Jann,
Last year I visited the Asian Art Museum in Seattle. From India were huge marbles, dominated each by a central couple, man and woman, the woman smaller, supported partly on his lap. The tenderness of the embrace. The Etruscan tombs (Etruscan Museum, Rome, Boston Museum for examples) have sarcophagus of stone, the husband smiling, arm proudly around his wife's shoulder as tho to say, "Look at her! is not she beautiful!" In the book Faces of Africa, we can see photos of affectionate touch among many tribes. Also photos of ceremonies during which the people are possessed by gods. Legitimate human religious experience, not the monopoly of BKs by any means. On the web, we have the story of the baby hippo who bonded to a 100-year-old tortoise. In my inbox is a mail with pictures of a polar bear playing affectionately with a group of sled dogs. To see him nuzzling and petting them, then laying down by them, relaxed, on his back.
- Good buddies
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That is the tradition of India that I take for myself now, of tenderness and affection expressed in relationships on equal footing. Meeting people and seeing that in other traditions people's lives are sufficiently rich without BK knowledge helped assure me that the sense of family and unity that I crave I can find independently for myself, without self-denying principles.
They call it 'Easy Yoga'. If you hold hands for too long you might begin to have lustful feelings. That is because this is also the highest Yoga. Those who climb higher fall further, etc. Those who knew the Father and went back to the old world become even more sinful than before.
I am rambling now, so I might as well add for the benefit of Pilatus who asked if any else had psychotic episodes associated with their BK experiences. cannot you see us, limping, hobbling over our crippled psyches?
I think reflecting frankly I had several near psychotic episodes during my BK life. In Madhuban there were numerous episodes of various people having some kind of mental strangeness, all a huge drama of coming to Baba, leaving Baba, coming back again. Some yoyo like that, as some lovers do, together and apart. I am surprised that a person that I introduced to the BKs (gave her the course) left, studied with a healer and then left him for Baba, again.
It is all a crap shoot. Yes, the BKs have their patter, all ills clearly stem from body consciousness. They also have an inordinate number of psyhotic episoides, to the extent that their practices involve with tinkering and rewiring a person's reward system. They teach that they practice equanimity in the face of positives and negatives. They have their special scales and their music. Many continue to dance to the music of his sermons.
One old BK I know barely eats and looks like a skeleton, a kind, gentle person, happy with Baba. Another of my contemporaries, still a follower, is withdrawn, barely sees people. Another, who went to an ivy league school in the US had some kinds of breakdown after joining, and now delivers newspapers.
Undertsand that the act of paying attention in a different way ("I am a soul, I am looking at you through these eyes" is typical BK focus) can easily bring a person into trancelike state open to a wider range of possibilities.
For more on emotional episodes, I suggest searching the forum for 'psychotic' and 'breakdown'.
Have a psychicially healthy day.