Integrity

Hi folks,

... some nice members of the forum have shown an interest in discussing their emotions as a way to integrate what is really happening to our ex-BK lives. I feel good when I read any coment that points us in that direction.

My first and undesirable emotion: it sucks to feel like I do today!!!! I know exactly what I did to feel like this and I am even conscious enough to work-it-out on my own. Nevertheless, ohhh boy ... does it hurt!!!!!

Thanks for being there.

Hi, may I share a Zen suggestion I learnt before Gyan and never forgot to implement?

"You can let the birds of sadness fly over you but don't let them build a nest in your head!!"

Love and take care.

This is a rather valid and sensitive subject, the emotions.

One could be forgiven for thinking that it has been removed from BK teachings. Does that mean that souls are left to work it out in the post BK fall out? This may be one of the most beneficial aspects of these forums for many. If people don't express themselves, others may continue bottling things which don't have to be in there. Perhaps we don't have to go around thinking like a BK when we are no longer "practising".

Have mercy on the self.

This is a rather valid and sensitive subject: the emotions

I think that BKs and family are the masters in controlling the emotional-human-side and their code of conduct is prepared to achieve just that.

The problem for me now lies in that, I no longer can follow any "code of conduct" and my emotions are again alive. So, that is both positive and negative. The only thing I know how to value is my inner heart and the love that emanates from within. Any human being deprived of this choice in whatever form expressed is dead emotionaly.

Thanks for your replies. Somehow they helped to pick me up a bit.

This is a rather valid and sensitive subject, the emotions. One could be forgiven for thinking that it has been removed from BK teachings. Does that mean that souls are left to work it out in the post BK fall out? This may be one of the most beneficial aspects of these forums for many. If people don't express themselves, others may continue bottling things which don't have to be in there. Perhaps we don't have to go around thinking like a BK when we are no longer "practising". Have mercy on the self.

Thanks Sparkal. Actually it has been removed entirely. I started to wonder elsewhere whether we Ex-ers were always destined to be such? And if that is the case what specialities do we bring to the 'party' so to speak? What aspects of ourselves were not nurtured while inside the BKWSU for all the talk about Gyani life being the idea life? The emotional ones of course.

The longer I stay around here the more I get glimpses of new unlimited possibilities. Possibilities that DO incorporate, but also go even further beyond the boundaries of any bog-standard, BKWSU oblox.

As card-carrying BKWSU students they tell us that we have to develop a far-sighted and unlimited intellect! And then they go and prescribe the regions in which our intellects should pasture! Typical control freakery.

Ah well, being abek it never seems to take too long for song to pop onto the turntables. Anyone remember this one. What beautiful harmonies! Surely soulful enough to make us feel like dancing with delight and freedom! Well me at least because I get so emotional, I don't know why I like it, I just do Woo hoo hoo ... I remember the way that we touch, I wish I did not like it so much uh ...

...This is a rather valid and sensitive subject: the emotions

Yes sparkal, I agree entirely ... Anyone who had a heart would look at me and know that ... Integrity is what we are all looking to manifest. This too has to be a journey onto the understanding and clarifying the 'urges that lie within'. Is it not the case that any God-seeking human is in fact delving deep, deep into the self so as to unveil what? Our god-loving nature me thinks! Is that solely a head thing? Or is too an aspect of Royalty that is to be found at the very heart of integrity?

The problem for me now lies in that, I no longer can follow any "code of conduct" and my emotions are again alive. So, that is both positive and negative.

In my opinion, I think BKs are as good as anyone else controlling their emotions. On the other hand, they think they are more than others because they have God with them. It's very easy to do anger management from that point of view. "I am the sun of God but you are just a Shudra, so I will stay under control while you try to make me explode in anger." And, yes, it gives you a sensation of power because you think you are in control. In the end of it, it's just arrogance actually.

So allow yourself to feel whatever you're feeling and then think what you want to do about your emotions. But you're not less just because you feel anger or lust or whatever you feel. It's much harder and much more noble to accept that you are a human being, stay in the real world and live in it that to come up with a fairy tale, deny everything and just go on thinking that you’re much more than the most of fellow humans and God is preparing paradise for you just around the corner. And now again, who is the hero? The one that stays and fight or the one that runs away to the fairy tale?

[And now again, who is the hero? The one that stays and fight or the one that runs away to the fairy tale?

Believing in a fairytale is just the easy way out. Remember that most BKs join because there was just about not much left. The love bombing was the first thing they experienced, for most even for the first time in their life.

We all want to belong to something, one goes to a sports club the others joins a cult.

Jan

The problem for me now lies in that, I no longer can follow any "code of conduct" and my emotions are again alive. So, that is both positive and negative. The only thing I know how to value is my inner heart and the love that emanates from within. Any human being deprived of this choice in whatever form expressed is dead emotionaly.

Evaluating risk in food, in approaching others, in love and in relationship, has changed dramatically for me since, like you, I left off following someone else's "code of conduct."

I think it is important that feelings can tell a different story than the rationalizing, language-generating part of ourself that can often be a part of our self-protection (i.e. feeling-denying) mechanisms.

For BKWSUs, to have one's action plan unseated by feelings is diagnosed as a weakness of intellect. For those who are living in acceptance of themselves, this phenomenon can also be a pathway to a deeper discovery and experience of oneself in relation to others. The simple formulas of the BKs may help those with ready faith. Certainly no longer professes to be helpful for psychological problems, which are also afflictions of the spirit.

If you never allow yourself to risk making a mistake, to risk making a decision without certainty over the outcome, you are not allowing yourself to live. The powerful emotions that BKWSUs fear will destroy us can be powerful, creative, loving forces in our lives. After all for many of us, our passions constitute our life, in direct extension of the way a growing child learns to speak and to walk and many other things about himself through pursuing activities he finds pleasing.

In contrast to BKWSU teachings, many of us who have left the BKWSU, believe that such intense emotions as a mother bonding and caring for her child, can be a source of richness, rather than what they tend to characterize as toxic, harmful, I guess that's what the Murli speaker intends when he describes Iron-Aged children as 'snakes and scorpions.'

To be observer may be a good thing, but to be dissociated observer--which internal soul incantations can maintain--is not consistent with taking charge of one's own life. "No we don't use The Knowledge this way, a knife can cut vegetables and it can kill."

That is my point, they are already thinking about killing, I never thought beyond cutting vegetables. Like doctors, they thrive on people wanting to prevent negative outcomes. Constrain yourself with this discipline to prevent that risky outcome. But devoting oneself to avoiding negativity (developing the intellect) is not a guarantee of developing positivity. I am not suddenly a kind of shellfish that suddenly filter feeds only the good. This part of the BK life was a sham for me, although I lived for years in total faith. Life is about creating, not merely filtering in the effects of company like an oyster filters seawater.

As the BKs admit, life in the BKWSU family will only be acceptable to a rare few who can experience satisfaction within the renunciate lifestyle. Not all, even those who pray to God or talk Yoga to God will be rewarded magically. Nor are BKs uniquely elevated over other "ignorant souls", as I believed when I first joined.

Joel wrote something like: "Life is about creating and not merely filtering-in the effects of other's company, just like an oyster filters seawater." ... I think I can stick-to-that!!

Integrity is all about being oneself. But for me, at times, it's just a huge effort to stay AWAY from the negativity. I know the negativity of others is attracted by (surely delusional) fears.

Some therapists are treating children who are victims of overwhelming parents with alcohol or other pathologies. It creates in the personality of the child the "need" to be alert of other's behaviour and thus acting like an oyster (read again Joel's coment above). Coming to terms with our desire to be loved is a tough journey.

Since this forum revolves aroud the BKWSU topic, I must warn my Brothers; In my experience, going around acting like a BK/PBK/ex-BK/ect., without having resolved one's "childhood emotional wounds" is dangerous. I have a tremendous faith in an ocean of love (God), but with-out developing more faith in me and the "drama" (Life), then what ...??

Thanks and love ya all folks ...

in the night

Whilst on holiday, I borrowed a book from the hotel library on eros in ancient Greece. It was not that interesting, but some lines drew my attention, The author reminded us that ancient philosophers, and especially Plato in the "Symposium", which I haven't read in adult life, were interested in understanding human emotions, rather than suppressing them. A different method from denial!!

Reading that I felt kind of embarassed about the coarseness and superficiality of BK systems.
If we believe in The Cycle, sure philosophers that lived 500 yrs BC or so, were closer to the Golden Age, but how come that the Confluence Aged BK organisation claims to be a promoter and creator of the New Age, and yet is so pervaded by tyranny, despotism, lack of democracy and obscurantism?

Whilst on holiday, I borrowed a book from the hotel library, on eros in ancient Greece. [...] ancient philosophers, and especially Plato in the "symposium", which I haven't read in adult life, were interested in understanding human emotions, rather than suppressing them. A different method from denial!!
Reading that I felt kind of embarassed about the coarseness and superficiality of BK systems.
[...] how come that the Confluence Aged BK org claims to be a promoter+creator of the New Age, and yet is so pervaded by tyranny, despotism, lack of democracy+obscurantism?

BKWSU is exactly what we see now. They would say 'we don't teach denial or suppression.' It is up to us to decide.

Much of BK culture/knowledge is a compendium of the self-help philosophies popular at the time of its establishment. Thus, the chart, having "court" where you confess your pecadilloes, ritual cleanliness, faith that an outside power, God, can absolve you of your sins if properly invoked, belief in the efficacy of 'effort-making'.

It is the old-school that says: if you are not succeeding in A, it is because you are not making sufficient efforts. If you cannot make sufficient efforts to succeed, we understand that it is not in your fortune.

The mystical, magical meeting of Father and Children through the Murli, the divine BK family etc. is the furniture and the veneer of BK life. Underneath are attitudes toward life that were quite conventional at the time, after making allowances for people leaving their families and the unique code of belongingness among BKs.