Is Access a cult?

I was born into a cult.

I had long hair that my mother took the time to put into overnight-curlers on Sundays. We wore certain colours on certain days. We were vegetarians.We had leaders of the cult that were worshipped and adored. We had our own rituals.

On Sundays we would travel a few hours and decree as a group, attempting to use enough violet flame to purify our bodies and energy, trying in this lifetime to become pure enough to become an Ascended Master. When you were pure, your blood would run gold and until then, it stayed red as sin.

We believed in reincarnation not as an awareness, but as a karmic result: it was on us to come back lifetime after lifetime until we got it right. The fact that we had a body in this lifetime indicated ‘more work to do’ and that work was all about active use of the violet flame and staying away from negative energy.

Negative energy could be found in peppercorns, black and dark clothing, rock music, pop culture, and television. And so, I didn’t listen to the radio or have a TV until I was 13, and grew up on an idyllic blend of show tunes, John Denver, Mozart and Beethoven, didn’t eat meat, and stared wide-eyed at the people who did.

At 13, my parents finally separated after years of abusing each other with hatred and jealousy, and after my dad finally moved into his own apartment and I had no other way of describing my uncomfort to my mother other than to tell her the truth, I told her about the sexual abuse.

Sexual abuse was rampant in the cult because no one was talking about bodies. In fact, we were to transcend this body in favour of our spiritual body, and so bodies were not only shunned, but ignored, and everyone’s physical desires were acted out on children and in ways you couldn’t share.

After the separation, my mother’s energy went into getting us ‘recovered’: the trek to visit the temple on Sundays was too much. And for awhile, we joined the Mormons.

After a few years of ‘belonging’ to that group, the divorce proceeded, and my mother was pulled into the office in front of Mormon leadership and told that she could not be part of that group: divorce was not condoned. She was faced with conforming by staying married or losing another group’s support, and so for awhile, we went group-less.

Until the day she found a big charismatic church on the edge of town, and when I was 16, we changed our life and group again, and began the Christian years, which I did to the extreme until I was 30.

What does it mean to be a cult?

‘Cult’ is a term that attempts to describe groups and organizations that require you to be insular. On-side. Cults require you to conform in order to belong. In every single group that we joined, no matter what they were called, they required us to subscribe to their beliefs in order to fit in and be a part of them. If we conformed and acted via these beliefs, we were in. If we didn’t, we were out.

When I found Access Consciousness, the thing that stood out to me amongst everything was that they didn’t need me to believe anything they were saying. ‘They’ had no interest in me conforming. There was nothing you could do to fit in and ‘be a part’. If you chose to hang out with the people ‘in Access’ you could, and if you didn’t, it wasn’t required.

I noticed that some people treated Access like something you could join and be a part of. There were a lot of people who said they were ‘in Access’.

But I know ‘cult. And I really studied what was being put out: there was nothing there about joining.

Nobody was teaching Access-speak: people were just doing it.

Nobody was having us get on the same page about beliefs: people were just doing it.

Nobody was teaching the ‘Access-way’: people were just turning the stuff they were learning into a new religion.

In fact, the thing that was emphasized over and over was:

don’t trust us, trust you.

Every conversation, facilitation and otherwise was to get us to look at what we knew.

At the very beginning, they gave us a possibility of sensing what was true for us and what wasn’t, and encouraged us to play with it to see what it did. To try sensing things for ourself.

Every single facilitator I came in contact with, even if they did some weird shit, overall was encouraging us to know.

After 30 years of active cult-membership, I was aware they existed and knew that that wasn’t something I would choose again. And so, I took Access with a grain of salt. I played with things and let myself discover what occurred.

What occurred is so much of it (read: all) changed my life completely. Gave me total access to me. To what I know. To the sense of things. I was empowered to see things for what they are and that information always created more ease. Space. Wellbeing.

But people are leaving!

In my 10 years of playing with Access Consciousness, I've seen many people come and many others go. Usually, the ones that go are the ones that were the biggest fans previously, and as a result of an event, are now the biggest detractors.

It was always: positive judgment turned into negative: the same thing we have to do to justify leaving a lover.

For most people to feel justified in leaving someone or somebody, they have to find someone to blame. They create judgment and separation and rejection so that their choice is right. They create a reality of judgment in order for other people to agree. 

What I know about judgment is that it requires more than one person to exist as a real thing. People who function from judgment always need other people to validate it, otherwise it can’t exist.

And judgment kills. Always. It rots rice. Kills plants. Ultimately destroys our bodies and the earth.

People who do allowance don’t need anyone to agree with them. They are much more like horses or jungles or dirt. They be. Are. By their being, they empower.

Allowance allows things and beings to flourish. It doesn’t demand agreement or fight resistance. It gifts. Endlessly. And we can choose to receive the gift or reject it in favour of another reality.

As I’ve studied the difference in those two choices, I’ve chosen, over and over, how I want to live. What I will choose to be the source of. And with every person pulling in their preferred direction, you too have that choice.

Access Consciousness has gifted us with the bazookas of consciousness. Consciousness simply includes. Everything. Including judgment.

Every choice simply creates or destroys. And so, if we wish, we can ask ourselves: What will I be the source of today?

What something is and how you treat it or relate to it are not the same thing.

What do you know? And what will you choose?

And what choices can we make today to create the world we want to live in right away? ✨