Claire Hoffman: A Journey Back to Life Transcendent
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2017
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Abandoned by her alcoholic dad when she was five, out of cash and evicted from their NYC apartment, Claire Hoffman, her mom and seven-year-old brother found themselves dropped into a small town in Iowa.
But, not just any old town, this was a sacred enclave, Heaven on Earth, established by Transcendental Meditation founder, Maharishi Mahesh. For Claire’s mother, Transcendental Meditation and the cloistered culture around it became a source of salvation and calm. But, over time, Claire began questioning the teachings and traditions. She eventually fled the town, the practice and community and moved back in with her father.
Decades later, a now established journalist and teacher and parent, and looking for answers, Claire found herself drawn back to Iowa, to reexamine her spiritual upbringing in an attempt to resolve unanswered questions rediscover a bit of lost magic.
In today’s episode, we sit down with Claire and dive into this powerful, raw and revelatory journey, detailed in her memoir, Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood.
photo credit: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We went away for like a long weekend up out of the city and with our neighbors and when |
| 0:10.2 | we came back my dad had just left a note and $50 and was like I went to California by. |
| 0:17.2 | And you know I think my mom probably saw it coming but couldn't quite believe it was |
| 0:21.5 | like that and we got the eviction notice the next day. |
| 0:30.3 | Imagine waking up one day about five years into life, living in an apartment with your |
| 0:34.9 | mom and dad and brother in the Upper West Side of New York City. |
| 0:37.8 | I'm going to find that your dad has not come home and shortly after you, your mom and |
| 0:43.7 | brother are whisked into the middle of Iowa to become a part of a large spiritual community |
| 0:51.3 | and all that goes along with that community. |
| 0:54.0 | That's the story of today's guest Claire Hoffman. |
| 0:57.8 | She shares her journey of moving into the Transcendental Meditation community in its very |
| 1:03.4 | early stages in the United States and we get deep into what unfolded as she moved to |
| 1:09.6 | a place called Utopia Park. |
| 1:11.4 | In fact it's all detailed in a book called Greetings from Utopia Park. |
| 1:15.7 | This is not a judgment about Transcendental Meditation or the community but we do talk |
| 1:20.9 | about a lot of touchy topics and conversations. |
| 1:26.2 | Everything from what Transcendental Meditation is, what the community was about, what some |
| 1:30.1 | of the promises were around it and how she responded to it and her family responded to |
| 1:36.0 | it. |
| 1:37.0 | She eventually left that community, went out into a mainstream American life for a long |
| 1:41.3 | time and more recently in her adult life came back to it because there was a story that |
| 1:48.2 | needed to be closed, there was a loop that needed to be closed and we go into this. |
... |
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