Acquinas' acknowledgment of pessimism and Susan's "work on anxious feelings, or any "feeling" that so early in my life I learned was me being "in my mind" tugs at my heartstrings. It goes to the core of this cult and the harm it does. Prem Rawat set a rediculous, obnoxious and "toxic" benchmark for happiness.

It reminded me of this from the Fourteen Objections:

14. Human relations

Mr. Rawat tells his followers that they should rely solely on the "inner friend," and that all other love relationsips are secondary, imperfect, and not to be trusted. By following this teaching, his followers develop a toxic relationship with their own humanness.

Not just following his teachings about relationships, but their relationship with their own thoughts and feelings!

Then I remembered something that brought tears to my eyes at the peak of the distress I felt when I first left the cult. In a heated exchange about the validity of anger, Lp strongly defended that and other feelings and emotions as "millions of years in the making" from an unimpeachable evolutionary perspective. He essentially said that anxiety, pessimism, anger, fear, etc., play an important role... in the survival of the species! Warning signals. The claxons of life.

Then Prem Rawat comes along and thinks he knows better. In fact, he thinks he's the only one who knows better about everything.

Yes, those feelings can be counterproductive and unhealthy at times, but they also deserve attention and respect.