I just found out some disturbing news about my former meditation teacher. Talk about my world being rocked. He was someone I respected and trusted for his knowledge and wisdom and his spirituality. What was even more disturbing is one of the people involved was someone I knew and that without knowing it, I was part of the drama. Not that I knew what was going on, but I was there during the events she described in her allegations. I was there, I knew the names of the people involved, and yet I was ignorant to what was really going on.

Other people I know have corroborated the allegations, people I also trust. Talk about freaky! This all happened almost 15 years ago, and I'm only finding out about it now because I just happen to google my former teacher to find out if the group had a website.

In the shower this morning, I felt such a loss of identity that for a few seconds I didn't know who I was anymore. That group and my teacher had been such a part of who I was, who I became, and who I am to a large extent today.

The only good part of the whole incident, if there is a good part, is her allegations gave me insight into incidents that I had observed and that had happened to me 15 years earlier that at the time I didn't know how to comprehend or even process. Incidents that were so baffling to me that I never told anyone about them, not even my best friends. The only people who knew about the incidents I saw that particular year were in Bali on vacation during Gulf War 1.

Talk about a part of your self dying like a snake shedding another layer of skin. And why now? Why did it have to come out now? It's not like I was looking for it, it wasn't like I thought my life was damaged greatly by what happened.

A friend said I must have been traumatized by it because I've kept it secret for 15 years. Was I? I don't know. In my mind, I don't think anyone who wasn't there in Bali, who wasn' t part of the group, who didn't understand the group dynamics I was a part of would have understood it. I barely understood it myself. I lived through it yes, but some incidents in life I think are never meant to be understood, may be are never meant to be processed. Until last night, until today.

It feels like a veil was lifted, and that maybe I'm old enough and mature enough to deal with mentally what happened. I don't know. I keep going back to something I've always thought was nice but have never ever experienced for very long; ignorance is pure bliss.