Thx for commenting… Alexandra Stein writes in Terror Love and Brainwashing:

“Giving in — dissociating and ceasing to think — is experienced as relief. In my own experience I remember well this sensation: overwhelmed with confusion and exhaustion, the thoughts that were trying to enter the cognitive part of my brain just could not make it there and they fell back out of consciousness. Simultaneously I stopped struggling and decided to commit myself more fully to the group even though I disagreed with it. That too felt like relief — I didn’t have to fight anymore. In fact, as we shall see later in more detail, key regions of the brain that connect emotional (largely right brain) and cognitive processing (largely left brain) are shut down in the disorganized and dissociated state.”

In my own case, the relief of submission was more like euphoria. I think that in BDSM literature, this is described as “sub-space”.

As for Shambhala, I did write this piece: https://thewalrus.ca/survivors-of-an-international-buddhist-cult-share-their-stories/.

My main question about Naropa is how much of Shambhala’s relational style informs the pedagogy there, and whether the “contemplative psychotherapy” now has broader roots than Trungpa’s dubious intuitions.