How does one immunize oneself from becoming a cult member? If you are not in a cult now, how can you prevent yourself from becoming a member of a cult in the future? How can you harden your mind from being exploited by those who are experts at hacking into your brain and exploiting you? There are a number of things that you can do to help cult-proof your mind.
First of all, to keep from being swept away in the sea of fictional religions, you have to find something firm that you can hang on to. I suggest there is but one choice, and that choice is reality. Reality is like a lighthouse that doesn't go away once you stop believing in it. It leads you back out of the insanity and it is always there for you. By reality I am talking about real reality. The Church of Reality itself is not the real reality that I'm talking about. This church is an attempt to form a religion around reality and to the extent that it succeeds, then it is the same thing. But to the extent that it fails, then it is quite different. And we have to assume that the Church of Reality will get some things wrong, or perhaps become totally corrupt in the future as some people have expressed concern that might happen someday. So it is reality itself that you have to stay loyal to.
making a personal commitment to reality and spending time thinking about reality is the best way to keep the cults from owning you.
The ego is a point of vulnerability. People develop a sense of self-importance that leads to a habit of wanting praise. Praise makes you subject to blame since they go hand in hand. That's why we have the Sacred Principle of Humility, so that we don't forget that we live on a planet that is a mere speck of dust in the universe, and that no one is all that important. By being a humble person, one is not easily hooked by ego treats and seduced to the grandeur of their imagined purpose in life. I believe one should assume that the reason they exist is pure chance and that they weren't sent here for any purpose whatsoever. I exist solely because my parents happened to have sex and I was the lucky sperm that got to the egg first. If any little thing had been different, I wouldn't be here.
I believe that reprogramming your brain into reality-based thinking will help keep the cults out. Developing mental habits of wondering about everything and the purification of truth through scrutiny are good mental habits. These things make the mind stronger and less easily suckered. The more you are Real in the Sacred moment, the less likely you are going to end up at a Moonie mass wedding, or mass suicide, or sending your kids into battle to die for a fraudulent war. As long as you keep it real, the cults shouldn't be able to get to you.
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