I was here in Austin for about 6 or 7 months. And during that time I got invited to class and I started having problems with it. Classes in Atlanta were great. Class here felt confusing to me and the reason was that half of what I was hearing was pure Vedanta and Buddhism -- and it was spot on. And half was a bizarre misinterpretation. And it bothered me. A lot. And I started talking to Guinevere, Tabitha and Frolic about my concerns but none of them wanted to hear it. No one understood what I was talking about. I had a background in psychology and spiritual practice and I just couldn’t make sense of it. And I was talking to Frolic a lot because I’m also a hypnotherapist, and I would have regression with him (I definitely feel every therapist needs to have their own therapist. Very great spiritual teachers I’ve met have told me how necessary it was for them to have teachers.) And after 7 or so months, of wrestling with my love for these people versus my misgivings -- and the half of what I was hearing that was great versus the half that was crap… [At this point I’d be sitting in class thinking “Why in the f.ck is he doing the same drama therapy exercises, and Gestalt exercises that anyone could learn at a weekend seminar at the Esselen Institute in Big Sur in the early seventies?”] I had my Master’s degree by this time and it boggled me how superficial he kept everything, and how he was using exercises that were no longer deemed that effective by the therapeutic community anymore. Finally, I applied to the Doctoral program at a wonderful school in San Francisco and left.
After receiving my degree, a client called and asked if I’d design her house in Austin. This house was a disaster and it probably took 14 months to complete. So I was back in Austin again. Back with everybody and loving everybody. I got invited to everything again and to class. Again I would go but end up having endless discussions about it with Tabitha… I’m sure I drove her absolutely berserk. Also during that time, Martina lost it. With my background (I had worked for a long time in a drug and alcohol clinic) I could see this girl was going to kill herself if she did not get in-house help. And I told Fellini (we had become really good friends) that she needed to be in rehab. She needed to be in-house. There’s no way she could maintain sobriety as an outpatient. I was worried that this girl was going to kill herself. But of course, she was getting feedback from Angelo that said no. So I was already against him. And I was very, very concerned. And then Martina really lost it. And I was driving her around one day and Angelo was calling her on the phone and Martina was crying and waving the phone around and screaming at him saying, “You’re not f.cking hearing me!” I could hear him saying over and over again “Drop your mind” over the phone,. She was crying to him for help and he was just saying “Drop your mind”. I was completely devastated at his lack of compassion. Its OK to say that to someone who is not in crisis, but totally un-present to say it to someone who is going through a severe breakdown. But of course he never did understand the psycho/spiritual continuum very well. So I had long discussions with Fellini…long discussions. I said to her, “I don’t give a shit what he’s recommending, the guy does not know how to deal with an addict. She’s an addict and she’s going to kill herself if she continues like this.” And I don’t remember time-wise whether the Nascimento thing happened before that.. I think it did. So this was probably the second time I was really pissed off with him.
So that whole thing that happened with Nascimento was such bullshit, because it turned out not to be Nascimento. I actually met Nascimento when he first started dating Natasha (they stayed at my house for a week.) And I had serious concerns. I had a session with Nascimento (during which he admitted that he had beat up all of his past girlfriends.) I told Natasha, “I’m really concerned. I think you should stay away from this guy. I told her that I had no respect for him, I’m seriously worried about you.” And I had probably told that to Frolic too. So when all the threats (or whatever) happened… they came to me and said, “We want you to write a letter, stating your understanding of Nascimento’s character from a therapist’s perspective. And this will be your service.” I was OK with it because I had seen Nascimento as a client and lived with him for a week and could talk from my own experience. When I found out it that it wasn’t actually Nascimento that had written the letters, I was absolutely furious. Because I wrote a professional letter, from my perspective that I never needed to write. It was an honest letter. It was my perspective of him but it was based on being told, “Here’s the letter he wrote, what do you think of this?” So what I wrote was my response based on that false information. It was based on a lie. So I felt abused and I thought it was completely unethical. And then this whole thing with Martina happened… I thought it was all not right … I really started questioning. I had long discussions even with Dharma… Dharma begged me to stay. And I said, “I can’t sit there and hear him say things like “I look in the mirror and I see the Buddha -- but I don’t see the Buddha in anybody else.” And I’m sick and tired of hearing, “I’m just the finger pointing toward the moon”, and acting like he was the Great Enlightened One, or hearing him give mixed messages like “You’re God, but really even after 18 years with me you’re still a f.ckup.”
One day Frolic told me that he wanted to ‘play’ with me. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time, so I said sure (I was very excited to spend some time with him.) So I went over and we started ‘playing’ as he called it… He was taking a course in NLP and wanted me to take it with him so we could spend time together -- and so that the course wouldn’t be so boring for him. It was a mail order course and we’d watch the video and write answers to the questions in our notebooks and then do some exercises and answer some questions and he kept the notebook so he could “compare my notes to what he’d written” and this went on for 6 weeks or so. At the end of that time, I asked for my notebook and he said, “Well actually in the master’s name, you’ve just done service.” which completely pissed me off. I don’t blame Frolic at all, but felt that I basically took the test for Angelo’s NLP certification. And that evidently wasn’t a unique experience. I spoke with others that had done the same thing… One of the people got him his doctorate in theology amongst other things. It was evidently common. He apparently has a lot of certifications that he doesn’t rate. For me it was just compounding one thing after another and eventually I just couldn’t stand it any more. I would say that pretty much was the catalyst for my leaving.
