Tower: 5. My Typical Week

A typical week in the Buddha Field went something like this for me:

Mondays I got up, meditated, and went to work. Came home. And an hour later had to leave to go to class. “Class” was a blend of an acting class and a psychotherapy class. Angelo had been an actor before he became enlightened. People also said it was a psychotherapy class, but I think that’s just part of method acting techniques: where you try to get at your root emotions through various exercises. We all became much better actors… better liars anyway. There were a lot of things in class that I thought were a huge waste of time, but there were some things that were really beautiful that came out of it also. Class would run from 7:00 p.m. until around midnight. What time it ended varied. Classes would get later and later so for a while they were running until 2:00 a.m. Xena and I did manage to keep a lid on how late they got by pretending there was a security alarm on the buildings that would go off at midnight if we were still there. So, if Angelo didn’t want to be there when the cops showed up, he needed to wrap it up before midnight. For some reason, some people thought it was very cute and mysterious and “in the moment” that he could never finish on time. Personally, I thought it was cuter that, despite his omniscience, he never knew we were totally bullshitting about the alarm. There was never a security alarm.

Tuesdays I got up, meditated and went to work. Came home. And had about an hour and a half to eat dinner and make his cake before I’d have to leave for Tuesday night meditations… which were two hours of sitting and meditating. Those meditations were great.

Wednesdays, after work, I’d help Xena make his cookies and then head off to Wednesday night dinners. Once we got to Austin, we stopped having Wednesday night dinners, but I’d have to leave for the writer’s group. There were about six of us in the writer’s group and we were supposed to be writing a script about this girl that found a master and how the Cult Awareness Network came after her (before they were taken over by Scientology) and tortured her. She was this simple girl that just wanted to love God and the whole point of the movie was how they should have left her alone. Angelo was guiding us to write that and Malario spearheaded the whole effort. It wasn’t really a writer’s group per se, because Malario kept the reins on everything. We did do different writing experiments which were fun. And I really liked several of the people in the group. There were some fun times. But it was silly. It came to the point where our whole function was to write protest letters if something anti-master or anti-cult came out in a magazine. We’d send letters to the editors that said, “I saw the recent article in your magazine about cults and it was completely off base.” We’d send the letters as different people and we’d have people mail them from different parts of the country so it would seem more impressive. We became this letter-writing force and if Angelo wanted a letter bombardment on someone, he’d have us do it. I remember sending them to the Yoga Journal, Time magazine and several TV news companies because of shows that they did, berating them for being so irresponsible in their journalism. Malario would collect different types of stationary for us and we’d all use different fonts or handwriting styles so that it could seem like it was more than just 6 cult members writing the letters. I remember some of them were actually published in “Letters to the Editors.” But many of the letters were to executives as irate consumers berating them for their irresponsible yellow journalism. We would use the names of childhood friends or go through the phone book and pick random names and addresses (the idea being that anonymous letters don’t have the same credibility.)

Thursday nights were Satsang meetings. For me, that started immediately after work. I would leave work and drive directly to the hall (wherever we were having the meetings at that time) and I would spend 2 ½ hours setting up the facility. Setup usually involved cleaning out whatever was in the room – anything that might interfere with the “feel” we were going for, setting up seating (chairs and floor pillows) for the audience, prepping the entryway and bathroom areas and setting up the area around whoever was going to be sharing (This usually involved setting up an empty chair that was actually put in the ‘main’ position. This chair would remain empty except for a picture of the master. It was to make it clear that he was still the master and no one could take his place. Sharers sat in a chair off to the side.) At various points, other tasks came and went, including: posting signs about not speaking or lingering (we were supposed to go immediately into the room and sit and meditate silently until the sharer showed up), unkeying the facility’s alarm systems, setting out the songbooks/instruments, and setting up the lighting. The whole thing was pretty extensive at this point… and then during the meeting I had a few services that were meant to facilitate the flow of the meetings. Then, at the end of the evening, it probably took an hour or two to break down and get everyone out so that I could reset the alarm and go home to bed. On occasions when Angelo would share, it was much, much more involved and involved many more people. Whole sets and backdrops would need to be erected (so people would know that it was something special.) Normally, the meetings would end around 11:00 p.m., but when Angelo came, we could be there til 3:30 or 4 in the morning.

Friday nights were Movie Night. Years ago, I’d come home and have to bake “Movie Cookies”. A few of us would cook batches of cookies to sneak into the theater (since we could not buy any of the theater’s treats that were full of wheat and sugar and dairy). We would pass them around during the movies. Some of them were tasty but some of them I referred to as “Aisle Cookies” which basically meant you threw them into the aisle cause they were too nasty to eat. We stopped passing around cookies around the time of the Waco incident. The incident with the Branch Davidians made us all a little more fearful of ‘outsiders’ and attracting attention… so there was a pause in some of our more attention-getting activities like the cookie passing. And some of those things, like the cookies, just never started up again. But we always saved seats. That was a hilarious thing to watch (and participate in). Angelo wanted 3 rows around him that were filled with Holy Company so he wouldn’t have to sit next to any “dead” people and have them throw off his energy. There were only about four of us that would consistently show up to save those 3 rows of seats… and then there were always the useless cling-ons, like Verthlessa, who would come in and throw her scarf down on the closest seat to his that she could get (cause the energy being close to him was so much more profound than sitting 3 rows away. I’m serious. People actually said that. When in actuality they just liked GETTING his attention and it was easier to get when they were in his sight). Anyway, immediately after she would throw something in her chair and a few chairs for her friends, she would go to the bathroom to do her makeup until Angelo arrived. Worthless…. Worthless….Even among mindless automatons, some people shine in their worthlessness. But there were about 4 or so of us that were consistent in that service. I didn’t like the seat-saving aspect though – for many reasons. Maybe it was just that the execution of it was so flawed. Imagine going into a theater and there are 3 rows of seats in the middle of the theater that are “saved.” Now imagine that in front of and behind those rows are 5 or 6 more rows with a lot of the seats saved (this was by people that showed up right before the movie started and would send one person to save seats for the group.) So, in the middle of the theater, it was typical to see 15 to 20 rows with only a few people sitting in them.. but with sweaters and stretched out over the seats to “save” them. AND the people would get there right before the movie started. Imagine how pleased those “dead people” were -- showing up to see a movie and not being able to get the seat they wanted. Anyway, back to the movie experience. I loved seeing movies and then sharing about them in light of “what was the highest that it had to offer”. Usually after the movie we’d go somewhere to meditate, or go for a walk. It was those quiet moments I treasured. When there were 150 people moving silently together, enjoying the night and the silence… I’m sure we scared people because you don’t see that often. I remember when we were on a retreat (in Arcata I think it was), there was an article in the paper about the “Nightwalkers”. The headline was something like, “Who are the Nightwalkers?” and went on to describe this large mob of people that would walk around the neighborhood at night in total silence. It may have been eerie from the outside, but on the inside it seemed the most natural thing we did.

Saturdays were the slowest day of the week. It was one of Angelo’s gym days so some of us would go there and save machines for him, because God forbid he’d have to wait for a minute while someone was finishing up on a machine he wanted. Then, when he was using THAT machine, we would hurry to the next machine he wanted to make sure it was available as soon as he was ready for it. Most people had Saturday off – as a free day. It was the night that they had the “new being” meetings. So those in the Knowing that had been asked to share at those meetings had to go to that. And I think Saturday was one of the nights I was involved with the writer’s meetings. We did those twice a week and I think we were doing them on Saturdays at this point (they later moved to Sundays). Also on Saturdays, I had to bake another cake for him. Twice a week. It took a couple of hours to make it so it was usually what I did before the writer’s group and Wednesday night dinners. I think we got it down to only costing $30/cake to make it (but it was MUCH cheaper at those times I used regular flour, sugar and milk!) There was a period when there were outings during the day on Saturdays too. And I did those when they were happening.

Sundays were the “official” outings. We’re spanning quite a number of years and I’m not sure what happened when… but I do know that once we got to Austin it was all-day outings on Sundays. Hours and hours of long retreat-type outings, where we would drive to local lakes (usually there was water and swimming involved on an outing). We would swim, we would sing (we sang a lot – we were like the Family Von Trapp… only without the Nazis) Angelo liked to sing so he was always mic’d… but Sunday was his day to come up with songs. He would make up words to music… old-timey music that I’m sure was really big back in the 30’s when he was listening to music but since none of us knew it, it was like brand new songs to us. I was in charge of the songbooks. People would take notes when he was free-styling lyrics and I would take the words they wrote and type them up and put them in songbooks. I’d have to carry them on the outings so if we had long walks I’d be carrying these big backpacks of songbooks. I also took the songbooks to the Thursday Satsang meetings. And there was a separate set of songbooks for the Thursday meetings also – songs that were more appropriate for the new beings to hear. I guess they idea was that if people were on the outings, they were “in” enough to hear the more blatant songs. Anyway, in the beginning, we’d have to hurry home from the outings cause we had Ryker’s sharing to go to that night… but those vanished because the outings got longer as Angelo got more into singing. Eventually it took all day. It would be a 10 hour outing… and you didn’t really take food (or I didn’t cause I knew I’d get yelled at for eating). We did get to the point where we would take little bags of food because we knew we’d be there all day. I know the long outings bothered a lot of people because they talked to me about it. Mainly because of the singing. Angelo would get into these songs that were just retarded. Some of them were sweet, but we went through a phase where we were singing songs that were just farm animal noises. So everybody would be singing “BAAA BAAAA”. And it would just be a round of people singing that for an hour. That sometimes happened on Friday nights after the movies also. We’d go somewhere afterwards to share about the movie and end up singing the barnyard song. It was a strange dichotomy because at the same time there was singing and laughing, there was also “Good Lord! When is this going to end? What does this have to do with spiritual growth?” A lot of times that was the drop-your-mind stuff where you were told to sit there and be in meditation. And sometimes, it would be HOT!!! (it was Austin remember and there are 150 of us elbow-to-elbow in this sister’s living room) And also Angelo’s body was too “sensitive” to be in a/c or in a direct breeze, so they would block the a/c vents in the half of the room where he was sitting and turn off all the ceiling fans. Angelo would be singing these stupid songs for hours and it would be really uncomfortable. I remember being tremendously amused at this whole thing because so many people were SO miserable… and it cracked me up that people were there – putting themselves thru that. I actually got to the point where I wasn’t bothered by the heat or the time involved. I actually WAS in meditation so it didn’t matter. In a way, I’m really grateful for that… cause I never would have suspected that would be the result… but I was very aware that a LOT of people were miserable. Of course, I was lucky. I sat in the back of the room… close to the window a/c… in a big comfy chair. I was totally fine back there laughing at the whole thing.

That’s a general overview of a week. You couldn’t pick and choose. You were supposed to go to everything or you would “miss” (and end up on a list.) I remember there was a list kept about the people that would miss Satsang, the people that would go to Satsang, and then once we started sharing in individual houses, there were lists of people that would go to hear Ryker share too frequently. Angelo seemed very jealous of the esteem in which people held Ryker and he must have felt that Ryker challenged him in some way. A lot of people found Ryker’s sharing really beautiful. Of course, he didn’t have very much competition. None of the other people would have enticed me into Satsang like he did. It was kind of ironic that Angelo didn’t want people to become too enamored of Ryker’s sharing since, for quite a number of us, his sharing was what allowed us to find beauty in Angelo’s sharing.