Very grateful to discover this site

for ex-BKs, exiting BKs, Friends & Family of BKs and newcomers to the forum.
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audacity

ex-BK

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Very grateful to discover this site

Post30 Oct 2009

Hi all,

I became a BK as a teenager and left at about age 21. I guess when I left I thought I would just try to get on with a normal life and put the BK experience behind me - go to college, get a job, meet new people etc, and that time would heal ...

However, it did not happen and I am kind of embarrassed to say that 25 years have passed and, if I am totally honest about it, I still feel that I cannot comfortably touch people, have friends, or eat normal food etc. I have been suffering alone in silence for 25 years, wondering why my life still seems to be constantly full of serious "bad luck", mental/emotional/physical pain & illness, and an inability to have happy relationships or make long term plans - despite years of therapy, positive thinking, good education and healthy living?

I discovered this site about a month ago, and the "penny finally dropped". I had no idea that so many ex-BKs existed and that the "programming" ran so deep, or that the BKWSU was, in fact, widely recognised as a destructive religious cult. I am amazed at how similar a lot of the ex-BKs stories are to my own. I am just so grateful to the people who started up this site and to ex-BKs who have been brave and kind enough to share their stories. At last I can know that I am not some kind of intrinsically defective person, but that my mind was programmed during my vulnerable teenage years with a lot of very insidious and destructive thought patterns, especially about what would happen to me if I dared to leave the cult.

Now, I hope that by talking about the BK experience and facing the lingering programming I can finally take back my life. It's never too late. I found a very helpful series of videos by an American therapist who specialises in post-cult recovery:


Best wishes to you all.
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rayoflight

beyond BK

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  • Location: Truth.

Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post30 Oct 2009

Welcome Audacity, :D.

You are right, it is never too late to get one's life back. Looking forward to hearing more of your experiences.

Best wishes,
rayoflight

p.s. Thanks for posting the link. Very interesting!
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ex-l

ex-BK

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Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post30 Oct 2009

Namaste Audacity ... and thank you for making such a touchingly honestly and impressive contribution to the forum straightaway. A very interesting video that deserves watching and analyzing further. Thank you. What a sincere, intelligent and experienced sounding woman.
Vulnerability and opening ... what most people are not aware of is that there is a significant percentage of the population that will exploit such openings ... this is something we don't teach our children ... During the hypnotic sessions [the leader] planted post-hypnotic suggestions to make us see ... or deliberate made NOT to see things ... ... you are still susceptible after hypnosis/mediation ... senses directed within ... divided mind ... taught to distrust your own mind ..."

And, to answer a question Cranuta asked about identifying the BKWSU as a cult ... "the characteristic of a cult is non-disclosure".

She talks about the book, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias.

I was thinking on how the BK instill 'post-hypnotic suggestions' into their adherent's minds and I was wondering about how they refer to themselves in the Third Person, e.g. Dadi thinks this, the soul thinks that ... Would this not be just that in action, suggesting to adherents WHAT to believe about them, their power and infallibility all the time?

The whole question of hypnosis is one that we have wrestled with here from when it was first suggested. I do not think that many of us suspected it was part of the technique that the BKs were using and, even those of us who were critical, argued against it.

However, listening to the woman talk and reading over some of the other topics on hypnosis on this forum, and elsewhere, it is inarguable that Brahma Kumarism practise involves some kind of hypnotic practise ... or, if not, something only a few degrees away from it. it is just that others of us have left the possibility open that there are other more 'psychic' elements to it, however those things are understood. And, yes, you are not alone with the lingering remnants of whatever imbalancing was done to us.

Did you become a BK by yourself of through your parents? We you are "surrendered" soul, or sevadhari (which I translate as a Senior Sister's 'unpaid servant'), as a teenager?

audacity

ex-BK

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Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post01 Nov 2009

Hi,
thank you for your supportive comments. The videos by Madelaine Tobias have been so helpful to me starting the recovery process. Here is the link to Part 2 of the series Cult Recovery.


To answer the question:
Did you become a BK by yourself of through your parents? We you are "surrendered" soul, or sevadhari (which I translate as a Senior Sister's 'unpaid servant'), as a teenager?

My older Sister first became involved in about 1980 after she had moved to a larger city to start college. She had embraced Raja Yoga wholeheartedly and later went on to become a leader in many BK centers. So I was introduced to the BKSWU through my Sister in about 1981. I was very vulnerable at the time due to some serious trauma and lack of family support, and the BKs (and my Sister) seemed to provide a peaceful haven.

I moved out of home at 17 and attended teachings at a Raja Yoga center in that city (guided especially by my Sister) for a few months. Then I returned to my smaller hometown - armed with stacks of Murlis and tapes and a new vegetarian, anti-social lifestyle, convinced that nothing worldly really mattered and that rigidly maintaining "purity" and meditation would solve all my problems.

Trying to maintain this Brahmin lifestyle in a small town without the regular support of other members and a teaching center was an extremely isolating experience, especially when what I really needed to heal from the previous trauma was connection and support from friends and family. I ended up very stressed and confused and ended up dropping out of college and leaving home again, and moved around the country a lot attending various BK centers until 1985.

Interestingly enough, I could never intellectually accept the doctrine, and felt no real connection with 'Baba', and resisted the pressure to go to Madhuban - but somehow the teachings had got in deep. For a while, I lived with some BK Sisters and every time I expressed doubt about illogical aspects of the teachings or the contradictory way BKs behaved there was always the same "shame and blame" response - it was my fault because I was simply not following the teachings properly or meditating enough.

When I told a senior Brother at the center that I was thinking of leaving in early 1985, he told me that BKs who abandoned the chance to be gods and goddesses in the Golden Age, and who dared to criticise the BKWSU, would suffer severely as the "lowest of the low". He was very specific and told me that, as a female, I would even be raped during this degraded age as punishment if I said anything bad about the BKSWU.

I walked away in 1985 and I did voice my opinions in a small way about BKSWU as being a cult but, unfortunately, I feel like I have been unconsciously playing out his ugly prophecy for the past 25 years. I really feel like there were some kind of post-hypnotic suggestions planted in my mind - as there is even now a strange passive blankness that comes over me when I try to focus on living a "normal" positive life, and an unbelievable string of "bad karma"/accidents etc that happen especially when I really try hard to break free of the BK conditioning.

I know this will all sound really crazy to someone outside of the BK experience, which is probably one of the reasons why therapy never really helped me. We never got down specifically to the BK subconscious programming. And, while I recognise that I obviously had some pre-existing trauma and unresolved family issues before Raja Yoga (as did my Sister!), I can see that the BK indoctrination made things 1,000 times worse and actually prevented any chance of healing or normal emotional development from my teenage years into adulthood.

I sometimes now have flashbacks to my pre-Raja Yoga years - and I can actually remember when I experienced life in a much more simple, positive, physically active and natural way. I even dare to wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't been taught that touching people was wrong, that children were like "scorpions and lizards" and that the world was about to end.
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rayoflight

beyond BK

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  • Location: Truth.

Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post02 Nov 2009

Dear Audacity,

I wrote Madeleine Tobias an email and she was very quick in responding and her advice was very helpful. I am going to post it for others:

    1) Make a list of the reasons you liked the cult in the first place.

    2) Make a list of the reasons you may have connected to the people/person you created emotional relationships with. If you fell in love with someone, try to see if the connection between the things you liked about the cult were also attributed to the person/people. Oftentimes, relationships end when we leave a cult/group because we no longer have anything in common. Write down all the beliefs you were taught about relationships.

    3) The cult may be powerful but will-power must be even more powerful if we were able to exit.
I am paraphrasing but this is the gist of her advice as I understood it. She has visited this forum/site and mentioned that we are lucky to have such strong support for ex-cult members.

The last piece of insight (number 3) really opened my eyes. It brought a very clear and strong question to the forefront of my mind:

How much power did we unconsciously give to the cult and have we taken back our power even after having exited?
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rayoflight

beyond BK

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Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post02 Nov 2009

She also said to visit the International Cultic Studies Association.

For further information: http://www.icsahome.com

audacity

ex-BK

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Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post02 Nov 2009

Thanks Rayoflight,

you are really on the ball. :D
How much power did we unconsciously give to the cult and have we taken back our power even after having exited?

This is really the crux of the matter.

It's pretty hard to argue with "God is teaching us personally the absolute Truth only in the BKSWU" and this is the one chance in all of history to get it right, or be condemned to an eternal round of endless cycles of ignorance and suffering. That goes in deep - and is hard to overcome. But it is absolutely essential to look at - otherwise we can go round in circles for a very long time with our world view essentially still controlled by the very narrow, illogical and unsophisticated BK teachings. I know, I have inadvertently done this for 25 years. How totally embarrassing!

So, while I am still a little worried that some long-term psychic infestation by dangerous BK spirits may have happened to me during my teenage years, I can see that becoming fully aware of the lingering unconscious belief patterns is the most important step in taking back my power. And, hopefully, once I do this, my fear about the psychic powers of disembodied BK spooks will disappear too.
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Mr Green

ex-BK

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Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post03 Nov 2009

Hello.
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lokila

ex-BK

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  • Location: Europe

Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post03 Nov 2009

audacity wrote: I have inadvertently done this for 25 years. How totally embarrassing!

Hi audacity, I watched the videos of Madeleine Tobias and I want to thank you for sharing. The issue of shame and feeling embarrassed strikes me too. I consider myself as a sensible person and I still find it difficult to understand how I got stuck into the believes of the BKWSU for so many years. I think now, after a long time, I finally have mercy with myself and I understand why I was so vulnerable at the time I surrendered to the teachings of the BK.

It seems to me that many ex-BKs have a background of dysfunctional families. I am one of them and, since I recognized this, I can admit this was a perfect situation to become a cult member. Craving for a Father figure, desperately looking for stability and feelings of safety: the BK was at the right time in the right place.

At this point in time I have already left the BK a long time ago. But it took many many years to recover, to find out why this happened and what happened. To admit one is so vulnerable and to understand why, is a big thing. I needed to go back in time, not blaming the BKWSU for everything but trying to understand why I was such an easy victim. Quoting rayoflight once again ...
rayoflight wrote:it was a bite that fits the wound

Oh, and a big Hello to Mr Green!
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rayoflight

beyond BK

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Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post07 Nov 2009

lokila wrote:it took many many years to recover, to find out why this happened and what happened. To admit one is so vulnerable and to understand why, is a big thing. I needed to go back in time, not blaming the BKWSU for everything but trying to understand why I was such an easy victim.

It is becoming clearer to me that holding the organisation responsible for its lack of care is one thing, and finding out why we fell for their bullsh**, is another.

In regards to the latter, a good question that came up for me recently maybe from listening to the Madeleine Tobias videos, was, "what was I avoiding?"

Falling for the BK spiritual brainwash program seems to have taken many people away from other possibilities in life. I have been wondering if when I met the BK their option seemed to be the best, in comparison to my other options.

By looking at what we did not want because of our dysfunctional past, we stepped onto the BK boat, for a taste of something new and exotic, and got swept away when the tidal wave of BK-isms came to wash us away from shore. It all sounded so good at the time, and distancing ourselves from our dysfunctional past may also have been a great relief, but the further away from shore we got, the more it became a form of psychological kidnapping rather than spiritual healing.
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alladin

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Re: Very grateful to discover these links

Post07 Nov 2009

Hi everybody, and especially welcome to Audacity. Thanks for your contributions. I just finished listening to both M. Tobias' videos (actually, I realized that you posted twice the same video, part 1. I found the second one on google. It is the one 1 min 07 long. Could someone add the correct link, please?).

I found the therapist very humble and down to earth, the language and concepts easy to comprehend. Thumbs up! I enjoyed taking some notes, many points are worth a reflection, and discussion amongst us. Also she suggests books and other organizations who deal with cult exiting. This will probably provide more interesting reading material!

So, may I recommend listening to the 2 videos and have pen and paper ready. At least we are experienced at taking notes, aren't we?

More comments sometime later :).

jann

friends or family of a BK

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Re: Very grateful to discover this site

Post08 Nov 2009

Madeline Tobias

[url=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5302374578884111554&hl=en#]Cult Recovery 202
1:07:03 - 1 year ago[/url]
Madeleine Tobias Part 2 Former cult member, exit counselor, therapist and author talks about overcoming cult indoctrination.

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