How To Recognize Spiritual Abuse
Even with what I’ve been writing about over the last few weeks, I still believe in the power of personal development and spiritual growth.
I still believe we’re in this earthly experience to consciously know our soul nature more than our fear-based nature.
I don’t want to overcorrect in the opposite direction by abandoning anything that has to do with spiritual growth.
And I don’t want to deter you from spiritual growth either.
However, I do want you to feel safe in embarking on a process like this by arming you with the insights I’ve gleaned from looking into this over the last few weeks, regarding where things went wrong with respect to applying the teachings.
There’s still no guarantee this can fully protect you from being conned by a master manipulator but, at least, you’ll be armed with some key signs to look for.
What I observed (and can see in my own journey) is when you enter these teachings for the first time you don’t have a reference point for them so, to proceed, you end up having to place faith in both the teachings and the teacher.
And, of course, you only stay with the teachings if they resonate.
(This is also the case if you’re reading The Bible or going to church for the first time without any prior connections to or a reference point for Christianity. It just happens that most people who have a connection to Christianity are born into as a norm. The same could be said for all major religions).
My first experience with what I’ll refer to as “spiritual teachings of the direct path” was through a book called A Course in Miracles.
A Course in Miracles is set up as a self-study course. Some people join groups who are also studying it, which could involve a teacher. I did neither of those things.
This meant I was not apart of a group dynamic and/or a student-teacher dynamic. I gave my trust to the teachings as they continued to resonate. There was no physical teacher for me to place my trust in or gain my understanding from.
Because of this, I was not at risk of being manipulated by someone else’s interpretation or use of the teachings (this was not an intentional setup to protect myself; it’s just how it happened).
I was still at risk of being manipulated by the teachings themself if there was a danger posed in them because I was fully immersed in reading the material.
My second experience with “spiritual teachings of the direct path” was through a physical teacher. Since this came after I had a solid foundation of these teachings in place, I was entering this scenario with a reference point.
However, this teacher (Waris was his name) began to expand both my understanding of the foundation I already had and extend what I knew to things that went beyond the scope of my initial study.
I was definitely at risk of manipulation if I was in the hands of someone with an impure intent.
This is a position we end up in when we’re given an opportunity to learn from someone who is “further down the path than we are” (not that we can’t still rely on our intuition or resonance with the teachings/teacher to keep us safe).
Fortunately, Waris had pure intent.
Knowing how bad that situation could have turned out based on what the whistleblowers have shared is one of the reasons these scandals have stuck with me as heavily as they have.
On the flip side, I believe my time with Waris (and A Course in Miracles) is what hopefully would have saved me from a situation getting as bad as it did for people in Bentinho and NXIVM’s inner circles by recognizing the leader’s behavior did not match up to my other reference points for the application of these teachings.
I’ll never know but I’d like to think it would have helped and want to share what now stands out as major differences in behavior of the teacher and application of the teachings.
Waris and A Course in Miracles served as two separate reference points for me regarding “spiritual teachings of the direct path” and Waris also served as a direct reference point for what someone in a state claiming to be balanced in love and wisdom should look like.
Again, if you’re entering teachings of this nature for the first time that means you have no reference point for them and are at the mercy of the intent of the group and teacher you’ve stumbled upon.
You’re still deciding if they resonate or not, which is, of course, in your power.
Your resonance is keeping you safe; it’s letting you know it’s okay to enter into this space of learning (unless there’s something you’re overriding).
From what I’ve observed with Bentinho and NXIVM, it’s initially safe to enter the “outer community” and begin learning what’s being taught.
Things are not amiss in any obvious way. Blatant manipulation has not yet begun.
The teachings are empowering and beneficial to learn and apply in your life.
The scary part…
You’re learning how to be empowered (and supposedly awakened) by the very teachings that are going to be used against you if there’s a master manipulator at the other end of this, which occurs AFTER you’ve built trust and faith in both the teachings and the teacher.
Since this is occurring after you trust the teachings and the teacher, you’re mind is now in a position to overlook and justify small (and large, with enough trust and faith) discrepancies as well as your own intuitive alarm bells in order to continue leaning into the teachings as the teacher begins to manipulate you.
A master manipulator is playing the long game and, at this point, you’re deeply caught in their con, fully believing they are trustworthy and of good intent.
As an example of how the manipulation begins…
If you’ve made it to the inner circle, you’ve likely already shown a dedication to the teachings and “greater mission” the group is working towards.
The teachings empower you through personal responsibility so it’s already embedded in you that “being or acting as a victim in any regard” is frowned upon. You’re dedicated to taking personal responsibility towards any sense of victimhood you experience.
Again, if there’s not a master manipulator on the other end of these teachings, personal responsibility is a healthy step in healing old wounds and releasing beliefs and ideas around unworthiness as it allows you to step into your own power/know your wholeness more directly.
However, if there’s a master manipulator on the other side of these teachings, this person can subject you to emotional abuse (or worse) under the idea that you need to take personal responsibility for any sense of victimhood you feel.
This sets up a scenario where abuse is accepted as apart of your training to not be affected by it.
In other words, the “leader” can do or say anything to you because it’s your responsibility not to be victimized by it.
The teacher is never held responsible for intentionally inflicting pain as the teaching’s do not allow for it to be the case.
So if you’re in the hands of someone who enjoys inflicting pain on another, you’ve been taught to subject yourself to it as a form of undoing your victimhood.
But, instead of helping someone fully through their victimhood, as a normal teacher would offer, a master manipulator cleverly inserts a shame cycle where the student is taught to feel ashamed for not yet undoing the victimhood.
They’re taught to be personally responsible for their victimhood and to simultaneously feel ashamed for still experiencing it, all the while a master manipulator is having a field day with the trapped cycle they’re in.
Now the initial “empowerment teachings” or “spiritual teachings” that, at first, felt safe were actually grooming students to accept the abuse that was waiting down the line.
Again, this is occurring once the student is bought into the teachings and believes the intent of the teacher is good.
In the sick case of NXIVM, students were also taught to give themselves penance for not meeting the standards they set for themselves.
Another example of empowerment teachings being leveraged against you occurs when your desire for a dream, goal or spiritual awakening is used to get you to push through barriers and fear that involve doing things you would have never considered appropriate prior to this.
The teacher is able to make the case that “not doing this thing” is what stands between you and what you say you desire.
It gives a sense of “if you’re so dedicated to what you say you want, why are you allowing yourself to be blinded by or held back by whatever is stopping you from taking this next step?”.
This is also a way of getting someone to override their intuition by reframing it as fear. The thing standing in your way is the problem…even if it’s your intuition sounding the alarm!
The master manipulator likely starts with small seemingly innocuous but odd things as a way of building up your capacity to do more and more things outside of your comfort zone all in the name of it leading you towards what you say you want.
This psychological manipulation is what leads people into doing the most bizarre/outrageous things they normally would have NEVER considered.
If this is done through a socially isolated group, everyone around you is normalizing the behavior and belief system by participating in it, which adds to the manipulative effect.
So where they heck is everything going wrong and how can you recognize it before it occurs, especially when it initially feels safe to participate in?!
First off, since shame keeps you in a disempowered state, it can NEVER be apart of empowerment teachings.
If you’ve been learning about empowerment teachings and find that shame is being used to “motivate you to live up to the things you say you desire” by making you feel bad for all the ways you’re missing the mark, regarding the goals and desires you’ve established for yourself, something is off!
The use of shame is keeping you trapped in a disempowered state. It’s setting you up for something that is not good for you, both by directly experiencing the psychological affects of shame and in it becoming a point of leverage for a master manipulator to use for some other purpose like getting you to push your boundaries in the ways I described above.
Additionally, a shame cycle is NEVER part of a true awakening process.
It can’t be as it keeps you functioning from within the framework of the ego, where the point of waking up is to free oneself from the patterns of our ego (fear, guilt, shame, etc.).
But if you have no reference point for the teachings, you likely wouldn’t know this to be the case and, instead, would continue to go along with what’s being presented by a teacher you’ve given your trust to.
And even more disconcerting, people don’t often know they’re in a shame cycle when it’s occurring. This is why it’s so hard to pull someone out of it once the entire process is believed in as a training tool and the teacher is thought to be of good intent.
If you’re armed with this awareness, I believe there’s an opportunity to notice if the leader is trying to elicit a sense of shame in you (or the community in general) before you’re fully engaged in a shame cycle and made blind to what’s going on. That’s what I’m hoping this offers.
In everything I learned in A Course in Miracles and the direct path in general, the way in which we release ourself from egoic patterns is through the tool of self-forgiveness, NOT shame, self-judgment and/or self-condemnation.
Forgiveness moves us from believing in the shame (guilt, fear, self-judgement and/or self-condemnation) and simultaneously using these things as an indicator of our worth to knowing our worthiness through a direct sense of wholeness.
Without believing in the shame or believing our worthiness is tied to it, we can’t be manipulated by it. And (hopefully) the attempt to manipulate through shame (or any of the other emotions listed above) becomes recognizable.
However, if students have no reference point for this, a master manipulator is able to utilize tenets of the direct path like “taking personal responsibility for one’s victimhood” and cleverly replace the very important and critical step of self-forgiveness with a shame cycle for having experienced (and continuing to experience) victimhood. It’s a sick cycle that’s scarily effective at manipulating people.
Does this then set up a scenario where someone is accepting abuse and then instantly forgiving it over and over again as apart of taking responsibility for their own victimhood?
This possibility probably still exists. But, I think, if you’re able to recognize the onset of a shame cycle, knowing it’s a form of manipulation, you’ll also see the abuse that’s being set up and, similar to touching a hot stove, you’ll move away from it, instead of staying in it.
Then, you can forgive with a clean break and move away from the entire situation without carrying any lasting residue of resentment. And maybe warn others through your exit.
(If the exit is difficult you also know you’re in an abusive situation and the teacher is not to be trusted).
Now let’s look at the scenario where you’re being pushed to challenge boundaries and barriers in the name of getting what you say you desire, whether it’s a personal goal, spiritual awakening and/or being dedicated to “the mission”…
If you feel like there’s a subtle (or not so subtle) convincing at play, something is off!
A teacher who is truly balanced in love and wisdom DOES NOT CONVINCE students of anything. Period. The teachings either resonate or they don’t.
With respect to connecting to the true teachings of the direct path through a truly balanced teacher, the student is either ready for them or they are not.
A student is NEVER to be convinced of something. A true teacher knows and respects this.
A truly balanced teacher can offer explanations of a higher nature to see if they resonate, but if there’s any sort of using “higher reasoning” as a form of convincing, something is off!
A master manipulator obviously DOES NOT respect this and, thus, engages tactics to convince (i.e., manipulate) the student to see their way and/or to engage in what they want them to engage in. This also occurs by discounting “those who do not get what they’re teaching”.
It’s one thing for a teacher to frame something as an idea you’ve never considered that resonates immediately (i.e., no convincing is involved) and it’s a whole other thing to do something similar to this and continually reframe and add ideas or reasons to finally convince you it makes sense (if mental gymnastics are involved to get you to “see their way”, pay attention as this is manipulation).
Also, if there’s major convincing (i.e., manipulation) involved in getting you to dedicate yourself to the teachings when you’re not feeling that commitment or dedication by your own free will, the teacher is either not respecting where you are in your path or what path you’re naturally meant to resonate with by trying to get you to do something that is not good for you (because it serves them), both of whichindicate a true imbalance in the teacher.
A true teacher who is balanced in love and wisdom does NOTHING to serve themself (this is extremely rare).
They are not upset if you’re not on board, either through commitment or understanding, with what they have to teach.
They are not upset if you want to leave the student-teacher relationship (and if a personal relationship is involved, a balanced teacher is not upset if you decide to leave the relationship).
Something is off if they get upset and try to make you feel bad for no longer wanting to be dedicated to the teachings, mission and/or relationship.
I did have an instance where a fear was triggered in me that led me to temporarily ending my student-teacher relationship with Waris (i.e., I understand how fears can be triggered in students even when the teacher is truly balanced. This is the position Bentinho is taking with his community. My point in sharing about my incident with Waris is to show how a truly balanced teacher responds as opposed to one who is not balanced)…
I wrote Waris a scathing email listing all that concerned me and ended it by saying I was done and didn’t want him to use his capacity for “higher reasoning” to change my opinion on any of the things I listed. I left no room for him to explain himself so he was at the mercy of my attack.
Note: there was NO ABUSE involved, regarding my triggered fear. It was a deep fear around the amount of dedicated attention he was able to give me that I connected with having to mean more than a student-teacher relationship. He never crossed a line with me or even attempted to cross a line with me. Regardless, things built up in my head and I felt the urge to run backwards.
Looking back, I think this was a trip wire put in place to keep me from truly unsafe situations that occur through spiritual abuse, now that I know how common they are and how vulnerable I would be to them by the type of learning I was taking on as a part of my purpose in this life.
His dedicated attention was actually an extension of unconditional love that I had no reference point for and it was something he did with everyone he was close with. My time with him was one-on-one so I didn’t have a reference point for this same dedication towards everyone else in his life. Also, this dedicated attention was NOT the “love bombing” the ex-girlfriends of Bentinho referred to. It was literally actions of going out of his way to do things for me that I deemed “too much” for someone who was a friend/teacher. These things majorly tripped the trip wire I referred to earlier.
Back to how the events unfolded before I understood these actions to be pure extensions of unconditional love…
Waris responded to my email respecting everything I said by not defending anything I leveled against him (since I took that away with my final sentence). Can you imagine being attacked by someone you care for and staying so balanced you don’t attack back and/or defend yourself?
(I realize one could say this supports Bentinho’s claim of being balanced in love and wisdom since he’s not addressing the allegations that have been leveled against him by defending himself. One major difference is HE IS BEING ASKED to respond to the allegations by members of his community and the whistleblowers. More on this shortly).
Instead, Waris respected my desire to leave with the perception I had of the situation fully intact (whether he thought it was correct or not). He also left a bridge open (despite me burning it to the ground) for me to come back anytime and he sincerely wished for me to continue on the path whether he was apart of it or not.
In other words, there was no gaslighting me for wanting to leave or for having, what he considered, an incorrect perception of the situation. There was no manipulation through convincing me whatever was in my head was wrong. He respected my decision and perception by letting me go.
Whistleblowers have shared when they have what Bentinho considers a “misperception of the situation”, they’re told their perception is off and it’s caused by their own internal distortions (unhealed wounds) and/or psychic attacks (a negative entity preying on their perception as a way of attacking Bentinho himself or “the mission”). The community is also brought together to have a “group distortion reading” on the person with the “misperception”. This is public humiliation and an intimidation tactic to keep others from having “unaligned perceptions”.
You could say Bentinho has let his “former students and ex-girlfriends” go once they’ve left the community. But, according to them, their exits weren’t without a massive effort on their part.
This a very different approach than Waris took with me.
Within two weeks I reached back out wanting to give Waris a chance to address what I shared in my email. He addressed everything point-by-point, very clearly. It was resolved with a couple of measures put in place to help me not feel overwhelmed by “too much dedicated attention” (he didn’t try to convince me I needed to get over what triggered me and, instead, did what he could to help me feel safe). To move forward, he said this situation, from his perspective, was like a passing cloud leaving no trace or residue of having been there (i.e., there was no leveraging my misjudgment of his intent for manipulative purposes).
As a side note, even though Waris never held this incident against me, when he passed a few years later, I cried my eyes out for having misread his intent and, thus, “attacking light”. I have since forgiven myself, but I bring this up because me speaking out against Bentinho is not being done out of a knee jerk reaction as I would never want to risk attacking light out of some haphazard assessment. I know the pain of having actually done that and hope to never do it again. If anything, it made me have more leeway towards Bentinho regarding the discrepancies I noted prior to the whistleblowers coming forward.
As I mentioned, Bentinho is being asked to respond to the allegations of abuse by members of his community and the whistleblowers. Here’s his response, cleverly cloaked as a “no comment”…
“Truth need not be rushed. The Universe will correct itself, I have zero doubts about that. I pray for my (former) friends that this correction will be graceful and constructive. For now, I believe the uncertainty serves the purpose of catalyst; not knowing for sure what is true or not (yet) allows people to see their own beliefs rise to the surface. This confusion accelerates their learning. Hence I see this current manifestation and confusion as a natural evolution of the mission of global awakening. I believe it serves people not to know, so they have to search themselves deeply and choose to view from the heart vs the ears. If we take away all confusion, what is there to choose from? Without uncertainty, faith and love cannot be practiced. We will respond, potentially, in our own good time when we feel this current phase has served its purpose for those who choose to participate in it. Happy choosing my friend.”
To me, this is a master manipulator holding strong to the long con by giving the community an opportunity to double down on their loyalty (making them more blind to future discrepancies by a deeper investment in his good intent). All he has to do is weather the storm by allowing those who are discouraged by the current whistleblowers to jump ship, wait for this to blow over and attract new members who are unaware of this recent iteration of whistleblowers. NXIVM’s leader, Keith Raniere, did the same thing, keeping his organization going for twenty years before enough people with evidence and power were able to bring the organization down. So beware of a teacher/organization taking this tactic as well.
I hope this helps you feel safer in continuing on your journey of personal empowerment and/or awakening.
Sincerely,
Shanna
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