Those of us who signed up for the Egypt trip had a conference call with Vishnu a few weeks later. I was in Argentina and had to make this call in the middle of the night. He told us the trip would cost $15,000 each. I was stunned, and my stomach sank.
They are using us, I thought.
He continued talking. The first $5,000 would cover the trip costs, and $10,000 would be the “empowerment fee,” which went directly into Lakshmi’s bank account.
“Money is energy,” Vishnu said. I guess $10,000 was equivalent to the amount of energy with which Lakshmi would “empower” us.
A little voice inside my mind told me it was time to stop, that I had gotten myself in above my head.
But I pushed it aside. I had lived life my way for thirty-three years, and it was simply not working for me. I was so soul-sick. I was so lost. I had to find something new. I needed a radical change. And this was it. I was ready to jump. I wanted to go.
I had to go.
By the time I returned to California from Argentina, my investments in the stock market had increased exactly $15,000. I saw it as a sign. I got a cashier’s check for the full amount and handed it in with my tuition the following month.
Vishnu came up to me before the event and said, “I want to shake your hand.” He looked me in the eyes. “You are the first student to pay in full, and you are a new student. You have some serious power,” he said.
I loved being singled out, being special. As the nerdy weird kid growing up, the kid who could barely get her mother’s attention, I craved this recognition more than anything. Each time they gave it to me, I felt that sad little girl inside of me finally feel worthy, finally feel good enough, finally feel approved of.
What I did not realize is that by paying in full, I had singled myself out as wealthy.
I had always been ashamed of my money, ashamed that I came from an affluent family and did not have to struggle the way so much of the rest of the world did. It always felt unfair to me, as if I didn’t deserve it. And so I hid it from people. I worked minimum-wage jobs and drove ratty old junker cars. I lived in tiny studio apartments and dressed modestly. I secretly gave a lot of money to charities and always gave money to homeless people, trying to make up for the fact that I had more than so many others. Suddenly, and for the first time in my adult life, I was blipping on somebody’s radar as wealthy. Naïve and trusting, I had no idea what I had just done.
Chapter 4 Rage
Gary and I not only lost our father when we were fifteen, we lost our way of life as well. Our mother fell apart; she could hardly function. She sold the boat and fired Dave and Jeanne. She withdrew into alcohol and prescription medication. She had been trained from a young age that a woman’s purpose in life is to find a man and become the perfect wife. Without that identity, she had no idea how to face the world. She did not go to therapy, and we did not talk about my father’s death.
While married to my father, she had kept her addictions under control. I rarely saw her inebriated. However, she always had wild mood swings. She acted as though she hated me much of the time. She glared at me. She ignored me. When I entered a room, she often turned her back to me, too busy to listen to anything I had to say. If I tried to approach her, she snapped at me, “Not now, Renee.” She made it obvious that she was happier when I was not around. When Gary and I fought or argued, she always blamed me. If I got extra attention from my father, she got jealous.
My father, when he was not traveling for work, made up for the neglect I got from my mother. He’d defend me, saying, “You’re always siding with Gary. You never even listen to Renee’s side of the story.” He would always stop working when I walked into his home office. He would smile and motion me to his lap, hug me and look into my eyes and tell me how much he loved me. He would ask me about my day and was always willing to listen to the long, convoluted stories of a child. If my mother happened to walk in, the color would drain from her face and she would back out of the room quickly.
It felt to me as if my mother never really wanted me. My maternal grandmother told me when I was six years old that my mother didn’t feed me when I was an infant and a toddler. My Nana had to sneak food to me, slip slices of wrapped American cheese under my bedroom door. I don’t know if that is true. She had dementia so it probably wasn’t. But I do know my mother clearly adored my brother and clearly detested me. When Gary walked into a room, her eyes would light up; when I did, she scowled. This is not lost on a young child.
I spent my childhood trying to figure out what it was I did or did not do to upset her so much. Was I really that unlovable? Did me just being me turn her into a monster? An already incredibly sensitive child, I became even more sensitive. Maybe if I could learn to read her body language and her energy, I thought, I could figure out the patterns. Of course, her mood swings had nothing to do with me, but I didn’t realize that as a child. I just learned to believe that I was unlikeable and unlovable and difficult to be around.
Sometimes, especially if my father suddenly appeared, she would catch herself and then overcorrect, telling me I was beautiful and perfect in a sweet, syrupy voice. At other rare times, when she seemed truly happy, she’d hug and love and encourage me.
She taught me proper etiquette and how to be a lady. She encouraged me to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it, saying, “Your body will tell you what to eat and how much.” I am grateful for this because I seem to be one of the only women I know who does not have some sort of obsession with calories. She always encouraged me to dance, and she always told me my dancing was beautiful. I cherished these moments with her. Something about my dancing opened her heart. But these moments would never last, causing me to feel even worse when she went back to her regular neglect or nitpicking.
“Goddammit, Renee! Close your legs! What the hell is wrong with you—doing that in front of your brother?”
It was a summer day, nineteen months after my father’s death, and my mother was screaming at me from the kitchen doorway of a small villa we had rented in the Bahamas. I had danced since I was five, and ballet was my life. I was hoping to get accepted into a major ballet school when I graduated high school the following year. I wasn’t as flexible as the other dancers, so I worked on my flexibility daily. The living room floor was the only space large enough to stretch fully. I was off to the side, practically hidden behind the sofa, while my brother and his friend, Teague, watched television. I was not scantily clad, with body parts hanging out; I had on long pants and a baggy boy’s T-shirt. Still, my mother had decided I was trying to seduce my brother and his friend. Her anger and the absurdity of her comments hit me like a punch to the stomach. I was stunned, humiliated. I felt sick. I felt as if she had stripped me naked and spanked me in front of my brother and his friend.
“Get in the kitchen and do the dishes!” she screamed.
“Leave her alone,” my brother said. “We made the mess; we will clean it up.”
“It’s a woman’s job!” my mother replied. “Renee, get in the kitchen and clean up that mess!”
Another time, she was hosting a Christmas party in her Colorado condo. She’d had way too much to drink, was slurring her words and tripping over furniture, and her wig was sliding off her head (she always wore wigs because she hated to style her own hair). I quietly pulled her aside, into her bedroom, and whispered, “Mom, you have had too much to drink. Please switch to water.”
She screamed, “Goddammit, Renee! What the hell is wrong with you? How dare you tell me what to do?”
The party screeched to a halt. Everyone stopped talking and stared at us through the open door.
My brother, from across the living room, shouted, “Mom! You are drunk! Stop drinking now!”
All the anger melted out of her body. She looked at him with so much love in her eyes, put down her drink and said, “Gary, you are always looking out for me. Thank you, Honey.”
This was life for me with my father gone.
My mother was angry and ne
eded someone to take it out on. That someone was always me. Emotionally abusive tirades like this taught me to doubt myself. They taught me to constantly wonder whether I was being inappropriate. They taught me to tiptoe around the house on eggshells. Her behavior made me want to hide even more, made me more insecure. Everything I did somehow made her angry.
I have blocked out a lot of the pain of my childhood and seem to have mostly happy memories remaining, but very few of these contain my mother. Over the years, I absorbed the message that I was never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough, never strong enough, never . . . enough. And I’m not going to lie: it sucked.
The summer after my father’s death, I was in the Denver airport with my mother. We were returning from my ballet camp. Suddenly, I couldn’t find her. I ran to our departing gate; she wasn’t there. I ran back to our arrival gate; she wasn’t there. I called for her in the bathrooms; she wasn’t there. Then I heard my name over the loudspeaker.
“Renee Linnell, paging Renee Linnell. Please meet your mother near gate 34. Renee Linnell, paging Renee Linnell . . .”
I ran to gate 34, but I didn’t see her. I turned around, scanning the terminal. My mother was slumped over in a large chair. Her wig was sliding off her head. Her pants were gone. She had squeezed into my white shorts—easily ten sizes too small for her—and passed out. I ran to her.
“Mom!” I yelled.
She raised her head, her eyes dull. She was wasted. “I peed my pants,” she slurred. “I had your shorts in my purse and had to put them on.” She held her head up, crossed her legs, and tried to look refined.
Oh my God, I was horrified. I was a teenager. How was I supposed to get my drunken half-naked mother on a plane? I started to cry.
“Don’t cry,” she slurred. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not, Mom,” I replied. “It’s not okay. You have a drinking problem.”
“Goddammit, Renee, I do not!” Her face contorted with anger. “You are the one with the problem!” She pointed at me as spit flew out of her mouth and rage brewed in her eyes.
With my father dead, and my mother incapacitated by grief and substance abuse, I spiraled into the dark. Sure, I had decided that we all reincarnate and that loved ones constantly find each other in other lives. Sure, I had chosen a belief system that helped me cope with my father’s death and filled me with joy. But absolutely no one else in my life believed in anything magical or mystical or spiritual. I had no one to talk to. The only other living relatives I was close to were my godparents, and immediately after my father’s death, my mother shoved them out of our lives, telling Gary and me that our godfather had stolen half of our father’s estate. I know my mother tried, in her way, to hold it together for my brother and me, but she never suggested we get therapy and she spent most of her time stumbling around the house, barefoot, angry, and irritated, struggling through a hangover.
So, for the last two and a half years of high school, my brother and I were basically on our own. He and I grew apart. He had never been really close to our father because our dad had always been too hard on him, trying to turn him into a man while Gary was still only a little boy. He rebelled from our Catholic upbringing and chose atheism. He believed that we live, we die, and it’s over. We never spoke about our father’s death.
Over the course of a few months I went from a shy, quiet, nerdy good girl to a raging, angry insurgent, most of it directed at my mother. I did everything I could to not be the “lady” she was hoping I would be. I dressed in all black: I wore black fishnet stockings, black combat boots, and black bullet-studded bustiers. I cut up my driver’s license and made a fake ID. With that, I could get into almost every bar around. My mother was barely parenting me, so I was free to do as I pleased.
One night, in the summer of 1989, just before my senior year in high school, I asked my mother if I could go to Costa Rica. Gary had just returned from a surf trip there with his friends and I wanted to go. She was getting ready for a date; she was a beautiful woman, stunning really, and men were lining up to take her out now that she was widowed.
“Sure, Honey,” she slurred, drunkenly.
I hurried to my room to pack as my mother left on her date. I loaded my surfboard and a small bag into my car and ran back into the house to put a Post-It on the refrigerator, Went to Costa Rica, back in a week or ten days. We didn’t have cell phones then; my mother couldn’t contact me. I was free.
I landed in Costa Rica at midnight and hitched a ride to Jaco Beach with a bus full of German tourists. I spent a week on the beach learning to surf. I met wonderful people and hitchhiked around the country with some girls I met, surfing and flirting with boys as much as possible. I returned home changed.
That trip ignited a spark within me. It expanded my world. Suddenly, I realized there was so much more out there besides high school and ballet and my sad lonely mother who seemed locked in a life of despair.
I thought, Travelers, true travelers, are all the same. All unbound, free, liquid, formless, open. Ready to let life carry them where it will. Choosing freedom over security. Willing to be uncomfortable, willing to have no idea what the next moment will bring. They simply surf the flow of life.
I wondered if maybe they held the answers I was seeking. After that trip, I sat in my history class, staring up at the world map on the wall, planning my trips: Africa, Asia, South America, Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific, Europe.
My wanderlust had been born.
Chapter 5 Vishnu
In early January, a little more than a month after I submitted my Egypt payment, I received an e-mail from Lakshmi’s team asking if I could be available the next day for a call. I was on vacation in Colorado. My heart stopped. Yes! Of course I could be available to take a call from Lakshmi. I e-mailed back a window of time for the following night.
My cell phone rang—a private number. It was Vishnu. He told me to “please hold” while Lakshmi got on the line. I held my breath. This was the first time I had ever spoken to her on the phone. I could feel the light flowing through the plastic device in my hand. I felt like I was floating. Again, I was being held in a womb of love and light, by the hands of God. And this was just a phone call.
Lakshmi told me I had been doing a great job with the linens and the flowers and the audio and the chair. She said she could tell I was practicing my meditation daily. She said she was very impressed with how quickly I had jumped into computer programming and that I was ready to take on more responsibility. She asked if I would like to accept the task of planning her events.
I was stunned. “Yes!” I exclaimed.
This, she explained, would entail selecting venues for the monthly meetings, negotiating prices, placing banquet event orders, and managing the volunteers. She gave me a list of hotels with which to begin and her contacts at each. From this point on, I would be dealing with Vishnu. She gave me his cell number and e-mail address. She also gave me hers.
When I hung up the phone, I cried tears of joy. I had been given personal access to both of them. I had been trusted with this information. I was definitely a huge step closer to becoming Enlightened.
Until this point in life, my professional careers had been: massage therapist, bikini and surf model, personal trainer for about a day, and Argentine tango dancer; with brief stints as a booze-cruise ticket salesperson, a barista, and a cliff-diver in Hawaii. I had never had a corporate job, and the idea of it intimidated me. I didn’t believe I was capable. Plus, I had the added pressure of wanting to do things perfectly for Lakshmi.
My first call to a hotel was nerve-wracking. I felt like a child playing grown-up. However, I rapidly established relationships with the event mangers at the hotels, and I learned quickly how to find the perfect venue and negotiate huge discounts. I was able to get us into the nicest hotels in town at a third of the price. I loved the challenge of my new job and didn’t mind it taking a lot of my time.
There was no pay, of course (it was selfless service to
the guru), but I didn’t care. I still taught dance on the side and had some inheritance money. The months rolled on. I was so happy. I loved all the changes I was making. I loved my new sangha (sangha is a group of people who meditate together). I loved believing I was on my way to becoming an Enlightened Master. And for the first time in my life, I felt as if I had a purpose. For the first time in a very long time, I was truly happy.
In the meantime, Lakshmi began to teach us ways to conserve our energy. One method was inaccessibility. According to her, if we were inaccessible, people could not pull on us with their minds, which would leave us free to meditate better and to be less influenced by others. For example, we should make our home phone numbers private and only have people call our cells, because if they call our land lines they have direct energetic access into our homes. We should get post office boxes so nobody knew where we lived. We should not reveal our birthdates (our day of power). We should not have people inside our homes, and if we did, we should rearrange our furniture so visitors could not access our homes in their minds once they had left. We should not give gifts that lasted (people would think of us any time they looked at the gift), and we should accept only ephemeral gifts ourselves. And under no circumstances should we ever be photographed; people would “hit us with their attention” every time they looked at the photo. We should avoid social media and remove every photo and nonprofessional trace of ourselves from the Internet.
She had us read the Carlos Castaneda books and explained that, by changing our living habits, we could increase our personal power. With increased personal power, we could make more money and have more influence in the world. We could get much more accomplished, and we could reach higher states of mind in meditation. It all felt very covert, very James Bond. Suddenly, our new adventure became that much more thrilling. We, like Carlos Castaneda following his Teacher, were on our way to becoming “men and women of power.”
The Burn Zone Page 5