I was listening to tapes and CDs for a while but ended up going to RSE live when my brother was stationed near Yelm. He was never interested in the school, I was the only one in the family interested in the new age movement. We didn’t grow up religious or atheist, there just wasn’t any emphasis on anything spiritual. We just found our own way. Him being close by was good enough excuse to finally check out RSE in person on an extended vacation. The thing is, I was mesmerized by the materials I had on tape and CD but when I had my first event in person it was a let down. And I hung on for a long time, too long.
At my first event Ramtha wasn’t there and I was mad because they made it seem like he was there to teach each class. I didn’t know it was rare now. I got the usual spiel of, “oh Ram makes JZ’s heart beat too fast, she can’t channel for very long these days” and I just accepted it. I knew he said he wasn’t in her body, but I still accepted the explanation that he was harming her body without question. Oh well?! I now understand that was probably just a cover story to corroborate the so-called "scientific research" that her heart races above normal when he is present.
So it took a while before I had an event live with Ramtha. It's hard to be a regular when the only hotel in town wants over $100 a night. I tried staying with someone from the school but that was a total disaster. A couple friends I met from online brought me to the event with Ramtha finally and they were so excited about Ram “coming down” and I was too. Until he “came down” and babbled about aliens and UFOs for hours. It was a wine ceremony, too. He said something about how wine makes you forget everything because it moves you into “no time” and I was tipsy but not stupid. I started to see how everything was being twisted and justified with fake science.
But then I got to do fieldwork and had some extraordinary experiences and the tank was grueling but great at the same time. I even had a spontaneous healing from doing the blue body dance. I figured I could ignore the UFO-cult garbage if I got to be on that field. But then someone asked me if I was “going with Ramtha” and I was like what? And this person asked if I was chosen, would I go? They pointed to the sky. Immediately I’m thinking what-the-f?? What am I not being told??
They explained the whole “lift off” thing to me. I knew liftoff to be the concept that a person’s merkaba or light body can vibrate so fast it pulls the body into another dimension or whatever. But they were telling me Ramtha was going to choose a select elite few from the school to physically save them from the Earth and they’re going to live in his spaceship and he’s got some magic ability to create a habitable environment for them and then make it look like they died so everything seems normal on Earth. So when students died, people would say “they’re with the Ram now” and they wondered if the person got picked up for liftoff and everyone else got left behind. Or maybe we jumped timelines. Huh??
Later on, Ramtha would use liftoff against people and threaten not to take anyone because we just weren’t applying the teachings. He was really mean about it. I mean, she, JZ, pretending to be Ramtha was really mean about it.
Then there were two people who told me they were in love with Ramtha and he’s their soulmate. I’m sure there are more than two people who thought that because they both said that a lot of people believe they're his soulmate, but they both believed they were special because Ramtha tells them directly from the stage and confirms his love for them all the time. I got hit with a lot of looney tunes my first few events. But the thing is, I found different people to connect with and they told me those people were just the fringe students. I got comfortable again.
I started seeing the game but still I kept going for years and justified it by my desire to be on the field and go to the tank and do archery. Like, oh, there are weird people in every group.
I never caught the “Ramtha fever” but pretended to be impressed because I felt like I just wasn’t getting the inside joke. I felt like I was at a party and everyone was drunk and I was the only sober one. It really bothered me because I wanted to be excited but I wasn’t. I was excited for the disciplines, but not the Ramtha babble. That wasn't the Ramtha I had come to know through the CDs and tapes I had been listening to before coming to the school. I kinda felt cheated.
The first time I heard people do the warrior cry during C&E it was uncomfortable and just made me feel even more like I didn’t get it. Then there came the spiel about how we were all part of Ram’s army and so many people had vivid “memories” of being in his army in a past life. Then during a wine ceremony he started the drumming music and started talking about his "big black horse" almost in a sexual way and everyone was screaming and I just felt like I was in the wrong place.
Control. RSE fed those dark, dusty corners of my ego that wanted control over my life. I wanted to dictate all the terms of my life.
Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, I woke up.
I witnessed a teacher being completely abusive and out of line with a new student at a 101. Everyone knew this teacher was on her high horse imitating Ramtha and it was getting to be too much. She’d take us through C&E and say “breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!” like Ram, but we never had time to take in a breath. Then she’d yell at everyone for not doing it right. I asked myself why I was paying money to go listen to that. At that point I still was on the fence about whether Ramtha was real but I didn’t have any reason to suspect it was such an elaborate fraud.
I was starting to believe the alternative story that Ramtha was there in the beginning, but they got into a fight and he left and she just took over and now she’s pretending, but she was genuine in the beginning. Reading her autobiography squashed that theory. It was holier than swiss cheese. It reads like fiction because it is fiction.
I eventually ran out of justifications to keep going to events.
The focus is on escaping your humanity, and to make it palatable it’s called transcendence and enlightenment. When you’re “above” your pesky emotions, then you’re enlightened. A true master has no opinion. So everyone turns into uncompassionate zombies.
I read some newsletter on the RSE website about a student who was murdered in a town near the school and JZ seemed sympathetic but at the end she reminded students to create their day, as if that student either didn’t create her day or people can avoid getting killed by creating their day.
To judge RSE by its fruit would give a mixed basket. On one hand, I know many wonderful people who are dedicated and loyal to RSE who don’t get involved in the drama. The disciplines and teachings are interesting to them, and helps them work through their past traumas. They’re too star struck to see the truth.
The first time one of my “partners” asked me if I would go with Ram and I said I wouldn’t go he told me it’s Ok if I wasn’t ready to leave my Earthly life behind, not everyone is ready to be with the Ram. He didn’t understand that it’s not that I wasn’t “ready” it was nonsense to me. He may as well have asked me if I was ready to be a poptart.
Then there was the JZ’s closet thing, are you kidding me? People buy Ramtha’s robes for thousands of dollars? That’s nuts.
Then I came across an employment contract from JZK Inc. and the terms were just bizarre and I thought they were based in paranoia. Now I know it’s because everyone quickly learns she’s a fraud and all of her contracts have to serve as a gag order or she'd be screwed.
At one point I was defending those videos that Virginia posted without even having seen them, saying the standard "they were edited, they were out of context" nonsense. Then I actually saw the videos and it opened my eyes BIG TIME. I think that's when I officially flipped from "maybe I'll keep going to events because I want to be on the field" to "there is no way in hell I'm associating myself with these people or this organization."
I don’t doubt the disciplines or even the so-called powers, I’ve experienced everything you can imagine in the realm of energy. I can legitimately read a deck of cards and remote view (but the way RSE teaches remote view is a joke). Not 100% but with high accuracy. That’s just something that has been with me since I was a kid. It’s not special and doesn’t make me special. It’s just something that happens to some people more than others.
I felt like I was progressing in some way with that, and that somehow I would better my abilities, so I stayed.
Then I met JZ. Case closed. Goodbye, RSE :)