into the trap and spell of manipulative leadership. Because, it is like a spider web- it is magnetic, desirable… that is what the promise of saving you from your trauma does…. it feels like an offer too good to refuse.
Sigourney Belle.