Welcome
What you read here are true, first-hand accounts of life inside an alternative religious group. What we went through may seem incredible to you. But keep in mind, we were normal, every-day people. Just like you. And we never thought it would happen to us, either.
Eventually we ended up in Austin. Against my wishes. I wanted to stay in Boulder. But he decided to move to Austin. Fellini had bought a house for him in Austin and I came early and we set everything up. Angelo came came a few weeks later and we all lived in the house Fellini had bought. That was a horrible, horrible experience. First, he is without-a-doubt a hypochondriac… he constantly has to have people working on his body… always did always will. And it’s absurd. He will go and lift weights and then say if you brush up against his arm that it throws his arm out… it’s absurd. He’s a hypochondriac. Anyway, for some reason his hypochondriac personality had decided that breezes were really bad for you, so he wouldn’t use the air conditioner. Now this was Austin… in the summer. Angelo arrived there… in May I believe, which is the beginning of summer in Austin. We would go to the lake during the day (to nude beach called Hippie Hollow -- that’s where all the gay guys went, so of course that was the beach we went to.) We’d meet people and invite them to… something… we weren’t having satsang at the time. There were only a few of us here. But we’d go home at night, after being in the 102 degree sun, and he wouldn’t turn the air conditioner on. It was so disgusting. And made me so angry. Everyone was sitting on the couch in their underwear. Sweating. For months he wouldn’t use the air conditioner. I slept with my face up against the window trying to get some breeze coming through the screen because it was so nasty. I hate being that hot. It was really bad. I hated living in that house with him because, again, I had no autonomy. I had the most autonomy of anyone there -- and still I felt completely stuck. I wanted to get out and find a house to live in and get everybody else here and start a business and he’s like “no, no, no, no ,no. Wait.” I remember being so pissed one time that I literally went outside and slept in my car because I was so mad. And Angelo came out to get me. And talked me into coming back in. I felt like I just couldn’t stand it anymore. It was so controlling.
But I stayed.
The L.A. people eventually came and the people in other cities started to drift over the next couple of years. After that first initial period, we started to separate into different houses -- and then other people arrived from different cities and we’d have to find houses for them. And we’d again have class on Mondays, movies on Friday, Satsang on Thursdays and Sundays -- I’m not sure when these meetings started to break up into little pieces (so we wouldn’t be conspicuous) but that happened after we got here.
