I had the great privilege of spending the bulk of my early adult years in northern Minnesota. And let me say, after 30 some years I do believe these people may just have a cult love for winter. But it’s a true God believing place, because the cold will take the breath from your lungs. We all love God screaming, Oh my God, multiple times a day during dark cold winter. Yup, a cult!

I started my “spiritual” walk in southern Florida based on a foundation of Christianity, greatly dissatisfied by the narrow-minded interpretation offered by the white elders. You know, teaching of the judgmental God and the team of earthly judges dressed up as fathers, brothers, preacher, teacher, husband, that we were suppose to look up to and follow. It was a foundation any smart and loud mouth girl would run from. I did and right into the doors of what ever institution offered me safety in my new “better” beliefs.

Enter new age churches with beaded doorways and incensed filled lecture halls, candles everywhere. I thought I was in heaven. They taught all manner of cool classes and I went to them all. And then you meet the leader/preacher and find it’s a loose word. The one in charge either had the money, had control of the money, or were having sex with the money. Thus began the art of manifesting my desires and co-creating with source along with donations made to the church of your source. Or get ready for the phone calls.”Your tithe is late.” Being bull headed and poor made this an easy dive away from.

This cult tried but they couldn’t do it,

Ugg and what’s next…

Enter Yoga…American style.

I learned yoga from a book first. I needed yoga because by my 30’s, my body was beginning to signal more pain than joy. Postures and breathing yeah, Yoga! And then Yoga got cool when I learned about Kundalini Yoga and chanting. I loved chanting. With a foundation in new age speak I was gloriously happy with this Yoga and my innate need for ritual was filled up by a 2 1/2 hour daily yoga practice at 3:30AM. I AM A YOGI PEOPLE, she said following someone else’s path. And it helped.

And this guy called himself a yogi and his “followers” called him a Guru, and was one and would have stayed one had I never set eyes on him.

I loved his writings and really loved his voice, it was powerful and sure. I was in Northern Minnesota and no way to have close contact with the organization, back in the day it was all mail and phone calls, on a wall mounted phone…But I tried my best, good student that I am, he’s my teacher I would declare, Yogi Bahjan said this, Yogi Bahjan said that…My God it’s embarrassing now! But I did it, hook line and sinker.

But like I said being so far away he could stay the big man and I could work with the teachings as I saw fit in Northern Minnesota. I was teaching spirituality and closeness with the Divine I was teaching what I thought of as a spiritual form of Yoga. I didn’t worship guy…I was too far way and surrounded by Lutherans, it would not have profited me, might as well said I was a witch.

When word got out that guy might be a liar and a thief and much worse, I was aghast at myself, why hadn’t I said more when I saw him that summer. The first time I met him was at training. At first, he taught at night and we learned during the day, but on this day we were able to pay extra to SEE him. UGG, the horror! He was surrounded by girls, one on each hand, foot and one by his head. It was a disgusting display, as it was in front of a line of us students trying so hard to get 5 minutes with our great spiritual leader, yay he’s busy, you know busy with girls.

Distracted and not wanting to be there he was belligerent and disrespectful. He yelled at the reformed drug addict behind me for tattoos, he told ego girl to pray more (I loved that one) he told me I think to much, which means he said nothing to me, as my disgust was so loud to be noticeable, by the time my group excited the circus side show we were badly disillusioned and the entire organization began to smell bad.

We would sit for hours and wait in cold rooms, waiting for HIM to arrive, late as usual and then the bowing and touching his feet shit, where the Hell am I? Is this America? Do we bow here? I don’t!

Because I don’t bow, I was born a bitch and poor, I was nobody which helped keep the worse cult behavior away from me. Thank God. But later Yogi Bhajan’s name would become a verb, He Yogi Bhajaned me. This meant the teacher used you up, took your money, your position, your virginity in all forms, your word, your hopes and dreams, taken and used, not replenished nor grateful, the team would get rid of the student who now seen as a problem. You were either team YB or you weren’t, and that was a problem amongst the group trying to keep thousands of students who would come in for trainings spending thousands of dollars, it became one gigantic ego competition.

And there I was, MS Naive Northern Minnesota. Far enough away but somehow my lesson had not been learned. A near miss until the need for someone to tell me became stronger as my life became harder, I needed help and where do you go for help but a spiritual master, a true spiritual master…