Justice: 17. Reflections
What was something beautiful I was blown away by? People surrendering to shakti. Which, I did experience shakti at the end. I don’t think anybody experienced it in the beginning. But when Angelo started giving it in the closed room, I think it did spur something on for people. I think they were allowing more surrender or something. Something started happening… whatever the reason. Even if it was the flashlight. Yeah, he used a flashlight to simulate light. I used to be in the shakti room helping him, so I saw it. I tried not to look, but Spiccolli supplied him with a flashlight and he’d put it in this little bag off to his side. But I’d try not to look while he was doing it. And it seemed to intensify the experience for people. No! Of course I never told anyone that. Why would I do that? It’s like trying to ruin somebody’s experience. Who cares if Angelo tickled their head with a feather or if they used a flashlight… it’s your surrender that creates the experience in my book. Where it got dangerous to me, was when people tried to talk about it and say how beautiful it is and, “it was like a welder’s arc” and all that stuff. That’s where I thought the beauty that might have happened got cheapened. Because for every person that tries to put it into words, ten other people start judging their experience and that’s a shame to me. I read about this one master that used to tickle people with a peacock feather… so who cares what device is used? I think it’s mostly what the person brings in there with them. And use whatever device is available to say, “Now I’m surrendered.” It could be anything or anyone that brings it on. So flashlight smashlight, the problem is when Angelo starts claiming credit for it. Talking about what he did,… or having other people share it. When someone goes on and on, it’s good PR for him. But as much as it was good PR, it mostly made people feel less than or more f.cked up instead of inspired. And made them think they had to stay around because they hadn’t tasted the carrot yet. I didn’t like when he did that. “Share about how beautiful I am.” I hated that. Because it wasn’t conducive to getting the real thing going. The flashlight, maybe that could. But certain things were just to puff up his ego.
I’m good with most of how I handled myself. I constantly found myself standing up for people. Like with Odysseus, he’s dying of AIDS. He went on Fellini’s cleanse and started losing weight. He got as thin as a rail. And he couldn’t stop. He was in my ballet class at the time and even the teacher said, “What’s going on?” He didn’t have a doctor or anything. He was told to not go to a doctor. But he has this friend who is a doctor and I took him to see her. And after we told her what was going on with him and his case history, her mouth dropped open. “Why did you let it go this far? Why aren’t you on the inhibitors?” So just getting through that whole process with him… basically he was dying. I’m numbing out right now to talk about this because this was at the height of my love and protection for him. And Angelo was trying to put him through HIS schedule and HIS way of doing it and it was going to kill him. But I stood up to him and got Odysseus on the inhibitors.
Angelo expected everybody to come to him for any advice.. medical or otherwise. And to follow it. It was routine. Herbs were OK. Like he would have the girls do these home remedy abortions, using pennyroyal or whatever herbs it was. You’d have to ask them about that. But I know some of those herbs can be nasty.
But medical care was always a fight if you went outside the group. Angelo really went out on a limb with people medically. Like with my knee. I have this ripped meniscus. And I was dancing for 3 years on this really damaged knee. In excruciating pain. Life was hell then. For years. We would have really active days, dance class, then hikes, then the gym. And Simone would go up to him and say, “Justice is limping” as in “It doesn’t look good.” A cyst started growing out of the side of my knee. Which is what happens if a meniscus tear is really severe. But I couldn’t go to a doctor. Angelo was just healing it with his shakti hands and he’d say I was making it up. But after the ballet, Odysseus took me to have knee surgery. And in the surgery, they did this arthroscopic video showing how it was torn. Angelo wouldn’t even watch. He refused to believe that anything was ever wrong with it so he just denied the whole thing. To do what I did on this knee for as long as I did.. all the things I did on it… I really wanted someone to just shoot me. Because I was in so much constant pain. It was beyond hope that it would ever be gone. But then it was. Thanks, Odysseus.
I couldn’t cross my own lines of what I knew was “on” or “off.” Even for him. I was in the position where I’d have to relay his guidance to people.. and I would if it seemed like it was in their best interests. But as soon as I found out it wasn’t, I couldn’t do it anymore. But before I started catching on to that… yeah, I regret participating in all that. Like with Pépé Leputois. He didn’t want to come to
There was also a pressure to stay young and pretty in that group. I was getting older and the way those guys were going in Angelo’s house, it was just unbelievable. I really don’t care if my hair is gray… but the guidance was to dye my hair. I think because if we go gray, we make him look older. In L.A., Angelo would put this white J&J tape on his face at night and sleep only on his back, to prevent his face from getting wrinkles. I felt a lot of pressure with that. I didn’t see how I would be permitted to grow old there. And I really thought, if the looks went, what good was I, you know? The actual guidance were small things.. what clothes to wear, how to cut my hair… but the message and the pressure was there. I think it affected the dynamic of the whole group – the focus on beauty. The “beautiful people” thing … thinking you need to be attractive to get love. It’s twisted. I think part of it was that he loved to dress people up. He told me he used to do it to his maids when he was a kid… do their hair and makeup. And dress them up like his dolls. So he was basically doing that with everyone in the Buddha Field.
I hated ballet. Angelo tried to get me to dance when he first latched onto me. … He’d try to get me to salsa and try to show me how to do ballet. But ballet really didn’t become a big deal until Trinity showed up. It used to just be his little morning warm-up, but they got passionate about it and turned it into something more. As I saw him dedicating more and more time to that, I got kind of disgusted. Because I was thinking of it as… think of all the things we could be doing to help everybody and you’re sitting here with your ballet class every morning and calling people in from work and stuff. I hated that type of thing and it just got more and more. And everybody seemed to be liking it. It gave people a chance to surrender. He tried to pull me into it but I was just too freaking tired. My body was thrashed. And I’m supposed to bend it like this and do all this stuff? I would just bow out and go vacuum or make his breakfast or something. But he kept extending the invitation. And finally, because I ended up having to be there anyway to DJ the music for him… so I joined in. That was like so many things with him. It’s easier to go along than to constantly fight him on it. Angelo said that we needed to take another ballet class so we could be better dancers in his class. We found out there was another class on Wednesday nights, so I leapt at that. Anything to get out of the house. So I could take that class and then sneak over to Odysseus’ house for a half hour… that was my little freedom. My little escape. I did like the discipline of the ballet class. The real one, not Angelo’s. Angelo didn’t know what he was doing so his choreography was hard on a person’s body. His technique was horrible so he couldn’t really teach proper technique so a lot of people screwed up their bodies in that class.
