Tower:10.Begin the End

The last few years in the group seemed very different to me. For starters, I thought there was a dramatic shift in a lot of people’s attitudes around the time of this incident that happened with a guy named Teiko. Angelo started getting these horrible anonymous letters and he absolutely, positively, for-certain knew it was this guy,Teiko, that was writing them. There was so much drama and cloak-and-dagger stuff associated with this incident. But to explain how it was different, I first have to explain the normal cloak-and-dagger stuff that was part of being in the group. I loved this element. It seemed like every few months, there would be something that came up that we’d have to go all “Ocean’s Eleven” on. Whether it was to thwart a danger from the outside (the real world) or to play a part for someone in the group that Angelo wanted to think a certain thing, it seemed like we constantly got to play “pretend” and employ all those useful techniques we learned in class. Growing up, there are only two things I remember thinking it would be fun to be when I grew up. One was a Monk (courtesy of Kung Fu) and the other was a bank robber (which I’m sure I got from some Disney movie). In the Buddha Field, I found a combination of both. We had our normal identities as meditators, but we also had our secret identities. We had disguises and accents, we blocked and staged our “capers”… it was like being in an episode of Mission Impossible every few months. It was great. Looking back, I’m amazed that we got away with so much. I’m not sure if it’s because regular people don’t go around suspecting that people are playing Mission Impossible with them, or because we had an exagerated sense of Divine Right on our side. I know that we felt Grace would protect us because we were doing the work of the master. Sometimes I would be amazed at the complicated dance we’d do and how seamlessly we’d pull it off. It would be a real rush. And the impetus might have been something stupid, but the rush, and the feeling that we had accomplished something important was very real and intoxicating in a way. And forget about questioning whether you SHOULD be doing something… that quickly is brushed aside and it becomes of question of whether you CAN do something. Most of what we did was harmless. It was the equivalent of sneaking thru your own house and pretending that there were people in it and your objective was not to be seen by them. Now imagine you’re doing that with a group of friends, being led by Inspector Clouseau. It was fun. It was hilarious. It was brilliant. Cut to the incident with Teiko.

This really seemed to key into something with Angelo. It was something out of his control and it really freaked him out. He was obsessed with it. He would have meetings for hours and hours with a bunch of different groups of us that were all working different angles in an effort to prove Teiko was writing the letters and then to “handle” him. Some groups were working in concert and others were working independently. One group would follow him around, another group would be waiting to intercept and delay him if he started back too soon, while another group broke into his car and downloaded everything in his laptop. There were some people stalking his activity online. There were some people talking to him -- trying to defuse the situation. Some talking to the police, some to handwriting analysis experts, some to psychics. This went on for weeks and weeks. Eventually, we actually found out that it wasn’t really him writing the letters, but Angelo told everyone to keep saying it was Teiko (because he had really gone out on a limb by assuring all of us, “Teiko IS writing the letters and that’s absolutely true. Trust me. He IS the one doing it. … trust me… he is the one doing it.. “) Then, someone found out that it really wasn’t Teiko. And I think the world trembled for a lot of people. Because Angelo was wrong. And if he was wrong about this, what else was he wrong about. If he could be so SURE of this and be wrong… what else that he was so sure about might be wrong? There had been meetings where they discussed the viability of having Teiko killed. What if we had done that? WOULD we have done that? I know that I couldn’t have. But if I knew about it, would I have kept silent about it because it was “for the highest?” I don’t know. That can really screw with your head. Angelo had had a lot of people doing a lot of “questionable” things around this… and we all thought we had Right and God on our side. But Teiko didn’t write the letters.

Angelo was also reacting so strongly to this incident. He was obsessed, he was overreactive, he was afraid… but he kept reassuring everyone that it was justified because his “vision” saw what was going to happen and it was a danger to him and to the group. But his “vision” was wrong. And his obsession with Teiko in this incident was suddenly revealed as nothing but his obsessive-compulsive disorder and his need to be in control. That, I think, flipped out a lot of people. I remember Ryker, Spicoli and Xena were all talking about how flipped-out Angelo was about all of this, and I think that was one of the contributors to why Spicoli left the group. From my own perspective, that was when I started seeing people take a step back internally. Even the ones that didn’t actually leave, stopped being so ready to share about the perfection of the master in group settings. They stopped piping in when Angelo would ask for comments from the floor. They stopped being the ones that would advocate how beautiful the master is and all of that stuff. I think though it had less to do with the fact that he had displayed his ego so blatently, and more to do with the fact that he wasn’t copping to it. I think all of us would have been right there with him if he just admitted that he was a work-in-progress like the rest of us, but it seemed the more he thought his ego was showing, the less he could admit to any error on his part and the more he demanded we play “Emporer’s New Clothes” and pretend that he was the perfect master. But a few of us couldn’t do that anymore. And it seemed like the less that people outside of him would play the “perfect master” tapes, the more he’d have to say himself. So Angelo was forced into the position of having to say the things himself that he’d really rather other people say. He had to declare his own perfection… except for meaningless ramblings of disciples with no crediblity, like Verthlessa and Leitch. … and Hebetudino. They would start sharing and it was like PLEASE! Whatever. But I think that Teiko incident, although it wasn’t the final straw, was the beginning of the end for some of the people that were involved.