After the Truth

Ho'oponopono: The Best Way to Help

2008-05-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

Many feelings come up when people read the stories on this site. Or on the news for that matter. It's only human to wonder what you can do to help. The most useful thing I've come across is something that I've started applying in my own life. It's based on a Hawaiian therapy for healing called Ho'oponopono. In the 80's, Morrnah Simeona "streamlined" Ho'oponopono from a therapy for healing interpersonal relationships, into something that an individual can practice for themselves. Her students (including Ramsay Taum, and Ihaleakala Hew Len, Ph.D) continue to teach and practice this version of Ho'oponopono. Hew Len's name may be familiar from Joe Vitale's book, Zero Limits. Hew Len asserts:

The healing process of Ho'oponopono is based on the principles of total responsibility, taking responsibility for everything that shows up in your life. He says if one takes complete responsibility for one's life, then everything one sees, hears, tastes, touches, or in any way experiences is one's responsibility -- because it is in one's life. Total Responsibility advocates that everything exists as a projection from inside the human being. The problem isn't with our external reality, it is with ourselves and to change our reality, we would have to change ourselves.

The simple truths are the strongest and there is much more to the practice than I can present in this post. However, the basis of Ho'oponopono is to accept responsibility for everything that has shown up in your consciousness. And anything that provokes feelings of anger, sadness, pity - or really, anything that sends you out of joy - is something that is crying out for your help. The good news is that offering that help is quite simple. Not easy perhaps. But simple.

In the moment you recognize that a person or situation in front of you may need healing - even if you are simply reading about it - address the Divinity within yourself and all around you in the following way (the words you use are not as important as your intention and feelings):

I am healed. All is healed. - Heal my limiting beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, which have helped to create this pain and disharmony. In finding healing within myself, I am releasing these negative and mistaken beliefs and programming so that myself and others in this shared reality may be transformed and healed. I offer love, joy and healing into this and every situation. In this too, I am healed. All is healed.

Thank You. - Thank you for my life. Thank you for this outer reflection of something within myself that cries out for healing. Thank you for shining a light on whatever I can surrender for healing - and, in so doing, create a more positive, joyful reality for myself and everyone. Thank you for allowing me the power to choose to experience love and gratitude. Thank you for the simplicity of Divine Healing - where healing is possible without knowing all of the details of what exactly needs to be healed or how it can happen. Thank you for the empowering knowledge that the healing power of Love knows no bounds. Thank You.

I Love You. - I am filled with love for you, for this life, for the Dinivinity of Creation and for Love itself. I allow Love to fill me and radiate from me, transmuting and transforming whatever allows its touch. If I have ever offered anything to this person or situation that was outside of Love, I take this moment to erase that offering and instead, offer Love in its place. I Love You.

I am healed. All is healed. Thank You. I Love You.

Something so simple and yet more profound help (I believe) than anything else you could offer.

Energetic Contagion in Synchronization Video

2008-05-16T07:35:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across the video below and it seemed to be the physical equivalent of the energetic or emotional contagion phenomenon that groups experience. I'm sure you've heard of "mob mentality" (also called herd behavior.) Well, this video is a great aid in visualizing what happens.

Five out-of-sync metronomes are put on a board and the board is placed on two soda cans laying on their sides. After an adjustment period, the metronomes become synchronized.

I've often been in an audience where the applause at the end starts out random and then turns into a synchronized beat. I always figured it was just a subconscious adjustment in each person in the audience. And maybe it is. But here, something else is going on because the metronomes have no "psychology." Perhaps the non-fixed, free-form framework of this setup allows us to hear what happens when the energies/vibrations become in sync.

Darth Vader Falls at Jedi Church

2008-05-14T13:25:00.001-07:00

Perhaps this is just what happens when you try to make a religion.

At the site of a Jedi Church, two acolytes were dueling with light sabres and filming a documentary when over the wall lept Darth Vader who proceeded to pummel them with his light saber.

Well, not so much a light saber as a crutch.

And not so much Darth Vader as Arwel Hughes, a 27 year old who evidently drank a 10 litre box of wine (as you do), put on a black garbage bag as a cape and thought he would pull a surprise attack on two Jedi fanatics, Barney Jones and his cousin Michael, "worshiping " at the church.

Well, not so much worshiping as engaging in a light saber duel.

Arwel reportedly jumped over the wall and started hollering "Darth Vader" as he swung his crutch around, hitting Barney in the head and Michael in the thigh.

The two victims were actually Master Jonba Hehol and Master Mormi Hehol, the founders of the Church of Jediism, Anglesey Order. The group has about 30 members although in the 2001 UK census, 390,000 people listed Jedi as their religion. From the church's website:

Is the Jedi religion fiction? Many religions claim to be the one and only true religion, thus necessitating that all other religions are fictitious. In addition, although many religions claim to speak the word of God, but the truth is they are only the written word of prophets or followers of the religion. There is no way to prove or deny that what was written was the word of God. Several other religions openly admit that their text is not the word of God, and that it is only a prescribed behavior or a philosophy of life (e.g. Buddhism, Scientology). Most non fiction is a discussion of science and life, of things that can be observed, quantified and readily challenged for its truth and authenticity. But not religion. Any religion put to scrutiny is merely words on paper, with no ability to confirm its authenticity. The Jedi church makes no denial that its name and terminology originates from a fictitious past, but the concepts and ideals that are identified by Jedi followers are known for their innate truth. The sun existed before it was given a name, and it could be revered as a God, however, when the sun finally had a human name, it could be written about and communicated with others. The Jedi religion is just like the Sun, it existed before a popular movie gave it a name, and now that it has a name, people all over the world can share their experiences of the Jedi religion, here in the Jedi Church.

How do your church elders measure up? :D

District Judge Andrew Shaw just sentenced Hughes to two months in jail but suspended the sentence for one year. He also ordered Hughes to pay $195 to each of his victims and $117 in court costs.

Actually, his attack brought back memories of swatting people with pillows and yelling "El Kabong!" I was about seven at the time. I think I got it off of a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon.

Dr. Weiss and Past Life Regression on Oprah

2008-05-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Dr. Brian Weiss, was on Oprah today (seemingly promoting his new book, Many Lives, Many Masters) and the whole hour was filled with the doctor doing past life regression therapy.

He says it takes about 20 minutes for someone to be regressed (on average.) He talks about this type of therapy being good for many aspects of the healing process and also what it indicates about life beyond this life. It was fascinating. Not just because of the content, but also because Oprah is pretty brave to address this with America at large, considering she is already being labeled as a cult leader by some.

At the end of the show, Oprah mentions that there was more content and referenced a "part two" of the show. So keep your eyes open if you are interested. Also, there is a lot of content on her website if you follow the link above.

For those that follow the stories on this site, past life regression is what Angelo called "cleansing" only he said we were also using it to clean our karma. And I don't know about anyone else, but he usually "guided" me for about 45 seconds before I was "under." So I don't presume that I actually KNOW what a true past life regression is. Although I did see for myself that this can be an effective tool if used responsibly.

(Update: Oprah's website lists June 24th as the date that part two will air.)

Bonewits' Cult Danger Scale

2008-05-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

After my last post about Identifying a Cult, Ivan pointed me to a scale that you can use to evaluate the danger of a suspected cult. From looking it over, it seems to provide, not only a good way to recognize a group as a cult, but it also gives you a way to assign the group a "danger score." Basically, Isaac Bonewits lists a number of factors you can rate (using a 10 point scale -1 being low and 10 being high) to evaluate a suspected group against certain known cultic dynamics. Use the link to his site for his most up-to-date list, but at the time of this post, it looked like this:

THE BONEWITS CULT DANGER SCALE
Internal Control: Amount of internal political and social power exercised by leader(s) over members; lack of clearly defined organizational rights for members.
External Control: Amount of external political and social influence desired or obtained; emphasis on directing members’ external political and social behavior.
Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s); amount of infallibility declared or implied about decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations; number and degree of unverified and/or unverifiable credentials claimed.
Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members; amount of trust in decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations made by leader(s); amount of hostility by members towards internal or external critics and/or towards verification efforts.
Dogma: Rigidity of reality concepts taught; amount of doctrinal inflexibility or “fundamentalism;” hostility towards relativism and situationalism.
Recruiting: Emphasis put on attracting new members; amount of proselytizing; requirement for all members to bring in new ones.
Front Groups: Number of subsidiary groups using different names from that of main group, especially when connections are hidden.
Wealth: Amount of money and/or property desired or obtained by group; emphasis on members’ donations; economic lifestyle of leader(s) compared to ordinary members.
Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s) of non-tantric groups; amount of control exercised over sexuality of members in terms of sexual orientation, behavior, and/or choice of partners.
Sexual Favoritism: Advancement or preferential treatment dependent upon sexual activity with the leader(s) of non-tantric groups.
Censorship: Amount of control over members’ access to outside opinions on group, its doctrines or leader(s).
Isolation: Amount of effort to keep members from communicating with non-members, including family, friends and lovers.
Dropout Control: Intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts.
Violence: Amount of approval when used by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s).
Paranoia: Amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies; exaggeration of perceived power of opponents; prevalence of conspiracy theories.
Grimness: Amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).
Surrender of Will: Amount of emphasis on members not having to be responsible for personal decisions; degree of individual disempowerment created by the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).
Hypocrisy: amount of approval for actions which the group officially considers immoral or unethical, when done by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s); willingness to violate the group’s declared principles for political, psychological, social, economic, military, or other gain.

Score each item on a scale of 1 to 10 and then divide by 18 (since there are currently 18 items on his list) for the overall score.

How does your group score?

How to Identify a Cult

2008-05-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

Invariably, when a cult is in the news, this site gets hits from people Googling "How to Identify a Cult." Unfortunately, they end up on the Top 10 Ways to Identify a Cult page which was created as an inside joke (sort of), and an incomplete one, based my own cultic experiences within the Buddha Field.

But for the people who land here and are truly concerned with identifying a real cult, the issue is more serious. The word cult brings to mind the things we have been exposed to in regards to the cults we've seen on the news: brainwashing, suicide, sexual improprieties, etc. However, it's hard to come up with a checklist because there are SO MANY cults in our society. A cult is specifically any social group which is devoted to a belief system considered outside the norm. That's very broad. Let's focus just on religious cults (groups with theological ideas outside the norm.)

The only real difference in the beliefs of a religion and the beliefs of a cult is that usually the religion has been marginalized by its popularity. Sometimes a religion is a cult that has been allowed time and popularity to become more palatable. Many people consider Scientology a cult today, but in 1000 years, who knows? It wasn't that long ago that Joseph Smith's Church of Latter Day Saints was considered a cult and "fringe" but today it is generally accepted as a valid religion and accorded the rights that the state accords any other religion. How soon will it be before The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster follows suit?

But again, let's narrow our focus to smaller, less popular groups that have not had the time to become a religion. A group that focuses on religious ideas that are (for the moment) outside the norm. Within these narrow parameters, there are some things you can look for:

Cults usually center around a charismatic leader who claims to have the answers from a higher spiritual authority and may claim to have special spiritual powers. There will usually be warnings against listening to other teachers because none of them have that "divine authority."
Cults have a hierarchical power structure with the leader at the top of the ladder. His way or the highway is usually the reality although they may phrase it more politely ("If you don't like the way things are, there is the door.")
The group itself will adopt the same chosen/special/select attitude that the leader exemplifies. Perhaps there will be a sub-group at the top of the hierarchy that is "more special" than the typical member, although never as divine as the leader.
You will generally notice double-speak around ethics. One set of rules for others and a different set for the leader. And within the group, society's ethics hold no real value (ie. "Lying is OK if it's for the good of the group or if you are following the direction of the leader.")
There is generally a system in place to subtly persuade you to believe as the group believes (and as the leader believes.) Questioning the leader and having different opinions are usually frowned upon.
Isolation is a key element in cults. Give up your petty life/desires for the group and the leader. Other people will not understand. Avoid non-believers. You are not strong enough yet to handle that. There is generally a paranoia with those outside the group. And you will be dissuaded from having any interests (outside the group) that might take your focus away from fulfilling the needs of the leader or the group.
Pay attention to whether anyone ever "graduates" from the group. Are there those who have "attained" and moved on? In a cult, members tend to remain dependent forever (or until they choose to leave and are then "in disgrace.")
Pay attention to the secrets. When a cult maintains a cloak of secrecy (usually regarding money and sex) that means there is probably something that would not be regarded in a favorable light.
Some groups will employ actual brainwashing techniques to make you more open to new ideas. These include changing eating/sleeping patterns and encouraging leaving your old identify and belief system behind with a new name (usually chosen for you by the leader.)
The charisma and draw of the leader, and the expansiveness of the ideology may be in conflict with the confining feeling you get from the group. This is pretty typical because there can be a real experience that you are allowing yourself to have (using the group as an excuse) that is at war with the confining dependency that you feel the group is provoking within you.

If you take these things into consideration, you should be able to identify a cult. That being said, it remains your option about whether or not to participate. Perhaps the cultic experience would be better than your current life situation. Only you can decide that. Whatever your choice, try to do it with your eyes open.

Update: Here is a more recent post with a way you can rate how highly a group scores on the Dangerous Cult Scale.

Watch the Love Guru Movie and Go To Hell

2008-05-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Why am I still surprised by this stuff?

Now that the trailer for Mike Myer's The Love Guru movie has been released, the protests have begun. Some people are quite serious about it. Jangagruti Samiti finds the film offensive to Hindus (OK, I get that) because it mocks the sanctity of the Guru-Disciple relationship. In addition to letters of protest to the MPAA and press releases, Janjagruti has also decreed what the karmic debts associated with the film are:

Act	Demerit	Means
Making the movie, ‘The Love Guru’	30 units	2^nd region of Hell for 1000 years
Watching it for entertainment without knowing the spiritual science/significance	2 units	Nether region of Hell for 100 yrs
Watching it for entertainment even after knowing the spiritual science/ significance	5 units	1^st region of Hell for 100 yrs
Being a seeker of God/on the spiritual path, knowing about the Movie, but doing nothing to stop it	5 units	1^st region of Hell for 100 yrs

Now I kind of HAVE to go see it.

Austin's Buddafield Cult & Strong City Cult Just 2 out of 3000

2008-04-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

I just watched National Geographic's "Inside a Cult" program that I posted about previously. I have such a deep compassion. For those in the Strong City cult. For those in the (evidently) 3000 other cults in America. Both for those still inside the groups and those that have escaped.

I found the program itself interesting. Several of the facts/insights presented did remind me of my own cult experience. The Buddha Field was a completely different cult. The Strong City cult was more of a Christian cult with roots in Seventh Day Adventists (like the David Koresh cult in Waco.) The Buddha Field was more Hindu/Buddhist/New Age/Psychological.

The documentary focused quite a bit on the leader (Wayne, or "Michael"... he evidently liked to change names also) having sex with its members (and how sex can be used as a means of control in groups) and the "end of the world" belief of group members. But really, what else are they going to focus on?

The sex card is often played by the media to show how a select group is "immoral" and deviant. So I understand most people in our society being distracted by that issue. The fact that one of the girls was 14 is a matter of legality to be sure... but other societies around the world mark "adulthood" and the beginning of sexual availability at a much younger age than America. It's a sensational aspect -- a way of showing "how devoted" people are. But when the normal morality of a cult member is superseded by the words of God Incarnate - that is indicative of a much larger problem than the fact that people are having sex.

The Doomsday/Armageddon belief is typical in some cults. The Buddha Field encouraged an immediacy to devotion by saying that this life was going to end and you didn't want to die in your mind... you wanted to be free... to free yourself from the wheel of karma so you didn't have to be reincarnated again. Feeling things for this world were futile... like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic... a useless and wasted effort for something transient. It was said a number of times that "your house is on fire." It is burning down around you (meaning your death is fast approaching) and you need to take care of business quickly. But really, is that all that different from the fear tactics used in regular Christianity? Accept God and be forgiven for your sins before you die or you will burn in hell forever?

I think the program missed talking about the allure of such a group. It touched on it, by identifying the people that are susceptible as "seeking something more" but it neglected to show what such people find in a group like this. Love, acceptance, a kinder picture of the world than they have been shown previously in life. In the interviews on this site, you can hopefully see what each person was carrying with them that made them open, at a specific moment in their lives to what they may not have been open to at any other time.

I see myself.
In the slant of the program, I see myself before getting involved with the Buddha Field.
In the members in the group, I see myself in my longing for a "meaning of life" and for "something higher" and the lengths to which I was willing to go to gain that.
In exchanging emails with an ex-member of the group, I see myself.

I truly wish for the best possible resolution for all those involved. As usual, I see the best thing I can do in response, is to continue forsaking false prophets and those who would prey on the innocence and open hearts of others and to stand up for truth and love in my own life every chance I am given.

View all posts mentioning Strong City.

Sometimes a Spinning Dancer is Just That

2008-04-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I introduced an image of a spinning dancer and included the theory behind why some see her spinning to the right and some to the left (right brain versus left brain.)

An article today in the NY Post refutes that theory. They say it is something that happens entirely in the visual system (I thought the brain was part of the visual system??)

At the time, I remember being wary of how they could KNOW that it was a right/left brain phenomenon because a number of friends that are very "right brain" could not see it the way they were supposed to be able to see it. And vice versa. But, I went with the theory presented without digging deeper because I thought it was neat. And harmless.

Now I wonder.

I wonder how much of that happens? Recently on the Ellen Degeneres talk show, Dr. Wayne Dyer was talking about how research has shown that serotonin levels (a chemical that makes us happy) are increased when someone receives a gift of kindness. He cited that same research as stating that not only the receiver benefits from those happy feelings (serotonin increases) but the giver as well. Not only that but all of those witnessing the exchange had a similar increase in serotonin. Of course, I could infer so much from this. THIS is why people get addicted to doing service and get so high off of it. It made something make sense in my head. Only after talking about it with someone else did I go... wait a minute. Let me search for that research.

I'm pretty good at finding things on the internet and I couldn't find any indication of that research that he mentioned. I found many people asking where he got that fact from (it appears that the first time it was mentioned was in one of his books) but no one else is familiar with that study... including one psychiatry site I visited. Did he make it up and now other people are passing it around as fact? (including myself this weekend) If so, is that a bad thing? I mean, it's a nice, beautiful image.. what's the harm? That's the logic behind the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus after all.

Interesting, isn't it? Just for ourselves. What else are we accepting as truth because someone cites an authority in order to bypass our own system of questioning.

Question everything. Even me saying to question everything. Why not? What is there to lose?

Strong City Cult Escapee Finds After the Truth

2008-04-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

An ex-member of the Strong City cult contacted me:

Dear Post-cult-compadre,

I'm impressed with your website. Thank you for taking the time to maintain it. I realize how much effort and time that it takes to keep meaningful and useful things online, in a manner that is easily accessible.

Being a Strong City escapee, your notes and those of the contributors on your site have special significance. The insights you all share are very helpful. They reflect experiences/thoughts/processes that are similar to my experience, and no doubt the experience of other former cult members, in general. This is extremely useful, for readers as well as posters, as we all work out the kinks that we worked into our lives. And I appreciate Dr. Datanah's remarks very much.

If you are interested, please take a look at a blog I have posted for keeping up with the Strong City version of the cultype. They are going through a particularly difficult time right now (kind of like what they have been going through constantly for a long time, only now the State is involved).

I was so impressed with your "Fortune Cookie For Angelo" that I'm using it on my personal page. Hope that's okay...Those quotes are right on the money...

Thank you so much for the email. A number of readers of this site have been deeply moved with compassion for those involved with the Strong City group since first reading about it. So few people can really understand what being in such a group is like (without experiencing it for themselves) or the trauma and healing that can result from choosing to leave. I'm glad to find out that this site might have helped in some way.

Also, it tickles me to death that you like the Fortune Cookies. One day someone was talking with me about the fortune cookies that Angelo used to give people at holiday functions (like Thanksgiving and Christmas.) And the idea of adding that fortune cookie to the site started as a way of poking fun at that in a playful way... but then, once I found the Lazarus Long and Solomon Short quotes, I really got into it for its own sake.

I've also taken this opportunity to update some of the external links in Elsewhere on the web to include the Strong City links.

View all posts mentioning Strong City.

Distance Factor, Angle Factor: Perspectives

2008-04-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I got another reminder of how your views and perspective are more dependent on where you are now, than any sort of universal truth. Several of us were setting up some flower arrangements around a tree and each person was standing in a different position so we all saw "center" as a different place. It was outside and the goal was to have the arrangements placed so that the oak tree was centered between them, but all of us had a different idea of where the audience was going to sit, so we all saw "center" as relative to where we were standing - so it was different for each of us. And actually all of us ended up being "wrong" in the end. That may be hard to follow. Perhaps an easier way to explain this is to post this image:

Sitting close to your monitor, you see Mr Angry on the left and Mrs Calm on the right. Now, get up from your chair and back up 10 feet or so. Watch them switch positions. That's what I mean. What you see, depends on where you are looking from. That's why arguing about truth is so futile. You can be absolutely sure of what you are seeing, but the other person is looking from a different position and sees a different truth. Each may be "true" but the difference in perspective makes them seem different. And most people have a hard time believing that multiple opposing views can be true at one time.

Adyashanti actually addresses this in an interesting way:

There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of Zen, Seng-tsan, called the Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as Verses in Faith Mind. In this poem Seng-tsan writes these lines: "Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions." This is a reversal of the way most people go about trying to realize absolute truth. Most people seek truth, but Seng-tsan is saying not to seek truth. This sounds very strange indeed. How will you find truth if you don't seek it? How will you find happiness if you do not seek it? How will you find God if you do not seek God? Everyone seems to be seeking something. In spirituality seeking is highly honored and respected, and here comes Seng-tsan saying not to seek.

The reason Seng-tsan is saying not to seek is because truth, or reality, is not something objective. Truth is not something "out there." It is not something you will find as an object of perception or as a temporal experience. Reality is neither inside of you nor outside of you. Both "outside" and "inside" are not getting to the point. They both miss the mark because outside and inside are conceptual constructs with no inherent reality. They are simply abstract points of reference. Even words like "you," or "me," or "I," are nothing more than conceptual points of reference existing only in the mind. Such concepts may have a practical value in daily life, but when assumed to be true they distort perception and create a virtual reality, or what in the East is called the world of samsara.

Seng-tsan was a wily old Zen master. He viewed things through the eye of enlightenment and was intimately aware of how the conditioned mind fools itself into false pursuits and blind alleys. He knew that seeking truth, or reality, is as silly as a dog thinking that it must chase its tail in order to attain its tail. The dog already has full possession of its tail from the very beginning. Besides, once the dog grasps his tail, he will have to let go of it in order to function. So even if you were to find the truth through grasping, you will have to let it go at some point in order to function. But even so, any truth that is attained through grasping is not the real truth because such a truth would be an object and therefore not real to begin with.

He has more to say about it so follow the link to read it if you are interested...

Strong City Cult: A Reader's Reaction

2008-04-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

In response to my last post about the Strong City Cult (or, as they name themselves, the Lord Our Righteousness Church) and their leader, Michael Travesser, several people told me that watching the Strong City video that I linked to reminded them of our Buddha Field and Angelo. Seiva sent me an email after watching the video that I think expresses it well:

Well. that really creeped me out!!! The Strong City Cult video was disturbing on so many levels. The overall vibe of it was, well, depressing and made me throw up a little in my mouth. I felt dirty all day after watching it- it reminded me of Angelo and some of the members of the BF- not all, but enough of them, myself included in certain aspects. YYYUUUUKKKKKKKKK!!

Not only was so much of it hauntingly familiar-the required zombie behavior to slavishly adore the leader, to the Leader being an eccentric control freak and the only source of affection and love, estranging members from loved ones and friends, reinforcing that self righteous 'holier- than- thou' attitude, isolating the members from society with all its various perspectives (healthy and unhealthy is often a matter of opinion.) that could give a member support to have their own"voice"- it was awful to see others being so grossly manipulated, as I now felt we were by Angelo.

And excuse me- God told him to sleep with his son's wife???? Oh! that sounds just like Angelo - "Having sex with the Master is the highest....." or" Never say no to the Master" Anyone with even the least bit of perception could see the son was torn up about it but could not really see his way clear to deal with it. How many of my brothers were subjected to this gross type of BS and how many sisters (or brothers) had their boyfriends or lovers destroyed or damaged by this- even if it were only one, that would be too many, but as we know now it was way more than that.

It definitely was an encapsulated example of everything exposed and addressed so far by your site.

Of course for the vast majority of us, it is the time for healing and moving on, being thankful for whatever growth occurred inside and setting our focus on rebuilding our lives. Easier for some than others but everyone has been through a huge transition, death if you will, and I send my love and support to each and every one of them. I love and respect most of the people who used to be in the Buddha field and hope everyone is doing well.

I have been surprised that I don't miss Angelo at all- hardly even ever think about him, only when I check in to read this site. But I often am reminded of my hearts' friends and how much I love and miss them.

It is my experience that each life has many incarnations within its span- I have already been through several- this has been the hardest but also the richest in lessons learned.

Moving away from Austin and starting this chapter of my life has been challenging and much more difficult than I expected it would be, but that is OK. I am continually delighted by what the universe presents me with, even the unpleasant difficult situations. Lots of opportunity to see who "I" really am, since no one knows me here to define or limit me. Having no "group mind" to check in with for approval or
even advice leaves much to be explored. It can either feel un-grounding or liberating. I choose liberating. And relying on that still place of inner peace to be my guide rather than someone or something on the outside- it is "good stuff". I can honestly say I choose to accept my time in the Buddha field as part of what makes me who I am now- I would not want to do it again in this life but I don't want to be bitter and distrustful the rest of my life . I am learning to exercise personal boundaries though- very important!!

It will be interesting to see what happens with other ex-members and what they end up doing with their next chapter.

I know that reminders like this can be disturbing, but I also know that once you're ready for that bucket of cold water to get thrown in your face, it can be very liberating to be reminded of what you have walked away from. Especially in something like this where you can take a look at our group, by looking at "yourself" in a different setting.

As an aside: Am I the only one that sees "LOR Church" and reads it as Lord of the Rings church?

View all posts mentioning Strong City.

Strong City Cult - Inside a Cult

2008-04-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

I found this article about a show on the National Geographic channel called "Inside a Cult" which looks to be part of a series called Inside. The description of the episode is:

Doomsday cult leader Michael Travesser prophesied that the world would end October 31, 2007 -- but what happened? Go inside Travesser's cult to meet its leader, its followers and the dynamics that shape cult behavior.

Unfortunately, it was on last night so we missed the premiere. But it looks like it repeats next Wednesday afternoon (Unbelievable how difficult they made finding that information on the National Geographic site. They need to rethink their schedule design for functionality.)

There were a couple of comments from Louis Marlowe's article about the show that were familiar:

- There is nothing creepier than the smugness of the true believer.
- With cults, it's always us and them.... To question authority is to damn the divine.
- Everything outside the community is suspect; only the spiritual leader can provide absolute truth.

I'm going to set my DVR to record this show. They only had 56 members in THEIR cult (and that wasn't meant to be "Ha! Fledgling, wanna-be, pretender cult!" I just find it interesting when people are able to use a small group of people in a unique situation to gain insight into much larger, more all-encompassing issues. )

To get the group's take (since we are about first-hand experiences here), you can visit their website.

Update: I found this video on Google Videos. No idea where it came from but it was posted on Jan. 3, 2008 so I don't think it's the National Geographic program. It looks like a documentary that was filmed by someone that found their way into the Strong City cult. Looks like they are a much more public cult than we were ('are' for those still in the group.)

Oh Good Lord. He even has the raised chair with "devotees at his feet" thing going on:

Of course, they aren't as "beautiful." And we would never have been allowed to go so gray, or dress so blah, and beards were discouraged... and where are their tans? It's obvious they are nowhere near as spiritual as we were. Seriously though, this image does make me want to watch that show more.

View all posts mentioning Strong City.

You Think Oprah is a Cult Leader?

2008-04-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like Oprah is on the receiving end of "alternative religion" (ie. cult) bashing too. It's funny because I watch this video and wonder how anyone can possibly object to what she says. That scene where the audience starts yelling at her about Jesus being the only way is very telling. Sad, and telling. From an ex-cult member... it's obvious which ones are in the cult-mind.

I guess cults with live masters ARE better than cults with dead masters. Because you have a chance of seeing that they are full of crap.

Some Cults are Powerful

2008-04-21T09:18:00.001-07:00

The interview with Jason Beghe (ex-Scientologist) that I posted earlier was removed. I figured Scientology would not be thrilled but didn't know what they could do until I read this article.

Hopefully, if you were interested in watching the video you already watched it because I don't know how long it will be until it is uploaded again (if ever).

Update: I found the website of the guy that did the interview. Looks like he has the full interview posted there.

There's More Than One Road to Nirvana

2008-04-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me a link to this lecture on ted.com:

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:44.)

Basically, one side of her brain exploded and she found Nirvana within that experience. (Without a master or anything.) The experience she describes matches what some of us found through meditation... so I guess there is a biochemical reason for what we experienced. So I could relate to her experience of Nirvana... and walking around with only half a brain. But her speech is worth listening to. Hope you enjoy it.

An OT8? Guess That's Like a Knowing Person

2008-04-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting video on YouTube. It's a 'teaser' interview with Jason Beghe - the first celebrity that has been a "Clear" in Scientology that has come out talking about his experiences. Jason has a long list of acting credits, but he's one of those actors that you kind of recognize but don't know from where. This video is a teaser trailer for an upcoming interview that will soon be released.

He talks about Scientology as "destructive and a rip off." And how the higher up you go on their ladder, the more screwed up you become (definitely making allusions to Tom Cruise's manic OT8-ness.) I can tell I'm going to enjoy this interview when it's released. (If Scientology doesn't squash YouTube before then.)

As a side note: When I started these interviews, it was suggested that I film them (similar to this.) Can you imagine? Admittedly, watching a video is much more engaging than wading through all the info on this website. I'm well aware this is a lot to struggle through. But the point wasn't to create little digestible sound bites. It was simply to make people's first-hand experiences available to those with an interest in seeing everything without the 'kool aid goggles.'

That "Other" Cult in Texas - the Polygamist One

2008-04-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

With the polygamist group from Texas in the news these days, the age-old debate about whether something is a "sect" or a "cult" rears its head again. Several highlights from the article:

"In a healthy or legitimate religion or sect, you are presumably worshiping some higher principle or some higher authority," Lalich said, "whereas in a cult people tend to end up worshiping that living human leader. She added, "Your salvation is tied up with that particular living leader, and obeying orders and not breaking the rules, and subjecting yourself to whatever personal transformation you're expected to go through to be on that correct path to salvation."
Once they become members of a cult, individuals become more and more isolated from society and from reality-checks found in a diverse world. "You take on new reality, this new interpretation of the world," Lalich said. "It doesn’t mean you have to live in a compound in the middle of Texas. But you've closed your world view. Everything you're interpreting, you're interpreting through the cultic belief system."

"A lot of these groups operate on fear. You're afraid of whatever punishment you might get from the group," Lalich said. "But more so, you're afraid that you're going to be missing out on that path to salvation, whatever that salvation might be."

By now I think it's pretty clear we were (they are) a cult. Not to dismiss the beautiful things that we might have gotten out of the experience... but it seems clear that it was a cult.

You're Looking Swell Dalai...

2008-04-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me these snippets from a couple of articles that quote the Dalai Lama and his stance on teachers and the standards against which they should be measured. And how to handle a teacher that abuses their power.

The following quotes are from the article "Toward A New Spiritual Ethic," by Kate Wheeler; March/April 1994 edition of Nexus.

"At a symposium with 22 Western Buddhist teachers, the Dalai Lama had strong words for teachers who abuse their power—and students who give theirs away."

"A teacher who behaves unethically or asks students to do so can be judged as lacking in ultimate insight, His Holiness said. ‘As far as my own understanding goes, the two claims—that you are not subject to precepts and you are free—these are the result of incorrect understanding.’ No behavior is free from consequences. For this reason, true wisdom always includes compassion, the understanding that all things and beings are interconnected with (and vulnerable to) each other."

"’Even though one’s realization may be higher than the high beings,’ His Holiness said, ‘one’s behavior should conform to the human way of life.’"

"When teachers break the precepts, behaving in ways that are clearly damaging to themselves and others, students must face the situation, even though this can be challenging. ‘Criticize openly,’ His Holiness declared. ‘That’s the only way.’ If there is incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing, teachers should be confronted with it. They should be allowed to admit their wrongs, make amends, and undergo a rehabilitation process. If a teacher won’t respond, students should publish the situation in a newspaper, not omitting the teacher’s name," His Holiness said. "The fact that the teacher may have done many other good things should not keep us silent."

The following quote is from the article "Small ‘cottage cults’ drawing more converts in United States," by Richard Read in the Oregonian, Sunday, July 15, 2001:

"The Dalai Lama, the high lama of Tibetan Buddhism, advises potential converts to check a guru's qualifications carefully and to view a teacher as a spiritual brother or sister. ‘The best thing is,’ the Dalai Lama said in an interview last February, ‘whenever exploitation, sexual abuse or money abuse happens, make them public.’"

Thanks for sending these to me. It's interesting to me because he can also be viewed as a 'teacher' so, in essence, he is saying to hold him to the standards of "the human way of life" also. I don't really know anything about this guy, but that's a good sign!

A Rose By Any Other Name

2008-04-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

I received an email from a friend on some insights she has had on her path after leaving the group. I love hearing how people are continuing on the journey to heal, grow and love. I thought there were some real gems in this, so with Blossom's permission, I wanted to share it with you:

Recently, I sat in meditation for a couple of hours while listening to a cool music station on cable. I have not been meditating for the past few weeks so consequently, the quiet time was most welcomed. For the last few weeks, I’ve simply been watching who I am without quiet time. A new theory from this non-meditation time has been showing up. I am finding that it's not about whether I choose to spend time in quiet and solitude...it's about staying magnetic -- and meditation simply helps me do this. However, because of little-to-no meditation in the past few weeks, I have not been feeling so magnetic. I’ve come to realize that when magnetic energy is flowing out of my hands (literally) and up into my face/head, I know that I'm hooked up, or rather, fully opened to THAT energy. I breath different -- not deeper, but fuller. I have found that I can be busy, busy and still BE in that flow; but on the other hand, I can use my busy, busy as an excuse to ignore that I'm not in the flow. Hence not being in that magnetic place becomes a tad uncomfortable. So consequently I can get depressed, lonely, etc.

Now, the million dollar question is this...we all know what happens if we ignore or stuff an unresolved issue or emotion – especially from childhood. It causes a block somewhere, in either our body or emotional makeup. We all acknowledge that this unresolved trauma can lead to an addiction or questionable behavior in order to not feel the original pain. Rolfers and body workers make a living off of releasing stuck emotions in the body. But what happens when that raw emotion shows up and we decide to instead shift into a “happy” thought? If we are sad then we think happy thoughts and become happy. Will this shifted emotion later return in the form of a questionable behavior because it was pushed down/away? We all know we cannot candy-coat an issue with a just a few happy thoughts. Who wants candy that is sweet on the outside but tastes kind of funky on the inside?

So far, so good. However, the next part is where it gets tricky.

Let’s up the ante a little more. What if we lift/shift into not just a “happy thought” but that genuine magnetic energy? It may be meditation. It may be a mantra. It may be sitting on the seashore. It may be just a deep, deep breath to fully open. In that energy, we all know there is no sadness, no anger, no need for anything or anyone. But what happens if we are not fully anchored in this bliss and still have unresolved crap? We have very, very clearly seen a demonstration of a being who has spent focused time in magnetic energy but has done little to resolve childhood issues. I would go out on a limb and venture to say that we have seen questionable if not addictive behavior from old unresolved wounds. Here is the tightrope: How many times have I myself gone up into that beautiful energy space to deny old, unresolved trauma only to come tumbling back to earth scratching my head.

In this past couple of years with no group and no teacher (believe me I tried to replace both but something at this time would just not let me), I've come to see what is so enticing about "masters." Masters spend a lot of focused time cultivating that magnetic energy. When we get in their energy field, suddenly we feel so good, so light, so magnetic ourselves. But...here is another tricky question. At what point are we giving away responsibility to a master to get us to this magnetic place over and over and over? Now...I can see how a master will jump start the student but the student must find their own magnetism not once or twice but repeatedly – and repeatedly away from the master’s physical presence. I recently learned of a Guru who told her disciples that they have everything they need to find God on their own. Consequently, the last I heard, she was rarely available to her students. It seems the more the student cultivates this magnetic space, the less and less the student needs a teacher. I think the hard part for me has been to not realize how focused I was during these guru/disciple times with achieving that magnetic space – no matter what the path has been. An example of this was when I was at Angelo’s garden on Saturdays. I would literally spend much of my mental/heart time in a very practiced and intent focus on God. I had no idea I was focusing on the internal magnetism. His home became the excuse to do this. I used to think it was he. I now see I spent time in my own practiced, disciplined way regardless of the task - arranging flowers, watering a garden, raking leaves or cleaning a pond. Close to two years later I have no excuse for this practice - meaning I have no place to go and say, "at this time I am going to think and be with God." But...here is the twist about “going to a place to perform service, or a church, going to the temple.” The church/temple/master/service is simply a reminder that we should do everything we can to stay in that magnetism/God/love – not just for that hour or two but all day long. There should be no external, scheduled excuse. It is an all day long, every minute of the day thing. In my mind this is the only prayer/intention that exists. How do we all stay in that energy all day long WHILE acknowledging deep self-inquiry and self-examination?

My recent experiment of no meditation (or practiced magnetism), no group and no master has shown me that focus needs to be more intent – simply because the scheduled reminders of satsang and service are gone. However, this intent, this focus/practice has the added component of watching myself when I go off into the land of trying to get a "fix" from something that will appease me in that moment. In the moment it feels so great (coconut cream pie) and allows for a momentary but very fake “god-hit.” When we were in the BF we were discouraged from doing this or that. I am coming to my own, “hey, I don’t want to do this or that cause it simply doesn’t feel good in or for my body.” And, while I have always been one to dig out dark corners from my psyche I now find an allowing for the deeper acknowledgment of old hurts that have been lost in the fog.

In conclusion, I can see there needs to be an awakeness while being “awake” around a teacher, otherwise it is all for naught once one leaves the nest. In my opinion, the disciple who knows the teacher is available simply as a constant reminder wins the game. It’s when we as disciples fall into the space of “only the master is god and I am nothing or can do nothing without the master.” Oh boy, we are asking for trouble and a cult is in the making.
This is nothing new really but simply more grounded and aware of the space that needs to continually be reconnected. There needs to be an awakeness to being asleep so one can remember to return to that magnetism. I am coming to see magnetism/God/the bigness/higher self is nothing fancy or mysterious and can be found and felt in many, many ways.

April Fools!

2008-04-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

Well, that was amusing! I amused myself at the idea of that last post, but I was equally amused to receive so much helpful info from readers who didn't want me wasting my time wandering the beach to find Angelo. People offered his address, his phone number and all that, but I was more amused by his "schedule." It seems not that much has changed after all. This is an example:

His routine is pretty much the same as it always was. He goes to the gym on Kalakuau St. in Waikiki on Tuesday and Saturday, and then goes swimming afterwards at the "gay" beach (called Queen's beach - and yes, it's really called that) The other days he does outings or swims late in the day. He and those with him are often at Lanikai Beach -- he walks there from his house to do Tai Chi and dance in the sand (still the picture of discretion you can see)

There was more (and more detail) but you get the gist of it. This cracked me up... not just because it sounded so much like "business as usual" but because people were so helpful when they thought I might be wandering around the beach trying to find him. I'm not sure why that amused me so much. But it did.

How Could I Have Been So Blind?

2008-04-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and it was like a fog had lifted from my eyes. Really. Everything seemed so clear and I was aghast at what I have done. It's not like I didn't KNOW that this is what the mind does... it has been that way all through history... but to be confronted with it so suddenly was devastating.

I don't really know what to do at this point. I know Angelo lives on the beaches of Kailua now, so I suppose I could use my upcoming vacation to scour the beaches... how large an area can that be? I know if I run into him, he'll understand. He knows the mind after all. In fact, I'm sure if he saw me, we would both crack up laughing.

It's decided then. I'll let you know how it goes...

Awareness Test

2008-03-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

Care to test your awareness? This is interesting... especially in light of the subject matter of this website.

On another note: Sinapalooza '08
This article was hilarious. What was being written about was not that surprising really. But I thought his tone was right on the mark. Here is a snippet:

...what's perhaps most amusing is that in this modern age, someone still feigns to have the authority to invent new sins in the first place, to perpetuate the inanity of the very concept, to torque and mold and reshape divine will as he sees fit, just sort of making it up as he goes along, expecting everyone to basically kneel and cower and kiss the ring. Is that not fabulous, in a hey-look-we're-back-in-1328 sort of way?

Ah, the Pope doesn't hold the monopoly on that does he?

Eureka! I've found him!

2008-03-06T08:11:00.000-08:00

Evidently, Angelo has moved from Hawaii and taken up residence in this monastery in Poland. Watch the video and you'll see what I mean.
Polish Monks

Also, my post about Moses being "high" elicited a response that I added to the end of the original post.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

2008-03-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

"High" on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a classic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

****** whoops. I posted this because I find things like this funny. But Dr. Datanah took the opportunity to make some interesting counter-points so I'm adding them here:

I read your latest post on biblical drug shenanigans, and I want to comment on the many and varied types of mystical experiences. (see below a brief look at some of them)

At the outset I want to take task with the inherent criticism of the Israeli cognitive psychologist who, coming from his empiricist position, turns out to be an intellectual reductionist who dismisses the power and consciousness-expanding properties of the true mystical experience.

I concede that the problem with many drug induced experiences is that they are transitory and do not promote genuine shifts in consciousness, but that is often the problem with the intention and consciousness of the people going into the experience, and not with the mystical experiences themselves. And in defense of the indigenous traditions that use and honor ayahuasca and other plant "teachers" in controlled sacred ceremony, mystical experiences induced this way can, and have through the centuries, had profound wonderful lasting effects on the consciousness of the people involved. Please note too that the "religious" interpretation of Judaism is worlds away from the deeply spiritual experiences of the Jewish mystics ....and that is true of all traditions.

As for the drug criticism, we have to question whether it really matters whether an experience is mediated or not (e.g. drug or trance induced.) Surely it is the wonder of the experience itself, and the beauty of the connections and interrelationships and understanding that come as a result of the experience that are important?
I am convinced that as we come to know the richness of life through our understanding and acceptance of the gift of the experiences and perspectives of others, we shall come to an honoring place. We are all, in all our varied and complex experiences of the world, intimate and ongoing participants in the creation of the universe. When we remember who we are, however we get there, we will meet each other from the beauty of the wider place, and create a greater society.

“In this is the lovingness of the spiritual family.” (Ibn Arabi)

Mystical experiences Explored

Many mystics, when they relate their experience, talk in terms of having a direct experience of Ultimate reality.

Its important to note that many traditions acknowledge an ontological creation in the spontaneity of diversity. This ontological slant has shaped large portions of the world’s mystical literature. In the Judeo Christian religions, God is seen as the Ultimate Reality, the uncaused creator, ground of all existence, excellence and goodness. God is experienced as a personal force in the world and in human life, but is also felt to be ultimately beyond human comprehension.

Many mystics describe their experience of Oneness in terms of a perennial philosophy which is a term coined after a book by Aldous Huxley, and is used to define the One Essential Unity behind the diversity of life.

When mystics subscribe to the idea of a perennial philosophy, they experience their union with the same Absolute, whatever their religion. For example, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Head of the Sufi Order of the West Sufi, is talking about the One Absolute God when he speaks of “That which transpires behind That which appears." In the Sufi experience of “fana al fana” all contradictions disappear.

For Advaita Vedantans, God, Ishvara, Brahman is also non-dual unity. It is the substratum of all phenomena, the Self, or Atman that is Brahman. It is not to be mistaken for that which changes in this time/space dimension, and neither is it separate from it, much as the wave is not separate from the ocean. The reality of Self is the reality of all Being-ness. It is the substratum of existence that gives the ever-changing world its reality. It is experienced as solid, calm, loving, expansive, balanced, benign, ultimate and intimately familiar.

There have been Christian mystics who know Christ as themselves. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart experienced himself in a state of pure consciousness or transparency as the transcendent. Eckhart returned from a state of pure consciousness or transparency-as-the-Transcendent, “as a translucent medium of expression for that Transcendent.” It was from this place that he could express his life in terms of the creativity, compassion and justice that is the very nature of the Ultimate Transcendent.

Buber spoke of the community in-between as being the true place of spiritual realization. Some scholars state that the type of mysticism that a mystic experiences is dependant on the religious or cultural context of the mystic. They feel that religious communities exert a powerful influence on the kind of mystical experience that a mystic has, as well as a way in which the mystic responds to that experience. They insist that it is a mistake to see the mystic’s experience as disconnected from his particular culture and history, but rather suggests that the type of experience will be contingent on it.

Others suggest however, that the mystical drive to live in the presence of God is in fact to be found at the core of all religions. They note doctrinal differences as well as differences in symbolism in the experience of mystics of the differing religions, but, nevertheless suggest that there is an identifying moment in which all differences converge. They suggest that to the extent that mystical states are all described as ecstatic, and transitory, they are all identical, but that they differ only in the interpretation of the experience.

And what of those mystical traditions that do not find an essence that exists independently of this immanent world? Madyamaka Buddhism, for example, promotes the knowing of no-self. Reality is seen to be ultimately processive, non-static, non-stable, non-substantiative, and not fixed. Nothing can be found that is ultimate in the flux of things. What is important in Buddhism, and in the training of the Buddhist mystic is not the search for the ultimate reality but for the relief of suffering. Both Madhyamaka and Yogacara Buddhism state that there is nothing that is not empty and therefore there cannot be any underlying reality that is fixed. Yogacarans do acknowledge the quasi-substantial reality that is seen by the ignorant self, and the Madhyamaka insists that one should abandon the quest for ultimately reality including the idea of Dharma and enlightenment. And then what you are left with is the changing nature of things, and the pragmatism and compassion with which one engages a life well lived.

Ken Wilber in his Spectrum of Consciousness creates a hierarchical map of mystical experience. According to him there are different levels of psychological and spiritual development. He calls the different levels holons, which are levels that are both whole entities unto themselves and that also incorporate lower levels, much as nested boxes include smaller boxes. He sees the ultimate stage of mystical realization as non-dual mysticism that includes all other stages. For Wilber mysticism therefore is an evolutionary process. He notes at least four different stages of transpersonal evolution. These he calls the psychic, the subtle, causal and no-dual stages. Each stage, or fulcrum as he calls them, has a corresponding form of mysticism – nature mysticism, deity mysticism, formless mysticism and non-dual mysticism. An important part of his theory is that each fulcrum has different cognitions that support different moral stances and different senses of the self. Wilber sees the great wisdom traditions of the world as providing a map for the different stages of growth.
In the psychic stage there may be an increase in paranormal experiences, such as transcendental phenomena including shamanic visions and voyages, the disclosure of subtle energies in the body, and spontaneous spiritual awakenings, but the defining characteristic of this stage is awareness beyond that of the individual ego. There may be identification with the natural world, where there is a profound experience of a union with nature that Wilber calls the eco-noetic self. According to Wilber at this stage, one does not identify oneself as a strand in the web of life, but one experiences oneself as the entire web.
In the subtle stage, mystical perceptions may include interior luminosities and sounds, the experience of archetypal seed forms, subtle bliss currents, and expansive affective states of love and compassion. It is here that Wilber finds that individuals experience archetypal forms that correspond with their culture for example a Christian might experience an encounter with Christ, and a Buddhist with the bliss body of the Buddha. Wilber sees these archetypal figures as the first forms to emerge out of emptiness.
In the Causal stage as the Witness touches the very source of being, no objects arise in consciousness at all. This, Wilber says, is not a state of mere blank, but a fullness of Being that is both empty and full. In this state the mystic experiences freedom from identification with time and space. There is no separation at all between the Witness and that which is witnessed. The seer can’t see the seen. It is in this state that Wilber suggests there is total union with the ground or essence of Being.
The final non-dual stage is not technically a separate stage, but rather the reality of all states. It includes and transcends all states of being. Here consciousness and its display are one.

It is important to note that experiences of so called lower levels after a person has experienced higher levels are not only common occurrences, but in fact are important for spiritual transformation. The spiraling path leads the ego to meet and integrate lower repressed material in the psyche that is important for spiritual growth.

Mysticism can be said to consist of two domains. One domain of phenomena that can be caused by human effort, such as drug inducement or trance dancing, and one that cannot be caused by human effort.

Whatever the circumstances that engender the mystical experience, one should note that mystical experience is at heart one of pure receptivity and the perfect correspondence with the essence of things.

Interesting points, no? Does it matter that drugs can induce what people interpret as religious experiences? For that matter, does it matter that scientists can now stimulate certain areas of the brain and trigger a religious experience? They are still our experiences. Subjective, yes, but what else are we to go on? And is it all part of a beautiful and complex creation? Does the fact that there may be biological reasons for a transcendent experience make them any less valid or beautiful? Does knowing that it is a bio-chemical reaction in your body make you love your partner any less? Should it?

I think at this point, for me, it is like watching a beautiful sunset. Because I know the tricks of refraction and diffusion of light in the atmosphere, do I enjoy it any more than someone that just 'thinks it is pretty?' If not, then who cares? At some point, you've just got to enjoy the beauty.

A Monk's Take on Cults

2008-02-27T09:38:00.000-08:00

Someone sent me a link to a monk's response when asked how to spot/protect yourself from a cult. I like hearing what a person that lives a spiritual life (though atypical for an American) thinks about these things. Here are some highlights:

Unfortunately, there are no shortages of gurus, spiritual teachers, self-proclaimed lamas and "enlightened masters" out there, particularly in the West. And although I personally consider the behavior of such individuals as predatory, I also believe that we have to see this for what it is, and realize that the reason such things occur more prevalently in the West is because we expect instant gratification. So we embolden the con-artists, the hucksters and the opportunistic personality-types to do their level best to take us for all we're worth.

In the West, the whole concept of guru is largely misunderstood. A guru is a teacher, not unlike any other spiritual teacher. Despite what they would often like you to believe, few, if any of them, are enlightened. Surely, they may possess a better understanding of the spiritual path, and may have more experience in the practice, but they are not enlightened. So the first piece of advice I will give you is that any time someone tells you that they are going to "give you enlightenment" or "take you to god" with a tap of a peacock feather, a glance or a "magic word", expect that they are entirely full of shit, and get out of there quietly, when the dog and pony show is over. No guru has the ability to "take you to god" or give you enlightenment, because it's not theirs to "give". Such absurd acts are born out of a delusional and dualistic mindset. All that you need, you already possess. No one can unlock it but you.

A true teacher will not demand anything of his or her students, without demanding the same or more of themselves... and not just when it's convenient for a photo opp, but when no one else seems to be looking! If a teacher expects one to submit wholly to their control, don't wait until a convenient time to walk away... get up immediately and run, dragging anyone else who will come with you out of that dangerous environment! Love is never controlling, and whatever is not love is not sacred.

If a spiritual teacher tells you, or if their "inner circle" tells you, that outside of that teaching, people are lost, asleep, dead or damned. They are completely delusional as well. Get out before you find out that the "lost" ones are the ones who are susceptible to such cult-like programming.

Interesting, no?

How To Start Your OWN Cult Video

2008-02-25T10:35:00.001-08:00

I ran across this YouTube video so of course, I had to post it.

Jewish Buddhist Quotes

2008-02-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

Someone sent me this email and the Sayings of the Jewish Buddhists made me laugh, so here they are. I'll probably make them "fortune cookie" quotes at some point.

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip, joy. With the second sip, satisfaction. With the third sip, peace. With the fourth, a Danish.
Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.
Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy.
There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?
Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.
The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out . Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.
Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as a wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.
Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.
Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.
The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself. The Buddha says maybe > there is no self. So maybe we're off the hook.

The Love Guru - His Karma Is Huge

2008-02-19T08:28:00.000-08:00

I saw this poster for an upcoming movie called The Love Guru (with Michael Myers). Good Lord. I want to see it because it'll probably be hilarious. But at that same time, I don't want flashbacks. What to do... what to do...

Oh well, I have time. It doesn't come out until June.

What Was I Thinking?

2008-02-13T07:47:00.000-08:00

Ivan sent me an email where he relates something that has helped him put things into perspective and helped him when he met the invariable question, "How did you fall for that?" You've probably come up against this yourself when you try to relate your experience to others (if you do.)

It's based on Tony Robbin's take on our Basic Human Needs. I meant to look it up but Ivan gives a good overview. Enough to whet your appetite anyway. But if you find it interesting, do some follow-up reading on it.

Ivan on The 6 Human Needs

2008-02-13T07:27:00.000-08:00

Over the last year and a half I’ve talked with a number of people about my experience in the “Buddha Field.” People who were not members almost always ask “How could you have been a part of that group?” Even people who were in the group have asked “Why did I let myself be a part of that?”

Intelligence, experience, age, upbringing, life circumstance, and beliefs are only some of the variables that could influence one’s choices. However, the simple answer to this question is that the “Buddha Field” experience met our needs.

We all have different desires, but they are driven by the exact same human needs. When people achieve a goal only to ask “Is this all there is?” it is because they never analyzed their true needs or how to meet them. Understanding the Six Human Needs can not only help you find out what drives you, but also to be truly fulfilled on a consistent basis.

It is easy to look back on an experience with a new awareness and see what was “wrong.” Rather than do that, I think it may be useful to look at the Buddha Field through the filter of how it met our needs. Doing so may give you some perspective that can be helpful with healing, letting go, or forgiving.

Every need has vehicles (or strategies) for how they are met. These vehicles can be empowering to our lives, or they may be fulfilling for the moment but in the long run are quite destructive. The vehicles you select will determine not only your fulfillment in the moment, but also your long-term fulfillment and whether you will truly grow and contribute in a significant way

There are several human needs models, including those used by Maslow, Jung, and more recently, Marshall Rosenberg, author of the Nonviolent Communication programs. Another recent model comes from Anthony Robbins. Robbins identifies six human needs, grouped into two categories: the “Four Fundemental Needs,” and the “Two Primary and Essential Needs.” He says that all of these needs must be met for us to experience ultimate fulfillment.

Fundamental Needs:

1. Certainty/Comfort
2. Uncertainty/Variety
3. Significance
4. Connection/Love

Primary and Essential Needs

5. Growth
6. Contribution

You can rate, from zero to ten, how much a particular need is being met, where zero is “not at all” and ten is “completely.” If you think about anything that you really enjoy doing, it will not only meet all of your needs, but it will also meet them at a high level, usually a six, seven, or higher.

If there is something that you do not like to do, it is either not meeting all of your needs, or it is meeting them at a very low level (ones, twos, or threes).

These six needs can be further distinguished as follows:

1. Certainty/Comfort

The ability to produce, eliminate or avoid stress or pain
The ability to create, increase, or intensify pleasure
The ability to be comfortable
Safety / Security / Survival

2. Uncertainty/Variety

Surprise
Diversity
Difference
Challenge (stimulation of uncertainty is often required for growth)
Excitement (variety is the spice of life)
Celebration
Play / Creativity

3. Significance

A sense of being needed and wanted
Feeling of importance
Sense of purpose
Uniqueness
Sense of meaning (often, separation is one of the ways of doing this)

4. Connection/Love

Bonding
Oneness
Sharing
Intimacy
Feeling a Part of
At one with

5. Growth

Everything is either growing or dying. We need to constantly develop emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

6. Contribution

We all desire to go beyond our own needs and give to others. Everything in the universe contributes beyond itself, or it is eliminated.

All of these needs can be met by destructive, neutral, or constructive means. Most people can easily see how activities like playing sports or having a hobby can be a constructive way to meet our needs. However, it is not always obvious that something destructive like smoking, or joining a street gang can also meet our needs at a very deep level.

Here are a few examples of potential “vehicles” with which to meet various needs.

Certainty/Comfort needs can be met with...

Control
Consistency
Food
Learned helplessness
Negative identity
Completion
Identity
Faith
Belief in guidance
Having a routine or set schedule

Uncertainty/Variety needs can be met with...

Alcohol
Drugs
Food
“Sabotage” / pick a fight, etc.
New Relationship
New job
New location
Stimulating conversation
Taking on new challenges
Learning
Changing your focus

Significance needs can be met with...

Tearing down others
Violence – possibly the fastest and easiest way to create significance (even with complete strangers)
Negative identity: Disease/Disorder, etc.
Material possessions
Academic degrees
Accomplishments
Style
Development of new skills and knowledge
Growing levels of caring or extraordinary compassion
Scarcity (scarcity is often used as a criteria for creating a feeling of uniqueness or importance)

Connection/Love needs can be met with...

Sympathy through sickness/injury
Commit a negative act (crime, do drugs, smoking)
Gangs
Attempting to get others to comply with your requests (evidence of acceptance)
Relationships (family, friends, intimate)
Spirituality
Being in natural surrounding (“in nature”)
Pets
Self-sacrifice
Sex
Joining a team/club
Beauty
Art

Robbins states that any vehicle meeting three or more needs can be an addiction. If you review your own experience in the Buddha Field, chances are good you will find that it met all of your needs at a high level.

Furthermore, most people have one need that is their most important need, and as long as that need is being met, other areas of their life can suffer. For example, if your primary need is for Connection/Love, you can be in an abusive relationship and not leave because your need to connect is greater than your need for certainty (safety and security). As long as your need for connection is being met you are likely to stay in that relationship. History is replete with religious groups committing all kinds of atrocities in the name of God (the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, etc.). In recent history the followers of Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Marshall Applewhite ended up dying or committing suicide. The members of these groups were all meeting their needs.

So how did the Buddha Field meet our needs?

Connection and Love was almost a given in the Buddha Field. You had a large extended family of people who you connected with every week on a psychologically intimate level. And you had a group that you could hang out with no matter how screwed up you were. Your past, however dark or terrible, was seen as part of your karma or path of growth or evolution, and forgiven. Many of us also developed close friendships and romantic relationships with other members in the group. Any religious leader (regardless of their authenticity) can also help us meet our need for spiritual connection, and Angelo was no exception.

If significance is your driving need, that was also easily met in the Buddha Field. It was a pretty exclusive group. It was secret. You had to be invited. There were seemingly endless opportunities for layers of meetings, service, experiences, and “techniques” that not everyone was privy to. Entire books have been written about the “spiritual ego.”

For people who valued certainty, this was also the place to be. You didn’t have to worry about figuring out things on your own. You simply asked for guidance. What to wear, what to eat, your career path, where to work, where to live, and what to do every day of the week could potentially all be decided for you. There was a pretty set schedule of things in the Buddha Field: Monday night Satsang. Tuesday night meditation at x's house, Wednesday night Fruit Night at yoga, Thursday night class, Friday was garden service, Saturday was additional service, and Sunday was movies or an outing. And unless there were special circumstances that schedule changed slowly or rarely. On some level it felt safe to be a part of the group. Even our weekly meetings had a certain format that pretty much stayed the same. Thursday night class, with precious rare exceptions, followed this format:

1. Enter room
2. Find or fight for place to sit
3. Meditate or at least pretend to
4. Cough up flower money
5. Share open eye meditation with Angelo
6. Participate in the guided “visualization” (or fall asleep)
7. Take the “hot seat” or watch
8. Participate (or avoid participating) in the group exercise
9. Sing
10. Meditate
11. Follow Angelo out to his car
12. Go home and meditate some more
13. Get three hours of sleep before you had to get up and go to work

For those of us who valued uncertainty or variety, we hit the jackpot with the Buddha Field. Even though things followed a certain format, what happened within that format, or what Angelo would do or have us do was hugely unpredictable. He was charismatic, he was funny. You never knew what someone was going to say that would have the entire group completely in stitches. In one evening you could experience the entire gamut of human emotion from anger, frustration, and depression, to joy, bliss, and ecstasy. Would you be called on to bare your deepest secret in front of the entire group? Role play a terrorist? End up Kissing someone? Get your ribs kicked in? Sing a song solo in front of the group? Play “Fruit Salad,” "Karma Wash, "I'm Wearning Jeans," or some other game? Would you receive shakti that night? Take a field trip? You never knew what to expect! And of course, you never knew when we would need to change locations.

If personal growth was your primary need, that could also be met in the group. After all, it was a “Mystery School.” It was meant for learning. And I think we all learned a great deal about ourselves and human consciousness. Meditation is a tool for self awareness that has been used for centuries. Every week there were many opportunities to grow and expand yourself on a number of levels.

Contribution was also easily met in the “Buddha Field.” Actually, it was built in as one of the pillars of “Meditation, Devotion, and Service.” We were all expected to “do service” and there were countless opportunities to take on all kinds of things. You could organize, schedule, oversee, cook, clean, build things, or tear things down. You could volunteer your time or talent. You could help individual people, groups of people, businesses, buildings, animals, birds, fish, entire gardens, single plants, or pretty much anything you can think of that was related to the group. Angelo himself was a virtual bottomless pit of wants and desires that could be serviced.

In light of all of our needs being met, it was very easy to excuse, rationalize, or justify anything going on that did not seem “right” or congruent. Of course, a lot of people were not aware of the really big problems. That is why it was difficult for so many people to leave.

I hope that in reading this it helps you find understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and healing.

Peace.
Ivan (all posts from Ivan)

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

2008-02-12T08:06:00.000-08:00

Someone was talking to me about the site the other day and said the coolest thing:

I may not agree with everything on the website, but it always makes me stop and examine what I DO believe. At various times I'll laugh, or get pissed off, or sad. But no matter what, it always makes me think.

I freakin' LOVED that. Maybe because it's the exact opposite of Zombie-Think. And the point isn't to get a consensus or anything. There's certainly some stuff on the site that I don't particularly agree with. But that's also a step closer toward healing for all of us. Allowing that we can all have different opinions or perspectives - and not have to disqualify a different opinion by disparaging the person (as we learned to do in the group): "They think that because they are not as evolved." or "Only a true disciple can see a true master." Remember when we thought like that? It's hard to believe now. It's like trying to squeeze your mind back into a sixth grade mentality.

But as long as people are inspired to discover their own thoughts and feelings, then this thing is succeeding as far as I'm concerned. And thank you for sharing things like this with me. It helps.

Updated:
I received a quick email response to this post from Dr. Datanah that made me laugh (again) and so I wanted to append it to this. She writes:

Far more insidious than "Only a true disciple can see a true master." was the one I heard often:

" If you don't listen to the Master's guidance you will miss your chance at enlightenment and have to come back for many many more lifetimes".

Contrast this to the Buddhist Boddisattva vow that promises "Sentient beings are numberless, I promise to liberate them,"......meaning, 'out of compassion, I vow not to enter nirvana until all beings have entered nirvana.' This means the Bodhisattva practices not for her or his enlightenment alone, but for the enlightenment of all beings. The Bodhisattva vows to remain in this world of ignorance and confusion,and vows to be willing to experience whatever living beings experience, until all beings are liberated.

For me this is another example of how Angelo's teachings were problematic. I think he had a very "New age-y" idea of Buddhism....it was cool to teach people to be awakened, but he never really taught or honored the true teachings of Buddhism about suffering, and they way he dissed most people as being "dead" and not worth our time, I certainly didn't see him being an example of "compassion in action", (very basic Buddhist teaching), either. So I'm not sure what he saw when he said he looked in the mirror and saw the Buddha.

Of course we can flip the saying to "Only a false disciple can see a false master." or how about "Only a true disciple can see a false master."

Something to think about......

See? This is what I mean. I know that I read that and start thinking about how the concept of Namaste can co-exist with an individual's drive toward personal enlightenment. I guess freedom for me right now is more about the questions than the answers.

Puppetji Shares Socksang

2008-02-10T21:06:00.000-08:00

Seiva sent me this video of Puppetji sharing Socksang. It really made me laugh so I thought I would pass it on to you. Enjoy!

The Princess and the Cult

2008-02-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

I received a surprise in my email this morning: A beautiful fable that I wanted to share with you. While it wasn't a result of 'the interview process' I came up with, I think it does give a pretty clear overview of Tonaiva's experience and what she got out of the group. For some reason, it reminded me of reading one of Aesop's Fables when I was a kid. I know that sharing your story with others is a very important part of the therapeutic process - even in 12 step programs it relies heavily on that. I'm not sure why, but it seems to help people process things that have happened/are happening to them.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy her story as much as I did.

The Beautiful Princess Tonaiva: From Pretense To Truth

2008-02-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

As a child I would often play by myself, pretending in my magical world that I was a beautiful princess. Sometimes I would crawl around in the grass, exploring the earth, expecting fairies to appear or leprechaun’s to peek out from under the clovers. In my world, there were no limitations--I felt as if anything were possible. As I grew into a young adult, my innocence stayed in tact, and my desire for the mystical grew stronger and stronger.

The years passed, I went to secretarial school, and ended up in Austin, TX, where I worked as an administrative assistant for a software consulting firm. As I was in the front office, I would see employees as they entered the building, and I would see them as they left. There was a particular gentleman who would always stop and chat with me on his way in and out. He was a nice fellow, and I didn't notice anything special about him until one day when we were engaging in our afternoon chat as he was leaving the building. On his way out, wishing me a good evening, he stopped, turned my direction, and made eye contact with me. I stayed with him, but then a moment passed, another moment passed, and another; he was still staring into my eyes. I began to feel a bit exposed, vulnerable, naked in fact--not in a sexual way, but in a way that I had never experienced before. It wasn't that I felt uncomfortable; it was as if my heart starting blowing up like a balloon. I had to turn away suddenly as to prevent my heart from exploding. He said, “goodnight,” and proceeded home. I was a bit perplexed by what had just happened, and I felt like I needed to explain myself--why I had just turned away. The next business day came, and he entered the building, passing my desk as usual. He stopped and invited me to lunch, where then he began to tell me of his life of selfless service, his constant practice of meditation, and the endless supply of love, which flowed from the hand of his guru to all of his brothers and sisters in a bubble of total serenity, safety, and security—“The Buddafield.” He invited me to come to a meeting that Thursday night, wherein beautiful “sat sang” would be shared, joyful singing would take place, and the guru himself would reveal shakti to people. The events that transpired following this momentous invitation changed my life forever.

As I walked into The Assembly Hall, which smelled of damp wood and incense (per the spiritual context of the meeting), there were 150 people all facing the front of the room where a living room chair had been placed, centered and covered with a pretty blue Indian-print blanket. The chair was set on a two-foot platform, lit up with a rose-tinted spot light, and had two large flower arrangements set on the floor on either side. There was also a lovely navy blue backdrop with metallic gold designs. This whole set up gave one the feeling that someone really special would be sitting in that chair. I found a spot on the floor after squeezing in-between the tightly arranged ocean of chairs and sat in Indian style, closed my eyes, and meditated as everyone else in the room was doing. Not long after I shut my eyes, the room became even more silent as if everyone stopped breathing. I turned around and looked towards the door from which I entered, and there HE stood, perusing the entire room. Quickly, a path was made for him to walk to the center chair (sort of like the parting of the red sea). He aired aristocracy, and his body was extremely muscular with golden skin that seemed to glow with light. When he spoke, the tone of his voice, mixed with his Venezuelan accent, was mesmerizing. That night he shared, we sang, then he invited several people to receive shakti, a transferable energy that contained the element of bliss…not quite the direct experience of God, which he called, “The Knowing,” but a rung towards “the ultimate gift of holy truth.”

From the time I was 23 to 36, I lived with, worked with, did selfless service with, played with, and everything that one can possible do with the same 150 people. Every day and night was filled was some Buddafield activity, and I was never without something to do. During the week-day mornings, we were encouraged to come to the guru’s garden and do service. This entailed cleaning and feeding his 20 chickens, 12 peacocks, 9 rabbits, 25 parakeets, 15 cockatiels, 5 large parrots, 2 black swans, and his kangaroo. Monday mornings, I went to the guru’s garden until about 1pm, went to work, and rushed home to get ready for Class. Monday nights, we would all meet in a reserved space large enough to fit our whole group for a function that our guru called “Class.” It was like an acting class/therapy class wherein various group exercises took place that focused on ridding ourselves of programmed psychological habits that inhibited our ability to connect to meditation constantly. This class started at 8pm and usually lasted until 2am. On Tuesday nights, I cooked and delivered meals for six different disciples who served the guru so much of the time that they had no time of their own. Wednesday mornings, I would help one of the quadriplegic disciples bathe and eat, then I would go to the garden, work, and home to make “Prasad” for the guru’s ballet class, which took place every Wednesday and Sunday afternoon. On Thursday nights, we would all meet for a night of formal sat sang in the Assembly Hall, and on Friday nights, we would all meet at a movie theatre to see a movie that the guru picked. Saturdays were free days, in which we all tried to catch up, and Sunday’s were spent on “outings” with the guru, which entailed swimming, singing, and the revealing of shakti. Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas day were also spent with the guru. In the guru’s terms, this was our “real” family. Essentially, everyone in the group spent little or no time with their physical families for years and years. Some had been with the guru for over 26 years and hadn’t seen their immediate relatives in over 20 years. They had no idea that in the months to come, they would learn that they had pushed away their families for no veritable reason, but solely as a way to stay under the mind control of the most manipulative and deluded man I have ever known.

In July of 2006, some very unpalatable truths about our beloved guru came to surface, and the entire Buddafield came crashing down. Pages and pages of distasteful information was funneled through the group over about a year’s period. Disciples dropped off either one-by-one or in small groups. Eventually all but ten left the guru to start their lives anew. I was one of the last ones to realize the truth about the guru, but when I finally accepted the facts, my mystical paradise instantly evaporated, and the sheath that protected me was suddenly in flames. The result for me was total devastation. I had to deal with the death of my greatest love, my home, my identification, and my religion.

Not only was the guru not illuminated, but he had manufactured the Buddafield under a belief system that he had simply made up. He based his teachings on books about ancient spiritual gurus, such as Rama Krishna, Babaji, Maher Baba, the Buddha, Jesus, and Krishna, all of whom he referred to as equals. One of the things that he used to share with us on every occasion was that duality is an illusion; however, he would tell us that we are not our minds, and whatever the mind says is a lie. That didn’t seem to apply when we were praising him.

My community/family/friends/the Buddafield was filled with love and devotion because that is what we all wanted to experience. He was the center point that gave us the excuse for that. Personally, he was my master, my guide, my mother, my father, and my everything; I would have jumped off of a cliff if he only asked. If I had known just a few of these things that I know now, I would have left him a long time ago:

He craved an audience so desperately that he did and said whatever it took to keep us around.
For years he had been manipulating his male disciples (both heterosexual and homosexual) to have sex with him by telling them it was the highest service to be with the master.
He created negative rumors about those who questioned him as a way to transfer the focus off of himself and on to the one questioning (black-listing them).
He was abusive to many of his disciples behind closed doors as a way to control them.
He never paid for anything, not even his toiletries, but kept his mattress stuffed with thousands of dollars.
He rejected those of his disciples that wanted to be near him and surrounded himself with only the most handsome men and women as to attract new handsome male disciples.
Opposite to how he encouraged us to live, he received several sexual “services” daily from different disciples the last 20 years.

In conclusion, being in the Buddafield for the last 13 years of my life has been a great learning experience and has forever changed me. I can safely say that my age suits me, because I have been through the mill. Here are some of the things I have learned and can whole-heartedly share with others:

You can’t avoid the world; as long as you are in it, there are many things that you must deal with, and it’s not always easy.
I am the ruler of me; I am the only one that can make the choices for the life that I’m living.
I am very powerful with my own will, and must take great care in making requests from others or the divine.
I must be cautious and conscious while walking whatever path I choose.
Intuition should be used freely and as the ultimate personal guide.
The blissful experience of the divine is real, and it is alive in each one of us.

Emotional Contagion and a Movie Recommendation

2008-02-01T21:35:00.000-08:00

The subject of emotional contagion has always been fascinating. Perhaps more so after experiencing it yourself. Basically, it's how the emotions and beliefs of one person can affect (or "infect") one or more other people. For instance: The Salem Witch Trials, The Holocaust, The Chupacabra, Cult-Think, etc.

Recently I was reading a blog entry where the movie "Bug" was recommended for those wanting to know why and how such a thing can happen. I haven't seen the movie yet myself (I found the trailer kind of off-putting) but it's currently playing on "Movies on Demand" so I might check it out. But I thought I'd pass on the recommendation in case you find yourself uninterested in the Super Bowl and looking for something to do on Sunday.

The blog also links to a book on the subject of emotional contagion.

What is a Transpersonal Psychotherapist?

2008-01-23T09:25:00.000-08:00

In a recent interview, the phrase "Transpersonal Psychotherapist" was brought up. This, of course, is in line with the questions some have about psychotherapy and the role of spiritual counseling as it relates to the spiritual seeker. Dr. Datanah sent me her take on this type of work (from a paper she wrote in school on Spiritual Counseling and Psychotherapy):

Because I know the spiritual as inseparable from the material, to differentiate between spiritual counseling and psychotherapy seems to create a division where none really exists. I understand that clients might not realize that they are doing spiritual work when they come for psychotherapy, or vice versa, and there might never be a need to define the work with them in those terms, however, I see the work as a psycho- spiritual continuum.

In his poem Tianamen, the poet David Whyte talks of “….loneliness, And how it works at the edge of all experience.” In his poem Dissolver of Sugar, Rumi says, “ Love moves away. The light changes. I need more grace than I thought.” Both these poets express the profound pain that lies at the root of human experience. It is from the experience of this loneliness and this longing that the soul seeks solace.

The therapeutic relationship has tremendous transformative power, and the success and validity of the relationship depends on the quality of presence that is brought into the relationship. There is a sense that in the presence of an aware therapist, a person becomes more fully who they really are. The ego lives in a samsaric mind of constriction, limitation, inflation and pain, but our souls, crave the freedom of the awakened mind. A therapist who is operating from a deep, loving place, from the essence of who they truly are, enables a glimpse of freedom to the client. In fact, it is the unconditional positive regard, and the love that it engenders, that triggers the unfolding and healing of the psycho-spiritual journey.

The characteristics of that love are openness and warmth. These are important as the client undergoes the onslaught to the ego that is the work of the psycho-spiritual journey. Initially, during therapy, the neurosis of the ego is heightened. This manifestation is important because in order to be purified, the ego needs to be seen. It is through the unconditional loving of the therapist, that the client can be truly seen. The places that are closed to love, and those that crave it, are brought to light. The defenses that arose due to early wounding are explored. And the therapeutic relationship provides recompense for the inadequacies of the primary relationships with early caregivers. As this neurosis is allowed to come to light, and hopefully be released, there is what the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyum Trungpa called, “co-emergent wisdom”. The soul needs unconditional love in order to unfold. The therapeutic relationship allows the ego to soften because of the possibility of openness.

The relationship between therapist and client is an important crucible of learning. It should be one of mutual recognition and equity that also embodies the qualities of respect, honesty, vulnerability, curiosity, openness and trust. These allow the intimacy of the relationship to foster the best possible growth. The therapeutic relationship is the transpersonal ‘between’ that is created when two people come together in a way that allows them both to go beyond perception, projections and transference.

As I mentioned earlier, I see therapeutic work as a psycho-spiritual continuum, and it is very important that there is a healthy ego structure that can support the deconstruction of the false ego self without further defensive splitting taking place. When a client wants to work on their spiritual selves, its is imperative that a therapist recognize the need for the developmental work of ego strengthening in order to be able to integrate spiritual teachings into their lives in a practical way. The old cliché, ‘you need to have an ego to lose an ego’, has a lot of wisdom to it. When a person does not have the inner strength of a well-grounded psyche, and embarks on spiritual work, there is a tendency towards spiritual bypassing.

When clients come to my office in order to work through their problems, I see, at the basis of their anguish, a sense that they do not know who they are. It is this most profound ignorance that affects the way they engage the world, and their terror and pain is immense as a result. I have had clients who have come to me with a wide spectrum of issues, with manifestations of psychosis as well as neurosis as well as issues that they define as being ‘spiritual’. I see that the basis of whatever they are manifesting and the feeling is that they are lost and they want to find themselves. They want to relate to their lives from a position of strength and of knowing.

From the Advaita Vedantic position, when we are ignorant of our true nature, our true Self, we identify with our ego, live in a state of fear, and we suffer from anger, greed, hatred and the miseries that arise as we project our fears onto the world and onto others. We become reactive to situations in our lives because we feel that they do not provide us with the sense of well being we crave. We expect to be made to feel whole from external circumstances because we do not realize that our state of wellbeing resides within. We are out of touch with our true nature that is in fact boundless and whole. The reason of course is that the identification in those moments is not with the essence of Self, but with something external. There is identification with changing concepts, thoughts, feelings, conditioned by time and space, and consequently, there is suffering.

My position as a psycho-spiritual therapist/counselor is to hold my clients in an honoring place. I know that my deep trust and love of the play of life with all its multifaceted rich dynamics has a profound effect on my clients. Knowing myself as I do, I have deep empathic resonance with my clients and I have always been able to hold them in a place of love, even if I could not always condone what has sometimes been some pretty heinous behavior. It’s interesting to be with someone who, out of the pain of disconnection manifests aberrant behavior, and to be able to mirror back to him or her, the essence of who I know they really are. The work we do together invites them to realize this as much as possible. My modus operandi is to allow my clients the space to explore the depths of the pain of their issues. Once they have elaborated those issues and framed them in a way that can be integrated into a larger perspective in their lives, when appropriate, I invite them to meet themselves in the light of the Self. Sometimes this takes the form of mirroring, sometimes a deeper exploration of their containing myths and their concepts of who they are in a spiritual sense. My experience is that my clients crave this type of exploration. The sense of deepest disconnect is the most painful of experiences, and the exploration of the Self, the most joyous and freeing. Therefore, there are times when I will actively invite an exploration of the Self, if a client seems to be ready and willing to engage in this type of exploration.

My understanding of the Divine, that I know to be in every Being at every moment, allows me to be profoundly present to my clients. It feels natural to me to mirror the beauty and creativity of my clients. As I honor their Beings, and honor their struggles, they can come to know their worth, and to open up to their depths. It is from this empowered place that they will be able to know themselves, and embrace their lives. This then, is the psycho-spiritual work, by whatever name one calls it.

Ideally, it sounds like what cleansing was supposed to be. Except, you know.. without the nudity and porn.

Adyashanti. Say It Soft and It's Almost Like Praying

2008-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Someone forwarded me part of an article recently and I found it interesting enough to look for the rest of it online. It's from Sun Magazine. There were parts that were interesting.

The role of the spiritual practice is basically to exhaust the seeker. If the practice does what it’s supposed to do, it exhausts our energy for seeking, and then reality has a chance to present itself. In that sense, spiritual practices can help lead to awakening. But that’s different from saying that the practice produces the awakening.

Hmmm.... well, that certainly fits what happened to me... so I kept reading...

Spiritual awakening doesn’t happen because you master some spiritual technique. There are lots of skillful meditators who are not awake. Awakening happens when you stop bullshitting yourself into continual nonawakening. It’s very easy to use disciplines to avoid reality rather than to encounter it. A true spirituality will have you continually facing your illusions and all the ways you avoid reality. Spiritual practice may be an important means of confronting yourself, or it may be a means of avoiding yourself; it all depends on your attitude and intention.

Then there was this part about the corruption of power:

There’s a lot of power inherent in enlightenment — or the perception of it — and spiritual power is no less corrupting than any other power. In fact, it may be even more corrupting.

I remember the first time I became conscious of this: I started teaching at thirty-three; most everybody was older than me, and more educated, and smarter. They had better jobs and all that. As I was driving home from teaching one night, it suddenly hit me: I could go in there and say almost anything and make them believe it. I saw, all at once, the incredible frailty of human beings. And I understood how intelligent, well-educated people can get involved in cults and the most ridiculous ideas: when we are in the grasp of ego, we’re extraordinarily vulnerable. As soon as I realized this, something else arose, which was this extraordinary distaste for it. That sort of power isn’t a pleasant thing to have. Now I look back at my teacher, Arvis Joen Justi, and see that her most important transmission to me was her integrity, because it gave me that distaste for power and influence. I can only guess that some people, even people with the best intentions, start to find that power enticing.

When you’re a spiritual teacher, you’re living in the projections of people around you. They have a tendency to see you as godlike, and that is not a healthy environment for anybody. But a spiritual teacher, by nature, has to exist in it. I’ve found that the more you try to correct this perception, the stronger it becomes. People just think you’re even better, because you’re not like all the teachers who are encouraging their students to see them as demigods. There’s no way around the projection game, and the potential is always there for it to corrode my integrity. I’m not immune to that. In fact, as soon as I conclude that I could never take advantage of people, it’s already started. It’s a subtle thing that can easily grow as time goes on, because there’s usually not someone around to say to the teacher, “Hey, this isn’t right.” Spiritual students are almost encouraged to think that because the teacher is an enlightened being, he or she knows everything. So people check their good sense at the door. What I tell people is that if you’re seeking enlightenment, your good sense is vital. In fact, you’re going to have to learn to trust it more and more. I think people actually know early on when something’s off about a teacher, but they think they must be wrong, because an enlightened person can’t do any wrong. And that’s not true. Enlightened people can do wrong. They can do harmful things. I think sometimes they don’t know it themselves.

My teacher told me, “There are lots of temptations out there. If you ever think you can’t handle those temptations, stop before you do something stupid.” That was a promise I made to her. We shouldn’t make the assumption that lust or greed or corruption could never emerge in us. It clearly can. Humility is always the best protection against being corrupted by power.

That section was when I thought this might be good for this site. And the single-most piece of advice he offers someone who wants to awaken?

Get in touch with what you really want. What does awakening mean for you? Do you want it because it sounds good? Then you’ve borrowed someone else’s idea of it. What is it that’s intrinsic to you? What’s been important to you your whole life? If you touch upon that, you are in touch with a force that no teacher or teaching could ever give you. You are quite on your own in finding it. No one can tell you what that is. Once you feel it, once you’re clear on it, everything else will unfold from there. If you need a teacher, you’ll find one. If you need a teaching, you’ll bump into it, probably in the most unexpected way.

Click the link to read the rest of the interview if you want. There are parts that are interesting although there were also parts for me that... well,... exhaust me still. :D So, enjoy.

Posting a Quick Response

2008-01-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

I received an email from Clay adding some comments of his own:

I have enjoyed reading Dr. Datanah’s words and would like to attest to her wisdom and accuracy. As with her I had be around the spiritual block a few times before landing in the presence of Angelo. I can honestly say that in my experience the ‘energy’ I felt in his presence did not necessarily bear any relation to spiritual clarity or evolution on his part. I had experienced such energy many times before in the presence of other beings who took on charismatic roles as spiritual leaders in different communities. For example, I once attended an evangelical Christian summer camp. When the speaker came out he had extremely charismatic energy and as he spoke and placed very strong suggestions in the minds of his follower’s people were falling over backwards from the ‘energy’ all around me. His ability was in his charismatic presence, the role in which he placed himself and the power his congregation gave away to him. His actual understanding of his divine nature and his ability to lead people with any form of clarity was confused at best.

Who knew…? ten years later I was going to give my power away in a similar manner! Who knew...? I was going to confuse the ‘energy’ I felt as spiritual clarity! This is not to say that some of Angelo’s borrowed teachings did not induce growth or the practice of meditation did not impact my life. The benefits, however, were seriously negated by many of his teachings that were rooted in his own spiritual confusion!

The past fifteen years did result in growth for me. I have learnt true spiritual discernment and to trust in my own direct connection to source. Truth is experienced in my own heart. I just have to listen.

We are entering a period of great spiritual evolution on our planet. It is now time to step boldly into our own spiritual power. We are glorious and powerful co-creators! Let’s embrace our spiritually inspired lives with love and play!

It's a New Dawn... and I'm Feeling Good

2008-01-16T14:57:00.000-08:00

I made an effort to do Dr Datanah's interview. This was way back after the first group left, but before the latest wave (to put it in context). She was in town briefly and consented to answer some of my questions before a dinner some of us gathered for. I think it's an interesting perspective from someone with a lot of life experience before finding the group. Not a lot of us had that. Especially the perspective of someone with experience on the spiritual journey. I mean, I had dabbled in some stuff, but I admit I was a bit of a back-burner spiritual seeker until the Buddha Field. Consequently, I had not experienced many of the things we delved into within the group.

Keep in mind my lack of experience when reading the interview. If I got some things wrong, it was in the transcription process and not any fault of Dr. Datanah's. (Actually, bear that in mind while reading all the interviews. It's not as easy as you might think.)

Anyway, hope you enjoy her journey.

Datanah: 1. My Childhood and Growing Up

2008-01-15T23:50:00.000-08:00

Childhood: I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. I had a really beautiful childhood. I’m the oldest of three kids. I was definitely the princess… and was definitely in charge. I have a very close and loving relationship with my parents and my siblings. We’re all very close. As are my cousins… we had one big extended family loving us. There was trauma of course, I have a father who raged. But always within the context of “I love you”, and always followed by tremendous apologies. And my mother was the typical nurturer, the classical forgiver. Financially, we were very well off.

It was very interesting politically, growing up in apartheid South Africa. When I was little, I would play with the servants’ children but when you got to be 7 or 8, you no longer played with African children. This was confusing for a child, and the beginnings of my learning compassion. Politically, in my latter years of high school and as a university student, I got involved in a left-wing student organization that did work with black kids in the townships. It was illegal, and therefore dangerous. I had friends who disappeared, a cousin that was under house arrest for 7 years because of her involvement with the ANC. My parents were questioned by the police. I was followed because I had an Indian boyfriend. (which was taboo… crossing the color line.)

I also had many significant mystical experiences as a child. I grew up in a Jewish household, although not orthodox (traditionally practicing). My parents on my mother’s side are a very old Jerusalem family. There’s a lot of mysticism in my family. My great grandmother was the last person to be given permission to be buried on the Mount of Olives. The reason I’m bringing it up was that when she died, my grandmother was in South Africa… so when she went back to Jerusalem to look for her mother’s grave, she went to the hut on the hill and the man who had the grave name and numbers wasn’t there. She walked out and she felt somebody leading her. She turned and went straight and turned and when she stopped she was at her mother’s grave. So this type of mystical experience runs through the veins of the women in my family. My mom had them. I had many experiences myself. As wild as you can possibly imagine, covering the full gamut of experiences recorded in all the mystical traditions. It’s what led me into my studies.

Also, growing up in a non-traditional Jewish family, I started doing yoga when I was four. I would go with my mother to yoga class and we would meditate at the end. So I started meditating when I was four and it became my nightly ritual at bedtime. I also would hang out in the field at the bottom of my road in Africa (the fields were where the African churches would meet) African Christianity is a mixture of missionary Christianity and traditional tribal religion. So, in the name of Christ, people would dance and sing and go into trance. And so would I. I’d spend time with African witchdoctors. There was a lot of that sort of thing in my childhood.

When I was 13½, I cut school one day and I went to a mystical bookstore downtown. While I was in the bookstore, Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi” fell off the shelf and hit me on the head. There was an Indian guru there and he was laughing and said, “This means you come and study with me.” So I studied Vedanta studies as a teenager, the truth kernel of the Vedas. When I left South Africa, I went to live in Israel for a year, where I became very friendly with a Chinese Buddhist and got involved with Buddhism. All of this is to say that prior to coming to the Buddha Field, I had many years of spiritual studies plus initiations by various gurus. I was also initiated by the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. Many different experiences like that. There was an organization I belonged to in Atlanta that met at a Trappist monastery (because one of the monks was a Trappist. He was given special permission to meet with us as Trappists hold a vow of Silence. However the head of the monastery really liked the focus of our meetings which was the exploration of different religious and spiritual expressions.) There was a Benedictine monk (a very good friend of mine) that was part of it. There was a Native American medicine man and faith keeper for the Muscogee Nation… I was initiated as a spiritual member of that Nation,as well as of the Hopi Nation. There was also a leader in the Sufi Order. (I actually also have initiation in two different Sufi orders). The head of the gay churches in Atlanta was in that group. There were about 8 or 9 of us. A very interesting group of people. And the head of the Rama Krishna Order in the Vedanta Society who is a good friend of mine. This was in the late seventies or early eighties. It was wonderful. So I had a very varied spiritual background, and experience in varied mystical practices before I ever got involved with the Buddha Field.

Education: When I was an undergrad I was probably pretty indifferent to school. I did very well in school, it was very easy for me. As an undergrad, I was a typical 19-20 year old kid, in that, I’d make deals with myself like, “If I can’t get a parking space, I’ll go shopping.” But I passed everything really easily. For my Bachelor’s degree, I majored in English Literature, Social Anthropology and Psychology. And then I left South Africa, lived in Israel for a year, then came to the States. I was a very natural mom and felt very enriched by my experience of mothering. Something about unconditional loving and going beyond yourself. I helped start a ballet company in Atlanta and an International School. I worked for the Southern Center for International Studies (which is Jimmy Carter’s organization… not the Carter Center but a behind-the-scenes political thing. I did fund-raising.) I worked to provide housing for Vietnamese and Russian refugees. I was very involved in the growing-up of Atlanta. When I got there it was a tiny town. But Andy Young was the mayor and he wanted to make it an international city. I was very involved in that stuff. And when my kids got old enough to be at school for the whole day and were involved in after-school activities, I went back to school and studied Interior Architecture and Design. But when I started working in that… it turned out that when people would call me constantly and it was never about “5 beautiful tiles they had to choose from,” it was always some interpersonal drama in their life. And I was on the phone forever with them. One day I realized, “I’m kind of counseling people and if I’m going to do this with any integrity, I have to go back to school.” So I went back to school and got a Master’s degree in transpersonal psychology. And then, subsequent to that, I received my doctorate in East-West Psychology with an orientation in Spiritual Counseling and Spiritual Emergency.

Marriage: Before the BF, I was married. Twice actually. The first time I got married when I was 21. To the guy I’d been dating for 3 years in South Africa. I did the typical South African thing. If you’ve been dating someone for a long time, you get married when you finish your University studies. And so I got married. And then I got pregnant 3 months later. We were both kids and he wasn’t ready for a kid. And I wasn’t prepared to get rid of the kid. So that was the end of the marriage. When my marriage ended, I was 22… with a baby. I was 24½ when I married my second husband, an anesthesiologist. My first husband was a neurologist. They were both in the medical profession. Then, we left South Africa and went to Israel for a year… and then came to the States. I was with my second husband for 15 years before we were divorced. Oddly, I would get some cocked up message from Angelo via Frolic about how I never stuck to things. Not my experience at all. When I met the people from the Buddha Field in Atlanta, I had been divorced for about a year. And I had two kids. My son was 11 and my daughter was 16.

Sexual/abuse problems: Often when I talked to Tighre he would say “what about the sexual abuse you had”. I always told him he was confusing me with someone else. He always said I was in denial. I wonder now if he was told to say that. There was none of that in my family. My father would rage and during that time he was emotionally abusive of course. He has a very short fuse, but thee was no physical abuse at all. And you know, South African people are very above-board emotionally. They shout, scream, love, kiss each other…Very much like Southern Italian or Southern Mediterranean… people singing all the time, all around you. It was like that.

I do know that one of the things that attracted me to the Buddha Field, one of the things that really attracted me was that I was living far from my country of origin and therefore my close family. So, even though I had lots of friends (I always have had) one of the things I loved about the people that I met from the Buddha Field was that they were like this very close family. And I think that was very significant.

Datanah: 2. Finding the Buddha Field in Atlanta

2008-01-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

In Atlanta, there was a bookstore that had a café in it. And that was the café where Tighre and Frolic worked. They used to help serve sandwiches. One Wednesday morning, I was sitting in the bookstore with my daughter, and she said to me, “That cute guy is looking at us, mom.” He was. It was Tighre. Soon, my daughter had to go wherever she was going, and when she left Tighre came over and started talking to me. We immediately had a rapport. We had this long conversation that was lovely, “Who are you? What do you do? What are you interested in?” It turned out that we both liked Tai Chi and Yoga. And Tighre asked me if I had ever meditated. I said sure. And then he asked if I’d ever meditated in a group and I said, “Not for a long time.” So he invited me to a group meditation that he went to on Sunday nights… (I actually didn’t know until the end of the evening that everyone at the meditation knew each other… I thought it was just like a yoga class. You go to a meditation and people just turn up.) I accepted of course. I thought he was adorable. Lovely, warm, sweet. And I gave him my phone number and left to do whatever I was doing… picked up the kids and came home. When I walked in, my house mate said, “Oh, this guy called and said he met you this morning and wanted to know what we were doing this evening. I told him nothing so he’s coming over.” So, I was like, “OK.” So now I’m thinking this guy was totally into me. Because when I had left the café, he had given me the most beautiful, warm hug and it was like: here was this beautiful guy, and he was into me, and how nice. Anyway, he turned up with Frolic and we all had a gorgeous evening. We all just adored each other. They asked if they could come back on Friday night. And we all just loved each other.

So, I went to the meeting on Sunday night. The satsang meetings were held at a house where a whole lot of the BF people were living together… but I didn’t know that everyone there knew each other then. I actually walked in late. Everyone was already sitting and meditating (before anybody started sharing.)-- I’m pretty sure it was Frolic sharing satsang that night – and it was the whole production with this chair and the flowers and everything. It was at the end of the evening that I realized all these people I had met were there all knew each other. And it was lovely. I think Simone was traveling at that point but he came a few weeks later and literally, from that day, we became this big extended family. I remember one snowstorm – I had a very large house and Atlanta shuts down when it snows – I had fourteen people in my house. Everyone from the BF was there. We were drawing, we were writing, we were sleeping, people were in my bathtub… and we were this very big extended loving family. Plus at that time my son was going through a difficult time, dealing with the divorce. And Tighre and Frolic would go to the gym with him and take him swimming and to play basketball… a pretty good substitute for the males in his life… His dad was bipolar and his “out there” behavior was one of the things that contributed to our divorce. So for my son, who was about 12 at the time, it was wonderful. I was 38 then. Around 1990.So that’s how I met everyone. It felt like the group was an instant family.

They talked about Angelo. (There were pictures of him in the house even though there weren’t supposed to be.) Also, I got to hear tapes of his sharing. The focus of the group was “We’re meeting because of him.” The story at that time was that one of the girls in the group had been stalked and the group had split up. I was aware of that… that there were people in different cities. And then people in our group started to leave. Tighre was one of the first, and we were very close. He and I would do tons of things together. So it was very touching when he left. And when he left it was because he was “going traveling” and didn’t know if he would see me again. And then others would leave and when everyone was leaving they would ask if I wanted to come with them but they did say my kids could not come. And it was very clear to me that there was no way in hell I was going to abandon my children. And my kids had come to satsang in Atlanta – they came to everything. They were very much a part of the group. They were just not allowed to come where Angelo was. I was just told that if I wanted to come, I could, but they couldn’t. So it was very clear. They said that they wanted me to be there… and that I needed to be there…Of course I would never abandon my kids….I don’t think abandonment is a very conscious or compassionate thing to do, do you?

It was interesting actually because when my daughter left school she went traveling and Simone had been in contact with her. After everybody left Atlanta, I was asked to mail things for people. They kept a mailbox in Atlanta and they’d send things to my house for me to mail – part of maintaining the façade that people still lived in Atlanta (they didn’t want people to know where they were.) So I was very involved in that way. And then when my daughter was traveling cross-country and she was invited to come to Austin, but Simone told her, “Your mother is not to know where you are.” And she was absolutely horrified. She was like, “What the f.ck are you talking about? My mother was in there with everyone else. We were all doing class together. I know you still are in contact with her.” So she actually freaked out and didn’t come. And she would have come if he had not said, “Don’t tell your mom.”

They were in Atlanta around 2 years. And I never saw Angelo during that time. I spoke to him once on the phone (although he denied it was him.) I knew it was him because I’d heard his voice on a tape. But he called to speak to Frolic and I answered. So that was my only contact with him. And then everybody was gone.

Datanah: 3. Austin, By Way of Bali

2008-01-15T23:30:00.000-08:00

Well, life continued and at one point, I found myself working 6 days a week. I was exhausted… carrying on a private therapy practice, working at a community mental health facility and I had my interior design practice. I was just so busy. And in 1999, I was just DONE with working so hard. I decided to take off 4 ½ months and do a road trip around the states. So I told Simone my intentions and that I already knew everyone was living in Austin (one of the guys that was not invited to come to Austin had found phone bills with the Austin information on them.) So when I told Simone I would be driving through Austin he said, “Oh my God, I have to see you.” So I came and saw him and he invited me to Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving dinner was a beautiful celebration. I loved seeing everybody because I hadn’t seen them for years at this point. I had been very close to everybody so it was really nice. Still, I had huge warning bells…

There were a few things that really gave me pause. That seemed really f.cked up. Like them putting a huge bib around Angelo’s neck for him and I was like, “What is this baby bullshit and this servile bullshit?” Then, I hated that everywhere he walked, everybody “en masse” would turn and look and follow him around. It was crazy to me. My own interaction with him was disturbing also because I felt like he looked into my eyes but there was nobody there. I really felt like he was not connecting with me. And I talked to Simone about that. And then also, he came on stage (to “perform”) wearing this gold lame see-through thing and started singing a love song to his guru, he said ( How ironic is that). It was like some third rate disco in South America somewhere. I thought what the hell was he doing? So I left that night disillusioned. With real questions. I remember talking to Simone and he told me it was my mind and to drop it.

So then I continued on my travels. When I got back to Atlanta (Feb 2000) I felt done with Atlanta. I had been there for 18 years and it felt like I was ready for a new phase of my life. I don’t even remember who I talked to at that time. I was very close to Tighre, Simone and Frolic… and I know I talked to one of them. And they said come to Austin. And I thought that I was ready for an adventure so I sold my house in Atlanta. I was ready for a new phase. My kids were done with school. My daughter was off somewhere else, and my son was off at his own school and I thought that I needn’t hang around Atlanta anymore?

So I drove to Austin. I got here on a Thursday afternoon. And on Friday morning I got a phone call from a good friend of mine (who is a Sheik in the Sufi order) and he asked where I was. I said, “I’m sitting by a river looking at some terrapins on the lake.” And he asked where and I told him Austin. He laughed and said, “Oh, I really have to see you.” And he said he would be in Austin the next weekend and asked if I would see him. I often see clients who are his disciples that are going through things so I thought it was one of those things, but he said that it didn’t have anything to do with that. So, the next weekend I saw him. During the intervening week I was connecting with everyone again and it was lovely. I didn’t get invited to anything except meditation at that point but that was lovely to reconnect with everyone. And then on Saturday when I saw my friend, he said, “I have a request for you if you’re up to it. I’d like you to travel around the world for 6 months buying art for some people.” I asked where he wanted me to go and he said to go wherever I want. And I said, “I’d really like to go to Bali and India and Morocco.” His reply was that if I went to Morocco, then there was a Sufi in Egypt he’d like me to meet so he’d like me to go there too. I said absolutely. For me, it was a no-brainer.

Well, Simone had a different perspective. “You’re being tested by the universe.” And I thought about that and I thought that actually the universe seemed to be giving me a beautiful gift. It was asking me to say “Yes” to life. And a great life at that! I was to travel with an unlimited budget, going wherever I wanted, meeting whoever I wanted, and it just felt awesome. It didn’t feel off to me at all. So I went. I had this amazing trip with unbelievably incredible experiences… and met (oddly enough) some very powerful spiritual leaders. I saw the Dalai Lama again when I was in India. I met the teacher who teaches all the priests and monks in Bali. I spent time with some very beautiful Sufis in Egypt and Morocco. I did spiritual practice with all of them. I mean, I won’t go into it but it was a fabulous and rewarding trip. And then I came back to Austin. I was glad I did it.

Datanah: 4. In the Buddha Field

2008-01-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

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.

Datanah: 5. Why I Left

2008-01-15T23:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Datanah: 6. And Then The Break-up

2008-01-15T22:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Datanah: 7. Reflections

2008-01-15T22:15:00.000-08:00

I did receive guidance. I got guidance not to sell my house when I left Atlanta, to rent it out instead… but that didn’t make any sense to me and I needed the money to go to grad school and put my daughter through grad school. I never felt like Angelo had any sense of me or my life -- so the guidance that I was ‘given’ (not to go traveling for instance) didn’t make any sense to me. And I guess because I didn’t listen, he didn’t give much more guidance. Also, I thought the guidance he was giving other people was fucked up. And I told them. I told Tabitha the guidance he gave her was really damaging. The guidance he gave Martina (before rehab) was really damaging. So I didn’t think he had any clarity about a lot of things. Angelo just felt off to me.

I had experienced shakti before the Buddha Field. With other people. Years and years of it. Even without anybody there. So I never associated shakti with Angelo. And then the first time that he “gave me” shakti, I felt nothing. What I felt was him pushing my head back… so it went back… and everyone was gasping and Simone came to me afterwards and I said, “You have just been initiated in to the beginning. This is nothing." But it didn’t feel like a real experience.

Another thing that would bug me was when we were sitting in meditation and seeing some of the sycophants shake all over the place. I’m not saying they weren’t experiencing something… but I’ve been in the presence of spiritual teachers who, when people started shaking, they’d tell them to stop and pull themselves together. So for me, it became a performance -- an art piece -- where they would shake all over. Like, “What the hell?” He was putting on a show but so were the rest of the people. Which is not to say some people might not have felt it genuinely… because people feel things… and I also know the mind is very tricky so when you put yourself in a spiritual scenario, you can have spiritual experiences, and some can feel very profound, and some can BE very profound. -but I felt like there was this charade happening. And then I was sure there were also people that had very meaningful experiences to them. I never felt like they were specifically Angelo-related though. And the first thing he ever said to me was so meaningless his first words. We were at a ballet performance. I was invited and I was standing there with a sister and he looked at her and said, “You’re a beautiful ballerina.” Then he looked at me and said, “You need to learn to point better.” And for a little bit I thought, “What is he trying to tell me?” It it some sort of Koan?.....but actually he hardly ever said much to me…

And the other thing I have to tell you about which really shifted things for me, was in class one day when my son and a friend of mine from India were in town, and they were invited to a Sunday outing. And Angelo gave shakti and threw prashad and all that. And this friend is an expert in Newar art and there was one particular painting Angelo loved… he brought a few guys over to where I was staying to see the paintings… So they were all standing around and Angelo was looking at all the paintings and, honestly, he said to me in at least 7 different ways that he wanted me to get him one of the paintings. He would look directly at me and say things indirectly like, “This painting has special shakti” or “This painting has a real light to it. Much better than any other ones” And things like that. When he left, my friend said, “He really wants you to get him that painting.” And I said, “I know, he told me 7 different times in not-so-subtle ways.” So I thought OK, I’ll get him that painting. He really wants it and basically the art supports the artists in Nepal so it’s a really good cause. So I bought it for him and framed it and took it over to his house. When I was there, he came in and looked it up and down and he looked at me and all he said was, “I knew you would get me that painting.” And I just thought, “F.ck you, don’t try and pretend you are psychic.” I didn’t say it… I just said, “You’re welcome” and he turned and walked out of the room. I mean, f.cking well say thank you at least, you know? That stuff bugged the shit out of me. Because it didn’t feel real. You ASKED for the painting. I got you the painting. Have the grace to say thank you.

None of this was new or unique to me. I had endless discussions about all of this with Tabitha (because she had told me she wanted to leave but she was told by Angelo that if she left, she would be destroyed.) I told her, THIS is the reason you should go. To see that you can handle it. You’ll give yourself a chance to grow up if you’re away long enough to find out who you are.

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

2008-01-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Datanah: 9. Masters

2008-01-15T21:45:00.000-08:00

It actually didn’t surprise me to find out that Angelo didn’t have a master. First, I never saw him teach anything that came from any lineage that felt authentic. When I was in Atlanta, I heard that Angelo had a master and it was somebody he met on a beach in CA and that didn’t feel right. I’ve been around people that are in lineages that are centuries old, so when I heard that I immediately thought it wasn’t true. There was never really anything that indicated to me that he DID have a master. The only thing I saw in him that I didn’t see in other teachers (which I always thought was a deficit) was that he didn’t ever associate with other teachers. Every teacher I’ve known not only learns from other teachers, these guys always had other teachers, even other teachers from other paradigms to talk with and get feedback from. To learn from, to share with, to communicate with. I never saw the humility of that in him. That he didn’t have a teacher didn’t shock me. As far as “The Knowing” was concerned… I knew of Maharaji and his methodologies. I knew of his Knowledge. I knew that’s what it was.

Yes, I believe Masters do actually exist. There are Masters whose sole purpose is to lovingly and unconditionally lead you through your defenses to the quiet inner stillness and wisdom of the beauty of your Essential Truth that is hidden in your soul. They are not there for their own ego gratification but solely to reveal you to your Self.

Work should ideally be engaged with the student who does not idealize the teacher, as idealization constricts the energy. It is best engaged in a spirit of curiosity, innocence, humility and wonder, allowing for the primordial terrors that often surface as part of the process. Work should be able to contain the student’s feelings of being stuck, resistant, righteous, struggling over power and their judgments, with the recognition that these are part of the process. It is in being truly seen, that we heal.

A good teacher never creates dependency, because the teaching should be about freedom.

Tower, Tower, Tell Me Tower

2007-12-31T14:37:00.000-08:00

Dr. Datanah's last email provoked a question from a reader (that I've gotten several times from different people). Franky, I never meant to imply that I had any answers... I only have my own opinions/experience to offer. However, since Dr. Datanah's comment provoked the question, I thought I'd forward it to her to see how she would respond. The question I received was:

..just read Dr. Datanah's latest post/info on schizophrenia. I don't dispute any of this, certainly since I know little about the subject, but I'm wondering what she has to say about the heightened energy. Maybe some of the people in the BF never felt it- or maybe Dr. Datanah never experienced such a thing. But Angelo possessed it. It was what brought me to the BF in the first place, and what kept me there. It was not the first time in my life I had experienced such energies- nor was it the last- but I could walk in to that house and tell if Angelo was home- not home- or in the yard- just by the strength of the energy I experienced around him. Any comments, thoughts?

Since I have not yet posted Dr. Datanah's interview, I want to point out that she is speaking from not only her training and education in psychology and spiritual crisis, but also from a lengthy and profound spiritual quest of her own. I think you'll really enjoy her journey so I'll try to get to it as soon as I can. For now though, consider her response to the above question:

Very good question and I understand why there can be confusion in relation to it.-The "energy" that people felt around Angelo is something that is often a bi-product of consistent spiritual practice, it is well documented in all traditions, and in Sanskrit is called a "Siddhi".

Siddhi is a Sanskrit word that literally means "accomplishment", "attainment", or "success". It is also used as a term for spiritual power such as exuding energy or displaying psychic ability. The term is used in that sense in Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism. These spiritual powers supposedly vary from relatively simple forms of clairvoyance to being able to levitate, to be present at various places at once, to become as small as an atom, to materialize objects, to have access to memories from past lives, and more.

There are many perspectives about attaining Siddhis. One school of thought states that they are a normal set of occurrences that should not be focused upon because they will pull one from the path. Other perspectives hold that each siddhi should be pursued because it will allow one to understand the power of the Godhead. Siddhis may occur in many ways: naturally though the agency of karma, as a result of extended practice (sadhana), through rigorous austerities (tapasya), meditation, control of the senses, devotion, herbs, mantras, pranayama, chanting, trance dancing, or by grace.

J Krishnamurti warned about siddhis in the context of meditation -- comparing seeking the siddhis of maya to desiring mere candles; instead, he counseled to seek the Sun of full Enlightenment and Liberation (Moksha). Siddhis are considered to be still in the energy vibration of the Astral plane.

Basically as the normal everyday brain waves are slowed down, the consciousness expands ( this is what happens during meditation and also hypnotherapy or any of the above practices.........all mystical spiritual traditions have different practices that are designed to expand consciousness), this allows one to access the collective consciousness, the Oneness. A person may then experience, or through practice, may learn to exude, the "energy" or Chi or Prana that is the matrix of life. There are people who become very good at exuding energy and there are people who through their practice are more able to perceive it.......

Now, as the questioner alluded...some people did not feel Angelo's energy...and this could have been for different reasons.
Angelo might not have been exuding it at a particular moment ( some practitioners are able to "turn it on or off"),
The people who tuned in to it had to themselves have been in a somewhat expanded state of consciousness in order to perceive it
Or another possibility is that the tricky mind wished to perceive it so convinced itself that it did.
A person might have for some reason not wanted to be open to it, so was not in an expanded state and did not experience it.

Please remember that we were all practicing meditation so were expanding our own consciousnesses, and some us at times were very magnetic at times too! I remember how certain people would gravitate towards us!!

Here however is the rub.....and the basis for confusion, and the reason why Krishnamurti, and many religions and spiritual paths warn against trying to develop Siddhis....

Siddhis can be attained by anyone through dedicated practice ....they in themselves are neither good nor bad, but how and why they are used depends on the spirtual development of the practitioner . They in themselves are not an indication of enlightenment. There are people who are enlightened who do not practice Siddhis, and who consider them just a stage on the path, recognizing that they can be used for good or not depending on who is using them.

I know many people in the Buddha Field felt that "energy" and Enlightenment are synonymous. I think this was encouraged. However if you study Hindism or Buddhism, you will find different interpretations none of which have to do with "energy".

In Hindu philosophy, Enlightenment is seen as a transcendence of phenomenal being, a state of higher consciousness, in which time, space, causation (karma) and the other features of empirical reality are understood as maya. Liberation is experienced in this very life as a dissolution of the sense of self as an egoistic personality by which the underlying, eternal, pure spirit is uncovered. This desireless state concludes the yogic path through which conditioned mentality-materiality has been dissolved uncovering one's eternal identity prior to the mind/spirit's identification with material form. Liberation is achieved by (and accompanied with) the complete stilling of all passions — a state of being known as Nirvana. A state of experiencing the Stillness of the Ground of Being.....no "energy" at all.

In Buddhism, bodhi means the awakening experience attained by Gautama Buddha and his accomplished disciples and refers to the unique consciousness of a fully liberated yogi. Bodhi is sometimes described as complete and perfect sanity, or awareness of the true nature of the universe. After attainment, it is believed that one is freed from the cycle of samsāra: birth, suffering, death and rebirth. Bodhi is most commonly translated into English as enlightenment. This word conveys the insight and understanding (wisdom) possessed by a buddha and is similarly used in Christian mysticism to convey the saint's condition of being lit by a higher power - the merging of the human and the divine. It expresses the notion of awakening from a dream and of being aware and knowing (reality). It is thus more accurate to think of bodhi as spiritual "awake-ness" or "awakenment", rather than "enlightenment"......again nothing to do with "energy".

I hope this is helpful.

I love this response. Much better than anything I could have come up with. But the question did allow me to do a little self-examination to see how I would respond.

First, I experienced a lot of energy... period. Not any more with Angelo than I did with other people. I might have allowed it originally with Angelo, but (and this was the way I applied things during my time in the group) I thought the purpose of the "master" was to allow your love/devotion for the master to open yourself to him. To allow yourself to experience things, using him as the excuse, that you then moved on and allowed with everyone else in your life. I mean, if it was to be exclusively with him... I didn't see the point. So, I experienced an energy with him. But not any more than I did with a lot of people. Again, that may have been my own unique experience. Certainly the message toward the end was that he was special and thus the reason for all experiences that everyone allowed themselves to have.

My own opinion is that anything along those lines has more to do with US and what we ALLOW than with him. What you allow yourself to experience, with him or with anyone. So, if you are very sensitive, you'll experience a lot... but then allow that to expand to the rest of your life. I mean, you said you could walk into his home and tell if he was there. But weren't you primarily focussed on him also? Did you try that with other people? Or were you mainly concerned as to whether he was home or not?

The word "energy" has become incredibly vague to me at this point because it means so many different things to everyone... so I try to substitute other concepts for that one when I can. Like I usually use "fire" when I'm thinking about an elemental energy, or a personal attribute when talking about a person's energy. For instance, there are people that are just naturally LOUD. You can walk in and tell if they are home cause you can hear them. I'm sure there are people that are just loud energetically also. Take Hitler, for instance. (I love using him as an example because his followers sounded like disciples sometimes. They said that everyone had to take notice when he entered the room and they had various reasons why this was so. That he had a strong personal presence. That he was on a mission from God. But I think we can also agree that he was a psychopath, can't we? And a vegetarian. And a painter. What does any one of those things have to do with the other?) Similarly, would you think that someone having a loud voice says anything about whether they are a psychopath? Or a master?

This is not to diminish anything that anyone allowed themselves to experience. On the contrary, I think it's more beautiful in that it shows that everything is available to you at every moment and does not rely on someone there with some "special" gift or ability.

Anyone with a different perspective that they'd like to share?

Well, Hello Dalai!

2007-12-31T12:16:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me this email. It seem particularly poignant at this time of year when people are thinking about the past year and what they want to focus on in the coming year.

This is what The Dalai Lama has to say for 2007. All it takes is a few seconds
to read and think over. This is true for all – even if you are not
superstitious… or of whatever religious belief… Faith…

Instructions for Life
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s:
Respect for self,
Respect for others and
Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

Let this coming year be the most glorious year of your life so far!

A Trained Professional Sees a Pattern Here

2007-12-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

I received an email from Dr. Datanah that may help some of you in processing your experience:

I have been reading the stories you are posting on the website, and I know I have already sent you information on both schitzophrenia and the pre/trans fallacy ( where subconscious motivations are confused with integrative and mystical structures....where because mystical states and psychosis can have similar syptoms, many people do not know how to discriminate between whether the state is one of pre-egoic fantasy, pre-conceptual feelings and pre-personal desires, or whether the experience is genuinely one of trans-egoic liberation.)

This study has been part of the focus of my Doctoral studies and as I read more of people's experiences of "Angelo's " story I have become more convinced that we have been dealing not only with his painful childhood, and confused desperate attempt to earn a living but also with pretty severe mental illness.

I sent you the information on schizophrenia a couple of weeks ago after I became concerned by the content of some of the descriptions of his behavior ( paranoia, violence, appalling lack of hygiene, delusions, of grandeur, etc.) in the interviews, and after a conversation I had with Frolic -- during which he told me that Angelo was starting to idealize the experience of the sanyasin, romanticizing the homeless people walking the beaches of Hawaii.

I read people's constant questioning about things that just did not seem rational and consistent to them, and I really think it would be most helpful if people could understand that it is most likely that we were, in fact, dealing with mental illness. I know many people would like to hold on to their hurt and anger, and also to the idea that Angelo was originally truly inspired and did not start out trying to be hurtful, but if they understood that much of his behavior is consistent with pretty severe mental illness, they will not only have a context for their confusion, but also, I hope, allow for some compassion.

I know you mentioned that you would probably post the information on schizophrenia at some point. I personally think that doing it sooner rather than later would be helpful.

Dr Datanah refers to an email she sent me a week or so prior to this email which I am posting here:

I was reading through your site and was struck by the 9-11 piece. It occurred to me that some of Angelo's symptoms are consistent with Paranoid Schizophrenia. Significantly:
Symptoms may include:

Delusions, feelings of persecution; delusions of grandeur, in which a person may believe he or she is a famous or important figure; depression; excessive sleep, insomnia, or both; hyperactivity and/or inactivity; an inability to concentrate or cope; extreme religiousness or an obsession with the occult; unexpected hostility; ; frequent loss of possessions; inability to maintain normal hygiene; rapid weight loss; extreme reactions to criticism; escape attempts manifested in frequent moves or hitchhiking; inability to cry or excessive crying; early signs of migraines; an unusual sensitivity to stimuli; an inability to express joy or inappropriate laughter; bizarre behavior; a refusal to touch people or objects, a decision to shave one's head or body hair; self-mutilation; excessive blinking or staring without blinking; and/or rigid stubbornness; attributing special significance to numbers or letters; Hallucinations and Illusions.

Interesting, and somewhat disturbing, many people with sociopathic tendencies also tend to be highly magnetic personalities.
In my professional opinion, so many of Angelo's symptoms are classically psychotic, that I think that the elevation to an "enlightened state" is an uneducated pre/trans fallacy mistake.
Read here for further information.

For myself, I find this very interesting and insightful. And I hope it is helpful (as intended).

Note: The article linked to is available through a subscription, but you can also Google information about the Pre/Trans fallacy to which Dr. Datanah refers.

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!

2007-12-20T07:53:00.000-08:00

There is one part of the interview that is not first-hand information. I figured I would never get an interview with Angelo, so I asked those who consented to do an interview for any information on his past (that they got from either him or from Ceuta.) So this is second-hand information that, collectively, can perhaps paint an image of Angelo's past. Or maybe only the past that he portrayed. It's interesting in either case.

I was going to wait until I was done with the interviews to try and piece this together. But then I thought perhaps you would enjoy piecing it together for yourselves. I doubt I'll have the chance to update the site again before Christmas, so consider this an early Christmas gift.

If anyone has other stories about Angelo's past and you feel pretty certain of their validity, let me know.

Also, I know that this Christmas is the first Christmas that some of you are going to celebrate outside the group. I really hope it's a glorious holiday for you!

Ryker: On Angelo

2007-12-19T23:00:00.000-08:00

All that I know about Angelo’s history is what I heard from him. And some from Ceuta actually.

Angelo left home at 15 with an older man (I assume it was an older gay man), from Venezuela and went to Montreal, where he lived for a while. I believe he went to school there and then moved to Oakland and I guess (according to what Angelo told us) he danced with the Oakland ballet. I’m pretty sure that he did that. And then he moved to L.A. and pursued acting. I believe he was a hustler as well in L.A. and Florida. I’ve heard it from some people there. There was a tenant in the building that was an actor that had appeared in a lot of old TV shows. He knew Angelo from before and he told me that Angelo was a prostitute. And then in Florida… one day I heard him on the phone and it was pretty clear what was going on. He had two phone lines at the time. And I heard him on the phone, saying in this deep voice, “Oh, you won’t be disappointed.” I asked him about it later and he said it was nothing – but he was evasive about it. Then, a few months later I saw a magazine that was open on his dresser -- opened to an ad for a call-boy (or whatever.) I looked at it and was like, “That’s your body in that ad” He denied it was him of course. But I’m pretty sure that’s what was happening. I asked him what he was doing but he kept refuting it. But one night he called me up and said “One of my hypnotherapy clients is over here and he’s drunk and won’t leave. And I’m afraid that he’s going to do something crazy.” So I got in my car and drove over to his place to try and help him. The man was definitely drunk, but by now he had calmed down. And he was pleading with Angelo to be with him sexually. Even at the time I realized… this doesn’t seem like a therapy patient. It seemed like something else from what the man was saying.

In as much as he was very active in that whole life (which I didn’t understand at the time because I had no experience with it) it also seemed like his life changed after being revealed the Knowledge. Oh, Ceuta told me something interesting about how that happened as well. She explained that she had The Knowledge revealed to her and that she wanted Angelo to go with her the next night, but he didn’t want to go. So, she kind of dragged him there, saying, “I’m going to cut your balls off if you don’t come with me” The initiation was intended for people that had been there before and when asked, Angelo lied and said that he had been, so he got the techniques revealed to him. And consistently, Angelo always said that when he started meditating…and I heard him say this from day one so I believe it… that he literally didn’t go out of his house and got very blissful and intoxicated with God and he was changed. And I believe that. Because even when I first met him --even though he wasn’t actively a teacher. I could tell that he was in love with this experience and he definitely was in love with God and that was the main part of his life.

Anyway, that’s the picture I had of his life before I knew him. But the whole thing about his being a prostitute didn’t bother me because I was so open to the possiblity that anyone can change. Even if he was, it wasn’t like a big deal. I would have rather he had told me the truth than lie to me… but I’m sure it was embarassing at the time. But I took it as, “Wow, he can have his faults and I can have my faults and we can still meditate and be awake.”

Justice: On Angelo

2007-12-19T22:45:00.000-08:00

What I know of Angelo’s history and childhood, I got from him. From what he told me.

Angelo was one of the youngest kids from a large family… of mostly girls. His dad was a rancher, his mother was an alcoholic. His father knew his mother was an alcoholic and tried (unsuccessfully) to wean her off of it. But his mother actually had him go buy her rum for her. She would give him money to run to the store to buy her rum and he would do it. He said she had him doing that when he was 3, but it was probably older than that. Angelo’s mother died when he was six of alcoholism so he was raised by his sisters – one of whom was supposedly a beauty queen… but whatever.

Maybe the way his mom died is why Angelo never got into drinking or drugs. Or maybe it’s because he could never allow himself to be that much out of control.

He said he used to like to meet older men in the plaza for drinks, but he had to watch it because his sisters would ask him what he was doing having drinks with these older guys. He said that once, his brother caught him twirling around in his sister’s skirt… and beat him up. Things like that he would tell me and I’d feel so sorry for him. Poor little guy. I think he was teased for being a fag. Remember this was in South America where the “machismo” was really big.

Anyway, his family was really torn up when his brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. When Angelo was sixteen, somehow he got shipped off to art school in Canada. But the money didn’t come very quickly, so he found himself hurting for cash. Angelo told me stories about hooking up with guys where he’d find himself tied up and naked, or having to run for his life here and there. Other people told me he was hustling at that time. That kind of made sense since he didn’t have the cash. I could see that being an option for him. But his family supposedly had money because when his father died, he inherited some. I guess it was just a timing thing with the money not arriving.

But from Canada, he somehow got down into CA and started the acting thing. His big “claim to fame” was when he was in the musical, “Bye Bye Birdie.” In the review in the newspaper, evidently they just thought he was the bomb. He had all these people all crazed for him and his big “sexual energy” onstage. So, he’s in LA, meeting and networking with people there – and hooking up with tricks. He had some old polaroid camera that he used to take pictures of all the handsome young guys he was hooking up with (which are the shots I found when I was cleaning out his closet.) But that’s where it gets fuzzy for me… somehow he ended up in Florida. I’m not sure if he met Ceuta in LA or Florida actually… and somewhere in there he decided to be a hypnotherapist. Maybe that’s what he was in Florida for, going to hypnotherapy school. I don’t know. But he and Ceuta have a weird background. I’m not sure what it is… she supposedly got him to invest in a gold mine at some point and lost a lot of money. Who knows what really happened. Angelo went to Florida and got his hypnotherapy license and met the first members of the Buddha Field. He started up those acting classes – which coincidentally, the guy I was in a relationship with for two years was in his acting class. He was dating a girl at the time and very straight acting… he met Angelo at the gym and Angelo talked him into taking his class. He said they did that exercise where you rub butts to communicate and he got turned off and never went back. It’s pretty weird that I actually lived in Florida at the tail end when he was there (I was doing modeling there.) Verthlessa worked at a restaurant where I used to eat breakfast but I never saw her. But you know the story from that point. Angelo came to LA with the Buddha Field.

Denomio: On Angelo

2007-12-19T22:30:00.000-08:00

The only things I know about Angelo’s past were what he told me himself… so at this point, I don’t know which stories are true… because he told some very interesting stories about traveling the world. Like about meeting Picasso (and he didn’t know who Picasso was) and they went swimming and while Angelo was in the water, Picasso drew a picture on his shirt. And Angelo got mad because who was this guy to draw on his shirt? It was an interesting story, but at this point, how do you know what to believe?

The basics seem to be that he came to North America because he wanted to be a famous actor. And when things didn’t seem to be going that direction, he started teaching acting. But I think he was generally interested in spirituality. I have a hard time believing it was all about him needing to be in control of everyone around him from the very beginning. I think there must have been at least a seed of wanting to experience consciousness that attracted the initial people to him. And then, more and more, he became the emperor with no clothes. I think that’s the nature of human beings too. We need checks on our egos and if we don’t have them, our ego just gets more distorted and gross. Look at Michael Jackson. I have compassion for him because he had enough money that he could protect himself from having any checks on his ego and he got more and more distorted… to the point where I don’t think he’s a very happy person. I think he suffers quite a bit. And I think a similar thing happened with Angelo where he wasn’t fully cooked. He had seeds of wanting to control and then he created this environment where people were asking him to control them, and asking him to make their decisions for them… and it just fed itself. And even when it got so he felt overwhelmed by all their demands, he was unwilling to see how he created it. I think he felt a victim to the role that his universe had asked him to play, but didn’t see how he was responsible for creating it.

15 Minutes a Day Adds Up

2007-12-12T23:55:00.000-08:00

I have finished transcribing Denomio's interview. His was one of the first interviews that were done so, again, remember that this interview represents his experience at that time -- it might be radically different today (was it really a year ago?)

I really hope his dry wit comes through. Many times, wry humor can get lost in written form but I hope you get a chance to giggle as much as I did.

Also, I am re-ordering the "Our Story" order on the left. I made a point of explaining new concepts more fully in the earlier interviews and some of the newer readers (that just start at the top and work down) are not getting that intro.

Again, thank you for your patience.

Denomio: 1. My Childhood

2007-12-11T23:30:00.000-08:00

I was an only child.

Born to a single mother.

For the first 5 years of my life, I lived in Mexico City. My mother didn't indoctrinate me into any particular religious belief system but was open to me pursuing whatever I wanted. I think she felt a little torn -- she was brought up as a Catholic and wanted me to be exposed to the traditions of Catholicism, the church and the ritual, but didn't want me to be exposed to the nuns. And I'm actually grateful to her for that. One of my first experiences with religious beliefs involved my Catholic babysitter. She was telling me all about going to hell. How God punishes us and all that. One day my mother and I were walking past a church and I broke away from her -- ran inside the church and up to the alter and started pointing my finger at the crucifix, saying "You shouldn't punish little boys... that's not right. They don't know any better. That's not right that you do that." So from the start, I haven't had any problem asserting my view if I feel put upon or if I feel something is not in integrity.

When I was 5, we moved back to Phoenix where the rest of my family was and I lived there until the age of 21 (there were a few trips of 6 months here and there ... but I didn't really leave and start a new home until I was 21). That's when I left Phoenix and moved to Atlanta.

It seemed that every school I went to, I was put in the "gifted" program. However, I was really rebellious and would start out real strong, and then screw off. And then I actually ended up dropping out of high school. I got a GED, took a few semesters at community college and then went to massage school. For the last 14 years, I've been a massage therapist.

When we first moved back to the United States, we were a lower income household for the first year or two: on food stamps and government assistance. Then my mother got a job at a union -- working for the rights of undocumented workers in the fields. That didn't make a bunch of money either. But one of the things that the union wanted to do was to start providing health care. So, she took it upon herself to write the proposal and get funding for a rural health community clinic that, by the time of her death 25 years later, had gone from 1 clinic to 30 rural health clinics. Half a million underprivileged people that hadn't had access to health care were able to receive health care because of that. As time went by, I’d say we slowly climbed the social ladder, going from fairly poor and on food stamps as a small child, to moving into the big house by the time I left home. But I never got to experience the big house.

There was no sexual or physical abuse in my family. My mother didn't really even believe in spanking. I think I was spanked twice in my life. My mother was a bit analytical and kind of reserved which, I think, led to a certain amount of “not feeling loved” and craving attention as a small child. Being raised by a single mother, she would need to go to work and I wouldn't want her to go, so there was a conflict with that... you know.. "If she really loved me she would do this." -- But that’s from the perception of a 5 year old. It wasn't necessarily what was happening.

I started smoking pot when I was nine. My uncle (who was bi-polar and used marijuana medicinally) introduced me to it -- and I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed being with him. He was my favorite relative -- the first real male role model that was fully accepting, fully loving and fun to play with. That progressed until I started smoking pot regularly when I was 13. I also started doing other drugs and ended up in drug treatment and eventually junvenile jail for various drug offenses. I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 14 (in drug treatment). I got sober in AA when I was 16. I was sober for about 2 years and then started using drugs again until I was around 20 when I sobered up again. When I was 21 I got introduced to the Buddha Field and was drug and alcohol free during my involvement with that – until the last year or so.

Denomio: 2. The Pre-Buddha Field

2007-12-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

When I was around 20, my mother and I went out to Los Angeles to visit my cousin, Aurelius (who was in the Buddha Field). I hadn't seen him in a long time. Growing up, he was my version of an older brother. We would spend one weekend a month together, and pretty much grew up as brothers. He was the one that talked to me about the Buddha Field and talked to me about this person who could touch you and reveal an experience of God. At the time... that sounded intriguing. There were other members of my family who were into meditation and eastern religion. My uncle (Aurelius’ father) had a guru and was into eastern religion. And -- while I hadn't studied it myself -- I had an aunt who was into transcendental meditation. So the concept of enlightenment wasn’t new to me. But still, the idea of somebody who could reveal an experience was very appealing.

But also around that time, I was being pursued by a Hawaiian Kahuna (a healer in the Hawaiian tradition) Actually, Aurelius encouraged me to follow that path as well but it never quite seemed to work out -- I would go and do this or that... but either I couldn't find the place, or the money wasn't available... always something… so that just never manifested.

But then later -- when the BF left L.A. -- Aurelius was part of the group that was sent to Atlanta. But there was also a group of disciples who came to Phoenix (about 10 or so). So when Aurelius came out to visit me, he introduced me to some of them. And I was curious. I wanted something more. I was sober and looking for an experience of God. So pretty much right from the time I was introduced to people, I started becoming part of their small community there. We had weekly Satsang meetings and would spend time with each other. That was about the only "formal" thing going on at that point.

Around that time I met Guinevere. I fell in love within five minutes of meeting her. So Guinevere and I got involved but when we started dating, there was a little resistance because Guinevere didn't think it was “spiritual” and I didn't want to be "trapped in a relationship.” But within two weeks of spending time together, we were like, "OK, we're in a relationship" (or "hanging out" as it was called.) So we were in Phoenix for about 6 months and then there was a relocation. All of the BF people in Phoenix relocated -- half went to New Mexico (that's what we were told but I think they actually came to Austin) and the rest of us went to join the group in Atlanta. It was about a year and a half until those of us in Atlanta were invited to move to Austin. Austin was where I met Angelo for the first time, so I was around about 2 years before I even met him.

My first impression... you know, I remember the first bit of drama happening on the move to Austin. We had been told what day to arrive, but on the way we found out that a member of our group had a brother in Round Rock -- so it created a “situation.” Valerii had just joined the group as we were about to leave Atlanta and wanted to come to Austin with us, but when the Powers-That-Be found out she had a brother here, it was decided she should not come. But we were already on the road. (There was a fear that her brother might want to get involved with her life… which turned out to be a totally unfounded fear because he didn’t care at all.) But what that meant was that we had to break apart from Valerii. We told her we were going to San Antonio and so our first several days here we weren’t allowed to leave the house for fear we’d run into her somewhere in the city. That was one of the things that early-on was part of the drag of being in the Buddha Field. We were told to create this story that we were living in San Antonio, so I had to get a mailbox and a driver's license address there so I could tell my parents we weren’t actually living in Austin. And it wasn’t until I had been here a year or two that I could tell them we were moving up to Austin.

Anyway, we arrived in Austin and then were sequestered in our houses for a few days (for fear of running into Valerii in the health food store or somewhere) and then a few days later we went to our first group function: a Satsang where Angelo was sharing. I remember getting really high. I was really excited to meet all these other disciples and all these other people. And I really enjoyed the social-ness of meeting all of these new people who were of the same mindset. Instead of the six or eight people that I had been spending my time with... suddenly there were 100 of us. And it was intoxicating. And after that first Satsang, we started going to Satsang and class every week. But it was at least 6 months until I was allowed to go to the garden (at Angelo’s house) or have cleansing with him.

Denomio: 3. Joining the Austin Group

2007-12-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

I remember that I really wanted to communicate with Angelo. I was struggling with these feelings -- questioning if he was really my master. Remember that it was 2 years before I met him so I had feelings of “Well, I've never met him. He’s never told me that he was my master and I’ve never told him he was my guru... So how do I know?" Then, when I finally meet him in Satsang, there still isn't any direct communication. It’s not long before some of the other people (that had known him before) started going to the garden and I was put on the back list of people waiting to get cleansing with him or waiting to be allowed to go to the garden. My only way to communicate with him was to write him letters. It was frustrating... in part, because it reminded me of my father. When I was 8 or 9, I was in contact with my biological father but he wanted us to write him – and I didn’t like writing. I just wanted to be like, “OK, here we are. Are we going to hang out?” So this was reminiscent of that same childhood dynamic with my father. Also, Angelo’s accent was fairly thick so I didn’t know how much he understood of the English language. I remember asking people “How is his vocabulary? Can I use this word?” People chuckled at that… but he didn’t have the best grammar so how was I supposed to know?

I got to work with other people in the Buddha Field. I got a job working at Whole Foods and then I was a construction assistant with someone for a while… so I would go to work and then do the normal BF routine: class on Monday, Satsang on Thursday, movies on Friday... outings on Sundays…

The first several years in the group were very transformative. There was a lot of personal transformation. It was evident with everyone really. One of the ways that the Buddha Field likes to describe itself… somebody outside the group once described us as “the beautiful people” and everyone laughed at that... but we kind of liked it also and we adopted that idea as having a certain amount of truth to it. I met a lot of people who were transformed and a lot of people with a lot of gratitude for their lives. And we fed that within ourselves -- because a lot of us had been completely neurotic going in. So suddenly, there was a little bit of stillness and silence, and an experience of loving something beyond ourselves and that was transformative. And I think we were all fairly self-congratulatory about that. And we kind-of collectively made the decision that that was because we were “on to something” that nobody else on the planet had. Or, if anybody else had it, then it was very, very rare. It was a self-fulfilling hypnosis, but at the same time we WERE meditating, we WERE going into stillness, we WERE doing selfless service, and we WERE, as a group and individually, striving for something higher. And that is transformative – for us and anyone around us. Because we were searching. And most people had no clue.

I struggled with meditation all the way through. I’d occasionally be transported or get really blissed out, but for the most part, I didn’t enjoy the process of sitting down to meditate. It was very difficult for me to shut my brain down. There was certainly a tangible experience of Shakti -- of a vibration in my third eye -- but it was the strongest when I was in action... when I was walking through the grocery store and my third eye would start vibrating. At that time, I attributed that to Grace. I attributed it to “God connecting to me.” --- Although I remember playing with my third eye as a child. In detention, I would sometimes drop into a zone where I would feel this vibration and I didn't know what was causing it but I would enjoy it. Then it would start to disappear and I would be like, “No, no, wait… come back" But I didn't know what was happening... why it was there. I also remember putting my hand up next to my third eye (not knowing it was my third eye at the time) -- and feeling the vibration and going “WOW”. Also touching other people's third eye... actually I wouldn't touch them ... I would go right up next to it ... and some people could feel something and some people couldn't... like my mother couldn’t. So I've spent a lot of time being aware of that spot between my eyebrows, but it was hard for me to sit and formally meditate. Sometimes those two hour meditations felt like torture... especially… there were other people who loved it and they would be like, “Oh it's only two hours and you just have to surrender” but for me it was hellish. Sometimes I would want to run screaming out of the room and sometimes I would leave early..get up and walk out... So dynamic meditation (in service or walking around connecting to my third eye) was much easier than sitting and connecting. And I attributed that to Grace. (pause) Perhaps I thought Angelo was facilitating that for me, or helping me with that... but I never thought it was because he was there that it was happening. I didn’t think it was coming from him. But there was definitely an idea that it was through his Grace that it was happening. But what I thought it was… the analogy… the sun shines all over the planet but we happened to be in Palm Springs where it was really hot. Like Angelo was this magnifying glass that facilitated it in a stronger way than other people. So I did think it was about him, in part.

Once I read a book on Bhakti yoga and I told Guinevere that we were doing Bhakti yoga and that got back to Angelo. He really didn’t like that term. We weren’t doing any particular style of yoga, we were doing a modern synthesis. We were doing it all. In certain ways, we were. There was a devotional aspect, there was a selfless service aspect, as well as a meditation aspect.

Once I started receiving guidance, I used discrimination in following it. I generally did what I was guided to do -- but there was usually a bit of a fight or questioning with it. I had the idea that Angelo saw clearly and that if I wanted the rewards that were being offered that I needed to trust and to drop my mind and my ideas. My ideas were the things holding me back and if I’d just surrender... and sometimes that would be how I could get through it. I’d say “This doesn’t make sense, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe I'm being asked to do this -- not because it's the best thing ever -- but because I get to use it as an excuse to move beyond my conceptions and into something else."

I don't know that I ever thought I’d become enlightened but I thought I could lead a life filled with grace and divine perfection and that I wanted to be in the Tao... to be in the flow of that grace.

I did feel Angelo had special powers. There were multiple times that he gave Shakti (the act of touching the third eye) where I would feel some sort of electrical transmission and I witnessed that in those around me as well. There were stories that people would retell about him being psychic, or about his Sita powers, and there were little incidents. Like a couple of times at Barton Springs, and I’d go up to use the bathroom or something and maybe spend some time looking in the mirror and not come immediately back. Later, Angelo would mention something about the mirror and I’d be like “How did he see that I was checking myself out in the mirror?” Eventually, it became obvious that there aren't a whole lot of things up in that bathroom... But at the time… I didn’t see him like the Jesus thing of raising the dead, but I believed the anecdotal stories and by witnessing the transformative effect on people's lives… it seemed that there was this grace there. That he was more than your average human being. That he had powers that transcended space and time. What they were specifically... I wouldn't be able to pinpoint. But I believed that he had vision. He had told me when I first started coming around (in Phoenix) that he had a vision of me every day. Like he would be walking on his daily walk and my image would pop into his head and he told me that story two or three times...that for several weeks before he even met me, I’d pop into his consciousness. And that I had been his disciple in a previous lifetime. So, yes, I believed that he was perceiving things that I had no concept of.

Denomio: 4. Life in the Inner Circle

2007-12-11T22:45:00.000-08:00

During this period, I started coming into the “inner circle.” In doing daily service with Angelo, you get to see things – as far as him not doing things he guided others to do. I would see him not connecting before eating. His food would be put in front of him and he’d immediately start eating rather than sitting for a moment and connecting to meditation. I remember the first time I was ever really like, “Whoa, what the f.ck?” I was in his house (I had just started doing direct service for him) and they changed the position of the couches so Angelo walked by and bumped one of the corners of the couch and immediately started screaming at people. That they needed to bring the old couches back. That he couldn’t be bumped like this... were they trying to kill him? And I remember sitting there thinking, “You're enlightened... couldn't you just walk around the couch? And if you do get bumped... if you're enlightened... so what???” So that was one of the first times that I thought “That really doesn't seem like the actions of an enlightened being to me.” That he’s screaming at people for changing the couches. There weren't a whole lot of things that I thought were incongruous. There WERE things that I noticed as being odd but I just thought, “Well, he’s the master and he doesn’t need to do that.” That’s the rap. That he’s always in meditation so he doesn’t need to sit and formally connect. Later on I saw things that I thought were just not in integrity… it didn’t necessarily have to do with contradicting his own guidance. There’s a great Bob Dylan song that says “you don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows.” I’d see things and that just didn’t feel right to me -- and I don't need anybody to tell me what's right and wrong – some things just don’t seem in integrity. Toward the end of my time in the group I started to question more.... and started to point out the things didn't seem right.

I always resisted the concept of “doing it right.” And I always chaffed when things seemed hypocritical. A concrete example… not about Angelo... but another person in the inner circle. At one point, Angelo was receiving some bodywork that he liked and he wanted me and this other person to go get some training on it. I went first and it was a LOT of information. So when I got back, I was telling this other disciple that it was a lot of information and that he might, after 5 or 6 hours, have a cup of green tea to stimulate his brain so he could retain that last little bit of info. It’s not like I did a lot of caffeine. But this disciple looks at me and says, “You should never put anything into your body that the master wouldn't put into his body.” It was a reprimand from an older brother disciple and I just looked at him and was like, “All right... whatever.” I later found out that he was drinking a half a pot of coffee every day. That was the sort of thing that drove me nuts because I always tried to “express it like I experienced it.” And the idea that you just put on this show for people… it was one thing to hide things, it’s another to outright lie about it. Like sometimes, when there were new disciples around -- if I felt like I wasn't doing something that was in integrity then I might try to shield them from seeing it… or run away from them so they wouldn’t see me doing it… but I would never lie about it. I would never say “Oh no, that's a horrible thing to do... I’d never do that.” That hypocrisy was always something that really stuck in my craw.

There was guidance about which food we could eat and what movies we should watch.. but sometimes you wouldn't know what was expected or what was going to bring ridicule. Like I noticed that I watched a lot of TV, so one day I was in the room with Angelo and he asked what I had done the previous night and I told him that I read a book. I was feeling really good about having NOT watched TV and having read this book my mother sent me (“Angela’s Ashes” – a Pulitzer Prize winning book) And Angelo asked what it was about and then just ridiculed me for reading it… asking why I wanted to fill my head with that and why wasn’t I reading about Ramakrishna or Yogananda (the only things that were worthy) So there were times you didn't know what was expected or what was going to bring ridicule and then there were other times where you just got the feel for the group social consciousness of “This is how we are, this is what we do and these are the acceptable attitudes or concepts and these are not.” It was just apparent if you had any sort of social consciousness or awareness of group dynamics. It wasn’t really hard to see which way it was to fit in. But I personally always chaffed at that.

I remember one time, Guinevere (my girlfriend for the first 7 years in the Buddha Field) and I were in class, and somebody said, “Oh, I want to be in a relationship but I don't feel like I can.” Angelo immediately started ridiculing the idea of relationships and he asked if there was anybody in the room that liked being in a “relationship” and no one raised their hand. And I looked over at Guinevere and she looked at me and we both raised our hands... because we were in a relationship... if we didn't like being in a relationship we wouldn't be in one. It just seemed… it was a weird dynamic. I knew I was opening myself up for social ridicule from the group and that Angelo was about to rip us both... but I felt like, “You f.cking liars.” All the people in that room, all the people dating, and none of you like being in a relationship? Then why are you dating? And yes, Angelo ripped into us both and talked about how immature we were and how we were deluded and everything. But looking back, I’m glad I did it. Even though, I knew when I raised my hand that it would have consequences. That has been part of my discovery about the nature of my character. I don’t do well with being brow-beaten and I don't do well with trying to pretend that I'm something other than what I am. I guess I have enough of a sense of myself to say “No, this is what I believe.” It felt so shifty. There were times I would put up the fight because it felt too hypocritical not to, and other times when I would just toe the party line and other times when you just accepted what the party line was. It was all three.

Looking back... there were things I was required to participate in that I didn't really like doing... like lying to my parents on a regular basis about where I was and what I was doing. And coming up with all these stories. I understood the concept of why it needed to be done – Simone explained it to me once. He explained that if someone was going along in their life and suddenly they realize that what they really want is God and they lose interest in their religion or their career or they no longer want to have babies and 3.2 kids… their parents get freaked out by that and want to call Cult Awareness and that creates all sorts of secondary problems for Angelo and the group. Rather than do all that, it was easier to just lie about everything and create these stories because, even if you didn’t think your parents would do that… you never knew. Because there were all these other people that had thought it would never happen to them, and it had. So go ahead and spin tales about where you are and what you’re doing and why they can’t visit. My mother finally came out and visited me when she realized that I was never going to invite her out. One year she just said, “I’m coming to Austin. I’m going to be in San Antonio and then I’m coming up to Austin.” She just TOLD me rather than asking me because she realized I’d never invite her. So that was a real drag. Also, when I first started doing my service, I thought it was a real priviledge. I thought I was really fortunate and blessed. My service was being Angelo’s primary bodyworker. And I started to get cleansing with him and started going to the garden… And one day his body is hurting and I got a call to come in and work on him. And I worked on him and he liked it and I got blissed out and I thought I was climbing the ranks. But that was secondary. I got to be around him more. And have close contact with him outside of class or the other functions – contact that most people don’t get to have. So I started working on him once a month or so and going to the garden more. And on the days I was at the garden, he would usually call me into the house and so one day I asked if he wanted me to start coming every day. And he immediately said YES, like he had been waiting for me to make that suggestion. So, I started going to the garden every morning. And then after that he started occasionally wanting to have an adjustment after his ballet session or after he’d go work out… So it started creeping into a twice-a-day thing. At first it was a little like, “OK, fine.” But soon it became a heavy thing for me. He’s a hypochondriac. He perceived it as he “has all this energy coursing through his body” and he would have muscle twitches all throughout his body. His muscles would go into spasm and he was very sensitive. It was like The Princess and the Pea… the story of the princess who was on fourteen mattresses and can still feel the pea and was uncomfortable. Angelo would hurt himself regularly just from sleeping. But he was also obsessive compulsive in how he slept. Like there had to be three tissues under his pillow and then, “Oh no, that’s too much.” Or, “That’s putting pressure on my sacrum… here, let’s put this bandana on and take one of the tissues away.” And he’d sleep in that one position all night (because he couldn’t turn on his side and he couldn’t sleep on his belly.) Like the less he would move, the more he’d hurt himself. He thought he had all this energy coursing through his body and that’s why he’s so sensitive. I now think he’s in the early stage of Parkinson’s or some similar neurological disorder. He has this really shaky finger and he would stick out his hand and his hand would be trembling and he’s say, “Look! That’s all the Shakti coming through.” But I think it’s a neurological disturbance based on how he took care of his body. Like I saw a huge transformation… Angelo was very, very disciplined in how he took care of his body. Obsessively disciplined. In that he would do the same thing every day. He’d eat the same food every day. He would say, “This works” so let me have this over and over and over and over. And that’s not good for the body. He was getting worse and worse as far as not being able to do things and only being able to move in particular ways. But then this new bodywork came along, and he was open to trying new types of bodywork, so he started doing a bunch of new exercises and the transformation in his body was amazing. The other bodyworkers and I were in awe at how differently he was moving. But what happened was he went to a certain point and then he took it over… like he turned it into a routine so he did the same thing over and over instead of progressing on that evolution. So, now he had incorporated this new routine and it had helped. But it was an intense source of frustration to see how much his body had changed… and I’d say, “Let’s do some more of this… take it to the next level.” But he had stepped back into his routine. “This is what I do every day. This is my pattern.” And he stopped transforming. Maybe that’s indicative of what happened in his spiritual life. That was one of my deepest senses of frustration during that period. I was working on him every day and what he was doing was driving me nuts. I’d constantly be making little barbs (like in class) because it was just eating away at me. Because he’d have the same complaints day after day. And day after day he’d want the same treatment. Every day. And he’d say, “Did you do this muscle test? Did you do that one?” After a while, I just gave him what he wanted. I ran through the routine. I know that I need to do these seven muscle tests and if I just gave him what he wants he would be fine with that. But why are you still complaining about the pain in your side if you’re not going to do anything different? He just wanted me to do what he wanted me to do. The same thing we had done the day before. I don’t know how many times I said, “OK, let's do that exact same treatment that we've been doing for the last six months. Maybe this time it’s going to make it all better.” That was incredibly frustrating for me.

Denomio: 5. Bodywork, Bodywork, Bodywork

2007-12-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

Angelo is a man that has to have his routine and has to be in control. Once he decides that something is good, then he would do that day after day after day. He had a chair that he decided was good for him. All the other chairs hurt his back. And this chair he liked so he just sat in this chair and it contoured around him to the point where you’d look at it and you could see that it was warped so that one butt dent was higher than the other. He had been sitting in it in the exact same position for so long, it had completely molded itself and become distorted. We said, “Let’s get you a new chair.” But you couldn’t get him out of that chair. Because he was into his pattern. He wanted to go to the gym at the same time on the same day doing the exact same exercises every time. The new workout we started doing with him transformed his body because suddenly he started doing something new and it completely changed his movement patterns, but then those became his routine and he stopped changing because of it. Why was he so fixated on his routines? I don’t know.

Angelo had many different body workers working on his body. He was always more or less complaining about his body. At some points he would really complain that he was in a lot of physical pain and you could see it… that he was not moving well, or that he was wincing… But the complaining was constant. So different bodyworkers were brought in and if he found one he liked, he’d want it every day, all the time. I would come over every day and every night and give him an adjustment and then, on top of that, he’d see these other bodyworkers. At least once a week. Sometimes he’d see two different bodyworkers twice a week. So he was getting twenty to thirty hours of massage and bodywork, cranial sacral therapy… That’s what had happened with the chiropractic adjustment in LA. I wasn’t there in that period, but apparently he had been in pain and gotten a chiropractic adjustment and he liked it. So he had some disciples learn to do adjustments and then he was getting between five and fifteen chiropractic adjustments a day. I think he has some sort of neurological disorder. As far as all the shaking and spasms go. And he would get really intense muscle cramps. I’d watch his hands shake and how he moved. While there was a certain amount of fluidity, because he was a dancer, there was also a rigidness and inflexibility… but I think his fixation on his routine actually created more of a problem. It wasn’t a problem to get a chiropractic adjustment once or twice a week, but it became a problem when he got 5-15 adjustments each day. He had people around him and if his shoulder hurt, they’d adjust him. And he’d want the same things over and over again. I think that’s more a psychological thing. How he liked his routines so much. But that would be my frustration. Where he’s complaining about this exact same pain he’s been talking about every day for the last 6 months and he wants me to do the exact same treatment and then he’s complaining it’s not getting better. I’d say, “Let’s do something different! What’s the point of doing this again?” But it never got through to him. He wanted what he wanted and he liked what he liked. And he wanted it over and over and over.

In the mornings, I would give him an adjustment. I would go into his room and massage his calves while he was eating breakfast. So I got a lot of one-on-one time with him. And I did feel like he was fond of me. And I felt like he had a certain fondness or respect… that there were other beings that didn't absolutely kiss his ass that he liked... you couldn't NOT kiss his ass... you couldn't be so far out.. you HAD to kiss his ass to a certain extent for him to like you. But he also liked a certain amount of gumption. Again, that might have just been my own perception; but yeah, I thought he had a fondness for me that extended beyond the norm. I did get to see things that most people didn't get to: in his private atmosphere; while he speaking “privately” on the phone with people (they didn’t know I was in the room with him); in the mornings while he was eating breakfast, reading letters and making phone calls (that was when he would tend to a lot of Buddha Field matters).

Most people that were not in the inner circle didn't get to see how volatile he was because when we were in the class setting or in Satsang meetings, he definitely had a different persona. But when you were in the inner circle, in his bedroom or in his house, he was flying off the handle regularly. And often it was about all sorts of trivial things (like the couch incident). It was like being in a Mexican soap opera where he wanted to control what people were doing, what his disciples were doing, how they were thinking, how he was being perceived. And not just them, but all of their friends as well. He was very into controlling everything in his world around him. So when he perceived something as a threat or “not good,” it would be hours and hours and hours of drama at the house. People would gather to talk about this major problem. And often people would wonder why he saw it as a problem. And he would say, “Oh, you don’t see that this is going to happen… so why don’t you tell this story to this person…” Then someone else would chime in with the problems that doing THAT was going to create and we’d have hours of people coming up with different stories and perspectives of what we should do and how we should handle a “situation.” And many times it seemed so unnecessary. Artificially manufactured drama… like a Mexican soap opera. Most people didn’t get to see that. People got to see the wise-loving-compassionate-singing-songs-about-God Angelo. They didn’t get to see the person who was completely preoccupied with trying to control the outside world. Seeing threats all around that he needed to control or “take care of” before they became this big problem – and often, the best way to do that was to create a “story,” – and why not? After all, “truth is relative.” And it’s all to serve the highest good. And of course, only HE knew what the highest truth was. But what it really came down to, I think, was that he thought he really needed to be on top of controlling all the details around him. Of everybody around him. And that he knew best and could handle it. I'm not sure how to put it... One of the definitions of the narcissistic personality is thinking that you know best and that you know how to control all of these things, and he was really into trying to control EVERYTHING. And if something seemed to interfere with that he would get furious! Like, he would tell people to do certain things, “Go ahead and tell this person this story.” And then he’d call them the next day and ask if they had told them. And they’d say that they had and then they’d tell him what the other person had responded. And Angelo would ask what they said to that and when they told him, he’d scream, “What?!?! Why did you do that? You just f.cked all of this up! I told you to do this or that.” He was so into controlling every detail to the minutiae level and he wasn’t very good at it. So it created all sorts of drama that didn’t even need to be created.

At the time, it seemed a bit crazy. But then I would read the stories of other enlightened masters and it fit right in. I’d read the stories of Ramakrishna and think, “God, Ramakrishna seemed completely insane.” And I’d think, “Well, at least Angelo isn’t rolling around in the grass.” And I’d use those stories about other masters to justify that maybe this is what it is to be enlightened. That these people are in tune with the highest reality and it’s perceived by me as being insane. So maybe that’s part of this thing. We just kind of brushed it off as “that’s how he is” and maybe he has reason for that. Because people would tell stories about the crazy people in LA that were stalking Angelo and threatening to kill him and stuff… and you’d think maybe there was a reason for him to be paranoid. Later on, I started seeing that maybe it’s just his karma. That’s what he is manifesting. At the time though, I perceived it as him trying to protect himself from this energy out there. What I think he would say is, “I am the Christ and there is this AntiChrist energy and we are having to do this dance. I don’t want to do this dance. But I have to. Because this Anti-Christ energy is out there and we need to circumvent this.” Now I see that was part of what he was manifesting. We are all responsible for our own reality. He’d tell other people that. But he couldn’t see it in his own life… that he was manifesting crazy people or situations around himself. For example, I heard that story about when Lute found out about all the stuff going on and went into Angelo’s house and threw stuff around. Well, when I first heard it, I thought, “What an asshole that guy is.” Going in and busting up someone’s home and threatening to kill him and all that. But my second thought was, “That’s Angelo’s karma.” That’s what he always feared and now he has created it.

Denomio: 6. Brothers and Sisters

2007-12-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

There wasn't any sexual contact between me and Angelo other than when I first started going and seeing him in cleansing. He was asking me various questions ... at one point he had me undress.. and I stood there naked and turned around in front of him. But that was it. I think at the time I thought it was strange but the way I thought about it was that I was just getting naked in front of the guru and it was a way of looking to see if I was truly surrendered and open and naked (literally and figuratively) to him. I was only naked for about two minutes. I got up and took off my clothes and then turned around and sat down and he said I could put my clothes back on and I did. Nothing else sexual happened between us. But all of my psychological issues… week after week… involved women. It was really clear that I was not gay. There was the perception in the group -- that most straight guys were actually gay but they didn't know it. That “they hadn't given themselves permission to experience that” or that “they were suppressing it.” It came up in cleansing generally, and once or twice on an outing he had me kiss a guy – and it was just kind of an exercise to drop my mind. It didn’t really mean anything. I didn't feel like I was homophobic and at one point, I actually did make out with a man… just to see. Because the idea was proffered that if I was really in tune with my experience, that I would want this. So I thought, “Well, maybe…” I ended up making out with this guy and then I thought, “That didn’t make me horny at all.” I told Angelo about it and he didn’t push it. There were times when I felt he was encouraging it… I remember that he led me through a homo-erotic visual in cleansing where I had oral sex with a man. I wasn’t told that I had to be gay, but he said I probably was and it would be good if I was in touch with that, but if I wasn’t, then that was fine. But I was also providing a service for him already… he didn’t need me to be his lover cause I was already giving him four or five hours a day. But maybe if I had been more receptive to the idea, it would have been a different story. But this is all in retrospect. I just saw it as his predilection but at the time I was not aware of the sexual exploits with some of the other disciples. I never saw first-hand any direct sexual contact with any of his disciples. Later of course, after hearing the stories, I’d remember being in cleansing and I’d hear the TV turn on without any sound and I’d think it was odd. But I’d think he must be watching ballet videos (for choreography or something).

Actually, towards the end of my time in the group, I actually did have sex with a man once. I thought maybe the kissing thing didn’t do it… maybe it was the wrong man or circumstance so I did end up doing it. But it was much the same thing. Nothing to write home about. I didn’t need to do it again. Nothing wrong with it, but it didn’t do anything for me. But I did tell Angelo about it because I knew he’d be fascinated by it. I knew he still had that in his character and he was riveted. I knew he would be. But still, the reason I left the group was not because of any inappropriateness on that level. It was much later that all that stuff came out.

I hung out with a wide variety of people in the group. Whatever girl I was seeing at the time, the people I did my daily service with, the people I saw in the morning at the garden and then there were the people I did evening service with (the other bodyworkers) – some of them I was close to, others not so much. And different at different times. One person I felt really close to, but later, when I was leaving, I felt like he was trying to kill me. That was literally the feeling I got. When I was like, “This is not in integrity.” He would say, “I’ve experienced those sorts of thoughts before and you just have to surrender and if you get to the other side of those thoughts, there is so much beauty and so much love.” And I remember feeling as he was telling me that, that he was trying to kill me. In that he was asking me to go against something that I felt in my depths and telling me that it’s not right and that all I need to do is go into the void and that’s where I’d find fulfillment. But there were different people I felt close to at different times. One period where I felt close to Tiger and Mirra, one period where I felt close to Dharma… one period where I was close to some young nubile hotties… different people rotated in and out. But primarily I hung out with whoever I was dating. Mostly women. I think I hung out with more women than men.

Who was I inspired by? I don’t know that I was inspired by anybody, but there were those I had respect for. Like, I had a great amount of respect for Simone in that I knew what he was going through. He was in the inner circle as well and saw the insanity (that Angelo was in and creating) and even so, he was able to stay in love and still keep doing his service… able to put all that aside and keep going and keep surrendering. He used to be a news anchor and before that he used to make huge amounts of money as a TV producer. He has actual skills and talents and could go and do these other things and yet there he is, doing what this crazy person told him to do. I had respect for that. People that I felt were there with me in the trenches, yeah, there were people in that close five or eight people that were doing daily service with Angelo, spending hours a day with him, that I respected for what they were doing. I had respect for Guinevere. She was always fairly grounded and in a loving space. I loved listening to Ryker’s Satsang. I would actually get more blissed out listening to Ryker’s Satsang than I would to Angelo’s. It was often hard… when we started doing the weekly meetings… I really only wanted to go and listen to Ryker because there were other people that it would be difficult to keep my eyes open for two hours… where with Ryker… I would say I had respect for Ryker in that. I would go and listen to him and there would be something he’d say that would stick with me, that I could apply into my own consciousness.

There were a couple of people that I felt like I had serious conflicts with. And I’d work on them in cleansing but I didn’t feel like anything would ever be resolved. I mean, I’d drop it, but I never really got a satisfactory answer why certain people were never called out for their shit. Like, Quentin was someone that I felt kept f.cking people over. He f.cked me over. My story with him was that I was trading with him and he f.cked me over for some money. I forgave him and dropped it. I started interacting with him again and six months later, he f.cked me over again. And then I felt done with it. At one point he actually attacked me physically. I was like, “Why is this person still under this umbrella of protection? Why are people making excuses for him?” It was one of those “secrets” of the BF… like people should still go and see him and we don’t talk about the stuff he did. I didn’t understand that. Why not call a spade a spade? Not just with me. There was story after story with certain people. Why were we so concerned with image? We don’t talk about what Quentin did, we don’t talk about what Martina did or Malario f.cking people over financially. In other communities, that would be called out. People would say it was wrong and others would be warned not to get involved. So that was something I had serious conflict with. Angelo would say we had to have compassion and we don’t want to create more drama – but he just talked around the issue with certain people. I never really got that.

One of my favorite moments that I look back on, was when I started to go to a 12 step program again (towards the end of my time in the group.) I remember talking to Angelo about it and he had such scorn for the whole concept. And talking to Malario about the 9th step (where you go and make amends to all the people you have f.cked over) and Malario was like, “How could you get in touch with all those people?” He was flabbergasted that you would be able to do that. And I was just amazed that it was so beyond him. And then it occurred to me, that he had been doing that his whole life, to so many people. That’s why it seemed so daunting. That was very telling.

There wasn’t anything that friends or family could have done about my involvement in the group. They might have been able to put up a stink and create problems that would have forced me to separate from the group, but I think after I started working on Angelo’s body, he was hugely invested in me. I was providing this thing so I’m sure we would have created some huge elaborate lie so I could continue doing it. Mostly I thought that people that weren’t in the BF were spiritually dead. They didn’t have the kind of understanding that we had because we were the beautiful people. We were the people that were in this beam of grace. Mostly I saw my role for most people as just trying to share the light. And that was what was encouraged. The framework that we were given. We were in this special thing and most people are outside of it – completely asleep and unconscious to it – so we need to share that specialness with them if there is an opening. So there was a certain amount of proselytizing.

There was once that I almost left the group but didn’t. One morning when I went in to do my morning service, I don’t remember the exact circumstances – there was something I wanted to leave and go do.. and of course, Angelo didn’t want me leaving. But I was always really direct with him about what I was feeling or thinking and I had told him I wanted to go and he said, “Go! Go do it then!” and I just looked at him for a second and then said OK. And I got up and walked out. I went home and called a friend of mine outside the group. She didn’t answer right away but she called me back later that evening. I wanted to ask her if she could put me up if I left the ashram. This is about four or five years before I actually left. I called Martina too and talked to her about it, and she showed me how I was in my mind and I saw the ways I had created this thing. So I went later that afternoon back to the dance studio and I apologized to Angelo for being in this drama and thanked him for his patience with me. Then I resumed my daily service. By the time my friend called me that evening, I had settled back in. But that was the closest I ever came to leaving before I left the group. I had actually called someone and was prepared to walk that day.

When other people left, I thought they were deluded. I thought they were in their minds and that they weren’t seeing clearly. When Aurelius left, it felt like he was really manic. Nobody that I was really close to left other than Aurelius. I was not really good friends with anyone that left. So I was never involved in those kinds of games.

Denomio: 7. Even Zombies Have Opinions

2007-12-11T22:15:00.000-08:00

It wasn’t “politically correct” to have opinions of your own – that went counter to the group’s opinions. But I still had them and I wasn’t going to apologize for it:

Eating: You were supposed to think that eating mammals was bad. Angelo had this vision of what was best for our spiritual growth, and that was actually one of the linchpins before I left the group… at one point, I had started eating a little bit of red meat and I told him that I felt stronger and more vibrant when I eat some read meat. Angelo said it was obvious I was anemic and I need to start eating more beets and doing molasses and things to increase my iron content. We ended up doing a body analysis and it turned out I had about 500 times more iron in my body than I was supposed to have. It was one of those things, out of three or four, where we were told in the BF that Angelo sees clearly and we didn’t… that he has this vision. And I remember confronting him about that and told him, “You told me I needed to do this and you were quite clearly wrong because that’s the exact wrong thing to do.” And he said, “Well, I knew it was about iron.” (like he had this intuitive thing from the ethers that it was about iron) The only trouble was he told me the exact wrong thing to do about it. So, in my last year or two, I started completely disregarding what he said about nutrition. Because I found my own way with eating that worked a lot better for me than what the guidance was.

Marriage: Marriages were delusions. Maya. There is no person out there that is going to fulfill you and the idea of marriage is bourgeois and a hindrance to your enlightenment. Even more so with children. Having children make it so you could not concentrate on God so it enslaved you further into Maya. [ed. This may be different in the group currently. After the breakup there was a rumor that Angelo was officiating at marriage ceremonies for some of his disciples. Was that to keep people around him or did he change his mind? Perhaps that will become clear in future interviews.]

Parents: You could share love with them. Your role is to help them evolve. However, they are also a karmic web that you need to free yourself from and they can create havoc in the BF if you let them in too close. And that would distract you from your spiritual work if you are too involved with them. Just because they shot you out of them at some point didn’t mean they had anything to do with you.

Races: I got the distinct impression that he didn’t like the black culture. He didn’t like black music of any kind. He didn’t like black dance… unless it was Alvin Ailey and even that was just barely acceptable. One comment I remember from class is that he was talking about this woman and he said, “She’s really attractive even though she is black.” And everyone in the inner circle did a collective inhale and thought, “Oh no… don’t… that’s not the correct PC thing to say here.” So I felt like if there was a black person in front of him, the spiritual shadow of him would say we’re all souls… and this person is just another soul… but on a personality level, well, …I don’t think he would call someone a nigger… he wouldn’t say they can’t become enlightened… but he would say they have a certain vibrational energy that’s kind of low. Kind of base.

As far as sex and relationships go, Angelo gave the impression that it was base and something to be transcended. I remember he gave a talk one Christmas about how sex was just excitement. Excitement and release. And how it was such a low level of existence. It was OK if people were doing it. There was nothing wrong with it. But it was something to be transcended. And I had a lot of pressure when I first started doing my service with Angelo where he would ask me what I did the night before. And if I said I had sex, he would scold me. At one point he kicked me out of the room because he had been scolding me on a regular basis about having sex with Guinevere and I kept doing it. So one day he just kicked me out of his room in disgust. Later on, I thought perhaps this was his way of trying to break me from this hetero relationship in order that I could be moved more easily into a homosexual relationship. I’m basing that on listening to the experiences of other people and what happened with them. I’m ascribing motives to him that I don’t actually “know” he had. But I do know he was discouraging of it but when it became obvious I was not going to stop, he stopped giving me shit about it and for the next 10 years he didn’t say anything. Only during that first two year period where I felt like perhaps he was hoping I was going to “turn gay.”

Fundamentally, we were to believe that Angelo was the All in All. He was the highest guru on the planet. He was Krishna. Christ. And the members of the group… in the sea of ignorance that was humanity, these are the ones that really SEE. So much of what was considered “good” was based on what Angelo liked or disliked. Like with dance. Some forms of dance were considered beautiful, like ballet, and other forms… like tap dancing… were disgusting and low. However, Flamenco dancing, which was basically Spanish tap dancing, was this great art form. Seriously. We’d be going to these Flamenco performances, one after another and then we’d go to this composite city-wide dance festival and there would be tap dancing and he’d think it was so vile – but it was the same stuff… just with different music. That’s how it was with everything. Classical music was really beautiful and crooners from the 50’s were really beautiful but if you were going to listen to reggae or rap then it was low. Everything was completely based on his personal preferences. Same thing with your individual talents. If it was a talent that he valued, then you’d be encouraged in it. If it wasn’t, then it’s a waste of your time.

Denomio: 8. Toeing the Company Line

2007-12-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

I was in the group for 13 years and the last 2-3 years became more and more painful. More and more. Until it was just too much at the end. There were several things that facilitated my leaving. The thing about the food I mentioned – and my feelings that his guidance on that were just not right – and also I just felt (after having been around for years) that there were things that were just not in integrity. Here’s an example… I had a good friend outside the group that I make a connection with in my first year in Austin. She had always been my friend and we had never had any sort of sexual contact or anything, but Angelo always seemed kind of threatened by it. He didn’t like me hanging out with her or being friends with her (or anybody outside the group). And every now and then I’d mention her name and at one point he looked at me and said, “You know you really shouldn’t sleep with her because she has herpes.” And I remember looking at him and thinking, “Why would you just make something up like that?” And after I left I did actually have a little romantic thing with her for a few months and she didn’t have herpes. But the fact that he would just randomly make something up like that and pass it off as “truth” was not cool. He had told me that maybe a year before I left and I was so taken aback by it. Whatever. She actually ended up helping the group out with a couple of situations that were about to blow up. And Angelo even met with her and talked to her during that but he still didn’t like my associating with her. He asked me once why I was still in contact with her. I said, “Because I’ve never had an experience with her where I didn’t feel she was in integrity.” That was as close as I could say it. He knew what I meant. I knew what I meant. Mainly that I had a LOT of experiences with him that I didn’t feel were in integrity. But I couldn’t say that… challenging him directly was pointless because it wasn’t going to go anywhere. One of the things that irked me for years was that I would be in the massage room with him when he’d get messages about people. Updates on people that were not behaving the way he wanted them to behave. They were “on the fringe,” or “about to leave,” or “causing waves.” And he would talk about all the stuff that was going on in their hypnotherapy sessions… their cleansing sessions… with all of us there in the room. And I didn’t want to know all of that about those people. What their childhood situations were. I didn’t want to know that. But if someone wasn’t doing what he thought they should be, it was because of their psychological problems and he had a way of explaining about why their actions were not “in harmony” because of their psychological problems. At first, when he shares that stuff with you, you feel special that he’s trusting you with it… like you’re in the “in crowd” and get to hear all that stuff. But as time passed, I was like, “What about patient/client privilege? Why are you sharing this stuff than any other therapist would consider private? I don’t want to know this stuff.” It was just gossip. There was no delineation between what was happening in therapy and what was happening on the other end. Frolic would do that too. If Angelo wanted to know what was going on with someone that Frolic was seeing for cleansing… I don’t think Frolic volunteered it, but he certainly shared when it was asked about. And I had that same thing about, “What happened to privilege?” It just didn’t feel like it was in integrity.

If we were in class and the person was sitting in front of him, he might bring up their issues in order to show everyone that he was right about their psychology and to let people see things as he saw it. But that’s different if the person is right there and you’re trying to build some consensus… as opposed to them not being there and he’s just talking about all the ways this person is “in their mind.” To me, it felt like gossip. Like how is it my business that this person was molested when they were 8 and that’s why they act the way they do? It’s not my business. And it really stuck in my craw when he did that.

I also remember with Hinkley one night in class, Angelo asked him “Where were you last Thursday night?” Hinkley hadn’t gone to Satsang that night and he was stammering some non-answer. Angelo presented it like he just knew… like he was psychicly in tune with his disciples and he knew where they were were. Most of the people in the room (including Hinkley) seemed awed… but the truth of it was that Angelo had people that went to each meeting and wrote down the names of the people who went. So he knew who went and who didn’t. But it wasn’t mystical. But it was that thing of presenting himself as having mystical powers, that he knew what was happening, that didn’t feel like it was in integrity to me. Why did he feel he had to put on a show like that? That seemed so contrary to what we were doing.

I know of the Euripedes letter. I never read it. But I had my own experience of Euripedes for many years and I felt like… Listen, the BF attracted more than its fair share of psychologically unstable people. And in some ways the BF was helpful to those people but it also was very easy to use their instability to discredit them. To say, “That person is crazy,” you could look at them and agree that they were crazy… but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have some valid points. And from what I understand about the Euripedes letter, there were some things that were accurate in it. But at the time I just thought it was another disgruntled person blaming Angelo for all of his woes. And I still think that to some extent. People need to take responsibility for their lives. And the same people that thought Angelo was Superman/Santa Claus – that would do it all for them and make their lives better… now feel betrayed by him and cast him as Satan. At the end of the day, we’re all responsible for our own lives. At the time, I felt like Euripedes was always one of those people that blamed Angelo for the state of his life and never took responsibility, so it was easy for me to not care what the letter said. Because I already had him in that role.

When anyone left the group or wasn’t toeing the company line, they were cast as “in their mind” or “deluded.” And because Angelo knew all of their psychological foibles (that they had revealed to him in cleansing) he could use all the information to prove the were just following some old pattern. He could lay out all their choices and show you how they were choosing what they were choosing because of their psychological makeup. As far as I know, that still goes on. I know it happened to me. I saw it happen to many others. The minute someone challenges something, Angelo turns to “Don’t you see that you think this way because when you were five your dad wasn’t around, and when you were 7 your brother hit you and that’s the only reason you think this. If you stop and connect to God, you’ll see things the way I do.” Everything you tried to express was simply dismissed as deluded because it all goes back to something from the way your child saw something -- that has no basis on the current situation. As I was leaving and expressing my reservations about the things that I thought were not in integrity, I knew that was happening to me. I knew that’s how it was being portrayed.

Denomio: 9. Leaving Was Hard At First

2007-12-11T22:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Denomio: 10. It Got Easier

2007-12-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

My life since leaving has been good and bad, up and down, but it has been beautiful. I spent 7 months in Hawaii and it was perhaps the most beautiful time in my life. Day after day of the most amazing beautiful experiences. Part of the programming of the Buddha Field that I received was that if you leave, your life will fall apart. If you go against guidance, life will turn to shit. And part of me was afraid of that happening. But as I went through it, it was so much better than the last few years in the group that, even if it was going to eventually go to shit, I didn’t care because it was so much better. It was actually good! And I was enjoying my life again.

It’s funny… I had always wanted to go to Hawaii. It was the one place on the planet I had always wanted to go. And my mother, years before, was going with my stepbrother and stepfather and she had frequent flier miles… so I was invited to go for free. And I really wanted to go. But Angelo said no. That it was a desire. It was “a trip.” And we had a big fight about it… but this is an example of the fear of leaving thing… he said, “I see into the future and this will create a lot of karma if you get on that flight. It’s going to be bad news for you because I have this vision…” He would do that quite often about trips or leaving the group. “If you leave, you’re going to devolve… You’re going to fall back into that morass… “ Which didn’t happen… but it was a fear that I had to push through. That idea. But when staying in the group became more painful than the idea of what terrible thing could happen… it didn’t matter. Because whatever happened it was better than living this life that was completely outside of integrity.

I would say that I transformed in a positive way from the person that I was when I entered the Buddha Field. Had I not been in the group, I don’t think I would have had the evolution that I did. And I’m grateful for that. For a while, there was a bitterness that was under the surface (after I left)… when I looked back at the things that I perceived as lacking integrity… when the stories started surfacing… It made me angry and I wanted to protect people and defend them from this f.cked up stuff. It definitely raised my ire. One of the things that helped was talking to my cousin (who brought me into the group but had left several years earlier). He talked about how the first 4 or 5 years, he had a huge amount of transformation and that he was really grateful to the group because it provided him a shelter. He didn’t have the discipline to meditate without the group setting and it allowed him to be taken care of and supported and loved and do all the things that it did. And I stopped and took a look at my own experience and saw that I really did transform quite a bit. I grew up psychologically. I experienced love, service, devotion, getting out of myself…. And for that first several years it was really beautiful and then I stagnated. That’s when it became painful. So, looking from the outside in, while I can’t say that I advocate it for anybody… like if anybody was starting to get involved with the group now I would share my own experience with them and say, “Go into this with open eyes.” Then, if they’re still into it… maybe they’re in that transformative stage… because I did transform. I did get something out of it.

But had I known when I first met him what I know now, well, that would transform who I was then so I wouldn’t have had to go through it. If I knew then, what I know now. If I could go back in time and talk to that person, then I wouldn’t have to go through the things I’ve gone through because I would have already had the experience… but I needed the experience to transform into the person I am today. So, no, I would not go through that again because some of it was incredibly painful. And if I could have understood at 21 what I understand now… it wouldn’t have been necessary. Ultimately, I think I had a better life as a result of learning how to meditate and doing this discipline and doing service -- but it came with a price. If there were a way of telling myself that and not going through it, then yeah, I would have skipped it. But I had to have those lessons to get to the point where I am now.

I still have healing to do relative to my experience so I’d say that I’m at an 8.5 on the healing spectrum. When I was in Hawaii, to be honest, I rarely thought of the Buddha Field. Except when people started calling and telling me how the group was deteriorating. There was a point of Angelo doing whatever he could to bring people back into the fold and when it became apparent to him that you weren’t coming back, then you were pushed or got kicked out. It was a bit of a f.ck you because I had seen it happen to other people and I knew it was happening to me. I knew Angelo was probably calling Guienevere and Teresavila when I left and telling them to encourage me to stay in Hawaii. “Hawaii is a really beautiful place for you to be.” And then after I came back to Austin I was talking to someone still in the BF about planning on moving back to Hawaii and suddenly they’re saying, “It’s so expensive… why would you want to move out there” (Because Angelo has relocated there.) I knew what was happening. I had seen it too many times. So, while it didn’t feel good, that was the nature of the BF, so I wasn’t offended like, “How can this be done to me?” It’s done to everybody. That’s the nature of it.

Denomio: 11. I Wasn't Around for the Break-Up

2007-12-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

When the big Buddha Field breakup happened, I was in Hawaii. And not thinking about the group much. But hearing about the breakup… what it did for me was show me how much hidden anger I still had. Latent anger that I hadn't really addressed. When I left, there was some anger, but I never knew all the many things that came out later. It just showed me that I still had some issues that I hadn’t looked at because I had just walked away from the group and “moved on.” So when I got back to Austin, in some ways, I felt more angry than I had when I left. Because before I had just left with the attitude, “This isn’t really working for me. I’m out of here.” But now it was more,”Wow, there are some really f.cked up things going on.” And I AM responsible for my own experience. But the feeling of being made to feel bad or f.cked up or in my mind when I left… suddenly I felt revulsion that I had been put through the wringer over this thing that was not in integrity.

Since I left the BF I’ve pursued multiple disciplines. I read many, many books and studied many different disciplines. I always thought it was funny that the group was identified as the Buddha Field and yet nobody ever studies the Buddha. I had the chance to study a lot of spiritual disciplines since I left and I feel much more integrated than I was 3 years ago. I look back on my view of the world in the group and it seems very limited. Microscopic.

The things I treasure about my time in the group were the experience of all-encompassing love at the points where I was just completely in love with everyone and everything; the experience of dropping the small “I”, dropping the limited self in order to serve something that I perceived as higher was just beautiful; the search; the intention of serving the highest (whether or not the highest was there, the intent was there so that was beautiful and transformative -- both to me and those around me). And that’s an element I was talking about earlier… people that weren’t even in the Buddha Field would say, “Wow, thank you so much. You’ve transformed me so much.” Not just to me. To others in the group too. People would say, “There’s just something about you, thank you so much. What is it?” And I think, in large part, that’s because the BF was a collection of people that wanted something higher. Who truly wanted to serve… God or Love or the Universe. Whatever the label. And that was beautiful. And I think the most important thing I got to do, was tap into the experience of love more and really start loving myself more. That was healing. I didn’t have to stay in the same self-destructive patterns that were, on some level, based on hating myself and hating my life… so I got to start having a sense of love for something beyond myself – which allowed me to love myself. And that allowed me to transform my experience of ME – to not be in a sado-masochistic relationship with myself anymore.

Angelo really was a dynamic personality. I mean, I was in awe of how well he could relate to so many different people. He could be an artist, an intellectual, he was psychologically hip, he was well-traveled. He could expound on spiritual truths… like we would see a movie together and he would just start rattling off things that had never occurred to you when you were watching it. And you’d think, “Wow, that’s a whole other level of depth than I was experiencing watching that movie.” And he was really disciplined in what he believed. He was really devoted to what he thought and believed and was 100% dedicated to that. Which helped to bring that out in me. He could touch you on your third eye and you would quiver. There was a tangible excuse to believe in the power of Love and God and Consciousness. But suddenly that was one of the things as I was leaving… someone came up to me and said, “But don’t you see how he transformed you and he gave you all this love, and that all the love you’re experiencing is through him?” And that was how I saw it at the time. But I realize he was just the excuse to allow me to experience that love that was already there. He said, “Look, here I am in this thing… you can be here too… come through me.” Perhaps at the time I didn’t believe it was possible to experience that. But maybe if I was under his cloak, I could ride his coattails and it would be possible for me too. So it was the excuse to experience that in myself.

Shakti was certainly evidence of special powers. Or stories from people where he seemed to be tapping into the ethers. Like when he knew something and you thought there was no possible way he could have know it. And in some ways, I think that’s possible. That he was tapped into something. Just because at some level he was deluded doesn’t mean he wasn’t tapped into something that we’re all connected to. Guinevere told me a story about how he knew the name of her cousin or something in cleansing. Or he would know subplots of stories that nobody else knew and so, because those details come up every once in a while, we wanted to think he was tapped into this thing. All the time. Maybe. I believe he believes in his own experience. He reaches out to the Divine and because he reaches out, maybe sometimes the Divine answers and he does get those inspirational things. There were definitely times that felt like that, where he plucked something out of the ethers. But I think now, looking back, that it was the random happenstance of life. It was just something that happened… and then got turned into, “I SEE. Always.” And I just don’t think that was the case.

There was a sense of pride being in the group. I was proud of helping his body. I was proud of helping humanity to evolve. I was proud of being part of this elite community that GOT it… when there were so many other people in delusion. There was an energy around him that facilitated things… the garden at his house was this little oasis that was unbelievably beautiful. And the performance center, while I didn’t participate in the building of it (other than the occasional afternoon) was kind of magical. None of that would have happened without the energy that surrounded him. So, all of that was a sense of pride (while I was in the group).

Denomio: 12. Less Pleasing Memories

2007-12-11T21:25:00.001-08:00

The less pleasing memories about the group were the constant lies, the unending Mexican soap operas, the lack of patient/client privilege, the “beautiful people” arrogance. Things like that.

What I am sorry about were the times when I reported back to Angelo on people. I didn’t do it a lot, but there were times when people were on the edge and, in my head it was framed as “You’re not telling on this person. The master is here to help this person if you let him know what’s going on. So by telling him what’s going on, I’ll be able to help them.” So, betray their confidence. Go ahead and pretend or lie… or whatever it takes. But, as I said, I wasn’t close to a whole lot of people who left, so I wasn’t frequently cast in that role. But I regret being part of it at all. And I regret that I didn’t leave sooner. The last couple of years were really painful and I wish I had come to these conclusions sooner and not wasted all that time.

Angelo had lots of ideas about grooming. He gave me makeup to wear for a while… for the bags under my eyes. I still follow some of his grooming guidance… like I trim my armpit hair. But Angelo placed a lot of emphasis on physical beauty. He showed me a picture of himself a few years ago and asked, “How old would you say that person is?” and I looked at it and said, “Mid-50s.” He was VERY offended. He started yelling and saying, “WHAT? How can you say that?!?” I said, I knew he started seeing Ryker 20 years ago and he was a college age student and I was doing the math in my head and then he relaxed and said, “Oh, you were using logistics.” It was very important to him that he be perceived as beautiful. I remember one day I was cleaning out his bathroom stuff and he just had so many cosmetics and false eyelashes and stuff. And at that point I hadn’t seen his beauty routine so I asked, “Do you want me to throw this stuff out?” Of course not. I was pretty new and actually shocked that he had so many cosmetics. The way I justified it in my head was because he was a performer on stage sometimes and maybe he used it on stage. I didn’t know that every day he did the whole cosmetic thing.

There was absolutely lying in the group, to those outside the group and those within the group. It was part and parcel of the group that we “handled” people. I remember getting really offended toward the end because… there was a girl that was just beginning to come around and I wanted to spend some time with her. There was going to be a party and I was going to it, but then Angelo had Guinevere call and un-invite me. Angelo didn’t want me hanging around this girl,.. probably for good reason… but I was so pissed off because he had Guinevere call and say that “it’s a small house and the guest list got out of control and there were only supposed to be a few people coming,” so I was uninvited. Which, I was like, “OK.” But then Guinevere couldn’t handle her part in that. She felt bad that she had done it and called me and told me that it was Angelo behind it but that it was for my own good. She was trying to portray it as a loving thing from Angelo but I felt so angry at being “handled.” I felt like, “You’re doing this to ME? I don’t need to be f.cking handled! I’ve helped you do this stuff before and you’re trying to do it to ME now? What is wrong with you?” But it was obvious. He wanted to control every detail of everybody’s life. Who was sleeping with who and where you go at night and how long you meditate… and in order to facilitate that… whatever lie was needed to secure his vision of what was best… didn’t matter… that’s just what “needed to happen.”

The lies I was particularly struck by were that there was no hit man coming after Moretti. And some things it’s hard to tell if it was a lie or just something I didn’t know was happening. Like all the sex Angelo was having. He portrayed sex as this thing to be transcended, but then to discover that he was having sex regularly with people. That he was having people give him fellatio during cleansing on a regular basis… that rocked my world. But probably the biggest lie was that Angelo didn’t have a guru. After all that crying he would do over his master. I remember being so touched by his story about his guru and how choked up he got about it. And the stories about what he went through and that he gave up his career in Hollywood to receive the Knowing… that he was up for this major role the next day but then he found out that there was a Knowing Session and that he walked away from it so he could go and receive the Knowing. And he never even HAD a guru. Still, he WAS a good actor. All that crying for Christ’s sake. But when I heard about that, it really turned my stomach.

The basic thing is that truth was not considered a virtue because it was relative. So there were all these lies constantly. But those lies… wow… those were just to manipulate us. Those were the ones I was like, “Wow, he really f.cking lied.” I was never really part of all that. I didn’t know. I mean, I lied. We all did. The small lies. The lies to protect. I lied to my parents quite a bit. But there’s nothing to clear up at this point.

Denomio: 13. Brainwashing and Manipulation

2007-12-11T21:25:00.000-08:00

When I first started in the group, I had this idea of this Divine God-man. And I wanted to get closer to him. And I did experience many things that were beautiful as a result of being around. It gave me the excuse to experience those things within myself. And at first there was this spiritual warrior idea of “Just serve. Drop your mind. It doesn’t matter what you want because there is this other higher thing happening.” And there is a certain amount of beauty that takes place in that. In dropping your desires. But after a while… after years it wears. And the façade starts coming off -- about this perfect man and his serene experience. I guess that’s what changed for me. Time changed. There is this passage in The Laughing Jesus that talks about desire. If we only are in desire, then we’re going to suffer because life is never going to be perfect. But at the same time, we can’t stop desiring because desire is what changes the life dream. Like, “I’m not making enough money” is a desire to make more money. Or even the desire to go to the bathroom. Or eat. The problem isn’t the desire. It’s ONLY desiring. I feel like I got a valuable lesson about the nature of desire -- even if it was only half of the truth.

Ah, the brainwashing question… I think… well, you can’t rape the willing. I think I accepted a certain amount of programming that was done. Programming that could happen only because I was open to it. But brainwashed? To say the word brainwashing seems to imply a lack of responsibility and while I’m not saying that I was completely responsible for it… it was at least 50% my responsibility for participating. If you want to use the word brainwashing, then I was complicit in 50% of my own brainwashing. No one could do anything to me that I wasn’t making myself available to.

I did bring a couple of girls to Satsang. My experience with that was that what was looked for was an openness to follow whatever was being shared. Are they going to toe the party line and be open to what Angelo shares with them? I didn’t bring any men to the group but it seemed that there was different criteria for them. In some parts it had to do with how good-looking they were. There were a couple of guys that Angelo just saw a picture of… I remember one guy in particular… Angelo was very interested in him. He said he had a “soul communion” with that being and was hyper-interested in the contact and relations continuing with him. He would repeatedly refer to him and ask about anyone that communicated with him – all based on that picture. The guy never actually came to the group. But I think it was a different standard for really attractive men – versus non-attractive men or women. And when this whole breakup went down, I reached out to the girls I had been close to that were still a part of the group… because I felt a bit responsible. Some of them would talk to me, but some would give the zombie response, “No, everything is beautiful… everything is perfect… it’s only love here.” And what are you going to do with that? You know, at this point, if someone just wants to keep their eyes closed, then OK.

Looking back, it’s hard to tell what were manipulations. It can seem like everything was. If something was working, Angelo wouldn’t want it changing. Whatever would keep me doing my service in an uninterrupted fashion. When my relationship with Guinevere ended, Angelo said it was bad and I was creating karma but then time passed and I kept doing my service and it became accepted. And when I broke up with Maddalena, the same thing… he was upset and wanted me to stay with her. And actually, I went a little nuts after that. It pressed all my psychological buttons. I had gone out with women that weren’t really interested in me… and that was one thing… but I had never been in a relationship where I wanted it to continue and the woman didn’t. It just brought out all my four-year-old psychology. I started smoking and hanging out with the “wrong crowd” and Angelo wanted to make sure I was in a stable frame of mind so I could keep doing my service for him. So he kind of started throwing girls my way. He would mention someone that would be “good for me” – one I remember that I wasn’t interested in and he said, “Well she’s just like Guinevere and you were with her for several years.” He said, “You can pretend anything.” Anyway, the next day she called me and asked me out. Of course, she denied that Angelo put her up to it. Oh! And for a while Angelo was suggesting that I date Star. So she and I were hanging out for a while and it was kind of a weird scene because I’m sure he told her to hang out with me… and she was dating Ryker at the time. And I asked her, “Isn’t this going to create tension with Ryker?” And she said, “Oh no, our relationship isn’t like that.” And I took that to mean that they weren’t having sex. So I felt like I had this green light to approach her. And then later, Star clarified that she was involved with Ryker but that Angelo kept pushing her to be with me. I told Angelo they were a couple but he didn’t think that was an issue because I was a better “fit” for her, so he was actively trying to get me to date her. I stopped calling her after she made it clear she was involved with Ryker and wanted to stay with him. I relayed that to Angelo but he said it wasn’t true and that I should keep pursuing it. There was always stuff like that going on.

It was hard to earn a living because I was doing service for Angelo in the morning and the afternoon. So trying to make a living in-between was difficult. Basically, it was presented as, “Find a way. This is your spiritual work. This is the most important thing in your life. It’s your sadhana.” So I did feel supported in that I knew he would do whatever he needed to in order for me to continue doing that service. There was a lot of frustration too because occasionally I’d be allowed to go out of town for training, but it had to be something he really liked – like if he had seen a therapist that did a certain thing, then he might say, “Go off and study that.”

Angelo’s sex life was always in the shadows. I never saw any direct evidence of it. I mean, you would wonder. You would hear allusions to him having slept with disciples in the past – but was that something that only used to happen? There was no way of knowing. When the group started, Angelo wasn’t claiming to be a master. So then it wouldn’t surprise me if he was still having sex. Actually Angelo told us that he was the Grand Marshall at a gay parade in West Hollywood or something like that. But he never mentioned anything about… oh, he did say that before Aurelius (my cousin) left, he offered himself to Angelo. Like, “Do you want to have sex with me?” Angelo said no but he thought it was sweet of him to ask because it was a way to offer yourself completely to the master. But even during that conversation, he never let on that he was doing that with anybody else. That he, himself, would ever do that. I never asked Aurelius about that but it wouldn’t surprise me. We talked before about how it wasn’t required to be gay in the BF, but it was certainly encouraged.

Denomio: 14. Don't Demystify the Master

2007-12-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

Cleansing was different than other kinds of therapies I’ve had. My understanding of the purpose of cleansing was that we were resolving the patterns that were locked in our psychology from early childhood (and sometimes from prior lives) by dropping into a hypnotic state and redoing the events. But basically, real therapy involves a lot of listening. Cleansing felt more like Angelo guiding you to the conclusion he thought was the answer. Other therapies didn’t seem like they were trying to convince you of what your actions should be, or what you should feel, or what you should do. I probably had cleansing once a month for two years with Angelo. I also saw Frolic for cleansing for a couple of years. And I guess it was similar, only Frolic seemed more like a hypnotist where he would actually guide you… 10… going down the stairs… 9… deeper relaxed… He would guide you into it. Where Angelo didn’t seem to think that was necessary. He’d say, “We’re going down the steps, 10,9,8,…” and you were supposed to just be there. And Frolic again was not quite so trying to guide you to a specific outcome. There was less of a, “Do you see this?” or “Do you see that?” He seemed more receptive than guiding.

Angelo certainly wanted people to be as dependent on him as possible. To view him as their all-in-all. As the key to their happiness and liberation. And I did to a certain extent. But it wasn’t because he was playing the role of my therapist. He was playing the role of my guru. That was his job description as far as most people were concerned. He was the key to liberation and we should worship and be devoted to him. And the psychology part of it was just because he was a hip, modern master so we were also getting that along with our spiritual work.

I was in the room with Angelo when he would get reports on people. All sorts of reports, on everyone, all the time. If there was any thought that someone wasn’t toeing the company line then it’s a cause for concern and should be reported for Angelo, so he could do his work behind the scenes and save them. There were lists… all kind of lists… who went to Satsang, who didn’t, where they went… but you had to be in one of the inner circles to know about them. I just stumbled on it and when I did I was sworn to secrecy – because that was one of the things I heard him say a number of times… “Don’t demystify the master.”

There were a couple of different “inner circles.” There were the people that lived in the house with him. They were probably the innermost inner circle. But right outside that, there was me, Malario, Xena, Simone (although he later lived there as well) and Tiger. And then there was a layer of people that were going on the daily outings and basically had an all-access ticket. I could go to the gym or on an outing. I might not participate in something all the time but if I wanted to, I had carte-blanche. And then there were the “Ma’s”, that seemed to be a part of an inner group but in a different way: Verthlessa, Mirra, No-One, Hisminia.

Denomio: 15. Special Needs & Body Limits

2007-12-11T20:45:00.000-08:00

He had “special needs” for his body but I felt like… OK, he’s the master and therefore whatever he said, went. So things would just get more and more absurd. Like, He didn’t sit down to take a poop. He actually squatted over the toilet and pooped over the toilet without actually sitting down. I believe it was because he thought the seat hurt his body. So he would get this idea that something hurt and come up with some absurd work-around, and then everybody would just support him in that. And it would just get weirder and weirder. Like the tissues he would lick and put over his nose so he wouldn’t get dust in his nose when he was reading (from turning the pages of the book), or the 3 tissues that had to be under his pillow at night (because 2 created a strain on his lower back and sacrum) and then all the muscle testing. That was one that drove me crazy. All the muscle testing. I don’t miss that. Whenever anything was wrong, he’d want to do muscle testing. Let’s say he had a sniffle, he’d want to do muscle testing. Is it a virus? Is it this? Is it that? And then we’d get some answer. And then if he still had it the next day, he’d want to muscle test again and we’d get a different answer. But he was still convinced. I was never able to convey to him that if you get six different answers, what good does it do? Why not just flip a coin and get the answer that way? But he wouldn’t have it. It’s like he was invested in this role of being in communion with divine guidance or something and to abandon the muscle testing would be to abandon this direct line he had. I don’t know what was going through his head because it didn’t make sense. The testing was never consistent. My all-time favorite incident with this was when Malario and I were doing a muscle test about something and I stuck out my arm to be the surrogate (because we did so much muscle testing that Angelo couldn’t be the test subject all the time so someone would take his place as a “surrogate”). So Malario starts doing this muscle test… yes, no, yes… no… yes, yes, yes… no.. .and then we’d been doing this for 30 seconds or something and I looked up and asked what information he was getting and he said, “Oh, I thought you were asking the questions.” So we were doing this muscle testing and getting these definite answers but neither of us were asking a question. I laughed and laughed. Angelo didn’t think it was that funny.

I believe Angelo really did have actual physical limitations, but I think they were brought on by how he took care of his body. With the nervous system, the less you move, the less you CAN move. So he’d say, “Oh, I can’t do this or that” and then he’d stop doing it. And I think by doing that, he was creating this manifestation in his body that just progressively he was not really fluid in a lot of ways. For a while, he started doing Z-Health and his body started transforming. He started getting so much more motion and started doing shorter bodywork sessions and his body was really radically changing. Then he just codified it. He went into his routine with it, rather than allowing it to continue to evolve. He turned everything into a routine and then it stopped progressing.

Denomio: 16. Angelo & Mastery

2007-12-11T19:45:00.000-08:00

Angelo wasn’t all bad. He was bright and funny and could be very caring and compassionate, but he was also completely preoccupied with his ideas about how things should be. If only the world would do as he said, then everything would be OK. That was the big thing with him. I think he really believed that all the things that were going wrong were because people weren’t in tune with what he wanted. And if people would just do what he wanted in the way that he told them to do it, then all would be well. As a result, he’d end up really feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Like he would sometimes feel overwhelmed by all of the demands on him but he, in fact, created it. He wanted to be in control of all the details of everything but then he would feel exasperated when someone brought something to him. I really confronted him on that once. I had a car that I wanted to sell to someone that had just wrecked her car and I brought it up during a bodywork session. I just said, “I need to talk to you about this.” And he pouted and made this big sigh. And looked at me like I was imposing on him. And I told him, “I really resent that I’m being made to feel like I’m imposing this on you when I’m perfectly capable of making a rational financial decision on my own… and the only reason I’m bringing it up to you is because you want me to. And now you’re complaining about it.” That happened often. Regularly. He would feel put-upon, but it was all through his own manifestation.

There are certain people that I don’t really like or care for, but I don’t really feel like I have anything to apologize to them about. I can’t think of any person in the group that I owe amends to. I had some regrets about my mother and about lying to her and stuff. But I feel like over the course of time, I resolved all of that. By the time she died, we were on good terms and there weren’t any lingering wishes that I had done things differently. Perhaps 8 or 10 years ago, it would have been a different story. But by the end, I was clear with everybody. When I was in Hawaii, I’d find myself a few times in a mental argument with Angelo or Simone. You know how you leave the present moment and start arguing with this other person (that isn’t really there) to justify what you’re doing? I’d have to stop myself from doing that. That’s not being in the moment. Having this imaginary conversation with this imaginary person off in the future. So right after I left, there was that desire to justify myself to people that were still in the group. But that was because of all those years of indoctrination. At this point though, I feel pretty clear about what I’m doing. I don’t have those internal feelings that I have to defend myself against the ideas of those still in the group. It’s funny that for years it was the people that were leaving that were “deluded” but now that most of the group has left, there is a shift in perception so that the ones that are still with him are “deluded.” So it’s good to be on the right side again.

What is a master? I think there are people who have a deeper, more blissful experience… a more harmonious relationship to the universe than others. And that those people can help bring others along into that understanding. But it’s not particularly miraculous. Just like if you’re around an angry person, chances are you’re going to get angry. Or if you’re around someone that’s laughing all the time. Energetics rub off on each other. So if you’re around someone that’s more blissful, then that’s going to be provoked in you. But that doesn’t mean they are perfect. And I really think it’s a foolish idea to think there is an end to the journey. I no longer believe in enlightenment – that one day you’ll get to the end of the ride and you’ll be free of the wheel of karma and in the circle of life, death will stop. That there is this end, this destination point, where you just get to hang out for all eternity. In heaven. Heaven’s a bad idea. There is no beginning and no end to the ride. There is always more light, more joy. And I don’t think there is an end to it.

I think Angelo did experience some spiritual planes that I probably still haven’t reached or experienced. And there were times he was able to provoke that or be the excuse to bring it out in individuals. But his failing, was that he turned himself into that. He didn’t encourage others to be true to their own experience and what they felt/thought, or their own knowing-ness. Instead, he thought it much more important that people followed what he thought. A true master would want people to come to their own experience and not stop at his finger. Angelo used to tell that story, but he didn’t live it. The story of the Buddha talking to a disciple and pointing at the moon. The disciple said, “It’s your finger.” And the Buddha said, “No, it’s the moon.” Disciples can easily make that mistake. That it’s about the finger and not the moon. And, rather than leading people to their own experience, Angelo let them think it was his finger. “It’s about where I’M pointing and what I’M saying… and if you aren’t doing this, then you’re in delusion.”

For me, it comes down to a question of integrity. I love that Bob Dillon line, “You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows.” We might be fooled at first, but if you’re around long enough and have your eyes open, and what you’re really reaching for is integrity within yourself, then you can sense that with someone else. Ultimately, you don’t know what’s going on inside someone else’s head. I only have my perception of it. And that can be a childish defense, “How dare you judge me? You don’t know what my experience is.” But it’s also true. You don’t know that about a bum on the street either. How do you know that bum isn’t enlightened? I don’t know that. So how can I know it about Angelo?

Often, What You See Is Your Choice

2007-12-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people find their savior in the most unusual of places. But really, if you look for something, you will probably find it -- whether it is actually there or not.

But don't get upset. It's not the real Jesus.

The Planet Boggart

2007-11-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

Clay sent me another note about some realizations he has had since his time in the group. Some of you might find it helpful in your own healing process.

In Harry Potter there is a chapter about ‘The Boggart in the wardrobe’. The Boggart is a magical creature which takes on what a person fears the most. For one student it was Professor Snape and another it was a Dementor. To counter the Boggart the student first had to realize that they were creating what they were seeing and then shout the spell ‘Riddikulus’ (ri-di-KYOO-lus) while pointing their wand at the creature.

It is my experience that we are powerful creators. We are consciousness. Our world is consciousness. We shape our reality into what we perceive both individually and co-creatively as a group. Source takes on whatever form we choose. As a result God can become whatever we perceive God to be. The reality we create will therefore appear to confirm our view of God.

In the ‘Buddha Field’ I accepted as fact a very particular idea of Source. In this case the view of reality was:
I am trapped on the wheel of karma and am here to transcend the world of duality to become enlightened. In order to do so I must destroy the ego which is in direct opposition to my divinity and I require a spiritual master to succeed.
For thousands of years many have agreed to this view of reality which has seemingly brought about an outer reflection in creation which appears to validate it in the same way the many different religions have their own views of God and can prove it. As a result many believe their view to be exclusively correct. The ‘Boggart in the wardrobe’ obliges and takes on whatever shape we give it and then we think that what we perceive is the only reality and the ‘Truth’ of the matter! I have discovered that the moment I take this path I have created division. In the act of thinking I have found the ultimate ‘Truth’ I end up creating the very separation I am attempting to heal! In my case this was compounded by the nature of the belief system I accepted as reality. As long as I believed I was stuck on a wheel of karma and had to overcome my ego to be free, my belief in my plight would create and shape a reality of perpetual separation.

When I left the community it took a while for me to dismantle the belief structure I had taken on as ‘Truth’. Since I have begun to take back my power, I am realizing that I am a powerful creator… we all are. Since my reality is my creation I am ultimately responsible for every aspect of my life. Am I going to react as a victim to my own creation or am I going to take full conscious responsibility for it? This has offered challenges. I have spent a lifetime responding to what appears to be, rather than truly acknowledging I am creating the very things I am responding to! One thing has become clear. Once I take responsibility I am no longer a victim to my own unconscious creation. I can now consciously create my reality into an outer expression of my hearts desire.

Consciousness is fluid, dynamic and expansive. It can exist in an infinite variety of expressions, many of which appear to contradict each other. In my reality none are right or wrong. When I begin to believe I have it figured out it is time to pull out my magic wand and shout ‘Riddikulus’. It is only in my heart I can rest in the infinite fluidity of God.