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What is the point of sending a letter, when SRF already is reading the Walrus board?

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DENIAL ..what do others think?

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Personally, I agree with Winston Churchill: "Democracy is the most imperfect form of government ever devised by man, except for every other system that has been tried." Someone should write this on a piece of paper, put it in a bottle, and float it across the ocean of denial to SRFland, where it may resonate and do some good. But I freely admit my pessimism.

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Are you abstract, intuitive and imaginative in your thinking? Are you friendly and find yourself concerned with how people feel about themselves? If so, you might be a member of that small category of people (10 %) who David Keirsey calls "The Idealist" temperament.

SRF is a microcosm of the greater world. In our midst we find various temperaments. Keirsey, in his landmark book titled "Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence," thoroughly describes four temperament types which constitute the family of man: The Guardians (40% -45% of the population), The Artisans (35% - 40%), The Idealists (8% - 10%), and The Rationals (5%-7%).

More than the other three types, The Idealists are uniquely concerned with issues of authenticity. In fact, their very self-confidence is based on how much they are allowed to strive for and attain it. In an environment which stifles personal creative expression, the mutual exhange of ideas, and the opportunity to intitiate meaningful change, the Idealist becomes numb and estranged from himself like a fish out of water.

SRF is an organization which for the moment is run primarily by Guardians. Guardians tend to feel secure when there is a high degree of compliance among its members. The idea of people striving for authenticity and individual expression is threatening to stability-seeking Guardians. Clearly the two are each others' opposites. And when opposites have to live, work and worship together, there will either be an exchange of the best each has to offer or there will be friction and polarization.

It is the Idealists who seem to understand keenest of all how a disproportionately high emphasis on monastic thinking in the SRF teachings has created the most inhospitable environment for their own self-evolution. Consider the following analogy: Suppose we were to liken SRF to a plot of soil in which certain plants will be grown. Before we plant, we need to know the pH balance of the soil. Most plants do best at a pH of 6 to 7 which is neutral. Some such as rhododendrum, azalies, cranberries, blueberries, and some potatoes do best in acid soils of around a pH of 5.0. Alfalfa, on the other hand, prefers an alkaline medium. Using this analogy, it is clear to see that rhododendrums and cranberries would probably not bode well next to alfalfa. One or the other will end up with a compromised development.

Attitudes, ideas, and beliefs are very much like the substance of an alkaline or an acid. Their addition affects an environment and makes it hospitable to one thing and not to another. And so in considering our beloved SRF as the principle medium in which our lives have taken root, it becomes a necessary question to ask "Has that medium been optimimum one for our flourishing? And if not, why not?"

As an Idealist, I can clearly see that the SRF environment has always been too alkaline for the good of my psychological and emotional development. For as long as I can remember, there was always this feeling that something essential and nutritive was missing. But it was more than a mere deficit that I sensed. I also detected the presence of value system which had a curiously depleting effect on me. At first I thought it was me with the wrong attitude and found plenty in SRF who were more than willing to support that theory. But then I kept meeting others like myself who complained of the same symptoms. I began to wonder what it was that linked me and so many others to the same baffling fate.

As I probed, I was destined to discover that, what many of us had in common, was a similar typology. This wasn't guesswork. I actually had my friends take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. I administered it to my family, I recruited fellow employees, strangers, anyone who had a half hour to spare. I discussed these ideas for many hours with professionals in the fields of psychology and sociology, and I read the best supplementary books on the subject, In effect, I became an armchair expert in the field of typology and got so good at it that I can't read a novel or watch a movie without seeing how the differences in types generate most of the dramatic tension of a plot.

Knowing one's type is a surreal experience. You spot ones like yourself standing out in a crowd. So it happened in SRF that I found a tiny constituency, my type-kin, on the Walrus site and among the disenfranchised long-timers who became sickened of the status quo -- all of them involutarily prodded by their conscience to become the first rebels en masse of Self Realization Fellowship.

I see now that I was tricked into duty. When I first began this journey into my unknown self, I wanted above all to exact a painful revenge on the organization which starved me on half truths and never looked twice when I stumbled and fell. With as much zeal as I once served the organization, I now found myself wanting to subvert it, to subject it to the same experience of frustration that had plunged me into a crisis of identity and, consequently, a life altering depression.

I must admit experiencing the most intense satisfaction in vindicating myself. It was cathartic like nothing else. Like tearing down a dilapidated house nail by nail until only the foundation is exposed. The very act of sabotage was like muscle pumping in a gym -- I couldn't wait to go back and do more. I sometimes wondered who this new person was. He certainly resembled nothing like the "dear one" (in Daya Mata parlance), the sweet devotee he once was. The new person was more like a Bengal tiger with the scent of blood in his nostrils. He deserved a new name for his new life. The title I felt most accurately fit my mood: Raja Begum.

With my jaws deep in the flesh of SRF, cutting to bone and sinew, I made a discovery about myself accidentally. I discovered quite shamelessly that this predatorial bloodfest was exactly what was required of my growth. It and whatever phases were to follow were leading me onward and upward through the stages of differentiation and individuation. Facing down the gods, deposing false ones, making Matas into mincemeat, I found the Confident One long buried underneath the striations of unqualified deference and perpetual pronams. Only recently is it entirely obvious to me that one's being certain of the spiritual authority of another and the very act of putting that person above one's self are all supreme acts of fiction and projection. If someone is above my comprehension, how can I profess to know what they are? I can't. I can only know myself. The rest is fraternity. That's why Babaji washed the feet of the sadhu at the Kumbha Mela -- because there was nothing else he could be to that sadhu that would make sense. To be the almighty Babaji would have no meaning to the sadhu unless he also shared Babaji's realization. So Babaji, with a profound sense of utility, met the man where he could be comprehended best -- as a humble pedicurist!. Among lesser luminaries, it becomes mandatory for the preservation of our own authenticity that we never give anyone so much awe as to make our own selves invisible to ourselves. Thus finally confronting the the Sernior leadership of SRF and their tenets, I found myself entirely out of their spell. It happened so suddenly that I almost wondered if I'd ever been mystified in the first place.

You may find yourselves undergoing a similar transformation. After many years asleep you are finally waking up to the authentic you, and you can't understand why it had to happen under such bitter auspices. But that's a judgment. In truth the method of your awakening was entirely sensible.. How does one become authentic if he or she continues to put others' thoughts and feelings above his or her own perceptions? It doesn't happen. The only surefire way back to self-authenticity is to eradicate the supremacy of influences of anything that is non-self. This is such a beautiful way to approach God. And it in no way harms our relationship with our guru since, by definition, he is one with us. So the more we approach our essence, the more we shall find him present. The stripping down of outer influences and living authentically by my inner rule -- this is about the only form of renunciation I can practice with any sense of naturalness.. The rest seems like a masquerade of Guardian protocols. My only problem now is to consider what of SRF remains for me?

I'm going to switch from tiger talk to the subject of rhododendrons, cranberries and alfalfa. If what I am is a cranberry, and if what you are is a rhododenron, and if where we sprawl happens to be on the highly alkaline plains of alfalfahood....brother!...we ain't got a chance.. And if all that alfalfa can't see why that's a problem for the rest of us, it doesn't mean there isn't a problem. One of the most revered senior monastics told a close friend of mine that the teachings will not change and, if he didn't like it, he could find another path.. My friend is has been a long time member. So what we've got here is Mr. Alfalfamoy telling Mr. Rhododendron to get lost. But Mr Rhododendron doesn't want to get lost. So he introduces changes into the soil to make it more hospitable. Suddenly the alfalfas are in a panic while the Rhododenrons are reviving their colors. What ought to be a benign pasture turns into another Kurukshetra. . This is what SRF is becoming and will continue to be as long as some higher concilliatory intelligence doesn't enter into the picture.

I can no longer feel the same anger towards the leadership of SRF that I once did. Anger would only mean I feel helpless and vulnerable in my relationship (or lack of it) with them. Instead I feel calm, cool resolution. I know that SRF will change because I see the pieces falling into place. How was I to know that, by walking away, I would come full circle back to the center of the movement. Only this time, I feel I am uniquely giving to it something true of my soul.

What this means? A thorough reexamination of the lessons, the way the teachings are presented, and ultimately there must be some hard questions asked about the leadership and its tendency to douse every aspect of our sadhana with monastic-centric thinking. .

How do you feel? The same as me? Perhaps you are one of the 10%, If so, this world is your oyster. The more you pry at it and make it change, the more you defy that pat Guardian Dictionary definition of "devotee" and become an authentic individual in relationship to the work, the more the work becomes what it is destined to be. You are the message. Don't hold back. Is an Idealist disobedient and disloyal because he followed his Idealist dictionary and not a Guardian one? Can a bird be insubordinate to a fish? Or a rhododendron to an alfalfa?

Trust yourself -- your thoughts, feelings and instincts. There is work to be done. This is your right-of-passage.

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