Maui wrote:I did a workshop on depression and the inner child and saw immense suffering amongst BKs.
Was this a BK workshop, or a non-BK workshop?
For those of us leaving, when one finds out this is not true, just a cover, synthetic love and then we start to reach some kind of awareness and self actualization ... it is/can be devastating.
I think part of the issues that arise after leaving is that during being a BK we allowed parts of our spiritual self to become extremely weak, like muscles wasting through lack of use.
For example, and this is just a quick sketch done without much thought, self-determination/will, decision making, critical thinking, standing up for one's rights.
The emphasis within BKism is placed upon submission, conforming and accepting ... which turns you into an extremely weak person in a hard world. Within BKism, you are rewarded for fitting in, not causing 'change' (nevermind trouble), not asking questions, not looking too closely.
Despite what they say, it does not prepare you for real life at all because real life ... surviving ... does not reward the BKs' primary values. I would say it turns you into a passive, uncomplaining victim ... and re-learning or re-developing real life skills is hard and difficult, especially when you have no support or guidance, they are not written down and codified, and they are almost opposite to what you were led to believe is "good" within BKism.
To be good within BKism, number you have to be good at being exploited, willing to be exploited, willing even to be duped, not question, accept non-answers and exploited.
That's a self-destructive 'life strategy' in the real world. I am not surprise some ex-BK have killed themselves because they cannot or do not know how to fit it.
I remember feeling like alien, an alien behind a thick glass wall, looking at what felt to be an entirely separate world of which I was not part. There's also a severe unhealthiness, a severely unhuman state of disconnectedness from others that they encourage/d. Never in our history of DNA did we experience such disconnectedness from others - or at least only in the states of the most severe circumstance did we experience it, e.g. after wars/pestilences/crises etc.
It is something else to look at ... like being a networked computer ripped out from all its network wiring and expecting to operate properly on its own. It cannot because its knowledgebase and operational abilities are shared ones. It requires being in a network to work. BKism demands control of all of the network and defines any other network apart from its own as evil/negative/bad/dangerous/not to be trusted.