Why would I join a cult? Why would I willingly embark on a life-path of giving others power over how I lived my life every day? How do I make sense of my choices day after day to relinquish my freedom of thought to someone else? Maybe these are your questions; they have been mine since leaving the cult.

When I joined the cult in 1975, I was an idealistic, somewhat naïve 21-year-old young man. I joined after attending a meeting at which the two leaders spoke. At the time, the group was not known in the press, and cults were not in the public eye. The two leaders, a man and a woman, shared a message unlike anything I had ever heard. They talked about preparing to ascend to the “level of existence above human”. Their teaching involved assisting any who cared to join them in undergoing a process they called “human individual metamorphosis” (HIM) in preparation for ascension. This process would involve leaving behind our human lives and devoting all of our focus and energy to preparing ourselves to “graduate” into this “next evolutionary level of existence above human” or “next level”. They likened this process to the chrysalis stage a caterpillar undergoes to become a butterfly.

They said they were the two witnesses spoken of in the book of Revelation in the Bible. They said they had come with a continuation of the message Jesus brought 2,000 years ago. Not only that, but they said that “some” of the extraterrestrial spacecraft, seen by humans as UFOs, were the mode of transportation of this next level.
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Hi. I want to tell you a story. It’s my story. I have a secret. I’ve held it close. I’ve told very few people. I have been ashamed. The shame and the not-telling has been a weight on my life. The failing to shine a light on my story, even for myself, has kept me from becoming all I could be. I’ve played small. I’ve maintained the illusion that by hiding I would be safe. But it wasn’t true. Instead, I was choosing not to live fully.

Here’s what I have been ashamed of letting be known: I was in a cult for eighteen years. In joining, and choosing to remain as long as I did, I relinquished my choice to determine my own beliefs and my own behaviors moment by moment, day by day, until years had gone by.

My leaving the cult is a story in itself, for another day. In my internal work years later, delving into my unremarkable life in the world, abandonment issues came to light. I realized the person who had abandoned me, was me. In trying to fit in and be acceptable to the requirements of the cult, I had developed a strong habit of ignoring my inner voice. I had all but turned off that voice.

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