Recovering from Transcendental Meditation, part 2012

For many, recovering from TM takes a lifetime.  So if you're still recovering after many decades, don't lose hope, and don't berate yourself.  It's normal.

I hope that some day there will be better techniques available to help people recover more quickly.  Right now, the best advice is to learn about mind control.  Other things that help are:  conversations with other former members, physical exercise, practicing real-life skills that you lost (or never learned if you were raised in a cult), psychotherapy, residential recovery centers, continued reading about destructive cults.  One exit counsellor suggested writing down every single thing you remember from your time in the destructive cult.

Gina (a co-contributor to this blog - see panel on the right) published a post on this blog, ("Psychotherapy with Former Cult Members" posted September 2, 2011;  http://tmfree.blogspot.com/2011/09/psychotherapy-with-former-cult-members.html), in which she informed the readers of a new Continuing Education Units course for psychotherapists.  I was moved to send the following e-mail to the teacher of this course, as follows:

From:  Laurie ------    

Date:  June 14, 2012 

To:  Patrick O'Reilly  

Subject:  Recovery for former destructive cult members

Dear Dr. O'Reilly:  

I am a friend of Gina Catena's, and like her, I am in recovery from the Transcendental Meditation (TM) organization. 

She showed me your excellent internet article on how therapists can help former cult members by encouraging them to learn about mind control.  I am grateful that you are putting the information about mind control and post-cult syndrome (which can masquerade as other mental health conditions) out there, and are offering a CEU course.

Since the psychological community is still at the beginning stages of learning how to help former destructive cult members, and since you are a leader in educating therapists on how to help cult victims, I hope it will be helpful for you if I share three additional steps that I had to go through in order to help me recover from my cult.

1.  I needed to learn information about my particular group - the specific lies that my particular group taught which kept me a believer.  Even though I already understood mind control, I still was a believer because of the 600 research studies I had been taught about, which proported to prove how marvelous TM was for every aspect of every person's life.  I had to read anti-TM websites to discover that TM experiments were usually biasedly designed and/or biasedly conducted in order to produce only positive results.  Also, I learned that some research had shown that TM sometimes produces unimpressive or harmful results, but that the TM organization had kept that information from us.

2.  I needed to talk to other former TMers who had been at my level of involvement in TM.  Even though I had spent over 20 years telling my TM experiences to sympathetic friends, therapists, and former TMers who had been at lower levels of TM involvement than I, TM memories continued to flood my mind.  However, when I finally found peers, and told them my memories, the memories finally stopped.  

3.  I have been in psychotherapy for many years.  By working on family-of-origin issues, TM has less and less hold over me.  

If these additional steps were necessary for me, then I assume there must be others out there who also need more than just education about mind control in order to recover from their destructive cult.

I hope this information is helpful to you.  Please feel free to contact me if I can be of assistance to you.

Please keep up the good work!  Thank you for what you are doing! 

Sincerely,

Laurie --------" 

I have been out of TM for 31 years, and I am still recovering.  As Sudarsha, a co-moderator for this site, has said, "You have to claw yourself out of the TM mindset, ('Maheshism') inch by inch."  For instance, it was only last month that I realized that part of the reason I eat a lot of nuts on my morning cereal is because Mahesh said that nuts were very good for you.

A problem I still have 31 years after leaving TM is my difficulty in learning new skills from books.  Before I got into TM, I had taught myself guitar, typing, shorthand and crocheting from books. But since leaving TM, I find it excruciatingly hard to learn new things from books, , like how to use a  computer or follow a recipe.  I think this is because when I try to learn something new, it activates the feelings I had when I was learning to "fly:"  "If you're don't 'fly' twice a day, you're wasting your life."

What stratagems have been helpful in your recovery from TM-brain?  In what areas are you still recovering?

re: Laurie's Reflections on Recent TM Publicity

Morris said, in response to Laurie's recent post:

• on TM-Free Blog: Reflections on Recent Transcendental Meditation Publicity 19 hours ago
  I'm not as familiar with the internal dynamics of the TMO as some others, and I have no doubt that much of what is said is true. But most of the things being discussed happened many years ago, and Maharishi is no longer here. I don't see what the harm is in seeing if learning TM actually can help kids with ADHD learn better without drugs, or help veterans who have suffered traumatic experiences in a war get over their fears and lead productive lives again. I agree that the quote mentioned is pretty much over the top, but so what? Reading some (not all) of these posts, it seems that some of the people making them want TM to be of no use at all, even in these cases, because if it is, it would invalidate their opinion of the TMO and MMY (which it wouldn't, in my opinion).
  Morris

I think you have raised an interesting point of pertinence to which I wanted to respond. I have no doubt that there are highly divided ideas, opinions, feelings and emotional responses when it comes to TM, the TMO and the on-going battle between those who would continue to propagate the faith (so to speak) and those who would happily see its backside burn in the fires of gehenna. There are always extremes. Avoiding both, I think, is about the best we can hope for.

Mourning Raga for a Catastrophy

Oil and Wind and Water. oy veh!

The image is from today's CNN story.

I wish there were a way to show this to Guru Bev or Raga Hagelin and inquire, straight faced and in all sincerity, for an explanation of Inwincible America. Course, the answer, today, is obvious: it ain't over 'till it's over. - which both Guru Bev and Raga Hagelin have no doubt practised to perfection in front of a mirror, facing east, of course.

By the time it's over other much more important questions will need to be asked, such as how to prevent this in the future. Lucky for Guru Bev and the imaginary raja, Hagelin, by then no one will bother with such nonsense as Maheshism's inwincibility; or will this still be an actual belief in the quasi-religion of Maheshism and the dogma of worshipping Mahesh's ego?

Don't forget to click on the Title to find out more about the ridiculous beliefs of the TM organization.

Questioning my real motives – why did I start TM, why did I leave

I have taken a couple of comments from other sections of this Blog to set up this new thread where, if anyone wishes, s/he may talk about the why’s of starting TM and, if it is the case, the why’s of deciding to leave either the whole TMO shtick or just TM or meditation altogether … and, should anyone wish, to discuss what s/he is doing now, whether some other school of meditation, some other yogic practice or other religious pursuit.

It might also be useful if people could tell us how they feel now in relation to how they remember feeling when they were doing TM/TMSP.

Here follows comments previously made:

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Seeker noted I’m beginning to question my real motives for being here -

I’d like to know more about everyone’s feelings of “motives” for being here. I’ll start: I thought, believed, deeply, personally felt devotion to Mahesh because I thought (on the basis of almost no experience of any kind) that I had found something precious, monumental, real and lasting. This, as it happens, turned out to be false. It simply is not so. Thank you, Vaj, for clarifying this, above, for exactly what it is in a far better writing fashion than my own poor powers of explication could ever manage.

So I forgot about TM and all things Maheshism for a long time and went in search of more and clearer experience and understanding.

Then, as one does, I sort of re-discovered TM and things Maheshistic via John’s excellent Trancenet and, as things are so oft want to do, one thing led to another and here’s TM-Free Blog where I am finding out more and more about how disappointing TM/Maheshism has been for people who didn’t find wearing “transcendental” (ought I to have said vedic ?) blinders all that satisfactory.

When Mahesh said he made his mind like Guru Dev’s, I cannot now help but consider that, like a politician, he was actually saying, I figured out how to stay on his good side, how to manipulate him and his surroundings. When I hear Mahesh sayI could adjust his table, aside from wondering why he talked like an idiot, I now understand him to be saying, not unlike a politician, I wanted to get into his room and snoop around.

When I read Paul Mason’s excellent material on Guru Dev, I read about a truly committed individual who was willing to give up everything in his search for something transcendent to the materialistic and “gotta have” world of the flesh — and actually found something that permeated his every word and action. Obviously I only know what I read; I wasn’t present in the Ashram to see how he treated Mahesh who bitched that Guru Dev had been very hard on him and he wowed (why couldn’t the man pronounce his v’s ???) he’d never be as hard on any of his disciples as Guru Dev had been on him. What is the real message there? He got caught again and again trying to manipulate others, to gain personal favours????

The people I knew in India who had attended Guru Dev’s public talks and even been a bit closer to Guru Dev than that were profoundly moved by Guru Dev’s presence and his teachings. They also knew/remembered Mahesh from those days but would absolutely not talk about him. While reasons for this are many and varied, I cannot help but consider that, although Mahesh said he made his mind like Guru Dev’s, the disparity between the two men was blatant, patently noticeable and not at all what Mahesh let us believe.

Aside from sharing my own experiences of Mahesh who liked to tell the truth (“the actor can play god better than god”) and hide his motives in plain sight (“I knew something that would make all the people happy”*), I have found everyone’s contribution to this Blog insightful with respect to clarifying my own experiences of Mahesh and his very, very watered down teachings (yep, Hinduism light, Hinduism for people who’ll believe anything I tell them).

There’s more out there. There are deeper experiences of profound rest and profound wakefulness; there are meaningful teachings out there that exist only for the purpose of helping the individual find her or his own transcendent reality.

____________

* and I knew I could get them to pay a fancy price for it, too

Sudarsha | 06.22.09 - 4:46 pm | #

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Sudarsha, why don’t you start the thread (but not open...give it a title) and use your comment above as the introductory article? Then it can be archived so that we can find it to remind ourselves of why we are here. Also, comments with regard to this won’t steer our attention away from this article under which they now appear...did that make any sense? It’s just a suggestion and I certainly have a few things that I’d like to contribute.

Seeker | 06.22.09 - 5:21 pm | #

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Here’s my 2 rupees (typed while eating lunch at my computer.) Sudarsha, yes, please --- open a thread. Our individual motives here have been questioned more than a time or two (as in “Get a life!” type remarks) by some drop-in TMO-TBers. Let’s open a specific thread on the topic so that they can really have something to chew on!

Karina | 06.22.09 - 5:35 pm | #

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Exellent idea Sudarsha! I was 19 years old when I met MMY, followed him for a couple of years in Europe and “initiated” more than 1000 in a few years and walked away when the powerprogram of siddhis were introduced 1976. Married the most beautiful initiator, had 3 children, had our sex, redwine, meat and holidays. We both live professional lifes in our chosen fields, trying to help fellow humans in trouble to the best of our abilities. Now, children away, and once more we go to India several times a year.... because we are having a good time. Really no problem with TM, Guru Dev or even MMY but BIG problem with organisations. They are like cancer, necrotizising from within...sending out their metastasis in many directions.

I am here at intervals simply because I love the truth... that is my definition of a seeker, might be a side effect of meditating on a Saraswati bijmantra for many years... who knows?, and is spirituality not never to be caught in a static web? That is at least my beliefsystem for the time being. As the danish mystic Emanuel Sörensen alias Sunyata puts it:

Emanuel was a simple man from Denmark.

“I did not belong to any cliques or creed.

I was not attracted to their magnetism.

What words will you use, when you, walking the

path alone, meet crossroad souls?

This Lion spontaneously

roared out his own Wu! language.

I am not alone! he would proclaim... I am all-one!

Joyous ease, innerstanding, delightful uncertainty, affectionate detachment.

Emanuel´s words are easy to innerstand”

However, I had my ups and downs and sadnesses, will properbly have in the future, and I love to hear how you are all doing!

Bjarne Hansen | 06.23.09 - 4:09 am | #

New Books About Guru Dev

Paul Mason has published a set of three texts on the life and teaching of Guru Dev.

These are available at http://www.paulmason.info/gurudev/gurudev.htm (see new book!)

I am in no way connected with the production of these texts and in no way benefit from their sale, but I wanted to let everyone know that they are available.

For me, there is a significant distinction to be made between the heuristic presentation of Maheshism and the far more traditional grounding of Guru Dev. While everyone will have to come to his or her own conclusion upon studying these texts, I know that Paul has made every effort to find the most meaningful translation and to supply every photograph and illustration available.

Sudarsha

The late George Carlin

Our local newspaper published some of the great quips of George Carlin. I couldn't help myself: two of them seemed to be speaking to those of us who haven't managed to see things the way Mahesh had had in mind. I thought I'd share the quotes and, maybe, we can make of them whatever we want. After all, Mahesh can hardly be the only one capable of doing commentaries! :)

I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it.

Regarding "the beauty of the written word"

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Not sure, but I think we just might have some thoughts along these lines.