Tower: 4. As Time Goes By

My spiritual path held both meditation and devotion. Not specifically devotion to the master (which is what a lot of disciples mean when they say that) but complete devotion to meditation. The difference was that in the beginning, I was devoted to the concept of God that I was given by Angelo; however, as my own experience in meditation grew, my meditation became the lens through which I could really focus on the Divine. Then I became devoted to my own experience and my own practice and, of course, if you’re living from a place of love, selfless service is something that happens naturally. However, during the first year, my own experience was just developing so I can’t say that I knew what meditation was. The Knowing was the figurative “carrot on a stick”, but after the Knowing Session, Vidal and I both felt fantastic about our experiences as “only aspirants.” We were a great support system for each other… and we both loved our meditation. I think meditation got me through everything.

As far as Guidance went, in my first few years I followed it completely. I was very strict about it. Later, I definitely used discrimination when deciding which guidance to follow. There was some guidance I completely ignored because I thought it had nothing to do with my spiritual evolution. There was some Guidance I thought would have been good for me, but that I didn’t do. There was also some that I thought would be useful so I did do it. After I became aware that Angelo didn’t have any special knowledge or awareness of my karma, I weighed and considered each bit of Guidance he offered. I always thanked him and was grateful to receive Guidance but I started taking responsibility for my own choices and experience.

It was always portrayed that Angelo had “special powers.” And he played on that also. I mean, his first words to me were, “Oh, you were about to create some karma.” How often have you said that when you first met someone? It was implied that he, like Santa Claus, had a list. He knows when you’ve been sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He even had a song he would sing us whose lyrics were very “Big Brother” that went something like, “Every step you take, every move you make, every breath you take, every single day, I’ll be watching you” And the whole thing was presented very “mysterious ways of the master.” Although, I have to say, for whatever reason… maybe because I had been in stage productions… I was aware of a lot of the set decorations and things that were supposed to serve as a backdrop for him… But, to me, they were clearly staged decorations. So they didn’t really work on me. Like this material they hung behind him when he was sharing to make it look like energy was shooting out of him. But stagings were subtle compared to what was actually claimed. The claims weren’t subtle at all. For instance, disciples would tell you, “You are under his Grace.” And anything good that happened would be credited to being under his Grace. Basically that meant that, as his disciple, he kept bad things from happening to you. If something bad DID happen, then it was because you got in his way and prevented him from doing his work. You were “in your mind” and one of the “dead.” It was a closed-loop system. To me, if he was going to accept the accolades for the good, he should have accepted responsibility for all of it. But then, how would he have explained bad things happening? So it had to be Karma vs. Grace. Your Karma vs. His Grace. If it was something we liked, it was through his Grace, and if it was something we didn’t like, it was our Karma.

It wasn’t ONLY Angelo saying this stuff… our whole group had a spiritual hierarchy that was geared to support this person -- this “very mysterious” person that acted in very “mysterious ways” – totally beyond our ability to comprehend. Angelo was definitely presented as having powers. For instance, he would hear something from someone’s roommate (and I would hear about it because “hot topics” were discussed in the morning meetings and Xena would tell me about some things before Angelo brought them up in public.) Then, in class, he’d say “I dreamed this” and I’d think, “No you didn’t. Her roommate narked on her.” But it was definitely portrayed that he was so sensitive that all knowledge was available to him. He knew whatever he wanted to know. And if you did something off that he did not call you on, they said he still knew it, but sometimes he does not call you out on everything out of compassion or because it was just your karma. But he knew… regardless. However, there were some things I KNOW he would have called me out on. For instance, I doubt he knew that I used regular sugar, milk and flour in his cakes. One of my services was to make him cakes. Big, 10-inch round, double layer cakes. Two cakes a week for 15 years. At the beginning, I was very conscientious of using the accepted ingredients because they would muscle-test his body and there was a lot of stuff he could not tolerate. It was very “Princess and the Pea.” He could reportedly only accept certain things into his body because it was so pure… but after about 5 years I thought, “Really? Well, let’s see.” So I started experimenting. First I would use lemon concentrate instead of lemons. Then I’d try regular milk instead of soy milk. And then regular flour instead of spelt flour. And you know what? He never said a word. Now, as part of my own practice, I didn’t do that a lot. Only if circumstances seemed to warrant it. Like if I was in a hurry and couldn’t run to Whole Foods but a trip to 7-11 would be do-able. And it was funny when I’d hear back that the cake was “much better last week” and I’d think, “Of course it was. It was real sugar, milk and flour!” But it was knowing about that or other things that I knew people were keeping secret from him (which, if he had known, I knew would have freaked him out) that allowed me to move away from thinking of him as being omnicient. Even though he was portrayed as that.

By the end of my second year, as I approached my self-imposed deadline for questioning my involvement in the group, I felt like my life was progressing the way I wanted. I was aware my focus did not align entirely with the way the group was focussing, but I thought it was still a fertile environment for my growth. Being in a group like this was VERY nurturing. Similar to any group whose members are singularly focussed on one thing -- in this case it just happened to be God or enlightenment. It seemed like everyone around me was talking about how wonderful the group was for them (of course, those voicing different opinions didn’t stick around very long.) But, for me, it was a matter of evaluating whether I thought this environment was helping me… and it seemed to be.

I don’t know if Angelo had guidelines that he set for himself or not; but he certainly never followed the many guidelines he set for us. We had so many rules. People would say that they were to give us opportunities to drop our minds and opinions. Many times during class, someone was sneezing or coughing and they were called out as being in their mind and even yelled at because “How could they let their body be in control of them?” And yet, Angelo was always hacking and spitting into his spit-cup. Or if people were uncomfortable after hours of sitting in one position and they started shuffling, they’d get a lecture on letting their bodies control them. And yet he was the one who had to have someone come in and use a level on his chair to make sure it was exactly level because if it wasn’t, it would throw his body out. And he needed exactly the right depth of cushion to sit on; to the extent, that they had a box of tissues so they could add depth one tissue at a time and have him test it until it was just the right depth of cushion. Where is the dropping your mind in that? Some people judged the devotion of anyone that set themselves up as "exceptions" that didn’t need to follow Angelo’s guidance, but I found that hilarious! They were exactly following what they saw Angelo do! What clearer guidance could they be following? He was supposed to be our example. And you know, if he wants to sit on 2 pillows and 3 tissues then great… but if so, he needs to allow other people that same courtesy. He had a blank check in a lot of areas that the rest of us didn’t. But that was supposedly because he was special. He was enlightened. Well, I wasn’t around him at his home, but from what I saw, he didn’t apply what he shared with us. And the reason always given was because he was already blissed out and enlightened so he didn’t need to do. Perhaps he was not comfortable with enlightenment unless it also was tissue-thin.

For someone that was supposedly free from the wheel of karma, he certainly created a lot of craziness around himself. Of course, I think that was also part of his “qualification” as a master. Because masters are supposed to be crazy. Read the stories. They’re all nuts. Even in cartoons like The Lion King, the wise old monkey that’s wacky and beyond normal comprehension… So the more crazy he acted the more wonderful he was because, “masters are all like that.” They are all kooky and they all say things that seem to not make sense. And part of that was fun I think… wanting him to be that so badly that you accept his personality idiosyncracies as further proof of his Divinity.

I think in the beginning, when I truly believed that his guidance might “free” me, I tried to convince people to follow guidance more unquestioningly than might have been wise… only because I was trying to do that myself. I thought, “If you’re going to have a master and you’re going to be serving him, then you must give up your will to him.” You are saying to him, “Look, you see everything,.. you see my path better than me… so I will let you make my decisions.” Otherwise, what are you doing? You’re not really serving a master if you’re not putting yourself completely in his hands. A disciple can’t make himself free any more than a lump of clay can make itself a sculpture. At least, that’s what Angelo taught. Whether that’s the same concept that someone raised Hindu would have, I don’t know. So I think I did pressure people to seek his guidance during my first few years when I was thinking like that.

Would I change anything about my experience then? Looking back, if it were possible to send my consciousness back to that time and live as a more conscious person, then yeah, I’d do that. But the choices I made were because I wasn’t capable of any more then. I didn’t know any better. I wouldn’t change anything else though, because changing one thing might change where I’m at now… and I love where I’m at now.

I wasn’t in the inner circle and I wasn’t on the fringe. I was somewhere in the middle. But Xena was in the inner circle, and we were very close, so I heard a lot of stuff that others may not have been privy to from her. It was never anything that I could repeat because she shared it with me in confidence. I also talked to a lot of fringe people (people on the outskirts that didn’t seem to be diving in as deeply as TRUE disciples). And fringe people knew a LOT. I actually heard a lot more from fringe people than I did from Xena. Somehow they would know specifics even better than she did sometimes. I’m not sure how that happened. Maybe some of the people living in the house were talking to people who then talked to the fringe people? But they knew things outside of the spin I was given as a member of the group… so I heard things from a lot of different directions.

I never got the feeling that Angelo felt I was special. I mean, I think he liked me, but I also recognized that part of his charm was his ability to make people feel like they were special to him… despite how he treats them. I did feel like he appreciated my humor. I felt like he was my friend that had been on this spiritual path longer than me, who knew more than I did about it. I was using him as a resource… he was like a big brother. I did feel close to him… he didn’t act with me the way he acted with others… or rather, the way other people said he acted with them. Others would tell me how he would tell them about all the karma they were creating by not listening to him but he never did that with me; if he had, it would have been problematic since I didn’t believe in that. But he didn’t. I don’t know if it was because I was Xena’s brother and he knew he better not mess with me (or he’d have to deal with her). I don’t know. But I was light with him. I stopped being scared of him when I stopped believing he was all-seeing and all-powerful… like the Wizard of Oz… when I saw the man behind the curtain… then he became more like my friend… and not this illusion being projected.

Angelo never tried anything sexual with me. Which I guess is ironic… I mean, if he was going to “work with” anybody sexual, it should have been me. A couple of times in cleansing, out of the blue, he had me imagine a situation where I was having sex with someone. I remember one situation where Ryker flipped out about me not bringing the blanket to throw over his chair in Satsang. Here I am spending hours in service, setting up for satsang, only to discover that we had forgotten to bring the Indian blanket we covered the chair with. But we dealt with it and did the best with what we had (I actually liked it better cause I never really got the whole “throw an Indian blanket over it and it looks beautiful” mode of decorating). But Ryker shared that whole meeting about not being consistent or something and it annoyed me enough that I took it to work on in cleansing. I talked to Angelo about it and went down the stairs and everything and then suddenly, he was “Now, see yourself in bed with Ryker.” And I remember being shocked but I went with it. And then Angelo guided me to be kiss him and take his dick in my mouth… and I was kind of grossed out because, one, he’s Ryker… he’s my brother, my friend…and two, I never thought that way about Ryker. He’s not my type if I have a type and… eeewwww….. but Angelo kept guiding me through it and asking what it was like. I remember at the time not understanding the whole point behind that. Oh! And there was another time where he brought up masterbation about something that I said … and he asked “What if I have you take off your pants and lay on the bed and masterbate?” After which I remember laughing and saying, “Neither of us would like that” and then moved on and didn’t think anything else about it. And on a different occasion, I did feel like he was trying to get me to play with myself. He was telling me to touch myself but I was just doing it in my head and he was saying, “No, REALLY feel your balls” and I just pretended not to get it. To be honest, I just thought it was odd. It never occurred to me that it was anything until I heard similar things happening with other guys… that I realized that maybe some people would have actually done it when prompted like that where I just laughed it off. And I’m sure some people discredit some of the guys’ stories because they didn’t just laugh it off. Like, “Why did you do it? Or why not just say no? Or why didn’t you tell someone about it?” That would probably have been my reaction too -- because I COULD say no. I forgot that some people make him into someone you can’t say no to.