Most of you joined for selfish purpose

Dear Brothers

Accusing the Brahma Kumaris or any other cult or cult-like organization promotes dreams to your ego. And if you fell for it, it is your fault. Even if you do counselling and get out of the trauma, you are going to fall for another trap.

Most important is to correct your behaviour and selfisness, and then you will not end up loading yourself with PTSD or sorrow.

Thank you

Jay

... promotes dreams to your ego

You make a statement as per the above quote then go on to say that people will "end up ... with PTSD or sorrow".

It sounds very accusatory and condemnatory but all without any reasoning or evidence.

I am not saying I disagree because I cannot say I understand what you're saying here.

This post is no more helpful than a BK writing the opposite, that leaving the BKs was because of "ego" and those who leave will experience PTSD and sorrow, expecting us to simply accept that statement because they said so.

And if you fell for it, it is your fault.

I guess that's the attitude that the Indian call centre scammers have when they con some old lady in America into handing over $1,000s of Dollars via some kind of PC fraud?

"If you fell for it, it is your fault".

Honest question, where do you draw the line?

Rape victims ... it is your fault.

Child abuse victims ... it is your fault.

Financial fraud victims ... it is your fault.

is not that a common theme within BKism and the Hinduism where they borrowed it from, of "karma"?

Karma ... if you fell for it, it is your karma.

Fault/karma what's the different? Is your fault if you were not born infinitely wise? Is it a child's fault if they are immature or naive (or just born to a BK parent)? Is it a woman's fault if she is weaken than a man? It is an old pensioner's fault if their cognitive powers are in decline and they are easy to fool?

It seems to be a very unsympathetic view of life that ignores what we know about brain and personality development.

To Be fair ex-l, I will admit that I "fell for it" and, yes, ego had a lot to do with it. But I understand that in my own terms, probably different to yours, Jayadeepan.

The world is full of appeals to ego, just look at advertising, or just wanting to be liked. However, I don't understand the rest of what Jayadeepan wrote. I did not experience sorrow or PTSD after leaving the BKs. Quite the opposite. Those were the feelings that were growing the longer I remained a BK, too long, until I finally realised I was lying to myself. That the "Golden Aged new clothes" (as per the children's story about the Emperor) were imaginary, sold by smooth-tongued charlatans. I was naked, it was only my choosign to adopt beliefs and contriving rationalisations that made Gyan and BKism the best explanation of my life experiences.

I don't know about you, Jayadeepan, but when I joined BKs it was as a young idealist looking for experiences and I found this group of people whose company I enjoyed. I experimented with the teachings and practices and found there were experiences to be had. It was the explanations offered about what those experiences actually were and what brought them on that was sold to me.

The interesting thing about cults and religions, all philosophies and ideologies for that matter, is that they are each in their own way a "Great Lie", i.e. the best lie is that which is closest to, but not quite, the truth. Some get closer to the whole truth than others, but none can completely "be" the truth because truth is bigger than any explanation.

Because we choose to focus on the aspects of "truth" within that description, we inevitably blur the rest, we ignore the gaping gulfs of credibility. Why? Because we want it to be true. We suspend disbelief because we are enjoying the story.

We join up because of ego, i.e. the better kind of ego that wants to find an identity; how do "I" fit into this complex and often crazy world, the ego that wants to to self-improve, wants to find a path that suits MY sense of what I think SHOULD be.

Then the ego of wanting to be right (I SHOULD be right) pops up, the ego of not wanting to admit one made the wrong choice. So we practice as advised, we keep churning - rationalising - "making effort" because that's how we will resolve the contradictions and fill the gaping holes our instincts are picking up on. We begin to feel the cognitive dissonance within ourselves. And if we can be honest with ourselves, we realise BK life is no longer serving us. But again, rather than just letting go and moving on, ego sees us wanting to blame the other.

So maybe in this way you are correct, Jayadeepan. But we may as well blame our parents and school teachers the community, the world, i.e. anyone and everyone but ourselves. That is, we are just like the BKs who blame kali yuga, Maya, our cycle of karma for the dissatified and sorrowful condition of ourselves and the world. The arrogance is in thinking it's all those other things, not our choices.

But I wonder, jaydeepan, are you projecting? Is this a cry for help? Do you feel anguished that maybe what you say of others is actually about you? Are experiencing anger, sorrow or some kind of PTSD? If so, be honest. We are all here to support each other.

An interesting and valid way to end that reply, Pink.

So let's re-write as a personal note ...

Dear Brothers

Accusing the Brahma Kumaris or any other cult or cult-like organization promotes dreams to my ego. And if I fell for it, it is my own fault. Even if I do counselling and get out of the trauma, I am going to fall for another trap.

Most important is to correct my behaviour and selfisness, and then I will not end up loading myself with PTSD or sorrow.

Thank you

Jay

"Everything that happens to you is all your own fault" is a very BK point of view. I disagree. I don't believe in such a simple, mechanistic view of karma. For me, it's the language of everyone from con artists to domestic violence abusers, gaslighting their victims and blaming the victims for they, the abusers, are doing to them.

At the very least, we have to draw a line somewhere of when someone becomes completely responsible for their own decisions and I am not going to be the one to blame children, the elderly, the naive, the needy for being victimized.

I'd love to meet to a New Age guru pushing that theory in order to slap them hard in the face, and then tell them it was their fault that I did it. And keep doing it to see what they would do.

I suspect that they'd quickly want to stop believing in the theory!

:I'd love to meet to a New Age guru pushing that theory in order to slap them hard in the face, and then tell them it was their fault that I did it. And keep doing it to see what they would do.

Now that's something I'd like to see. Make sure you video it and share it!

I am not sure it's a legitimate equivalence to compare this topic - adults joining BKs due to ego and any suffering that ensues when they decide to leave BKs - with the tactics and behaviours of blatant abusers in family and other power imbalance situations.

I can see your point if you were arguing against the BKs' rationalisations as to why the ex-BK may be suffering, or what they tell us when we are BKs, but your argument also seems to remove all agency from the person, especially once they've left and are outside the influence of the cult/abuser. That's where we get into personal psychological needs and where we then exercise our choices of what to do about our experience at that time.

For sure, many will need recovery support but that'll be different for each person, depending on their individual need. Some will work their own way through whatever baggage they're carrying.

I.E. jayadeepan is over-generalising and I think, depsite the validity of what you say ex-l, you are verging on that as well.

From my experience, and observations of BK dynamics and the different people coming and going, I will say that some people "invite" being abused, for whatever reason. Some people want to be told what to do with every aspect of their life, they want to surrender even that which should not be surrendered, one's autonomy.

Some of these needy people are fortunate enough to find their particular BK community is not led by narcissists and sociopaths (and those with their own fragile ego issues) who get off on exercising power, who'll gladly accept "invitations" to exploit those who look to them to fulfill their needs. But unfortunately that is the exception, given we are dealing with group dynamics of a hierarchically-orientated cult - thats even more hierarchically based than the society that gave rise to it.

jayadeepan is over-generalising and I think, depsite the validity of what you say ex-l, you are verging on that as well.

I'll accept that.

My point is really at what age, or stage of personally development, do we become completely responsible for ourself?

I can see how accepting personally responsibility might be useful as a method, e.g. focusing on what you can change (yourself), instead of what you cannot change (others), I just don't accept that objectively all people are entirely responsible for themselves from birth, or that all victims deserved it.

On that aspect, I've found it interesting to look into Indian call centre scams and their victims, and find there are parallels between it, and victims/scammers of religious cults.