Live in the Layers, Not on the Litter

(sounds like a cult)

This life is a thump-ripe melon, so sweet and such a mess. ~ Greg Brown

We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder. We belong together. ~ Brianna Hildebrand

In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: Live in the layers, not on the litter. ~ Stanley Kubitz

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Stick with me while I finish laughing my head off over here…. I’m re-reading my dear friend Jordan’s latest post the only (dirtbag) cult I’d join (read here). It’s good to laugh at things that have previously caused you harm (if you can). I think it’s a part of healing, after enough time has passed.

Buckle up, we’re talking about cults today, folks. Also, listen to this song while reading (only if you want to).

Let me start by saying, Hi, my name is Leah (Hi, Leah!) and I am Cultish. Meaning, I’ve been in, and come out the other side of several cults in my forty-six years of life. Anyone who knows me, knows this about me. AA language (cult) is not helpful, I’m just trying to be funny.

I am borderline obsessed/fascinated by cults. Which makes sense, given my conditioning. I listen to Amanda Montell’s podcast ‘Sounds like a cult’ ,which has helped me break down my own lived experience. She talks about our culture which is, essentially, predisposed to cult-like behaviour. From Ikea, to dance moms, to veganism, Soul Cycle to Yoga, reality TV shows, and then onto darker movements like NXIVM, Jonestown and drinking the Kool Aid. Think of the language. Pop cult(ure.) Cult following. Cult films, music. Cult personalities. And why is this? We are hardwired to belong. We need to belong - to a tribe, community, with other humans. And sometimes this goes haywire. But it’s hard to extract yourself, because you have found belonging, you are not alone.

Definition of a cult: A system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. A misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.

What happens when you are born into a cult? And it’s all you know, as the neural pathways are developing in your brain. As you grow up you may start to see things that don’t feel right to you, but it’s really hard to leave, because who will you be? What will you belong to, when you leave? Just as a recap: when I was born (age 0-5), my parents lived off-grid in the woods of interior BC. We were isolated with a small group of families, led by one very charismatic man (person), who had removed themselves from the world, because they believed it was ending soon. Rapture, Jesus coming back, the whole works. As I got a bit older and started going to school, we graduated into a christian light version of this belief system.

I would say the next cult I was susceptible to was when I moved to Montreal at age 18. I was alone in the big city and searching for belonging. I found a church and friends who believed that the KJV (object) was the only true bible, and everything else was wrong. And also some random conspiracy theory about black helicopters taking over the world.

Then I went on to Bible School (very cultish) in Europe, and then YWAM (a christian volunteer youth organization) rife with practices of spiritual abuse and harmful beliefs. We’re talking: shut a group of young people in a small room for six hours to shame them into confessing their ‘sins’ in front of their peers. Demonize mental health. Shame women for their sexuality and blame them for any SA they have experienced. I could go on.

The common denominator in these four experiences: Judgement and bigoted beliefs toward anyone who did not have the same beliefs as said group of people. The first time I started questioning Out Loud (because I had always questioned inside myself in my quiet voice) was when I moved to Montreal again at the age of 24, after spending two years in the cult of Ywam. I remember two specific experiences. The first. I was walking down the street on a glorious summer day, under the tree canopies and two people were walking in front of me, clearly in love. Exuding love. I felt its beautiful, pulsating energy. Two women. Now, when you grow up in the church this is considered a ‘sin’. I put the word sin in brackets because I don’t believe there is such thing as sin. A sin that you can be put in a room for six hours and be shamed for. A sin that elders will try to cast out of you, as if you are possessed with a demon.

And I was just like, yes. Love.

This is love. That’s all there is to it. This is who I am, I am a lover. I love love. I believe in love. I don’t care what love looks like. Plus, when you see love in something that you were told is not love, and conversely you see hate in something that you were taught is love (God is love), shit just gets confusing.

The second: My friend and I had just been on a bike ride around the Old Port, we stopped in the Gay Village at an SAQ for a bottle of wine to go with dinner. He went in, and I stayed outside with our bikes. It transpired in under five seconds. I was watching people, and I watched as two gorgeous, buff gay men walked by laughing and holding hands. And I felt love. I felt what can only be described as a transcendental wave of love. Like the veil was parted for a moment and everyone and everything around me was enveloped in this aura of love. All is full of love. A mystical moment. A religious experience, if you will.

Now, because I am wired for spirituality, I’ll touch on one more of my cultish lived experiences; my foray into the New Age world, which lasted about two years. What pisses me off royally now is the language of a movement. Specifically the words high vibrations. Essentially, people who say ‘this person has a low vibration’, or ‘I have a high(er) vibration’ are saying I am better than you. I’ve figured it out and you haven’t. I belong and you don’t (a consistent theme in cults and cult-like behaviour). I’m more spiritual than you.

But spiritual work is about (can be about) holding your seat. Learning to be comfortable with discomfort. Learning to stay when you feel uncomfortable, uncertain, angry, vulnerable or sad. These are real human emotions. This is what it means to be human, along with feeling connection, joy, love, and ecstasy. We can’t have one with out the other. And if we try to bypass, something goes wrong. Don’t get me started on how this harmful language is intertwined with privilege. Did I manifest this, or is it just my white privilege? Rainbows and unicorns notwithstanding (because who doesn’t love rainbows and unicorns.)

Now if you’re still with me, Bravo! This is a lot, I know.

I am going to talk about a few more things, a few key points from Jordan’s brilliant, hilarious post . Feel free to read it before continuing if you’re in a particularly researchy, studious mood. She writes about humans living in healthy community. The antithesis to a thriving cult, which is humans living in unhealthy, often harmful, sometimes violent community. But still, community. Which is hard to leave.

Key points (from Jordan’s dirtbag cult) that are the antithesis to (real) cults:

1. ‘I don’t know’/I don’t have all the answers. Cults must have the only right answer. And anyone who doesn’t get it is, necessarily, excluded.

2. Have a sense of humour. Cults have no room for humour, which pokes fun at and makes you think outside of the box, a helpful tool.

3. Be kind, don’t exploit or demean anyone. Enough said. In my fairly extensive experience of cults, a lack of kindness, exploitation, and demeaning others was par for the course.

4. Don’t expound on your beliefs or force them on someone else, unless you find a like-minded person who wants to discuss it with you. I.e. Shut the fuck up about what you believe unless someone asks you and/or believes the same thing and wants to talk about it with you. People in cults have a habit of proselytizing endlessly on their beliefs and trying to shove them down the throats of anyone who will listen and usually people who don’t want to listen. It’s annoying. It’s harmful. It’s an extension of colonialism. It’s often called ‘witnessing’ or some such other vague term.

5. There would never be anything destabilizing about spiritual practice. Nothing that would cause trauma or dredge up trauma from your past. See 8.

6. There would be a pair of special pink sparkly glasses you could put on to filter out the bigoted bullshit inserted by nasty humans. I.e. The whole old testament would be pretty much all spaceman spiff with Calvin and Hobbes strips superimposed over it. See Jordan’s post. I don’t think I need to expand on this one. Just picture me rolling on the floor belly laughing over here.

7. Everyone would be safe. I don’t have the emotional energy to write more about this right now.

8. There would be help and support for people who have been traumatized by (other) cults. I.e. Trauma-informed mindfulness practices and therapy. Stuff that doesn’t give you C-PTSD flashbacks. Education on nervous system regulation and how trauma works. Resources, accountability. Sometimes even good things (meditation) can throw a traumatized body out of whack. More education, more resources.

9. Spiritual starter pack vs. spirituality advanced pack (coffee and cigarettes). Speaks to the fact that we don’t really know what spirituality looks like. It could be different for every single one of the 8.2 billion people on the face of this earth. Who are we to impose our version of spirituality on anyone? Also, if our version of spirituality is not evolving, it’s stuck and can quickly become harmful, to ourselves and those around us, even (especially) those we love.

Living in the layers, folks.

Life is not black and white. There is no one answer. I believe that Love is real and will save us all, whatever that looks like. I believe that each person has the inherent right to believe what they want and write their own story. I will never force my beliefs on you. And I will question myself if I ever notice that my beliefs, practices, and language aren’t changing over time.

If you made it this far, thank you. I appreciate my readers (all 10 of you!) Writing is part of my healing journey. It is a part of me making sense of this insanely fucked-up and beautiful world, and my experience of it. It is a way that I regulate my nervous system and use my voice (something it took me years to learn to do, having been essentially silenced from a young age.) Also, I have a lot of stuff to say. Remember, it is just my opinion. Take it or leave it.

I love you dear readers, dear humans. You are the light of the stars on my darkest night. XO until next time…..