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- [00:00]
Wondery Announcer
Wonder plus subscribers can listen to exclusive episodes of this Is Actually Happening by joining Wonder in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [00:10]
Sponsor Voice
This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific.
- [00:16]
Wit Misseldine
Content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.
- [00:26]
Narrator/Host
Hi listeners, Today's Storyteller speaks about growing up in Rajneeshpuram, which was the center of the religious Rajneesh movement in the early 1980s and today is widely considered.
- [00:37]
Wit Misseldine
To be a cult.
- [00:38]
Narrator/Host
The cult attracted thousands of followers that began as an intentional community centered on meditation and spiritual liberation, but over time it devolved as outside community conflicts escalated and nefarious activities surfaced, including widespread sexual abuse, arson, attempted murder, and bioterrorism. AR Our Storyteller today touches on only a few aspects of this cult from her perspective as a child, but the activities of the cult were extensively detailed in the phenomenal 2018 Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. So if you haven't already, please check out that documentary series if you want to learn more. And if you'd like to read more about the Rajneeshis, we've also put some pertinent links in the show notes. And now on to today's episode what if you had a spontaneous awakening?
- [01:27]
Storyteller
My eyesight was like brand new. I could see details in every little thing, like the trees. I could see them breathing. I could see them talking to each other. I felt this whole new level of understanding that we were all connected.
- [01:56]
Wit Misseldine
From Wondery, I'm Wit Misseldine, you're listening to this is actually happening.
- [02:06]
Narrator/Host
Episode 380. What if you had a spontaneous awakening?
- [02:14]
Storyteller
What if?
- [02:20]
Greenlight Advertiser
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- [02:52]
Nick Cannon
Your man, Nick Cannon, and I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon At Night. Every week, I'm bringing out some of my celebrity friends and the best experts in the business to answer your most intimate relationship questions. So don't be shy, join the conversation, and head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at Night or subscribe on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.
- [03:27]
Storyteller
My Parents, when you look at them individually, you cannot imagine they were ever a good match. My father was from the province of Quebec, and he grew up in a very modest family. His father died when he was 16. He had a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. One of his sisters was two weeks old. But he was determined to, like, do something amazing with his life. So he joined the Air Force. He ended up traveling to the province of Ontario in Canada, and that's where he met my mother. Beautiful family, upper middle class. She was studying to be a X ray technician. They were like 22, 23, and they met in a bar. And so my dad spoke a little bit of English, my mom spoke no French. And they fell in love. And soon after my mom was pregnant, my father went out of the Air Force and started working in air traffic control. He was asked to, like, move from one place to another, like, very, very frequently. Sometimes like twice in a year. We would never stay in the same place very long. But I'm super happy. Like, I'm a happy kid. My mom is everything to me. Like, she's. She's a great mom. She takes me everywhere. She's just very, very present. So I'm six years old. I'm sitting in a park with my mom, and she tells me that she's going to leave my dad and that me and her are going to go live in an apartment. And she's already got it and it's super pretty and her and I are going to be happy. So we moved out and right away, like, I don't feel great there. My mom is dating a bunch of people. She's interested in spirituality, and there's a lot of, like, meditation groups and things like that happening in my house. Stuff that I thought was a little bit weird. And on the weekends I would go to my dad's, who he was very distant. I didn't really know how to interact with him. And he also drank a lot. By the end of the day, like, he was pretty much wasted. So I would just like stay in my room pretty much like the whole weekend that I was there. He was not a mean person. He was just very absent. He wasn't even 30 by this time, so I don't know. He just didn't know what to do with a kid. I don't think I felt like I had to, like, grow up really fast during that period. I started going to a new school. I don't know why, but the kids there, they just hated me. I had like a little bit of an English accent, so they started, like, threatening me, like, saying they were going to beat me up. I just remember that being kind of like the beginning of, like, fear, like, just being really scared. It just felt like I was alone a lot. Like, there was nobody really asking me how I was doing or, you know, how things were going. It was a very lonely time. My mom was dating also all kinds of guys that I never really liked. They all seemed very weird to me because, you know, they all came from these communes and they were kind of hippies. I didn't know what to make of it. Very different from my dad, military background, who was, like, super straight. He always wore nice suits, and, you know, it was just very different lifestyle. One day, my mom, it's probably like 1977, she decides she's going to go spend a month in a commune in Kentucky. So I was left with my dad for a month, and she went off and did that. That was like, the longest month of my life. Like, I just missed my mom so much. I would cry all the time, but I didn't want my dad to know that I was crying because I didn't want him to feel bad. I just felt really responsible for my dad and for my mom. Like, I feel like I wanted them to be happy and not worry about me. So that was a pattern that I kind of, like, kept a lot of my life. When she came back from there, she basically told my dad that she wanted to move there. She was going to take me and go live in this commune. And for some reason at that point, my dad said okay. So I ended up in Kentucky, living in this commune. It was just another world again. But the first few days that I got there, I was just blown away. Like, first of all, all the kids were super nice to me, which was different from what I'd known. I had really good friends. We were free. Like, we didn't have to do anything. We were just, like, running around naked in the rain when it was raining. Or there was a big ice cream machine that you could make as many as you wanted all day. And I made a friend there, really good friend, and she had a horse. We only had one saddle, so we would ride together. And I just have this memory of, like, galloping through the fields on the back of this horse with my friend, feeling just pure ecstasy. Like, I was so happy. I just loved it. Even if I didn't really see my mom much. It was, like, so much fun to be, like, 8 years old and, like, have no parents telling you what to do. That was really the Most incredible, like, four or five months. One day, I got a letter from my dad, and he was, like, super suspicious, and I didn't know what he was talking about. Like, for me, this was like paradise, you know? And I told my mom, and she was like, oh, well, your dad kind of wants to see you. You know, he misses you. And, you know, we decided you're going to go live with your dad. I didn't really know what was going on, to be honest. All I know is that I ended up on a plane, and I just, like, waved my mom goodbye, and that was it. My dad picked me up, and he was like, okay, you know, your mom is doing her spiritual hippie thing, and you and I are going to live together, and it's going to be great. It was devastating. I was losing my new friends, my new life. My mom having to live with this guy that I really didn't know. And my mom, I don't think she really cared that much. Like, she was so excited about this new life. Like, she basically quit her job. She took all her savings and moved to this commune. So after that, I went back one summer. That's when she told me that she was going to move to another commune. She had just been introduced to a new spiritual master called, at the time, Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh. And they were now going to move to Oregon to start a new commune there. She said, I'm gonna go, and then once I get there, I'm gonna get you to come and stay with me. I remember finally just packing my bags to go see my mom on this commune. By that time, it's probably 1980, I'm 10 years old. I finally arrived at the ranch, the commune there, in the very beginning, when they were just arriving there and starting to build everything. So Rajneesh Puram was started by an Indian man called Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh. He was very smart, very educated. He was very charismatic, and he had a vision for a new world. He wanted to create a place where people would live with different values than normal society, based on love and sharing and taking responsibility for how you feel and communicating, just like a better place. And he appealed to a lot of people. This was like a large scale organization with millions of followers all over the world. Some very wealthy business people, famous actors. There's a lot of people that were interested by what Bhagwan had to say. His presence itself was very powerful. When they arrived on this piece of land in Oregon, there was literally nothing. It was like desert. And they Basically transformed like this barren land into this beautiful self sustained community of like minded people. There were a lot of basic things that you had to do. You know, you had to wear the colors of the sunset, so all variations of oranges, pinks and purples. And you had to wear what's called a mala, which is kind of like a bead necklace that had the picture of the guru on it. So you had to wear that all day. There was nothing overtly nefarious in this culture. Meaning, like there weren't any punishments or like weird things that sometimes you hear about in, in cults. But of course the commune is also known for like free love and free sex. It was pretty rampant. Like there was a lot of overt sexuality there, which always made me uncomfortable. I was a little too young, I think, to be the target of, of any nefarious men. I could see things that I thought were a little weird. Even in the first commune I remember there was a 12 year old girl that was with like a 30 year old man. She was my friend and I didn't understand like how she could be with this old dude. Like I just thought it was really gross. But there was a lot of that around. It was very normalized, but it never happened to me. I think I was just more childish. The weird part was I never got to see my mom. They separate the parents and the kids. It's like if you have children, you can't be on a spiritual journey. We were treated like adults, even as children. And we had responsibilities, which is a good feeling. But I don't even get to see her because she's working all the time. The rest of the time they're meditating and dancing and chanting. I actually met a guy there in the restaurant where my mom was working. And he was the first time I remember having a major crush on somebody. His name was Jay and he was just gorgeous. By this time I'm like 13, maybe he's 15 and I'm just in love with him. I write in my little diary, I met the man in my dreams and he like didn't even notice me. I don't think because he was a little bit older, he already had a girlfriend. But that really was one of the most magical moments of that particular summer. Again, for me, that was just like another incredible experience. It just felt so different from the life that I was living. But I ended up going back home and then I started high school and my dad put me in a private Catholic school for girls. School was very easy for me. I was A ballet dancer. I was just, like, living this super traditional life most of the year. And then in the summers, I would go to this crazy cult in Oregon. My dad didn't change, you know, he was very much solitary. He liked to be on his own. He drank a lot, and that was something that I really hated. I felt so uncomfortable. Like, when he was drunk, he didn't do anything bad. Like, he wasn't a mean drunk. He was a very sad drunk. And I felt so responsible for him, you know? And he would, like, blackout, and he would be sick, and I would, like, wash his clothes and then put it back on him and then bring him to his bed because, like, I didn't want him to know that he had done that. And I had seen it. I was just trying to, like, not have to make him feel bad for doing what he was doing. I was taking so much responsibility for everybody's actions in my life. It was very heavy. I didn't feel super confident in myself. I didn't feel like I was worthy of love. I always thought my own mother didn't love me enough to want to stay with me. Like, she preferred being with everybody except me. I used to pretend that my mother was dead because I couldn't tell people, oh, yeah, I have a mom. She just doesn't want to be with me. Like, when nobody kind of, like, shows you that you matter as a kid, it's tough. It's hard to construct a sense of who you are. I always had that kind of, like, dark kind of sadness. And so that kind of feeling was always there most of the year. Living in this weird life with my dad. He also brought me a lot of nice things. You know, he wanted me to be successful. He worked really hard for that. And being proud of me was, like, the biggest compliment that I could get from him. So everything I did, it was hoping that he was going to be proud of me. So that was, like, nine months out of the year, and then three months out of the year was living in this commune in the US Until I got a letter from my mom. And she basically tells me, the commune just broke up and I'm coming back to live with you. By this time, I'm, like, 16, and I basically never had a mother. So my mom came back and she rented an apartment with a bunch of other sannyasins, the people from the commune. And she told me that I could come and live with her. So that's what I did. At some point, you know, I'm around all these people that are Talking about going to India, because when the commune broke down, they arrested Bhagwan and a lot of the people that were kind of running the commune, and he was expulsed from the United States. So after that, they decided they were going to reopen the commune in India. So like a year later, I'm like, okay, I want to go to India by this time, like, I don't live with my dad. I'm just grown up now and I'm doing my own thing. But I still want him to be proud of me. So I don't want him to know that I'm going to India because that's just going to kill him. And so I decide to tell him that I'm going to go pick grapes in France because that was like, acceptable thing to do instead of going to school. And so meanwhile, my mom borrows some money so that I can buy a ticket and go to India on my own at 17 years old. She thinks that's a great idea. So I quit school, got in a plane and I landed in Bombay. I fainted when I got off the plane because everything was just so intense. And I somehow made my way to the commune. And it's beautiful there. I actually really love it. I was exhilarated. I felt like my life was actually starting. It's not the kind of commune that you imagine where people are like against money. It was the contrary. You know, there was a lot of wealth there, a lot of beautiful jewelry and houses. And even the commune was very beautiful. You know, it was like a little paradise. It was just nothing that I wanted to do more than to live this life where I was just gonna go wild. This is when that started this, like, trying to fill that hole inside of me with anything and everything in excess. I end up meeting this other guy who's a Sanyasan. He's older than me. He's probably like 10 years older. And he's got a lot of money. We end up dating. I find out he's like a drug dealer. Not a little small time drug dealer. He's like a big drug dealer. I didn't know this in the beginning, but became very clear. And I like fall totally in love with him. And he's treating me like a princess. And at the end of the three months in India, he like, goes back to San Francisco. I fly to San Francisco. We end up living together. I'm 17 years old. I'm with this guy who's probably about 26. He's a drug dealer. He's very rich. He's buying me all kinds of gifts. I remember he took me shopping and bought me, like, a diamond Rolex, Chanel bags and jewelry, and, like, traveling all over the world. He was making me deposit money in banks in Luxembourg. I was walking in with, like, suitcases full of cash and, like, giving a false name for him. Like, that was pretty much taking advantage of a young girl. I didn't see it like that at the time. Obviously, I was a bit naive. He did consume a lot of cocaine. I never really connected with drugs at all. But then I was like, what are you doing? And he didn't want to tell me. Like, for the longest time, he was like, you don't want to know about this. You don't want to know about this. And so finally I asked somebody else around them, and they told me that it was heroin. And that's when I first tried it. And the minute I tried that, I knew I was in trouble. It was like every voice in my head, every pain, it just took everything away. I just felt at peace. I felt like I was cool. And it wasn't the typical lifestyle that you associated with heroin. Again, it's like we're living a life of great luxury. So you're not running out, you're not desperate, you're not going on the street, meeting a dealer. It's like, none of that. And so it's almost just like this little thing that magically appeared in my life and took away literally all my pain.
- [22:23]
Sponsor Voice
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- [23:28]
Nick Cannon
It's your man, Nick Cannon and I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at Night. I've heard y' all been needing some advice in the love department. So who better to help than yours truly? Nah, I'm serious. Every week I'm bringing out some of my celebrity friends and the best experts in the business to answer your most intimate relationship relationship questions. Having problems with your man? We got you catching feelings for your sneaky link. Let's make sure it's the real deal first. Ready to bring toys into the bedroom? Let's talk about it. Consider this a non judgment zone to ask your questions when it comes to sex and modern dating in relationships, friendships, situationships and everything in between, it's gonna be sexy, freaky, messy. And you know what? You'll just have to watch the show. So don't be shy, join the conversation and head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at night or subscribe on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. Want to watch episodes early and ad free? Join Wondery plus Right now.
- [24:33]
Storyteller
At this point, all of my friends are wanting to go work in Japan. And so I end up going to Japan and I worked there for about three months. And during this time, I was just still talking to my boyfriend on the phone, but it's like I could tell, like I was almost ready for something else, you know. So after a while, I ended up going to Thailand with my friends after Japan. And you know what's in Thailand? A lot of heroin. After like another round of like India, Japan, Thailand, Europe, I ran out of money. I'm 21 years old by this time. I've been traveling the world alone for five years and I've slowly kind of built this heroin habit. I was exhausted and I end up calling my dad and telling them that I want to come home. My dad is thrilled, buys me a ticket and. And so I finally go back home. But it was a big shock to me when I came home. But first thing I do, I talk to a guy and oh, he's into heroin. And he has a connection. And so that started the whole wheel again. And this was like a different ball game because now I'm not with this multimillionaire guy. Now I'm on my own and I don't have access to all that money. My whole life revolved around finding that drug. And I lived like that for two or three years at least. It's very insidious, you know, because here I am, beautiful, fresh meat in this Underworld. And another girl suggests, like, well, I'm a stripper. Like, you should come and dance, you know? And the first time that I went to the strip club, I didn't know what to do. But, you know, I persisted because I had no choice. I needed the money. So, you know, somebody says, oh, you know, there's this client. If you want to go on a date with him, then he'll pay you, you know, a thousand dollars. It was like at this point, like nothing was off limits. I've always felt like I had guardian angels or something. But in the end, more and more of these bad things were starting to happen to me. And I felt like my guardian angels are just tired of me. I was kind of living with my mom, but she couldn't take it anymore. And one night I went to my dad's house, and we're talking, and I'm detoxing. I'm super sick. And he's like, what's going on? Can you just tell me? And I just said, well, you know, I have a drug problem. It's heroin. And he's like, I'm going to help you. And so he found all kinds of treatment centers. It cost him a lot of money to put me through all those things. He never gave up. It actually brought both my parents back into my life big time, supporting me in any way they could. The real moment of truth for me was that I became pregnant. My whole world changed. I loved this baby so much. I loved her more than me. The moment I learned that I was pregnant, I quit every single drug in an instant, and I have never touched them again. The reason is that I was so fulfilled. Like, I felt so much love, and I didn't want her to feel how I felt. After being pregnant for three months, I enrolled in university. Meanwhile, I was working full time, going to school full time. The next years for me were about creating a new Persona. Like, who am I now? I finished my bachelor's, I started my master's in marketing, and I got hired right away. Every year, every year and a half, I was getting promoted, you know, from manager to director to senior director to vice president to senior vice president to executive vice president. And then at one point, I had the opportunity to become the head of the company. I was very proud, you know, and I just wanted that. I wanted that normalcy. I didn't want communes or drug addicts. I just wanted normal. I eventually started dating a man that had a different life than me. He was living in the country, and he. He loved snowboarding and Windsurfing and just healthy kind of wholesome life. And we ended up having another child together. Things were going pretty good, like for the longest time, you know, 10 years in, we're sort of growing a little bit apart. It was hard. We did not have the same outlook on how we wanted to live our lives. And at some point during that phase, we kind of decided we were going to, you know, see if we were going to get separated. At that point, I happened to go to San Francisco with my work and I'm like, hey, I'm going to try to reconnect with my old San Francisco friends. So I connect with a couple of people and one of them is Jay, the guy that I had fallen in love with at Rajneesh Purim years ago. It'd be fun to catch up. And it was not just him, there was a whole bunch of other people. So we just go out for dinner one night and you know, everybody else leaves and he stays there. I still find he's absolutely gorgeous and, you know, I still feel the 13 year old butterflies inside my stomach when I look at him. He's telling me too that he's, you know, married, but they're thinking of getting a divorce. And, you know, we're like, okay, well, we'll see what happens. I finally decide I'm going to break up with my then partner. And he tells me that he's doing that as well. He's like, hey, why don't we go for a weekend to Malibu? And he rented like this beautiful apartment right on Malibu beach. He's kind, he's just a different person. And I think to myself, wow, like, I guess he's matured, you know, he's also now very successful entrepreneur. He's made a lot of money. Like me, you know, we're a little bit more on the same level. We also have that shared experience of the childhood in the commune. We know all the same people, speak the same language. He also had a problem with heroin for three or four years. So it's like we have all these things in common and I just feel like, oh my God, finally this guy's the answer to, you know, everything I've been looking for my whole life. I literally just fall in love with him like right then and there. The first three or four months. There's a lot of talking about the future and how we're going to live and you know, he's going to build us this beautiful house. So he's really playing into that and like telling me about this wonderful life that we're going to have. And, you know, he slowly, slowly starts putting quite a bit of pressure on me to quit my job. I've worked so hard to be independent and be where I am that I don't even see that as an option. And I start noticing that every time I push back on anything that's not his plan, he gets really angry. It's like little things in the beginning that are very, very strange that I don't really understand. Like, he'll be in a really good mood, and then all of a sudden, like, he's mad, and I don't know why. And I'm trying to understand. Like, I'm again kind of feeling like I was with my dad when I was little, like, trying to guess, like, what his mood's gonna be or what I can do or say to make him love me again. And then he starts doing these things that are very, very confusing to me. And I start noticing a pattern where every time my focus is not on him, he gets really mad. And sometimes he'll just not talk to me, or sometimes he'll literally yell at me. I've never been in a relationship like this, so I'm really confused. He was controlling everything I did. Whatever I was wearing, if I put makeup on, how I did my hair, who I talked to when I could work. And he started, like, making me think that I was a bad mom. He would pretend like he had talked to my mother about me, and she really agreed with him that I had some kind of real weird psychological problem. You know, it went from, like, once in a while being weird to all the time being weird. And I was so confused. Nothing I thought I knew or understood about people, life, myself, made any sense anymore. And I didn't know what was wrong. And every time I would try to have a conversation with him, he would deny it and turn it on me. He said, like, well, you're the one who started this, and I'm not a confrontational person. I don't like being angry. I don't yell at people. So I knew that wasn't true. Then he started saying he had mental health issues and he was going to get better because I said, like, I can't do this anymore. At that point, he told me he was going to check himself in to, like, some mental health thing and get some kind of treatment. Couple weeks later, I'm sitting on a patio with two of my good friends, and all of a sudden he shows up out of nowhere, and he gets on one knee and he, like, pulls out this ring. And he actually didn't say, will you marry me? He said to me, I'm gonna marry you. And so I kind of said yes. And every bone in my body knew I shouldn't have said yes, but I did. Everybody thought he was the most wonderful person, so generous and, you know, all this other side. So you're kind of like, am I the only one seeing this? And the day of our wedding was just more of that same thing. Like he didn't talk to me for 48 hours before the wedding. And then we got to like the, the wedding place. And all of a sudden he's all lovey dovey and kind of. It's just crazy making stuff. And then after the ceremony, when everybody went to bed, like, then he starts getting mean to me again and not talking to me. I'm just like feeling so stuck by this point. I'm like, what am I going to do? Eventually it was the 4th of July and he had invited a whole bunch of people there for like a party, like 75 people. And then the whole night he was just berating me to a bunch of different people. And other people heard it and told me about it. And then when I confronted him about it, he like slammed this glass table and the glass flew everywhere. And, like, I got really scared. I tell one of my friends that night about everything that's going on, and he tells me, well, I think you should read this article about narcissistic abuse. And it was like the clouds came out of my head in one instant. I was reading the thing and it was like it was written for me. Like every single thing that they were saying was exactly what I had gone through with this guy. So once I knew that, then I knew I needed to get out of there. For the first time in my life, everything came to a head in terms of my emotional state. Here I was feeling unworthy again, and there's nothing to help me escape from it. And then it's the pandemic. So I'm alone at home and I can't see anybody. There's nothing else to do. I was tense being around him like walking on eggshells. I never knew, you know, when the, the next explosion was going to come. And I decided, I'm going to start meditating. I started meditating every single day. I started slowly, like 10 minutes a day. And it changed my life. It was in this context where we went to a park. We're sitting on a park bench, and all of a sudden this feeling came over me. I felt shortness of breath that really quickly transformed into kind of like all my senses got engaged in this weird effect. I felt like I was seeing everything from above myself. Is the best way that I can explain was like almost like an out of body experience where I was looking at him and thinking, like, he was far away. Like this impression that he was talking to me through this big fog or something. I was like, oh my God, what is happening to me? The only thing that I could think of was like that I had taken some magic mushrooms or something crazy like that. Because it was that level of experience. It wasn't just a little feeling, it was radical. All the colors around me started to pop. Like the green of the trees and the blue of the sky. Sky. And like the people that were like walking around in the park, like their faces were just like really, really vivid in itself. What I was seeing and experiencing wasn't scary at all. It was very beautiful. It was very enchanting. It was just the fact that I didn't know why I was feeling that way. And so I told him, like, I'm not feeling well. There's something very strange going on. Like, did you give me something? He's like, no, of course I wouldn't do that. You know, I didn't do anything. And I was like, I think we have to go. And so we packed up and we got into the car and like, it's not going away. And if anything it's just getting even bigger. I feel like I can hear like tiny little sounds like a fly a mile away. It was just so intense, like in total senses overload. My eyesight was like brand new. I could see details in every little thing. Like the trees. I could see them breathing. I could see them talking to each other. I could see that the birds and the ants and the squirrels, like they were all communicating with each other. And I was a part of it. Like, I felt this whole new level of understanding that we were all connected. I started hearing conversations and people, like, more loudly than I normally would have. And when we finally got into the car and it was a little bit more quiet, I realized that one of these voices was actually talking to me. And the voice was very relaxed and kind and caring. And it was a male voice that said to me, don't freak out, don't worry, you're moving to another level. Then of course, I thought to myself, oh, my God, I'm losing it. And so we got home and right away went into my bedroom just to lie down. And even as I'm lying Down in my bedroom, the same feeling is present. I can hear everything going on in the neighborhood, it seems like. And it was extremely overstimulating. But at the same time, everything was harmonious. Like, it wasn't scary or weird. So I was like, okay, I'm just gonna rest and hopefully this is gonna go away. And it actually lasted in that level of intensity for another three days. When the intensity of this experience started to kind of fade. What I realized was it's not that it was going away, it's that I was getting used to it. And from then on, I was able to kind of like, tune out of, like, the noise that was too much for me to hear. And so I went back home after that. I continued, like, researching for what this experience could be, what could it mean? I was gravitating towards taking a look inside myself and being more quiet and not having my life so busy with, like, people and relationships and work. And it was this moment in time where I was able to do that. I would say about six months later, during meditation, I started having a vision and there was some people in a circle and they were chanting, and the words that they were chanting were hanta ine, which again, I had never heard before. But it was very, very clear and vivid to me and it seemed to be very reassuring. And then I started searching for what this hanta ini meant. It turned out that in certain cultures, that expression meant make way for mother Earth.
- [42:23]
Charlie Brinkcoast Cuff
On Boxing Day, 2018, 20 year old Joy Morgan was last seen at her church, Israel United in Christ, or iuic.
- [42:32]
Storyteller
I just went on my Snapchat and.
- [42:34]
Charlie Brinkcoast Cuff
I just see her face plastered everywhere. This is the missing sister, the true story of a woman betrayed by those she trusted most.
- [42:43]
Storyteller
IUIC is my family and like, the best family that I've ever had.
- [42:47]
Charlie Brinkcoast Cuff
But IUIC isn't like most churches.
- [42:50]
Interviewee or Witness
This is a devilish cult. You know when you get that feeling where you just, I don't want to be here. I want to get out. It's like that feeling of like, I want to go hang out.
- [43:00]
Charlie Brinkcoast Cuff
I'm Charlie Brinkcoast Cuff, and after years of investigating Joy's case, I need to know what really happened to Joy. Binge all episodes of the Missing Sister, exclusively and ad free right now on Wondery. Start your free trial of Wondery on Spotify, Apple, Apple Podcasts, or in the Wondery app.
- [43:32]
Storyteller
During this time. You know, I'm at home. You know, my oldest daughter lives on her own. I am now sharing custody of my youngest daughter she's 6 years old, approximately the age I was when my mom kind of left. Like, she's very attached to me, I'm very attached to her. We're very symbiotic. And although I had a great relationship with my daughter's dad, it was still a heartbreak every time she had to leave. And so there was a point where she left and she was crying and it just cracked my heart open. It brought up all these emotions from my own childhood. Like at that age, being forcefully separated from my own mother, it brought on this feeling of abandonment and feeling alone. And so I thought about this mantra, this hanta, and so I closed my eyes and I repeat that a few times. And during this chanting, where my heart was just bursting from like sadness, all of a sudden I had this connection with a spirit called the Divine Mother. And my understanding of what that meant was like, she's everywhere. She's my mother, my true mother. And I felt like an instant connection to her. And she basically reminded me of who I was, a spirit on an Earth journey. And that this was not the whole journey, this was just one experience. This life, the human experience is just a little part of who we are overall. Even, you know, what happened with my mother, you know, or even my ex husband. Almost like I had been kind of in on it. Like I had accepted that I would have these gentlemen challenges in this lifetime and that, you know, I was prepared to grow through this and view this as an opportunity to just better myself. And so I understood then just a lot of things. Like I remembered choosing to come to Earth and just have this experience. It just unlocked a whole other level of understanding, an appreciation for life and that sense of interconnection that we all have. It allowed me to take responsibility for my feelings and also removed any fear I had because that was the plight of my whole life. This terrible sadness and abandonment wound that I had turned against myself in many ways and I had not treated myself very good. And I'd been repeating these patterns in different relationships, in different contexts, putting myself with people that were going to make me feel that way again. This experience with the Divine Mother can't even say how long it lasted because it was out of time. It's even so hard for me to use words to explain was just this download of information that came to me not through spoken words. It was just something that I all of a sudden knew. Once I had lived that experience, I actually was looking for help in all kinds of ways. And I. I ended up finding an osteopath When I first went there, it was such a rush. This experience that I had lived, it had unlocked this magical world that I kind of wanted to be in all the time. I was still kind of out of my body. And then he started reminding me, but you're still in this body and you have to ground yourself. So he helped me come back and, like, ground that experience into my body through, like, body work and learn how to use that experience in my day to day life. I needed to be here and be present and be there for my children. And I'm also lucky because my mother, as wild as she's been, she's also clearly very open minded. And so I was able to talk to her a lot about it. And she was actually the one who told me about the Kundalini Awakening. I then purchased a book that spoke about that phenomenon. And when I read the book and they described what that means, it was exactly what happened to me. In my case, it was a spontaneous Kundalini awakening. Some people work to get to that, but I never asked for it. It was a spontaneous thing. And so, you know, seeing that it was actually a thing, thing that happens. And between reading about it and this wonderful body worker, I was able to sort of, like, bridge this new awakened state that I was in with my real life. I came back to, like, just who I really am, like, what are my values, what are my boundaries? And also just loving myself. And from that love then, I was able to love other people around me, you know, and be a wonderful mother and put an end to toxic relationships and friendships. I had a real sense of who I was and what I wanted to experience in this life. When you join the Rajneesh commune, you're given a name and, you know, it's supposed to represent you kind of like dropping the past and embracing this new thing. In my case, I got my name when I was a child, and so I didn't really put much meaning into it. But my name, translated from Sanskrit, means divine longing. I think for a lot of us, we have this longing to, like, remember who we are. And we kind of know there's something more. There has to be something more to this existence, you know, than just like, working nine to five and get sick and die, you know? And so my experience with the Divine Mother, one of the main messages that I got was that my mother, this Earth Mother, why am I going to be mad at her and blame her for abandoning me? It's a gift she gave me. It's almost like we could have decided, okay, well, in this incarnation, you're going to be my mother and you're going to do this thing which is going to cause me so much pain that at some point I'm going to go really deep inside and it's going to force me to remember. Because my suffering led me to this moment where I was actually able to remember. Because I think that that's the challenge we all have. There's this veil that keeps us from remembering who we really are. My heart opened, and it opened to myself first, because for me, that was my biggest challenge. I had never really learned to love myself or that I am lovable. I deserve to be loved. And part of my not loving myself was. Was because my mom left me and she preferred being with this guru. When I had that experience in the park, all of a sudden it allowed me to see everything around me in a more kind of, like, holistic way. And so my mother leaving me at that age wasn't an attack on me. She was doing whatever she thought was the best for her at that time. And that for me was the biggest difference, is just feeling compassion for everybody. By the same token, I was able to also forgive and have empathy for my ex husband because he's also just playing the role that he's playing and trying his best in this crazy life. It doesn't mean I have to stand there and take that. No. Now I know that I have boundaries. I don't need that or want that. But I. I don't hate him. I am not angry at him. Even, like, I see myself as a participant in that. And I woke up and realized, like, this was not good for me and I'm gonna get away from him. And I love that because I feel like it empowered me. It's like I was the one who made the decision, the cost of being loved by this person is incredibly high and dangerous. I don't need that. That was another one of my insights too, was that I don't have to be in this constant feeling of bliss or feeling of connection with everybody. Like, I'm still living a human experience and I'm still going to get annoyed. Some days it's okay. I don't. I don't want to be perfect. That's not my goal. Like, I'm living my normal life. My relationship with my mom is as if nothing ever happened. I see her whole life experience as pretty courageous. She was 23 years old when she had me. She didn't know where she wanted to be in the world, and she was just experimenting. And I can See how being in that same context, like having this dream of a utopia sold to me, maybe I would have done the same thing. Like, I don't know. She's paid the price for her faults, like many, many times over. I've told her, I forgive you and I love you. She's had the chance to re experience, you know, raising a child by seeing my kids grow up. She's just a very beautiful person. She was just unaware of the impact that her actions could have on me. And she has become aware and to me that's good enough. Nobody has a perfect life with no suffering. Everybody has had their form of suffering, whether it's physical, whether it's mental. Like humans are going to do human things like, like everybody's looking for dopamine and avoiding heartbreak and hard things. And so I think that while everybody's doing these things, they are inadvertently hurting a lot of other people. And just me taking ownership for the part that belongs to me was incredibly empowering. I think that emotions are the key to unlocking this level of remembering and knowledge. Our gut feelings, like they're not just there by the way. Those are important things. You have to pay attention to your gut feelings when you not feeling great about someone. Get out of there. Like if my gut tells me this is wrong, this doesn't feel good. My peace of mind is more important than anything else now. I just want to be around people that are kind and loving and open and I don't want to be around intentionally fucked up people anymore. I just don't. When I think now about the spontaneous Kundalini awakening and like those feelings that I had of like hyper awareness, part of it has faded a little bit. But I've just gotten used to it. Like I think I've gotten used to that level of clarity. I actually find a lot of comfort in the thought that it's actually still there. And now it's more manageable. Like I can go back to like not feeling like a total alien when I'm walking around. I'm not going out there claiming to be some spiritual person. I just have healed and I do feel happy and I, I really trust that my life is going to be beautiful. To other people, I think I just seem like a more happy, calm, open version of my previous self. And I can just be in the moment, be my very best in this moment, and that's going to lead me to the very best thing in the next moment. And I just know that now. The one thing that was very clear to me is that this does not make me special. And it kind of annoys me that so many false prophets and masters and all this stuff are like selling access to this to people. They're charging them so much money. It has nothing to do with learning or paying. The only thing you need to do to be enlightened is to remember you already are. You already have it. This world is more than what we think and we're told it is. It is magical. It really is. You just have to give yourself the space and the context to remember and feel. It's free and it's infinite.
- [57:31]
Narrator/Host
Today's guest requested to remain anonymous. If you'd like to reach out to her, you can find an email address in the Show Notes.
- [57:42]
Wit Misseldine
From Wondery. You're listening to this Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or on the Wondery app to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the Episode Notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me and Andrew Waits and Aviva Lipkowicz with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg.
- [58:14]
Storyteller
The opening music features the song Sleep.
- [58:16]
Wit Misseldine
Paralysis by Scott Velasquez. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram Actually Happening on the show's website thisisactually happening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactually happening dot com. And finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening.
- [59:03]
Wondery Announcer
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