by Matt/Copatos

I was never actually “in” the inner circle, I was in inner circle school. It involved almost a year of special classes, trips to the Lodge every weekend, and more. It was intense and incredibly cruel to all the members of my group except one, and he was brought in later…

All the members of this group went from being valued members of ML to being lower then shit in the space of one day, and we were supposed to be Morninglands “brightest”. They were training us to be in leadership positions in ML, second only to Sri, the Gopis, and the Kamazis. All they did was tear down all self esteem, self confidence, actually they did everything they could do to destroy all the good work they’d done in the past. My grade in inner circle school was a big fat “F”, I failed miserably, we all did, except for one person. He was the one who was brought in later to “help” us. I’m not quite sure but I think his name was Chang Valline? The only difference between him and us was that he seemed to be better at berating others and ripping others down than the rest of us were. He thrived at those seminars, his cocky and better-than-everyone-else attitude grew and expanded with every trip to Crestline.

I think the only real failure the rest of us had in that stupid grouping was that we held on to our compassion, we didn’t enjoy ripping into each other and other disciples. As far as a group in “oneness”, that was doomed from the start. Sri was trying to take half of us and make us into something that we’re not. No wonder why that group failed. I could no more be a gay man then our gay friends be straight, you can’t change human nature, you can only take what you’ve got and grow and expand on it from there.

I’ve lived with that Failing grade for years now, always wondered why, because I was given no real explanation as to why I failed. Sri and many others just spent my final year in ML making sure that I knew that I did fail. Now I’m beginning to realize that the failure in that grouping wasn’t mine. The one who fucked up was the great, so-called infallible Sri Donato, not me. I’ve spent years now wondering why, holding all this inside, part of me knew that I didn’t fail, I just couldn’t put my finger on it until now.

–Matt

Filed under: By Exers