Journey to the Center: Revisiting the Site of Spiritual Trauma

Surreal. That's the best word I can come up with for finding myself, a couple weeks ago, visiting the meditation center / ashram at which I had worked twenty years earlier - a community I now understand to be the heart of a high control group.

As I pulled into the parking lot, Madelyn (I'll call her here) glided down the steps from the meditation hall, like a ghost or a figure in a dream. Madelyn is the current leader of the organization, by title at least. She is also the only one remaining there from my old "young adult" cohort of the early 2000s.

Deciding

I had called a couple days before to express my interest in visiting the ashram - something I'd had no plan to do when I started the big road trip that brought me to the area.

Okay, it wasn't Jules Verne adventurous, but visiting the ashram did feel audacious - and like stepping into an alternate reality, a land before time. (Image: illustration from the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, painted by Edouard Riou. Public domain.)

Not that it had never occurred to me that I might go back there. Indeed, over the past couple of years, since learning of the founder's misdeeds and the organization's deception, a friend and I had occasionally rage-fantasized about going to the ashram and putting posters along the adjoining county road, saying something like "We believe the women."

We want truth. We want accountability and reparation. We want an end to the deception and subtle psychological re-conditioning the group continues to enact as it draws new waves of people into involvement.

Despite the draw of decrying the group's cruel denial in some public way, as I began to plan an actual trip to the area this fall, I'd dismissed the idea. It might sound personally empowering for me and any friends who joined me. But it promised to be unproductive in terms of engaging the institution. History - mine and others before me - had shown that confrontation led to the meditation center and its residential community doubling down on denial and spiritual bypassing.

It had not occurred to me previously that I might come on quieter terms. I was surely persona non grata there, after I stumbled onto new revelations about the founder, and helped to share it widely with others who had ties to the group. Thus, I did not expect to be welcome. And I did not care to impose myself.

Anyway, the prospect of setting foot on the ashram was unsettling. For while my intellect might know I'm long gone from that place and its dynamics of social-emotional captivity, my intellect is not in control.

Trauma resides in the body, in the nervous system - which does not distinguish between past and present. Instinctively I feared that returning to the site of dysregulation and confusion would be destabilizing in the present.

(Image: Meghana Ratna Pydi, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

However, while talking to friends after arriving in the area, and hearing that some of them might like to make such a visit, given the chance, it dawned on me that perhaps I could do so. And maybe it would be beneficial. If not now, when?

I was here - I had driven through six states, all the way from Omaha to the San Francisco Bay Area. This was a rare opportunity for me to return to the origin point of the spiritual trauma which I had been carrying for two decades, since I had moved cross-country to work there. I felt a surprising pull to go, if I could.

I mulled it over for a day. On balance, I felt such a visit was more likely to help than hinder my healing. In therapy before the trip, using somatic experiencing to explore my relationship to the meditation community, I had received messages from my subconscious about:

• taking my power back
• experiencing that I am not stuck anymore
• hearing my grief
• protecting myself

What better way to live out these messages - to reassure my amygdala and nervous system that I am free and safe - than to waltz in, and back out, of that ashram?

I did leave once, already. But I know so much more now, about who the founder really was and what the community really is and why I had the supremely confusing experience I did. Seeing that place again firsthand, with the understanding I now possess, could be powerful.

Asking

As Madelyn approached me getting out of my car, I greeted her with a warm hug. She leaned in obligingly. Yet her ginger touch, and the space maintained between our bodies, gave the embrace a distant, antiseptic feel.

I had initially explained my motivation to Madelyn in a voice mail: I wanted to visit the place on the ashram grounds where I had buried my canary. I felt there might be something healing for me in that act.

She returned my call the next morning to say "it's not going to work out."

Mad Upset GIFfrom Mad GIFs

Well. This was what I had expected.

I acknowledged and accepted this decision, while making the most of the opportunity to speak directly with Madelyn on the phone.

As the last of my group stuck there, I have worried about her since I left. Particularly when others left too, over a decade plus, and especially since I'd come more recently to view the group as a harmful cult. I hoped to get a sense of Madelyn's well-being in this live conversation.

"How are you doing?" I asked. After a succinct, positive reply, she inquired about my family and so on.

Before long, the thing I'd most wanted to express to her bubbled up - my sorrow and empathy for the loss of her husband, too young, just a few years after I left my ashram job and returned to the Midwest.

I had worked closely with him, and felt his loss keenly when I heard the news. Further, it increased my concern for Madelyn. To be lured into the web of that place by the promise of a life partner, only to lose him a few short years later, left her wholly isolated within that alienating 'community.'

In response to my heartfelt words, ashram platitudes tripped from her tongue. Death teaches of the preciousness of life, she told me; he inspired them all to carry on in their spiritual work; etc. Despite the rote response, I think she felt the sincerity of my care and empathy for her. I hope so.

As the conversation continued, I reiterated my motive for visiting the ashram: to stop at the burial site of my canary.

To my surprise, Madelyn remembered about me having a bird. Apparently my roommate during that time, who had also moved from the Midwest to California to work for the meditation center, had recounted to her how Kokopele would start singing, unfailingly, several minutes before I arrived home. They both marveled over that.

A canary singing. A great gorgeous sound comes from these small birds. They have a lot of personality too. (Photo: Ken and Nyetta, Wikimedia)

At some point in this relatively short phone conversation, I also mentioned that had I had the opportunity to stop by the ashram, I would also have hoped to visit with Madelyn in person. The time spent with our cohort of young adult meditators had been a special time in my life, I explained, the people important to me - though I realized it might be different for her, since she's been there so long now, living and working with many others.

Madelyn wanted me to know that she, too, feels a special bond to our "YA" cohort. The quickness and feeling with which she spoke surprised me.

Sensing some degree of genuine connection between us, another thing that came up for me was to repeat that, though ashram leaders and I have some significant differences in perspective related to this organization and its founder (understatement), that does not change that I care about the people there that I knew. I meant it and I think she could feel that.

I may not be remembering the pieces of the conversation in the order in which they occurred. But these are the highlights that stand out for me. I ended the call with Madelyn out of respect for her time. She wished me well.

Later that morning, Madelyn called me again. Her voice was light: "Why don't you come." I was welcome to visit after all, to pay my respects at Kokopele's resting place.

Gratefully, I thanked Madelyn and we settled on a time. She left open the possibility of a personal visit too. Wow! This was going to happen!

Later that day, wanting to make some further gesture of friendship and goodwill, I went downtown to pick up some flowers to bring to the ashram. I came across a little shop featuring a variety of houseplants and pots; customers select one of each and the shop pots it for you. Lovely!

Such a plant in Madelyn's office could not only add beauty, but also purify the air she breathed. I chose a pretty plant and pot, adding a ceramic heart on top of the soil next to the green stems.

Returning

The next day, when I arrived at the ashram and met Madelyn, she agreed to chat for a bit. She led me into her office. Below an image of St. Francis in the entryway, she set down the plant I had given her.

(I wonder if the plant will stay there, or as I later learned is common practice, will be regifted to a random other person at the ashram. God forbid a sadhak keep such a token of care, and feel connected to anyone outside. Sigh.)

As the visit unfolded, much seemed the same as when I had been there all those years ago. The friendly questions about my family and work - a two-step of courteous interest and deflected inquiries.

The inside of the old bindery, where those on site used to visit over lunch together when I worked there, was just as I remembered. Only it looked a little more worn and flat to me, now, as we made tea to take back to Madelyn's office.

The buildings on the campus in general appeared the same, as we walked. Well, one small change: Madelyn pointed out that the old trailer in which she and I had once had our offices, which had outlived useability, was presently being replaced with a new (used) trailer.

Orange-yellow poppies brightened the roadside under an overcast sky, as they always had.

That feeling when you return to a previous life, and it's deja vu all over again. (The characters are from a tv adaptation of the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness.)

The place continued to feel unusually still, out of time. Only now, that set-apartness did not coincide with the humming energy of a plentiful, multi-generational meditator-staff, as I remembered from 2005. Instead, it felt empty and stagnant.

Back in Madelyn's office, our conversation meandered from small talk to common ground to heartfelt words.

In response to her polite inquiries, I shared some updates about my family and life in the Midwest. When I asked her to remind me where she was originally from, Madelyn noted that before the ashram she had lived in a lot of places (none of which she mentioned now) - this was probably why no association stood out in my mind.

When I asked about her family and how they were doing, she said "they're good" and quickly moved on. Perhaps she is just a private person by nature. She and I were never especially close, never had a relationship beyond the shared experience in the young adult group and as newbie workers.

Still, in her non-answer, I couldn't help wondering if, as was the case for many in earlier generations, the ashram has coached her to distance herself from her family. You know, lest her family of origin (as they might frame it) distract her from her spiritual path and goal.

We commiserated over leading institutions through the pandemic. We'd both gone through the process of pivoting to manage risk, adapting what we did to new conditions, and renewing programs after emerging. Tending neglected infrastructure had subsequently preoccupied both organizations too. Another point of common experience was the need to set and hold boundaries as part of leadership.

At one point I asked Madelyn about how she had grown through her years of leadership experiences. She pondered this for a bit, and spoke to learning what virtues really are.

Like patience - "what is patience, really?" she said thoughtfully. I could certainly relate to that; "the pace of church" is legendarily slow, for example. Any sort of institution-building is a long game, in which the progress may only be clear when one is looking back, years later.

When the conversation turned to the future, words of concern tumbled out of my mouth. Madelyn was the last of our cohort still here, decades younger than other ashram residents, having outlived many long-timers already; I shared that I was uneasy about what the future might hold for her. Carrying the burden of leadership for an aging community, as its population dwindles down to someday, perhaps, just her.

"You mean, what will happen to the Center?" she clarified. To the mission? To Founder's work?

"No, you Madelyn... I worry about you."

Blink, blink. The pause, her face, communicated that this was a foreign thought.
Then gently, encouragingly, she spoke into the silence: "I don't worry about that."

I felt the truth of that. She did not think about it. She was unconcerned about her future.

Grieving

Whatever the reason I was allowed in, I appreciated the opportunity to visit the Center. To talk to Madelyn in person. To experience the ashram with the new insights I've gained over the past two years of learning about high control groups. And yes, to make pilgrimage to the place where I buried my sweet canary.

I asked Madelyn if she would like to walk with me as I wandered the property, intuiting my way to Kokopele's resting place. Yes, sure. She offered me some red-orange flowers to take to the site, and we set off over the grounds.

Which tree was it? (Photo: Alexey Komarov, Wikimedia)

My memory of the bird's burial was dream-like in both its emotional potency and its visual fuzziness. I remembered going over a footbridge. There are only a few of those at the ashram, so we picked one and wandered into the trees, continuing to talk.

I was unable to identify the exact spot where I had dug a hole and placed my feathered friend's soft body in the earth, almost two decades ago. But for my purposes of remembrance, a similar great pine on a similar hillside would be close enough.

Madelyn gave me some space as I chose such a tree and paused there. I knelt down, as I had when I rolled the dead bird into the soil. Instinctively I lowered my head and my eyelids, clasping my hands. In the damp air, I was brought back viscerally to the low point of my year there, and to deep loss. The ritual act of burying my bird was indelibly etched in my being.

Gently I placed the bright flowers on the dull ground. A quiet wave of grief arose, of sorrow for the sweet little friend who had made the journey with me to this place, and who had absorbed the malaise that it passed onto me.

Lament rippled through me. Lament for my trusting young self, and for all the others similarly wooed in and used - including the ones still there.

As I rose, my throat constricted and my eyes welled with tears. Nothing about my wanting to protect others from deception and harm had changed. But I felt a welling up of forgiveness, too.

In seminary, I learned that hurt people hurt people. In my study of high control groups, I learned that when emotionally traumatized people create circles of adoration around them, an attempt to stave off their own endless insecurity - a charitable explanation for what my old group's founder did - they end up replicating harm. They make others as hollow as they themselves have felt. Tragedy upon tragedy, to which the only effective answer is harm reduction, and genuine love.

I turned away from that tree, my cheeks damp, a sense of release in my chest. I was struck by the heartbreaking turn of this community from haven of flower child idealism to vortex of isolation and sorrow. (So much for "the end of sorrow.")

Seeing it clearly, accepting it for what it was, was good medicine. My step felt lighter as I walked down the hillside

(a light feeling; my photo, in CA later in trip)

My attention shifted to the practical question of locating Madelyn, who was not visible from my current spot. I called out her name; she stepped out from some trees a ways down the hillside. We returned to the road, passing by an old barn that had once housed goats.

Other than the goats - who turned out to be more work than they were help to the pioneering first generation here, Madelyn told me - I don't remember our conversation topics as we walked out. I surely expressed how good it was to see her, and meaningful to be there, and hugged her farewell as we neared the parking lot.

Parting

This might have been when Madelyn remarked on the period of our cohort's arrival as a second wave of workers. I had reflected that my year working there had been a difficult period for me, and that it was meaningful to me to come back with the distance of the intervening years. I was a bit raw, and appreciative for the closure of this visit.

Madelyn commented that that time had been one of hope and new energy for the long-timers, who were then only a few years into grief over the teacher's "shedding the body."

Perhaps she meant to reassure me that some good had come of our cohort's migration to the ashram area. Good for some of the long-timers, perhaps. Good for the organization, perhaps. Good for me and other "escapees" of my generation - not so much. Perhaps members and leaders of this community did not know they were using us. Not consciously, anyway. All of this went unvoiced.

Back in my car, I started down the access road. I saw a couple of figures walking, each striding alone, too far away to recognize. The access road was a common walking spot for the people who lived and worked here. Doubtless each was repeating a sacred formula in the mind while in motion.

(Image: Road with Boy, 1887, painted by Laurits Andersen Ring, public domain)

We had spotted one of the walkers before I got in my car. When I wondered aloud who it might be, Madelyn had guessed 'Sheila' - someone who had participated a bit in the young adult program back when Madelyn and I were newly involved. I had barely crossed paths with Sheila, and doubted she would recognize me if she saw me.

I recalled having heard, more recently, that Sheila's mother had moved into the cottage by the retreat house. This was after one couple who had long resided there were abruptly asked to leave, not long after I started asking questions of the group's leaders.

As I drew nearer to one of the walkers on the narrow road, I slowed my car to a crawl. The person came into clear view. Liahna! This was one of the leaders of my old YA program, who was, by this point, the de facto leader of the organization. (She might not be at the top of the org chart, but she pulls the strings.)

Without thinking, I hopped out of the car, saying hello and reaching for a hug. 'Liahna' greeted me and we spoke briefly. Her sky-bright eyes and ruddy cheeks were much as I remembered, though something in her manner felt troubling. Perhaps she was uncomfortable with me - angry or determined, or deep-down vulnerable - given recent history.

We did not speak of any of that, of course. My impulse to connect with her was rooted in positive memories of my early involvement with the group - ah, don't we all want to go back to the good old days? So human.

My instinctive care reflects, too, my belief at this point that Liahna is likely a tortured soul. Why had she latched onto the father figure of the founder the way she had, fawning like a supplicant, when she arrived here in the 80s? What personal history played into that? And what might she have experienced with the founder, as his personal caregiver? Given his misconduct history, it was an open question with any female who had been in close proximity to him.

Through a swirl of emotions, after the side-hug she gave me back, I exchanged pleasantries with Liahna.

"You probably have a lot of pilgrims these days," I said, reaching for some bit of conversation that would be neither too direct nor disingenuous.

(Image: Raimond Klavins, Unsplash)

I wasn't the type of pilgrim they were cultivating. The memorial garden for the teacher, and rooms in the complex that had more recently been turned into sacred sites in his honor, reflected a very different worldview and purpose, as pilgrimage sites, than the bit of woods in which I had buried my bird and an innocent piece of my soul. But on the surface, special visits were a safe conversation topic.

As Liahna told me about pilgrimages people now made to the center, she was all ashram-speak. She delivered the messaging that anyone who has been close to the group for long could channel, as I could when I was there.

On the surface Liahna was friendly, but there was also a brittleness to the brief exchange. Again, that could have to do with me in particular, as a figure who had recently come to be perceived as threatening to the group's interests.

I suspect, though, that it also reflects a deep level of indoctrination, of adaptation to living in a traumatized system. The deeper in a person gets, and the longer they stay, the farther out of touch they are, I believe, from anything real - from real relationships with other people, from the real world beyond the group, but also from their own authentic self. It all becomes distant, out of reach, almost unreal.

So the visit ended with the same feeling with which it began - surreal. Apropos for a place that is built on illusions.

I drove silently past the fences and poppies that border the access road. Turning onto the county road, and past the humble wooden sign bearing the organization's initials, I felt strangely normal.

Bleached hills rose and fell around me as I left the ashram behind.

(Image: Mantas Hesthaven, Unsplash)

What happened next? In a subsequent piece, I'll share how I settled my nervous system (ah... ocean waves), and what feelings and insights have come up for me, in the several weeks following my visit to the ashram.

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Meanwhile, here are some other articles that may interest you. How Cults Hijack Our Body-Minds ... What About My Beloved Meditation Passages?! ... Why Do Westerners Turn to the East? ... Who Joins Cults?

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