stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

... TO A NUNNERY 345
In any case, with regard to him and the head monk
“helping” me to spend my own money for the ashram’s
good, I further suggested to the former that if money was
that tight for them, then the three of us should get together
and talk about the possibility of me loaning the ashram
several hundred dollars from my own meager savings, to be
repaid when I left.
Amazingly, the same weasel stopped me later that day,
to inform me that he and the head monk had discussed the
situation—again without me, of course!—and might just
ask me to provide a computer monitor instead! (I would
then take that heavy item back with me to Canada when I
left, according to their autocratic plans.)
All of that transpired while I was already providing
sixty hours a week of extremely efficiently done, professional-level
programming, in return for only a $30 U.S. per
month allowance.
(The required ashram work week was actually less
than thirty-five hours. I put in the extra time, in spite of
my immediate supervisor’s unsolicited discouraging of me
from doing that, simply because [i] I enjoyed the work, [ii] it
desperately needed to be done, and [iii] the sooner I completed
the training projects there, the sooner I could get the
hell away from that oppressive, micromanaging jackass.
Have you ever had someone literally looking over your
shoulder, for minutes/aeons at a time, while you were trying
to write code? Thanks to Hidden Valley, I have lived
that dysfunctional “Dilbert Zone.”)
In all fairness, though, the $30 allowance was still better
than average. By contrast, most ashrams—e.g., Radha’s
Yasodhara, Rama’s Himalayan International Institute,
Ananda and Findhorn—charge you significant amounts of
money (currently up to $300 per month, in HI’s case) for
the privilege of doing menial work for them in “karma
yoga” retreats, generally with shared accommodations.
(People living in Jetsunma’s and Rajneesh’s early ashrams
likewise supported themselves financially. That was in addition
to donating to the organization and paying for Rajneesh’s
encounter groups, etc.) One of the attractions that
many people feel toward SRF is exactly that it evinces less
of an explicit focus on money