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Chapter Thirty-Six

LOVE, BETRAYAL, AND THE UNSEEN HAND OF GOD

 

HERE I WAS, AFTER TEN YEARS of monastic life, having lived a celibate life, not being a lesbian, and yet somehow having been convinced to enter a nonsexual but romantic relationship with Suze Orman for nearly two years. It was ridiculous, but my own lack of experience in such matters, together with Suze's high pressured desires and pleading had created this very strange situation.  I carried, and to some degree still carry, a certain innocence that could also be described as a lack of maturity and an unexercised self-will.  After all, I'd just spent a decade living in a spiritual ashram community where participants were generally expected to acquiesce to the will of our teacher and her representatives without question or complaint. 

When most people are asked to do something in a non-monastic setting, they might take a moment to think of reasons why they might or might not want to fulfill the request.  However, in the ashram, we lived with a "yes" mentality, which generally worked well in terms of keeping people of various levels of management and service working together in a fairly harmonious way.  Living with such openness was actually comfortable for me, as it expanded into a sense of trusting the universe. Nevertheless, it seemed that I had lessons to learn along the lines of the Middle-Eastern saying, "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel."

Even though the word "no" had not been an oft-used part of my vocabulary, I had initially said no several times to Suze's request that we have a relationship, explaining that I was not gay and had never had any sexual attraction to a woman.  This refusal was followed by Suze going full force with her pleading and pushiness as she convinced me to enter this strange situation of having a nonsexual but romantic-style relationship, which I considered to be more of a close friendship than a relationship of lovers. If you've seen Suze pushing her wares on television, you know how strong and willful she can be when she wants something, and I was not only a decade younger than her in years, but lifetimes younger in relationship experience. 

So there we were, in a supposedly monogamous relationship, having many friendly and caring times together and deep discussions about many aspects of our lives for hours almost every day.  For me it was a friendship plus, and for Suze, it was a lover minus. 

Over the next two years, our unique arrangement revealed a whole spectrum of lessons about the nature of relationships - from Suze's initial crush to the fading of that crush, to what is captured best by the title of a play, "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change," to the relationship's ending and devastating aftermath.

For me, the relationship didn't shift that much over time, because it wasn't based on the infatuation of a crush, but on friendship.  However, for Suze, it was one more romantic relationship destined for failure.  As Suze's crush on me began to fade, all of a sudden, my lack of social training, which had been so attractive to her, lost its attraction and became irritating. 

The main venue for this new battle came during our mealtimes.   For goodness sakes, I didn't even know which fork to use for what! On top of this, I dared to cut several pieces of my food up ahead of time, which apparently broke some international law, based on Suze's response.  Not to mention Suze's growing irritation about me being a vegetarian, which limited what we could eat during our meals out.  Suze couldn't complain too much about that, with us both being members of a spiritual path that encouraged vegetarianism, although she did try to get me to change my vegetarian ways. 

Perhaps Suze's sublimated frustration about my not eating meat and raw fish sushi (not to mention not wanting to have sex) can help explain her over-the-top anger about my lack of eating utensil etiquette.  It was a big deal that disrupted more than a few meals. 

One of Suze's previous lovers, who was a wealthy trust fund baby from a large, well-known company, had taken similar efforts to teach Suze how to eat with proper etiquette.   However, one difference between the trainability factors of Suze and myself is that, not only had I been brought up by my family without a single guidance on how to eat "properly," beyond the occasional "close your mouth when you chew," but I had just spent a decade of monastic life in a place where, seriously, the only utensil we ever received to use in eating our meals was a spoon, a practice that the ashram has since updated to include usual utensils.   I think spoons may have been used exclusively at the time to keep things simple and to keep clean-up time down. After all, in Indian ashrams, people often eat meals with no utensils at all, scooping up rice and vegetables with their hand or chapati bread.

In fact, I learned during these monastic years that nearly every kind of food can be eaten with a spoon.   Spaghetti was the main obvious challenge, but even that was doable when you learned the secret mysteries of spoon eating.   I remember going out to eat a few times during my monastic years, and always making the same joke - picking up the fork as though I'd never seen one before, and exclaiming, "Why, you could pierce your tongue with this!"  

So, I had arrived from this one-spoon world into Suze's elegant dining world, where using a salad fork for the entree was practically a sin, and the way I held my utensils was completely unacceptable.   Each meal became a training ground for teaching me how to eat properly, and because I wasn't a very good student of this lesson, Suze would get more and more upset and frustrated, until our meals started to remind me of that scene from the Helen Keller movie, where Helen's teacher is trying to teach her to eat with utensils instead of her hand, and they end up fighting aggressively and chasing each other around the room during each meal.   I started to feel like "wolf-girl," clearly with no chance of ever fitting in with the upper echelon that Suze was wanting to hang out with.   This was the first major chink in our previously pleasant relationship.

Another strange rule that came up after a fairly short time was that Suze had a freaked-out reaction if she ever saw a strand of hair off of someone's head. If I brushed my hair in front of the mirror, I had to make sure that no strand of hair was left on the counter or floor.  The most disastrous thing was for Suze to find a wet strand of hair in the shower – she would scream in a childish shriek for me to come and clean it up, much the way an easily-frightened woman might call for her husband to get rid of a big spider, and she would be angry that I had been so uncaring as to miss a hair in my expected close examination of all bathroom surfaces.  I imagine there must be a "hair-o-phobia" type of name for whatever it was that Suze had. 

Then came the clothing issue.  Since leaving the ashram and moving to Hollywood, I had seriously upgraded my clothing selections, finding comfortable but contemporary combinations to wear to the studios for work.   But even these upgraded fashions were not up to Suze's standards.   She wanted me to wear her style of clothes - tight pants with boots, oh, and I had to also get bikini waxes, because every woman must have bikini waxes.   Suze even told me that she insisted on having a bikini wax before any visit to the ashram to see our guru, which I thought was an intriguing commitment to make before undertaking a spiritual pilgrimage.

Being in this relationship after so many years of monastic life, especially with a woman when I was not a lesbian, was confusing to say the least. I did my best to acquiesce to Suze's wishes during this time, however, this pattern of following her wishes soon led to something that I would deeply regret if I didn't have a commitment to trusting that even our mistakes happen for a reason. 

Soon after our relationship began, I wrote a letter to our guru to let her know about this new development in my personal life.   I wanted to present the situation to my guru with an understanding that if she did not approve of this strange relationship, she certainly wasn't shy and could tell me so.   It was with this understanding that I began a letter to my guru, describing the circumstances under which Suze and I had met and come together.   It was an honest description as usual, but then came another unexpected twist.

Suze wanted to participate in writing the letter, and I allowed her to do so.   She actually dictated entire sections, expecting me to include her words as though they were my own.   Sadly, I allowed this interference with my personal relationship with my guru to take place. 

Suze included her oft-repeated line about how one lover had taught her about wealth, the other about power, and that I had brought her back to God, which I would have never included on my own.  Suze also used my letter to address her tendency to hop from woman to woman, because it turns out that our guru had asked her to stop doing it after Suze started going from relationship to relationship with different devotees of the path. This was news to me!  

I was a little surprised to find out about this request from our guru during our letter-writing endeavor, but managed to squelch a note of concern that perhaps the divine eye might not be smiling on this relationship after all.   Once you're already on the train, it is not so easy to disembark.

I never received an official response from my guru after sending this letter, however some surprising changes did begin to take place in Suze's life fairly quickly.   The local bay area ashram that she attended suddenly, quickly, and without explanation, turned Suze into a persona non grata, apparently with this direction coming from someone at or near the top of the international spiritual foundation's hierarchy.   Until then, Suze had been honored and included as a public speaker and contributor to the Oakland ashram's creative program designs, however now she was no longer welcome to play any official role in the bay area ashram.   People who had been her friends started to avoid Suze and treat her as someone they weren't supposed to associate with. 

One of Suze's best friends, Tulasini, was a lawyer who was also on the same spiritual path and offered service with the foundation's legal needs.  Although she was a professional person, she and Suze would speak to each other almost exclusively in baby talk.  In fact, Suze spoke with most of her friends in baby talk — it was strange, but I more or less got used to it. 

Tulasini came to remind me of that snooty little busybody junior high-school girl who likes to keep a list of who is in or out of popularity.  I first got to see her in action while I was helping Suze get pre-endorsements for her first book.  We had written a letter to contact Eugene Callender, one of the most wonderful, accomplished, and big-hearted people we knew.  Eugene had been president of our guru's foundation for many years, and was also a popular Harlem minister, a civil rights activist, director and advisor to many social and political organizations, and at the time was serving as head of the Federal Council on Aging, which was perfect for Suze's first book, You've Earned It, Don't Lose It.  Eugene wrote a beautiful endorsement for Suze's book, but then along came Tulasini telling Suze that she shouldn't use his endorsement, because Eugene was, as she put it, "on the shit list." 

Now if you knew Eugene, you knew he couldn't possibly be on any shit list in this or any other world — this was a real man of God, one of the most loving people I've ever met.  Tulasini indicated, as usual, that she had some secret information about why he was on this elusive shit list that only she seemed to know about, but she would not give Suze any of that specific information, and expected us to banish him from her book based only on Tulasini's mysterious aspersions.

I convinced Suze to use Eugene's endorsement anyway.  Maybe my convincing Suze to go against Tulasini's carefully kept list is what inspired Tulasini to one day see to it that I would eventually be given my own spot on it for years to come.  But first it was Suze's turn to be treated like a persona non grata in this game of "mean girls, yoga style."

Suze was understandably upset by her mysterious banishment from the local ashram.  It made her feel more vulnerable and insecure than usual.   We wondered if this sudden shift had anything to do with my letter to our guru.   Surely, the timing was synchronistic.

Around this time, Suze's previous lover Kathleen told her that she had visited the New York ashram, and met with Ralph, who she said was upset that Kathleen and Suze had broken up.  According to Kathleen, Ralph told her that when our guru read the letter, she had thrown it to the floor in anger.   This report initiated more discussions between Suze and me about whether we believed Ralph's description of our guru's response to be true, because Ralph was known for sometimes bending the truth considerably to suit his own goals. He was actually quite a fun-loving, intelligent, and creative fellow, but you know what they say about getting too much power — it can bring out strange behaviors.

I've since asked Ralph about this time, and he explained that Kathleen had come to the ashram crying and distraught at the cruel and uncaring way that Suze had dumped her.  I was saddened to hear this, because I now realize that I was too naive at the time — fresh out of a decade of monastic life with virtually no personal relationship experience — to understand and pick up clues about what was going on.  I'm a bit more "street savvy" now, after these and other experiences.  In fact, the lessons I learned from this relationship with Suze and all its branches were probably enough to make up for a lot of my dearth of interpersonal relationships from all my monastic years, although not necessarily in a positive way. 

At the time that Suze had brutally dumped Kathleen to latch on to me, I had little idea of what was going on behind the scenes in terms of how these events were harming Kathleen's heart and soul. Suze had initially told me that they'd already broken up, but apparently she hadn't told Kathleen that and had just started coming on to me right in front of her -- as though she relished the cruelty of slamming down someone who loved her.

Suze's virtual banishment created a quandary for me.

I wanted to follow the wishes of my spiritual teacher, and wondered if Suze's banishment was a sign from her that I should beware of what I was getting into.  If so, I sure wish now that I'd heeded the sign!  In fact, I think that one of the main lessons learned from this sequence of events was that I'd made a mistake by not exploring and heeding this message.  My heart was feeling soft due to Suze's sadness and despair over becoming a persona non grata on the path.  Suze was feeling quite upset and vulnerable from being blackballed at the local ashram, and it was not my way to abandon someone in their time of need.  Little did I know that this softness of heart in staying with Suze while she was on the ashram "shit list" would one day lead to Suze and Tulasini making sure I would become a permanent fixture on that list.  Who would have ever imagined this as a possibility at the time?

Ultimately Suze's banishment was too nebulous a message for me to take as a definite command or instruction from my guru, especially when cutting off our relationship at this time would devastate the already vulnerable Suze.  I was not quite convinced that these new changes in the community's responses to Suze were coming from our guru and not from someone like Ralph.  Suze and I continued our relationship in spite of these new challenges, while I continued to look for any other clues from our guru about what her wishes might be.

Soon after, I was able to get two front row tickets for a big "Amnesty International" show being filmed by Lifetime Television.   Many famous stars, comedians, and singers offered their talents, and Suze flew down to Los Angeles for the weekend so we could go together.  

Video cameras were filming the audience, and I knew that being in the front row would probably give us a good chance of being filmed.   So I began to nudge Suze every now and then, saying, "Come on, smile! Gurumayi is going to see us on television!"   We were still in the phase where Suze had a crush on me, and so she was fairly amused by my comments, although at one point, she asked, "Are you obsessed (with the guru) or what?"

 

Here are  two screen frames from the Amnesty show as it aired:

 

Two months later, I was working on the news at Disney on the evening when the amnesty show was scheduled to play on television. I phoned into my home answering phone machine to find a very loving and enthusiastic message from one of my guru's secretaries.   Our guru did occasionally watch television, and her secretary phoned to say that she, apparently along with our guru, had been flipping through the channels, "And who did I see, but you and Suze Orman at the Amnesty show!   It was great to see you!   Good night!" 

From the happy tone of this phone message, I surmised that our guru had seen the show too and asked her to phone, and thought this probably meant that she was fine about our relationship after all. 

Suze and I continued to speak on the phone, often for hours every day, and to fly up and down the coast for frequent weekend visits.   Very naturally, I seemed to enter a role of being Suze's counselor or coach. We would discuss her childhood memories, her daily challenges, her arguments with friends, and her future.  She would ask my advice on large and small matters in her life, and I was happy to help however I could.  Suze's favorite time was when she'd be going on about something, and I'd say, "It's not like that," and help her explore another level or see the events from a more spiritual perspective.  She'd exclaim in her usual baby talk voice, "I love that!"

At the time, Suze was charismatic, but still quite insecure and still in debt, although her financial planning business was doing much better than when we'd first met.  Soon after we met, Suze was hired by PG&E to guide workers through their new early retirement program.   Both Suze and I were extremely creative possibility thinkers.  Suze began to discuss with me and other friends what would be a good next step for her career.   Mutually, the idea and vision came together for her to write a book and become a public teacher of financial education.  As impossible as it seemed, we thought Suze could be a financial version of Martha Stewart.  Soon after, Suze found a published author who was willing to collaborate with her on writing a book about saving properly for retirement. 

While Suze was writing this book, I was able to help her in many ways, from helping to envision the idea and possibilities, to offering prayers, mantras, and blessings, to helping to edit the writing, brainstorming on a title, requesting endorsements from experts, and convincing two television shows I was working on to film and broadcast video pieces with Suze.   These were Suze's first two television show appearances. 

CLICK HERE to see a video of Suze's first television interview, which I had pulled many strings to arrange. In this frame, she's pointing to me, knowing I was going to be editing the video. You'll see that Suze was kinder and gentler at that time than she seems to be now.

Find help with realplayer here    

I flew up to San Francisco for a day to film Suze's three-hour lecture to PG&E early retirees -- a gig that also brought Suze many one-on-one appointments with the retirees and helped her to get her finances back in order. 

All the media appearances and lectures were included in a polished video presentation that I financed, produced, and edited for Suze to use in getting a publisher for her book. The publisher she wanted, who did eventually publish Suze's first book, had a requirement that their authors must already have a media presence. But Suze hadn't had any television appearances and didn't have any video of herself speaking, so like a one-man PR company, I was able to film Suze, finagle to get her on two television shows, edit a vibrant and professional publicity reel, and give Suze the kind of media presence that was required by this publisher. 

All of my help was offered as a gift of friendship on my dime to help Suze get out of debt and create a new life, with many ongoing extravagant promises from Suze of how she would repay me "if this book takes off." She would often say, "If this book takes off, I'm going to take care of you for the rest of your life."  Little did I know she must have meant "take care of you" in a mafia way, as in trying to destroy my life.  Suze often said that the first thing she was going to do with any money that came in was to buy me an Avid editing system, which at the time cost well over $100,000.  Suze made a lot of promises, over and over again, every one of which she would eventually break without even a second thought. 

Another promise that Suze would repeat fairly often is especially intriguing with hindsight.   Suze would acknowledge being aware of my innocence and lack of experience in getting close to another person, and would say how special she felt to be the first person I'd ever been close to on a day-to-day level.   She would look soulfully into my eyes and speak with her greatest sincere voice,   "Kumuda, I promise that I will cherish you forever and will never, ever break your heart." I'd imagine that Suze had been accused of breaking hearts before, based on stories I heard after this time and on Suze's own behavior in my life and on the television screen in years to come, where she would seem to relish insulting and speaking about her previous lovers in the most derogatory ways.

But at the time, I was just a simple person who loved to help people achieve their dreams, and have helped many to do so over the years, as described in some of the stories in Chapter 34.  Helping people was perhaps a bit of an addiction, because I thought it was amazing to have been given positions and connections in Hollywood, together with an innate ability to envision the greater possibilities for people's work and careers.  Over the years, I've helped many start new career paths and others to uplevel their careers. 

I was used to offering my assistance to people without focusing too much on what I might be receiving in return, and would often respond to Suze's barrage of promised repayment by saying we should focus on getting her career going, and that I was happy to help her.  Truthfully, my focus was not at all on what Suze might be able to help me with in the future, nor has it ever been so, even when the time came that I'd be living under the poverty line while Suze was flying high with millions pouring in from her book career -- a career that I think has more than satisfied her promised criteria of, "If this book takes off."  Still, more distressing than the personal slight was the regret I'd come to feel for having helped to bring such a damaging person to the forefront of the public eye, but we'll get to that in just a bit.

For now, I was happily helping Suze to start her new career.  Suze was visiting me for the weekend, and we were staying in my small one room studio apartment in Santa Monica, California. 

On Saturday, a major ice-skating tournament was on television all day and evening long.   Suze's idea for our day together was to sit on my bed all day long and watch all the hours of this tournament.   I, on the other hand, never just sat in front of the TV for hours, and if I did watch TV, I was usually flipping from station to station, and most definitely not watching any kind of sports show. Perhaps I would have flipped by the tournament and paused for a minute or two to watch one performance, but that would have been it — not so much of a sporty gal here.

After several hours of sitting there watching this ice-skating tournament, I was bouncing off the walls. My apartment was just a small one-room studio, so there was no other room to go to.  I asked if we could please turn the television off and do something else, but Suze refused. She was more interested in watching this tournament than in being with me, talking with me, or doing anything with me.   I wasn't so interesting or appealing to Suze now that her crush had worn off, and it seems that she had once again found herself in the familiar territory of having jumped headfirst into a relationship based on an uncontrollable crush, and then sobered up to find herself once again trapped in a relationship she didn't enjoy anymore, without experiencing the same intensity of feeling for the person that she had previously felt. 

For Suze, her interest seemed to be all about the initial sensory rush of having a crush and attaining a conquest. This is probably an element in many relationships, but I think that in Suze it had become a more troublesome habit than for most.   As I'd discovered only after agreeing to be in a nonsexual but romantically tinged relationship with Suze, her trend of hopping from person to person was practically legendary.

It was too bad for me that Suze didn't just hop away and break the whole thing off right then and there.   I had never really had a relationship, and didn't know how and when to end something that never should have started in the first place and was clearly going downhill.

Finally, I couldn't watch the ice-skating anymore and left to go outside. I got into my car and just drove around for a while to have some time to think.   We'd had an argument when I asked to turn the television off, and since I didn't have many close friendships, I also hadn't experienced many personal arguments.   I wasn't so sure that this interpersonal relationship stuff was for me. 

After an hour or so, I returned home, where Suze was still watching the ice-skating tournament, as if nothing had happened.   Soon afterward, she turned it off, but the tension remained between us as we went to sleep.

Even though we'd agreed to have a completely non-sexual relationship, we did often sleep together in the same bed, especially since I only had one bed. For me, it was an intimate but nonsexual experience.  With my lack of knowledge about the world of relationships, I didn't quite realize how unusual our arrangement was.  Regardless, I've never made choices in my life just to fit into the norm of what everyone else considers to be usual, and so in this case also, I was tending to go with the flow. 

Suze and I would often sleep holding one another, sometimes in a configuration that I learned was called "spooning," although Suze almost always wanted me to be the one holding her in this position. She seemed to generally feel protected by my presence.  Even though I was a somewhat shy and innocent person, I was filled with a certain strength of spiritual power.  I'd just spent nearly ten years waking up by 5:30 in the morning every day and doing many hours of spiritual practices with full-hearted vim and vigor.  My first two years in Hollywood may have dampened some of these energies a bit, but had also increased others as I met with new circumstances, challenges and blessings and developed new confidence in my skills and abilities.  

In spite of our continuing relationship, I still had no sexual attraction to Suze whatsoever.  Since we'd agreed this would be a nonsexual relationship, my disinterest in that area was fine – at least with me.  I assumed that Suze was fine with our arrangement as well, since it had been her idea.  With hindsight, I'd imagine she was having quite a few withdrawals while trying to live a celibate life. 

I had an additional excuse to not feel obliged to kiss Suze, because she had a bone infection in her mouth and didn't like to brush her teeth regularly.   It was often difficult for me to sleep when we were holding one another, especially face to face, because I was so unused to being in such close proximity to the smell of another person's body and breath.  Even aside from Suze's bone infection, her usual body odors mixed with perfume were distasteful to me from so up close.  This was my first and thus far last experience of being so close to another person's body.

My personal tendencies seemed to be directed toward living a more monastic-style life. The yoga scriptures of India describe a quality called shaucha or purity.  It doesn't just refer to staying clean from dirt or germs, but also thoughts, smells, energies, and other subtle environmental qualities. A person practicing shaucha would be naturally disinclined from touching or getting close to other people's bodies, which makes them a good candidate for a monastic way of life. 

On this night, Suze and I had just been through our biggest argument to date, so we still slept in the same bed -- my only bed -- but without holding one another.   Then something happened that left me with a shock that continues to this day.   I woke up to find Suze down in-between my legs under the covers, breaking our agreement by taking advantage of me in the form that President Clinton insisted wasn't sex, but which obviously was.   I awoke to the shock of being violated by Suze in what I could only assume was an act of anger and aggression after our big argument -- this was my first (and pretty much last) sexual experience.  

At this point, I should have jumped up and yelled and screamed and told her to get out of my life, but I didn't. I had almost never yelled at anyone in my life, and didn't know how to respond to this situation. I did push Suze away and say, "I can't believe you just did that." 

Suze apologized and explained sorrowfully that she just couldn't help herself.  It was as though she was like a dog in heat who couldn't help herself and didn't care if I was even conscious or not, but just wanted to satisfy her own lust. 

With Suze's whiney apology, I ended up displacing my compassion onto her guilt and lack of self-control instead of having compassion for my own feelings about having just been violated during my sleep.   Things can really get convoluted when you're in a relationship, especially when on one hand you have someone who knows how to manipulate, and on the other hand, someone with a lack of expertise of how to relate to others in these complex and convoluted ways. I think it was also easier for me to just let the situation go than to pursue and deal with it properly.

After this event, the disharmonious times between Suze and me became more frequent, with Suze often speaking to me with an unfriendly or condescending voice.  Nevertheless, Suze and I continued to be in an official relationship, and still kept in regular communication, with hours of phone calls on most days and occasional visits up and down the coast to spend weekends together.  The relationship was not much fun anymore, yet we continued to participate in it.   Why?   Perhaps simply because it was there.

Soon after these events, I started to gain weight, and eventually went from a healthy size to what would officially be considered as obese, gaining more than 100 extra pounds over the next six years or so.  I've heard some suggest that people often gain weight as a subconscious shield of protection to keep them from being attractive to those who might desire and eventually harm them, and I can say that this is exactly what was happening for me. 

As I started to gain just a few pounds, Suze's treatment of me got worse and worse, until she started acting at times like she couldn't stand me, even though she still wanted to continue our relationship.  At one point, while I was getting dressed, Suze looked at me with a facial expression of pure disgust and asked in a nasty tone, "What have  you been eating?" 

I felt crushed by the mean-spirited delivery of these words, and as I slumped and sat down on my bed, Suze reached over and again started touching me inappropriately and without permission.  Once again, this violation happened after she had first knocked me down emotionally — and even though this time I was awake, I felt so disempowered that I didn't know what to do. 

My first relationship experience was turning out to be quite traumatic and harmful to my previously carefree spirit.  I now knew what it felt like to be in an abusive relationship, even if not to the extent of a physically abusive one that so many have had to endure. 

Suze finally phoned one day to say that she was in another relationship, and that she and her new lover Marissa had, in fact, been living together for the past month.   This means that they had been together during our hours of talking on the phone, as Suze and I would do almost every day. 

I had a mixed reaction to this news.  On one hand, I was relieved.   Yes, Suze should be with someone who is gay.   I was not able to play that role for her, and clearly the stress of her having to hold back from the whole arena of sex had made Suze feel great resentment toward me.   I think Suze had hoped I would have discovered some hidden gayness or turned gay, but it didn't happen.   She would often suggest that we take a lesbian cruise together, which I later found out from a lesbian comedian who was in a film I edited is a standard way to help potential lovers open up more to the idea of having a gay relationship.   But, with Suze announcing her new lover in this phone call, I was relieved of further responsibility for Suze's sexual frustrations. She had found someone who could fulfill those needs.   I was off the hook, and mostly happy about it. 

The bothersome part of this phone call was the deceit of her not telling me about her new relationship for so long. I can only guess that it is because of Suze's enjoyment of the thrill of lying, hiding, cheating, and having secret liaisons.  Certainly, Suze would have known that I'd be okay about her getting together with another lesbian.   In my eyes, our relationship was more of a super-close friendship than a deep romance, as she and I had discussed before.  

I assumed that we'd be able to continue being friends while she delved into her new relationship, but again, this was reflective of my naivete.  We did continue to talk on the phone fairly regularly, but the interest was definitely fading from both of us.  Suze was being more condescending and mean-spirited to me, and I was feeling sad about being treated badly by a friend and by the process of losing a friend way too slowly and painfully.

Then came the psychic. Suze was very into going to psychics and astrologers, and I'd also picked up the habit a bit and made an appointment to have a reading with a highly regarded psychic in the Los Angeles area, Cheri Mancuso. Suze asked me to bring one of her photos along to see if the psychic had anything to say about her future.  

I brought several photos of friends to the reading, but this psychic just locked onto Suze's photo, and went on for some time with her assessments about her.  This was in August 1993, after I'd been helping Suze to begin her writing and public career, but before her first book was published in 1994, so Suze was not publicly known at all.  Suze had never met Cheri,and Cheri knew nothing at all about Suze other than what she intuited from seeing her photo.

Cheri described seeing a scene where Suze was walking, like a leader of some sort, with several women following her -- they were all wearing dark shrouds.   The psychic went into some depth about Suze's obsessive interest in playing with the occult dark side to get what she wanted (which I knew she was very interested in and have come to see as her means toward achieving fame and fortune in this world, in a "make a deal with the devil" kind of way).  Cheri described how Suze wanted to be a leader of other people, but that she would be leading her followers into darkness.  Cheri also described how Suze's dark energy was bringing me down from the light I'd achieved from my years of dedicated spiritual practices, along with some other not so flattering assessments of Suze's nature.

To be  honest, I didn't quite notice how harsh Cheri's description of Suze was, because she has a kind and compassionate way of saying things, and also because my narcissistic mind kept wanting to pull the psychic back into talking about my nature and future during the limited time of our reading, so I wasn't paying all that much attention to the specific information Cheri was giving about Suze.

That evening, Suze and I were chatting by phone as we did pretty much every day, when she asked if I'd shown the psychic her photo and if the psychic had said anything about her.   Without really thinking, I replied that she had, and offered to play the audiotape over the phone so that Suze could hear what the psychic had said.   Well, as it played, I started to cringe, realizing how negative the reading was.  

After the section played, I came back to the phone to find Suze extremely upset — not with the psychic, but with me. 

"How could you play something like that for me!"   Suze was furious.   It was as if by playing the tape for her, I was saying these things myself.   I suppose what she would have expected me to do was to lie about what the psychic said and not play the tape, but I was not experienced in these kinds of coverup-type games. 

In a way, from that moment on, Suze never forgave me for playing this reading that was so unflattering to her.  Perhaps this was the moment when the seed was planted in Suze to want to destroy my well-being after I spent much time and effort to help her to achieve her dreams.  Or maybe I was just one more example of Suze's pattern of wanting to bring down those who had helped to lift her up.

I apologized for playing the tape and tried to explain to Suze that I hadn't really noticed how bad the reading was while it was taking place, but that did nothing to lessen the sting of this psychic's blunt assessment of Suze's nature and future.  Even though I didn't necessarily place my full trust in the words of a psychic, her words did ring truer than I wanted them to ring.  Deep inside I agreed with the psychic's advice that it would be best for me to let go of my contact with Suze and work to regain whatever part of my spiritual light had been darkened by these two years of living in someone else's fairly warped world of desires and deceptions. 

Moving on from this friendship with Suze was something that should have been easy for me to do. I've always been able to move on from people and things throughout my life.   People have come and gone from my life with little trauma, from family to friends.  Sometimes there might be a minor falling out that leads to the separation, but I've always felt and understood that moving, growing, meeting and separating are part of the inherent nature of life, especially if you've chosen to be on the fast track of munching through past-karma residues, learning new lessons, and continually growing into new vistas. 

We draw to us people who are resonating to some aspect of our beings, and when that resonant vibration is no longer coming through from one party of a relationship, there is a natural space for the relationship to cease to manifest outwardly, although the underlying feeling of friendship may continue and even be rekindled years later.   It seemed to be time to move on from this friendship with Suze.

But I didn't.   Yes, our phone calls became less frequent and less intimate, but we continued to meet one another by phone, and also by email and instant messaging - since we'd both recently discovered the internet through America Online.

One evening, I did a search to see if Suze was online, and sent her an instant message to say hello.   She responded back with an upset message.

You see, even though Suze was now living with her new lover, Marissa, she had also begun a separate cyber-relationship with a lesbian woman from the Upper East Side in New York, named, appropriately, UpEastSide.   Marissa didn't know about this online-affair, and to be honest, I wished that I didn't know about it either.   Suddenly I was given a much more blatant view into Suze's patterns of hopping from person to person and living with deceit toward the ones she supposedly loved while cheating with others.  And now, I was expected to also participate in keeping Suze's secret from Marissa.

When I found Suze online this evening, she was upset because she and her online lover were having a big fight about some silly thing.   She asked if I would come into a cyber private room with them to help them sort it out. 

I was still used to slipping into the role of personal counselor for Suze, and joined her and UpEastSide in the room, asking each of them to give their side of the story, and helping them to find a peaceful resolution.   At the same time, I felt uncomfortable helping Suze with this online lover who was being kept secret from her live-in lover.  This kind of deception went against my generally open and honest nature.

I had become tangled in a very strange web indeed —  one that had originally been sparked by a very pure wish to fulfill the creative service asked of me by our guru's ashram when they assigned Suze and I to work together to produce the New Years Day greeting video from California.  But what was happening now had little to do with the spiritual issues that had been so precious and important in my life before beginning this relationship with Suze.   Perhaps, as Suze said, I had helped to bring her back to God, but, looking back, it seems that the same relationship had taken me away, to a significant degree, from the level of peace and purity that I'd developed in ten years of monastic life.  

After Suze and her online lover cyber-kissed and made up, Suze asked me to leave them alone in the room. For some reason, this little message was the straw that broke this camel's back. Sometimes the last straw in a situation is very light, but nevertheless tips the scales. 

Suze was kicking me, her dear friend who had been enthusiastically befriending and helping her for the past two years, out of this room so she could do God knows what with this cyber woman who she'd never even met in person. 

I had spent most of my life free from experiencing anger, due to having a peaceful nature, as well as to the heavy artillery of defense mechanisms that had formed during my challenging childhood, when I hadn't been allowed to express anger.  Even in the face of numerous actions by Suze that certainly could and perhaps should have called for some anger, I'd kept my state of mind fairly steady and accepting. But now — finally —  I was pissed off, and I cyber-stormed out of that cyber-room!

Later, Suze sent an email saying that she hoped I hadn't taken her request for me to leave personally.   For the first time since we'd met, I wrote back something tough to Suze:   "No, it was totally, f**king rude." 



Suze was shocked.   This was not like the complacent, easy-to-push-around Kumuda that she'd come to know! 

Soon after, I received an email from Ms. UpEastSide, who felt bad about how Suze had kicked me out of the room after I'd spent a half hour helping them to heal their rift.   She apologized for Suze's actions, and I responded to UpEastSide with a warning that Suze used to be nice to me too, but now treated me like a dog, and that "if you stay involved with Suze, she'll probably start treating you like a dog one day too."   Since hiding and deceit is not my nature, I also copied the email to Suze. 

 

CLICK HERE to play an intriguing clip from Suze's show years later, where she mentions this online lover and actually refers to her as "dog meat."

 

Ka boom.   The end.   Suze's response to this email was way out of proportion to the circumstances.   All of a sudden, she hated me with a vengeance, and took an actual vow never to speak to me again for the rest of her life — the only one of her many promises to me that she more or less kept. 

Still, at the time, I never imagined that Suze would do anything like try to destroy my reputation in our spiritual path, or to harm me in any way.  Such a thought would never have even crossed my mind.  I thought that she'd just flown off the handle, and that our karmic time of interacting was ending.  I felt a bit of relief that we could both move on with our lives and perhaps continue our friendship in a different way sometime down the line.  I still wished Suze well, and hoped that her first book, which was just about to go to printing, would be a great success, as we'd envisioned.

Little did I know how revengeful this woman could be after our two years of friendship and assistance.  I would soon find out. I would also have many upcoming occasions to consider whether I'd made a big mistake by giving two years of my post-monastic energy and efforts to help begin the career of Suze Orman. 

The events of this chapter together with subsequent years of repercussions due to the rumors spread by Suze and her "gang" throughout our mutual spiritual community did create a wound in my psyche that would come to color my future in sobering but still spiritually fruitful ways.

At the same time, these events turned me away from getting absorbed in the usual minutia of worldly relationships and endeavors, and refocused my attention on my love of the peacefulness of creative solitude.  But first came illness and an epiphany.

 

 

A note on this chapter:

First, a synopsis of what Suze did in this relationship:

1. After being asked by her guru’s spiritual foundation to co-produce a video with a woman devotee she didn't know who was fresh out of a decade of ashram life, Suze developed a crush on the woman and strongly pursued her even after the woman said that she was not gay or interested in a romantic relationship, even though their mutual guru had asked Suze to stop hopping from woman to woman in the spiritual organization.  Suze knew that this woman had almost no previous relationship experience, and that she was more innocent in terms of relationship matters than most 12 year olds would be today, and Suze used the woman's innocence to push her into having a romantic but non-sexual relationship.


2. Suze attempted to change the woman’s ways, such as her vegetarian commitment and manner of dress – things that are are par for the course in relationships.


3. After a big blow up argument, Suze went to sleep next to the woman and in the middle of the night, as an act of aggression, snuck the woman’s covers off and nightgown up to perform oral sex on her – very clearly without permission and knowing that permission would have been denied.  She performed this sexual violation/rape knowing that it would be the woman’s first sexual experience.


4. Suze used the woman’s Hollywood connections, skills, time, and resources to help begin her writing and public speaking career, with all the woman’s participation being offered without charge or compensation for nearly two years.  During this time, Suze very clearly and frequently promised the woman that she would repay this help: “The first thing I'll do is buy you an Avid editing system,” “If this book takes off, I'll take care of you for the rest of your life,” etc.  The book and career took off, but no help of any kind, financial or otherwise, was ever offered, even when Suze knew that, in part due to her actions toward the woman, the woman had gone from earning a six-figure income to living under the poverty line for many years.


5. Suze used her friends who had high-level positions in the hierarchy of their mutual spiritual community to actively and aggressively spread untrue negative rumors about the woman and effectively destroy her reputation and relationship with the spiritual community that had been most important in the woman’s life.  Assumedly, this was done, in part, to make sure the woman wouldn't have an opportunity to tell others in the community what had taken place.

Is this the kind of person who should be giving moral advice to society or be named as one of Time Magazine's most influential people int he world?  It is no wonder that the economy has tanked after a decade of Suze's mixture of useful financial advice with her very warped behaviors and world views.

Of course it is not pleasant to have to write about such things, but sometimes what is necessary and proper outweighs what is pleasant and agreeable.

The two main reasons I share these events are 1. to finish my memoir, within which the impact of these experiences and the events of upcoming chapters is only understood if you know who the person is, and 2. because people deserve to have information that will help them decide  whether someone has the personal or professional credentials to be giving psychological, moral, and relationship advice for their lives along with basic financial information.

I don't worry too much about the repercussions of my sharing these events on Suze's career or well-being because she'll certainly weather any couple chapters I have to share. If my sharing these events gives Suze a chance to pause and think about how she behaves toward people, then perhaps I'll have helped to make the public monster I helped create a little less of a monster. 

While writing the first edition of my memoir in 1997, I made the decision to wait to share this part of my story until Suze chose to come out as a lesbian, so that I wouldn't out her.  I didn't imagine that it would take so many years for her to do so, since she had been quite out and even militant about her orientation.  During these years, I've watched Suze behave badly and give often heartless and negative advice and examples, and have felt an ongoing struggle about not honestly sharing this part of my life as I did with the other experiences I'd had.  In effect, I was joining in on Suze's web of deception by keeping her secrets, keeping my own life experiences in the closet, while waiting for Suze to leave hers. 

When Suze finally came out in 2007, I felt quite clear that I must be honest and include these experiences in my writing and speaking works -- for the integrity of the works, and also for the benefit of those who may be basing their personal relationship decisions on the dictates of someone they think must be morally trustworthy due to her support from celebrities such as Oprah (whose other works I generally admire) who have embraced and endorsed Suze.

The responses of some lesbians who have read these chapters have surprised me a bit and given me concern about this particular subculture.  Some seem to think that disrespectful and degrading behaviors are par for the course in life, and are more concerned about expressing their opinions that I wasn't good looking or hot enough for Suze, which really takes the cake as a response to these events. One professed her extreme crush on Suze before commenting on my lack of physical beauty and stating, "Welcome to life outside of the ashram. If you haven't been molested in your sleep, you just aren't living, I would contend."  I've received several angry messages from self-proclaimed lesbians who think Suze is the greatest thing in the world and are upset that I would dare to so something so unspiritual as telling the truth in my own memoir.

I've also found that some readers focus mainly on my description of Suze's sexual violations, perhaps due to their own unresolved issues on that topic or society's shock over such behavior. For me, these violations were just one aspect of the larger experience of betrayal, and not necessarily the most problematic part -- although for Suze to make what she knew would be my first sexual experience something so nasty and degrading, stealing it from me like a thief in the night while I slept after we'd had an explosive argument, is certainly one more example of her greed, lust, and disrespect for the well being of others.

To watch this damaging person somehow be placed in a position of not only a financial advisor, which Suze does have the basic credentials for, but also as a moral arbiter for society has been a truly mind boggling challenge and experience that has brought me many contemplations about karma and personal responsibility.  I believe that Suze Orman's energies, alignments, mixed motives, dishonesty, greed, and disregard for others (as demonstrated to some degree by my personal story), have contributed significantly to current downturns in economic and societal issues.  I comment a bit more about this connection on the Spiritual Social Commentary Blog.

Suze mixes her warped views with useful financial information and quotes from our mutual guru's teachings and courses, presenting these wise teachings as though they were Suze's own thoughts.  In her speaking style, Suze is clearly imitating our mutual guru's vocal inflections and mannerisms (not particularly well-done, but still a clear attempted imitation). This imitation projects a deceptive and confusing sheen of the spiritual inflections, teachings, and mannerisms of an elevated spiritual person being superimposed over a very unenlightened and not so spiritual person, fooling those with less sensitive BS meters into seeing Suze differently than she is beneath the veneer. About 98% of the generally conscious people I've spoken with about Suze over the years have said almost the exact same thing -- that they turn the channel as soon as she appears on the screen -- although obviously many do enjoy her books and shows.  I've come to consider it as somewhat of an IQ test.

I've watched Suze regularly shaming and disempowering people, such as in this example from Kathy Griffin's show, where Suze disparages one assistant's "manhood" while attacking Jessica as being stupid.  Is this how a social arbiter should behave?  I'd actually been in touch with Kathy's assistant Jessica for about a year before this scene was filmed.  She had contacted me after reading my book Secrets of Spiritual Happiness, which had created a significant positive shift in her spiritual life.  After this show was taped, Jessica shared with me that she did not appreciate or respect Suze's behavior. 

I've seen Suze on her CNBC show, instructing a woman who wanted to divorce her husband to wait a year while lying to her husband and socking away cash, because if she made it to ten years of marriage, she'd possibly receive more of his social security payments in the future.  I've seen and heard Suze tell people not to help their friends and family in need, and tell parents not to help their kids with their college educations. For years, Suze has used the admirable-sounding phrase "people first," before finally explaining that by people first, she means to put yourself first.

Here is one example of a self-proclaimed fan who trusted Suze without knowing all the facts about her personal life and wrote this very polite post on Tammy Bruce's website after Suze stopped hiding her orientation in 2007:

I have been a fan of Suze Orman for many, many years. In fact, I credit her with helping me achieve financial freedom. I never gave her sexual preferences a second thought. She always flirted with the male callers and created a sexual tension between she and her email co-host Jeff, on her CNBC shows. I did however, used to find it odd that whenever a woman called in to discuss her male partner's flagrant credit stories, Suze ALWAYS recommended dumping the guy, divorcing the guy or just plain getting rid of him. Suze never once suggested the two work it out and solve the financial problem together. I also used to find it odd that she would advice women to think of themselves first and forget their children.

For example: forget the college tuition and worry about socking money away for your own retirement. Now, since Suze outed herself, it all makes perfect sense. If I had known this information beforehand, I would have handled her advice a bit differently. I had my own children endure painful and costly student loans all in the sake of my own retirement. Suze doesn't have children so how could she understand a mother's enduring love? Suze has different problems in her partnership than a husband and wife does.

I wish her much luck in the future. I just wish she could have been more honest 10 years ago when I started following her advice. I may not have cast off a relationship so easily.

Some have suggested that my sharing these experiences with Suze in my memoir means that I'm bitter, but actually I don't feel personally bitter toward Suze at all.  I don't hate her or want to harm her.  However I do think it has been irresponsible of me to hide my experiences with her while sharing just about everything else that has happened in my life.  Without getting too superstitious about it, I also feel that my decade plus of poverty after a six-figure income in Hollywood was to some extent a punishment for this intentional omission, whether from the universe or my own subconscious sense of not doing what should be done, regardless of whether others may judge or attack you for doing it.  More than once I felt the inner message saying that until I shared my experiences with Suze as openly as I'd shared other things in my life, I would have to remain in poverty. 

The truth is that just as Suze was going through these years hiding and lying about who she was, I was also hiding if not lying about my experience of who she was, which, along with her positive qualities and financial expertise, was a thief, a liar, a rapist, and someone who had made efforts to destroy my reputation in our mutual spiritual path after I'd helped her to achieve her greatest dreams. 

I think the most disheartening time came when I watched Suze's CNBC show and was horrified as Suze talked a woman into saying that she was relieved that her ex-boyfriend had committed suicide.  Suze often spoke in cruel and disparaging ways about her ex-lovers — always making sure to use only gender-free pronouns. 

On this day, Suze spoke about how she had been perfectly happy when one of her ex-lovers, a beloved bay area financial talk show host and kindhearted devotee of our guru who had loved and generously helped Suze for many years, died when Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plunged into the Pacific ocean.  Cynthia had also played a significant role in bringing Suze into the public eye, and was also thanked in the acknowledgments of Suze's first book.

I watched sadly as Suze denigrated Cynthia's memory, feeling once again the shock and horror of having spent nearly two years of my good life, good energy, and good skills to help bring this nasty person into the public eye. 

While speaking about Cynthia's death in the plane crash, Suze told her guest, "I didn't feel bad about it, and everybody was saying to me, 'Suze Orman, what is the matter with you?' And I was like, 'What do you want me to do? I didn't like the person! The person screwed me over! Why should I like this person — I don't care, that's their problem.'"  This about a woman who was one of the few names featured along with mine in the acknowledgments of those who helped to begin Suze's career with her first book.  I'm sure Suze would love to have all of her ex-friends and lovers crash into the ocean and die.  Then she could continue to say that she had done it all herself, that she doesn't know how she went from being in debt to successful — must be her Suze magic, right? 

 

 

On to Chapter Thirty-Seven: An Inner Command

Back to The Table of Contents

                   Prologue

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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