Ryker: 5. The Business of God

My days revolved completely around this life we had created. For a while, I had a painting company. So I would work during the day and then do our spiritual activities at night. I would always meditate in the morning (which we all were supposed to do for at least an hour.) Then eventually, some of us started a different company that turned into a large company that we worked out of our home. It actually turned into a million dollar company. And we’d do that and still do all the other spiritual exercises at the same time. Only group members worked at the company, of course. It wasn’t for outsiders cause they were considered very ignorant and insensitive.

Since I was such a zealot, when Angelo would say things like “If you don’t hate your mother like I hate my mother then you can’t be with me” and quote Jesus saying, “Let the dead bury the dead,” I would take those things to heart. I used to go visit my parents (who still lived in New Jersey) and one day Angelo told me that I needed to stop doing that and stay put and do my work. I did have a little wander lust. I liked traveling and moving around and having experiences. But for some reason it was very important to him that I stay in one place. So I told my parents that I wasn’t going to be visiting there anymore. I felt really bad at the time… like I was going to be hurting them. But I had to make a choice between being a disciple and being their son. I remember telling my mother and father that they weren’t my parents. That’s one concept I definitely got from Angelo… that we’re just souls and we’re here to become enlightened and simply playing the role of father, or mother or son. But the idea was that by cutting that connection, I would be able to love them more that way.

I thought of myself as a disciple but I didn’t think Angelo was Christ. I, myself, had taken on the mantle of being a sub-teacher to the other people. I spent more time with them than he did. And I felt like that was part of my vocation. I would get stuff from him and feed it to the other people like a mother bird. So they could digest it. Because everyone would come to me. I was much more approachable. I felt like I was in first or second grade, helping people transition from kindergarten and that Angelo had graduated from college. So, I don’t know if I thought I needed to be a disciple but I was more serious at that time about enlightenment and knew that I had to make some kind of sacrifice. And do things my ego did not want to do. I had to sacrifice that in order to go further on the path of enlightenment. And I thought Angelo was there to facilitate that. I did not think he was Christ at all. He was my friend basically. A friend and mentor that knew more than me about this. I followed guidance to be an example and as part of my own spiritual practice. I was deliberately letting myself be his project. I was taking an adventure. I really felt like this was the adventure I was looking for. And the more I listened to his version of things, the more I accepted his view as my own.

Working with other members of Satsang was like working with family. The daily work wasn’t as much about running the company as it was dealing with people’s psychology. Things that would come up for them. If anyone was going through something emotional, everyone was there for them. We were there to confront each other when one of us was slacking in our spiritual work. I was the boss somehow. I always ended up in that role. So, for me, I was always just ready to stop whatever I was doing business-wise to play the spiritual counselor for people who were having problems or questions or whatever. And I always tried to steer them on the right path according to whatever I saw that was at the time. I guess there were a lot of disfunctional people, but I didn’t see it at that time. I saw it as people working through their stuff and it was a continuation of how we lived every day.

The company lasted 5 years or so. The whole time we were in L.A. What happened to it? Of course, I have my own version of that. The company made hair accessories and the main partners were the 7 people who had come from Florida. We were the main people who made money from the company. Everyone else was an employee. We formed a corporation and after a little while Angelo lost faith in me as the ‘boss’ because I didn’t really have business experience. I just ended up in that role because I was the best one for the job at the time. Until Malario joined the group. He was a stock broker. Little did I know at the time that he ended up being a sociopathic, pathological, thieving liar who stole money from practically everyone in the group. But when he came around, Angelo started taking his counsel because he talked a good game of business. Even though I didn’t have the background in business, I had street-smarts because I used to sell speakers out of the back of a van. I knew the fad of hair accessories was dying down and my gut feeling was that we needed to scale down the company. We had 30 people on payroll. A good third of whom didn’t even work there. We had 30 people on insurance. Because that was our instruction from Angelo. It was well known that it was, for all intents and purposes, his company. Even though he wasn’t on the payroll. He was on the insurance. As well as anyone that he saw fit to have us add to payroll or insurance. And he also told us how much to pay them. This was his company. Not mine to do with whatever I wanted to. For sure. My gut feeling was to scale the company down and get rid of a lot of people and try to run it from there. But Malario had his ear at this time and I remember Angelo telling me not to question Malario. He ended up putting us so far into debt. When I ran the company, I ran basically a cash business. Because that’s the New Jersey street-style business. At one point I had $125,000 in savings. I never had less than $30,000 in checking. And I ran the company that way. I wouldn’t borrow. Malario basically extended the shit out of the company. He borrowed Spicoli’s $150,000 inheritance because he was trying to keep all these 30 people on payroll and insurance when the sales just weren’t there. And this whole time he’s telling Angelo that everything was alright and that he had a plan. And Angelo made it very clear he didn’t want to hear a word from me. “Do not question Malario.”

A lot of people just came and did service at the company. People would come and make boxes and put rhinestones on the hair clips… anything just to hang around Holy Company. They’d come after work or on their day off… whenever they could. But even with all that, all those people on the books were a big drain. We were selling products that were highly profitable so we had the means to do that in the beginning. But as we had to lower our prices; as the fad wore off; as sales went down, I was not allowed to downsize the company. It was taken away from me. That was when I really started to lose favor with Angelo. He would not listen. He didn’t want my input. I wanted to downsize the company and try to keep it running. I wasn’t allowed to do that. We had to keep it at the same level that it was (as far as expenses) even with less income. So eventually I ended up leaving the whole company in the hands of Solomon and Malario. They took over the company and… did whatever they did with it… I don’t even know what they did. All I know is that it was driven into the ground. Into bankruptcy. Ironically, it was me, and me alone, that had to go bankrupt with the company. Because I was the president and my name was on everything.