Denomio: 8. Toeing the Company Line

I was in the group for 13 years and the last 2-3 years became more and more painful. More and more. Until it was just too much at the end. There were several things that facilitated my leaving. The thing about the food I mentioned – and my feelings that his guidance on that were just not right – and also I just felt (after having been around for years) that there were things that were just not in integrity. Here’s an example… I had a good friend outside the group that I make a connection with in my first year in Austin. She had always been my friend and we had never had any sort of sexual contact or anything, but Angelo always seemed kind of threatened by it. He didn’t like me hanging out with her or being friends with her (or anybody outside the group). And every now and then I’d mention her name and at one point he looked at me and said, “You know you really shouldn’t sleep with her because she has herpes.” And I remember looking at him and thinking, “Why would you just make something up like that?” And after I left I did actually have a little romantic thing with her for a few months and she didn’t have herpes. But the fact that he would just randomly make something up like that and pass it off as “truth” was not cool. He had told me that maybe a year before I left and I was so taken aback by it. Whatever. She actually ended up helping the group out with a couple of situations that were about to blow up. And Angelo even met with her and talked to her during that but he still didn’t like my associating with her. He asked me once why I was still in contact with her. I said, “Because I’ve never had an experience with her where I didn’t feel she was in integrity.” That was as close as I could say it. He knew what I meant. I knew what I meant. Mainly that I had a LOT of experiences with him that I didn’t feel were in integrity. But I couldn’t say that… challenging him directly was pointless because it wasn’t going to go anywhere. One of the things that irked me for years was that I would be in the massage room with him when he’d get messages about people. Updates on people that were not behaving the way he wanted them to behave. They were “on the fringe,” or “about to leave,” or “causing waves.” And he would talk about all the stuff that was going on in their hypnotherapy sessions… their cleansing sessions… with all of us there in the room. And I didn’t want to know all of that about those people. What their childhood situations were. I didn’t want to know that. But if someone wasn’t doing what he thought they should be, it was because of their psychological problems and he had a way of explaining about why their actions were not “in harmony” because of their psychological problems. At first, when he shares that stuff with you, you feel special that he’s trusting you with it… like you’re in the “in crowd” and get to hear all that stuff. But as time passed, I was like, “What about patient/client privilege? Why are you sharing this stuff than any other therapist would consider private? I don’t want to know this stuff.” It was just gossip. There was no delineation between what was happening in therapy and what was happening on the other end. Frolic would do that too. If Angelo wanted to know what was going on with someone that Frolic was seeing for cleansing… I don’t think Frolic volunteered it, but he certainly shared when it was asked about. And I had that same thing about, “What happened to privilege?” It just didn’t feel like it was in integrity.

If we were in class and the person was sitting in front of him, he might bring up their issues in order to show everyone that he was right about their psychology and to let people see things as he saw it. But that’s different if the person is right there and you’re trying to build some consensus… as opposed to them not being there and he’s just talking about all the ways this person is “in their mind.” To me, it felt like gossip. Like how is it my business that this person was molested when they were 8 and that’s why they act the way they do? It’s not my business. And it really stuck in my craw when he did that.

I also remember with Hinkley one night in class, Angelo asked him “Where were you last Thursday night?” Hinkley hadn’t gone to Satsang that night and he was stammering some non-answer. Angelo presented it like he just knew… like he was psychicly in tune with his disciples and he knew where they were were. Most of the people in the room (including Hinkley) seemed awed… but the truth of it was that Angelo had people that went to each meeting and wrote down the names of the people who went. So he knew who went and who didn’t. But it wasn’t mystical. But it was that thing of presenting himself as having mystical powers, that he knew what was happening, that didn’t feel like it was in integrity to me. Why did he feel he had to put on a show like that? That seemed so contrary to what we were doing.

I know of the Euripedes letter. I never read it. But I had my own experience of Euripedes for many years and I felt like… Listen, the BF attracted more than its fair share of psychologically unstable people. And in some ways the BF was helpful to those people but it also was very easy to use their instability to discredit them. To say, “That person is crazy,” you could look at them and agree that they were crazy… but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have some valid points. And from what I understand about the Euripedes letter, there were some things that were accurate in it. But at the time I just thought it was another disgruntled person blaming Angelo for all of his woes. And I still think that to some extent. People need to take responsibility for their lives. And the same people that thought Angelo was Superman/Santa Claus – that would do it all for them and make their lives better… now feel betrayed by him and cast him as Satan. At the end of the day, we’re all responsible for our own lives. At the time, I felt like Euripedes was always one of those people that blamed Angelo for the state of his life and never took responsibility, so it was easy for me to not care what the letter said. Because I already had him in that role.

When anyone left the group or wasn’t toeing the company line, they were cast as “in their mind” or “deluded.” And because Angelo knew all of their psychological foibles (that they had revealed to him in cleansing) he could use all the information to prove the were just following some old pattern. He could lay out all their choices and show you how they were choosing what they were choosing because of their psychological makeup. As far as I know, that still goes on. I know it happened to me. I saw it happen to many others. The minute someone challenges something, Angelo turns to “Don’t you see that you think this way because when you were five your dad wasn’t around, and when you were 7 your brother hit you and that’s the only reason you think this. If you stop and connect to God, you’ll see things the way I do.” Everything you tried to express was simply dismissed as deluded because it all goes back to something from the way your child saw something -- that has no basis on the current situation. As I was leaving and expressing my reservations about the things that I thought were not in integrity, I knew that was happening to me. I knew that’s how it was being portrayed.