Personal Reflections On a Tragic Loss

Photo by Molly

Personal Reflections 

On a Tragic Loss

It was three years before Ron and I were married that I first met Robert Beatty. Ron had known Robert for many years and initially took me to Portland Insight Meditation Center (PIMC) when we were very new in our relationship. And I felt like I'd come home. I felt heartened and deeply grateful!

Robert Beatty had been the Founder and longtime Guiding Teacher at PIMC. He was also the one Ron and I chose to marry us in September of 2013. And it was Robert who I asked to officiate at my mother's memorial ceremony in 2021. I loved and trusted Robert.

I also appreciated his humility and humanness. In dharma talks, Robert would speak to his struggles right alongside his strengths. He was relatable, imperfect, and growing and evolving in an ongoing way. This is something that mattered to me. He was not a guru, but was human. And through his lifetime journey, he acquired and strengthened his capacity for wisdom, compassion, and love. 

This also opened the door to the hearts within our community to struggle and learn, to heal and evolve, to be vulnerable and honest, and to stop the endless striving for perfection and being "good enough." There was the felt sense of being welcomed and embraced just as we were. 

Robert, Ron and myself shortly before our wedding in 2013

* * * * *

It's now been just over a week since we received this message...

September 25, 2024

To the Sangha of the Portland Insight Meditation Center,

The PIMC Board learned on Monday, September 23, 2024 that Robert Beatty, the organization’s Guiding Teacher and Founder, was involved in a sexual relationship with a longtime student and member of the community. This relationship was a clear violation of PIMC’s code of ethics. 

We also learned that the community member in question tragically passed away last weekend. 

We accepted Robert's resignation as Guiding Teacher, President and Board Member on Monday evening. He is no longer affiliated with the organization. We have also instructed Robert to refrain from contacting or communicating with PIMC community members.

The PIMC Board is deeply saddened by this turn of events. We will be working diligently to determine how best to move forward as an organization.

In the meantime, all PIMC programming is on pause until further notice. We will provide updates as more details are available. You can reach us by email at BoardPIMC@portlandinsight.org.

Sincerely,

The PIMC Board

(Vik Anantha, Tracy Cullen, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, Dan Leif and Doug Pullin)

____________

Then today, this message was shared...

October 3, 2024

To the Sangha of the Portland Insight Meditation Center,

Last week we informed you about the death of a Sangha member, and we are following up now to offer more information.

KB Mercer, 64, took her own life on September 21, a fact we share with the heaviest of hearts.

She had been an active part of PIMC for years, serving as a volunteer greeter on Sunday mornings and participating in many gatherings at the center and online.

We remember KB as a dedicated Dharma practitioner who was also passionate about climate action, theater, music and much else. We and many others at PIMC are devastated by her loss.

Our decision not to share this information sooner was to ensure KB’s family had time to announce the details first, on their own terms. You can read more about KB in an online obituary posted by her family. That site also gives you the opportunity to donate to organizations fighting for causes important to KB during her life.

The suicide of a community member is tragic and unnerving. We send thoughts of healing and love to KB’s family, as well as anyone feeling the pain of this death. The Buddha taught us to open to suffering and impermanence, but experiencing the manifestation of those realities in this episode is painful beyond words.

For those community members who may find themselves troubled by these details, we have compiled a list of resources that you can turn to for help in the event of a mental health crisis.

Finally, we recognize the need to come together in practice in challenging times. We are continuing to work through the complex process of separating the organization from its founder in the wake of his serious violation of our Code of Ethics and subsequent resignation. For the time being, we need to continue to keep the center closed and all programming on pause. 

We are committed to keeping lines of communication open and will update you immediately as we decide on next steps. If you’d like to be in touch with us, please email BoardPIMC@portlandinsight.org.

May we all remember KB and, in so doing, remember the preciousness of life. 

The PIMC Board 

(Vik Anantha, Tracy Cullen, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, Dan Leif and Doug Pullin)

https://www.portlandinsight.org/

* * * * *

Many hearts are broken right now. There is much deep grieving. 

First and foremost, my heart and prayers go out to the family and loved ones of the community member who took her own life. Coping in the aftermath with suicide is one of the most heart wrenching losses anyone can ever face.

I also hold deeply those of us who have been close with Robert and all who love him and have been inspired and supported and helped by his teachings and the generosity of his heart. There are so many layers here of this devastating loss for the whole of the community. Healing will take some time...

And I hold Robert in my heart. I don't excuse him. I don't minimize the horror and the dire heartbreaking consequences of his actions. Not at all. I do also now recognize how there must have been this part of him that was deeply buried and incredibly lost and wounded and disconnected from his Self. Robert could not have otherwise engaged in such a profound breach of ethics that resulted in such profound harm.

And I weep for us all...

All photos are by Molly

* * * * *

In all of life's greatest losses, it is my belief and experience that there ultimately is some depth here that is beckoning for us to explore, to understand, to feel into with the strength, courage, integrity, compassion, wisdom and love held in our deepest being. When we are ready. Not right away, but when we are ready. When our pain isn't quite as acute. When we have the inner and outer supports we need to seek to let into our hearts that which can, with time, be part of a soothing balm to the intense trauma we are going through.

This has certainly been true for me in the wake of my twin brother's suicide many years ago. I've needed to make sense of how this tragedy could happen. And I've needed to move through many layers of excruciating grief and glean something that can act as a powerful antidote to all that I was experiencing — the rage and confusion, the denial and disassociation, the judgment and blame, the shame and guilt and if only's, and the ocean of overwhelming sorrow. I needed to understand what did I miss and what might I have seen but didn't?

And, ultimately, with time, I came to hold myself and all of us as human beings with a profound depth of compassion that I could not have imagined when I first began on my healing journey.

* * * * *

In the midst of it all, I am feeling this depth of compassion today, and including for Robert Beatty. 

Did I know of his affair years ago with a former client towards the end of his first marriage? Yes, I was aware that before I began going to PIMC that several community members had left PIMC when it became known that Robert had an affair with someone — who he'd been acting as a therapist for — less than a year after she was no longer his client. Divorce with his first wife followed. Was this disturbing? Yes. I believe that PIMC's code of ethics were clarified and strengthened in the aftermath of this painful time.

That said, what was heartening for me was what Robert communicated about the hard and very painful lessons he has learned from painful experiences. I also knew him now to be in a loving second marriage. And I believed in Robert. I believed that our teacher had been radically changed by attending to some very old deep core wounds that had been left to fester for decades and made him vulnerable to risking everything despite the dire consequences.

And I know what that is like. I know what it is like to cause great harm to myself and those I love and care about. And I've also now been on a journey of profound change, unburdening, healing, accountability, and transformation for decades. I've been doing the deep work to sustain these changes, expand on them, and grow into the fullness of who I most wholly am. And I believed that Robert was, too.

But I was wrong.

And what is addiction anyway? In its essence, I experience and witness addiction as a pattern of behaviors and beliefs which tragically, and to one degree or another, keep us distanced from who we most wholly are. Addiction perpetuates our being locked into suppressed parts of ourselves suffering from unattended generational and cultural pain and trauma. The impact is that our connection with our primary sacred Self is impaired or severed. Again, and to one degree or another, we are literally lost to the beauty, strength, wisdom, compassion and love of our true nature.

Over the years, and through my personal and professional journeys, I personally have come to define addiction as anything in which there is a pattern of our using as a coping strategy to distract and disconnect us from these deeper painful emotions and experiences that we carry and have buried within ourselves. This includes substance addictions and a whole host of non-substance addictions — to work, social media, exercise, food, sex, shopping, religion, meditation, spiritual bypassing, compulsive cleaning, hoarding, gambling, caretaking, people, cults, gurus, greed, guns, war, unhealthy relationships, political polarizations, image management and perfectionism, anger and chaos, power and control, judgments and dehumanization, mental and emotional states that are dangerous, projections and ideologies of separation rather than connection. And the list goes on. In essence, it is a pattern of engaging in harmful beliefs and behaviors no matter the suffering and devastation and losses, sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant, to ourselves and others.

And this is what Robert did. And this is what any of us are vulnerable to doing to the degree that we leave our deepest core wounds abandoned, denied, depressed and suppressed and shoved down into the deepest recesses of our being. If we are alive, there is more to unearth, embrace, unburden, and transform within ourselves. There is no graduation day with walking under the rainbow and simply living happily ever after. No, there is always more to attend to within ourselves as individuals and collectively. The danger occurs to ourselves and those around us when we come to believe that we've arrived, failing to understand that the journey of growing into our wholeness is a lifelong committed practice.

It, therefore, doesn't matter how many times we humans meditate or profess to practice the dharma, how many times we attend church and pray and profess to follow the teachings of Jesus, how many times we participate in sweat lodges and Native American Sun Dances and other ceremonies and rituals and prayers, how many 12 Step meetings we go to and how often we work the Steps and work with our sponsors, how many times and ways that we worship the Goddess or New Age spirituality or any other religious or spiritual traditions — if we neglect our deepest pain, we are abandoning core parts of our hurting hearts. 

The consequences of keeping our deepest pain and trauma locked inside of ourselves can manifest in countless ways. That pain has to go somewhere. It can show up in affairs and numerous addictions, both substance and non-substance. It can show up in illnesses like cancer and autoimmune diseases and Alzheimer's. It can surface as depression and anxiety and rage and despair and isolation and fear and shame. And on and on.

We live in a culture that, no matter our religious or spiritual tradition or none at all, so often asks us to wear a mask. We strive to look good, to smile and be perfect, to say yes when we need to say no, and to distance ourselves from vulnerability and our own deepest needs for authenticity and connection and love.

This encompasses a much larger picture than the need to recognize and heal and transform our individual core wounds. Because under all the ancestral trauma that we've often unknowingly inherited is the deeply unhealthy culture in which we live. bell hooks accurately describes it as "imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy."

So there is this individual and collective need to drop the pretenses that we are not hurting when we are. We need to come out of hiding. We need the recognition and support necessary to become our compassionate Self and to live with authenticity.

As much as Robert spoke to and taught compassion, there was an inevitable hole in him that he tried to fill by looking for love in all the wrong places. And who among us hasn't looked for love in all the wrong places? I certainly have. And this included for me in my past — and I also now believe for Robert over the years —sex addiction, something which alongside countless other addictions is so prevalent in our society. Hopefully, during the times that we were lost to ourSelves, we haven't caused such devastating harm to others. Too often, however, we have.

And then we need to do the hard work of accountability, forgiveness, understanding, compassion, and love. We need support that will empower us to connect with and hold with compassion and love all of our many hurting parts. And the joyful ones, too. And we need above all to strengthen our capacity to live Self-led lives.

Mark Nepo eloquently describes our Self in this way — “Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.”

Somehow, in all his years of teaching, counseling, meditation, and the great good that he did, it is obvious today that Robert's connection with his Self remained fragile and impaired. This is a great tragedy for him, for KB Mercer who ended her life and for all those she leaves behind, and for the whole of the PIMC community and beyond.

The great challenge now, I believe, is over time to find what can be learned from these profound losses to prevent future ones from happening. What is needing to be seen and embraced more deeply within ourselves, our families and communities, and our world that continues to yearn for recognition, compassion, and a depth of healing and unburdening that will alter the trajectory that we are on individually and collectively?

This is an important question for each of us to be asking. At least this is certainly what I am asking of myself in an ongoing way. And as I have come to humbly and wisely understand, if we are alive and breathing, there is more that we can do to embody the wholeness, beauty, strength, wisdom, compassion, joy and love of our sacred Self.

* * * * *

I am moved to end with these glimpses into some of the solutions that you may find helpful. I certainly have.

• These are excerpts from a beautiful, heartfelt, compassionate, illuminating, and empowering workshop held by Richard Schwartz and Lama John Makransky on compassion:

• This is an excellent talk by Gabor Maté on the stress-disease connection and the healing power of authenticity:

May we each find within ourselves and our communities ever expanding loving, compassionate, and wise supports which assist us on our human journeys of growing into the fullness of who we most truly are.

May we be at peace.

May our hearts remain open.

May we know the beauty of our own true nature.

May we be healed.

Bless us all, no exceptions...

💗

Molly