I'm Leaving.

I remember when I was 20 or 21 and my girlfriend and I were nearing the end of our relationship. We were living together, and had been for about a year, but things just started to feel like they were falling apart between us. I can remember us having arguments as we lay in bed going to sleep, and I can remember thinking about ending the relationship, and what I would do once that relationship had ended. I would often think about ending the relationship and moving down to Wellington, or up to Auckland. In my mind I always felt like my life would be better outside of that relationship at the time. But although I felt strongly about leaving that relationship, there was still some major emotional and psychological barriers which kept me in it. The thought of changing everything was scary. At the time it felt like it would redefine who I was in the social circles we moved in, it would mean not having that super close support person there when you needed one, and it would mean having to change my living situation, and my life style. It would mean, in one sense, walking away from something that I had put a lot of time, effort, emotions and energy into for close to two years. And as a result, I never did break that relationship. I think for a while we were both in that same situation, both wanting to end it, but neither ready to take that scary step away from the comfortable and the known. It was like an unfortunate stalemate. The breaking point would come when one of us felt like we had more to gain from leaving than we risked losing. She reached that point first.

When I think back on my last few months with the Krishnas, I realise that it really was a very similar situation. I felt like I had reached the end of my ability to remain within that community, yet there was a fear that went along with the thoughts of leaving. It was a great unknown. I had put seven years of serious energy, emotions and effort into this community, and into my own personal progress within this spiritual philosophy. I would have to radically change my world by leaving this community. Nothing would be certain. I would be leaving behind a community which acted as a form of support network in a lot of ways. My own personal value at the time was based primarily on my roles within that community. I gained self-confidence by using my positions within that community to generate praise, or situations which made me feel better about my skills and character. And I knew that I had a stable future available within that community, in the sense that the organisation would provide some kind of directed life for me. These would be things I would lose by leaving, and to leave would mean accepting an unknown future. That was scary. At the same time, I wasn't happy in the community, it was like a relationship that had broken down to the point of being irreparable. And so a sort of stalemate resulted, which could only be broken when I felt that I had more to gain by leaving the community than I risked to lose.

So even though I had come to the point where I was certain that I would leave the community eventually, I really was lacking the confidence to just up and leave. It was a scary thought. I also knew that it would mean that the community would more than likely criticize me and look down upon me for leaving. That I was going to leave was, in my heart, inevitable. When and how were the only things up for questioning. Would I leave suddenly, or draw it out slowly? If I did leave suddenly, when would be the best time to leave? All these sorts of questions did occupy my head for some time.

As the year went on, I found myself having another situation arise with the management committee of the yoga centre which resulted in an increased desire to leave the community. The situation wasn't extreme. It was just a decision that was made by the committee which most of us in the monastery did not fully understand. We asked for some background information on the decision, and when it was given we provided our opinions and suggestions about it. Part of our concern was that although the monks did play an active role in the yoga centre community to some degree, we were given no say in any real way about how things ran, we weren't consulted on decisions that affected us as well. At the time we really had no idea how the committee operated, as we hadn't seen any minutes from their meetings for over a year. So we brought up these concerns in some e-mail correspondence. The result, however, was that we were labelled as insubordinate. I can understand that perhaps we had communicated our concerns through the wrong channels, which we all realised after the fact. But the way this overall situation was handled meant that I had very little faith or confidence in the committee of the yoga centre to run a community is a strong and healthy way. It made me feel increasingly isolated within the wider community of devotees, a trend that seemed to have a long history, and which continued until I left.

I continued to feel that I needed to leave, but I also continued to lack the courage to actually do so. Although I knew that I had a lot of friends outside of the Krishna community, and I would have a solid support network to rely on, it still seemed like I needed to have some deeper friendships, people who I could rely on to really pull me through the pains that this sort of transition is sure to produce. When I became more and more determined to leave the community it really did feel like everything I needed to make that final step fell into place at the right time.

I had a few ideas in my mind, I think I've discussed them previously. One was that I would finish the year of university lunches, stay throughout the summer, attend the Krishna festival over xmas and new years, go to India in February and then leave the community when I returned. That was my selfish plan in a lot of ways. My other idea was simply to leave in early December, after the university lunches took place, but during the time when most of the monks were out selling books as part of the yearly book selling marathons they ran. But because of the stalemate in my mind I hadn't really decided firmly which option to take, let alone whether I would actually have the strength required to make the jump myself.

In about mid-November I started to develop a very solid friendship with someone. It seemed that we were both, at the time, going through some personal struggles, existential crises, and general questioning about what we were going to do with our individual lives. And so a mutually supportive friendship developed. Our friendship mostly grew and developed from conversations over electric mediums, text messages, twitter, facebook, but we would hang out in real life as well. She lived with another good friend of mine, the two of them have both been a massive support for me over the last 5 or 6 months and continue to be in their own unique ways. I went over to their flat on a few occasions and cooked them both an awesome dinner.

In general, over a short period of time a real friendship developed, which for me seemed like the first real friendship I had had in over 7 years. And in this friendship I felt a lot of support and strength. I also felt, for the first time in many years, that I had a friend who generally cared for my overall well being as a person. Our friendship gave me a sense of self worth, and it reminded me of the potential in human interactions to provide a real sense of fulfillment. It also meant that I now had someone who I trusted enough to discuss my issues with, and someone who could provide some honest feedback on my thoughts and plans for leaving the Krishna community.

One weekend I was catering for a Green Party meeting of some sort, over the Saturday and Sunday. I had my new friend join me to help bring the food up into the kitchens, and then clean-up after the lunch had been eaten by the Green party people. While they ate we sat in the car and discussed life etc. It was during that weekend that I made my final decisions about leaving the community, in terms of when to leave etc. I realised it would just be wrong for me to go on a pilgrimage to India and then leave immediately after. We also discussed about the realities of life, that I would likely need to study in order to get a real job eventually, and the university year would start the day after I returned from India. If I were to leave to start studying, I would really have to miss that trip to India. We discussed how, in reality, it was going to be a rocky transition after seven years of living with the Krishnas, and I probably would need a few months to get settled in life again before starting a process as important as studying. I also realised that this was going to be one of the last Christmases that we would spend together as a family, because my parents are planning on moving back to Canada this year. If I missed out on this Christmas, which I would have if I had stayed with the community, then I would have missed out on the last family Christmas together in NZ. So, I made the decision, I would leave the first weekend of December, which I think was the following weekend. Aside from my own issues, I helped to encourage her to get herself sorted to pursue what she wanted to do in life. As a result she ended up enrolling in university as well, following a course of study to get into a path of life she felt was where her passion was.

When I returned from the Green Party catering on the last day that weekend, I decided to call my parents and let them know the decision I had made. That was a very intense phone call. I took the phone into one of the monastery cars that day, and sat in the drivers seat as I talked to my parents. My father answered the phone, and I spoke to him first. My mother was overhearing the conversation that was taking place, but was completely unaware that my father was talking to one of her sons. She seemed certain that my father was talking to someone from work, who was either quitting his job, or getting laid off. I can say with honesty that that conversation showed me a side of my dad that I hadn't seen much in my life. Just before he passed the phone over to my mom, he said, with a choked up voice "You know, your mother and you are the most important things to me in this world." My mom then took the phone with surprise, wondering why my father's work colleague would want to talk to her. When she heard my voice I think she was even more surprised, but at least then it made sense to her why my dad had tears in his eyes getting off the phone. Of course, after hearing my dad's final phrase of our conversation, I wasn't in a state to start another conversation, my mom had to give me a few minutes to get myself together before I started talking to her about my decision.

She laughed about a few things. Apparently, on the very morning before I called to say that I would be leaving the Krishna's, my mother had had a phone call from my grandmother in Canada. She was asking my mom if she thought there was any chance that I would give up the Krishna lifestyle. My mom replied to her "I don't think so, I think this is where he will be for life." So the fact that I called up that very afternoon to tell her I was leaving was an amazing coincidence. I remember in 2004 when I told my mom that I would not be coming home for Christmas, because I would be attending a Krishna festival in Christchurch, at which I was getting initiated, I remember she started crying. Now, however, when she realised that my leaving the Krishna community in early December meant that I would be home for Christmas this year, she started crying happy tears.

In general I kept things on the down low while I sorted things out. I quickly applied for the unemployment benefit so that I would have some income while I sorted myself out. I put in an application to the university of Auckland for a course, which in the end I didn't get accepted into. And I started sorting out a place to live. As fate would have it, an old friend of mine had a fully vegan house, and a room that needed filling, which was going to be emptied on the very day I was planning on moving out of the monastery. Everything felt like it was falling into place, almost to the point of being amazing how well it was working out.

I had a few last things I needed to sort out before I left, and I spent my last week getting those things together, and hanging out when I could with my new best friend. It was an exciting week leading up to the big day, and I was filled with a whole lot of hope for the future. I knew it was still gonna be a tough and scary thing to do, but I now felt like I had much more to gain by leaving than I risked losing by doing so. As I tell people when they ask why I left, I felt like I had many more reasons to leave than I did to stay. That last week was also filled with anticipation. I didn't want the Krishna community to know ahead of time, because I knew that they would try to intervene in some way, and convince me to stay. My mind was made up, I was leaving.