I'm so excited to have you here, Matthew. I tune into your podcast every now and then, and I'm either

loving it or kind of triggered by it. But I've come back to it time and again, because it's so

easy to fall into these sort of harmful dynamics. And why do you think that most people

committed to their spiritual growth are at risk to end up in some sort of harmful cult dynamics?

Well, I think there are a lot of factors at play.

I mean, most of the cult literature that I'm aware of usually starts from the principle of

situational vulnerability, that if you are, you know, socially detached, if you've recently

been divorced, if you've lost a job, if you are living in rising global fascism maybe, if you're watching,

you know, chaos in your neighborhood, if you have lost contact with a more sort of institutional

religion, there's a lot to be said for the kind of welcome and kind of utopian

promises that are offered by a high-demand group.

You're listening to Mind Love with me, Melissa Monty.

I don't think we should underestimate the power of a relatively small social organization

immediately offering kindness and welcome to you, or so it seems, it might be deceptive in some way or another.

But in the two high demand groups that I was in, for instance, people really did welcome me.

I really was given a sense of, you know, you can actually relax here and we're going to listen to your story.

And we're going to, you know, include it in with the kind of discourse

of the entire group and we're going to help you make meaning of it. And there's a lot of attention

that is given. And then there's also, I think this is crucial, there's a sense of a kind of

communism that is immediately offered in many high-demand situations,

which is just to say, at least from the outset, you are taken into a community that seems to

want to share everything with you, right? And that can be even, that can come down to the

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