My main focus regarding our meeting was
feeling an exuberant excitement at the opportunity to co-produce and create a
magnificent video that would inspire Siddha Yoga devotees worldwide with a
greeting from California, and also a greeting from me, as someone whose videos
many devotees around the world had enjoyed while I offered years of video service at the
ashram. This was a dream project
for me, especially since I'd just spent the last two years editing a whole lot
of not-so-uplifting news stories. I was eager and ready to pour my love and care into a
project that was both uplifting and also direct service to my beloved guru.
When I was asked to work with the woman
from northern California on this holiday greeting video for the ashram, I was
mainly hoping that we'd get along enough to have a pleasant working
relationship. Some of the members of this spiritual community, and
probably spiritual communities in general, could be intense, difficult, or
unfriendly at times.
Suze and I started talking about the
video project on the telephone, and our conversations would stretch into hours.
Most of the time, I was at work at Disney's KCAL News station, waiting
for the news stories to start coming in. Even though we news editors
were scheduled to work a usual eight-hour day, we'd sometimes sit in our
editing bays for hours while waiting for the video footage and scripts to be
ready to edit quickly for the evening's broadcasts.
During our long conversations,
unbeknownst to me, Suze was starting to have a crush on me. It turns out
that she was not only a lesbian, but also one who had a reputation of hopping
from woman to woman; dumping her old lovers in ways that sometimes harmed their
self-respect and well being. Who would have ever imagined that I was to
become one more damaged ex beneath her rudders? I certainly had no
interest in having a romantic relationship with a woman.
I arrived in northern California to meet
Suze, who was exceptionally happy to see me. We were driving around with
Kathleen, who turned out to be Suze's current lover, and who was a major power
figure in republican politics. At one point, Kathleen went into a store
while Suze and I waited in the car. Suze looked deeply into my eyes with
a bright and enthusiastic look of extreme interest that I'd never experienced
from anyone before. She said, "You know, I'm gay."
I replied, "That's fine. I'm
not, but I believe that everyone should live in a way that is true to their
nature."
She continued to tell me that her
relationship with Kathleen was basically over, although unbeknownst to me, Suze
hadn't quite told Kathleen that yet. I was not familiar with bouncing relationship games, and just nodded to
show that I was listening.
During our travels that day, I started to
get symptoms of a stomach flu. By the time I arrived at the bay area ashram
of our path, where I was expected as a weekend guest, the symptoms were making
me feel tired, and perhaps more vulnerable than usual. The room I was
registered in ended up being extremely cold, with no way to raise the heat
level. Before going to sleep, I decided to spend some time meditating in
the very powerful "meditation cave" room that was available in this ashram.
I walked in to hear the mantra of our lineage playing, and saw that I
was completely alone, with just a large altar with photos of the three gurus of
our lineage at the front of the room. I sat facing them, and began to
have a bit of divine conversation.
Perhaps having Suze be so flirtatious with me during the day combined with my vulnerability from the stomach flu and my still feeling so new to the world outside of monastic life to trigger something new inside me. As I sat for a peaceful meditation, I felt the tenderness of a heart that recognizes that it has not really known human love or been held, comforted, or deeply cared for, even in childhood.
I had experienced amazing forms of spiritual and divine love for God, guru, and my inner spiritual self and did have friends and a community while living for a decade in the ashram, but in that moment I became aware of something I'd missed — an experience of human mutual kindness, affection, and love. Even though I'd always been fairly self-contained and was a lover of peaceful solitude, in this vulnerable moment, I felt a rare, deep sense of loneliness. I began to cry, and spoke mentally to my three gurus on the altar before me, saying "I need to have some affection in my life."
Ka boom. Be careful what you ask for in a powerful place.
Feeling emotionally drained after the
good cry, I returned to my room and fell asleep, only to be awakened by a phone
ringing in the room. It was Suze. It was midnight. She
wanted to talk to me and play some possible music tracks for our upcoming video
production. On came all these heart-rending love songs that had nothing
to do with our video, most memorably, "Getting to Know You," and
"Good night, my love, pleasant dreams and sleep tight, my love. May
tomorrow be sunny and bright, and bring you closer to me." After
this song played, Suze told me that she had fallen in love with me and wanted
to have a relationship with me. She said that she wanted to hold me, love
me, and care for me. I was surprised not only by her bold profession,
but also by its synchronicity with what I'd just been asking from my guru
lineage in the meditation cave.
I told Suze that we couldn't possibly
have a romantic relationship, because I wasn't gay, and in fact, had led a
celibate, monastic life up until that time. I had just turned
thirty-two, and Suze was in her early forties. But even more pronounced
than this decade of age difference was the difference in our levels of
experience with relationships. I had less relationship experience than
most twelve-year-olds would have today, while Suze had experienced a string of
varied lovers for decades. I was confused by her come-on, but was quite
clear about not being gay or wanting to have a romantic relationship with a
woman. I was hoping we could be friends, but was not attracted to her or
any other woman as a love interest.
Now, an appropriate response for Suze to
have at this point would be to think, "Oh well. Even though I'm
having these desires to have a relationship with this woman for whatever
reasons, she has now told me twice that she is not gay. I also know that
she is very innocent and has spent the past decade plus living a completely
celibate, monastic life, like a nun might live. I'll just have to deal
with my lusts and desires as I've had to deal with other things in my life that
I've wanted but not been able to have."
But no. Suze saw an opportunity to
dig into someone's life and fulfill her desires. Suze didn't care about
all these details about who I was or what I was looking for or not looking for.
She wanted to be with me, and as the world would soon find out, Suze was
a very persuasive salesperson, who often assured me that she could sell anything to anyone.
"We can have a non-sexual
relationship. Oh Kumuda, I just want to be with you. I think you
are the most amazing woman I've ever met. I want to learn from you and
love you and take care of you. In fact, I think it would be good for me
to experience a celibate relationship after all I've been through." She
continued, wheedling and cajoling on and on, pleading with me to enter a
romantic relationship with her. "You're the most brilliant woman I've ever
met, and I just want to love you and be with you!"
More than being flattered by her compliments, I was feeling concerned about this strange turn of events. Again, I said that a romantic relationship wouldn't be possible,
but perhaps not with the strength and authority that would have slammed the
door shut. It was after midnight, and I was still reeling from not only the stomach flu, but more so the deeply vulnerable and personal space of prayer I'd entered in the meditation cave, where I had just asked God and my gurus to heal my loneliness and help me to experience affection. I did mention to Suze the synchronicity of her words to the prayer I'd just offered,
and Suze strongly declared that she was the one who was meant to fulfill this
request.
Everything in my mind and logic system
told me to be firm and clear about this. You can't have a
beyond-friendship relationship with a woman if you're not gay and have
never had any sexual attraction to a woman, although to be honest, I hadn't
really had very much sexual attraction to anyone, especially during the
previous decade of monastic life.
Several things kept me from slamming this
door closed and telling Suze to never mention anything about it ever again.
First, we were just beginning to produce a major video creation
together, and so far had gotten along very well. Serving my guru and
humanity through this project was of utmost importance to me. Thus far, Suze
and I had gotten along creatively as co-producers of the video. I think
that if someone else had come onto me even with the same intensity, I would
have found it easier to say no in a way that ended the discussion. But in
this case, Suze and I were working together on this huge, demanding project
that would be blessing our guru's disciples all around the world. I didn't want
to disrupt the good creative flow we had started to generate, and was concerned
that any kind of negative anger or animosity would be like a kiss of death to
the quality of our video.
Also, I had just, moments earlier, asked
my guru lineage to bring affection into my life — one of very few times
that I ever asked for anything from God or guru, from within or on the outside.
This late night phone call, just an hour or so after my request, was
enthusiastically offering to fulfill that prayer. This was a synchronistic
surprise, and in my usual mode of looking for meaning in synchronistic events,
I felt that I should keep my mind and heart at least a bit open, knowing that
God will sometimes respond to prayers in unexpected ways and forms.
The Lord works in mysterious ways, although this one was pushing the envelope
big time.
I was also somewhat intrigued by the idea
of finally learning what a relationship was like, since I'd never been in one
before. During my monastic years, I knew many people who were in relationships,
but I just didn't know much about how relationships worked, or why people would
want to get into one. A tiny and quiet thought arose, wondering if
perhaps the universe was bringing me this very strange circumstance to allow me
to experience what it is like to be close to another person. I was being
enthusiastically offered a way to experience a relationship in a unique
situation where I'd be able to maintain my celibacy while looking more deeply
into the mechanics of relationship on an experiential level. This aspect
of the situation did intrigue me a bit. I've always tended to look at
life as an educational experience — even at times a research experiment,
as I've been known to say with some humor, "I'm just here to study the
species."
I wasn't in love with Suze by any stretch
of the imagination, but did already like her as a friend. We could
probably have some fun, educational, creative, and mutually beneficial times
together in a close friendship, although I wasn't interested in having any kind
of sexual relationship with her. What she was offering and pleading for
sounded more like a super-close friendship than anything else, and I hadn't
even had one of those in many years. I was so naive about how sex and
relationships worked that I really didn't see how ridiculous the whole idea was
of having a nonsexual relationship with a lesbian when I wasn't a
lesbian. I also believed that Suze was sincerely wanting to experience a
celibate relationship. Having had no real sexual experience up to that
point in my life, I didn't understand how important sex was to people, other
than the Hard Copy interviews I edited about the topic a year before these
events with Suze took place.
I was a free lance editor for the brand new Hard Copy show just months after leaving my decade of monastic ashram life -- how's that for a wake up call? One of the first pieces I edited was a three-part sex survey, for which the Hard Copy producers had interviewed
a group of people, asking various questions, including, "How much money would it take for you to give
up sex for a month, and how much for a year?" I was shocked by their
answers. These people were asking for hundreds, thousands, even millions of
dollars! One huge, husky woman even bellowed, "Nothing could make me stop
that!" The producers and I enjoyed imitating her in various contexts
during the long days of editing.
While we were editing the "celebrity
fantasy montage," one of the Hard Copy producers had responded to my question about
whether Michelle Pfeiffer was the blond or brunette by asking, "What
planet are you from?" And in fact, my experience of re-entering
"the world" after a decade of ashram life was very much like entering
a new planet. Every day I would encounter unfamiliar circumstances.
Of course, now I can see the absurdity of Suze's
proposal to have a nonsexual relationship, especially considering her voracious history, but at the time, the whole arena of interpersonal relationships
was fairly new to me. In moving from monastic to worldly life, this was just one more experience for which I
didn't have the knowledge or experience to know what was appropriate and what
was ridiculous.
When Suze wanted something, she wanted
it, and didn't seem to care a whit about whether it was appropriate or not for the
other person or people involved. And in the other corner was
Kumuda, who had little interpersonal experience and had barely uttered the word "no" during her previous ten
years of compliant monastic living. My
whittled-down will power was no match for Suze's strong desires.
God knows why Suze was so attracted to me at the time. It's not like I was gorgeous, nor did I have such an interesting or vibrant personality. I had a flair for certain creative skills, from playing drums to chanting to producing and editing videos, and I'd already been called a "genius" quite a few times already during the past two years of working with producers in Hollywood. I had also received and achieved a fairly deep level of spiritual peacefulness and awareness during the many years of monastic spiritual focus, chanting, meditating, studying, and service. But other than these accomplishments and qualities, I didn't have many opinions or wisdom about worldly ways, and wasn't all that interested in worldly pursuits or entertainment. In fact, I thought of myself as being fairly boring, especially for people like Suze who were more focused on outer relationships and experiences.
Looking back, I think what probably attracted Suze so strongly to me were my creative skills, my spiritual focus, and perhaps even more, my obvious innocence. Just like some men are attracted to youthful innocence, Suze seemed to be attracted to this 31-year-old virgin fresh out of ashram life, who had hardly ever even been kissed. At the time, I didn't really have any context with which to understand Suze's proposals.
Nothing turned around during our late
night phone call, but by the time we met the next day, my stomach flu had
gotten much worse, aggravated by the freezing cold room I was staying in.
Suze insisted that I stay at her house the next night before returning
to Los Angeles. She would turn the heat up, make tea for me and take care of
me. I really didn't want to spend another night shivering at the ashram
with this flu, and actually, I couldn't remember having ever had anyone want to take care of me while I
was ill. With cosmic warning sirens and flashing lights going off all around, I packed up my bags and went to Suze's house in the Oakland
hills.
True to her word, Suze did take care of
me, making me tea, bringing me light food to eat, and even offering a full-body
massage. Yes, a full-body massage - one of my weaknesses after growing
up so starved of physical touch, and feeling so achy with the flu. After
the massage, I closed my eyes and relaxed. Apparently, Suze thought I
was sleeping, because she dialed to call Nancy, one of her previous lovers with
whom she was still friends. With me lying peacefully beside her, Suze
spoke to her friend softly, but completely audibly, and with the enthusiasm of
a tabloid reporter who had just gotten the big scoop.
"Guess who is in my bed right now!?!
Yes! I gave her a massage!"
Several feelings came over me at that
moment. First, I felt that I had to now pretend to be asleep to avoid
having to confront Suze about the sense of conquest that was clear from her
enthusiastic words of triumph. This was especially uncomfortable for me
because I was usually very clear about being honest and not hiding things,
since I didn't really have much to hide anyway. Second, I'd never
been treated or spoken of in that way before - as though I was an animal that
had been won over, or a game that had been cinched. At this point, I
should have noted the discomfort of being considered in this way and clearly
stood my ground about not being available for a relationship with this person.
I should have sat up and spoken up, but I didn't. It was in this
moment that I sold myself out by avoiding action and taking the easier path of
going along with someone else's will.
At this time, Suze was neither rich nor
famous. In fact, she had borrowed $50,000 from her friend on the
phone, and was also having an argument about not being able to pay the loan
back according to their agreed-upon schedule. I thought this was
strange, because Suze seemed to love living the high life - driving an
expensive BMW, wearing expensive clothes and jewelry, and eventually taking me
out to many fancy restaurants, including one decorated like the Kasbah, where
we had our own curtained harem booth with a belly dancer coming by on occasion
to entertain us. These were all firsts for me, being just two years out
of the monastic life. I tended to have fairly simple tastes.
The next week, we began filming the
video, and it turned out that Suze and I were quite a good creative team.
She proved her ability to talk just about anyone into just about
anything by arranging for us to rent — at very low prices — a yacht
and helicopter. We gathered a hundred or so Northern California devotees
on the yacht, all holding up flags from all different countries, while the
cameraman and I flew overhead filming the scene. I still had the stomach
flu, but managed to more or less push my attention away from it for the weekend
of travel and filming.
Indeed, it was a fun and fulfilling
weekend for me, traveling up and down the coast, letting the magic of creative
service manifest through our small team of creative, intelligent, and
accomplished devotees that included a cameraman, a director, and Suze's
supposed ex who didn't yet know she was an ex aside from watching Suze flirt
grandiosely with me (awkward!).
It was a great creative effort, and the
enthusiasm and devotion that I was feeling during this time of very active
service kept me going in spite of the stomach flu symptoms and this very
unfamiliar experience of having someone — a woman no less — who
wanted to have a romantic relationship with me. Then came the many hours of editing that it took to put the
video together. All these exciting
efforts likely contributed to my positive feelings about being close friends
with Suze. Both of us were creative dynamos who knew how to do different
aspects of a project than the other. It seemed to be a good creative-devotional
team, with many possibilities for bringing greater light to the world in the
future.
After some additional filming on cable
cars and with devotee children in the San Francisco area, we flew down to Los
Angeles, where I was able to work a bit of my own magic with my friends and
coworkers at Disney. One of the executives was kind enough to arrange
for us to have a private meeting with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. We filmed
them bowing to the camera, and were also able to set up in a special spot for
filming the parade.
Suze and I thought it would be cool to film some of the parade characters giving a namaste bow with folded hands to the camera -- this is a common gesture that we would use during our ashram ceremonies and festivities. But how to communicate this idea to the characters in the midst of a very loud and exciting parade?
We came up with an idea. Euro Disney had recently opened, so while I filmed the characters, Suze stood
next to me, shouting out and begging each character to "Bow for Japan! Bow for Japan!" You can hear Suze
shouting this phrase over the parade music as an almost-continuous soundtrack on the recorded videotape, and I was slightly horrified and humored to realize that all of
the tourists around us who were filming the same parade must have gone home
with their own recordings of "Bow for Japan! Bow for Japan!"
And bow, the characters did! We
even managed to get Santa in his grand sleigh to give a loving namaste bow to
the camera from high above the parade.
CLICK HERE to play some of the fun video footage I filmed while Suze was shouting "Bow for Japan!"
Get help with realplayer here 
The next day, we drove to San Diego, where we'd arranged to have some of the devotees rent four hot air balloons. Suze and I were in one balloon with the camera crew, and the San Diego devotees were in the other three, lip-synching to the original song we'd recorded for the piece. It was quite an amazing weekend.
Here I'm helping to set up one of the hot air balloons for our filming.
CLICK HERE to play the final edited New Years video that Suze and I co-produced.
Get help with realplayer here
Our time together with this project was fun, and we were a great creative team. Suze was very sociable and outgoing and liked to engage people, although it seemed obvious, even with my naiveté at the time, that part of what she was doing was showing off a bit for me, hoping I would go along with her plans. And I did.
The next thing you knew, Suze and I were in a full-fledged relationship, though a nonsexual one per our agreement and the fact that I wasn't gay. I realized that ours wasn't a usual, traditional kind of relationship, but at the time I didn't understand quite how unusual an arrangement we had.
At first, it was mostly pleasant to have a partner who was so happy to see me or hear from me, and who would say over and over words that I'd hardly heard during my life -- "I love you." Suze would often ask me to sing for her, and would often say that I was the most brilliant or talented woman she'd ever met. She seemed to enjoy my simple, not quite so socialized qualities, as well as our honest discussions about everything from the day's events to spiritual teachings, to the sometimes-complex depths of Suze's mind, heart, and interpersonal relationships, past and present. We spoke on the phone for hours most days, and I somehow fell into the role of being somewhat of a counselor to Suze as she began asking my advice about large and small matters in her life.
Okay, these photos were taken on a bad hair day. Suze was staying with me in Santa Monica, and she woke up wanting to go to this new mall in Westwood for breakfast and shopping. I told her that the stores wouldn't be open yet, but she was sure they would be and insisted that we jump in the car before I even had a chance to wash up or get rid of the bed head. The stores and restaurant were closed, so we took these photos in a photo booth.
Suze would often say that one of her previous lovers (a trust fund baby) had taught her about money, that the next lover (a major player in republican politics) had taught her about power, and that I had brought her back to God. I suppose that being fresh out of a decade of monastic life where most of my time was spent studying scriptures and producing powerful spiritual videos made my natural level of conversation more spiritually-focused than most of the people Suze had previously spoken with on a regular basis.
Looking back, I can see certain indications of Suze's upcoming fame and fortune. She was extremely narcissistic and seemed to require a lot of attention and assurances to ease her many insecurities. Suze was extremely motivated to get whatever it was that she wanted, especially if it would prove to others that she was powerful and effective. Sometimes it seemed that one of Suze's goals in life was to get people to feel jealous of her -- something I couldn't relate to at all, because to me jealousy is a generally negative energy. In fact, I often share my challenges, perhaps a bit too much, in part so people won't feel jealous about the blessings. When I lived in the ashram and had the amazing wonderland blessing of producing, scripting, and editing videos of my beloved gurus all day long for years, I would allow other ashramites to also see the challenges, such as being left behind from traveling with our Guru's entourage and staying in the ashram during the cold upstate New York winters (which I'd also come to love in all their silence).
That February, Suze mailed me a carefully
chosen card every day for the two weeks preceding Valentines Day, along with the ironic one she brought from Oakland to Santa Monica as she spent the weekend with me before I went for a visit to our guru's ashram. Suze and I would
fly up and down to spend time together in person every few weekends.
For the first time, I had a chance to see what it was like to be in a
fairly close relationship with another person -- with both the benefits and the drawbacks.
One surprise came when Suze asked me to
let her know at all times where I was and where I would be going. For
example, if I was going out to the store, she wanted me to let her know first, because
she would just like to know where I was at any particular moment of the day.
I thought this was kind of creepy and definitely unnecessary, and didn't
really keep to this request, although Suze and I spoke for hours almost every
day.
Suze kept saying that she wanted to win one too (she has since won two)
On to Chapter 36: Love, Betrayal, and the Unseen Hand of God
Back to The Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Awakening
Chapter 2: Never to Return
Chapter 3: I Chose This?
Chapter 4: Through the Years
Chapter 5: Exploring the Unconscious
Chapter 6: Faith-Healer
Chapter 7: Hidden Persuaders
Chapter 8: The Threshold of Life
Chapter 9: When the Student is Ready
Chapter 10: Magical Meeting
Chapter 11: Toward the One
Chapter 12: Who is Shiva?
Chapter 13: Destiny Calls
Chapter 14: Winter Wonderland
Chapter 15: The Happy Pauper
Chapter 16: This Karmic Dance
Chapter 17: Stoking the Inner Fire
Chapter 18: The Fruits of Surrender
Chapter 19: That Gracious Glance
Chapter 20: How Could He Be Gone?
Chapter 21: From Heart to Heart
Chapter 22: Get a Job
Chapter 23: Smash the Idol
Chapter 24: Clothed in Devotion
Chapter 25: Nemesis
Chapter 26: Who Are You Calling Jad?
Chapter 27: A Perfect Mistake
Chapter 28: She Still Thinks She Did It!
Chapter 29: Taming the Beast
Chapter 30: Undo What You Have Done
Chapter 31: The Great Guiding Force
Chapter 32: The Wish Fulfilling Tree
Chapter 33: Where is the Key?
Chapter 34: The Hollywood Chronicles
Chapter 35: A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Nirvana
Chapter 36: Love, Betrayal, and the Unseen Hand of God
Chapter 37: An Inner Command
Chapter 38: Cardiff by the Sea
Chapter 39: Miracles and Great Beings
Chapter 40: Shiva's Fiery Dance
Chapter 41: A Shifting Path
Chapter 42: Cheering up Nine Swamis
Chapter 43: Death Threat
Chapter 44: Spirituality For Dummies
Chapter 45: A Real Angel
Chapter 46: Send in the Clowns
Chapter 47: Dispassion and Death's Door
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