I unfortunately saw this as an orthodox Christian as a teenager. I’m fine now but was diagnosed with major depression with psychotic characteristics, my priest told me it was the devil influencing me and I should even HIDE information from my therapist in case the devil hears it.
I am a Tibetan Buddhist tantra and Dzogchen practitioner, so I am a practitioner of guru yoga. My concern isn’t necessarily guru yoga itself, but how people idolize and blindly follow gurus like Chogyam Trungpa whose allegations of serious abuse are deemed credible and really horrific. A lot of this abuse is also perpetuated by the “crazy wisdom” tradition, which while might be valuable I view with skepticism, as does my guru who said his teacher never relied on any such methods. I feel there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance in parts of the western sangha, crazy wisdom is unconventional and the guru is higher than you so no matter what they do it’s just “you don’t understand it, so follow along and worship him like the Buddha”. But this is a severe distortion, a guru can’t get you to violate the dharma and many dharma masters have pointed out that once a guru abuses you the samaya link is broken. It’s also an issue because I’ve seen people complain that people in trying to heal their trauma speak out against the guru. Sorry this is a bit of a rant but it very much bothers me and it reminds me of the cultish attitude I experienced in the conservatives churches growing up where you were told to “sit down a shut up” with methods to silence questioning.
I was baptized into orthodoxy at 15 and have left. But the most disastrous thing for me in this church was the bs sexual ethics that ruined my entire teenage years with intense anxiety and depression. Moralizing sex that is consensual or pornography is so harmful and against everything we know in science/psychology. The shaming that you’re a sinner for having basic biological urges that are a necessity as a human being is just so odd to me and I hated myself for years because I understandably couldn’t control my sexual desires. The logic of this church is that you should feel repentant and sorry for a biology God gave you and that is so essential to being a human being your body will force you physically and psychologically to act upon it. I always see young people extremely depressed and anxious about it in the church unable to question it out of fear of sin and I was like this for years, but once I got an outsider perspective looking in after deconstruction it’s just all completely illogical. I have since become Tibetan buddhist and my teacher who is a monk said sex is a good thing and that there’s no shame in it which was a huge relief for me.
I have never been in ISKCON but know people who are and describe it as a harmful cult. I was wondering what people who used to be in ISKCON think of the western social media influencers, mostly women it looks like, who become monastics? I see this quite a bit and these people seem quite normal.
One thing I’ve noticed about Taoism in the west especially is that it really is divorced from its roots. I imagine there are multiple things to blame in this, watered down teachings from people like Alan Watts and new age philosophy that seems to want to secularize traditions. But Taoism in the west I’ve seen is just lazy, it has nothing of the authentic Chinese traditions and it seems to be a “do nothing and attain realizations”. There’s also the annoying phenomenon where you ask for advice and people are like “just go with the flow bro” which is a clear indicator they have no idea what they’re really talking about with the religion. In a tradition that has emphasized training with spiritual masters and if you aren’t doing that you’re usually visiting temples as a layman praying to deities it seems it runs the risk of appropriating an entire religion/culture. Is anyone else concerned about this? How many people try to truly engage with the religious culture as Taoists in the west beyond a superficial understanding of Laozi?