So this past weekend marked one year after I left the Krishna community. I thought it would be only fitting to do a blog entry to mark the occasion, partly to discuss some of my thoughts one year out, and talk a little bit about this past year. I do also kinda miss writing this blog regularly. I had plans to either continue or to start a new blog, but they never really manifested. I even set up a new blog after my last entry in this one, called “Change of Season”, but aside from an introduction which was never published, I never touched it. Maybe I will one day, at the moment, however, I find that I'm usually just too busy.
University kept me busy for most of the past five or six months. It also served to keep my desire for writing satisfied with it's constant stream of essays and research assignments. When I was 19 I enrolled in a Bachelor of Nursing degree in Hamilton, at the Waikato Polytech, which is now called Wintec. I only finished one semester of study, but my marks were all pretty decent. It was a very full year of study, when I try and remember all the names of the papers I had to take that year, I'm certain it was a fuller course of study than the nursing degree I'm currently doing. I remember having to do a communications/computer literacy paper, microbiology, anatomy and physiology, cultural sensitivity, nursing theory, nursing practice and human growth and development. My best mark back then was in the cultural sensitivity paper. This year, with my current attempt at a bachelor of nursing degree, my best marks were in my communications paper and the human growth and development paper.
I don't know how many people are familiar with human growth and development theories, or general psychology theories, but most development theorists have structured their concepts into basic stages of development. They all have their different styles, Freud is definitely a nutcase, but an influential one. The basic pattern is theorists will identify a certain development stage or conflict which people go through at different points in their lives. And different theorists really focused on the development of different aspects of a person. Freud focused on the psycho-sexual development, Erikson was all about psycho-social development, Piaget was into cognitive development, Kohlberg was into moral development theories, and Fowler presented a very interesting theory of faith development.
I first started making movements towards the Krishna community when I was 21, and walked away during the last few months of my 29th year of life. In terms of human development, those are generally very dynamic years of life. When looking back on one's life path, it is always impossible to say exactly how we would have ended up if things had gone differently. But when I consider my 7 years within the Krishna community, especially looking through the lens of development theories, I can't help but feel that the structures of the specific community that I was part of stifled my personal development during my time within it. And the struggles of this past year seem to me to be the result of suddenly finding myself in a growth-fertile environment, ready to re-define myself, and allow my long held personal values to mature and produce fruit. During one of my counselling sessions this past year the metaphor of a sponge came to mind, a sponge that had lost it's volume due to dryness, but once coming again into contact with water grew to manifest it's full potential.
Although I believe that my time within the Krishna community temporarily stifled aspects of my personal development, at the same time I think it served as a solid distilling process for my values. The thinking person, when in a situation of a dictated values system will at least challenge internally the assumptions of the dictated system, and feel out those values, always analysing the worth and truth of them in their lives. I entered the Krishna community with a strong sense of values already intact, and when being confronted with a dictated value system, which I adapted in an experimental fashion, testing this system as I journeyed along, in the end I developed a firmer grasp on the values that I personally hold to be the most true. The community itself did not provide a framework for the eventual maturation of this process, but it provided what I think was a sped up, pressure cooker environment that provided the POTENTIAL for growth and maturation. And once removed from that environment and again in contact with an accepting, loving support-system those values developed the simultaneous qualities of firmness and flexibility. Using a rather 'zen' analogy, bamboo is very flexible when blown by the wind, but if you butt heads with it it's going to leave a bump. In terms of Fowler's faith development theory, I guess my experience within the community could be said to have involved the transition from faith stage three, characterized by conformity, to stage four, which is marked by angst and struggle, leading to a point of re-evaluation and reconciliation, a personalized assimilation of values and beliefs without a need for answers to everything, or undeviating doctrinal conformity.
One thing a structured/dictated community can provide is a firm sense of a concrete future. Regardless of what options you choose in terms of Krishna lifestyles, the choices are relatively limited and to some extent dictated, which provides a unique feeling of security, in the sense that you have a fair idea of how your life will turn out. The downside of this, of course, is that none of the options may really fit in with the deeper values that one may hold to. If you have to make a choice between different options which all seem to really miss the mark for you the result can be a sense of despair, or even worse, reluctant acceptance of something deep down you hate. I think this is something that is completely present in the general, secular world as well. I think a lot of people see their options in life as being rather limited, and when faced with various options which all seem like they require us to sell our souls, so to speak, we resign to picking the best of a bad bunch. I don't think this can ever be a healthy choice. Ironically, a lot of people looking in from the sidelines of the Krishna marriage process usually make comments hinting at this. Sometimes it does seem like a lady within the Krishna community is so desirous of changing her current situation and getting married that she will accept any possible male Krishna as a potential husband. Hey, just being honest, but the pickings in NZ are pretty slim if you're a Krishna lady looking for a solid potential husband. But it totally works the other way as well. Regardless of the benefits of certainty and stability offered by the dictated system of Krishna life-planning, I couldn't think of anything I would want less than to have had to restrict my pick of marriage partners to what was available in the closed community I was part of.
However, having left the certainty of a life-planning system I did start to feel a strong sense of uncertainty about my future. I guess it could be akin to the feelings a person would have after having been fired from what they assumed was to be their long-term career, or when someone decides to exit a long-term relationship they had expected to last forever. Whether the change is being forced upon you by an outside power, or it is being forced by your internal desire to remain sane the general result is the same; you find yourself on unstable grounds. That offers you two options: despair or hope. Hope is always the best option, and when you are in a situation where there is uncertainty it is the best time to question existing foundations and rebuild new ones. The despair option is often the one of denial and self-destruction.
The late-20s has the potential to be a time of instability or uncertainty in general, according to some development theorists anyway, especially in this current era of human existence. Often it provides a more intense opportunity for identity testing than was available in the teen years, because you know the power of rebellion well, but now you also have the independence that adulthood brings to increase the potential of your identity testing. I have heard a number of Krishna devotees in their late-20s make comments about their felt need to be more real, or more themselves than they had previously been within the community. The Krishna community that I was part of had a tendency to reward conformity in general, not just in the monastery, but in the wider community itself. I think some form of conformity makes sense in a monastic setting, but that the freedom to express one's identity and personality, and 'realness', should never be repressed.
When I left the monastery I felt uncertainty, both in terms of where my life would lead next, as well as a sense of uncertainty about my place and identity in the world around me. I think much of my time in the first half of this past year was spent defining these things. The sudden sense of liberation from a restrictive social setting gave a wider horizon to test identity and values against. I had a firm sense of what my values were, however, and I think that strength is what allowed for me to experience a year of swift and mature development as a person. I think what I found surprising to some extent as my new sense of identity and firm values began to show their form was that I still held to many of the values and principles that had originally attracted me to the monastic lifestyle I had previously lived. At the same time, these values helped to highlight the aspects of the community I had left which had destructive or cancerous potentials to them. I am attracted to a simple life lived for the benefit of others. I'm attracted to regular rhythms of spiritual practice. I'm attracted to working and living in community. I'm attracted to the ancient, the ritual, the sacred and the divine. I'm attracted to compassion, love and mercy. I'm attracted to a life of sobriety. But I struggle when faced with unnatural and undeserved hierarchy and power structures. I cannot cope with a system that rewards orthodoxy and dogma but ostracises the questioners and doubters. Nepotism and position gained by longevity within a movement both seem like cancerous growths. Criticizing the efforts of social justice for missing a deeper spiritual reality while providing no practical benefit for the vulnerable of the world seems like such an immature tendency. These attractions and repulsions form a major chunk of my world view and my personal value systems, and these things have been the major forces in my life over the past year which have shaped my life-plans, my relationships, and areas that I feel are worth investing my time in.
When I look over the past year of my life I feel an incredible sense of happiness and gratitude. I see a year marked primarily by personal development and growth which occurred at unexpected speeds. I see a year in which I tested many of the assumptions and claims made by the Krishna community about those who leave that community and proved those assumptions wrong. I see a year that I am very proud of, full of achievements and experiences and I am so glad for all of these opportunities.
At the beginning of the year I remember feeling a little bit anxious about having to come into contact again with members of the Krishna community. The main reason was that I was well versed in the assumptions made about those who left the community. I knew that there would be rumours of various kinds, because I've seen it all happen before. I knew that these assumptions and manufactured myths would form the background of all interactions. I knew that there would be an attitude of 'maybe he will return' or 'I never expected him to fall down'. Throughout the year, as I gained a stronger sense of confidence in myself, and realised that I had developed into a much stronger person than I ever was previously, I stopped worrying about these assumptions, and as a result I began to be feel incredibly comfortable coming into contact again with that community. I had my sense of self, and I knew that the assumptions held by the community were false, so I no longer had a reason to worry.
I have no problem with people living in whichever community they choose to live within. I do, however, have a problem with people remaining in a community they feel to be a negative force in their lives, and I have a problem with people remaining in a community because of false assumptions about what will happen if they leave. I have a problem with people staying in a community because they believe that if they were to leave they will become exploitative people with negative, destructive lifestyles that rule their lives. I have a problem with people thinking that leaving a community is something people only do if they are failures or overcome by personal struggles. I have a problem with people remaining in a negative community because they feel like they have nothing waiting for them on the outside. The reality is your life has immense potential, this applies to everyone who is reading this, your life has immense potential. Don't let your potential by restricted by the situations of your life right now. Making a change might feel difficult, but I can assure you, to borrow a phrase, it gets better, it does get better. And the paradox is the more you are willing to make a change, the more that you pursue help when needed and admit weaknesses where they exist, the more you do these things then the more you will see growth occurring in your life, and stronger sense of confidence arising within you.
These are just a few thoughts from over the past year. This is probably the last time I'll ever write in this particular blog. If you have any questions or comments to make on anything at all, please feel free to leave a comment or get in touch. If you want me to e-mail you or something, post your e-mail as a comment. I moderate all comments, so if you send contact details through as a comment I'll just take down the details but not post the comment, if that makes sense.
Thanks for joining me on the journey.
