Kaelan + Ecstatic Self
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A script for my next video: The Day My Mind Broke
🕑 Added 2023-10-15 12:21:04 +0000 UTCHey guys!
Rarely do I write out a script for my videos. But this morning, I did just that. Some ideas I’ve explored before… But not in quite this way. I hope that you enjoy!
Ecstasy’s Edge: When Enlightenment Turned to Madness
We all have moments in our lives when our perception of reality crumbles. Moments when the utterly impossible becomes chillingly tangible—like seeing a dinosaur sauntering down a city street. For some, it could be returning home to find their spouse, after seventeen years of what felt like blissful marriage, standing with bags packed and a farewell note. Others might confront an unexpected and advanced cancer diagnosis, despite feeling they were only battling the flu. Just recently, I read about a seemingly healthy young man who was rushed to the ER for recurring vomiting. After tests turned up nothing, a surgical look revealed a necrotizing digestive tract. Tragically, he never woke up.
For me, that earth-shattering moment came at 29. A close observer of my life’s episode, who saw my turmoil from just a short distance away, remarked, “If I were in your shoes, I’d be in a padded cell indefinitely.” And she was a psychologist. Oddly, she never spoke to me after that.
Losing my best friend of 20 years to an inexplicable ghosting was agonizing. Being unexpectedly dumped by my first boyfriend, even after our vows to communicate better, was devastating. But this event… it fractured my very essence.
This was the day my savior abandoned me.
[ intro ]
So, if you’ve been watching my other videos, you know that I spent 7 years living in an ashram. I had been associated with that community for almost a decade,. I have more recently come to calling them a cult, and you’ll see why shortly, but suffice it to say that when I encountered this yoga tradition as a college student, I din’t realize that I would be entering an environment that would slowly and steadily reshape my reality. It would reformat my understanding of God, my place in the cosmos, my purpose, and who this one man, this “teacher,” this “guru” was supposed to be.Some of that reformatting was beneficial — it broke me out of my box and taught me to see reality in a deeper and more dynamic way. Some of it was very, very dangerous.
I was twenty years old and desperately seeking a greater understanding of spirituality. I was raised Methodist and really had no issues with the philosophy of the church, but I sensed there was a greater sense of awe and majesty to life than the church could give me answers to. I was seeking ecstasy, a personal relationship with the divine, a sense of cosmic wonderment. I wanted to better understand the supernatural forces that we glimpse in the peripherally of our vision, I wanted magic to be a present force in my existence. I sensed that wonderment and awe were my birthright — and this tradition provided me with that.
I met, well, we will call her Aasha, in 2007. She taught a meditation and yoga class that I loved. I fell into a deep state of … well, I couldn’t name it at that time, but … oneness. A sense of interconnectedness with the world around me, a sense of being bigger and much more than just my limited sense of self. These experiences of transcendence are mystical experiences witnessed across time and cultures,. From plant medicine in the Ecuadorian jungle to religious ecstasy in revival church meanings — this is a common sensation that humans long for and are deeply nourished by. As Aasha shared more about her understanding of yogic philipkshy, often quoting the writings of her guru, I increasingly felt like I had come upon the answers to my spiritual longing I had been searching for.
I began to attend weekly. She invited me to study more deeply with her via a yoga teacher training program — I couldn’t make it work with my class schedule. But I eventually set up a little alter in my bedroom, bought copies of her teacher’s books, and began to have mystical experiences of my own in my college apartment bedroom. I can remember having the first tactile experience of my heart chakra opening — something that had never been described to me at the time — while reading her teacher’s book.
Spiritual seekers in the east will tell you this is due to something called the transmission of spiritual energy or “Shakti.” That when we encounter great meditative beings—saints or rishis—some of the divine magnetism they’ve worked to cultivate gets transmitted into you. This process is called shaktipat — and it’s a process we see discussed by many of the famous gurus who have come to the west, people like Baba Muktananda in the 70’s or the hugging guru, Amma, more recently.
How it is supposed to work is this: When a student with a previous life history of deep spiritual refinement encountered a being with an elevated spiritual state in this lifetime, the energy within them awakens a torment spiritual fore called kundalini. For many, that process takes years and years for the “serpent at the base of the spine to awaken.” For me, it would happen within 9 months of first encountering this teacher and his students. Person after person who I have met has told me that I have been walking this path of service for helping others for many lifetimes, so it is not surprising that for me it happened so effortlessly and quickly. I am not saying this to brag or boast, this is something that we all will experience at some point — and there’s absolutely no need to rush the process. It is best to let it unfold when the time is right for you, not to force. It’s important for me to disclose this right away because it will become key later to understanding how things unfolded.
It worked out that summer that I had a scholarship willing to pay for me to go to this tradition’s main center near Boulder Colorado to spend a month undergoing yoga and meditation teacher training. I went, and by this time, I had been meditating daily — twice a day — for months. I had ben having out-of-body spiritual experiences, been hearing divine guidance, seeking spiritual beings manifest in my meditation space—faces change on the murtis/or statues on my alter — all things that are common spiritual experiences. I know nit might sound crazy — but these are well documented phenomena that happen to all seekers on the spiritual path eventually.
Arriving at that ashram was like a homecoming. All the questions I had been asking, all the practices I had been longing to find to yoke me to the divine were there. I offered rice to sacred fires, learned “puja” or the ritual of sacred offerings, Aarti (the waving of lights), chasing, meditation. Here were concrete tools to give me a direct experience of God — and here were hundreds of people doing them daily. I found my tribe! I found people like me…something I had never felt hitherto. I was always looking for others who saw the world in the way I did, and here were dozens and dozens of them. I found my people and felt embraced with open arms. I found a sense of home and belonging. More than that, I found a sense of remembering. There was a part of me that loudly shouted, Ah, yes! This. This is what we’ve been looking for — this is what we’ve done many times before. I remember this.
Right away, I was initiated in “secret practices” that most others had to wait, often years, to be given. I learned hour-long Sanskrit chants, dozens of mantras, tens of energy work/chakra practices. And…most importantly, I met the guru.
I don’t remember what my first impression of him was. I don’t think it was something overly dramatic. I didn’t fall onto the floor and begin convulsing or anything like that. I know that I was the only person there for teacher training who got to “sit with him” — is what they called it — three times. No one else seemed that interested, but I asked for it.
By the time my four weeks in residency were done, I was “sold” lock, stock, an barrel. I returned back to the midwest, but within the next few weeks, I would officially ask to take him as my guru, I chose a Sanskrit name for myself (by which I would now be called for anyone else in the club/tribe), and cemented my relationship with the growing pocket of community members residing in Chicago.
Aasha, the woman who had only been practicing for maybe two years longer than me, had politicked and wheedled her way into being ordained leader of our little cohort — and she ruled with an iron fist. If you didn’t show up for. Meditation 7 days a week (6 am, 30 minutes from my campus), she wouldn’t take you seriously. If you didn’t show up to scrub the walls nd floors of the yoga studio on weekends — you weren’t invited into the webcast meditation classes with her guru.
I did everything that was asked of me. I stopped eating meat, I trekked the 30 minutes down to Edgewater in Chicago, often in the snow, on my bike, To attend classes. For what would be the theme for the next 8 years, I learned to live off of 4 Horus of sleep, because that was expected of me in order to stay in the ashram’s good graces. (I later learned that sleep deprivation is a common theme amongst cults striving to manipulate its members…but more on that later).
Over the next several years, I would take, on average, three to four trips annually out to Colorado to visit my teacher. There, I would often stay at his second, smaller ashram — the one where he and a few select students lived. I was given special privileges. I would get put on seva or selfless service projects that were more fun — everyone was expected to be working at all times when they weren’t at meditation. I often got invited to redecorate spaces, paint walls, go run errands into town. While others were chopping wood and cleaning chicken coops, I often got invited to spend one-on-one time with the teacher. This was considered a rare and special honor.
Here’s how almost everyone experienced the guru. They would sit in the meditation hall, spending a good twenty to thirty minutes in meditation, actively working to prepare themselves for the teacher to arrive. Once everyone had been settled and chanting divine mantras for some time, the guru would be escorted from his nearby private home by two guards to the temple door. He would enter, process down a long central aisle to the front of the room, where he would sit on an elevated platform — some might call it a throne — near all the states depicting divinity (including a photo of his own face), while everyone sat in neat rows on the floor in front of him.
As the evening progressed, there would be an opportunity to get up and kneel on the floor in front of him, toughing crown to earth — where he might smile and wave, offer you a piece of chocolate, or bop you on the head with feathers or the like. Any of these were considered a divine blessing because he was performing shaktipat or the transmission of divine energy directly too you. There would be singing and dancing, people would pass around objects like trays of lights, silk scarves, peacock feather fans, bright umbrellas — where we’d offer them to the statues and the guru seated before us. Then, we’d all sit in silent meditation. If it was an “advanced class,” the teacher would make direct eye contact with you, Most classes, he would just gaze inwards.
When class was over, he would again be escorted out, and only after he had been delivered to a secure location would everyone else be invited to get up and leave. Sometimes he would show up at a collective meal, if it was a festival or retreat day, but mostly he kept to himself. There were a couple of other times he’d be present — he’d come and inspect the communal labor being done — but he was always escorted by guards and you were almost never alone.
Except for me and a few select others. I was invited into his sacred house several times. He would take me in his pickup truck and drive around with him. He’d call me out to the patio and work with me directly. He would tell me, “you know, you have the potential to be a teacher like me. Let’s see if you develop into it.” He made me feel very special. Very loved. And for someone who spent most of his life being an outsider, that meant more to me than anything. Here was this group of people whom I loved more than anything, a group that felt like family, and I was being invited into the innermost circle.
I remember talking to others who would tell me how important it felt to them to always live near the guru and to be at in-person meditation class each week. They would say things like “I can never meditate as well as when I am sitting at his feet.” I remember, not initially, but over time, replying, “That’s bullshit. I can meditate just fine on my own. You should too.” I began to see the guru as a useful tool, an indelible fixture for my spiritual growth — but I recognized that I was the one responsible for my spiritual growth, not him. If I wanted enlightenment, if I wanted growth, than I had to be able to attain it whether or not he was there.
The women back home who ran our little ahsram/community was very jealous of the special attention I got — and when she became pregnant and the guru suggested I take over running the Chicago group for a while, she completely lost it. She immediately spread vicious rummers about me, did everything she could to discredit me and cling to power (despite being very sick throughout her pregnancy and often bedridden). The rumors worked, I was verbally attacked by the guru and she remained in charge. The funny thing was that I/ didn’t think I was at all worthy of leading anyone — and I had no conception of the manipulation she was doing. I have often discussed on this channel that I have come to realize that I am neurodivergent. One of the ways that manifests is thatI have a complete inability to plot or scheme — I just don’t understand how manipulation works because in my mind there are two many variables that don’t seem to add up. How am I supposed to be able to predict how someone is to respond to a falsehood — it could go so many different ways! This is also why I struggle when I am set in front of a chess board, I don’t seem to have the requisite skills for plotting — I cannot see seven steps ahead.
Despite all of this, I continued to grow in the guru’s good graces and continued to be gifted many special privileges.
When his daughter decided to move to Chicago to attend university, I was given the special task of looking out for her and befriending her. This was no chore for me—I genuinely really liked their child and we quickly became fast friends. We both began exploring our queer identities around the same time — me as a gay man and her as a gender non-binary and eventually trans man. I was loving and supportive of them throughout their exploration process.
Unfortunately, their parents were less than thrilled. I would hear about hateful and cruel things their mom and dad (my teacher and his wife) would say and write to them. It got so bad, that they set up a bot to automatically forward their emails to their therapist because reading them was so triggering and hostile. The would go for weeks with their parents’ number blocked on their phone.
This was almost impossible for me to believe. How could my guru, a man who we were told was an embodiment off the divine, a man who—we were told—could do no wrong (ha)—be subjecting their child to this type of behavior just because they were questioning their gender identity. We humans are particularly good at burying our heads in the sand, refusing to accept facts that are presented before us, even when the evidence is irrefutable. We see this nowadays with the political polarization where it is impossible to believe that someone from the opposite camp could possibly say anything that is true. It quite literally took me years for me to hear my friend’s pleas of help and accept that these people could be capable of such behavior.
In the yogic tradition, you are told early on that if you take a guru, that person will incarnate with you from lifetime to lifetime, serving you until you reach your enlightenment. They are held up as god incarnate and you are expected to do whatever they say without question. This is called “surrender.” You surrender your will, your identity, your worldly desires to his person and in exchange they’re supposed to help you grow and achieve liberation from samsara or freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth.
The guru is never wrong, only does everything out of love. Everything good that comes into your life is due to him, everything bad is because you haven’t worked hard enough to surrender to him. He is unapproachable, he can never be replaced, and—you are told—will never outgrow him or surpass him.
This is the philosophy that I was slowly and assuredly indoctrinated into. And I believed it hook, line, and sinker. I now, looking back, realize that so much of that philosophy is cult ideology. A leader who can never be supplanted. A leader of divine origin who can do no wrong—their word is law. In the ashram, the guru told us who we were allowed to date, what kind of jobs we could have, what our names were called, what type of food we could eat, and even if we were allowed to bare children. His rule was absolute. But, in exchange, we were told we were given so much.
The day eventually came where I told the guru’s wife that —and I quote — “Your child is happier than I’ve ever seen them. I hope one day you can see that.” That was a text message I sent after enduring several phone calls where they assured me they thought their child was ruining their life by considering hormonal transitioning.
The response I got back to that text message was terrifying and cruel — but the outcome wasn’t entirely unexpected. You see, I had recently returned from the ashram in Colorado, and as I was leaving (with my now-husband, then-finance beside me) I remember stopping in the road, just outside the front gate and saying, “You know, I have this strange feeling that I won’t be back here for a very long time.” I didn’t know why I said that—it had been a wonderful visit. I could feel some tension between me and the guru’s wife over their child and their fear about them — and my lack of willingness to try to convince their child to not explore their trans-ness. But there was no obvious sign that I wouldn’t be welcomed back.
A few weeks later, that text message was sent, following up with an otherwise very nice text conversation. The response however could hardly be called ‘nice.’
“Fuck you, you fucking asshole,” was the first line of the reply I received, I remember. She continued on to a multi-message rant, calling me a “manipulative prick” who was “incapable of loving anyone and only interested in what I am able to get for myself.” On and on she went. For hours… literal hours.
And, god’s honest truth, I never sent a reply. We were schooled that if the guru or someone high up in the ashram hierarchy was “giving you fire” — which, by the way, we were told to accept as a divine blessing — that you just smiled and accept it. So I didn’t write back. I just said to myself, “Okay, Chiatanya,” (that was the name I had chosen as part of the community), “just surrender. Whatever this is, just flow through.” Interspersed with her tirade, I was getting emails from her husband, my guru, saying “What are you doing?” No subject line, no other questions, just that. What was I doing? I have no idea… was she saying that I am harassing her? Was she concocting some story about how I was tormenting her and why she was obsessed with her phone that afternoon? A few hours later, another email from him: “Stop it.” Stop what? What is he talking about? I am doing nothing but trying to let go.
Okay, well, I did decide to take the photos I had of the two of them and tear them down the middle so she was no longer depicted in my meditation space, as crazy as she was behaving. I took her halves of the pictures and burned them. I might not write back and instate the fight, but I sure as hell wasn’t inviting a person like this into my sacred space any longer.
Eventually the text messages subsided. A few hours later, I erected another one. “I guess that was our first fight. I hope it is our last. Let’s move on and pretend like this never happened.” Suddenly, that day, all the emails and messages my friend had told me about receiving from their parents proved all too real.
I didn’t know how to reply. What fight? There was no fight? This was you attacking me? I said nothing. I figured, let me give it some time, cool down, and then let’s see if we can have a civil conversation.
I was never given an opportunity for that to happen. A scant 45 minutes after that final text arrived, a third and final email from my former guru appeared on the home screen of my phone.
“You are no longer my student. I never want to see you again. Don’t ever come back.”
That was it. The whole message. No question, no conversation, nothing.
This was a man to whom I had surrendered everything. I had made him my god. I had accepted him as my teacher and he had promised to stay with me for however many lifetimes it took until I was spiritually free. I had traveled to his home four times a year for eight years. I had given all my (very limited) amounts of money to him, his centers, and his school. I had spent countless hours as a slave scrubbing floors, shoveling snow, cleaning sidewalks. I had bowed, and prayed, and been devoted to him for years on end. And here I was being unceremoniously dumped via email with no conversation, no explanation, no asking what was really going on.
I lost my teacher, my god, my savior that day. Within the next week, I would come to realize that I also lost my entire social network, friend groups, and the individuals I had come to consider my family. Only three people from the ashram were willing to talk to me about what happened. None of them were willing to hear that something was deeply wrong within a community that would treat anyone this way. I had thought I would have these people and this tradition forever — but it was not so. One of my friends from there told me that she’d have to be put in a padded cell if this happened to her, but she offered no further condolences. I haven’t spoken to her since that tear-filled exchange that day.
I am glad that this had happened to me when I was still in my twenties, when my brain was still developing—when I had only devoted a decade to this tradition, not four or five. I was able to move on, I was able to recover. My mind didn’t indelibly fracture. Instead, I came to see this as a huge blessing. I began to see that I was gibing over so much of my own power to this person and this community. I began to realize that so long as he was responsible for my spiritual growth, than it wasn’t mine. I had to own my own journey, my own process on my own… otherwise, it would only ever be a “gift” from him. I had to walk my own path. I began to reclaim ideas and practices that I had been told to ignore because they didn’t fit within the framework of this particular school. I began to lean more heavily on my own intuition, my own sacred knowledge, rather than subjecting it to the will of a teacher.
It was, in hindsight, the best possible thing that could have happened to me. But, at the time, it felt like my world was disintegrating. I am so thankful that he unceremoniously threw me out…because I would have never left of my own violation. I would have stayed and endured whatever I had to… I was so indoctrinated by that point. But by being cast aside, I had to find my own resiliency, grit, and tenacity to keep on. To continue walking my spiritual journey through the proverbial wilderness…and to realize that I wasn’t going to get lost on my own. I had an internal compass, and I could follow it.
When I was living in the ashram, we were assured that if we were to ever leave, our lives would fall apart. Being there was the most blessed, sacred place to be, and any life away from the guru’s light would be a sad shadow of the life could live if you stayed sitting by his fire. There was no graceful way to leave — the only people who left either “went crazy” (and yes, that’s a direct quote) or couldn’t keep up. They assured us, our lives would be shit without the radiance of the guru.
But that’s not what happened for me. My life has budded and bloomed in unanticipated but completely beautiful ways. I have become a more powerful, compassionate, and loving man because of the harshness I endured, through the destruction of my reality by being tossed aside. It has taught me a deep humility to never put myself on a pedestal as a spiritual guide for others, to never sit aloof at the front of the room as everyone bows before me. To realize that as a spiritual teacher for others, we are—in fact—their servant, their slave. It is the lowest, humblest position to be helping others mature and burn through their shit. We are not the mightiest, we are the roots of the tree supporting the structure above. Important, sure…guides and teachers are necessary. But glorified? No. We are the earth, the river, the stream. We are thew water, the fire, the stone. We are the simplest and the most basic—not the grandest.
One other anecdote worth mentioning: a scant year after all this took place, my former guru and his wife officially disowned their trans-son. In their place, they legally adopted an adult woman — roughly the same age as their child, my friend — and had her name changed to match that of my friend’s prior to their transition. They emailed my friend to let them know that “We did this to replace you.” How cruel can a parent be?
I will leave you with this. I don’t think my teacher acted from a place of him looking out for my highest good. I don’t think he was coming out of doing kindness, deep seated compassion, or many of the spiritual attributes that we aspire to in spiritual work. But I have fervently come to believe this: a higher power was working through him to make him do that to me that day. It was time for me to go; I had outgrown him and what he had to offer. Had I stayed, he only would have limited me. I don’t think he knew he was doing it for my highest good, but he absolutely was.
Which just goes to show something: someone can be a total prick and do things for selfish reasons, but though the divine magic of universes, much good can still come from it. And someone can be a great person coming from an altruistic place, but they can still deliver shitty results that cause great suffering. Whatever we do or don’t do…it ultimately matters little. If we are able to see everything the universe brings us as being a blessing, a lesson for our higher good and personal growth, then we realize everything is going to be good. Or, as I often say: All is well. All has been well. All will be well.
Or, maybe, I just tell myself that to preserve whatever little is left of left of my sanity. Because, after all, all of this was more than enough to make even the most mentally stable amongst us flirt with the fracturing of their reality. I survived; I am confident many wouldn’t. Regardless, I am grateful to be where I am today.
I am Kaelan; this is Ecstatic Self.
Comments
Marc Birou
Thank you...in many ways you are describing my family. And I do look at it as a blessing...time for me to move on from the family patterns. Thank you for sharing....very timely.
Elk Whistle
Thanks you for this. I hope that you include this in your next novel? "When one door closes another door always opens" even sometimes if we don't always see it.
