Under The Bloated Banyan: My Journey from Awakening to Disillusionment Within a High-Demand Group

By Jelelle Awen

What is it that makes a group a "cult" or a "high-demand group"? What degree or harm or abuse (if any) is acceptable in the name of emotional and spiritual awakening? Is it ever acceptable to ostracize someone from an entire intimate social community without allowing them to defend themselves and process their experience? How does someone reconcile the good that they experienced in such a group from the bad?These are questions that author Jelelle Awen explores in Under The Bloated Banyan after being given a harsh ultimatum about either choosing to stay in the group she was part of or give up her budding relationship with her now current husband. The love for her husband and the Divine gave her the courage to leave Emotional Body Enlightenment (EBE) after close to five years of being deeply involved in the inner circle and being a facilitator of the paradigm working with others in paid session space. Offered mostly through journals and blog entries that Jelelle actually wrote during the time, this book covers a six-year period of her experiences with love, healing, intense pain, profound awakenings, and self discovery during and after EBE.Under The Bloated Bayan offers a vulnerable and raw perspective that is stripped of much mental analysis and goes to the emotional core of why intense groups and their charismatic leaders are so alluring. Rather than play a victim, Jelelle accepts her experience as a necessary one and appreciates it for the gifts it offered, while also feeling a strong desire to expose and hold accountable the founder of EBE, Daniel Stace Barron, for perpetuating a years-long repetitive cycle of harm and post-traumatic suffering for so many of his followers. This book is for anyone who has experienced such a group, is drawn to joining one, has a friend or relative in one, or is just curious about this sort of experience and wants to learn more about it. From the author: This is my story of being under the bloated banyan. Sometimes being under the canopy of the banyan tree felt like coming home, being safe, finding my soul again. Sometimes being under it felt like being trapped, in a prison, unable to fully be myself and share my truth. The bloat of my banyan experience is a reflection of unfelt wounding in the collective and in our emotional bodies and souls too. The bloat comes from spiritual teachers who haven't reconciled, loved, and integrated the wounded masculine shadow inside of themselves. The bloat comes from distrust, polarization, anxiety, rage, separation that LIVES inside of parts of them (and in us) until it is felt and recognized. The bloat comes from seekers who give away their sovereignty and project their bigness, and goodness onto others who often don't deserve it.This is also a story of love. Of discovering and finding love for myself, for parts of me, and with others in relationships. Of a capacity to experience love even in the middle of the harshest fires, storms, and upheavals. It is a story of falling in love in varying degrees until finally meeting the soul mate of my dreams who I am still blessed to be with to this day. It is a story of returning eventually to the arms of the Divine and its love for me. It is a story of eventually trusting that ALL of what I experienced (even the most painful) was for my own growth. I feel such gratitude and blessings for this journey that I share in this book. I am proud of it.... even of the times where parts of me were distrustful, frustrated, envious, competitive, petty, and showing my shadow and small sides. Thank you for taking it into your heart and soul,Jelelle

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1980665257
• ISBN13: 9781980665250
• Release Date: March 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"