The Journey of a Blind Heart

The Journey continues

2010-12-06T16:54:00.001+13:00

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 29^th 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.

Closing the doors.

2010-05-17T11:06:00.003+12:00

When I think about every decision I have made in my life, and in particular my reasons for making those decision, I'm struck by the reality that human reactions to things in life are incredibly complicated. The different ingredients that lead to a reaction or a decision are a massive tangle of desires, previous experiences, world views, social conditioning, emotions and often confusions. It is no simple task to separate all these factors to determine why it is a person acts the way they do, or why they reacted to certain things in ways that perhaps others don't understand. What makes this a more difficult reality is the fact that humans tend to want the simplest answer to things possible. They want summaries. They want a one sentence explanation. Essentially, it seems, they want explanations without personality involved. Give it to me in an equation and I'll understand. Add personality, add emotions, which are so incredibly hard to explain, and you've immediately confused all but the most empathic of hearts.

In all human interactions there seems to be these two things occurring simultaneously. You have so many aspects of our personalities and personal experiences determining how we react to the situations we are confronted with in our lives. These can be so confusing sometimes we may not actually understand ourselves why we act or choose as we do. Yet we still desire very much to be understood, and for our actions to be viewed in the context of our wider life. I want you to understand that my decisions were not results of simple one-off events, but come with a much more intricate background which adds colour and illustrations and animations to every decision I make. Then, you have the human tendency to want to abstract, to simplify. Which means no matter how full a picture one paints explaining why their life is moving in the ways it is moving, still we will never be able to look past the specific detail we decide to focus on. We will abstract according to blue-ness and only be able to see the blue in a painting.

Today, while getting my MRI scan done, which if you have ever experienced one is a very noisy event, my mind managed to focus on one half of the sound, which kinda sounds like a drum-n-bass beat, and completely ignore the more obnoxious sound, which actually did sound like an alarm clock hooked up to a PA system on full. And since it went on for like 1/2 hour all up I kinda had the chance to reflect on things, and this upcoming blog update. Abstracting helps us to cut out the uncomfortable things in life, the uncomfortable parts of human interactions, and allows us to pick and choose what we are going to focus on and target. It really is an amazing coping mechanism, and the stronger we hold to our chosen item of focus, the harder we will argue for its primary relevance in a situation. It also makes it much easier to point blame at others. 'This happened because you did this' and that's the final verdict. It takes a lot of courage to look at things from a wider perspective, primarily because of the fact that when we do look from a wider perspective things can get uncomfortable. We may have to admit our own faults, we may be confronted with issues in others lives which mirror problematic issues in our own, issues that we prefer not to focus on in our own lives, lest they force us to acknowledge and deal with them. And so we abstract, we haze over the details, and focus on whatever we can to avoid looking at the entire picture. We make up stories in our heads about others, or about ourselves. 'I'm like this, therefore of course I am going to act like this' or 'Well, that's the way he is, so it's no surprise he did that'.

I find it funny now, in some ways, when people ask me to summarise why I left the Krishnas in one sentence. Or even ten sentences. Or even really in one conversation. I even find it funny when people say they have read this blog and now understand why I left the Krishna community, and then give their version of understanding. And I find it funny how everyone has taken a different lens to this blog and gives a different explanation all the time. What I really hope is that this blog just helps to show that nothing is black and white, simple or straight forward. In writing this blog, of course, I have focused on certain aspects of situations, because to me those were the aspects that I felt like dealing with at the time of writing. Each entry I wrote needs to be taken in a wider context, beyond just the experiences discussed, but also to include the different emotions and experiences I was going through at the time of writing. Writing really is not a sufficient medium to fully explain what is a very personal experience of life and existence, and that needs to be remembered. There is always more going on than we are able to see, boiling under the surface. We will never get a full picture of anyone, completely. What this SHOULD do is inspire us to ALWAYS give people the benefit of the doubt. We should never write people off automatically, or judge them harshly, because we will have to admit that we will never truly understand what took place to make them act the way they have, or make the decisions they have made in their lives which we disagree with. It is a sad soul that makes firm and condemning judgments on others, assuming perfect vision, never really willing to make the vulnerable steps to understand what it is that led others to what they have become. That is the most lonely existence.

Now that it is a bit over 5 months since the day I left the monastery, I can't entirely remember what I did for that last week. I have a vague memory that the night before I left I went out for dinner with my brother and my good friend, I'm fairly certain that was that night. I think it would be fair to expect that I was excited the day before I left, kind of like the excitement the night before Christmas, but I don't remember entirely feeling that way. I do remember feeling a lot of excitement for the future in general, it felt like I had a wide open space full of opportunities and potential coming my way. I also remember feeling a bit of fear, the kind of fear that comes with any uncertain transition period that approaches. I was well aware that things weren't gonna be cut-and-dry in terms of leaving, and in terms of becoming accustomed to life outside of the monastery and the wider community.

It was December 5th, 2009 the day that I left. I got up late that morning, which wasn't all that uncommon at the time. My little brother was going to pick me up mid-morning, after I gave him a text letting him know that everyone was out of the house. I chanted a little bit with everyone else. We ate breakfast together and just had a normal morning. I remember part of the discussion during breakfast was about how if we left the Krishna community we would never be able to enjoy life again, because we would know the philosophy that everything is temporary and therefore suffering, we would have no choice but to remain devotees instead. Part of me was worried that they had picked up the clues that I was leaving, but no, it was just normal breakfast conversation. My departure was going to come as a big surprise for almost everyone.

I wasn't 100% certain how I was going to tell the other Krishnas yet. Part of me felt like talking to them in person was the best idea. But another part of me just wanted to make a clean break and leave without any hassles or conflict. I knew that if I explained my departure in person it would just turn into a discussion about how I should stay, and I was already determined to leave, it wasn't a question anymore. I also knew that I would have to elaborate on all my reasons for leaving, and that they would be questioned, individually. My reasons for leaving were complex and intertwined, this blog probably indicates that well I hope, so I wasn't interested on discussing that, over and over again on the day. I just wanted to leave and that is all.

During the time that I was supposed to be chanting by myself in the morning I sent a text to an old friend of mine who had left the Krishnas the previous year. I said "Today is the day that I leave Krishna consciousness". He wasn't certain if I was serious at first. I wanted his advice, on how to break the news to the other devotees that I was leaving. Whether in person is best or not. He advised against having the discussion in person. He gave an example from his experience, where he actually felt insulted and even threatened by one senior devotee when he was explaining that he was leaving. I wasn't interested in repeating the same experiences, and some of the people that I would have to discuss this with were the types that I personally didn't trust to let me leave without causing problems. So I decided to go with e-mails and the impersonal text message. It wasn't a decision I made lightly. It's akin to breaking up with a long term relationship with a text. But I just wanted the cleanest break possible, just to sneak out the backdoor and be gone, no questions asked.

I spent much of the morning writing out an e-mail to send to my Guru explaining my departure. I also forwarded that e-mail to the other managers of the monastery, so that they could get the same picture of my departure. The e-mail was fairly vague, just explaining that I had had enough of the relationship problems in the community, that I had lost faith in the practice and the philosophy, and that I had other things I wanted to do with my life. I let them know some arrangements I had made, as manager, to make sure that my leaving would not disrupt things massively. I said thanks for everything I had been given, that I did honestly feel bad for making this departure, but this is what I needed to do for my personal sanity in life. I let them all know that I had organised things well for my departure, I had an income, I had a home, I had a vague plan for the future, I had a lot of friends around me to support me. I wasn't making a rash decision to leave, and I wasn't putting my welfare at risk by running away without having things in order beforehand.

I packed my things up quickly. It wasn't hard. I had been a monk for years, I didn't HAVE anything much to pack. I had one bag of clothes, two boxes of other belongings and my sleeping bag and mat. That was pretty much everything. I took off the beads I had worn around my neck for the past 7 years, along with the sacred thread that I wore over my torso and placed them inside my beadbag which held my chanting beads. I placed them altogether on the desk of one of the monks. I was leaving behind an identity and all that it involved. So I waited for my brother to arrive. When he did we quickly packed my things into his car, I hit the send button on my e-mails out to people, and we left. I put together a few texts to send out to let others know I had left, primarily my friends in the monastery who I felt needed to hear from me directly. I had also sent an e-mail to another devotee, as I was actually supposed to give the presentation that Sunday at the yoga centre, but obviously I was going to need someone to replace me that day. I went through and made sure I had everything, I turned on the alarm, locked the doors behind me, and we left for the city.

I was surprised in some ways just how little of an emotional response was generated by my leaving that morning. Considering I was walking away from 7 years of my life is something that you would think would have been a bigger event for me. But it felt less dramatic then graduating from high school, it was almost a none event. It wasn't the leaving that produced any real emotions for me then, nor in the future, it was more the transition and the unknown possibilities that lay ahead which were going to be the triggers for more emotions as time went by. I didn't feel like I was walking away from friendships, I actually felt like I was taking on and deepening many more friendships and relationships. It really wasn't a sad or difficult day in that respect.

My brother drove me into town, we picked up my friend on K road, then made our way to unpack my stuff at my new house, which didn't take long at all. The weather that morning/afternoon was a bit drizzly, a bit grey and wet. My new house had two dogs in it when I moved in, and unfortunately, while moving my stuff into my room SOMEONE left the door open, and one of the dogs bolted out - GREAT first impression. It was a bit of a shame, but we spent the next 1/2 hour or so trying to find the dog and get her back into the house. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to put my full attention into the task, as the texts that I had sent out to various devotees had started to result in a flood of texts back, which I spent a while replying to, explaining things. Some said things like "Hey, don't worry, you should just come back, we can iron out whatever problems you're having", or "I'm standing in the street, just read your text and the tears are flowing down my face." I didn't receive any negative texts as such. One of the monks sent me a text saying "Hey, no worries big guy. But if you stop being my friend I'm gonna knock you off your bike next time at bike polo!" I made a general policy on that day, I would respond to those who made it clear they wanted to be friends, and approached me as a friend, but I would ignore those who wrote back trying to convince me to stay, or directing criticism towards me for leaving, making assumptions about why I left. And that is how I kept it.

In then end, my flatmate came home, and as soon as he showed up the dog returned immediately. So now it was time to remove the final marker of my being a Hare Krishna, I cut off the tuft of hair at the back of my head. It was like a ceremony of sorts, in a way. Everyone was involved. I had tied my bunch of hair up, and my friend took the hair clippers and shaved it right off. That final bodily reference to being a Krishna was gone. I then razored the rest of my head, clean shaven, and showered. It definitely felt different to be without my neck beads, my sacred thread, and the long bit of hair I had kept at the back of my head. Interestingly, where that little bit of hair had previously been now felt incredibly softer than the rest of my shaved head, for some reason. I was no longer a Hare Krishna. I had changed my world.

While I was shaving my head my Guru had called my cellphone. I wasn't answering my phone that day, but even still I missed that call while I was shaving. He left a message on the voice box, which I checked once I was finished with my shaving and showering. It said "Vidyapati, please don't break my heart in this way. I will be in Wellington in a weeks time. Please come to Otaki and stay with me there so we can discuss this." That was not an easy message to listen to. But my mind was made up, I'm not the type of person to go back on a decision like this, primarily because of the fact that I don't make such decisions lightly. I also was not going to go out of my way, travelling down to Wellington by myself, spending several days by myself in a closed Krishna community. I wasn't going to go through that effort, it wasn't the direction I wanted for my life any longer. I was closing doors.

I also received an e-mail back from one of the devotees I had e-mailed. He basically said that he knew why I had left, hinting that it was because of strong sexual desires, and that I should just admit it, come back, and prepare to marry some nice Krishna girl instead. That was probably the most insulting response I had after first leaving. It was highly presumptuous, and I think even a bit insulting to the Krishna women in general as well. Another devotee called my phone, though I didn't answer it. He left a message saying that he had heard rumours that I had left, and wanted to hear it from the horses mouth directly, and possibly meet up to discuss anything that would see me return. But I wasn't interested in a return.

I had a sort of celebration dinner that evening, at the vegan restaurant on Victoria Street, with a selection of friends and my brothers. I ate the tofu and eggplant hot-pot. It was heaps good. Yes, I actually remember what I ate, that's the way my mind works. Though I can't remember everyone who was there that night. My mother called during that meal, to hear how everything went. I had kept it so quiet that not even all my brothers had known that I was leaving, so mom made me call up the one brother who was out of town and let him hear the news that I had left. It was a weird thing to explain to people at first, a very weird thing indeed. I think it caught a lot of people by surprise.

As the days went by news started spreading amongst the Krishna community, and I started to receive texts and e-mails and facebook messages from devotees all over the place. It was kind of a surprise, especially considering the fact that most all of the messages were coming from women devotees, many of whom I barely knew due to my being a monk for so long. Mostly they were messages saying thanks for everything I had done over the years, saying I was going to be missed, and saying that I would always be welcomed back. One, from a closer friend of mine, wanted me to provide an explanation of why I left, and I did the best I could to explain it at the time. I had one text from a friend of mine saying that he and his wife were both surprised by the news, but still wanted to maintain friendships regardless, and invited me to visit them if I was ever in their area. And I did go and visit them this past January. They cooked some awesome veggie burgers and vegan ice cream when I visited! Unfortunately she was still recovering from the birth of their first child, but it was good to catch up with them regardless.

The day after my departure there was a bike ride that I had help organise, as part of a protest against climate change. I knew that one of the monks was going to be attending, the one that had made the comment that he would knock me off my bike if I stopped being his friend. I was a little nervous, it was going to be the first time I saw a devotee after leaving, and I was still getting used to it all. That day was really my first public appearance as Mikey again, without the beads, the hair, the Hare Krishna identity. It was a bit weird. Especially meeting those who were just finding out I left. It was odd. And as I rode up to the meeting point that day, I saw my monk friend there waiting amongst a group of our mutual friends. I rode up, did a quick skid to stop, and some how or other lost my balance, and completely fell over, my feet still stuck in the toe-clips of my bike. What an entrance! My hands and ego were both bruised a bit at that time, but it certainly broke the ice.

It took a little while getting used to a new life. I always knew it wasn't necessarily going to be a smooth ride, but life really seldom is. My life as a Hare Krishna hadn't really been a smooth ride either. The next few months were testing at times. I discovered that most of the things I had expected to be difficult to deal with in terms of walking away from one time of my life, and preparing for another were actually not all that difficult at all. And things that I hadn't expected to be difficult ended up being bigger obstacles than I had anticipated. I started to have nightmares from time to time, of confrontations with Hare Krishnas. Transitions are difficult, because they provide very little solid ground on which to stand, and the tendency is to grab on to whatever stability is available with all your strength and wait to see it through. There is the tendency to rush forward into the uncertainty, just in the hopes of gaining a new foundation, but that is always a dangerous option. It can result in a wide variety of unfavourable situations. In one sense, all you can really do is hold on through the turbulence, preparing to make the most of what comes next, and slowly start to piece some form of direction back into your life. Having good friends around you helps a lot with that. And maintaining a firm commitment to your personal values through it all is invaluable.

I don't entirely know what is left to say from this point on. I don't know whether to continue forward and discuss in more details what I went through trying to...recover, acclimatize, start anew, rebuild and regain things that I had lost and given up before, find myself again? Not certain what is the most correct term to put in there. Or whether to just write various anecdotes about my time as a Hare Krishna which illustrate themes instead. I guess maybe a combination of those two? Not certain, I guess we'll see what happens. My basic plan for the next few months anyway is to continue to use my free Mondays to write updates. So, next week there will hopefully be something coming to my mind to write about.

I'm Leaving.

2010-04-26T12:26:00.006+12:00

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.

Context is everything - Part Two

2010-04-19T12:49:00.003+12:00

Originally when I was starting this blog I was going to call it "Philosophical Journeys of a Blind Heart". A few years ago I had the idea of putting together a presentation on my personal philosophical journey through life. I had realised, looking back at my life, and looking at the lives of friends around me, it seemed that people in general have a major inclination to accept philosophical stances not on their own merit, but out of emotional or psychological needs at the time. Sometimes atheists will claim that theistic philosophies arise out of the need to feel like there is someone in control, or that life has meaning. I think that, on one level, this is a fair statement, but I think it needs to be expanded. I think that, equally atheists will accept atheism not entirely out of a philosophical sense of 'rightness' but mostly out of an emotional or psychological need. I feel that if you map out people's lives as philosophical journeys, you will see a network of emotional and psychological triggers which led to their taking up new philosophical stances. I've sat through countless lectures at university hearing about the development of various thinkers and their theories, and throughout there is always a theme arising of personal struggles resulting in the rise of new social theories. I think we do a great disservice to ourselves when we assert that we have accepted certain things as truth solely because of their philosophical 'rightness' and not at least partly because of our own emotional and psychological needs.

When it comes to interpersonal relationships I think this same thing happens. Sometimes, at least in the short term, we will ignore problems in a relationship because that relationship serves some specific emotional or psychological need at the time. And sometimes, in order to dismiss people we will readily accept half-truths as essential elements of a persons character, accept speculations as secret realities, and then filter all our experiences of that person through these new social lenses. In the longer term, however, it's hard to maintain this kind of response in a relationship without a lot of hard work and determination.

I know that, if people want to write someone off, they will, and there is nothing you can do about it. Even to the point where, if you do try to do something about it, they will just take your attempts as evidence of their original claims. So, I know that by dealing with some of the ways I have been dismissed within the NZ Krishna community I may be providing more ammunition for my own dismissal. But I still value the right of replying to these accusations, regardless of how they will be received. Those who matter the most to me seem interested to read my reply, so I will deal with these four things, as I listed in my last entry, which were 1) that my blog is an internet campaign, 2) that my blog is an exercise in creative writing, or in other words that it is fictional, 3) that I have elastic gender inclinations, 4) that these elastic inclinations are something that I bottled up, struggled with for years, and eventually popped because of.

One last thing before I start, I've been asked by a friend to point out that the Hare Krishna world is wide and varied. Every area of the world has different things going on, and what is true for one centre is not true for all. So always take this into consideration whenever you read something I've written.

Issue one: Is my blog an internet campaign, specifically against the Hare Krishnas?

I was always worried that this blog would be considered an attach on the Hare Krishnas, which is why when I started I specifically asked two of my friends, who are still Hare Krishnas, one in NZ and one overseas, to monitor what I wrote and let me know if I started getting off track and offensive. Heck, I even wrote an entry entitled, "This Is Not An Anti-Krishna Blog". Writing this blog as an internet campaign or an attack on a community was never at all my intention. As I've explained several times before, I started this blog for my own personal reasons. Mainly, I was tired of having to explain to people over and over again about why I left the Krishna community, and what I had been up to for the past 7 years while I was absent from their social circles. I also realised that by not discussing things I was not properly dealing with issues I had experienced which I really needed to address in order to move forward.

The responses I received from people, especially when I first started this blog, was amazing. For one, people were able to draw parallels to their own individual lives. I had people who started writing to me about the different communities they were part of, whether it be work communities, religious communities, social communities, activist communities. They were able to say that "yes, my community also suffers from these same problems." I think that viewing the Krishna community as a unique community with unique problems is incorrect. It is also incorrect to dismiss whatever problems this blog may highlight as part of some internet campaign against a specific community. If anything, this blog serves to highlight certain frailties of the human creature in general. I think that the vast majority of people reading my blog are able to see it for what it is, at least I hope so.

The fact that my blog has been accused of being an internet campaign unfortunately says more for those making such claims than it does about my personal blog. It suggests that the people making such claims are unable to acknowledge problems that exist in their own community, or else want to ignore such problems, or keep them out of the view of other members of the community. As someone mentioned as a comment to my last entry, saying that there are no social problems in a community, or even a family, is itself a sign of social problems. Even my own family, which many people say they are envious of, has its own issues to deal with in terms of interpersonal issues. It is no criticism to acknowledge these things, and it is incredibly unhealthy to deny the existence of problems.

Is this an internet campaign? No it's not. It's just me sorting through my experiences in a public place.

Issue two: Is my blog a fictional creation?

This suggestion is probably the most cutting of all the negative things said about me or my blog. Is my blog fictional? No it's not. It's rather insulting to have someone suggest that my description of my experiences over the past 7 years is fictional, as I'm sure you can imagine. I don't really know what parts of my blog people would like to think are fictional, it would be interesting to find out what people think I've made up and why I would have done it. That would be interesting to find out.

It's funny, because I have had a number of people who lived in the monastery in the past, several who are still Hare Krishnas, saying that they were glad I was finally airing some of the problems that went on in the monastery, and some of the social problems which occurred there. I don't think I described anything that reveals the place to be incredibly corrupt or evil. The fact is the monastery suffered from the same problems as any workplace would, it was just compounded by the close living situations, and intensity of the setting. It happened, it wasn't fictional.

I mean, I do have e-mail records which can verify much of what I've discussed on here, I have friends who lived in the monastery at the times that I described who would be happy to verify what I've described. I don't really see how anyone can claim that my blog is fictional.

In my blog I have tried as best as I can to not deny my own part in negative social behaviour, or community problems. The community I lived in had issues, no denying it, and I played an active role in those problems, I perpetuated the same issues. If I were to write a fictional piece, attacking the community, surely I would make myself come out smelling like roses, but I definitely didn't do that.

Is my blog subjective? Yes it is. It is me describing my subjective experience, looking back at it with a certain mindset and analysing it all with ever changing emotional and psychological needs. If one wanted to dismiss my blog, why not dismiss it based on that fact, and not on the claim that it is fictional. Subjective experience is never fictional, it just may not correlate 100% with someone else's subjective experience of the same thing. While speaking to a friend of mine recently about this all, he made a joke like that, which certainly held truth, he said it was ridiculous how my blog was being dismissed, he said it should be dismissed in one sense for being overly emotional, but not for being fictional, or being the writings of someone with 'elastic gender inclinations', and I think that is fair enough. Read my blog in the context of someone struggling to deal with the feelings one could expect to deal with while making radical lifestyle, worldview and community changes in their late 20s. If you do that, there is no need to make claims that this blog is fictional. It's just subjective. Filter it through the subjectiveness if you must, but acknowledge it as truth, and deal with that truth as you need to in order to continue on with your life, or help you live a better one.

Issue three: Do I have elastic gender inclinations?

I personally don't think this as much of an important issue as the above two, and probably the final one. For starters, what does this claim mean? A friend of mine wanted me to clear up whether the implication being made had to do with gender identity issues or sexual orientation issues. The wording that is being used is definitely both ambiguous and vague at the same time. As I describe the context of this claim I think it will all become a bit more clear.

According to the article I referenced in my last blog, it is claimed that I disclosed in a discussion with another devotee that prior to my taking to Krishna consciousness my "gender inclinations had been elastic". I would like to discuss the context of this conversation, as well as the context of my 'revelation'.

Sometime after I started writing this blog I was contacted by a female devotee who found my blog interesting because of her own experiences within the Krishna community in New Zealand. Because of the segregated nature of the community, I really had nothing much to do with the women Hare Krishnas, I didn't know much about them or how their communities functioned. Since leaving, especially since writing this blog, I have gained a bit more insight into their world. In a lot of ways, it's increased my satisfaction in my decision to leave.

This devotee who contacted me was once being utilized by the NZ Krishna community as a wonderful example of how the powerful process of Krishna consciousness can I guess cure someone from being a lesbian. At the very least, that's what this film suggests - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWSqYruVc-E&feature=related - as it labels this devotees as an 'ex-lesbian'. Feel free to make your own value judgments on that one.

I found myself confronted with a troubled devotee who definitely felt she was being mistreated because of her sexual orientation. My response was to do the same thing I often did when confronted with those types of situations, I discussed my personal history, experience, philosophies and thoughts on the issue of sexual orientation and sexual identity.

When I was 16 I started taking more and more of an interest in anarchist social theories, and all related topics; feminism, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, animal rights, environmentalism. What this meant was going through a constant reassessment of my own personal values and personal assumption about myself and society around me. Why did things occur in our society as they did? Was this the best, or even most truthful approach to social interactions? The whole community I found myself a part of, especially as I grew older and moved out of home, was one that was always questioning and challenging social norms, and issues surrounding sex, sexuality and sexual identities were definitely up for challenging. Concepts such as polyamory were/are definitely common within the anarchist and activist communities around the world, and the communities in NZ were also taking interest in these theories and practices. I remember reading 'Refusing to be a Man' by John Stoltenberg, a radical feminist who put forward some very interesting concepts of gender identities, and sex and sexuality. Reading his book was definitely something that, at the time, made me start deeply questioning issues like sexual attraction and sexual orientation. He had a way of putting everything on a continuum, even gender. His claim was that sex is not a black and white label, male or female, but a continuum of identity, even based solely on physical traits, which just happened to have larger percentages at two peaks of the population graphs. It was an interesting way to put things, and reading it made me question my own personal histories and attractions to body types. What was the basis of it? Similarly, sexual orientation was placed on a continuum, many people never really questioning the black and white views of sexual orientation they have been brought up with, and therefore never really analysing their own personal sexual attractions to body types. And anarchist and activist communities I moved within were always challenging such concepts, and encouraging people to challenge them as well. And as I challenged various other societal values I also questioned and challenged it's values when it came to sexuality. I think it was this challenging mood which also led to me happily accepting a life of complete celibacy as well.

As a result of my challenging, and honest, reflection during this time, I personally came to the conclusion that sexual orientation was a very fluid concept. If I was honest I had to acknowledge that there were times when I was romantically or sexually attracted to people of the same sex, to some degree. Essentially, I found myself dismissing the concept of sexual orientation in general, and decided it was much more pragmatic to simply just see whatever developed naturally in terms of relationships. I was never a highly promiscuous person by any means, so it didn't seem to really matter much how I described myself, relationships would develop naturally however they did. Taking that pragmatic approach, I would say that, if I were to give a label to my sexual orientation I would borrow a phrase a friend used for me the other day, 'a bit bi'. And, in my opinion, if more people took the time to analyse their own personal lives, and were willing to actually challenge societal conventions we've been fed surrounding sexuality, I think we would find a large portion of society falling into the category of 'a bit bi'. The only difference was I went through a process and period of questioning, challenging and experimenting.

Issue four: Did I bottle up and deny an elastic gender inclination, and thus suffer through my years in an all-male monastery until I 'popped the cork' and left?

A friend of mine pointed out that this claim makes me sound like I was hiding in the closet, full of lusty thoughts, masturbating while watching other monks get changed, which I personally think is hilarious on so many levels.

The article I am dealing with at the moment makes several claims about this. For one, it is suggested that I was "hiding and bottling up such significant psycho-physical tendencies for some years". Personally, I didn't find that I had significant psycho-physical tendencies to begin with, so the assumption that I was hiding them or bottling up such tendencies is itself a non-issue in a lot of ways. I think that, in my explanation above, I probably would have shown that I took more of a pragmatic approach to my own sexual orientation. Since within the Krishna community, with its general celibacy, and suggested/arranged marriages, my personal pragmatic approach was, for the most part null and void. I never found myself struggling with repressed sexual or romantic attraction to any of the men in the Krishna community, nor to any of the women within the Krishna community for that matter. Since my approach to sexual orientation was based on a wider context of questioning the values of society, I never really found it relevant to the context of the Krishna community. When I entered the Krishna community, I willingly accepted the values and social assumptions of that community, so my pragmatic approach to sexual orientation that I held previously seemed to be irrelevant within this new community, so what value was there in discussing it?

Sexual desire had pretty much zero to do with my reasons for preparing to leave the Krishna community. I mean, unlike many others in the monastery, I never struggled with masturbation, I had maybe 6 'wet dreams' a year, I did not look at pornography on the internet, I never thought of any single member of the Hare Krishna community in a sexual way. It really baffles my mind how someone could make the assumption that this had any thing to do at all with my leaving the Krishna community. It sounds to me to be such a scapegoat, a way to deflect the possible reality that I left because I lost faith in the community, the leadership, the philosophy and scriptures.

Everyone outside of the Krishna community which have viewed these comments about me have made their own observations that they are highly homophobic, and they really are. Which brings up one major fear I have about these comments. In the article I am dealing with, it is mentioned that a monastery/asrama is not the place for someone with any kind of 'elastic' gender inclination. For starters, I do think this is a homophobic statement in general, with certain assumptions that I think are just plain incorrect. But, even more so, I think this is both impractical, and also carries the risk of making potential candidates for the monastic life in the Hare Krishna movement doubt their own sexualities, or deny tendencies that are indeed significant for them.

For starters, what sort of checks would you preform to discover where on the continuum of sexual orientation a candidate monk sits? And where would you draw the line? Would you ask questions like "have you ever wanted to kiss someone of the same sex?" or "have you ever thought another man was good looking?" And at what point on the continuum would you draw the line? How could you discern whether someone had not yet taken an honest look at themselves, and may actually be completely gay altogether? And how would that even really matter if they never found themselves struggling with sexual desire to begin with? Wouldn't an approach like this breed more of a 'don't-ask-don't-tell' situation?

To be honest, after hearing about the ways that the ladies in the Krishna community have been treated who have openly identified as 'queer', I would not fault anyone for not wanting to discuss their sexual orientation within that community. Imagine never being allowed to be left alone with someone of the same sex, for fear that some sexual attraction may develop between to two. Or imagine if you were a lesbian and an entire community tried to 'fix' you sexual orientation. And now, imagine watching someone leave the Krishna community and then hearing accusations that the reason they left was because of bottling up gender inclinations which were 'elastic'. What sort of message does this send to the rest of the community when it comes to issues of sexual orientation? Personally, to me it seems to send the message of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I think this is the longest it's taken me to work on any of the updates I've written for this blog to date. And to be honest, I'm not entirely confident that this has really dealt with the issues brought up. Either way, I hope that it provides some extra context and things to think about when figuring out how you will view this blog and the issues it brings up. I'm gonna let this issue rest for now on my blog, though I still may be taking other actions in relation to the public dismissal. In my next update I'll continue discussing the final lead up to my leaving the Krishna community.

Context is everything

2010-04-16T13:06:00.003+12:00

On the day I left the Krishna community for good I remember saying to a friend of mine, "I hope you're ready for the roller-coaster ride". Obviously leaving a tight and closed community I had been part of for 7 years, which had been my primary, even sole, focus for a quarter of my life was going to involve a very rocky transition period. Of course, over 7 years there were good times and bad times, to deny either would be ignorant. And I am happy to accept and acknowledge my own personal shortcomings within that community, as well as acknowledge the shortcomings of the community itself. To ignore those would not be healthy at all.

I knew when I left the community that people within the community would need to reconcile my leaving in some way that allowed them to continue with faith and confidence in the religious community they wished to remain within. And when I started this blog, I also assumed that the members of this community would eventually also find a way to dismiss anything negative I had to say about my experiences within that community. And they certainly seem to have done that. Though perhaps in a way that I think has the potential to be rather negative, even destructive, for their community.

I think, when you take these two things into consideration you can understand why this has happened. I started writing this blog to explain to my wide range of friends what I've been up to over the years, and my reasons for leaving. I also started writing this blog as a way for me to deal with specifically the more negative experiences and impressions I had within the community, because, strictly speaking, these are the ones that are most negatively affecting me still, they are the ones which I found slowly eroded my usually high self confidence. Therefore, my blog had a certain mood to it. When you combine this mood with the tendency for a religious community to attack anything it sees as criticism, with increasing attacks depending on the nature of the perceived criticism, then it is no wonder this religious community has created an interesting illusion in order to dismiss the contents of this blog, and my personal description of my experiences within that community.

Despite this, when I was sent a link last week to blog by a prominent Hare Krishna leader I was still struck with surprise, and a bit of hurt, to read just how this community has gone about dismissing me. The full article can be read here, but below is the specific part of the blog which relates to me:

Recently, somewhere in the ISKCON world, in the southern hemisphere, a monk apprentice suddenly, without a word, departed the ashram for full material life, and then astonished his comrades by launching an Internet campaign of, shall we say, creative writing, depicting his brahmachari years as emotionally coerced suffering. Later he revealed to a lady devotee that prior to his devotee years, his gender inclinations had been elastic. Commonplace today, gender variables are no barrier to a bhakti practice, at home. An ashram, however, is a special niche. The brahmachari comrades of this former monk apprentice, still deeply valuing this person, were saddened more by the unnecessary stress and pain their friend had inflicted upon himself, than by the glaring lack of disclosure and interpersonal honesty. Hiding and bottling up such significant psycho-physical tendencies for some years popped the cork in such a regrettable and immature manner.

I plan to address the issues and claims of the above statement in a later blog update. Personally, I'm not willing to entirely speculate about the motives behind these statements. Nonetheless, I think it's fair to comment on the likely effects of such statements.

I do not think that my blog was/is an internet campaign to oppose something. I hope that it doesn't sound like my past 7 years were filled with emotionally coerced suffering. I do, however, think that my experience within the Krishna community has the potential to highlight some areas within that community which I feel that community needs to address if it is going to become an example of a healthy community. And the community has two options. It can either completely dismiss anything I have to say as being an angry internet campaign propagated by a closet sexual deviant. Or it can acknowledge in a humble way that perhaps things aren't 100% perfect and there are areas that need addressing. I think the fact that they have opted to instead take second/third hand conversations out of context, speculate upon that to come up with a fantastic tale of my real reasons for leaving the monastery and Krishna consciousness in general, and then laid this out for public airing is sad, and almost scary.

Another effect that a story like this has is that it make everyone start to second guess every interaction they have had with me in the past. How much of it was fueled by a 'repressed sexual identity'? The opportunity for people to speculate after being given a sudden surprise based on next to no real information or background, or even context, means that the doors are wide open to come up with a multitude of theories and speculations, all the while being distracted from the reality that the community is not sparkling clean and shiny, but has serious social issues to deal with, and a hierarchy of people who really don't have the qualities to occupy positions of power over every aspect of other people's lives. And I think this is a problem. It is also a symptom of an unhealthy community. Which in one sense is ironic. While trying to protect the community from a perceived risk of criticism, the community has instead risked making a spectacle of its inability to acknowledge any internal lackings.

But I think the average reader of this blog can make up their own minds about this based on what they have available to read.

The statement made in relation to me carries four specific claims I will deal with in my next blog update. Those are 1) that my blog is an internet campaign, 2) that my blog is an exercise in creative writing, or in other words that it is fictional, 3) that I have elastic gender inclinations, 4) that these elastic inclinations are something that I bottled up, struggle with for years, and eventually popped because of. I will probably work on my next update over the weekend, and into next week, so expect an update sometime early next week.

It's better than it actually is

2010-04-13T20:11:00.002+12:00

The past week has been a very busy week for me. And to show you why, this update includes a link and two videos:

http://www.3news.co.nz/Pig-protestor-chains-himself-to-silo/tabid/309/articleID/150518/Default.aspx

Also, on Friday night a friend of mine sent me a facebook message with a link to a blog with some interesting comments about my blog and some even more interesting speculations on my 'real' reasons for leaving the Krishna community. I'm not gonna tackle that yet, I'm waiting to hear back from a few people before I do, but I think there are some interesting themes to discuss from that. I'd be lying if I said that this didn't occupy a large part of my mind over the weekend. But I'm lucky. I somehow have a lot of friends around me who are willing to support me when I need it. I have been on the phone to a number of my friends who are still involved in the Krishna community in some way or another who have expressed their own feelings of concern about what has been written about me. Anyway, I'm not gonna to discuss this right at the moment, but you can wait in anticipation for when I do.

On with todays update:

There is an interesting human quality that seems to be used as a coping mechanism for things that just aren't exactly as amazing or perfect as we hope they would be. That mechanism is to constantly talk about how great things are. This artificial superposition seems to cover over the reality we are confronted with, and allows us to maintain an illusory sense about our circumstances.

I can remember being a teenager, before I became straightedge, talking about how amazing our weekend parties had been, despite the fact that we really just got so drunk we were sick for most of the night, and likely still recovering from the hangovers. Somehow, constantly talking about how great they were really does make it feel like it was a good time, and increases your anticipation for the next week. But the reality was not that pretty.

I've had friendships in which we would often talk up how great of friends we were to each other, and when having those discussions it actually did seem that way, but time always proves the strengths of real friendships, and sometimes painfully pulls back the curtain to reveal not much at all.

Often, how this occurs is that the best parts of something are emphasised, while the weaker parts are ignored. This will include comparisons with other, lesser examples to show just how great your situation or thing really is.

Our monastery was like that. I can't make any comments on it now, but it was like that while I was there. And that actually did make it hard for me to leave it in a lot of ways.

The way we would talk about the monastery was often to point out all the problems that other Krishna monasteries in the western world suffered from. And it was true, our monastery was free from a lot of those things. We did have a solid combined focus for the most part, we weren't just used as 'roster-foder' by a management trying to keep a failing temple running. We weren't being used as fundraising slaves like in other areas of the world. We had our own vege garden. We could focus on our own spiritual practices without a lot of distractions of other monasteries in the world. And that was definitely good. But I think it would be inaccurate to say that the monastery was a well functioning one.

We would often have classes in the monastery were we would hear about how lucky we were to be in the monastery, and there was always an never ending list of reasons why we were so lucky. But as the manager of the monastery it really didn't feel that way to me. It seemed like our management meetings were always full of dealing with personality clashes, and it really did feel like we never made any progress dealing with what seemed to be rather easy issues. There was the constant tendency for standards to constantly drop, and it seemed like a constant battle amongst the managers to keep the standards clear. It's incorrect to say it was a total mess, there were positive things going on. The point is, however, that we were really doing ourselves a big disservice by always talking about how amazing our monastery was, instead of being realistic and trying to actually make it an amazing place.

Because it wasn't really amazing. It wasn't incredibly inspiring to be there, I didn't feel that there was strong leadership at all, if anything the leadership was a serious let down. There definitely was no real sense of camaraderie at all. It didn't feel like we were progressing forward in any way, there didn't seem to be any real training taking place, we were just treading water a lot of the time. It wasn't the dynamic atmosphere we were advertised as being at all. But it wasn't horrible. It just wasn't sufficient. And as time goes by, if we aren't getting progressively more out of a situation, then we aren't going to be being determined to continue within it. And that lead me to be more determined to leave.

Within the Krishna community we would also often hear about the important of taking guidance from seniors, being completely honest, making ourselves vulnerable to seniors, especially those in the position of mentors. This is emphasised over and over again. And generally, whenever someone leaves, the excuse that is given is that they didn't take enough advantage of the seniors around them. They didn't reveal their minds enough. They didn't make themselves vulnerable to the seniors. This serves to provide a nice excuse for when people leave. An excuse it essential. Otherwise it might hint that things aren't as pristine as they are pretended to be. However, there is seldom discussion on whether or not there are actually people in the community who have the qualities needed to be actual leaders, mentors, guides for people to put full personal and emotional trust in. In my personal experience, I did not find that to be the case. In the monastery, I could not find the confidence and faith to make myself vulnerable to the mentors there. We had an option of three, one was had a history of bullying, the other two, while being nice people, just didn't have the qualities I could look up to as mentors. Being steady in their practices really isn't the sole quality.

As a friend commented on my last blog, in every situation all parties should be able to see that they are 50% to blame. That is what makes for a healthy community and friendship. Without that, things will never improve, mainly because of the staunch determination to deny that things need to change. That is a very sad situation. But, by constantly talking about just how great a situation is, while turning a blind eye to all the evidence that proves it really isn't that perfect, one will never have a chance to actually create a great environment. It's not criticism to say that things need to improve. It's not an attack or a campaign of opposition. It's called honesty. And it pays to apply it to all situations, instead of simply continuing to point the finger at others.

Many times when devotees leave the Krishna community it will be said that they left because they weren't willing to work on themselves. I remember once someone left our monastery without giving any notice. I arrived home one day, and went into his room, and all I found was a note saying he had left. I contacted our monastery authority to see what he wanted us to tell the other monks about this sudden departure. His reply was that this person had a lot of issues they weren't being honest about. Perhaps that is true. But I also felt like it was my fault, for not being considerate enough with his situation, for pushing him into taking on more than he was able to cope with in terms of services and jobs. But to claim that he wasn't willing to work on himself was a good scapegoat from taking the blame on ourselves.

I personally find it highly ironic. In my personal situation, I am finding that I am working on myself harder now than ever before, primarily because I now feel like I have a community around me that is happy to support me as I try to work on the negative mental patterns I have developed over the years. Instead of faulting a person for not working on themselves in a specific situation, perhaps it is worthwhile analysing that situation to discover if there are weaknesses that prevent people from making themselves vulnerable and really being honest with themselves to others.

I have talked to a number of Hare Krishnas who really do not feel like they have that type of environment available to them in New Zealand, in any of the different centres, and I think it is a valid concern. I think that the aggressive tactic of solely placing blame on these individuals is the most negative approach possible for that community.

I know this isn't entirely an update that fits into any chronology of the story. I really am stalling at the moment. But I figure it's better to write something than nothing, considering I had almost gone a month without updating at all. And yes, my mood has changed in my blog at the moment. I have been accused of writing this blog as an internet campaign against the Hare Krishnas, and I have had some rather insulting speculations made about me on a public forum by a Hare Krishna leader, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn't feeling angry about that. Clearly this is going to affect how I write at the moment. But like I said, I'll discuss all of that a little later. It's something that I don't think I can let slide without addressing directly.

How to dismiss a ex-Hare Krishna blog in three easy steps

2010-04-10T17:03:00.002+12:00

So it's been seriously close to one month since I last updated this blog. What can I say, it's been a very busy month for me. And having my own computer now has actually meant, ironically, that I have been much less focused on writing for this blog than I was before I had this computer. I think this is mostly because I've become a big fan of talking to friends via the miracle of facebook chat. But after a full month of people asking me for a new update, combined with some extra inspiration to continue writing over the past couple of days, I've decided to finally get it back in action.

This entry is actually one I've started and stopped at least 10 times over the past month. This time I've turned all my online chats off, and I'm planning an early night at home with no distractions.

As my mind became settled in knowing that I would leave the Krishna community, I started to become more aware of the socialised mechanisms used within communities to retain membership. I guess consciousness is state specific, as they say, which means that you will be more aware of certain things depending on your desires and consciousness. My desires were to leave the Krishna conscious community, so I was made more aware of the social mechanisms which snap into place to encourage people not to leave that community.

As I've said many times before, this really isn't property of religious communities specifically, but I think of all close communities in general. I would say that I experienced the same social mechanisms when I first started showing interest in Krishna consciousness, and I see these same mechanisms sometimes come into play in the hardcore and straightedge communities as well. Pretty much every community. What I think the Krishna community offered was a more magnified view of this social phenomenon.

I can remember vividly the very morning before I left the monastery there was a conversation held over breakfast. The discussion was on two points. One was that whenever anyone leaves Krishna consciousness, they are destined to end up in the same negative positions they were in before the started Krishna consciousness. In other words, if one was a former drug addict, they would likely return to their drug use, if someone was suffering from depression, they would end up depressed again, if someone were highly promiscuous, they would end up back in the same negative patterns of life which they had originally left behind. The devotees would then think about the previous aspects of their lives which they found distasteful, and their lips would curl in distaste. And in many cases rightly so I think. The underlying assumption is that one cannot be progressive in their lives, they cannot aim for self-betterment, outside of the Krishna conscious community. And if they leave that community, they will be doomed to a life of pain and suffering.

The second point that was brought up during that breakfast was the concept that 'Maya', or illusion, acts even harsher on ex-Hare Krishnas, it is Krishna's way of trying to convince them that they made a mistake. It is even said that the more someone dedicated to the service of Krishna consciousness, the more Maya will make them suffer once they leave. Often times, at this point, the devotees would bring up stories of ex-Hare Krishnas who, upon leaving the Krishna consciousness movement, ended up finding themselves in situations of extreme suffering. These stories are thrown around like Gospel truths, the standard expectation. There was the ex-Hare Krishna who ended up married into a Muslim relationship, where her Arabic husband mistreated her to such extreme levels that she ended up having to run away with her children to save herself from the abusive relationship. This was said to be a result of her leaving Krishna consciousness, after having done so much service. Another ex-Hare Krishna found himself getting beat up one late night in Auckland while walking home. This was said to be a result of his selling so many books for Krishna, but then leaving the community behind.

As I sat during breakfast hearing these same stories repeated, those taking part in this conversation speaking so convinced by their words, I just felt like shaking my head.

Also, as the time came when I become more determined to leave the community a former member of our monastery was beginning to make movements to again take up the practice of Krishna consciousness. I can't recall if I told the story already, but one day I was on Google Chat, and he started to talk to me about how he was preparing to meet up with our Guru to discuss things. I knew he was hoping for my encouragement, and I felt such heavy irony in the fact that I was only days away from leaving Krishna consciousness behind just as he was entering again.

We've never really discussed his original reasons for leaving Krishna consciousness, personally I'm not willing to speculate. But I what I can say is that the community reacts in a very specific way whenever devotees do leave the community. How they react is that they construct their own explanations as to why devotees have left. This serves to shift any possible blame away from the pristine and amazing leadership, camaraderie, facility and training which they have been offered, and instead places the blame 100% on the shoulders of the person exiting the community. In every case that I witnessed of a person leaving the Krishna consciousness community this is exactly the response I have witnessed. And this served as a constant retaining mechanism for the community.

To begin with, it serves to dismiss any claims brought by an exiting devotee. They weren't honest about their motives, they weren't willing to work on themselves, they hide aspects of their lives, and this resulted in them leaving. As a result, whatever statements they have to make about their experience within the community is likely fictional, a creation of their own minds, bewildered by illusion. This also serves to contain the impacts of those who leave. Their departure can now easily be explained and dismissed without further investigation. And finally, it serves to create a sense of fear amongst the community, as devotees worry "I wonder what they would say about me if I left?"

My original plan for departing from the Krishna consciousness community was one I ended up abandoning. I had been offered a trip to India, which seemed to me like it was a last ditch effort to revitalise my spiritual life. The trip was to take place over February of 2010. I had decided that I would stick it out until my trip to India, because I really wanted to finally get out of NZ for some time. I would return from India, and then make my departure, with the hopes of immediately starting studying at university. Obviously this didn't occur, and there are a number of reasons for that.

There were a few reasons for this. For starters, I realised that my going to India, on a spiritual pilgrimage, with the aim of leaving my spiritual practices behind completely upon the end of the trip was probably not the most honest thing I could do. Also, I started to realise that the transition Hare Krishna monk to full-time student probably was NOT gonna be a straight forward transition to make. I realised that if I was actually gonna start getting my life together, I was probably gonna need more than a single weekend after my return from India to do so.

There were also other reasons for my speeding up my timeline for departing this community, which I will discuss when I put out my next update, probably sometime over the next week. But right now I have to get to sleep, because I am walking up at around 4 am tomorrow morning to prepare for a dynamic animal rights protest. I'll let you know how that went in my next update as well.

A preface for the upcoming updates

2010-03-16T20:49:00.003+13:00

I'm kind of at an interesting point in this little project, and I haven't yet figured out how to progress through the next few entries that I plan to do as part of the chronological story. I have actually sat down several times over the past week and tried typing something out for this, but so far I haven't really made it past the first paragraph or so before my mind kinda freezes up and I don't know where to take it. I think there are a few reasons for that.

Firstly, most of the things that I have discussed up until this point have been things that I have pondered over for a longer period of time, in some places years of thought have gone into these words. And I have also had the chance to remove myself from the situation a bit to think it through from a new vantage point. However, now I'm in a totally different situation when I try to write these next few updates. Now I'm talking about things that I really haven't had the chance to thoroughly process or think about in a reflective way. I also feel like I am still tied up in the processes and events which I need to next describe. This makes it a bit harder to talk about honestly and humbly I think.

I also have this feeling that the next few updates will be the ones that some may use to create value judgments on me, perhaps as an effort for them to reconcile my decisions with their own worldviews and life stories. In a lot of ways, this blog was much easier to write BEFORE I discovered that so many people were reading it. Not entirely because I have been worried what people will think, but more that at times I've purposefully structured my entries to keep people interested. Though the thought has always been in my mind that people will use information from my blog to back up their own world views, indeed that will be one of the issues that I will bring up as I start to describe in more detail the events leading up to my leaving the monastery altogether, and how my thoughts developed over that time to make me feel most resolved that I needed to leave.

Without a doubt writing this blog has been an interesting emotional experience for me, and at times it's taken a lot of emotional energy to actually write about these things. In particular, describing the events of Suzy's death really did take me at least a week to properly get over, it was a draining thing to discuss. And for different reasons I also think that describing the events leading up to my final decision to leave this community will also be a somewhat emotionally taxing situation. I want to actually be in a solid emotional situation before I start writing about it, just so that I can ensure that I write with honesty, and not allow simultaneous emotions to filter through. This past week has definitely not been the week for such a task.

I will probably start writing again tonight, but I do have some relatively early appointments tomorrow morning, which will take me over an hour to walk to, so I'm probably not going to stay up late tonight to finish it off. But for those who have been asking me whether I am going to continue with this project, have no fear, I will be. It's on my mind, I'm just wanting to finish this up properly.

Once I am done with the chronological story telling, I will most likely just start telling various stories of things that occurred over the years, things that I think are relevant, but I skipped over in the first telling so that I could get to some of the most important episodes.

Thanks for everyone who has been reading and passing this around. It's actually amazing how many people have had a read of this. I'm completely surprised at some of the people who have sent me messages, e-mails and phone calls over the past month or so. Some of those messages have come at just the right moments, it's been remarkable.

Starting to finish.

2010-03-11T18:07:00.003+13:00

I'm usually someone who is open and willing to accept the blame in things that go wrong. I think that is an important trait I learned while in the monastery. I think this is especially important when dealing with problems of the interpersonal type. No matter what interpersonal issues arise, chances are everyone involved had their faults in it. And it's almost always the best position to first of all acknowledge and deal with your own fault in a problem before tackling the faults of others. I think there also comes a point where all avenues have been exhausted, and it's time to give up the situation altogether. I definitely think it's foolish to give up on relationships without first putting in the solid effort to fix the problems in them, but I also think there comes a point where defeat has to be admitted. Knowing exactly when to admit defeat is probably the toughest part of interpersonal dealings.

Over the years, as my time as the manager of the monastery, and the most proficient communicator of our management and leadership team, I often had to write letters to our authorities about the problems that were arising with other members of the monastery. Sometimes I had to describe in detail some of the problematic behaviour that was going on, whether it was dishonesty, rough dealings, overly competitive relationships or personality clashes. This time, I was given two days off by the management team to write an e-mail explaining my own problems, with a sense of much more severity than the e-mail I had sent the year before.

I sent an e-mail to my Guru explaining in a fair amount of detail why I was finding it so stressful to continue living in the monastery. I think I have pretty much explained everything in my previous updates. For one, I was feeling overwhelmed by all the of responsibilities that I had to deal with. I was cooking three days a week for universities, trying to run a dynamic program with the sustainability network, looking after the books and accounts, monitoring income and expenditure, and book sales, making sure bills were paid, and people were fed and everyone had something to do. I had to communicate with people around the country, even around the world, to keep everything running. And I found myself being the person who had to think for everyone else in the monastery. I was glad to have a lot to do, but it was just becoming more than I could cope with, but every month it seemed like something new was being added to my list of things to do. I just wasn't a strong enough, or organised enough person to be able to deal with it all.

I was also having a hard time dealing with the others in the monastery. I think partly because I was doing so much, and often having to pick up the pieces and spend sometimes days fixing mistakes that others had made. It feel like I was holding everything together sometimes while the others were blissfully unaware how we continued surviving week to week.

I just didn't have the compassion or leadership skills to delegate tasks out to others very well. I had a hard to accepting the inabilities of others as I saw them. Every management meeting just filled me with frustration as we discussed for hours with no firm result on anything in the end. I just didn't have the strength to rectify these issues on my own.

Because of all of this I had started becoming less and less enthusiastic with my spiritual practices. Finding time to read was made doubly hard by the fact that I started to dislike reading altogether. Focusing on my chanting and meditations became more difficult as I was either rushing to finish my rounds before I had to start cooking, or else I was sleeping in because of exhaustion and having to chant instead of attending the morning prayers and programs. I just started to lose attraction for these things as time went by. And in the meantime, my attraction had started to become preoccupied with things like my bike, and thoughts of activism, and the prospects of leaving the monastery and starting to a career.

I wrote all this in my e-mail to my Guru, and said that, in my opinion, it was time for me to leave the monastery, I just wasn't going to be able to remain there peacefully much longer. At the time of writing it, I was pretty certain that I wanted to leave Krishna consciousness altogether. But, at the end of the e-mail I said that I wasn't going to rule out any possibilities. At that point I was feeling a bit pragmatic about it all. I was feeling less and less satisfied with the philosophy as it was presented to me, so my contemplations of remaining within the community were of a more pragmatic nature, if it suited my purposes I would stay. At the very least it would give me a chance to continue working on my personal character.

One thing I found incredibly interesting about this period of time was how interested the management was to ensure that no one else in the monastery knew I was having personal struggles. That was something I never liked that much. There was a culture within the community of silence when there were problems, especially problems with people who were looked up to within the community. It was like the other managers and leaders of the monastery were a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that I was being totally open about how I was feeling in the situation. They didn't seem to have the precedents to rely on to deal with it at all. And so when some of the other monks asked why I was getting a few days off, they weren't certain how to answer them. If they asked me, I would just tell them. I was beyond the point of burn-out, and I was writing to my Guru to let him know that things needed to change and fast.

There were several results to my e-mail. My Guru called up at some point, I recall, and we had a brief chat about things. He said at first that he would look into things, and try and find a way for me to pass on my responsibilities to others so that I could have a break from management. He said that I had reduced his stress over the years by looking after the place nicely, but now I was feeling that burden too strongly myself, and so it was causing it's damage to me. However, it wasn't until a month or even longer I think, maybe two months had gone by that it was finally decided that I would split up my services and spread them amongst some of the other monks in the monastery.

My Guru also decided that he wanted each of the members of the management team, at that time four of us, to get together and discuss our strengths and weaknesses. He asked me to write to him with all my possible complaints that I may have about all the other members of the management team. I wrote a novel, which I always do when I write. He was definitely concerned, and disappointed by some of the things I had to report. But despite his constant requests to have a meeting together it just never happened. Our management team was notorious for NEVER honouring meetings and meeting times. We made plans for meetings on many occasions, which never happened, and simply resulted in me becoming more and more dissatisfied in my situation. When we finally did manage to get it together to have these meetings, the result was even more depressing. It turned into an empty show. We would spend time focusing on one member at a time, and we would each discuss what we perceived were their strengths and weaknesses. It was good in the sense that, for the first time, we discussed some of the major character flaws we saw in others. The downside was that, despite having these things shown, there was no effort to improve that I could see from anyone else. I was also especially disappointed that, when it came time to discuss my strengths and weaknesses, I was left being complimented and given very little to work on. I was a harsher critic on myself than the rest of the managers were.

The third thing that happened after my letter was that my expressed desire to leave the monastery was, for the most part, dismissed. Within the Krishna community, if you are not a monk it is pretty much expected that you will be getting married. There were aspects of that part of the community that I found a little bit odd. In particular was the fact that a lot of the ladies seemed to discuss their marriage hopes amongst themselves. Since leaving I have heard from a few friends that some certain members of the female side of the community had their eye out to marry me, which I have to say is something I find a little bit creepy now.

When I said that I wanted to leave the monastery, the connotation was that I wanted to get married. Which i don't think was entirely the case, but within that community that was the connotation. I definitely knew that I just wanted to do a whole bunch of things which weren't really suited for a monk to do. I wanted to get involved in activism, I wanted to ride my bike, and have a few different bikes. And I even wanted to go to hardcore and punk shows, and see my little brothers' bands play. I wanted to be able to visit my friends outside of the Krishna community without having to feel guilty for doing it. So, essentially, I didn't want to be a monk anymore.

The basic reply to my request to leave the monastery was that getting married would be an even more stressful and frustrating endeavour than the monastery was for me. That living with a woman would be infinitely worse than living with 8 monks, regardless of how annoying I found the other monks.

I found this response a little bit frustrating for various reasons. If someone is asking to leave a monastic life, I would think it would be best for them to leave. But, I also disliked the dichotomy of 'either monk or married'. Ex-monks tend to be married rather quickly, and often through arranged marriage situations, with some choice exercised. I didn't like the thought that if I left the monastery, I would be instantly encouraged to prepare for marriage, and then lined up with a single woman from the community. For starters, as I said in my previous update, my parents are my primary example of a successful marriage. I could not see within the Krishna community a relationship that came close to theirs. And even worse, from what I knew of the ladies in the community, I didn't really see any who I thought were capable of that. My Guru sometimes let me know about the struggles in the ladies communities, I think perhaps sometimes he was trying to discourage me from considering leaving the monastery by letting me hear how 'crazy' the ladies were. I'm sure they are nice people, but as I've told a few friends, if I ever do consider marriage, I'm not the type of person to settle for less. And since I was already considering leaving that community as it was, it didn't seem pragmatic to get myself in a marriage situation within that community, only to leave anyway. That wouldn't be a very considerate approach at all. I think it is sad that sometimes marriage has been used in that community to retain members. Not so much in the immediate community that I was part of, but the Krishna community in general had that approach many times.

Essentially, the result of my raising personal concerns, and acknowledging that I wanted to leave was that I was given the chance to offload my services, and train other people to take over my jobs. That and I was given a trip to India as a spiritual recuperation trip, a trip that I never ended going on. For me, I considered this the final death thralls of my spiritual life. The only thing keeping me now was that I liked the projects I got to do as a monk with the eco and sustainability community, but once the year came to an end at the universities, and once I had managed to sufficiently train up some replacements, in my mind I would be free to leave the community altogether.

The last six months or so that I spent in the monastery were probably my most stressfree of all the years I was there. The main reason was that I knew the time was coming to an end. I had made up my mind, I was preparing to leave Krishna consciousness.

I forgot to give this one a title...

2010-03-09T23:29:00.003+13:00

I took a trip to visit my parents in Whangarei around the end of June 2009. The occasion was their 30th wedding anniversary. I remember spending a lot of time on the internet during this visit, mostly watching bike videos on youtube, and checking out ebay for deals on vintage bike parts so that I could finish putting together my green bike. I definitely knew at that point that I was experiencing a change in motivations in my life. My spiritual and religious life was taking more and more of a back-seat position in my mind. i was becoming increasingly dissatisfied in the community I was living with, yet I was finding more support and better friendships with people outside the community.

For about 9 years now I have been posting on one rather dynamic discussion board on the internet. Over the years I have made what I consider to be some solid friendships with the people on that board. My posting on there has gone through it's ups and downs, but after Suzy's death I found myself posting on there more often, partly just so that I could have some people to talk with that I could actually relate with on a personal level. The monastery was really not the place for that, not that I didn't try. A lot of the people on this internet forum are from the same background as me, I can relate to them. And some of them I look up to in a lot of ways.

In 2009 I think I relied more on the internet and that discussion forum more for friendship and a sense of community than I did on the monks in the monastery. I knew that wasn't the healthiest state to be in, living in a community that wasn't providing friendship or a real sense of a caring community, and instead getting that in virtual form. I also knew it wasn't good for the longevity of a monastic life.

As I described, in 2008 when I visited my friend and his wife in Hamilton, I became a bit jealous of his house, his future career and his marriage. We were from the same background, and I was inspired by his example of life. The same holds true to some of the people who post on this internet community as well. I found myself admiring their lives, their families, even their struggles were seemed more tangible and real to me than the issues I saw in the community around me. I actually found myself becoming more attracted to the concept of struggling through life in a material sense than I was attracted to the concept of struggling through life in a spiritual practice, primarily I think because of the fact I struggled to find a single example within my immediate community which I had any desire to emulate at all. All this served to push me more and more away from the community I was immersed in, and I become more and more frustrated having to deal with the community in anyway.

For my parents wedding anniversary I spent the day cooking. I didn't really do my best for this meal I'm afraid. I just kept it pretty simple. But I did try to put together a nice carrot cake with that classic matte white icing that is always used wedding cakes and stuff. I can't remember what that stuff is called, but it starts with a P and you can get a vegan version of it at the supermarket.

(My parents cutting the cake that I made for them)

My parents decided to renew their wedding vows in front of a few friends for this occasion. They happened to have a friend who was a licensed marriage celebrant to give the event that extra sense of authenticity. My mother had sent an e-mail out to everyone in our extended family asking them to write some words to congratulate my parents for the 30 years of marriage. She also made it clear that all four of us sons would be expected to say something as well. They invited a few friends over for the occasion as well, but it wasn't a big event.

I definitely cooked to much food, but I ate too much as well, so I think it evened out. I made some quinoa and blackbean patties, a creamy eggplant kind of dish, and I think one other bean dish. It was all rather rich in the end though, and I definitely got a bit of indigestion both from the quantity I ate and the richness. But that is often my style when it comes to food preparation and consumption.

(Me cooking, with the whole family hassling me :) )

Some of my parents friends who came had a few kids of their own who they brought along. The son was really into cooking, so he enjoyed watching me cook, and learning a few tricks and secrets of the kitchen. I think he also liked the fact that I cooked without recipes. I hate recipes sometimes. He definitely enjoyed the meal when it was ready to be served up.

My parents wrote their own vows to read to each other. I guess they weren't exactly 'vows' so much as just their thoughts on their relationship together over the past 30 years. Everyone who meets my parents, including people within the Krishna community, have always commented on their relationship, or their successful parenting. Sometimes some of the ladies from the Krishna community would stay with my parents and mention things like that to them or to me. The vows that they read out were definitely touched the heart of everyone who was there. There were some damp eyes while they read out their vows, and I would be lying if I said that my eyes stayed dry the whole time, but I imagine that would hardly surprise anyone.

(My parents dancing during their 30th wedding celebrations)

I had a realisation while they were exchanging their vows. I realised that one of the main reason I had I guess resigned to a single life was that I held no hope for ever having the kind of successful relationship that I saw that they have. When it came time for me to have my say as part of the days celebration that is what I said. I told them that they had effectively set the standard so high that it seemed unattainable for the rest of us. And the thought of a second grade relationship really wasn't that appealing at all.

I kinda realised that day that I wasn't really being a monk for the right reasons at all. I realised that my two main reasons for being a monk were that: 1) it gave me more time, free from having to worry about income etc, to do the things I wanted to do with my life. However, as time went by, those things seemed to change from spiritual practices to being involved in social justice activism and riding my bike. And 2) I was a monk because I knew it would be incredibly hard to have a marriage/relationship on the level as my parents.

That weekend gave me a lot to think about. The whole last two years was giving me a lot to think about. I think I started to feel a bit depressed in my situation. I felt like the community I was living in just wasn't fulfilling me in any of the ways I needed it to. I didn't feel spiritual enlivenment at all, I felt like we were just treading water in a lot of ways. We were hardly doing anything revolutionary or even really effective at bringing about a really positive change to the world around us, or even to our own lives. Our management team at the monastery was a total embarrassment in a lot of ways. Although I managed to squash my bullying tendencies by this time, and I was actually able to treat the younger monks with respect these days, I was still really struggling to deal with the leaders and managers. The leader who I wrote much about previously had returned, and a lot of the emotional blackmail tactics had returned with him, though I was much stronger in dealing with it these days. I just found it all so uninspiring. I couldn't see any example of a person within the Krishna community that I could look up to, or see myself following in their footsteps. I couldn't even really see people who had undergone any radical transformation of character as was so promised by the practice. Sure, people underwent some radical changes at the beginning of their days in Krishna consciousness, and that is admirable that people were able to give up their destructive addictions. But still those I was living with were certainly not exemplary human beings, at least no more so than my friends within the activist communities that I was dealing with, people who I started being more and more inspired by as each day went by.

I was still so busy, and overburdened by a still ever increasing amount of responsibilities. I had to pick up the slack of responsibility from the other leaders and managers, and I literally had to make sure they didn't burn the house down on a few occasions. There just seemed to be no common sense prevailing in their actions a lot of the time. Sometimes the things they did were so unintelligent I was baffled that anyone thought it was a good idea at all. I was just getting so incredibly frustrated.

And so, one day, I called the managers to have a quick meeting, and I was totally upfront with them. I was not dealing with this situation at all, I wanted to leave the monastery, though I wasn't ruling out any possibilities, but if we didn't fix these things there was zero chance that I was going to be staying around. Actually, I already had next to no faith that we would be able to work our way through these things. In fact, they practically admitted that during this meeting. They acknowledged that in a lot of ways I just didn't fit in with this setting, or with the managers. They acknowledged their own lackings, and I acknowledged mine.

It wasn't an easy meeting to have with them in a lot of ways. But I was at breaking point, and I needed things to change. Already at that point I knew that there was little keeping me in that community at the time. Not much at all, aside from the fact that I just wanted to keep working on myself, trying to use the opportunity for personal growth. Sometimes I hear people say within that community that the only reason people leave that community is because they no longer want to work on themselves. I definitely have to disagree with that. At least in my situation, I left partly because I knew that I could no longer work on myself within their community, not in a positive way. I left knowing the fact that I would actually have to work on myself with a lot more determination once gone than I did within that community. I would have to ride without the training wheels and knee pads.

I had been the manager of the monastery for about four years or so, and no one else was capable of replacing me at the time. Although I desperately wanted to leave at that point, I still knew that I couldn't leave without first training up others to take over my jobs. Otherwise the monastery would end up in serious financial problems. We had a $1/4 million debt with our book supplier, it was a serious job looking after it all.

The management team decided to give me a couple of days off to think about things, and to write a letter to my Guru explaining the situation, which I did. The letter took a while to write. Aspects of his response were awesome, other aspects were a bit not. And there was a definite attempt to fix things in the monastery. I have even heard that there has been talk about dismantling it, but I'm not certain what the future holds for them. But I'll discuss my letter and it's responses later.

I like to ride my bicycle.

2010-03-08T23:26:00.004+13:00

If I'm honest, the one thing that sticks out most for me in the year 2009 is bicycles. That pretty much sums up where my focus was for most of the year. Bicycles and sustainability. And finding a million ways to cook awesome food utilizing silken tofu.

What I did with my bikes was I took the first bike I got in 2008, and I did it up a little bit, made it a bit nicer, and then sold it for more than I bought it for. Combining that money with the money I got for Xmas I bought another BMX frame, and built up ANOTHER bike. It was that bike that I crashed and broke myself with. After that accident I went on the sickness benefit because of my injuries for a little while, which brought me in enough income to put towards ANOTHER BMX, which was better than the previous by far. However, I realised that BMX bikes are probably not the most suited for long distance riding, or commuting, which was something I wanted to get more into. So, that's when I decided to sell that bike, and buy a single speed road bike instead.

That's when things started getting crazy. I bought a fixed gear wheel set for cheap on Trademe, which was decent, and got into riding fixed. And I started riding my bike into town all the time. Whenever I would go to the yoga centre in town, I was riding my bike. This did wonders for my health, and my mental state I think. I would ride everywhere, whenever I had an excuse I was riding. I made friends with all the bike shops in the area, always looking for deals on parts and tuning everything up right.

One weekend two of us decided to attend the E.C.O. conference, to network more with eco groups. The conference was far out west, but I was determined to ride to it, partly just because I liked riding my bike, especially long distances. And partly because I was determined to start relying on sustainable transport more often, especially when taking part in eco events. Unfortunately my friend wasn't much of a cyclist. Like, not even slightly. We rode together from Otahuhu to New Market, and it took significantly longer than usual. I was going perhaps a quarter the speed I normal travel at, and he was still lagging behind! From New Market we caught the train to Swanson, deep in West Auckland, and from there had to ride up this steep and windy hill to get to the conference centre. It took us about an hour or so to get up the hill and find the place, yet only ten minutes heading back down the hill. As we got close to the retreat centre my rear tire got a puncture. Did I mention it was raining? That was a definite adventure. And I don't really know why we attended the conference to begin with. On the way back into town we stopped off for a soak at the pools in New Market. When we got out to ride to the yoga centre for a special program that evening, the Auckland rain really hit us hard. We arrived absolutely saturated!!

It was around that time that I started attending meetings to organise for a big climate change action on the 24th of October. The 24th of October was an international day of action against climate change, and in New Zealand a large number of events took place on that day. At the first meetings we had for this in Auckland, different ideas for different actions were put forward, and we split up into groups who would focus on one specific action. I joined the other cycling advocates to organise a mass bike ride through the city. We had many meetings over the next few months, and the result was really an amazing event. In the end we had over 400 cyclists meet up in the city, and cycle together 12km to Mount Eden. We had a team of about 12 ride guides, who blocked traffic at intersections to ensure that everyone was safe as we rode. Some of us had practiced that route up to ten times, just to make sure the ride was perfectly, and it did for the most part. It was a huge success actually, a highlight for the cycle advocacy movement in Auckland for sure.

(I led the ride on the 24th. This is me on my green machine at the front of the ride)

Another inspiring event that I attended in May of 2009 was the GetAcross March, which was a protest action calling for cycle and pedestrian access to Auckland's Harbour Bridge. This bridge effectively splits Auckland in half, and if you are a cyclist, that means that if you want to get over to the North Shore, you need to shell out for a bus or a ferry to get you there. It is a definite barrier to sustainable transportation in the city. So in May around 5,000 people showed up to a protest to march across the bridge to show their support for pedestrian and cyclist access to the bridge. Unfortunately, although the police were happy to allow us all to have access to the bridge, the transport authority for Auckland said 'NO'. The head of the transport authority was actually at the protest, and repeatedly told everyone that they would not be allowed access to the bridge. Unfortunately for him, and the two dozen or so police officers who were to try and keep five thousand people off the bridge, people power had spoken, and we all decided that we were going to go on the bridge anyway.

When I arrived at the protest there were a whole bunch of speeches taking place, but I quickly got bored of them. Instead I made my way over to the police barricade which was blocking access to the bridge. It was there that Wayne, the transport authority head, was standing. A few of us on bikes stood there and mocked him for a good while, as slowly more and more people made their way over to the blockade. Wayne continued to deny us access, so a few of us thought we would make our way to the other motorway entrance down the way, and see if the police blockading there would be more lenient with us. When we arrived there, we found four police officers, and a lot of space to walk around the barricades, even with our bikes, which is what we did. To be honest, I was expecting to get arrested that day, because I was just determined to get on the bridge. But as it turned out, so was everyone else.

As I rode my bike up the motorway entrance, I saw that huge amounts of people were also fighting their way to the motorway. I actually saw a family scaling a fence to get on to the motor way onramp. The father climbed over first, the mother passed over the baby, then the baby stroller, and then she climbed the fence. It was amazing. I made my way to the entrance to the motorway, and there were four police officers now trying to keep a few hundred people off the bridge. It wasn't going to work. Suddenly, we saw a group of breakaway cyclists come from further up the motorway fly past us and up the bridge. There was a huge cheer, and it was on, we all rushed the bridge, and five thousand people disobeyed the authorities to have their say on sustainable transportation.

(That is actually me with my fist in the air riding over the bridge...)

That evening I was scheduled to cook the feast at the yoga centre, which I did. But my mind was fully occupied with thoughts about what had just happened on the bridge. To me, it was really inspiring to see so many people make a firm stand like that, it felt awesome to have taken part in such an event. The biggest civil disobedience act in New Zealand history. And it looks like it was a success. While cooking I was constantly texting friends who had also attended the protest, and I was searching all the news articles about it on the internet from my phone. It was an inspiring event.

And throughout this year the Sustainability Network that we were running at Auckland University was taking on a more and more stable form. We were having effective meetings, things were actually growing and developing. I remember after one meeting having a chat with one of my friends from the monastery about how satisfying that meeting was, and how it was completely the opposite of the frustrating meetings that I took part in a few times a week as part of the management and leadership team at the monastery.

Because I was cycling so much, I decided to put the time and effort into putting together a really nice bike. I bought an old '74 frame from TradeMe, and started doing it up, with good quality, vintage bits and pieces. I had it powder-coated a nice metallic green, with chromed forks. I bought new-old-stock bits and pieces for most of the components, and a few retro pieces here and there. The result was a masterpiece if I do say so myself. And one that was such a dream to ride around the city, to get me everywhere I needed to go without relying on fossil fuels for my transport.

What all of this did for me during 2009 was make me realise that the things I actually got a kick out in my life were no longer things with spiritual focuses. I also wanted to be an effective radical, and I felt that I could do that much better outside of the religious community I was part of than inside. My mind was always thinking about how to fix up my bike just a little bit better, where to ride that day, and just craving the feeling of going fast with the wind rushing past me as I rode. I was inspired by all these community drive protests I had taken part in. They made me feel like I was part of something bigger, and that was actually going somewhere, instead of being stuck in what was feeling like a stagnant community with little forward movement or development. Our meetings at the monastery were getting increasingly frustrating for me, as we spent hours discussing the same things, and never progressing on anything. Meanwhile I was attending meetings with various groups, including our own Sustainability Network, which was always developing and pushing forward. I realised that my desires to the life of a sage was decreasing day by day, and my desire to be an effect agent of social change came back to the forefront of my mind. Since I had started feeling more and more let down by the decisions of the management committee at the yoga centre, I just found myself becoming more and more dissatisfied with the community I was in. Interacting with the monks at the monastery and dealing with the other managers in our wider community just started to become more and more frustrating for me.

Over the year things just deteriorated continually in that direction, until I started to realise that I now had more reasons to leave that community then to stay. But I also knew that it wouldn't be easy for me to just get up and leave, and it wouldn't be easy for the monastery to suddenly lose the manager who was the only one that currently understood all the systems that kept the monastery function. So I devised a plan to slowly back out of my duties until I felt I could leave altogether.

Yeah, I know this isn't a proper update...

2010-03-08T00:08:00.003+13:00

I know that I promised a number of people that I would get a new entry up today, but it just isn't gonna happen I'm afraid.

I've had a really busy weekend, and since getting my new computer I've spent a lot of my computer time getting it customized just to my likings. As a result, I just don't think I have the focus to write an update today.

Here's a quick run down of my weekend:

Friday I checked out a site where a new community garden is being set up in Mt. Albert. It looked pretty awesome! Then I arrived back home to find that my computer arrived, which was also awesome! After getting distracted by my computer for a little while I made my way into town to meet up with a friend to go to an anti-whaling protest. I was a bit late, as usual, but as it turned out the protest organisers were late also. The protest was a street theater style protest. We had an big inflatable whale that was being harpooned and cut up by the 'scientific researchers' while myself and other protesters handed out 'whale meat', which was actually nicely wrapped styrofoam covered in red paint stuff. The protest was outside the Japanese consulate.

After that, we went back to my friend house, and I pretty much just played on my new computer for a while. After that I made my way to another friends birthday party, but on the way to the bus I caught up with another friend I had planned to meet up with that day anyway. Her, one of her friends, and I spent two hours hanging out on the side of K road just chatting about so many interesting things. It was actually a lot of fun. Then I caught the bus to my little bros' place, did a few things on my computer, then headed to the birthday party. It was a chilled out and relaxed affair, but I enjoyed just hanging out and catching up with everyone there.

Saturday was a fundraiser vegan sausage sizzle for the animal rights op-shop we're setting up. Unfortunately I slept in a bit that day, and missed with the initial set-up. We were just down the road from Eden Park, selling sausages to the cricket fans going to see NZ get beaten by the Aussies. Sadly, we didn't do as well as we had hoped, and didn't actually cover our costs. We have loads of sausages left, which we'll selling at $13 a pack if anyone is keen and wants to help support the cause!

My parents came and picked me up around lunch time, and we went spent the afternoon together with the family. I went back to do some more work at the sausage sizzle in the evening, but we were still not the most successful. Then we went out for dinner with the family again, this time to Golden Age. We arrived a bit late, but that was alright. Because I ate a lot of sausages during the day, I wasn't so hungry. I just picked a bit here and there off everyone else's plate, had some pan fried dumplings, and ate some deepfried vegan ice cream, which was AWESOME!!!

We then took a trip to the Sky Tower, which was pretty cool late at night. When we arrived up the tower everyone was totally quiet up there, kinda like they were in awe or something, or else they were on romantic dates or something. My family just got up there and did what we always do, make fun of each other, and do silly things. We timed how long it took us to walk about the circumference of the thing. My mom freaked out whenever anyone walked over the glass floor section. We all used the toilet, just because of the novelty of using a toilet so high up in the building. We are a weird family for sure.

Today was my birthday. I'm old now. My parents came around a bit after ten, then we wasted a few hours at my brothers place. I was trying to install ubuntu on to my new computer, but failing. During the process I managed to pick up a virus on my computer, and also infect my little brother's. In the end though, we got rid of the virus, and late this evening I installed Ubuntu, which is cool.

Eventually we got ourselves together and went to Motat where we continued our family tradition of wandering around, making fun of each other and goofing off in a serious setting. The mirror maze was awesome. My dad freaked out in the space ship simulator ride, and stopped it after the first 30 seconds. Over all it was a successful visit. Then we went out to Wagamamas for lunch, after our other choices turned out to be failures. The Thai place I had hoped to go to was closed when we arrived, as was the other Japanese place. After lunch we went to the supermarket and bought a whole bunch of stuff. I got some chocolate, like heaps, as well as some basic supplies for the week so that I can actually eat food properly for once.

Then I arrived back home, tired, but pre-occupied with my computer. I've got it slowly setup how I want it, and I'm pretty much going to go to bed happy as a result.

The things I realised this weekend are that I'm really happy at the moment because of the awesome people I have around me, and because I am feeling at the moment that I can really be myself without worrying about anything. I am a very social person, even though I'm not a party character so much, and I'm really glad I have lots of people I can chat with and hang out with when I need to.

Anyway, I promise for reals this time that I will do a proper update tomorrow!

Sick and broken

2010-03-04T16:25:00.004+13:00

We arrived back from Wellington in time to get some final things prepared for the December book distribution marathon, which was a yearly event. This year was a slightly different marathon, primarily because of the fact that our most enthusiastic, or at least our most productive, book distributors had been shipped off to Sydney to start up a new monastery there. That left us with a smaller team of less productive book distributors to work the streets of New Zealand.

Also, at this time our sustainability efforts were being more recognised for their success, and we were being encouraged more actively to try and find a site to set up a community garden in the city. Two of us spent a fair bit of December dealing with that, forming relationships with the city council, looking here and there for possible community garden sites.

During the marathon, for almost the whole month, everyone was out traveling the country selling books, aside from myself and one other monk. The other monk was putting the final touches on a masters thesis he had written for a masters degree in accounting. He spent most of December in front of his laptop, and reading books, getting everything all together. I spent most of December riding my bike around the city, attending meetings, and networking with different groups. I was slowly getting an increased taste for the freedom this schedule has provided me with. With everyone out of the monastery we both started sleeping in a bit later, getting up and chanting more around 6:30 than my usual program of 3 am or 4 am rises. I still felt like I was recovering from my crazy schedule I had kept up for the previous two years. I felt like I was slowing down a lot. I no longer had the motivation to just rush around like a mad man everyday of the week. Summer time was my holiday time, and since I had already felt the stings of an impending burn-out earlier in the year, I was trying to balance things out a bit.

That December, as I think we did the previous year, a number of us took a trip up to Whangarei to visit my parents. In particular myself and my thesis writing friend spent what I think was about a week there with my family. We stayed there pretty much right up to Christmas Eve, and then drove down to Wellington for our yearly end of year festival. While in Whangarei I think I pretty much just chanted, ate food, rode my bike and hung out with my brothers. It was the only time of the year that we were all at home with my family. Most days I borrowed my mothers car and took my bike down to the skate park so that I could get the kids down there to teach me how to ride it better, and get more skills in handling it. At first they made fun of me, for being this weird old guy on a small bike, but in the end they just helped me out, and taught me a whole lot. I do like the idea of working with youth some day, mainly because I think I still have a lot more in common with teenagers than I do with people who are actually grown up. Plus, I know that those years are incredibly formative in people's lives.

I can't remember exactly what day it was, I think it was something like the 24th of December, my little brothers drove me back to Auckland. The other monks had left my parents place a few days earlier. Some were in Auckland still, others were a bit further down the line. The next day we were to start driving down to Otaki for our yearly end of year festival. On the drive to Auckland with my brothers they had their ipod playing the whole time, mostly punk, hardcore and emo bands that I used to like. I really relished the chance to listen to some of these songs again, and they each of the old songs I used to listen to reminded me of another time in my life, some good times, some rather bad.

Back in Auckland I put some finishing touches on some book sales spreadsheets that I needed to bring down to the festival with us, which meant a had a bit of a late night before the trip down to Otaki. We rose as early as we could the next day, and the few of us who were there drove about two hours to meet the others. There had been a definite communication breakdown in our organisation of that trip, which left me a little grumpy. I was expecting that we would meet up, and make our way down straight away to our final destination. I hated dragging out trips like this. However, once we arrived and met up with our colleagues we discovered that they had just started making waffles as a Christmas gift for their family, who they were staying with, and that we had to wait a good long while before they were even ready to start packing. I was not happy at all, so I just sat in the van and chanted my rounds, to get them finished before we started the long haul down to Otaki. When I was grumpy I always aired what had frustrated me, not in an incredibly angry way, but I didn't keep it hidden.

The festival that year was primarily one of illness. I had to cook lunch on the first day after our arrival, and then breakfast the next day. While cooking breakfast I starting experiences symptoms of a cold or flu. By the time I had finished cooking I pretty much just had to go to sleep. I ended up sick with a series of illnesses over those 9 days, each worse than the previous. First was a debilitating fever which wiped all my energy for at least two days. Then, I woke up one evening with an incredible stomach pain, which seemed to draw all my energy to my stomach. I got out of bed, sweating, and lay down on the bench outside of the toilet. I tell now lie when I say I actually thought I was going to do, simple because it just felt like every ounce of energy had drained from my body as I lay there, then my stomach grumbled and I quickly ran as fast as I could to vomit. That night continued in a multitude of exciting bodily reactions to something in my stomach. The next day I hardly moved a muscle. After that I ended up with a head cold. It was all very exciting. I pretty much required a week after the festival just to recover from my illnesses!

In mid January my Guru asked me to catch a bus down to Otaki again to spend a few days with him at the centre they had recently purchased there, and then drive him back up to Auckland, with an overnight stop-over in Hamilton. I thoroughly enjoyed this trip, it was like another break from all the madness I dealt with in my personal schedule and the monastery. He made a few comments about how it seemed like I had taking a break from thinking while staying with him in Otaki, and to be honest I think I did. He was understanding, I think he gave me this opportunity just as another chance to take a breather away from my responsibilities and schedule. I also had, for the first time in years, the opportunity to work side by side with my old friend from the animal rights scene. It was a rare occasion for me, and I was very happy that we had the chance to do some services together for once. Mostly during that trip she would cook for our Guru, and I would serve him his meals. She would normally make extra so that we could also have something to eat.

Then we drove up to Hamilton. He had asked me to take a different route than usual, and I should have checked the maps the night before to make sure I understood the whole route. But I was confident I could find my way, I guess that is something that people would say is a stereotypical male approach, but I really am good with my directions! Unfortunately he wasn't so impressed with my lack of preparation and made fun of me again for turning off my brain while in Otaki, which was also true so we both laughed about it. In the end we found our way without problems. About an hour or two from our destination he started talking to me about my programs and how I was finding things. We talked about the sustainability projects we were running, the relationship in the monastery, my own stress levels. He acknowledged that I was struggling, and said that we're just trying to keep my nose above water, which I think was an accurate description of how I was doing at the time.

Arriving in Hamilton we were greeted by a nice devotee couple who run a restaurant there. Our Guru sat down with them for his lunch while I went into the 'spare' room to chant my rounds. I was trying to focus on my meditations and chanting, but my mind was so grasped by the conversation in the other room. Our Guru was asking this couple, who had been married well before becoming Hare Krishnas, about how they met, and how the husband managed to convince his future wife to consider dating him. The exchange was a caring one, full of laughter and jokes, and encouragement. I laughed as well hearing the story, because to be honest it was a rather comical one.

After that I got to have a bit to eat, having skipped breakfast that morning. My tummy is rather sensitive, and I normally don't like eating while I travel, just in case. Meals out of the way, we had to start cooking for the evening program that was taking place that night. Various guests had been invited to the house there to hear our Guru give a presentation of the philosophy, and they would be served a nice vegan meal afterwards. We cooked and joked and talked about different things. The program went well for the most part, though I spent almost all of it in the kitchen.

That evening I shared the spare room with the husband. The house emptied at around 11 pm I think, after we had washed he dishes and cleaned up as much as we could. It was a late night for us. But once we got into the room to crash out, and we got into our separate sleeping bags, we started chatting, and ended up talking almost the entire night. We talked about a lot of things, including our different struggles, and issues we were having or had with other people in the movement. And we also talked about things we were enjoying about our lives, and the people we were getting strengths from. I think it would have been around 3 am by the time we got to sleep. I slept till 7 or 8 that day, and my roommate slept only till 4 am! He was up bright and early, doing all the chores he had to do that day.

I was tired when we drove back up to Auckland. We had some more chats about life and my projects on the ride back up. Once in Auckland my Guru decided that he wanted to get his new watch properly fitted for his wrist, so we took a trip to Sylvia Park. I waited while we went to a shop in there to get it set properly. When he returned he took his old watch out of his pocket and gave it to me. He said that his old watch gained 5 minutes every few days, and since he was always traveling around the world, from time zone to time zone, he found it a rather confusing thing. He would always turn up early to his speeches, wondering why everyone else was late. I still wear that watch, it's a nice watch, runs on kinetic energy. And when people ask me what time it is, I can only give vague answers, because I always forget to re-set it every few days. Sometimes it ends up as much as 30 minutes out!

The rest of my January was much like my December. Most of the devotees were out of the monastery until March actually. It was mostly just a few of us there. One evening I took the car and my bike out on an errand. I ended up locking the keys in the car while I was riding my bike from place to place. In a bit of frustration I started riding my bike with a bit of anger. Unfortunately that meant that I also rode it in an unsafe manner and ended up falling. Since I had a lot of speed when the accident happened I ended up quite hurt. I bruised my ribs, broke my glasses, grazed my chin and hurt my wrist rather badly. I ended up getting a ride home by a nice guy I met, and we picked up the keys of the car so that I could go back and unlock it, and drive it home. That night I woke up in a whole lot of pain. I could hardly even breath because of the bruised ribs. I thought perhaps I had cracked or broken one. I had to get up and ask one of the monks to take me to the hospital.

(This is potentially my favourite photo of me ever. In a cast, broken glasses, grazed chin, looking tuff)

After spending a few hours in the waiting room and ER, I got the verdict that my ribs weren't broken, only really badly bruised, which apparently doesn't feel any different, and it still took me over a month to recover. They said that I MAY have fractured some bone in my thumb, so I had a cast on for a few weeks. And I ended up taping my glasses back together until I could get new ones. So, for the rest of February I was pretty much out of action.

When March came it was back into my busy schedule again, but this whole year just felt different for me. I felt like I had a total shift of values and desires and aspirations. And the whole year I started thinking about leaving the Krishnas all together.

Wellington and bikes

2010-03-03T18:59:00.004+13:00

Throughout 2008 I was attending Critical Mass, and providing some snacks and refreshments at the end. I started thinking more about riding a bike more often, and after receiving some extra income during the year I asked the leadership team at the monastery if it would be okay if I purchased a bicycle for myself. They gave the thumbs up so I started looking on TradeMe for some cheap deals. I wasn't entirely certain what to look for at the time, I didn't have the intention of going long distances, I figured that I wanted something I could take on the train, something that I would destroy jumping off curbs and something that would help me feel like I was reliving my youth! So after checking out a few things I decided to purchase, with a little help from my parents, a nice little BMX. This bike reignited my love for cycling, and soon took over my life!

I had always liked riding bikes as a kid, at least in the summer time. Actually, we did try riding our bikes on the snow and ice roads in Canada during the winters of my childhood. And in 2003, while living in Wellington, I lived on my bike. It got me everywhere.

Upon getting this new bike in 2008 it reminded me of that sense of freedom I had as a child riding a bike. It was the first opportunity for independent transportation, independent from my parents at least. And this new bike gave me that same sense. Suddenly I was much more mobile to get around the city on my own, without worrying about having the share cars, or pay for petrol. I also started liking just messing around on my bike for fun. On my first week of riding the bike I did a bit of a jump, landed on some grass, spun out and smacked my head against the ground as I fell backwards. It was awesome! Riding also improved my health dramatically, even in those first few weeks.

In November, after the festival in New Plymouth, myself and another monk traveled down to Wellington to spend the month there helping out at the men's asrama down there. It was a very timely visit. Before heading down I was feeling near the end of my wits. I was struggling with one relationship with one of the monks so badly, yet we had to work together in close quarters on an almost daily basis. I needed a break. I also needed a chance to recover from my insane weekly schedule. As with my trip to Hamilton, this trip saw my body just collapse in exhaustion, being free again from my sources of stress at the monastery. This trip also saw me riding my bike more and more.

We drove down to Wellington in one of the monastery cars, and for pretty much the entire ride down I answered questions and talked about Vedic cosmology, and how I had tried to reconcile it with modern views of cosmology. It was pretty fun, a rare opportunity for me to talk about those kinds of intellectual aspects of the Bhagavatam. My partner for the trip admitted he didn't understand any of it, but still continued to ask questions about it all.

Part of our mission down to Wellington was to set a good example of book distribution, which was near impossible for me at that point. I don't think I sold a single book the whole time, I seldom actually went out at all. Mostly I would sit in the car and read, or drop off some of the devotees, then go ride my bike to a park and read. I also got some modifications done on my bike, to make it more rider friendly, and cool. I even took it to a skate park a couple times to get used to handling and riding again. I definitely didn't fit in at the skate park. I was an old dude on a lame BMX who could hardly ride it at all. But it definitely was an awesome work out, my health really did start improving when I started riding my bike more.

Still, aside from when I was riding my bike, I felt exhausted while in Wellington. I think while staying in Auckland I was being held together by adrenaline, and while in Wellington I just fell apart physically. I had a sore throat and runny nose most of my time there.

One thing I noticed that was unique during this stay was that I was not at all mistreating any of the younger devotees. There was no hints of bullying on my part when dealing with them at all, despite the fact that they made so many mistakes. I was just able to laugh WITH them about it, and be understanding. Even the one ex-monk who moved back to Wellington to prepare for married life, our relationship during that trip was the nicest it had ever been.

Two other friends who were in Wellington at the time seemed to be going through some tough times. One was an ex-monk who had recently taken off from the monastery unexpectedly, I talked about him previously, and the other was a friend who had stayed in the asrama down in Wellington for a good number of years. He was coming and going at the time.

I think I mentioned this before, but generally the monks hated spending time in Wellington. One of the reasons was that we had to spend time living closely with younger devotees, or people who were just finding their feet in the community. It was kinda tough to deal with sometimes, especially when you just wanted to focus on your own problems and things. The other reason we didn't much like Wellington was because the ladies were mostly in charge there, and they had a totally different approach to everything than the monks did. It was really almost like a different world all together down there.

There was one guy I met at the yoga centre who wanted to take me out and teach me some things on my bike. So we met up one Saturday and rode our bikes at a skate park. We talked about Krishna consciousness, while he taught me a few bike skills. I didn't know much about his background, but he seemed interested in the Krishna community and practices. Unfortunately, some of the people at the yoga centre didn't like him for some reason, and he ended up being banned that weekend. I never really found out why.

On the last day that we were down there the yoga centre there held a big festival, with a hill made of sweets. My partner and I had the service of spending the afternoon handing out flyers to people on Cuba Mall. It just so happened that the Santa parade was also being held that day. It's weird, because normally I am an outgoing person, but when I had to approach people on the street for things, I just couldn't do it, even if it was just handing out flyers. Instead, I got caught up watching the parade, which was rather impressive.

I am such a critical person, and I was so especially as a Hare Krishna. That evening I criticized every aspect of the festival in my mind. Well, at least aside from the awesome cow shaped white chocolate covered apricots. Those were beyond even my criticism. I think I was just always feeling super-sensitive to the mood in which devotees would carry out their outreach etc. Or maybe I just thought I could do better. Actually, I know it was because I always think I can do better. But usually people who think they can do better never really do. Or maybe it's because sometimes I flip between being totally outgoing to being totally self-conscious in a matter of seconds, and that makes me feel over-sensitive to peoples moods in outreach etc. I still do it now, when watching people preach veganism.

After the festival came to a close, my friend and I raided the rest of the hill that was covered in sweets. We had a few boxes that we filled up with whatever we could grab. But our motives were not selfish, they were gifts we were bringing up to drop off to friends and family in Hamilton on our way home the next day. Monday morning we woke up, chanted, ate, and packed up for the long drive back to Auckland.

After arriving back I felt that a few of my relationships at home were recovering. And, pretty much during my absence our monastery leader had been sent to Australia for some time. It felt like a new era in the monastery was about to begin. I think in one sense that was the case. But, that era was my final era in the monastery. For the next year I felt myself slowly drift away from everything to do with that monastery and community in general. For starters, the management at the yoga centre was about to change, and I never really gelled with the new management. I didn't feel that they appreciated my skills or services as much as the previous management there. That made me feel less and less inclined to take part in that aspect of the community.

I guess I did have myself to blame for that. During 2008 I made some minor complaints to our higher authorities about the mood of one of the regular devotees doing outreach at the yoga centre. We never really got along he and I. After my complaint reached him, things went down hill between us. And also between myself and the new management committee. It was a major stress for me for well over a month. I had to deal with long phone calls, and in the end a decision that I could not accept. I was asked to apologise for the complaint I had made. That seemed ridiculous to me, especially as I hadn't considered my complaints any big issue, it was more some small concerns I felt about the way certain things were being conducted. But it was treated like I was being completely insubordinate. I was unable to meaningfully say sorry for what had happened, because I was not sorry, I felt like I had done nothing wrong. I was sorry that it became a big issue, I was sorry that people reacted badly, but I don't think I had done anything wrong in what I did when making my concerns known.

I lost faith in them, and I was never really given the same respect at the yoga centre again. SO I just did my own activities mostly from that point on. I kinda felt cut off from the yoga centre after that point. I think that was a big blow for me, one I don't think I really recovered from.

I like to talk

2010-03-02T10:07:00.003+13:00

In October of 2008 we had a short festival with our little community in New Plymouth. There were about 100 devotees there, or something like that. It was in part to celebrate the birthday of the Guru that many of us shared. It is traditional for disciples to celebrate the date of their Guru's birth with some celebrations, as a form of gratitude.

A few of the monks in the monastery were of the opinion that I was given special attention by our Guru. The leader of our monastery sometimes mentioned this in a rather sour tone. I don't know if it is entirely accurate, but I do know that I was treated differently, I think in part because of the responsibility I held in my position as manager and organiser.

In the lead up to this festival my Guru called me and asked me to meet him at the airport in New Plymouth, a day or so before the festival was to start. He told me to catch a bus to a stop near the airport, and then make my way to the airport however I saw fit. I hitchhiked the rest of the way, which he approved of on several occasions. We spent the night together in a little bed and breakfast in New Plymouth, in a building that used to be a residence for Catholic Nuns. We sang some songs together, and had discussed practical matters about the running of the monastery. I always felt like there was a caring friendship there.

In the morning I helped him with his breakfast, and with his Chinese herbs he was taking. Then, we packed our things back up and made our way to the retreat centre that would be the site of our weekend festival. He had a separate accommodation set up for himself, in a small little house right beside the retreat centre. There was no cell phone reception here, and no internet. I took it as a chance to focus without the distractions that the internet brought. After unloading his belongings into the house, he talked about where his assistant would stay during the weekend. He asked me what I thought about his assistant sleeping under the stars on the deck. I laughed and asked if he was referring to ME sleeping under the stars. As it turned out, he was, though he must have noticed that I wasn't so keen on the idea. In the end he arranged for a vehicle for me to use for the weekend, to run back and forth from the retreat centre and his house, and that was spacious enough for me to put the seats down and sleep in. I think I ended up with the most comfortable bed out of anyone at the festival that weekend.

During the days of the festival I pretty much exclusively sat in my Guru's house, reading, or chanting or chatting with him. Or overhearing his conversations with others. I didn't get to really hang out with any of my friends there that weekend, but I didn't really mind. It was nice to have a break from the monastery life, to not have to worry about responsibility so much. Just to have some peace and quiet.

Sometimes, during other visits, my Guru would invite me over and let me sit in and listen to conversations he was having with other people. I think the main reason he did this was so that I could learn something from the conversations, including how to deal with problems and issues that arose. I often felt that he had big plans for me, sometimes he would hint that that was the case. During this festival I overheard a lot of interesting conversations, there were two things I overheard in particular, I think during one conversation, which really stood out to me.

The first had to do with how to reconcile contradictions between scripture and science. This had always been something I struggled with personally, especially given some ideas that most Hare Krishnas held dear. In my first year as a Hare Krishna I remember having a discussion with a friend about how he wanted to start doing outreach work at the university in Wellington by focusing on controversy, and he wanted to start by publicly opposing evolution. I responded by saying that I don't think that evolution runs counter to the principles of the religion we were following. I was happy to see, over the past year or so, some Hare Krishnas tackling this issue publicly. I don't see how evolution can be taken as a challenge to theism. There are also some interesting, yet incredibly confusing descriptions in the Vedic scriptures regarding the structure of the universe. It's not at all simple stuff to understand, and often devotees would get misunderstand aspects of it, but cling tightly to their misunderstandings. One such misunderstanding if the widely held belief that the scriptures say that the moon is further from the earth than the sun is, which, strictly speaking, is not a concept mentioned in the scriptures it is said to come from. I had many arguments with devotees about this over the years.

In the conversation I overheard during this festival, I heard my Guru make the comment that the best approach to take is the humble approach. If we admit that, actually I don't really know what the scriptures are describing, but I also don't know how to understand or comprehend what the scientists are describing, or how they came to their conclusions, but I accept that the scripture is correct, I just don't know HOW it is correct. In one sense, I guess that is an honest approach, but personally I didn't find it a very satisfying one. I was getting tired of having to reach around my head to touch my nose in order to explain these aspects of the scriptures which didn't at all correlate with the seen world around us.

At the time, the same friend who had previously made the comment about publicly opposing evolution was doing an about-face in terms of how he approached science and the scripture. We had a few chats, though I was still attempting to reconcile science and scripture, he was taking a more radical approach. He made the point that aspects of the philosophy were amazing as standalone philosophies, like the suffering in the world because it's temporary nature, the concepts of Vedic theology, which were very beautiful, the nature of the self etc. But then there were aspects which just seemed beyond belief, and fantastical. He was at a point where he seemed to be approaching the fantastic with caution, but embracing the parts he appreciated. This pick and choose approach wasn't very much appreciated by the wider community.

So, overhearing this conversation left me wondering how to reconcile it all. It felt anti-intellectual to say that the best approach is an "I don't know but scripture must be right", I didn't feel like I could take that on. I think it was from that point on that I started becoming a little more firm in my approach to these aspects of the philosophy and religion. I couldn't be against science so much, though I don't think I would ever say that science or technology is flawless, or even benevolent in many ways. But I couldn't deny it's validity, which was such a common stance in our monastery. It just made me feel uncomfortable to hear anti-science statements sometimes, often with little knowledge behind them.

The other thing I overheard during that weekend was a conversation about some devotees who had rebellious, or anti-authoritarian stances. It was suggested that some of these persons were suffering because of feelings of anger towards their fathers who had cheated on their mothers. I thought that was an interesting suggestion. Coming from a family in which my parents had an incredibly tight relationship, I couldn't entirely relate to it, but I thought it was an interesting social observation. I'm not willing to say it is accurate, I just think it's interesting, and the sense that I wonder what the thought process would look like to reach that analysis.

On the Sunday of the festival we had a special birthday party for our Guru. As part of this celebration some of the devotees present had the opportunity to read out homages that they had written. Because there were around a hundred or so Hare Krishnas there for the festival, there was a short list made of the persons who would be allowed to read out their homages. The first list was made by one of the organisers of the festival. She had made the list based on how long persons had been involved with the Krishnas for. However, our Guru wasn't so keen on that system. He said that the list also needed to take into consideration date of initiation, whether someone had received second initiation, and also whether the person was taking on extra responsibility, as that extra responsibility was an extra credit to getting these kinds of special privileges. He turned to me and smiled when he said that I would get to read out my homage as well, as a recognition of the responsibility I was taking on my shoulders. It was a nice exchange and gesture.

I have always felt comfortable with public speaking, almost scarily so. But there are some occasions where I just feel completely shy doing it. Last month I had to give an impromptu talk at an animal rights conference, and I've never felt so embarrassed when speaking in front of others in my whole life. This day was another time that I felt embarrassed. It was difficult to read out my homage. There were a lot of thoughts going through my mind while I did so. One such thought was that I realised that I wasn't certain if I actually did feel all the words that I had written. Saying them out loud made me doubt my statements more. I also realised that the main reason I liked reading these homages out in front of others was because I hoped others would recognise my literary skills.

After the celebration came the feasting time. This was another awkward situation. As I was assisting my Guru during this event, it was my job to look after his meal until he was satisfied. That meant that I couldn't sit and eat with my friends until he was done his meal. My two favourites things, eating and talking, and I had to suppress those desires until he had decided he no longer needed my services. It was a tough task, though in a comical way. I am comfortable laughing at myself about things like that, and there were more opportunities to laugh later on.

When he finally decided he didn't need me, he said I could go and eat with my friends, and then we would return back to his house after that. I filled up a big plate and sat down with some people I knew. And I started eating and talking. Actually, mostly talking. To much talking that I actually did very little eating, or at least not quick eating. By the time I had just about moved onto dessert I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see my Guru staring down at me with a bit of a friendly frown on his face. He said "Are you eating, or talking?", to which I had to reply honestly and say "Talking mostly." He laughed at me, then said "If I knew you were going to take this long I would have just told you to bring it back to the house to eat!"

When we returned to the house he was staying at I apologised for getting side-tracked during my meal. I said "Sorry, but I have a real big mouth sometimes, and I just have to talk." He looked out the window and said "So, you're a big talker huh? Well, that's okay, but from now on just talk about Krishna."

I still like talking non-stop, given the opportunity, I guess this blog is an extension of that. But in some settings I will just be the quiet person, almost like I have two complete extremes of socialising. My mother is a big talker, my dad is a quiet one. I guess I have both qualities at certain times.

If I analyse my relationship with my Guru I have to accept that there was a bit of a paradox to it. There was the one side that I felt he cared about me, and treated me like I had a lot of potential. I did like talking with him about things when given the opportunity. But, if I am honest, and I know this blog is about honesty, I also struggled sometimes watching the way he related to other people. A lot of my friends and family had met him over the years, and although they never said anything at the time, they now admit freely that they felt a little uncomfortable around him, and during his classes at the yoga centre. At times it was like a relationship where you care for someone, but you also worry when introducing them to new people, because you know that they have a personality type that a lot of people won't gel with.

On the week that I left the Krishna community, I talked to a friend who regularly visited the yoga centre. He asked if one of the reasons I left was because of the harsh statements made during the class by my Guru the previous Sunday. I hadn't thought about it at the time, because I had many reasons for leaving. But not long after a friend within the community e-mailed me, asking for my reasons for leaving, and then also asked what my relationship was like with my Guru before I left. It started me thinking about this point. I can completely understand why people don't like him, and I think that was always at the back of my mind. At the same time, I appreciated the care and attention I received over the years. As some of the monks said to me, sometimes I did feel like I was treated like a favourite son, and I think that helped me to overlook things that others complained about.

I don't want to analyse it all too much here. I think it's a very complicated issue. I don't think most people can relate to the dynamics of the relationship, nor to the social structure in which it occurred. Which I think may be telling in itself. I will say that when I first left the community I thought that the biggest emotion I would have to face upon leaving the community was the feeling of guilt for breaking my relationship with my Guru. I was both surprised and disappointed to discover that that wasn't the case at all. I was surprised that it didn't really occur on my mind at all. I was disappointed to discover that there were many more emotions that were much more difficult to deal with that arose after leaving.

To Vulnerability.

2010-03-01T23:38:00.002+13:00

I've had a pretty busy last few days, and tonight, although I'm keen to write up a new update, I'm just too tired from the weekend to put the proper thought into it. I spent the weekend in Hamilton for Hamtown Smakdown, and had late nights both nights. Then yesterday I hitched back up to Auckland, got dropped off in Epsom and walked all the way to Kingsland, made it just in time to go to a meeting about the animal rights op-shop meeting, ate heaps of food, then pretty much went straight into town after that for the lantern festival. The lantern festival was awesome. I felt like a five y.o. kid for some reason, running around the crowds. I've never been to the festival before, and I was pretty impressed. The fireworks were pretty cool too. I ended up home late again. Today has been a tiring day also, full of cooking and walking and visiting the O Week at University of Auckland.

I had a few chats with people during the weekend about this blog. One thing that a lot of people liked about it was that I am willing to make myself vulnerable in this blog, by just being upfront and honest about things. And vulnerability encourages others to make themselves vulnerable. I think that is encouraging. I wish that everyone was willing to make themselves vulnerable, and that everyone had the maturity to respond properly to that vulnerability.

Coming home from Hamilton yesterday I got picked up by a lady probably in her late fifties. We chatted as she drove me up to Auckland. That's the nature of hitchhiking, no matter how tired you are, you are obliged to have a lively conversation with whoever has picked you up. It's like the fare for the ride. As we chatted we both became more honest and vulnerable with where we were coming from. I started to reveal a little more about myself, my life transitions at the moment, and my fears about life right now, things that aren't going as I had hoped they would, but also my hopes for the future, my dreams and goals, and my optimism that the journey would work out in the end.

She started talking about her recent divorce, and the feelings it brought up for her, her feelings of isolation from her family, because it is hard sometimes for family to understand divorce, and to re-design their view of a person separate from a long standing relationship. I was impressed by her honesty and willingness to become vulnerable to a complete stranger.

I think we all wish we could just open our hearts up to others, without fear of harsh judgments. I think we all wish we could share our hopes and dreams and fears and mistakes with everyone. When someone asks how I'm doing, I wish I could just tell them everything.

Friendships can be difficult at times. I talked about this with the woman who gave me a ride on Sunday. This was the main reason her relationship with her husband fell through. He wasn't willing to discuss how he felt about things, what was bothering him, and what his worries were. I don't think friendships can last without address these things when they are important. There is only so much that can be swept under the carpet before you start to lose your footing as you try to navigate you way through the room. Eventually things get so ingrained that dealing with them becomes to difficult, or unfamiliar, and it's easiest just to walk away.

I think I tried many times as a Hare Krishna to be vulnerable and honest like this. I just don't think it was reciprocated with. I think it was considered something uncomfortable, or something others couldn't deal with. So the lumps under the carpet just got too big to ignore any longer.

I don't want that to happen with my friendships now. But perhaps that is curse of human nature. 'Which is the most universal human characteristic? Fear or laziness?'

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have recovered enough from my weekend to continue on with the next parts of this story I've been telling. I've had the time to think about a few other events from 2008 which I think are worth talking about before moving on to 2009. I'm looking forward to more opportunities to make myself vulnerable. There seems to be little that is more rewarding.

Things I regret

2010-02-25T22:56:00.004+13:00

There are many things that I did as the manager of the monastery that I am not at all proud about. I think I have a lot of people to say sorry to for the way I treated them and the things I did as the manager throughout 2008. I know for a fact that I made some persons stay in the monastery less than pleasant in a lot of ways. I was stressed out, I was over-worked, and I was increasingly frustrated. My tolerance levels were at an all time low that year. Not an excuse, but at least an explanation.

Our management and leadership team often felt at odds with a specific member of the monastery. I don't think there was any specific reason for it, other than just a clash of personalities. But sometimes it did mean that our meetings together, including my meetings with my mentor, would be overshadowed by discussions about all the problems we perceived in this one monk. As you can probably tell by the nature of this blog, I am pretty good at verbalizing problems I perceive in myself and people around me, and the world in general. As a result I would often be asked to write letters to our monastery authorities explaining all the issues we had with this one particular person. It was a very awkward position for me to be in, especially because sometimes he and I would have a great friendship, and other times it seemed like we both needed to get as far away from each other as possible.

Having to think deeply and write about another persons problematic and chronic behaviour wasn't very pleasant. It made me feel awkward sometimes, knowing that I would be responsible for any trouble that came his way as a result. It was also difficult having to continue working alongside someone so closely who I felt I had betrayed. It only served to weaken our friendship at times. Throughout 2008 this was a back and forth issue. Sometimes things were going very smoothly, other times they weren't. I know that I caused him a lot of stress over the years, and when I left the monastery I sent him a text letting him know I was sorry for everything I had done that caused him suffering. In 2009 our relationship had improved, especially the last half of the year. And now we still catch up regularly.

We also had two younger monks staying with us in 2008, both of which I mistreated on a regular basis, mainly because I struggled to deal with their immaturity and lack of practical skills. I struggled because it felt like I was living with teenagers again, who expected me to do so much for them without any respect in return. It was a difficult thing for me to deal with, especially while I was already stressed out and frustrated.

One had been in the monastery since 2006. I pretty much started hassling him from the very beginning of his stay there. I remember I once told him off for wasting water once while brushing his teeth or something like that, and everything grew from there. I remember feeling angry at him because I felt like I was doing so much work to keep the monastery afloat. The vegetarian lunches I sold at UNITEC and AUT was our major source of income, and I was also looking after all management affairs, keeping bills paid and bellies full in that way. This one monk was suffering from ill health. He was also a rather intense character, very unique. And I couldn't really deal with it well.

I was always aware it was a problem, and I tried my hardest on a number of times to get over my nastiness. I remember once just getting so nasty and personal one weekend. It almost scared me that I could be so mean. I had just spent a week of madly running around with the university programs I had going. I had been completely frustrated by incompetent management meetings and morning five minutes meetings. And it was another hectic Sunday for me. I just wanted a little help filling up the water buckets, and he wasn't interested in helping, despite doing nothing much all week. Of course, he was suffering from health problems, like due in part to the way I treated him sometimes. I just lost it at him at that point, and felt very bitter towards him. That scared me a lot, and I promised myself to work harder to get over my intolerance towards the younger monks.

Eventually, the management decided that we were unable to cope with him anymore, that he would be more happy in his spiritual life if he were to leave the monastery altogether. We had a discussion with our overseeing authority, and the decision was made that he would return to Wellington, and prepare to consider married life. I think that my mistreatment of him served to push this result. After he left the monastery I think our relationship improved by a million. The times I did see him we acted like old friends. I would like the chance to say sorry to him again.

In early 2008 we also had another young monk join our monastery. He was the youngest who ever came to stay with us, and the most lacking in life experience. I felt sorry for him, in that he was so young and immature, yet he found himself in a very intense monastery where so much was expected of him. He struggled with pretty much everything practical, and the older monks all struggle to accommodate and tolerate his youthful energy and lack of experience. He was chastised and told off by pretty much everyone in the monastery over the course of his stay. When he would cook with us for the Thursday lunches we would always be complaining about how slow he was. Some days I tried to keep positive with him, and joke through the cooking, other days, when time was running out, and things needed to come together with the meals we were cooking, I just didn't have to tolerance to deal with him.

Then, one morning in December, during the book distribution marathon, when there were only three of us at the monastery, he woke up early, packed his bags and left without any of us noticing. I felt so bad when he left. I knew that part of the reason he left was because of the treatment he received from me. I did some investigative work, and discovered that he had arranged with a relative to stay at their house in Auckland for a few days before heading off to Wellington, and then eventually back to Australia. I felt bad that I didn't get a chance to say sorry for the way I treated him. And I felt bad that I had become the cause of someone feeling bullied in our monastery.

In 2008 a friend of mine left the monastery under a similar situation. I hope he doesn't mind me telling that story. One day, after he had come back from a trip to Whangarei to distribute books, everything just seemed to change for him. It just seemed like a totally different person had returned from the trip away. In the morning he had a back and forth argument with the young monk I described above, and it just seemed so out of character. At the end of the backing and forthing, I dealt with the situation like I deal with most uncomfortable situations I find myself in, I used humour. I made a joke reference to how that was like watching a tennis match, back and forth. He just replied with a "Yeah, well not for long."

So some reason when I heard those words I knew he was planning to leave the monastery for good. That was a Tuesday, I remember because I had to do a cooking class at MIT that day. That cooking class was mostly a failure, because the campus had failed to turn the power on for the kitchen we were using. So, instead I brought everyone back home to the monastery to cook instead. As usual, I made massive misjudgments in terms of the quantities I was cooking, and ended up with much to much food in the end. Which was lucky for my friend who was going to pick his mother up from the airport that evening before spending some time with her in Hamilton. I knew he was planning on leaving, so I figured he was going to need food, so I packed him up with what was very possibly something like 16 litres of food! He left that evening, with the car my parents had donated to the monastery, and left for good.

I'm not entirely certain about the circumstances of his leaving, nor exactly what happened once he left. He wasn't gone for long. He called me up at one point, as our Guru was visiting Auckland. He asked me for advice on the fastest way he could get up to Auckland from down south. There were no buses that would get him there fast, my only advice was to hitch hike up, which he did. I had to laugh about that situation, but also admire his enthusiasm.

When he left I felt very bad. I wished he would have told me first, so that I could have given him some money to help him out on his way, so that I would at least know that he was okay. It was the not knowing what had happened, or whether he had himself organised that worried me the most. His leaving was so abrupt, it seemed poorly planned, so I was worried that he would be struggling to get by, or to slot into whatever life he had planned. But he came back for a while, not to live in the monastery, but to try another style of Krishna consciousness. Then he left again. And now it looks like he's back. In fact, the very day before I left the monastery for good he contacted me over the internet to tell me he was planning on returning to Krishna consciousness. I didn't really know how to respond, whether to let him know I was leaving, or pretend to be enthusiastic that he was coming back.

The final part of 2008 I think I will talk about is a festival that he had at the end of October. That was a weekend of highs and lows for me, and a weekend during which I had a lot to think over and contemplate. I spent the entire weekend, from Thursday until I think Monday, serving my Guru 24 hours a day. That was a very unique, and exhausting, experience.

A weekend in the 'Tron

2010-02-25T11:58:00.002+13:00

When I moved out of Hamilton at the beginning of 2003 I had put together a small zine with my then girlfriend, as a sort of reflection on the time I had spent in that small city. In my opening words of that zine I thanked a number of my friends who, I felt, had given me so much and helped me out at a time in my life when I most needed friends around me. Of course, since becoming a Hare Krishna I had pretty much zero contact with them whatsoever. In fact, when discussing my feelings of indebtedness to my friends who had helped me out over the years most devotees would kinda smirk about it, because the help they had given me had done little to nothing for my spiritual advancement. In fact, I was told that any help that was given by my friends and family was actually a spiritual poison, because it simply served to increase my material attachments and desires. I had a hard time swallowing such a cold analysis of life.

With Suzy's death I started feeling like I needed to get in touch with the people in my life who had helped me out so much over the years, especially those people who had gone the extra mile to make my life happy at times when I struggled to smile through the days. It was not a comfortable feeling knowing that I had neglected these relationships for so long. It made me feel genuinely awful, even made my stomach turn to think that I had turned my back on these people for so long, especially since I had not really developed any friendships within the community I was confined to at the time that really even came close to being as sincerely supportive as those.

In May myself and another monk were asked to help cover for some friends in Hamilton, who were running a restaurant there at the university. They needed to head down south for the weekend, returning on Monday, but they needed someone to cook and open up their little restaurant for them on Monday morning. We had to come down on Thursday night, help out with the evening program they had at their house, then get up early on Friday to learn the routine for the day. The weekend we had to ourselves for the most part.

At the time my little brother had a friend who was coming sometimes to the evening events at the Krishna place there. He had a few friends in Hamilton, and would sometimes head down to visit and hang out and go to shows. He decided to come down that weekend as well. He came to the program on Thursday evening, and we hung out together on Friday and Saturday.

On Friday morning I was supposed to get up to learn how to cook and everything. But when morning came I didn't budge. I felt completely exhausted. I had just spent the previous three days cooking and serving out and cleaning for our university programs, and basically running around like mad in general for some time. My body just shut down. Plus, this was my first time away from the monastery in a good number of months. I hadn't had a break from the constant harassment I felt within the monastery, and had almost gotten used to the feeling of never being able to relax for a second. As soon as I was out of that environment I just felt all the anxiety flee from my muscles, and my body just collapsed in exhaustion. It was a bit of an eye opening experience really. It made me realise for the first time just how incredibly stressed out I was, and how dangerously close I was to burning out completely.

I showed up to the restaurant late, and in a rather dazed state. My brain felt like it had slowed right down, as if on holiday mode. I helped out a little bit, learned what I needed to know to assist in cooking and running the restaurant. Luckily my friend who had come down with me was a resilient guy, he pushed through the tiredness of the previous weeks activities and got done what needed doing in the kitchen. Afterwards I went into town with my little brother.

While there I ran into a number of my old friends around the place. Hamilton is a small town after all. Catching up with friends after a long absence can sometimes be a happy experience, and sometimes it can be rather depressing. Sometimes it's inspiring to see where people ended up, what they did with their lives, and how they had bettered themselves. Other times it can be a bit heartbreaking to see that people ended up in worse situations than before. This trip gave me a mixed bag of feelings like that. The odd part I noticed was that I felt everyone had considered that I was one of the sad cases, someone who had potential but let it sit unused.

Some friendships had suffered drastically over the years, to the point where it was just incredibly awkward being in the company of these friends. I felt guilty, and I think that they felt bitter. Others felt like they hadn't changed much at all over the years. I met up with one good friend of mine who had gotten married. I hadn't even really met his wife. I went to their house, bringing cookies as a gift. It was so refreshing to see him and how he interacted with his wife. Their house was awesome, especially their extra deep bathtub they showed off with pride. We sat and talked for a long time, and about a lot of different things, very candidly. I left feeling a little jealous about how his life turned out. I would rather have been in his place than my own. (As I typed this paragraph out I received a Facebook message from this friend, offering me a place to stay for the weekend while I visit Hamilton.)

I also met up with two other friends who had helped me out a lot during my last year in Hamilton. They both came, independently of each other, to the restaurant on Monday to hang out. It was so nice to see them both. I still have photos of both of them on my phone. Talking to them both it was like nothing had changed. They had never changed their opinion of me over the years, they still held me as a friend despite the separation of time and distance. They were both people who have always popped up in my mind on a regular basis, people I always cared deeply about.

As we returned home to the monastery I felt that I had a lot to think about. Firstly, I had to acknowledge the fact that the environment at the monastery was stressing me out beyond what I thought I could bear much longer. I realised that if things kept up like they were I would eventually completely snap. As a result I wrote a letter to my Guru explaining the situation, what was stressing me out, and how I was feeling in the situation. I said that if things continued like this I would have to make the decision to leave this setting altogether. His solution at the time was that I should take monthly retreat trips to Hamilton to recover, and in the meantime he would think up a solution to the general issues. When I explained this to the leadership and management team of the monastery, they monastery leader responded by making some of the most hurtful personal digs he had ever made towards me. It was like rubbing salt into my already agitated wounds. I had to struggle not to respond by yelling at him.

The other thing I had to acknowledge after my trip to Hamilton was that I was becoming more and more aware of my shifting desires. I was becoming less and less attracted to the monastic lifestyle, with its social limitations. I wanted a life like my friends, with his career, house and family. I discussed this also with my mentor. At the time it was dismissed as being a product of psycho-physical changes that were expected at my age, and that I should try and push past them to continue with my monastic career.

In the end, I felt like nothing much had changed in the monastery and in my life, except that internally I was going through more and more battles to reconcile my two different halves. Part of me still enjoyed and aspired to the monastic lifestyle and my spiritual focused life. But a growing part of me started to actually feel repelled by it all. I reconciled it all mostly by relying on basic philosophy for a while and by acknowledging that fact that the mind is never satisfied wherever it rests. The 'grass is always greener' is an effect which will always act on the mind, even when your life is running perfectly and fine. I knew that life away from the monastery wouldn't be as easy as my mind would sometime pretend it to be. When I brought up these feelings when discussing with my Guru this is one of the things he pointed out as well. He once said that yes there were problems, but there were going to be problems in any situation, and that leaving this situation wasn't truly going to get ride of the problems. On one level I thought that made sense. On another level I struggled to deal with it continually.

After writing the updates on Suzy I have felt kinda emotionally neutral. Those were tough to write out, and left me a bit exhausted. I was just getting texts from a friend who has been trying to read the one about Suzy's death for the past few days and just hasn't been able to make it through the whole thing yet. I've kinda gotten back on track today I think. I'm making a trip to Hamilton this weekend, so I'm not certain what will happen in terms of updates. Either I will find it an emotional experience and feel the need for an outlet for it all and end up writing loads, or else I will just have loads of fun, forget about everything else and start updating again when I get back. We'll see how things go.

The Kuli

2010-02-24T14:56:00.002+13:00

My schedule in 2008 started to take on an even more hectic appearance than previous years. Along with the Tuesday, Wednesday and now Thursday cooking and serving food at universities, and the Thursday night classes at the yoga centre, we were also trying to push the sustainability network with different events during the week. This included late night movie screenings, weekend gardening workshops, cooking classes and more. Oh, and during this year I also managed to organise vegan cooking classes at MIT campus in Otara. All this on top of my personal studies, my management services (which were full-time on their own) and being involved in the yoga centre activities. It was a very busy year, and the most hectic of my life I think. And with the extreme busy-ness I started to find it increasing difficult to cope with the social dynamics around me, especially what I perceived as the incompetence of both the younger monks and the leadership, both of whom would constantly approach me, even after I had gone to be, with what I saw as simple questions that anyone should be able to answer. It was stressful. What friendships did exist during that time within the monastery were stretched to the limits. I did yell or snap a number of times, just frustrated that I couldn't walk through the house without being approached from all angles with people asking me where the salt was, why the computer was typing in ALL CAPITALS, or if I knew of a good remedy for their health ailments. At the same time my constant work was being ignored to the point where some people actually openly admitted that they thought I was wasting too much time because I wasn't distributing books.

In April 2008 our monastery received a some emotional softness in the form of a very kind and gentle monk. This young monk had grown up in the Hare Krishna movement, living from the age of about 4 or 5 in a Hare Krishna school in India. He always smiled, and his eyes almost always looked like he was about to cry because of compassion for other people. In fact, during his month-long stay with us I witnessed his eyes brim with tears on many occasions.

I had a short break in my university schedule during this monks visit, which meant that for about two weeks we were the only two at home in the monastery during the day. He was a very heart felt monk, who had seen EVERYTHING in his time as a devotee. He had a lot of insight into the dynamics of our monastery. All of the observations I have made in here were identified by him as well. He saw the harsh treatment, and the lack of respect, and the struggles of the management and leadership. He discussed how he worried about certain devotees because of their behaviour. One devotee was renowned for chanting so fast, though he actually seldom verbalised the entire mantra he was meant to chant. Many times he would just repeat the same word 9 times, moving his beads regardless. Our little visiting monk found this to be very worrisome.

If you have ever spent time with Indians, you will probably know that they are a bit more comfortable about issues surrounding their personal space than most westerners are. When you meet up with an Indian, they will often shake your hand and continue holding your hand while you discuss things. For the western mind this often creates an awkward moment. You want to pull your hand away, but you aren't sure what to do. It never bothered me much, but I used to watch a lot of westerners squirm their way through the situation. Our visiting monk was very reliant on physical contact while discussing issues. He and I developed a close friendship while he was staying with us, and as we talked we would often be holding hands, sometimes embracing and cuddling. That was how he operated. And sometimes, when we discussed difficult personal issues between the two of us, the physical contact helped calm the pain.

My visiting monk friend had been through some very difficult times in his life. Hare Krishna schools do not have the best track record, at least not in the old model that ran the schools. There was a lot of nasty behaviour going on within those boarding schools, both carried out by the teachers, principles and by the students and residents. There was physical assault, sexual assault and extreme emotional bullying. My friend, being the runt of the school, felt the brunt of this misbehaviour. He was never once bitter about it, but nor was he willing to dismiss what had gone on within those school walls. Although I was well aware of this situation before meeting my friend, hearing him describe things, and seeing the reactions he was experiencing made it all the more real and heart wrenching for me.

We would also discuss difficult points of philosophy. There are occasional philosophical controversies which would arise in the Krishna consciousness community, and I made a point of studying the arguments and counter arguments when I had the chance to, so that I could understand what the official line was for our movement. But I seldom met a devotee who understood the implications of many of these arguments. My visiting friend was one such person, so we would discuss the ins and outs of these issues. In some areas we disagreed, and continued to disagree after discussing them, other times we both shed knew light on the subject, and coloured our previous standpoints with a bit more grey than we entered with. Even when in heated debates about the origin of the soul and the implications of that issue on the overall process and philosophy, we were still holding hands or cuddling on the floor.

I discussed with him my pains at losing Suzy, and how it made me feel. He talked about his dissatisfaction over the issue that his previous principle, who he had witnessed carry out so many deviant activities over the years was still held in high regard within the community. We would chant Gayatri together, and sign kirtan. For me, it was both a period of spiritual inspiration AND a time of deep reflection on issues within our community, as well as becoming more honest about our own personal lacks and strengths.

My monk friend told me he was planning on leaving the monastic life. We said that he had always wanted to head towards a family life situation, getting married and continuing on with life in that way. We discussed the issue many times. The real reason he was with us was because he had brought his wish up to his authorities, and it was decided that he just needed some time away to get his thoughts together, and then he would continue on as a monk. I can attest that it is not exactly as easy thing to leave the monastic life behind, primarily because of the social structures in place to keep monks there.

I discussed my own realisations with him. I acknowledged that I was feeling so many different desires for things in my life which I didn't think could be restrained much longer by the confines of the monastery walls. I wanted to make the world a better place, and I was having doubts that Krishna consciousness was able to do that. I told him that I loved to study the scriptures and learn the philosophy, and I loved the things I was doing at the universities, and that I wanted to stay a monk for those reasons, because having a simple life meant that I would be able to focus on reading the books, and putting all my effort into my cooking for university events, and organising dynamic sustainability projects. He pointed out to me, rather starkly, that I hadn't picked up a book for the past three days that we had chatted together, so he doubted my sincerity regarding my love for studying. I realised he was right. Actually, my taste for studying had started to decrease, primarily because of the fact I felt I struggled to have faith in the scriptures as a whole, something I may get around to discussing at a later time.

His visit solidified a number of things for me. It increased my realisation that I had been neglecting my emotional side for a very long time. It reminded me of the importance of being physically comforted when dealing with difficult emotions. It made me question more and more my motives for staying in the monastery, and for staying in Krishna consciousness in general. It made me view the overall philosophy less and less as a black and white issue, and instead with many shades of grey. For the first time I felt like I actually had a deep heart connection with someone within the Krishna community who I could talk to about whatever needed airing. His visit gave me such a mental relief for that one month.

When he left to go back to his home temple, I missed his association greatly. My stresses quickly overwhelmed me again, and I started to struggle even more when dealing with the perceived incompetence of those around me. The management team was starting to drive me nuts with the hour long meetings to make decisions which were overturned by a single member of the management team a few hours later. I was sick of telling devotees again and again not to ruin the accounting systems by spending money from book sales before accounting for it. There were so many stresses. I just felt tense at all times that I was in the monastery, because I knew it was only a matter of seconds before someone would approach me with a complaint or a question which anyone should have been able to answer for them, or they probably could have figured out on their own if they had actually bothered to think about it first. It was driving me nuts. Even now, as I type this and remember how I felt during that time I can feel my body heat up in frustration. I remember that feeling all the time, almost wincing whenever I heard someone call my name. Now that I remember, the reason my reading first started to suffer was because I couldn't get through half a page without someone approaching me and asking me some insane question about something. If I wanted to read I had to do it while everyone was out of the monastery, but that was also the only time I had to catch up on my management services uninterrupted. It was a mad time for me.

Because of this madness and extreme stress, when I did manage to get away from it all, during my trip to Hamilton sometime around May, I felt my body completely collapse like someone cutting the strings which held up a marionette. Only my strings were the strings of stress. Hamilton was also the home of several of friends who I felt very indebted to for their support in my pre-Krishna years. I would probably not be alive without them I don't think, and I wanted to touch base with them again, I didn't want to risk losing another friend to the cruel hands of death without at least letting them know that I was grateful for their friendship. My visit to Hamilton opened my eyes to a lot of things about myself and my situation, and my return from Hamilton was the time I tried hardest to be honest about them all,

Every action has a reaction.

2010-02-23T22:53:00.002+13:00

As I wrote about in my last update, soon after Suzy's death I started focusing on building the Sustainability Network at Auckland University. The first steps towards this basically required me to go to the university during O Week and approach people to get them to sign up as members for the club. It was pretty simple. And it was heaps of fun. It gave me a sense of independance. Plus, I made a whole lot of friends in a real short span of time. A good number of people that I met on those few days I'm still in contact with today. At the same time a good friend of mine, who was a good friend of Suzy's, and a solid animal rights activist, was also on campus promoting Greenpeace during O Week as well. We would take lunches together, and chat and catch up. I had actually first met him while I was selling books on the streets while he was signing people up for Greenpeace many years before. Now I consider him and his partner Kali to be two of my best friends.

I needed some help with setting up the Sustainability Network, and at the time I could actually only think of one person who was coming along at our yoga centre who was involved in the university. I tried to recruit her help with the project. At first she was going to be the president, but I discovered that the president didn't need to be a student, that I could easily fill that role. So instead we had her act as the secretary. She took the minutes at our first AGM. It took her AGES to send them to me. And I never heard from her or saw her again. I always wondered what had happened to her, but I found out recently that she was told by some of the Krishna ladies not to talk to me anymore, as I was a monk. That advice didn't sit well with her for whatever reason and she stopped coming to the centre or talking to any Krishna devotees. Which was a pain for me, because we needed her signature on our accounts! Plus it was a shame that someone was scared away like that.

I liked promoting the Sustainability Network, and building it. I liked making friendships with lots of people, and being involved in eco projects, and discussing issues with people. I'm a people person by nature. I like to talk openly with people, and be able to have heart to heart chats with people. My best friend these days is someone I feel 100% comfortable just sitting with on a couch and talking to about whatever's on my mind without feeling like I'm boring them. I have two sides to me, there is a quiet side, and the side that likes to talk whenever given the chance. I think this blog represents that chatty side. The Sustainability Network really gave me an outlet to release that chatting and friend making side.

I was being encouraged to make a profile for myself again within the activist movements, which suited me fine. I felt like I had much more in common with most activists than I had with the devotees I was meant to restrict my socialising to. I helped out a small bit with organising some aspects of a protest, and attended a few meetings. I was asked once if I could help out with one small protest. Some activists were going to climb up on top of the roof of a building and hold a banner. I was supposed to meet up with other people attending the protest and bring them to the protest venue once the activists were up on the roof. It was simple, and in the end I found myself in a big argument about animal research with a group of about 20 or 30 med students. I LOVED debating, and this was such a fun experience for me.

One day, on a Sunday, when I was returning from the temple, I got an urgent call from a friend of mine, asking if I could help out with an urgent situation. Some activists were transporting a number of ex-factory farm animals, but their car had broken down south of Auckland. They needed someone to help them out. I told the monastery leaders I needed a car for the job, and they said it was fine. This was during a time where everyone assumed I could do no wrong, or so it seemed I guess. Everyone seemed to think that whatever I did was 'sanctioned' automatically. It was a weird situation to be in. So I grabbed the car that my parents had donated to the monastery, placed some tarpaulin in the back, and started riding down to meet them. The ironic thing about this day was that I was scheduled to give a talk at the yoga centre about spiritual sustainability.

When I met up with the broken down car, not far from Mercer, I saw that they had something like 30 chickens in the back of their car. To be honest, I had thought they had liberated these animals. I assumed straight away that these were animals that we 'stolen' from a factory farm, and that my transporting them was an illegal activity. Which kinda makes the story funny, but it turns out they weren't stolen, they were actually paid for. But, along the way to dropping the hens off at their new safe homes, I made a wrong turn and we found ourselves, with a car load of chickens in someone's driveway. Apparently they found the situation of three young kids, with a car full of chickens, to be a bit dodgy, because they called the police to report out behaviour. After dropping off half of the chickens at a nearby house we started driving to the next house. On the way down the road, we say the man from the random driveway waiting on the road with a police officer, pointing out our car as we drove past. They had also assumed that the chickens were stolen.

We were pulled over, and questioned by the police for a while. I assumed that we were about to be arrested, because I still thought these chickens were stolen. But my friends in the car told him that the chickens were paid for, and they gave him a phone number to verify this story. I thought they were just being very clever, and had lied to him. Either way, the number they gave him didn't answer. I said to the officer "Look, I've gotta go and give a presentation at a yoga centre, no one has reported that any chickens have been stolen, and you have our contacts to track us down if you find out they were stolen, so just let us carry on." He accepted that, and we went on our way. We dropped off the rest of the chickens and I made it JUST in time to give the presentation at the yoga centre. Since the presentation was on sustainability, I was going to include a photo of me holding one of the hens, but the photo didn't work out. Plus, one of the monks suggested that it wasn't the best story to tell publicly. The next day the police called me to say that our story checked out, and that what we were doing for the chickens was a great thing. I was still convinced at the time that the chickens were stolen, so I couldn't help but laugh. I only found out the following Wednesday that the chickens actually WERE purchased as retired layer hens. I laughed so much, a laugh of relief to find out. I was so worried about what would happen had I been arrested for that. The real ironic thing is that I found out the very next weekend what it would be like to get arrested as a monk.

The next weekend there was a number of events relating to an animal research conference that was visiting the city. First, there was a fund raising concert, with hardcore and punk rock bands. We were asked to have a bake stall at the show. We baked for two days to make a whole selection of awesome and amazing vegan baked goods for the show. It was an awesome event. It was the first hardcore show I had been to since 2004. It really brought back some memories of old days at shows. We also dropped some of the baked goods off at a public meeting. When dropping the cookies and cakes and things off there I met up with another old animal rights friend of mine from Wellington. It was so nice to catch up with him again for the first time since Suzy's funeral. Funerals aren't the best place to catch up with people.

There were protests throughout the weekend which I didn't attend. On Monday I promised I would come down to see how things were going. I arrived near the end of the protest, as we were going to go and have lunch together afterwards to celebrate their successes. At the time I was also planning to help out with a public meeting on vivisection, so we were planning to discuss that after the protests. I've actually never been much of a protest person, which may be hard for some people to believe. My preference is debating with people, or sneaking around being a trouble maker. At this protest I mostly just wandered around the perimeter of the conference centre, testing the security and things. It brought back a lot of old feelings, and was just generally fun to do.

After the protest ended we started making our way back into town for lunch and meetings. But on the way it was decided that we would visit the office of a company that carried out animal research. The offices were at the Tamaki campus of Auckland University. I didn't want to risk getting arrested, so I didn't take part in the protest. Instead, I just walked onto the campus as the protest was going on, partly to see if the Sustainability Network could do anything at this satellite campus. There was talk about letting us have some land there to set up a community garden. I then walked around the back of the building the protest was targeting and overheard that things hadn't quite gone as planned for the protest. Somehow the staff had locked the activists in a courtyard. I went back around the front to see that some had climbed a fence. Eventually the rest climbed the fence to escape. As we were about to leave, however, the police arrived. After rounding everyone up, and arresting a few people, they decided to arrest almost everyone who was there, including myself. Not everyone was arrested, there were others who also hadn't taken part in the protest, but for some reason they didn't accept my story of events, and arrested me despite the fact I hadn't done anything.

I had been arrested many times before this, it wasn't an unfamiliar event for me, so I just argued my way through the whole process. They demanded that I remove my neck beads and my sacred thread that I was wearing. I said that I would not. I managed to keep them on until the police station. Despite the fact that I KNOW the police codes of conduct say that they are not allowed to remove a Hindu's or Hare Krishna's sacred thread, they forced me to take mine off. I argued with them, and told them I would lay a complaint against their station for this behaviour. I also explained to them that there was nothing they could actually charge me with, because I hadn't broken any laws. They said they were looking forward to seeing me on the stand with a guilty verdict being read out. But the funniest/most insulting part was then they realised I was wearing kaupins instead of tradition underwear. They called all the police around, including the female officers, to inspect the situation and decide whether it was a safety risk of all things! I was put in a cell with the other men who had been arrested and we waiting the hours it took to be processed. In the end we were charged with being unlawfully in an enclosed space.

It was late when we were released. I didn't get home until after 9pm, which for the monastery was rare. Although the monks were worried about my whereabouts, they accepted my story that I was just at a late night, unexpected meeting. It was weird, because I knew no one else would have gotten away with such a long and late absence. But for some reason I felt like I could get away with anything and everyone would still think I was just doing something dynamic in line with my 'outreach' work. It was a weird feeling. I was pretty stressed out by the event, for sure. I struggled with the question of whether to admit the story to the monks. I don't think I kept anything a secret before this point. But I felt so embarrassed for having been arrested as a monk that I just couldn't think of how to explain it. Before I could decide whether to tell them the story or not my charges were dropped, as the police reviewed the footage of the protest and realised that my story was the truth, I hadn't been involved in it at all.

Thinking about the events of 2008 feels so different from the previous events that I've talked about. For me, it was a totally different world. After my arrest I realised that I had let the balance slide a little too far. I was still a monk, a leader and a manager at that, and I shouldn't have put myself in that situation. I pulled back from my involvement in any protest activities, and just helped out with other things. Ironically, just after my arrest my Guru sent me an e-mail suggesting that I don't attend protests, and instead get involved in activism in other ways, which I did from that point on.

I think the arrest was part of my reaction to Suzy's death, and some of the emotions it brought up for me. There were several times between early 2008 and the time that I left the community altogether where I actually found myself feeling angry at the restrictions I had to live under, and I would almost despise my practices and limitations at times. I think this was one of those times, and the result was that I pushed the boundaries and got arrested. I also think that I was getting annoyed at the way I had started being treated in the monastery. The management and leadership team was driving me insane at times, but at the same time I felt like I was being held up as an advanced person just because of my abilities on a material level, and my steady character. I almost feel like my arrest was a result of feeling like a rebel who wasn't getting the attention from his parents his needed (in this case not my parents, but the leadership of the monastery). Plus, I just wanted to have some fun, and from my background getting arrested at a protest is kinda fun. Not fun that I would recommend to anyone, but fun none-the-less.

There are two other events I would like to talk about that occurred in the first half of 2008 which I think are important to this narrative, and I'll discuss them over the next two updates I think. The first is a visit from an indian monk to our monastery. Some people have said, I am hoping jokingly, that they wish this whole story involved some real dirt, like me falling in love with someone from the yoga centre, or discovering that some sort of love affair within the monastery. This story doesn't include anything like that, but I guess the following update is the closest things get to that sort of thing. The second event I would like to talk about from the first half of 2008 is a trip I took to Hamilton, and how it made me realise I had become so completely burnt out by my having to deal with the leaders of the monastery and the younger, less experienced monks. Both of these events seem significant in this story, as they both brought up feelings that I hadn't expected, and they both had carry on effects in terms of how I viewed the people who's authority I was under.

There are a lot of things that I wish I could write about in this blog, and as more and more people write to me about this blog the more I feel the need to answer their questions and thoughts through these updates. I think I have enough to keep my mind busy for months, hopefully once I get through the main parts of this story I can discuss more details and themes to answer these questions and thoughts that people have brought up. I don't think this will get boring for anyone anytime soon.

Also, Thanks to Jasmine for lending me a computer, which will help me spend more time working on this stuff without having to walk to other people's houses to use their computers. Assuming, of course, that I can figure out how to get this computer to connect to our wireless network...

The aftermath

2010-02-23T16:09:00.003+13:00

Often times when discussing the philosophy of Krishna consciousness devotees would throw around a few maxims. "Krishna consciousness combines the head and the heart" and "All emotions can be dovetailed in Krishna consciousness". And another is that "No man is an island". During the period after Suzy's death I thought deeply about these maxims, trying to figure out how to best reconcile them within my practical realities. At the time I did still hold hope for Krishna consciousness, but I started to realise that there were so many things going on in my head and my heart which were not being taken care of.

One major issue for me, which was brought up by Suzy's death, was my rebellious nature. Suzy was a very rebellious personality, and she had now fear of getting arrested, or going through the court systems if it meant furthering the cause of justice for animals. I liked that, and I found I was drawn to a similar way of acting. After Suzy's death I started desiring to protest again, I realised that I needed some way to 'dovetail' my rebelliousness into my Krishna conscious practice.

I also started to realise that along with being very rebellious, I couldn't shake my attraction for radical social theories. I had read so many books on social change, radical feminism, the social politics of sexuality, anarchism and autonomous social organising, yet now I was functioning in a society and community which was sexist, homophobic, hierarchical, authoritarian and not very radical. After this point I started looking through the scriptures and books with the vision of extracting information about the radical social restructuring which they described. From an academic point of view it was very interesting. From the point of view of a radical theorist, however, it wasn't very satisfying.

Suzy's death made me aware that I was ignoring a whole lot of emotional experiences which were actually taking place in my heart. There were so many feelings and emotions which were going on, but which I put out of my mind and ignored, thinking that they weren't befitting a monk. I realised that if I wanted to continue on within my monastic lifestyle I was going to have to start expressing my emotions more directly with my mentor and the other monks I was living with. I realised that if I didn't directly deal with these things I would simply grow more and more bitter. I also realised that I had spent so long focusing on the philosophy side of Krishna consciousness that I had completely ignored the emotional requirements. From that point on my classes become more focused on emotional experiences of life, and encouraging an open acceptance of one's own personal struggles. As one senior teacher once said at our temple, everyone else you live with knows all about your problems, so there is no point hiding them.

In terms of opening up about my emotions at the monastery, I found I hit against a definite brick wall when trying to do so. For starters, my mentor at the time, the leader of the monastery, would still sometimes use my revelations against me at future times. Our relationship was going through another rough patch as it was. Since I was now the manager, and had pretty much taken over all responsibility for all practical matters, sometimes I would have to write to our authorities to explain situations where our leader's behaviour was less than exemplary. He never liked this much. He especially disliked it when he would get in trouble for constantly falling asleep while driving. When I tried discussing Suzy's death with him, and the effects it was having on me, he struggled to stay awake.

I tried discussing Suzy's death with the other leaders. One seemed unable to process emotional issues anyway. He immediately turned everything into a dry philosophical discussion, whereas I just wanted to talk about how things were hurting, or how things were making me feel, and where to go from there. Another leader turned everything into an extreme situation. Or would ask questions about whether I took the chance of Suzy's funeral to think about the temporary nature of life. It seemed as if there was no outlet for emotions in our monastery, there seemed to be no mature guide to help out in these situations.

The fact that Suzy's death made me realise how awful I felt for ignoring my good friends combined with the fact that I found myself surrounded by people who struggled to act on the platform of friendship when I needed it, I started to realise that if I was going to stay sane and tackle my emotions, and deal with the things I needed to deal with I was going to have to seek that from outside the tight community I was living in. We were told to make strong friendships with the other monks, and that should be our support. But there was no support within that framework at all, not for those willing to acknowledge openly the emotions they were dealing with. If we did want to attend funerals of friends or family, we almost had to lie that our primary motives for attending were social obligations, lest we be labelled as being fallen for having family or social attractions.

Before Suzy's death my Guru asked me to expand my projects at the universities in the city to include Auckland University. At first he suggested setting up a Vegan club on campus, which was an idea I thought was ideal. At the time of Suzy's death I was in the middle of a lull in my veganism, something I knew that Suzy was not very happy about. Suzy's death made me feel more guilty for consuming dairy, and I went vegan again soon after. Less than a week after Suzy's funeral I received an e-mail from my Guru encouraging me to do something radical and revolutionary on Auckland University campus, something more dynamic than just a vegan club. I sent an e-mail back thanking him, and told him that I felt that I needed something like this at the moment, as Suzy's death brought to the surface the feeling of urgency for me to deal with my radical and revolutionary tendencies. It was at that point that the Sustainability Network started to form in my mind.

The next day, with Suzy's death still pricking at my heart, and the suggestion of my Guru in my mind, I set out to the O Week madness at Auckland University to get people to sign up for my new club. I had next to little concrete concepts to go on with the club, other than it was going to be AWESOME! But somehow so many people joined up. Most new groups struggle to get 10 members sign up at O Week. In the two days I had left to make the most of O Week I managed to get 6o sign ups. It was awesome. And my mind dedicated half of it all to Suzy.

I increased my friendships with the animal rights scene, and I started to attend Critical Mass. What I tried to do was find a way to bring my Krishna conscious culture and resources into contact with networks that I actually wished I was part of. In this way I tried to have the best of both worlds. The problem that increased for me, however, was when I started noticing that the qualities, maturity, and life skills of the people outside our little monastery appeared significantly more developed than inside.

Another thing that Suzy's death brought up for me was the question of effective social change. I had serious doubts developing in my mind about the philosophy and practice of Krishna consciousness. Now I was also having doubts about whether I was wasting my time trying to promote Krishna consciousness as the solution to all the worlds problems, when it seemed that people outside the Krishna community were being significantly more effective at dealing with these problems. The monastery leadership struggled just to decide whether to buy uniform jackets or hoodies, let alone actually tackle issues of massive importance like peak oil, the food crisis or climate change, issues which I consider to be fundamental issues in our current day and age. Was Krishna consciousness the solution to all problems? I was starting to have a very hard time believing that it was.

I know that within the Krishna community, whenever someone leaves their fol they try to reconcile that within their own philosophy system. I think this is a rational reaction in a lot of ways. I know that I do it sometimes as a vegan, complaining about the reasons ex-vegans really started eating meat again. I also do the same often thinking about straightedge kids who are no longer straightedge. I don't blame them for it. Still, it is something that feels uncomfortable, knowing that behind your back there is discussion about the 'real' reasons that one leaves their community. When I left, someone wrote to me to suggest that the reason I left was because of struggling with sexual desire, which was something I literally laughed out loud about, considering I had never even remotely compromised the vows that I took as a monk during my time in the monastery.

I imagine that the complaint made against me would be that I didn't try hard enough to express my emotions, feelings and doubts within the living situation I was in at the time. I imagine they would probably use phrases like "no man is an island" when discussing my fall from grace. I think it is very sad that I tried very hard within that community to express my emotions, to reveal my mind in confidence, and to hash out my doubts. Doubts are never dealt with well within the community. I will discuss this all at a later time. I hope that, instead of being taken as a point blank criticism of the community I have recently come out of, my blog will be embraced by that community as a telling sign pointing to things which must change if they are to continue on as a functioning society. I hope for the sake of future monks that mature leadership develops in their monastery, otherwise I foresee the same problems occurring again and again.

Of course, as I will describe later on, my reasons for leaving were multiple, and had more to do with my developing philosophical doubts as much as it had to do with any social issues. I would happily stay within a dysfunctional social movement IF I had firm conviction in the goals and precepts of that community.

This entry today is more of a thought process than a structured part of the narrative I have been sharing. The last update was a very heavy one for me to write. It actually has taken me over a day to recover mentally after writing that one because I felt confident to continue telling this story. After the last update I partly felt afraid to start writing again, my mind went blank when thinking about the story and how it developed from that point on. Suzy's death was so pivotal in my life that it took me a little while longer than usual to start thinking about what comes next. I guess next is when I become a rebel who functions under the radar of the monastery, and manages to get arrested without anyone noticing or question his long absence, all in the name of 'outreach'.

Busy day

2010-02-22T18:19:00.002+13:00

Sorry for those waiting for an update today. I've had a busy day, and haven't had the time to write an update. I have a meeting tonight, and a few people I need to catch up with this evening. I don't have regular computer access at the moment, and Skeeter, who's computer I've used to do updates on over this weekend is back from Oz tonight. But I'll see what I can do.

Because of the previous two entries, and thinking about the next entry, today I wore an old Auckland Animal Action t-shirt that I helped design with Suzy years ago. And, as fate would have it, a good friend of mine also gave me one of Suzy's old t-shirts as well. The anniversary of Suzy's death is on the 24th, which is just a few days away, so this is all very timely.

I'm very happy with the way this project has unfolded, and with the fact that it seems to be making so many people think critically about their own lives. I don't think I could have asked for a better outcome from all of this.

This has been an amazing week. I'll keep writing as often as I get the chance to.

Thanks!

You might want to grab a tissue for this one.

2010-02-21T23:26:00.003+13:00

I've been preparing for this post since I started this project. Here goes nothing.

Already started crying.

One morning, in the last week of February, I received a text from the manager at the yoga centre in town. It read, "PAMHO, I just got a call from Simon from AAA. He said he had some really bad news he wanted to talk to me about. *number included*."

Immediately my heart stopped beating. I hadn't been involved in Auckland Animal Action since 2003. There were only two things I could think of that would count as really bad news which would be related to Auckland Animal Action. One thing I thought was perhaps the police had done an investigation into some of the illegal activities that we were involved in over the years, like animal liberations, and through their investigations they had finally decided to come after some of us. But that wasn't actually THAT bad. I really knew there was only one thing that could happen in relation to Auckland Animal Action which could possibly be really bad. Something must have happened to Suzy.

I quickly sent a text back thanking the manager of the yoga centre, and then sent a text to Simon asking him to call me when he could. My mind was racing. There were so many things going through my head. It was breakfast time at the monastery, but I was hardly present at all. I was anxious for so many reasons.

Soon after breakfast Simon called my cellphone. My voice broke as I spoke to him. He was straightforward but caring as be broke the news. Suzy had died. The funeral was on Friday. I struggled to maintain my composure. I told him that I knew, as soon as I heard that something bad had happened in relation to AAA that something must have happened to Suzy. He asked if I was okay, and I said I was, and that I would see him at the funeral.

I wanted to run somewhere, curl in a ball and cry. But I was a monk. And such extreme emotional responses was not expected of a monk. I walked back into the kitchen, suppressing all my emotions. There were two monks cleaning the kitchen, and they asked who was on the phone. I told them that a friend of mine had died, and that was someone inviting me to the funeral. They responded coldly, asking if I was seriously considering going to the funeral, as it's not a normal thing for monks to go to funerals. They made comments about how life was temporary, and we would all die soon. No one asked how I was feeling about the situation. No one comforted me at all.

I was staying back home that day, and everyone else was heading out to sell books. As soon as I heard the car leave the driveway I broke down. I started crying hysterically. I curled up in a ball in my room and cried for possibly over an hour. I didn't know what to do. I felt I had no one I could talk to about this. No one at the monastery seemed to be possess the maturity to deal with these kinds of emotions. The fact that I was crying about the death of a female friend of mine would have simply illicited concern from the monks that perhaps I wasn't a very good monk. And I was almost entirely cut off from any friends outside the monastery who knew Suzy at all. I felt to alone, and so completely shattered by this. I sent my mother a text asking if she could call me when she had a spare moment. When she called I just broke down in tears again, sobbing. She didn't know what was wrong. I finally managed to get myself together to tell her that Suzy had died. She stayed on the phone with me until I managed to get myself together. She called again in the evening to make sure I was okay. She also told all my brothers to call me to let me know they were thinking about me. My dad also called soon after my mom hung up the phone. She had also called him.

I went online to see if there was any news about Suzy's death. Indymedia had an article up, which you can see at http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/75005/suzanne-carey-september-10-1973-–-februa. I left a comment on the page, which was as follows:

This is potentially the worst news I have ever received. This is a major loss for the animals. I think it may be fair to say that she directly saved more animals from conditions of suffering than anyone else in New Zealand thus far. I have many found memories of late night missions into factory farms with Suzy, leaving many cages empty. Who can ever take her place? I'm incredibly saddened by this news.

I also posted a thread on an internet forum which I had been frequenting over the past nine years. What I posted is as follows:

It is with great sadness that I report the death of one of my very closest friends and long time animal liberationist, Susan Carey.

I knew Susan for about 10 years, and I know for a fact that she has liberated more animals than anyone else in New Zealand, from conditions of suffering and placed them into caring, safe homes to live out the rest of their lives in peace, free from the abusive meat, egg, fur and animal research industries.

Now that she has passed away, I think it is safe to mention a few things that Susan did for the animals, which would not be safe to mention if she were still alive, given the nature of these acts. One night, at about 2 am, during a very heavy rainstorm, Susan and one other activist gained entry to a very dark battery hen farm. After documenting the horrific conditions in which these battery hens were living, Susan took 9 hens out of their cages, placing them safely into animal carrying boxes, and took them out of the hellish factory farm death they were sentenced to. She stayed up all night looking after the birds, in the morning she took them to a vet friend of hers, and then drove an hour to drop them off at a farm owned by some caring vegan friends.
This was not an isolated incident. One time she helped several other activists to liberate 38 chickens from a factory farm. I am willing to say that over the +15 years that she was involved in animal liberation activities, well more than 1000 animals would have been save by her.

Aside from this, she inspired so many people to take up an active role in the animal rights movement, risking their own freedom and comforts to save the lives of as many animals as possible.

She was a very humble person, she never wanted to take any credit for anything. She lived a very simple life, dedicate not to attaining material success, material comforts or possessions. Instead she spent all her time and all her money on helping the animals. Her pleasures were simple; chinese vegetarian food, french fries, humus and chip sandwiches and late night movies.

I think a lot of people will miss Suzy, and I am certain that the animals will be mourning her death. She was always there for me in the tuff times of my life, and I owe a lot to her. I would not be where I am today if it were not for her.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I wanted to let as many people as possible know about this great loss.

RIP
Susan Carey - September 10 1973 – February 24 2008

I pretty much spent the whole day crying. My heart was broken thinking about the fact that I never had the chance to say sorry for ignoring her for all those years, and for turning my back on our friendship without any explanation. What I was most surprised about was that I felt guilty for being so incredibly sad about it. Monastic life was such a sterile existence, and extreme emotional responses were looked down upon. From some of the comments from the monks in the morning I felt like I was fallen just for being so emotionally destroyed by this news.

At the same time, the emotional release felt empowering for some reason. I felt as if it was the first time in several years that I actually experienced serious emotions. As I lay in my room crying I realised that I had nothing to be ashamed about, and these emotions were so important for dealing with this loss that I should never consider repressing them. None the less, before the monks arrived home from the day, I had a long shower, washing my face all of signs of crying. I was exhausted.

I knew I needed to talk to someone about this. I had one friend at the monastery at the time who I felt I could approach about this. I called him into a room, and told him what had happened, and how I had responded. He was very supportive, but he was also understanding that the other monks, especially the senior monks, would not really understand. I was very grateful for the chance to talk to someone face to face about this. I was and still am very grateful for his friendship over these years. He even called me this morning, as he is also following this blog religiously.

I cried everyday until the funeral. I had to go to the funeral, even though I knew it was looked down upon by the other older monks. I told them that it was a family friend who had died, that my parents expected me to attend. They still protested but I insisted it would be okay. I knew that if I did not go to the funeral I would be bitter for the rest of my life about it. I was already bitter about the fact that I hadn't spoken to Suzy in years, or had the chance to say sorry before she died.

I was dropped off at the funeral by the same friend I talked to about Suzy's death. He was very comforting and understanding, and said I could call at anytime if I couldn't deal with the funeral, and if I wanted to leave. In the end, I sent him a text saying I would find my own way home.

As funerals are, this was an unfortunate opportunity for a reunion with so many people I hadn't seen or spoken to for years. That alone was a massive emotional experience for me. I felt so guilty talking to each and every person for having ignored their friendship for so long. These were all people who had helped me out in the past, with whom I had so many intense experiences. Just meeting up with many of them made me feel like crying, let alone thinking about the circumstances of our meetings.

The funeral was sterile. I think it was mostly designed for family. On one side of the chapel sat Suzy's family, dressed in respectable clothes. The other half of the chapel was full of activists, punks and hippies. Both sides were crying. Aside from the funeral director, Suzy's sister also spoke, as did many of her friends. My eyes were full of tears the whole time.

At the end of the funeral we were all invited to come up to the closed casket, place any items we had brought with us, or some flowers that they had available on it, and to say our last words to Suzy before she was cremated. I had brought some flowers from home, so I went up and placed them on her casket. I touched the casket, and whispered to her that I was so sorry for turning my back on our friendship. As per Suzy's wish, the song Cow's with Guns played in the background.

We then all left the inside of the chapel and congregated outside. We all felt like we needed more time for closure so many of Suzy's friends decided to meet together at a near by park. We visited a supermarket that was close by and picked up a few things to eat and went to the park where we sat and talked about Suzy and shared hilarious stories of protests and things.

It felt so nice to talk to my friends again about Suzy, and to share these emotions together. I knew this was unconventional for a monk, but I didn't care anymore. By ignoring my friendship with Suzy over all those years I felt I had suffered such a great loss, I didn't want to risk anything else.

After that I made up a list of friends who I had to contact before they were dead. One was easy to find, she was always on MSN anyway. I signed into MSN, and my first words were "Do you have a system in place to make sure that I would find out if you died?" Her response was "Are you dying or something Mikey?"

I still sometimes cry when thinking about Suzy's death. I definitely cried while writing this update. Suzy's death brought up so many emotions for me, and it made me realise so many things about my life, what I really needed to do with my life, and it made me see so many aspects of the way I was living my life at the time which were not at all healthy emotionally, nor sustainable psychologically.

This single event led to so many carry one events throughout 2008 and 2009, which culminated in me leaving the Krishna community altogether. 2008 was a turbulent year.

In the coming updates I'll discuss a bit more about the ripples that Suzy's death had on my life, and how it shaped the rest of my year in amazing ways. There were a few other unrelated events that year which shock my perceptions of myself and the community I was a part of. Also, I got arrested that year, which is probably a surprise for a lot of people to hear about.

RIP

Susan Carey - September 10 1973 – February 24 2008

Cows with guns

2010-02-21T18:07:00.003+13:00

After thinking it through, I think this part of the story requires me to provide a bit more background in order to make I clear why I found it such a big issue to deal with. With my dramatic suspense building writing skills displayed in my last update, I had a friend actually call me up to ask what the big event was that I found so defining and dramatic. I almost think he was a bit disappointed that it wasn't something extremely controversial, though I could be misreading the situation. So, this update will provide the background information for this, which I hope will make it clear why the event weighed so heavily on my mind, and really made me lose my motivation to continue in my spiritual practices.

When I was 18 years old, having just finished high school, I moved to Hamilton and took six months off of everything just to travel, and get used to living independently from my parents. I spent a lot of time in Auckland over those six months, going to shows, and anti-GE protests, and making lots of new friends. Once I hitched up to a show in Auckland with a friend, and at the show there was an animal rights group that had an info stall. I was really interested in getting involved in animal rights activism at the time, so I picked up a few flyers, with the intention of contacting the group about becoming active. A few weeks later the circus was visiting Hamilton, with it's captive elephant attraction. I organised along with a couple of other friends to have a protest outside the circus, and I wrote an e-mail to the animal rights group in Auckland to see if they wanted to come down. From memory they just weren't able to come down for some reason.

Sometime in the second half of 2000, I was attending an anti-GE rally outside the animal research facility in Hamilton, with a large group of people. I was there with some of my vegan friends. As we were standing there one woman came up to us and asked if we knew Mikey Brenndorfer. I was kinda surprised, but said that actually that was me. She said, "Oh good, my friends just over there have come down and want to meet up with you." That, of course made me feel pretty special, like I was some sort of important person at the protest.

These two people I met that day were from Auckland Animal Action, and they had wanted to meet me because of my previous e-mail to them. One of them was named Suzy. After the protest we invited them around to my flat, where myself, my girlfriend and my flatmate sat around with them hearing all sorts of amazing stories about animal rights activism. We were all completely inspired to hear about the protests, and the liberations, and the movement in general. We sat for hours hearing about it all, mesmerized by their tales. This day started my increased interest in animal rights activism.

From that point on, I was hooked. Anytime my girlfriend and I visited Auckland after that we would stay with Suzy. We would go to protests, and punkrawk shows, and do information stalls. We started attending animal rights conferences, and meeting up with other grassroots animal rights activists from around the country for big protests. In Hamilton we organised a protest all on our own for a three day animal research conference, where we managed to have three hundred people yelling and screaming and banging drums for the whole three day conference. During this time my friendship with Suzy grew and grew.

After that three day protest in Hamilton a few of us, including my girlfriend, traveled up to Auckland for a punk festival. When we arrived we were still buzzing from the protests, so we decided to carry the enthusiasm and have an impromptu protest outside a shop that sold fur. As fate would have it, five of us ended up arrested for disorderly behaviour.

We started an animal rights group in Hamilton, and Suzy always considered me the point of contact for the group. She would call regularly, often at 10 am in the morning, often catching me at the most inappropriate moments with my girlfriend. For me it almost seemed like a running joke that Suzy would always know to call at those times. I'm not 100% certain, but I think my girlfriend started wondering about my relationship with Suzy, at times she would make comments about me and Suzy. After my girlfriend and I broke up she regularly suggested that I should consider going out with Suzy.

And up until the time that I moved to Wellington I spent pretty much most weekends up in Auckland staying at Suzy's house. We would plot protests, liberate animals, do information stalls, have meetings, and meet up with and encourage other activists. We would also eat a whole lot of junk foods, and watch lame movies from the rental place until late at night. Once, when we were on Queen Street together I met a Hare Krishna and tried to buy the Gita, but didn't have enough money on my EFTPOS card. On the ride home she told me why she didn't like the Krishnas. Her main complaint was the philosophy of karma, which she said meant that if you were raped it meant that you deserved to be raped, and she couldn't accept that. Also, at the time, and even recently, some Hare Krishnas have been known to lie to vegans about their foods, which has always made vegans doubtful. Of course, for the most part, that has changed as a number of Krishna places are now fully vegan.

The thing with my friendship with Suzy was that it was 100% platonic. When watching movies, even though it was just the two of us in the house for most weekends, we always sat on separate couches. I don't think we so much as hugged even once. I slept in the spare room at all times. Often during the days we would hang out in her room, she would sit on her bed, and I would sit on her computer. We would listen to straightedge vegan songs while I posted on internet forums, or designed animal rights leaflets.

Eventually I ended up with another girlfriend. Suzy never liked my girlfriends, and my girlfriends never seemed to trust my relationship with Suzy. Even years later people still ask me if there was anything going on between myself and Suzy, but in all honesty it never even remotely crossed my mind. She was my best friend and that was all.

Once I moved to Wellington we would still regularly hang out together. She would often come down for visits, for animal rights conferences, and protests and just because at the time most of the experienced animal rights activists were living in Wellington. And when I was taking trips up north to escape my girlfriend I would spend time in Auckland hanging out with Suzy.

Suzy was aware that my girlfriend and I were hanging out with the Hare Krishnas. She even came with us to a few Sunday feasts at the yoga centre in Wellington. She didn't like it much, and would often do research on the internet and show me all the reasons I should consider the Krishnas a cult. She had seen three other animal rights activists become Krishna devotees in the past, and I knew she was worried about losing her friend.

I wrote Suzy an e-mail when I was moving up to Hamilton to live with the Krishnas. At first I had planned to come and visit her from time to time, being closer to Auckland in Hamilton than when I was in Wellington. But the lifestyle took over, and I never went up to Auckland to visit her. I never even contacted her again, as the Krishna philosophy does suggest maintaining friendships only with other devotees, and that men should always be wary of their contact with females, especially if they were considering taking up a monastic lifestyle. Suzy sent me an e-mail once before I moved back down to Wellington. She wanted to know why I hadn't contacted her or visited. She hoped that I wasn't put off the animal rights movement by my time in Wellington, and she hoped that I wasn't giving up her friendship for the Krishnas. The e-mail was a little out of the ordinary for Suzy, it was a little bit wussy, whereas Suzy usually never let any of her emotions show through. Because of my focus on the Krishna lifestyle at the time I never wrote back to her.

I only saw Suzy one more time after that. It was in 2005, after I had moved up to become a monk in Auckland. I was selling books on Queen Street, and she just happened to be walking down. We chatted for a bit, and a few other animal rights activists showed up as well. Talking to her, it was like old times again, our friendship hadn't changed. After that, I would always keep an eye out for her car in the city, always trying hoping that we would randomly meet up again. But we never did.

In late 2007 I had flown down to Wellington for another visit with the 'doctor'. After getting off the plane, and catching the bus into the city, I saw another old animal rights friend of mine. She was also a good friend of Suzy's, so I asked how Suzy was doing. She gave me Suzy's cellphone number before she got off the bus. I always wanted to send Suzy a text, just to say hi, but I was scared as it wasn't the thing a monk should do at all, even though my friendship with Suzy had nothing to do with sex on any level. In fact, one day, in mid-February 2008 I wrote out a text message to send to Suzy, saying sorry that I had completely ignored her friendship for so many years. I sat there with the text typed out on my phone, staring at it for a few minutes, debating in my mind whether it would be a fall down from my monastic standard to send the text to her or not. I played out all the possible results of sending the text in my head, feeling guilty just for even thinking of sending her the text, but feeling equally guilty for turning my back on her friendship all these years.

In the end, I never sent that text. And there is nothing in my life which I regret more than that. It haunts me to this day.

Suzy getting arrested at a protest

Preface for 2008

2010-02-21T11:48:00.002+13:00

I decided to quickly skip through 2007, primarily because the themes that occurred in 2007 have mostly already been brought up in my previous updates already. It was more of the same, but with a few different colourings here and there. After I have given this general overview of things I will probably go back and fill in some gaps, provide other details and tell other interesting stories of different things that occurred which I think are of relevance.

2008, to me, was such a vital year, and the themes that will be coming up in the following updates are a bit different from those already covered. 2007 I think was my peak in terms of my time with the Krishnas. From early 2008, or maybe even late 2007, everything started going downhill. It really did all start falling apart. The floodgates started showing their cracks and it was only a matter of time before they burst altogether.

In particular a certain event which occurred late in February of 2008 (actually, the two year anniversary of this event is only a few days away) set off a nuclear bomb in my mind, the effects of which I know I am still struggling to come to grips with. It is the part of this story I have most dreaded writing about, and I may be something that I will split into two updates.

Some people have written to me to tell me that they are reading this blog at the edge of their seats, checking every couple hours to see if I have written another update. For those of you who have become addicted to this story, prepare for a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride. You may want to keep some tissues on hand as I talk about February 2008 in particular. And Jasmine, you may not want to read that update at work, just saying.

I wish I were exhausted tonight.

2010-02-21T00:52:00.003+13:00

I wrote the final paragraph of this update before writing the rest. I think I wrote it first because I needed to get that out before I could focus on telling this story. It's funny because as I was thinking of how to relay this segment of the chronology I didn't consider it a very emotional segment. But the more I think about my motivations during this time, the more I realised it is an emotional thing for me. So I changed the title to reflect that. I wonder how many people will skip to the concluding paragraph now.

When I returned to Auckland after my recovery time in Wellington, I had to immediately assume again my role as on the ground manager. The first task was to get rid of a nasty dialer virus that had infected the computer. The next task was to find a new house for us to live. The monastery was about to head for a new stage of growth and maturity, and the first step was to find a new location.

Because of a growing community of Hare Krishnas living in Otahuhu we were told to find an inexpensive place to live there. After checking out a few horror houses, one which actually had a dead mouse in the living room when we went to inspect it, we found our little home on Church Street. This house had immediate appeal, primarily due to its new carpets and paint job, the fact it didn't smell like death, and there were no dead rodents visible.

The next change was an expansion of my services. On day in January my Guru was visiting, and he called me to visit him. I sat with him for a few hours, chatted with him about various management issues in our monastery, showed him graphs displaying expenses, income and book sales. He then called for the monastery leaders, which now consisted of three different monks. When they arrived, I was told I could leave. I started walking home, but about half way I received a call to return, so I turned around. The hot sun was making it's presence known on my bald head. When I arrived back, my Guru said, in front of all the leaders present, that he wanted me to start preparing activities at all the universities in the city, aside from Auckland university. I was to expand our presence onto the university campuses. Then I was told I could carry on back home.

On my walk back home I started thinking up all the excuses I could give as to why I shouldn't or couldn't carry out the mission of setting up university programs. I was scared. But as I walked I realised I doubted myself because I had started buying into all the negative things I had heard said to me over the years. I realised that if I could get the programs running I could show prove those statements and attitudes wrong. I could show that I was as effective as anyone else in our monastery.

I set to work straight away, researching what I could about each different university or polytech in the city. I attempted to set up clubs, food stalls or cooking classes on four different campuses. My first success was at UNITEC. Later I also managed to get a food stall at AUT. For the first year we let Auckland University continue to be 'targeted' by another Hare Krishna without the presence of our team.

(Our vegetarian food stall at Unitec)

Adding this on top of my already heavy workload was tough, especially as my body was still having it's ups and downs, and fatigue was something I had to deal with regularly. And running vegetarian food stalls was a big task. It meant waking up at 3 am, chanting my rounds, then starting to cook, attending our morning prayers, cooking more, eating breakfast, finishing cooking, packing the van, going to the campus, setting up, selling food, packing up, coming home, cleaning everything, doing my management jobs, reading 2 hours a day and preparing to do it all again the next day.

My entire week started looking busy. Sunday was temple day, which meant waking at 3 am. On Sundays I also filled 10 20 Litre buckets with milk at a near by farm that para-legally sold raw milk (this was before the vegan wave hit the Krishnas in 08). So, after the morning prayers and class at the temple I would drive 15 minutes, clean all the buckets, fill them up, put them in the car then drive back to the temple, give half to the ladies from the yoga centre. Then fill up our 3 25L water bottles (the temple had filtered water, which was infinitely better than the tap water in Otahuhu). Then drive back to Otahuhu, arriving at noon, cooking breakfast, then usually reading or sleeping until it was time to get ready to go to the Krishna Fest at the yoga centre. I would be out there till after nine, come home, likely in bed late that night, late me for me.

Monday I would sleep in. But Monday was chaos day. Things that needed doing included banking, book scores, shopping for the university cooking days, a large feast where we would invite guests to the monastery, weekly reports, management meetings (which were massive headaches in themselves), general monastery meetings, correspondence, and then getting set up to cook the next day.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays were cooking days in 2007, at UNITEC at the time, the schedule for which I already described. Tuesday night also ended up being the night we would give philosophy classes at the yoga centre, which meant late nights.

Thursday was the day my body crashed, it was my physical recovery day. Friday and Saturday were days where I caught up on my management, reading, e-mails, communications and sleeping, as most days of the week I was functioning on close to 5 hours of sleep.

I was moving non-stop. I was enlivened and stressed-out at the same time. It was awesome having so much to do, and feeling the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. But I was definitely stressed, and my shortened temper meant that I was less able to deal with other peoples lackings very well. If younger monks, or even older monks, displayed any level of ignorance I would snap at them, mock them, or let them know of my superior knowledge, intellect and skills. My bullying continued, but it also expanded to include attempts to raise myself above the senior monks by pointing out my efficiencies.

I was also communicating a lot with the manager of the yoga centre, discussing aspects of our services at the yoga centre there, and how to improve things. I was ordering large amounts of books as well. We had an order of something like 50,000 copies of one type of book. That meant I became responsible for $250,000 worth of debt to our book suppliers. That was a heavy burden to feel.

I noticed an interesting tendency in myself at the time. It was the tendency to always want to communicate. I would sent out e-mails so that I would have more e-mails to read and reply to. Same with texts. It was an extra distraction.

Sometimes, when I get a moment of stillness in my life, I realise that the reason I often try to stay busy is because when I stop moving all the emotions catch up with me. But if I can fill my day up with constant activities and distractions then I never have to deal with myself. If I can make sure I get to bed exhausted at night the emotions won't catch up with me. 2007 was the year I tried this approach. 2008 was the year it came crashing down.

Feverish and moving

2010-02-19T22:44:00.004+13:00

With my change in focus in 2006 came a change in schedule. As the manager I was responsible for drawing up the service rosters for the monastery, so I had control over what I did during the day. This was a blessing and a curse. It was a curse in the sense that I was still one of the youngest members of the monastery, and I had to decide and draw out the service engagements around the place for everyone who was senior to me. That didn't make me a lot of friends. But it was a blessing in that I could keep myself busy, give myself lots to do, but schedule it so that it all fit together well.

My program for most of the year was simple. I would rise at 3:30, shower, get dressed, put tilaka (sacred clay) on my body, and memorise verses for ten minutes while it dried. I'd then finish getting dressed and go on chant my rounds. I would usually finish a little after 6 when I would return to my room, finish my learning of verses for the day, read until 6:30 and then do into the garage to do yoga. At 7 I would go back upstairs to attend the morning prayers and class. Then breakfast. Then we would all get ready and head out the door to distribute books. I would normally stay close to the monastery, mostly going to New Lynn, Henderson, or onto Queen Street. At the time I was living just one street over from where I currently live, close enough to walk to town, and close to the train line heading west.

(A photo of a friend I made while selling books in New Lynn. We're still in contact, and he's reading this blog.)

I would go out on books for a couple hours, then return home for lunch. Usually I would have to cook something simple for myself at lunch time. Then, I would sit down at the computer and read the rest of my allotted two hours, which was the minimum expectation at our monastery. Sometimes I would even sign into a voice chat and read to my friend while he was at work in Wellington. I would then do some of my management chores, which grew month by month as I was the manager. At the time I would also usually update the blog I was running, and contact some blog friends through MSN. Then almost every night I had rostered myself to cook dinner for everyone. Except for Friday and Sunday nights, when I was at the yoga centre in town.

(This is a photo of me coming back from a bush walk in Piha. Guests at our yoga centre who were interested in Krishna consciousness would sometimes be invited out on bush walks with us. On this day we ate samosas. They were awesome. We had them with a tamarind chutney, the remains of which ended up sitting in our fridge for close to six months.)

I liked my new schedule. And I liked the dynamics of the monastery for the first six months of 2006. My new responsibilities gave me a sense of worth and achievement, and it provided a stable ground for my relationships with those around me. I was fairly content and peaceful. There were still occasional stresses. As I mentioned in regards to the rosters, it was difficult being in a position where I had responsibility to decide things in an insubordinate sort of way within a social hierarchy which didn't appreciate that. But overall it was nice.

Then, our monastery took part in a three week book distribution marathon in May. I structured my daily program so that I could take part in it as much as possible. But my fatigue grew during the weeks. By the final week of the marathon I ended up sick with the flu. This was the start of about three months of steady illness. I had the flu for a week, followed by a lung infection which took several weeks to recover from. Then I was hit with the most awful stomach bug I've ever suffered from. I could not keep anything down for a week, nothing at all. By the time I could eat again my eyes were sunken, I had lost a lot of weight, and my already tired body was even more tired. And then I got another flu, followed by another lung infection.

My Guru came to visit after this spell of illness, and expressed concern. On the day he left Auckland on that trip myself and two other monks made a journey up to Tauranga to visit distribute books using my parents place as a base for our operation. We arrived late at night. In the morning I didn't wake up. I didn't wake up until about 3 in the afternoon. I had another flu, the worst I think I have ever suffered from. I was delirious again with fever. I got up during the night to visit the toilet, and passed out in the hallway, waking up to find myself curled in a ball in the small space between the hallway and the toilet door. We decided that this didn't make the best impression for my parents, and we left the following day, after I had taken a trip to the doctors to make sure everything was okay. When I recovered from the illness I was exhausted for weeks, having not yet recovered from my previous illnesses.

I wrote a letter to my Guru explaining the situation with my health. He decided that I should travel down to Wellington to visit a natural doctor down there and seek treatment from him. This doctor was an unconventional character in pretty much all ways. His focus seemed to be homeopathy, but he also practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine, Naturopathy, neuro-linguistic programming, and I think he was also a trained chiropractor or osteopath. I'm not certain. The idea was that I should have an initial appointment with him, with the likely result of shifting down to Wellington to stay and recover my health for a while.

Moving down to Wellington was another uncertainty. Within the monastery Wellington had a certain stigma about it. And a monk spending time in Wellington was almost looked down upon. The reason being that generally monks went down to Wellington to give up their monastic lifestyle. Our previous manager was now in Wellington, about to be engaged for marriage. I don't know if I've managed to convey the mentality very well in this blog so far, but amongst monks there is, whether rightfully or wrongfully, a lot of prestige about being a monk, and aiming to maintain one's monasticism long term. Even if one left the monastic order, if they had maintained if for a long period of time they were looked up to by the monastics. And anything which indicated a possible change from a monastic life was deemed to be the result of personal weakness, and looked down upon. Openly we knew this mentality was wrong, and I think the monastery over time had worked hard to squash this mindset out as much as possible. But for the immature among us, like myself at the time, this was a serious concern. And I overheard several conversations while in the monastery indicated that others thought that my move to Wellington was indicative of my giving up the monastic order, which was not the case at all.

I arrived in Wellington a few days before the biggest festival of the year, the same festival I described several entries ago when talking about the argument turned potential fight. The day before the festival I had an appointment with the 'doctor'. As part of the treatment he hooked me up to his computer and ran some kind of computer program which was meant to scan the energy vibrations of my organs AND my emotions. Personally, I always thought that was quackery. BUT the result his computer generated was INCREDIBLY interesting to me. According to his computer the reason I was suffering from so many health problems was because I was suppressing my revolutionary tendencies. I think that was incredibly accurate. As the manager of the monastery now, dealing within a framework of entrenched hierarchy, and even nepotism, I had to restrain myself so much from expressing my revolutionary propensities to rebel and take over. His counselled me a bit on the issue, telling me that he was certain that I was destined to be in a role where my tendencies could be exercised, but I just had to learn how to express them safely in the meantime. He was no fool when it came to understanding the intensely hierarchical social structure I was living in.

The next day was our big festival of the year. The yoga centre in Wellington held a huge celebration, and I was asked to give the philosophy presentation for the evening, which I was delighted about. I loved giving presentations, and public speaking.

This trip to Wellington, however, brought up some other tendencies in myself which I hadn't had to deal with before. In Auckland I was the lowest of the pecking order. In Wellington, staying with the younger men, most of whom were not initiated, I was a senior person. And how I learned to act in that different situation was an interesting example of how human behaviour works within structured hierarchies.

(This is a photo of me taken while I was giving the presentation at the festival celebrations in Wellington)

Transitions are difficult.

2010-02-19T18:15:00.002+13:00

The dynamics of our monastery in the first year of my being there were not very healthy, and thus they did not last long term. By the end of 2005, however, things were coming to a head, and 2006 ended up feeling like a fresh start. And as things were coming together a bit more for our monastery, the one in Christchurch completely fell apart, and monks stared migrating our way.

The older school Hare Krishna monk mentality prevailed at our monastery in 2005. The attitude was that to be a good monk you had to be good at selling books, if you struggled with that one task it was a sign that monastic life wasn't for you. Our UK import tried to mellow this hardline stance, but it still came through from our monastery leader. And I heard about it regularly, though increasingly indirect, as a result of my increasing illnesses.

I was being presented with an ideal standard, that I would be able to sell books and lots of them, and told that that would ensure my life as a monk. Of course, I liked monastic life, the simplicity of it, and the focus involved, and the chance to steadily work on improving myself. I liked those things. So I wanted to achieve this ideal goal, but my failure to do so resulted in a feeling of failure, combined with the feeling that, if I failed, I would have to give up what I liked about my life then. It was a scary feeling. And even though I was being told by other senior members of our monastery that this wasn't actually the case, nonetheless it felt like it, it was what was being dictated by the monastery leader.

Around half way through the year we had two senior and well seasoned monks join our monastery, after escaping the collapse of the Christchurch centre. At the time, their presence in the monastery improved the situation to some degree. They were much more soft hearted in their approach to others, and were encouraging to me of my efforts as a monk. They were monks of the 'new school', where monasticism was not based on book sales, but character, study and discipline. As they recovered from their experience in Christchurch, which I must say were infinitely worse than what I have described so far, they eventually took up roles of leadership in our monastery.

As the year came closer to an end our monastery manager made the decision to give up monastic life, and pursue life as a married Hare Krishna. This left an opening in the monastery for someone with computer, management, organisational and communication skills to take his place. Because of my failing health, my computer skills which far excelled anyone else's in the monastery, and my previous experience running an animal rights group, I was the obvious choice for the job.

Each year, as I've mentioned before, the Hare Krishnas run a book distribution marathon, focusing all their attention on selling books for the month of December. Because book distribution was such a strong focus for the monastic as it is, the marathon was the chance for the monks to really show their prowess, show off their strengths to each other. Sometimes even cheating. As the time for the marathon approached, perhaps a week before, I came down with another massive illness. I developed a huge fever, which literally made me completely delirious for two days. As that illness progressed it moved into my lungs and I developed pneumonia. Others also got the flu/fever, but I was the only one to develop pneumonia. I was out of action for three weeks, coughing all night.

For most of my time that year, everyone was encouraging me that even though I was sick and not distributing many books, there was no reason for me to think about changing my service focus and doing something else instead. But when I got this illness the mood changed. As I lay awake one night, coughing my lungs out (not literally) the manager came into my room and said "I've had enough of watching you hack away at yourself like this. If you keep this up you will end up completely destroying your body. We need to change this." His suggestion was actually that I consider going to university to study something, but remain a monk. I found out recently that he got in a whole lot of trouble for suggesting this to me without discussing the concept with my Guru first. Our UK import talked to me the next day, and agreed that my time as a fulltime book distributer was over, and that I would have to do something else as my focused service. The problem was, nothing was certain about what I was going to do next. Nothing had been confirmed or discussed with my Guru at all, and thus I spent most of December in a state of insecurity. What if I did have to leave because I was changing services? Was I failure because of this? What was I actually going to do next year? And how would it affect my relationships within the monastery?

These were big concerns for me during that time. It bothered me a lot. I spent most of my recovery time then listening to lectures on my mp3 player, reading 7 hours a day and discussing philosophy with our manager as he trained me to take over his job as manager. He trained me as the manager even though, at the time, I had not received any direct word from my Guru whether or not that was actually what he wanted me to be doing with my time. That month I also started writing a blog, which was mostly philosophical musings combined with personal thoughts about things. It was a little unconventional for a monk, but that month was the start of the creation of my unconventional monastic approach.

The month of December in 2005 was a stressful month, but at the same time it was a month of hope. I spent my worrying time split between thinking I was a failure, feeling rejected by the monastery for not living up to the expected standard of a book distributing monk, and the other half of the time worrying about what I would be doing instead, whether it would mean leaving the monastery, or being looked down upon for doing some 'inferior' activity, whether I actually had what it took to do the other activity or not. It was a stressful month for me.

There really are few feelings in life that I can think of that are worse than feeling rejected, a failure, not good enough and uncertain about what will happen to you next. The feeling of plans falling through, and hopes being pulled away can sometimes be heart crushing. That December felt like that. And this February has felt like that.

Over Xmas and New Years that year, I did manage to visit my family for the holidays. The festival that was being held at that time was not open to the monks, instead we joined a second end of year festival which took place in mid January. I had relatives visiting from Canada, and I explained to my Guru that this may be the last chance to see my Oma. As it turned out, she didn't come to NZ anyway, though she is still alive in Canada.

When I returned from my parents place to the monastery, I was greeted with news about my new services. I would be taking over as the manager of the monastery AND I would be more involved in the outreach work at the Loft, giving classes there more regularly, including during the week, teaching philosophy, making friends, drawing people to take up the Krishna conscious lifestyle. I was pretty happy to hear the news, it brought a feeling of stability.

But it also brought some personal changes that I didn't expect. And some of those changes were things that grew in later years into things that I despised.

My Family

2010-02-19T09:47:00.001+13:00

I just came across this photo as I was looking for relevant photos for my blog. This photo is from 2005, pretty much right around the time described in my last post. This was the FIRST time my entire family came to visit me at the monastery. We had spent the day at the zoo together, posed for a few family photos there, which ended up used as Xmas cards for the extended family. And this is us together at the yoga centre in town, attending a Krishna Fest on the Sunday evening.

EDIT: Decided to include the family photo from the zoo as well.

The rise of the turks.

2010-02-19T08:47:00.000+13:00

A few days ago I had dinner with a friend of mine, he was the manager of the monastery when I first arrived there. At the time of our dinner he hadn't seen this blog yet, but he asked me to tell him what he was like during that time. This morning, while I was contemplating the issues of this update, I remembered an event which was relevant to this entry and which also provides some insight he may find useful as well.

Our monastery now had our UK import who was trying his hardest to rectify the problems of our monastery, which were many. Aside from the bullying, the other part of the monastery's issues which I found created a constant feeling of instability was the constant power struggles that went on during this time. This was a difficult issue for our UK friend to solve. The manager wanted to exert his control over the monastery, and the leader had his approach. And they were worlds apart in vision, values and character.

But this power struggle often overflowed from the management committee which was set-up over to the small guys, the turks as we were once called. Once, somehow or other, my room which I shared with two other monks, the turks, started to have a problem with fleas. I'm not sure how it happened, but myself and my roommates started to get covered in these insanely itchy little flea bites. These were a million times worse than any mosquito bite I had ever suffered from, and the lesions would actually last for over a week. They drove us insane!

And one day, while we were contemplating how to get rid of these awful fleas, there was a knock on the door. I answered and it was a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman, who wanted to make an appointment to come back and give us a free demonstration of his vacuum cleaner, by cleaning one room of our house for free. He informed me that this vacuum could even eliminate fleas. What a perfect arrangement, I thought.

For some reason, however, when the manager was approached about this idea, he was adamantly opposed to it. He offered up his arguments, and I offered counter arguments. Others got involved in the issue, which created a fair bit of tension for the monastery. Ironically, years later when I was the manager I made a similar judgement call to his, with a similar result. What happened in this case was that power relationships were emphasized and even publicly declared. We were informed that we were to respect all the decisions of the manager as the manager, and we were to respect the role of the leader as the head inspiration of the monastery. The result of this, however, was an increase of distrust. For starters, we had no faith in the leader of the monastery at the time. And then there started to be greater doubts about the manager of the monastery, rumours of frivolous spending (which to be honest probably stemmed from the awesome lunches we bought when selling books together, the manager and I), and doubts about decision making.

I think anyone who knows me will know that I always have a problem being under someones authority, and I will always speak out when I disagree with something. But during this period of time I had that tendency squashed, with the result of increased health problems and stress for myself.

As all of these internal power struggles occurred amongst the management committee of the monastery, us younger monks created our own mechanism of coping with things, and creating our own stability. In particular, for that period of time, the relationships between myself and the younger monks who I shared a room with, tightened dramatically. Because we couldn't rely on the leaders and seniors for support and encouragement, we started being there for each other, creating our own little scene within a scene.

This had both positive and negative results. I think perhaps everything does if you think about it enough. The positive result was that we became more enlivening in our lives. The negative result was that we had only served to isolate ourselves further and further. Hare Krishnas restrict their associations and friendships to only Hare Krishnas. Monks tend to reduce their socializing and friendships to other monks. And now we had reduced our genuine social interactions to our own small room. For me, being such a social person by nature, this was not a healthy long term option.

I started to feel more and more withdrawn. At the time I was still selling books fulltime on the street, but my outgoing nature started to whither, making each day more difficult. I started to suffer more and more from fatigue, asthma, and I started to contract regular illnesses and lung infections. At one point I had a case of extreme food poisoning which lasted an entire week, where I could not eat anything at all.

Our UK import was also a sickly fellow, and he took pity on my ill health during this time, though he seemed convinced that it wasn't due to mental anguish. The leader of the monastery, however, let me know regularly that I thought my illnesses were do to my weaknesses and psychological lackings, which of course only served to make things worse.

Somehow, I stayed positive through it all. I used my sick days to focus on my studying, reading, and spiritual practices, which kept my spirits high. At that time I loved to read the books, and memorize them, and ponder philosophy deeply, and the time of solitude and reflective thinking kept me strong and working on myself. I was in anxiety because of my situation, but I also felt like a person of growing strengths. I knew that I had the potential to grow through this time and come out better off.

Excitement, growth and fist-a-cuffs.

2010-02-18T23:04:00.001+13:00

After my last few posts a lot of people have been asking my why I stayed within the Krishna community for as long as I did. I think the answer is complicated, but the next segment of the story should provide some clues.

In the early months of 2005 the saviour of our monastery appeared on the horizon, coming all the way from England. He was a monk who had served for many years in London, taking on many different roles, including leadership roles, and was in a lot of respects an expert counselor by nature. Because of his seniority and respect he was naturally given the role of leader for our struggling monastery. He quickly assessed the problems, and did what he could to solve them. Or at least to deal with the messes as they continued to arise. And arise they did.

But he started to point out shortcomings in some of the leaders of the monastery, and he helped us younger ones learn how to deal with these kinds of issues in more positive ways, and how to view them as they arose so that we did not become negative towards those who we felt pained by. He was very scholarly, and always knew which verse from the Gita to apply to which situation, not in an impersonal way, but in a natural and fluid way. When I was struggling with my personal relationships with people I considered to be bullies, he reminded me of the strength of character required to see enemies and friends on an equal level, which is an amazing aspiration I think.

One day, during one of the biggest festivals of the Krishna calender, after spending the morning taking part in the events at the temple, myself and several other devotees went to distribute books in Henderson. It was a Saturday, I remember because Henderson was always full of various Pentacostal Christian groups, each given an hour slot, singing, preaching, praying, speaking in tongues, and often attacking Hare Krishnas. Most of the time on these days, the Hare Krishnas would find different places in Henderson to distribute books, either running and hiding through the mall, hanging out in carparks, or other areas. I always liked being in the middle of the Christian zone. I knew my Bible inside and out, and I had made friendships with some of the Christians, and complete rivals out of others. Saturdays selling books in Henderson was always my favourite event. And this Saturday in particular, while engaging in battles of wits with Christian preachers, I actually managed to sell an amazing amount of books. It didn't even make sense to me, but it was such a fun and exciting day. I felt so happy to be doing what I was doing.

But then something really weird occurred. It didn't ruin the awesomeness of my day. But it did have carry on effects, both negative and positive. I was standing near the doorway of the mall entrance, in the square in Henderson. I was almost jumping with happiness to be there, having such an awesome day. I approached one person to see about selling them a book, they took it! They even gave me an extra big donation of $40, which was awesome! As I turned around towards the door again, I saw our monastery's previous leader, the person I was struggling with in terms of our relationship, because I felt bullied by him. I saw him there, standing almost in surprise, short of breath, face white. I smiled at him, cause my day was going awesome, and he smiled back, then walked back into the mall.

What I had missed was that he was actually chasing another member of our monastery out the door of the mall. Not in a kicking him out sort of way, but in a chasing to catch sort of way. I hadn't noticed the other monk slip past me while I glowed about my $40 donation I had received for a book.

Then, it was time for us to pack up. We were fasting all day, until midnight, and I was definitely feeling tired by this point. I went back to the van with our book selling leader. But this time it was just me and him. The other monk who had come with us was not there. I asked about his whereabouts, and received a vague answer. I sensed something was wrong, but I knew not to push the issue, lest I receive some harsh treatment as a result. We drove around the block, and then back to the temple. When we got to the temple our other monk friend was already there. If you know the geography of the area, this is an amazing feat. The temple is not an easy place to get to from Henderson. This monk and I had developed an interesting and open friendship over the months. He was the first one I confided in when I felt the stings of bullying in our monastery. So I asked him what had happened. He filled me in on the story.

Our leader/former (I should think up code names or something) had tried to have a conversation with him about some personal issue. However, the conversation was over shadowed by a bullying mood. My friend did not feel comfortable in that situation, voiced his discomfort, and decided to exit from the vehicle to get some space to cool off. When he tried to leave the van, the leader became a bit more agitated, and tried to grab his arm. My friend said that the discomfort increased, and so he left quickly, only to be followed by the leader, through the carpark, into the mall, and out to the exit where I was standing. According to him, the situation was only a few steps away from escalating into a physical fight.

This was a turning point I think for a few of us at the time. And it lead to a watershed for me. We now had a new sane head to our monastery, our UK import. He was made immediately aware of this situation, and set to work rectifying it, working on fixing broken relationships. And he did an amazing job. I think both parties in that dispute came out much better off in the end.

As for myself, I had issues with it. It did nothing to strengthen my failing relationship with this person in a leadership position in my life. One day, I was having a counseling session of sorts with our UK saviour. Somehow I brought up the fact that I was aware of the near-fist-a-cuffs that took place on that festival day. He immediately expressed concern. Not just concern, but a very intense opinion of the issue. His concern was primarily for my own mental health, and he gave me a good solid kick in the ass. He pointed out that, although this was a serious issue, and he acknowledged that I was being a victim of bullying, at the same time, I had developed rather negative ways to dealing with the problem. My way of dealing with it was not to deal with the problem, but to dwell on it constantly, to find others who would back up my opinions, and just sit and backstab the person I was having troubles with. He pointed out that this was not at all beneficial for anyone. We were monks, destined to live together for likely a long period of time in a small and tight community. If I didn't directly tackle this issue it would only destroy me from the inside, which it had already started doing. His words were so truthful that my eyes filled up with tears.

I left his room that morning, and caught a train to sell books in Glenn Innes. I cried as soon as I got there, because I had to acknowledge that he was right. My response to my situation was not only doing myself more damage, but it was hurting others in my community as well.

That day marked a change for me, and my attitude in the monastery. I was more determined from that point on to do MY part at least to fix the relationship problems I was having. And by doing so it gave me a huge sense of persona growth. THIS, I think, is the kind of thing that kept me in the Krishna consciousness movement for so long. Being in such a close and tight knit community is going to be really tough, in any situation. In a monastery that pressure is multiplied by a million. And it was always going to be difficult. But, by standing up to the difficult situations, and working with the aim of improving myself and my relationships gave me a solid sense of achievement. There were always problems, sometimes things got worse before they got better, sometimes they never got better at all. But that struggle to keep moving forward was a real strength builder. And that kept me moving forward despite all the tears shed, the illness from stress, or the hierarchical social structure which beat at my soul.

So, hopefully this story sheds some light on why I stayed within this community for so long. It was fun, I had awesome days. And I also felt like I was achieving something awesome, something that added to me as a person. I think that without these experiences I probably wouldn't have the strength to write this blog.

This is NOT an anti-Krishna blog

2010-02-18T22:26:00.000+13:00

I really have to thank everyone for reading this, and for all the amazing e-mails, text messages, facebook messages, phone calls and conversations. The response has completely blown me away, and has been beyond all expectations I had for how this little project would turn out. It's been amazing reading everyone's responses, and seeing how different people pick out different aspects of this story, and use it to reflect on their own personal lives in such unique ways. I think the openness of this blog has inspired people to be open about their own lives and situations, and honestly acknowledge that things aren't perfect, and they need rectification. To me, that is an amazing response.

I can't even describe how important and positive all the support and encouragement has been for me. This has been exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. The fact that it took a lot of guts to even start writing this blog made me feel like it was a big risk. What if everyone saw that I am actually a weak person? What if people attacked me for being honest and open about the negative aspects of a community? What if this attempt to be open, honest and heartfelt resulted in me being insulted, brought down and hurt more? But so far, the response has been so uplifting, this has easily been my most inspiring last few days since I made this change in my life.

But I did just want to clarify a few things. For starters, this blog is NOT an attempt to criticize the Krishna community, philosophy or lifestyle. That is not it's purpose, and I am a little concerned by the fact some people, both Krishna devotees AND people in general are taking it as such. I still have a lot of friends who are Hare Krishnas, and I have full respect for their community. This blog is about ME. It's selfish. I am talking about MY experiences, MY life within their community. I am willing to be totally and brutally honest about it all, and about my personal shortcomings. As my blog carries on, and as the story progresses, I think that there will be a few twists and turns along the way that will surprise people, because they will reveal a lot about the basic human condition. I am totally willing to admit my own mistakes, and I am willing to acknowledge that sometimes, the ways that I acted within this community were as bad if not worse than the things I have so far described. And that is MY fault, not the communities.

There are problems in every tight knit community. I received one message from someone I feel to be a close friend who mentioned that if they were to write a similar blog to mine about their experiences within the radical activist community it would probably come across just as negative and anti, even though they are still fully active in that community, and consider it their home.

I think it is important for the growth of a community to acknowledge it's shortcomings. If it can't, problems will just continue. I hope that if this blog challenges anyone they will take on board that challenge, acknowledge what needs to be changed in their own lives, and make the tough and scary decision to improve their lives or their community. I can see that is happening already for some. And that is so inspiring.

One final thing: Yeah, I know there are grammar and spelling errors, which probably make things difficult to read or understand sometimes. And while I AM sorry about that, I'm not going to go back and edit these entries. One reason is I don't have the time. Another reason is I don't want to risk second guessing some of my openness and changing things. As this blog progresses, and maybe even comes to some what of a conclusion, I may actually consider committing this all to print. At which time I will probably edit it, or more likely, I will ask someone else to edit it for me. :)

So anyway, THANKS HEAPS!

Porn Again.

2010-02-18T10:20:00.000+13:00

Every year, for the month of December, the Hare Krishna community holds a book distribution 'marathon', where the selling of books on the street, and door to door, takes priority over all other activities. I was initiated at the end of year festival which took place after the first book distribution marathon that I participated in. As I mentioned before, when I moved into the monastery I experienced some less than encouraging treatment by the hands of the leader of the monastery. During this book distribution marathon that mistreatment reached it's boiling point for me, and I know that it was noticed by the others in the monastery at the time.

As a result, one day while taking a lunch break with a fellow monastery members, I discussed the issue with him. It was definitely a relief to talk about it with someone, and to hear that I wasn't imagining that I was being treated in such a harsh way, as others were also becoming concerned about it. He suggested I talk to the monastery manager about these issues as well, as he was also concerned about it.

That happened sometime before the end of year festival, where I was initiated and received my new name. Then we traveled together down to Christchurch for the festival. On our return to Auckland, I had arranged to travel to my to my parents place, for a late Christmas celebration. Before I left for my parents the monastery manager informed me that he had a plan on how to deal with the leadership issues that were taking place in the monastery. He was writing a letter to higher authorities about it, with the hopes of having the leader removed from his position, possibly even from the situation altogether. This is the stage of the monastery I often refer to as the mutiny stage. I went to my parents with hopes that it would be successful, but also with a definite feeling on instability, knowing that the leadership and management of the place I lived was such a shambles.

I had a nice visit with my family at that time. There were also a few other family friends visiting during that time, and it was nice to catch up with them. I chanted my rounds either alone in the early hours of the day in the garage, or sometimes I would talk to an old bus stop down the road, and chant in the bus shelter. I cooked big meals for the family, because Hare Krishnas refuse to eat any food cooked by someone who is not a devotee, as their lower consciousness would affect the eater in a negative way.

Then I returned to the monastery. What happened on my return made the whole situation I was living in seem even more of a shambles. I arrived by at the monastery, and attempted to turn on our communal computer. For some reason, it was not working at all. I don't even know how it happened that is was so completely SNAFU, but NOTHING worked on it. I know enough about computers to fix them in most situations, and but this time, although the fan turned on, and the lights were going, the computer completely refused to boot up at all. There was nothing I could do with it.

I approached the monastery leader about the problem, and I said "There is something wrong with the computer, what happened?" His response was a complete surprise to me, he said "Don't worry about it, we're looking into how those pictures got on there, and when we find out who has been looking at these websites we will tell their Guru." I was taken a back, as this both felt like an accusation AND an admission of guilt simultaneously. I replied by saying, "No, I don't even know what you're talking about. The problem with the computer that I'm talking about is that the computer is broken, it isn't turning on at all. Do you know anything about it?"

To be honest, I suspect that the computer had been destroyed in some crude way to protect the porn spying culprit. I mentioned this issue to the monastery manager, who then acknowledged the issue, that some porn had been found on the computer. He also pointed out that there was also porn found on the laptop computer. The laptop was a computer which was seldom allowed to be used by anyone other than the manager and the leader of the monastery. He recruited my computer nerd skills to find evidence of who had in fact been looking at porn. Before the communal desktop had stopped working, he managed to get the files off the computer which would help incriminate the offender. As we looked at it closely, it was clear that the person responsible was in fact the monastery leader.

This made things increasingly more difficult for me. For starters, I was already being mistreated by this person who exercised their superiority over me at any given opportunity. Then, I had started talking about this person behind their back as an attempt to get some relief from the mistreatment. There was the attempted, but failed, mutiny and coup. And now I was one of only two people who was aware that our exalted leader, who was a long-term and well respected monk, had been looking at porn online. I felt simultaneously sorry for him, yet at the same time, I hoped that this would mean a down-fall for him, that either his position would be taken from him, or his behaviour would radically change. As we sat chanting together in the same room, I could see that he was feeling the pressure of someone about to be caught out in a lie. It was stressful, every interaction was pressurized for me during that time. This is when I started to suffer from increasing health problems.

Then, one day, the manager had decided he had enough evidence to confront the leader about the porn issue. At first, the leader denied it. Then he said he was just testing the computer monitoring system, to ensure that if someone had looked at porn in the monastery it would be detected. Then he acknowledged the reality, that he had been distracted and purposefully downloaded the porn.

The monastery manager then decided it was time to bring this issue up with higher authorities again. He still hoped to have the leader removed from his position, and he hoped that the porn issue might be sufficient to do the job. In one sense, it was. Though not directly as a result of these issues, a more senior monk came to stay with us a week or too after the higher authorities were made aware of the porn issue. He took on the role of leader for the time being, for the 9 months of his stay in NZ. And under his care the monastery turned into a sane place for once.

As a result the leader was made to apologize to me about his looking at porn, and the issues that had caused in our relationship. Our relationship did change from that point on. I think partly because of a sense of embarrassment on the part of the monastery leader. He was a very emotionally lead person. Although he still had his mean and nasty streak to him, which he seems to carry to this day, from that point on he seemed to approach me with a mood of low self-esteem. It was hit and miss though. And it was still a constant source of stress and anxiety for me.

Not long after this, the stress had taken it's tool on me, and I started to get sick regularly. I didn't want to tell anyone at the time when they asked, but I do think that the primary reason I suffered from sickness was the stress of having to deal with a bully 24 hours a day. I started dreaming of leaving the monastery in Auckland, ideally for another monastery elsewhere, just to escape this situation. And I often had to hold back tears while the mistreatment continued. And so I started my period of ill health in the monastery.

My Initation

2010-02-17T23:59:00.000+13:00

I think these are the oldest picture I have of myself as a Hare Krishna. These photos are from the date of my initiation ceremony, sometime in the last few days of December 2004, when I officially took the vows of a Hare Krishna, which were that I vowed to abstain from illicit sex, intoxication, meat eating and gambling, and I promised to chant the Hare Krishna mantra on my beads 16 times around each day, a task that generally took me personally two hours to complete. Initiation also means that one is taking a vow to obey and follow the guidance of a Guru. During initiation one is also given a Sanskrit, or sometimes Bengali, name, which is chosen by the Guru. At this ceremony my name became Vidyapati dasa. Vidyapati was a poet, so I was named as his served, Dasa meaning slave or servant of.

On a practical level, receiving a new name is a confusing thing. For starters, it actually took me at least a day to remember my own name, and then longer to remember to respond when people used it! And it took others a while to get used to referring to me as Vidyapati instead of Mikey.

This occasion was a very serious event, as you may be able to tell from the photograph. The acceptance of a Guru, and the taking of vows is something that I have always considered to be on the level of a marriage situation. You take vows essentially to promise to be loyal to one person for the rest of your life. It is a point that is often stressed in the Krishna community that one should not approach these vows whimsically, and then change one's mind at a later date, saying "I was different then, I've changed now."

I think that is fair enough, and I think I entered into my initiation with the intention of sticking with it. At the same time, obviously I did not continue to be faithful to my vows, and I am no longer following the guidance of my Guru. Obviously, my goals and desires did change over time, and that lead me to a point where I felt I could not longer continue my relationship as a disciple in any way.

I will be honest to say that this was the hardest part of my decision to leave this community. At first, there was a definite sense of failure, even though I had already completely lost faith in the process and philosophy of this movement. There was definitely a fear of letting down the Guru, to whom I had made my vows to begin with.

I will say that there is a certain issue of prestige within the Krishna community, which I think is difficult to avoid for a lot of people, and which draws them to make big decisions perhaps partly out of social pressure more than through their own well thought out opinions. Having a Sanskrit name does give a feeling of belonging to the community, and it provides a recognition that a certain standing has been achieved, almost like receiving the next colour belt in a martial arts style. This is not the purest of motives by any means, but it is definitely a motive that happens. There is a feeling of disappointment in the hearts of an aspiring disciple if they have to watch others getting initiated before you, as if it is a sign of your inferiority. And within this community, status actually does mean a lot. Seniority is respected, and a Sanskrit name gives the receiver a certain sense of seniority. They are above those without a Sanskrit name. At least, I can say with honesty, this is how I felt about the situation, and I acknowledge that perhaps it was not the best motive for taking vows that are, strictly speaking, rather serious.

My initiation took place at the temple in Christchurch, while all of the young devotees from around the country spent a week or so together having a festival, between Christmas and sometime after New Years. This festival happened pretty much every year that I was involved with this community, though in subsequent years it was held at different locations. Having a festival at this time meant something very tuff for those of us who came from strong family backgrounds. It meant not being able to go home to see our families during the holiday periods, especially Xmas. I remember having to tell my mother before this festival that I was not going to be able to come home for Christmas. She started crying on the phone. My reaction at the time was one of anger, that my family was not respecting the lifestyle choice and goals I had set for myself. To be honest, I was also still feeling a bit bitter about the fact that the previous Xmas my family had all taken a trip to Canada without me.

But not being present to take part in Xmas with my family for so many years is something that I am very sorry about now. In truth, I missed watching my little brothers grow up because of the fact that family attachments are frowned upon within the Krishna community as being illusory distractions. You are not your body, you are the soul, so your family are only bodily relations, of limited importance in comparison to your spiritual progress. So I missed watching my brother grow up, and I missed seeing their bands perform, I missed hearing about how life was for them. I don't really know how they ended up the way they are now, and I definitely feel sorry that I wasn't able to be there for them as an older brother during any rough patches they may have had. I don't even know if they HAD rough patches. And to me, now, that is heart breaking to think about.

I think I am going to cry regularly while updating this blog.

EDIT:

Just found another picture of this day.

Introducing the Renounced Life:

2010-02-17T14:13:00.000+13:00

I moved up to Auckland to be a founding member of the new monastery that was being set up here. I arrived in the first week of October, 2004. At the time we were renting a rather run-down house on Auckland's most prestige street, Paritai Drive. The street was so famous we ACTUALLY had tour buses running past our house constantly during the day. Sometimes we would wave at the tourists from our dinning room as we had breakfast together. I always wondered whether our eccentric run-down house-turned-Hare-Krishna-monastery ever featured as a site of interest for the tour.

Moving into this monastery was a huge paradigm shift for me. Not because I had to renounce much to get there, as I had already been practicing strict celibacy since half way through 2003, and I never have had money, or much or anything really. I would sometimes joke that I actually ended up with MORE belonging as a Hare Krishna monk than I ever had before hand. The paradigm shift had more to do with two factors. The first was that now I was going to be spending the majority of my days trying to sell books on Auckland city's streets. That was definitely a big task, physically, emotionally and psychologically. I remember after my first full week of book distribution I was so incredibly exhausted that on our visit to the Temple I fell asleep at around 4 pm and didn't wake up for over 12 hours. At the time I was typically getting up each day at 3 am to chant and read before our shared morning program, class and breakfast, then out the door by 9:30 to sell books.

The second, and actually more problematic aspect of this paradigm shift which was the most troubling for me was the fact that the leadership and management and relationships of the monastery I was entering into was a complete shambles. Even though there were only a few of us there at the time, there were power struggles, emotional blackmail, bullying, and even an at one point an attempted coup. I was the youngest one at the time, and was the worst at selling books, so I was definitely treated like the one at the bottom of the pecking order. It was definitely a confusing situation to be in, when the people you are meant to aspire to be like are acting in ways that were certainly not exemplary at all.

Without going into too many details, the leader of the monastery at the time had a major tendency of bullying, yet was very insecure about his short comings. I remember one time during a more academic class we were having he snapped at the teacher because I was getting more praise and attention for providing more consistent right answers. So he seemed to compensate by pointing out how many books he was able to distribute, and how great a monk he was. It was a very uncomfortable situation. And I wish I could say it got better. I just learned over the years how to deal with it more. Not that there weren't attempts to rectify his behaviour, but I honestly would have to say that there was very little change that occurred.

As a monk, the last thing you want to hear from someone is that maybe you aren't up to being a monk. As a young and struggling monk I was told this on several occasions, sometimes just because I had gotten food poisoning, or had started to have decreasing success in my books sales. When I had joined the monastery I had visions of being part of a team that would work together to promote something they considered highly valuable. I had thought of it as some sort of revolutionary spiritual group, like you read about in the Book of Acts in the New Testament, who would go out and 'spread the good news'. Of course, to me now that sounds incredibly immature, but I always like to put a revolutionary spin on everything I do. But to be faced with a disappointing mess of leadership, and constant discouragement and even bullying was definitely a disheartening thing indeed. I think my self-esteem took some massive knocks during that time. And to be honest, I think the self-esteem issues I struggle with now are highly linked to having to deal with that sort of thing, in different forms, for the past five years.

THANKS!!

2010-02-16T23:58:00.000+13:00

So, I only started this blog project pretty much last night, and I've already got something like 6 entries. I do plan on updating regularly, so keep checking back here every day or so.

I'd just like to thank all the people who have been supportive of this blog so far. The response has actually been amazing. You can't tell from the comments section, but I've already received a bunch of messages on facebook and e-mail about this blog, which is pretty awesome, considering so far I think it's pretty boring, haha. But at least it seems that I'm already answering a lot of questions people have been wondering for a long time, so it's clear that this is going to be a beneficial project.

So thanks again to everyone for your support!

2010-02-16T23:53:00.000+13:00

When I think of my time in Wellington, both as a Hare Krishna, and before hand, I think of two things: solitude and reading. When I first moved to Wellington in 2003, I spent so much of my time reading. The library was like my second home. Along with the religious books I was reading, and the quantum physics/pop science books, I would read various novels, and when I was bored I would spend time looking through the magazine sections at the Wellington library, picking out science magazines and AdBusters. And I spent so much of my time alone, exploring the city on my bicycle. I managed to completely memorize the Te Papa museum, like to the extent that I could actually be a tour guide. I went to the museum a few weeks ago, it hasn't changed. My favourite exhibit is still the feather cape that is hiding behind the Te Triti o Waitangi display. No one really knows about the feather cape, but it's my favourite.

When I moved back to Wellington this time, to live in the mens' ashrama there, again my time was spent reading, and primarily in solitude. I would actually spend up to 8 hours a day reading books on Krishna philosophy, often alone, or in silence with one other person in the room. I shared a large room in the basement of the house with another Krishna devotee. My schedule was structured pretty much all the time to allow me to just read as much as I wanted. Most of the other men had more busy schedules, or services rostered for them, which meant cooking at the yoga centre, or cleaning etc. My main jobs were to cook lunch at the ashrama most days of the week, and sometimes go to the yoga centre to clean or to welcome yoga students. The rest of the time I would read. And that was a LOT of the time. I would wake up usually around 3:45, shower, and start chanting Hare Krishna usually sometime just after 4. I would finish before 6 am, at which point I would usually return to my room and read until breakfast was ready at 7. 7:30 was morning prayers and a class, usually finishing sometime after 9, when I would return to my room and read until lunch, unless it was my turn to read. Either way, after lunch I would return to reading until around 8 pm when I would go to sleep.

There were, of course, changes to this plan. Most people consider me a very social person by nature, and I think this is true. As a result, every now and then, usually once I week, I would start to get stir crazy, so my desire for social interaction lead me out into the city streets of Wellington to try and sell Krishna books to people there. My motivations when selling books was never really pure at all. I pretty much just liked talking to people. Even though I tried, I never really sold many books, but mostly just talked to a whole bunch of people. And then I would come back home and read and study.

During most of my time with the Krishnas I felt like I was being treated special, like I was given extra benefits and perks. The fact that I had such a light service schedule so that I could just read was one such example of this. I also got the chance to give public presentations regularly even though I was such a newbie to the community. I always loved public speaking and teaching ANYTHING so I relished these opportunities. Plus, all my reading and study time gave me a very solid grasp on the ins and outs of the Krishna philosophy. In fact, since leaving the community I have had a number of people mention that they were most surprised that I left the community because they considered I had such a firm grasp on the philosophy.

But if I were to sum up anything about my six months at the mens' ashrama in Wellington it would be reading and reading and solitude. I definitely think this was a mechanism I used to hide from myself, and from the parts of myself that I didn't want to deal with. I could create a new persona, the studious one, the philosophy, the professor, just by reading and studying and being alone. It's amazing looking back on it now, because my final years in Krishna consciousness were probably polar opposites to that time. My social needs seemed to grow more and more, and my aptitude to read and study decreased day by day. Even though I always read constantly, even as a kid, at the moment I struggle to read anything that isn't in web format. I blame Facebook.

At the end of my time in Wellington, I received an e-mail from the senior monk, my future Guru, telling me to prepare to move to Auckland to sell books on the street full time. The day after a small operation to remove a lump from my leg, on October 6th, I made my way up to Hamilton from Wellington, to meet up with a Hare Krishna friend, my brother, and another friend. I spent a night with the three of them, and then the next day, October 7th, I made my way up to start my 5 years of living as a monk in a Hare Krishna monastery.

Getting Deeper into the Practice

2010-02-16T11:29:00.001+13:00

Eventually, I decided that I wanted to get directly involved in the Krishna lifestyle, and take it on as my fulltime focus. I decided that I would move into a living situation with some devotees, and have my day structured around my spiritual practices, and helping out with the Krishna projects they were involved with. So I packed up my things, my parents came down to Wellington to help me move, and I made my way up north, back to Hamilton, to live and work at the Krishna restaurant that was running there at the time.

I made the decision myself that I wanted to move in with the Krishna devotees in Hamilton. However, this decision was a little bit controversial within the Wellington community at the time. Not controversial in any sinister way, more just unconventional. Generally, when one becomes interested in the Krishna community in Wellington, the expectation is that they will decide to move in to one of the ashramas in Wellington, either living with the men or the women of the community. For me, however, that option did not appeal to me. There were a few reasons for that.

The first reason had to do with the personal situation I was in at the time. When I first started looking into the Krishna lifestyle seriously I was living with my girlfriend in a flat with a few other friends. Our flat was vegan, which was great. Pretty much around the time that we moved into our flat, my girlfriend started getting self-destructive with her depression, and I started becoming less interested in continuing our relationship as a result. Sometimes she would cut herself when I was out at something I really wanted to attend, and she would call me on my cellphone in tears, wanting me to come home. At the time, when I decided to get involved in the Krishna lifestyle full time, I felt that if I were going to be able to give my full attention to my spiritual practices, I would need to be as far away from that relationship as possible. At least until things settled. Whenever people asked why I decided to move to Hamilton instead of straight into the ashrama in Wellington, that was usually the reason I would give.

However, the primary reason I didn't want to join the ashrama in Wellington straight away was really because it scared the heck out of me. What scared me at the time wasn't the strict discipline that one was expected to keep to while living in that ashrama. That was actually something that appealed to me at the time. What scared me more was the uncompromising character of the head of the ashrama, who appeared to me at the time to use fear and emotions to get points across. I had witnessed enough brief interactions of that sort while on my short visits for the ashrama to make me feel uncertain about living in that situation. To be fair, he wasn't all bad, I actually got along with him better than the rest of the Krishna devotees at the time. And I'm under the impression that he has acknowledged this tendency of his, and has tried to rectify for the most part. But at the time, the last place I wanted to move to was his ashrama.

I found out later that the majority of Krishna devotees were certain that I was not going to last as a devotee in Hamilton. Their reason for thinking this was that the majority of my good friends were in Hamilton. The Krishna community does frown on having deep friendships with people outside of their community. The reason being that our desires and values are based on the people we associate with, and since the Krishna community has radically different desires and values than the mainstream communities, it is best to keep friendships outside the community limited at best. Their fear was that I would just dive back into my social circles once I arrived in Hamilton, and eventually turn my back on their community for good. In one sense, that is what happened, but a good six or seven years later.

So, I decided to move into the restaurant that was then function in Hamilton at the time. The restaurant was run by a nice Hare Krishna family, who had an older male devotees staying with them, and younger, fresher female devotee. I lived at the restaurant for six months, during which I learned how to cook, and carried out all the different duties involved in running the restaurant. It was a fun time being a productive part of the project.

This period was also a time that I used to really ponder about my decision to dive into this lifestyle. I was reading Krishna literature as much as possible, often four hours a day, whenever I had a spare moment. And I spent a lot of my money downstairs at the internet cafe, both debating this new found philosophy with others, while simultaneously researching all the controversies that arose WITHIN the Krishna community. I would think about all these things deeply, and work out ways to reconcile my doubts without compromising my intelligence. I wasn't going to ignore that there were problems within the community, but I was convinced that these problems in themselves weren't reasons to abandon the community.

I also watched as the young woman who was living with us at the restaurant went through her own intense personal and emotional struggles. Eventually, her emotional stresses were too much for the rest of us, and she was asked to leave. Sometimes she would spend the whole day hiding in her room, sometimes crying under her bed. At the time I was known for being incredibly tolerant of others, never one to lose my temper. But one day, during a rather stressful event at the restaurant, where she refused to help, I came so close to losing it at her that even she, when talking about it later, said she was surprised to see me so angry.

That summer my parents took a trip back to Canada with the rest of my family, without me. That was my first Christmas without the family, and it was definitely a tuff one. In New Zealand, our little Krishna community would organise a large festival over the Christmas and New Years period. That year we congregating together in Christchurch. On one level it was always a nice experience getting together with the other Krishnas from around the country. On another level, I always felt uncomfortable with the fact that we were all expected to abandon our families over Christmas, which for me was always such a family time. However, this first year, I felt more that my family had abandoned me with their trip to Canada. During this summer break the restaurant was closed, and I spent a week or so house sitting my parents house, attending a Krishna wedding, and going to a temple opening in Auckland. It was also during this time that it was decided through talking with the senior monk (who later became my Guru) that if I wanted to progress in my spiritual practice I would have to spend some time in the ashrama in Wellington. By this time I was convinced I could deal with the situation there, and that whatever struggles I went through while living there would be for my own benefit.

The restaurant ended up closing, under a rather dynamic situation. The family who were running it decided to move to India so that their son could attend a special boys only Hare Krishna school there. They tried selling the restaurant to some Hare Krishna friends of theirs, but the business deal was strictly business, and as a result the friendship exploded. Since I am a fast typer, and I had a lot of computer and internet skills in comparison to the family I was living with, I had to write various correspondence on behalf of the family trying to deal with the sudden break down of their business deal. The family was leaving in a few days, and their expected income from the sale of their business was pulled out from beneath them. It was a rather stressful time for them.

Eventually, they made their way out of the country, and I made my way, by train, down to join the ashrama in Wellington.

The Prequel Introduction

2010-02-16T10:30:00.000+13:00

Originally, I started writing these little bits with the plan of presenting them as one complete article, together. But then, during a late night chat session with a friend on Facebook, I was inspired to set this up as a blog instead. It was also that conversation which inspired the url (e)xkrishnax.

What follows below is the original introduction I wrote for what I then planned to be one complete story. But since I already wrote an introduction to this blog, this introduction is called the Prequel Introduction.

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I've decided to write an article, or blog, or whatever about why I left the Krishna community. Since leaving I have been asked so many times about my reasonings for leaving; sometimes I am happy to give a brief explanation, other times I just don't feel like I'm in the mood to talk about it. To be honest, it wasn't a simple decision to make, nor is it something I can discuss in detail in a short conversation. Since I respect the people in my life a fair deal, I felt it was worth providing a more details explanation for my decision, not only to dispel some of the misinformed rumors that seem to travel around, but mainly so that the people in my life who care about this will have a better understanding.

I also know that a lot of my friends and family have little idea about my life as a Hare Krishna, what I did for these past years, and why I first got involved in the community to begin with. As such, I thought it would only be fitting to also provide some brief information describing how I first got involved with the Krishnas, why I got more involved with them progressively, and what my life was like throughout the seven years that I spent within their community. Aside from providing some insight for my friends and family, I think this may also be a therapeutic exercise for myself, and may even be of interest to those who are beginning to take a look at the Krishna lifestyle with the aim of getting further involved in it. This will be a description of my personal experiences and perspective on things, and certainly these will differ from others' experiences and perspectives, which I would say are equally relevant and important.

I intend this writing to be more of a personal explanation than an attack on the Krishna community, and I hope it is accepted as a personal story and appreciated in that way. Though, to be honest, the longer I am out of their community I find that a sense of bitterness and mistrust starts to grow within my heart. As much as I can, I hope to avoid attacking their community, and instead focus on my own experiences of my time with them. If any tinge of anger appears in these paragraphs, please view it as an emotional colouring and filtering process, as I try to separate my emotional reactions from the experiences themselves.

The Forming of Associations

2010-02-15T23:55:00.000+13:00

After attending my first Sunday at the Gaura Yoga Centre in Wellington, and meeting for the first time this travelling monk who shared his wisdom and experience with the guests who attended his seminar, I was drawn to continue coming back every Sunday. The experience was fresh and new, the philosophy touched the same attractive features which I found in all eastern philosophy which was the pronouncement that material life was the source of our suffering, the practices were demanding yet appealing, and my vegan hunger was catered for with smiling service. At the same time, I found the members of this newly discovered community to be rather odd, people I could not relate to. I remember at one point, I was in constant correspondence with the senior monk I had met on my first visit to the Krishna centre, and I mentioned to him the fact that I didn't really like any of the Krishna devotees. I told him that they just seemed weird to me, and we just didn't seem to have anything much in common. He told me just to keep up a friendship with my old friend-turned-Krishna, and to keep writing to him weekly.

The ironic thing about my time in Wellington was that I found it hard to really gel with any community there. Even the punk and activist communities which I normally fit into seemed a bit foreign to me there. Being straightedge was such a faux pas of sorts in Wellington that it made me feel like the odd one out even amongst people I otherwise shared a lot in common with. When I rode my bike through Cuba Mall I would have punk kids yelling "CRATE EDGE" at me. During social gatherings at my house people would try to convince me that drinking and getting stoned was akin to eating tropical fruits. As a result, although I felt it would be impossible to fit in with the Krishna community in Wellington, at least I could feel that we shared some primary values. That was a draw card for me for sure.

Another draw card for me was the chance to do something that I felt was positive for the wider community. My activism was an extension of this same value. I wanted to do something, to help the community in some way, and I was always looking for some avenue to feel useful in this way. The Krishna community has a focus on service, and if you want to offer some service, they will encourage you to no end. So, my desire to offer service to the community was picked up by them, and fanned from a spark into a burning fire. I started by just vacuuming in exchange for yoga classes and dinner. Eventually I started helping in the kitchen, doing some basic kitchen hand work, doing dishes. Helping out in this way made me feel like I had a place within this community, regardless of whether or not I felt that I actually had friendships with the members of the community. Looking back, I don't think that changed much over the years.

I also started getting more involved in the practices of Krishna consciousness; the chanting, the reading, the diet changes and world view adjustments. My girlfriend and I were growing apart and we decided to spend as much time apart as possible. When she was out of town I would spend most of my time hanging out with the Krishnas. When I went out of town I would often spend time visiting the Krishnas in Hamilton. One week I took a trip to the Auckland Krishna community for a series of festivals there, and from that moment I had made my decision to dive head first into the experience. My desire for an all-encompassing, high demanding spiritual practice was being fulfilled, and at a very timely moment, just when I was starting to most feel isolated from my friends and communities.

For some reason, the activist communities in western countries seem to be so full of infighting and depression. Everyone has their ways of dealing with it, but the ultimate result is that the communities become unproductive. Some escape through drugs. Others focus on gossip and shit-stirring. Others turn to religion as an escape route. For me, that was definitely the case. My turn to a spiritual community, especially a highly demanding one, was partly an attempt to deal with my personal inabilities to deal with a struggling radical community. I wanted to strive for a positive change, and I wanted a radical lifestyle of rebellion, but I also wanted an escape from aspects of the communities around me. My escape was to turn towards a spiritual community full of rather passive personalities, subdued by their practices and by the leadership structures that they operated under. And it worked, for some time. Until, at least, I realised that the sense of community was painfully superficial, and over-shadowed by an authoritarian approach to everything.

The Steps of Faith

2010-02-15T23:52:00.000+13:00

I'd always been a deeply religious person. I can remember as I child in primary school having to write a book report for our English class. I asked the teacher if I could write a report on the Bible. Although I was always a rowdy kid in Sunday school, I still paid attention to the stories and meanings of the parables we learned. The community of the church was always important to me even through my teen years, when I developed some solid friendships within the wider youth of the Anglican Church in New Zealand. For my final year of high school I felt impelled to attend a private Christian school, partly to aid a shift in personal values that came around the same time, and partly so that I could focus more on my spirituality. During that year I read many books by C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, amongst others). I read the Quran, I studied the Old Testament with various study guides, and read up on different Christian approaches to creation and evolution, from the conservative to the radical. When I finished high school I continued to keep the Bible close to my heart. Verses by Paul which seemed to glorify the life of the celibate seemed to appeal to my spiritual side. I contemplating having a friend put together some homemade Franciscan robes for me to wear, as an announcement of my completely informal vow to a life of poverty and simplicity.

For various reasons, perhaps primarily an increasingly mature view of my life, I discarded these ideas as impractical, and not entirely compatible with the life I actually desired to live. The rebel in me drew me more to a critical view of the world, and to radical activism. I continued my teen obsession with challenging the conceptions of the mainstream world, and that rebellion led me to question the ethical and theological basis of my Christian foundations. As a result, I abandoned Christianity, and I began to satisfy my spiritual thirst by delving into the traditions of the east, including Taoism, Buddhism and the Vedas. I also began to read books discussing pop science and quantum physics. The universe began to seem more confusing than ever before, a view that ironically seemed to better correlate with my experience of the world than my previous theology had offered. I remember sitting in a religious studies class at Waikato University, which I would regular sneak into, and hearing for the first time the Buddhist statement that everything is temporary and therefore a source of suffering. That truth hit me so hard as I realised that the very seat which had brought me great relief when I first sat in it at the beginning of the class was now a source of great discomfort one hour later. I began to feel a renewed focus on taking on a deeply spiritual lifestyle, and I started to inquire everywhere about meditation and mysticism. I started to attend various discussion groups, and meetings to learn more about these new concepts I was encountering, but I never exactly found a community that I felt I could belong to in any deep and meaningful sense.

In early 2003 I moved to Wellington. Before moving, my girlfriend and I compiled a small zine, as a gift to the friends we were leaving behind in Hamilton, and more for myself as a means to gain a better perspective on the growing up I went through while in that odd and isolated little city. At the end of that zine we listed our goals for 2003. Mine included something along the lines of gaining a better perspective of this existence. So when we arrived in Wellington, I started in earnest to look into all the different spiritual communities in the city, primarily those that focused on eastern mysticism and traditions. I spent hours reading in the library, always focusing on the philosophy and religion sections. I attended so many meetings, seminars and discussions, and I tried to develop friendships within all of these communities. Sometime in the first week of February I ran into an old friend of mine, who had become a Hare Krishna almost two years prior. She invited me to visit their centre, to see a monk speak. I was definitely intrigued to come along, especially as I was very poor at the time, and there was promise of an awesome vegan meal for me to partake in afterwards! Never underestimate the power of a decent vegan meal. This was especially a major factor in my attending the Wellington Taoist programs. My motives have never been 100% pure in anything I have do.

It starts

2010-02-15T23:28:00.001+13:00

Well, I've decided that, for therapeutic reasons, and for practical reasons, I'm gonna start a blog to discuss everything everyone is asking me about my time with the Krishnas and my reasons for leaving. I kinda feel like I need a place to air some of the things I'm going through at the moment, for my own benefit. I also think that running a blog like this will give me a chance to answer a lot of questions people keep asking me without having to have the same conversations over and over again. Instead, I can just direct people here.

Leaving the Krishnas and dealing with the aftermath is a deeply emotional experience. Sometimes I don't really want to talk about it with people. And sometimes I feel like talking non-stop. So this blog is about accommodating both of those feelings in one place.

To start with, I plan on putting together a series of pieces describing the reasons I was drawn to the Krishna community in the first place, some information about my time with them, my experiences within their community, my reasons for leaving, and my experiences of life having left a community I was part of for seven years.

I will be publishing this in a series of blog updates on here as I put them together. Hopefully it will be beneficial for everyone involved.

If anyone has any personal questions at any time about anything I post on here, please contact me personally. Also, this blog will not be used as a chance for debate. It is about my personal experiences and perceptions of things. If you disagree with something I write on here, do not use the comments features to air your opposition. All such comments will be deleted. But you can contact me personally with such comments, and I will choose whether to reply to them or not.

I do not plan on using this blog to attack any community or persons within any community. I just want a medium to express my feelings and experiences and perspective of things I went through and am going through.

Hopefully this little project or whatever will be appreciated for what it is.