XBK Chat (unofficial archive)

tomas · Joined: 18 Feb 2006 Posts: 9 Location: Bronx, New York

hi everybody this is tomas again. as some of you might know i am pretty new in this forum therefore i'd like to give a sort of autobiographical summory so you'll have a better idea of who tomas is and where i come from. first i'd like to start of by saying that i am a 23 year old US Navy veteran born in Dominican Republic and raised in the Bronx, New York. i came to become a bk because when i separated from the Navy i had an existential vacumn inside of me. i read many books and articles on such subjects psycology, philosophy (friedrich nietzsche lol), books of the bible, the gita and the coran etc. althought a lot of these plubic knowledge did satisfy my intellectual curiosity, it didn't answer the questions that were eating me up inside. the elusive self knowledge that the ancients were suggesting was becoming a 24 hr a day obsession. i ask my human contacts about the subject and they either had no knowledge of it or just didn't care about it. i became depressed because of my unhealthy habit. my mother took me to a local hospital here in the bronx where i saw a psychiatrist. the doctor suggested that i take psycotheraphy with a local psycologist. before i could go for my first session i started to look for a place that thaught hatha yoga, so i could make my "runner's limb" more flexible, but i couldn't find one. my mother had a friend at the time who "practice yoga" but when we came her house, which is a subcenter, she told me that the yoga she thaught was a yoga of the intellect. she said this yoga was more important that the classical hatha because you can't be truly fit unless your mind is fit. this sounded pretty good then she told me about the foundation course. i agreed to take it. as i was taking this course i felt that everything they were talking about was true and supported what i had learned from my previous reading endouvers. after the foundation course there came the murli. when i heard the murli i felt that i wanted to meet whoever had written such wisdom (whether it was god, bapdada, brahma Baba, dadi gulzar,krishna, narayan or some old hundi guy in white close that resembled gandhi). within 2 weeks i had given up all meats, garlic, onions, liquors, woke up for amrit vela, did traffic control, went to all morning classes, gave donations, meditated before bed, before eating gave dhristi to the food and made effort to practice difficult brahmacharya. i was hoping to be approved to go to madhuban for a meeting with God however i wasn't approved. i was very disappointed. i felt i could no longer delay my education so i left the country and move to Dominican Republic DR to study medicine like many of my lokiks had in the past. in DR there was a sister trying to stablish a service center so i thought i would help her, but as time went by i felt the obligation of being close to the divine family. i planned to move to a place in the capital near to where the sister was. unfortunately a series of tests came in front of me, which i flunked (lol),that proved to ender of my auspicious efforts . you see Dominican women are very luscious and it was difficult for me to meditate with pure thoughts in a place where everywhere you turn all you see is vuloptuous Dominicanas. these tests was what got me out of the bk realm. i ended up in a situation whereas i didn't want to look at people at all so i wouldn't have to see their bodies. i didn't want to go out because the evils of maya would make fall from grace. anyways my father who is surgeon took me to see a psychiatrist. the doctor asked me why i wouldn't eat the foods they cooked for me and i answered that thoughts influence the purity of food and i only ate foods made in the remembrance of God for this was the only way that we can become pure. the doctor diagnosed me schizophrenic paranoid and ever since then i have had to take medications for the "condition".i moved back to the US. i tried to live within the maryadas in hope of returning to Baba and the family but i had to be hospitalized in a psych ward because the medication i was taking were making me drull and hellucinate. while in the hospital i decided that this bk stuff isn't working for me therefore i stopped meditating and started eating meat because the veggies were horrible in there. after a month i came out of the hospital and was appaled to the thought of making love to a girl and the image of aesthetic beauty of the female body was not an image i wanted roaming in my mind however after a bit of time i was making love my ex girl after almost a year celebacy. i felt guilty at the beginnig but after a little while i just enjoyed myself. i miss the meditation, the pure vibrations and the sense of community in the bk life. the only place that i know that has a similar feeling of community and goodness is chuch, but hate people who talk in the name of god (who gave them such authority). besides i don't believe christ was god because he said he was the son of god just like we are. Does anyone know of a practical form of medition that excludes the dogma? if so please let me know. also if you have any comments or questions regarding this posting please let me know. i look foward to hearing and interacting with y'all

Joel · Joined: 09 Nov 2004 Posts: 102

Thanks for sharing your story, Tomas. Whatever problems you've been having, it seems like you have an interesting life and a direct, colorful way of talking about things.

As concerns meditation without dogma.... if you just want to sit, the Zen people and Vipassana people have silent gatherings--some that last for days!

I am already a bit too quiet to begin with, and have benefitted a lot from the combination of action and resting in Awareness Through Movement classes. It is based on the rhthyms and movement variations that an infant uses in early movement explorations, and can tap into similar amazing learning abilities. I find myself feeling quite peaceful afterwards.

In general these classes are dogma free. Although based on the work of one man, Moshe Feldenkrais, and quite structured in some ways, the exploration is internal, with value on the subjective, and understanding that there are no absolute rules (the first principle is that there are no principles.... of course that is an advanced principle that you won't hear at the beginning Very Happy

)

There are lots of classes in the New York area, which you can probably find for $10 or so for an hour session. The teachers, as a general rule, do not act like gurus; the classes are without much mumbo or jumbo.

Well, good to hear from you. I look forward to reading whatever you might have to share.

--Joel

Sam · Joined: 18 Feb 2006 Posts: 47

Hi,
Great post. Open and heartwarming. Have you tried self-hypnosis? I have a CD which I use sometimes. It starts off, as many self-hypnosis techniques do, with asking you to relax your body then to gaze at a point, real or imaginary, on the wall (or ceiling if you are lying down). It will be very familiar to you as it is obviously so similar to the BK method of open eyed meditation. There is no dogma at all, and people use it just to relax and unwind. These type of self hypnosis CDs and books are widely available. Hope this helps.
Kind Regards,
Sam.

tomas · Joined: 18 Feb 2006 Posts: 9 Location: Bronx, New York

joel wrote

Joel · Joined: 09 Nov 2004 Posts: 102

zhukov · Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 86

primal.logic · Joined: 02 Mar 2006 Posts: 16

Hi Tomas. I think we all probably relate to your story - seeking the answer when all the information or 'knowledege' in the world doesn't satisfy. If you haven't read the topic 'help please' in xbk issues, I recommend that you do.