Ramtha

I don't usually write that  much personal stuff, or at least not about my (non-sordid) past, but a podcast I was listening to yesterday got me thinking.  The woman on the podcast was talking about how she was a Buddhist in the late 80s/early 90s, but how this brand of Buddhism was all about chanting "nom myoho renge kyo" to get what you want.  So, like the opposite of what Buddhism actually teaches, as far as I know.

My aunt and my mom were totally into this at that same time.  They both set up Buddhist altars (and spent a bunch of money on them, because the idea is that you would get more stuff if you had a sick altar) and would chant all the time with something in mind that they wanted.  These could be things like health, or actual material object, sometimes specific ones, sometimes just chanting for money.  I, of course, was cynical and sarcastic about the whole thing.  And bitter that my mom was spending money on that crap.

Around the same time, my mom and aunt also got super into Ramtha.  They would watch grainy videotapes of her/him.  What's Ramtha?  He's a spiritual warrior from Atlantis who is channeled by a women named J.Z. Knight, which is obviously a fake name.  That a picture of here above, and here's a clip of her on the Merv Griffin show, rocking her super fake Ramtha accent. I like that Merv Griffin is busting her chops.

Other things my mom got into in the 80s/90s: feng shui, herbal medicine (including trying to start an herb farm at our house). Her and my dad took a ton of St. Jon's Wort for a while, to try to cure their depression.  There's probably other stuff I'm forgetting/blocking out.  Oh yeah, way earlier, maybe 1984 or 1985 my parents tried writing a romance novel together.  They wrote some steamy scenes.  I remember a line about a man cupping a woman's buttocks.  In a real shocker, they fit perfectly into his cupped hands.