Tower:15. Reflections-2
Another red flag to me were the lists and the policy of reporting your roommate’s indiscretions to the satsang Gestapo. I saw this documentary a few years ago about Hitler and one thing that fascinated me was how he was able to use people’s allegiance to him to get people to turn on one another. We had our own little version of this. There was a group of women with the Knowing who consistently harped on what behavior was acceptable and what wasn’t and who routinely reported back to Angelo on what everyone was doing. I actually heard that they were reporting on so many people that it became necessary to combine their reports into what became “the lists.” They might as well have passed out black armbands. I was told that they routinely had lunches to discuss the particulars of how someone they perceived as “off” would be dealt with. Was this true? I don’t know. I find it coincidental that this group, who were always proponents for the path of guru-worship, are among “Those Who Remain” and that guru-worship is now effectively the only acceptable path in the Buddha Field. So I’m left with a quandary. I can blame “The Harpies” (one of my favorite pet names for them – second only to “The Little Old Ladies” or “The Ladies Who Lunch”) for this quality of the group and see Angelo as much a victim of their machinations as the rest of us. Or I can leave the blame with Angelo and see “The Ladies Who Lunch” as sisters that were just doing their service as they saw it. Neither vision appeals to me. And blame seems pointless. This element of the group was so far removed from anything I was interested in… but there was still an “allowance” on my part. I would certainly mock it and debate the wisdom of doing it within a spiritual community. But I also recognized that different people need or want different things. One person wants to be able to pray to somebody and it wasn’t really my right to tell Angelo to “stop allowing people to pray to you.” I actually enjoyed different people approaching God in different ways within the group. In a way, I thought that was what we were all about. Now there is a single acceptable path. So there should be peace in the valley for them. I hope it works out that way.
The persistent rumors should also have been a red flag. Maybe the first time you can dismiss it. But when you hear the same basic story repeated over and over, with just a different cast of supporting characters, you have to consider that there may be something there that needs to be addressed. Especially in a setting where there is a total disregard for any authority or set of rules. Angelo felt bound by nothing, and absolute power corrupts… absolutely. I think that was the case here. Angelo did not feel bound by anything because he had a blank check. He was a master and beyond question so nothing he did could be wrong. He had the might of God on his side. And that attitude is contagious. That’s how you can suddenly find yourself in a conversation where you are literally discussing whether someone should be killed -- and not even worrying about any moral implications of that. Fortunately, in the past, there was always one or two voices of reason that stopped it from going that far. Does that still exist among “The Committed?” I don’t know.
I feel sorry for some things I did when I was with the group… but so much was done out of ignorance and misplaced trust. I feel sorry that I believed a lot of the misinformation that was planted about people (that they were drug addicts or crazy and it was only the infinite mercy of the master that could forgive some of the things they had done and allow them to stay with the group.) I just accepted these ugly judgments of people and held them at arm’s length because of it. Also, I feel sorry for the way I treated some of the people outside the group. Not allowing them too close to me because they would taint my spirituality. I had a cousin that I was very close to. We used to talk every weekend and through a series of events I was told to stop associating with him. That it was endangering Angelo and the group. It seemed a reasonable request at the time. Because what if that were true? I didn’t want to endanger the group. Choices. Each choice reshapes your life. So many things I would have chosen differently if I could have.
I did receive some “beauty” guidance. I was guided not wear glasses. Angelo said that I should wear contacts. Contacts didn’t work for me so I ended up getting laser eye surgery. Turns out I loved that! I wish they had had that 20 years ago. Not because of the beauty aspect. Just because of how simple it became to not have to worry about glasses or contacts. I was also invited to take Angelo’s ballet class (and we were supposed to take another one during the week on our own. I did that too for a while.) I think I just stumbled into that ballet thing by accident. Maybe because Xena was in the class. Most of the guys in that class were the guys that I think he wanted to see in their tights. But I did have rhythm (which some of them were lacking) so he asked me to join the class. It was a complete farce. I mean, ballet in particular is all about lines and the beauty of lines and when you have a body like mine, you don’t really make nice lines. So that was one of those things that were supposed to encourage my growth that I found ridiculous. But at the same time. Why not? I enjoyed dancing and wasn’t working at the time. But when I did get a job, I quit dance. That was frowned upon as well. I was asked if I felt horrible that I didn’t take advantage of that class. It was expected that I would turn down the job so I could continue taking his class. Which, to me, seemed ridiculous. But yeah, ballet was considered “high” for some reason.
There was a definitely message that the more enlightened you are, the more beautiful you are. Even if you weren’t attractive to begin with, you would become more beautiful by being in meditation. And I have to say, he did surround himself with all the good looking people in the group. Pretty much all of the inner circle were physically beautiful. (Or junky worthless wanna-be’s that whined so much to be around him that he allowed it – probably to shut them up… like Verthlessa for instance.) But yeah, there was a huge emphasis placed on physical beauty.
I went on a number of retreats with the group. You could write a whole book just about the retreats. The first retreat I went on there was a Knowing Session. Then, the next year, people thought there might be another one. And things even seemed to be moving in that directly. But then the whole retreat became a ballet production. Angelo’s ballet class were the performers and the rest of us made sets and costumes and backdrops. All of us were working on it and at the end of the retreat we did a big performance. And it took the whole 5 or 6 weeks we were on retreat. I enjoyed it because I always enjoyed the theater, but some people hated it. And it was one of the long retreats so people lost their jobs and stuff… all for this ballet performance. I was able to hang onto my job but only by having my dad die and then suffering some sort of mental breakdown myself (at least that was the story I had to tell my boss). You see, it’s not like we were told how long these retreats were going to be. We went expecting that it might be 3 or 4 weeks, but then Angelo would decide that we were going to stay an extra week because the performance wasn’t quite ready yet. And then the next week, he would decide we would stay ANOTHER week. And each time, everyone would have to come up with ways to cover a more prolonged absence. It was chaos, but it was also hilarious. No one wanted to leave… because what if there WERE suddenly a Knowing Session and you had already left? Some of the aspirants joked that OUR Knowing Session was the Arcata ballet. But I actually liked when he would do ballets. And I always found it funny that Angelo would cast himself in the lead too. Because everyone would talk about how beautiful he danced, but from the perspective of somebody that has watched real ballet, it just looked like this older guy hobbling around up there. I mean, in his movements you could see the remnants of a dancer, but one who had lost his extension and flexibility decades earlier. We would see a ballet and people would tell Angelo that he danced so much more beautifully than anyone onstage… and I thought “Are you on crack? Or just a brown-noser” It was really bizarre. There were a couple of dancers that were professional-caliber in the group. And I always thought the production quality and crew were amazing considering that we were all amateurs. But praising Angelo’s performance was the equivalent of a mom praising her kid’s performance, you know?
My whole time in the Buddha Field, I think I invited one person. At the very beginning. He ended up moving to
