Kamrā devī dāsī Autobiography Part 7
My name is Kamrā devī dāsī, and this is part 7 of my autobiographical video series.
When I was born, I had full knowing that this was going to be a very difficult lifetime, and also a very blessed one, beyond all dreams. I cried deeply with this awareness, but to the doctors present in the delivery room, it was just the cries of another baby.
I was raised in a violent and abusive household. My mother and her mother were my first sexual abusers, doing things to my body while I was still an infant, legs drawn up in newborn fetal position. My mother, her mother and father, my father, his father, other relatives and friends of the family, some of my teachers, the doctor, the dentist, the entire neighborhood was a center of dysfunction and perversion. The family doctor was the head of the Satanic Ritual cult, and my father proudly brought me to be used by all of them, because it made up for his total lack of self worth, having himself been abused as a child by his own father.
There was a lot of cognitive dissonance on my part, being raped by my family and their friends at night and having to participate in making a pancake breakfast in the morning like nothing had happened. So, as with many abuse cases, the horrific part of life that made no sense got shoved in the way back of the awareness, only to surface to the conscious level when I turned 40. By that time, my health had failed. My back was seriously injured by what I thought was overwork at the age of 31, and I was told that I would likely never be able to walk again. I had a major heart attack at the age of 39, and was also diagnosed with congestive heart failure and severe Grave’s Disease, for which I was treated with radiation that burned out the most of my thyroid gland. Now, even looking at a cookie puts on weight!
Suppressed and repressed memories will show themselves through both physical and emotional symptoms. That is why, many times, a health protocol that addresses physical complaints cannot be fully effective until the deeply underlying trauma is also addressed.
In the interim, between my youth and the age of 40, were all sorts of addictive patterns and acting out behaviors that any sensible therapist, or even a well trained teacher, might have noticed. There were drugs, alcohol, reading 6 books in a day or two, and then going to the library again for another 6. I tortured my Barbie dolls. But the teachers were part of it, the doctor headed it up and prescribed many adult dose tranquilizers for me that were happily used by my father, and my eating disorders nearly killed me. My university friends cared for me, although none of them approved of my unhealthy choices in life. It went on and on like that, but still, in the midst of all the inner turmoil, I wanted nothing other than to find the meaning of life and viewed my existence with great introspection.
When I was 39, I cared for a devotee friend of mine who was very ill with no known cause or diagnosis. It turned out that she had been a victim of early child abuse, and as she recovered her memories and her health, I got sicker. By the time she returned to her home, after three months, she was in a lot better shape than I was. That is the nature of healing from abuse, one person who is facing and healing from their life experiences may act to bring out of the darkness those issues for someone who still has them deeply buried in the subconscious awareness. It can be like dominoes. Many of those who assisted me in my healing process were also spurred into theirs in the same way.
I went into many years of deep process and recall. My first body memory came during a massage, where the therapist was working on the inside of my left thigh. All of a sudden, her hand turned into an erect male organ, and I started screaming, “It’s a d I c k, it’s a G-d f—-king d I c k!” And I rolled to the side of the massage table, dry heaving, reliving a childhood memory involving my father. The therapist held her composure, and soon after, she herself went into recall process. So the process started. The entire thing was from hell, years of it, and it seemed like there was no end in sight. There were no words for how dark it was. But as I came forth, I realized that as there had been no words to describe how hard the healing process was, there were even fewer words to describe the blessings on the other side.
However, even as I healed from the childhood trauma, I still had no conscious awareness of what had happened to me as an adult in the organization of ISKCON when I tried to fight against the pedophile presence in the Hare Kṛṣṇa schools and challenge the false diksa guru system. But inside, I knew there was something else I was not yet getting for my healing, it was there but not yet reachable. It was deeply buried. It was too hard to face at that time that people in devotee dress, many of them in top leadership positions in the organization, could be doing similar things, and even much, much worse.
My back never fully healed from whatever that injury was in 1985. Some time ago, maybe 2011 or 2012, I was getting a massage on the connective tissue in my left hip. Again, massage started to release deeply held memories in my body. All of a sudden, something became very clear, and I exclaimed, “Beast raped me!” I knew there were also other people present. Doubts flew out all over the place, but the body doesn’t lie. A homosexual can rape women and girls out of his hatred for them. It is a sheer power play, and it doesn’t stop at rape. I had finally entered into the deeper knowing, and the deeper healing, that would solidify my relationship with Śrila Prabhupāda in a way that could not have been foreseen.
The back injury had not been from overwork as I had surmised, nor was it from “too much horseback riding when I was younger,” as the temple president was fond of telling devotees who asked how I was injured. Disgusting demons. They were all in on it.
I will not be sharing the actual names of those involved. There is no need on my part to do so, and it will hinder my service. It is not a matter of getting tied up in individual accusations and proofs, it is a matter of illustrating how things have gone way off course, and more importantly, keeping alive what Śrila Prabhupāda gave to us and separating his name from the deviations and evil agenda.
The Lord has revealed to me several past births, mostly in very strong and historically well-known male bodies. In none of those bodies would I have ever even thought to commit hideous violence upon others, so I knew that my birth and later life experiences were not simply karmic. So, I implored Kṛṣṇa for an explanation, why had He placed me into such a crazy family, that I had never done such a thing in the past to warrant it… His reply was, “There will be much healing required, and this was your qualification.” And I replied, “Dear Lord, I accept.” And, later on, when I similarly implored Him about why I had to experience such physical and emotional torture at the hands of demons in devotee dress, He told me that I had to know the depth of the evil infiltration we were up against.
I learned much through my ordeals. I have been able to take what I learned and consolidate it to the essence for supporting others in their personal growth and healing. My abusers have been my best teachers. I have great compassion for all of them, and as I have said before, compassion has many flavors. May those who have defiled Śrila Prabhupāda and his followers and his organization be caught with their pants down so that the Truth may be known, may they die inglorious deaths so that there may be no more false samadhis and misplaced worship, and may they eventually, however many eons it takes, awaken their hearts to the gifts that Śrila Prabhupāda offered to them out of his great compassion. That will bring the greatest pleasure to Śrila Prabhupāda, having the transcendental victory of bringing the biggest demons back into Kṛṣṇa’s loving fold.
