The Burn Zone

by Renee Linnell

  “Yes!” I responded. “I was expecting you to do more. That’s what starting a new business entails. In the beginning, it is a lot of work.”

  He had no response.

  I continued, “Do you really think it’s fair that I’m doing all the work, putting in all the money, that I’m going to give you the studio and pay off half the remodel loan, and I still don’t get my investment back? Does that seem fair to you?”

  He was quiet. And then, “THAT MONEY IS GONE, JACK! YOU’RE TRYING TO GET BLOOD FROM A STONE. THAT MONEY IS GONE, JACK!”

  I hung up the phone and called my lawyer. I explained everything to him. I knew I could never talk to or see Hiroto again. If I did, my heart would open up, I would forgive him, and be sucked back into the drama.

  As spring turned to summer, I realized I was never going to get my money back. Hiroto was not going to budge. I had a decision to make: walk away and lose everything or sue him and hope he would settle. I didn’t want to sue him. I wanted to just walk away. But everyone I spoke to told me I had to sue him, that I couldn’t let him get away with this. I felt like maybe I really did have to fight, like I had to at least try to get my money back. So, after four months of attempting to negotiate through my lawyer, I hired a litigator and sued him.

  As soon as we filed our lawsuit, reporters started calling. My lawyer advised me to not answer my phone, so I let it ring all day long. Reporters must have been calling Hiroto, as well. I got a text from him that said, I have $200,000; I can get you the rest. Please don’t do this. Think about the trainers. Then he called my lawyer and left a message saying the same thing. It was too late. I could not call off the reporters. I had not called them in the first place.

  The next day, as I was making breakfast, I got a text from a friend at 8:00 a.m.: Good morning. Are you okay? Have you seen the paper?

  I had not. Immediately after, I got a phone call from a classmate. I didn’t answer because I did not recognize the number. He left a voicemail: “Renee, are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Worried, I got online and googled my name.

  Oh. My. God.

  The lawsuit was all over the Internet. The New York Post popped up first. Then the New York Daily News. I read those two articles and called my lawyer. Meanwhile, it went viral: the UK’s Daily Post; the UK’s Daily Mail, the Gothamist; InsideCounsel.com with the title “8 of the Strangest Lawsuits Making Headlines.” I was afraid to go outside. I was embarrassed to see my doormen. My phone kept ringing: unknown numbers, reporters; I didn’t answer. I called my lawyer again. I was horrified, but I couldn’t stop laughing. The articles were priceless:

  “There’s no heavy lifting at one Manhattan fitness studio that offers low-impact workouts—but apparently, there is a lot of grunting.”

  “Is it possible that the steamiest establishment on Tenth Street isn’t the Russian Bath House?”

  I was doubled over in laughter; it was surreal. Yes, I was being slaughtered along with Hiroto, but I didn’t care. I had suffered so long because of him and lost so much. It felt so good to finally laugh.

  The laughter didn’t last long, however. He created a counterclaim and attached edited versions of my most personal e-mails. It was a blow that brought me to my knees. Somehow, through everything we had been through, I still believed deep down he was a good guy; that he was damaged and just needed love and therapy. But when I saw my most personal e-mails in print, when I saw a counterclaim filled with lies, my world shattered. I knew what horrible things people did to other people, but I never imagined someone I knew, someone I had slept next to and made love with, someone I had believed so strongly in and given so much to would want to tear me apart like this; could lie so blatantly; would use the e-mails I wrote, the e-mails that said he was a Magnificent Being, as evidence that I was obsessed with him and thought he was God and had lost my mind. And I could not believe I was really going to lose all that money. I had been ordained as a monk. I had dedicated my life to God and spreading love and light and peace. Something like this was not supposed to happen to someone like me. Everything I believed about the world, everything I believed about people, unraveled. I became undone.

  Chapter 29 Oatmeal

  I lie on the floor of my apartment. I have to get up. I know I have to get up. Eat. I have to eat.

  Just make it through a bowl of oatmeal, I tell myself. That is all you have to do today. Just make it through a bowl of oatmeal. You can do this.

  I drag myself into the kitchen. I stumble, fall into the wall. I start to cry and start to slide down the wall to the floor again.

  “NO!” I scream to myself. “Get up!”

  I think of Trinity in the first Matrix movie.

  “Get up, Trinity. Just . . . get . . . up,” she tells herself.

  I make myself get up. I make myself cook oatmeal. I make myself sit down and conquer one spoonful at a time, until it is all gone. I cannot let my mind move forward or back. If it drifts to the past, I start to die. If it drifts to the future, I start to panic.

  “Stay here,” I tell myself. “Stay here now.”

  To get each bite down, to make it stay down, I must keep my mind—hold my mind—in the present. It is the only way.

  Chapter 30 Opt Out

  I was trying so hard to be a monk, my idea of what an Enlightened monk was. I was trying so hard to live in hell but have my mind be in heaven, like a lotus flower growing in mud. I had been sure, as my time working with Hiroto grew more and more difficult, that it was my Bodhisattva training ground, that opening a business with him was my Divine task. Now, all of that was gone. As was my reputation and the business I had built and all the money.

  No one besides Lakshmi would understand. I prayed for her to show up back in my life. I had tried everything, I had tried changing myself in every way possible, and nothing I was doing was working. Everything was blowing up in my face. Maybe, I thought to myself, maybe I need to give up meditating. It is the only change I have not made. I quit meditating that day. After never missing a day for six years, I quit cold turkey. Within 24 hours I noticed a difference in my face. It looked grey; I had worry lines in my forehead. I felt heavier. I felt worse. Lakshmi, I thought, please show back up in my life. I need you. I am so lost.

  A few days later I was in a coffee shop near NYU and saw one of her flyers. For one night only, the University of Mysticism would be in New York.

  Are you fucking kidding me? I needed her so badly. I needed to see my sangha mates, my tribe. I needed to believe again in magic and miracles and mysticism, and she was going to be in New York! I began to see her posters all over town. There was one in the window of the store in the lobby of my apartment building!

  I showed up early to the event. I was uneasy. Was it okay that I was there? Some part of me believed she was in New York because of me, because she knew I needed her. I entered the ballroom with the rest of the people, and I timidly asked Leslie, who had been one of my partners in Lighten Up! Enterprises and was clearly the new event manager, if it was okay that I was there.

  “It’s a public event,” she said, not outright mean, but definitely not welcoming.

  In the two years I had been gone, her hair had turned completely grey.

  I saw some of my favorite sangha mates. I bowed to them with so much love in my heart, and they bowed back. I saw Jessica.

  “I love you,” I whispered as I walked by her.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered back.

  I sat in the back row and kept my head low. Jessica sat next to me and smiled. It felt so good to be back beside her; she and I had been friends for close to twenty years.

  Lakshmi walked on stage, escorted by Vishnu. She looked fit and strong and fierce again. Lisa was a few rows ahead of me. She turned around and looked at me with fear in her eyes. She said nothing and turned back around. Her hair was now long, like Lakshmi’s, and she had gained even more weight.

  During the break, some of the remaining senior students appr
oached me and started asking questions: Was I living in New York? Was I still part of the group? I answered vaguely, but with so much joy to be speaking with them. I was thrilled to be back among them. Paul, who had relocated to San Diego just to be a part of the group with me, looked happy to see me but afraid to be caught talking to me. He kept it short and walked away.

  I did not feel the same light. I was now able to meditate much better on my own than I was in this seminar. However, I left that night filled up again, fortified, knowing I was taken care of, that Lakshmi would always be there for me. She had arrived to New York exactly when I needed her. She was, and always would be, my Teacher.

  As the lawsuit wore on and Hiroto’s attacks through his lawyer became more vicious, I dipped back into periods of deep despair. I was still going to the dojo, determined to finish my task of getting a black belt and unwilling to let the rumors and gossip keep me away. It wasn’t easy. I had to deal with almost all of the advanced black belts looking at me like I was the devil. Hiroto had gotten fired, and they thought it was my fault. They had no idea what I had invested or what my side of the story was. To them, I was just a jealous woman that left Hiroto and sued him.

  I was struggling to make it through school. I slept a lot, cried a lot. I wanted my guides back. With Lakshmi and the sangha in New York, I felt strong, but as soon as they left, I fell apart. I spent a lot of time meditating. Only in meditation could I find peace. I touched those pristine mind states, light and love and quiet and bliss, and I didn’t want to stop meditating. I didn’t want to return to the world.

  Suddenly, I understood suicide. I had always thought people that did it were selfish and weak; now I saw them as simply wanting the pain to end and being willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. No one understood me; no one ever would. What was the point to even being alive? I had arrived to New York as a newly ordained monk, eager and wanting to spread light and love as far and as wide as I possibly could, and instead, I got creamed.

  I imagined different options for killing myself: jumping off a building, turning on a car in a closed garage, taking sleeping pills. Fortunately, I didn’t have the energy for suicide. I figured that if I tried, I’d fail and end up maimed or mentally impaired. This depressed me more.

  I was broken. I had no idea just how broken. I was still loyal to Vishnu and Lakshmi and the sangha. I still believed their Teachings. I was not ready to give that up, because if I did, I would truly have nothing. Having something broken and twisted, at this point, was better than having nothing. And the truth was, if I even started to imagine that their Teachings were not The Way, I would have to admit that Hiroto was right—that I was crazy. I would have to admit I had pushed everyone I loved out of my life and that I had radically altered everything about me because some strangers had told me to.

  In late November, shattered and suicidal, I woke up with the sudden urge to go back to Colorado. I still owned a condo there, the one my mother had used when hers was rented. She had left it to my brother and me, but I bought him out of it shortly after she died. It was still filled with her belongings. I had not been there in over five years because Lakshmi and Vishnu had advised me not to go.

  “It will bring back the old you,” they had told me.

  I decided to go. Maybe it will help me find my way, I thought. Maybe it would ease the pain. I planned a trip for five nights.

  On the fourth day, I had a snowboarding accident. I was racing down the mountain at top speed when I hit a rock that was covered with snow. It threw me into the air, and I landed headfirst, tucked my neck, and miraculously rolled out of it unscathed. I sat down and started laughing. It was unbelievable and so scary. I decided to go back to my mom’s condo and lay low for the rest of the day. I tried to nap, but got the urge to get up and get rid of my mother’s stuff. I put it all in bags, thinking about my life while I purged. By the time I was done, I was sure I needed to quit school, leave New York, and move to Colorado to start a new life.

  I had a phone call scheduled the next morning with a woman who reads the Akashic records (a library of everything that has happened and will happen in the many lives of a soul). A friend had told me about her months prior, and I had scheduled an appointment; however, the first appointment I could get was months away, and months away was now suddenly tomorrow. I had been told I would be allowed to ask five questions.

  When the theosophist called, she asked my full name and birthdate and said she would open the records and I could ask my first question.

  “What happened to me yesterday?” I asked. “Why do I suddenly feel like the life I am living is all wrong and I want to start a totally new life, again?”

  “Renee,” she said. “Ski trips are interesting. Accidents happen all the time. Nobody would have asked questions. You had an opportunity to leave this life, and you decided not to. I like to call it an Opt Out. Each soul schedules them throughout its lifetime in case it needs a big rest and wants to return Home; these are the accidents that seemingly occur out of nowhere. When you decided to stay, you decided to get on your True Path.”

  As she was saying this, I pictured myself tucking my chin and rolling out of that fall. If I had not tucked my chin, I would have broken my neck and died instantly. I hadn’t told her I was on a ski trip or that I had had an accident. I suddenly remembered the last thing I had done before flying to Colorado: I had rewritten my will. I had removed Lakshmi and Vishnu, and I had gotten the revision notarized the morning I got on the plane. As I thought this my skin rippled with goosebumps. I had prepared myself to transition to non-physical. I had prepared myself to Leave.

  “Why were my Spiritual Teachers so mean to me? Why did they send me away?” I asked next.

  “Renee, they did not have your best interests in mind,” she said. “They were doing shadow work. They hated how bright you were, how bright you are.”

  I needed validation, and she was giving me that, but I was not ready to hear that Lakshmi and Vishnu were working against me.

  “Their spiritual names are masks that they hide behind,” she continued. “They are not good people. They spread doubt and fear. They spread paranoia. They think they are spreading light, but they are doing the opposite.” She was right. They had filled my mind with doubt, with paranoia. They had shattered my intuition.

  I returned to New York more confused than ever. While lying on the floor one morning, sobbing over the lawsuit, I finally admitted to myself that I was in a cult.

  Yes, I know you and every other person in my life already knew this, but I, unfortunately, had yet to figure this out.

  After hearing what my attorney had told me about the e-mails attached to Hiroto’s counterclaim, I had not allowed myself to read them, thinking it would be too devastating, too embarrassing, but I pulled them out and read them all. I saw how demented my thoughts had been, how I had truly believed Hiroto was a “Magnificent Being trapped in Maya” and I was “a Bodhisattva sent to save him and pull him out.” I sounded exactly like Lakshmi and Vishnu. My e-mails were filled with hatred and accusations and weird concepts from the cult.

  “I’m losing my mind,” I thought. I began therapy that week.

  As if they sensed my newfound clarity, Lakshmi and Vishnu sent me a letter via certified mail. The must have found my mailing address through my tax records; I had rented a mailbox from a mailroom, as they had instructed. The letter arrived in a brown envelope, the kind I used to mail for them. It contained a note:

  Renee,

  Eternity is your Teacher now. It is no longer appropriate for you to attend Lakshmi’s events.

  I was officially set free. I felt so relieved.

  I had no idea that the hardest part of my entire journey still lay ahead.

  Part 4 Alone

  “Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Chapter 31 Colorado

  In January 2013, six months after I filed my lawsuit, I took a leave of absence from NYU a
nd moved to Colorado. I was sure the move would make me feel normal. And by normal, I mean happy and resilient and optimistic about life and able to interact with others without worrying that doing so would harm me in some way. Instead, I got to Colorado and broke apart even more. Without the structure of New York and school, I became lost. I had no idea how to fill my days and no energy to do much more than sleep. And I was so afraid. I didn’t trust anybody anymore. I had no idea who was going to screw me over next. I was terrified of running into people I knew and having to explain why I had disappeared and what I was doing with my life. I was now so completely different from the fun free spirit that they used to know. How could I possibly explain the change?

  I hated Hiroto for making me afraid of men. I hated him for refusing to return my money. I hated him for not showing up to work and for lying about me in his counterclaim, and I hated him for pretending to be something he wasn’t.

  “How could he do this to me?” I asked myself over and over again. I started fantasizing about him getting an STD or getting in a motorcycle accident that would break his pelvis, or even about him getting diagnosed with cancer. I would fantasize about him losing all his money—my money—and becoming homeless. My mind was mired in dark, angry, vengeful places. I called friends in New York who knew Hiroto and asked how he was doing, hoping to hear he was doing terribly. Instead they told me the studio was beautiful and full of people. Hiroto was doing well, surrounded by my money in the beautiful studio that I built, and I was lying in a heap on the sofa, unable to get up or go outside. It all seemed so extraordinarily unfair.

  My hate turned to Lakshmi. I hated her for pretending to be something she wasn’t. I hated her for teaching me to erase myself, for convincing me to throw away everything—and everyone—that made me who I was. I hated her for talking me into spending my prime hidden away in sack-like clothing. I had given six years of my life to this woman, and now it felt as though I was damaged beyond repair. I hated her for brainwashing me into believing I was a witch and a sorceress and that I was manipulating people with my energy. My mind overflowed with all the ways she damaged me. My face contorted with them. I could not forgive her.