The Burn Zone

by Renee Linnell

  Shiva had told Lakshmi to stop meditating—the only thing in the world she loved as much as Vishnu. He told her it made her “too open” and allowed “the Dark Beings to mess with her mind.” Since her break from teaching had not helped, he thought maybe a break from meditating would. So Lakshmi sat outside on her patio at sunset each day and simply watched the colors change. Vishnu, in his effort to be exactly like Lakshmi, insisted on doing the same.

  I followed him out to the patio. Vishnu sat in half-lotus with his eyes closed. Lakshmi stared at the trees. I was ignored.

  This was the anniversary of my father’s death. I was used to spending it at home, cooking for all of my closest friends. I sat next to them on the patio and silently cried. Now I hated them both.

  Once the sun set, we went inside, and I quietly excused myself, saying I was tired, and drove to my hotel. I cried all night in my hotel. I begged God and my father for guidance. No one was supposed to know I was in Arizona; I couldn’t even call Lisa. The “family” and the rings and my being consort were all a huge fucking secret that was starting to kill me slowly.

  The next morning, I took as long as possible to get up and get ready. I was supposed to be at the house by noon, but I was also supposed to do all the Thanksgiving shopping by myself before I got there, before I cooked for the two of them. In the grocery store parking lot I had a horrible thought about Lakshmi that bubbled up through my mind and out of my mouth. I mumbled it under my breath: I hate you, you fat hag.

  It has to be the occult, I thought. I could never think that about her. Just then, my phone rang. It was Lakshmi. She told me to hurry up.

  “I have a few more things to buy,” I told her. “I will need to go to Albertsons to get them.”

  “I can’t eat food from Albertsons,” she said.

  “But my recipe calls for a few ingredients I can’t get at Whole Foods,” I said.

  “Renee, it’s not all about you,” she spat bitterly. It was the first time she had ever been outright mean to me, the first time I felt hate in our interaction. I put the phone back in my purse and got into my car and sat in the parking lot and cried some more. Then I told myself I was walking “The Warrior Path,” that it was the hardest path there is, because you do not shut yourself in an ashram and act saintly, you live in the world and act saintly. So I pulled myself together and filled my heart with love and put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot . . . back on my mission.

  I arrived at the house, unloaded the bags by myself, and began cooking. Vishnu sat on his ass watching TV. (We were instructed in Lakshmi’s events to never watch TV because it linked us into the mind states of every other human watching TV.) Lakshmi stayed in her room. I thought of my dead parents and imagined them there with me. I thought of my dead Godmother and about how much she loved to cook. In fact, I was using her and my mother’s recipes. Thoughts of them warmed my heart and lifted my spirits. I thought of Sri Ramakrishna washing latrines with his hair and realized this was so much easier. I can do this, I thought to myself and continued cooking.

  Then Lakshmi came out of her room. She walked into the kitchen, opened her arms wide, drew me in for a long hug, and told me she loved me. The light was back; I could feel it flowing out of her. We giggled and laughed, and she helped me finish preparing the meal.

  As the afternoon progressed, Vishnu’s mood worsened. When we sat for dinner he didn’t speak. He slammed plates around and jabbed at his food; like an insolent child. Suddenly, he stood up, left the table, and stormed out of the room. Lakshmi and I looked at each other and simultaneously sighed with relief. His mood had been so heavy. With him gone, we began enjoying ourselves. Giggling and chatting. Eating away.

  “I need a man in my life,” she blurted out. “I feel much better when that part of my life is taken care of.”

  I smiled, not knowing what else to do. She had spent time in almost every one of her seminars telling women that our loneliness and desire for a partner is what impedes our journey to attain Enlightenment. She had told us over and over to get good at being alone.

  “I’m not very good at relationships,” I said, to fill the silence. “I think I’m better on my own.” I didn’t know what else to say. Again, it hit me how much she loved Vishnu, he loved me, and I loved her. I wished she could see me as the solution to her loneliness, as her support. I had a sudden thought that God had sent me to her, to be her companion, to be a similar soul craving Enlightenment, but that she could not see it, because I was in the wrong form, because she insisted that love and support and companionship come in the form of a man, of a lover. And not just any man, she only wanted it from Vishnu.

  It was the same way my mother couldn’t be appeased with love from me, how she wanted it only from my deceased father. Utterly unable to see and accept the love that was waiting to pour into her from other sources.

  As I was cleaning up the kitchen, Lakshmi offered me a tour of the house. She took me from room to room, and I noticed the house was full. It was as if they had kept everything they had ever owned. The garage was full of boxes and crates and shelves piled with old crap. Vishnu’s room looked like a little boy’s room. He still had his college baseball cap and a college sweatshirt and old photos. His furniture was old. His bed was old, with an old bedspread on it. Their house was in total disarray. I felt deflated, betrayed. I felt lied to and manipulated, duped. I thought of my Armani jacket and my baby bracelets and the beautiful photo of me surfing going up in flames.

  The more time I spent with them and the closer I got, the more I noticed they practiced very little of what they taught. All of my belongings were gone. All of my friends were gone. All of the activities that made me me were gone. And I was sleeping with a man I could not stand. I was utterly lost. I could not go back to the life I used to live, and yet continuing with Vishnu and Lakshmi suddenly seemed outrageously wrong.

  Could I trust my instincts? Or was it the occult messing with me? Could I trust Lakshmi, or did she hate me because of Vishnu? Could I trust Vishnu, or was he just using me for companionship and sex? I was so confused, I honestly did not know.

  Chapter 16 The Decision

  Kate and I were sitting side by side on her balcony the week after I returned from Arizona, watching the sky turn crimson over a calm blue ocean. Kate had left our meditation group shortly after we all returned from Australia. She was trying to talk me into doing the same. She thought it was a cult. She was worried about me. She said there was too much mind control. She said it was dangerous. I thought she was too skeptical. I thought she lacked faith. I thought she was too locked in her mind to follow her heart. I figured she just didn’t yearn for Enlightenment the way I did. Yes, I was doubting them, too, but it came in flashes. Like a light going on and off. I was faithful, I was following these guides—Lakshmi and Vishnu—and then, with a sudden flash of clarity, I could see I was going the wrong way, that they were leading me dangerously astray.

  But I had lived life my way for thirty-five years, and it was not working for me. I was still lost. I was still soul-sick. I still could not figure out why I had so much sadness inside, and I felt like I had to find my purpose if I wanted to stay on this earth. I also saw myself getting older and couldn’t bear the idea of being in my fifties and finding joy only in surfing and dancing and men. What would happen if I got sick? What would happen when I got really old? I had to learn to be content inside my own mind. I couldn’t keep running from party to party and man to man and job to job in order to distract myself. I had to try something different. I simply had to. I had so much doubt, especially the more I got to know Vishnu, the more I got to see how he lived, yet I believed in the occult, and I believed I had a huge ego, and I saw the light coming out of Lakshmi, so I believed the problem was with me. Lakshmi had told us the path would be hard, that we would want to quit. Every time I had that flash of clarity and wanted to quit, I rethought it. I couldn’t turn around and go back to life the way I had lived it before. I had to keep going forward. I
had to keep trying.

  “You don’t understand,” I told Kate. “All I care about is Enlightenment. I would give up my limbs to be free from human states of attention and to spread more light and love in this dark world.”

  Kate looked at me, her brow furrowed.

  “And,” I continued, “if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just write a book about the five years I spent in a cult.”

  “Okay,” Kate said. “I’ll keep working so that, if you end up crazy and homeless, you can come live on my couch.”

  We laughed. I looked at the sunset. She looked at me looking at the sunset. I knew she thought I was losing my mind.

  Kate’s opinion was clear: Get the fuck out ASAP. I went home that night and gave it more thought. If I wanted to win a gold medal at the Olympics, I would hire the best coach I could find, and I would do everything she told me to do. Everything. I wouldn’t pick and choose which directions I wanted to follow and which ones I did not. This was the same. If I thought Lakshmi was Enlightened, then I had to commit; I couldn’t pick and choose. I had to do everything she told me to. And if she told me to listen to Vishnu, I had to listen to Vishnu.

  I had seen Lakshmi’s flaws. I had seen her as just a damaged, confused woman, but when she was on stage in front of us, she flooded the room with gold light. I could see it! I could feel it! I saw her turn into Jesus when she spoke about Jesus.

  “Do not confuse the teachings of Jesus Christ with Christianity,” she would say. “Jesus’ teachings were about love and acceptance. He told his students to get outside in nature, out of the churches, and to find God through meditation and within their own hearts. He taught that we all have direct access to God, that we do not need intermediaries, and that we are all perfect from birth.” And then she would go on to explain passages in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus in the most magical and magnificent way. She told us about the Pistis Sophia, which mentions Jesus turning rooms gold when he meditated. The way I felt in those events was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

  It has to be the Occult, I thought, as an explanation for all the times she behaved badly in my presence. I decided to go allin, to do everything they told me to. I was going to stop arguing with Vishnu; even if it killed me, I was going to look up to him as my guru. Vishnu told me to stop dancing. He told me to not go out to eat with male friends. He told me to surf less. I did it all. As I made these changes, I got more depressed, but I believed Lakshmi when she said I was more reluctant to change than anyone else in the sangha. So each time I felt the urge to run, I told myself it was just my ego. I told myself it was the occult trying to push me off the path. I hated serving Vishnu and doing all his errands and putting up with his narcissism, but I kept doing it. I kept doing all of it.

  One day, Vishnu called me from a furniture store. “I’m buying a new bed,” he said, all excited. “What should I get?”

  I was in his garage, sorting through old files. One of my jobs was to prepare his house each time he flew in. I had to fill the refrigerator with groceries, open all the windows, buy fresh flowers, make sure all the sheets and towels were clean, and today he had added filing away all the remaining old cards and questions from students—years worth of them.

  After a few moments of silence, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “I think Lakshmi’s bipolar,” I blurted out. “And I feel like neither of you practices what you preach.” I finally said it. Damn! I had just decided I was going all-in. But I couldn’t stop myself. “I thought being Enlightened meant that you were free from human mind states, yet Lakshmi seems like she’s in hell. She’s obsessed with you, and she can’t get over you. I thought tantra meant you live in the world while your mind is the ashram. Yet you don’t want me to dance or surf or go out to eat with friends. I’m really upset and really confused.”

  He told me to go for a surf and come back to the house afterward, that we had to talk.

  He greeted me at the front door with flowers. “Lakshmi just struggles with the idea of us together,” he said. “And she gets hit with a lot of dark energy. The dark forces are using our relationship to really hammer on Lakshmi.”

  “Then why don’t we stop?” I asked. “I don’t understand why we don’t just stop.”

  “Because it is not right,” he said. “You are supposed to be my consort.” I hated that word. I hated the idea of being anyone’s consort. I was the family slave. I was the servant. And at times like this I felt like the family concubine, as well. I told him so, and he got on his knees again. He grabbed my legs and looked up at me. “I love you,” he said. “I love you so much. We can figure this out.”

  We had one event left that year, and then I’d have a break from all of it for Christmas. Or so I thought, until Vishnu told me I would be spending Christmas with them.

  “That’s a bad idea,” I said. “Lakshmi won’t like it.”

  He told me I had to, that we were “family.” So I flew to Arizona on Christmas Eve and spent the night alone in my hotel room.

  The next morning I arrived at their house as late as possible. Lakshmi asked me to join her in her room. She showed me a painting of a Buddha emitting rays of light and told me she was one of those rays of light. Then she said, as we sat side by side on her bed, looking at the Buddha, that I could never be like her.

  “I’m complete, Renee,” she said. “I’m Enlightened; I’ve attained perfection and can no longer make mistakes. Why do you insist on sleeping with Vishnu? Why can’t you just leave him alone? You have been throwing your pussy at him since the first day you saw him. You just throw that sexual energy all over the place, don’t you?”

  This has to be an occult attack, I thought. This cannot be her. I shut down, hoping that if I didn’t speak, the conversation would be over faster.

  Lakshmi said, “Well, maybe you’re lonely. Why don’t you get a dog? You don’t need a man. A man will hold you back from Enlightenment.”

  Then she smiled and grabbed me by the hand and led me to Vishnu, who was sitting by the Christmas tree. She said in a cheerful voice, “Let’s open presents!”

  I couldn’t stop crying. Vishnu didn’t even notice. He handed me gift after gift. He had spent a fortune on me. Then Lakshmi handed me her gifts. The first was an embroidered silk tunic. It was pretty, and I thanked her between silent sobs. The second was a set of lavender sequined ballet-slipper flats. They had ribbons to tie around my ankles. For some reason, this made me cry even harder.

  I felt like a child again. But I felt loved. I felt like my mother was buying me pretty ballet shoes. I was so completely unwound at this point, so utterly empty and destroyed and powerless. A thirty-five-year-old woman transformed into a very wounded child. I looked up at her with love in my eyes.

  “I feel so loved,” I said as I held the shoes to my chest. “I feel like I have a mother again.”

  She narrowed her eyes and said, “Don’t you ever think of me as your mother.”

  Vishnu didn’t notice. He was lost in his own thoughts, as always.

  I sat in their living room, surrounded by discarded wrapping paper, and wondered how much more I could take.

  Chapter 17 Threesome

  By her next event, a month after Christmas, Lakshmi had gained even more weight, and she had dark circles under her eyes, but she still flooded the room with light, she still radiated with power.

  “Women waste a lot of their energy getting men to notice them,” she said. “Have you ever been driving down the street and suddenly whipped your head sideways when you noticed a scantily clad woman jogging?”

  We all had.

  “That woman was shoving her energy out, making you notice her,” Lakshmi said. “Women do this all the time. Ladies, this is a humungous waste of your energy—energy that could be used to excel in your careers or reach higher states of mind in meditation. You spend all this time building energy in your meditations and then you throw it away when you shove it at a guy to make him check you out.”

  “Protect you
r hard-earned energy by covering your body. Wear looser clothing. Buy shirts that are long enough to cover your ass.”

  “Especially you, Renee,” she said as she glared at me from the stage.

  I sank into my seat.

  Then she added, “Ladies, the men in these events, your sangha mates, are here to reach Enlightenment. I do not ever want to see you pushing your energy out at them to get them to notice you. This needs to be a safe place for them.”

  We all felt embarrassed. We cinched our jackets tighter together. Why were we suddenly in trouble?

  I soon began receiving daily calls from Lakshmi; they often lasted an hour or longer. Sometimes she was kind and loving, sometimes she was hateful: “You think your pussy can pull a warrior like Vishnu off the path? It can’t. You’re a witch and a sorceress,” she would say. Or “Don’t you ever compare yourself to Vishnu and me. You will never be like us. You will never be as evolved as we are. You are here to serve us.” Or “Why do you think Vishnu wants you over me? Am I that disgusting as a woman? I must be. Because I am Enlightened and I have attained perfection, and you are nothing, so he clearly just wants your pussy. You are a witch.”

  During these calls, I would slide to the floor, curl into a fetal position, and cry. I’d stay there for an hour after we hung up. I had never experienced such mental anguish before in my life. It was as if a dark curtain was pulled over my mind and I couldn’t find even a crack of light. I began to not answer her calls. “I shudder to think of the karma you are creating by not answering calls from your Spiritual Teacher,” she said to my voicemail. I panicked. My karma, according to her, was already bad enough. I dreaded making it worse. I answered her calls.

  At this point, I hated both of them, and part of me knew it, but I wouldn’t admit it to the rest of myself. And I kept replaying Lakshmi’s words in my mind: “This path is the hardest path there is. You will want to quit. Only if you are doing this for others will you stick it out.” And I was doing this for others. I was going to become an Enlightened saint to heal the world and all the suffering souls in it.