He had a huge fight with the people upstairs who I never saw. I was there that night as Natvar stood on the landing, shouting up the stairs at them, bounding up the stairs, pounding on their door – or maybe I wasn’t there and only heard about it. No, I was there, staying back inside, watching through the door at Natvar, shaking his fist, the muscles of his biceps bulging. He was in his yoga clothes – white ironed pants, bare feet, a tank top. And he stood on the landing, looking up the dark staircase.
I loved the way his anger exploded. I loved the way he knew what to say when he was furious. I loved that he stormed out from the meditation hall, flung open our door and strode out onto the landing. No hesitation. No worry about what might happen.
I wanted that. I thought it was what the guru was talking about, the one called Baba who wrote the books, whose picture was on the walls. Baba said that enlightened people feel free – are free. And when I saw Natvar’s anger I thought that’s it, he’s not scared.
After that night the landlord said we had to move out. I never met the landlord. I didn’t know his name. But he had had enough.
We were sitting on the floor in one of the back rooms, Natvar across from me, sitting against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. One or two others were also there. “Well, maybe that’s it,” said Natvar. “Maybe that’s the end of the Institute.”
“No,” I said immediately, deeply shocked that he could consider this. I could not imagine this world that all of us had been creating together for the last year would just end. It was literally my entire life. It was not part of my life. I had stopped everything else, thinking I didn’t need anything else now. I didn’t need writing. I didn’t need a job. I didn’t need that apartment on the Upper West Side that was unsatisfying in a way I couldn’t figure out. The Institute had solved so many things. How could Natvar even come up with those words: maybe it’s over.
What about the beautiful huge oversize chair he had made himself for the meditation hall -- the guru’s chair that we all bowed down to – cutting wood into elaborate curves with a jigsaw, staining the wood, making firm purple velvet cushions to go on top. What about the slanting display shelves for the little bookstore that he’d made in the lobby? What about the kitchen we had set up in Mark’s apartment a few blocks away, the wall we had torn down there one afternoon to make more space, the schedule we set up so we could eat all three meals together with dinners that lasted for hours late into the night, Natvar sitting at the head of the table – the white marble tabletop broken in two but fitted neatly together that Mark had found in the street – discoursing and discoursing, and me listening – all of us listening – wishing I could speak so fluently. “I feel like I’m learning a foreign language,” I said to Natvar. “I can understand it, but I can’t speak it yet.” “Oh, it will come, my love,” said Natvar with a smile, with sweetness in his brown eyes. He called all of us “my love” then. We called each other that.
I stayed up late on those nights which were every night. To leave would be to miss something. So I stayed, then walked back to the Institute that was now my home. I’d given up the Upper West Side apartment to live here, sleeping on the floor of the lobby and getting up extra early to prepare the hall for our morning chant, lighting candles – special candles that floated in pools of oil, candles that Natvar liked and insisted on because they reminded him of what they had used when he was a child in Greece during the war.
We had added a whole schedule of chants, you see. A Guru Gita at 5 in the morning, a noon chant, an Arati chant at about 5:30 and an evening chant after the public yoga class. Mark and Natvar sleeping in Mark’s apartment. Okay, so they were a couple. I hadn’t counted on that in the beginning, had sort of assumed Natvar and I would get together, that’s what it had felt like in the very beginning, but okay, it was him and Mark – it was another reason why we were different, all of us – Anjani who lived on the Upper East Side, Eve and David who had apartments, Kenny who lived somewhere in Harlem, Tracy who lived on Long Island. But I lived in the Institute. I loved being the only one who went that far, who lived there.
And when I said No in complete disbelief to Natvar that he would even say the words: Oh, well, maybe it’s over – he looked at me, he laughed with pleasure – not mocking – warm and loving – I had said the right thing – for all the years afterward he’d refer back to this moment – when Marta kept him going, when Marta said, No, of course the Institute will keep going, of course we will find another home.
11 comments:
Now I know why you were such a sucker for Gurumayi.... because long before you moved into "her" ashram you had already moved into Muktananda's Mind.... Heart.
His Siddha Yoga world.
Or for some painful reason moved your own mind and heart out of your body and soul and let India, Baba, SY, Navar, that chair with the purple cushions, all of it... moved that into yourself in the place of your own personality.
I have to go back to the beginning of your long memoir to find the explanation for why you abandoned yourself to this extent.
Only by writing can you clean out the space in your personality that you tried to erase with SY, and call your mind and heart home to your soul.
K.
In Ch 1 Marta said:
Thirteen years ago when I was eighteen Jeffrey was the first real boyfriend I liked.... We lasted five years... Then I met Natvar. He was a yoga teacher. He gave me a bear hug when I came to class and told me I was wonderful. I quit work. I moved into his school... And then he became my master. He said he knew what was wrong with me... I believed him.
It took me seven years to get away from Natvar... I have sworn I will never do anything spiritual again.
*** ***
These are the pieces of your memoir that speak to me about the most recent chapter of your blog, the ones that show me now that I have a clearer picture of your life with Natvar how your ended up in SY.
Looks to me like you were in SY before you ever put a foot in "Gurumayi's Ashram".
I'm glad someone taught you a good way to get free from your incestuous father, and from the men who offered, each in his own way, to rescue you from your charismatic father.
I am glad to see you rescuing yourself from the fear of losing yourself simply by telling the world what it means for you to be yourself.
That's good teaching for me.
K.
"No, I was there, staying back inside, watching through the door at Natvar, shaking his fist, the muscles of his biceps bulging. He was in his yoga clothes – white ironed pants, bare feet, a tank top. And he stood on the landing, looking up the dark staircase.
I loved the way his anger exploded. I loved the way he knew what to say when he was furious. I loved that he stormed out from the meditation hall, flung open our door and strode out onto the landing. No hesitation. No worry about what might happen."
Why is anger so intensely, brutally attractive at times? I've felt this too, this being frightened and enthralled and excited and cowering all at once. I think it goes back, way back to the first time we experienced anger as a child. That rip in reality, lightning out of the blue, that suddenly and irrevokably reveals a heightened, more alive more present more electric reality just beneath the quotidian surface.
I often wonder if the abject worship that I gave to a spiritual master was any different than the abject nakedness I felt in those moments of incipient violence I experienced a child.
Had a similar pre-SY experience with a charismatic type who appended Baba to her bag of tricks. She had Rajneesh and Leonard Orr there too. The altered states, not through chemicals, but through thoughts and breathing and mantras were phenomenal to me. Meeting Baba in person confirmed the states of experience I was having. I connected them to SY from then on. It took this long to drop my interest in them. Some continue their meditation practices, post SY. I just can't. It's not laziness, lack of discipline. that. Just can't benefit anymore from it somehow.
Otherworldly things though I know of great significance, seem to be the wrong focus.
Thanks for sharing pre SY experiences Marta. Windows to a shared culture. SY was part of a bigger scene.
"I often wonder if the abject worship that I gave to a spiritual master was any different than the abject nakedness I felt in those moments of incipient violence I experienced a child."
Romanticizing anger and violence as something holy, something liberating. When, later it becomes that which returns us to the prison world of scared childhood.
My mother had a charismatic alcoholic father, then became involved with a man who was charismatic, violent, charming, put her through 11 years of emotional abuse before finally marrying her because he had grown older, and had developed a health condition for which he needed a caregiver.
In his early days, Dad had driven around in a fancy car, with a rifle under the front seat, had a gun collection at home. Mom and her friends rode in the back, and they all were convinced this was great good fun.
Only difference between Dad and Baba was that Dad hadnt learned to manipulate shakti, and was a violin guru, rather than a guru who offered salvation.
But the dynamics were the same. Violence and terror were packaged as daring-do, adventure and romance.
But it may be that Dad and his gun collection were why Mom dared not ditch him and return to her family and home state. He could have easily tracked her down using a private detective, and killed her, maybe harmed them, too.
Or that was what he had convinced her he would do.
I think my mother coped by convincing herself that terror was adventure and that obsession and the bliss of temporary relief were love and that this wasnt prison this was living free, being a Beatnik/Bohemian and handmaiden to a musical genius.
And Dad's charm and glamour were such that even 60 years later, after he and Mom were dead, surviving family friends were still rationalizing it, and still making excuses for them.
It was a cult of 3 to 4 persons, rather than one of thousands,and there was no use of shakti, but apart from that, all one has to do is change the terminology and stage props, and its pretty much the same ritual of enchantment that you're all spell breaking in relation to SY.
And though I was not in SY, your ritual of disenchantment has assisted me in my smaller, private ritual of disenchantment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Many bows.
One our Soto Zen vows is,
'Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.'
Librarian/Zennie
PS there is an article by Arthur Deikman whose URL I posted next door at Rituals of Disenchantment.
Good stuff to add to the ritual implements.
http://www.deikman.com/eval.html
Librarian,
I found your most recent post here really fascinating. Yes, a cult of 3 or 4. I too have seen this kind of thing many times, especially in families. The situation you describe is unique. But its cultlike aspect is not. And this is something really worth talking and writing about -- that cults are so prevalent. People think of "cults" as Jim Jones etc. But cults are everywhere, and I would bet that pretty much most people have become embroiled in at least one. Maybe we need another word for it.
I thank you for this very meaningful and personal story.
Marta
Marta wrote:
"I thank you for this very meaningful and personal story.
Marta"
Librarian/Zennie replies:
I wrote this story as a result of having wierd vibes all through childhood, even dreams, that indicated that I was surrounded by stuff unsaid.
I was able to write the above after 14 years of therapy with a shrink who could not be distracted and who cared not about my wit but about me.
Additional tools were provided by Daniel Lapin's book and one of his lectures.
And by finding strange addresses on envelopes sent to my mother, while I was digging through a trunk of family letters earlier this summer, looking for photos of an uncle--we were planning his funeral.
Those addresses led me to realize that my parents had an entire hidden life.
I ordered searches of vital records, studied marriage certificates and had a bunch of conversations with the son of a family friend who lives in the UK--an exile from his family craziness.
I didnt grow up in a family. I grew up amidst mythologization.
Big difference.
Doing this ritual of disenchantment triggered 3 months of insomnia that required medical treatment.
But..lemme tell you, if you want to grow up in relation to your parents and do a ritual of disenchantment, run a background check on Mom and Dad.
I attended a geneology class at our library and 95% of the people in the group reported they'd discovered family secrets.
So..whether you trace the geneology of a family or something that is a cult in the official sense---make very sure you can face any skeletons that show up.
So many families have secrets and knots of enchantment, and so many cults have those, too.
And have friends you can talk with about all this!
I didnt grow up in a family. I grew up amidst mythologization.
Big difference.
Doing this ritual of disenchantment triggered 3 months of insomnia that required medical treatment.
But..lemme tell you, if you want to grow up in relation to your parents and do a ritual of disenchantment, run a background check on Mom and Dad.
I attended a geneology class at our library and 95% of the people in the group reported they'd discovered family secrets.
So..whether you trace the geneology of a family or something that is a cult in the official sense---make very sure you can face any skeletons that show up.
So many families have secrets and knots of enchantment, and so many cults have those, too.
And have friends you can talk with about all this!
Dear Librarian/Zennie,
Your thread is so powerful to read. Your generous nature in sharing the truth will reach many for many reasons. Those abused in cults begin to remember many things as more time goes on. The isolation without help from skilled sources and genuine friends, to be there to listen and care can be overwhelming, if not impossible to continue to live with.
What you have done takes tremendous courage, no matter how long it took to get to dig down to the core of all of these issues. To be able to stand in the light of day, no matter how long it took to dig down to the core of these issues, has obviously born fruit beyond measure for you (not meaning this in any glib way or discounting any pain and suffering all along the way). What has come out and been processed and owned by you, as you have done the work and stepped into it to own it, is now reaching out to link and teach others. It offers hope that there are answers and a way to begin to get free from the darkness of entrapment of not knowing, and not looking at what is causing the pain and loss felt in many corners of personal interior living.
Your being a genuine human being (I've read many of your entries here and I believe this to be true) shines through without mistaking it.
Librarian/Zennie, thank you for all you have offered, it's been a bounty of experience, insight and tools to help those fortunate to be present to read what you've taken all of the time to write and send.
Dear Marta and all:
From Librarian Zennie:
I dont know if this took courage. It was something outside my conscious awareness that just refused to stop living.
It kept pushing, like a blade of grass underneath concrete.
Consciously, all I thought I wanted was to please my parents and get into medical school. I had anxiety attacks in high school that interfered with my ability to study, so on that basis, at age 17, I asked for psychotherapy.
Something in my just kept banging at the walls, silently but persistently. I tried to ignore this but it refused to stop pushing me to want to know and understand.
At age 19, I told a psychiatrist I thought I was mentally retarded or brain damanged. She was puzzled and asked why.
All I could say was, 'I feel there is something I have to know. Something out of reach, something important. And I am just too stupid to know what it is.'
I had no clue that I was being systematically lied to. But something in me just sensed it. I risked a diagnosis of paranoia, but I felt I had to tell this person the truth as I felt it.
I did not discover the full truth until thirty years later at age 49.
This has distracted me from attempting close relationships and from figuring out a career path. But..I had to get things right and feel not certain, but at least grounded, somehow.
All I can offer is this:
1) The internet is a fantastic resource. But..most of the healing encounters I have had have come from face to face relationships. The internet is a great source of referrals, and validating information, but there is something that happens in body-space, where non-verbal communication takes place, that does not happen in cyberspace.
I had to do a lot of reading--books, many published pre-internet. Many of my early educational resourcs were books and articles written for mental health professionals.
I had to serve hard time in therapy with a professional, someone who gets his intimacy needs met in marriage, in a consultancy group and in his sports club. To give me undivided attention, this man has to take care of himself.
Finally--you do not know how long it will take or how old you will be when you manage to sort things out and this work is stressful.
So...take as good care of your mind and body as you can. It isnt self indulgence. We are issued one body and mind per life time--and our bodies are part of our thought process. The grey meatball can be conned and confused, but the body possesses a mute wisdom, especially in the belly--and can never be lied to.
What we know in our bodies can be silenced and suppressed but the body can never be lied to.
When someone or something cause mind and body to distrust each other's knowlege, that is where we get lost in enchantment--and require a ritual of disenchantment so that body knowlege and brain knowlege can re-unite.
And so that inner child and inner parent talk to each other and bring out the best in each other. Predators try to con the inner child into believing nuture is oppressive and not protective.
Predators try to con our inner parent into despising the inner child as selfish or hating her for being vulnerable and attracted to glitter and bliss.
The real remedy is for parent and child to repair the quarrel and help each other.
The parent creates a safe and bounded playspace and teaches the child about cause and effect.
The child teaches the parent to play and keep wonder fresh and alive--and to care deeply about what is fair.
Re:
"The internet is a fantastic resource. But..most of the healing encounters I have had have come from face to face relationships. The internet is a great source of referrals, and validating information, but there is something that happens in body-space, where non-verbal communication takes place, that does not happen in cyberspace."
Dear Libarian Zennie,
I have been really helped by all your comments wherever they are posted. Truly from the bottom of my heart thank you.
I must disagree with the above however, though we need be with our fleshly selves in a real way with real people, I think real relating, real connecting can happen online.
I love many authors like they are real friends to me. I would have given up living without them.
Thank you.
From Librarian/Zennie:
I dont want to dismiss the internet. Never, never. Its been a place for finding allies and making connections--and finding some great information.
Still, perhaps partly because my lag point has been social relationships---it was the face to face connections I had, prior to the net, that turned out to be of the utmost importance in my working things out.
If I'd omitted mentioning this, I would have felt like I'd omitted important information about nutrients when describing a diet that had worked for me.
And, in terms of information, some items are not yet available on the net--I had to spend a lot of time in libraries and assembled a personal library of pre-internet resources.
It was library research, plus online friendships combined with face to face friendships (and where needed, therapy) that for me was the winning combination.
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