The Bottom Line

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The Bottom Line

Post02 Jun 2008

The Bottom Line - posted by Joel on November 11, 2004

It’s definitely sad when a person is still obsessing about Raj Yoga this, BK that, ten years after leaving the Yagya. I remember, at the time I made up my mind to go, I had the benefit of the support of another BK who was just deciding to leave her center. Our first real conversation was rather awkward. I was still suffering from BKspeak, some time after we’d traveled together to Kuala Lumpur for a retreat, I supported her decisions to trust her own judgment and to accept her sexuality and orientation. A couple of months later she was there for me as I prepared for a change in my life, accepting my own judgment and sexuality as well.

There were actually a number of steps - each one a big awakening at the time - that led to my decision to pull out. Maybe others would like to share what ultimately led them to leave.

1. Acquaintance with the 12-step process

A student had encouraged me to visit some 12-step meetings, where I saw first hand the liberating power of honest description of oneself in front of a sympathetic mirroring group. 12-step groups do not generally respond with advice, each tells their own story, one story leading to another. This was a contrast to life with the BK’s where sharing ‘negative’ experiences was frowned upon. I remember being told to speak of negative internal stuff was actually harmful, turning others away from God.

Well, in those meetings I saw only good coming from the ability to speak frankly, and I saw maturity, humility honesty and humor far exceeding my own in the souls who’d been in the 12-step process for 10 to 20 years.

2. Acquaintance with the books of John Bradshaw

His most famous work is “Healing the Shame that Binds Us”. It shed a lot of light on the problems my mother faced as a result of abusive trauma in her early childhood. Also it helped me appreciate anger as a force for good. Emotions tell us that something is serious, or draw us to another. I remember talking with Dr. Nirmala on a train ride about the positive aspects of anger. Maybe half an hour. She listened. I was then quite surprised when in class the next morning she gave her usual speech that ‘anger is a fire that burns you and burns others’ as though our conversation had never happened. Suddenly it was clear a gap had opened between my own realizations and the teachings of the Yagya.

3. An NLP session

NLP was the synthesis of two men, Grinder and Bandler, drawing on the work of hypnosis and brief-therapy pioneer Dr. Milton Ericson. An NLP guy came to visit me at the center. We had a session. I thought about asking him to use his hypnosis to help me eliminate my sexual desires. At that moment, I realized that I valued my sexuality, didn’t want to give it up.

Actually supressing sex led to some extremely intense experiences. Particularly I remember that the act of showering, running my hands over my own soapy skin, was highly arousing. Even if I didn’t relieve myself in that instance, I could forsee that the hormones would keep building and building and eventually I would be unable to avoid the consequences. The suppression meant even in something common like riding in a crowded train, the slightest hint of physical contact with others triggered arousal.

In the state of being deprived of physical and sexual intimacy, any contact was highly intense. The contact of hands and drishti in taking toli. I remember that tying rahki was very intense because of the duration; especially recall that Sister Sudesh (London) really held my hand and looked right into my eyes. A nice ceremony, but there was something wrong with touch being so highly rationed.

Look at the sea lions resting in the sun on Pier 42 in San Francisco. They’re all lying in a group, flippers resting on one another. All very friendly, no pressure to work, just flop into the water every so often for a meal. So what’s with all the compulsions of us humans?

The desperation for touch and its electrical effects were signals that all was not well. After ten years of Gyan, I was so turned inward that I didn’t even know how to play with kids. Other BK’s would be playing and teasing while I could come up with nothing to offer. As though my own playful childhood had disappeared, died.

So I remember in Hong Kong it was highly affirming when a forward two-year-old came up to me and took my hand on an afternoon cruise. In another episode, there was a Sister from Singapore living in Hong Kong with a leg that dropped. Hiking one afternoon to a lookout above Madhuban with some friends, I overcame some internal confusion/resistance and took her hand to help her over the rocks. Physical contact, my own decision. Supportive, positive, reassuring. The casual touch that the whole world knows about and, in my version of Raja Yoga, had been denied. For what reason?

4. The Guide on Celibacy

I mentioned the Pathwork lectures in my first posting. The lectures have great titles like, “The Compulsion to Recreate and Overcome Childhood Hurts,” or “The Higher Self, The Lower Self and the Mask.” The lectures following the titles do not disappoint. The speaker, who never identified itself, hence simply called “The Guide” often solicited questions at the conclusion of the lecture. At the end of a lecture entitled “Love, Eros and Sex,” one of the audience asked about someone choosing celibacy for the benefit of humanity.

The answer given was (as I recall) that the choice for celibacy is often based on a fearful withdrawal from intimacy. Intimacy means revealing ones self to the other. There is risk in that. There is no risk in revealing oneself to a God who already accepts you. And wouldn’t the task of serving the world be better accomplished with an understanding of true partnership, which is one of the most rar accomplishments in the human world. I don’t know if this clicks for you, but it did for me.

Soon after I fell in love for the first time as a post-BK adult, able to act for himself. The experience brought such intense feelings that were impossible to reject as wrong. The Guide says the Eros, the force of attraction, gives a temporary hint of what genuine love is. Eros has benefits: will make an shy person outgoing, a miser generous; it breaks through a person’s defenses, brings them to another, can serve as a bridge to a relationship of genuine love which is not a gift, which requires ongoing work to remain fresh and vital. (The most widely available anthology of the Guides lectures is The Pathwork of Self Transformation).

5. Yagya Silence on Mental Illness and Suicide

I remember my bubble got popped pretty hard after encouraging one woman to follow BK disciplines subsequently she went pretty bonkers, her husband called me, yelled his head off at me for messing with his wife’s head. Dr. Nirmala wasn’t able to advise me much, and it seemed no one in the BKs had really planned or trained teachers to how to respond to students with mental problems provoked by joining BK beliefs and practices.

If someone is ready to commit suicide, then why not, for example, offer them counseling or even a morphine prescription to ease the pain? Incidentally, some recent studies have shown that the brain’s physiological response associated with mental pain is identical to its response to physical pain. Both are equally hurtful, and interestingly, access to the most effective and safest palliatives - opiate medication - is severely restricted. I believe it is because access to direct forms of pleasure threatens a society that supports its economy by channeling individuals’ search for satisfaction into work, spectator sports and shopping.

In that context, it’s not surprising that society stigmatizes masturbation and BKs stigmatize all sex, both self-regulating mechanisms that satisfy the person’s cravings. In both cases, the group would prefer the individual’s satisfaction be accomplished through acts that benefit the group. Although such preference may not be stated explicity, it neatly explains some otherwise bizarre cultural biases. That is a much larger issue than speaking about BK and post-PK realities, but my recent experiences helping care for a stroke patient in a hospital ward - to take just one example - has shown me that authoritarian practices are much more widely found in our society than just religious groups.

6. Exit Interviews

As questions grew in my mind over the years, I made it a habit to speak with BKs who had left Gyan, asking them why they left and how they were managing and so on. I had visited Dr. Hansa in San Antonio before that; by that time I was testing various teachers with ideas that made sense to me, but were at the fringes or contradictory with Gyan - for example that anger can be a positive force that alert you to an injustice. It was stimulating to be there, but her lectures were still the party line and I could see my life could now longer be explained and guided by the general and absolute Maryadas.

7. Sleep

I never could seem to get enough sleep. I was tired all the time, and after a nap in the afternoon (one to two hours, catatonic) I would awake feeling even more tired. It was liberating to travel one time and sleep in a center somewhere on the way to Ahmedabad with a bunch of Bharatwasi Brothers who didn’t bother to get up for Amrit Vela. The last couple years, my eyes would close and I would fall asleep nearly every time I sat in meditation, even while giving the course. So it was convenient when the student fell asleep first.

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