He describes the contrast between growing up as a non-Iowan in Iowa. How do you tell your current friends that you learned to fly when you were 17? Why do local Iowans think "you're not from around here" when you really did grow up in their backyard? He eloquently describes coming of age surrounded by cornfields, idealistic ex-hippies who believe they bring world peace by holing up to bounce on padded foam for hours daily, shmoozing with visiting celebrities, and his peers' angst.
Click here to read Willy's : Growing Up in Utopia
After years of declining invitations to make a formal presentation at San Francisco's reputable intellectual forum The Commonwealth Club of California, On October 20, 2014 I presented Cult or Benign Cure-all? Life in Transcendental Meditation's Hidden Society
With an illustrated Power Point presentation and screen shots of TMO's active websites, I described the lives of my loved ones and myself in the TM Movement from 1966-2014. By coincidence fifty years of my family life were defined by the TM Movement, even though I physically left in the late 1980s with my own three TM-born children. Without throwing slanderous stones, I shared stories of loved ones as TM's focus changed from mysticism to mystical science, of child neglect, psychosis, suicides, thousands of dollars spent for promises, fortunes lost and the next generation's struggles for self definition. Such stories lay doubt on the David Lynch Foundation's promise of one-shot panacea for Transcendental Meditation in public schools, the Veterans Administration and elsewhere. Listeners might appreciate post-talk objections that were raised by TM true believers.
You may listen to the 45 minutes audio track by clicking here : Cult of Benign Cure-all? Life in Transcendental Meditation's Hidden Society
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