{"id":2408,"date":"2026-06-02T10:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T17:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/?p=2408"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:32:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T17:32:39","slug":"i-wasnt-brainwashed-i-was-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/i-wasnt-brainwashed-i-was-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wasn&#8217;t Brainwashed. I Was Worse."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"I Wasn&#039;t Brainwashed. I Was Worse.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vJJ-cmClScU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I Wasn&#8217;t Brainwashed. I Was Worse. <\/h1>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My Confession<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Opening<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It was 2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was home when one of the senior leaders of my group\u2014a friend\u2014texted me asking to talk. Now we\u2019re on the phone with one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI noticed the post you made to Facebook this afternoon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOkay,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat about it?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWell,\u201d he replies, \u201cI really appreciate everything you do for our community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here it comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d just hate to see something bad happen to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t feel fear. I feel anger.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The head of the group in the United States was controlling who members could associate with outside the group. How could I not speak out against this?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The voice on the other end of the line is calm, reasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSay we have a member on the editorial staff of a newspaper,\u201d he suggests. \u201cA columnist there is writing hit pieces on us. Shouldn&#8217;t leadership use that connection to get the columnist fired?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I fire back. \u201cWhat are we, Scientology now? Of course we shouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Further back and forths. Eventually, the call ends. The heat dissipates. I\u2019m alone with my thoughts.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m convinced I\u2019m right. I am right. But \u2026 what?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silence. And then\u2014fear.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I log into Facebook. I take down the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I stayed. Another 6 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not only did I stay \u2014 I helped make a place that contained people like this appear safe and spiritually serious.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I thought what made me different from them protected me from becoming part of the problem.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I was wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I Thought I Was Different<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For the 11 years I spent in this group, I was not a blind follower or a fanatic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Very few people who joined this group showed real interest in its spirituality or wanted to be challenged by it. The conference they did every two years was usually remembered for its sex parties and drinking, not the originality of its lectures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I came to believe early on that there was a lot more depth in the organization\u2019s spiritual teachings than most people realized. I translated these insights into lectures, articles, and videos, because I thought they were legitimately transformative when understood.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The entire time I was a member, I witnessed immaturity, licentiousness, outbursts \u2014 violence, threatened and real \u2014 and sexual predation. I began vocally opposing that very early on, and eventually became a force for safety standards and seriousness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I differentiated myself intellectually and morally from those around me. Over time, I came to view myself as in this group, but not of this group.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I remember vividly one night this self-concept was put to the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was an evening late in 2020. I was sitting in the backyard of some senior members\u2014the folding chairs spaced appropriately so we didn\u2019t risk transmitting COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I brought up the unfair treatment a critic of the group had received from national leadership. The conversation started to become heated, one person insisting the treatment had been deserved.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I pushed back. Suddenly, he said, \u201cIf I ever get my hands on him, I\u2019m going to fucking curb-stomp him.\u201d [pause]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My trusted friends know I have a dark sense of humor. We will sometimes joke about violence with one another. This didn\u2019t feel like that. This was said with vehemence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t recall my reaction at the moment. I remember the drive home. I felt shame. I thought about how much I had probably frustrated this person for him to say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following day, I felt sick. And then angry. Angry at the intolerance. Angry at the fanaticism.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eventually, the experience became another piece of evidence in my argument\u2014not for why I should leave.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for why I was better than most of the people around me.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I genuinely believed that because I could see the problems clearly, I was fundamentally different from the people enabling them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But seeing clearly and acting ethically are not the same thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Trap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The group I was in did not present itself as authoritarian. On the contrary, its highest values were things like freedom, tolerance, nuance, anti-dogmatism, and above all else, individual freedom \u2014 of interpretation, of one\u2019s path in life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The easy explanation for a group like this is hypocrisy. But the real mechanism was more sophisticated than that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because a group like this doesn\u2019t primarily control people overtly. It works by turning those very values of tolerance and freedom against you \u2014 so that the more you embody them, the more trapped you are.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I stepped down from my leadership role, my replacement \u2014 coincidentally, the person who threatened the curb-stomping \u2014 convened an emergency meeting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that meeting, he reassured people \u2014 repeatedly \u2014 that \u201cno one was in trouble\u201d for having accepted a meeting with me. And everyone was encouraged to continue to be friends with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Think about what that implies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If no one is in trouble for meeting with me this time, what about the future? If someone is giving you permission to remain friends with someone, that implies they can withdraw permission.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the first initiation ceremony of this group, new members were reassured the organization neither knew nor cared what their intention was with regard to the group. Even if they wanted to harm the group, they were free to do that. But \u2014 cause and effect are still real, and they would have to face the consequences.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The implication became that if you suffered social or institutional consequences, the mature response wasn\u2019t to question the system. It was to question yourself. To do otherwise is to lack maturity or worldliness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This group didn\u2019t demand high fees. The standards of conduct were so loose, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a cosplay religion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s not just that the reality of the group contradicted the appearance. The group did become more controlling of members as they progressed. But it was more complex.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The atmosphere of permissiveness was itself a covert way of manipulating people. Control wasn\u2019t presented as control. It was exercised through the language of freedom.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that when you were punished, it wasn\u2019t abuse or control. It was your failure of personal responsibility. It wasn\u2019t the system\u2019s dysfunction. It was your lack of maturity and common sense.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which means that if you wanted to succeed in this, you had to embody certain qualities. Not conformity. Of course not. Savviness. Not blind belief. The ability to see things from \u201cmultiple perspectives.\u201d Not control over who you\u2019re friends with. But the wisdom to keep clear of trouble-makers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This wasn\u2019t a system optimized for gullibility. It was optimized for intelligent self-regulation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in the context of a group like this, intelligent self-regulation also kept you obedient to its power structure.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when you think about leaving something like this, you don\u2019t think of yourself as escaping something that was harming you and others. You think of yourself as leaving power on the table.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because you were winning. [pause]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My Role In The System<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the group I was in, I was a winner, not a loser.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was a winner intellectually. I understood things about the spirituality no one else could\u2014and I could put them in words and teach others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was a winner morally. I refused the worst forms of excess. I never threatened or harmed anyone. I spoke on behalf of victims. I organized a space I thought was safe.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was a winner politically.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the national meeting where I was appointed to a position of local leadership, a mid-level bureaucrat with a bone to pick stood up and challenged me. I calmly defanged him in front of 30 people. People came up to me afterward saying how I embodied the self-control they wanted to see in all leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the time I stepped down, I was running a thriving local community, and I was on track to reap all the rewards the organization offered people. Some people were against me. I welcomed it\u2014knowing my intelligence and character made me impossible to stop.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was proud. And I was arrogant.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But here\u2019s the thing about pride in a system like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nobody \u2014 no matter how smart or moral they think they are \u2014 gets to participate in a system like this without paying a price. And the price is yourself. Because in order to be in something like this, you have to conform to a role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s very similar to dysfunctional families, where people aren\u2019t whole people. They\u2019re the Golden Child, the Hero, the Scapegoat.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With my ability to reframe situations and tolerate negative emotions, my function was Digesting Darkness. I was the one sitting with the crying victim while others were saying, \u201cThat\u2019s none of my business.\u201d Which again, made me feel morally superior.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was the one confronting the darker aspects of the religion, because I could tolerate complexity, and because I could tolerate being attacked.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few years before I left, I discovered that the founder of the religion wrote in his diary about sexually molesting a child. I brought this topic up to two good friends of mine in the group, and they both refused to take it seriously. They wouldn\u2019t even consider that it might be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I pushed on it. Finally one of them said, \u201cLet\u2019s say that is true. Then what are we doing here? How can we be part of this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I thought to myself, \u201cThis person is too weak to look at the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And maybe they were. But the question they posed was actually reasonable, but <em>I <\/em>refused to take it seriously. Because if I did, it would force me to confront my own pretense.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It would force me to see that the role I had contorted myself to fit \u2014 the one who can tolerate all this dissonance without flinching \u2014 was not a source of power. It was an elaborate form of self-harm, and it kept me weak and obedient.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because the reasonable thing to do when you\u2019re confronted with as much darkness as this group served up on a regular basis \u2014 is to leave.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in my mind, it was flipped upside-down. And so I became proof \u2014 not just to myself, but to everyone around me \u2014 first of all that the darkness was contained. That it was being managed. Because I was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And secondly, that it wasn\u2019t that bad. Because a human could absorb it without being destroyed by it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People saw someone thoughtful, articulate, psychologically aware, morally serious \u2014 and assumed a place capable of containing someone like that must itself possess depth and integrity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My presence made people think: this must be a good group.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It didn\u2019t make people ask, \u201cWhy is there so much darkness here in the first place?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Realization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>What finally broke the illusion for me wasn\u2019t defeat.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shortly before I left, one of the newer members I was mentoring told me he was impressed by how functional our local group was \u2014 that in his year as a member, he hadn\u2019t witnessed anything weird or unsettling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, during the same period of time, I had absorbed personal attack, months-long manipulation and drama, ostracization, overreach into my personal relationships, and spying. But I wasn\u2019t thinking about any of that. I was proud of the experience I had created for this new member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The experience of safety and depth I had created was real. So was the endless emotional labor and political endurance required to create such an experience in an organization so thoroughly corrupt.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It happened gradually \u2014 over about three years \u2014 the slow, growing sense of what it felt like to deform myself for this thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I stopped seeing my ability to tolerate it as a virtue\u2014as a sign of my superiority.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I just started to see tolerance as a form of self-abuse\u2014and as enabling abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And once self-loyalty reached critical mass, there was a shift in perspective. The system I was in wasn\u2019t surviving despite people like me. It was surviving partly because of people like me.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wasn\u2019t the maverick I imagined. I was a dues-paying member of an organization that had entrusted me with running their branch in a major American city. The path in front of me was wide open.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How could that be the case if I was such a rebel?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then I realized: If someone thoughtful, articulate, morally serious, and self-aware could remain inside this thing\u2026it appeared safe.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It appeared serious.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It looked like it had something real at the center of it rather than just egos and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was never lying to people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I genuinely believed everything I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I was helping generate an experience of depth that prevented people \u2014 including me \u2014 from seeing what the system actually was.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had given elaborate lectures on refusing bullshit. I was one of the biggest bullshitters in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Closing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>After I got off the phone with the senior member who had threatened me, I took down my Facebook post. I didn\u2019t delete it. I set it to private.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I see it every year now in my Memories when that date rolls around.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a reminder.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not of cartoonish evil.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a reminder that the qualities I\u2019m often most proud of in myself \u2014 my intelligence, my ability to hold contradiction, and my ability to hold space for people who have been harmed \u2014 don\u2019t belong to me. Not absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They can be captured by systems larger and more powerful than me, and they can be put in the service of harm.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don\u2019t have to be a fanatic or a bigot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don\u2019t have to be threatening or committing violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don\u2019t have to agree with a system\u2019s worst tendencies to help sustain them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes all you need to do is help make a system feel deep and survivable \u2014 just like I was doing for the new members of my group.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s what that private post is, every time I see it: not a monument to how far I&#8217;ve come, but a reminder of what I&#8217;m capable of \u2014 and what I have to keep watch over.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I Wasn&#8217;t Brainwashed. I Was Worse. My Confession Opening It was 2019.&nbsp; I was home when one of the senior leaders of my group\u2014a friend\u2014texted me asking to talk. Now we\u2019re on the phone with one another. \u201cI noticed the post you made to Facebook this afternoon,\u201d he said. \u201cOkay,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat about it?\u201d&nbsp;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[32,506,505,67,66,488,487,2],"class_list":["post-2408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aleister-crowley","tag-cult-recovery","tag-cults","tag-ordo-templi-orientis","tag-oto","tag-oto-high-control-group-2","tag-oto-high-control-group","tag-thelema"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2410,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions\/2410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}