Group Cohesion vs. Cult Dynamics

I want to bring people to their own wisdom, and I don't want to bring people to my wisdom or somebody else's wisdom or a group wisdom.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. We're talking about the vow and cults and Some of the people coming back into AOA from having done ESF and other kinds of work, and there's like a tongue-in-cheek thing that sometimes people joke about, like, "Oh, I'm back in the cult," or, "This is a cult," or, "This is not a cult." Or a question for you that somebody asked that was tongue-in-cheek was like, "What if you just stopped resisting that you're a cult leader?" It's funny, like, as soon as you say this, and I know that it's being recorded, I become self-conscious and I become, and I'm like, I don't even want to put that thought in anybody's mind.

And I don't know if it's a semantic thing, if like what other people use the word cult, it means one thing, and in my mind cult means another thing. Like, I don't know if it's even generational, but to me the essence of a cult is where you're handing over your power to somebody else, which is the antithesis of the work that I want to do in the world. By the way, I, I don't think that all cults are bad. And I actually think that there are things that are cults that we don't call cults. Like, I mean, I've definitely been in companies that have a very kind of cult-like thing where it's like very hard to leave and it's—

it's—

there's only one way of thinking and dissent is, is not appreciated. And so I've definitely seen it. And in places where people don't— like political systems have like some deep cult-like behaviors. But it's such an antithesis of what I want to be doing in the world that I'm just like, I just don't want association with it, which is there's something in it for me in that.

Yeah, for sure. It brings me back to something that you said once about like, when we did our one-on-one session that was recorded, there was a thing that you said when I was feeling a lot of tension, you were like, well, tension, if you took all the tension out of a cell, it would die. Tension is part of the system. And I'm seeing this here, like in any group, there is, there's like a desire within the people of the group to start to surrender to the group. Be like, please just solve my problems, meet all my needs, make my decisions, make life easy for me, and heal me, change me, especially in personal development type groups. There's that particular force that's like kind of driving towards group cohesion and towards group healing. And as it does that, there's, some levels of critique and critical thinking or personal wants and needs can start to slowly fall to the wayside. And so then there's this other opposing force, which is, I think, the one that you're living in a lot whenever somebody brings up, "Ah, this is a cult," and you're like, "Ooh, I don't even want to use that word," which is like, "No, no, no, no, we want everybody to have their own autonomy. We want everybody to have their needs met and not sacrifice a large portion of their needs so that the group can as a whole get like a small sliver of needs met and then completely be unhealthy and whatever in other ways.

Right.

So yeah, there's this tension.

I also see that when groups subjugate themselves for the group, there is no healing that happens. Like as people in a group subjugate their needs for the, it's like, it just creates trauma. It doesn't actually create healing. And yeah, I think there's a tendency for it. I think it's very similar to the same tendency that two people get into a relationship and both of them start making sacrifices to their authenticity to make sure the other person is happy or stays happy. You know, walking on eggshells or saying the exact right thing or, you know, doing whatever they need to do so that the other person doesn't get upset with them or angry at them or, you know, get sad or whatever it is. And I think it's the same thing that happens. And I think it's really unhealthy in a relationship. And I think it's really unhealthy in a group. At the same time, there's no judgment towards it in my system, but there is a deep dislike for that kind of, like, dislike as in, I don't like the taste of that.

Yeah.

Like, it just like, I don't, I don't like cooked fish. Yeah. And I want to eat cooked fish. I'll eat raw fish. It's like that. There's that to it. I think the other thing that bothers me about the cult thing, and I'd love to just to explore this, because like I said, I know there's something in this for me, is that what I notice is that when people get involved in these programs, they have a way of interacting with each other, which is deeply fulfilling. People come and say, I really miss doing the work. I really miss the groups. People who do this work together stay friends for now 5, 6 years, and they get to know each other, and the community builds, and there's nobody telling them what to do, no leadership in it. They just enjoy it. And it feels to me that, like, to say this is like cult behavior, it diminishes— it's saying that, like, we can't be this way naturally, we can't just be happy naturally, we can't just be deep and intimate naturally. It's only okay because we're in this cult. There's— so there's There's something about that tongue-in-cheekness, which I think dismisses the idea that this can be your life. This is my life, right? This is many people I know's life who's never done this work. There's something in me that's like, hey, hey, hey, don't dismiss. Don't, nah, uh-uh, like, don't like, like, oh, that only could happen in Vegas. No, it can happen any goddamn place you want it to happen. It's like, this is your life. So there's something in that that also kind of, I get a little defended towards. I'm like, wait, hey, oh, oh.

So there's a, there's this idea that can happen when you, when you find a group and a set of tools that brings you to a deeper place of self-acceptance and self-love and your life starts changing. There's a stage in that where you believe that these tools and these people are either required for it or just that you're far more likely to get it if you're with those people. So it starts to create the sense that there's a boundary between us and then everybody else who's not on this page. And that is the thing that just happens anywhere in any group, a sports team, fans of the Browns, anything. It's like, these are our people, those are the other people. Our religion is the ones that eat chicken, the other religion is the ones that eat pork. And so it starts to create this boundary. And there's something in the way that you relate to this Which is, well, even if we're playing with the idea that this is a cult or not a cult, or letting ourselves play with the idea of letting the concept of cult show up in our jokes so that we are at least self-referential and self-aware of the tendency that we might have to become insular, but that there's also still this—

Oh, I've never, hold on, I've never thought about it that way. I've never thought about it that way. So what you're basically saying, on some level, the jokes are, potentially the jokes are, a way to, it keeps it in consciousness, like it creates an awareness of it so that it doesn't get out of hand potentially.

Yeah.

And that actually makes me really appreciate it in a different way. I hadn't thought about it that way.

Yeah, I think it also kind of puts a little bit of a framing around the kind of behavior that might occur if you show up, like for a group of us that moved to Hawaii recently, and we moved to Hawaii and we have a particular way of relating with each other and we have these tools and some people would come and hang out with us and they would just see us doing things. Like differently and we would like go deep into emotions and with these particular techniques. And like, we actually had a couple people sort of be like, "Are you guys a cult?" And so it's like, if we were just like defensive, like, "No, we're not a cult," like then that would be like sort of a, I don't know, maybe a red flag.

So what's the answer? What do you say?

I mean, the answer is like, well, I don't know. Like if things got out of hand, we could let ourselves accidentally devolve into a cult if we weren't actually careful because It is easy to recognize that, you know, this group has something that I need and that I want that seems to be filling my needs more than I've found other places. And then I start getting attached to the group and then my fear and my control mechanisms start coming in. And then somebody might start trying to control the group. And then people might sacrifice themselves for the group cohesion because the group is so important and it feels like you're not gonna get it elsewhere. Which goes back to that thing where you were saying, which is buying into the story that all of life can't be a work.

Right, right, right, right.

And so there's a tendency that that could just happen if you're not watching for it. And so there's, I think there's a way that being kind of self-aware of like, well, we have a different culture developing in this group of people than is the broad culture out there. And that might mean others project cult onto us. And that might also mean that we accidentally start exhibiting those behaviors.

Yeah. What's interesting to me here is that, so I watched the Vow thing and some of the tools that the Vow use are similar to some of the tools that we use. And so, like, I remember the immediate response. I watched it with Tara, my wife, and our immediate response was just like, mine more than hers, I was like, I just don't wanna do this at all. I don't like, give up the business. Like, maybe I won't even coach. Like, I don't want anything to do with this. And I was having a hard time. And I remember watching them like, well, where does the cult begin and where does the cult end? You know? And I was like looking, okay. So then I started doing the research on the cult stuff and the high control groups. And then I started seeing it everywhere. Like, and I remember this one scene in "The Vow" where the Dalai Lama is talking to Keith Raniere and the Dalai Lama has a problem with the thing and everybody's like, oh, this is a problem. And then he gets, you know, talked out of the fact that it's a problem and he goes, oh, and then everybody goes, ah. And I'm like, wow, it's like one cult talking to another cult.

Yeah.

Now obviously there's huge differences between the two and I really like what one has done in the world and I like some of what another has done in the world and some of it I dislike. But I saw it in companies, I saw it in, political groups. I just saw that this behavior kind of almost everywhere. And I remember after watching it, there was kind of a, this thing that happened to me is almost like a, oh, there's just no way to do this. That was kind of like giving up or something. There's something in me that was just like, no matter what you do, humans will make it a cult. Like no matter, and by humans, I mean me. I'm not excluding me from that. So it was just like, well, no matter what you do, like, this is what it devolves into because, or evolves into, but because people like to have clear understanding of what's going on. They like to have rules, they like to have hierarchy. And so that was like, that was the arc of my adventure watching that. And somehow or another in there, when I started to really research I remember, like, 25 things that let you know that you're in a high control group or a cult. And I was like, oh, we don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do— and all of a sudden I saw, oh, this— there is a distinction and this is the difference. And that's the only thing that actually, I think, got me interested in doing the work again, because it was so much like not wanting to— I want to bring people to their own wisdom and I don't want to bring people to my wisdom or somebody else's wisdom or a group wisdom. And I sometimes don't see my own wisdom. I see the group wisdom or someone else's wisdom. Like it's something that is impossible to completely let go of. So it's an interesting journey for me. And I wonder how much of the word is like charged. I think about like the word narcissist, the words narcissist and victim, they were like, they were bad words in my head. Like if you're a victim, that's a like, and, or you're a narcissist. And then seeing like, oh no, we're all narcissists. We're all victims. There's no bad word here. And I haven't found the place where cult isn't a bad word. Like in my world, like there's, I don't see the place where, um, giving up your will to a group is not a a bad thing. The funny thing is, the thing that hits me first is that giving up your will generally is a beautiful thing. As a matter of fact, I think that that level of surrender is like one of the most enormous gifts I've ever had in my life. But it wasn't to a guru, and it wasn't to a, a group of people, and it wasn't to a And so I think about something Gareth, who runs this thing Conscious Culting, says is like, what happens if you're surrendering consciously with the full understanding that there's imperfection on all sides of it? Even there, I would say it's far better to surrender to the ineffable than it is to a person.

Well, the ineffable, that's one of those things that I could imagine somebody hearing and be like, what the fuck does he even mean by that? But I see something here. That you've said before, like surrender, but this way you have this feeling about this word surrender that it's like, well, I don't like the way people use it normally because it's like, what are you surrendering to? And so I'm seeing maybe a distinction between surrendering to something outside of yourself that is not tapped into your wisdom and surrendering to whatever is actually coming from within you and through you. And so that brings me into something that actually really relates this sort of unavoidable phenomenon of group cohesion into cult behavior that just exists in all humans, even if you become part of the cult of personal development gurus who doesn't want to be a cultist, which could be its own cult.

Right. No way out. No way out.

No way out. And so on some level, there's this fundamental pattern in life to self-organize into structure. Structure becomes control, becomes rigidity. And that can occur on a group level, but it can also occur on an intrapersonal level inside us. And that's actually what a lot of this work is, to recognize where in some sense we are a cult of one with our own beliefs and our own subselves and like parts that are colluding in some cult-like way to be us against the world. And the, the work itself is to be swimming upstream of that and finding what's underneath it and relaxing those constraints and find— and letting, letting a broader intelligence come through, right?

So that, that's just— it's so much joy in me right now hearing that. Like, that— I love that, how you've turned— shown that the cult is a projection of the internal cult and how our internal structure is very cult-like. We have a guru that's the voice in the head that says things, and we believe it without questioning whatsoever. I just love the whole thing. So if I, if I want to take the principle and say, okay, so if, if my internal world is that of abuse, then I look outside and I see the external world is abuse. If my internal world is one of love, then I look outside and I see that the external world is one of love. Like, I see that how love acts. So the question I have for myself is if I am rejecting the cult externally, if I'm rejecting the cult externally, because I'm not sure if I'm entirely rejecting it, but let's just assume that I am, or the charge to the word. I'm definitely rejecting one of those things. Then I'm rejecting that in myself. I'm rejecting. So what does it mean to reject the cult in myself? Like, because the fact is, if there wasn't that cohesion, if there wasn't like, this is the worldview that I hold, then there'd be like a deeper level of collapse. It would almost like feel like you lose your center. Anyway, hold on a sec. Yeah, which I mean Every major transformation has been a losing of the center or the fear of losing of a center.

So there's some level that each of us is afraid of losing the center for a reason, 'cause we could just fully dissolve. And yet dissolving is exactly the direction that is most healing for most of us to go.

Yeah.

Not all of us.

So the way I'd be thinking about it is like, I'm a cult of one and that's okay. There's like a tremendous amount of joy with that statement. And there's also like a nervousness. Huh. I'm a Cult of One and that's okay is like, it's like somehow I define myself incorrectly. Somehow I define myself incorrectly as as someone who can almost entirely see through my own belief patterns. So it's like, it's almost like an acknowledgement and an okayness and a love of the fact that I can't see through my own. There are ways that I can't, maybe every way I can't see through my own belief patterns. I was like, I'm sitting with that. I wanna see what that does to the I'm gonna say it again. I'm a cult of one and that's okay. Yeah, what turns in me is like, it's almost like there's no group of people who don't have a set of beliefs that they— it's like seeing the humanity of cult. And it reminds me of this thing when I saw the whole The Vow, when I saw it the first time, or the only time, I remember thinking to myself a couple things like, wow, they get so much goodness out of this. There's so much goodness out of this. And then the next thought was like, why do you have to mess this up? You know, like, why did anybody? And then the other thing that I saw was like, oh, everybody is in a cult. Like the cult of materialism, the cult of, you know, the cult of technology, the cult, like there's just major thought processes. And if you went out into society and said, I'm gonna just give up all technology, you would just, the society would be like, what the fuck? And they would call you a cult. They wouldn't see that they're the cult as well. And so, yeah, I think there's a freedom that comes with this of saying that, oh, I'm a cult of one and that's okay, that I, no matter how hard I try, I will never, ever be able to see. I will never be able to see the water that I swim in.

A characteristic of the experience of being in a cult must be that there's parts of you that are aware that you're being controlled or that you're allowing yourself to be controlled. And those parts are being resisted and dissociated. So I'm curious, in you, in this, I'm a Cult of One, like, you have this belief that I will never be aware, or I don't see through. But what about the part of you that does see through whatever sliver of the structure you think you have?

Oh, that's how I identify. It's the destruction of that identity that is, I think, the cult, meaning that like, I identify as somebody who can see through it. It's the death of that identity. And I agree. I mean, I agree that all of us see through it. And I also agree that all of us are ignorant. There's definitely just some stuff that we can't— like, we don't know what life would look like if we didn't have eyes, but we had different sensory organs, like we are limited in our ability to understand by the nature of our organism, if nothing else, by the colors that we see. But that's an extreme version. So yeah, it's an interesting thing of, it's just literally, it's like the death of the identity of, yeah, I can see through stuff and I can't see through stuff. That there are ways in which I am open-minded, ways in which I'm not open-minded, and I can't even see the ways that I'm closed-minded in some cases. And I can see the ways I'm closed-minded sometimes and I'm trying to ignore them.

Yeah, which is a necessary thing to do in order to weave our experience together into any cohesive story that can even have any consistent plotline at all. There has to be information that's lost, and that is essentially some micro level of cult behavior inside ourselves.

Yeah. Okay, so let me test it. Say, give me a cult joke or something like that about this work being a cult, and I wanna feel what happens in my system.

Yeah, so we're getting a bunch of shirts made with your face on it, and like, we're gonna save the world. One Joe at a time.

Oh, so you got, you got the double duty on me.

Yeah.

Even the saving the world part of it. Oh, oh, there's more humor in it for sure. I can laugh at it. I couldn't laugh so easily at it recently. So that's, that's a good sign. Yeah. I had this idea though, if we ever did have a center, if there was ever a place where everybody was coming together to do this work consistently, that we would have a picture of a guru on the wall in like 5 or 6 places, but every month it would change. So we would just pick one of the people and like put them in the guru picture.

And at least two of them would be cartoons or like some mythical animal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah, that's great.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. That was really fun.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us on your podcast app. Podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.