Tower:16. The Lying

I KNOW there was a policy of lying in the group. We had many classes on how to convincingly lie to people outside the group. And which lies to use. It was both specific and situational. On outings we were an ecological group. On movie nights we were a film class. If someone comes to your door asking for someone, you don’t know the person they are asking for. If a package comes for someone, don’t accept it unless they have asked you to before it arrives. If you encounter someone that used to be in the group, tell them that the group doesn’t meet anymore… that you rarely see anyone. That it’s not happening anymore. That Angelo is out of the country and you are not in touch with him. That you are not really involved anymore and that you’re doing your own thing now. (It is interesting that, although they KNOW we were at these classes where everyone was taught these excuses, that they are now using them on the “Fallen Angels” they encounter.) But that was typical. Lie with conviction and just keep lying because you can only ever be caught if you change your story. That really screwed with some people’s heads. They would be lied to about something that they witnessed first-hand. But because they were lied to with such conviction, and the lie was supported by so many people, they started to question their own experience and sanity. And if you were absolutely caught, then there is always the “truth is relative anyway so what’s the difference between a lie and the truth?” I found that interesting. A game of words. Some people could not distinguish between an error in perception and a lie. I found myself in debates explaining how someone could be mistaken about something but that didn’t make it a lie. But the deliberate misrepresentation of facts in an attempt to manipulate something… THAT’s a lie. Evidently it’s too fine a distinction for some to follow. It’s not really until you get some distance that you realize that almost everything you hear in the group is a lie.

There was lying within the group to one another as well. Probably because we all took our cues from Angelo and he was constantly lying. When he said he had a dream that someone did something when really their roommate told him. But that was for God, so that was OK to some people. But to me, the thing with Donner and the manipulation, that was what rocked my world the most. Of course, I also think it was a shocking lie that Angelo didn’t have a master. And the thing is, I never would have cared about his spiritual lineage. But after sitting through those meetings when Angelo would cry in front of us about how much he loved his master. And how the only reason he wasn’t at his master’s feet was because his master had only been around for 2 years and then he died. That was the story I heard when I first came around. And I wasn’t curious or anything. I didn’t care about all that really. But there were always rumors to that effect. Xena told me that she was talking to him once and mentioned something about him not having a master and his response was, “But isn’t it even more beautiful if I didn’t?” That’s when she actually realized, “Oh my god! He really didn’t!” Because even though you might hear people saying that, or you might notice that some things don’t really add up, you never really believe it. Then, after people found the History of the Knowing online and they realized that he got it from the equivalent of a weekend seminar… then you have to wonder about all the crying-over-his-master performances. His declarations of his love for his master and the way he felt about his master were all just what he wanted us to feel about him. Time and time again, you’re left saying to yourself, “Wow. Even that was a lie.” Since I left, I have heard that Angelo now says that he had a master in a past life, not this life. Convenient. But necessary I supposed. Because he basically had no time on his own from the time that Ryker met him. He couldn’t have had a real master so his master had to be in the ethers or a past life or something.

When it came to deception, I deliberately didn’t play the good disciple. Any deception I discovered, I talked about with everyone I knew and felt close to. I didn’t make announcements in class or anything, but I made sure that everyone I knew, in the inner circle and on the fringe, knew everything about it. So I was never approached about deceiving someone or helping to manipulate them. Maybe he knew not to. Angelo was different with me than he was with other people (from what I hear.)