What is it?

Children of the Mountain is the worst kind of cult: the self-help cult that only really exists online, like perverts. CoM claims to be a personal development community and the world leader in digital self-awareness training. They hide behind brochures and slogan and slick marketing. They use stupid feel-good jargon like "acknowledge your actuality" and "utilize your completeness". They spend a lot of time and money trying to explain how they're not a cult. If you spend all your time screaming "I'm not gay!" then you probably are - trust us on that one.

Over a million people have been duped by their 4-stage "self-realization" course, which guarantees a new life of success, enlightenment, and sex with strangers. All from a weekend seminar or online program. And all for a hefty fee, of course, and whith all the caveat that you spend every waking minute hawking their products to your friends and family. Thousands of dollars later, and guess what? Your life's still shit and you still haven't had blissful sexual congress with beautiful strangers.

Does it pass the CULTSTOPPERS 5-point cult test?

1) Self-appointed messianic leader?

Yep. Brother Adrian. Welsh tax accountant turned spiritual leader, poet and harnesser of human potential. A man who's made millions selling bullshit to millions. He even owns a radio station in Liberty City that plays trippy music while the DJ repeats CoM dogma. Brother Adrian is proof that people really will believe anything someone with an annoying British accent tells them.

2) Elitist totalitarian structure?

You're either in or you're not. Their followers are destined for unbridled success. Everyone else is destined for catastrophic failure. It's like the classic fear-based "join or burn in a fiery-forever BBQ pit" marketing of another well-known cult. Brother Adrian is known to rule over his seminars like a maniacal despot, banning his students from food, water and bathroom breaks, then laughing when they pass out or soil themselves during the "Actuality Analysis". It's all part of the 'process'.

3) Promise of higher power?

Their catchphrase is "Discover the divine within" so, yes, case closed. Success, happiness, enlightenment, sexual prowess. Children of the Mountain can give you it all... for a price. They even claim to enable you with the power to rid yourself of all disease. Cancer cured by webinar. Not bad, if it worked, which of course it doesn't. The only thing that cures cancer is weed. But Adrian says when the course doesn't cure cancer, it's your fault for not commiting fully to the program.

4) Mind control techniques?

It's their modus operandi. People emerge from their weekend courses as glassy-eyed drones babbling on about "embracing their futility". Brother Adrian and the other CoM teachers will attack your character, find your weaknesses, make you cry, brainwash you into believing you're in the grips of a desperate personal crisis... then convince you that the only solution is to buy more of their "self-awareness training".

5) Heavy financial commitment?

This is the self-help gravy train, powered by pressure selling. You'll pay a couple of thousand for someone to tell you that your life's a miserable failure, then countless more on psychobabble to fix it.