Collection
Thinking for Yourself
These articles are about noticing how easy it is to outsource your thinking. Seven years inside an organization that called itself spiritual taught me how a community can borrow your discernment without you noticing. The pieces here test the mechanics: how belief installs, how certainty masks manipulation, how verification becomes its own trap.
21 essays~3.1 h of reading
- The Lurker's Syllogism: Why I Never Comment OnlineThree YouTube comments in fifteen years, and a very reasonable argument for every silence. What one ten-word comment about 7-Eleven did to that argument. · 8 min
- Nothing to ContradictI translated texts that could not lose, carefully, for a few hundred people. One question would have shown me what I was smoothing. It works on a weather forecast. · 12 min
- The Doors You Left AtThe things you walked out of after one evening left no mark, precisely because walking out worked. What that does to the story you tell about how gullible you were. · 5 min
- I Gave Up a Relationship for a Spiritual Path. Except I Never Chose To.The last time I saw her, we were both passengers. Twenty-six years later, a film scene and a regret study helped me name what happened at that roundabout. · 9 min
- The Ashram at the OfficeYou like the breathing and distrust the gift. A former meditation instructor on the one question worth asking your company's wellness app. · 8 min
- Astrology Works. Not the Way You Think.I spent years drawing birth charts by hand, then walked away on my own evidence. Why a reading feels so accurate, told from the wrong side of the desk. · 11 min
- The Cult Doesn't Need a Guru AnymoreThe robes are the easy part to see, which is why they matter least. Take them off and the machine still runs, lately into something that never disagrees with me. · 11 min
- Nobody Calls You Gullible for Saying NoWe treat doubt as the smart default. But the skeptic and the believer make the same mistake; the skeptic's just never shows. On the hidden cost of saying no. · 7 min
- When It Doesn't Matter Whether It's TrueI spent years sure I couldn't write without meditating first. Then I tested it. A pragmatist's filter for the beliefs that change nothing but how you feel. · 4 min
- I Believed in Chi TwiceI spent thirty years certain I could feel chi, on the mat and later on the meditation cushion. Why the sensation is real even when the explanation isn't. · 9 min
- Spiritual but Not Religious: A Field Guide for People Who Hate Both WordsAfter thirty years of using the label, I can name precisely what 'spiritual but not religious' hides - and what survives once you stop using it for cover. · 12 min
- How I Left a Spiritual Community Without Becoming BitterTwenty-five years after walking out of a spiritual community that turned out to be a cult, the two traps that catch most ex-members, and what I kept on the way through. · 12 min
- How to Think for Yourself (Not Just Think You Do)Thinking for yourself starts with slowing down at the moment an idea clicks and asking where you got it. · 9 min
- The Dictionary They Gave MeOn borrowed vocabularies, offices that look like ashrams, and the one thing that finally broke the language I was given for my own inner life. · 5 min
- I Learned to Verify Everything. Then I Got Stuck.I learned to verify everything after snap judgments failed me. Then verification became its own problem. One question that cuts through the delay. · 4 min
- What Seven Years in a Spiritual Organization Taught Me (And What It Took to Leave)The funny thing about cults is that nobody inside calls them that. I was twenty-something, European, and convinced I had found something real. Seven years later, I walked out. · 13 min
- When the Messenger Ruins the MessageI closed a YouTube video in one second because someone looked old and tired. Years earlier, a TV crew dismissed us in one second because we looked young and naive. Different judgments, same mechanism, and I've been on both sides. · 8 min
- The Fanaticism TestI run this test regularly like antivirus software for the soul: Can I disagree with my teacher and still respect them? Can I question the system and still practice within it? · 7 min
- The Volunteering TrapI spent twenty years confusing exhaustion with devotion. Here's how volunteering becomes a cage - and the one question that reveals whether your generosity is a choice or a compulsion. · 8 min
- Your Beliefs Probably Aren't Yours (And That's Not Your Fault)Discover why most of what you believe comes from others-and why you can't tell the difference. 20 years of practice, one uncomfortable truth. · 8 min
- What Nobody Tells You About Spiritual OrganizationsSpiritual organizations are still organizations. That obvious fact has implications nobody talks about. Including the slow drift from mission to maintenance. · 14 min
