The need for belonging
The need for significance
The need for power
These are the three basic things humans strive for. “Belonging” is also relationship, friendship or community. Significance is also appreciation, acknowledgement, purpose. Power is also energy and influence.
Because the ego-self feels separated from these, the needs are the most manipulated. By who? By
marketers/advertisers/sellers
politicians
cultists
psychos
Examine the list below – triggers used by marketers to sell to you. Familiarize yourself with them so that you become immune and can make conscious, aligned choices.
If you work in the field of self-improvement, watch the documentary movie “Holy Hell”, which shows how a cult-Guru easily manipulated the three needs to enslave his followers.
If you haven’t seen it, spoilers follow.
The cult-followers are not drawn in by evil but by abundant goodness. The evil comes years later. The evil doesn’t show up AS evil – a vital life lesson!
In the documentary, it all starts as a tight-knit community where the followers practice energy work, the transfer of “shakti” (via forehead and chest) from teacher to student, leaving the group blissful beyond their wildest dreams. Attuning with nature, each other and their inner-self via hypnotherapy, taking dancing and yoga lessons, by the time the movie is halfway over, you think they’re in paradise. Finally, the teacher let’s them “experience the presence of God”.
The second-half reveals the Guru: a narcissistic psychopath. A failed actor and former porn-star, an expert hypnotist. The followers are soon financing his lavish lifestyle, buying him houses, cars and properties. They are cleaning his facilities, working day and night to make him happy. So enslaved have they become, that he starts sexually abusing and raping the men, one by one. He manages to get them to keep it secret from one another, as if it were a privilege.
They slide from a group of self-development into a cult of adoration. Elaborate ballet dances, theater plays and movies are designed to adore only him. The followers start kneeling in front of him to worship him (worship of humans should have been a red flag but the followers are too far gone by this point).
Once the lies and abuse are discovered, the group disbands leaving the naïve seekers crushed. Still under his spell, they choose not to report him to the police but let him go. He moves to Hawaii where he collects a new following and deploys his scheme all over again.
The documentary is the story of a manipulative individual who deeply understands what people REALLY need:
Community,
Energy and
God.
He fed people these things. Once they were hooked, he exploited them.
The pattern is common in society. The trusting heart is used by the narcissist for their own ends.
How to achieve Immunity
Belonging is important. It doesn’t feel good to be excluded from a group. But being part of a family or circle requires phases of disconnection where you temporarily leave the hive-mind to gain individual perspective. If you can MOVE IN and MOVE OUT of a group at will, you retain sanity and enjoy the group without creating strange entanglements or dependencies. So powerful is the group-field, that it can overwhelm the individual to commit atrocities they never would have outside of the influence.
Significance is important. Everyone wants to feel seen and heard. This is why Gurus practice “love bombing”. People feel someone actually cares about them. Those who have experienced little love in their families and haven’t learned to respect themselves are susceptible. Practice giving attention to yourself and others, become the source of love, not the beggar of it. Every time you feel you’re not getting the attention you want, reverse the flow and start giving more attention – it works like magic. You’ll release the addiction to attention and also get more attention.
Power, energy, vitality is important. Be skeptical of people who appear to be a source of energy and healing but fail to teach you to find it within yourself. Naive people seek power outside of themselves. The power is within you, don’t make human beings the sole source of wellness or strength or money.
Don’t take the image below as a recommendation. Use it to find all these things within yourself, nobody can sell them to you.
