How to Recognize a Cult

Some say that the spiritual path called New Thought is a cult, but they fail to take into consideration what a cult actually is. If you are ever confronted by someone who wants to know if your New Thought church and spiritual path are cultish, you now have the information that will put their minds and hearts at ease:

• Cults are manipulative, deceptive. They do what they believe they must to entice you.
• They’re exclusive; they always claim to have the “only right way.” And everyone else is hellbound.
• Cults use spiritual, psychological, and financial exploitation. They catch you at the emotional rather than logical level.
• They are totalitarian; you must think, feel, and act in the group’s prescribed manner at all times. (Now, that’s scary!)
• Commits—or at least, threatens—psychological or physical harm to members and/or their families, in this life or the life to come. They may even preach that a punishing deity is always watching you.

Remember, claiming to have an open mind is often considered heretical. Yet, the only progress that has ever been made has been by people who have stretched the confines of consciousness and moved off into unknown territory. Early technologies were considered not only heretical, but dangerous, even evil. That’s all changed, right?

The heresy hunters are still with us. And you may be a target. No need to concern yourself. As a New Thought practitioner, you’re on solid spiritual ground. What's more, you are free to leave this path any time you wish. But then, why would you want to?

“A miracle is nothing more than this. Anyone who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, of his oneness with the all-pervading Wisdom and Power, thus makes it possible for laws higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him.”
Ralph Waldo Trine