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Hey Shereelove, Nice to hear from you, happy you're out. Staying in sounds so very numbing. I can't imagine, really. I'd suggest you read and think a lot before ever cozying up to any religious tradition again. They all suck in my personal opinion. There's a real sense of freedom one has when one calls Rawat on his bluff. I can tell you're already enjoying it. Don't worry. Be happy. 
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Shereelove,
Well done for seeing through this cult. We are all familiar with the feeling of loss, of disappointment, anger... there's whole lot of feelings pop up that aren't exactly comfortable. The blinkers have fallen away from your eyes, and it can be too bright! Lots of new thoughts and strange feelings are inevitable. One day you know the secret of life, the next you don't. It takes some adjusting to. Give it time.
Embrace the uncertainty! It is better not to know, to accept that you don't know, than to take another leap of faith and follow another set of irrational beliefs. Don't mess with those Jehovah's witnesses! You don't need that - though you might need some friends who are able to accept and enjoy the magnitude of life without having to cram it into some arbitrary shape to give it some meaning.
You can have joy without faith, feel meaning without an explanation - nothing is diminished by just being who you are, without gurus and spiritual guides and beliefs in things you don't know. Just try it!
You mentioned that there are days you feel you only have to live for other people. I know that one. Sometimes you feel hollow, as if there is no pleasure you can take for yourself. If the best you can do is just stuff for other people, you might as well give it all you've got ( as you have nothing to lose ), and make it fun for them - I find kids are most appreciative and responsive to such efforts. I think you might find the hollowness is soon forgotten, and you're back in the saddle.
While you are fresh out of the cult, try to stay fresh - don't leap out of the frying pan to somewhere just as hot.
Good luck,
13
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Hi Shereelove, I understand much of what you are feeling and hold out my hand across the pond to you. I too was an over 30 years long premie and left 3 years ago after reading EPO.It was heart wrenching and scarey and I too cried.Since then I have had to rebuild my psyche and my life. We were ensnared in this dangerous philosophy at such a young/formative age that it etched itself deeply into our thought processes.I am still learning that actually my life and the beautiful ( and sometimes ugly) world around me is NOT AN ILLUSION and that it's ok to be angry,to desire and to have attachments.I am learning to wallow in the Maya and not feel guilty.I am rediscovering my true (never mind if it's flawed ) humanity.What a poisoned chalice we were passed ! He was not a Good Guru , you are right but I think we were good devotees ,too b***dy good if you ask me,and we made him successful and rich ....I regret that ! Of course we were never good enough according to him ,but then his job depended on our hopeless dependency. I,too remain a "believer" in a loving transcendent force but would never join a religion or cult again.I am happy to enjoy thanksgiving and praise within the traditions I grew up with and am used to but have absolutely no time for superstition (of the "miracle" variety.......it's Ascension Day next Thursday.....can you honestly believe that Jesus "rose" up to Heaven,I can't and I don't care ),new agey money spinning cr*p and apocalyptic gobbledegook. Despite everything,I am grateful to "the Maha" (I like that ) for returning me to a more spiritual vision in my life which ,now I have got rid of him and his pernicious ideas, I can enjoy exploring. Warm wishes to you Sheree and have a wonderful guru free future.
Modified by lexy at Sun, May 13, 2007, 10:24:00
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Despite everything, I am grateful to "the Maha" (I like that )
for returning me to a more spiritual vision in my life which , now I
have got rid of him and his pernicious ideas, I can enjoy exploring.
Grateful to him ? Can you elaborate ?
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Yes,I am serious. I accept that we must all be rather different from each other and I'm afraid Jean-Michel ,that not only do I prefer Claude Francois to George Brassens (by far) but I actually think that Indian Guru did at least one good thing for me. I was inspired by Shereelove saying : "I don't regret the love and devotion, I take responsibility for what I did, it developed something wonderful in me, in spite of him. It's beautiful but very sad." The key words are "In spite of him".......something good happened for me too among many horrible things.It's hard to unravel the good and the bad, or to know how it would have been if the whole experience had never happened.You see my life had been a bad dream anyway up until the point of meeting the first premie......and here I am....still alive.......and I have no idea if that would have been the case otherwise.One day I will elaborate but now I must go to work! fond regards,Lexy.
Modified by lexy at Mon, May 14, 2007, 04:05:26
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OK, I have to admit your analysis, as based on your own life's history.
But still I'm very much critic on a couple of things.
1/ You say the Indian guru did one good thing for you.
Is it actually 'the indian guru', or rather the spirit of the group, the friends you had there, some fulfillment of the dreams you had at that time, and what you did with all this ?
2/ When shereelove writes There, I've said it again. I don't regret the
love and devotion, I take responsibility for what I did, it developed
something wonderful in me, in spite of him.
She clearly makes a difference between what she did involving her own responsibilty - and 'him'.
That's all very much intricated, but I think it's worth analysing much deeper.
Modified by Jean-Michel at Mon, May 14, 2007, 04:53:04
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This is indeed a difficult area. Having firmly embarked upon a simple poetry and truth seeking lifestyle I was unlikely to fulfill another old childhood dream of making and flying a variety of radio controlled aeroplanes and learning to fly full size.
On principle, as many of my friends of that time did also and have upheld to this day, I gave up any intention of owning or driving a car.
It was feeling left out as I stood around in robes in garages watching premies getting under the bonnet (hood) with M, that I found myself thinking:
"Wait a minute, I hold various ATC badges in engines, flying, etc., have all science A levels, I've taken apart and put together little aircraft diesels etc. I could learn to do this!"
If getting physical was what it would take to get spiritual, I reasoned that that would be what I'd have to do. In the mission in those days you were handicapped if you couldn't drive, unless of course you were an Indian mahatma, but standing around in holy name, actually wasn't what impressed M. It was the world: cars, watches, aeroplanes.
So to get closer to him I began to "embrace materialism" a bit too. I raised a hundred pounds, bought a car and some L plates, turned my driver into an instructor and began worrying about universal joints and compression.
Some of those influences might have been desirable, even eventually beneficial or not, but since they were entered into with deluded expectations I cannot call them wholly good, if only because of the manner in which they came.
I am very thankful that I learnt to drive for example. I still enjoy it and depend upon it. Yet I know, somewhere in myself, I have paid a price for letting my principles be influenced, and have contributed to polution ever since, having, if all the miles were stretched out, circumnavigated the globe many times, though I started driving late.
Saph. (you miss the rush hour traffic that way)
Modified by Lp at Mon, May 14, 2007, 13:27:40
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I'm not sure what that unsmiley green face means......but I feel slightly queasy at having to tackle this subject before the greek chorus ( to quote Nigel some time ago) of yous lot . I'm busy and tired and will just have to try and tell it like it is and be damned as I don't have the energy or time to analyse too deeply. It's so embarrassing to tell the story that I told several times, many years ago, to pad out the ghastly ,expectant silence of satsang meetings.........the gruesome (as it turns out) "People who look for Peace get it" (they "got it" alright !) story of "how I came to knowledge". I can't be ar**d to do a satsangesque river of truth but I'll try to briefly explain. After seven years of Dickensian boarding school life , a large part of which was spent having the life squeezed out of me by numbingly boring and repetitive,compulsory church services,endless prayer sessions,religious lectures and religious education lessons and having read all the scriptures of all the main faiths.....I was a proud and lonely atheist. I had entered that school a believer but they systematically with all that ritual ,and with all those controlling rules and with the lack of any interest in or compassion about one's feelings ,brow beat my faith out of me. So then I entered the big ,wide real world,aged 18, ....with little preparation......and had to survive with very little support ( father had just died, and mother who had given up parenting when I was about two years old and could be found in a casino somewhere). I had a place at University College ,London ( predictably,to read Philosophy) ....but there were several months before I had to take up my place and I had various live in jobs to survive...latterly in London.I frequented dark corners of the city,mixed in bizarre company,drank,took drugs and felt horribly insecure.Nobody ,nowhere, teetering on the brink of danger. This is where I met a self styled ,guru type premie who "love bombed" and bla bla ed me with Maharaj Ji's mind cr*p until I surrendered and decided it must all be true,musn't it? I had a wonderful feeling of relief, of being "found",saved,special ....of all the "suffering" having been for a purpose.....you think of a cliche ,dear reader, and I experienced it.I was filled with a transcendant feeling of joy and love for all mankind........and to cut an increasingly tedious and (to you no doubt familiar) story short,I joined the cult and didn't leave for over 30 years. However ,I never want to go back to being "an atheist" again.For me ,that was one hell of a cold and empty place to be.......and made me prey to those who would do me harm. I don't know if that explains anything......I don't think it was the fellowship of the other premies that was so important (although that opened me up and interested me.......so many different kinds of premies in London) as I thought that they were often pretty strange. It was having a belief system and some kind of hope that was important.....I was saved....what a relief....I could just be a humble sheep and follow the herd ...........Is that what I want to be now ,I hear you ask ? well....I think I've done enough sheepish humility, but I like the feeling of belief and hope and love.
Modified by lexy at Mon, May 14, 2007, 17:50:28
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...but I like the feeling of belief and hope and love. Hi Lexy, Thank you for that. I am of the opinion that just because the `Nollidge` is based upon a falsehood and is led by a con artist that does not mean to say that everything associated with it is wrong. Misguided perhaps. I think we each brought something very positive in the form of hope and love. I`m not so sure about belief, but we all have a belief system of some sort or another so it is an important element too. I enjoyed many aspects of my involvement with the cult. Met some great people. I wouldn`t have stayed so long if there were not some benefits. There were good times and bad, and the long term influence was significant. Take care. Mila
Modified by Milarepa at Tue, May 15, 2007, 07:19:03
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Hey, if we're giving false credit to the fraudulent Lord of the Universe, I can play too, can't I?
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At some time or another I have heard, almost, if not every premie I have ever known say that M saved their life. It speaks volumes for the power of suggestion, though I'm sure some have very real scenarios to tell.
Mataji plain came out and told me that Maharaji had saved mine. Once I'd accepted that, it was easy to flesh out a story line.
Modified by Lp at Mon, May 14, 2007, 13:46:56
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At some time or another I have heard, almost, if not every premie I have ever known say that M saved their life. It speaks volumes for the power of suggestion, though I'm sure some have very real scenarios to tell.
Mataji plain came out and told me that Maharaji had saved mine. Once I'd accepted that, it was easy to flesh out a story line.
Spot on LP. That`s the crux of the whole caboodle for me. The thin end of the wedge that leads to... well, entanglement I suppose. Mila
Modified by Milarepa at Mon, May 14, 2007, 16:15:03
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and welcome to life without the Maha. No pacifiers...but authentic. And you aren't lying to yourself all the time.
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Good Lard! Don't even think about the JWs yet! Think about thinking for yourself and healing. BTW how many people are leaving these days. Lots? I hope so. It will be nine years for me this June.
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"Good Lard!" That's such a funny expression. I thought I would be getting rid of all my fat, laughing buddhas (they're everywhere!) because they reminded me of "him", and the betrayal. Now, I may actually laugh. I suppose others answering on line may give us a clue as to how often people leave. I just have a feeling that they're dropping like lies, I mean flies. As for the JW thing, I have no desire to join anything. My co-worker showed me answers from the Bible to questions that I had, as in thinking for myself I wasn't coming up with any answers to why is there so much suffering? Though, I will tell you, there are some mighty devotees at JW, but I need space to heal; this is true.
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