r/cults

I was part of a church on 3 separate occasions that I later came to find out was a cult. Here's the thing even though I'm aware they are a cult(and they are, they qualify by the BITE model criteria) I'm still thinking of reaching out to current members and possibly rejoining. The reason is my life has not been going great and I have never felt a sense of community and belonging anywhere else. I know this is probably residual brainwashing but I'm just tired of feeling bad all the time and ppl in my current life only treat me like crap or like I'm nothing. I have no control over anything and no agency or autonomy so at the worst this would be a lateral move and maybe even an improvement. I wrote all of this to see if anyone here had any advice on what I should do because I'm the closest I am to being out of options. Any words would be a great help.

I’m here because sometimes I consume so many documentaries that they blur together. I recently saw one that I had never seen. All I can remember is that the cult got busted for selling stickers that were illegal bc they were of sports teams. I believe the feds got them on copyright infringement or something. It was in the 70s or 80s. Does anyone else know what documentary I’m talking about? I obviously need to rewatch it.

I had my own reservations about this sect/cult but I never dared to express my true feelings about them toward my girlfriend for fear of losing her and potentially disbanding our nice little family. Very recently one of the cult's representatives has started an extortion campaign against me after first brainwashing my girlfriend, forcing me to join the cult and pay up or face the very destruction of our relationship I have feared all these years.

There's basically nothing I can do against this... My girlfriend is too far gone already. I'm of course building a case against this cult and reported them to the police. My lawyer says cults are protected by law in this country (Netherlands) and I can't take legislative action against them.

If anyone has useful tips for me I'd like to hear them... In any case I'm treating this very delicate situation with the utmost care and the proverbial velvet gloves.

It's also hard to prove things in the case I'm building because this organisation knows exactly what they're doing and is very slippery and vile.

The brainwashing occurs in multiple face to face sessions for which my girlfriend has to drive 3 hours one way, so 6 hours return trip on a day without traffic jams.

Since I don't exactly know what happens during these sessions it's hard to prove the malicious intent of this organisation, but the result is that my girlfriend now threatens to end our relationship, based on the information in a harmless looking e-mail she has received from the representative, which states that I as a partner are negatively influencing and inhibiting her spiritual growth.

TLDR: The conclusion is that I should join the cult and pay them insane amounts of money or face the consequences with what I can only describe as the complete destruction of my family with two young children.

I refuse to be extorted this way and I will fight them with every last bit of strength in my body!

There are only three people actively running the cult and I don't know how many members it has.

For now I'm trying the legal route to take them down, but I'm also in possession of a particular set of skills if you catch my drift... (No lol it's not what you think, I'm a cybersecurity specialist)

Marjoe (a combination name of 'Mary' and 'Joseph') a former child evangelist turned adult superstar preacher, let a pair of hippie filmmakers infiltrate his gospel empire. They captured every manipulative trick in his holy-roller playbook, many of which prosperity gospel hucksters still use today.

The article includes a link to the 1972 documentary.

I was born and raised in Scientology.

When I realized I was in a cult, I left.

This is my story of growing up in and eventually leaving Scientology

My friend has joined the ICC, ever since it was like all she talks about is God. She's never been religious and now she's trying to make people join, telling them they're going to hell. They have a leaderboard of how many people they've convinced into joining. They baptise eachother and everyone there must be under the age of 20, they make friends with people their age and eventually make them join the church. If one of their friends leave, they never talk to them again along with the large amount of tithing the church want from them. I've researched the ICC and theres been so much negative experiences from it, especially in London. She won't talk to me because I'm catholic and she thinks I'm stupid because of that, she tells her own muslim friends that they are going to hell and that her church are the only ones going to heaven. I don't even think I'm going to talk to her about it because she's so ignorant.

I don’t even know where else to ask this, but I’m honestly kind of freaking out.
Has anyone here had any experience with Shane Baldwin? From what I know he is an extremist Mormon (I think he was just excommunicated?) and served significant time in prison for fraud and theft related to an alarm company he had?

My extended family is in Utah and some family members from out of town are currently here visiting. Somehow, while they’re here, some of them got connected with him. I think certain members of my family have been involved with him for a few months now. My family was very, very LDS for most of my life, but over the past few years some of them have gone really hard in the opposite direction. Still LDS but leaning extremist. Instead of believing everything the institutional church says, they’re now getting into all these “hidden truths,” end-times, remnant, secret knowledge, weird blessings, deeper “doctrine” kinds of circles.

Some relatives have met with him recently.
I’ve heard from what happened that Shane identified himself as the earthly embodiment of the Holy Ghost? Like wtf. I haven’t personally heard the recording yet, but I’m told there is audio of it.
I know that sounds unbelievable.
The reason I’m so scared isn’t because I think people can’t have unusual religious beliefs. It’s because I personally spent two years trapped in a high-control cult adjacent group recommended to my mom by her bishop. I was under the impression it was a cool therapeutic community and that I’d be working in gardening and growing my own food. That was not what it was at all. I was unable to leave, they locked up my phone, passport, everything and I was completely unable to leave despite multiple attempts. I know what it feels like to slowly watch people get pulled in, become emotionally dependent on a charismatic leader, and stop trusting the people who love them. It took me years to recover from that experience and I wasn’t even there by choice. Also, I understand it is not uncommon from a psychological perspective for LDS people to get easily pulled into delusions of grandeur and essentially experience spiritual psychosis because of some of the church teachings that are so deeply ingrained in them

Then I started reading about Shane Baldwin and realized he has a publicly documented history of securities fraud, served time in prison, and is now leading this movement centered around prophecy, revelation, and special spiritual authority.
I genuinely feel sick to my stomach.

I’m not trying to start a witch hunt. I’m trying to figure out if anyone here has firsthand experience with him or knows someone who got involved.
Did it get worse over time?
Were there red flags you wish you’d recognized earlier?
Is there anything that actually helped someone before they got in too deep?

Please don’t tell me, “They’re adults; they’ll make their own choices.” I know that. I’m asking because these are people I love, and I’ve lived through coercive control before. If there’s something I can do now that actually has a chance of helping, I want to do it before this gets any further.

If you’ve had direct experience with Shane Baldwin or people in his circle, I’d really appreciate hearing about it.
I genuinely don’t know how to handle this and I am willing to do everything in my power to get this man exposed and back behind bars. Please help

Not a joke.

Really great interview with a terrific young man, and friend of this subreddit, who got out of Scientology

This is probably my last shot at reddit. I have been ignored many times before. And finding a one person out of 8.3Billion who understands me would mean a world to me.

I am literally on my last resort. I never could have imagined how deeply frustrated one can be. It's like my frustration has no limits. There's so many layers of my frustration, that i could never wish anything that i have gone trough on my worst enemy. The only person i wish it would come back to is the one that caused it all.

In short: Basically i stumbled upon an online cult from Russia called : usladushka.(the name of the cult leader) The story for a normal person might sound like something from imagination or sci-fi plot for a movie..

It all started in the end of 2015( the last year of my even remotely normal life)

So it's november/december of 2015. I recently moved in with my long term girlfriend at the time in an apartment. I was smoking marijuana on a daily basis. I was actively doing psychedelics trough the whole 2015, up to couple times a month. One morning after a night of a heavy drinking whilst being really hangover, i stumbled up on a "spiritual website" in russian. There was something about star names, past incarnations and "this incarnation"meaning on their forums. The information was really intense and overwelming. It's like you could almost feel the words written there. My critical thinking was perhaps on my all time low. So I started looking at "energically charged images" which the site owners described as "energy work" or something like that. And i literally experienced something appearing on these images, like an unknown entity, yet they were colourful, but not really shaped like humans, more like something unpleasant and incomplete. So i got pretty shocked. Back then i had no clue on the depth of the consequences of that day.

I always knew there was God till that day, and on the website they were posting something like prayers to God, but not in a biblical way, but something like God mixed into their way of spirituality. I continued to explore these images, there were really many of these, like pictures of nature "loaded with energy", each of pictures meant for their own purpose. (But in reality they were something like hacking the perception, like finding the backdoor to your computer. Hypnosis at it's best.)

It's incredibly hard to even write this, because the PTSD of this experience and consequences are unimaginable.

I continued to explore the website and the pictures. They simply drag me in, i didn't even realize at the time that my mind was getting completely shut off the more i explored the website. The "feelings" of my soul were so overwelming, that i could not even function properly without looking at the pictures atleast a couple of minutes every day. So it became like a routine for a while, i deeply down always felt like somethings not right, but i was so detached from the reality, that the only way i could function was just going back to see the pictures. I even printed them out, and they still "worked".

So became a time about a year later, when i simply had enough i couldnt do it any more. One day I ragequited my own life because of this experience. I left my girlfriend, who just had a baby. Just dressed up, called my brother to help me move my belongings, and moved out of the apartment.

I thought it will get better after a while, but my soul was completely detached from reality and was always waiting for something to give her the same "energy" or something for free. Like not "Do and get" but, more like "Get and do" mindset. it was somewhat utopic, but with a complete denial of my mind or sanity. It's kind of embarassing to say it like that, but i was litterally trapped in that kind of perception.

After that I tried many ways of getting back into a normal everyday life, but the perception was so damaged, I couldn't get back into it. Only finding ways to live atleast at 30%-35%

I have no strength to continue with the story, but I can say that ever since then i am trapped into this fake perception, like watching world trough a periscope. Like i have lost any friends i had, anyone i cared about at the time, and my every day is a fight to keep my head above water.

Some people might dream of big things like marriage, owning a supercar, or company or career, my biggest dream is to simply live a normal life ever since 2016. These 10 years have gone down the drain, like completely worthless, because "not me" was living them. Apart from the end of the 2018, when i literally felt like the whole universe understands in how deep trouble i am and probably gave me everything i had ever been planned to give in my whole life. And when that ended, i am now simply existing, trying to get trought each and every day. It's unimaginably crazy to never meet anyone with similar problems or someone that has never experienced something similar.

So if any of you have dealth with something even remotely similar or know where to seek help, please answer.

Hey everyone, a paid ad for this “accredited, non-profit, university” called Maharishi International University. Screamed cult to me and I was curious if anyone has heard of them before and what they are doing at that school.

I am quite curious about cults and the psychology behind them. I wanna learn more about it but I don't know where to start? Any recommendations for a starterpoint? Maybe an interesting case?

Hi WNC, I'm Jessica Wakeman, a contributing writer for The Assembly, an online magazine about NC politics and culture. I'm reporting on the town of Lake Lure, which appears frequently in two episodes of the new HBO docu-series "Bring Me the Beauties."

To distill a cVERY omplicated story into a paragraph, basically there was a cult called Eternal Values that lived in Lake Lure. (They were in a house on the lake, but the house has since burned down. There's a new house in its place.) The leader thought he was an alien living inside a human's body. They moved to Lake Lure because the leader thought the Blue Ridge Mountains would be a safe place to ride out the apocalypse. They ran a construction company called The Lotus Group and also started a company, Lake Lure Tours. They also sold gemstones, which were apparently quite worthless.

I'm looking to speak with folks who lived in or visited Lake Lure at the same time Eternal Values was there. Did you know any of the cult members? Did you see them around town? Did you hire (or work for) The Lotus Group or Lake Lure Tours? Buy any gemstones? No story is too small.

I can be reached over email at jessica dot wakeman at gmail dot com -- thank you!