Mother, I Won't Be Back.

I was excited about the prospect of attending meditation classes that were free and within walking distance of my home.

The classes were held at  a local community centre, in a room that was half the size of a school classroom.  At the front of the room was a TV and DVD player. Next to them was an 'altar' -i.e a small wooden table. covered with a white tablecloth, a white candle (lit) and picture of the woman who had founded this particular type of meditation that we would be learning and doing. And there was a whiteboard with a drawing of a body with all the chakras marked out.

The instructor was an eager,enthusiastic, energetic, lively, and likable middle-aged Vietnamese woman who spoke English fluently and eloquently.

This was my first ever meditation class but I had meditated before. I am self taught via books, CDs, the 'net.
But this type of meditation was a bit different. A lot different actually. The instructor had told us about the woman who had founded it. She was a member of an Indian royal family and had no need of money' so, she decided to provide her knowledge and teachings for free. 'All good',  I guessed.

And then the instructor began the first lesson (of which I'm giving a potted account.) Basically, we had to sit in our chairs and put our hands on specific part of our (own) bodies and recite various  affirmations, questions, and requests. For example, place hand on heart: "Mother, am I not my own master"? Place on rib cage: "Mother, I am not guilty". Put hand on back of neck: "Mother, forgive me".

My sister, her partner. and my brother were in the class with  me. My brother is a logical pragmatist, so he pointed out the contradiction between claiming that one is 'not guilty' and asking for 'forgiveness'. To which the sprouted some anti-intellectual mumbo jumbo about not over thinking things -which set off alarm bells for me.

She then put on a DVD of the founder doing the same exercises that we had done in front of a large audience and then discussing the latest phenomena confronting the UK 'punk rock'.

Oh  yeah, after the exercises we had to put our hand above our heads and report whether of not we felt either a cool or warm breeze coming up from the top our skulls. That would indicate that the exercises had opened up are chakras and that out kundalinis  had been awakened.  Nobody experienced it. ONE GUY said that he did. But he later admitted that he had been bullshitting/
"I felt sorry for her, so I said I could feel the breeze". he said.

The fact that she expected our chakras and kundalinis to be opening up after only one lesson was another alarm bell. Don't Buddhist monks have to meditate for years before stuff like that happens to them?

The biggest alarm bell, red flag was all the 'Mother' stuff. At first I thought it may have been referring to 'Mother Nature' but more and more it became apparent that the founder was 'mother' -i.e a human being escalated to a deity. Nope. Not for me thank you.

But I decided to give it one one more go and came back the next week. I was the first one there. During the course of our chat, the instructor asked me if I had any ailments. I said that I had some mouth ulcers. She told me to get a photo of 'mother' and place a 1 litre bottle of water next to it over night and that mother's positive energies would purify the water and if I drank it the next morning, my mouth ulcers would be cured.

"That sounds great"! I said ( "Mother, I won't be back!" I thought")

So I  stopped going. I did feel a bit sorry for instructor. She was a likable lady. But t said I really didn't like the way the 'founder' was being held up as some sort of divine spirit.