I dreamed I was back in the CULT!

What happens when the subconscious drags you back into the cult you’ve left behind? In this episode, I share a vivid dream where I was back in the cult—a surreal journey that left me reflecting and exploring the parallels between my dream and the troubling patterns I see in the world today. This episode isn’t just about a dream; it’s about what the dream represents. It’s about confronting the relationships between my cult experiences and the societal “rules” that feel eerily similar, and unpacking the challenges of living authentically in a world rife with ideological capture and judgmental intolerance. 

Transcript

Hello everybody. Welcome back. Before I get started on the dream, I want to just remind you wherever you listen to or watch this podcast, please like, subscribe, follow. And also if you'd like to support the podcast, please go to patreon.com forward slash mark Vicente. That is where you can support what I'm doing before I get into the dream. I do want to tell you I've had dreams like this a number of times.

I dream that I'm back in the cult. Now it's never that I'm arguing with Raniere or fighting with him. It's like, that's kind of almost done in a weird way. It's almost like, it's like, fuck you. don't care about you anymore, but let me, well, let me tell you the dream. so I am, this was two days ago. I'm walking into an auditorium of some kind. It's like a theater. Maybe I have some gear with me. I have a drone.

charging the drone batteries. I'm not sure what exactly I'm doing, but I see the Raniere's in the front of this sort of auditorium. It's a little bit like the Silver Bay YMCA with where V week was held and he's taking feedback from the community and everything. All the people are generally a blur, but somebody, young, a young girl

I know who she is. She, she worked in accounting, is, is talking to him and the other people in front explaining how she's not sure why she feels so unhappy, why she feels so messed up. And she sort of has, has tears in her eyes and I'm waiting for my opportunity to explain to everybody why they're so fucked up. And when she's finished, I look at her and I say, I think I can tell you exactly why. I grabbed the microphone.

And I start talking. And the first thing I do is I remind everybody of the thing that Bonnie has said publicly. Now, just to go back, I think it was about 2016 maybe Bonnie and Keith Raniere were taking a walk and in that walk, she said to him that what she's noticing in the organization is that everybody, the entire organization is run on, know, using guilt, shame, coercion, bullying, and fear as sort of a tool of control. So I am reminding everybody of what she said. And I'm saying to people, what is going on here is everybody's being guilt tripped. There's all this shame, there's all this coercion, there's all this bullying. That's why everybody's so unhappy. And at a certain point I turn around and I say like, who's with me? Who understands what I'm saying?

one or two people in the front, sort of raise their hands timidly and then drop their hands. And then somebody yells, take the microphone away from him. And I turn around and I see who it is. I'm not going to say who it is. I see who it is. It's somebody who's woken up, but in my dream, I was, I guess, seeing her as she was. And I say to her, I don't understand. I thought you were on board. And she said to me, well, you don't know me. I was like,

All right. So they call for Jim Del Negro to come and take the mic away from me. Now, those of you who know Jim, Jim, Jim has died. Jim is not not around anymore. And so, he comes through the door, I guess he's outside, the door blows open and it's sort of Jim, but it's also sort of Mike Baker for those of you who know who I'm talking about. And he tells me to give me the mic.

And behind me is another young guy. Won't mention his name. Tough guy. And basically they're going to beat me up. And everyone's calling for take the mic away, take the mic away. So, Mike tries to grab the mic and I say, so you're going to take it. You're going to take the mic for me, right? So like, well, what is your principle? What is the principle you're standing on? Like, what do you actually stand for? Like, you know, where's your backbone? And he knees me in the nuts.

which for some reason in the dream doesn't hurt. Thank God. I realized that he's going to just beat the crap out of me. So he grabs the mic and I go, okay, I guess that's what you stand for. But I decide to keep on talking and I'm, avoiding these guys who are trying to get me. I'm, and I keep on telling people, I am tired of the coercion. am tired of the shaming. I'm tired of the guilt. I'm tired of the bullying. I am tired of the fear, enough fear.

And the sort of whole crowd suddenly erupts and starts clapping. And I grab my gear. I grab the drone. I grabbed the batteries and begin walking out knowing full well that Reneary is going to be completely pissed at me. So I woke up with this feeling of like, what was that about? And then I realized that that night I had gone to bed thinking about doing this actual podcast and somehow thinking about doing this podcast, which

I had gone through the podcast the entire night I was doing the podcast. And I guess the dream was a reflection of it in some way. And as I said, I've had these dreams before and in the dream, I'm always trying to wake everybody up. always like, what am I doing back here? Why are you people not understanding what's going on? Like, why are you not turning your back on him and everything he's doing?

So why the dream? And I started to realize, I think it's because of what's been on my mind. And by the way, as I walked out, as I said, I recognized there were going to be consequences. I recognized that although I felt good about what I said, there was going to be profound consequences. So I woke up, I thought about it, I said, yes, why the stream? It's because of everything I've been thinking of, everything that I've been consumed with in the background, not beneath my awareness. I've been aware, but I've been consumed by this. And it's that I have been, I found myself walking on eggshells in society for the last number of years, and it's been deeply unpleasant. And there's an episode on the podcast called prickly people that

If you guys want to watch that, it's really worth listening to because I talk about the very thing I'm about to talk about again because I'm just obsessed with it. And in that episode, I think the description reads, ever been around someone who seems to correct or criticize everything you do? Do you have that person in your life that you feel you need to be really careful around as though there are landmines everywhere? You have to tiptoe very carefully through their rules and regulations.

They live with an ideology in their head that can become authoritarian in its intolerance. So this, this phenomena that I see, and I see it online, of course, a lot, mostly online. and of course, with some people that I meet, I see that people really believe that they are their beliefs. They really believe that they are their thoughts, that they are.

their ideologies. And I know some people might go like, what are you even talking about? Of course we are those things. No, we're not. Like there is actually a part of us that can think about thinking, can think about our own thinking. We can think about our own life. And I recognize that when you're ideologically captured, you literally believe the thing you're thinking, the thing you believe is the entirety of who you are.

And this ideological capture, this confusion of thinking you are the things you think, crosses all political parties. It doesn't matter which political party, it crosses all religions. It's an archetype. Nobody has the complete monopoly on this issue.

So for the longest time, I have had issues with fundamental religions and the way the believers behave. I grew up as many of you know, in South Africa, and I saw a lot of religious fanaticism. And I still see it in the world today. There is so much religious fanaticism and being around people that are fanatics.

is difficult because, you know, they'll gasp if you use the Lord's name in vain or you transgress some imaginary boundary in their heads. I don't experience it as much now with ultra religious people, but certainly growing up I did. And I know people know people like this. It's so uncomfortable being around them because they're so uptight. They have these beliefs.

And they believe that you should be thinking the same thing. they, they, and it's almost like they can't imagine that you can have a different set of beliefs. Well, they can't imagine it if they just go, well, that's cause they're evil and wrong. That that's how they can imagine it, but they can't imagine other people inhabiting a different nervous system and a different brain and having been raised in different ways. It's like they're, they're so almost, it's kind of delusional. It's almost this, this

narcissistic brush of everyone needs to be like me. So yeah, you're just uptight and you feel very, if you know what I'm talking about, you feel very constricted around them. Like you have to be very careful. Like of course you can just be yourself, but like shit's going to blow up, right? So you feel like, you know, in order to be in rapport with these different people, you have to restrict yourself. And it's almost like you have to suck yourself in deep inside yourself and hide who you are.

And I say all this because, you know, I'm an artist. You know, I went to drama school, you know, studied film and drama, you know, did the, you know, or tites and dance class, the whole deal. I thought I was gay for a minute, you know, it's a pretty, pretty open-minded guy. But you know, my twenties, I, you know, we all think we're whatever. So I consider myself progressive, but when I say I consider myself progressive, like I think I'm an old school liberal, you know. maybe I'm more like liberals of the 60s or 70s.

So traditionally the ultra religious people were conservative. You know, they were the uptight ones, not, not liberally minded people, not progressive people, you know, and progressive people have always found that the people that are religious and uptight, and intolerant, like difficult to be around. And we have, you know, tease them and vilified them, you know, because of their uptightness now.

Again, I'm not taking a big stab at religion in general. I'm talking about a certain archetype, you know, a certain strictness, a certain rule boundedness that is just almost fucking pathological. So why the dream? You know, why have I been walking on eggshells? You know, is it because I've been around ultra religious people, the last few years? Yeah, kind of, but not in the way.

You might imagine being a progressive person spending time in the progressive tribe is currently exhausting. There are so many rules and regulations. There's like who you can talk to, who you can't talk to, you know, who you're supposed to hate, who you're supposed to love, you know, they're, you know, everyone's offended by everything and anything, you know, you don't like.

is hate speech or it's misinformation or it's disinformation. And as I said, there's all these rules about, you know, who you have to hate and, and, then you're given reasons why you have to hate them. And the hate has to be complete 100%. And there's rules about how to address people. And the, the level of delusional self-righteousness is frankly fucking staggering. mean, my tribe.

And when I say my tribe, know, know, some of my artists, friends, you know, my progressive tribe has their head so far up their ass that they've developed a colon for brains. They have no sense of humor and they have a frighteningly authoritarian impulse. Now me even saying these things will cause a major uproar.

You see, I'm supposed to 100 % agree with every single belief that the tribe has, right? Like I cannot veer off. Like there's all these checklists, you know, and where do the checklists come from? They generally come from the propaganda box. You know, the propaganda box tells you, you know, these are the checklists of things that if you agree with these things, you're a good, good moral person. So

You have to agree to all of them. And if you agree to 99 % of them, but not 1%, then the tribe comes after you. know, then everybody starts eating everybody up. And the question of course is that's a bit culty, no? Well, of course it's fucking culty. But the thing is, me even saying that, me even saying, I find the 1 % culty or the 20 % culty, I will get vilified. You know, which proves my point, of course.

I will get, you know, online destroyed. And I'm finding as I'm expressing things that go outside of the tribe on social media, like I'm just getting, mean, it's a fucking gangbang online, you know? There's this weird thing where people feel, look, I understand that, you know, to some degree I'm a public figure and I really have been very, very vulnerable on television. So people feel like they know me and almost like they own me. So.

they start to admonish me for things online. And it's interesting. It's almost like they don't realize that I'm not in their cult, that I'm not in their way of thinking or whatever, whatever it is. I'm not in their mind. They think I'm, I'm this object inside of them that they have power over. So they want to start correcting me. This is clearly a pathological problem.

And it got me thinking about splitting the psychological concept of splitting. I'm going to just read you some stuff I was looking up. So psychological splitting is a defense mechanism in which an individual views people, situations, or even themselves in extreme all or nothing terms, such as all good or all bad. It is a way to cope with conflicting feelings or experiences that are too difficult to integrate.

Splitting is a common and natural part of early child development, but if it persists into later life, it can become a characteristic of certain mental health conditions, such as borderline personality disorder, BPD, or other disorders involving difficulties in emotional regulation and identity. So splitting is the one thing. And then just to refer back and the other thing is just that it feels like people, I'll talk about myself personally, cause I'm the one experiencing it. People.

Like I don't really exist to them. Like I am an object in their own mind. Which is, by the way, one of the hallmarks of narcissism. I'm not saying they have NPD, but it's one of the hallmarks of like where you don't see the other person as an actual, you don't have object constancy about the other person. They don't really exist. They're just something inside of your own head that you get to, you know, have your sort of

monopoly game with and, you know, be the king of or the queen of. So here's what's interesting about splitting though. This all good and all bad, because I keep on thinking about what I'm seeing people do online or sometimes I see it in conversations is they're so black and white. Like there is no, you know, 50 % or 60 % or it's just 100 % or zero. You know, it's all good or all bad. And so if you express an opinion,

about something that doesn't agree with the checklist from the propaganda box, you start to get these looks and then you get this and then you get that and then they don't want to spend time with you. And then, you know, you're seeing this in the world right now. People literally just shunning each other just like in a cult. But if you say it's a bit culty, they're like, no, it's not. It's righteous. It's for a good reason. They give you all the reasons as a cult member does. They give you all the reasons why it's actually OK. So let me read you a little more.

So splitting in early childhood development. There's a normal developmental phase where splitting occurs, often occurs in the first two years of life during the early stages of emotional and psychological development. Infants and very young children lack the capacity to hold nuanced or integrated perceptions of themselves and others. This is because their cognitive and emotional systems are not yet mature enough to process complex

contradictory feelings or realities. Not mature enough, right? Okay, second point. Good versus bad objects. Young children perceive the world and people around them in dichotomous terms. For instance, a caregiver who provides comfort and nourishment may be seen as all good versus a caregiver who denies a need or causes frustration. Example, they're unavailable or they say no, they may be seen as all bad.

These good and bad perceptions are not integrated. The child swings between the extremes based on their immediate experiences. So that's this, you know, one to two year old range. And you guys have seen that with children. The thing that's frightening is, is I'm seeing that in the world. I'm seeing with adults right now. That's what's frightening. Now what's the resolution? Well, there's a resolution through integration as the child's brain and emotional systems develop, which is around two to three years old.

They gradually learn to integrate these opposing views. They begin to understand that a caregiver can simultaneously have positive and negative qualities. For example, mom is kind, but sometimes says no to me. This process is part of a healthy emotional development and leads to a more stable sense of self and relationships.

And so again, it gets me thinking because like what I'm seeing is an early developmental stage of children, but people are stuck there. And, you you can say things like, you you can blame, you know, social media. Yeah, but I think there's something else going on. I think that there's this mass global infantilization of people and people are encouraged not to grow up. You know, the entire, the entire news cycle right now.

I'm not talking about long form stuff like the short form sound bites. The entire news cycle is designed to inflame you, you know, and you know which propaganda box to watch and you know which propagandists to watch in the propaganda box. Now bear in mind when you're in this kind of thinking, the fact that I'm calling it a propaganda box, you're like, no, it's not. I mean, the other team has a propaganda box. We have the truth. Yeah. Study history. Study history.

Hi, please study history. This got me thinking about, you know, the judgmental nature of what I'm seeing. You know, dealing with, with judgmental prickly people has been exhausting. I am exhausted when I talk to people that have lots of rules and regulations in their head that are not open-minded that can't pull back and see the bigger picture. And I've mentioned in other, in other podcast episodes, the metaphor of being in a war, you know, being in two trenches, you know, you're one trench or the other, you can't see the battlefield. And if you're able to pull back, you know, maybe you can see, you know, the generals making deals and all the other shit that's going on. That's making people kill each other, but everybody's so entrenched, you know, in their thing. And what happens is it's, it's exhausting the same way.

that let's say you were a progressive person and you were around somebody that was, you know, super religious fundamental, you know, and they, and they, they, they just can't even understand what you're saying. And they have all these rules and everything you say is wrong. You know, it got me thinking about, cause I realized like what I'm saying might be confusing to some people. And I want to just talk about, I'm not going to talk about the name of the person in NXIVM in ESP. There was a,

a guy, was an older guy and he was like a hardcore biker, tough dude. And he had been through a lot of really, really tragic stuff in his life. And, you know, I think the education helped him and I think the community helped him. When I began announcing that I was not on board with the company and that what Ranieri was doing was truly evil, he texted me one day. actually, I think what happened is I sent him

the first indictment of Raniere. And he wrote me back and he said, do you love Keith? And I thought, what? I didn't say it yet. said, what? Is he what? Like I'm talking about the criminal behavior and the entire structure of the organization. And he's talking about, you love Keith? And so in his paradigm, there's either you love Keith or you hate Keith.

Like that those that that's where he's operating from. And I wasn't operating in there at all. Like I'm operating in a completely different space. And I think I wrote back to him after look at it exactly. I think I wrote back to him. This has nothing to do with loving or not loving. This has to do with what he's done. You know, because what Raniere had done is he'd gotten everybody to believe that being righteous, being noble,

equals loving him because he was the greatest representation of those things. so talking to this guy was really difficult because everything I said, he put in the box of he doesn't love Keith, you know, and there was no way I was going to allow him to put me in the box of he does love Keith. But, but that wasn't the choice here that he thought the choice was loving or not loving. To me, the choice was like,

The guy's a criminal or he's not, he's doing horrible shit to people or he's not nothing to do with loving him, you know, that constraint that I felt talking to him, trying to, to, to deprogram him. I think eventually he did. I'm not sure. I don't think we ever spoke again. Most of them never wanted to talk to me again. because I think it's the, feelings would be too uncomfortable, but that feeling I had of my God, I have such a,

razor's edge to have a conversation. I can't really have a conversation. I can't really have a broad, nuanced, interesting, high-level conversation because he's just obsessed with Do I Love Keith?

So that's part of what I'm finding in the world right now. That's part of what I'm finding in my tribe, you know, that, you know, a lot of my progressive friends insist that you think exactly like them on every single thing. And if you don't, you're part of the evil problem. Like they are all good because they've checked off all the boxes and you are all bad.

Because maybe you haven't checked off one box or two boxes, you know, and this is what's been happening in, political discourse. And I realized, you know, again, why I had this dream, because I feel like for a number of years, I feel the feeling sometimes of like, I'm back in Nixxiom. I've been having the exact same feelings that I had when I was, you know, waking up. mean, look.

Bonnie was much worse because she was awake for many, many more months before me. So I can only imagine what it was like for her to be awake inside the system. And we spoke about it actually. She's in Australia right now. We had a conversation about it. And then I said, yeah, I only had, let's see, I had maybe three months. It was a bit more actually, because I had to pretend for a while, maybe four months of being awake inside the system. She had.

much more. She had like, I think was close to seven months of being awake. The intolerance that I've experienced is so frustrating. And it is like being awake inside the cult. But in order to keep relating to the cult members, you have to pretend you don't see what's right in front of you. Or at the very least, you don't bring it up. And as I said, you have to walk this

razor's edge in every conversation so you don't hit the tripwires or hit the landmines because they're so sensitive. You know, they're so afraid. And honestly, a lot of my acquaintances and some of my friends are just constantly offended. I mean, by everything. mean, Jesus. I mean, I guess my message is if they could hear it, like it's time to grow up. It really is time to grow up.

When I say at the end of every podcast episode, stay curious. I really mean that. I really mean stay curious. know, philosophy is such a fascinating branch of inquiry. And the reason it's so interesting to me is because in philosophy, you can look at different frameworks of belief. You can look at different frameworks of thinking and it allows you to pull back and say,

This person believes this, this person believes this, this person believes this. And you can sort of look at what people say, or they believe and you go, based on their upbringing, I could understand if you marry philosophy and psychology based on their upbringing, I could understand how they would believe that. If I had been brought up that way, I would believe the same thing. In philosophy, you tend not to be like, wow, we're right. And all the other people are wrong. Cause like, that's what every hardcore fundamental religion believes.

with philosophical thinking, you recognize that different people believe different things. And, you know, to simply say, well, they believe that thing, therefore they are all evil is really fucking juvenile. mean, like, okay, at age one or two, I get it. But hopefully as an adult, you can be a little more nuanced. You can sort of think about, maybe

Not all the boxes have to be checked of what I insist should be the way things should be. That didn't make sense what I said, but you know what I mean? I mean, I hope as an adult, you know, we can do that. But what I'm seeing is I'm seeing that that that as a society, especially, you know, people that are embroiled in online fights, which I'm not interested in. They are stuck at a very, very early age and we need to grow up. So.

I guess what I would say given all this, and I understand that a lot of people are going to be offended and what can I tell you that is just the way it is, but I implore you, don't be a narrow-minded asshole. Stay curious.