Destructive spirituality initially sounds like an oxymoron. How can something that is supposed to help us establish core values and make sense of life be destructive? The unfortunate truth is that abuse of power is commonplace in spiritual and religious organizations. The stronger our faith and thirst for meaning, the more vulnerable we are to mind control techniques used by abusive, narcissistic leaders. I’m one of a large number of Americans who has been pulled into a destructive non-Christian group. The Tibetan Buddhism I thought I was involved in has proven particularly troublesome, but Zen and Hindu teachers have also harmed and demoralized students. My tale is cautionary, but also written to help me process what happened.
Back in grad school, I joined a group that turned out to be a destructive, high control Buddhism-ish sangha. The main leader was a charismatic, self-anointed “enlightened teacher.” I’ll call her Jane, and the second teacher John. Jane had spent some time in the Frederick Lenz Computer Cult. Her dharma talks incorporated Lenz’s freewheeling mixture of garbled Tibetan Vajrayana and Trikaya Buddhism, Vedānta Hinduism, confused Zen, Carlos Castenada, and toxic, fear-based dogma. The “teachings” included a strong us-vs-them narrative, isolation, demands for perfection, abundant paranoia, behavior control, and deeply problematic techniques like thought stopping. That was bad; however, the real damage from destructive spirituality was the deliberate twisting of my deep faith into constant fear of screwing up my chances at enlightenment.
How I got stuck
Unfortunately, as important as I believe it is to speak up, I’ve been finding this tale difficult to tell. People who join cults and high control groups are regarded as being incautious, gullible, or stupid. Victim blaming is the norm. I have to remind myself that the attitude is largely defensive. Nobody wants to believe that a person skilled in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and hypnosis can mind control them in a matter of minutes. The truth is too frightening to accept.
Cognitive ease is also tremendously powerful. At first Jane was genuinely inspiring and the true Buddhist and Advaita Vedānta teachings were valuable. I read scripture, and continued to develop my practice. Unfortunately, Jane was also pushing paranoia. Fear indoctrination is one of the most powerful forms of mind control. While I thought I was ignoring threats of evil beings trying to “steal my power,” or instructions to cleanse “negative energy” from my home and car with distilled water lest I be unable to meditate, maintaining selective skepticism is not cognitively easy. My faith in Buddhism primed me and I was in a good mood at the sangha meetings. We also sat through through tiring, evening, three hour lectures interspersed with focusing meditation. Those are both techniques cults use to increase mental susceptibly. Eventually I started to buy into the group doctrine and the destructive fear-based emotional control through sheer dint of repetition.
Recognition
After 18 months, John started lecturing. In retrospect, I suspect Jane was having second thoughts. He started piling on shame, which is another powerful cult technique. If we weren’t following the ridiculous directions and demands for perfection, we didn’t deserve to be in the group. He pressured students to isolate from their families, and established ranks in the group with an inner circle, senior students, and newcomers.
After about three years, monthly seminars jumped to $100 minimum and $1100/month for “diamond” members. I’d estimate Jane and John were netting at least $50K for one weekend a month, and we were not their only group. At that point buzz started about the sangha being a cult and I knew in my heart it was true. A lot of people walked away. Believe it or not, I still stayed. I thought I could take care of myself, I had sunk costs, and the fear indoctrination meant I thought walking away from my guru meant losing my only chance at enlightenment. Tibetan Buddhism only allows a student to take one guru in a lifetime, and walking away costs you the incarnation. Other money and power-hungry narcissists have used that to their advantage.
I ended up so stressed once John started his toxicity that I developed an autoimmune post-viral syndrome. Finally, after I’d been in the group a bit shy of five years, my “enlightened” teacher asked me to leave the group after I was too sick to attend a retreat. The lack of compassion shocked me, but it was a blessing because in disguise because I got out. It took me over a decade of solo practice to risk looking for a sangha again. Now that I’m practicing in a legitimate American Zen lineage I’m essentially having to deprogram myself.
Factors in why I joined
At the time I joined, I knew nothing about mind control or how high-control groups work. My idea of cults were groups like the Hari Krishnas, Moonies, Heaven’s Gate, or the Manson family. The problem is the small innocuous-seeming groups in your backyard serve up equally destructive spirituality. I even knew some of Lenz’s students had accused him of leading a cult. I thought it was a guru worshipping cult of personality though, and he was dead. It never occurred to me that the teachings themselves were dangerous.
I also didn’t have a lot of options in town for American Buddhism. There were immigrant Chinese and Korean temples but I knew I didn’t belong there. Zen also seemed very formal and foreign. I found a little meditation center with American teachers and attended for four years but the only teacher I resonated with left. I was mostly interested in meditation so I didn’t put a lot of effort into reading sutras or developing a strong understanding of religious Buddhism. Unfortunately, as much as Americans would like to pivot Buddhism away from its religious underpinnings, or enhance it with “new age” trappings, at a certain point it ceases to be Buddhism. Instead it just becomes destructive spirituality that diverts the faithful away from the very thing they were seeking.
Moving forward and cautions
At this point, I am mostly free of the mind control. The thing that helped the most was this video on Lenz. It was shocking because I had no idea the extent to which Jane and John were copying his manipulative playbook. I got angry and almost physically sick, and the fear started to ebb away. At this point, I’m mostly just regretful. All we have on earth is time and actions, and they stole my time and misdirected my earnest actions away from productive practice. Jane used to tell us getting angry at her would fuck up our our karma; I can’t think of anything more deeply ironic.
If you’ve gotten this far and are starting to wonder about your own sangha, take a look at Steven Hassan’s BITE model of mind control. There are still Lenz students out there “teaching,” and Steve Eichel, a cult expert, estimates there are as many as 10,000 high control groups and cults active in the US. There are big, obvious cults like Soka Gakai (SGI) or the Mormon Church, but the majority are small and appear legitimate. Learn the red flags, and be unflinchingly honest about what you’re really getting out of the group. Never think you are too smart, perceptive, or independent to be pulled into a high control group. The smarter you are, the more valuable you are to the cult.
In the event you are looking for a sangha, check into whether there is an ethics policy and a meaningful grievance process to hold the teacher accountable for their conduct. Finances should also be transparent, reasonable, and scaled to income. A sangha can be wonderful for supporting practice, but it’s really important to find the right one.
