Cult A Love Story Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery Alexandra Amor Books
Download As PDF : Cult A Love Story Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery Alexandra Amor Books
How does one get swept up in a coercive environment?
No one joins a cult. That's a quote from Deborah Layton who wrote a book about her experiences with Jim Jones and the Jonestown cult. What she means is that no one knowingly puts themselves in a situation where they will be manipulated and controlled and abused. We join groups of people who are like-minded, whose values seem close to our own and slowly, slowly we are convinced that the leader knows better for us than we know for ourselves. As our choices become more and more limited and we are manipulated to believe that we cannot leave and that what we are doing is right and good, we lose track of our authentic selves and begin to develop what cult expert Steven Hassan calls a "cult self" that believes the doctrine we have been fed.
Joining a cult does not mean that someone is unintelligent or unworldly. It is an immensely complicated psychological process and one that I deal with in great detail in my book.
What was the name of the cult you were involved with?
The group I became involved with was not a famous or large organization. It was a small group of people who were interested in learning about meditation. The woman who ran the group was someone who considered herself to be a spiritual medium or psychic. She began applying thought reform (also called mind control) techniques on those who followed her; our choices became limited and we were told that if we left the group we would be leaving God, which is one of the criteria that's used to define a cult.
What caused you to leave the cult?
My escape from the cult came as a result of questions I had begun to have about the guru we followed, combined with a particularly nasty event that she subjected me to. I began to receive therapy after that event, while I still belonged to the group, but the therapist helped me to learn to trust my own feelings and to question the leader and the group I was involved with.
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Cult A Love Story Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery Alexandra Amor Books
In order to help a client write a memoir about her own experience of religious abuse, I've been reading lots of cult-immersion-and-escape stories. Very very intense stuff. Leah Remeni's self-extraction from Scientology is the funniest and most entertaining, but this memoir, from a person so much more introverted and motivated so strongly by an authentic longing for the divine, is the most poignant, complex, and self aware. I would want to read about her inner journey even if the subject were not so dramatic. What an incredible love story -_as Ms. Amor explains, you don't join to be in a cult, you fall in love (initially!) with the way a certain type of compelling charisma and absolute certainty makes you feel. And then you come to love your fellow members. And then that love for the (illusion) of certainty, plus your intense connection with the only other humans who know "the truth" creates the kind of intensity of radical belonging that makes such love almost impossible to leave, even as another part of your soul is screaming as loud as it can to Get Out.I particularly enjoyed the intimacy and intricacy of a story from a survivor of such a small, un-famous cult - just a handful of earnest people engaged in epic spiritual battle in (mostly) the wilderness of British Columbia. Instead of relying on the increasingly horrible accounts of escalating physical and emotional abuse - as so many of these memoirs understandably do - Ms. Amor focuses instead on her own psychological journey - it's quieter but to me more riveting. So many of these books make me feel sick as I keep watching different dramatic versions of the same car crash. I don't mean to diminish the very real suffering of those unfortunate authors, and I have just as much human tendency to get sucked in to the velocity of the ambulance chase as the next person. But I was surprised, again and again, by the incredible honesty of this author to examine her own compliance.
Amazingly well done, Akexandra. I look forward to reading your fiction, but I would be just as eager to read anything else about your real life, again, even on a much less inherently intense subject. What you have accomplished is a major testament to the eternal human struggle to discover one's own truth, outside of any culturally mandated belief. As you demonstrate - it's incredibly difficult but also the most rewarding of any human endeavor. Bravo!
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Cult A Love Story Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery Alexandra Amor Books Reviews
“I just want to get through this. I know it will make me spiritually stronger.”
This powerful memoir begins with a heartbreaking break-up, one that is demanded by the cult leader, a woman who ultimately will insist she be called Lady Limori. By the time you finish it, your heart will probably be broken a little bit, too.
There are many books about cults and it's estimated that there are more than 5000 cults now active in the United States, so these stories will, tragically, continue to be told and they need to be told.
Alexandra Amor was committed to the teachings of this unnamed cult for ten years, and we live through the entire experience with her, a real life "game of Snakes and Ladders." Sometimes she finds herself on the good side of Limori and other times, she is told she has a "dark energy" and too much "ego." The push and pull of all cults is well examined in this story, how they recruit you with "love and acceptance" (hence the title) and then how they keep you, with fear and mind control.
Having read several books about cults, what always strikes me is how similar they all are. The all claim to have "the Truth," they all claim to hear directly from God or the leader IS God, and they all either know your sin or they want you to sit and confess your shameful secrets to them. In one particularly chilling scene, everyone in the cult is told to write down every dark secret they have. Once they are done and are before the cult leader...well, what happens next needs to be read to be believed. Same with the time when one woman is asked just how committed she is to God and when she says she is 100%, she's then asked to prove it. What follows is humiliating and very disturbing.
The author’s great sensitivity to her story and the people she knew ensures that the reader is always aware of his her surroundings as the story unfolds. You really are there, and there is grace and great affection in the writing. Ms. Amor admits that she stills loves the people in the cult she left behind, and that rings true throughout.
Toward the end, one woman confides to the author, “I just want to get through this. I know it will make me spiritually stronger.” This is a book/story that is difficult to stop reading because you come to care so very much for the people involved.
And as the author says at the end "If you have been in a cult, I am not too proud to get on my knees and beg you to get professional help and to work at your healing so that the rest of your life can be lived as freely as your spirit intended."
CULT, A LOVE STORY is highly recommended, and it's not easy to forget.
http//cultalovestory.com/
Insight on something that affects many, but even more don't even realize they are out there!! Enjoyed reading from a past members perspective. Someday I hope to write from a parents perspective.
Finished reading Jonestown, the story of Jim Jones and his followers. I was still trying to understand how so many people could follow someone so obviously crazy. The book Cult a love story explained it perfectly. It could happen to anyone.
I don't really review books very often. I also have never read a memoir before. That said, I bought this book on Friday night on a whim and was hooked until I finished it on Sunday afternoon. I never expected to be so gripped by a nonfiction story.
This is a powerful and moving story about how good intentions can sometimes lead us down the wrong paths, how love can go awry, and how the psychology of abuse plays out. I was impressed with how well written this book is--the few typos are easily overlooked for me personally--and how well the author mixes talking about her personal experiences with factual and theoretical information about cults. It's really well done and the book is better for the combination of the two.
I admire the bravery of the author for telling her story, and I think I'm going to have to look a bit harder at memoirs! I had no idea what I was missing.
In order to help a client write a memoir about her own experience of religious abuse, I've been reading lots of cult-immersion-and-escape stories. Very very intense stuff. Leah Remeni's self-extraction from Scientology is the funniest and most entertaining, but this memoir, from a person so much more introverted and motivated so strongly by an authentic longing for the divine, is the most poignant, complex, and self aware. I would want to read about her inner journey even if the subject were not so dramatic. What an incredible love story -_as Ms. Amor explains, you don't join to be in a cult, you fall in love (initially!) with the way a certain type of compelling charisma and absolute certainty makes you feel. And then you come to love your fellow members. And then that love for the (illusion) of certainty, plus your intense connection with the only other humans who know "the truth" creates the kind of intensity of radical belonging that makes such love almost impossible to leave, even as another part of your soul is screaming as loud as it can to Get Out.
I particularly enjoyed the intimacy and intricacy of a story from a survivor of such a small, un-famous cult - just a handful of earnest people engaged in epic spiritual battle in (mostly) the wilderness of British Columbia. Instead of relying on the increasingly horrible accounts of escalating physical and emotional abuse - as so many of these memoirs understandably do - Ms. Amor focuses instead on her own psychological journey - it's quieter but to me more riveting. So many of these books make me feel sick as I keep watching different dramatic versions of the same car crash. I don't mean to diminish the very real suffering of those unfortunate authors, and I have just as much human tendency to get sucked in to the velocity of the ambulance chase as the next person. But I was surprised, again and again, by the incredible honesty of this author to examine her own compliance.
Amazingly well done, Akexandra. I look forward to reading your fiction, but I would be just as eager to read anything else about your real life, again, even on a much less inherently intense subject. What you have accomplished is a major testament to the eternal human struggle to discover one's own truth, outside of any culturally mandated belief. As you demonstrate - it's incredibly difficult but also the most rewarding of any human endeavor. Bravo!
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