Into Your Soul

How is it possible? You might think. That a word has the key to your consciousnesses more than a touch. I suppose it shows that consciousness is so much more deeper than skin. It shows that the consciousness is also so much more vast than a word,  so much more vast than our thoughts and than our mind.

My life experience was based on these superficial skin-deep stimuli until I began to watch Swamiji’s satsang– until His words began to seep through my skin, and enter into my consciousness, awakening what I never knew was inside me.

Watch Nithyananda Satsang LIVE every day at 7 AM. Don’t miss the happening  of The Avatar in your life…

My Thirteenth Birthday

No matter how much I try, I can’t forget my thirteenth birthday. It has been a decade but this memory is still fresh in my head. My birthday coincides with the Seattle temple’s anniversary so that day I did celebrate, as I do every year, with my family and friends in the temple. But I honestly don’t remember how I celebrated that day. Those happy memories are overclouded and darkened by what else happened that day.

That morning, I received a message from Vinay to pick me up from where he usually does- in  my neighborhood, just across from my school bus stop. I can’t tell you how many times in the years after that period in my life I stood in the very same spot, with tears streaming down my face and fury in my chest as hot as fire. I screamed at that stupid girl who got into that car and let the man drive her thirty miles away from her home. I mourned over her like a mother would a lost child. It was almost as if I believed that if I stood there even four or five years later, somewhere in a parallel dimension it would stop me from opening the door to his car that day and all the other days.

I was there when Vinay’s car arrived. When we got on the highway, Vinay asked me to look in the back seat. I turned my body to look. Behind my seat was a pink Victoria’s Secret bag. My cheeks burned. I knew what these bags usually meant though I had never shopped there before. I stretched and grabbed the bag. Inside was a small plastic box with delicious-looking chocolate cake and a matching purple-colored pair of bra and panties.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“Your birthday” he responded and I couldn’t think of a response.

I proceeded to open the box of cake to eat it but he quickly stopped me.

“Wait, wait, wait!” He cried. “Wait until we get home!” I closed the box, thinking that he didn’t want me to make a mess in the car.

But in his apartment, he instructed me to change my underwear. I went into his bathroom and put on the undergarments. I stared at my body in the mirror but strictly avoiding my own eyes. My still-triangular and pre-pubescent breasts were hidden behind the cups of the bra and the panties barely hung on my uncurving hips. I wasn’t sure what he was expecting but surely this was not how any model I saw on the internet looked.

He shouted from the next room, “Come out quickly”

I hesitated at the door. Months back, I had given in to this ruse that Vinay was playing. That this was some sort of forbidden relationship and actually I was really mature for my age. Maybe it just easier for me to believe him and go along with it than to actually confront what I felt. Maybe I was too innocent. But this moment I felt the most unwilling to proceed outside. This moment I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to go back home and go to sleep. Forever.

Vinay shouted again. I turned the knob and walked outside. His eyes devoured me. A grin spread across his face.

“You look beautiful” he said to me and for a moment my apprehension diminished slightly. He had put the chocolate cake on a plate. He proceeded to feed me a bite of it with his hands. I opened my mouth and took the morsel of cake inside. Then he pulled me close to him and kissed me, forcing his tongue down my mouth and taking the piece of cake into his.

Vinay enjoyed the rest of the cake that day in a similar way.

I felt dead by the time I came home. I was exhausted and nauseous. I sat under the shower for about an hour, probably until the first layers of my skin washed away but I still couldn’t feel clean. After my shower, I fell fast asleep but to my horror- I was able to wake up again.

 

 

Yellow Sweater with Blue Flowers

I used to wear a yellow sweater with blue flowers. It had a hood and long sleeves but it was not very good protection from the cold. I used to pull it over my wrists and stretch out the seams there permanently. For some reason if my wrists were not covered, I didn’t have a chance at becoming warm again. I remember this sweater distinctly from my childhood though. I don’t remember where it came from or where it is now but it remains a significant image from my memory when I dive into the memories from ten years back.

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The sweater was no help against the cold November breeze which filled the Overlake Hospital lobby every time the sliding doors opened. I was waiting in the lobby while my parents attended to my grandmother. I tried to lie down and curl into myself in the fetal position on the sofa to get warmer but was not having any success.

My grandmother had lung cancer. It was a few months until she passed away. My mother had just brought her from India and was taking care of her almost all of the time. Vinay had come to the hospital to give her spiritual healing. It is one of the initiations by HDH Nithyananda Paramashivam to be able to heal ourselves and others from negative energies and frequencies. I knew this when the chilling doors opened again and Vinay’s figure walked through. He didn’t notice me curled up on the sofa but the minute my brain registered him my heart began thudding in my chest. I started having this reaction to him from two weeks before this when Vinay forced himself inside my house when my parents were not there.

I observed him with apprehension as he approached my parents, speaking to them softly with concerned questions.

“How is she?” I guess he asked. They told him her health status though I am not sure if he cared as much.

I watched them disappear behind a door and then stared at the door for a few minutes before I forced my eyes shut and focused on my heart calming down.

I noticed one thing about how memories work over the years.  In movies there are audio and visual tracks that make it up. Since memory is so personal for us, there is a third underlying track: emotion. While my audio and visual memory fails me now a decade later, my emotional track is still alive and ripe. For the next events which happened that day, the emotions are as alive as if I were living those moments today.

What I remember next is Vinay offering to drop me off at the temple to my father. My father looked at me. I was more interested in going someplace warmer than this hospital lobby. I nodded my head at him. I followed Vinay to his car and sat in the front seat.

I remember as Vinay drove the car,  I was talking but I don’t remember what I was saying. I was filling the uncomfortable silence.  Or I was trying to fulfill my discomfort.

Then I remember he missed the turn to go to the temple.

“You missed the turn,” I said when we were in the middle of the crosssection. I looked over at the road which we were supposed to be on and for some reason, this image is stamped into my memory even until today- perhaps because it was the exact moment my stomach felt like it dropped. And again my heart started thudding.

“No I didn’t,” He said.

“Yes, you did” That’s the turn to go to the temple. You can take the next turn though- ” I started but then stopped again when he sped passed that turn as well.

“No I didn’t” he insisted.

I looked in front of me again. Then I understood. And with that understanding, the words – whatever I was trying to muster up to fill the silence- seemed to fall into an abyss and  all I could do was stand at the edge of this abysmal silence and mourn.

We weren’t on the way to the temple.  We were never going to go to the temple. 

From the time Vinay suggested to my father to take me to the temple, he had no intention of doing so. He didn’t miss the turn- he was right. When he took me from my father, he had planned to go to his apartment instead. The devil who drove the car next to me had the guts to show his face to my father, lie to him and take his daughter away to molest her. And he likely planned what he would do to me there. This monster was remorseless.

For the rest of the car ride, I couldn’t say anything. Not when we arrived at his apartment complex and he insisted that I come inside for a few minutes. Not when he closed the door behind me, slammed me into the wall and kissed me. Nothing. No words. Not even as he climbed on top of me on his bed and slowly unzipped the yellow sweater with blue flowers.

The Most Beautiful Way to Grow Up

“Most beautiful way to grow up is as a Hindu kid” – HDH Nithyananda Paramashivam

 

Navaratri celebrations in 2010 (8 October – 17 October). Assisting my father in the ritual of arathi. I am seen sitting below. 

A 9.5 feet tall golden Nataraja entered the city of Seattle, Washington, USA in 2007. He is the most beautiful diety you will ever lay your eyes on. He looms over you in a shining golden color. He is flawless.  And He is created by none other than His Divine Holiness himself.

I do not know whose master plan it was but from the beginning, I always knew there was a purpose behind His Divine Holiness establishing a temple for Nataraja, my favorite deity in the place that I grew up.  Perhaps an underlying motive which would inevitably restore me at the feet of Nataraja, no matter which corners of the world my mind took me. I suppose it started with Nataraja.

Even though I was half-a-world away from Bangalore, India, I experienced the best childhood because of the temple HDH established in Seattle. I grew up in the eyes of Nataraja. My nights were spent lighting lamp after lamp and passing them off to my father as he waved them to all the deities in the temple. This ritual took twenty minutes as the song which was played while it took place was twenty minutes. I sang along loudly. People around me in the audience clapped at a steady beat. The gong of the large temple bell ran in the background. At the end of the song, the gong of the bell sped up until it vibrated my ears, the golden light of Nataraja filled my eyes and the music climaxed joyously and then ran into complete silence. The silence was only for a moment but to me, that silence was louder than the song, and the bells, and the clapping and the singing all put together. I remember clearly it was in those silences I would naturally fall into the deepest most profound spiritual experiences which I had in my life.

Just for those perfect few moments, I would spend hours cleaning the arathi set, preparing for arathi ritual and cleaning up after. When school started and I couldn’t be in every night, I called volunteers, trained them and assigned them one day of the week. On the weekends, I spent Saturday and Sunday morning doing abhishekam (the sacred bath ritual) for the deities. I prepared the ritual, picked out the deities clothes and jewels, assisted during the ritual and helped adorn the deities afterward.

assisting participants as they do puja on two different days during Navaratri . 

As I remember it now, it was a golden childhood. I did not spend my time on the television, or video games or gossiping with friends-  I spent time in the temple, with deities and devotees. I remember even enriching the temple-goers who came in and went. I would tell them about the teachings of HDH, and speak to them for hours just on the contents of one book- Guaranteed Solutions. I remember them telling me, “You are so mature for your age!” and some arrogant old men, who perhaps have a lot of Vedantic ideas, who would ask, “What do you know at your age living in America?”

When these mustached, grey-haired men would ask this, I  would smile at them, and not say anything, knowing what I knew and what might take lifetimes for them to realize.

Above all, HDH, or who I called as Swamiji, remained from then until now my God. He remains the one I speak to inside my heart as I go to sleep, and the first one I think of in the morning. It was because of this and the gargantuan effort HDH put into establishing and maintaining the Seattle temple that I was saved from a lifetime of absolute torture in the hands of criminals such as Vinay Bharadwaj and the other conspirators against HDH.

I am in the green sari in the far left corner. This occasion was December 10, 2010 as a group of took up Guru Mudi Vrata before the Jayanti celebrations. 

As I look back,  this eco-system which HDH brought me up in is entirely what made me the person I am today and why I remain impervious to any attack done against me or Swamiji. I am dedicated to building this eco-system for millions more girls and young women to be benefitted like I was.

My Video Response To Sarah Landry

 

I want you all to know –

The Supreme Court of Washington State,  Honorable Judge Eadie was presented the entire situation surrounding my case. He saw over 200 hours of phone sex records with a minor, he heard the testimonies of serval witnesses including my parents, he watched me cry on the stand when I was describing what Vinay Bharadwaj did to me. After all this, they decided that Vinay was guilty of third-degree child abuse and sentenced to federal prison.

Let everyone who dares speak against HDH Nithyananda Paramashivam know that they are the vermon of the world, siding with demons and ghosts. They are criminal offenders.

Even if that still doesn’t make you believe what I am saying, I will go on standing for the truth because I know what Swamiji has done for me.

 

I have made it to ten.

It’s been ten years since the acts of rape and sexual abuse against me. It’s because of His Divine Holiness Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam, I have made it to ten. Otherwise, I am sure that would have remained stunted at a tragic single-digit number due to the raging anger and grief over the loss of my purity and innocence that I was unable to end for so long.

This ten years I have inexplicably grown and transformed due to the grace and blessing of His Divine Holiness. He has given me a higher purpose in life which makes my past irrelevant. Whereas I felt I could not heal in a body which I felt was so violated, He taught me that consciousness is never violated, untouchable and invincible. What’s more, He showed by example. He showed that no matter the character assassination, slander, abuse, relentless attacks, betrayal and blackmail which He has been through, He remains untouched, just like the waters of Mother Ganga on which anything floats. I see Him in samadhi amidst all this attack, His physical eyes locked upon His third eye, a smile tugging at His lips and His head tilted ever so slightly to the cosmos above Him. He shows me that He is Paramashiva, which reminds me that I am Paramashiva also.

Only these powerful cognitions and higher understandings have contributed to my full healing and transformation. But with every powerful cognition which He delivered, the abusers and attackers who still exist, have tampered with the powerful space created inside me. I have still had to fight an onslaught of attacks even though my battle against Vinay Bharadwaj was won. I am not new to accusations that I am lying – VB himself tried to defend himself with this reach. He failed miserably. Yet, many abusers have raised the same beaten-down questions over and over again, insensitive to the fact that it forces me to reopen wounds I want to close once and for all. What kind of inhumanity is this – to demonically probe a deep wound inside another human being, like a kind of special torture in Dante’s Inferno. But what have I done to deserve this treatment?

Are we not beyond secondary victimization, collective ignorance and objectification as a society? Do we raise these judgments even for children who have been sexually abused as well?

For a long time, I sought to make myself stronger and take this abuse. But now after this incessant probing has grown wings, I have decided I cannot tolerate this any longer.

I was a 13 year old child when I was sexually abused, assaulted, manipulated and terrorized. My breasts had not developed, my periods had not become regular, my hips were still un-curving. I recently came across a picture from when I was 13 years old. It was taken on the first day of school in 8th grade. I recall that day clearly in my mind as I remember the dull, low feeling I always feel after speaking with or interacting with Vinay. He will abuse me to tears. My mother wondered why among a whole school full of excited children ready to begin the new school year, I was the only one with my eyes red, crying softly, nervous and shaking even to make a one step in front of me, much less begin another year.

I am recalling this picture as I write this post now because I am remembering that girl- not who I have become. Still vulnerable, unassuming of the world. That is who Vinay Bharadwaj raped.

Within just a few months of the first police report I filed in January 2010, Vinay pushed the other conspirators to move fast in their plot against HDH. By March 2010, I saw the result of Vinay’s schemes and murderous plans but could never be swayed to believe his stories. A dust storm of confusion, doubt, hatred and denial was raised in the ear, and still at 13 years old, I seemed to be in the center of it-seeing the whole storm clearly from the beginning.

Ten years I have fought continuously against people who make claims that I am lying. Honorable Judge Eadie of the Washington State Courthouse (who has perhaps long forgotten me, but I will never forget ) in his statement at the end of the trial was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that I am telling the truth. He states on page 3 (image attached below), “Now, I did– prior to the trial or early part of the trial, in pretrial matters, I certainly became aware of the issue of the conspiracy that was alleged to discredit the defendant because of issues involved litigation with Swami. And so when L.M., as I will refer to her here when L.M testified I was sensitive to that background and watched her carefully, tended to her testimony, her demeanor while testifying and in her testimony, I find that she acted in a way that was natural. That she responded in a way one could expect of a person testifying about matters such as this. I found the detail that she gave was detail given by her in a manner that was not consistent with being scripted”

The official court transcript of the trial proceedings during Judge Eadie’s statement

Found on page 3 of the court transcript of Judge Eadie’s statement

Found on page 11 of Judge Eadie’s statement

He later expanded, “She clearly had a very strong attachment, commitment to Swami and Swami would have the motive to discredit a person who may be a witness against him. In this case, however, I don’t think there is any credible evidence that a plan to discredit was ever actuated or put in place, and I think that L.M.’s testimony in this manner is evidence of that. Perhaps the best evidence of that. And in saying that I think that she told the truth when she testified as to what happened”

Found on page 8 of Judge Eadie’s statement

Finally, in the Findings of Fact, a summary document produced by the Washington State Courthouse, among the points listed that they found credible was, “ That the victim L.M was credible and was telling the truth in her testimony as to her relationship with the defendant. That L.M’s demeanor on the stand was natural and she responded in the way one would expect of a sexual assault victim of her age, that she consistently gave details in a manner not consistent with being coached in relationship to an elaborate conspiracy theory. For example, L.M very genuinely described not saying anything, squirming and not knowing how to react when the defendant licked her neck with tongue”

“Findings of Fact” Document with court stamp from September 21, 2012

Found on page 2 of the “Findings of Fact” Document

Once the Washington State Supreme Court made its decision, enough evidence was there to prove Vinay wrong in his civil suits against HDH where as a way to defend the cases going on against him, he accused HDH of brainwashing him and soliciting sexual acts from him. In 2014, as he was in prison for his crimes against me, he lost his civil suit against HDH. He was then fined half a million dollars for these false accusations. Vinay Bharadwaj appealed the court’s decision almost immediately as it was made. Vinay appealed that the court should consider the opinion cult expert, Dr. Whitsett. However, the court stated in the appeal denial that, “ Although Dr. Whitsett based her commentary on what appears to be sound research, she did not at all know the facts of S.M’s life. S.M attended public middle and high schools. She interned at a hospital and hoped to attend Boston University, across the country from her immediate family and the Swami’s closest control. Thus, while Dr. Whitsett may very well identify a complex mind control analogous to hypnotism, it appears unmet in S.M’s particular case. Bharadwaj fails in his burden to overcome the presumption of competency under the law. Thus, the failure to present this expert testimony did not prejudice the trial results”

Upon this critical analysis, long and painful pre-trial process which took over two years, finally the case was closed in September 2012. After listening to over 20 hours of phone sex records in which Vinay- a 35 year old man made to a 13 year old child–, Vinay was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in federal prison and deportation from the United States, with no scope of return until after 10 years. Upon return, Vinay must still register as a child sex offender wherever he is. Only in India, a perverted pedophile like Vinay is not barred or monitored in any way. In India, he walks free.

After several years of intense depression, I was given new life and new opportunity upon joining His Divine Holiness Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam (HDH) and His mission to revive Hinduism. My life became about celebration and nothing else and I’m not exaggerating this fact. Despite the persecution and attacks that HDH has been through, He has sustained the purest form of celebration of existence and made it into a lifestyle here in the Aadheenam. I have been exposed to all kinds of life but this is the best life I could have in this day and age.

Over the last several years, allies of Vinay Bharadwaj have ruthlessly gone on news channels, newspapers, magazines, trying to convince people that I am lying about my experience. As a thirteen-year-old, after undergoing the intense trial in court, being scrutinized and judged by the society was traumatizing.  My family has been under a microscope, closely being watched and our lives publicly displayed.  I withdrew from society and went through middle and high school completely alone, betrayed by society and feeling unprotected in the world.

My post-trauma healing was entirely due to the loving care and spiritual power of HDH. His teachings brought me so much of relief and the yogic techniques revived me from practically the dead.

In a recent post, Linton Jesse Norrish tries to dig into accusations that I have been sleep-deprived and extremely sick in the aadheenam. I am actually astounded at this lie. I am sure there will be hundreds of voices who can support me that I have not at all been sleep deprived, of all things, and rarely, if at all, been sick. I habitually go on a public stage for performances in full costume, make-up and jewels and I have been passionately and unabashedly posting every day on facebook. I interact happily with other aadheenavasis who I live with and devotees living in countries all over the world. And recently, I have had the opportunity to travel to New York and represent the nation of Kailaasa, the world’s only Hindu nation revived by HDH, in the United Nations. This is a chance I would not have gotten at all in my purvashram life.

I am healthy and extremely blissful and every day grateful that HDH has saved my life. At a point in time when I was so isolated from my family, friends and any other safe harbor, nearly at the brink of drowning, at the risk of His own life, HDH rescued me entirely.

 

Recollection

I did the math.

The human brain doesn’t remember random incidents as well as it remembers patterns. So I pulled out this string inside me which has now decayed and nearly disappeared like a dying plant stem. When I was thirteen, there was a time that I got into the rhythm of being called to meet Vinay in a private location every other day. I know it was every other day because I remember thinking it, scheduling around it, and it becoming a part of my routine. This pattern went on for several months from January 2009-to the end of April 2009. The private locations were varied but most often he asked me to meet him down the street from my house. Then he would take me to either a secluded destination in the nearby forest or he would take me to his apartment. It depended on how much time he had.

Every other day is four days a week. Multiplied by 4 weeks is 16 times a month. By four months, it’s 64 incidents.

The three other days of the week Vinay was in continuous contact with me, either texting me or calling. Every night when I went to the temple, He would corner me and kiss me, he would touch me inappropriately and hold me too close.

That’s over 100 counts of sexual contact with a minor and I didn’t count any incidents before or after an intense period of abuse. This was what happened. This is the straight truth in all its horrifying and arithmetical gory.

So, why didn’t I say it like this in court? And moreover, who else like me also didn’t?

The years after the court case in 2012 for me was a period when silence, speculation and suppressed anger battled each other inside me, only showing to the world as deep purple circles underneath my eyes.

The simple and straight answer is that I didn’t know. I didn’t know this was how Vinay’s punishment was calculated. I didn’t know I would have to describe each count in detail from beginning to end, from the time Vinay called me to come until he dropped me back at home, a nauseated mess. Each of these incidences blended together in my mind and I thought it would be okay if instead of going through a painful and victimizing recounting process, I just gave the court prosecutor a summary.

It wasn’t okay.

Because inadvertently I saved Vinay from more time in jail and gave myself more pain.

There is a more complicated answer to the question of my conservative testimony. The answer is that it takes a certain amount of detachment and compartmentalization to be able to spit out the number of times you’ve been sexually abused or raped. And for that to happen it took me time to wrap my head around it.

I mean, can you? Could you even wrap your head around that happening to someone even once?

It took me years to be able to come to terms and tell my story without having to relive the pain every time I recount the experience. I was riddled with anxiety, depression and faced multiple attempts at suicide. Finally I am able to say that I have healed more than ever and recuperated – but sometimes despite everything I feel it is too late. What difference does it make when real justice cannot be served?

I call prosecution systems to re-address their processes so that they encompass these situations in cases of child abuse. I cannot be the only child who was not able to say what happened simply because I didn’t understand and then have to suffer for it. We are responsible for a better system.

The exact understandings and processes which will advocate for and support the victim will empower and ultimately heal them. When we heal and empowered, we are more likely to implement prevention methods of further incidences of violence. This pulls society up entirely and works towards eradicating sexual violence entirely.

And only then, forgiveness becomes possible.

Warrior

Shoulders back, chin up, core engaged.

In dance, you are taught to maintain this posture through and throughout any performance. Even as your abdominal muscles quiver and your thighs burn, you must persist with a graceful smile on your face.

I was trained for this since I was five years old with the grace and blessings of my guru, HDH Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam.

The posture, the movement and the context was ingrained in me since then and I have learned not only to face an audience with this strength, but life itself. I was bred into being a warrior.

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A warrior has an inner space held by the pillars of immense strength, bravery, persistence and pure integrity. But if you see there is a mechanism behind the human and superhuman components of these qualities. If you are trained with immense strength, not only in your physical body, but with the strongest truths of the mind and intellect, then bravery is the blessing given by the Cosmos to fulfill your strength’s greatest ambition. If you are persistent in any of your goals, enough to burn any of the obstacles that might come in your way, integrity is the divine intervention given to you by the universe. A warrior’s inner space is therefore the union of your soul with the divine super consciousness.

This is the way that I see it after having been trained, even without knowing it, for years as a warrior. In our day and age, we may not fight physical battles at borders, lead armies and wield weapons but it is widely accepted that our battles have evolved. The battles have become against collective negativity: terrorism, racism, or sexism. The armies have become rallies, campaigns or even social media activists. And the weapons have become ideologies, concepts and truths.

It is the truth that the cognition and understandings we have about humanity, life and universe could actually be a our greatest enemy. But the nature of these indecipherable, highly dynamic things is that they could be our greatest weapon as well.

So let me tell you about the great truths on which I was brought up. I was taught since I was a kid of the greatness of the universe and I was taught not to be intimidated by its greatest but to understand it as my own potential. I was taught oneness and peace our the irreplaceable values. And I was also taught that values are not just rules or guidelines but true experiences of our innermost being. These truths are in Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Shiva sutras and the Upanishad.

As a Rudrakanya in Adikailash, Bengaluru where I performed every day as nritta seva for Nithyanandeshwara, the presiding deity of our city.

Whether in art or in the rituals that we do or the professions we take up the truths from these scriptures are the ultimate context of our civilization. I saw that no matter what I did in Hinduism taught to me by my guru, the context was always this and I also saw that whatever I did outside of my Hindu practice was most often rooted in a disturbing and harmful understanding about life.

That’s why as I was trained in dance and rituals of Hinduism; in the most painful moments of my life where I faced the people who raped me, wanted to wipe out my culture and murder my guru, I was able to use these evolved weapons and win battles.

I have been used as a sex slave, been beaten up, and stoned. I have named a witch and a prostitute. And I am alive today and able to make intellectual metaphors on battles and warrior” because of the Hindu truths that birthed me.  I know there would have been no chance for me if not for the sacrifice which Swamiji made for me.  This goes to say that what Hinduism offers is much more real than what you are experiencing as the world through this digital screen right now and more solid the four walls and cushion seating which surround you.  It is real and it works. And I welcome you to be enthralled by it.

When I was sixteen years old, there was a fortnight where before I went to sleep I would visualize myself in a battlefield armed and sitting in a chariot, Swamiji as my charioteer. Like this I would brace myself for the next day when I would travel to the Washington State Courthouse and sit in the courtroom in front of a judge and other dementors of the adult world. I would sit there and take a deep breath and tell myself,

Shoulders back, chin up, core engaged.  

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On facebook, Swamiji blessed me as Paramashiva’s real warrior princess and His best rudrakanya. It is of course something to remember forever.

 

 

My Name is Sexually Abused

 

 

If you’ve been through anything like this, you know that it becomes the definition of your life. It becomes the root of your fears and your worries. Everyone tells you that you have to give yourself slack but you can’t because you’ve connected yourself so much with that person. You identify yourself with the person you were when you were powerless and the vicious cycle continues.

People act like there’s no “other side” to being raped or abused. By other side, I mean the abuse equivalent to becoming a billionaire after years of poverty or healing after sickness.  After you’ve been abused, it feels like you’re permanently marked and there’s no place in your head where you’re all better. Maybe when you’re 95, you won’t remember when it happened. Or maybe you’ll find someone who understands your fears and holds you through the times when your memories attack you.  But while time and love do heal, they heal very slowly. Believe me when I say that there is a way to reclaim your life back. I know because it happened to me. It defined me and deformed me in so many ways that I can’t believe I made it out. Yet, miraculously, I did. I made it out of the abusive situation and I made it out of severe depression in the time that followed.

Why, then, am I saying that “my name is sexually abused”? Am I not defining myself by what happened? I have always defined myself by what happened and it has always put me in depression. Now, I’m defining myself by my mission.

The hard part with sexual abuse is that in the cases where it was not forced upon you, if you did not feel the need to please someone else it probably wouldn’t have happened. This is where the drama of the whole situation lies. You’re asking me now, “wait are you saying that it’s the victim’s fault?” No. Nor am I saying it’s 100% the attacker’s fault. I’m saying that whether the victim feels guilt that he or she put themselves in that situation or if they feel anger and vengeance toward their attacker, it IS powerlessness and it won’t help anyone. It’s my mission to eradicate powerlessness. My name is sexually abused because I want to make myself available to those who went through the same situation – to those who felt like the life was taken out of them because they were so hopeless before, and they are afraid because they could be that hopeless again. So I will wear the title and scream it to the world not because I was once weak but because I am now strong.

And you should be strong too.

Lesson #1: Life Has No Hypocrisy

When you slowly begin to dissolve into sangha, one of the biggest realizations you have is: you, by yourself, are pretty useless to society. I would say entirely useless except that you are good for one thing: pressing a share button once in a while and slowly becoming a channel for one person (or beyond-person, really) who can actually help society.

I suppose it sounds pretty life-negative but honestly, who are you trying to kid?

Literally a year ago, I was obsessed with my idea of helping people. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to help women who had been through what I had been through. I didn’t realize that this ideology is itself already flawed. Helping women who had been through what I been through never dissolved my victim identity that I was suffering with. In fact, it  was heightened. But let’s say this was fine. Say, I could swallow the pain I was holding on to for my work.  Even then, how many non-government, non-conservative organizations can a women make for other women without really helping at all?

Let’s look at this a little more deeply.

Many of us have our token charity that we like to ‘campaign’ for once a year. Some of us are full-time charity folk. Some of us don’t do charity at all.  That’s a separate issue.

But for those of us who are, have we asked ourselves the fundamental questions?  What are you doing for your charity? Volunteering time? Giving money? Where is your time or money going? Do you see it changing people’s lives visibly? Or is going into a system and is virtually gone into the abyss once it leaves your bank account?

If you can answer yes that you’ve actually seen your work change the lives of people  (I’m not even discussing the status or type of the other end), then you’re at least better than half the middle class population. Getting people on their feet is at least better than leaving them to suffer after all. But at the end of the day, where are we raising them to?

Are we giving them money for an education just so they can be fed back into an already flawed system? Most of the world (by world I mean the UN) runs on the assumption that education will help our kids. Education, where we already lack passionate, hard-working teachers and an examination process that teaches kids to fail. Is school really the answer?

Many of us who say yes are forgetting that while learning and passion is one thing the schooling system is tremendously different. India is facing the most number of youth suicides because of examination stress.  And if you quit the facade for just a second, you’ll remember that school was not so much of the golden days than they were days that you were highly stressed and grappling with the idea that this might be what life is like.

I’m not saying that charity is entirely not good- it at least comes from an inherent, deeply compassionate side of all of us who want to help each other. However, when instead of looking for a true solution, we go for something that only emboldens the screaming hypocrisies of society, charity just becomes something to make you feel like you did something while actually you’re perpetuating the problem.

Which brings me back to where I started: We, by ourselves, are useless.

What am I implying? Change society entirely, from the root up?

Yes.

That is what Swamiji is doing and that is why I joined His mission.

What I understood very quickly is that I couldn’t help people. Not how I am now- full of hypocrisy. If I tried to help people, they would think it’s ok to be like this. But no, it’s not. The true model of a being completely free of hypocrisy is Swamiji himself. He lives by one cognition: He is Sadashiva and his life is to manifest the whole humanity into Sadashiva. Other than that, you will see that no deceiving culture runs within him and he is more than willing to destroy any hypocrisy if at all it is there.

In the end, realize this one thing: conflict in your nature is what creates suffering. By conflict, I mean hypocrisy. You say one thing but mean another, most likely the exact opposite. You say you’re happy but actually you’re not. You say you just want him to be happy, but actually you don’t. This microcosm of conflict is exactly what goes on in the macro-scale. The corporation says all the money goes to cancer but it doesn’t. The TV says it’s on 4 installments of $19.99 but actually they didn’t include tax or the shipping costs.

Jokes aside, if you become aware, you will see these everywhere in society. When I went to university and was working on earning a degree in Gender, Women and Sexuality studies, I was horrified by how many layers of conflicts there actually were. It makes life seem so impossible and for some of us, we’re ok with that but that self-denying acceptance doesn’t last forever.

Hypocrisy, in this day and age, is the true devil. Last year, I couldn’t bare to be like that so I left and wanted to start over, creating myself with absolutely no overlapping threads at all. And while it is a struggle, at first, to nurture and grow without any deceiving  knots, it is a million times better than trying to convince myself that any job, relationship or education is going to make me happy in society.

I know, for sure, whether you’re ready to accept it or not, you want this too. When you say you are good to the 9 AM Starbucks barista, you actually want to mean it more than once or twice.

You can accept this now, or when you have wasted your life thirty years from now and you’re actually responsible for more people than one. Even that is ok if you actually accept this. Because it’s the truth.

And you know it.