You become afraid without wanting to admit you are afraid

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AnonymousMarch 11, 2015 at 1:07 PM

CULT RECRUITING TECHNIQUES

Here are some key warning signs that may indicate a cult is trying to recruit you:

Hyped Meetings

Rather than explain to you what the group believes or what their program is up front, they will instead insist that you can only understand if you come to a group meeting. There everyone around you will seem so enthusiastic that you will start to think there is something wrong with you. They create an environment where you will feel uncomfortable and the only way to become comfortable is to join them. This is an application of controlled peer pressure.

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Another method is, let the target be aware that this is a very, prestigious, special group. Drop a few words about initiation. Your friend may say he or she is unavailable due to a retreat, day of silence. If you ask, they'll tell you that it is confidential. Perhaps they may scold you for being pushy.

Over time, this person may say they described you to their spiritual director or preceptor. This authority figure may have said you have special talent.

The friend may give you a book. This may be a test. If you really dig the book, this may be a signal that you're a promising recruit.

All this may be a set up to pique your curiosity.

Intense Unrelenting Pressure

They call repeatedly. Trick you into coming for only an hour and then lead you into a long study, meeting or talk. They have to keep the pressure on, otherwise you might snap out of the mind control environment they are trying to immerse you in.

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A group might not seem to apply pressure. You may have a life crisis.
Your may ask your friend to recommend a psychic reader or life coach.

Your friend may be entangled with a counselor who is part of a secretive lodge.

Once you're a client, whatever you say may no longer be private.

THEY TELL YOU THAT THEY ARE NOT A CULT.

This is a preemptive strike against the warnings from friends and family members which they know will come. In fact, some cults go so far as to tell you that Satan will try and dissuade you by sending family members and friends to tell you it is a cult. When this tactic is used then often a warped form of logic occurs in the recruits' mind, the "agents of Satan" do come and tell them that it is a cult. So since the group predicted that would happen, the group therefore must be true! Basically if any group tells you that they are not a cult, or that some people call them a cult, then for goodness sake find out why!

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They joke about being a cult, right at the start.

You may be told there was discord years back and the ones calling it a cult are the ones in the other group. Or you're told some members 'kicked themselves out'.

You may be so afraid to compromise your friendship or be so dependent on the counselor your pal recommended that you may ignore or rationalize any warnings you're given by well informed outsiders.

WARNING SIGNS

(not all necessary)
Single charismatic leader.
People always seeming happy and enthusiastic.
Instant friends.
If you are told who you can or cannot talk to or associate with.
They hide what they teach.
Say they are the only TRUE group, or the best so why go anywhere else.
Hyped meetings, get you to meetings rather than share with you.
Experiential rather than logical.
Asking for money for the next level.
Saying that they have to make people pay for it because otherwise they will not appreciate it. This is of course a very silly reason, plenty of people are able to appreciate things which they did not pay for.


Cults know that if they can control your relationships then they can control you. Whether we like it or not we are all profoundly affected by those around us. When you first go to a cult they will practice "love bombing", where they arrange instant friends for you. It will seem wonderful, how could such a loving group be wrong? But you soon learn that if you ever disagree with them, or ever leave the cult then you will lose all your new "friends". This unspoken threat influences your actions in the cult. Things that normally would have made you complain will pass by silently because you don't want to be ostracized. Like an unhealthy relationship love is turned on and off to control.

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Disrupting friendships with the person who recruited you is another way for the group to monopolize your emotional life. By this point you may be
involved with a group member who, unlike your friend, has become an authority figure in your life, someone on whom you have become dependent for guidance.

The friend who recruited you into the group may suddenly vanish or reject you with zero explanation. They may be told something fake that leads to them avoiding you. Or you're told something fake that leads to you avoiding your
pal.

If you're told a secret and told not to tell your friend this secret, you're made to feel special, you're burdened with a secret -- and worst of all,
you're estranged from your friend. This is an effective and evil way to disrupt your pre existing friendship once you're in the group along with the pal who recruited you.

You may find yourself clamming up around friends who are outside of the group.
Eventually the strain of keeping quiet around your outside friends is so great, you drop those friendships and socialize only inside of the group.

Thus you drop outside relationships without being told to do so.

Privacy is mutual and consensual. Both of you have all cards on the table. You both consent to keep quiet. A secret is imposed on you. Secrets exist amid power imbalances. And, all too often secrets carry a burden of fear and you end up being unable to think clearly about them.

Cults also try to cut you off from your friends and family because they hate others being able to influence you. A mind control cult will seek to maneuver your life so as to maximize your contact with cult members and minimize your contact with people outside the group, especially those who oppose your involvement.

'maneuver your life' -- see above

REPORTING STRUCTURE

Everyone is encouraged to watch out for "struggling" brothers and sisters and report what they see to leadership. Cult leaders will then use this information to convince their members that they have a supernatural link, the trusting member does not suspect the very natural mechanism behind the supernatural revelations they are given.

Corboy: Or the cult leader uses this information to disrupt friendships within the group - see above. Really astute cult leaders are like chess grandmasters. They break up friendship pairs and groups that could potentially generate
zones of loyalty independent of the leader.

TIME CONTROL

Mind control cults keep their members so busy with meetings and activities that they become too busy and too tired to think about their cult involvement.

Time control also helps the cult keep their members immersed in the manufactured cult environment.

And time control helps keep members away from friends and family.

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If a cult keeps you busy, busy busy, eventually it may seem
quite natural to decide to move closer to where the group has its
headquarters.

No more long commutes.

A friend in the group may even
tell you that an affordable apartment or house has become available in the neighborhood. They may route you to a job opportunity that just happens
to be tied to the group. Then you decide to move to the area....
you are becoming an inmate and you do not even realize it.

Many posts and links by Moriarty at

sunniport.com/index.php?threads/cult-mind-control.11128/page-1