I have spent a long year feeling sorry for those who are left behind. Knowing that they have been sold a lie.
That they do not not know the dark side and lies of the guru they are following.
Suddenly I had an insight that helped me let go of feeling bad for them.
All followers of not so genuine and absuive gurus are under the very strong power of illusion.
They see the guru as a beautiful, external representation of God. Sometimes as God himself. A perfect being who has perfect vision.
They are under that hypnotic spell that noone can break.
This is what protects them. This is what makes it so they lovingly serve like slaves. Not being able to discern. Use critical thinking.
I have been under that spell myself. I thought I had won the lottery. I looked at it all with pink glasses.
I was given the vision that the guru was a modern Jesus and I felt bliss in that strong belief. You only have eyes for your guru type of “love”.
There must be a “cupid” version for gurus that throw arrows at the hearts of followers.
It was that fantasy that protected me from all the negative aspects of the group for years.
So no need to feel extremely sorry for those who follow these gurus.
The power of illusion is stronger than any psychedelics out there.
While we pity them, they are enjoying the most amazing Mirage.
Those who know the Truth may look at that guru and see a Narcissist. The “devotees” see a Saint.
They may feel sorry for those who are not able to see the perfection of their abusive masters. We are the blind ones to the followers.
The guru does its job for those who have faith in him. It is the most amazing spiritual placebo effect.
It is a lost cause to try and wake followers up. The hypnotic spell must break naturally.
Until then, know that they are usually satisfied in their own world where the guru is the Godsent Unicorn that will help them cross the rainbow bridge.

Truth wins Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is a lost cause to try and wake followers up.
> The hypnotic spell must break naturally.

In understanding why some followers stay (and others leave) I think it is very important to understand that there are at least two aspects to the dynamic between guru and follower that are usually in play.

The guru usually claims to be God, in one form or another, and the guru's having successfully convinced followers of this is definitely an important part of the dynamic.

However most gurus also offer, or claim to offer, significant pragmatic benefits in the here-and-now as well. If you follow this guru, you will get a better job, or a better relationship, or be in better health--etc. The practical benefits that the guru claims to offer can be very important too--it isn't just about whether the guru is or is not God.

Some gurus do deliver on the practical benefits they claim to offer--at least some of the time with some of the people. If you find that some people have left your group and others have stayed, the reason could be at least partly that the people who have stayed are still realizing some kind of practical benefit which the people who have left were no longer getting.

Of course, there can be a significant cognitive dissonance when people realize that maybe they are receiving benefits of one kind or another, but it comes at the price of staying with a guru who increasingly appears to be lying when he claims to be God. Until they resolve that conflict in their mind, and decide whether the practical benefits outweigh the fundamental living of a lie that life in the group entails, we cannot expect much to change.

What I'm saying is that the people who have stayed in your group may be having a different experience than the ones who left--and that may be why, for now, they are staying. I left my guru from 1995-1997, although partly returned later for the last year of his life. When I left it was at least partly because I was no longer seeing the practical benefits I'd experienced in earlier years. I'm definitely open to the possibility that those who stayed during that period might have still been seeing some benefits from the experience that I wasn't.

Dharmalion2003, there are many different gurus and many different philosophies.
In the tradition I was following, guru is key. He is the middle man.
Pleasing guru is equal to pleasing God. So guru is taken very seriously.
He is your ticket out of the miserable material world.
In our case, those who stay do not know all the lies and dirty secrets.
Yes of course there is still benefits. The amount of bliss the followers get from the process is always there. It will never cease in the process I was following.
Those who are in, are protected by the illusion that the guru is spotless and perfect.
When I left it was not because of the guru but the group dynamics. I still had faith in the guru for many years. It is just recently that I found out about all the dirt.
If anybody reaches the vision I have now, they will never be able to stay in the group one single day. It is truly the what you don’t know won’t hurt you or ignorance is bliss.

Truth wins Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dharmalion2003, there are many different gurus and many different philosophies.

True but my experience has been that they are all more similar than different. That is why resources like CEI exist. Each group is a bit different and has its own unique characteristics, but the different groups tend to have a lot in common.

> In the tradition I was following, guru is key. He is the middle man. Pleasing guru is equal to pleasing God. So guru is taken very seriously. He is your ticket out of the miserable material world.

I think you will find this is true of the group that I was part of as well as of most groups that are discussed on CEI. All of this stuff is true of many groups. Although each group has unique characteristics, the different cult groups tend to be similar more than they are different. That is why resources like CEI exist and why we can learn from each other if we accept the similarity of most of these groups.

> In our case, those who stay do not know all the lies and dirty secrets.

I would, however, take this with a bit of skepticism especially since you are speaking in the first person of a group that you are no longer a part of. Since you haven't stayed, how do you know the state of mind of those who do? If you look at the Pair a Docks blog they have a 10-level pyramid model & psychodynamics of cult organization. If you look at the higher levels in their pyramid, the people at those levels are described using terms like the Sociopaths, the Cynics, and the Willful Slaves. In other words, at least according to this pyramid, those who stay and reach the higher levels do know about the lies and dirty secrets, but have also become increasingly cynical and stay for whatever real or perceived benefits they might be getting.

> When I left it was not because of the guru but the group dynamics. I still had faith in the guru for many years. It is just recently that I found out about all the dirt.

The thing is that although you say you still had faith in the guru, that faith sounds like it was no longer absolute. Had the faith been absolute, you would have stuck it out with the group no matter how bad the group dynamics were. The group dynamics--a here and now pragmatic factor--was the main factor informing your decision of whether to stay or go, not any faith in the supposed godliness of the guru.

I would also put it out there for consideration that the reason you perceived the group dynamics to be bad is that you had fallen out of favor with the guru. Other members of the group who were still in favor with the guru might have been experiencing better group dynamics and so they stayed.

If you look again at the Pair a Docks pyramid structure I mentioned earlier, one can see that especially at the higher levels, the group dynamics become bad for a reason. It isn't something that just happens randomly. At a certain point to progress any higher one needs to start imitating the guru and become abusive to one's peers oneself.

So I'm suggesting that if the group dynamics became bad for you, it is likely because the members of the group you were part of were imitating the guru and starting to become abusive themselves. So the members of the group who stayed were, at least at some level, aware of what was going on and imitating it for cynical reasons.

One thing that former cult members sometimes have trouble with, and that I think you may be struggling with, is that cult members are often betrayed not just by the guru, but by their peers (fellow cult members) as well. The people in your former group who stayed are probably not nearly as innocent as you seem to think they are.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2021 03:18AM by DharmaLion2003.

Our group dynamics were really bad because of the leader of the center.
The guru has thousands of followers and I never saw him in person.
That center was a nasty experience for pretty much everybody.
Many ran to other centers because of thag leader.
No I did have full faith in guru when I left. I left the center and stayed attached to them for many years.
I truly left the cult last year. I had one foot in and always thought worse comes to worse I will go back.
Now I know way too much and I have also attacked them personally. So thankfully it is over. I am protected by mys sabotage.

I think the place you were in psychologically for many years--up until a year ago--is a very common situation to be in psychologically as one goes through the process of leaving a cult. It is the same place I was in myself for many years and to some extent still am.

It is quite common to say, as you did and as I also did for many years, that one still has faith in the guru but one doesn't trust the guru's subordinates, and hence one leaves or reduces involvement. Usually the hated subordinate is someone who is somewhere in the direct chain of command between the doubting member and the guru. It is, psychologically, a step that a lot of us make. It is too big a leap to, all at once, say one has lost faith in the guru. It is easier to take the psychological baby step of saying one no longer trusts the subordinates but still has faith in the guru.

Such a position can work psychologically for a long time, but eventually it often turns out to be untenable. If the guru's subordinates are acting badly, in a high intensity group it is almost always because the guru put them there to act badly. It is often done by the guru precisely to produce the kind of psychological reaction both you and I experienced. The guru has his subordinates do most of the dirty work so that when people begin to doubt, they will doubt the subordinates and not the guru himself. This often works for awhile but eventually the buck stops on the guru's desk. The guru can't get away with passing the buck to the subordinates forever.

Your group sounds like it was a bit bigger than mine, so your guru probably had the luxury of delegating more of his dirty work than mine did. But I would be quite confident that, even if your guru didn't know you personally, most negative things that happened originated with your guru even if it was stage managed to appear to be initiated by the subordinates.

That being said, the higher ranking subordinates do have some responsibility for their own actions too. The defense that they were "just following orders" is often not a persuasive one.

Our group was very complex. It is hard to blame the guru for the subbordinates.
You would have exteremely compassionate and kind ones and some nasty and controlling ones like mine.
I have had many different experiences.
In lectures, the guru always criticized callous behavior.
I cannot tell you how covert the lies and the past of the guru are.
I only found oit about it all in this forum.
Ultimately yes, I now blame him for the crazy dynamics. Also looking at all the dysfunctions, I cannot imagine how I was tricked to think it was normal.
With oir group, it seems as though what hurts the most is what we did not know.
Giving your life and souls to a semi lunatic guru who is pretending and believeing he is absolutkey perfect and the manifestation of god.
I personally have great compassion for all human beings and their disorders. I myself am far from being very leveled and perfect.
however those gurus brainwash you day and night that they are perfect. Faultless. The external voice of God.
This is what makes it so hard for them. It is that perfection that they project and that other people expect of them.
It would be much easier if most gurus admitted that there are as messed up as everybody else.
I am sure that there are some rare genuine ones out there that are worthy of trust.
After everything that I have experienced and know, the idea of a guru (even good ones) makes me sick to my stomach.
I have nothing against a guru who is just a teacher. I believe for sure that some of us might have something more to offer.
however the idea of a guru deciding for your every move and chastising you like a 2 year old, sounds extremely retarded to me.
It keeps one in spiritual infancy and you can never reach a level of self-confidence when it comes to trusting your own intuition.
The level of control is just too much. there is no way for anybody to reach their full potential in an atmosphere of fear and control.