Do you want to know about a mistake I made over 20 years ago?

A story of suddenly seeing an invisible cultural trap

Photo by Sergio Capuzzimati on Unsplash

As you know, I am writing a series about healing trauma. As I am thinking about it, some things come up that I have not thought about for decades. And I am like, wow, it really did impact me but I hid it from myself!!

Here is one of those things. This story is meant as a sharing of my mistakes so that maybe it can help someone see through theirs, and look at themselves with love.

Remember I said how I was a Buddhist at one time? Well.... I was very much into the Tibetan culture, I was friends with all four or five Tibetans living in Moscow at the time, I was attending most Tibetan events, and so on.

And so I became friends with, God knows now what his title was, I think it was something like the representative of the Dalai Lama in the post-Soviet space, or something like that. He was a proper Tibetan monk (well, not so proper but very much an official monk with kind eyes, calm energy, and a yellow robe). We became great friends, we hung out, talked about life and philosophy, I really appreciated him as a wise spiritual person whom I had the privilege to call a friend.   

And so one day, he asked me—very politely and philosophically—to touch his private parts. It feels strange to me now but at the time, I thought that he made a good logical case for his request. He wasn't forceful, he explained that he was trying to understand himself, that he was missing that side of him, and that he could not have sex because if he did, he would have to become disrobed. He didn't want to get disrobed, at least not yet, he wanted to understand himself. He said there was no lack of Buryat women who wouldn't mind seducing him in order to marry him, so he didn't trust them with this half-way exploration, but me, he trusted, and so if it was okay with me, would I please ...

I thought he was logical and respectful. I think self-sacrifice was so ingrained in me that I didn't think twice about that. I didn't have a boyfriend at the time, it was easy enough to do, I didn't want a romantic relationship, I felt that if I could be useful in his spiritual pursuits then why not. And so I did what he asked, he acted thankful, he said that maybe I was a Dakini, which I remembered because I didn't feel like a Dakini, I felt like a lonely kid, but I thought it was very kind of him to say such a lofty thing.

But then the next time I saw him, he said we could no longer be friends because he was getting too attached to me, which he didn't want because he was a monk with a job to do, after all, he was a representative of the Dalai Lama in the post-Soviet space...

And that pricked my heart, I was attached to him as a human being, I loved him as a friend, I liked our hanging out and our conversations about philosophy and life.

And so next time I saw him, it was a public event where he was a shiny, distant, robe-wearing important monk.

I don't think I saw him after that. Time passed, life happened, I forgot about him, and I even forgot his name (I had to focus to remember his name). At the time, he asked me to not tell anyone, which I honored because of our friendship and his career, for over twenty years I didn't say a word, it wasn't on my mind anyway, I only told one person a few months ago, with no pain.

And then suddenly, my dignity found me.

And when I got into it, I thought, what the fuck, and don't my feelings matter, and how come the explorations of a spiritually elevated man are more important than not breaking a regular human being's heart?!!

I was his FRIEND. I cared about him. His private parts are his private parts,  I don’t really care,  and I have no delusions about the holiness of monastic minds, but he betrayed our FRIENDSHIP, and I am responsible for my part.

I let him. I let him use me. The self-sacrifice of women at the hands of broken boys is coded into my culture so deeply that I didn't even see what I was doing, what I was doing to myself.

And so, I take the responsibility for my part. It was wrong for him to be an irresponsible friend. It was especially wrong because of his spiritual status that invoked human trust. It was wrong for me to allow anyone, and I mean anyone,  to reduce me to a prop in their spiritual pursuit.

Human hearts matter!! Sometimes, we all make mistakes with other people’s hearts. I have made such mistakes, and I feel sad about that. The problem is that a high spiritual status doesn’t provide immunity from being human, and I am not judging him in a moral way, I believe sexuality is spiritual, I believe his philosophical pursuit was sincere, and for a moment, he made himself very open to me, which is a normal  human thing to do. I could have said yes or no. At the time, I didn’t  understand myself, and I chose to treat him with love from a place of not understanding myself.  

But, what is up with the kind spiritual pursuit that requires elevated people to stimulatingly tap into other people’s energy ON THEIR TERMS and then disconnect from the people whose energy they had tapped into ON THEIR TERMS?

There is something fishy about that. If he were so enlightened, how come he didn’t read my energy and  see that going ahead with his pursuit wasn’t going to be good for me? How come he only saw himself? And fine, spiritual people are people, spiritual people make mistakes, fine … but how come he never apologized to me as a human being, as a person whom I loved as a friend?

He disconnected because I had seen his unprotected emotional side, he was okay with tapping into my energy to explore himself, but he didn’t want to be vulnerable to me. That is an artificial arrangement. He is responsible for his part.

I am responsible for respecting myself. If at the moment of his request, my heart were of a confident woman and not of a lonely child longing for some kind of spiritually charged human connection, I would have lovingly declined the offer to be his prop. I would have told him, rightfully so, and probably laughing, that I  understand the sentiment but I am not anyone’s prop. And that if he liked me in this way, we could have talked about it and figured out who wants what, and that is fine, but not like this. Not in this way.

There is no conclusion to this story other than sometimes, the invitation to self-betray is coded so deeply into our upbringing that it takes decades to find, see, and expose it for what it is.

I can’t believe that I forgot about it completely, due to cultural traps and the fact that later in life, I encountered crudely abusive people who shocked me a lot more.

I can’t believe that it took me so long to see that story for what it was. God.