The Burn Zone

by Renee Linnell

  Then my hatred turned to Vishnu. I hated him for making me believe I was so incredibly flawed, for training me to believe that everything and everyone was going to steal my energy and pull me off my path to Enlightenment. I hated him for making me paranoid. I had stopped hugging people, because Vishnu told me I shouldn’t blend my energy with other peoples’. I had stopped wearing bikinis to the beach, because he told me men would fantasize about me and put energetic lines into me. I had stopped going out dancing because Vishnu told me people would watch me and I wouldn’t be able to get them out of my attention. I hated him for making me believe old friends would hold me back or that I could not invite anyone to my home and that I could never stay with others. I hated him for making me believe that if I slept past sunrise or did not wake up often enough throughout the night, I would get “energetically raped on the dream plane.” I hated him for making me believe that I had to meditate for an hour every morning, as soon as I woke up, or I would mess up my karma. These beliefs were not going away; they didn’t instantly disappear. I was so pissed off that I couldn’t just immediately go back to normal.

  My thoughts cycled back to Hiroto: I had given Hiroto everything—everything—and he had shit all over me, said I was “the devil,” said I ruined his life. Then they circled back to Lakshmi and Vishnu: I had trusted and loved and adored Lakshmi, and she had hated me and brainwashed me. I had trusted Vishnu, and he had turned me into his slave and concubine. Then, in a flash, the self-doubt resurfaced. I started to believe all of them. Maybe I was a witch. Maybe I was the devil. Maybe I was a sorceress that was using my energy to manipulate people. Maybe I was irrevocably flawed.

  Hiroto, Lakshmi, Vishnu. The triple knockout punch. Lakshmi and Vishnu had shattered me just enough to allow Hiroto perfect access. And he came along and shattered what was left.

  My anger consumed me. My thoughts of suicide returned. I did not fit into the world at all. Nobody understood me. Nobody else cared about Enlightenment. The world was cruel and people were cruel and there was no reason to go on living. I had no purpose. I had nothing to believe in. I had run out of hope.

  The pain was fierce. All the parts of myself I had pushed down over the past six years were bubbling to the surface. I had no idea who I was anymore. I had no idea how to find out. I had no idea what brought me joy and no idea which way to turn. I wanted to undo the last six years, to go back to the free-spirited girl I was before I joined the cult. But I could not, and that caused me unbearable mental anguish. The more I suffered, the more hate I felt. The more hate I felt, the more exhausted I became, and the more exhausted I became, the more I stayed inside, alone, with nothing but the demons in my head to keep me company.

  The cycles of hate, anger, and rage felt like acid inside of me, killing me from within. They left me fragile and weak. There were days where my task was just to stand up in the shower and not collapse: “You can do this. Breathe. Feel your feet planted in the ground. Be here, now. You can do this. Just make it through this shower.” And all I wanted to do was sleep. And cry. And sleep. Only when I was sleeping did the pain go away.

  I had calls every week with my therapist in New York. I would tell her, “I know this happened for a reason, and I know it is part of the Divine Plan, but I am just so angry and filled with hate.”

  She told me I had to stop looking for the saintly approach to healing and had to allow myself to feel the rage. “Emotions should be feelings in motion,” she would say. “You have to let them move through you. You have to let them out.”

  She encouraged me to journal. She encouraged me to scream into pillows. She encouraged me to buy a punching bag and take my anger out on it. I punched my punching bag until I could no longer raise my arms. It helped. I screamed into pillows until my voice gave out, the screams turning into inhuman shrieks in a desperate attempt to release the rage I had felt toward Lakshmi for years but could not—would not—admit. How dare she claim to be teaching Enlightenment, teaching spirituality, teaching meditation, when all she really wanted was a plethora of broken souls lying in worship at her feet?

  Into my pillow I screamed, “Fuck you, Lakshmi! Fuck you and your fucking dharma. Fuck you, you fucking piece of shit liar.”

  My therapist was right. It helped a lot. Oh my God, to express what I had hidden inside me for so long was such a relief. To allow my emotions, these seemingly dark emotions, to finally flow through me brought a sense of joy and a sense of self that I had forgotten existed; it empowered me.

  When I wasn’t talking to my therapist or screaming into pillows or punching my punching bag, I ate. Somehow, I ended up with two family-sized slow cookers. I made meals like cheesy tuna-stuffed baked potatoes and chocolate peanut butter fudge pudding cake for eight people. And then I would eat it—all of it. Not in one sitting, of course, but I still ate all of it. And I sat . . . and sat . . . and sat—for months. And I got fat, for the first time in my life. I didn’t even notice the change in my body. I didn’t have a full-length mirror, and I was living in sweat pants and pajamas.

  In mid-February, I got in touch with Kate. She was now living in the Middle East, married and pregnant. “I’m traumatized by the cult, too,” she said. “I need to see you. I didn’t want to admit it really was a cult until I knew you were out of it, because you believed in it so much, but they really fucked us up. I have to come see you.” She jumped on a plane to come visit. We had not spoken to each other in close to five years.

  When she arrived, we spent days talking about everything that had happened. Lakshmi had taught us that we should never get married and we should never have children. If we did, God forbid, have a child, we should never let it breastfeed; it would be sucking from our heart chakra, draining all our energy. After years in the cult, it was difficult to trust our own feelings and intuition.

  We googled brainwashing techniques and discovered they had followed every single step. Overloaded schedule to create sleep deprivation. Check. Induced Alpha mind-state through meditation, speaking cadence, or music. Check. Environment of isolation (all normal social reference points unavailable). Check. Assault on identity. Check. Guilt. Check. Self-betrayal. Check. This list continued.

  “How did they do this to us?” she asked. “We are both so strong and independent. It amazes me that this happened to women like us.”

  Kate said that after she left the group she went back to traveling the world as a journalist. She said it was the only way she could find herself again but that she still struggled with doubt about getting married and having a baby. Seeing how Kate got her life back gave me strength. I began exercising with her, and I began eating better. The change gave me more energy.

  She talked me into going shopping. I felt alive again. I got excited about buying clothes. I pulled a handful off the rack and went to the dressing room. I took my clothes off, turned around to look at my backside in the mirror, and saw it: Dimples! Everywhere. My arms! My legs! My ASS! All my muscle had disappeared and had been replaced with cellulite. Every part of me was huge and pasty white and soft and full of dimples. My eight-pack stomach had been replaced by rolls! Rolls of fat! Yes, I had noticed these but I told myself it was just because I was sitting down and my stomach was scrunched up. I stood there, amazed, my smooshy white dimpled ass bulging and sagging out of my tiny black G-string. I cried. And then I put all the clothing back on the rack and left the dressing room utterly dejected.

  When I came downstairs, Kate took one look at me and said, “What is wrong?”

  “I’m fat!” I wailed.

  She laughed. “Oh, Honey,” she said. “We all get fat. Look at me.” She lifted up her shirt to show me her huge belly. “And I’m sure I have a camel toe. These pants are so tight.”

  We both started laughing and left the store. But deep within, I was now even more depressed. Kate was gorgeous and gregarious and men stopped to stare at her as we walked into stores and restaurants. I, on the other hand, was fat and wounded and could not even imagine being confident enough t
o talk to strangers.

  As soon as she left, I pulled out the slow cookers and ate some more—and sat some more. I simply could not muster the energy to change anything. I couldn’t bear to make myself stop eating; it was seemingly the only source of comfort I had. Somehow, it filled the emptiness. Each bowl of pudding cake felt like a warm hug. Each tuna-stuffed cheesy potato felt like my father holding me and telling me everything would be okay. And I couldn’t bear to force myself to exercise. I just didn’t have the energy or the willpower. All I could do was trust that one day I would get the energy to start exercising again and that the fat would all go away and that I’d get my hard, sexy, sleek body back.

  Meanwhile, I tormented myself. I began to google every single beautiful actress I saw in a movie—their great bodies and great faces and great skin and great hair.

  “I used to look like that!” I whined.

  This fueled my anger at Lakshmi and Vishnu.

  “I spent the best years of my life dressed like an old lady. I gave up sex. I gave up dating. Now I’m old and ugly and gray and I can’t get those years back!” I wailed. Every time I looked in the mirror, I just saw an old tired gray woman. Add to that the dimples and the weight and I was revolting. My dating life was over. I was doomed to be alone and angry and damaged and hateful forever.

  And I was still fighting the lawsuit. Every time I got an e-mail from my lawyer telling me we were no closer to a settlement, the anger tore me apart from the inside out. I had escaped to Colorado to heal from the hurt but had only lost myself to anger. My therapist helped me realize I was having such a hard time letting it go because ultimately I was angry with myself. I had gone into business with a guy I had just met, I had decided we didn’t need to sign a contract, I had agreed to getting the loan in my name. Suddenly, after almost a year of agony, I realized I had the key to my own handcuffs, and I could free myself any moment I chose.

  In April, I called my lawyer and told him I wanted him to do whatever it took to end my lawsuit.

  “You can’t let this guy win,” he said.

  I said, “I have already won. I get to wake up every morning and be me. He has to wake up every morning and be him.”

  He told me that as 50 percent owner I had the power to dissolve the company. I did not want to do that. The company was all Hiroto had. I had to forgive Hiroto. I had to move on.

  I heard a saying once: good people bring out the best in others; bad people bring out the worst. Fighting Hiroto brought out such an angry, hateful, mean, nasty side of me. That may have been the scariest part of the entire experience for me. I was turning into a monster: hating Hiroto, hating Vishnu, hating Lakshmi, hating everybody. I wanted to be me again. I wanted to trust again. I wanted to love people and life again. I could not take the business away from Hiroto. I would never be able to live with myself. If I was ever going to heal, the fighting had to be over.

  My lawyer said, “It’s so unfair . . .”

  And, again, I told him I didn’t care.

  I felt better after hanging up the phone. Finally deciding to let go was an incredibly powerful decision for me. I got myself into that mess, I could get myself out. The experience was an expensive life lesson, but one I clearly needed to learn. I would never get into a legal battle again. I would never go into business with someone I did not know well again. I would never try to save somebody again. And I would never date a guy who did not cherish me ever, ever, ever again.

  I forgave Hiroto. I asked God to please let me never see him again, in this life or any other. And then I let him go. Every now and then, I’d get a wave of anger and google him and hope to see that something horrible had happened to him, but those waves slowly dissipated and eventually went away altogether. With my decision to forgive him, I regained a huge piece of my heart and a large chunk of my power. Some of my energy returned. I felt lighter. I felt stronger.

  Now, I had to figure out how to forgive Lakshmi and Vishnu. And—most difficult of all—I still had to figure out how to forgive myself.

  Chapter 32 Mirrors

  I decided to drive to California and spend six weeks on the beach. I yearned to get my fun free-spirited self back and I thought maybe this was the way. My California house was leased to tenants, so I rented a studio apartment. I loaded my car with beach clothes and self-help books. I packed Falling Upward by Richard Rohr and This Time I Dance by Tama Kieves and Living Beautifully With Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron and Ask and it is Given by Ester and Jerry Hicks.

  I thought maybe, now that the lawsuit was over, the ocean would heal me. Maybe I could return to California and jump back into my old life and my old self. I had run over all my surf-boards with my car once I knew I was moving to New York, in an effort to kill the surfer girl within me. It felt like maybe now was the perfect time to resurrect her.

  After thirty minutes on the road, I stopped for lunch. Sitting at the counter, eating a slice of pizza, I got an e-mail from my lawyer; the settlement papers were attached. My heart sped up. My hands started shaking. I jumped in my car and found a copy store. Still shaking, I went to a computer and printed everything out. I signed the papers and overnight-shipped them back to him. I walked out to my car, got in the driver’s seat, and started crying—and laughing. It was over. Life was about to get fun again. I felt a thousand pounds lighter as I drove west.

  I spent the first night in Arizona. I had been there so often with Lakshmi and Vishnu that, for some reason, it felt right to start there. I went to the same hotel I used to stay in. I cried a lot; I wanted to be back with them. I missed the good times we had had together, the magic of our path. I missed thinking I was on my way to Enlightenment and believing I was with a tribe of people just like me. I walked around the center of town, terrified I’d run into them. My emotions swirled from anger and hate to love and forgiveness, rapidly changing from one extreme to the other.

  I got in the car the next morning and drove to Sedona. I had never been there before and arrived at twilight. I could barely see the red rocks, but I could feel them blasting me with white light. I began to dissolve, the same feeling I had when I touched the pyramid in Egypt. I had to squeeze the steering wheel and sing loudly to stay alert and in my body. The energy there was off the chart. I picked a hotel nestled in the base of a red mountain, took a shower, ordered room service and got in bed. As I drifted off to sleep I could feel the energy of the land pulsing through me. I dreamed of ancient Indian warrior chiefs, male and female; I saw their beautiful, kind, wise, weathered faces and felt them holding me in wombs of light, as if rocking me to sleep in a hand-made cradle of love. I dreamed of magnificent beings all around me, reminding me I was much stronger than I knew. I woke up in the morning with strength and clarity: I would heal. I would come out the other side of this, and I would come out stronger and wiser than I could ever imagine.

  I began to chant to myself: “This will turn out better than I can possibly imagine. I don’t know how, but I know it will.”

  I chanted it to myself all morning long. It became my mantra. I headed west. Fortified.

  The next stop on my tour was a place in the desert I had visited at least twice a year with the sangha. Lakshmi and Vishnu had told us it was a sacred site for our tribe. I felt like I might gain some clarity there; it used to feel so loving and magical. We had always been told never to go there alone, but I thought that doing so might empower me and help seal in my mind the idea that I was now my own Teacher, that I could go wherever I wanted.

  I got there as the sun was setting. The desert sand was washed in pink and purple, reflecting the pastel sky. It was beautiful, and it took my breath away. I checked into my hotel and went up to the room. Suddenly, I had to go to the toilet. I took a huge shit and then realized, while sitting in the bathroom, that I had to get the hell out of there. It felt so wrong; I couldn’t sleep there.

  I walked back down to the front desk, checked out, got in my car, and drove the rest of the way to the beach, laughing the whole way about t
he fact that I had just gone to our sacred site to shit and leave.

  I navigated the twisting desert roads in the dark, arriving in California close to midnight. It had been three and a half years since I had left and it felt amazing to return. I checked into a hotel and left my balcony doors open, smiling as I drifted off to sleep to the sound of the ocean and the humid air on my skin.

  The next day, I woke up refreshed. I squeezed into an old bikini and went straight to the ocean for a swim. None of my beach clothes fit me anymore, so after breakfast I went to buy new bathing suits. I pulled my usual style off the rack, tried it on, and cringed. There was no way I would ever fit in this style of swimsuit again. It looked obscene on my now fuller and larger body. I looked for one with more fabric. It looked just as bad. Nothing looked good on me. I began to sink into despair, and then remembered my chant. “This will turn out better than I can possibly imagine. I don’t know how, but I know it will.” I repeated the mantra a few times to myself in the dressing room. Then I bought a wetsuit and a surfboard and headed to the beach to paddle out.

  As soon as I hit the water I was gasping. Me! I had surfed almost my entire life! Now I was like a beached whale squeezed into a neoprene wetsuit. It was disgusting and depressing. I began to cry. And then I caught myself and chanted my mantra. I spent an hour in the ocean, doing my best, burning calories, making myself stronger and thinner. Chanting to myself the whole time. Next, I moved into the apartment I rented and, that night, I went to a yoga class, the first in close to three years. When I got back to the apartment, I ripped off my clothes and looked in the mirror. I didn’t look any stronger or thinner!