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SRF Walrus > Treatment of Members/Monastics > Two clashing models
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Raja Begum Unregistered User (10/12/01 11:09 am) Reply	Two clashing models Try to think of the monastic experience as based on two models: one, the army; the other, a family. Historically, monasteries after 800 B.C. tended to have a military, or what we in SRF would call Kshatriya, orientation. The rigors of self-denial and the emphasis on "killing" the ego are all aesthetics of a military mind. When you fail to make the "expected" sacrifices in the military, you are usually dishonored by your commanders. The emphasis is on unquestioning obedience. Information is channeled on a need-to-know basis. And those who enlist are expected to know what they are getting into. Looking at SRF in that way, we see that the Matas are the generals, the Brothers and Sisters are the majors and captains, the Bramacharis and - charinis are the lieutenants and sergeants, while the novices and postulants are the privates. Everyone is ranked by color: ochre, yellow, and blue. I believe there's white for a miniscule few caled lay-monastics (like a civilian reserve). It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to figure out where the Matas' elitist mentality comes from. This is substantiated by all those stories we have of the Matas being "shredded" by the Master as a form of discipline. I find it very interesting that about the only thing Mrinalini Mata talks about is how she got the living shits beaten out of her (spiritually) but was able to take it with the right attitude each time. Is she bragging? Or is she merely reflecting the one and only one form of pleasure that a military mentality can indulge in --- the satisfaction of having conquered or of having surmounted a difficult trial-by-fire? ("When will Divine Mother send the ones who can take it?") If this is one's only pleasure, naturally, those who whine or quit early are considered cowards. Sri Yukteswar once commented, "Some people try to appear tall by cutting off the heads of others." You might even say this is a manifestation of one of the 8 meannesses of the heart -- a narrow sense of respectability. But, of course, the military is not predicated on sentimentality; it is based upon conflict with the enemy and shared cooperation during battle. So what precisely is the battle SRF is fighting. First off, the building up of the SRF organization. The spreading of the teachings too. Any obstacles in the way of those purposes become de facto enemies. Let's also remember that Mrinalini and Uma came when they were 13 and 14; Daya, when she was 17. They never experienced the world. They never got naked, made out, made love or had sex. They never smoked a joint , got drunk, went to a rock concert or basically did any of the wacky things most young people do. They never had a normal adult life either All the time, from day one till present, these "ladies" were put in the service of their Master's cause. I wonder sometimes, if behind their righteous devotion, there isn't a certain amount of defiant self-justification. After all, their egos have been picked-on a lot. And even if they've seen the light, their egos, still holding on, have each one gigantic, stinky shadow attached to them. I haven't said anything about the family model, so now I will. How many times have you heard it said, "SRF is your family"? To the monastics: When you first read the pamphlet on becoming a renunciant, isn't there somewhere in there the Krishna quote "Give Me thy heart"? The SRF God is Father / Mother. The Matas are called Matas because they want to be seen as "mothers" of the organization. Some of you even call them "the bad ladies" much like a four-year-old would, his mother. Isn't that revealing? And isn't it familial to name our ministers "Brother" and "Sister"? Loyalty is required not only to the cause, but to the founder and his representatives. And its a type of loyalty more familial, sentimental, and covering a longer duration (incarnations) than say the loyalty a soldier would feel towards a political Commander-in-Chief. The monastics live always together; they are expected to die together. They are excluded from most of the activities of the outside world. Their total world is each other. There are rules about what can be thought and what must not be thought or acted upon. Indeed, the ashram, by virtue of the extreme dependency it inculcates in the monastics who live there, is a family model. A parent / child paradigm. I don't care what the defenders of the "faith" may say. This model insinuates itself into the consciousness of each monastic by the way the lifestyle is set up and also by the basic rhetoric and lore passed around. If this consciousness of emotional and physical dependency is not conspicious and admittable by the monastics themselves, it nevertheless glows subtly like radiation on everything SRF does, is, says, or touches. We could launch into a full scale investigation of how the words, conduct, and even architecture generate this pervasive consciousness. I'm to lazy to shoulder a project on my own. So I won't. I assume we're all on the same page. If you find these two models plausible, you can see why monastics are having a hellish time on the "ranch." First off, with multiple models ruling the roost, the potential for confusion increases exponentially. Expectations are nurtured and then disappointed or frustrated. Not everyone goes to Master looking for a war and a military experience. Some people really, honestly, truly, undoubtedly look for a spiritual family. A place to heal the wounds of division, and a place to feel supported and be supportive. Scoff. Call it needy. But that doesn't diminish its validity one iota. I once was in a discussion with a senior monk about the large numbers of monastics leaving. He didn't give me the requisite ten senconds to finish my sentence before whipping out his tried and true glistening silver pistol of an excuse crying...you know...blah blah blah...these people are not living "the life"...blah blah blah....they want to work out desires...blah blah...they want someone to hold their hand and give them a hug...blah blah.. but no one can do that for them in SRF... blah blah blah...everyone works on themselves... blah blah blah blah... And I saw, clearly, that this man, like a fish who no longer has an awareness of the water he swims in, could never understand the serious double bind his charges are undergoing. This man is a simpleton intellectually. He glides in and around the smoke and mirrors of the SRF organization the way Forrest Gump stepstones through the brazen shifts in the cultural scenery. This man is too gentle a soul to even cognize (what the Matas gleefully profess) that the ex-monastics are nothing but a bunch of sorry-ass, unweaned wimps. He has, not the wrong idea, but a one-sided idea of how things are. Informally, psychology calls this behavior "crazy making." And I ought to restrain myself from sprinking a pejorative on this feast of though but...hey...here we go: What do you call a military organization who steals your heart, mind, and soul, keeps you as dependant as a baby, and makes you feel like @#%$ if you leave? Guess? Last time I checked the dictionary it was called a CULT. If you think SRF should maintain its Klingon military ethic, consider the following: The New York Times reported that the U.S. Military is taking the subject of mental health very seriously. They learned a lesson after WWII, after Vietnam, the Gulf War and Desert Storm that soldiers need to maintain their psyche's just as much as their bodies and their weapons. The military now has an army within the army of certified psychologists who help our soldiers keep in mental tip-top shape. Isn't that progressive? After all, our President did say we are in a new era, fighting a new war. And not long ago Clinto passed the parity rule which gave insurance claimants the right to ask for mental health benefits. So you see, mental health care is not babying people. It is good countermeasure to the complex world we inhabit. So hey Matas!! What gives? Explain why it was necessary to dissolve the spiritual life committee. Why did you gag on all that love and feel good energy generated by Devananda's and Meetrananda's therapeutic talks at the Convocation. You ladies are falling behind. The "world is marching on" says Master....but not you. So which God do you really worship? A progressive living God, or one frozen like stone in time? We need more psychology and science, more rationality and sanity in SRF. This is not only for the monastics. Our counselors are embarrasing amateurs. There exists time-tested intervention techniques, counseling techniques which do work. SRF ministers ought to become certified. And the ones higher up should stop pretending they are surrogate gurus. Master, at times, dealt with disciples in seemingly irrational ways, but he, being an avatar, always made that training work. Last I've been told, the lineage of avatars stopped with our guru. When anybody less than an avatar tries to imitate that training, the result can only be disaster. This country was founded at the very moment when the world entered into Dwapara Yuga. The founding fathers, who emulated the best of the new age, were 100 percent for rationality and individual thinking. Modern psychology is the natural successor of that spirit. To scrutinize and introspect, not judgmentally, but objectively is what every human needs to do. The world's people, all of us, continue to face an unending barrage of irrationality -- from terrorism to the standard fare of daily neurosis. Yes, we can spray disquietude with the peace of our meditations, but we also must use our minds to organize our experience. SRF claims to provide us with a metal template for organizing our thoughts and experiences...SRF, the one-stop How-To-Live way-of-life. In truth, SRF is a disorienting hodgepodge of models sorely in need of integration. Until we lay these discrepancies on the forge, what can SRF ultimately be but a place for winners and losers? If we want progress among us, I recommend we sift through and sort out these models, catalog the types of words and phrases associated with SRF rhetoric, and spend some time not only examining our expectations but also how SRF played into our expectations, fostered them, and then dashed them all to pieces. Would you join me in this project? Or shall we continue to whine about conditions which will change when dinosaurs die and are replaced with Cro Magnons?
Raja Begum Unregistered User (10/12/01 3:04 pm) Reply	....and a third In post, let me add another model just to confuse things even more: The corporate model. If you recall the conversation I had with a senior monk, at one point he told me that SRF needs to protect its trade secrets and run itself just like any other corporation. I found that revealing. Looks like the Matas really ARE getting modern!!! We know SRF was incorporated in Master's time and it is supposed to run like any other non-profit --- with a board of directors and certain bylaws. So the SRF organization is, in certain ways, indistinguishable from any other corporate non-profit organization. I used to work in a high profile company which had a strong corporate culture. When a company has an identifiable corporate culture, that means it also has strongly identifiable bad habits. Usually the company wants to thrive, and, if it is enlightened (mine wasn't for the longest time), it will hire outside consultants to take a good look at things. The call is often up to the CEO and CFO. When my company finally began Total Quality Management, and when doing so opened channels of communication from the lowliest corporate worm to the highest fat cat in white shirt and tie, the company became more productive and employees, happier. Corporations are like soft armies with a pinch of feudalism added for taste. Of course, we do find an increasing number of cutting edge workplaces which give a high degree of autonomy and rewards to its workers in exchange for innovative service. But I digress... Any way you slice it, the SRF org. prides itself as being a type of fledging but "spiritual" enterprise much after the grandaddy of organizations: IBM. It can invest and sue and it has modern computers and the latest security system and all kinds of intelligent people. Pretty darn mod for a bunch of monks, nuns and assorted-odd yogis. Yes, the SRF organization does model the corporate paradigm, too. But here comes the rub: Men and women don't work together. And while corporate people leave and go back to their lives at home, in SRF, home, work, and worship are one But it gets dicier. In a corporate workplace, the highest positions are just your bosses. In SRF, they are your spiritual leaders. If you get fired from a corporation, you lose a job. If your leave is facilitated in the ashram, you lose a life. A corporate lay-off is nothing but an action motivated by impersonal economic forces. Leaving the ashram is like abandoning your post in heaven. For the military-minded, it is like going AWOL. In a corporate job, I am hired for my skills and expertise and evaluated according to my performance. In the ashram, the same applies...BUT...there are also those who seem to want to evaluate the what's in my heart as well. Sound invasive....? Judged by corporate standards it would be. By a family model, it wouldn't....okay, it would, but wouldn't for a dsyfunctional family. After all this writing, I'm not sure if I ever made a clear point. I hope I did. But, just in case I didn't, let do so now... When push comes to shove, it really doesn't matter how SRF -- or for that matter, any organization --- wants to present itself. Just be above-board. That's all. Have integrity. Examine the way you present yourself and the expectations you set up for others. If you call yourself an army, then be an army. If you want to be a corporation, then be one. If you want to be a Neapolitan of three flavors, then tell all those who apply, "We are a Neapolitan of three flavors." Don't leave it for others to guess and then call them stupid for guessing wrong.
Raja Begum Unregistered User (10/14/01 5:12 pm) Reply	Words of Ancient Wisdom "That which is meddling, touching everything, Will work but ill, and disappointment bring. " --- Tao Te Ching "Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war to the knife between different ideas." --- Gandhi
4py Unregistered User (10/18/01 9:12 am) Reply	Other models... Thanks for the models. I have a few more that I may add to the mix in the next several days: 1. Two conflicting models: Ken and Barbie 2. The NASA model 3. The Caste system model Of these, the most important one that relates to SRF is the NASA model. In an effort to understand the tremendous difficulties inherent in SRF I wrote, for my own edification, about similarities between SRF and NASA. This was about 5 years ago and my "thesis" (so to speak) is on another disemboweled computer, so I'll need a few days to recreate it.

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