TM Casualty Community

Posted for "Ananda":

Hello fellow TMCC’s,

I am in the process of cult therapy.

I have had some thoughts (not in meditation) and self-reflective questions regarding the how’s and why’s of my TM experience. Therefore, I will jump right in. From the very start, I had expectations regarding what TM would do for me. This was even before the intro and prep lectures. As a young child I remember being glued to the TV set listening to every word that MMY said on his ‘late night TV show gig’. What was it, Merv Griffin? Yes, I understood what he was saying. He really wasn’t saying much except ‘bliss’ and ‘in all aspects of life’ and flowers and the lilt of his voice, and giggling, so I knew this was good – very good.

Then there was the meeting at high school held in Room # whatever at lunch. An Initiator came and the room was packed and I went because I didn’t have anyone to eat lunch with that day, I sat in the last seat in last row and I don’t remember anything he said but he was very good looking. Again, this was good – very good.

So then TM came into my life just a couple years later at the simple suggestion of my boyfriend to go to an intro lecture. His drummer and bass player were meditators and he thought they were great people so we went to become great people.
I had suffered from severe depression from the age of 10. At this point, I was 18, so I definitely expected that after starting TM I would become a happy person. Well, that did not happen, my depression stayed, it waxed and waned, and I am still treated for it today. I have chronic depression and after all the years of TM and then other techniques that gave me my constant trance fix, the depression did not go away.

I had felt suicidal at age 14, but not a constant presence. After meditating, those tendencies flared back up and stayed constant for years until about 4 years ago.

I would think the personality aspects I had, these things resulting from a difficult childhood would have improved. They did not. Granted I apparently came to TM rather damaged. Was there someone there to notice? No, you weren’t kicked off a TTC unless you were schizophrenic.

Moreover, speaking of TTC. I went to TTC 5’7” and 138 lbs. That is healthy normal, not movie star normal, healthy normal. After 6 weeks on the Course I went to the “doctor” on the course and weighed myself on a scale someone told me was there. I had lost 30 lbs! Yes and I did not know it. How could I not know of this? I knew my clothes were lose, but I was so spaced out I wasn’t aware of the weight loss. 3 months after starting the Course we changed locations for 1 week and there was a full length mirror in the bathroom. I discovered to my horror what had happened to me and that I had lost another 10 lbs.

Why had this happened? There was no meat; I ate lots of fruit and chard, dhal. I didn’t eat cake and ice cream or sugar laden cereals with room temperature milk. That is all that was available. I craved protein so much I greedily ate the goats milk cheese when it was available, how gross was that? I left the course with nine cavities, which I was terrified to have treated in or around Avoriaz, France.

If the technique was going to enable me to utilize a greater portion of the 90% of my thinking brain that I wasn’t tapping into then why wouldn’t my health improve? Especially since, I was listening to hours and hours of lectures by MMY convincing me that it would.

I think dipping into the transcendent state might just be bullshit. If it is supposed to improve the effectiveness of an individual in the here and now then why were the Initiators I worked and lived with so dopey and loopy?

I love you all my brothers and sisters,

Ananda