Ryker: 2. Meeting A Curious Fellow
Two weeks before graduating from community college, I left on a road trip. I was 19, it was around 1977, and felt a very compelling inner pull to
When I met Angelo, I had an instant connection with him. Instantly. I told myself I was going to look this guy in the eyes and if he’s anything special (like this guy was saying) he’s going to look back and not look away. At that time, I was testing people. I thought everyone was full of crap. I knew there was something deeper that I was looking for. Didn’t know what it was. But Angelo actually looked back at me and stayed right there with me. In that moment, something happened and after that he literally couldn’t get rid of me. I wanted to be around him all the time. He was definitely my mentor.
He was offering something that I was looking for that I didn’t realize that I was looking for. At that time, he was just somebody that was teaching acting class and doing hypnotherapy sessions with people. I didn’t see him for hypnotherapy at first. I just went to the acting classes. And I immediately became his assistant – without ever being asked. I’d go early and setup. I would do all these things to participate more than other people because I wanted to learn… about acting and meditation. Whatever things he could share with me. He talked about meditation a little during class -- but mostly we talked after class. We became friends and he would talk to me about spirituality all the time. And meditation.
I’m not sure why I felt such a pull toward meditation. I was deeply searching. I was a poet. A songwriter. I was very sensitive. Insecure as a child. But then I also enjoyed a certain amount of popularity because I was always in a band and I developed a side to my personality that liked to be around a lot of people and have a lot of friends. I knew there was something more to life. I think every artistic person is trying to express something that can’t be said in words. The only influence I had in spirituality was Jesus. But I always felt there was a more mystical Jesus than we were being told about. Just organically I felt that. And I found little droplets throughout my life that just made me more thirsty. Thirsty for something more than this surface life. So I don’t know what it was exactly. I just felt it. That’s all I can say.
When Angelo would share, the whole point was this thing that was called The Knowledge. The Knowledge was basically a series of meditation techniques put together that had been passed thru a certain Hindu lineage. And that was the point of sharing about truth, or God, or whatever. Because of that participation (or effort) of someone’s meditating in The Knowledge and the sharing would come out of that. The whole point of sharing was to awaken others to the fact that there was a way to connect to God thru this thing and that this is what is missing in people’s lives.
He never offered to show it to me. He just did one day out of the blue. I didn’t know what it was and I wasn’t even really using it. But I was reading books at that time about Yogananda, and becoming very knowledgeable about different traditions so I started forming my own ideas of spirituality from that as well as from what Angelo was sharing with me. It was really informal. But the subject matter between us was never sports or ballet or anything mundane… it was always about the spirit.
I found myself wanting to experiment with my own consciousess and let myself be a guinea pig – consciously – for the exercises and different things Angelo was giving me to do. I was deliberately letting that happen. I knew my consciousness somehow was expandable and I trusted that what he was doing and guiding me towards was facilitating that expansion. I felt like I was headed toward something. Happiness. Wakefulness. Whatever I identified at that time as being the point of introspection.
