A technical writer's job is to write manuals and a manual's job is to solve chaos. Therefore, a technical writer’s job is to solve chaos. That has been the definition of my job for a long time, and in my fantasy I rank it as high as police officers and firefighters or as low as professional snow shovelers, depending on the mood.

But taking a step back, ALL jobs in the world are geared toward solving chaos. Teachers help students organize their knowledge base. Biologists and other scientists untangle the mysteries of natural science. Bookkeepers sort inventory and straighten financial status. Consultants tell their clients how to clarify complicated situations. Artists, no matter how entangled their works may seem, try to create a perfect world that can stand on its own.

Well, then, how come our world is still so…chaotic at large? In the world where everybody is busy solving the small mysteries around them, larger issues never cease to pop up. Food shortages, nuclear hazards, the steady increase in the jobless rate, an ever-increasing discrepancy between the rich and the poor. The list goes on and we are already apathetic about collectively reaching any sort of goal as human beings.

We spend most of our waking hours trying to solve this and solve that, yet those daily acts do not transcend to larger issues. Why?

Maybe it’s because we don’t want to solve issues—completely.

What we are accustomed to is the act of solving, not eradicating problems (maybe it’s because we have never enjoyed how it feels to eliminate all problems…but that’s another issue). If we solve everything at hand, what’s left for us to do? Retire peacefully in a small condominium? According to my parents’ generation, that’s not as fulfilling as governments and tourist agencies preach.

We enjoy what we do too much, which is endlessly tackling problems. I cannot help but think that that’s probably why our collective minds do not work together to solve the larger chaos that exist in our lives. Technically nothing stops us from solving major problems, such as war, but maybe people aren’t ready to give up the adrenaline rush, no matter how devastating the outcome is.

Are we going to continue destroying our health, society, or earth at the expense of doing what we have been doing?

I emphathize with cults but do not sympathize with them. I would like to dig into this issue. I define a cult as a (mostly) religious group that meets the following conditions:

• Its core belief is not widely known but nevertheless considered dangerous.
• Its primary purpose is to sustain itself, not to reach a practical goal. If the latter is the case, it’s a project.
• Joining it is very easy but leaving it is very difficult. For me, this is the most important hallmark of a cult.

A cult might be labeled as “different” by both its members and the society, but it is still a group—a collection of people. A member of a cult is expected to follow certain rules such as belief, attire, and language, like in any other communities. Therefore, a cult’s identity is not being different; it’s about being the same. Otherwise, why form a group in the first place?

In other words, a cult is an attempt to create a miniature members club by people who couldn’t join one in the real society. It is like growing a bonsai tree because you can’t afford the money or space to buy a real one.

This similarity between cults and the rest of the society is one reason why cults are oppressed. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo and its members have been thoroughly persecuted after they spread sarin gas inside the Tokyo subway in 1995. Today, people talk about Aum in the same context as they discuss a lethal virus. But in terms of the amount of inflicted damage, the often-glorified yakuza far exceeds Aum. Why has Aum been treated so differently? Its structure holds the secret.

Aum’s members were mostly highly-educated young people—their main source of income was designing and marketing laptop computers—who organized self-sustaining community under a spiritual leader. Sound familiar? It looks identical to the Japanese society at large, even including the blindness to external points of views. Aum wasn’t an alien force trying to infiltrate the harmonious Japanese society. Aum was Japan itself. That’s why it is hated with a vengeance.

What we see in cults is often the ugly side of ourselves. Thus we persecute cults, and that’s how cults justify themselves; the harder the persecution goes, the stronger the badge of recognition becomes. The whole affair turns into a vicious circle.

There is a way to avoid this tragedy, which is to get back to the source: being different. Why do we need to crave for sameness? We can embrace ourselves as who we are. It’s not about being different; it’s about being unique. And everybody is the same for being unique. All we need is a little more courage and strength.

Being accepted or not shouldn’t be the way to vindicate our identities; we are not that weak. We should stop playing the belonging game, and instead start bonding with each other in a healthy manner. We might become alike in the end. But it should be the side effect, not the objective.

I do not sympathize with cults because I believe we have gone on to separate paths beyond the initial identity struggle. Let’s embrace our uniqueness. It is not only healthy, but—this is the real bonus—it’s also FUN. Sameness is so boring.

So, my fear of cults doesn’t reside in cults but myself. What does that mean? This topic goes down a path in my history.

Throughout my life I never felt like I belonged to the majority. When I was five years old my family started to move around the world, from Japan to Taiwan to Malta and back to Japan. I was a newcomer everywhere, desperately trying to fit into given communities. I lived under the fear that someone might take my invisible visitor’s badge any time and declare that I didn’t have the right to be there.

Through years of half-attempted adaptations, I turned myself into a culturally/mentally hybrid person, someone who can be comfortable at skin level at anywhere but always restless at a deeper level. (There is even a word for my profile: ATCK, adult third-culture kid.) Then I came back to Japan, which didn’t improve the situation much. In the land of the rising sun, the myth of a homogeneous society was prevalent and the assimilation pressure was stronger than in any other cultures I had experienced.

I gradually got over my fear, not because I found how to adapt myself or a group I belong to but because I found myself fine (= surviving) being nowhere. Seven years ago I settled in Taiwan, and it has only been getting better in terms of being comfortable with who I am, a happy mutant.

But old habits die hard. Whenever I hear keywords such as “weird,” “foreigner,” “eccentric,” my ears stop absorbing anything else that is going on and pay all attention to what I am hearing, out of survival instinct. This is why the topic of “cult” not only triggers my attention but induces my fear; the fear of being singled out.

So the truth is that I don’t fear cults. Instead, I fear being called out as part of a cult, or as any name which implies that I “do not belong.” My old survival instinct gets triggered automatically, no matter what. And that instinct triggers another action, also automatically:  finding an escape route. Back when I was a kid, the routes consisted of simply saying no, or saying yes too loudly, or my favorite, shutting off physical sensors and living in my imagination.

Now I find there is yet another route: projecting my internal fear onto an external object—the cult, in this case. It’s about them, not me—that’s the pressure release valve my protection mechanism choose. I must admit it worked well; I haven’t noticed it until now.

Let’s go back to the cults. I don’t hate them. In fact, I might go so far as to say that I emphathize with them, as I do with other social misfits. Our paths might be parted, but at a point in our lives, we fought the same war for survival.

But it doesn’t mean I sympathize with cults. To be continued…

Ever since I encountered Tibetan Buddhism, the word "cult" has been in my head. When I started visiting the dharma hall, I wondered if I saw one. When my visits became regular, I wondered if I befriended one. When I decided to seriously study Buddhism, I wondered if I joined one.

All the above questions have long been answered—I guess it’s hard for a group to become a certified cult when “Let it Be” sits at the core of the belief—but a question remains: Why am I always worrying about “cults”? It is time to go down the rabbit hole and see what’s in there. Figuring it out might be similar to knowing the identity of Freddie or Jason. This doesn't make either less harmful, but would make me feel much better.

The first step is to figure out which aspects of a cult make me nervous.

• Do I fear specific cults?
• Do I fear members of a cult?
• Do I fear how cults influence me?

Do I fear specific cults?
This possibility, though ear-pleasing, doesn’t exist; I have never received real threats or harm from groups identified as cults (as most of us haven’t). I associate the word “fear” with “cult” because I see them associated in news media. There is no physical entity that gives me cold sweat.

Do I fear members of a cult?
Cautiously, I would say no. I was annoyed a few times when some friends tried to recruit me into something I perceived as a cult. Although our friendship had changed permanently (mainly because I distanced myself), there was no harm. They were, without exception, trying to spread good will, not a scam or an evil scheme.

Do I fear how cults influence me?
Hmm…No. Ultimately it is up to each of us to decide to be “influenced,” except for kids forced to join a cult. There might be thousands of people who claim to be victims of a group, but also there are people who set their lives on good tracks because of that same group. Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Beck might be part of a controversial group, but it doesn’t make them less professional and awe-inspiring.

It is becoming clear that the source of my fear does not lie in cults or their members. Of course—I have barely had direct interactions with any such groups. But my obsession and fears about cults are real. Where do they come from?

I already know: Me. Where else?

I don’t need to know what the exact cause is—my tummy is accurate enough to signal me (through contraction) that there IS something inside. I will dig into what issues exist in the next post, but for now this revelation is good enough: If I fear something but do not have a solid reason for doing so, it’s because I am looking at a projected image of my private issues.

In a cozy apartment, munching a delicious home-cooked meal, a dozen of us eagerly wait for Sasha Cobra to join the Skype call after we have watched the DVD of her bodywork. We have more questions than we anticipated. One reason is that we are simply confused because her practice is nothing like we have seen before. But the bigger reason is that we are hooked and we want to know more.

Sasha appears. She is pleasing but doesn’t please. She is relaxed but she is alert. She looks young but appears more mature than any of us. She is soft-spoken but her messages are strong. Her attitude is gentle but her focus is sharp. To summarize, she is off-balance but integrated. I keep thinking: This person actually exists?

I google my brain for the word to describe Sasha, because there is no framework I can automatically categorize her into—a habit which is probably treated in her workshop—and the search result comes out: authentic. I am exhilarated and exhausted at the same time. I have used that word on numerous occasions, but now they all seem fake (indeed, some were). Something tells me that I am using “authentic” correctly for the first time.

She shares her insights on why we are so confused about sexuality, how our energy runs through our body, and what it means to be a man/woman. Her words are handed to us gently, but they penetrate right through our mental walls. It is as if she is throwing marbles of wisdom into our soul’s dry well. I hear the clicking sound all the time.

To get more glimpses of her insights, I listen to her podcasts including this interview she did with a so-called dating guru. Using the same relaxed tone, she nails audience questions (and the guru) as in this one:

Q: What do you make of men who constantly get friend-boxed?

Sasha: They’re too needy, or seeming to be too needy, which is usually about the same. Where they have started, a lot of these men have unresolved issues with their mother. When a little boy wants to get approval from his mother, he tends to do things to please her, undermining his manhood, just to make sure that his mom says “Oh, you’re a good boy.” So what a lot of these men would be doing is relating with women in the same dynamic.

Truth hurts. But it’s a medicine—or even an operation—the patient has neglected for a long time. It’s time to “take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

P.S. A friend’s comment reminds me that the whole affair is more about invigoration than investigation. So here is an uplifting message from Sasha’s Youtube channel, which contains more gems.

This is your life, and your life is going to be a direct reflection of what goes on internally. So as long as you are creating some kind of blocks for you, as long as you are feeling insecure about what other people think, your life is going to have blocks externally. So you know, sometimes I work with men and it’s like, it could be something where you get rid of blocks in the physical level, and all of a sudden they get a promotion at work. And they are like, “How do those two connect?” But they do. You could just imagine if it’s difficult for you to grasp the concept but your whole reality externally is a direct reflection of what’s going on inside.

P.P.S. She is coming to Taiwan on November.