Dark Paradise: The Descent Of Cult Consciousness Upon Kauai

By Amethyst Rhodes

My recent trip across two Hawaiian Islands and two and a half months was an experience marked by rainbows, seductive floral fragrances, stunning sunsets and the often ethereal swim sesh. It was also tainted with enough provincial drama to have me fleeing for NYC in the dead of winter. What could possibly go wrong in paradise? I had successfully aligned an ocean and a continent between me and a toxic ex, as well as a city I felt wasn’t meeting me half way. I’m looking at you- mid, post- pandemic NYC. To date, I’ve lived about equal proportion between both New York City and the Hawaiian Islands, and this trip was consciously curated as a healing one. I figured I’d let the elements literally wash over me, realign my energy and take a much needed respite at a friend’s house on the north shore of Kauai. In hindsight, as it usually unfolds, the warning signs were there before arrival. I just chose to re-narrate them to accommodate my need for emergency landing. What I didn’t realize, was that I was literally flying into a danger zone.

Kauai has a profoundly special energy. It’s palpable upon landing. She attracts both the healed and the healing with her profound mana, as the Hawaiians call it, which can be translated as the inherent, pure energy source coursing through an element or person. To say one has mana, speaks of the raw purity of their presence. Kauai has this in spades. Consequently, the healers, the leaders, and the desperate followers flock there in droves.

I hadn’t seen this friend of the north shore for nearly two years but conversed with her almost daily over the phone. Recently, a lot of huge developments were shaping her reality and I was about to meet them, head on.

The first big development was the arrival of a tech bro from California and his subsequent land investments; including the land she’d eyed and prized and had only partially paid off. This was to be a community project space, which was threatened with foreclosure before the arrival of said tech bro. For matters of humanity, we shall refer to him as Grey.

Grey had only been living permanently in Kauai for about four months up to that point and was buying up land and dwellings with the zeal of a fat kid on a winning monopoly streak. He purchased the house just below my then friend’s home, who shall be called LaLa- short for “a lady who lunches,” because despite her protests, she has essentially templated a moldy jungle version of a “lady who lunches”. She’s never had to work for a living and has thus created all manner of “projects” involving other people’s business. It seems her penchant for doing so may cost her, big. Because whether she realizes it or not, Lala has essentially been chosen to host and acclimate Grey and his compound to the local Kauai environment. LaLa’s explanation of Mr. Grey as some sort of angelic funder of visionary dreams was always fishy to me, from the beginning. Yes, there are legitimate angel funds and the like set up; I actually worked as a content writer at an NYU startup that was funded by one. But these angel networks and individuals are essentially “investing,” not blindly throwing money around. It’s wise to discern the difference. The vague parameters around Grey’s million-dollar purchase of LaLa’s land was suspect to me from the start. “So, what does he want out of this?” I asked. She couldn’t really provide a solid answer. Red flag #1.

Upon arrival to Kauai this past September, and to LaLa’s specifically, no one introduced themselves to me. It was awkward AF. LaLa’s property was positioned on higher ground, just above Grey's compound, sharing an obvious border, visibility, and accessibility between both properties. After a full month went by, I was finally shown a third property just two doors down from where I’d been staying; an entire house Grey purchased on condition that LaLa pay him back. The house, however, is to be used for Grey's and LaLa’s joint vision as a conscious death center. Upon my inquiry, there are apparently no special licensing or zoning requirements for this kind of project; at least according to LaLa. Interesting. And also red flag #2.

I figured everyone living at Grey’s compound would eventually make their way over to at least casually greet me; a new person living on what is essentially their partner property. But no one ever did. “Bizarre,” I thought. “What kind of people shield themselves like this?” Abused ones, I later realized. And people hiding shit. For reference, Will Allen, a former devotee of the Buddhafield Cult, is quoted saying in the Hawaiian publication, Flux Magazine, that “The group think, the isolation, having a leader tell you what to do—they all have to be present to be a cult.” After about a week of being totally ignored by a very active household and neighboring property, I decided to pull out all my gregarious New York City sensibilities and fully confront one of the gals who lived at the compound. Upon meeting her en route to the local health food store, the warning signs were loud and clear. She made consistent references about “escaping” and “alone time” and not wanting to upset anyone on the property.

Then, there was my host; a person I’d known for quite some time... suddenly being uncharacteristically controlling, absent and bizarre. No, I couldn’t use her second car to trek to the beach or to go anywhere during three weeks of rain. And there was nary an invite to actually do anything together coupled with lots of concealing and withholding of information. There was also an arrogance I barely detected before. None of us are saints, I realize, but this was an edge I only later realized came from a power trip high. When I’d last seen this friend, she had no staff or grouping at all. Now she was co-running projects like a feudal lord in the 1500s. Lots of ‘my way or the highway’ energy was running amok. Other strange behavior, related to her hygiene and appearance had me truly confused. She possessed the kind of abandon I’d expect from an adventurous three-year-old, not a composed woman in her 50’s.

She just seemed really off. And when her behavior eventually catalyzed total concern, I reached out to Grey, who still hadn’t introduced himself to me; the roommate, friend and visitor of his own property and project partner. So, I mustered that distilled NYC courage again and met him head on. “What’s going on with my friend?” “Is she ok?” “Is she stable?” He gave me some vague sentiment about stability being transient or something, served up with a heady dose of arrogance that I immediately recognized. I have a certain, potent detector for “messiah mania.” Especially the kind that’s cultivated in the islands. It’s unusually abundant in people who fetishize Ram Dass, I’ve noticed. Nothing against the man, just a pattern I’ve observed. Later, LaLa would confirm my hunch… “Oh yeah, Ram Dass is his guy”. I bet. Moving on, the biggest red flag about this entire situation would reveal itself to me…from me. Immediately upon sitting down with Grey, I found myself just blurting out, “So, are you running a cult here or something?” He never denied it. He did get sincerely awkward. I felt like I was talking to a literal wall. Sometimes, kids, the truth is closer than two degrees of separation. Grey used the convenience of a sudden downpour to completely ghost on our meeting with zero follow up.

As I became friendlier with the gals who worked on the compound, I discovered that they were romantic partners. One was a painter, fulfilling a commissioned mural for Grey of what looks like utopia on the main wall of his house. The other partner is a Jackie of Trades, and both were working full time at the compound. Over a matter of weeks, I learned that they were living somewhat squalidly in a shed and that Mr. Grey initiated requests that they pay him Hawaiian market rates for their um, “accommodations”. After a few heart-to-heart conversations with both, I intuitively pieced together that the causal reason for their early avoidance came down to depression and shame. It had zero to do with me; something I felt mutually relieved and also sad about. I was also irate when I learned that they; a dedicated couple, were appointed by Grey to live in a shed. “He’s a fucking billionaire, what kind of asshole puts a nice lesbian couple in a fucking shed,” I fumed to LaLa. “What century are we in, oh feudal lord?” Again, she didn’t have much of a response. At this point I had to start writing LaLa off as just not even present. Her mental health background is already sketchy and something I had compassion for. Hence, I thought it best to start detaching so as to preserve what innocent regard I had left for her. But I was very much beginning to realize that my friend had developed something of short-term vision loss in the presence of this messiah maniac. His Wi-Fi name, by the way? Jesus.

The compound would have regular meetings: red flag #3, with LaLa in attendance. Concurrently, I realized about a month in that I was very much on the outside looking in, in every capacity. Through my research, this kind of isolationist strategizing is a regular defense mechanism used often by manipulators in cult environments. I further realized that they were protecting their entire “brand identity” and didn’t want my presence, witnessing or outside ideas… ones that included me encouraging the compound couple to set project rates for their work, instead of schlepping hourly, to raise their fees and require better working conditions; all in the name of simple sustainability.

It was later revealed to me that in a recent compound meeting, the Jackie of Trades partner finally broke down, saying that she “felt completely unseen and disposable”. And just like that, dear reader; all the essential elements of a cult are revealed: isolation, group think and toxic hierarchy. I wanted to share the fuller length trajectory of how this awareness developed, to truly demonstrate how subtle the manipulations of cult consciousness can be. How simultaneously subversive and subcutaneous in their effects. This is only one example of how people end up in these insidious groupings. At first, a cult can simply smell like the fresh cuttings of community and togetherness. People combining resources and energy toward congruent goals. Sounds idyllic, right? Sure, if that’s the real outline, but the second we include a hierarchy it seems human nature is poised to perpetuate some form of toxic power dynamic. I do think it’s possible for leadership to exist without toxicity; it’s just extremely rare. So rare, I don’t recommend shacking up (ahem, literally) with any tech bro who can’t discern the ‘āina from their own ass, anytime soon.

Cult consciousness can easily ride the wave of vague to completely polarized. By the time we hear of cults in the news media, they’ve usually reached a state of extreme polarization, but it’s worthy to know that all insidious organizations begin spinning their propaganda agendas as seedlings, oftentimes for years. before any kind of coup is actualized or descends upon the people. Reference the Nazi party, for example.

So what primes a pristine beauty like Kauai to be such a hot spot for cult consciousness? After all, this micro-cult experience I witnessed is only riding the heels of other cult happenings. The notorious cult Love Has Won was escorted off the north shore of Kauai in early September 2021, after townies practically descended torch and pitchfork style upon the AirBnB where the cult was live-streaming bizarre videos from inside their compound. Prior to them, the Source Family took their celeb-popular, vegan restaurant earnings and relocated their very large commune; including the fourteen wives of their delusional leader. Their new home? Hawaii. Then, there’s Buddhafield, the cult that guided the exposé style documentary, Holy Hell, a film produced by Jared Leto. That founder and his closest followers base in Oahu.

Right now, in Kauai, there are tech bros and businesses gobbling up sacred land; displacing natives and locals and creating a polarized economic strata. These are facts. It was like this when I first arrived on island in 2014 and it’s only worsened. Beneath this layer, one can find domestic groupings bonded by common consciousness, preferences, and dogma, often led by a hierarchy headed by a white male in a financially affluent position of organization and influence. Is the remote romanticism of the Hawaiian Islands the ideal environment for cults to base, move discreetly, and expand their oppressive ideologies?
[Ed. note- The Body, which is the cult this website was originally intended to expose, relocated to Kauai in 2016. They have since moved on to Washington state and Australia.]

After nearly half a decade of living within the islands and seeing this cult consciousness percolate in various forms; from being insisted upon that I take an oath of veganism in order to rent a cabin in Maui; to witnessing a very talented musician I dated essentially sell his soul for indentured servitude, a mosquito ridden shack, and a lifetime of worship at the Temple of Peace, a center posturing as a Universalist spiritual hub, but moonlighting as a covert Hare Krishna recruitment base; I must say that from the my personal experiences, from subtle to profound, my response is a resounding “Yes, unfortunately”.

Strangely, my path has crossed with an actual cult hunter…a completely mysterious enigma; again, on the north shore of Kauai in 2019. At this point, the journalistic process must acknowledge the scientific one, no? I met her at Hanalei center where outdoor seating meets some of the most gorgeous, mountainous waterfall sightings, right from town. She explained how she had been tracking a cult presence in Wainiha, coincidentally the same locale where Love Has Won was hunkering down. She described how she lives on the lam, supported by PayPal donations, and exposes such “dark matter” for the betterment of society. Turns out we have more in common now than I would have ever guessed.

Jared Leto described his intention for backing the movie Holy Hell by expressing that those involved in the crosshairs of cult consciousness are not “just marginalized zealots, but good people who sometimes get caught in the web of someone else’s madness.”

And with that, here’s to a new year of sovereignty for all.