What comes after seeking?

Reflections on ethical adulthood in post-spiritual collapse

I kept my Osho mala beads for six months after I left. They sat in my nightstand drawer under a pile of random papers, and every time I opened it to grab my phone charger, I’d see them and feel this weird mix of grief and relief. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, but I also couldn’t bring myself to use them anymore. Even after “breaking up” with the cult, I felt stuck between two worlds, not really belonging to either.

Most deconstruction spaces focus on the red flags, the abuse of power, how to deprogram your mind from cult dynamics. Of course, all of that matters and I do that in my work as well. But what’s less talked about is what happens after you leave. How do you hold two things at once: the harm, the pain, the predators, the coercion…and the very real insight, healing, connection, and transformation that also happened in those spaces? Where does one begin and the other end?

There’s a particular loneliness that comes with leaving a spiritual community. It’s not only the loneliness of being alone, but the loneliness of being between. You’re no longer who you were, but the harder question is: how much of who you were was ever really you? How much was authentic, and how much was just a shadow version of yourself performing enlightenment while your worst impulses quietly took the wheel? The framework that made sense of your suffering is gone, and you haven’t found a new one yet. You’re just suspended there, holding contradictions that don’t resolve, questioning everything you thought you knew about your own authenticity.