Listening to the author of “Cartwheels in a Sari”, Jayanti Tamm on NPR this morning. I’m gonna grab a copy for myself, and if you were raised in 3HO or any other high demand religious group, where your spiritual teacher claimed to have a direct connection with God, maybe it’s worth a read. The parallels …
Yogi Bhajan on Wiki
Yogi Bhajan’s page on Wikipedia has some GEMS. For example, he was “the son of a graceful mother”. Who knew? An excerpt on his attitude toward homosexuality reads: “…Yogi Bhajan at first was shocked by the phenomenon. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, Yogi Bhajan taught that the condition could be cured through intensive yoga …
So, because of the nature of my gmail name, I get targeted banner ads that Google thinks are customized to my profile. I don’t know why, I don’t have anything set. I guess it’s just the nature of my goofy email address: sat gur schnrub I’ve gotten yoga ads, spirituality ads, kirtan and other devotional …
Kinda like Harry Potter, but not…
I remember my first day at GNFC very well. We arrived at lunchtime, after a grueling train, bus and taxi ride up to Mussoorie. They were serving Rajmah Dal, chapatis and rice in the upstairs, well-lit senior dining hall. The food was good – I made burritos out of the beans and chapatis and thought, …
On Tolerance
For anybody that’s been able to catch the recent flick “Milk”, there’s probably no doubt that questions of the tolerance within your own family, friends, religion or culture would arise. Growing up in the ashram, I had to listen to a lot of homophobic, ignorant and intolerant remarks about homosexuality. To be fair, I had …
“Hinglish” ???
There’s Spanglish, there’s Engrish, but what’s the word for mixing English and Hindi? Have there been any coined terms? As a native English speaker, who eventually learned broken Hindi and Punjabi, I am curious to know. The little I know of Hindi and Punjabi is in spite of the learning of languages having been severely …
Amritsar 1983
Images of India float around the web. They bring up a lot of conflicting feelings. There we are smiling for the camera. Smiling for our parents back home, not yet knowing how disassociated we would become from them. It’s taken a long to time to have a parent/child relationship again – but now we’re adults, …
Agoraphobia
Black Friday. In the wee hours of the morning after Thanksgiving day, throngs, hoards and mobs of people storm the doors of big box stores all over America. Today at a Walmart in Long Island, these “shoppers” trampled a worker TO DEATH. Read the article here and be prepared to be utterly disgusted with humanity. …
Janja Lalich on Jonestown
Janja Lalich, PhD, author of “Cults in our Midst”, gave the keynote speech a the International Cultic Studies Association and forwarded a copy which is now online. In the beginning of her speech she talks mostly about Jonestown, and the question cult leaders pose to their followers: “Would you die for me?” When I watch …
Letter to Siri Akal
The following is an excerpt from an email I sent to Siri Akal, who was headmaster of GRD Academy, the first of a series of 3HO led boarding schools in India, est. 1989. It’s been a few months now, and he has yet to reply. I figured, since he probably doesn’t care, why not just …
Halloween, 1984
It’s hard to realize or even be aware of congruent events in one’s life until hindsight makes them clear. One of the things that I can recall about being a child in 3HO was this feeling of foggy confusion around what grown-ups were doing and discussing, and around big international events that seemed to be …
It takes a village…
It is very common within cults (of all types) to raise children communally. The leader takes a basic notion “It takes a village” and twists it into dictatorial orders that go against what most see to be important in basic child-rearing and child development. A healthy bond between parent and child is crucial in developing …
GNFC
Being at a boarding school at such a young age was not easy, although it was at times fun. It did get more nerve-wracking the older I got, and the more independent I became, which I think was a sign that I was healthier than I thought, and ready to live my own life. Every …