Datanah: 6. And Then The Break-up

Actually, when all the drama happened with Donner, Simone called me from the car (I'm sure Angelo was with him) to talk about the ethics of it and try to convince me that Angelo had done nothing wrong. Simone said, “There are so many rumors but here is what really happened.....Angelo only asked Donner to strip naked and then sit down with his back to him.” I stopped him right there and told him to go no further......that it is totally unethical for a therapist to ask a client to strip. He sounded totally shocked.

And I was getting call after call from people who had had things stolen from them, or been lied to or manipulated. One thing after another.

But to be honest, I wasn’t shocked. Because I had had my own experience of deception and lies and manipulation – and my own experience of being confused. Confused about why he was not clear in what he was teaching. There would be moments where he would say things that were pure Vedanta, pure Buddhist teachings -- and then his own personal behavior was so contrary to it. So my confusion for a long time when I was in class was, “Why is there no clarity here? And why are all these people that I love so much -- that are obviously intelligent mature adults… caught up in this?” And at this point, most people weren’t really talking to me. Fellini was -- but others just thought I had it wrong. But it obviously wasn’t wrong. That was why I had left. But I also understood that they couldn’t see it that way. Not acknowledge it and stay in the group. Also they were emotionally manipulated, and were prohibited from reading the source material from Hinduism and Buddhism and other great teachers.

Meditation didn’t change for me from being in the group. I’d been meditating my whole life and had different practices and different teachers at different times. So I didn’t connect it to Angelo. I’d been meditating since I was four … so I was never got caught in that “oh, Angelo and meditation are the same thing.”

I stayed as long as I did because of the community. The people I connected with in Atlanta… and the people I connected with way before I had any relationship with Angelo. I always felt when he looked at me, he never saw me. What he thought of me probably came from other people’s perceptions anyhow. I never thought this man knew anything about me and my life. And then the stories I’d hear about me that were supposedly my issues or my problems, like I never stuck to anything or that I was sexually abused as a child, I knew were not my issues or my problems. So for me, Angelo was an aside. And a curiosity, because he’s got a very bizarre personality. So it was definitely for me about my friends, the community, and the people I love.

There was a schism with the group after I moved away. Not with my friends though. I always let my friends know what I thought. And interestingly enough, we still talked. And I also told them, which was true, that I felt love for Angelo as I feel love for all of man. And I feel love and compassion for him, I still do. I feel he’s a very damaged human being and my sense is that he must have had a very damaging childhood… so it’s not difficult for me to say there’s love and compassion there… but there’s also tremendous dislike… and sadness -- I think is what I’d say I feel.

I never felt like I was trying to get to any endpoint… for me, being in the group was simply connecting to people I loved and staying connected with them.