Denomio: 9. Leaving Was Hard At First

I left the Buddha Field in the summer of 2005. I started breaking away. I told Angelo I could no longer do my morning and night services… that I could do the night service but I was no longer going to do the morning service. And he said, “No, this can’t be on your terms. You have to absolutely surrender or it won’t work. If it’s on your terms… if you’re not going to do it absolutely… then don’t come at all. And I said “OK, I won’t do it at all.” But I still tried to come to other things… but that doesn’t work. And I can tell you why it doesn’t work…

You have to understand, Angelo was really harsh with people (generally speaking). He would really crack them on the head, until they started pulling away or showing some doubt. And at that point, he’d become the sweet Angelo. At that point, he’d start nurturing them and trying to take care of them… wanting to make sure that everything was alright. At one point, toward the end of my time in the group, I wasn’t making enough money and I told him I’d have to get a job a couple of hours a day and he said no. So he actually had another disciple give me $1500. And I said no, I don’t want that. And he said, “Who doesn’t want that? You’re just in your mind. Here… take this money.” At the time I took it. But it felt really weird. And I remember telling people that I felt like he was bribing me to stay but they said, “No, no.. he would have to be really needy to be doing that.” But I really felt like on some psychological level, he needed to be loved and seen in that light. It really disturbed him if he wasn’t. And what would happen was that he’d become really sweet with a lot of people on the fringe. That sweetness would draw them back in because they had been wanting that love from him for so long. But it only went to a certain point. As soon as you made it clear that you were pulling away… like crossing a threshold… then you become the enemy and all of his aspersions on your character start to get put out there. He is really scared of that virus being spread so that’s when he starts telling everyone about your psychological issues… because he needs to justify why you’re deluded to everyone else that you might be talking to, so that they dismiss what you say and don’t really hear you. And then he starts pushing you away. After I stopped doing my service, I was still trying to go to class… I was still going to Satsang. I went for a couple of months. But it gets under his skin… that you’re there and not surrendering. You aren’t “succumbing to the sweetness.” So there were all these backhanded barbs… little jibes in class that maybe not everyone was aware of but if they are directed at you, they’re really obvious. And the little comments became so painful, so painful to be in that room and listen to those little jabs. I’d be gritting my teeth. And finally one day I was intending to go to class, but it was making my skin crawl just thinking about it, so I didn’t go that week. But I was planning on going the next week. But as the time got closer, I got more antsy and I just couldn’t do it. And that’s how I left. Not in a big “I AM LEAVING” gesture, just acknowledging a little at a time how much it made my skin crawl to go and listen to him and all of the things that I felt were not in integrity. We were given a message constantly that Angelo KNOWS and that we don’t. Well, what I was left to deal with as I was leaving was that if that’s the message, then what am I supposed to do when he dies? Because all I’ve been told for the past 15 years is that I’m in my mind. I’m in delusion. So if he’s dead and all I’ve been told is that I’m completely in delusion what am I supposed to trust in? That’s one of the things that helped me leave. That and my mother’s death… her cancer.

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she called and told me about it and wanted me to come to her. But of course, Angelo didn’t want me to go right away. I knew he’d let me go at some point, but it was like 2 or 3 weeks and basically he was saying, “Don’t go out there. Are you going to go out there every time she calls you? You’re attached. You’re deluded.” It was a struggle for that first 2 week period. And I went out to visit her and came back with a different attitude. “No, I don’t give this one to you. You don’t make this decision for me.” I went out to see her about every 2 months in the last year of her life but I knew that if I let it be on Angelo’s schedule, that I might have gone 2 or 3 times. I’m pretty sure about the timing on that. I knew that the one thing in the world that my mother wanted was for her only son to be there as she was leaving… and if I didn’t do that, I was going to feel like an ass for the rest of my life. No way. Especially when I’d already been seeing these other things that didn’t feel right. If my mother had been diagnosed the second year I was in Satsang, when I was really a “true believer” it might have been a different story. If I’m honest with myself, I might have detached myself and “No, this is more important… to serve Krishna.” But towards the end I saw that, no, this guy is just attached to me and my being here to massage him twice a day. I’m not going to do that. It was a really, really hard thing for me to break because virtually all of my friends were thinking that I was completely deluded at the time and that everybody was feeling sorry for me. Just like I had felt sorry for the people that had left before me. “Oh, poor thing. He’s in his mind. He’s really missing out on this highest, truest thing.” But no. My mother’s death was one of the things that freed me… because I said, “No. I’m choosing this. This is not your decision.” As Angelo saw me pulling back , he got sweeter and sweeter and sweeter. And he started giving me half his dinner at night and he gave me money and wanted to know how I was doing and all that. And then when I was making it clear that I was not going back to that subservient lemming role… he became nastier and nastier to me. And (I found out later) talking about me to other people. I had stopped going to the adjustments and Guinevere would call up Teresavila (my girlfriend) and say that I was the only one that knew how to work on his body effectively. Really trying to push her to bring me back into the fold. But it was so painful in the last two years in the group. And when I finally stopped going… it felt so good. Beautiful. Even with all of my friends telling me I was deluded and all my programming was telling me I was deluded… and I was still struggling with that. Am I really in my mind? Am I really deluded and missing out on my chance for enlightenment? I was still, on another level, experiencing so much more happiness. Like, “Oh, I don’t have to be there every morning and night! I can go out dancing at night!” The last formal function I went to was a Christmas dinner… and those dinners, for the first few years, were ecstatic. I loved them. I loved listening to him share Satsang and I loved the dancing and the whole pageantry of it. But the last few years… I hated doing the Greek line dancing. I hated doing the Polka. He’d add a new dance each year and then we’d do them every year after that. So that last year, I didn’t go to the dinner at Thanksgiving, but I went to the one at Christmas. And it was different for me… it was fun -- because I was no longer worried about getting in trouble. I rearranged the seating assignments so Guinevere and I could sit together. I just moved people... cause what are they going to do to me? I didn't care. I stayed for the dinner and the first half of the dancing (where it was freestyle before Angelo came downstairs to join in) and then Angelo came down and started the Polka. Some other friends had invited me to another little dance party afterwards so I got up and said, “OK, it’s time for me to leave.” I didn’t want to be there for the whole polka and him going around and looking at people and giving shakti. I left and went to this other party and it was fantastic , being with friends, dancing to music I actually liked. And not worrying about the concept of dropping my ideas of what I liked in order to toe the company line. To not have the ideas that flamenco was beautiful and tap was bad… it was ecstatic. Doing what I liked. Doing what came naturally to me. Doing what I’m feeling called to do. It was much more beautiful and joyous than the idea of all those other things are my mind and only Angelo knows… To start to embrace, once again, my own sense of love. What I loved. Rather than what I was supposed to love. It was liberating.

I was involved in the whole Nascimento situation. In short, someone was sending Angelo nasty, anonymous letters and for some reason he KNEW it was Nascimento – a guy outside the BF that used to date a girl in the BF. Well, there were endless meetings about what should be done and what was happening and how it should be dealt with and who should say what… It was a Mexican soap opera. It was hours and hours and hours of discussing minutiae, “If you say that, he’ll say this… and then this would happen… and then we’ll say this… so you go say this to them first… but if you say that, then he’ll say this… and then what would happen… maybe that… so we’ll say this.” And then we’d hear something someone actually said and we’d get everybody in the room together and talk about it for the next four hours. And in the end it turned out that Angelo was wrong about the whole thing. What he thought happened and who he thought was involved was wrong. It was presented like, “There’s this guy that is another Kendrick… another crazy guy trying to bring down the Buddha Field. What are we going to do about it?” I will give Angelo credit… there were people that advocated violence. That said that this guy is a threat and that we should take action. I suggested some things. Just throwing out ideas, that were not necessarily violent but were not in integrity. Trying to defend and protect. “Well, we could frame him for this… We could create this scene around him…” And Angelo never went with anything that was violent when I was around. And it was certainly suggested a few times. But I never saw him doing anything that was directly malicious. What we did wasn’t violent, but it wasn’t UN-hurtful either. There were things that were done and advocated that were not necessarily truthful, or not going to be a win-win for everybody involved… but I never saw him do anything with anybody that was malicious or violent. I actually wasn’t involved in the resolution of the Nascimento incident. I’m not sure what happened. Evidently he found out that Nascimento didn’t actually write the letters. I only found that out after the BF breakup. He never addressed that in front of me. It was presented as “Yes, I’m absolutely certain because I KNOW that this person did it.” He never said he was wrong about the whole thing.

There wasn’t like a “final straw” that made me leave. It was a combination of things. I was not happy. Because I wasn’t doing things I wanted to do. It was painful to go into that room twice a day and give him the same adjustment and the same dramas going on. I didn’t feel that how I saw him behaving was in integrity but that kept being dismissed because he SEES and he KNOWS what is the highest choice. And then other things… like the nutrition thing with my body – that it was just clearly wrong. And my mother’s cancer… actually gaining the ability to say “No” from that situation. It was a culmination of seeing things that were just not in integrity.. not in the Tao. And when I left, I had some resentment but I still had my own doubt. I had an attitude of “This isn’t working for me anymore but if you guys wish to keep doing this, I wish you well. You should do what you need to do.” But then later, after the recent breakup, all the stories started coming out. If I had heard some of these things before… Like I heard the Moretti story… that was one of the things that really raised my gall. About Angelo telling Moretti that somebody was out to kill him.. and causing Moretti to pack up and run for his life. And all the sexual improprieties. If I had known about all that stuff.. it would have made my exodus a lot easier. Because for me, I was really struggling with, “Am I deluded?” All of my friends seemed to think I was. All of my programming was telling me I was. That was really hard.