By Karen Jonson (Rishika)
Published: 23 May 2008
Updated: 22 March 2025
Note: On May 23rd, 2008, I started my first blog called My Life in a Cult using the nom de plume Freedom Writer. It was my first time being able to be completely free to speak out about my years inside the cult, Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat (JKP). After making 13 posts, I decided to block the blog until after the criminal trial of Swami Prakashanand Saraswati in 2012. I will repost all of these blog posts here as an archive. The following was my first blog post on My Life in a Cult.
Share Your Story Here
Many people have been hurt by a professed spiritual organization known as JKP. Many of us have tried to tell our stories and share our thoughts on other blogs recently, but have been abused, ridiculed, and drowned out by the JKP damage-control machine.
This will be one place where we can tell the other side of the story about this organization — the one it doesn’t promote in its brochures or on its many websites. This will also be a place for people who did not personally experience the dark side of JKP, but who have doubts or thoughts to share. It will not be a place to merely badmouth JKP, but to share real experiences, constructive criticism, and helpful advice for abuse victims.
I was inspired to start this blog by the people who recently tried to share their thoughts about the dark side of the JKP on other blogs. Some of us were discouraged when a couple of the blogs were shut down. I will regularly post my thoughts and knowledge about JKP here. I will manage all comments and keep out all of the abusive comments, JKP self-promotions, and JKP blind defenders — after all, we’ve all heard enough of that.
Please share your story here. You deserve to have a voice. And we owe it to ourselves and the world to tell the dark side of JKP — in other words, the truth.
Comments from my former blog, My Life in a Cult:
yojimbosanjuro: I’d like to hear more of your story if you feel you can post it.
FreedomWriter: Hello Yojimbo, Thank you for visiting my new blog — and for your interest in hearing more. Yes, I will definitely be posting more insights in the weeks and months ahead. In fact, May 25th, 2008 is the anniversary of a very important day in my life — it was the day I knew for sure that I was in a cult. It’s an interesting coincidence that I have started this blog so close to this event. Send me your questions knowing that we are free to talk here without interference — thank God almighty, we are free at last!
Copyright © 2008-2025 Karen Jonson/RishikaXcult. All rights reserved. No part of this blog post may be copied or duplicated without the express permission of the author.
