Ryker 17: Cleansing

I had therapy with Angelo for a long time. But he changed the word to cleansing because… I think the reason he gave was that he wasn’t a therapist. He was a spiritual master so your time with him wasn’t therapy as much as it was working with him to clean your karma. So that’s when it started to become cleansing. Perhaps he coined that phrase because he thought it would get him out of hot water … like he could say, “I never said it was therapy,” if someone accused him of improprieties.

Cleansing was basically where you talk to him about your problems and how you feel. He used hypnotherapy to take you down for a count of 10 into your subconscious and you bring up some emotion or feeling -- and you emote and you scream or whatever and then you get (hopefully) a positive suggestion on how to fix that. And that’s it. And you’re supposed to remember that now in your life and use it. For a while I found it effective. But after a while I… you don’t have a choice. It wasn’t like, “I elect to go to this thing… “ You have to go. If he called you, you went. That’s it. Or you would be demonized.

Since I left the group, I have had other therapeutic sessions and there are some differences. I’m not given suggestions by those other people. I’m just there, allowing my subconscious to empty itself. I just talk about stuff without getting positive suggestions and everything. It’s just about letting this thing unravel -- naturally. Much less interference and -- I don’t know. Much less INVOLVEMENT on the part of the therapist as far as what they think I should do. Because Angelo was a combination therapist/teacher/whatever and it was a mixed bag. I couldn’t be as honest as I wanted to be because he would hold it against me. And I couldn’t say anything about him. No one could work on problems they had with him. Because you’re not supposed to. It was clearly said, very succinctly. “Do not question the master.” So if you have problems with him, you’re not allowed to say anything. And you know what he wants to hear… so it became more like a game than anything. But again, in the beginning, it was cool because I saw things about my subconscious and what it was doing. And it was interesting. But after a while it became like a game. You had to know what to say and what you couldn’t say and it wasn’t really therapy because you weren’t really allowed to just be open. It wasn’t unbiased. It was completely biased on his part.

The details of my cleansing session with Angelo were always brought up in front of others. And other people’s cleansing details were routinely discussed with me. There was no privacy. There were no boundaries. Nothing was ever secret. Every hidden impulse that was uncovered was always paraded in front of everyone -- just at the right moment. Usually when it was useful to show why you don’t adore him. It was brought out as, “Oh you did that because of this quality.” He loved to pigeon-hole you. In other words, you’re f.cked up but you’re God. “That’s just YOU, doing this trip of yours we all know about.” So he’d talk about not keeping people in roles but would constantly remind you that you are this thing. This is what your mind is and this is what you are and you’ll always go to this place in your subconscious over and over and over again.

I had to play a game with the whole thing. But really, I didn’t care who knew what about me. I mean, my life is an open book for two reasons. One, in the things that I shared, I told everybody about everything. I have nothing to hide on that level. Two, I knew everything I said to him was going to be public, but I liked that. Because we would do psychodramas and I’d say “I feel like an orphan” and I’d get up and we’d do a psycho-drama and everyone knew about it and I felt good. Because I had nothing to hide. I’m not ashamed of my service. I didn’t care about that, but I know a lot of people did. And now I see also with classic therapy: It’s supposed to be completely private -- which allows you to be more free and open and to develop trust. But the trust with Angelo is completely gone. From long ago. Therapy with Angelo was my first exposure to therapy so I didn’t know how it was different or what it was supposed to be.

(Talking about transference) To be clear, I never projected Angelo was my Savior because early-on, I was meditating in this direct experience that I still love. And that was closer to God than he was. He wasn’t in my way. So I never projected a Savior on him because I saw him develop this persona over the years. So no matter how much he insisted I believe his bullshit (that he ended up believing himself) it was impossible. And he would call that “keeping him in a role” and “not allowing him to grow”. But he definitely encouraged transference with others. Amazingly more and more and more. Trust him and doubt your mind. But always trust him. Yeah, he really wanted that to happen. He wanted everyone to be completely dependant on him for every decision no matter how small. What color to paint your bedroom, if you should cut your hair. What kind of makeup to put on, if you should buy a car and what kind. Disgusting ridiculous things. For everyone. It was absurd.