I was used to being tested. Something had already been established where I felt guilty for even wanting to go be with my mother when she was dying. Some guilt had been instilled. “She’s only your physical mother. She’s not a spirit being. It’s not like a brother is in the hospital and needs something. It’s an unconscious person.” So I felt a pang of guilt. And then also guilty on the other side for not going immediately. But by that time I had already sidelined my parents as less-evolved -- therefore less valuable and with less chance of enlightenment for them in this lifetime. And my job was to serve people who were almost enlightened. To help them cross over that line a little bit more.
I came back to L.A. for a few months when she died. Angelo was traveling. He went to San Francisco, Sedona, and eventually Boulder. We were all looking for a new home for the group. Immediately after my mother died I flew my dad to New Jersey to be with my sister. Xena and I went there and then flew back to L.A., Dharma met us at the airport with a Tupperware of food. Then we hopped on a plan to Austin to check it out. We met a couple of sisters here who were already checking things out. I hated it. I had just come from being with Angelo in Boulder.. either Boulder or Sedona… we stayed in both of those places for months. But my vote was that the group move to Boulder. But it was overridden. Aside from the brief visits back to L.A., I was traveling with Angelo the whole time. It was awful… because I was so used to being very autonomous. I was not in the inner circle by that time and things had changed. He was “the Master” and was waited on, hand and foot. I was there with people that were used to being with him 24 hours a day.. and I wasn’t used to that. It was really driving me crazy because one thing he would do constantly... every night… was talk about the problems… over and over again. The problems. “How are we going to solve this? How will we solve that?” And it would drive me crazy. I thought, “Just do something… pick one and do it. I can’t keep going back and forth.” And it was a big struggle between he and I. Because I just didn’t want to hear it anymore. He would just go back and forth and back and forth. At this time he was getting prepared to do his citizenship (because he was deathly afraid of being deported.) He was pretty much on-the-lam. There were about 8 of us there with him. And every day we’d do the same thing. Go on an outing. Meditate. Come back. Wash up. Have dinner. Watch tv. Meditate. Go to bed and do it over again every day.
It was infuriating. And really frustrating how high-maintenance Angelo was. He was odd to begin with. He was the most bizarre person I’d ever met in my life. Which at the time was very intriguing, but by this time I had come to understand his idiosyncrasies (of which many really infuriated me and I disagreed with but I kept my mouth shut cause it wasn’t just about me.) But I thought he was actually giving people teachings and breaking down their ego. A big part of what we were doing was that your ego needs to be broken down. Because you’re not your ego but you think you are. And if you break it down, you’re free. You break it down by being confronted when you’re trying to hold onto it… and usually it takes someone helping you who isn’t afraid to confront your ego. You have to give them permission to do that. It’s like saying, “Here, kick me in the face whenever you want and I’ll not react to it. Humiliate me in front of everyone and I’ll be OK with it so I can drop my ego.” Anyway, his being difficult was incredibly frustrating for me and I found myself thinking he was wrong MOST of the time.
While I was traveling with Angelo, some people stayed in L.A. but he sent people to a bunch of different cities to throw off the Cult Awareness Network from our trail. I wasn’t in on who he was in touch with during this time… I deliberately stayed out of it because it bored me. I thought it was silly. I was ready to leave L.A. by that time. I had enjoyed it and I loved it. I didn’t need to go -- but I was ready for a new adventure. So to me, this was a new adventure. It was fine. But all the drama… trying to figure things out, and what’s this person doing and tell this person this. It bored me so much I just kept out of it. He didn’t want to hear what I had to say anyway because it was never what he wanted me to say. So I learned that it was none of my business. I don’t care.
