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In that case my bad

Completely normal and reasonable crashout especially given the fact that I qualified multiple times "under my light" and that you can have your own definition and in the other thread I said that I take cult to be a cluster concept and hence I take it that there are multiple different configuration of facts that can make something a cult and hence multiple different definitions are possible and reasonable.

Its probably relevant and important to provide this for people who wants to make their assessment about actualized.org Look through some of the ban list and the context there and how reasonable those responses and bans were by Leo. Flyboy Axiom , spiritual memes, vladorion The Mystical Man Arcangelo, Gesundheit2

I definitely wont engage with you, because I dont think you are a good faith actor. I told you what you need to do if you want me to answer, until then im good.

its your job if you want to engage with me to do at least the bare fucking minimum to try to not misrepresent my positions and to actually engage with what I say.

Right, lets see how you can possibly make yourself look good/reasonable there. This is your opportunity to make yourself look reasonable and make me look silly for reacting the why I did by providing a plausible story to account for all the following facts. After you provide us a plausible story that explains the following facts, after that I will answer your question - the fact that you had literally nothing to say about Leo making himself to be an exclusive authority on what definition of cult ought to be used by everyone on the forum and that everyone else is disqualified from thinking anything different from that and why you only and explicitly had issue with me asserting my definition , even though I qualified it multiple times and implied multiple times that you are free to use a different definition and that you dont have to use mine and the other fact about why you taught that Leo not explicitly making any 2026 threads or comments about him being the most awake person on Earth ,only just that he is the standard of epistemology, that that distinction was somehow relevant to point out and was relevant to the allegedly good faith line of questioning that you were doing when you were making your own level headed assessment whether Leo's actions and statements were reasonable or not. Also explain the fact why you asserted and told me "ohh you are making up your definition now" rather then actually engaging with it and laying it down why you disagree with it, if you think you were being good faith there. If you concede that your "ohh you are making up your defintiion now" comment wasnt in good faith, then I dont know why you acted so surprised to how I reacted.

Cool, given that definition, there arent any cults as long as there is no member in the group who ever feels pressured by the leader regardless what statements the leader makes and what behavior the leader exhibits. Even if the leader explicitly and implicitly asserts to be the authority on literally everything and asserts that he wants to control your whole life, he wont be a cult leader.

No you rather act passive agressive and you dont engage in good faith and pretend that you are not asking questions to get an answer and to make a trap and to end it with your passive agressive remarks like the way you did in the other thread where you said "omg im so scared that I cant leave". Given that you were too lazy to read 2 lines from the start , and that you demonstrated multiple times that you cant summarize accurately what my position is on this, even though I literally fed all the relevant info to you and walked you through my line of thinking and answered more of your questions in more detail and specificity that what Leo will ever do to you on any issue, let alone related to this specific issue and and then you ended with the "omg are you just making up your own definition what a cult is" implying that thats a special issue that you suddenly have now, with a straight face, while ignoring the fact that I showed you that Leo (you know the leader of this forum and the guy who has more than a million subscribers on youtube) arbitrarily made himself to be to be the exclusive judge on what definition of cult ought to be used by everyone here and you had 0 comments and issue with that is just fucking perfection my guy, I dont know what else you expect me to do or what else you expect me to tell you related that delicious performance. If you think that its too retarded or that its too much to ask from Leo to stop making definitive comments about other people's awakenings and to stop completely undermining their ability to make that judgement themselves then go ahead my guy, you do you and you can freely use whatever different definition you want to use.

Thats super duper cute that you suddenly have an issue with that but you had nothing to say when Leo wanted to tell everyone what 1 definition ought to be used by everyone. Notice that Im not telling you that you have to use my definition or my norms. Its also cute that you dont recognize the difference between the responsibility that a forum member has and what a forum leader has, who has more than a million subscribers on youtube. (But again im not even saying that I have some special priviledge that Leo doesnt have, but even that would be appropriate for me to imply under my lights, because he obviously has more responsibility than a random forum member).

If they are telling other people and correcting other people about how conscious those people are or what awakening they must have have had without any qualification and without making it clear that their judgements might be wrong and without completely undermining the judgement of those people - in that case yes, under my lights , they are cult leaders as well.

I dont know what the answer to that question is because thats a metaphilosophical issue but I know for sure that if you let the leader to be the exclusive norm/judge itself, that in that case he will automatically create a cult or at the very least he create an environment in which cult dynamics will prevail. But there is a relevant difference even there - there is a difference between giving norms and being the norm itself - a mystical tradition can lay down a specific theory about spiritual devleopment and can give you certain details about how to recognize for yourself whether you managed to rise to those given states or whether you managed to get to that given level of development or not and between the leader being the exclusive and explicit judge who tells you and corrects you about how conscious you are (despite the fact that he has no fucking access to what awakenings or experiences you have had up to that point). And of course, you can have a problematic mix bag , where the leader provides you a set of principles or standards meant to help you evaluate things independently. But then, when someone uses those same standards to reach conclusions that conflict with the leader’s own views, he dismiss their judgment, question their competence in applying the standards, and or implicitly place himself above the very framework that he previously encouraged others to use. So ,the original norms remain in place in theory, but they are selectively overridden whenever they challenge the leader's preferred conclusions. But before you or anyone else tries to imply that im asking for something impossible from Leo, Im not. The criticism is not that he needs to solve this impossible issue (that he needs to solve all problems around epistemology and spirituality and philosophy so that he can find the correct norm and that after that he needs to explicate the ineffable), the critcism is that given the problematic epistemic nature of this issue and given the fact that he has no fucking direct access to the content of your experience and your awakening, that he shouldnt run around and pretend to be an authrority on any of this. Its not so hard to just shut the fuck up about making claims about what level of consciousness other people managed to acess or its not so hard to qualify your judgements related those things without implying that your are the only correct person to make a proper judgement on this and without undermining the ability of literally everyone else in the Universe who wants to make that judgement for themselves. And then my advice for complicit actualized.org members is to find your balls and to not be spineless and complicit about this and around this. Dont make excuses for Leo and dont open up your asscheeks so that Leo can take free advantage of you and so that he dictate to you whatever the fuck he wants without any limits, but to stick up for yourself and to actually do what he allegedly wants you to be - be sovereign - act sovereign and use your sovereignty. Relativizing this issue and not calling out Leo for this is exactly the thing that will make it so that cult dynamics will prevail on this site (irrespective of whether Leo is malicious or not ).

I think you missed a cute relevant context there - "Im the standard of epistemology" was literally replied to establish authority over what should and should not be considered a cult. He didnt just say that you are wrong about cults, he implied that he is literally the proper foundation from which it can be accurately assessed what should and should be not considered a cult. There is a difference between saying "I disagree with you and I think im right" and between saying that "you are so mentally impoverished that you cant even begin to understand what standards or methods are needed to judge whether something is a cult or not, so let me be that standard and dicatate and control all of that shit" Again this goes back to there not being any independent norms and standards from him - He wants to be standard that tells you your level of development, he wants to be the standard that tells you whether you are wrong or not , he wants to be the standard that tells what is and what is not cult, he wants to be the standard that can tell you whether he himself is a cult leader or not etc.

Sure if you are looking for an explicit phrase where he explicitly claims to be the most conscious being in the universe, then I cant show you that, what I can show you again is the general sovereingty undermining attitude where he consistently places himself above you and others. Not sure what this establishes though and also not sure what the practical difference is between saying that im the most conscious being in the universe and im am the standard of epistemology. You seem to implying that a lack of recent thread created by him implies that he doesnt hold to the exact same sentiment anymore ,even though again I can show you many 2026 posts where he disses other actualized members and where he implies that other teachers wont get you to where he can get you and where he specifically target other gurus and tell you that they are wrong or not advanced enough. (Osho, Daniel Ingram, Ralston) etc.

Nope

Doesnt seem to be the case based on his past behavior. Usually when people asked him questions related to this without immediately throwing the cult leader accusation at him ( when he made his "Im the most conscious being in the universe and all of you are dumb" threads), then he usually wasnt very talkative or expressive other than dissing people in his usual way for not understanding why he is the most conscious. For instance given the "LEO" thread, you can go through and reverse back and check each thread from which those quotes originate from and you can check whether my summary is accurate about Leo's behavior or not.

Yeah because Leo surely takes his time to directly respond to questions and to directly lead you to the specific posts that gives you relevant context to get an underlying understanding about the things that we talk and debate about. (like we are talking about context thats literally just on this page, not about you needing to watch 10 thousand hours of videos) I also never said that you cant disagree or that you are dumb for disagreeing, what I have and had issue with is you being non-responsive and not engaging with whats being said and with you shooting down charicatures and then pretending that thats substantive or responsive to what was said. If thats your takeaway after allegedly reading through all the material I linked you and all the things I directly responded to you, then go ahead. And if you think and can say with a straight face that what you said there is a good faith summary of what I said, then go ahead.

It perfectly adds up , you do understand that even if it were the case that I didnt have any single disagreement with him - that fact would compatible with me wanting him to handle disagreements in a different way with other people who has a different view on spirituality ,right? But I do have some disagreements with him - I told you explicitly there that I have issue with his epistemology and what his general approach is to any kind of disagreement where the topic is about something that he cares about. The main criticism is a principled criticism about disagreements - namely that you cant disagree with him on anything that he cares about without him implying that you are dumb or impaired in some kind of way (for a specific example - take a look at his response for instance to the cult accusation, he used the exact same kind of boring dissing tactic that he uses in other instances as well - where you are necessarily treated as someone who is dumb or who lacks something) There are dozens of examples where he will claim that the reason why people disagree with him on spirituality is because they are dumb or dont undersatnd something or lack something. The other criticism of mine is related to him being the most conscious being - the criticism is not that I know definitively that he isn't the most conscious being in the Universe, the crticism again is credence and epistemology related - namely that he isn't justified in believing that to be the case (he admitted multiple times, that he inferred that to be the case) and hence I attack his credence in that belief that he uses as a main foundatioun from which he can handwave literally all criticism and undermine the validity of all differing opinions in literally all domains that he cares about. And before you say "yeah but a bunch of other spiritual leaders behave that way " - I dont grant that to be the case, a bunch of them dont claim to be the most conscious being in the Universe and dont imply that they cant be wrong and that all differing opinions must come from misunderstanding or from people being dumb or unconscious - but the ones that do qualify for such a list of things thing - for those I would be happy and not reluctant to say that they are cult leaders and that their followers are in a cult. But then again - read motherfucker, everything is literally layed out here in front of your face just on this very page.

This community scores on literally all the points that are not "in-person" (except the meditation/chanting one unless you want to stretch it into recommendations to take mind-altering substances to "know what I'm talking about"). Virtually all of Leo's blog posts are about how destructive ("egoic, self-deceived, low-consciousness, stupid, unintelligent, corrupt") the world is and he routinely implies his teachings are an/the antidote (e.g. "Conscious Politics", "Pure Philosophy"). They use highly divisive and emotionally charged language and are highly judgemental, repetitive. I personally am repelled from reading them for exactly that reason. The reaction to this thread is a cult study on its own. Also, in your thread, it was implied I was being disrespectful for having a different opinion and that I "don't deserve his teachings". Emotionally charged communication. Instead of simply addressing my points and showing through argument, Leo will routinely say words like "you don't understand", "you don't know what you're talking about", like in this thread and the other cult thread I linked. It functions to remove my autonomy and belief in my own mental faculties. Statements like "I'm the only authority on epistemology" (see the other cult thread) reinforces that. PMs when I'm acting out and being critical, like here, trying to "talk it out". Happened multiple of times. No incense or eye contact, but a different level of proximity. The emotionally charged communication and autonomy-deriding language happens in a public forum inducing public shaming. Other members will routinely adopt the same style and gang up on you. "You only care about survival, your mind runs on self-deception and self-bias, of course you will disagree with me, that's expected". I would suggest this is a too dichotomous framing. Most sophisticated cults teach you such techniques, that's their appeal. And ironically they tend to use those techniques to protect and validate the ills of the cult. The virtues and the ills coincide, they are not mutually exclusive, and they often work in tandem to maintain the cult identity. That's what make cults so tricky. It's a tug of war between seeing the benefits and the ills. I'm sure you can find autonomy-increasing teachings in MAPLE, as you can in Bentinho Massaro's community, or in the Discord I was a part of. "But it's more ills than benefits in those cases". Well, let's assume you can even make such a distinction, does that warrant a categorical distinction (cult vs not-cult)? If the difference is only in degree, then maybe that's all it is.

Notice how Carl managed to predict perfectly how Leo will respond and notice how Leo's non-answer was a manipulative "you dont understand " tactic for the millionth time. Like this is perfection, Leo doesnt have a single fucking spine in his body. He cant fucking respond to anything with substance without implying that you are a retard or mentally or spiritually impaired. There is no disagreement with him on any issue that he cares about where you must not be dumb or misunderstanding. You either agree or you are just simply wrong. Fucking perfection, and people here will continue to deepthroat this guy. Also the allegedly non-authoritative guy btw, who wants to dictatate how his community should use certain words, and also wants to be the exclusive judge of your level of spiritual knowledge (since there is no one else who knows what they are talking about) and everyone else (inclduing you yourself) is unfit for that (btw you all have perfect sovereignty guys and you are perfectly legit to judge things for yourself as long as you agree with Leo, but if you dont, then we have a problem here, because that shows that you have no understanding and you should rather ask Leo to be your exclusive judge) Contrast current Leo with this past Leo:

I will leave this here and I will stop derailing your thread. This speaks for itself and everyone can judge things for themselves. This is exactly and explicitly how much actualized.org is about doing the work and not about Leo being the judge and an authority: Also take a look at how non-responsive Leo's answer was to Carl's question and how Leo exactly engaged in the dynamic that Carl was predicting based on Leo's manipulative and weasely tactics.

I dont have that kind of disagreement, I rather have issues with his completely firm credence on things given his epistemology. (this kind of criticism is applicable to everyone else btw who is dogmatic about something and isnt open to be wrong). There is a lack of acknowledgement that he can be wrong and there is a lack of acknowledgement that he takes certain things necessarily dogmatically true to even get spirituality on the ground and to start spiritual work. This is btw another interesting thing - you can watch him how he navigates disagreement with Buddhist or nondual people and how he will curiously claim that his teachings are different in a meaningful way and that are a bunch of meaningful differences and that those traditions are wrong about those details, but when it is convenient for him he will claim that those differences are just minutia and arent meaningful. The significance of disagreeing on those details will curiously change depending on what is convenient for him in the given context. Even if you take the dogma stack that Leo takes to be true for granted, you can still give him an internal critique that he doesnt have literally any subtantive response to and hence he should lower down his credence (even granting that his dogma stack is true) in his conclusions.

if it is truly just about the work, then I would not expect him to judge and demonize other leaders and other traditions and to waste time on that and I wouldnt expect him to consistently and continously claim to be the most developed person (especially when literally no one asks for it) and I would expect him either again to provide an indepdent process from him by which you can judge whether you are wrong or not and an indepedent process by which you can judge your level of understanding or If he cant do that, then I would expect him to be actually open to the possibility that he is wrong (not just claiming that he can be wrong, but actually seeing that he qualifies his satements and that he leaves room for others to be right and him being wrong) and I would expect him to qualify his statements and I would expect him to treat spiritual disagreements as something that potentially in principle both party can learn from (and not automatically think from the get-go in literally every single exchange that the other person is necessarily wrong or self-deceived from the fact that they disagree with him)

Its not about the styles, its about the unchallengeable starting premises that are taken to be true from the start and that shadows all interactions and all judgements going forward from there. There is no amount style change that can fix that. This is not about rhetoric, this is about the actual substance that is taken to be true by Leo. Again his actions and judgements flows from the unchallengeable starting premises that he takes to be true.

Leo created that trap and Leo made the work about himself. Its Leo who made it so that the "work" necessarily includes taking his words seriously, since his body of work is depedent on his subjective judgements about what is the highest awakening and what is the highest level understanding and there is no independent guiding process that is given to you that you can use to judge your progress other than his words and judgements. There is always this implication that the actual work can be done and judged independent from his stance, but in practice thats literally never the case. There is literally no option or scenario where you doing the work can lead you to the conclusion that he is wrong and that you are right, because that will automatically mean that you are self-deceived and that you need to do more. -------- Also the implication of your statement is that there are literally no cults as long as the judgements and the behavior of the leader is ignored. Like even if the leader claims explicitly or implcitily to be an authority on the subject, that still wont make it a cult, because you are free to ignore those claims and words about authority.When the Heaven's gate leader said that you need to unalive yourself to spawn on the spaceship, given your stance on this that wasnt cult like (as long as you didnt automatically take that claim to be true ), because he just simply descriptively outlined an action that you can use and try and test for yourself and you unaliving yourself there and then is just you doing the work and testing the waters for yourself and not necessarily taking his words on belief. (You unaliving yourself there and then is compatible with you being agnostic about the leader's words and just testing it for yourself).

Very good faith engagement right there and you dont come across at all as someone who is mindlessly sweeping for him and emotionally and defensively reacting to the points that are said.