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book cover for This Incredible Longing

This Incredible Longing

Finding My Self in a Near-Cult Experience

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Pub Date Feb 12 2026 | Archive Date Not set

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Description

A cross between Glennon Doyle's Love Warrior and the classic Yogananda Paramahansa's Autobiography of a Yogi, This Incredible Longing: Finding My Self in a Near-Cult Experience is a memoir about devotion, discernment, and the complicated beauty of spiritual seeking.

Blair Glaser thoughtfully stepped onto a path promising peace and purpose when she found Siddha Yoga, a movement led by a charismatic Indian guru and shaped by a community that would later be called a high-control group. What she found there wasn’t exploitation: it was healing. Within the ashram’s structure, she discovered confidence, calm, and belonging she’d never known.

But when the guru returned to India, cracks began to show. Blair's depression resurfaced. Hypocrisies emerged. A looming exposé of the heinous truths about Gurumayi and her teacher, her parents’ intervention, and a flicker of envy sparked by a “Friends” episode created a reckoning she could no longer ignore. 

This Incredible Longing is a story about the willingness to seek, and how looking for oneself by idealizing another human is simultaneously thrilling and dangerous. It is a story of awakening without bitterness that explores the fine line between transformation and entrapment, and the strength it takes to walk away with both eyes open. 

A cross between Glennon Doyle's Love Warrior and the classic Yogananda Paramahansa's Autobiography of a Yogi, This Incredible Longing: Finding My Self in a Near-Cult Experience is a memoir about...


Advance Praise

“Glaser's writing is evocative, relatable, and humorous. It's a relief to read a book that does not take a hard line for or against a place, but rather explores the greater longing in human beings, and how places and institutions can both serve and exploit at once. Nothing is easy -- Glaser demonstrates this in her heartfelt examination and tender exploration."

–Anna Rollings, author Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl

“What draws us to spiritual communities, and where is the line between devotion and delusion? This Incredible Longing chronicles Blair Glaser's search for transcendence within an organization that promises enlightenment but unravels in scandal. With wit and candor, Glaser reveals the tensions between belonging and autonomy, leaving seekers of all kinds with a nuanced take on faith, power, and personal transformation.”

- Jeffrey Davis, author Tracking Wonder

“It's easy to write about the harmful aspects of having submitted to life in a religious cult. In This Incredible Longing, Blair Glaser pulls off a more difficult and nuanced trick, unsentimentally excavating the twentysomething of herself and the tendencies that made her vulnerable, while also acknowledging what good she took away from the experience. This memoir will resonate strongly with anyone who had a quarter-life crisis that led them to make questionable choices as young adults; anyone who rejected the faith they were programmed to grow up in, in order to find their true spiritual nature; and anyone who ever longed to feel as if they belonged, which is everyone."

–Sari Botton, Oldster Magazine editor and author And You May Find Yourself

"For anyone who has gotten lured into something you are not quite sure about, but you felt the need to follow your impulse to explore it. Blair Glaser’s This Incredible Longing takes us inside the relatable journey of getting drawn into a cult (or something that might be a cult?) with the wisdom and self-awareness of a tale brilliantly told 30 years after it happened. If you are a searcher with longings of your own, you will love this book."

— Sasha Cagen, Author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics



“Glaser's writing is evocative, relatable, and humorous. It's a relief to read a book that does not take a hard line for or against a place, but rather explores the greater longing in human beings...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781956474749
PRICE $20.00 (USD)
PAGES 230

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