s/o Duggars-Who joins a cult & why?

[Cammie]

BTW, the ISKCON temple here in Bangalore is one of the most beautiful temples I have ever been to - and so busy!

[DhanyaCali]

JUST told a friend about this, so forgive me for cut and pasting, didn;t wanna leave ya'll haning :)

 

  When Dasa was 10 months old and burnt his hand (3rd degree) on a woodstove, they A) refused to call 911, and drove us there instead, B) in the weeks following we took our receipts to them as usual for reimbursement ()we got paid no money but lives there for free, like I said Stava worked 13-14 hrs a day, mon-sun)/ They would reimburse receipts however. Anyways I had stopped doing my service to care for Dasa, he was in bad shape, his whole hand was in a bandage, had to be changed twice daily with silvadene, he was on tylenol codine, etc. So ANYWAYS when we went to get the receipts reimbursed for his bandages, the temple president asked us why we didn't get them from the hospital, he said they should be free at the hospitsal (like in his home country). He basically accused us of like, trying to swindle him, and wouldn't reimburse us for the damn bandages. At this point it is important to note that not only was I not doing my service (Stava was his) but i verbally advocating for a child gate around the woodstove. So basically they were like F you.

 

I was also wearing sweatpants/PJ pants instead of a sari or Gopi skirt. My whole life felt like it was falling apart if you can imagine., having my baby sustain such an injury was the worst thing I could imagine and I felt horrible guilt, and was barley making it day to day at that point. Mother Parijata, the temple president's wife, took me to the side and asked me that I please start wearing devotional clothes again, it wasn't proper for me to be in pants, sweatpants, around the temple property (which we lived on in).

 

I was told I needed devotee counseling, and mother counseling, and wife counseling. I was accused of not letting other people watch Dasa enough so that I could do more service.

 

My neighbor, a single mom of 4 kids, was touted as an example I should follow. I think I may have mentioned b4 that she would leave her ~15mo in their room asleep and then go off to do farm work? He would wake up alone and cry hysterically, ebating his fist againt the door of their room, wailing. I would go get him once we moved into that building, and when she would come back and hour or two later she would always be almost annoyed when she told me, "You don;t have to go get him." Stava told me to stop going to get the boy but I was like, "No, forget that, no way"

 

When THAT little boy fell down and broke both his legs, she waited a full day to take him to the hospital, and no one would tell us who was watching him when it happened (it was the temple president, they were worried we would blame him or something?) and anyways when she DID take him in, she came back and said that it was two clean breaks on both legs, and they said a cast wouldn;t be nesscary. She was really, REALLY annoyed because she said the nurses KEPT trying to and asking to give him tylenol, even though she kept adamantly refusing.

 

Dasa's hand and how they treated us was the last straw for living there, but we were still Hare Krishna's when we left a month or so after we left a guy I knew from an ISKCON youth bus tour was arrested during a pedophilia sting, we saw the video. OK, there are pedophiles in every church or group but ISKCON really was hush hush about it, tried to sweep it under the rug. Not OK. We found that he already HAD a record of sexually harassing minors etc. No one EVER told us this when we lived nearhim in FL!!! He gave out gotdang MRDANGA lessons to children of the community. I knew him from youth group, Stava knew him from campus, how freaking SCARY that we may have sent our kid to him for drum lessons??? All because of ISKCON's super hush hush hush no molestation's have happened since the 80's attitude about this. Sickening!

 

 http://www.theyogafarm.com/

 

that's the short of it anyways, hope it;s comprehensible, there was more deets and shady stuff, but you get the gist yes?

[Guest]

Dhanya Cali, it's very generous of you to share your story with us!

[DhanyaCali]

Dhanya Cali, it's very generous of you to share your story with us!

 

 

Thank you! We are at peace with what happened now, but we did have bitterness for a few years there!

 

Oh and I forgot to put on how.why we finally left for good! After we moved I just randomly started reading snippets of the Bible, and was like blown away by the Gospel chapters and Jesus's words in particular. But we were, you know, 10 years in, having both given the BEST years of our lives to ISKCON, every single non family member in our acquaintance for the past 10 years was a devotee!!

 

So the attraction to Christianity was there for some time, but we were unwilling to make the jump, even though we were VERY dissatisfied with the society.

 

Anyways, shortly after the birth of our second son, (during which we of course prayed ceaselessly to our deities (idols)) we arranged to have his funeral at the Methodist church that has been my 'family church' for 5 generations, even if no one really attends any more besides Great Grammy. So we sat up front for the sermon, and we were SO touched by the message of hope eventual reunion, God loving children etc etc. Hard to recall it all now, but we were like, we need to hear more of this preaching, and so we started attending the church, and spent the while nest year praying on it and reading th eBible before we made the "switch."

 

I want to again emphasize that we were reading the Bible and thinking of Christiany before we lost Shridam, I don;t want to be made into a one dimensional caricature of grief who made a rash emotion charged change post loss.

 

Have you ever heard the rascal flatts song, "God Bless the Broken road that lead me right to you?" DH and I can honestly say we are SO happy to be  christian now and would NOT have accepted Jesus and Christianity without our stint first in ISKCON.

[Okra]

I am so sorry you went through this.  Hugs.  

[LucyStoner]

I am so sorry for the death of your son Dhanya. Hugs to your whole family. Thanks for sharing so much of your story. I really appreciate it.

[FO4UR]

 

Anyways, shortly after the birth of our second son, 

 

I am so sorry.  He was a beautiful chunky little man.

 

It was hard to read his birth story. You are a very strong woman.

[DhanyaCali]

Thank you guys for taking the time to read our story and remember him. It means a lot to me, truly.

 

<3

[fraidycat]

I'm so sorry about your loss. :( Thank you for sharing him with us. :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

[idnib]

:grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:

[TranquilMind]

I do think it is more attractive to people with high ideals, who are attracted to the methodical. (I count myself as such a person.) I am a very practically-minded person, and I think there is (initially at least) a lot of appeal in someone telling you, "this is how you raise godly children! Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it!" If I had not grown up seeing families affected by ATI, I think it would have been easy for me to be pulled in by similar gurus (Pearls, Ezzo).

I don't know.  I think it is personality, and even perhaps age.  I'm a methodical and highly practical person as well.  I read the Ezzos and Pearl and pretty much every other known book out there when I had babies.  I had to do something during those nights up! 

 

At any rate, I have no difficulty picking out what works and dismissing the rest.  Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, as they say.  For example, the Ezzo, "Eat, Play, Sleep" order really does and did work for us, so I used it, instead of feeding babies and putting them down to sleep.  It made perfect sense, as I don't like to lie down immediately after filling up either.  We all needed good sleep, so why not try it?  Mine quickly fell into great sleeping patterns.  Why not use something that works?

 

It didn't make me join groups or be led by anyone in doing particular routines in rearing children.  That just doesn't happen here.  I trust my own judgment implicitly and my gut feeling about something has very rarely been wrong, but then I was a really old first-time mom, and maybe that makes a difference.  If I were 20, for example, I might have been more malleable. 

[TranquilMind]

Thank you! We are at peace with what happened now, but we did have bitterness for a few years there!

 

Oh and I forgot to put on how.why we finally left for good! After we moved I just randomly started reading snippets of the Bible, and was like blown away by the Gospel chapters and Jesus's words in particular. But we were, you know, 10 years in, having both given the BEST years of our lives to ISKCON, every single non family member in our acquaintance for the past 10 years was a devotee!!

 

So the attraction to Christianity was there for some time, but we were unwilling to make the jump, even though we were VERY dissatisfied with the society.

 

Anyways, shortly after the birth of our second son, (during which we of course prayed ceaselessly to our deities (idols)) we arranged to have his funeral at the Methodist church that has been my 'family church' for 5 generations, even if no one really attends any more besides Great Grammy. So we sat up front for the sermon, and we were SO touched by the message of hope eventual reunion, God loving children etc etc. Hard to recall it all now, but we were like, we need to hear more of this preaching, and so we started attending the church, and spent the while nest year praying on it and reading th eBible before we made the "switch."

 

I want to again emphasize that we were reading the Bible and thinking of Christiany before we lost Shridam, I don;t want to be made into a one dimensional caricature of grief who made a rash emotion charged change post loss.

 

Have you ever heard the rascal flatts song, "God Bless the Broken road that lead me right to you?" DH and I can honestly say we are SO happy to be  christian now and would NOT have accepted Jesus and Christianity without our stint first in ISKCON.

I'm so sorry about your son. 

 

He will be waiting up front at the gate to see you in heaven.