This week’s issue of New York Magazine includes an interview with former teen heartthrob Andrew Keegan, who recently co-founded a “community spiritual center” called Full Circle. I’ve never been more jealous of a writer in my life.
“Hi, I’m Andrew,” he says, with a sweet, humble smile. “We love you, Andrew!” the group chants back. Keegan bows his head slightly and touches his palms together in a prayer-shaped thank-you gesture. “I love you all too,” he replies. “Today, I’m here to activate high vibes.” The circle nods approvingly and responds in unison: “And so it is.”
Full Circle, as you might have already gathered, is the logical brainchild of a homeschooled surfer bro whose favorite book is probably The Secret: “The actual theology of the group is tough to pin down, but it seems to loosely follow Hinduism—or at least Russell Brand’s Sanskrit-tattoo version of it. (There is lots of om-ing.)”
The profile, by Lauren Bans, follows Keegan as he wrestles with his “former” status:
“I had this girl come up to me not that long ago and say, ‘I used to just love you!’ ” he says. “It’s always past tense now. And I’m like, ‘Can’t we just always love each other and everybody in the world?’ ”
Attends Sunday services:
We held hands and, with a small squeeze, passed our “soul medicine” to one another. The woman next to me started sobbing quietly. A muscular young man in yoga pants loose enough to hide a small toddler in each leg played a homemade didgeridoo for the circle and then explained how the Earth regularly sends us invertebrate emissaries. “If a mosquito bites you, that mosquito was meant to bite you,” he explained. “If a fly lands on your arm, it’s there as a messenger.”
And cleans up the by-product of a congregant’s “very extreme flow”:
The day before, in the middle of a six-hour-long meditation seminar with Master Shinzen Young, a man in attendance undressed himself and started masturbating. “I mean, talk about an odd energy to deal with,” Keegan says. He ended up single-handedly steering the man into one of the church’s back rooms and keeping him there until the police arrived. “And the guy tried to come back again this morning!” Keegan laughs, then reconsiders: “You know, it was an experience of very extreme flow, but it was flow nonetheless, and it goes on. Now we know something and learned something.”
And so it is.
Image via Getty
Contact the author at [email protected].