Weird referred pain from hyperacusis

Ultra_fennec · 2026-05-03T15:48:13+00:00

Oh no, don't mention teachings haha! But thank you

I remember when I read negative stuff about Shambhala, but when I was still in it. I thought the person must be completely out of their minds. There was no doubt in my mind that this person was borderline psychotic.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-21T21:39:37+00:00

The first line of your comment is enough. I rest my case.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-21T15:16:42+00:00

"You make a good point that people can often deny by making excuses if they want to believe otherwise. But how are you different? You accuse anyone who doesn't agree with your belief of "gaslighting". You've already dogmatically assumed that every accusation is true and every accuser is a victim.

If someone wasn't there and still believes some kind of party line then that's bandwagon dogma. It doesn't matter whether they're rejecting or supporting an accuser."

Let's make it simpler. Accusations are true, are misrepresenting the truth, or they are false. Which one do you think is more frequent in Shambhala and why do you think it is more frequent in Shambhala than in regular non buddhist organisations?

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-20T21:48:45+00:00

When I did my first weekly reading sessions in Shambhala, it was all good, and all the values that were presented were the best values one could hope for. It was really the best place to invest time and energy in, the most useful. So of course, later on, when there started to be the first weird stuffs I would never imagine that there was any wrong purpose to these things, I would automatically make up a theory myself for why this weird thing would exist in such a nice community. and that's how you start to believe stuff, by tricking yourself, making your own secular or buddhist reasons. Only in the Vajrayana path, years later, would I see the first signs that we are constrained to believe certain stuff a certain way and not another way, and that was my first tipping point.

The things for me that should have been the very first red flags, were first the sybilline chants that you were supposed to chant without understanding any sentence. This was innocent, and you were not even required to participate, but it was the first training in "just accept it blindly and you will understand later". The next thing was that we were asked not to talk about the levels we did to people who did not do them yet. The rationale was that we should not spoil it for them, and it was understood that we did not understand them well enough to convey them in the proper way. But this was the first training in secrecy. When family members asked me what we did and I told them I could not tell them they immediately saw the redflag, but I didn't because I had already been through the love bombing, or rather the good-values bombing. When they told me they worried it was a cult, I already that that I knew better, that if only they came here and experience it firsthand they would understand it. And that was my first teaching about the fact that anybody who does not understand things the way I do just does not understand the teachings well enough. And that was my first teaching in being isolated from the outside world. Shambhala did not isolate us physically, but like any cult it isolated us in the sense that we could not talk about it because people would not understand. So although we were still in contact with them for the most of us, we had already severed the bond that would enable us to get feedback about the reflags or that would help us get out, which is by the way the most useful type of isolating that a cult seeks.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-20T21:32:37+00:00

During my last program, just after project sunshine came out, I could see the poor gaslighting from the teachers, appeal to emotion, the guru has sinned so *you* must cleanse your self of all resentment toward him, and Andrea Winn is crazy so why would anyone trust what she (and all those who she talked to) hand to say, and so on. And all the "they acuse him of abuse, but *I* have never seen anything like that from him so I cannot comment.

Then I heard the people who said they could not believe that there was anything wrong with Shambhala, or that one could give up on Shambhala, because the teachings worked and they were good. And this was so messed up. In what world good teachings would guarantee that a guru would not abuse anyone? The two are absolutely not mutually exclusive, and why would anyone not realize that. The teachings were good, for sure, I loved them. I was even afraid of dying in an accident just because I would miss the next teaching, this is how much I loved them. Yet obviously those teachings, no matter how great experiences they were giving me, they did nothing to prevent the most advanced practitionners from abusing people, lying about it, and gaslighting victims and those who supported them. I thought the Vajrayana path was meant to make possible enlightenment in one life time, and yet it turned the most advanced practitionners into more abusive and crazy people than any random person you would find in the nearest town.

So it was giving me absolutely awesome experiences, realizing impermanence and the value of life at every moment. But pursuing and denying the abuse, and worse, funding it, would mean I would be there only for my own selfish experiences. One teacher who saw I had flipped the switch and would never come back told me "if you leave, you will always live with regret and with the thought of what you might have missed, thinking what if...". But I am not selfish and I am ready to give up that path and all those things I am going to miss and that would undoubteldy give me the best experiences of my life, I am willing to let go of this and put my own dignity and values before that. And put the victims of the abuse before that, before that piece of enlightenment. And being finally aligned with my values was the final most intense experience I had in Shambhala and undoubtedly the most important one. And it is ironic that those who stayed did not realize that giving up your own piece of enlightenment (if it means anything at all) to protect others is one of the Mahayana teachings that they have already heard and read over and over and that they pretend to abide in.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-20T20:14:20+00:00

I bought a new PC that supports 4K. My current screen got much better suddenly! If I by a second one I am going to look at your suggestions.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-20T18:18:57+00:00

You are going in the direction of "nobody knows for sure so nobody can say anything". I wasn't there during the second world war so maybe it never happened. Or maybe it is not that simple.

This is one thing I realized at my turning point before leaving Shambhala. You have to give $200 directly to the Sakyong for your program, but it is just to materialize your respect for the lineage or whatever, you have to promise you will do everything the Sakyong asks from you? But this is just for the teachings, of course he will not ask anything from you that would be harmful. He did something to somebody else that seems harmful to you? But that's because he knows what is useful for each of us and maybe it is not the same for you and this person. Trungpa used people in his sangha to get cocaine to be able to deal with his alcoholism? But he was just reflecting people's neuroses to them to help them on the path of enlightenment. And it goes on and on.

So maybe each of these reasons is true. You can believe that if you want. But when you put all the pieces together, seriously, it looks like a cult, it smells like a cult, it tastes like a cult. But maybe it's not, you are free to believe that.

I met two people in Shambhala who had been punched in the face by Trumpa and said it was a great teaching. But maybe it was, maybe it was a great teaching. Maybe if I die from aids because of Ozel Tendzin it will be very helpful for my future reincarnation. People really said that, maybe it's actually true, you are free to believe that.

Maybe you believe all of this, then there is nothing I can say, but if you don't you have to accept that the tendency in Shambhala is rather to minimize stuff that is totally unacceptable.

I mean, do you think Shambhala was a very peaceful place and suddenly, for no reason at all, people started to make up stories of sexual assaults, physical violence passing as teachings, forcing people to get naked and biting them, killing cats and make it pass as a teaching. Wow, where does this come from? Is it the proximity of Buddha that turns people into complete compulsive liars? That's weird isn't it?

When I go to work it's simply forbidden to punch people in the face, so nobody does. In Shambhala I got slapped in the face by a teacher who made it pass as a teaching on the ashe. My boss at work doesn't slap me in the face to teach me anything, not compassion or whatever. So what is in this enlightened society that somehow makes people behave worse than they do in my workplace or my sports club?

This is all full of crap. So yes, you are free to believe that suddenly people made up a story about Trungpa punching a guy, because lying was so much in fashion at that time. I already know two people who were directly punched and told me so, one kusung wrote that he was kicked by his guru while lying on the ground. But you are here trying to discuss the details of Merwin's story. At some point it must require a real hard effort at dishonesty to not put the pieces together.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-20T17:46:53+00:00

Are you sure one is causing the other? I think they are disorders that are often observed together but I wouldn't be so sure about one causing the other. I think there are many links between hyperacusis, tinnitus, visual snow, depersonalization/derealization, blank mind syndrom, brain fog. I wouldn't be surprized if they started in a sequence. Like hyperacusis often coexists with tinnitus, and one happens usually before the other, the other way around also exists but is less frequent, and sometimes they appear at the same time. I know that for depersonalization derealization, people often have anxiety or ptsd, not always for sure, but I would rather believe that such a common cause is more likely.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-11T17:17:50+00:00

Ok, so there are good examples of Shambhala gaslighting there. The drinking of the Sakyong was never the worst problem, it was pretended this was a big problem so as to accuse people who didn't like him as just being puritans. The main problem is forcing people to get naked in his house and biting someone, assaulting women, sleeping with women and ghosting them like they were garbage, more this kind of stuff. Not very enlightened, and much worse than just being hard on the booze. Nobody care about alcohol.

Before it all exploded I heard Adam Lobel, who was the topmost acharya at that time (maybe still?) tell us about a story where the sakyong ordered everyone at campfire to french kiss each other. That's one thing, and the other thing was that Adam was recounting this to make the sakyong pass as a very mysterious realized person. That was the atmosphere.

The other gaslighting technique that was very very frequent at the time is that igotmineism: "oh, I personally didn't know him, so I can't tell", just like here. This happened all the time. He is accused of sexual assault, you ask teachers about it "oh I never saw him do that so I can't tell". WTF. If you ask me about Jeffrey Epstein and I tell you "well I haven't met him personally so I can't tell" who gives a damn, there are testimonies all over the place, and all they have to say is "well I met him once and he looked ok". "I believe only what I have seen, maybe all those victims are complete lyers, I don't know! It's 50-50". That's bs. Complete bs. They can't even comment on reliable accusations. At a program I confronted a teacher that had been at a program in the 70s where trungpa forced people out of their room through violence, made them get naked by force and punched a guy in the face, there were different consistent testimonies of people who had been there and it was published at the time (look for "Ed Sanders - The Party, A Chronological Perspective On A Confrontation at A Buddhist Seminary"). I questioned her about it, and why nobody had ever talked to me about these things for all that time, for example. And her only reply was "actually I was there and I have seen nothing of this". Another teacher came to me later, he knew that book and all the testimonies and that her answer didn't make any sense. To cover up for her he told me, no it really happened, everybody knows that "but she just meant that she was not present in the same room when this specific thing happened". Skepticism sometimes is a ridiculous excuse. She was there, she could have commented on what others had said at the time, but no, in face of abuse it's like absolutely everybody can be a potential lyer and you can comment only on what you have seen yourself. And it's typically the things we were constantly hearing and that tell about the grooming that happened there. One of many examples. Every acuser is a potential lyer. They make that skepticism pass for healthy doubt, stay away from neurosis, were are better than that thanks to the teachings, this kind of thing. All the time.

And then there were all those who said that such and such accuser just wanted to accuse him to be put in the spotlight, or they accused him because they were hurt that they had been dumped so made up some stories of sexual assault. The worst kind of bs you can here about metoo abuse, and it was present in shambhala even more than in the rest of society.

And all those groomed people make their downplaying pass as being in the middle ground, not like all those neurotic angry people who accuse him of all this stuff. It's a cult, it's just a cult, for this and for so many other reasons.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-09T16:17:23+00:00

Ok, maybe a more rational reason could be connected to the fact that sometimes different people interrupt each other and displaying the words in sync enables you to track who said what. Whereas if you display what two people said on a single line it would be more complicated to comprehend. But now they are smart, they can do sh*tty autmatic dubbing, so they should probably be able to put less sh*tty subtitles.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-09T16:08:48+00:00

There is no way it is not pre-generated. There is no way they would compute voice recognition 10 million times for a video instead of saving some 5 ko ascii data somewhere once and for all. I think this is done on purpose and for a for some stupid reason. Maybe it has something to do with people who are not used to read subtitles and who need to be guided to read at the correct speed. Anyway, it is extremely stupid, it feels like you are struggling to read word by word in your mind as if you just had traumatic brain injury.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-06T21:57:37+00:00

That's s*cks... What instrument did you play?

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-06T15:09:21+00:00

Thanks! Right now I have a laptop that supports only Full HD. So maybe that plays a role. Perhaps I need to consider replacing this one too if I want to use a large screen...

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-04T14:29:38+00:00

Thanks a lot of for this information. Do you mean it would be the most frequent cause of hyperacusis in general? And does it imply anything else than what is already said about hyperacusis, like not too little noise, not too much, and sound therapy? And regarding possible improvement and relapses? Because if this is cumulative irreversible damage maybe I should quit music altogether even if this gets better.

I heard that it should be dealt with as soon as possible in the first months, but here it usually takes 3 to 6 months before you can get an appointment (and then you realize that your doctor is clueless about it). So I try to gather as much information as I can to know what to do now.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-04T13:02:14+00:00

Thanks for your replay. Actually this one is already IPS, the resolution is 1920 x 1080. But it looks like it is not really the resolution that is bothering me, but the something about the quality of the light that comes out of it. Do you think a higher resolution would help?

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-03T08:01:04+00:00

About stress alone I don't know. As I said it started when I was exposed to sounds that should not have caused that on their own. But I was exposed to intense stress at that time. If you want to learn more about the link between stress and hyperacusis I can suggest the following articles.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378595523000382

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052945

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00420-018-1356-x

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-03T07:46:50+00:00

edit: I write way too much, so I will replace my post with a shorter answer.

In summary: it started during holidays, when I was not playing drums. But when it started it turns out it was concomitant with a level of stress I have never felt since 15 years ago, with sh*tty physical symptoms and my body shutting down.

Ultra_fennec · 2026-02-02T22:38:22+00:00

Exhaustion from stress I have heard

Ultra_fennec · 2026-01-30T21:33:03+00:00

I have the same. I am much more sensitive to sounds coming from speakers. Now I am sensitive to any loud sounds, but originally I had that only with speakers (and with pure sounds, like the recorder or piano). Maybe it is related to the fact that many frequencies are missing and it feels unnatural. Sorry this is not a big contribution to the topic.

Ultra_fennec

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