Love and Heartbreak in a Cult

Deeply personal blog entry, this one, so if you only come here for the usually goofiness you might want to reconsider reading ahead... Last night I got to facedown a ghost from my past that was a cumulation of almost all of my worst experiences and had a profound affect on my life of the last 5 years. I can't talk about it without giving some history, in fact this subject needs a book but I will boil it down to a few paragraphs. This is your last warning! This gets pretty dark. However, the event last night was rather anti-climatic.

1999 was a terrible year for me. It was ushered in by my mother's illness turning from a tragedy to a monstrosity, and also the first threat of divorce over my precarious marriage. In the next year, my mother would die, I would find near-complete proof that my wife was cheating on me followed quickly-but-not-quickly-enough by our divorce, the stress at work would mount to near horrific levels, and a co-worker would commit suicide. These came one after another in a strange rythmn, right when I was coming down from the shock of one thing, the next would happen. I spent the year in unfeeling.

The meditation and yoga I had always turned to as a source of deep contentment was starting to unravel, and I began to "wake" from meditation as if waking from a nightmare. The feelings I could not physically feel during the day or even in my dreams was errupting out in my meditation, and especially during our weekly gatherings. A key feature of our style of meditation is that you feel emotions without them being attached to a specific memory or event. I would come out feeling as if I had just watched the most terrifying and personal horror film, but unable to remember a single scene. This is why it is so important for your group to be a place of trust and healing, you shut your eyes to this intensity, you want to open them to love.

Insanely enough, that year was also peppered with minor horrors that would have been hard enough if they were to happen all by themselves. In a series of events that I can only summarize as my ex-wife is a truly, truly evil bitch, she actually turned this group against me, through lies and vague accusations. I came to our weekly meetings to see harsh judging glances coming my way, and in my terrible state I was thinking I was beginning to go insane. Was this practice that I had done for so many years playing tricks on me? Surely these wonderful people would never play such stupid middle school games, there must be some other reason, some trick my mind is playing on me.

But there wasn't, it really was stupid sophmoric bullshit, and in a couple of months I wasn't welcome at some of the meetings, and some were calling for the resention of my status as a teacher. It came to a head when the head of the local group told our master in India that I was leaving the organization and stopping my practice. Well, a month later I saw the "master", broke down into tears at the pure bullshit of it all, and said, simply, "My mother just died and I'm getting a divorce." He said to me, "You must keep doing the program," i.e, for those of you not following along, he mouthed to me the rumors told to him.

Finally, we get to the meat: When this wise man said those words to me, I instantly lost my faith. It took less than a millionth of a second, it happened so fast. This program that I had been doing for 8 years, which I had gotten so much enjoyment out of, was gone utterly in a mere moment, blown away by the Guru himself. I was not his student, he knew nothing of me, even after all this time. My only link was through these teachers, rich white people who were constantly in a power play to out-manuveur each other for the master's attention.

Last night was the first night I had seen the guru in 5 years.

I went for closure, and to confront the man. That weird little desire is something my sister immediately understood but my friends could not, even after many hours of explaination. I wanted to speak my peace, to be heard. I felt, in 1999, like I had no right to be a human being, no right to ask my wife to stop cheating on me, no right to even ask to keep my marriage. Our friends in this group ridiculed me for this.

Of course, that's not what I was allowed to do. This guy, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, has become a major international figure. The group for this tiny 1 day visit was 5 times the size of the festival I first saw him at, 15 years ago, during the biggest festival of the year. He spoke briefly that he was going to have a worldwide gathering in India next year, and expected 2.5 million people to show up. I didn't see anyone I knew last night, none of the major players in the organization that I had practically grown up with, save a few that I barely know and barely tolerate. It doesn't matter, I felt free. I did this for myself, and I looked within for my own happiness. That's a lesson I learned from my divorce, I never felt like I was in love with a lie, but that I loved because the love came from myself. This organization taught me that. This man is not an evil person, he is very wise and has a lot to teach the world. His organization just couldn't help me at the worst time in my life, no biggie! Glad to put that behind me, so long and thanks for all the fish.