yudhishtira wrote:Zone in Charge: lakshu bhen
Sister in charge; Ellen Degeneres
Brother in Charge : Dr "no ****" Phil McGraw
Publicity/ Literature person: Oprah Winfray
Spiritual wellbeing team; Gaye and Kate Hendricks
A fun and revealing game!
- Celibacy advisor: Dr. Ruth
Political consultant: Ann Coulter
Wait a minute, we have that dream team, and it is a nightmare. Their radiation reaches further right into the heart of America. Do I have to fight my way out, as in dreams of confused, ineffective struggle against invading and violating evil?
I think it is a stage of maturity that you do not define yourself in terms of the language of others. Your definitions, terms, responsibilities all lie with you, you physically carry in the fact in your upright posture, since every action you enter transmits its sensations into your skeleton and nervous system, sculpting your body, which people need to understand, whatever you define about the self, in this life you are not separate from your body.
You are not just a soul when you lose a leg, or when you don't use a leg that you have. "I can support my family with the other arm!" To someone who loses a limb, every day
is different. Yes, you can find ways to be fulfilled. But what about the person who doesn't know that he has arms? Or a voice to speak? Sometimes the BKs can help.
Not everyone needs or wants the maturity to see the world on his or her own term, definitions, responsibility. For them the BKs can be okay.
I'll tell the story of one very shy Japanese man, I'll call him Kenji, never big and even thinner as a vegetarian, his head looking like a skeleton, emaciated. His deceased Father had been an engraver of headstones. He had a sense of belonging to the BKs that has stayed with him for decades. Whatever the structure you accept, you live it with a group others, who you choose. Rituals give a sense of belonging, in healthy families too.
The BKs give a kind of love, and they do give responsibilities to people. To this nice unassertive Japanese man, who ate spagetti flavored with butter and miso everyday, those responsbilities and that participation was like a lifeline to him. Here are people who are affectionate, and to be asked by them for help with something is a sign of respect. It was only us there.
We were family for each other then. Kenji listened to the Murli, argued his points, decided that he would eat his mother's cooking when he went home to her, took responsibility for his own decisions. I'd ask him to do things, and he would say "no", and that was good for him. He liked working as a watchman, a kind of do-nothing job, because he was free to remember Baba. As a missionary I gave my company, my version of brotherly love. He got the structure, the society of others, ways to be confident in himself. We were surrogate family for each other, and did consider ourselves family, without consideration of how far that obligation could go.
Many people do have positive trajectories through. Of the two sisters in Tokyo, one has left the BKs far behind, the other is living in centers again after perhaps 15 years away. Her warmth, energy, genuine devotional feelings, pleasant to be with.
The Murlis are up front: give your mind, energy, body and money for Baba's service. Yes, it is missionary work, like the Jehovah's witnesses. Still, engaging with the group has created positive movement in many individual's lives.
Kenji got a family, belonging, in a quiet way, a voice of his own.
So alongside that, the "sin" of those - apparently since the first centers opened - of overenthusiastically dipping hands into others' financial cookie jars. That is the temptation and the sin of missionary work, is not it? Based on a prophecy of impending doom.
Impending doom and judgment is anticipated with varying degrees of urgency among Christian groups. That's what the old-testament prophets declaimed, too. "Follow God and prosper or be destroyed."
Kenji got what he wanted.
