Cults proliferate in the “we generation” periods…

I go shopping for food once every two weeks. I have a shopping list of 15 items, of which 10 are there every time… never changing.

But every time I shop I sneak in something different, eat it and get sick for a day or two or three. That is my indulgence for that two week period.

It makes me feel free.

I am from Hungary. I like spicy sausage. There is a famous sausage in Hungary, Gyulai kolbász. Chorizo is similar, but not the same. So I have been buying that or Andouille sausage made by Dartagnan.

Obviously the sausage is made of pork meat and pork fat.

I am Jewish.

So today I asked the question:

Why am I allowed to eat pork? Isn’t the Bible an accurate prescription for health?

I know, I know… but this question opened a veritable can of worms.

If pork were bad for me, muscletest would say so. But it’s been testing yes… at least this sausage.

Bringing doubt to this whole Jewish kashrut issue… Kashrut sounds like a health regulation.

Maybe it isn’t. Maybe if you create stringent rules to live by, you can create a group of people who live by the same rules and feel separate, different, superior to others who live by other rules, or no rules.

Maybe these are the “rules” to create a cult and you can rule their world.

As someone who is self-employed, I am also a marketer. And this resonates in marketing.

There is even a book I have read and of course barely remember any of it, about the way to create a brand and a following by using cult-building techniques.

Brain washing, proprietary words, a shared “philosophy”,

here is an extract of an article about how to build a cult”

• Difference – Distance your cult from the establishment or norm. Form your own niche. People love to rebel against the norm.
• Connectors – Recruit successful, attractive, and sociable souls to spread the word and drive growth. These are your influencers.
• Exclusivity – Limit entry to your group. Not anyone can join or the members wouldn’t feel as special or enticed by it. (Learn more about exclusivity and how your brand can do it right here.)
• Solidarity – A clear sense of belonging to the group creates loyalty and word-of-mouth.
• Ideology – A clear belief system outlines the values that the group is expected to uphold.
• Lovebomb – Overwhelm your customers with love to let them know how appreciated and welcome they are in the group.
• Paradox – Make joiners feel that they become more individual, despite the fact that they are joining a group. Make them feel like they are discovering a new sense of self, or finding a new way to express their individuality.
• An Enemy – Define what you are and are not to rally your group against the competition. (Think PC vs Mac.)
• Contact – Splash your ideas onto the right people.
• Let go – Don’t be a wide-read, psychopathic, control-obsessive cult leader or you risk losing everything you’ve built. Allow the vision you built to grow and evolve on its own.

Oh yeah, the book I’ve read and forgot is The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers Into True Believers, Douglas Atkin (Head of Community at AirBnb.)

Why did I forget? Because a cult is a construct built at the expense and on the weakness of the participants… it is a chicken coop. It is manipulative and that is against my personal values, my principles, what I am envisioning humanity as.

But some elements I do remember. And remember not to use them.

As an individual, I value my personal integrity over everything else. Integrity is what allows me to love myself, to love my life. And I have tried life without a very high level of integrity, and hated every moment of it.

Not mentioning the fact that I am surrounded by people who hate themselves and hate their lives, whether they are successful or not. Whether they are healthy or not. Whether they have a family or not.

My priorities are like a pyramid.

I used to have health as the highest priority… but I have been putting integrity there, ever since i have been experiencing how life feels when you love yourself. I can even love my life while am attacked about 30-50% of my time by some dark practitioner (I know who it is, just don’t want to say their name).

She may have a cult following, but she is wretched. Wretched, the dictionary meaning is (of a person) in a very unhappy or unfortunate state, but my meaning is slightly more precise: a person who has no inner peace because the two selves are at odd… there is no love between the selves… because there is no integrity.
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Kabbalah and Wallace D. Wattles say the same thing, when they say: power over others is the only evil there is. Desire to receive for the self alone.

You can want the best for yourself without desiring being over and above another person.

People criticize me for my vibrational reviews. They say that I want to push those I review down, so I am the only one who shines.

It is not true. I hate being alone. I don’t feel better because someone is less or less happy than I am. Quite the opposite.

You say that about me because that is the world you live in: desire to receive for the self alone. The kind of competitive world where your value is relative to others. You project your worldview on me, thinking you are talking about me. You are talking about yourself…

OK, back to cults, back to sausage…

Religions are cults. All of them. They have nearly all the elements of cults.

I was in a cult-like program once. I realized it was cult-like when in 1997 I attended a Landmark Education conference to create the company’s vision for the next period, forgot how long.

When they said: “World class company here to stay” I heard that they were starting to be about themselves, not about the students, not about the participants… and then I emotionally divorced myself from them.

Integrity is near impossible for most people.

Why? Because their two selves are like Landmark Education and its participants: different and incompatible purposes.

One self is all about itself. Get at all cost, even if it is extortion, theft, cheating, being a con artist, lying, etc. The other, the natural self is never considered.

And there can be no inner peace.

PS: I attract all kinds of people… and don’t have a tribe, most people visit the site, nod or frown, and leave.

One HUGE group of people who get to my site through searching for “butterfly language” one way or another.

I know I should write a whole article… but I don’t feel like it. I don’t like those people. Those people belong to the high delusional self category of people. They fancy themselves high spiritually, and they get that sense through comparison with caterpillars and they feel superior to them. Very clearly desire to receive for the self alone.

A ticket to wretchedness, a ticket to misery. Because being a butterfly is a delusion, and using it to elevate one’s self-image is evil.

No integrity. Can’t sit on their “arse” because the inner discord won’t let them. Can’t meditate, can’t do their job, can’t put all power in all action…

Because to be able to meditate, you need the foundations of inner harmony, inner peace. Because doing your job well you need inner peace, where your two selves are in the same camp.

Putting all power in all action is impossible without integrity. You can force, you can cheat… but no power.

And here is a most unusual cult: the cult of ignorance, the cult of stupidity. The enemy is people who have something to say, people who read books, who have an education, knowledge, skills.

I and my site are THE enemy to this cult.

70% of my sites visitors belong to this cult. The cult of ignorance… “hip” ignorance.

When I look at my exercise class, 90% of those people are proud members of this club.

The 70%, the ones that visit my site to hate me, feel totally superior to me, as some of my exercise class people.

Being educated, to have knowledge, to read, to strive for more knowledge is not hip.

According to Monday Morning Memo, Roy H. Williams, the pendulum will swing into a “me generation” where people will want to learn… but not yet.

Also: Read this article and check your eyes. If you wept, or if you groaned…

Let me know in the comments section of this site

1. “I felt so wretched because I thought I might never see you again”
   synonyms: miserable, unhappy, sad, heartbroken, grief-stricken, sorrowful, sorry for oneself, distressed, desolate, devastated, despairing, disconsolate, downcast, dejected, crestfallen, cheerless, depressed, melancholy, morose, gloomy, mournful, doleful, dismal, forlorn, woebegone;

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven