How could Actualized.org be a cult?

[Mada_]

"This work is not about belief... You will believe me for a few years and then realise you have made a terrible mistake." - Leo Gura

How can a set of suggestions, one of which being "do not believe these suggestions, think for yourself" be the ideology behind a cult? This doesn't make sense to me at all. 

I am not saying that I am biased by Actualized.org, but I just see these biases that I pick up on as beliefs that I have not inspected yet. 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Mada_

[Preety_India]

The short answer is... 

 

Actualized.org is NOT A CULT. 

Anyone who thinks like that should be happy to leave and leave everyone alone who  are seriously interested in doing their spiritual work here. 

People like me are not interested in hearing all the negative bullshit and the constant frivolous attacks on Leo. 

 

Like Leo said the forum needs a lot of Purging. All these negative people can leave right away 

They don't even know the definition of a cult and they want to spread their nonsense here. 

A cult does not even allow people to speak. 

They need to get the head out of the sand. And if they don't like it then why be here. Tell them to create their own websites. I doubt if anyone would even want to be remotely interested in being on their website. 

A lot of people who call it a cult, look at their profile carefully, look at the threads they open, they look like internet trolls, they don't have details on their profile, they come like anonymous people with a bunch of useless threads. 

You don't see them doing serious Journaling. You don't see them practicing even at least one of Leo's recommendations or suggestions. 

Yet they have the audacity to come here and call it a cult. Tell them to join a real cult, they are fit for it.. 

They are wasting everyone's time.. Tired of such threads.. 

People are here to focus on growth rather than speculate 24/7 on who Leo is. 

 

These people who call it a cult don't have better work to do. They are childish ignorant and like kids raging with hormones and Jealousy and they want attention in some form so they come to fuss around here. 

Enough of the bullshit. 

 

[Commodent]

@Mada_ Cults are very much about the dynamics and not neccesarily what the "leader" said a couple of times. In other words, it's generally non-verbal and moreso reflected in attitudes rather than precise spoken words.

Personally I don't care whether this is a cult or not. It is what it is.

1 minute ago, Shiva said:

A cult tries to recruit as many followers as possible. So, the more serious and the more specific his audience is, the less likely it is to become a cult.

You sure about that?

[Rilles]

Considere that people like to use loaded words to get a rise out of you or demonize.

[sleeperstakes]

4 hours ago, Shiva said:

At the end of the day a cult is what people make out of it. Even if Leo doesn't intent to make Actualized a cult, it could develop cult-like characteristics if we aren't careful.

Leo gave a pretty good checklist of the characteristics of cults in his video series on cults. Actualized.org checks a few boxes (so does every organization), but it's far from being an actual cult like Scientology. 

It think it is a good thing that he is now narrowing down his audience to more serious people. This is the opposite of what a cult would do. A cult tries to recruit as many followers as possible. So, the more serious and the more specific his audience is, the less likely it is to become a cult.

But yeah, people like to use the "c-word" as a label to badmouth this community. That doesn't make it true though...

If I could upvote this I would. @Shiva

[sleeperstakes]

21 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

It would be a cult if we started worshiping Leo, like some sort of personality cult, and if Leo sucked us out of lots of money.

I feel like some people in this community do honestly.

[SOUL]

Quote

In modern English, a cult is a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal

Hehe

[PlayTheGame]

Its definitely not a cult but the way Leo talks can be cult like, whether he realizes it or not. I think he has the best intentions but by making a 2 hour video explaining God, which he himself said you can only experience, this is just contradictory. Like Lao Tzu said if you can explain God, you do not understand God.

The video is just interpreted by the ego mind so you will believe it/disbelieve it whether you want to or not. This is why i dont watch metaphysical Leo videos anymore, they just fry my mind and not in a good way but in a really dysfunctional obsessive way. 
 

all other spiritual teachers uses poetic language & simple language because this speaks to the heart & not the mind. Ego is identification with the stories of the mind. This is why i dont like Leo’s way of spiritual teaching, he uses very logical language to explain something beyond logic. For me it just fucks with my mind which im trying not to identify with in the first place.

This is basically the biggest critique i can give to Leo, that he says “This work is not about belief” but then makes 3 hour long videos “explaining” these things anyway. This is highly contradictory.

I love Leo’s self actualisation videos, but his metaphysical videos are not my thing. I mean i’ve felt more deep truth in a two line Rumi quote than in a 2 hour Leo video. Its just to much for the logical mind to make something out of IMO.

He even says so himself, that other spiritual teachers “leave so much out” and the he himself “spoils” everything. @Leo Gura have you ever considered that this is on purpose because you cant spoil anything in the first place?

its like trying to spoil the end to a movie where the movie itself teaches you a whole new language with new words that you cant translate to other languages, and the end is in that language.

You can try to spoil it but its impossible, because we have not experienced what you have experienced. It just becomes highly confusing BS to me at least.

Edited March 18, 2020 by PlayTheGame

[sleeperstakes]

@PlayTheGame the problem is with theories and models, trying to categorise and explain the unexplainable and infinite. It's a yellow trying to progress to turquoise problem.

[Sempiternity]

8 hours ago, Preety_India said:

Enough of the bullshit. 

This.

[PlayTheGame]

@sleeperstakes exactly. Leo has the best intentions in trying to explain the beauty that he has seen, but our minds are just not ready and it actually backfires on us. I think this is why turquoise people like Sadhguru just keep it simple. Our ego minds will twist the truth so that we actually go opposite in the direction where Leo is trying to lead us.

[Mada_]

I think it is okay to resonate with Leo as a teacher, and be really enthusiastically interested in what he has to say, and the example that he portrays.

But at the end of the day, and as Leo has said himself, we have no clue whether he is a con artist or a Sage or something in between. 

--

Eventually we all must flee the nest, we must do our own exploration and do it as intensely as Leo has.