The Sheep's Clothing

I was young. I was searching. And I was hellbent on finding the "truth". This, interweaved with a top-heavy angelic ignorance and a non-existent self-image not only got me what I was looking for, but also got me a one-way ticket on the black train. My shallow innocense was like sand on a sinkhole and could hold its position for only so long before settling to the bottom and down to the bottom is where I went, in the city of fallen angels, in the city of Los Angeles, California. But like all mudslung cherubs, we still have a choice to go back before we cross that final line. This is where I first found myself--in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, aka Purgatory.

The watered down knowledge that I was receiving in college was not doing it for me. Even in my gullible innocense I could see right through the American scholastic system's tranparent molding process. I wanted no part of it. There would be nights where I would stay up until dawn reading my own personal non-assigned discoveries. Though receiving slightly above average grades in college, I completed all the volumes of the collective works of Carl Gustav Jung before the end of my sophmore year. Reading was one of my first addictions behind wacking off, of course, though later these obsessions became combined in a shadowy corner of the university library where I indulged into many books of my disliking ( for instance, The Bible, books on Behaviorism, Darwin, various boring business manuals, and just because of its title, Moby Dick).

I was in college to get away from my parents and my bad memory of the red-neck, clicky, and highly judgmental fuck of a prison camp high school that I attended. That and the fact that I wanted to meet friends and girls and maybe even lose my virginity for god sakes! But after an uncharacteristically good time I had in the first year at the University of Milwaukee, I was back on my dark path in a hunt for the truth at all costs. It was a hunt in which I became prey and like any proper wolf, his timing was impeccable. I met him when I was a mere 20 years old. Now and throughout he will simply be referred to as, "M".

My healthy youthful rebellion steadily turned into pure hatred. Hatred for the guilt-ridden, warlike and sexless christian church, in particular the catholic church; hatred for the elite-runned establishment; hatred for small-dicked, power tripping cops; hatred for egotistical know-it-all professors; and hatred for frat brats and sorority whores. Punk rock and mosh pits became my only release. Though still on the early part of the road, I was becoming what I rejected--fearful and hateful. I didn't really want to feel like this. I wanted to feel joy. My expectations for the human race were much too high. I started too clean and idealistic and became appalled by the shitty way people lied to and treated each other on a daily basis.

Scientology, or I should say, a branch off of it with an extra manipulative twist, was introduced to me at this moment. More correctly put, it is what I searched for and found. Just as Scientology is reworded concepts of many schools of thought, predominantly the philosophies and techniques of Aleister Crowley, "M" and his school of thought claimed to not be Scientology but only claimed to use some of its concepts. M even trash-talked Scientology as well as christianity, the establishment, and almost all the other things I despised. Divide and conquer here we come! I was officially sucked in! I had a partner. I found my mentor. Life once again had hope and the ideas he was throwing at me were new, rebellious and exciting to my mindset at the time.

I met M through an ad in the paper for "counselors needed, no degree or experience necessary". At the time I was majoring in psychology at the university so the ad caught my eye. M was comical and cheesy yet ultra confident and street smart. Combine a perverted circus clown and a laughing buddha with the devil and a car salesman and, wah-lah, you have M. He was a very likeable guy and I was easily convinced to join his center. M was a former member of the Church of Scientology in Chicago where he connived and stole an eschelon of Dianetic related and other types of books by L. Ron Hubbard along with training manuals and upper level top secret Scientology rundowns. We had the inside scoop and the mysterious recipes to get to heaven. John Travolta eat your heart out!

In order to be a counselor or "auditor" as Scientology calls it, I had to first be trained and of course this costed money. I was charged only $100 a month (only once). Others were charged twice or three times as much as me and had to pay every month. Anything related to money or power would not slip by M. He knew I was broke but still wanted me in the mix. In other words, he had bigger plans for me. It was similar to a drug dealer giving you that first hit free in order to suck you in. While I was there not one person ever became a paid auditor. The class consisted of self and free public auditing, intense philosophical discussions (that would render me sleepless some nights), and unofficial think tank sessions. We'd speak of conspiracies, out-of-body experiences, aliens, entity clusters, engrams, the afterlife, past lives, different dimensions and densities, telepathy, and the implications of absolute certainty and reality creation. We would also practice some of these techniques and communicate with noncorporeal beings and energies via the "E-meter", a galvanic skin response device (GSR) similar to a lie detector but a bit more crude in its physical make up. When a person hooked up to the e-meter was asked a question the needle on the contraption's dial would twitch or sway in a certain way depending on the subjects electromagnetic thought response pattern or intention surrounding the question.

This was about half of what the class consisted of. It was some fun shit! I didn't get to do this in college! I remember once I was auditing this Vietnam vet and got scary deep about some of the traumas he went through. I was young and fairly inexperienced at the time but as hardcore and intimidating as his stories were, I held my ground. We searched for the root of his trauma but couldn't find it in his war experiences. We had to go further back. So we continued to dig until the stress ravaged veteran went back into a womb incident. He recounted with 100% total recall the muffled words of his father during a scene in his life where his father was physically abusing his mother while she was 8 months pregnant with him in her belly. I never believed recall of a prenatal incident was possible until I worked someone through it. The tears were real and the meter's readings coincided.

After "flattening out the charge" of the womb incident (2 hours of intensely focused auditing) the Vietnam vet was smiling and shaking. After wiping the sweat off of his face, he hugged and thanked me. He left the center and never came back. He no longer needed to. M, with no detailed knowledge of my session, walked into the room and asked me what I did. He said the room felt lighter and cleaner.

I told him what happened and he said something sarcastic to the effect of, "Good job, now he (the Vietnam vet) won't have to come back again since you cleared him up in one session. He'll save a lot of fucking money too." Strange. I thought, since we were students that the public was our practice and they weren't being charged but it turned out that myself and the other students were being pimped out for our counseling skills. Unfortunately I was too dumb and impressed to realize this at the time. I didn't care. I was changing the world! After all, how could the intention be just money, I thought. It couldn't be. I mean look how much more important the stuff we were learning was. It couldn't be for money!

The other half of the time spent at the center consisted of M talking about pussy pussy and more pussy! He was fairly unattractive by most standards, being kind of chubby with a balding, nappy, goofy hairdo and also out of style with numerous gold chains draped over his hairy sweaty chest amongst his baggy gym clothes. But regardless, he fucked about 80% of all the girls that would come through his center of knowledge. Once, I was in a session in the room next to M's and some poor idiot was telling me how he had some pschological problem related to getting a hard-on. While mentally walking him through some childhood molestation/sex/guilt related incident, I could hear M banging some student in the other room. Later when I questioned him on what the hell he was doing, he told me he was working on some new counseling technique he was going to call "Fuck Therapy". Like I said, he came off as a likeable guy.

The place became a zoo and attracted a slew of different characters. Some of these included cameo appearances by other gurus and occultish type dudes. There was one scary old 1984 Orwellian mind control type fucker who intimidated everyone including the ultraconfident M. I can't remember his name but I do remember that he was an ex-Scientologist from Florida who also broke away from the church to create his own empire. He became a millionare off of the deaths of his patients and I mean this literally. He would take severely depressed people into his center and treat them for a small cost. These subjects would become dependent on him in the process because he was highly talented at momentarily relieving them of their misery (and their responsibility) yet he would not take them far enough to allow them the confidence to become mentally and spiritually self-supportive. Like any religion, he gave them the fix of hope in their wretched lives. Here is where he went for the kill. He would have them take out million dollar life insurance policies and they would sign him in as the beneficiary. He, in return, offered them a place in some kind of "heavenly abode" upon their death in exchange for the money. Supposedly he would then, with the power of suggestion, counsel them into stopping their heart or letting go of their body. It would look like a heart attack and he would collect the money. There were other ways that his clients would die that he did not discuss.

I asked M about the ethical and karmic implications of such an act and he told me there were none because reality is based on agreement and the clients "agreed" to it and that they were going to "heaven" anyway so what's the difference. He then laughed, part of him knowing it was bullshit though I wouldn't put it past M pulling off such a thing especially in the years to come when he became more manipulative. The real reason he claimed he wouldn't do it was because he wasn't powerful enough to pull off such a thing so he covered this up with something more morally righteous like, "personally, I wouldn't do it." M was more jealous of our Florida friends ability than anything else.

'That guy was a noncompassionate, selfish, spooky motherfucker and I'm glad I only met him once', I thought to myself. I mean, who wants to be in a room with a fucker who can tell you your thoughts (which he did) and whose intention is to prosper off the blood of the lonely and insecure--off the weak. I guess he was no different than anyone following the competitive American dream. I mean after all, only the strong survive. According to Charles Darwin, we are backed by natural law to prey on the weak, right? I don't know. Is a contrived justification to fuck each other over to be considered natural law? Now can you blame me for jacking off in Darwin's books?

Shortly after this visitation by our Florida freak, M's center began to deteriorate and he eventually shut it down and moved to Los Angeles with a runaway female stray that ended up at his center some couple odd months previous. I moved to Minneapolis but stayed in touch consistently with M. After two years in the Twin Cities, me and a friend decided to move to Hollywood to "make it" in one way or another. Another it would be. The seeds M planted needed time to grow and grow they did as they patiently and vengefully sprouted in the City of Angels.

(Milwaukee, WI, 1987-1988) . . . . . aa

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