My Night Spent With a Cult

Published December 25, 2022 By admin with Comments 1

The experience I am going to talk about happened about a year ago. Up until that point, the closest I’d come to a cult was on a screen or in my psychology notes, but I’d never been inside one.

When I was studying for my psychology degree, we learned about people joining sects and the ways in which it affects them psychologically. I’m not going to talk about these consequences as my involvement with a cult only lasted a night. However, I’m going to speak about what I experienced.

In this short article, I’ll tell you how, while walking the Camino de Santiago in the Basque Country, Spain, with my twin sister, we ended up spending the night in a cult (I won’t say its name out of respect).

It all started on the Camino de Santiago

To explain how I ended up spending the night with a cult, I have to return to the beginning of my story. It was August of last year, and I was walking a section of the Camino de Santiago with Anna. More specifically, it was the Northern Way, which passes through the Basque Country. It was the third year that we’d done it and until then, our experiences had been more or less the same. We never reserved any hostels to stay in because it wasn’t possible as availability was on a first come first served basis.

However, we were still in the midst of post-covid and were sure we’d be able to find somewhere to stay. How surprised we were, therefore, to arrive in Donostia, and find that everything was booked. We spoke with the people in the nearest town and the other walkers, and they told us that there was a place, on the hill just before reaching Donostia, where they’d welcome us for the night.

That said, they warned us that if we wanted to stay there we’d need to keep open minds. We didn’t really understand their comment and  wanted to know more.  We were told that people from all over the world went there and that it was a kind of community where they lived by their own rules. They assured us that, while we might see certain things that surprised us, we’d be okay. We were still rather unsure but didn’t really have an option with there being no other place to spend the night.

Content retrieved from: https://exploringyourmind.com/my-night-spent-with-a-cult/.