[Music] hey pel and tear those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist so we are doing our next little series we like to do little series and we're doing this series on Cults in my notes I have it with an exclamation point every time I typed it up Cults and um so we're going to be talking with people who have maybe broken away from their experiences yeah yeah got a couple people coming in and um we're also going to take some looks at things like the psychology of Cults but first we want to do an intro episode just kind of talking about the wise of this yeah um I had kind of interesting conversation with someone where I you know I do ask other people about what we're doing get some feedback people have thoughts you know I I kind of uh you know shoot out ideas and see what people have to say about it and one I was talking to just went like why are you doing that yeah because why and I you know in all honesty it had a lot to do with like our kind of way of trying to respond to what's sort of happening in the United States now yeah and the fact that like been happening Eric been been happening been happening I think the idea of we're like like an educational podcast on some level we P around you know we try to make it uh entertaining and Lively but you know we're educating and I thought well you know as you and I were talking Daniel it got to be like well what can we add to the conversations that are out there right and seem to be our Tech yeah yeah and then for me uh and I'll I'll share in like uh our our own reasons on the very personal level too but a little bit had to do with um conversations I had with some people where I was kind of shocked by the ctin of it like genuinely surprised so I'll try to share that a little bit and maybe it will be something helpful to other people to go oh yeah I've been talking with people and they sound kind of culty too yeah in new and uh new and interesting and disturbing ways yes but first before we get totally into it I I'll do the pitch at the beginning and you get to do one at the end which is if you can do all the things that people always ask you to do the likes and the subscribes and and you know maybe write a review if you think it's good you know if you don't think it's good maybe just help us out anyways you know you can help your friendly neighborhood spirituality podcast Jin and Tantra uh rise up under the hegemonic thumb of the algorithm that's right climb our way out yeah Spider-Man pinned under a rock trying to pull himself out I think it's a famous Spider-Man scene he pulls himself out from under a rock but any case you know if you can help us out maybe do the things and we'll keep trying to do our things yeah without good material for people people on and especially at at this time now you know I think we all have to share our voices yeah I mean a wild time you know the the the part of it is that like I mean I listen and I'm and I'm our audien is if you're consuming this podcast um then you're probably consuming other podcasts and other media in general human beings are generally curious creatures we want to learn we want to whatever and just because somebody is famous or popular doesn't mean they know what the [...] they're talking about interesting way to start a conversation for sure correct and so and just because someone isn't doesn't mean that they do so I'm not correlating those two things together I'm just putting this out there and the hope you know one of the things that that is going to be that so there's two there's two tracks here one is that we kind of go through these longer series and me as you know like I say like the you know editor of what we're doing the the content kind of editor always try and take different angles to to relate to people in different ways not because I want to break our message up but because I want to spread it around and and and hook people in and have them find things that would be interesting but from a larger perspective if we if we go over Eric and I'm talking to you now as you know a friend and podcast person we've been doing this for years the way that I get it now is that these are like semesters of of our own school that we're sort of creating for ourselves things that use that word in the text you sent me you said semester this is a semester it's a new semester and and why I say that is because as we get inspired to do things then we do the Deep dive on stuff and yeah I mean these are conversations that we're having in general but there's difference between having a conversation and then and then having a prepared conversation around a topic that you have researched that now we're presenting material in a like a informal educational conversational way that you know might be funny or not funny or whatever the case is but we're we're trying to present this material to kind of like raise the awareness around it and as we do that within ourselves it kind of helps us to be motivated to learn more deeply about it and so that is just those are the kind of the things that I wanted to to share and so with all of that as the background then we are you know Eric and I had a conversation a couple month maybe a month and a half ago or so about something in particular about like kind of like in the Zeitgeist of the you know kind of Pop not pop culture but like political culture pop culture sort of stuff and Eric really wanted to dive into kind of the psychology of it which is definitely part of our you know bandwagon here um and but I wanted to take a slightly different approach one that would be encompassing of a little bit more than just this particular ideology because I feel like that we what we do and what we've been always trying to do and I know we continue to say what we're trying to do and we also are doing it but what we try and do is take um a slightly more holistic approach to problems right and we present the kind of Buddhist tantric perspective we present the psychological perspective and maybe even I could say the anthropological perspective from this uh and the kind of like shamanic energetic perspective of this as well and we kind of weave all these things together in our presentation DST Chinese medical D Chinese medicine trying to give the spiritual take the including the shamanic and these other traditions and then psychological stuff yeah yeah and so we're trying to do all of that and then but as we are aware that we exist within a society so we are not separate from the society that we exist in we you know we and I'm still feder is still going to be coming on and Katie will still be coming on and Rory will still be coming so we're going to have still nuanced discussions about this but eventually we're going to weave more into this subject here and the reason being is that we do not exist separate from our society we know this Eric and I know this we are not naive in any kind of way and up until now I would say that like we have been on we have been presenting things that have been important to us and everything that we present is important in people's lives relationships femininity patriarchy um structures and and Powers around you and your own health and your own mental wellbe everything else because that is your reality simultaneously there is an external reality that is definitely out there and whether it's projected by our mind or not it exists and so we wanted to and Eric and I'll let you speak we wanted to provide people with a different way of seeing their surroundings and interacting with them in uh in as as much of a unified way as we possibly could and so you know through Eric and my conversation I just had the kind of idea whether it's genius or it's stupid we'll find out here in the next you know months or whatever however long we do this for but this is the way I saw this kind of mind virus if you will the the pandemic of thinking that has in infected many many many people probably even us in some fashion and I wanted to discuss it with you know you and me and then everybody else who was involved and with our audience if people have you know questions comments concerns things ideas they want to share hit us up in the comments section Jin and Tantra gmail.com or the at the Jin and Tantra podcast on the Graham you know this is a live conversation that we having with each other that we're having with our loved ones and that we're wrestling with in order to help to understand our surroundings in our society so we're bringing that to people this is the preamble to a longer kind of conversation that's going to unfold and we are more than happy to engage people in their thoughts as we do with our own yeah yeah yeah I think well said and I think like okay so you know we were kicking these ideas around and I think you threw out the word I can't remember who threw out the word first I think it's probably you though the word cult and I went yeah yeah that's that's the idea and then once we kind of hit on that it was like okay that is sort of our take into this what we maybe can add to the conversation because there's lots of people making political commentaries and talking about the news of the week which is tot worse every day yeah but um we thought maybe this is the one thing that a different angle that we can take that we could add that could be something constructive to the conversation yeah and authentic to us yeah yeah I guess with that as a note I'll like I we like to go personal so I'll share my personal experience with this they grab some strange conversations you know there was a whole thing about political Cults that happened over the last 10 years or something like the Q andon experience you know all of a sudden you're talking with your uncle or you know some family member and you're like what are they talking about you know and you're completely thrown you don't know the language what they're using and you're like what what is this perspective I've never heard this before like up and I had a similar kind of a thing with this but it was I think it's the other like it's weird it's the other major cult maybe that's happening maybe we can debate it right but I was talking with some people and it was really around like Elon Musk and in general we don't do news of the week and we're not going to like do it here either no but it was based on like the strange conversations where I started to realize like wow this is being talked about in this very like kind of cultish way around this person and not a follower of Elon Musk I don't care about him I've never cared about him don't give a [...] you know so I was just going in like as a kind of a tarasa I was a blank slate for this right and going what is what's being said here so I wrote this down for myself just to kind of straighten out because I want to do as Fair as I could about this so I was talking with people and they started talking about him in this almost like Messianic way yeah where he was going to be this savior figure for Humanity and I'm and I'm listening and I'm like literally like in my mind I'm like what the [...] is this like what is this thing you know have you never heard this before maybe like the first time you heard a qanon you're like what are they talking about right so it was that and it had to do with him like like on the one hand getting the human species out into the cosmos to save it by having it like travel to space first to Mars mhm then out seeding other planets to save human consciousness like literally this is like verbatim when I'm listening to and I'm like okay okay you mean these rockets that keep exploding okay and then it got to be like uh why is this and it's almost like because the planet's doomed so we're going to give up on the global warming question that's it we're giving up on it and so it almost had like again the cess began to build cuz I thought okay we're going to abandon the planet in a way okay got it and so it's a little bit doomsday okay got it it has that undercurrent and then it was the continuation was there's going to be the Perfection of like human consciousness and intelligence through the Uber AI like data from Star Trek AI that will know everything if you can remember that old show right the this kind of sci-fi Vibe and I was like oh okay and the AI like literally is going to solve all the problems it's going to like solve cancer it's going to solve cold fusion and and elon's going to do that for us and I was like all right as the conversation continued I mean I wasn't in person so I couldn't slowly back away but I was like mentally backing away and it got to the point like also we'll perfect human consciousness by some kind of like neurolink and we'll have some kind of brain computer interface that will all protect like perfect our Consciousness and I was like okay and as I was kind of going are you sure about this one of the things I heard was that he also doesn't care about money our Messianic person his only goals are to save the human and save and perfect the human species especially I guess sort of like save it from itself somehow maybe and uh uh and that was his mission and then they said something like he doesn't even own his own house and I went okay and so I looked into it and like again not knowing anything about this guy like having no particular thoughts or interests in him whatsoever I was like okay so there's these claims that he was living in this $50,000 House near like the SpaceX launch sites or something but then as I again I don't claim any expertise on this guy but when I was looking at Business Insider it was like no it seemed like the same time he was probably lying and living in some other multi-million dollar estate that he owned and I was like okay that was post research now I think as I looked this up you know prepping these notes I think he just bought the $35 million estate somewhere or something so I was like okay right and I by the end of the whole thing I couldn't help thinking uh you know being shocked and thinking C exclamation point because you know again it was it had you know we're familiar with these other kind of political kind of Cults I suppose um but it was sort of like okay I guess the idea is that there's a charismatic kind of Messianic figure there is an overriding Transcendent mission of like uber importance right right Transcendent importance which justifies everything in its wake so because the mission is so transcendently important whatever that figure does to accomplish the mission is obviously totally warranted no matter how many Rockets blow up in the sky or how many I think you and I were talking I think he gets eight million of government funding a day yeah roughly so whatever he gets a day that's all whatever and if he has to topple everything in his path uh there's obviously a kind of an ideology in this that's at work right like there would be it has its own kind of bizarre terminology CU I listening and I was like there was this words like well he's an accelerationist and other people are deceleration and I was like I don't know what you're talking about I'm not in these circles I have no idea what you're saying and you know the acceleration is that he's going to push the technological Windows forward and their naysayers have to be overcome because they're going to be drags and albatross around the neck of the accelerationists so it was sort of like okay there's kind of a group think maybe at work in kind of like a group speak which I mean if you know the terms you know them but if you don't know them you're like what do this person even talking right right you know and uh and then there were sort of these other by the end I was like so this is some kind of tech bro sci-fi thing right and I was like okay so that's what it is and you would get to the idea other person would eventually say yeah and then it had to do with like other elements of this because I was like okay so this involves a lot of like evolutionary psychology stuff then too right save and perfect the species or something and that kind of explains again not knowing anything about Elon Musk going in but like all these kids he has everywhere you know is like him saving his genome that's Superior and passing it on or something like that I was like okay you know and then the underlying kind of like Fascination about the Quasi genius Tech CEO leader who will messianically save everything and I was like okay put the phone down clink and just went okay I think this is like a new kind of cult I never heard of before and so again for me when you brought the I mean I was like current processing this and maybe searching for a word and I maybe I can't remember even you probably came with that word before I did and you just it was just like yes cult exclamation point mhm I was like okay so that's what this is right and again someone who doesn't know anything about Elon I had to look back and go like what is this and then again I don't want to argue about him so much but I was like okay it looks like you know you watch kind of things that videos of him speaking and there's always the miraculous technological Solution that's like right there just wait till the fall and then the magical pipeline that's going to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles will be blasting you there m or you know the magical self-driving vehicle where you'll be able to earn $30,000 in your sleep as it magically drives around the street doing your tasks and uh and uh you know and I I I again not knowing anything about the dude like and not giving a [...] but I was just like okay the we're gonna be on Mars like next week you we're always supped already supposed to be there based on the timelines I like I just happen on people talking through these things and you're like okay so uh so this is the thing you know where for me it would look like like uh okay he's just like just another corporate deag semicon artist I don't know don't care on some level but to the extent I had to like pay attention to this and I was like wow this is like really kind of amazing you know and no matter what you think about it like that's a lot of TLC to lay on some person yes I mean it's like it's pretty intense to have all of that I don't talk about like the dolly llama that way I don't talk about any spiritual figure I ever studi with that way and we may get to like the spirituality cult stuff as we go through it but anyways that was my experience and I was just like okay and then I realized like well this is just it can't be just the few people I was talking to or something this is like a widespread point of view and then the realization that like okay it seems like what's happening in this place where we happen to live which I don't care about too much either you know to be honest but in general I was like wow there's like just like there's a cult takeover sure anyway so that was my experience to share with y'all and uh again I'm not even here really to argue about this person you know I claim no magical about this guy don't really care about him but by the end of the conversation I was like Wow charismatic leader like a Transcendent Mission which justifies all goals all all means all yeah yeah whatever you have to do there's an obviously an underlying ideology it has its own terminology it has kind of a again a group think and a group speak and I was like okay and you know again it's like conversation people that you know it's not like you know people that you don't know and you're like wow okay so anyways that was my experience with this I don't know how this was for you Daniel and yeah of things but have you had these kind of conversations with people I mean I was kind of stunned because I just wasn't familiar with this thing yeah definitely definitely I mean in in different ways right around different things but ultimately it's the same the the the structure of the of the cult mentality right which is the ends justify the means regard almost regardless what the means are um the sort of Messianic quality of the leader with the Charisma such that they are able to um motivate people that would might not normally be motivated in this particular kind of way you know yeah so they turn on a fire in somebody that they wouldn't normally have so they almost they're almost infusing them with their own purpose they're merging themselves with that person and saying oh now their ideas their ideals are mine yeah right and so there's a void I believe that's being filled if you want to look at it that way I mean like you do feel that way right there must be some psychological space that's being filled by this when you get to the psychology but and we'll try to exp as best we can we get there after we do our intro stuff through this episode but yeah and then simultaneously when you are able to take on that mindset you'll find others who have the same mindset and that then makes you feel included that uh as you know our boy Marcel would say you are not uniquely cursed yeah yeah yeah you brought that phrase up yeah right and and so your misery or this you know Transcendence from your misery is shared by others and therefore they are now now your you can say that you might recognize them as your kin because when we when society's lines have been crossed in the way that they have and that there is not particularly a monoculture which we I'm going to dunk on this in later episodes so if you know what that word means congratulations if not don't worry Uncle D got you um but because of the fact that we don't share um anything other than language really I mean a lot more than that way of life where we shop I mean we're proximity but the ideas are different right when you have when you're from a same culture similar culture you're assimilated in the ways of thinking you might not agree with it but there's not going to be a whole ton of variation within a culture versus a melding of cultures where we are as we are here and then with the isolation of people simultaneously you have to reorganize who it is that you feel a kinship to which does not include your family it does not it it's not that separate as adults even as kids you know um I mean I have clients who are very liberal-minded and their kids are conservative how I mean children 12 13 14 years old how does that happen no I it's very strange yeah right it's weird so they're being influenced by who knows right oh yeah yeah you're talking about things out side of even like their peer group you're talking about the wider yes yes as a more interconnected society and I mean that via the Internet and you know smartphones and whatever that you can naturally or maybe unnaturally navigate away from the localized conditioning which we could say is maybe a good thing in a sense but just because you're navigating away from the local conditioning doesn't mean you're breaking free you're slipping into another conditioning one that is just counter to the one that you are in now so you're Shi you're leaving one Paradigm to get into another one and this um I guess I I don't I don't I want to call it realization but I could say observation from my perspective is the driver behind what it is that we're talking about is because I believe it is quite prevalent and then when you have sort of a a you know we can say like a transcendental uh cultural icon if you will maybe we'll say it's a better that's a better thing I don't think there's anything transcendental about uh Ellen musk you know um but you have a cultural icon that then sort of transcends all of the boundaries that people would normally see and sort of Rises to the Zeitgeist of you know ubiquitous Awareness on a sense and so that then gets idolized on a on a mass scale and then they develop followings you know and then this then just it just the funnel keeps getting wider and wider and wider as their you know influence grows and grows and grows and before you know it you're having conversations with people about things that you're like what are we talking about again you know what wait what yeah was weird as like talking with my like you know my more extended family relatives who would like speak in Fox News or something and You' be like I don't know what you're talking about like I can't follow your reality it doesn't make any sense to me I don't watch what you're consuming but it was like you know I tried to write all this down and I guess obviously I said it in some of an ironic way from my perspective but I really tried to write down almost in my little notes for this like almost exactly what the person said or what people have said and I was like okay you know to like Just Do It full Justice because again I didn't know there was a full ideology behind this in this way and it actually goes along way to explaining like a lot of support and a lot of like or a certain percentage of support and a certain percentage of actions that people are taking or what people think are okay you know like I haven't gone back to ask because I don't want to have the conversations but it would be like okay so I guess you think this is all okay because it justifies the greater means of like spreading human consciousness through our Messianic person throughout the cosmos or something yeah on a dying Planet yeah we're bother to save okay and that has a little bit of a ring of like a doomsday call to it or something there's extended kind of way it's kind of a drawn out doomsday call really yeah there's there's layers to it and then you know but then for our you know our audience that has been you know with us for years or whether how long you've been here for it doesn't really matter one week this your first time listening or your thousandth time listening I know it doesn't whatever the the foundation to these observation from my persp perspective and Eric you could say for you comes from years of cultivated Detachment from my perspective cultivated cultural Detachment now when I say that what I mean specifically is that like yes we are discussing things that are occurring currently right but I intentionally take The Road Less Traveled as best that I can so I can have so I could see things a little bit differently again I'm I'm also bias because I'm myself right but I want to try and see Trends as they occur whether they pull me in one direction or the other this is kind of a binary thing and okay fine we can talk about overcoming dualism and and whatever but I also just notice the flow of things as they I try to as a as kind of like a a viewer of anthropology or a sociological experiment right from I call myself a baby sociologist you know what I'm saying so like watching these Trends as Society grows in a way that is probably accelerated due to our connectivity at this point and when I feel like I see something then I'm going to kind of zero in on that but I'm going to take the meditative approach and observe first you know before I come to a diagnosis I want to wait and see what it is and then apply different theories to it to find what works again just like how I would do when I'm seeing a pat or just like how I would do in a meditative space if I'm you know focusing on myself or whatever some problem I'm working on to not be um moved to action or reaction instantaneously and allow it to open up a little bit more to give me a some more information to make a more informed decision you know then we extrapolate that and put it put that same gaze that same like intense focus on society as we're existing in it not to try and isolate ourselves from it but to be engaged with it in a conscious way and then say okay what's happening why do I believe it's happening use my ability to like research and then but then ultimately run it through the final filter which is you know my understanding and feeling and all the combination of of meanness around what's going on and try to put together some kind of theory around things and then have conversations around it and read and educate myself so I take the same approach to my personal practice and development as I am doing with this they are one and the same but they but it's born out of where it is that I you know believe myself to be from a you know a meditative practitioner and that doesn't mean that like if if you're listening to this and you don't have like a strong meditative practice or a meditative practice at all you can take those same um detective type approaches right or researcher type approach and and use it and apply it to this which is what we're doing and so I just wanted to say that for those who are people who are looking for the kind of the path you know what I'm saying the the meditative path the Buddhist path the doist path or whatever you know amidst all of this which is what I trying to do which is what you're trying to do um but just in a in a more uh societal a more Community kind of a way yeah know this is a hard one for me so I agree with what you're saying maybe I'll go back and I'll double through because I almost had to write my thoughts about this because it's such a weird subject matter for me but I agree with what you're saying yeah you know maybe before I totally respond I'll like try to walk my way through this because for me the next thing was sort of like okay you know uh I wanted to think about narrow and Broad definitions of a cult so I did kind of what you're talking about I I reached out to our uh resident uh Anthropologist on retainer ah yes that's right one Ryan K davor and I said well what do you think about this you know and we had kind of a conversation about you know from an anthropological perspective this notion a cult which was sort of like the narrow definition and maybe the more broad definition was the way I walked away from it the conversation with now he made kind of a point from an anthological perspective which was well the first thing to say is I did the psych research on this maybe I should say this first and I was like you know there's no strict definition for what a cult is in the pure there's like like not one agreed upon thing that I could determine and and listening to people talk about it it was sort of this repeated thing like well there's no set definition but here's a definition and people would sort of throw out their own things we did it too you know around you know this these conversations I was having huh um but a lot of those things would apply I I think those are things that other people would agree with right right um and uh you know kind of Ryan's thing was sort of about from an anthropological perspective if you make the definition too big well then you sort of lose the meaning of it as an anthropological things so you tend to talk more narrow okay for me I kind of realized you know um I'm not interested in Cults per se you know like I'll listen I did some research on this stuff I'll listen to it it's not a personal Fascination you know even when they had the oso cult thing on Netflix I kind of watched a few episodes and then kind of petered out with it did you watch that whole thing okay did you even know it existed yes okay okay I watched a little bit it had some drama in it but event and it was interesting to hear the people talk about some of their experiences but I'm not intrinsically interested in in maybe Cults in that more narrow sense but I did kind of find myself like being more interested like this and maybe like sort of in a more broad sense even in the way we're talking about here does this meet the formal definition of a cult in the way Ryan was talking about I don't know but to the extent that it shows these features that kind of interests me right and I think it interests me also for our project here in the sense that I you know it really brings home the idea to me that there this is kind of a vulnerability in human beings it's a of like spiritual vulnerability psychological or psychospiritual vulnerability to get IM mesed in these things yeah right and so I guess that was like part of why I found this to be like you we'll go through people's specific experiences right and things that might be more cultish in the more narrow sense right but it also was like I I realized what interested me was that there's a human tendency to be this way that I think you can look around the world and say wow this is really dangerous in a big picture sense right right and the way it affects like societies and cultures it's dangerous really [...] dangerous and there's a lot of that like ingroup outgroup aspect of this yes we're the in-group people you're the outgroup people therefore we have to eliminate you you are objects of like derision and potential destruction you know and that's dangerous [...] [...] m MH but it also made me think about this on an individual level too that from a uh a more like personal level whatever there is inside of each of us that has that thing going on I definitely see that's a spiritual obstacle too that we all have to work over for ourselves in order to make more more psychospiritual project on pro pro progress on the personal level right right like I think that's true and you were kind of hinting at it and I kind of wrote it in my own way to get to this point and then of course I'm interested what you think about it but as I was talking with Ryan about it I was like well you know then you end up with this whole problem of like on a certain level whole Societies or cultures can have this kind of cult like aspect to them and you could be within the thrall of the The Cult of your Society or something and it gets us to one of like I know one the subjects about like really close to my heart which is sort of the doist point of view which is you have to get away from those things right right and it is in Zen and dosm and the tantas and so on that there has to be this distancing from these things right and almost sort of like a purging Purge it out like you just drank the medicine Purge it you can make space for new stuff to come in right and the D in the in the tantric literature there's this idea if you're a dirty cup even if you try to pour some wisdom in your [...] in the cup is just going to [...] the stuff that's coming in you know the nectar will try to come in but it's just going to mix with the crap you already have there and you won't get the nectar right it's one of their metaphors right you be closed not allow new stuff to come in right the cup is closed I think you could be that rigid I'm just going to block everything that might be information that could be caught like too not g to listen to any other alternative perspective no I'm block right and then the other one is like if you have a bunch of your own crap in there even if you open the cup it'll just be contaminated with your own stuff right so anyway so I mean that's a big deal for me and it was interesting because when I was doing my research on this one of the things that came up was one of the things that you brought up a number of times too which is this problem of like human Conformity yeah you know all of a sudden you know whether the reasons are we did this whole thing on attachment Theory because you feel like your attachment needs aren't being met and you need someone to bond with and hold you together and you were alluding to that right the attachment Theory aspect of this I feel afraid to be alone I feel like I need the support of others I need connection I'm lonely I'm anxious whatever okay I I Glam On to others who then fill that gap for me or something like that right and you were talking that way and I was like yeah I hear that too in this right so uh we're sympatico on that or whatever other reasons there are with that I think one of the things that one of the people brought was this feeling of the need to be right or something you sure I'm assuming this position of I'm I'm correct I'm right you know and I have the right attitude and other people are wrong well also the other the other one is um you we got to do all the all theem tions the other one is that I'm angry yeah yeah true and when other people are angered about the same things that I'm angered about there's a kinship there we we we must share some thoughts because we're pissed off about the same thing um but you know anger anger makes strange bedfellows you could see it right around you now these are very strange bed fellows you know to the extent that there's a coup going on it's a coup that's like very internally incoherent right those people don't it doesn't fit and yet you know we're all angry at those people we're all angry at these people we're all angry at these people and that's bonds the people together that's right but those bonds are those bonds are formed out of anger yeah yeah and that that is not that's there's there's not substance in this you know because that anger has to be directed somewhere and when you when you use someone else as as a as a microscope to direct that anger or as a as a funnel you know to kind of channel that anger toward you forget that like you might be wrong where you're putting that anger where you're moving that energy towards you might be incorrect but your ability to critical think about that is impaired inherently by the anger anger in inherently impairs your ability to critical think that's why being reactive is the worst place to be when you're trying to have a normal civil conversation about anything that's of of importance when you move to that place of reactivity anger gets in the way and you stop thinking you stop seeing things clearly we see red right or you feel heightened your emotions are heightened you start to and then you work back then you work backwards and then you have to go through all the emotional states that you've inherited or that you've been you know conditioned to do and now you're you're moving from place that is below where you would normally like to be number one and then when the relationship that you are in now is is in or feels like it's in Jeopardy because of your anger or their anger or whatever you know whatever Dynamic is happening I'm just using anger at the moment then those attachment Styles come up and you'll see people be anxious or avoidant or a mixture of the two which then you know because like a cult is is a culmination of of of a bunch of individuals right and they're all going to have relationships and so all the series that we did on relationships all the various dynamics that that has comes into play because it's it's about you like the cult is you and the cult is you and you and you and you the cult is always self-centered you know what I'm saying it's your relationship with the the quote unquote even as you give up your identity to the thing it you're the one who's doing that correct you right yes it's still you it's how the way that you see the guru it's the way that you see the Messianic character you know it's how even if somebody is feeding you the the ideas it's still your perception it's still a selfish kind of way but until you're able to kind of transcend yourself and not in a bad way you know because the bad way is like I'm going to sacrifice for this or I don't mind if these people are hurting so long as the objective is is you know is good it's a it's a short-sided thing and it's not there is no Promised Land nothing is promised to anybody nothing so no one's taking you anywhere whether it be heaven or Mars they're selling you something that they can never ever you can never pay for it and they can never deliver ever even if the thing that they're selling for you comes to fruition it ain't real it's not a real thing it won't be the thing that you thought it was going to be in the first place anyways right no I mean it's the same like this kind of cult is the same thing that they've been doing it's been years been going on oh aliens are going to come down for us we have to drink this special uh bleach so that we can uh they'll be able to take Spirits can rise into the sky when the meteor comes over car alen seeds that we can now incarnate into and fly off to their yeah I forgot the name of that or whatever that was a cult that Heaven's Gate right Heaven's Gate there you go I mean it's the same [...] it's the same [...] you know but because people's memories they don't they don't know about this stuff or they don't care to look into it or they don't believe it's them you're the one that can't see I can see you know like that [...] just sounds crazy and I'm not saying that anybody is right or wrong I'm saying it's all [...] up you know use your brain yeah yeah just just use your brain and run it through a filter you know Mary K it's good to have an open mind just don't let your brain fall out yeah I use that line at like when I did the Pacific College commencement speech I never heard from Mary Kay I read it in like a personal adway back in the day okay but anyways yeah I mean I think from the Dows point of view you know just kind of doubling back is one of my favorite things and like if you don't question the world around you yes and that include like your own social conditioning and the norms and worries of your own place you have to develop that thing to become a psychos spiritual person it's just like embedded in the project and Ryan said an interesting thing in our kind of conversations about this he said well you know really any religion starts out as a cult by definition yes and I was like okay yeah and then eventually when you trace it through if we go to China I just thought of like Confucianism that's like a kind of a cult mhm that builds around confucious right and now he's the cult people person and he's the charismatic figure and now you have a whole bunch of things that come out of that that deal but then it becomes like the rules of a society came out of that thing we live in a kind of a Christian cult in a way right you know even if you're Christian or not and people are realizing that in weird ways you know even like people wouldn't identify as Christians there's a whole bunch of books being written around that now that we mentioned a little bit here and there oh you know this really is a Christian culture is isn't it you know no matter who you who you are but that started as like I mean not even in a derogatory sense but just in an anthropological sense that's a qu right right you know and then eventually Rome says this is the law of the land and now you live within that but I think the point is for what at least what I see we're trying to do here I think you feel the same is like you have to question these things you know and then when you start developing that habit of questioning well I'll question the things around me that everyone takes for granted and then when you hear the more outrageous thing well I'm going to question that too right which got to like I asked kind of a weird question about this at the end you know as we're getting toward the end of the episode maybe but you know like we're promoting spirituality right and I had to like look honestly and say well is this like a culty kind of a thing we're doing right what's the line between like presenting something like as a spiritual thing and what's the line between presenting something as a cult and it got to back to what you're saying I think honestly you know uh you know how do you make spiritually not become Ault how do you make things not become Ault it's because you do that critical thinking thing right and you you do that I'm looking at myself you know to like see where my own hinks are that I'm gonna get rid of so my thinking is more clear and more honest authentic and more direct and then I'm able to have a clearer view on the world around me so I like I kind of grabbed my dolly llama t-shirt I had got this like when the dolly llama was doing this thing thing uh in Washington I went through was teaching there and kind of got tandri teaching from and all that and it it has a weird backstory so it says like believe nothing here if you can see it in the camera yeah yeah at the time I bought it in red and white right because those are kind of like tantri colors right the goddess colors are red you know and all that I thought oh that's cool yeah I actually it's just a weird Side Story I wore this up to a water park in Wisconsin over the Christmas holiday it's a Sentimental thing and went there with my son we used to go when he was younger my daughter too you know and I was just wearing this around the pool area as I went in to like do the water slides and the [...] with the kids and then there were people coming up to me that were like I love your shirt and I was like why because in the back it's a bunch of Buddha [...] but I realized oh those are like [...] Maga colors to some of those people right thing is kind of like part of their whatever and I went oh this is weird at least it seemed that way to me the Buddhist quote on the back which is quite long you know uh goes believe nothing no matter where you read it or who said it no matter if I have said it me the Buddha right that's supposed to be what he's supposed to said before he passed away unless it agrees with your own reasons and Common Sense believe nothing and that's like the heart of it right and I so I when I turned the mirror back on myself I said well are we trying to promote something that someone else could say well what about your cult you know that you're presenting and they went well no listen we're at least in theory trying to do something different yeah and I kind of skim through and you know there's a lot of sort of buddh this things about this even from the Daly Lama he says should you do everything your Guru tells you to do I grabbed this quote from him even if it seems strange oh you should do he says you should do everything your Guru tells you to do even if it seems strange right and then he says wrong mhm no you know he says you know you have to like look and see if this has reason to it you know and you're not supposed to like just accept like odd aspects of what you're being asked to believe and you can't you know you're not supposed to just say oh it must be a test or it must be like a teaching or it must be some Crazy Wisdom sometimes they use that phrase you know it must be crazy wisdom you know or you know any of these things and you know Dal Lama says no no no no right and then like just to wrap these up yeah you know um a little bit of a longer one but he says oh this is from the Buddha oh mon and wise people just as a Goldsmith would test his gold or their gold by burning cutting and rubbing it so you must examine my words and accept them or not accept them but don't accept them just out of mere reverence for me my teaching is not a philosophy it's a result of direct experience my teaching is a means of practice not something to hold on to or worship my teaching is like a raft used to cross the river only a fool would carry the raft around after he already reached the other Shore so you're not supposed to put this reverence on things and then if you were to follow the Dharma the teachings or the path purely out of love for me or because you respect me I would not accept you as a disciple because if you follow the Dharma because you have uh your s experienced its truth because you understand an act accordingly only these condition have the right to call yourself one of my people one of my students you know it's like that kind of language right that's so important and that makes the difference I got one from the first D Lama just really quick which is the true spiritual Master looks upon all living beings with thoughts of love and shows respect to teachers of all Traditions alike such a one only harms delusion meaning that that's the thing that you're trying to get at your own delusions and if you take this attitude not being partisan not like doing this thing of like you know my teacher's the one and that's anyone I respect or something he says you know such a one in doing that will harm the delusions which is the thing you really want to go after your own delusions right and that's the real enemy that you're trying to get at so anyways I just thought that was important to get to before we got out of here today that's a great great way to end it you know like this is what makes the difference hopefully right yes like okay I was thinking of the people I was talking to well don't you have your own Cult of things you believe I was like well no I'm trying to like do the opposite of that right right like we're misunderstanding each other yeah so anyways that's great great great way to ended right there yeah awesome well Eric thank you for being on the ride with me brother audience thank you for listening uh you know whether you're just starting or you're just passing by or you've been here for a minute we appreciate uh all the eyes and that you uh lend us on a you know weekly basis here or sometimes more frequently than that if you find our work uh beneficial or stupid that's up to you but uh like And subscribe I don't care if you like really just subscribe because then you'll see when we drop stuff and you can get uh you can get it quick if you hit the notification Bell or get it whenever you get it it's all good we appreciate everything uh if you have a question comment you want us to cover something or you're interested in this topic more deeply feel free to hit us up at ginand Tantra gmail.com hit us up on the gram Jin and tanra podcast or if you know us personally because our names are literally listed right here feel free to uh shoot us a message and uh we'll be we'll be glad to continue uh conversation with you for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one keep your mind open peace