Gracefully correcting uncalibrated shame

Sad to hear that an end of a relationship had such an unfortunate fallout, as if the pain of splitting up is not enough.

At the time of the event, I was executive director of Oak (the California branch of the Monastic Academy), and Shekinah was visiting for a one-month training program. I had made specific monastic agreements not to engage sexually or romantically with others in the organization, and I broke those agreements by engaging with Shekinah, so I informed and apologized to the community.

Stuff happens to the best of us... and it's understandable. No one is perfectly rational and it sometimes feels impossible in the moment to honor our precommitments. That said, there is a price to be paid later for breaking them, and delaying the payment tends to compound the interest quite significantly. I wonder if that's something that happened. Should you have, say, stepped down and distanced yourself from the organization the moment the "monastic agreement" was broken, the debt may have stayed commensurate to the misdeed.

Edit: 

After finding and reading the relevant reddit thread and the medium post (which you didn't link, why?), I feel like the post is at least a little disingenuous, and the whole organization gives a strong cultish vibe. Apparent financial considerations, lack of transparency, severe gender imbalance, lack of expertise and poor understanding of the issues and vulnerabilities that novices face upon engaging with the organization look like significant red flags. While it's impossible for someone who was not there to figure out what really transpired, it is pretty clear that the setup was ripe for the new people getting hurt pretty badly, and I am quite surprised that not more people came forward about their pain and trauma after being a part of the Monastic Academy. But then it took a long time for the darkness in several of rat-affiliated orgs to bubble up into the public view. 

The lack of compassion for your ex in your post, while understandable, is a sign that the lessons of the incident have not been taken seriously.

It is hard to see the events you are describing as anything other than a clear pattern of leader worship and resulting abuse of trust. I hope the branch will not attempt to shrug off the events as an isolated incident and continue its practices as business as usual.

Context for this discussion

Alex doesn’t link to Shekinah’s original letter. Here it is. [LW · GW] In response to this post, she has also written a second post [LW · GW] explaining why she defines her experience as sexual assault. Alex blocked Shekinah from contacting him or commenting on this post, which is why I am replying here instead of Shekinah.

I have been Shekinah’s friend for years before encountering the LessWrong community. I have never met Alex, and have no personal connection whatsoever with Monastic Academy.

Alex had access to the first draft of this comment throughout the writing process, and had access to the final draft for several days, as well as notice that it would be posted, prior to my posting it in public here. He and I exchanged some polite messages during this period. Shekinah had access to the evolving draft of this comment throughout the writing process. Shekinah explicitly consented to me posting it. Alex and Shekinah both had the ability to comment on it, although only Shekinah did.

Editorial approach in writing this comment

Because my memory is limited and I was not a witness to any of the incidents that Alex and Shekinah discuss, I think the best thing I can do here is to gather and align their descriptions of the major events from their public writings. Therefore, I will lean heavily on verbatim quotes from Alex and from Shekinah. Shekinah has suggested I might contribute my impressions of our first discussion on her return from Monastic Academy. Those are in a footnote at the end of this post.

Alex says that “Shekinah makes many specific accusations in her post, but does not give very many details about specific events that gave rise to these accusations.” Shekinah disagrees, saying that she provided “quite a lot of detail in [her] letter,” which is “about half an hour long.”

To try and address the issue of concrete details about specific behaviors, I will be focusing on text that supplies details about specific events giving rise to Shekinah’s accusations. Some text regarding meanings, motivations, and impressions will be retained, either because it is contained in an otherwise detail-heavy passage, or because I believe that the specific impression is particularly pertinent.

I will be putting in bold text language that describes specific actions (or specific actions that were left undone). I will not be putting in bold text descriptions of meanings that were conveyed in language, unless specific quotes or paraphrases are included. These are my editorial choices, and I hope these choices are the right ones.

Alex says that “There are some very significant facts that Shekinah omitted in her essay that I will not describe here…” I do not know what facts he means, or what they are relevant to. 

One of the challenges here is that we are dealing with a problem of feelings, perceptions, and psychological impacts. Detailed descriptions of what physically occurred may be insufficient to describe “what happened,” or to properly evaluate the morality of people’s behaviors. For both Alex and Shekinah, the interpretation of what they experienced occurred in a complex context. Yet both sexual assault and mischaracterizations of sexual assault can occur in complex contexts.

Here, I have attempted to provide the quotes, links, and outside information that seems most relevant to parsing the central claims made both by Alex and by Shekinah. Much of their original posts have been left out, but the texts of both posts are publicly available. I have made editorial choices about what to emphasize and include. My intention is to make it easier for concerned readers to navigate these two posts, and to compare and interpret their texts, while being as transparent as possible about my friendly relationship with Shekinah.

Definition of rape in the state where the sexual incident occurred

Alex and Shekinah’s first sexual encounter, which Shekinah considers to be sexual assault, occurred in the state of California. Legal definitions of sexual assault are not identical with moral definitions, but I think that legal context is highly relevant here. I am not a lawyer, but I will be leaning on verbatim quotes from lawyers and law services here.

According to RAINN, California defines “consent” as “positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to the exercise of free will. The person must act freely and voluntarily and have knowledge of the nature of the act or transaction involved.”

In defining sexual assault and rape, RAINN says that in the state of California:

“All forms of nonconsensual sexual assault may be considered rape.

The essential determination of whether an offender is guilty of rape lies in the outrage to the victim’s person and the feelings of the victim of the rape.

Any sexual penetration, however slight, is sufficient to constitute rape.”

According to the website of lawyer Eric M. Davis, California has no statute of limitations on sexual assault.

Description of the sexual incident

Shekinah’s description of the event that she characterized as sexual assault was written as follows:

… later while walking along a beach in Santa Cruz, he asked me spontaneously to go swimming. After which we laid on the beach. Without any conversation about consent, without any kissing or foreplay, or any previous sexual engagement and despite the boundaries [“my desire then that we not cross anymore physical boundaries”] previously stated; he then jumped on top of me and entered my body. This encounter was over before I could even react. I did NOT have an opportunity to make a choice and I did NOT give my consent.

Alex says that “I believe that her accusations are straightforward mischaracterizations,” and “that sexual assault is a completely inappropriate way to describe it.” He does not supply any additional details to explain why he holds this belief. Alex also does not claim that he received affirmative consent from Shekinah prior to initiating this sexual encounter.

Descriptions of the monastery's response to the sexual incident and relationship

Another accusation Shekinah made in her Open Letter was about the circumstances of the letter the monastery had asked/pressured her to sign:

A couple weeks later my Beloved [Alex “Kōshin” Flint] came to me saying that Soryu Forall had personally asked him to write a letter to the leadership and board of directors stating that the described incident was loving and consensual, that we are abiding by the rules of the monastic container, and that we were not engaging in a romantic relationship. Most of that was true accept the piece around consent which I was still very confused about ( as commonly happens in the aftermath of sexual assault). I expressed that I felt unsure of this and hesitant about this letter. Several more times he talked to me about and showed me this letter. He expressed that the organization was afraid that I might sue them or that this might get out to the public. He also said something along the lines of this was what everyone in the organization needed to relax and feel safe, after which we could put this incident behind us and resume our focus on practice. It was also framed to me as a letting go of this connection and a demonstration of our commitment to the training. One day I came back from a walk in the park and I was informed that we would be signing this letter in front of the entire community. I said No to this and still felt pressured by leaders to sign this letter. At that point in time, feeling both overwhelmed within the training environment and pressured by someone I love, other leaders and community members I did sign this document. When I look back on this; I feel that the organization saw the issue from the beginning and intentionally covered it up.

The way Alex characterizes this same experience is as follows:

Around the same time, the head teacher asked Shekinah and I to write a letter clarifying the status of our relationship and our intention to stay in or leave the community. This is important in a monastic setting because when a whole community has agreed not to have romantic or sexual relations with each other, any breach cannot be left in an ambiguous state or else everyone will question whether the rules still apply to anyone. Shekinah describes being coerced into signing a letter, but when I reflect on the conversations between us I cannot think of a way that I could have explained more gently why we were being asked to write such a letter, nor made it clearer that it was up to her whether she did so or not. Shekinah was not an employee of the organization and was nearly at the end of her one-month visit, so there was little room for implicit leverage.

My conversations with Shekinah after her return from the Monastic Academy

I picked Shekinah up from the train station on her return trip from her experience at the Monastic Academy, and listened to her for hours as she processed her experience with me. This was about a year and a half ago. My memory is that Shekinah was very distressed, both with regard to her experiences one-on-one with Alex, and even more so with the way it was handled by other authority figures at Monastic Academy. I’ve also discussed this incident with her several times since then, both before and after the breakup of her relationship with Alex, and since the first drafting of this response.

My interpretation of Shekinah’s feelings about Alex and the first sexual incident between them is that it has taken her considerable time to parse her feelings and articulate them. When she first came back from Monastic Academy, she was simultaneously processing this sexual incident, the treatment of herself and Alex by Monastic Academy, her romantic feelings about Alex, her broader concerns about the organizational failures she perceives at Monastic Academy, her distress about being separated from Alex, and the traumatic experiences that occurred prior to her time at Monastic Academy that the meditation had brought up. In my opinion, it’s only natural that she has needed some time to figure out how she feels about this incident, and how best to articulate the events being discussed to others.

Because it has been a long time, I cannot remember the specific language she used during our conversations. Her feelings about Monastic Academy have been consistently negative, and the main reasons for that negative impression have been in connection with the way they treated her during her stay at the Monastic Academy.
 

[Soryu] wrote a very frank account of the whole episode in the quarterly report the next month, which is published on the website and sent out to supporters via hard copy. Shekinah describes this as a cover-up, but it seems to me like the exact opposite of a cover-up

I found this here.  The most relevant paragraph is:

> another OAK resident broke our resident commitment. While it is common for young adults in a residential, intimate environment to form strong bonds, CEDAR does not allow sexual contact between students who are training together. Most concerning is intimate relations within a hierarchy. Recently, two trainees at OAK fell in love, had sexual relations, and thus broke the residential agreement. They immediately communicated to others about their relationship. As a result, one of them continues training as a resident but has left their position of leadership. The other trainee returned home after completing their term of training. In order to maintain a good monastic container, CEDAR sent senior leaders from MAPLE to OAK. CEDAR will be more involved in overseeing and supporting each branch going forward. We have faith in OAK as it moves through this difficult, developmental growth.

Which leaves out many facts Shekinah has reported, some of which are disputed but others of which you (Alex) have either confirmed or not denied.  Most obviously the description of you both being "trainees" and the obfuscated reference to a "position of leadership", which I don't consider an accurate description of "executive director".  

As a note to other readers, I contacted both Shekinah and Alex to let them know that I've written a response to this post.

I am a friend of Shekinah's, and discussed these events with her both immediately after she returned to Seattle from the Monastic Academy, and several times since then.

If I publish this post, it will be leaning heavily on verbatim quotes from both of their articles. No information about the facts of the situation will be included beyond what is contained in those quotes. I also pull in some verbatim quotes about California law.

To be very clear, there are no "juicy tidbits" forthcoming from me. I don't have any. I will only be highlighting what seem to me to be relevant quotes from Alex and Shekinah in their public writings. You can glean anything I might post from their own words and a Google search about the laws of California.

This response will be published only with Shekinah's consent, and only after Shekinah and Alex have both had an opportunity to read and comment on it. 

If I publish this post, it will be under my pseudonym.

Mod note: this post and comment section previously used Shekinah's legal/professional name, and not the alternative name she used in her Medium post. She asked me to pass along a request to Alex to change that, which he has done, and I have also edited the comment section to change all mentions of her name.

A question that sounds combative on the Internet but which I'm asking honestly.

Why did you think this post was appropriate for LessWrong?

I'm extremely grateful to have found myself in connection with some spiritual teachers and friends who have helped not just with the "yes" part of this equation, but also the "no" part. My own teacher, Soryu Forall, has been shockingly clear in this discernment.

Did Soryu encourage you to write this post?

I had nothing better to do, so I decided to also go read Shekinah's medium post. I don't think you did anything wrong (except maybe get in the habit of doing some foreplay?), but I do think that Shekinah was incredibly unprepared for that level of retreat intensity. Having your first retreat as a beginner meditator be a month-long where they ask you to do things like a 16-hour yaza is likely to be... explosive. I think you guys should either spell out more clearly the training you do on your website, or increase the minimum experience level of the people you'll accept, a prior 10-day retreat like goenka's might be a good start.

And as always, shame is a pattern of body sensations, to be seen as empty and impermanent just like everything else...