John says that, while the last 14 months have made him feel depressed and suicidal, they have been constructive in helping him to face his anger, ego, etc.

This is his perception, and he tells us this has been the positive aspect of a hellish experience.

'the pride in my own brilliance'
One of the things that sticks clearly in my mind from the email conversations posted on F7 between John and Tom Gubler is when John says something like he isn't posting on forums these days because he had a 3 million readership for his magazine article in Oz.
Now, call me an old-fashioned clairvoyant if you like, but that small extract sent a little shiver down my neck.

I think the thing that swayed John to take the foolish decision to post the purloined EV files was the feeling that he was becoming invulnerable.
His (well-founded) pride in his own writing gifts was slightly bedazzling him.
This is all very human..

Personally, I think John is beating himself up to a ridiculous point.
I believe he has been frightened shitless, and is seeing things from a dramatically extreme position which I find quite frighteningly unreal.

He is taking therapy, where the point presumably is basically to accept responsibility for one's position rather than blame others.

*However*, he actually does have quite a lot to reproach others with - Maharaji for instilling in him at age 20 that he was the infallible, unquestionable Lord. Also, the actions of many cult-headed super-egoists of DLM/EV who commonly shit on one another and those weaker than themselves like swatting flies.

At all this he had a right to feel somewhat angry and somewhat vengeful, which he admits, and which seems fairly reasonable to me.

The point which he really appears to regret is allowing these feelings to draw him into a ceaseless circle or spiral of conflict, into a permanent sense of aggrievement and flame which comes to occupy one's whole existence. That he was starting to feel entrapped in this.

I agree with him on this last part, as there can be a genuine difficulty at prising oneself loose from forums such as these.
There is a danger of becoming an institutionalised victim.
This is IMO why so many people enter this place, spend maybe a few months expressing their piece and then quietly leave to pursue their outside life.

John regrets that last little temptation to engage just that shade more, by posting the purloined stuff, when for ages he had been feeling the time was well right for him to depart.

It gives me pain to see him whip himself so much - to drive himself into such a corner of self-humiliation that he cannot perceive that his original actions were honourable, and founded on a sense of care and duty towards other people.
He once said to me that he believed we would one day all meet up again outside the cult.

John Mac is a really beautiful man - very kind, caring and noble-spirited, and helped me enormously.

I hope he will eventually come to a more middle point in his realisations - to see Maharaji as human, and not an arch-fiend, yes. But that it was very needful to examine and deconstruct all the LOTU stuff, for the sake of many, including, incidentally, the former LOTU himself.

I think John thought that it was quite acceptable for people to follow Maharaji so long as they had an open-mindedness, and truly just thought he was an inspiring guy, and so long as M wasn't secretly trying to say something else.

That's how I personally see it too.

I feel deeply for what John has had to go through, and I dearly hope he recovers his equilibrium soon.
He says he feels he has passed through it all now, and this is no longer his fight, so good luck to him.

IMO that is a good point to have reached.

No one can say that he didn't play his part in the debate to the full.