Datanah: 5. Why I Left

Before I left that final time… I was really incredulous -- thinking it was bullshit. And I talked to people about what I was feeling. I remember we went to see that movie… Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring… We were talking about it in class and Angelo asked us questions about our perceptions of it. And I shared that the epitome of that movie for me was when the teacher died -- because for me that was the ultimate teaching… when you come to the point where you become your own teacher. It was a Buddhist movie and the Buddhists have a saying “ When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Basically kill everything that is not the Reality that resides in all Beingness. When I gave my answer Angelo said, “I’m not interested in the spiritual epitome, I wanted to know about the psychological.” And I said, “Well, what are we doing here then?” And he didn’t answer me. It was completely f.cked up.

I guess the real final end was being in class and seeing the incongruities, seeing how everybody was manipulating him by giving him everything they thought he wanted, and watching the sycophants (which would nauseate me.) So I got to the point where I wouldn’t go to class. And I thought, “What am I doing here?” And one night I had a dream that was the total turning point for me. I went to bed and dreamed that I saw Angelo turning a corner and he became a cobra and slithered toward me and his mouth opened as wide as it could open and the next thing I knew he had morphed back into himself. He and I were standing face to face, head to head, mouth to mouth and we both dissolved into nothing. And I thought, OK, that’s it. There’s no difference between me and him. I’m done. I packed the next day and left. It was about a year after I left that that the breakup happened.

And that’s when I started getting phone calls from everybody. And then the whole thing devolved. Fellini called and told me the Donner story. Then I started getting phone calls from Frolic with all the spin. And Simone would call and ask me what I heard. It was really important. All this crap I’d get over the years off and on but now it came really hard and fast. I actually sent Frolic an article on ethics and so then they started calling and asking, “Is this ethical? Is that ethical?” Frolic first started calling me to justify what he was doing and to make sure that he never did anything wrong himself….But also at that time, people were calling me and telling me about Angelo falling asleep during their cleansings. Guenevere called me once and she said that she had heard he was watching porn during cleansings and that she spoke to Xena about it, but that Xena said it was rubbish… that it was dance videos and she knew because she had put them in the machine. And I said, “Stop right there. Are you telling me this man is teaching you to be present and he’s watching a video, of whatever kind, while he’s doing therapy with you?” This went on for weeks and weeks. People were falling apart.