Thanks Joe.  I think that should be on EPO.  There isn't enough about DECA on EPO, and I'm almost finished with mine.  It's close to a final draft, but (you know me) it would never fit in one post!  It has been hard for me to write so I wasn't able to do it all at once and I dropped it for a long time.  That belongs on EPO too.

The whole DECA era is key to how Rawat got premies to do exactly what he wanted, using illegal means, to enslave us even physically --all for his personal gain.  It was so unbelievably sick.

You mentioned David Coyne in anther post in this thread.  He used to drop by at DECA but I was always vague about what he did.  I know his famliy had money and he definitely was a hanger-on PAM type, but he also was an ashram premie living at the Broadripple.  What did David ever do, if anything?  I could never get a straight answer out of the guy and he NEVER did a thing when he hung out at the little IMMCO warehouse.  And I mean nothing.

But, back to your DECA story.  Was it May of 79 that you first went down to Miami or was it later, because if you came to the IMMCO/DECA warehouse after April, 1979, we had to have met?  It was pretty tiny. And my desk was two up from Randy's near the front door.

So, I arrived in Miami a few weeks later, and was assigned to sleep on the floor of a room with FOUR other prmies in the particularly scummy "Algiers" Hotel.  What a pit.  I slept on the floor for a few months.  Not even a foam mat, just the carpeted (dirty) floor. At some point I moved back to the Broadripple where I actually slept in a bed..

There was a lot of shuffling around all of the time.  Once I was out of DECA, but still around DLM (it was still DLM then, not EV yet, right?) I got moved a lot to those scummy cockroach, mold-infested Miami Beach hotels.  Even the cleaner ones stunk.  I did a little stint at the Algiers, too.  They tended to move us around a lot when Initiators came to town so the initiators could stay at the Broadripple, I think.  I moved more times in my life than I care to remember during the time I was an ashram premie.  No wonder I'm such a home-body now! 

I was never told the words "your fired" either, but I was just told that I was out because I was so sick.  It devastated me because I was one of the first to become sick from total exhaustion and I really felt that I was a total failure to Maharaji and every other premie was a better devotee than me.  Of course that was really reinforced when I started processing divorces at DLM so premies (fresh bodies) could move into the ashram and work on the project for no pay. It took me a long time to recover just from feeling like a failure, not to mention getting so run-down.

I still went to lots of the satsang at DECA, when Rawat came there, and for other "events," but I actually began to kind of despise DECA, and way it kind of bulldozed over everything, and looked down on the community premies. 

It's interesting you mentioned that Maharaji told the DECA premies they were better premies. I know he did.  He propped us up to use us.  But, we did get pretty inflated spiritual egos from it too, and I'm sure it showed.  Think about it.  The center of the Lord of the Universe was the DECA complex and we worked there. He gave us all of his attention, on purpose, to get his needs met.   I completely lost touch with the community premies and I was so out of it, I rarely went to satsang in Miami.  I was pumb too tired.  We did think we were "extra special" though, some more than others, too.  I remember there were a bunch of DECA folks that liked going to Miami for satsang and avoided satsang at the Complex.

Now, Joe, the extreme irony your being sent to SF is that when I was transferred to Gainesville, after DECA and my DLM stint, they came so close to sending me to San Francisco.  They told me it was either Florida or California. Damn it. I really wish they had sent me to SF, because Gainesville was such a boring, boring town!  Oh well, just rambling now...

Cynth