Denomio: 12. Less Pleasing Memories
The less pleasing memories about the group were the constant lies, the unending Mexican soap operas, the lack of patient/client privilege, the “beautiful people” arrogance. Things like that.
What I am sorry about were the times when I reported back to Angelo on people. I didn’t do it a lot, but there were times when people were on the edge and, in my head it was framed as “You’re not telling on this person. The master is here to help this person if you let him know what’s going on. So by telling him what’s going on, I’ll be able to help them.” So, betray their confidence. Go ahead and pretend or lie… or whatever it takes. But, as I said, I wasn’t close to a whole lot of people who left, so I wasn’t frequently cast in that role. But I regret being part of it at all. And I regret that I didn’t leave sooner. The last couple of years were really painful and I wish I had come to these conclusions sooner and not wasted all that time.
Angelo had lots of ideas about grooming. He gave me makeup to wear for a while… for the bags under my eyes. I still follow some of his grooming guidance… like I trim my armpit hair. But Angelo placed a lot of emphasis on physical beauty. He showed me a picture of himself a few years ago and asked, “How old would you say that person is?” and I looked at it and said, “Mid-50s.” He was VERY offended. He started yelling and saying, “WHAT? How can you say that?!?” I said, I knew he started seeing Ryker 20 years ago and he was a college age student and I was doing the math in my head and then he relaxed and said, “Oh, you were using logistics.” It was very important to him that he be perceived as beautiful. I remember one day I was cleaning out his bathroom stuff and he just had so many cosmetics and false eyelashes and stuff. And at that point I hadn’t seen his beauty routine so I asked, “Do you want me to throw this stuff out?” Of course not. I was pretty new and actually shocked that he had so many cosmetics. The way I justified it in my head was because he was a performer on stage sometimes and maybe he used it on stage. I didn’t know that every day he did the whole cosmetic thing.
There was absolutely lying in the group, to those outside the group and those within the group. It was part and parcel of the group that we “handled” people. I remember getting really offended toward the end because… there was a girl that was just beginning to come around and I wanted to spend some time with her. There was going to be a party and I was going to it, but then Angelo had Guinevere call and un-invite me. Angelo didn’t want me hanging around this girl,.. probably for good reason… but I was so pissed off because he had Guinevere call and say that “it’s a small house and the guest list got out of control and there were only supposed to be a few people coming,” so I was uninvited. Which, I was like, “OK.” But then Guinevere couldn’t handle her part in that. She felt bad that she had done it and called me and told me that it was Angelo behind it but that it was for my own good. She was trying to portray it as a loving thing from Angelo but I felt so angry at being “handled.” I felt like, “You’re doing this to ME? I don’t need to be f.cking handled! I’ve helped you do this stuff before and you’re trying to do it to ME now? What is wrong with you?” But it was obvious. He wanted to control every detail of everybody’s life. Who was sleeping with who and where you go at night and how long you meditate… and in order to facilitate that… whatever lie was needed to secure his vision of what was best… didn’t matter… that’s just what “needed to happen.”
The lies I was particularly struck by were that there was no hit man coming after Moretti. And some things it’s hard to tell if it was a lie or just something I didn’t know was happening. Like all the sex Angelo was having. He portrayed sex as this thing to be transcended, but then to discover that he was having sex regularly with people. That he was having people give him fellatio during cleansing on a regular basis… that rocked my world. But probably the biggest lie was that Angelo didn’t have a guru. After all that crying he would do over his master. I remember being so touched by his story about his guru and how choked up he got about it. And the stories about what he went through and that he gave up his career in Hollywood to receive the Knowing… that he was up for this major role the next day but then he found out that there was a Knowing Session and that he walked away from it so he could go and receive the Knowing. And he never even HAD a guru. Still, he WAS a good actor. All that crying for Christ’s sake. But when I heard about that, it really turned my stomach.
The basic thing is that truth was not considered a virtue because it was relative. So there were all these lies constantly. But those lies… wow… those were just to manipulate us. Those were the ones I was like, “Wow, he really f.cking lied.” I was never really part of all that. I didn’t know. I mean, I lied. We all did. The small lies. The lies to protect. I lied to my parents quite a bit. But there’s nothing to clear up at this point.
