My writing as AmLearning January 9, 2004, No. 3

Dear Charles,

Your posts are so delightfully forthright, emotionally awake and honest. I really appreciate your self disclosure in brave, unpretentious, friendly and direct ways.

You said:

"Don't get too impatient waiting for the next honest, angry woman. People are completely dickless, and I don't mean that in a sexist way Tara stands out there on the road saying, "Fuck the goddamn lying religious fraudsters!" You pull over and join us. It's a miracle."

You build it and they will come. You made the effort to be honest, create a forum for sharing your painful experiences and awakening. I came. Others have contacted me privately with their stories. I am waiting, trying to be patient for them to share here what they shared with me privately. This is a warning to those people, I give you both 2 days to publicly share or I will post your posts to me here.

Yes, I have to say I AM SO ANGRY WITH DICKLESS TB DISCIPLES WHO ARE NOT SAYING ANYTHING IN PUBLIC BUT ONLY IN PRIVATE. I COULD SCREAM!!!!!!
I SO agree with Tara! Fuck the goddamn lying religious fraudsters!
Thank you Tara!!! Thank you for your brave, direct, not quivering in hiding ANGER!!!

You said:

"You note the amazing, appalling ignorance of people believing that the earth is flat. I may be picky, but that always bugged the heck out of me. Finally, I rolled it up into an aphorism. "If they're wrong about things we can see, why should they be right about things we can't see?""

Their general ignorance about anything more sophisticated than some crayon coloring book version of primitive reality was/is incredible. The focus of the majority of Tibetan Buddhism seems to be an obsessive-compulsive need for repetition of lengthy rituals and, like the old Christian idea of feeling defiled, stained, dirty, bad, and needing cleansing. Or some sort of magical sounding rituals on top of being emotionally undeveloped.

Like Milarepa's enslaved/enmeshed/abusive relationship with sadistic Marpa while thinking about flying? Say wha?! And THAT relationship became the national template for lama devotion. Talk about SICK!!! It's a classic story of an abused kid growing up in a toxic, abusive relationship with a pathological Narcissist and idealising it as devotion when it was what in modern parlance could easily be called S&M. Milarepa, who was a creative thinker in so many ways, touchingly and deeply poetic, self-abused with anorexia, spent an entire lifetime of deprivation addiction, as if that were spiritually healthy or helpful.

I once asked a Tibetan translator what the Tibetan word for imagination was, and there isn't a word for that in Tibetan that he knew of in either colloquial or academic vocabularies. Maybe a fancy shmancy scholar like Guenther could come up with one, but in over 30 years I never heard a word for imagination in Tibetan. I think the imaginary is considered real in primitive magical thinking. The Tibetan feudal political mindset suited this insanity.

What was intellectually advanced in Tibetan Buddhism came in very limited, compartmentalised snippets from India/Nalanda, in the yoga practices and viewpoint for example, or from China in medical science. There are a tiny handful of Tibetan scholars who seem to have a grasp on the philosophical meanings conveyed in the Abidharma, like Longchenpa, but although the meaning of the Madhyamika Avatara is discussed obliquely in Dzogchen teachings, or academically by various geshes, there is no walking it like they talk it! The actions do NOT match the views.

It seems grossly bogus to me to mouth fancy words but be emotionally, socially, sexually, politically, psychologically, spiritually, financially, criminally abusive. Any corrupt idiot can do that, without the pretense or sheer insanity of thinking they are a reincarnate lama or holy.

You said:

"What I intuit about your Peyton Place stories is that all the body fluids got exchanged at fairly high levels. Plebes, floor sweepers, chauffers, those people, didn't really get cut in."

No, Charles, you are, in my opinion, wrong there. That is to me the mindset of somebody who thinks there IS royalty and plebes in a cult. All the people, ALL the devotees, are part of the abuse support network which faces, like spokes in a bicycle wheel, the hub, the Narcissist. Without the spokes, the hub could not exist. Without the hub, the spokes could not exist. It is, oops a Buddhist term, an interdependent arising. LOL!

There are a number of ways to get screwed in a cult, not just, in the case of Tibetan lamas, a mini squirt from their side in a 5 second genital 'occurrence' that is almost imperceptible. Lamas pick on anybody they can. Whoever happens to be closest. If a newbie is the closest, it will be a newbie. If it's the translator, it will be the translator. It is the devotees who allow people to come close to the lama.  That is the game of the cult devotees with each other, to put themselves in an idealised position, near the Narcissist, and keeping others in what they think is a one-down position. The leader plays into this to keep all the attention riveted on them. It's codependent and counterdependent. Everybody is sickly dependent on everybody else.

In a cult there is no healthy, mutually acknowledged vulnerability in a healthy intimacy of peers based on earned trust.
Financially, all those who donate to a cult are screwed. The money goes into creating the cult, expanding the cult. The people who are involved with cult devotees are screwed too because they lose their loved ones to the cult. The newcomers think they have to put in time and dedication to work their way up the ladder to the position nearest the Narcissist leader. But the Narcissist NEEDS these newcomers as fresh supply of attention, to create tension/jealousy/mind-games with the old timers. Everybody is using everybody. Nobody is 'better off'. It's just games.
Eric Berne wrote an excellent book about the games played in a cult and how all the roles are part of a sick spiderweb in, "The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups." NY: Grove, 1975.
This and any of the books I've mentioned can be bought second-hand and very cheaply on AbeBooks.com

I highly recommend Eric Bernes' books, "Games People Play," and "Beyond Games and Scripts."

You said:

"I was kind of that way, at the periphery. Lamas, aside from Gyatrul Rinpoche, didn't like me so much. They got a suspicious look. I think it must be my Chinese profile."

I think you were not desperate to betray your true self 'enough', to get into the grossly servile position of the so-called inner circle. I commend you on your integrity and clarity NOT to have debased yourself to that level.
There may be something healthy enough in you that the lamas intuited they couldn't get at. You were not available to be conscripted as a bully they could manipulate, a sock puppet, a gofer, a sneak, an orifice, a doormat, a total sucker.
No, you would not have allowed a string to be tied to your big toe so when the lama felt like it he could publicly humiliate you, and idealise it as Good For You. No puppet degradation for you.

That kind of abuse is written about very well in 2 books, both, oddly enough, with the word soul in the title.  The first one is: "Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity," by Marie-France Hirigoyen.  The author is a professional victimologist, part of the criminal bureau of investigation in France. And the other book is one of my all time favories, called, "Soul Murder : The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation," by Leonard Shengold.
By the way did you or Tara know a psycho ex-monk bully addict who worshipped Chagdud, called Mike The Monk? Or Mad Monk?
Thank you for this conversation Charles.
Much appreciated,
AmLearning