#12: Beware the healing P🍆n🍆ses + cancelling dances :(

Welcome to my penis news letter! With the sun god Ra, Jesus Christ, and a Lingam in the mountains in Nepal.

Dear dancer,

Things are not going well, as me and my family are confronted with some severe circumstances. I have had to cancel almost all my september dances. Just two are left: this Saturday at De Vlierhof, and Saturday the 5th in Zutphen. That is all until the 25th, on which I hope to be able to play in Utrecht again.

I am very sad but also thankful to be in the position in which I can make time to take care of things. And with about six dances cancelled, I'm hoping younger dj's can also get a chance to play some more. Keep on dancing and give new dj's a chance!

Anyway, I already wrote a whole piece on healing penises so I might as well drop it here. I'v been writing alot about toxic masculinity, maybe I have something to come to terms with inside myself. Next month I will try take on a milder subject ;)

To the content!

Beware the healing penises!
Track of the month
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Beware the healing penises!

Over the past years journalists did some work on cults and abusive 'spiritual' leaders. Two of those 'leaders' I have actually met in person. And, surprise surprise, I met them in the context of ecstatic dance!

And what else do they have in common? Well, they both identify with a divine being, and they both say they have a healing penis! Brace yourself for wtf-ness.

Ra and Jesus Christ

The first and most famous is Bentinho Massaro, a Dutch boy who is running a business around himself in which he pretends to be the sun god Ra, helping the humble but broken people of planet Earth to become enlightened. He has an impressive following, and he offers some sort of spiritual story that promises that you never ever have to give a shit about anything other than yourself again - you can decide how you feel, at any time.

Massaro visited Odessa Amsterdam once when I was working there. I remember him eye gazing with some people in the lounge . They must have been some of this followers, because one of them later came up to me and said “You don’t know this guy? He is amazing!”. He struck me as a run of the mill, normy boy, who did not really stand out in the Odessa crowd. Eye-gazing was just a regular Friday night at Odessa...

There is also someone even closer to home who apparently started his own cult in a vacation park near Nijmegen. His name is Frank, he used to be a regular at Ecstatic Dance in Amsterdam. We’ve talked quite a few times. His impression on me was that he is extremely attractive in a prototypical masculine way, with muscles in all the right places and long hair, and an apparent calm and ease over him, a very friendly appearance as well. I always liked chilling with him even.

Frank looks a bit like how white people imagine Jesus Christ to have looked. And, at some point he was actually cast in some sort of art project as Christ on the cross. And then he actually started believing that he is some sort of reincarnation of Christ consciousness. I don’t meant this figuratively, he thinks this now. And a small cult of believers has evolved around him who apparently feel that way too (or are tricked into feeling this).

Here come the penises

So, according to themselves, having sex with one of these divine beings can bring you to another level on your spiritual path. Bentinho makes his girlfriends have sex with because their progress was stagnating. He also re-enacted a follower's sexual abuse story with one of his girlfriends, to celebrate that the follower had shared this!

Frank, who has made orally pleasuring him into some sort of initiation ritual, has similar practices: because one of his women felt a negative emotion, this was apparently reason for Frank to get her into bed with him to 'work through' the blockages. Both of them have literally said that they have healing penises.

We have the Sun God and Jesus Christ ejaculating people to Enlightenment. I wish I was joking, but I am not. And what’s even worse is that I think they might believe it themselves: they seem to be confusing their primal urge to impregnate females with a godly spiritual power. And this would indeed all be very funny if it were not so extremely harmful for the people getting involved with them.

Cult leaders are masters of seduction. They can see people’s deepest desires and play into them, love bombing their targets until they can no longer resist and join the cult. And then the abuse starts. This process is hard to put into words for me as it has so many aspects but I recommend the podcast and documentary series about these people (mentioned below). It is extremely damaging.

Not the only ones

I wish anyone who has been involved in this sort of madness so much love. It seems so easy: just don't get involved with these people. But it is not. You get played on some kind of unhealed wound, and suddenly you love someone and you are craving for his approval all the time. And once you are in, it is very hard to get out. And when you do get out it is even harder to speak publicly about it (Massaro even has new members sign a NDA). But some people do speak out, and I have so much respect for their courage.

I get why people fall for attractive gurus with a message of healing. If your soul has been broken (which, in this soul crushing world, happens alot), and you are seeking for something else, these people promise you a world where your troubles evaporate. All you have to do is step into their bubble, and maybe pay them a nice amount for a book or retreat. They present themselves as enlightened person, but in the end this is merely a performance. We tend to confuse charisma and charm with enlightenment.

And these two dutchies are not the only ones. Even some -no alot, too many- pioneers of modern day spiritualism have been known to abuse their followers. To name some: Osho, Yogi Bajan (Kundalini yoga inventor), Bikram Choudbury (Bikram yoga), Pathabi Jois (Ashtanga yoga), Sogyal Rinpoche (Tibetan Book of the dead author). They all just couldn’t handle the power that came with their roles as spiritual leaders.

The baby and the bathwater

And, to those who say "Yes but the victims, they wanted this right?", I want you to watch the documentary 'Generation Bhagwan' about Osho's communes, and tell me again that a 14-year old child 'wants' to lose her virginity to a thirty-year old Sanyassin.

And if you feel the need to defend all this with "yes but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater", then please stop. Yes there were probably good things, we all know that. But it is the dark parts, the abuse, that remains hidden for most of the time. So lets just all acknowledge that these are very immature people in very powerful roles (like in so many positions in society), and show some compassion for the victims.

And I know that these cult-like dynamics are prevalent in the ecstatic dance scene, in milder and more innocent versions as well. The healing penis attitude is everywhere, and we have people greedily playing into these vibes. So, to all the wannabe -male- spiritual teachers out there, I’d like to say: quit it bro, your wiener is not meant for healing. It is meant for peeing (sitting preferably), and for having pleasurable sex in a consensual and safe space without an abusive power relation (and if you find that sentence boring then you lack creativity).

And to all the spiritual seekers out there looking for enlightenment: Jesus was not white. He was brown-skinned and Jewish.

Beware the healing penises!

Inst@Guru, podcast about the cult of Bentinho Massara
Klinkt als een sekte, episode 2, about Frank
Generatie Bhagwan, about child abuse in the Osho community

Track of the month

Well, this one is a banger. And a classic, as well. Thanks to dubstep pioneer Mala I have been into classic dubstep for a while now. It is the same as with jungle drum n bass: not everything is suitable for ecstatic dance: alot of it is too gritty and dark, and just not so interesting for me. But this is one of those rarities that are just plain perfect. I found it through a DJ set by Mala, who is one of the Dubstep pioneers from the early days of dubstep.

I can't find that many tracks that resemble this rhythm or vibe, so calling on all music lovers and producers: please send me more of this ethno-infused, underbelly vibrations!