I have a longer, more reasoned response that I was going to post but I won't right now. Thank you, Pink, for addressing the subject of the thread. Those are hard questions I am asking but genuine ones and, as you've proven, valid ones.
I don't see BKism as a liberation movement for any race. I think it does very little to uplift those who need uplifted the most, and a lot to exploit those who are already personally or culturally "burdened".
I'd pick that gentleman you mentioned as a neighbour, Pink, before I'd accept any of the light or "wheaten" skinned inner circle of the Kirpalani Klan (...
to quote Indian marriage adverts).
"Did I experience a heightened spiritual awareness and gain any spiritual wisdom whilst studying Gyan?"
A very good question to ask, and keep asking as one reviews one's BK past.
Did you, and did you really? Let's take karma philosophy and square it with the Black experience. Whose fault is their oppression?
So you're saying your local centre and center-in-charge was a nice/laid back/mellow/equal ops one ... fair enough. Defend it. State your truth. But what about also adopting a wider vision and seeing the bigger picture? Life's not all about you and your experience. I think, in my time, we were just on the fringes and, my feeling is, accepted as the lunatic fringes of BKism; tolerated, accommodated, accepted, given additional privileges because of our usefulness or because they did not understand us fully (at that time).
Africa was still the Dark Continent for the BKs in my time. I have no idea what is going on there now. Is any one checking? Does anyone care?
For me, if knew the cult/religion/organisation to which adhered was practising discrimination, I would take it up with the leaders and then leave on principle if it did not stop, and expose it or protect others from it afterwards.
One of the problems with BKism is that one is just so busy/consumed/exhuasted and tied to one's own little centre that one often fails to do just that. And I think that and their "don't look ... don't speak out" attitude is deliberately controlling.
Who even thought as a BK to check on the welfare of others in other centres in other countries? How were such concerns handled and by whom?
I was deeply disgusted when I heard of some of what goes on not just in India to the villagers but in Africa and the Americas (
ask about poorer South American BKs, South America is also dived by light and dark skin).
I think we were encouraged not to perceive the real, not to look and see, and, especially, not to question or challenge anything that might rock the boat or change internal caste order.
Is that "a heightened spiritual awareness"?
I think that as BKs we were encouraged to accept we actually had no rights at all never mind not stand up for any, and this is the legal reality with the BKWSU today. BKs adherents the world over are not "members" of the cult, they have no rights at all. They exists and attended on the whim of an absolutely unaccountable leadership.
If you square that we not being paid for our labour, we were mentally enslaved. I'd even go as far as to say the young or Indian "surrendered Sisters" (especially 'Indian in India') were actual slaves. They were not free. They were not even 'indentured servants who could pay off their lives and earn their freedom with years of labour.
They may have been "house niggers" for the Kirpalani Klan, e.g. had a nice-ish life in the centres and not on the plantation, but they were still enslaved. Golden chains or golden cages are still chains and cages. They had no where else to go, no way out. I'd even say that's still the situation now. The BKWSU has no exit plan for them.
Even within, say, the Black BK community, they are creating class or caste division based largely on money (this also applied to South American), e.g. based on who will ever be able to go to Madhuban, meet their god and get married officially and those who will never be able to.