religion and spiritual cult ideologies (still) love brainwashing women out of their power

the cesspool jargon infested world of coercive control, manipulation, and power dynamics disguised as God

forgiveness. high vibes. love and light. love your neighbor as thyself. we are all one. anger is a low vibration. be more in your feminine. true divine feminine women are soft and surrender to the masculine! if you’re in your masculine, you’re not a real woman. insert trad wife nonsense. open your heart! SURRENDER!

*insert vomit emoji*

ideas such as forgiveness, loving your neighbor as yourself, or surrendering to a heart opened to life are beautiful, holy practices and ways of being.

and, when used in the context in situations of abuse, these once spiritual practices become weapons used to brainwash women out of their power, to keep women imprisoned in dangerous and life threatening situations.

let me explain.

first, i find it necessary to define what abuse actually is.

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people who have never experienced such of the sort often attribute overt acts like physical violence or rape as abuse.

while this is true, what i am interested in speaking to here is coercive control, high level emotional manipulation, and psychological violence that comes from a narcissistic, psychopathic, or otherwise pathological individual or group of individuals.

this can manifest in the form of grooming, love-bombing, subtle persuasion through lying, deceit, betrayal, threats, the classic pattern of idealize/devalue/discard, slowly isolating the woman from other support in her life, breadcrumbing, gaslighting that undermines her intuition or sense of reality causing her to feel crazy, spiritual bypassing, invalidation, blame shifting, deflection — and so on.

the nature of this abuse is incredibly dangerous, because like a disease, it infects the mind of a woman slowly, over time, little by little. where one day she wakes up and realizes her once lively personality has now become flooded with overwhelming feelings of weakness, helplessness, severe confusion, cognitive dissonance, fear, paralyzation, paranoia, self hatred, undifferentiated guilt, shame, suicidal thoughts, erratic mood swings, and debilitating depression.

the most insidious thing about this kind of abuse is that because it’s effects don’t happen immediately and instead unfold over time the more a woman is exposed to the pathology in her abuser, and because she is likely dealing with someone who is a master manipulator and gaslighter, she has no idea why these overwhelming symptoms appeared in her life at all.

she may deal with cognitive distortions such as:

“well, this is the time in my mom’s life where she developed mental illness, so that must be what this is”

or “i’m clearly just avoidant and need to work on my attachment patterns. i’m just afraid of love”

or the classic:

“i just need to work on being in my feminine, i need to surrender more and open my heart.”

her symptoms are beyond logic and rationality because often to the outside world and to her unhealed inner child, the abuser/abusive system she is entangled with appears perfect, spiritual, and saint like.

he may be a famous artist or even a guru or spiritual teacher. he may have loads of friends who adore him. he may have droves of followers that parrot his ideologies and buy into everything he says and does. he is likely charismatic, attractive, and very well off. he may have material power and influence.

he is not just an individual, he is imbedded inside of an entire abusive system, and she is now a pawn of that system. the system is feeding off of her lack of boundaries, low self worth, and how easy she is to persuade, manipulate, and control. she is energetic food for the beast. but the fact of this is not her fault, as nearly every spiritual tradition in the West is centered around dissolving one’s ego, letting go of ones personality. which is cool, but many women never have healthy egos to begin with. and so she dissolves and dissolves until she is a fractured, fragmented feeble woman with no healthy, solid definition of herself or of reality.

BeCAuSe WhO NeEdS a SeLf, RiGhT? WhAt EvEn iS ThE “SeLf,” AnYwAYS????

thus, she is susceptible and vulnerable to snakes, liars, and thieves robbing her of her most precious resource: her individuality, her Soul.

and so she continues to try and think her way out of her symptoms.

she will force herself to meditate harder, to be more feminine, to be softer, pray more, surrender to God/The Universe, surrender to her abuser, open her heart more, forgive, forgive, forgive.

she will convince herself that the tumultuous pain and confusion she is now perpetually in is a sign that she’s growing spiritually, having an ego death (which she is, but not the kind she thinks) or is a sign of her resistance to accepting deeper spiritual truths or practicing forgiveness. she’ll compare herself to him and his flying monkeys — saying things like “he’s all so perfect, what the fuck is wrong with me?”

she will take on all of the blame and unintegrated shadow for her abusers/the abusive systems behavior, and buy into the false belief that if she could just get her spirituality, divine feminine nature or relationship with God right, that she will feel better.

over time, through the invalidation, spiritual bypassing and posture of gaslighting coming from the abusive system, through their own ignorance and unwillingness to face or own or even acknowledge the very real existence of their own shadows, she takes it all on — because she is empathetic and kind and open minded — and was vulnerable to high level manipulation from the start.

because she was never taught to have a healthy ego, instead she existed in churches and spiritual groups that preach “less of you, more of God!” or about “surrendering to the Universe.”

that’s cool and all, and yes, when ones darkness and light is integrated, fuck yeah. More God! Surrender At Will!

but when the “God” and “Universe” these people are talking about are direct imitations of The Patriarchal, Transcendental, Dominator Consciousness that gains power from controlling and dominating others, that sees the feminine Shakti as fuel for its own gain, and that come hell or highwater cannot for the live of them surrender to their own pain or sorrow or inherent vulnerability and instead believe they can control everything — (including rewriting their history of abuse) in their reality with their own minds — these statements further the damage, and are dangerous to women who’s spiritual practice revolves around dissolving their ego.

mark my words: spiritual by-passers who are all Love and Light — look at their most intimate partners. i guarantee they have ingested the un-metabolized darkness of their abusers — unbeknownst to them.

this is often times why you’ll see a very powerful, charismatic, attractive men with “CrAZy ExEs” or “WiVes Who JuSt WenT CrAZy!” while they appear “normal.”

their “normalcy” and their partners “mental illness” are a sign that the man has injected all of his unresolved pain, trauma, his demons, his repressed and denied shadow, into the woman.

and again, because she has no ego, she took it all on. through sex, through accepting his manipulation, through just trying to forgive him instead of leaving, instead of saying no — she became the energetic dumping grounds for all of his unresolved shit.

and because of this, she has paid a hefty price.

her vitality, her creativity, her life, her Soul are all at risk of being completely destroyed and annihilated the longer she subjects herself to this kind of pathology.

further, the idea that “we’re all one” or that “what exists in another exists inside of me” sets the egoless woman up to not know her enemies, or to not even believe that she has enemies in the first place.

this naivety has her practicing forgiveness, unconditional love, and compassion to people who don’t even deserve to exist in the same room as her, let alone receive ANY access to her energy.

because “we’re all one,’’ the woman is manipulated into prioritizing “spiritual” principles over her authentic truth and physical/emotional safety. because many of these groups are toxic cults that are threatened by individuality and gaslight individuals into believing they should sacrifice their individual autonomy for the “greater good” of the group.

the way out of this particular flavor of madness, is for the woman to begin surrounding herself with people and communities that have their humanity in tact enough to say “what you experienced was abuse. it is wrong, it was not your fault, and you did nothing to deserve it.” no buts, just pure recognition of the truth. period.

this validation begins to break the spell that there is something wrong with her, and that her symptoms are a sign of her being not spiritual enough. it is quite the opposite.

if she continues to hear things like “what did you do to attract this?” or “have you tried just forgiving him?” — or exists around people who don’t validate the very real reality that she has been victimized because they hate victims — she will continue to be confused and spiral into the bottomless well of the agony of cognitive dissonance.

an open heart, forgiveness, practicing compassion, and acknowledging the interconnectedness of all of humanity should never come at the expense of a woman’s individual physical and emotional wellbeing.

these manifestations of Divine Love come naturally as a woman begins to reclaim her dignity, her sanity, her boundaries, and her autonomy.

if you are a woman who is angry at the way you have been taught to be egoless, and are sick of the spiritual bypassing cesspool of Love and Light, good.

the anger is not a sign that you need to regulate your nervous system, or pray/meditate away its manifestation.

the anger is a sign that you are a human being, that you are coming alive, and that you have the right to exist as YOU see fit. that your boundaries, your spiritual principles, your healthy ego, your reality, your story, are holy things worth protecting against the very real enemies, snakes, and harmful bastards that want to steal, kill, and destroy.

you don’t need less of an ego.

you need to build a healthy one.