Denomio: 13. Brainwashing and Manipulation
When I first started in the group, I had this idea of this Divine God-man. And I wanted to get closer to him. And I did experience many things that were beautiful as a result of being around. It gave me the excuse to experience those things within myself. And at first there was this spiritual warrior idea of “Just serve. Drop your mind. It doesn’t matter what you want because there is this other higher thing happening.” And there is a certain amount of beauty that takes place in that. In dropping your desires. But after a while… after years it wears. And the façade starts coming off -- about this perfect man and his serene experience. I guess that’s what changed for me. Time changed. There is this passage in The Laughing Jesus that talks about desire. If we only are in desire, then we’re going to suffer because life is never going to be perfect. But at the same time, we can’t stop desiring because desire is what changes the life dream. Like, “I’m not making enough money” is a desire to make more money. Or even the desire to go to the bathroom. Or eat. The problem isn’t the desire. It’s ONLY desiring. I feel like I got a valuable lesson about the nature of desire -- even if it was only half of the truth.
Ah, the brainwashing question… I think… well, you can’t rape the willing. I think I accepted a certain amount of programming that was done. Programming that could happen only because I was open to it. But brainwashed? To say the word brainwashing seems to imply a lack of responsibility and while I’m not saying that I was completely responsible for it… it was at least 50% my responsibility for participating. If you want to use the word brainwashing, then I was complicit in 50% of my own brainwashing. No one could do anything to me that I wasn’t making myself available to.
I did bring a couple of girls to Satsang. My experience with that was that what was looked for was an openness to follow whatever was being shared. Are they going to toe the party line and be open to what Angelo shares with them? I didn’t bring any men to the group but it seemed that there was different criteria for them. In some parts it had to do with how good-looking they were. There were a couple of guys that Angelo just saw a picture of… I remember one guy in particular… Angelo was very interested in him. He said he had a “soul communion” with that being and was hyper-interested in the contact and relations continuing with him. He would repeatedly refer to him and ask about anyone that communicated with him – all based on that picture. The guy never actually came to the group. But I think it was a different standard for really attractive men – versus non-attractive men or women. And when this whole breakup went down, I reached out to the girls I had been close to that were still a part of the group… because I felt a bit responsible. Some of them would talk to me, but some would give the zombie response, “No, everything is beautiful… everything is perfect… it’s only love here.” And what are you going to do with that? You know, at this point, if someone just wants to keep their eyes closed, then OK.
Looking back, it’s hard to tell what were manipulations. It can seem like everything was. If something was working, Angelo wouldn’t want it changing. Whatever would keep me doing my service in an uninterrupted fashion. When my relationship with Guinevere ended, Angelo said it was bad and I was creating karma but then time passed and I kept doing my service and it became accepted. And when I broke up with Maddalena, the same thing… he was upset and wanted me to stay with her. And actually, I went a little nuts after that. It pressed all my psychological buttons. I had gone out with women that weren’t really interested in me… and that was one thing… but I had never been in a relationship where I wanted it to continue and the woman didn’t. It just brought out all my four-year-old psychology. I started smoking and hanging out with the “wrong crowd” and Angelo wanted to make sure I was in a stable frame of mind so I could keep doing my service for him. So he kind of started throwing girls my way. He would mention someone that would be “good for me” – one I remember that I wasn’t interested in and he said, “Well she’s just like Guinevere and you were with her for several years.” He said, “You can pretend anything.” Anyway, the next day she called me and asked me out. Of course, she denied that Angelo put her up to it. Oh! And for a while Angelo was suggesting that I date Star. So she and I were hanging out for a while and it was kind of a weird scene because I’m sure he told her to hang out with me… and she was dating Ryker at the time. And I asked her, “Isn’t this going to create tension with Ryker?” And she said, “Oh no, our relationship isn’t like that.” And I took that to mean that they weren’t having sex. So I felt like I had this green light to approach her. And then later, Star clarified that she was involved with Ryker but that Angelo kept pushing her to be with me. I told Angelo they were a couple but he didn’t think that was an issue because I was a better “fit” for her, so he was actively trying to get me to date her. I stopped calling her after she made it clear she was involved with Ryker and wanted to stay with him. I relayed that to Angelo but he said it wasn’t true and that I should keep pursuing it. There was always stuff like that going on.
It was hard to earn a living because I was doing service for Angelo in the morning and the afternoon. So trying to make a living in-between was difficult. Basically, it was presented as, “Find a way. This is your spiritual work. This is the most important thing in your life. It’s your sadhana.” So I did feel supported in that I knew he would do whatever he needed to in order for me to continue doing that service. There was a lot of frustration too because occasionally I’d be allowed to go out of town for training, but it had to be something he really liked – like if he had seen a therapist that did a certain thing, then he might say, “Go off and study that.”
Angelo’s sex life was always in the shadows. I never saw any direct evidence of it. I mean, you would wonder. You would hear allusions to him having slept with disciples in the past – but was that something that only used to happen? There was no way of knowing. When the group started, Angelo wasn’t claiming to be a master. So then it wouldn’t surprise me if he was still having sex. Actually Angelo told us that he was the Grand Marshall at a gay parade in
