ARIZONA
This Is Not a Cult
Part 3: When does self-help trigger self-harm?
On a cool, bright March morning in 2018, white-marbled Arizona sycamores mesmerized me as I hiked along a gurgling creek in a Sedona canyon. The deep greens from the juniper trees delivered a pulsating intensity. Elderhostel seniors with weathered, smiling faces passed me from the opposite direction.
A vigorous young couple came bounding from behind me, hand in hand. The man was playing Disturbed’s remake of “The Sound of Silence” on his iPhone. Had it not been blaring from his speaker, we would all have enjoyed the actual sound of silence.
On that trip, I visited a Sedona crystal shop and considered my place in the cosmos. Dozens of glass trays displayed small stones, and placards listed their properties. Peacock Ore, a rough iridescent stone that looked like a small meteorite, offered protection from negative energies. Serpentine, soapy and yellowish, connected one to nature. The lemon-yellow stones called Citron offered assistance with depression and isolation.
The bewildering array beckoned questions. Am I conflicted? Do I need stimulation? Adventure? Optimism? Do my emotions need calming? Am I depressed, isolated, or restless? What needs connecting: Physical and spiritual? Male and female energy? Heart and solar plexus? Each involved a different crystal.
With so many solutions in front of me, I questioned what problem I was solving. Maybe, I thought, I should start by purchasing the jade-like Chrysoprase, which helps clarify problems. Then I would know what else to buy.
Paths to self-actualization reflect their times. Not long ago, one writer warned, ‟Sedona, AZ has been infiltrated by a polyamorous tech bro cult leader with a massive following.” Rolling Stone headlined its profile of the same man as ‟The Instagram Guru ‘F-king’ his Followers to Freedom.’” Below, it summarized, ‟Polyamorous, cigar-chomping Bentinho Massaro allegedly brainwashed his most devoted followers.” But, in traveling to Sedona and investigating organizations accused of being cults, I’ve come to believe that such sensationalism may actually do us a disservice.
Bentinho Massaro is young and white, strikingly handsome with blond hair and aquamarine eyes.
Massaro, who grew up in the Netherlands, calls himself a ‟renowned spiritual teacher whose teachings both transcend and empower the individual…If you want to know yourself at the deepest possible level and live a life of true fulfillment, you are in the right place.”
Until a few years ago, he hosted live retreats in Sedona.
Brent Wilkins graduated from Virginia Tech. Tall with light brown hair, he carried the good looks of a college athlete. Between classes, he worked to figure out what life was all about, reading Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle.
After graduation, Wilkins moved near Washington, DC, and found a job coaching tennis at a country club. In 2014, he attended a retreat led by Massaro in North Carolina. ‟I fell in love with everything and everybody,” Wilkins recounted in a video for Massaro’s website. ‟Life started coming through me.”
Wilkins quit his job and moved to Boulder, Colorado, where Massaro was then headquartered. Over the next two years, Wilkins grew close to Massaro and cut himself off from his family. He refused to meet with the cult-extraction specialist his parents employed to rescue him from Massaro.
But as Massaro prepared to move his operations to Sedona, the two had a falling out for unknown reasons. Wilkins returned to his parents’ home in Richmond, Virginia.
Wilkins was struggling with anxiety and depression and losing weight. During his visit home, he agreed to visit a psychiatrist. He admitted he felt overwhelmed by fear and had considered taking his life. He spent a week in a psychiatric ward and was released.
When I visited the heavily treed neighborhood of Sedona where Massaro once lived, I found his home surprisingly modest. But if his house was humble, his ambitions were not. Massaro promised his ‟Sedona Experiments” would turn Sedona into the center of the enlightened world.
Massaro began referring to himself as a spirit invested with divine knowledge. He claimed he could save humanity and berated the few students who questioned his teachings.
After six unhappy months at home, Wilkins decided he needed to reconnect with Massaro. He joined 150 others at the Creative Life Center for Sedona Experiment II, a 12-day retreat. But once there, his experience didn’t provide the answers he’d hoped for. He felt confused about Massaro’s teachings and troubled by the break in their once-close relationship.
The Creative Life Center was never affiliated with Massaro; it just rented him space for the event. Nonetheless, when I dropped by, I found it discouraged visitors.
Massaro insisted his participants pursue enlightenment with all their vigor. According to a video that captured his remarks at one retreat, he said, ‟Wake up to something important. Otherwise, kill yourself.”
Massaro knew that by the time of Sedona Experiment II, some were calling his venture a cult. He leaned into the term, saying, ‟It has no context for me; it feels so empty and meaningless. Like, OK, great, yeah, we’re a cult. It doesn’t change what we are.” The following year, he told Vice, ‟We are a cult. We are a Curious, Understanding, Loving Tribe.”
According to the Arizona Republic, he told the audience at Sedona Experiment II he preferred the term ‟social memory complex,” a group of people destined to grow so close that the electromagnetic fields of their consciousness would blend. They would become one, bound by the bliss of enlightenment. Which sounds nice, at least in a let’s-drop-some-Molly-and-dance sort of way.
Wilkins listened as Massaro answered questions. “Will you address the savior-complex accusation?” one woman asked.
“I can address this right now,” Massaro responded. He explained that since childhood, he’d felt tremendous pressure to save the planet. It wasn’t ego, he claimed; it was a powerful force that filled his body. He said he couldn’t quite explain it; the language didn’t exist.
“Do I currently feel like I am the one to save this world?” Massaro asked rhetorically. “No. I don’t.” A prolonged silence followed. Slowly, Massaro smiled. “I might still do it,” he said. The audience erupted in thankful laughter, the tension broken. After the Q&A, Massaro led a silent meditation.
Wilkins slipped out of the session without speaking to anyone. He drove to Midgley Bridge, where Oak Creek Canyon opened into red rock country. I later spent some contemplative time there. The pink and orange cliffs clasped puffs of green scrub that looked like the painted sponge you see on model railroads. Occasional traffic noise on the steel span disrupted the murmuring of the creek below.
We’ll never know what was in Wilkins’ mind when he visited this spot. He hiked to a ledge and jumped 200 feet into the gorge, falling to his death. Police identified him through his ‟Sedona Experiment II ”name badge.
A local detective questioned Massaro, who downplayed his friendship with Wilkins. When shown the video of his remarks on suicide, he claimed he was exaggerating for effect and wasn’t serious.
Massaro was never charged with any crime. But after Wilkins’ death, he transferred his operations out of Sedona. His classes are now promoted via social media. He offers a YouTube channel, a podcast, live online sessions by subscription, a 30-day mastery program, and a five-day ‟self-paced retreat,” which appears to be a video recording of a live gathering.
In 2022, three Massaro followers joined the podcast called A Little Bit Culty and claimed that Massaro was more than a little bit culty.
They unveiled how the organization worked. Massaro hosted ‟distortion readings,” where participants broke each other down by harping on flaws and insecurities. He encouraged his followers to disconnect from their friends and family. He advocated long fasts. Avowedly polyamorous, he invited women in the group to become his girlfriends and sometimes framed the sex as therapy that would resolve past traumas. He often told women who were resistant to his charms that they were ‟too masculine” and needed to surrender. Many did. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Massaro denied coercing women into sex.
One follower said Massaro was obsessed with policing women’s weight. An ex-girlfriend said he refused to have more sex with her unless she lost weight. She recounted him saying that women stored toxins in their fat cells. Massaro told Rolling Stone that when he’d shown women pictures of thin models to emulate, he’d been ‟exploring fashion and style ideas.” But, he added, ‟I can see in retrospect how this was an ignorant and naive approach on my end, and insensitive to the sensitivity women may have towards their body image.” His curious phrasing still seemed to place the locus of the problem on the women.
Though I’d already read the victims’ stories online, I listened to their oral accounts on the podcast. I had nightmares that evening after hearing their harrowing accounts of sexual abuse and brainwashing, and I’m not a person who generally has nightmares.
When criticism of Massaro seeps out on the web, it’s quickly mopped up, apparently by his tech-savvy followers. Nevertheless, it’s easy to find people reporting his claims of superhuman powers and suggestions he can control the weather, examples of him verbally degrading his followers, recommendations for dry fasting during retreats, separation of followers from their friends and families, and the old standby: reframing all negative outcomes as positive.
Sparks fly from the troubled intersection of spiritualism and commercialism, and fatal accidents are more common than we realize.
Sedona is a magical place. But its stunning grandeur has a dark twin: people who exploit self-help seekers and, through hubris and recklessness, destroy lives. The tragic deaths of Julia Siverls, Kirby Brown, and Brent Wilkins suggest ways all of us can avoid falling victim to harmful predators.
Demanding physical challenges can build confidence. But they require experienced guides — not energetic amateurs. Group spiritual pursuits can be fulfilling and meaningful. However, they are a dangerous substitute for professional treatment of mental health issues, particularly in the case of depression.
Cult expert Rick Ross defines destructive cults as having three elements: an authoritarian leader who is worshiped, coercive indoctrination, and the doing of harm. Whether we like to admit it or not, lots of workplaces are headed by charismatic leaders. Employment always involves some level of coercion. And many organizations — for-profit, non-profit, and political — do harm to employees, their communities, or the environment. But we don’t call them cults.
Ginny Brown, Kirby’s mom, started the nonprofit Seek Safely to educate self-help program participants and establish standards for professionals. Her organization illuminates two red flags to look for as events begin: required waivers, particularly at the last minute, and physical challenges without medical support. Freezing rooms, deafening music, and a pep rally atmosphere can be signs of trouble.
Seek Safely warns that the most dangerous situation is when highly charged emotional experiences are combined with sensory deprivation. Tight schedules that allow little self-processing time and preclude a full night’s sleep, inadequate breaks, and locked doors should all raise suspicions. One red flag is guided meditation or breathing techniques that foster disorientation and confusion. Another is the encouragement of highly emotional revelations.
Seek Safely also suggests a cold-eyed evaluation of speakers. Does their credibility come exclusively from testimonials and claims of enormous success? Do they belittle education and professional credentials? Do they muddy the differences between opinions, speculation, and scientific research? Is it difficult to ask them questions?
The next generation of cults probably won’t even require physical participation. Malevolent, sociopathic leaders can exploit social media. They can deploy apps with gamification and algorithms to drive large-scale self-destructive behavior that financially benefits them. Now that I think of it, that sounds a lot like cryptocurrency.
My time in Sedona reviewing the healing powers of crystals has led me to a prescription for Sedona gurus and those who might leverage social media for evil. Shungite acts as a truth serum. Blue Lace Agate promotes healthy boundaries. Obsidian blocks negative energies. I recommend they wear necklaces or bracelets of these various stones every day.
Copyright © 2024 Lou Schachter • All rights reserved
