Datanah: 8. Some Parts Were Beautiful, Some Were Damaging

In my life, I had been around other teachers and had other teachers – a lot of them I didn’t seek out or anything, I’d just find myself in their presence. And they all said the same thing: “It’s not about me. It’s about your relationship to your own essential ground. The truth of your own being, and any teacher worth their salt is only going to remind you to remember who you are.” So Angelo was another teacher. And when he reminded me, I appreciated it. But when he stopped doing that, I thought he was full of shit.

One thing I always thought was beautiful was the devotion that people had for Angelo. That was beautiful. Because I felt it was genuine – right up until they stopped having it. Which was also genuine. So there was beauty there. There was definitely beauty in the way people helped each other, cared about each other. The sweetness in that was very powerful. There was genuine beauty in people’s genuine desire to deeply connect with who they were spiritually.

As for my own actions, I feel sorry for the participation around the Nascimento letter, and my participation with having done that coursework for Angelo (albeit unaware as I was). And I understand that I couldn’t have known, but I’m still sorry I participated.

The emphasis placed on physical beauty seemed very damaging to me. F.cked up. First, Angelo to me always looked like a caricature. The Botox. The false eyelashes. The plastic surgery. It felt like a façade, you know? But the same emphasis that he placed on physical beauty… was like the shallowness that manifested in his teaching methodology. I can’t tell you how many discussions I had with Tabitha – trying to figure out a way to give him different exercises to do. We had endless discussions about that. As I said, it felt to me like he didn’t understand the therapeutic process. He didn’t understand how to shift people from a place of “Step 1 – Acknowledge your deficit.” To the next step of actually letting go of their drama… their identification with the drama. On the contrary. In class I saw him reminding people after 18 years of the same dramas they held from their childhoods. He was not letting go!!! And that same shallowness manifested in the physical obsession. And I saw it damaging people I knew. I saw eating disorders, I saw obsession with the whole outer beauty thing. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with being outwardly beautiful. It’s gorgeous. I like beauty and it’s natural that people are drawn to beauty. But I saw him being cruel to some people in class because he never thought they were beautiful enough and that upset me. And I didn’t think it was some “deep teaching.” It didn’t have any depth. It was like the taunting of a bullying child. There was no compassion and he was not acknowledging the inner beauty. What kind of spiritual teacher doesn’t do that? That’s absurd.

The lying I experienced from the beginning. As soon as everyone left Atlanta and I was sent this package… I didn’t realize right away but at some point I realized that I was participating in a lie. I was lied to about who the packages were going to and why I was sending them. And then it hit me and I was like, “Oh my God, I’ve become complicit in this.” And then I was asked to tell on people. I was told it was for their best interests (that Angelo knows what they are saying and thinking.) I didn’t do it… and I’m glad about that. But I was directed to.

All of the lies kind of rocked my world – in the sense that it was just heinous to me. I think that most of what I heard from Angelo was lies. Really early on, I was sharing with Fellini and so I knew almost from the day I arrived that Angelo wasn’t celibate… so I didn’t actually believe that one. But then when he would lie about it, it didn’t exactly add trust. The horror came when I saw how many people had been, and are still hurt because of all of it.