I really enjoyed the article “as one thinks, so shall one feel, and how to change all of that”..

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My mind did not know how to separate fact from installed fictions.

It is exactly this missing process that has been misused so broadly over the years, and even more so obviously today with the general public.

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... and learn how to use my eyes to see, my ears to hear, and my body to feel what actually... is.

Potentially, the missing process you describe is called “mentalisation”, there is a therapy dedicated to reigniting it within people, mentalisation based therapy.

Some of us have been staunch in a practice of “non judgement”, when sometimes it was judgement that was needed to keep us safe. Knocking that practice out is a good one too, but takes a while working through guilt and potential internalizing of any judged characteristics.

I was in a "non-duality" group that essentially was a cult for 6.5 years. I managed to get out simply because my brain couldn't accept the teacher(s) or the teaching any longer. While I may have left (1987), even after all this time there are still PTSD issues I still face including nightmares about "being back" with the group, etc. When I left there were so many issues I had to face:
"the world not being 'real'" according to their teachings, losing memories due to not having solid connection to my history at that point, dealing with "bliss" junkie issues like being numb to everything around me in a supposed world that "didn't exist", and basically left to try to create my life from this disaster. I did get 'therapy' for this, but frankly there is still a lot of internalizing going on, judgement, (especially since I left a child when I joined the group) and ended up with a group that basically used "non-dual practices" to install constant abuse and criticism of their students. It's not always easy being "out" even after 30 some years to deal with it all.

I am still learning the curve of posting here but wanted to have new messages, sorry for the error in my last post of not having it marked for following.

Welcome. You've been through a lot.

Thing to remember is when we are recruited into cults, we are lone individuals targeted by an organization that is hiding it's true nature from us, The cult does this in a strategic manner, persuading us to trust the very emotions they adroitly manipulate.

"Some of us have been staunch in a practice of “non judgement”, when sometimes it was judgement that was needed to keep us safe."

Very much agreed. I fell into non-judgment early on. Jiddu Krishnamurti's extensive but sometimes confusing commentaries about the topic make it clear that while complete openness to empirical observation is very useful, there's definitely a place for examining the potentially misleading admonitions from the (supposed) "authority."

"Rational empiricism" and all that.