Community and Cults

I spent my whole life wanting to fit in and feel a part of something, part of a community: to belong, like in a family.  I certainly hadn’t experienced unconditional love and support from my own family, nor did they provide a stable environment for me. As a result, I tried to be friends with people who were nothing like me, and I sought approval from people who were in no position to hold that kind of authority over me. I desperately pursued relationships that were complete mismatches.

But now, as I sit here in my adult mind, I couldn't feel much more the opposite. There definitely is still a longing to be part of a community, a strong and healthy community, but after traveling around for a year and then spending a year living in Mexico, I realize that all these communities feel like cults. That also extends beyond communities too.  I feel the same way about workplaces and organised groups. There seems to be an underlying expectation to be, or behave in, a way that conforms to the “rules” of those communities and to give a certain amount of commitment or “borderline obsession” to them, which not only do I not want to give, but no longer have the capacity to give. 

I understand that organised groups and communities attract a certain kind of person: someone searching for the things that I'd been looking for in the past, community, connection, and validation. Not ALL the people in those groups were like that, of course, but enough of them to create too much of a cult vibe for me to bear. So, as I started to explore the spiritual communities on my travels, I noticed this aspect even more. In the spiritual communities, the fragility of people was even more obvious. Some people were playing some very convincing characters. They had created enough of a following to be validated as gurus or spiritual warriors, but they carried just as much unresolved trauma as their followers; they had only learned more buzzwords and created a better costume to play the part of the expert. At first, I doubted myself and my own spirituality because I couldn't see anything but a broken boy or girl wearing some expensive boho clothing and spouting out trendy words like "healing" or "inner child" and talking about shamanic practices which had no authenticity behind them at all. There were days at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala when I felt like I had walked into a pantomime. In fact, there was one particular moment I remember vividly when I walked into a cafe with my friend and there was a white girl wearing a full Native American headdress playing songs on her guitar. She was surrounded by people who adored this uncomfortably inauthentic moment. I turned to my friend and said, "it's like a fucking circus." That's how it felt, and I was lucky to have a few friends who could see it too, but they were much better at making attempts to fit in than I was. During my time there, I couldn't visit certain “community” places where I knew I would want to leave immediately. This was a community for people who were in some kind of purgatory. Inside, they were just as broken as the rest of the general public, but they were a little better at creating a costume and persona to “appear” healed,  when, in fact, they had only made a well-constructed bypass to doing the actual work. However, their spirituality was photogenic and, therefore, much more relatable for people who wanted to sit on the outskirts of their darkness without stepping into it. 

When I moved to Chiapas, there were far fewer of these types of people, although they still existed. But I started to experience a new cult. The expats. Expats are not like travelers.  They have a different hierarchy depending on how long they've lived there and how much they involved themselves in the expat community. However, you wouldn't often see many of them walking in the streets with a native person. There is a smugness about expats that is uncomfortable but gives you something to laugh about in the local WhatsApp groups. 

Overall, I've learned from spending time in many different communities that human behaviour is much the same everywhere. The unhealthy dynamics are similar, and the expectations to conform are the same, but if you keep your eyes open, you will definitely meet others like yourself along the way. Those people are the ones who have helped me maintain my enthusiasm for living this unique life.