Escaping my Childhood Cult Issues in Thailand: Day Three
I’m a little worried I’ve ended up in another one. Entry #3 …
PS: This blog is for and about real cult survivors, but in Trump’s new world that definition just might apply to us all.
“WE LIKE IT natural around here,” Hans my hot Swedish farm-host says when I arrive at the permaculture commune in Thailand where I’ve come to write my cult-memoir.
I not so subtly sniff my armpit. “Sounds good to me,” I say, but I know he means more than just greasy hair and bare feet.
As the days begin to pass I start to fold into the feelings, releasing my heart’s resistance, just a little. I can feel the suggestion of a thaw in the bitterness that’s been grabbing hold. Just a creak-crack, like a hairline split on an icy pond’s surface back at my sublet in Vermont.
THE DAY AFTER I arrive in Thailand Buni, the village tribe Akha woman who owns the farm heads out to a day-long temple ceremony with Cameron, her wry, young farmhand volunteer.
Hans and I are alone. I am starting to feel uncomfortable. I came here to write and, let’s admit it, caress and toy with my bitterness, like one of those yin-yang balls that come in a box. Take it out, play with it, polish it, put it back, go lay in the sun, come back to my hut, take it out again …
But Hans’ presence is intense, dominating. He really does feel like the yang to my yin, and it’s all I can do not to be swept up in the rush of intensity around two strong members of the opposite sex. I don’t know yet what I’m feeling, but it’s definitely attraction and also something akin to peer pressure.
And there is nothing more intense than hippie peer pressure, because it’s about how cool your soul is. Constant, unsolicited, judgmental advice is delivered, rapid-fire, with a calm, placid smile, a knowing and self-righteous gaze of superiority, the gentle reminder that if you do not agree, you are not as ‘awake’ as said hippie on the enlightenment scale.
Oh you don’t smoke weed? Hmm. Very uptight. You should learn to relax.
Oh, no, I do smoke weed I just …
Running off to your hut is so western, so closed-off. You need to connect with what is around you and relax.
I am relaxed! Feels self-conscious in one’s bright red harem pants. Stands up, vigorously.
Wow. See what I mean? Graciously re-proffers spliff.
You hit the damn thing and try not to cough because, wait is this high school? Of course it is. Everything is high school.
BUINI THE FARM OWNER and Cameron the Brit stay gone for another day and I go ahead and get high on Thai bud and white sage spliffs for the next two days, which is actually great and just what Dr. Terrence McKenna would have ordered. Hans and I trade rapid-fire philosophy, shooting to the furthest reaches of the cosmos and zooming back into the core of the atom in between hits and European-style high fives (you keep your arm and hand high and stiff). I vacillate between defensive indulging, because oh, I can go there, I could be an energy master if I wanted! and irritation that I came here to write about being raised in a cult and am being subjected to a new one instead. By the umpteenth person who doesn’t know what they’re playing with because they weren’t raised in a cult.
Hans, I come to realize, is one of those exhausting old sports, Gatsby style, who did a psychedelic Oaxaca ceremony in Peru, became one with Mother Gaia, quit their gypsy-hustle, in his case professional poker player, and reordered their entire life around distributing their new insights to the commoners usually via the dream world so they can lock-in somewhere off-grid. These people freak me out, and for some reason, I meet them all the time.
Here’s one reason they freak me out: I am distrustful of psychedelic experiences. I call them ‘fast-food spirituality.’ There’s great stuff there, sure, but in my opinion they open your eyes — and dangerous portals — to things you might not have been ready to know. Better to come across them on the more natural and guarded pick-a-flower life path. Also, when the doors of perception are flung open like banging shutters in a snowstorm, what you remember from under the table with a blanket over your head will not likely linger as true lessons or real sustenance. Instead, you’ll just be running around somewhere like Thailand with stars like sticky jam between your fingertips and electric sparks in your eyes, ready to blow a fuse right through your crown chakra at any moment.
So how did I find this place?
It wasn’t a lucid dream. It wasn’t even a mystical mutual friend, although we’ve already discovered we have more than one of those.
This is just what I thought was a regular rental on AirBnB.
I had been to Thailand once before, Pataya, a beachy party city, that’s a whole ‘nother story, and I wanted to go back. I had heard the Chiang Mai province was the jungly, mountainous, hot springy retreat of the more spiritually and bohemian-minded westerner. One day in December on a whim during a snow-storm, I typed Chiang Mai into AirBnB. This place I found was described as a permaculture commune farmstay, with three organic meals a day and your own hut. There was a crazy discount if you booked a full month. So here I am. Talking relentlessly about the power of silence with a hot Swedish guy who seems to feel the need to tell me ‘well here’s what you should do’ as the opposite of whatever it is I say, no matter what it is.
Me: I’m tired. Him: You should really try to be more awake.
Me: Wow, look at that flower! Him: But did you notice the leaf?
Me: I’m feeling attacked and criticized. Him: Ah, but there you see! I have brought you to your awareness of your own monkey mind behavior! Me: Oh. Ugh. Thanks?
Hans and I have, it seems, a lot to prove to each other. I think we’ll get there. I hope. Or I’m gonna spend this trip horny by night and angry by day. And what about this side of bitterness I’m hauling around? Stew it? Brew it? Insert it into our talk soup?
I’m trying to keep it at bay.
Meanwhile, it’s impossible to ignore how many things there are to be thankful for, here. The soft, warm amber light that infuses every crack and angle of your open-windowed hut, from an outside lantern. It reminds me of the cozy, ‘you’re home’ colors of my woodstove, back home, but its own brand of golden light.
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