The Red Carpet Ride

TW: Coercion, emotional abuse, drug use

Something in the room had changed. The air suddenly felt thick, like moving in slow motion in a movie. Her altered, watery gaze focused on me. It wasn’t the petite, shy woman who’d been speaking, facing a group from all over the city, any longer. It was a slow-talking wise man she claimed to channel. Not having felt special before, I was easily seduced by the attention I was getting. I knew without question that I would give in to whatever she commanded.

It was a group of us, all strangers until called together by the same newspaper article. It was yet another rainy weekend. The rain had been coming down in buckets all morning, and it promised to be an all-day event. Both the gray out and the rain matched my depression. I was supposed to be happy, wasn’t I? I was living the suburban dream that, to my internal self, felt like a nightmare. I was trapped by something I couldn’t see. My initial attempts to break free had failed, so I gave up or gave in; I never figured out which. ‘Is that it then, God, this nine-to-five existence with a two-day layover, then dreading the return of the first five?’

I lit an illegal joint and inhaled my rebellion. Someone had forgotten to listen, and I was paying the price. That’s why, that day of hot tears when I opened the Sunday paper to the Living section, I was immediately captivated by the picture and article my eyes fell upon. She spoke a language I hadn’t heard before, but it was one I suddenly realized I wanted to know.

After a couple of classes of higher-consciousness teachings, it was time for a weekend retreat. It was an intimate gathering of those of equal minds–those seeking a better way, a way different from the one they’d been living, a way out of the box of small definitions.

There were several who practiced their metaphysical arts. I joined in, eager to learn about this new way of seeing things, of seeing myself. I was ready to strip the layers, to cleanse the mire, you see. I went on to scream and holler and beat pillows with plastic bats with the best of them. I fasted, ate tofu, meditated, did yoga, climbed to the top of the Great Pyramid, but according to my teacher, lower consciousness had a hold on me.

Until then, no one had mentioned the inner voice, and I now had a teacher who frowned upon listening to one’s own mind. Even though in some ways my mind screamed for me to run, I wasn’t strong enough to listen to myself over who would turn out to be a powerful charlatan.

There was symbolism around, but I missed it, like the burned-up, haunted mansion down the road from the compound. We’d been there, where the road ends, a few years before to look at a house. It was a promising time in my parents’ lives, and they were touring big houses.

When I ended up at a retreat a few years later and took a walk, thinking that something about the road was familiar, I discovered the house had been nearly burned to the ground.

It was a painting that had caused the scene, one of an upside-down cross.

Perhaps my mother would have thought of Peter had she known the story, the original meaning of the symbolism. Or maybe it was the Satan-ish look of the house’s owner that set her off, and caused her to forget about Saint Peter. She managed to make all of us uncomfortable with her confrontation. We stood with shuffling feet, surprised at the turn of events, for hadn’t we just been enjoying our time looking at beautiful houses? When I glanced at my dad, he met my gaze and stood silent. It was one area he didn’t claim to know, but his wife did, and she spoke it that day.

Small in stature, she did not back down, and she left the owner of the house speechless. The man with the Charles Manson eyes and the skull on a chain around his neck did not fool her for a moment. The house, upon first sight, struck one in the same way the Amityville house did. It made you want to run, but since no one did and no one voiced any concerns, we entered the forbidding home.

Seeing the burned-out shell of the spooky house just down the road should have been a warning, but at the time, I dismissed such things. Later, learning that my teacher had been a participant in the nefarious practices in that house should have been a huge red flag. But I didn’t know how to recognize the warnings that, in retrospect, were everywhere.

Once I began writing, any independence was completely washed away. Since I’d never before experienced the written word flowing through my pen, it was enough to hook me. And when the words seemed directed at the teacher, I became even more entrenched in her world of control.

Before long, I was part of the core group, special for the first time, a position I would hold until my self-disgust moved in three years later. Although it happened in increments during a second trip to Egypt, the final letting go would not take place until our return home three months later.

We were on a road trip, one that would expose the hypocrisy. Had any of her students been rushing through an airport with the sole aim of meeting a married lover, that student would have been taken down. But because it was a cult, you couldn’t tell anyone the thoughts you’re having. No one could be told that while in Tennessee, a lesbian in a flannel shirt would snap me out of my three-year spell. At that moment, just crossing her path, I knew that I was going home to my world, the world I missed, the world I’d run away from, the world I needed in my life again.

Once back at the compound, because of my “lower Consciousness” behavior, I was asked to leave. There had been two previous exiles, times when that same behavior had gotten me kicked out. But those times, still under the spell, I wanted back in. I was terrified of losing my writing gift, believing what I’d been told–that the gift was only mine because I served the teacher, and if I left her world, I would lose the gift. I bought it for a while, then I decided I didn’t want it anymore. Since all my kindergarten words were focused on the teacher, I no longer wanted anything to do with it.

I shut the door for two years, and when I started writing mature writings, her face was no longer seen. At last it was over, but in the end it was clear it was no magical carpet ride. It was a red carpet of abuse disguised as higher consciousness. And in the end, I would learn that I was the one who wasn’t listening.