Where Has Satya Gone?
It isn’t the first time. When John Friend was finally ousted for his sexual shenanigans, it turned out that the strong people close to him had known about it for a while and . . . kept quiet? People didn’t know what Bikram was doing? Please. The list goes on . . . but this kind of sexual harrassement gets resolved in other industries where there are laws and supervisors, so people feel protected, feel that there is someone they can turn to.
We all saw this kind of behavior when we were kids, the sexually predatory teachers, the bullies, and the sickos who burned cats (we had one of those in our neighborhood), and those bullies always landed on the smaller, more insecure, among us. We were too afraid to say anything then because we were scared for ourselves.
It seems that we are still scared.
But we have found our tribe now as adults – stepped out of the mainstream – and are supposed to feel safe because we believe our structure is based upon a set of spiritual beliefs that are actually higher than the conventional moral codes that many live by.
We know these ethics are incredibly important, not just because we choose it a way that makes life a little better, kinder for all; but because our world is unregulated – anything goes – and we like that too. We find our True North from the inside, spelled out in the yamas and the niyamas.
So I am mystified and angry.
If we’re on a journey together, this means we should speak up; call each other to the table, and start the healing process. Shedding skin and moving towards transcendence. But it can’t happen when people don’t know how, and don't have the resources, to speak the truth of how they were abused, and that is exactly what keeps it going. We must deal with our own rotting center.
--Cynthia Kling
