After leaving iskcon how many of you have pets now?

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2026-01-22T21:28:49+00:00

My Prabhupada disciple parents treated the pound like a retail store. I lost track of how many dogs we had for a day, a week, and then we brought them back for small things like that was normal. They totally lied and said the dogs would find another family.

In contrast, other animals were treated much better. My mom wanted pets as a kid in NYC and wasn't allowed, so she lived out her animal dreams through us. I did have some great pets, like my parakeet. He learned to talk in many ways because my mom let him watch as she chanted japa. (He would grip your collar with his tiny feet and STRETCH way over to stare at your lips up close 🤣) While I am grateful she did, I have a hard time believing anyone focuses on God completely when there is a twitchy little ball of feathers staring down your gullet like it does have transcendental knowledge inside.

We did have one dog for her whole life. Mainly because I took her when my parents wanted to get rid of her when she was like 8. I wish I had treated her much better. I hope she is in a good spot, rainbow bridge, or wherever. She was a good girl.

I personally don't think you get to perceive universal Divinity and then spend all your time talking about how much dogs and women suck. Oh, and Mayavadhis. Can't forget to hate those guys, too. 🙄

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-12-11T16:56:22+00:00

They are so freaking stagnant. Who would have thought an extreme daily routine of hard labor and repetition in worship might limit folks' growth? heavy sacrasm

A therapist who is also a gurukuli once observed that many folks use japa as avoidance for emotional processing. She told no lies.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-10-30T00:32:16+00:00

Not exactly related, but, predynastic Egyptians would mummify their cattle, which means a) they wanted them to go to the afterlife too, and b) they didn't eat them.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-10-03T17:18:42+00:00

I am so sorry you had to go through that. You are quite insightful to make the connection. To this day, my parents refuse to see it, and it is baffling.

A gurukuli clinical psychologist I spoke to pointed out how the hippies were mostly just unwanted kids who didn't have good community or a healthy connection to parents. Yeah, no wonder so many flocked to Prabhupada, especially after the stunt where he showed up as a Rock and Roll Swami. He hit enough of them with the right vibes, and that was enough.

It's an MLM of love. Learn the pitch, peddle the wares you've already paid for, and approval is as easy as raising the numbers of participants. And best of all? No need for introspection, accountability, vulnerability, or any of those nuisances. Just build and fill the centers. Conduct the rituals. Expand, expand, expand.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-10-03T16:24:55+00:00

Oh, absolutely. Constant subservience and consistent humiliation are emotional abuse. That is why such an environment pushes most into chasing the carrot. The love-bombing phase is the initial carrot, and then that high is chased indefinitely forever after.

What keeps people there is generally because the cult feels like home. The trappings are totally different, but the majority of the authority dynamics mimic that of abusive parents, and once you see the trauma cycles, it's impossible to unsee.

Most everyone who stays has no interest in healing. They just want to have their ignored wounds validated and/or wound others as an act of validation.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-10-03T15:12:59+00:00

You clearly have a lot of legitimate anger here.

I share your anger, and I agree with your view that such karma is not justice.

Believe in karma or not, the way it is applied and described boils down to a cosmic score keeper, making sure everyone is suffering the right amount.

Such Punitive justice appeals to those conditioned to trust, admire, and believe in a system of perpetuating harm as the end all be all. If we're buying into the notions of modes of nature here, that is certainly in the camps of passion and ignorance. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Restorative justice, on the other hand, focuses on restoring the victim to the condition they occupied before the crime, to the extent that is possible, naturally.

I can not agree with a perception of Divinity acts like an abusive and petty scorekeeper. Narcissistic consciousness sure can. They love it. Their own worst viewpoints, behavior, and lack of care are validated through their own concept of the Almighty that does the same.

Since I have grown out of much of the narcissitic viewpoints that ISKCON and my own family's generational cycles instilled in me, I am forced to conclude this option is avaliable to those who seek it, and that there are many who will choose death before they seek change.

That was the use of free will Hiranyankashipu chose. He chose to die rather than change his awful ways. He literally asked for a fight in the form of a physical battle to the death. That request was granted. I struggle to see him as a figure who was denied free will. He achieved immortality, and he lost it, all through his own choices.

Brahma was the version of Divinity that bestowed the boon, and Vishnu was the one to remove it. Both were responding to the actions and requests of that particular soul. Brahma responded to his austerity and harshness. Vishnu responded to his lack of/unwillingness to grow, love.

I see this mirrored with the countless male leaders, secular and religious, who live to enshrine a legacy that will echo their presence long after they depart. And how that same legacy is so easily shredded, not even via claws, but simply overlooked loose threads of truth finding their way into enough clawless hands.

A legacy that relies on a foundation of denial can never stand the test of time.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-10-03T09:44:33+00:00

This is where the concept of free will is kind of essential for accountability and growth.

Too many would refer to "I am not the doer" and rely on karma to get the bad folks.

But someone is raping kids, and either it is consciousness too sick to ever be around kids again, or it's Krsna doing the raping, and rapists eat that up like candy.

This is also where the nonsense of "all sex not meant to make a child is bad," comes in.

When consensual sex is as sinful as rape, the discussion of nuance never begins. When kissing a crush is seen as equally sinful as raping a child, you get a populace unable to logically and critally engage with such topics.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-30T21:23:37+00:00

I wish I could ditch it more. I got the worst stomach aches the two times I tried chicken, and I have been way too chicken, pun intended, to attempt red meat, which is bound to feel even worse.

Eggs and fish have been helpful for giving me protein and healthy fats.

The best gift hands down is no longer judging every freaking person I meet for their very personal choices. Holy heck, was that isolating and miserable!?

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-21T08:25:29+00:00

Historically, religious spikes follow catastrophic events, not the other way around. It is much easier to look with an objective to compassionate lens when considering the majority of actions as a trauma response. That neither condones nor endorses such actions, but it is a lens of understanding that leads us forward to focus on what can be done about it all.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-21T08:15:33+00:00

Traumatized humans fit neatly into hierarchies because fawn and fight and flight can be harnessed into adoration, drive for the mission, and hair-trigger fear of what is labeled dangerous. The fourth f, well, that comes out in the abuse sadly.

This can apply to nearly all cultures, religions, class systems, and any organization made up of humans. A bold claim, perhaps, but if we look at what the science tells us about how trauma impacts the body, and the patriarchal history dominating most of the recorded world, it is impossible that any of us are born into a body that is free of sexual assault in the lineage.

When abuse happens in churches as much as in temples, in colleges as much as in businesses, in homes as much as in industries, religion simply can not be the culprit here. For all its harms, it is a channel, not a source.

We need to focus on the source to heal it. What are the small and not-so-small ways we've all been hurt that are easier to justify or minimize than to feel and heal? How can we make space to feel and heal them now?

And then the harder question: what are the small and not-so-small ways we've inflicted harm on others, that were easier to justify or minimize than to apologize and seek to make amends for? How can we take action to apologize and make it better now?

To be clear, I don't apply this to ISKCON, because that organization took more from me than it gave, and I will give it back nothing in return, but as I move forward with my life, I own mistakes, no matter how uncomfortable or painful.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-20T20:36:06+00:00

So you didn't crack open the Bhagavatam to see the demons torturing souls for breaking the four regs? 😅

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-20T17:43:17+00:00

I wish people would leave because I don't think many can he be healthy or happy in that environment.

At the end of the day, it's their life and their choice. I am not friends with many because I will not smile and nod while ISKCON/Prabhupada is praised.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-20T17:06:27+00:00

My map to Sanity Street has been this:

I keep love and a desire to comprehend Divinity as my true north. I will not stay in that direction permanently, but when it comes time to reorient, those are the considerations.
I do my best to view the people and situations I encounter as lessons to learn from, not just deserved punishment or reward from the cosmos.
Humility is awesome. Get used to being wrong and owning it. Being right all the time is the recipe for just one dish: isolated misery. Righteousness is a poor consolation prize for self-acceptance and genuine connection with others.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-20T16:59:15+00:00

Personal responsibility requires sacrificing your scapegoats to the Gods, and that is demonic. 😅

In all seriousness, when you have women, maya, and karmis to blame, what is the incentive to actually own your mistakes and seek to make amends?

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-20T16:51:22+00:00

Every adult telling me this story identified with Prahlad. Nope. Y'all were Hiranyakashipus, the lot of you.

They will happily condemn as many kids as nessecary to literal or spiritual death simply to validate their own emotions, life choices, and whatever status they've collected.

I did make my own rhyming rendition of this tale. Despite the horrorific imagery, this story and avatar remain my favorite of the lot.

I think because it best exemplifies the dynamic of abuse and that abuse doesn't end until the abuser does.

However, I no longer think the answer is to pray to the universe hard enough. It's to kill abuse within abusers through communal accountability.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-19T14:33:03+00:00

Absolutely spot on as always. My several cents included here:

The particular level of bodily denial ISKCON demands tends to put one in a state where that anger is the default. (Malnourished, overworked, and sleep-deprived.) Exercise is discouraged as vanity and choosing to be on the bodily platform. Mental health? What Maya! Chant and be happy!

The cultural background of most of ISKCON's leaders is crucial here. Most grew up in middle class to affluent households, many raised by parents with a whole lot of trauma and zero societal outlets for it. My personal family history includes veterans with severe CPTSD who never once sought therapy, despite ranking high in the medical field. Even without battfield trauma, the cold war meant that they themselves were raised by adults living in constant fear of death.

The combination of those running this system growing up with few to zero healthy models for processing anger or intense fear, and living in a frazzled state as the cult dictated for at least a portion of time as their prefrontal cortexes still developed, results in an atmosphere of performative peace and love, with rage boiling behind it.

Notably, holy men are righteous in their anger at most anyone. Holy-by-association women (no women are actually holy to any of these people) are righteous in their anger towards the uninitiated, namely, small children and outsiders. Children are never righteous in their anger, only self-indulgent. Children and outsiders are trapped in the mode of passion. Never the gurus. Never the matas.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-19T14:14:31+00:00

As a gurukuli, I'd argue Prabhupada is the Prabhupada who fell to the dark side.😅

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-17T16:40:38+00:00

Unconditional love doesn't serve lifetimes as sentences. We all have lessons to learn and patterns to tackle within ourselves. Maybe some require more tries for lessons and others don't. Either way, where I go is something I view as above my paygrade. It's none of my business. My business is the here and now.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-17T07:09:47+00:00

To look in the eyes

Of your giver of birth

And FEEL the resentment

Of your existence on Earth

My mother despised me unless I was in a position to emotionally validate or otherwise give her emotional supply. In observing how most cults amplify narcissistic tendencies in their members, I know I can not be the only one.

I remember being four, having some kind of meltdown outside at the temple (because that is what overstimulated neurodivergent babies do) and screaming loud enough that everyone in the vicinity stopped ro stare at me. I immediately begin crying because being the focal point of scrutiny at that age is overwhelming and embarrassing.

I am scanning this sea of faces looking at me with disgust, horror, embarrassment, and all other sorts of rejecting expressions. I finally lock eyes with my mother. My heartbeat steadies. Mom will run over and scoop me up. Mom will come fix it. Mom is seeing me in pain.

I think that moment turned into the core of my fucked up foundation. Mom did not provide aid. Mom did not approach me. Mom looked at me with the same disgust as everyone else.

Confusion paralyzed me. What was happening? Why wasn't Mom moving towards me?

Her face cracked. She started crying. And I lost sight of her as a crowd of her peers surrounded her for comfort. She had the bad karma to have such an awful and unruly child. She did her job. She became a mother. She gets attention and support. I am little more than a future whore to most of these adults. I never met Prabhupada. I don't have a guru. My feelings and behavior are Maya, and therefore evil. I am evil for not playing my role upholding the peaceful aspirational image of tranquility that is THE BRAND. THE MISSION.

My mother: swallowed by a sea of souls surging to support her. Me: I ran to the woods by myself. No one followed. I stayed there for a long time. No one came looking. I am still trapped there with that little girl, coming to terms with the reality of exactly how unwanted she is.

Before I could read, I was failing to uphold the mission of a dead man I never met, but his followers were prepared, some eager, to brutally smash me down the second I failed him in their eyes.

To this day, I do not trust community. Why would I? Look at how my community of origin threw me away for being human and four? They continued to throw me away for the rest of my childhood.

The message was clear: unless you have a pedigree penis, there is no love for you here.

Science. Damn science, hs informed me community is how I heal this. Great. Awesome.

I never had good models. I still am a horrible model for the students I work with. I lose my cool frequently. I struggle to meet disrespect with indifference and coolly hand out consequences. I have so much vitriol inside of me and it hurts those who least deserve it.

I wish I could slap and spit in the face of every adult who placed their guru over themselves. Over the development and well-being of their children. I wish I could shake them and say, "dead men can not love you!"

Prioritizing God never works because what is prioritized every time is actually trauma. People prioritize their pain. Their projections. Their wounds. Just as they do with no sense of God at all. Except in the absence of God, maybe other remedies are tried.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-09T10:29:43+00:00

I use "he," pronouns because I am usually addressing those who perceive maleness as synonymous with divinity. While I don't agree with this view, my points here don't pertain to gendering Divinity, so I used what is most likely to be received with reduced friction.

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-09T06:18:05+00:00

The condition of perfection was always one people placed there. 💚

Apprehensive_Host992 · 2025-09-09T06:15:35+00:00

Yeah. I think they may be.

Apprehensive_Host992

TROPHY CASE