I used to think this, and then I realized that part of why I believed it was that my teachers believed it. One of those teachers, as far as I can tell, actually did present such an option in some sense; the other was trying damn hard to present such an option but in practice it wasn't available. Even with the one who did present such an option, the reality was that anybody who could have succeeded at taking that option consistently wouldn't have needed what she had to teach! Such a paradox implies that the option being "available" is kind of moot.
I spent years oscillating in and out of two modes in relation to her:
one mode where I saw clearly that she was presenting an option to not be in a cult dynamic, and how much more sense that made than any cult dynamics, and the part of me that was active in those conversations *was* genuinely seeing that and genuinely operating in a non-cult-dynamic way. the issue was that that part wasn't all of my experience, so I also had...
another mode where I was broadly suspicious and judgmental towards her
From my current vantage point, the mere fact that I was oscillating indicates that in the expansive mode where it seemed abundantly clear that she wasn't forcing me to be culty towards her... in that mode, I was pushing the other perspective of mine into my shadow, and from her perspective that looked like progress.
In principle, someone could have connected with her on this level without compartmentalizing, but I didn't know how. Instead, in service of learning how not to do cult dynamics - which part of me could verify first-hand she knew something really important about - I was adopting the same blindspots she had, and this yielded, in the short-term, an experience of remarkably connection and high-quality thinking.
As I integrated my two modes last year, I realized that the way my teacher carried this belief had a profound quality of helplessness to it, and I was immediately resolved not to perpetuate that feeling of helplessness in my own work. It's hard! It's much easier to throw one's hands up and say "there's nothing I can do - this person is choosing this thing that's not workable"
I still think there's an important partial truth to it, but my general sense is that treating it as true, as a teacher, is a profound abnegation of responsibility. Instead, I seek to acknowledge that there always *are* things I could do to co-create a more generative dynamic, but that I don't know what they are in a given situation, or I don't know how to do pull them off.
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part of my model, at this point, is that everyone has blindspots, and blindspots are unconscious but have access to the same social power that the rest of the person has (think Tyler Durden in Fight Club, kinda) and since part of the role of those blindspots is not being noticed, those unconscious parts will tend to try to colonize other people... and will tend to succeed more the more social power someone has, even if they're consciously doing almost everything they can to avoid that happening
and so I realized that if I were to try to be a leader/teacher in a context, this would by default happen with me too, even though I don't want it to happen
which is not to say there aren't things I can do to try to create more space for having conversations about all of it