uld not admit that I had trod what had in part become a bogus path.
I wanted so much for there to be a simple solution.

"I... I see sparks flying from your hand, Atmananda," I said, allowing
myself to imagine--and therefore to see--the sparks.

Atmananda left the room. I lay in bed, listening to the macaws.

"I won't let the Negative Forces take me over," I determined. "I am
going to be a true spiritual warrior." When thoughts about Atmananda's
other side resurfaced, I refused to confront them. Instead, I silently
repeated Atmananda's recommended doubt-combating mantra: "NO!"

"NO!" I thought, after reading in a Castaneda book Don Juan's
assertion that under no circumstance should you stay on a given path if
your feelings tell you to leave.

"NO!" I thought, whenever I found myself questioning the process by
which I censored my own thoughts.

I was still thinking, "NO," on the day Atmananda noticed the hole in
the roof.

"GRAAAAAUUUUHHHHG!" squawked one of the colorful, captive birds.

"BAM! BAM! BAM!" echoed Atmananda's hammer as he blocked off the
escape route with some two-by-fours.

13. Breakdown

In the months after I tried to run away, Atmananda kept me busy
expanding his postering routes north to Los Angeles and to the Bay
area. Once he had me plan and coordinate a campaign in which one
hundred disciples distributed four thousand posters and one hundred
thousand promotional newsletters across the entire state of California.
He did not seem concerned that I was only twenty-one. He seemed to have
faith in me. But after the work was complete, his faith regressed into
stinging verbal attacks on my level of consciousness, loyalty, and
sanity.

"You are mentally ill," he said. "You can hardly deal with the real
world." He explained that I was a prime target for the mind-ravaging
Forces because I was spiritually advanced, because I held a key
position in his Light-spreading organization, and, most importantly,
because I still doubted him.

"But stick with it, kid," he added. "We haven't given up on you yet."

Atmananda failed to appreciate that my doubt-blocking efforts were
largely successful, except for the time that I spent with him. It was
then that I saw him not as a divine incarnation with a bright golden
aura, but rather as an opportunistic Ph.D. with smooth social skills.
It was then that knots of tension mounted in my stomach, pangs of guilt
haunted my conscience, and, on