Um, Let's Not Become a Cult, Okay!
- Amy Nelson
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
You've been to our shamanic temple nights, or you're considering it. You might have wondered about cult vibes, or a friend or partner asked. Sacred sexuality, a movement offering a different, deeper way to connect with others, and the divine essence of life... It's... kinda like the opening episode of a documentary you've seen.
We've seen it too! And the line between them and us seems easy to cross, so let's keep our eyes open and make sure this revolution stays safe for us all, okay!
Communities that become dangerous are precisely the ones where this conversation isn't safe to have. So let's have a look at how cult dynamics form and discuss what we're doing to cult-proof our movement.
Let's Not Become a Cult!
Why Conscious Spaces Are Fertile Ground for Shadow
Everything that makes a temple powerful also makes it exploitable. Altered states increase suggestibility. Oxytocin and communal ritual create rapid bonding. Vulnerability shared in a group builds attachment faster than ordinary life ever does. People often arrive lonely, hurting, or in transition, which means we arrive open.
None of this is sinister on its own. These are simply the mechanics of deep human connection, the same mechanics found in choirs, sports teams, and churches. They turn harmful when someone uses them to accumulate power, and the shift is usually gradual. Cults rarely announce themselves. They form one small boundary erosion at a time, inside communities that believed their own goodness made them immune.
Believing you can't become a cult is step one of becoming one. So we assume the shadow is possible here, and we build accordingly.
The Patterns That Signal Danger
Decades of research into high-control groups, from Lifton's work on thought reform onward, point to a consistent cluster:
A leader who is beyond feedback, whose interpretation of your experience overrides your own
Doubt and criticism reframed as blockage, resistance, or low consciousness
Escalating demands for time, money, loyalty, or access to your body
Isolation from outside relationships, therapists, and perspectives
The group is positioned as the only place you can heal, regulate, or belong
Leaving framed as failure, betrayal, or spiritual death
Secrecy about money, decision-making, or what happens at "deeper levels"
Any single item can appear briefly in healthy communities. The danger is the cluster and the escalation.
How We Design Against It
Your no is the curriculum. Everyone enters through Level 1 temple because it is a non-sexual space where consent is practised deliberately at low stakes. We are actively training people to feel and voice their boundaries, which is the opposite of what high-control groups do. A community full of people with strong, practised no's is structurally resistant to capture.
We predict the vulnerable moments. We tell you about the post-temple crash before it happens, because unexplained lows are exactly what exploitative groups harvest. When you know the drop is neurochemistry, nobody can sell you the story that you need more of us to fix it.
We want you resourced outside the temple. Friends, family, other communities, other teachers. If we ever became your only source of regulation or belonging, we would consider that a flag and would have a check-in.
Scepticism is welcome in the room. You can question the practices, the facilitators, and this very article. Doubt gets treated as intelligence. Any space where your discernment is pathologised has already begun the turn.
Leaving is honoured. People step away for a season or forever, and they remain spoken of with warmth. Watch how any community talks about the people who left. It is one of the most reliable diagnostics that exists.
Power is highlighted. Facilitators hold structural power in these rooms, full stop. Pretending you are unaffected by the space is dangerous. So we actively encourage you to resist instructions to experience how your autonomy is honoured, respected, and celebrated. We also keep ourselves accountable to your feedback, and we keep clear ethical boundaries around money, touch, and dual relationships.
Transparency over mystique. What happens in temple and how decisions get made are all discussable in daylight. Secrecy creates gradients, and gradients create control.
Practices We Avoid
Neo-tantra and some conscious sexuality spaces have used language of healing to justify practices that function as psychological softening and coercive control. We name these explicitly because we do not do them.
We do not use forced emotional catharsis as the mechanism of change. Screaming exercises, "breakthrough" crying, or rage work framed as necessary for opening create a dangerous equation: tears and intensity become proof something is working, and your resistance to that intensity gets reframed as blockage needing to be broken through. We do not extract emotion or frame discomfort as something you must move through to heal.
We do not use breathwork beyond your window of tolerance. Hyperventilation, held breath, or intense pranayama presented as necessary for awakening is destabilisation, not awakening. When the nervous system is destabilised, critical thinking goes offline and suggestibility increases. We work within your capacity, always.
We do not normalise dual relationships between facilitators and participants. When teachers enter sexual or romantic partnerships with people they have held in ceremony, the power differential means consent cannot be genuine. This gets dressed up in the language of spiritual union and conscious relating. We keep these boundaries clean.
We do not use altered states as the default mechanism. Intensive retreats, rapid intimacy acceleration, continuous trance states, and group pressure combine to create trauma bonding, not healing. Our events are single-day, grounded in ordinary consciousness, and designed to integrate rather than intensify.
We do not reframe your resistance as ego needing to be moved through. When someone says no, feels unsafe, or needs to step back, that is valid. Full stop. Dissociation, freeze, and stepping away are your nervous system protecting you, and we treat them with respect.
How We Work With the Nervous System Safely
Our entire approach is mapped to the nervous system, specifically polyvagal theory and the concept of window of tolerance.
We support low intensity and groundedness. Events don't require participation. We support witnessing as a perfectly valid form of participation. The intensity is accessible, and the practices support your own regulation rather than our expectation.
We work within your capacity, not beyond it. Titration, stepping back, taking a break, sitting at the edge of the room. Your body's signals are treated as wisdom. If you need to stop, stop. Your no stops everything immediately, even if you said yes before.
Emotions are invited, never extracted. We create conditions where grief, anger, joy, or longing can move if they want to. We do not push, demand, or frame your emotions as necessary for your healing. You are the expert on your own nervous system.
We expect your scepticism. Questioning the practices or the facilitators is welcome. Critical thinking is not the enemy of depth. It is the guardrail.
Your body is your authority. Not the group, not the facilitator, not the narrative about what you should be feeling. Your somatic signals, your discomfort, your intuition, your readiness to go or stay. These are sovereign.
A healthy temple wants you sovereign, resourced, discerning, and free to go.
How You Can Cult-Proof Yourself
We build the container, but you are the guardian of your own autonomy.
Cults are not just formed by charismatic leaders. They require collective participation. A controlling group only works because people in it agree, one small compromise at a time, to stop thinking for themselves. To isolate. To prioritise belonging over discernment. To defend the space against outside scrutiny. The leader provides the structure, but the members build the walls.
This means you have more power in this equation than you might think. You can choose to stay awake. You can choose to keep one foot outside. You can choose to let your body's signals matter more than the group's narrative about what you should be feeling. The practices below are how you do that.
Notice if you're isolating. Healthy communities make you more resourced in the world, not more dependent on the group. If you find yourself pulling back from friends, therapy, other teachers, or perspectives that question the space, pause. Ask why. The pull toward isolation is often so gradual you don't recognise it until you're already alone.
Check your own interpretation against theirs. If something in your body says no and you are told your body is wrong, blocked, or not yet evolved enough to understand, that is a red flag about the space, not about you. Your nervous system is not the problem. It is the instrument of your wisdom.
Track your money and time. Notice if you're asked to help for free, while you're still expected to pay for events. Is what you pay linked to your acceptance and spiritual progression up a ladder? Notice whether there is pressure, subtle or direct, to keep deepening your involvement through increased financial commitment. Escalation is how control systems work.
Practice saying no in small ways. An invitation to stay late, to participate in something you're unsure about, to deepen your involvement. Say no to a small thing and watch what happens. Does the space honour it? Or do you feel pressure, shame, or the suggestion that your no is resistance to your own growth? A healthy space makes it easy to say no. An unhealthy one makes it costly.
Keep your scepticism alive. If you find yourself unable to question something, you have stopped thinking. Scepticism is not the enemy of depth. It is the guardrail. If a space punishes questions or frames doubt as low consciousness, that is the moment your wisdom says something is wrong.
Watch whether you're defending the space. If someone outside raises a concern and your first move is to defend the space rather than consider the concern, ask yourself why. Defensive energy often shows up when we know something is off but haven't let ourselves know it yet.
Notice if leaving feels possible. Leaving should feel like a choice, even if it's a hard one. If leaving feels like failure, betrayal, spiritual death, or loss of your only source of belonging, the space has crossed a line. A healthy container wants you to be able to walk away.
It's up to us all! Let's not become a cult!
Okay, I Think We're All Set!
Oh, you are also welcome to contact our accountability partners if something comes up that you don't feel comfortable approaching us with. We do hope you will feel safe enough to approach us with anything that feels off, though, because we care deeply and can hold a lot of discomfort without reaching for defensiveness. However, for extra safety, feel free to mail Simon or Mishka, and they will initiate a process.
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