My experience during a night in a cult

It all started on the Camino de Santiago

To explain how I ended up in a sect by chance, I have to go back to the beginning of history. It was August of last year, and he was doing a section of the Camino de Santiago with Anna. Specifically, the Northern road, which passes through the Basque Country. It was the third year we had done it, and until then, our procedure had been similar; We didn’t reserve hostels to sleep because it wasn’t possible. Whoever arrived first slept in them.

That year (even in the midst of post-covid) we trusted ourselves and did not reserve anything. The surprise came when we were arriving in Donostia, and we found out that we had no place to sleep; everything was reserved. We spoke with the people of the nearest town, and with the walkers, and they told us that there was a place, on a mountain just before reaching Donostia, where they could shelter us for that night.

Of course, they warned us that to go there “we had to have a very open mind.” We didn’t understand that comment much and we wanted to know more. “Well, the truth is that people from many places in the world go there, it is a kind of community where they live with their own rules… Maybe you will be surprised by something you see there, but don’t worry, you will be fine.” The truth is that we didn’t have them all. On the one hand, we had no place to sleep, but on the other, we did not fully understand the characteristics of what seemed to be our only option.

Arrival in the community

When we arrived. They received us very well. The house was in a beautiful place, full of plants and trees, and it was a huge house, very organized and well cared for. We introduced ourselves and saw that there were some other lost pilgrims out there, just like us. There were about ten or twelve people, men and women of different ages, between approximately 20 and 50 years old.

The one who greeted us was a very young girl, she was about 20 years old or less, and she was pregnant. She introduced us to her boy, also of the same age, and they explained to us that they met on that same mountain, in that same community, since both had been born there. They told us that when a woman got pregnant, they did not go to the doctor for check-ups; They didn’t know anything about the baby until it was born. That they trusted her nature, and that they rarely went to the doctor when they were sick.

Our second surprise of the trip came when They told us that they had never left the mountain. They told us (and we saw) other details that caught our attention… When we asked them why they had not gone out, or if they were not curious to do so, they answered that their parents had told them that outside of that place the world was full. of problems, that they did not miss anything. With which, curiosity or desire to get out of there, eradicated. They had been raised this way, and had internalized this message.

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No books, no press, no television

The people who lived in that community could not read books, press, or watch television (they did not have any). In a sect, something very characteristic is the deprivation of freedom, even in a “subtle” way, as well as isolation from the world. They had basic rules of coexistence, which meant that each member of the community had a role.

Rather, women had certain roles (caring, cooking, sewing, teaching children…) and men had others (fixing damage in the house, maintenance tasks, tilling the fields, etc.). A distribution of tasks based on a rather sexist nature, it must be said. But they explained it to us in the following way: “each of us has a mission, and can contribute something of value to the community.”

The children didn’t go to school and they all dressed the same.

Another thing that caught my sister and me’s attention was that the children of the community lived in a somewhat hidden house, away from the house where we stayed. They didn’t go to school and the community teachers (who were not “real” teachers, but people who had discovered that their mission in that community was to teach the little ones) were the ones who taught them.

On the other hand, everyone was dressed the same. They made the clothes themselves. It was some kind of brown tunic. The food was also always homemade, all vegan and very healthy (from their gardens). They bought almost nothing in the town, only the essentials.

They changed their name

There was also a change in his identity, something also common in a sect (the alteration of identity). All people who entered the community had to change their name when “their God had chosen it” (a religious name). They were based on a religion that I don’t remember what it was, but it was not Christian, but rather a kind of adaptation of Christianity, with its pertinent modifications.

They had a spiritual guide who would be the equivalent of Jesus, but with another name, and all the members of the Christian religion also had other names. When their God chose the name of each member, they were baptized naked in the sea through a ritual and ceremony.

There was no intimacy

No member of the tribe had their own room. Everyone slept communally, in shared rooms. Not even couples had their private space. My sister asked one of the members if they didn’t miss that intimacy. She replied that that would be selfish, that they were all there for everyone, always together.

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We search on our cell phone where we are and… surprise

I’m aware that what I’ve said so far may seem a little strange, but not everyone would think it was a cult, perhaps. b We searched the place where we were on our cell phone, the name of the tribe or community, and we found that the sixth had done a report about the place.

They literally defined it as a sect, which was also spread throughout the world (there are dozens, or hundreds, of groups with the same name throughout Europe, Latin America…). They had a very specific name that I won’t say out of respect, with a story behind it. We were also able to expand all this information by searching in forums and the internet. We also saw videos of testimonies that had passed through that community, and members of it, who were still inside, explaining how they lived. We were frozen.

We also find testimonies from cult experts, psychologists and professionals talking about it. In reality, what we experienced there was only a very small “piece” of her entire life.

When searching for information on our cell phone, we identified the name of the sect along with opinions of experts talking about it.

What the girl in our room told us

What shocked us the most was the testimony of a girl, about 30 years old, who slept in our same room. She had belonged to the community for some years, if I remember correctly, six or seven. And since then, she no longer had contact with her family.

He told us that the community had changed his life; that she felt very lost, that she was involved in the world of drugs, that she had no one… until she saw the light in that community. That she was “called by her God”. That girl had something in her eyes… in the way she spoke… she seemed to repeat what she had heard so many times inside that place, like a convinced automaton. As if it were a motto, a message to be engraved in fire. And as if what had been in another life was no longer there.

You must give everything

He also told us that, in order to belong to the community, you have to hand over everything before entering (all kinds of assets you have; cars, houses, whatever). Although “God calls you”, it is not free. He told us that they knew that the world was going to end, and that in that community they were constantly learning how to save themselves, all together.

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The look and the way of speaking

This girl, who had adopted a Hebrew name, told us a thousand things about the place, so many that it would be very difficult to collect them in a single article. I noticed in her, as in all of her members, something very characteristic, which my sister also noticed (without having previously spoken about it): her gaze. The look of those people. She seemed absent, very far away. As if they saw from a very distant and ancient place, and now only the echo of it came.

With his phrases and words, the same. Really, in that place everyone seemed like… abducted, as if their brains had been reprogrammed. As if they had no criteria of their own, or the criterion they had was the same, the only one, the one shared by community. As if there was nothing to question there; as if everything was just the way it should be. Of course, living isolated from the world, who can refute anything? You are born there and you assume what that life offers you. Without questions.

A very positive experience

However, despite our amazement at discovering that particular world, I don’t want to seem like I’m criticizing anything (on the contrary, I respect him deeply; but that doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of how a sect, I’m not saying this one, but in general, can break your life). I do not share their way of living, and I think that there are many ways to reach a community like this, and stay in it. And although I am aware that each sect is different, for me this one had many elements to be so.

But I also have to admit that they were lovely to us (to me personally, when they saw me so interested because I asked them many things, They proposed to me to stay). They treated us great (they didn’t let us collaborate in the cooking tasks, setting the table… something that also surprised me). The food was all vegan, and was exquisite. They only asked for the willingness to spend the night there. But I learned a lot from the experience, and from their particular world, from everything they explained to us.

And although I didn’t sleep all night (because deep down, I was shocked, and the girl who “welcomed us” and who explained everything to us didn’t stop getting up to open and close closets, she had a very strange behavior), They were very friendly and I would definitely do something like that again.. Although that does not mean that I am critical of that world that I found without searching for it.