It did not go well.

Blake Dyer is Teal Bosworth Scott Swan's long-time friend, roommate, ex-boyfriend, and business partner. You may remember Blake from such hits as Jason Freedman: Freelance Reporter, Blake and the Unanswered Questions, and Stop Destroying Teal With Your Worsening Depression. Now he brings you... a very thorough scolding. There is trouble in Teal Tribe and it's all because of "haters." People just seem to turn on teal, but it's never her fault. As she explained it, in one of her blog posts:

Again and again, I experience “haters”.  I especially experience people turning on me.  I guess you could call it a form of betrayal.  They go from being very close to me and “loving” me to “hating” me with verve and passion.  They go out of their way to try to injure my credibility or my success.

What can a very, very famous spiritual luminary do but respond in kind? Of course she doesn't do that dirty work herself, not publicly. She has people for that. For instance, her current and fourth husband Ale Gicqueu took on husband number three in a biting, personal attack on his blog, which has since been taken private. Now it falls to Blake, her all around guy Friday, to devote a very long post to taking on her growing list of "betrayers."

Blake explains that this pattern of betrayal stems from deep, unhealed wounds in the collective psyche, including his own. He further explains that the people who've turned on teal did so because of their own unwillingness to self-reflect.

Blake's claim that no one else takes personal responsibility is ironic (note the correct use of the term), given that the entire blog post is devoted to blaming everyone but himself and teal for everything. Nowhere in the entire post does he describe a single action that they took that just might account for these people breaking from teal. It's all blame throwing. The only thing Blake takes partial responsibility for is his own "personality disorder," for which he blames his parents. He's learned his tealisms well.

Blake's first target is Cameron Clark, whose mind he seems to believe he can read. He has many ideas about her internal motivations, which he states as facts. Cameron, for her part, has already described her motivations and experiences very clearly in interviews and her own posts. I find it downright hilarious that Blake accuses Cameron of not taking personal responsibility for her experience with teal, when she has clearly stated the exact opposite. You, gentle reader, can decide for yourself whose words seem more credible.

Blake also raises an issue that Cameron has not spoken about publicly, which is her split from Guru Ethics.

Another group that experienced the lies of Cameron Clark was called Guru Ethics. If some of you remember there was a group called Guru Ethics that was investigating Teal. They had released multiple articles against Teal. Debra Van Este [sic] created a group because she herself had been subject to a cult around the Chicago area when she was young. They quickly found Cameron and were working directly with her because Cameron had painted Teal as a dangerous Cult Leader, until something happened. They refused to air uncorroborated information that Cameron was wanting to spread about Teal and so low and behold [sic], now Cameron Clark turned against them. This planted enough doubt in their mind [sic] about the things that Cameron had said about Teal that they contacted us. They told us that they had discovered that Cameron was a liar and an unreliable source. It must have been bad because she apparently even tried to sue Guru Ethics.

I discussed with Cameron the best way to address these defamatory statements. Her hectic work schedule has not allowed her the time to publish a rebuttal. She has given me permission to address the issue and to publish the relevant portions of a previously unpublished interview, in which she explains what happened with the magazine. In short, she fell out with Guru Ethics, not because of their unwillingness to publish information about teal, uncorroborated or otherwise, but because of her own unwillingness to let them publish her private discourse with Gabriel "Kundalini" Morris, against his wishes. As is now a matter of public record, the two had exchanged a series of messages. Gabriel subsequently published his own conclusions on his blog. Cameron wrote a response, which can be found here and here. But their private discussion, which Guru Ethics pressured her to publish in the magazine, remains private.

The unpublished interview was with a teal follower who calls himself taofighter. He contacted Cameron about his intent to create a video about the Guru Ethics situation. She agreed to an interview, providing that they each had the publishing rights. To my knowledge, he never completed his project, but their lengthy email exchange still exists, in a very rough, unedited form. I have posted the relevant excerpts of that interview here. In that exchange, one of many things that is made explicitly clear is that even from the Guru Ethics perspective, the dispute was over the Gabriel Morris piece and Cameron's unwillingness to move forward with it.


Next, Blake took some swings at teal's most recent ex-husband.

I don’t want to peg the whole creation and reason for truth tribe onto Sarbdeep Swan. But the reality is, after Teal was gracious enough to put Sarbdeep in the pubic eye and people accepted him, he used that same level of notoriety that she gave him to connect with Cameron Clark and those who Cameron Clark had poisoned against us and they banded together to form an active hate group that is almost unheard of in the spiritual field.

It is amazing how much of this short passage is factually wrong. Sarbdeep never wanted to be in the public eye, which is why the first two episodes of the "podcast" he did with teal were devoted to arguments over his desire for privacy. All the "Tea Time With Teal" videos were removed from her platform, but those two were discussed in the comments on my blog here and here, as informal pre-noncasts. That this was a central problem in their marriage is something teal laid out again in her blog post announcing their divorce.

As many of you already know, when it came to the topic of openness vs. privacy, my husband and myself held conflicting values and we both held them very dear. A while back, I publicly said that if two people absolutely can’t agree on something that is wanted, it will pull them in opposite directions and if it is a core value, they will break up. This is ultimately what has happened. My life is public. This is the bottom line with fame. No matter how private I became about my personal life, my life is still in the public eye. And for someone who genuinely does not want a life in the public eye, being with someone who is famous, is a constant source of grievance. But there is another dimension. I have not decided to be private with my private life. I have decided to lead an authenticity movement. And I have as much conviction about this decision as any revolutionary does to the ideal that they espouse. This openness or shall I say transparency that I have dedicated my life to, is not just a lifestyle choice for me. It is a purpose. And so, it became a source of continual conflict between he and I; one that eventually caused us to question our future together.

Truth Tribe is not a "hate group." It's a support and discussion group on Facebook, made up largely, but not entirely, of former followers of teal's. You will find no mention of Truth Tribe, nor any"anti-teal" hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and teal is a privileged, white woman, not a disenfranchised minority group of one. Not only was Truth Tribe not started as a joint effort between Sarbdeep and Cameron, it was started by neither of them. It was started by a nice fellow named Nile. Its creation was spurred in part by Sarbdeep's "Black Swan"post, but he did not start it and has only intermittently been a member.




Yes, many people were upset by Sarbdeep's revelations in that post. It did spur more people to move away from teal, and Truth Tribe became one of a number of venues for people to process their disillusionment.

Despite Blake's apparent ignorance of this fact, many in the "spiritual field" have what he and teal characterize as "hate groups," or what I would call support networks for survivors of spiritual abuse and mind control cults. There are also some spiritual groups that are on the receiving end of genuine hate, like Muslims and Jews.

As a side note, when I was watching Rachel Maddow last night, she reminisced about Kim Jong Un's tirade against the movie The Interview. In his apparent world view President Obama was in control of Sony Pictures.

"U.S. President Obama is the chief culprit who forced the Sony Pictures Entertainment to 'indiscriminately distribute' the movie and took the lead in appeasing and blackmailing cinema houses and theatres in the U.S. mainland to distribute the movie," North Korea's National Defense Commission said Saturday, according to state-run media.

"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest."

The movie was an "act of war" against North Korea.

The spokesman did not elaborate, but said Washington was guilty of “provocative insanity” for mobilizing a “gangster filmmaker” to defile the country’s supreme leader. He also said the movie had inspired “a gust of hatred and rage” among the North’s citizens and soldiers.

As Maddow was explaining how we got to this point, on the brink of war with North Korea, all I could think about was how much Kim Jong Un sounds like teal, what with her delusional claims of conspiracies and hired assassins and plots hatched out of Truth Tribe to destroy her business. This may seem like a weird tangent, but when you understand the correlation between despotic regimes and mind control cults, the similarity really isn't that surprising.


Blake's primary target, though, was at one time a very close friend of teal's. She posted some of her story here. In the process of attempting to protect and defend his and teal's business associate from her charge of coercive rape, he disclosed both of their full names, which she had not. He has since revised his post to remove that information.

I have not commented on this situation previously, despite my knowledge of this man's actions and his prominence in the spiritual community, because his name had not been made public. But the cat is out of the bag now, thanks to Blake's stunning lack of discretion. The man in question is Jordan "Pearce" Duchnycz of Spirit Science.

Blake demonstrated ably that he shares teal's penchant for victim blame and perpetrator apologia. Echoing teal's dismissal of ghoste's assault, Blake blames it on her "poor boundaries."

She explains the night in full detail. She said no, she said no again, she said no again, then she said ok. yeeeeaaahh... That’s not rape. That is poor boundaries. I feel sorry for all of the real rape victims out there (including Teal) that will have their pain demeaned because of irresponsible statements and people like Tori.

I knew the moment I read it that his cavalier attitude would not go down smoothly, not even in the safety of Teal Tribe. And as expected, he got a lot of pushback. A good deal of it was predictably deleted. Comments on his blog passed 35 more than once, with the count going up and down for several hours.




Finally, Blake shut down commenting entirely, leaving a grand total of nine comments.




Many fantastic comments were deleted, including each and every attempt by ghoste to set the record straight. (Text is highlighted to aid in visibility against the execrable background.)






Jason Freedman even wriggled out of Blake's sock drawer to remind him what reporting is all about. His comment, too, was deleted.




Dissenting opinion did not fare well in Teal Tribe, either.






Blake made a number of comments acknowledging that he was too dismissive of ghoste's "pain." Yet his revised blog post is still a victim-blaming nightmare.

Furthermore she spent the next year or more in a relationship with this guy. And again we have a person that is unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions. Why couldn’t that have been a story of “I don’t have good boundaries, so I let this person walk all over me?” Why do we have to be the projection of the pain in that relationship that we weren’t even involved in?

What kind of message does that send to battered spouses and victims of spousal rape? His ignorance about what constitutes rape and how victims process it is very disturbing and he shows few signs of wanting to learn.

Alexander Fred has been doing some excellent reporting on this controversy. He had already put himself afoul of teal by doing a very even-handed piece on the question of her cultiness. Fred addressed Blake's post and the recorded "pretext call" between ghoste and Jordan. I have also listened to this recording. It's hard to take. Jordan did indeed admit to many of the elements ghoste has asserted here and on her own blog.

Fred explains brilliantly, in that post, how Blake is perpetuating rape culture. I won't attempt to duplicate his efforts. He also broke down the legal ramifications very clearly here, explaining the gap between the current FBI definition of rape and the lag in state laws in expanding statutes beyond "forcible rape."

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program amended their definition of rape in 2013 to read:

“Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

This definition is gender neutral and includes all forms of sexual penetration, including penetration with a foreign object. The “legacy definition” included only “force” against a woman as a cause of rape, but this new definition is gender neutral, acknowledges all forms of sexual penetration, includes penetration with a foreign object, and includes more causes than just force including:

• Intoxication
• Distribution of intoxicating substances or drugs
• Unconsciousness
• Psychological coercion
• Emotional duress
• Prior physical or sexual assault or abuse
• Threats of harm or punishment to another (e.g. a teacher failing a student or a boss threatening to fire a worker if they don’t agree to sexual intercourse)
• All other acts which remove a victim’s ability to consent.

The FBI's broadened definition accommodates but does not control legislation, which is up to individual states. States are gradually updating their penal code to include a better understanding of what constitutes rape. California, for instance, is now an "affirmative consent" state.

“Consent” is defined to mean positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to the exercise of free will. The person must act freely and voluntarily and have knowledge of the nature of the act or transaction involved. California Penal Code § 261.6.

It will take time and dedicated effort to make affirmative consent, or  "yes means yes," the law of the land, and it will happen state by state. This site tracks the legislative initiatives and their progress around the country. This article breaks down the massive resistance to these shifting definitions and what affirmative consent means in practice.

The current societal script on sex assumes that passivity and silence — essentially, the “lack of a no” — means it’s okay to proceed. That’s on top of the fact that male sexuality has been socially defined as aggressive, something that can result in men feeling entitled to sex, while women have been taught that sex is something that simply happens to them rather than something they’re an active participant in. It’s not hard to imagine how couples end up in ambiguous situations where one partner is not exactly comfortable with going forward, but also not exactly comfortable saying no.

Under an affirmative consent standard, on the other hand, both partners are required to pay more attention to whether they’re feeling enthusiastic about the sexual experience they’re having. There aren’t any assumptions about where the sexual encounter is going or whether both people are already on the same page. At its very basic level, this is the opposite of killing the mood — it’s about making sure the person with whom you’re about to have sex is excited about having sex with you.

So what it really comes down to is whether you believe women are sexual targets who do or do not acquiesce to sexual advances, or that women have agency and are entitled to actively and equally choose or decline sex.

The problem with Jordan's position, and Blake's, is that neither of them seem to see "no" as anything but the beginning of a negotiation.




There was nothing wrong with ghoste's boundaries. She said "no" repeatedly, something no one is disputing. Jordan had no respect for that boundary and continued to pressure her until she just gave up. He fought a war of attrition against her boundaries until he got what he wanted. It's not ghoste who has a boundary problem.

Jordan's inability to respect boundaries was also apparent in the dialogue he had with Cameron (here and here), although thankfully for Cameron, his target was not her body. Anyone can see from that exchange that he's relentless, and that his aw-shucks charm evaporates when he doesn't get what he's after.

Since Blake's disclosure of the identity of ghoste's assailant, Jordan has made some attempts at addressing the controversy. During a recent "Spiritside Chat" he talked in circles for several minutes about it. The original video appears to have been withdrawn, but the inimitable James Beard grabbed the relevant portion.




He later wrote a couple of blog posts addressing the incident and ghoste directly. His posts do not comport with his own words in the recorded pretext calls.




James Beard has already done an excellent job of demonstrating the disconnect between the two, so I won't belabor it. But I do have a couple of thoughts on this horrible, horrible conversation.




In that exchange Jordan pressures ghoste to take responsibility for finally dropping her resistance to his advances. He, on the other hand, blames his youth, his hormones, and her irresistible beauty, not his own choices. He was just overcome by forces beyond his control, but she finally said yes after "a million" no's and that is what "led to it happening."

Says Jordan, "I didn't know what you were crying about. I thought there was something else bothering you."

That's how interested he was in her emotional state during their sexual encounter. Pro tip: When a woman is crying and "bothered" about "something" when you are performing sexual acts on her body, she's just not that into you. Weeping and emotional distress are the exact opposite of "enthusiasm."

In a video released sometime before this story broke, Jordan released this delusional and grandiose "rant." In it he blames rape victims for law of attracting rape, then does an inexplicable 180 to tearfully tell them it's not their fault. Why rape? Why did he go there? Why is that the example he chose to explain personal responsibility when bad things happen to you? Mens rea perhaps?




Jordan does not care much for justice. He prefers love and forgiveness. This is something else we learned in his conversation with Cameron. He also explores this idea in this very strange interview.




Jordan's obsession with forgiveness puts me in mind of a piece I wrote some time ago about the Amish community and its considerable problem with sex abuse. Forgiveness is a lovely thing, but it's not a cure-all. Some things don't resolve themselves through compassion or God's grace and one of those things is sexual assault.




Throughout this controversy, teal has remained publicly silent. It would certainly be nice to hear how the self-described"spokesperson and poster child for ritual abuse" defends her lack of support for a victim of sexual assault and her apparent unwillingness to speak out against rape culture.

There are some indications, though, that her recently rekindled business relationship with Jordan and Spirit Science is winding to a close. She quietly removed the Spirit Science intro from her Ask Teal videos, after June 24. This was the last of her videos to display Jordan Pearce's handiwork, so we won't be seeing this anymore:




Good riddance.

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.



The last total eclipse of the sun to be visible in the United States was in 1979. Above is a little nostalgia viewing on the eclipse that was. Walter Cronkite's reassuring voice is sorely missed. But it was a calmer time, a time when all we had to worry about was the Cold War and the looming threat of a nuclear holocaust. They seem like halcyon days to me now.

For Americans, this eclipse may be more relevant than any we've seen in nearly a hundred years, because this one will cross the entire continental United States. Astrologers are predicting massive change and upheaval. In particular, there are warning signs for the Trump presidency and for the man himself. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not an astrologer, so I cannot vouch for their accuracy.

According to astrologer Donna Woodwell, in the most comprehensive analysis I've seen, the eclipse means "massive changes for the U.S."

First, the location from which an eclipse is visible indicates the areas of the world ripe for changes in society, cultures or leadership.

. . .

Of course, the “Great American Eclipse” puts the U.S. in the crosshairs of change.

It’s the first total solar eclipse to be visible coast-to-coast across the U.S. in nearly 100 years; the last time was in June 1918. Another pivotal year in U.S. history, 1918 saw a dramatic increase in the size of the U.S. government and armed forces, as the nation sent the first major deployment of troops overseas in the nation’s history.

The Aug. 21 eclipse is also the first total solar eclipse to be visible in totality only from the U.S. since the nation was founded in 1776.

Woodwell further explains that Donald Trump is directly in the crosshairs because an eclipse conjunct Regulus portends the fall of a king, and because of the way this eclipse hits Trump's natal chart.

It's a very thorough write-up and I highly recommend it. If her math is accurate, we are in for some very big changes. And if the past week is any indication of where Trump's presidency is headed, I'd say we're right on course.

Newsweek also interviewed a number of astrologers and got their take on what this eclipse might mean for the US and the Trump presidency.

The effects of the coming eclipse could take time to show up, according to astrologers’ claims. [Wade] Caves believes the impact will appear over the next two years because the eclipse will take around two hours to cross the continent (for a solar eclipse, astrologers interpret each hour as a year). The result could be “a loss of a leader in some sense,” he says, whether literal or symbolic. “It seems to me very possible that by this time next year, we’re looking at the reality of Trump not being in office.”

In February, [Debra] DeLeo-Moolenaar wrote on her blog Archetypal Assets that she finds it significant how the eclipse will involve Uranus, according to astrological charts. That planet, she wrote, “disrupts everything that it touches. It is a lightning bolt from the blue. Serious change in any direction and on a major scale.” And because Uranus “will make close aspects to Mr. Trump’s natal Mars,” she wrote, “this will be a power surge—provoking a crisis of some sort. Whether for good or evil, we can’t know in advance.”

Marjorie Orr, another astrologer, pointed out last November, just four days after the election, that the August eclipse is part of what space scientists know as the Saros series, which has included eclipses in 1909, 1927, 1945, 1963, 1981 and 1999. Orr noted the major political events in those years: the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a period of unrest in Chicago that involved bombings and an attempted assassination of President William Taft. “Usually this series places strains on personal relationships, induces hasty decisions on the basis of false information and is associated with tiredness or health problems,” she wrote. “Certainly this eclipse presages violence in one form or another.”

On a more optimistic note, The Fountain of Life forecasts this eclipse as a gateway of the divine feminine.

We are about to experience a Solar Eclipse that is a portal to a paradigm shift.

On the waves of lunar consciousness, come the rise of the Mermaids, the feminine water bearers of wisdom, and the awakening of the fiery heart of the Lion into his passion.

The total Solar Eclipse in Leo, on August 21st, 2017 is an extremely potent astrological event that heralds the return of mystical feminine consciousness and the rebirth of the ancient Mermaid priestesses. In every sense, the Moon is about to eclipse the Sun.

The burning heat of the hyper-masculine paradigm is about to be tamed by love.

. . .

The Sabian astrological symbol for this 29’ Leo eclipse is, “A mermaid emerges from the ocean waves ready for rebirth in human form,” revealing that spirit of the mermaid priestesses is embodying and returning to the planet after a long and difficult absence. Women are remembering their power, and their feminine divinity. Above all, this eclipse is a gateway of feminine activation, transmitting the energetic codes that will help women awaken to the mystical power of their wombs, and rebirth the ancient priestess arts.

There will be some global mediations scheduled. I'm going to post links to a couple that I've found: here and here. If you know of others, please post them in the comments.




If you're in or near the path of totality and intend to view the eclipse, please take the necessary precautions and protect your eyes. If you were not able to get protective glasses – and many experts say there's really no such thing – you can make your own viewing equipment using cardboard, foil, and paper. Here are few links with instructions for different methods: here, here, and here.

NASA will also be providing live video of the event, for those who are nowhere near the path of totality.

This is in no way a "hard hitting interview." Let's get that much out of the way, right now. This is an in-house production posted on teal's own channel. She is not being interviewed by a professional journalist, but by an unidentified member of her team. This nameless, off-screen voice is reading a list of prepared questions, with no follow-up or clarifying questions. He challenges her on nothing. Worse, I think they are trying to mislead people into thinking it's a real interview and that teal is really being challenged. Notice in this Instagram video, teal flubs, first referring to this as a a video, then correcting herself and calling it an interview. And they sure are ratcheting up the drama, with not one but two introductory segments of her sitting bolt upright in her chair, with darting eyes and a nervous expression, like she's about to interrogated.

But first, let me back up a bit. Way back in July, Blake Dyer reached out to Katherine Rose Breen for a list of questions from what teal calls her "hate group," or what people without persecution complexes call Truth Tribe. Truth Tribe is a support group on Facebook where people discuss cults, spiritual abuse, and life after Teal Bosworth Scott Swan. As Katherine explains on her blog, it was presented to her as a short video of around 15 minutes, that may not get to all the questions. The result, however, is nearly two hours long and still doesn't address a number of the questions, which have all been listed in Katherine's post. She does address a handful of the major issues that have dogged her, things that have been discussed on this blog and elsewhere. But a lot of the video is devoted to her answering softball questions, that no "hater" has asked, like how all this "antagonism" has harmed her.

The result may be the most self-aggrandizing pile of verbiage to escape from teal's mouth yet. She announces herself "superior" to her followers and the vast majority of spiritual teachers. She compares herself to Albert Einstein, Buddha, Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, and Nikola Tesla. She declares herself an expert, despite her lack of training, education, and certification. Her credentials? She survived Satanic Ritual Abuse, she's been suicidal, she's been married four times, and she's "extrasensory."
One of the many questions teal did not address in this video was this one: "As a survivor yourself, how do you feel about Blake’s perspective that Tori wasn’t really raped, and that the assault was due to her 'poor boundaries'?"

Tori took it upon herself to try to hold teal's feet to the fire on her Spiritual Catalyst page. The "teal eye team" doubled down. When comments supporting Tori started to come in, the whole exchange was deleted.






What follows is a segment by segment analysis of this video. I am using the same segment titles used in the video to simplify navigation.




Crossing Timelines of Abuse and Normal Life

"One of the things that I started off my career thinking was that by sharing the truth about my past, people would see that as a credential for why to listen to this person," explains teal. She wanted to show what she'd overcome, to demonstrate her strength as a self-help personality.

Her error, she explains, was in not realizing that much of society couldn't handle the hard truth of Satanic Ritual Abuse, so her critics set about trying to poke holes in her story. The central problem with that explanation is that it ignores the Satanic Panic of he 80's and 90's and the fact that SRA was widely and credulously accepted for a number of years. There were countless talk shows and self-defined experts. People went to prison for their "Satanic" crimes. But the evidence was always thin and a number of those cases have since been overturned. Therapists have been discredited for creating false memory. The FBI, after a thorough investigation, found that there was no evidence of vast Satanic networks raping and killing in the name of their dark lord. So teal's timing was poor. She came along with her story after so many stories just like it – I mean really, really similar – had been at first accepted at face value, then debunked.

The problem according to FBI agent Kenneth Lanning's report is not that people can't handle the horrors of Satanic Ritual Abuse, quite the contrary. It's that the realities of crimes like sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and child murder, are so horrific that it's easier to blame the devil than to acknowledge that human beings do these heinous things all on their own.

For those who know anything about criminology, one of the oldest theories of crime is demonology: The devil makes you do it. This makes it even easier to deal with the child molester who is the "pillar of the community". It is not his fault; it is not our fault. There is no way we could have known; the devil made him do it. This explanation has tremendous appeal because, like "stranger danger", it presents the clear-cut, black-and-white struggle between good and evil as the explanation for child abduction, exploitation, and abuse.

From there teal explains away the inconsistencies in her timeline, by pointing out that most abuse victims don't go missing like Elizabeth Smart. It's certainly true that most abuse victims aren't stolen from their families. The perpetrator is usually a family member or close friend. But teal takes this idea to surprising extremes. She seems perfectly satisfied to throw away the victims who do go missing... because it's rare and their perpetrators aren't very skilled, according to her.

One thing that people have to understand is that it's the rarity when it comes to abuse, a person who's stolen out of the house and vanishes and is kept in a basement for years upon years, that's actually the rarity. And it attracts attention because those abusers aren't particularly good at what they do. These are not the abusers we need to be concerned with in today's world, the people who you know go to those types of lengths to make someone vanish.

Screw those amber alert kids, man. Their kidnappers are just sloppy.

The problem with this explanation, though, is that teal seems to want it both ways: a common story of secret shame and denial and the drama of kidnapping by a cult – two cults actually, one Mormon, the other Satanic. She's been telling people for years that she was, among other things, repeatedly kidnapped from her bed at night, chained in a pit in her handler's backyard, prostituted out, used to lure other children to their sacrificial deaths, sewn into a corpse, repeatedly drugged, and forced to have sex with a corpse. All this we're meant to believe happened without her parents' awareness, while she was getting straight A's in school, and modeling around the world. Nothing in this video explains why all this does not strain credulity.

After explaining that she was living a double life – throughout her 13 year odyssey of abuse – graduating early from high school with straight A's and acquiring early bird scholarships, she blurts out, "Then you know the sad reality is once I escaped I had no life skills. I had no life skills other than skiing."

An accelerated student and professional model with no life skills? And in this blog post, she also claims that she became a licensed EMT at 18. This she would also have had to do while being tortured by cults, because she "escaped" at age 19. I'm pretty sure being an EMT qualifies as a life skill.


Suicide

"Ya got me. My actual goal is to get everyone to commit suicide," says a grinning teal. It's astounding how much teal laughs and jokes about suicide, but some of us are not so sure she's kidding.

What teal does in this segment is narrow the scope to Leslie Wangsgaard's suicide, ignoring the numerous statements she's made which sound alarms for many of us. She also botches the timeline and tries to pin the entire controversy on Cameron Clark. There were concerns about teal's commentary on Leslie Wangsgaard's suicide during the Santa Fe workshop long before Cameron went public about her own experience of having teal try to convince her that she was suicidal and should take a long drive and decide whether she wanted to live or die.

Concerns about the Santa Fe workshop were mentioned in comments on my first post on teal. I watched the video and was stunned. I raised the issue in my second teal post. As more public critics began to find their voices, that particular concern began to spread, for reasons that should be obvious. This was never about what Cameron had to say about Leslie's death. It's about what teal herself said about Leslie's death and about countless other shocking statements on the subject of suicide.

In Teal Tribe, over a year ago, teal also typed out a long explanation as to how she was in no way responsible for Leslie's suicide. The first thing that strikes me about this conversation, is how people have to phrase their questions about teal, so they don't risk getting banned. Heart emoticons and assurances that they love teal and aren't against her are de rigueur.






In her attempt to defend herself, teal threw her client under a bus. She accused her of not wanting to get better, an appalling and lazy thing for any healing facilitator to say about a client seeking help. And she revealed personal information that any licensed practitioner would face serious penalties for disclosing.

Why would she allow a client to become dependent? She's not a clinician and has no training in dealing with such a delicate situation. Why, if she knew her client was dependent and suicidal, would she not have made sure she had back-up while she was out of cell phone range?

These justificatory statements of hers also ignore her previous statements about her client's death during the Santa Fe workshop, which sure make it sound like she was fully aware that Leslie had made the choice to kill herself.

Her failure to prevent a client's suicide aside, teal is pretty sure that she has the answers on suicide and that the field of psychology does not. This will probably come as a shock to people who have been successfully treated for suicidal ideation. It also stands in stark contrast to her own statement in the Santa Fe workshop that, "There's nothing any healer could ever do for that type of vibration."

What qualifies teal to treat suicidal people? She tried to kill herself four times. Not only is this not a qualification for handling a life-threatening condition, it's fundamentally narcissistic. Why is teal so sure that her experience of being suicidal is the same as everyone else's? But it always comes back to this with teal, she universalizes her experience, she projects herself onto everyone else.

She's also very confident that she knows exactly what will happen if people visualize their own suicide. Echoing her "What To Do If You're Suicidal" video (addressed here), she states with certainty that people who visualize their own suicide will realize that the peace of death is boring and choose not to kill themselves.

But for all her talk of the pain and isolation of the suicidal person, she reduces suicidal ideation to a binary choice.

It is your life. You get to decide whether to take it or not. Unless you realize that it's your choice, you can't actually, consciously commit to life. People who are suicidal are fence-sitters.

Yes, that's the real problem with suicidal people. They're so indecisive.


Money and Spirituality

I don't know who if anyone is giving teal guff about charging money for events and products, or who expects her to "be a Mother Teresa." She has always charged for sessions, workshops, books, her "art," and the many products made from that "art." If she's faced criticism over that, I haven't seen it. She is getting some flack about the money question now, but I think what's new is that teal is getting price resistance. It's coming from her followers, who are finding themselves priced out of a lot of her new offerings, not from her "antagonists." Her new events are mostly high ticket and a lot of her new content is behind the paywall of "Teal Swan Premium."

It's all well and good that teal wants to charge for events and even that she has a "premium" section on her site. It also makes sense that she needs to charge high rates for some events. The problem is that a lot of this seems disingenuous.






Why put something like the 2-3 minute versions of her daily update videos behind the paywall, teasing followers with truncated one minute videos on Instagram? And why complain that Instagram only allows minute long videos, as if that's the reason she's charging for the extra minute or two of content. Did she suddenly forget that she has a YouTube channel?




And what makes 2-3 minute videos on her celebrity crushes, cooking breakfast, and video production, "premium" content from a spiritual teacher?

One of the things that my antagonists loved to say about me is that I have a religious nonprofit because nobody has to claim the amount of money that goes through the religious nonprofit. It's not religious nonprofit I have to claim every single cent that goes through this nonprofit. That being said we've done projects with this nonprofit. We did a books to prisons program for example. I haven't done anything that I wanted to do with my nonprofit yet it's literally sitting there waiting for future projects.

None of the many "antagonists" I know have suggested she has a religious nonprofit. I've simply never come across this idea. How on earth would she qualify? What people have asked, repeatedly, is why the books for her nonprofit, Headway Foundation, have not been made available to the public. She said they would be as soon as money was in that account. She was asked this very directly during what I like to call the "entities melee." (Discussed in the comments here.) At that time, January of 2015, she said her books would be open as soon as there was anything in them.




It sounds from her statements in this video like money has moved through that account. They've done projects. So where are the open books?


Are You a Guru?

Some people will idolize me. That is the reality in today's world. The same thing happens to pop stars.

Yup. Being a spiritual teacher is like being pop star.

She also doesn't think she can prevent "severe idolization" because that's just the level that some people are at in the "evolution of their awareness." They've disowned their own positive traits and naturally project them onto her.

However this is what I'm going to say in the spiritual field it seems to be the only place where being an expert is not acceptable. It seems to be the only place where superiority in terms of knowledge, or information, or capacity to see, is not something that is respected?

Since when? Has she never heard of the pope? Lots of spiritual leaders and teachers are respected for their knowledge and understanding within their disciplines and within their faiths. A lot of them write books, give lectures and interviews, and are tremendously respected for their insight into spiritual life.

Perhaps teal thinks this because she does not respect other spiritual leaders and teachers.

So my issue here is that people expect a kind of lethal humility for me, whereby I say there's no such thing as expertise, it's just one perspective. No. I'm teaching because half of the things that I'm looking at I think are a total BS. I mean nobody comes in as a game-changer, as a thought changer, and thinking that everybody's got it right. I think most people have it wrong.

I was raised Episcopalian, and though I've moved on, it's a church I still respect tremendously. One of the reasons it holds a special place in my heart is its active ecumenicism. Not only did our church reach out to other Christian denominations to do shared programs, it reached out to other religions. My youth group, for instance, invited the local Rabbi to do a presentation on his recent trip to Israel. We also went to a service at that synagogue and their youth came to a service at our church.

When I hear any spiritual leader talk about why their spiritual teachings are superior to others, I get very, very nervous.




As we all know, teal is against humility on principle. She rejects the idea that she is simply offering a perspective, because hers is a "superior" perspective.

Do I see myself as unequal to the people who are following me in this setting? Yes, I do. Otherwise I wouldn't be teaching.

What makes teal an expert? She's "extrasensory." Other people not so much.

How do I have all this information? It's because I'm extrasensory. I'm not limited to this dimension or time-space reality. But I'm not asking you to believe that. I'm asking you to look at my content.

Well, I have looked at a good deal of her content. I'm of the opinion that it owes not so much to her ability to move through dimensions, as it is her ability to google and hit cut/paste.

Being extrasensory makes her a victim, too. It sucks. But she can "see truths others don't see" because of their "perceptual incapacities."




After explaining that she has a superior vantage point and superior knowledge, that most of what other people in her field are teaching is crap, how much she is suffering to gain this incredible knowledge so that she can impart it, and that she thoroughly rejects the idea that her perspective is equal to other people's, she suddenly does an abrupt volte-face.

One thing that I will say is that I never taught anybody to see me as a guru. I am NOT the venue through which your spiritual information will come. I'm a person who's providing a new perspective. If you can't look at that perspective and own it as your own, it's just my perspective.

She can't possibly be a guru, because she's so "authentic." She's open about all of her "dysfunctions."

If I'm like, okay, and my personal life, my relationship is not doing well right now, what do you think people are gonna do? Are they gonna see you as a guru? Are they gonna look at you and say, oh they're dysfunctional. I don't want to follow them anymore. Believe me, if I wanted people to see me as a guru and the one through which their spiritual enlightenment is going to come, I wouldn't have taken that step.

And yet people do follow her. By her own admission, many people "idolize" her. Perhaps not as a traditional guru, but certainly as a "guru-type," which is how she defines herself elsewhere in this very video.

More to the point, teal is promoting herself, not just as a spiritual teacher, but as a celebrity. She talks about her own fame constantly. How do celebrities market themselves? Not by calling themselves famous celebrities all the time. Even by Hollywood standards, that's just crass. But what celebrities and their publicists know very well is that sharing their private lives, leaking to gossip columnists about their relationships and break-ups, and sharing personal stories in interviews, they keep themselves in the news cycle, and they endear themselves to their fans. It gives people a false sense of intimacy with these stars who are otherwise so out of reach. What teal is doing, in this regard, is not new or fresh. It's not some bold social "movement." It's plain, old-fashioned self-promotion.


Law of Attraction

Why, the nameless, off-camera voice asks teal, has she law of attracted so much "antagonism" compared to other spiritual teachers?

If you were expecting teal to take any sort of personal responsibility for why she's magnetizing so much of what she considers "hate" or "antagonism," you will be sorely disappointed. The problem is with everybody else, not her. According to teal, she's magnetizing antagonism because she herself is an antagonist, but against all those "old paradigms."

It's not anything she's doing wrong. It's what she's doing right. She's a "game-changer." It's everyone she opposes who is wrong.

What you're doing is coming up against the systems that currently exist. That means that anybody who's a part of those systems, anyone who believes in those things, or who has taught those things, now suddenly is being invalidated by you. So they have an option. Either they admit that they were wrong, that their entire way of doing it was misguided, that they've spent their life in vain pretty much and that their life is not valid. Or they hate me. What are you gonna choose?

Gosh, I cannot imagine why teal telling everybody they're wrong, that their entire lives were invalid and will continue to be if they don't embrace her teachings, could possibly make people angry.

It's really interesting to me that people, you know, always want to put the emphasis on how is teal the one making this happen, when the reality is I'm a revolutionary in this field. That's what I am. So look at what happens to revolutionaries. What do you think happened with Martin Luther King? What do you think happened with Christ? What do you think happened with Gandhi? Look at these people. What's happening with them is what's happening with me. 

That is some pretty rarefied air she inhabits, very select group.

Apparently, people like her represent only 1% of the human population. She is a "reflector," she explains. I was baffled by this concept, as it seems to fly directly in the face of her professed belief in oneness. It was explained to me that she is speaking of a specific system called Human Design. According to this system, what they call "reflectors"are only 1% of the population. I will not pretend to understand this system, but as presented by her and by what I subsequently read, I still say it's at odds with both mystical oneness and the derivitive law of attraction beliefs, in which we are all reflecting each other all the time and cannot do otherwise. But there is nothing new about teal being a walking, talking box of contradictions.

After going to great lengths to explain why it's her specialness and her revolutionary ideas that have put her on a collision course with "antagonism," she finally gets around to answering the question posed. Why is she law of attracting this? So is this where she takes personal responsibility for what she is magnetizing? Nope. It's still someone else's fault, in this case her family and her largely Mormon community, which "ostracized" her and made her the "black sheep."

According to teal, no spiritual teacher has ever been open and honest about the difficulties in their lives before. That does not accord with my experience. There are lots of teachers who've opened up about current and past difficulties in their lives and shared a range of emotions. But your better spiritual leaders also know that what they're teachings isn't really about them and try not to make themselves the issue.

Poor teal is constantly working against preconceived ideas that spiritual teachers have to look a certain way and should maybe not be living in a never-ending state of drama.

I mean it's really funny because there's a lot of speculation about how it should look but are you awakened? Then how do you know how it should look? This is the big question that I have for people. Because, like I said, it's all speculation until you get to that point and, believe me, it looks a lot different once you're there.

If no one knows what an awakened teacher looks like, because they're not "awakened," how can they possibly know that teal is awakened? Because she says so?

As her mind-reading of her "antagonists" goes on – and really, we can speak for ourselves – this whole thing takes a dark turn.

Another reason why people antagonize me like they do is because in this group that I've set up, which is an intentional community that's worldwide, is a sense of belonging. A lot of the people who are following my material are deeply lonely people. The only place they find belonging is in this group that I've created, the Teal Tribe. Now the problem is when, let's say, that they decided that they hate something that I've said, or they're starting to speculate about what kind of a person I am, and they turn against me, then by virtue of turning against me, in the type of group that is set up around the support of me [emphasis added], they now are seen as an antagonist. 

So Teal Tribe is set up to "support" teal, not the other way 'round. And there is only mutual support and friendship, in that group, so long as members are not questioning or criticizing teal. Got it.

When that happens, they lose their sense of belonging within the Teal Tribe. Now you've got a person who did feel belonging and is now losing belonging. And they're alone and isolated and where are they gonna go now? They have to find a sense of belonging. And what my hate groups have done is set up that belonging, oh if you don't belong with teal, belong with her antagonists. so they're literally switching one belonging for the other sense of belonging, and belonging is one of the principal needs for a human being. So this is another reason why. And the problem is once they fall in with each other to get a sense of belonging, their only way of staying belonging in that group is hating on teal so they have to keep doing that.

They are either "belonging" with her, or "belonging" against her, according to teal.

In point of fact many people come and go from her "hate groups." Many get complete with their processing of what they've experienced with her and move on with their lives. That's what a healing context looks like. It's not about becoming part of a new group. Most of these people have lives. Some restore their relationships with their families and friends, relationships that had been damaged by following teal. People are not adrift without her and in desperate need of a new group identity.

She's building global community, not teaching ideas. She's made this about belonging. That sounds awfully culty to me. It doesn't seem to occur to her that people should be able to pick her material up and put it down as one of many sources of information. They're joining something.

I have come into the world on a platform of authenticity, which means that I have shared the deepest aspects of my own vulnerability with people. And that is a level of intimacy which is not normal to have with most people, especially most people who are famous. And by virtue of doing that, people feel like they know me. So what happens when they feel this level of intimacy with me and I don't know them at all? Because I'm a public person I don't know one fan from another fan often they feel completely rejected.

If you don't know one fan from the next, that is not intimacy. That is obsession. As I said above, she's creating a false sense of intimacy, the same way celebrities and wannabe celebrities have been doing  since the dawn of PR. She's also taking it to extremes.

Another reason that I feel like I get the amount of antagonism that I get is that I'm not a fluffy person. I do not sell novocaine. I'm gonna tell you that like 99% of the people that are in this business, they sell novocaine. It's just I'm gonna give you whatever material makes you feel better and then you're gonna have to keep coming back to my material. Nothing's really gonna change but I'm gonna keep feeding you this positivity and you know all these beliefs that basically make you feel like the world is better. I don't do this. I'm in the business of serious, lasting change.

I'm not real fluffy, either, and I've been pretty outspoken about the tyranny of a positive attitude for a long, long time. For the few minutes I was enjoying my first reading of teal's blog, her apparent dismissal of love and light was the reason... you know, before alarm bells started ringing in my head.

But I take her invented statistic with a few grains of salt. It's not based on anything but her own narrow reading of what constitutes the spiritual marketplace and a back of the envelope calculation that I expect only has meaning to her. It also very conveniently throws all her competitors under a bus.

But the larger problem is that she's not leading her followers to independence anymore than she claims all those novocaine paddlers are. In fact, she's far worse. She's openly fostering dependency on her "tribe" as a place of belonging and participation in some greater mission of authentic something, something.

I also think her work is potentially far more damaging than the love and light pabulum. Her work has the potential to break people down psychologically. Her "processes" are push polls into despair. Her Completion Process can, by her own blunt admission, lead people to self-harm and suicide. On balance, maybe that novocaine is the better option.


Marriage

Why should anyone take marriage advice from a 33 year old woman who's already on her fourth marriage? In teal's tortured analogy, because sea captains who have only ever sailed in calm seas aren't prepared for storms. But a storm is a natural phenomenon, something beyond any captain's control. I think a better comparison might be to the sea captain who ignores weather forecasts, heads out into storm systems despite warnings, sinks one ship after another, and then publicly disparages the crew.

It's hard to be in a relationship when you're famous and she's very, very famous. Like all celebrities, she has fans waiting in the wings who all want to take her away from whoever the current "asshole" is. Is this a veiled admission about the demise of her third marriage, and the fan who sent her a mash note about the Eiffel Tower? Hmmm...




Anyone who wants to be in a relationship with teal has to be "addicted" to "awakening" and to "being worked on all the time." And this is very hard, by her own admission.

Why? Because just come to one of my events and sit in the hot seat and see what it's like to just be in that position for one hour. To be in a relationship with me, that's your life. I do not put up with a lack of awareness. I won't do it.

I'd just like to point out that the term "hot seat" is slang for the electric chair. To be in the hot seat is to "face intense questioning, criticism, punishment, or scrutiny." Having seen some of her workshops, that sounds about right.

One thing you get pretty quickly watching teal in action is that she's one of those people who is just never wrong. To hear her tell it, it's her personal torment that she's so aware of what's wrong with everyone else, that when they don't acknowledge it, it's like being gaslighted. It's never because she's mistaken. If you disagree with her at all, or if what she's saying doesn't connect, she just verbally beats you into submission.

During her Dublin workshop, a woman sought her help with Chronic Fatigue, but teal's interpretation of the cause didn't resonate. And the more she resisted, the more aggressive teal got. Over the course of about an hour, teal enlisted peer pressure by bringing another CFS sufferer up on stage to "play them against each other." She scared her with warnings about her potential death, played her discomfort and frustration for laughs, and after repeatedly invalidating her, busted her chops for thinking teal had criticized her at all. Talk about gaslighting.




And then, of course, there was the man who went to Philia for a singles retreat, only to have teal assess his "vibration" as "creep."




So on this I agree with teal. Being subjected to that kind of treatment 24/7, in any sort of relationship, sounds like hell.

Much of this we already knew from her interview with Ale, who explained her ministrations thusly:

Because you’re always a work in progress and she sees all your imperfection, and you have to be willing to see them yourself. Because if she sees it and you don’t see it, then there’s a conflict. And she’s not going to let go.

And challenging her on her imperfections?

I don’t go there… what people don’t realize about Teal, her self-esteem is not high. She’s struggling with self-esteem issue…. I had this advice from a friend who gave me a reading early in our relationship that we shouldn’t walk on each other, but the truth is I should never walk on her.

In other words, she's free to walk on him. Sounds lovely.




Your Pain

Just in case you were fooled by the set-up of this video into thinking that the off-camera voice is a real journalist and this is a real "hard-hitting interview," this question should put an end to that illusion.

What pain have you experienced from this situation and antagonizers accusing you of these lies?

Wasn't the point of this exercise for teal to answer questions from her "antagonists?" (I'm assuming that's the word she found in her trusty thesaurus, because it sounds a little more sophisticated than the very juvenile "haters.") So what "antagonist" ever asked how she was being hurt by their "lying?"

To illustrate the pernicious nature of "slander," teal explains that Napoleon Bonaparte was not short, he was tall for his era, but was insulted by some nameless foe, who called him short. The Napoleon Complex is predicated on a lie, according to teal.

I love teal histories. They can be counted upon to be wildly inventive. Napoleon was indeed not particularly short, but neither was very tall. He was of average, or slightly above average, height for his time. The confusion comes not from any defamation, but from a difference in measuring systems and his predilection for surrounding himself with tall soldiers.

Napoleon was not short. At the time of his death, he measured 5 feet 2 inches in French units, the equivalent of 5 feet 6.5 inches (169 centimeters) in modern measurement units. The confusion stems from the French and British measurement systems used at the time of Napoleon's reign, which used the same terms even though the actual measurements varied.

Napoleon was of average height, but his battle strategies may have earned him a reputation for being short. Apparently Napoleon preferred to surround himself with very tall soldiers, and these members of his personal guard made him look short-statured in comparison.

So, yes, errors happen and mythologized history can be pervasive. All that is true, but it doesn't explain the problems that teal is having.

I have lost talking deals based off of these campaigns, people who don't want to work with me because they're afraid of the controversy. Most people in this field do not require security. I require security teams at every single event. Most people in the spiritual field who are in the love and light don't feel comfortable with that type of dynamic happening at their events.

I'd just like to point out that teal has been alluding to threats against herself and her family since at least 2013, which was when I first became aware of her. Back then it was the "establishment" and nameless corporations and she was going to flee to Europe for her own safety, which, of course, she never did. Now, it's "antagonists" and evil plots hatched out of that "hate group" Truth Tribe. So this is just the latest completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, with which she can create drama and paint herself as a victim in need of protection.

Criticism is not slander. Perhaps teal's losing talking deals and not getting the support she wants, not because people are avoiding controversy, but because at least some of these folks recognize that there is ample truth in what her "antagonists" are saying. From the time of my first blog post on teal, she characterized my work as "outrageous claims." But, as I pointed out in the second post, I made no claims. I simply analyzed her own public record and stated my own opinions and deductions.

Since then people from her inner circle have come forward and shared their own experiences with teal. While much of this can't be empirically verified, their stories share many similarities. They also accord with her public record in many ways. The way that teal has retaliated against these folks, personally and through proxies, looks similar to the way Scientology handles the "suppressive persons" who've publicly broken with the "church." She doesn't take the high road. She takes no personal responsibility. She doesn't apologize for how she may have even unintentionally hurt them. The problem is always them. It's up to readers and viewers of that material to make their own deductions as to who seems more credible.

She compares her work to a "crown jewel" that nobody wants. None of her "famous" friends are giving her a hand up while she is doing so much to help them. I don't know. Would these be those same spiritual teachers who she says are selling "novocaine?" Or perhaps other people in her industry whom she's plagiarized? Ever think maybe teal makes at least some of her own problems?

Unusual for a law of attraction teacher, teal proclaims herself a "victim." She'll admit that she's a "vibrational match" to this, but that's because of how she was ostracized as a child. It always comes back to how she was victimized by others. Nowhere in this does she take any actual, personal responsibility. It's all blame-throwing, all shadow projection.

She is right about one thing, though. Some of us really do think people need to be protected from her influence, not necessarily because we think she's "like Satan." But as I've said many times since I started cataloguing her, someone had to bell the cat.


College Dropout

By her own admission, teal has no academic credentials beyond a high school diploma. Her answer to that conundrum is that she doesn't need any.

Okay, so my question to you would be are you gonna go back in time and sit at the foot of Albert Einstein and ask him for his credentials? No. People who know him understand that he was given a PhD. Why? Because he didn't need to study what was going on his material was already better than what was going on. 

What she appears to be saying here is that Einstein only had an honorary degree. This is woefully inaccurate.

Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.

He did receive many honorary degrees throughout his very accomplished life, but those were in addition to those he'd earned academically.

According to teal, traditional education doesn't create "game-changers" like her. It only teaches people old, outmoded thinking. Of course a lot of thought leaders and change agents have had traditional educations, people like, say, Albert Einstein. This is the kind of basic information that she would know, or at least  know how to fact-check, if she'd had a proper education.


Plagiarism

The question and the answer are, once again, narrowed in scope, focusing only on the allegations of plagiarism in The Completion Process, ignoring her long history of plagiarizing from multiple sources. I have it on good authority that my Fullmetal Plagiarist post was discussed in Teal Tribe, that she defended herself within in the confines of that group, and that the entire discussion was deleted, as criticism of her typically is. Can I prove that? No, it was deleted and no one got screenshots. But I also know that the issues raised in the post have circulated widely. I'm pretty sure she knows that she was caught plagiarizing swathes of text, word for word. But she's not addressing any of it in this video, only The Completion Process, where I guess she feels safe. She's not safe, for reasons that will become apparent.

According to teal, Ma Nithya Swarupapriyananda "who was already hating me because I'm competition for her in terms of the world stage and disseminating teachings as female prophet, basically, uh, she decided when she saw this process coming out called The Completion Process, having been angry that I used her guru's picture, flipped out, I mean literally flipped out..."

What someone literally flipping out would look like, I can't imagine, so let's assume teal means she figuratively flipped out. What she actually did was post a video on teal having plagiarized Nithyananda. But teal's narrative is very inventive and makes many assumptions. We all know that envy is the prime driver of any woman who takes issue with her, according to teal, so this is nothing new. But the thing about the photo I knew wasn't right either, so I checked. In point of fact, Ma Nithya Swarupapriyananda had no idea about the use of the photo until after posting the video in question. She learned it from a comment on that very video.




In teal's version of events, Ma Nithya Swarupapriyananda and the Nithynanda followers, unable to prove the similarity of the two bodies of work, turned their attention to Michael Brown, but that is bollocks. Nithyananda's followers are still actively and aggressively targeting teal for plagiarizing their guru and they were never the people who accused her of plagiarizing Michael Brown.

I had been hearing chatter about teal plagiarizing The Presence Process long before Ma Nithya Swarupapriyananda's video. In fact I was directly contacted about it shortly after my Fullmetal Plagiarist post went up and asked if I could look into it. This was before her book was published and when the details of her process were not available for perusal anywhere, so I could not find text to work from. It was Katherine Rose Breen who ultimately did the pick and shovel work of comparing the two books and her post can be found here and here.

In her video, teal claims that she has spoken to Michael Brown and everything is good between them. A friend of mine reached out to him to find out whether or not this were true. Brown had nothing good to say about teal. He provided the following statement. (Screenshots follow.)

"When Teal Swan's management first contacted me, asking if we could engage on some level about the commonality of our work, or some other pretext like that, I brushed them off. I said something like, 'when people do explorations into themselves they likely find the same things...blah, blah, blah'. When readers told me Teal Swan is plagiarizing The Presence Process, I wasn't really interested. I do recall comparing such mutterings to, 'yapping dogs'. I apologize for that now. My initial flippant response is because I have heard exact sentences, verbatim from my two books, come out of the mouths of many known New Age 'teachers', and even celebrities like Jim Carey, Oprah and Ellen. Even my own friends do it to me, not realizing they are talking my book back at me. This is because The Presence Process is full of perceptual catch-phrases I created in the 90' to communicate the intricacies of emotional processing, which have now become meaningless New Age memes. People love to use them to impress, especially when they have no experiential clue what they really imply. Some of these catch-phrases now appear on fridge magnets in New Age homes, always ascribed to some fake guru, like Teal Swan. The word 'integration', for example, was only used in the context of the business community before I added it to the vocabulary of emotional processing in the early 90's. So I take people plagiarizing my work with a pinch of salt. However, Teal Swan does take it to a whole new level. Since my one and only interaction with Teal Swan, last year if I recall, Namaste Publishing Inc. has been contacted about this matter by others and did pass their documentation on to their legal advisers. I would encourage readers to contact them again if this matter concerns you. [Attention: Constance Kellough www.namastepublishing.com ] I have not read Teal Swan's recent book, or any of her writings, other than excerpts sent to me by concerned readers. So beyond what has been shown to me, I have no idea to what extent she copies anything by anybody. But I have seen her videos on you tube. Teal Swan is everything I hoped the writing of The Presence Process would protect people from. I guess I failed a bit here!!! As long as people confuse 'taking their power' with 'following another despite their obvious inconsistencies', the Teal Swans of the world will be here to rake in the cash and leave a wake of confusion and disappointment. The Presence Process is delicate, personal, self-facilitation, written in context and with extreme care. People using any part of it to gain followers are naive, reckless, irresponsible and ignorant. Or otherwise they are just power-hungry psychopathic narcissists." Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process and Alchemy Of The Heart.

Practicing Psychology Without a License 



Neither I nor anyone I know, and you how we "haters" stick together, put the State of Utah onto teal.

In a classic teal move, she claims in this video that the citation is ridiculous because they based it on her using the clinical term "social anxiety." It's not because she used the term. It's because she used her process to treat this clinical condition.




Compared to a laundry list of abuses that could have gotten her license revoked if she had one – like, say, abandoning a dependent and suicidal client to go on vacation and then disclosing that client's personal details after her death – the technicality the State cited teal for may seem trivial. All I can say to that is that they brought down Al Capone on tax evasion.


Cult or Movement?

Here again, the question is narrowed, in this case to Teal Tribe, the Facebook group, but even some of her answers point to the larger issue, which includes things like the building of intentional communities of her followers.

I may at some point do an analysis of her Cult or Movement blog post, but now is not the time. One can certainly, though, compare even what I've documented in this post to the checklist she presents in that post and see some of the problems for themselves. I also took a look at some of the cult criteria I think she meets in this post here.

We can also just look at what she says in this segment of her video.

She claims here that she'd be a terrible cult leader because she's teaching people to "follow their own internal guidance system." Take another look at the Dublin video. How is she helping that poor woman with CFS to follow her internal guidance system. By invalidating everything she says, including how she feels her own intuition and "guidance system" have been serving her?

"There is no money to belong to this group," says teal. That's true if we are narrowly defining group to mean her Teal Tribe Facebook group but to be an active participate in her greater "tribe," there are certainly costs. She charges for her events, and a lot of her new offerings are pricey. People have to pay their own travel to get to those events. She has much of her new content behind a paywall. To really engage with her material, costs are involved, and they are increasing.

There may be no consequence for breaking from her "tribe," but there sure are for speaking out about your reasons, as discussed above.

Nowhere have I ever taught that this is the one truth. Do I think I have a hell of a lot of things to share and that most people on the planet in this field of doing it wrong? Hell yes. Otherwise I wouldn't be standing on this platform. But I've never said that there is one true truth and that is something that all cults do.

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. She may not have the "one truth" but most everyone in her field and in the world are wrong. She is, at the very least, in a very elite group of people who are  right. Who those other people are, she does not say, nor does she cite most of her sources, so...

Whatever problems people are having in Teal Tribe, it's because the group is made up of people. Some of them are "super awake" but some are "super asleep." I love the way she just casually throws away a swathe of her members for, ya know, not being "woke." Anyway, what problems people are having, it's with the membership, not with teal. Nothing is ever her fault.

"It's basically a mini-society." It's not a cult, though. It's definitely not a cult.


Narcissism

Says teal:

I'm an empath. It's impossible to be an empath and a narcissist at the same time. Basically, by definition, narcissists are incapable of attuning. They can't feel other people's emotions. An empath is the exact opposite of that. My entire career is set up upon the basis of me being able to feel other people's emotions and see them and experience them. I would be really bad at my job if I couldn't do that, so you can't argue that I'm a narcissist.

Scroll up this page and take a look at that Dublin workshop footage again. Where exactly is all this empathy? Here's what I see when I watch that and any other workshop exchange. She's not a good reader. Her answers are one-size-fits all assumptions, based on her own beliefs. In the above example, she insists there's only one underlying cause for chronic fatigue syndrome and when it doesn't resonate for the woman in front of her, she plays her against another woman with chronic fatigue, as if all chronic fatigue sufferers have the same problem and there's only one way to deal with it. A good empath would find something specific about this woman, as a unique individual, to help her gain insight into her situation. Instead of "feeling into" this woman, she plays her mental chess game, "I'm gonna do a checkmate move. I'm sorry, you asked for it. You ready?"

She uses this kind of chess terminology a lot in her workshops, which is very interesting because it really echoes her thought experiment in this video.

Because I am an energy vampire, I am a master at manipulating energy. I could become a brilliant energy worker. I have the capability of consciously pulling in negative energy and transmuting it inside my own body. This means I can feed off of illness and discordant energy rather than stealing life force from people’s bodies. I can manipulate energy to heal people. Also, being an energy vampire, I am a master at mental chess. I play mind games with people. So, the highest aspect of that trait (what we call the exalted aspect) is to play mind games with people that benefit them. I could become a brilliant counselor or psychologist. I could outsmart other people’s egos and help them to see things about themselves that they are totally unaware of.

And she plays to win.

Narcissists aren't introspective and she's very introspective, according to herself. But narcissists are very definitely self-absorbed.




She exposes her dark side and lets people see her "in a bad light" which is "not the action of a narcissist," according to teal. But as anyone who has had much experience with narcissists can tell you, what they crave is attention, and if it's not positive, negative attention will suffice.

The narcissist’s insatiable quest for attention (what Vaknin was the first to describe as “narcissistic supply”), leads him or her to seek out a steady source of admiration. Where that is in short supply, the narcissist prefers to inspire fear or hatred than suffer the nightmare of being ignored.... While the narcissist’s need for “supply” is inexhaustible, their sources are not. Devoid of empathy, narcissists will escalate the drama of a situation – regardless of whether the attention is positive or negative, it is simply more attention.

Why does it matter if she's narcissistic? Why are displays of narcissism discussed? Because "pathological narcissism" is a defining feature of toxic mind-control cults.

Is she using her "seduction and looks" to grow her business and fame?

She tries to appear passive in the way her image is being used to market her. It's beyond her control, because she has employees who handle her marketing and social media. And she can't help that she's pretty and sexy. It's just who she is. She thinks it's terribly unfair that there's an idealized image of what a spiritual teacher or "guru-type" should look like.

I want to smash the paradigm of the image, this little, boxed image, of what we think spiritual information needs to come through.

I almost agree with what she's saying here. There shouldn't be a certain type of appearance or level of attractiveness that determines your value as a spiritual teacher. The problem is that teal is on record saying exactly the opposite. She's said that her looks are very important to her ability to get her message out all over the world and that the Arcturians designed her to be pretty for that reason. Black women are seen, according to teal, as "pretty ugly" except to other Africans, so they're not able to get the kind of attention that she is. She's said that the mainstream doesn't want to hear spiritual teachings from someone who is "wrinkling and greyed." So teal has her own little, boxed image of what a spiritual teacher should look like and it's pretty, young, and white, because "sex sells."




Shadow Motivations

She's enlightened like the Buddha, and is now leading others toward enlightenment, but she feels unsafe in the world. Doesn't enlightenment mean awakening to the illusory nature of this world and that all that awaits you is Nirvana? What then could she possibly fear? How can she feel unsafe?

The Buddha stayed in the world to teach, as she claims she is doing, but out of compassion and to alleviate the suffering of others, not because it was the only thing he could do and was otherwise incapable of functioning.

Not for the first time, I am very troubled by the way she characterizes "extrasensory" ability. She presents it as this very unusual ability that she has, this rare "gift." Psychic ability is our birthright. We all have it and so do our pets. We certainly vary in our awareness and acceptance of our "sixth sense." Some of us have more developed abilities than others, but we all have these abilities and can refine and improve upon them. In my own practice I facilitate my clients innate intuitive abilities, help them to recognize and develop them.

I think I'm even more disturbed that she's also characterizing these abilities as a "curse." This makes psychic development sound scary and is potentially discouraging to people who want to acknowledge and expand upon their own innate abilities. Once again, she's fostering dependency on her. She is suffering to bring you insight, so you don't have to. How benevolent of her to martyr herself in this way.


Why Now?

Synopsis: She and her team followed the "what you resist persists" playbook. Turns out some things persist even when you don't give energy to them.

Suggestion: Might be time to rethink that whole what you resist persists idea.

Note: No one is lobbing actual bombs at teal, to be clear.


Passion

I am again left wonder what "antagonist" has asked her to share her life passion and mission, but here we are.

My life purpose and mission is to find an answer to suffering and one that I can convey. 

Didn't she just say that she was enlightened like the Buddha? Didn't he already do that? And didn't he understand the cause of all suffering when he became enlightened and only stay in the world to teach that?

But first, her mission is to "infiltrate mainstream media" and make it "so it's almost like you're tricking people into becoming conscious." It's always about the tricks and the mental chess, isn't it. Not surprisingly, her focus is reality programming. For some reason she thinks it's a novel idea to teach better relationship dynamics through television scenarios, and this is how she's defining "consciousness."

Note to teal: Higher consciousness has already"infiltrated" media. You are so far behind the curve.


Controversy

All powerful movements within society are controversial, says teal. Sure. But that doesn't mean they're all good. The Nazis were a powerful movement that ultimately upended the fledgling democracy of the Weimar Republic, instituted a dictatorship, invaded other countries, and put their eugenics beliefs into practice by killing millions of Jews, Gypsies, disabled people, and anyone else who opposed them. Some social movements it's better to resist.

What are people resisting when they criticize teal? Messaging that we think could lead to suicide... and arguably has? Yes. We are resisting that. I know that's not the message she claims to be sending. But many of us disagree. If we really thought she had a great model for preventing suicide, we'd support it. It's not that her "haters" are against preventing suicide.

Many of teal's stated goals sound good, prison reform, integrating holistic health care... As overarching ideals they sound fine. But the devil is in the details and her details range from puerile to scary.

I find it troubling that teal can make even "authenticity" a binary, with me or against me thing. It's particularly troubling in that teal has redefined authenticity to mean a lack of personal boundaries and privacy. Authenticity as TMI. If I thought it were an actual movement, I'd be against it.

I mean the reality is is that when racism was the issue, people found themselves at that point. Are you gonna side with the, the aspect and with all the antagonism of being pro integration of blacks, or are you gonna be against it?

Well, you heard it here first, folks. Racism is not an issue anymore. Apparently, once segregation ended, it was all over. But even if we define racism that narrowly, it's far from over.

One thing that I would wish is that people stop focusing so much on me and start focusing on the content. It speaks for itself.

Whaaaaaah?! (LaVaughn carefully wipes coffee from the computer keyboard.) Is that why her group is called Teal Tribe and she thinks its purpose is to support her?  Is it why she has endorsed her followers calling themselves "tealers," and calls anyone who questions her "anti-teal?" Is it why all her social media is awash in glamour shots of her and she embraces these "sex sells" marketing methods? Is it why she does daily updates about her celebrity crushes, her cooking skills, and whatever is irritating her on a given day? Because she wants people to stop focusing so much on her?!


If You Could Say Something To Your Haters What Would It Be?

Hate is your word, teal, not mine, and it's a lazy and juvenile way to dismiss legitimate criticism.

I would love to be able to say to you that you haven't impacted me at all, but you have. You've impacted my life immensely and I know that there's part of you that's happy about that. But the question that I'd have for you is can you honestly rejoice in the suffering of others?

I can honestly say that I have never rejoiced in the suffering of others. I know some people experience schadenfreude, but I never have. I can't stand to see anyone suffer, even hardened criminals. I do like to see criminals removed from society, in order to prevent them causing more suffering. And this is one of those ways that you and I differ, teal. You may not want to see even your own alleged abusers incarcerated, even if it means others might suffer, because, hey, you can't protect anyone from the law of attraction. Yet here you are, asking for an exemption.

I am so troubled by the sight of suffering that your public humiliation of your ex-boyfriend motivated me to put pen to paper. I think you're a spiritual abuser, teal. I think you cause suffering.

If you hate something, it must have hurt you. How did I hurt you?

How can you ask that when a number of people have already posted their own accounts of how you have hurt them, and your response was to attack and defame them, never to consider that there might be at least some truth to their words, never to acknowledge their suffering at your hands. Why ask a question when you clearly don't want to hear the answer?

Just when you thought the story of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS couldn't be any more stomach-turning, new and still more horrible details come to light. The "prophet," who remains incarcerated for molesting his very young "brides," is now facing new allegations of sexual abuse, via a lawsuit by one of his alleged victims. Worse, she cites numerous co-conspirators, including two of his brothers, in a scheme to ritually abuse girls as young as eight.

A new lawsuit accuses Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs and others in the church of ritualistic sex abuse involving girls as young as eight years old.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in state court by a 21-year-old woman only identified as "R.H.," levels allegations of abuse against Warren Jeffs, his brothers Lyle Jeffs and Seth Jeffs; and former FLDS leader Wendell Nielsen of sex abuse. It also goes after the FLDS Church and the court-controlled real-estate holdings arm, the United Effort Plan Trust.

. . .

"Systemic sex abuse at the hands of Warren Jeffs and other leaders of the FLDS Church from the age of eight until the age of 14," her attorney, Alan Mortensen, told FOX 13 in an interview Wednesday.

The details, which can be read in court documents, are hair-raising.

As part of their FLDS beliefs, sex between underage girls and priesthood leaders took place, the lawsuit alleges, noting that after President Rulon T. Jeffs suffered a stroke in August 1998, much of his power and authority was delegated to his son, Warren S. Jeffs, who began a new practice involving ritualistic sexual intercourse with young girls in the FLDS Temple and other FLDS properties.

“Sex with girls, ages eight to 14 years old, was initiated by Warren Jeffs, along with leadership of UEP Trust and the FLDS Church, including the Twelve Apostles of the Church engaging in and witnessing the sexual relations between Warren S. Jeffs, Lyle Jeffs, Seth Jeffs and Wendell LeRoy Nielsen and other John Does viewing, watching, taping, participating in and documenting these sexual encounters with underage girls.”

The lawsuit’s plaintiff — a 21-year-old woman identified as R.H. — alleges she was given a number by which she was known during these religious rituals and she was never called by name, but only by number.

“This horrific religious doctrine and religious rituals as performed on plaintiff consisted of plaintiff, beginning at the age of 8, having a bag placed over her head, led out of her house by representatives of the defendants, placed in a vehicle and being driven to an unknown location,” according to the lawsuit.

The indignities continued even after R.H. was too old for these pedophilic rituals.

The ritual rape continued until she was 12 years old, but the abuse didn’t end there, she says. At the age of 14, she was required to be a witness and “scribe” to the rituals with other young girls and the defendants, and document the sex acts along with the number of the victim, according to the lawsuit.

When she was 16, the plaintiff attended “Ladies Class,” where FLDS women would learn how to be a good wife. While at “Ladies Class,” Lyle Jeffs, Warren’s brother and a member of the FLDS “priesthood,” would remove her from the class and take her to his soundproof office to rape her, in the guise of furthering her “Ladies Class” education, the lawsuit alleges.

As outrageous as these claims may seem, they hearken back to things we learned when Jeffs was convicted in Texas, where the jury heard recordings similar to those described in this filing. Also documented was Jeffs's heavily fortified "rape room," in his repossessed Hildale compound, seen here and here. R.H.'s attorneys claim that they will be relying heavily on evidence obtained by the State of Texas from their successful prosecution of Warren Jeffs and seizure of the Yearning for Zion Ranch.

Whether Warren Jeffs and his associates will mount a defense is an open question. Another recent lawsuit resulted in a default judgment, garnering plaintiff Elissa Wall $16,000,000 in damages.

Neither Jeffs nor the FLDS church obtained a lawyer or defended themselves against Wall’s lawsuit, which claimed that she had been forced to marry her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed, when she was 14 years old, according to court documents. She was then required by Jeffs and the FLDS church to fulfill her religious duties by having sex with her husband and “to produce children.” Wall went on to have miscarriages and a stillbirth.

Judge Kelly wrote that Jeffs had exercised “absolute control, power and authority” over Wall’s life “so that he could require her, as a young girl, to enter into an unlawful spiritual marriage. … The conduct of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS Church, as alleged herein, was outrageous and intolerable in that it offended the generally accepted standards of decency and morality.”

The wealth and property of the FLDS is being carved up and served to its victims and apostates. And while the remaining FLDS faithful reject many of the supports offered — even making themselves homeless in the process — the church leadership has also stolen the food out of their mouths. As discussed, a generous deal was cut with most of the leaders who had been charged in the food stamp fraud case, which included instruction in proper use of SNAP benefits. Lyle Jeffs, whose almost comical game of "Where's Waldo" came to an embarrassing end last June, also bore the brunt of the legal fallout. Slipping his ankle monitor with olive oil turned out to be not so terribly clever, as he has now been sentenced to nearly five years in prison, 12 months of which are for his failure to appear in court.

His substantial sentence, though, also sends a message to the FLDS faithful, whose letters demonstrated to U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart a disturbing unconsciousness of wrongdoing.

Stewart referred to letters he received in support of Jeffs, and which are not part of the public court record. Stewart then apparently summarized what some said.

“‘It was persecution of the worst kind,’ ” Stewart said. “ ‘The man has done nothing wrong, and what the community as a whole did was not a mistake.’

“And that troubles me,” Stewart said, speaking for himself, “because it could happen again. The effect has not been felt by the community.”

Judge Stewart, it appears, agreed with Prosecutor Rob Lund, that Lyle Jeffs's sentence needed to make a broader point to his community.

Lyle and Warren Jeffs presided over a “culture of corruption” in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., Lund said.

“This case cries out for a message to that community,” Lund told Stewart. “They must obey the law.”

Nearly seven years after his conviction in Texas, Warren Jeffs's victims and the criminal justice system are still wrestling with the culture of lawlessness and depravity he built. One horrible story after another is shared by a growing roster of victims, victims who include his own family members. Recently his daughter Rachel Jeffs shared with Megan Kelly that she was also sexually abused by Jeffs starting when she was eight years old.




Even Canadian authorities have to wrestle with the legal questions raised by the FLDS stronghold of Bountiful. Last year's conviction of the Blackmores, who delivered their 13-year-old daughter to their "prophet" in Utah, was an arguably small and belated step in the right direction.

As officials try to tighten the screws on FLDS leaders, life is gradually being normalized for the church's apostates. Birth certificates are being issued for children whose births were shrouded in secrecy. Communities are rebuilding among the formerly disenfranchised.

But it is the women, many of whom suffered horrible abuses, who are the real game-changers. These women are fighting back hard, divesting the church of its assets, and even seizing political power.

When Donia Jessop fled the cult-like environment of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Hildale, Utah, she never thought she would return—let alone lead a movement to successfully become the town's first female mayor and the first to hold power without the church's support.

Jessop's historic victory as mayor was announced late Wednesday, and she now leads the long journey of rebuilding a town on the Utah-Arizona border that has never seen a female mayor or leader not appointed by the church. The polygamous sect of the fundamentalist church in Hildale — which was disowned by Mormon Latter-Day Saints — was made notorious by its former leader and convicted sexual predator, Warren Jeffs, who molested girls and forced minors to marry men twice their age. The town is still recovering from the disbanded cult's patriarchal control, making Jessop's victory striking.

Cardinal Dolan is nothing if not consistent. He continues to work very hard to protect the Catholic Church from consequence for it's decades of enabling pedophile priests. After leaving a meeting with New York's Gov Cuomo, he described  a "look-back window" in pending legislation as "toxic" and "strangling" for the Church, fearing a slew of cases against priests and dioceses that covered for them.

“The look-back we find to be very strangling,” said Dolan. “When that happens, the only organization targeted is the Catholic Church.”

How so? Is this a law that would only apply to cases of sex abuse involving Catholic priests? (Answer: no) Or is he saying that the Catholic Church is the only organization that has such a multitude skeletons rattling in its closets?

His statements seem unintentionally revealing. Just how much exposure does the Catholic Church have at this point? What does he know that he so desperately wants kept secret?

That this legislation would flood the Church with law suits is disputed by victim's group Child USA, but how is this even relevant? Should New York's legislator's tailor laws to protect the Church from potential litigation? Why would it be the State's job to protect the Church from facing consequences for decades of protecting and enabling pedophile priests?



Cardinal Dolan has spent his career protecting the Church at all costs, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. Not only did he maneuver against similar legislation in Wisconsin, he was caught quietly paying off pedophile priests to accept quick laicization and disappear. As discussed, the problem with defrocking priests and making them go away is that the Church is, in many cases, unleashing predators on unwitting communities. Cardinal Dolan doesn't seem to care who gets hurt as long as it's no longer the Church's problem.

Child sex abuse survivor Kat Sullivan, who was raped by a teacher in 1998 at a prominent upstate girl's school, ripped Dolan for his “toxic” comments.

“Is it a lookback or priest raping kids that is toxic? I'm just trying to figure out which causes more damage to society,” Sullivan said. “I think the words of a man who knowingly impedes a bill that would provide due process to citizens currently being excluded should be ignored because he represents an institution that not only violated children, but actively worked to cover it up and suppress.”

The Catholic Church is not the victim. They're not being persecuted. They're experiencing a reckoning borne of their own actions and inactions. Yes, it would certainly be unfortunate if communities and charities were hampered by legal costs. Dioceses have gone bankrupt even where look-back legislation was blocked, like in the aforementioned Wisconsin. They restructure. They go on. If they truly want to serve communities instead of filling their own coffers, I have little doubt they can do so. But their compassion should start with the people who still struggle with the psychological damage of having been both abused by priests and stifled by the Church. It's past time for them to take responsibility and come clean.

On the Ides of March, Tony Robbins did one of his pricey "Unleash the Power Within" events in San Jose. What he unleashed instead was a firestorm. Right after the event, video surfaced of Robbins mansplaining the perils of the #metoo movement to a sex abuse survivor. It quickly disappeared, most likely quashed by his team. Their damage control effort seemed to be working... until it wasn't.

Late last week I noticed that the video had resurfaced. The original footage is taken from a distance and it's a little hard to make out, but a YouTube version is found here. A cleaner, edited version was
posted to Facebook here.

On Saturday Tarana Burke's scathing response to the video was published on the Huffington Post. In under 24 hours, after weeks of trying to bury it, Robbins finally addressed the incident publicly and issued an apology — something he swore in profane terms he would not do, during the altercation. (I think it bears mentioning that Robbins has enjoyed a lot of positive coverage on the Huffington Post, over the years, and a very friendly relationship with founder Ariana Huffington.)

“My comments failed to reflect the respect I have for everything Tarana Burke and the #MeToo movement has achieved,” Robbins said in the statement. “I apologize for suggesting anything other than my profound admiration for the #MeToo movement.”

“It is clear that I still have much to learn,” he added.

Well, that last statement is certainly true.




Robbins's apology has not gone over well and inspired scores of people to unfollow the self-help guru.




Shortly after the event, Vice interviewed Nanine McCool, the woman featured in the video, as well as other attendees. Their excellent write-up is here. McCool, a sex abuse survivor, stood up to tell Robbins he had the #metoo movement all wrong. Robbins pushed back... physically.

Of the pushing, McCool said, “I thought, 'OK, we're going to fist bump.' Then he started pushing me. I thought he wanted me to show how strong I could be and push back, but that's not what he wanted. He wanted me to move backward.” She went on: “[I was] thinking he's going to transform it into some kind of awareness. I don't know, it's Tony Robbins, there's going to be some lesson here that's gonna be useful to me. I initially started pushing back but he immediately pushed back harder. There was no way. He was going to knock me on my ass if I didn't step backward so I quit pushing against him, I just started walking backward. As long as he was pushing me, I was moving.”

Nine of the 11 attendees VICE spoke to brought up how Robbins’s larger size and his physical contact with her seemed almost intimidating. “He’s a very large man so she looks tiny next to him, and then he starts pushing her, not to be abusive but pushing her as an interaction,” recalled Logan Wick of Austin, who has been a follower of Robbins for eight years and has gone to four of his seminars. "In that moment, when you’re talking about #MeToo and you’re telling a woman and you’re pushing against her and you’re very large—no matter what size man you are, you shouldn’t be doing that in this context.”

It is decidedly unsettling to see a 6'7" tall man pushing around a much smaller woman, especially in the context of that conversation. But his words were even worse.

As seen in the video, Robbins told her, “I’m not knocking the #MeToo movement, I’m knocking victimhood," and asked the audience to "consider what its impact is." He went on to say that "anger is not empowerment," adding, "Who should throw the stone? You shouldn't throw that stone if you live in a fucking glass house. Is there any one of us that hasn't done something that we prefer we'd not or that we're embarrassed by or that was hurtful even if we didn't intend it to?"

Sure. Nothing empowers survivors of sexual assault like telling them they shouldn't be angry, that they should feel Christly compassion for their rapists instead.

This is what psychologist John Welwood termed spiritual bypassing.

Trying to move beyond our psychological and emotional issues by sidestepping them is dangerous. It sets up a debilitating split between the buddha and the human within us. And it leads to a conceptual, one-sided kind of spirituality where one pole of life is elevated at the expense of its opposite: Absolute truth is favored over relative truth, the impersonal over the personal, emptiness over form, transcendence over embodiment, and detachment over feeling. One might, for example, try to practice nonattachment by dismissing one’s need for love, but this only drives the need underground, so that it often becomes unconsciously acted out in covert and possibly harmful ways instead.

But, by pushing around the much smaller framed McCool, Robbins was just making a point.

If you push someone else, it doesn't make you more safe. It just makes them angry.  

In other words, don't make trouble for abusers. Be afraid of them, instead.

Next came his bizarre apologia for misogynists in high places.

I was just with someone the other day, very famous man, very powerful man, who's saying how stressed he is because he interviewed three people that day. One was a woman, two were men. The woman was better qualified but she was very attractive and he knew, "I can't have her around because it's too big a risk," and he hired somebody else. I've had a dozen men tell me this.

Because, what, he can't help but molest her?! Poor guy! How is that the fault of the #metoo movement? It doesn't sound like "a dozen" of Robbins's friends and clients are saying that they're afraid of being wrongly accused of sexual assault or harassment. It sounds like they're afraid of being fairly accused because they can't keep their hands to themselves.

Apparently, stating that you've ever been a victim of a crime is not taking your power back from your perpetrator. It's not letting other victims know they're not alone in what they've experienced. It's not refusing to protect perpetrators with a cloak of secrecy. It's not refusing to cower in shame over something that happened to you. According to Robbins, it's all just self-indulgent "victimhood."

Robbins is smooth and he speaks the language of "empowerment" very well. But what he said in that exchange boiled down to some really disempowering ideas: Standing up for yourself somehow makes you a victim. Don't make bullies angry or you'll get hurt and it's your own damn fault. Don't be too pretty because your brain won't matter and you might get yourself raped. And whatever you do, don't try to be "significant."

And this is where the whole thing becomes downright confusing. Robbins's take-down of #metoo appears to have started as a homily on the cardinal error of seeking "significance."

If you use the #metoo movement to try to get significance and certainty by attacking and destroying someone else then you haven’t grown an ounce, all you’ve done is basically use a drug called significance to make yourself feel good.

But according to Robbins, "significance" is one of six "core human needs." He has warned that placing too high an emphasis on "significance,"at the expense of other needs, causes problems. But this is entirely different from calling it a "drug."

I claim no real familiarity with Robbins's work. I'm not a fan, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing some fine points in his "core needs" framework. But there is something acutely disturbing about telling survivors of sex crimes that if they stand up for themselves and against their assailants, they should stop trying to be "significant." It kinda sounds like he's telling them that their concerns, their injuries, their voices, their very personhood, are insignificant.

I realized something else, when I first saw this video. My lack of familiarity with the Robbins corpus, caused me to miss that Teal Bosworth Scott Swan has plagiarized him, too, much as she did John Welwood (see above) and so many others. I noticed it because I was equally mystified by her schizophrenia on this whole "significance" thing. She also seems to toggle back and forth between stating that "significance" is a central human need and discounting people's quest for "significance" as kind of pathetic.

I first became aware of teal's ideas on "significance," such as they are, when she was making her impassioned plea for "virgin killer" Elliot Rodger, as discussed in the noncast here (page search: devil). In her blog post on the Santa Barbara shooting, she wrote:

These mass shooters are in fact reacting against the pain of the rejection they felt from one or more of their primary caregivers.  They did not get the affection or attention they needed.  Because of this, they lack two of the most primary human needs, loving connection and significance.

How there could be two first needs is one of those mysteries of tealmath that will probably never be resolved. But at the time I wondered where her "primary human needs" idea came from. Note that she does not cite Robbins or anyone else. She just states it as a fact, as she does with so many of her unsourced, unsubstantiated opinions. A quick scan of her site shows that she has plagiarized his model on many occasions, like in her contemptuous take-down of humility, here and here. Worse still, she plagiarized his entire list in her article "Relationships and the Six Human Needs." Yes, there are six of them, just as Robbins laid out. She's tweaked a couple of the item names, changing "uncertainty/variety" to "variety,"  "growth" to "expansion," and "connection/love" to "love." Aside from this sleight of hand, it's the exact same list that can be found here, and in multiple articles by Tony Robbins, or crediting him.

But after stealing Robbins's work outright and using it to justify mass murder, teal, like Robbins, has made numerous dismissive and derogatory comments about the "need" for "significance." For instance, there was her exegesis on why religion is terrible, in her teacast on death (page search: death). And then there was her scathing commentary on all those other new age whack-jobs who try to connect with angels, in the tea thing on spirit guides (page search: drunks).

There is something really troubling about two people who have pursued fame as actively as teal and Robbins (who has actually achieved it), criticizing other people for wanting to be "significant." Tony Robbins was insulting people for wanting "significance" in front of an audience of about 12,000, who had paid up to three thousand bucks, for the privilege. That he does not see the irony!

Let us consider the irony of a man who preaches empowerment, yet who does not seem to believe in personal agency – at least, not for men in power. The irony of a man who preaches empowerment but who wants us women to swallow down our anger, to be nice, to be quiet, to not try to be "significant", and to not hold men accountable because the men are far too busy unleashing their power.

Let us also consider the irony of a man like Tony Robbins claiming that women are using "the drug called significance". Please. The dude is a self-positioned guru who thrives on fame, has starred in reality TV and trashy movies, puts his face on the cover of all his books, and regularly name drops his "powerful, famous" friends in public. How much more of the drug called significance can he possibly scoff down?

Keith Raniere may be discovering that there's a downside to following the Scientology model of recruiting celebrities into your cult. For whatever credibility and popularity they may initially bring to your organization, if things go pear-shaped, fame becomes infamy. A few weeks ago, the NXIVM founder was extradited from Mexico on sex trafficking and other charges. There was a flurry of news coverage, as noted here. But when "Smallville" star Allison Mack was arrested on Friday, a media firestorm ensued.

This is not the first time Raniere's cultivation of the rich and famous has backfired. It may be what put him on the road to ruin. India Oxenberg, an aspiring actress from a royal bloodline, must have seemed like a real get, until her much more famous mother Catherine Oxenberg went public. Her plea for her daughter's safety was covered by the New York Times, People, Megyn Kelly TODAY, and 20/20. And suddenly that "branding cult" was water cooler talk.

The unflinching, in-depth coverage in the media also forced New York authorities to begin taking complaints seriously, that they had previously dismissed as "consensual." Roughly six months later, NXIVM's most famous member is facing 15 years to life and so is Keith Raniere.

Previous to this graphic, public outing, Raniere's organization had been chugging along pretty quietly in Albany, making millions, and silencing former members with lawsuits and intimidation tactics, thanks to the very deep pockets of Seagram's heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman. Although their wealth and social position had also brought him a spate of bad press. But suing your victims into silence and bankruptcy is a less effective tactic when some of them are famous and well-heeled, something Scientology is learning the hard way with its futile attacks on Leah Remini.





Is this self-help organization a cult, asks Rolling Stone. Answer: yes.

NXIVM – which began, in 1998, as a "personal and professional development program" dubbed Executive Success Programs – was founded by computer programmer Keith Raniereand his business partner,ex-nurse Nancy Salzman.The group holds seminars and training programs for people "concerned with developing their skills," and claims to have worked with more than 16,000 people in 30 countries. The organization uses a trademarked method called "Rational Inquiry" to help adherents achieve their goals (for the reported cost of up to $7,500 for an intensive, multi-day workshop). (Rolling Stone reached out to Executive Success Programs and Keith Raniere for comment but did not hear back.)

. . .

Alexandra Stein, who has a PhD in the sociology of cults and wrote a book called Terror, Love and Brainwashing, tells RS that NXIVM does, indeed, qualify as a cult, per her five-point definition: it has a charismatic, authoritarian leader; it's "steeply hierarchical" in format, with possible front groups; it bears a "total, absolute ideology;" it uses coercive persuasion or brainwashing to isolate members from family; and it exploits followers and shows "potential for violence."

"Cults come in all forms," she explains. "Religious, political, self-help, therapy, sports/martial arts, commercial, business. If someone is promising you the world and starting to do [those] other things, beware."

All of those elements are very clearly present, as are other cult markers, not noted in that article. For instance, women are being starved to the point of being dangerously underweight. Raniere likes his women thin. But convincing women to subsist on 500-800 calories a day is a pernicious control tactic.

In one of the most troubling moments in Catherine Oxenberg's Peopleinterview she talks about her daughter being so thin that she had stopped menstruating and was already perimenopausal in her early 20s. This can happen with anorexia and Raniere's "slave women" are functionally anorexic.

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolff shows how our cultural preoccupation with thinness is a way of weakening women psychologically, socio-politically, and physically.

It is also a cult brainwashing tactic, often coupled with another physical stressor, sleep deprivation. Steven Hassan lists both under Behavior Control in his BITE model.

5. Regulate diet - food and drink, hunger and/or fasting
6. Manipulation and deprivation of sleep 

Both tactics were apparently used and enforced by Allison Mack in the secret NXIVM sect DOS (Dominus Obsequius Sororum).

The presence of excess fat can disturb transmission of Raniere’s subtle energies to women, he claims. So, he required female students to be slender. He offered instructions on overcoming bodily urges and “emotional viscera” toward food. DOS women were placed on three diets, separated by daily caloric intake: 500[advanced]; 800 [standard];  and 900 [women who had defiance issues].

. . .

In addition to constantly dieting, Raniere’s slaves are instructed to sleep little. Raniere said he dispensed with the need for sleep; slaves are required to ask permission to go to sleep and are awakened at the call of Raniere or Mack – which may come by text.  Failure to comply comes with vigorous paddling on bare buttocks.

. . .

Mack said the reason Raniere is unavailable during the day is he is in “deep transcendental communion with cosmic realities.”

Mack told her slaves the reason they are only allowed to sleep three to four hours per night is to teach them to be in “alignment with their inner representations” of Raniere.

Other red flags can be seen in the 20/20 episode and other reporting. Minutes into the broadcast, Elizabeth Vargas gives an overview of some of NXIVM's lingo.

We do know that NXIVM has its own lingo. Students are taught about overcoming "disintegrations" to become more "potent" and less "suppressive" and avoiding people termed "parasites" or "Luciferians."

In Hassan's BITE model, this falls under Thought Control:

3. Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words

"Loading the Language" is also item six in Robert Jay Lifton's thought reform criteria, also known as "thought-terminating clichés."

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

Also notable is the exploitation of Confession, number four on Lifton's list, and number six under Information Control in Hassan's BITE model.

Before joining DOS, women were required to give collateral, such as nude photos or sensitive information on family members, which would later be used to prevent them from telling anyone about the group or leaving it. 

The third item under Hassan's Behavior Control is:

3. When, how and with whom the member has sex

That control can play out in a number of ways, like the arranged marriages in Unification (moonies) and FLDS. Sexual exploitation by leaders may not be universal in cults and and other contexts of spiritual abuse, but it is frighteningly common. Many examples have been given in this blog: Warren Jeffs is in prison for sexual abuse of minors. Samuel Mullet of the Bergholz Amish punished men by making them sleep in chicken coops and having sex with their wives. The Catholic Church concealed and enabled sexually abusive priests for decades. Joshu Sasaki molested followers like it was good for their spiritual development. Bikram Choudhury has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. And a number of men say they were sexually abused by "Michel" in the Buddafield cult exposed in Holy Hell.

Sexual exploitation is not a bug, in a group like this. It's a feature. It's not just a privilege assumed by a leader drunk on power, although it is that. It's a means of control. It's one of the most disempowering things you can do to another person. It breaks you down, disintegrates your personal boundaries, and enmeshes you ever more deeply. It consumes you, body and soul.

By all appearances, Keith Raniere has a harem. Female followers were groomed in a women's group called Jness and then inducted into DOS, a secret sect that he denies any part in. It is the unusual women's empowerment group that is created by a male leader, but Raniere is credited with founding Jness.

Keith Raniere’s vision for humanity and human potential led him to found various other companies in the following years. In 2003, he founded NXIVM Corporation, a seminal company for various other endeavors involving the creation of community-building spaces housing athletic, spa, and health and wellness facilities. He is the conceptual founder of Jness®, a company started five years later to promote the furtherance and empowerment of women throughout the world.

The description by Sarah Edmondson on 20/20 sounds anything but empowering.

One of the key principles in Jness was understanding that the main difference between men and women was that men are designed genetically to not be monogamous, spread their seed, and women genetically are designed to be monogamous... And not only that but subservient to men.

Edmondson was inducted into DOS and was branded, along with other women, something she says did not "seem like a choice, at the time."

All the indoctrination. All the years of women are weak. Women have no character. Now is the time to prove I can do it.

She was also being extorted with the "collateral" that had been collected from her. Edmondson goes into more depth on how she was drawn into this extreme experience here. She describes her own cognitive dissonance. As discussed here, Leon Festinger theorized that we all need our thoughts, feelings, and actions to be congruent. When they're not, we are uncomfortable until we reconcile them. So if we take an action, even if it's under some pressure or duress, we're compelled to justify that action to ourselves, as she describes: "When you spend $3,000 on a five-day training, you want to make it good. You want to make it a good choice—yeah, I got something out of it."

Edmondson kept justifying her actions to herself, up to and including the excruciating branding process. This, of course, she would also have to justify to herself with obedience and deeper  commitment, in order to resolve the increasing levels of cognitive dissonance.

Inductees into DOS were apparently told that the insignia they were being branded with was Latin — something that was reported by both Edmondson and Oxenberg— but it was actually Keith Raniere's initials. "I lost it, when I figured that out," Edmondson tells Vargas.

But it appears that the brand is actually a combination of both Raniere's and Mack's initials. Vertically it reads KR.




Horizontally it's AM.





Clever.

The website for Jness offers little more than cryptic explanations of its purpose, sprinkled with the occasional platitude. Nowhere on that site could I find any explanation of what the name Jness even means. But I should definitely use the hashtag #jnessing. That much is clear.

Actress Samia Shoaib described to Page Six Mack's "desperate" attempts to lure her into Jness with vague descriptions of its purpose.

The pair met twice in the month after they met, once at an Amsterdam Avenue restaurant and another time at Shoaib’s Upper West Side apartment.

Each time, Mack appeared more “fragile and gaunt” with dark circles under her eyes, Shoaib said.

“She was definitely physically suffering,” Shoaib said. “There’s no question she was sleep deprived.”

The conversations quickly shifted from feminism to a Nxivm-affilliated woman’s group called JNess, which Mack encouraged Shoaib to join. But her descriptions of the group were always “very vague,” Shoaib said.

Jness appears to have been a front-group for DOS, a way of bringing in women and screening them for DOS. And Shoaib is not the only female celeb Mack tried to recruit. She even targeted Emma Watson, as if Watson ever needed help defining her place in the world as a woman. Unlike Watson, Mack is not a feminist and her ideas about women and women's rights seem a little twisted. This is from her blog post about Jness. I had to dig it out of cache, because her personal site has been suspended.

I have always been attracted to women’s issues and the struggle of women in our world. But for most of my life I have been at a loss in my understanding and experience of what it is to be a woman.  That is, until I was introduced to the women’s movement, Jness.

I can't fathom what it means to be "attracted" to struggle, but the more troubling part is that she didn't understand what it meant to be a woman until a man named Keith Raniere sorted it out for her.

And I lived my life conflicted. Feeling a certain type of frustration in being a woman – hating the perception of “young girl” or “beautiful flower” and never, ever feeling satisfied with the way I saw women represented. But then also feeling the conflict of fully diving into the “feminist” movement as I saw it existing. I didn’t want to spend all my time “raging against men” or “fighting to be heard” – something felt unnatural and angry in that approach and I didn’t think that was the answer either.

. . .

And consequently I felt threatened by women. The internal confusion and frustration I felt manifested itself in the way I related withallwomen [sic]. I saw them as I felt inside myself: complicated, quixotic, and unpredictable. I felt I couldn’t trust women. This was a secret I kept – and tried my best to resolve this by joining every women’s campaign I could as an attempt to prove I didn’t feel this way. 

So a woman who felt threatened by other women and didn't trust them, who thinks that she and all women are impractical and unrealistic, is on the board of a women's organization, one that apparently fronted for a group that brutally inducted other women and branded them with her initials. Let that sink in.




It's really too bad that they scotched Mack's website, because it is a fascinating study in itself, the weird splotch in the background that looks vaguely like a bloodstain, the way cursoring over the section headings effectively crosses them out. It's soft, pink, feminine, but with an undercurrent of rage and self-abnegation. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.




There's a rumor that Mack recently married actress Nicki Clyne. The story has been picked up by a number of news outlets, but traces to Artvoice, one of several publications run by Frank Parlato. Parlato was at one time NXIVM's publicist and he has dedicated years and many pixels to taking down the operation he once promoted. He has his own credibility — and legal— issues, so some of his reporting should probably be taken with a few grains of salt. However many of his scoops have proved out.

Parlato — who owns the Niagara Falls Reporter and Buffalo’s alternative weekly, Artvoice — first revealed the group’s branding ritual in June 2017 on FrankReport.com, a blog dedicated to exposing Raniere and his alleged crimes.

In the Artvoice piece, we learn a couple of things: that Mack married Clyne so she could stay in the US, and that both women sidelined their acting careers to devote themselves to Raniere full-time.

Sources inside NXIVM told Artvoice that reputed sex cult leader Allison Mack ‘married’ former actresses/sex slave Nicki Clyne in order to keep Clyne in the USA.

Clyne is a Canadian citizen and was having difficulties fulfilling visa obligations.  Sources said India Oxenberg – daughter of Dynasty TV star Catherine Oxenberg – witnessed the nuptials.

. . .

Clyne was encouraged to quit acting by Raniere, according to multiple sources. Although under contract in her recurring role in the series, in 2008, she asked the producers of Battlestar Galatica to let her out of her contract. They agreed and, in an episode, her character was killed off.

. . .

Clyne was not alone in giving up a TV role for Raniere.  Mack gave up her role in the TV show Smallville to follow Raniere in 2010.

Both women seem to still be acting, if you look at their IMDB profiles, but they were also both written out of very successful shows, so I'm not sure what the truth is there. If true, that would mean that it was actually Raniere who forced Cally Tyrol out of that airlock.




So who is this Keith Raniere that so many beautiful, talented women have completely wrecked themselves on? Short answer: nobody. As Elizabeth Vargas observes in the 20/20 expose, "He looks like a schlub."

Former follower and ex-girlfriend Toni Natalie explains, "It's one gigantic, hypnotic induction." There could be no other explanation.

Raniere, who likes to be called "Vanguard," is a genius of many accomplishments, according to himself. In an infomercial for his brainchild Consumer's Buyline, Eddie Albert lends his gravitas to a litany of impressive feats. (The complete infomercial can be seen here and here.)




So did he seem like a genius? Toni Natalie had questions even then.

He seemed like a geek. And I sat down and I asked him I said so you have a 240 IQ. Why are you doing this? Why aren't you curing cancer? Why aren't you really making a difference? And he said this is the platform that I'm going to use and I'm gonna change the world.

So he was going to change the world through bulk buying? But Consumer's Buyline was determined by numerous State Attorneys General to be not so much world-changing as it was a pyramid scheme. And that was the end of that grand vision. Now he's been arrested for yet another pyramid scheme, but he's upped his game to include sex trafficking. He does seem to have convinced his cult that this is also a world-changing vision.

But this is what cults always do. They leverage not only your personal hopes and dreams, but your idealistic vision for a better world. It's really that predictable.

Rick Ross tells 20/20 that NXIVM is just a rehash of Scientology, Ayn Rand, and EST. So there's not much new there... except the branding. That's novel.

It's hard to know what exactly they teach, because it's all fiercely guarded with non-disclosure agreements. Ross, however, published some of those materials and a 14 year legal battle ensued. The case was kicked in 2016.

I couldn't help noticing that Raniere's partner in crime Nancy Salzman studied Neuro-lingustic Programming with creators Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Considering that Bandler was a cokehead who nearly went to prison for murder, and that NLP is widely considered to be a mind-control technique employed by con-artists and cult leaders, that might be another clue. Here is James Arthur Ray demonstrating the wonders of NLP.

Red flags, there were plenty, but many smart, successful, idealistic people were drawn in by the unlikeliest of charismatic leaders, some going so far as to permanently modify their bodies.

Allison Mack was released into her parents' custody on 5 million dollars bail. She is reportedly considering a plea.

The Gateway is a six-part series about Teal Swan, a new brand of spiritual guru, who draws in followers with her hypnotic self-help YouTube videos aimed at people who are struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. Some followers move to Teal’s healing center—a spiritual startup in Atenas, Costa Rica—where they produce content and manage social media accounts. Teal insists her therapy saves lives, but her critics say Teal’s death-focused dogma is dangerous.

Last fall Gizmodo gained incredible access to teal's operation. Reporter Jennings Brown not only interviewed teal several times, he was allowed to take a crew into Philia, her retreat center in Costa Rica, to observe one of her high ticket Curveball retreats. The result of his year-long investigation is a six-part podcast series that is by far the most extensive profile of teal yet by a mainstream media outlet. Days before Gizmodo first interviewed teal, she was interviewed by reporter Addison Nugent for OZY, an international, online magazine. The interview was uncomfortable for teal, which she expressed immediately, and somewhat intemperately, on her blog. Neither the resulting OZY article nor "The Gateway" podcast series — which began airing at the end of May and has aired three episodes to date — have been mentioned by teal or her team.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I was interviewed by both reporters and my statements appear in both pieces.)

The day ends.  The house falls into the dark silence of sleep.  The next morning we board a plane to Paris.  I have one more interview to do; a segment for the provocateurs section of OZY.  This interview marks the end of this European tour.  I have five minutes to change my outfit before the camera is switched on in our hotel room.  The style of this interview is not what I expected.  There are two different styles of interview, one is supportive and the other is antagonistic.  In a supportive style interview, you are already going into the interview being loved.  The entire structure of the interview is set up to make you look good.  In an antagonistic style interview, the majority of the focus is placed on challenging you.  No one holds your hands in support in this type of interview.  Instead, the interviewer gives you the opportunity to fight though the power of narration to earn people’s good opinion by putting you on the spot.  The interview started off with this: “I have interviewed spiritual leaders from everywhere and many of them have been doing this for more than 30 years and to be honest, none of them have the amount of controversy, hatred and dedicated antagonists as you do.  There is so much written against you out there in the world, they call you things like ‘the suicide catalyst’, why do you think that is?”  In an antagonistic style interview, you spend your time trying to answer questions while simultaneously trying to caretake the vulnerable aspect of you that feels targeted and like hiding under a blanket while sucking its thumb.  Sometimes the interviewer is already biased against you and is simply setting up the interview as a trap to make you look bad so their pre-conceived, concrete concept of you can then be shared by the world in order to make them feel personally validated.  But if the interviewer is genuinely non-biased, the antagonistic style of interview often leads to the best content.  Nonetheless, it is always awkward when this style of interview ends because everyone acts as if nothing just happened and everyone is really friends when in reality both you know and they know that it was an antagonistic interaction that made all parties involved socially uncomfortable.  I decided to order minestrone soup after the interview was over to comfort myself and take a bath before I fell asleep. [all emphases added]

How teal came up with this binary construct of "supportive" vs. "antagonistic" interviews is anybody's guess. It bears no resemblance to how professional journalism actually works. In all my years as a publicist, I never once asked a potential interviewer if they were going to be supportive or antagonistic and not one of the supervisors, editors, or authors, I worked with ever expected me to. Most of them were just happy for the media exposure. But teal is different. She has a long history of doing softball interviews with other YouTubers, who are, indeed, very supportive of her. I think it would be fairer to say that there are fawning, sycophantic amateurs and serious journalists, and teal has almost entirely interacted with the former. It is not a reporter's job to "make you look good." It's a reporter's job to uncover facts and inform the public.

The OZY interview was published a month later, on November 19, and it did not go as teal had hoped, in no small part due to her own whinging about the "antagonistic" interview on her blog. She did not announce its publication or mention it ever again.

Days after OZY's Addison Nugent asked her about the controversy surrounding her and the moniker "suicide catalyst," teal whined to Gizmodo's Jennings Brown that she had no choice but to respond to  the "allegations." We know that it was within days of the OZY interview, because she announced that she had just taped the allegations video on October 23 to her Instagram followers. She announced that "Teal Swan Answers to the Allegations" was posted on October 25. (My response to that video may be found here.)




Seconds into her first conversation with Gizmodo, toward the end of Episode 1 of "The Gateway," teal launches into a jeremiad about how her "hate groups" have finally forced this public response. It seems painfully clear that the catalyst for the "spiritual catalyst" to make this video was direct questioning from OZY about her being the "suicide catalyst."

I'm a little frustrated today because today we're gonna be filming, uh, so, I'll just go here. My hate groups are so incredibly active lately that I've been put in a position where, um, our decision as a team to ignore it can't happen anymore... So I basically have to do a video today that's answering to a lot of their allegations, because I'm losing so many contracts [emphasis added] based off what they're saying...  Like for example one of the monikers that my haters have given me is the "suicide catalyst," as if I'm promoting suicide, so I'm gonna basically answer to all these things from my perspective.

Says Brown in his narration to podcast listeners:

I thought I'd have to work my way up to asking about things like her critics and the suicide allegations, but it's not even two minutes in and we're already there.

It is a strange interview, indeed, that mostly involves teal complaining to a reporter from a mainstream tech website— a survivor of the late, lamented Gawker Media — about her "haters."




Teal Bosworth Scott Swan has been talking for years about breaking into "the mainstream." To hear her tell it, it was a plan hatched by her Arcturian designers before she ever took human form here on earth. This is how she explained it to BATGAP's Rick Archer:

Do you want to know something funny? The way that I look was not designed for people like you who are already on the path. It was designed to break me into the mainstream. And the reality of today’s world is sex sells. The reality is the better you look the more people pay attention. This was a discussion which took place before I even came into this world. A lot of people in the mainstream would not listen to a person who was wrinkling and greyed. They would listen to someone who looks like me, and it has nothing to do with the validity of looking the way I look. It has to do with attention.

Buddha at the Gas Pump is a long-running and fairly well-respected platform, a cut above her usual YouTube interview. Archer got backlash when the teal interview ran, in part for his paternalist comments about her appearance, in part for interviewing her at all. (I included the BATGAP interview in the noncast"TEAL Works Blue.") At some point, Archer quietly removed the teal interview from his platform. When pressed, in the BATGAP Facebook group, about that and other removals, he explained.

Regarding Teal, I don't know anything that isn't public knowledge. I'll watch her answer to allegations. Even the guy she was married to when I did the interview says there's something rotten in Denmark. I see Batgap as a stew, Certain ingredients may spoil the taste of the whole thing.

Her explanation of Arcturian designed, universal appeal was also offered in an earlier interview. That interview was also removed. A number of interviews in which she has discussed her alien origins began to disappear just as she was doing what those Arcturians designed her for, getting mainstream attention and publication. Mainstream audiences, unlike the woo world, aren't so enamored of alien origin stories. But in this remaining snippet of that interview, teal explains the importance of being pretty and white, if one hopes to make a splash on the world stage.




It may well be that what attention teal has received, mainstream and otherwise, owes to her appearance. It is certainly not because of her ideas, which appear to be almost entirely plagiarized. (See also here and here.) Both the Gizmodo and OZY reporters admit to being struck by her physical attractiveness.

But pretty and white as teal is, her forays into mainstream media have not gone terribly well. That was true even before "haters" like myself started raising questions. She has never responded well to a more journalistic approach, wherein hard questions are asked, and healthy skepticism is employed. The press release for her first, and self-published, book was picked up by her local newspaper, The Herald Journal. The former book publicist in me can only see this as a win. The name of the book was mentioned. The op-ed was fair and even-handed. Really, from a publicity standpoint, this was a success. But teal and her team responded with outrage. Letters to the editor were penned by herself and by one Jason Freedman, a "freelance reporter" who appears to be none other than her associate Blake Dyer. In fact much of the firestorm that ensued in the comments section may have been so much sock puppet theater. But it was clear then, as it is now, that teal and her supporters will not tolerate anything but fawning, credulous coverage.

At some point, teal's rhetoric around mainstream success began to change. Instead of promoting herself as an Arcturian designed, caucasian beauty, capable of attracting the mainstream attention that "ugly" black girls and wrinkly, grey-haired people could not, she started to speak of herself as "controversial" and "up against the mainstream." And this has been her response to the Gizmodo series. While she has almost entirely given it the silent treatment, those in Teal Tribe who have stumbled on the series have expressed almost uniformly negative reactions, from sadness to outrage. Gizmodo has joined the legion of "haters."












In one of the longer threads, teal offered a brief response. She's very hurt, but she's challenged the mainstream and the mainstream is fighting back.




Outside of the teal bubble, "The Gateway" is getting positive reviews from mainstream outlets like The Guardian and The Wrap, which made a podcast about the podcast. The reviews teal gets from those outlets are less flattering, as they seem to find her own words about as jarring as I did when I first learned of her over four and a half years ago. To "the mainstream" her ideas about suicide are as troubling as you might expect them to be, as is the fact that she has no training or credentials that qualify her to treat serious mental health issues. She comes across as narcissistic, her claims grandiose. The influence she has over her followers' life (and possibly death) decisions inspires deep concern. In The Guardian, Miranda Sawyer writes:

All of this is undeniably icky. Having your life’s decisions directed by a compelling stranger is a very bad idea, but at least nobody’s getting hurt. Except… some are. Swan, who gives her closest followers very personal attention, insists that in some cases (when someone’s “vibrations” are of a certain type), then suicide prevention hotlines won’t work, psychotherapists and psychologists won’t either and that death feels fantastic and “is an immediate relief” or “a reset”. Meaning, it’s OK for people to kill themselves. And some do. Her fans call her the Spiritual Catalyst. Her detractors call her the Suicide Catalyst.

Confident and narcissistic, Teal is happy to talk to Brown (she boasts about having five security guards and refers to “haters”) and it looks as though in the next few weeks he’ll be going to her Costa Rica retreat. Let’s see if he returns in a state of spiritual refreshment.

One thing that teal can take some small comfort in is that, at least so far, "The Gateway" hasn't gotten a lot of press attention beyond what I've noted here. The reason for that, in my surmise, would be less comforting to the woman who talks endlessly about her own fame and hashtags her Instagram account with various iterations of #celebrity***. No one outside of her online following and the outer reaches of the new age and self help arenas have any idea who she is. In many ways this podcast is her "gateway" to notoriety, and it is a less than auspicious introduction.




Having spent over four and a half years cataloguing teal's body of work, I have amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of public material by and about teal. I have also gotten to know a number of people who have broken with teal, including some who have been seriously injured by her methods and her abuses of power. But I am not an investigative journalist or in the business of bringing forth information that I've received in confidence. I do not have the backing of a professional news organization that would enable me to do that kind of reportage. So what I'm enjoying most about "The Gateway" is that Jennings Brown's investigative journalism is bringing to light previously unreported information about teal's background and the lives she has affected. Episode 2 delves deeply into Leslie Wangsgaard's suicide, something I first learned about from her own video of the Santa Fe workshop, and wrote about in my second teal post. I vainly hoped, at the time, that it was pure invention on her part. What she said on that stage was so flippant, so bizarrely self-aggrandizing, that some sort of performance art seemed a plausible explanation. I learned in short order that teal was speaking about a very real person who was most definitely dead by her own hand.

When teal talked about Leslie Wangsgaard's suicide in that workshop, she described her as irredeemably miserable. "And this was a woman who was absolutely miserable. I'm talking, every moment of her life was a nightmare." But Gizmodo's reporting paints a different picture. She may have battled depression, but her friend Joyce remembers a vital and "upbeat" woman who enjoyed belly dancing and was always up for a bit of fun. She was also a compassionate hospice worker who extended herself to caretaking the vulnerable on her free time, rescuing homeless animals and humans alike. Joyce also saw a pronounced personality change when Leslie and her husband John Wangsgaard started working with teal. This may have had something to do with what John describes as teal's "ability to see things that you and I do not." And what did she see in Leslie but her soul's intense desire to leave her body.

According to John, she also "helped" Leslie recover "memories" of sexual abuse by her father. As Brown notes, repressed memory is a very controversial idea in psychology, but teal takes an unequivocal position on the topic. Despite her total lack of psychological training, she has guided many people through the experience of unearthing traumatic memories that may or may not be real. This was something Katherine Rose Breen asked her about directly. It got her banned from Teal Tribe. She recounted the experience in this blog post (also posted here).

There is a sense of tragedy to John Wangsgaard, not so much because his wife committed suicide. That he seems to be at peace with. What he seems to be grieving over is that he is no longer in touch with teal. He is still hopelessly devoted to her, longing for contact that he can no longer financially afford. There is a tone of desperation in his voice when he speaks of being with her again, if only for an hour. He keeps a stack of her "Frequency Paintings" in his bedroom. He claims that his "attraction" to her was spiritual, not sexual, but explains that teal told him early in their acquaintance that they had been married in a previous life. The interview leaves me more disturbed than ever over Leslie's tragic death and teal's role in it.




"I want you to imagine that you're dead. So we're all gonna get suicidal for a moment," is how teal introduces an exercise during the Curveball retreat that people have paid up to $5000 for. I can't help thinking about James Arthur Ray's version of the Samurai Game during Spiritual Warrior. Ray played God, with the power over life and death, making people lie perfectly still on the cold, hard floor for hours. At the end of that week, three people would die in his sweat lodge. So imagine the shiver that went up my spine when I learned at the end of Episode 3 that Philia is getting its own sweat lodge.

Brown is concerned about "suicide contagion," as the group embarks on this death exercise. This is something I've been concerned about for a long time with teal's followers, in part, because I have seen it play out in screenshots from Teal Tribe. Having people visualize their own suicide this way is something teal recommends for people who are contemplating suicide. This has always struck me as a truly terrible idea.

There is some new terminology in this, or should I say, old terminology with new tealified definitions. People can now "channel" anyone or anything and, when they do, they are "possessed" by them. This seems to be part of a new product/framework that teal is rolling out. I'm guessing it will be laid out in her upcoming book, something about putting people in jars.

As these exercises unfold, it seems like the lines between imagination/visualization and "actual" experience of participants' own deaths, and other dramatic experiences, is becoming blurred. Brown is also concerned that teal is "engineering a mystical experience," as people become convinced that they are "literally" becoming everything from dead relatives to rocks to shoe laces to bodily organs, in these "possession" experiences. It is all the more troubling to me because it does not seem like these are naturally unfolding experiences, but the result of very direct prompting by teal, who says "I want you to..." more times than I can count. She's not holding space for people to have their own realizations. She's not so much a guide as she is a dictator, telling them what will happen and what they should feel about it. It does indeed seem like their experiences, both mystical and emotional, are being engineered and directed by teal, who has established herself as a superior, spiritual authority in their lives.

You should write that down. "My whole life is about..."

Brown tracked down the author of a Philia review I had also seen on the Philia Facebook page. The charge is one of manipulation and outright fraud.




When Brown expresses concern that teal might be "playing with fire" putting a group of strangers together to have this intense, group "therapy" experience, teal replies, "I'm not afraid of that. That's where you get the best stuff. [snort, snort, giggle, giggle]" You can actually hear the duping delight (see noncast "Drunks, Cult Leaders, and Duping Delight" for background).
As disturbing as all of this is, it is not the most troubling part of this episode for me, perhaps because none of it comes as a surprise. I've seen these patterns play out in a variety of ways with teal over the years. What truly shook me was something a tech reporter like Brown is well equipped to explain, and that is how teal has cultivated a solid base of depressed and suicidal followers. The mystical experiences she's engineering aren't only in retreats and workshops. They begin when people stumble onto her videos on YouTube. What feels to them like some sort of divine intervention directing them to just the right video for their pressing need is actually a skillful use of search tags. In hushed tones, as if she's letting Brown in on her conspiracy against human decency, she explains how she targets people at their most vulnerable by matching the kind of desperate search criteria despairing people  will likely use.

Most people were going through a fucking huge crisis, like gun-to-your-head type of crisis. And then, you know, they typed in something like "how do I not kill myself" and my videos popped up and they just... I specifically try to go for tags and things like that that get that, capture that audience. When you're in a desperate state, it's not sophisticated. People, like, when they're in that state, they type in shit like "I just lost my mother, what the fuck do I do." Literally, that will be the google tag line so even when we're doing videos, we'll add things like that so if someone's suicidal or someone's had a breakup or whatever, that's the video that comes up. 

Says Brown:

Teal was explicit. She uses tags that target people when they're having suicidal thoughts. 

This explains, at least in part, something I've heard from one Teal Tribe refugee after another, that they were at the lowest of low points in their lives, when they first discovered teal. Some have described to me how when you're in that state, her videos are a kind of sweet relief. This caused some people to ignore any number of red flags, to put aside even a visceral dislike that was their first reaction. Could it also explain why so many of her followers credit her with saving them from suicide?

On a personal note, I'm a little startled to find that the seeming twist of fate that led Brown to his first teal video included a song I've long associated with her and used in my post about the suicidality so common among tealers, "Suicide Is Painless." I always thought this was an organic connection on my part, stemming from a childhood love for M*A*S*H. Suddenly I'm less sure that I made this connection on my own.

Meanwhile, in Teal Tribe, the plaintive cries of the suicidal continue. They bring a mix of reactions, some of which are more disturbing than the posts themselves. I wish I could say that this was more than a small, representative sample of the kinds of posts that come up over and over, in that group.
















Some posts are from members who are dismayed over the sheer volume of suicidal posts and the way they are handled — or not handled — by admin. And if that concern is great enough admin shuts those threads down. Move along, folks, nothin' to see here!

Update 6/24/18: Episode 4 of "The Gateway"

In Episode 4 of "The Gateway," Brown drills down on teal's use of online marketing tools to target suicidal and otherwise vulnerable people. He interviews Justin Olaguer, who was once part of teal's "intentional community." I had been wondering whatever happened to Justin. He's been conspicuous by his absence from her inner circle. It was nice to hear his voice and know that he's doing well. He seems to have come a long way from the days when he was ranting about me being the "psychic Nancy Grace" on his Facebook page. (I've never cared for Nancy Grace, but I thought that was amusing. Funnily enough, he's not the first to make that comparison, so maybe I should sit with that.)

Says Justin now about teal's targeted marketing to the suicidal:

Those are ripe for becoming dedicated, loyal consumers of her products... She just wants a share of that market. Sorry if that's overly cynical but that's a market... She's a self-interested economic force... That's a market. She wants it.

Justin worked on her PR strategy, so he would know. But he was also part of her "market." This is a segment of the last extant episode of "Shadow House" that I've been able to find. "Shadow House" was a kind of reality show that teal used to livestream. This was hardly the most action-packed of these broadcasts, like the infamous "racist rant," or her public humiliations of Cameron and Fallon. But it went to some very dark places.




Astronauts have cyanide capsules in case they need to kill themselves? And you can get these astronaut cyanide pills on the black market? Who knew?! I did not. (This is NASA we're talking about, not Trump's new space force, because that doesn't exist... yet.) So I googled it. It seems this incorrect factoid traces to Carl Sagan. You'd think she'd check the, um, Akashic Record on that.

That bit of absurdity aside, there's a lot that troubles me in those six minutes alone. I don't know what kind of pain Justin has had in his life or what state he came to her in, but she seems to be steering him straight into a very dark place and dangling suicide as relief for whatever hardships might await him. She assures him she can teach him to stop his own heart with his mind or, you know, take astronaut cyanide.

Even in 2014 teal was telling tales of deep paranoia. She was risking assassination by the government, cults, and the pharmaceutical industry. Nothing about "hate groups" conspiring against her, though. That came later.

I also learned from this podcast that another suicide was presaged in Teal Tribe, with posts that are hard to read after the fact. The first such suicide, that of the 22 year old Brown calls "Max," was something I wrote about in this post. When I wrote it, I was somewhat dubious about her claim of receiving ten suicidal emails a day. Why was she "law of attracting" so many suicidal people? Now that I know that she's actively, and mechanistically, targeting that "market," I find her unwillingness to devote the time to responding to those desperate emails all the more galling.

In this episode, she complains to Brown that she's just deluged with desperate and suicidal emails, too many crises for her to possibly deal with. Perhaps she should have considered that when she decided to target that "market" so directly. Perhaps she should have put some sort of framework in place before she started luring desperate people to her groups and workshops, presenting herself as the cosmic answer lady. Perhaps she should at least post some suicide hotline numbers in Teal Tribe, as many have suggested. Her contempt for those hotlines has never been more apparent than in this podcast. She openly mocks them, imitating the counselors with a silly, sing-song voice. She is actively dissuading her many, many suicidal followers from reaching out to helplines. Where does that leave all the desperate followers she can't find the time for? At least two are dead by their own hand.

I had not heard about the second triber taking her own life. Brown’s description of “Jane’s” gun-to-the-head post rang a bell, though. I went back over the many screenshots of suicidal posts I’ve received. Learning that she died of a self-inflected gun shot wound shortly thereafter, at age 18, I shudder. It’s a feeling I won’t be able to shake anytime soon.




We talk a lot about how tealers should be getting proper therapy, but I've read through hundreds of these screenshots, at this point. Many of these folks have been in and out of therapy and do not feel they've been helped. And a lot of them couldn't afford to go to a therapist if they wanted to. Brown interviewed suicidologist April Foreman who confirms that pessimistic outlook.

I'm not sure what of teal's body of work Brown shared with Foreman or what her feelings would be on things like suicide being a "reset button" or how it "feels so good to die." She did weigh in on teal's insistence that people, like the late Leslie Wangsgaard, need to "commit to life." The data do not support that idea, according to Foreman. What the research shows is that no one is ever a hundred percent committed, either way, even in the midst of a suicide attempt. She did not, however, call them "fence-sitters," as teal did.

Foreman's comments are echoed in a piece that recently appeared in the New York Times, a sampling of comments from clinicians who had responded to an AP article about Anthony Bourdain,  Kate Spade, and the escalating suicide epidemic.

As a mental health therapist who has been practicing for 26 years, I appreciate the attention that the recent celebrity suicides have been given by journalists. I believe it is important to shed a light on this issue and that talking about difficult subjects is crucial.

What I sincerely wish, however, is that journalists would stop referring to the “mental health system” in this country. This is the United States, not Canada or the U.K. There is no “system.”

There are only providers: some individual and some groups. But the idea that there is an established, organized “system” of care is simply incorrect.

Is help available? Yes. If you have health insurance and can locate a provider who will see you, then help is available. But please stop alluding to a “system” of mental health care in this country. It simply does not exist.

Sadly, Brown is right. There is a void and teal has strategically positioned herself to fill it.

Brown also interviewed psychologist and former Moonie Steven Hassan. Hassan seems to share a number of my concerns, after watching just a few of teal's videos. Her droning voice can be hypnotic, as can her soothing backgrounds. I can't personally relate as I find her voice to be like nails on a chalkboard, but many former tealers have told me that they found her voice and manner hypnotic.

She presents herself as an authority with special knowledge. As I've said many times, the way she defines "extrasensory" ability as something very rare, that she claims to speak for "source" where others do not, infuriates me. And I say this as a practicing psychic. Psychic ability is not "special." It's our birthright. Good practitioners in this field don't foster dependency. They teach people how to fish. But I digress.

Hassan was also very troubled by her suicide meditation, because, no, she does not know how everyone will process that, especially the suicidal people she is actively targeting with her tags on that video.

So Hassan addressed a handful of indicators of the mind-control cult that teal appears to be building. Justin now sees teal as a cult leader but also as the "pope" of her own religion, an "object of adoration." Todd Mooney, who abandoned his children and pregnant wife, under teal's guidance, calls her "divine mother." Rick Ross also told OZY that teal fits the definition of a charismatic cult leader. And the OZY reporter was troubled by teal's comments about people being exiled from her "community" when they disagree with her, just as Todd Mooney and countless others have experienced. You are either with her or you're with the "haters."

For somebody who’s never had a sense of belonging, [Teal Tribe] becomes … their new family. Which works until the minute that someone has a falling out with me. … If anyone has an issue with me, turning against me, they stand to lose all these people they’re really close to.

I'm still not sure if it's a cult or a quasi-cult, but there are a lot of cult indicators. I leave it to the experts to make that call.

Brown also did a Completion Process session with one of teal's certified practitioners. She seemed very sweet and supportive, but Brown left with more churned up than resolved. This is a process that teal herself says could make people suicidal, but is now proffering as the replacement to suicide helplines. Her practitioners are trained for a few days, for the princely sum of $2,600.00. But teal trains them herself and knows for sure whether or not they're ready to counsel people through crisis. She knows even before the training because she screens the applicants using her super-psychic abilities. And yet, she's refused to certify some people, because it turns out they just weren't ready. At one training, she tells Brown, she declined to certify five people. How did she not see that coming?!

I remembered hearing about this less than successful training in one of teal's Daily Updates and I had the same thought then. So not only did teal fail a bunch of psychically pre-screened people who shelled out thousands of dollars and traveled all the way to Costa Rica, she announced it to the world, before she even told them. And she hates to hurt anyone's feelings, even though, according to her, hurting people's feelings is what "shadow work" is all about. Funny because I thought she loved to "attack" people and put them in the "hot seat."

Her next CP training went better, according to a subsequent Daily Update. She goes on to explain that "real" healing "unseats your entire reality." Most people are so inauthentic, according to teal, that if they genuinely heal, their lives "implode," their "reality collapses." It's "not fun." It "sucks." So that's quite the advertisement. And I'm sure very helpful for people who are already suicidal.




"So. We gotta get you triggered," says teal, after tossing out a casual compliment about her client's attire. She's not even fifteen seconds in to this Completion Process demonstration video that got teal cited for practicing therapy without a license.  A minute in, teal directs the client to "think about the thing that's causing you the most pain in your life... I wanna see if by getting you to talk about it, we can get you in some strong emotions."

She talks a lot about "unconditional presence," but what teal is doing is the opposite of being present for this woman. Instead of meeting her where she is in the moment and supporting that, addressing the concerns that she's expressing, teal moves straight into her agenda, which is to make her as uncomfortable as she can as quickly as she can. She wants her to be emotionally raw. She seems determined to break her down, to unseat her entire reality, to have her life implode, no matter how much that might suck.

This is the kind of thing that has troubled me for a long time with teal's methods. I have described her version of "shadow work" as being more like a "witch hunt through the psyche to unearth trauma, real and imagined, for which people can find whole new reasons to blame their parents."

She's not helping people find any sense of equilibrium. She's deliberately throwing them off balance, destabilizing them, and pretty aggressively. That she's providing these methods to people she's deliberately targeted for their instability, makes this all the more disturbing.

At the end of this episode, Brown gently but directly confronts teal on her qualifications to treat suicidal people. She becomes defensive, her speech clipped. She "feels" like she has "the answer" to suicidality because she's been suicidal. He suggests that this is not really a qualification, that what has worked to keep her "off the fuckin' ledge" might not do the same for everybody. She replies:

It works for everybody I’ve stepped around... Unless, unless they really don’t want to be here.

How convenient. Her method is one hundred percent foolproof except when it isn't. But when it isn't, it's not that her method has failed. Her mind-reading tells her that that person was absolutely committed to dying, that thing that suicidologist April Foreman says is never the case.

And am I the only person who is struck by her wording? To "step around" something is to avoid it, as one might a dead body.

But teal is certain that she has cracked the code on suicidal ideation and she feels absolutely qualified to disavow hotlines and trained professionals, to set herself up as someone who has "the answer" for suicidal and psychologically fragile people.

And I have a lot of people who've written and said that I do. So.

This is a logical fallacy, argumentum ad populum, aka., the bandwagon fallacy. But just because something is popular doesn't mean it's worth anything.

"No one in this world, so far as I know... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." ~ H. L. Mencken

People keep calling teal the c-word, cult leader, and dammit, she's addressed this! Way back in 2014, she put this matter to rest, with a blog post addressing, point by point, the cult criteria that she in no way meets. Earlier that year I had written a blog post, myself, comparing her organization to a number of cult criteria checklists, and I came to a different conclusion. I started blogging about teal way back when, because I saw a number of red flags that warned of a cult in formation, starting with the coerced, public "confession" of her ex-boyfriend to "sociopathy." Since that time, she has grown ever more culty and her long-sought mainstream coverage has acknowledged that fact. She did not help herself with her own commentary in the recent podcast series"The Gateway," wherein she told Gizmodo reporter Jennings Brown:

I have the perfect recipe for a cult. Perfect. Recipe.

No, her foray into mainstream press coverage has not gone well and now comes an article from Vice, which puts her cult leader status and her disturbing position on suicide under a microscope. And irony of ironies (note the correct use of the term), the cult expert Vice interviewed for the article is the very one whose checklist teal used to exonerate herself in that blog post, Janja Lalich, PhD. Unlike teal, Lalich appears to have concluded that teal meets the criteria of a cult leader, a dangerous one.

Though Teal has denied cult allegations, her massive social media influence and controversial practices around depression and suicide—sometimes encouraging students to imagine their own deaths in detail—have placed her on the dangerous side of Lalich’s cult radar.

. . .

Lalich sees this kind of dramatic therapy as a way to manipulate vulnerable people. “They can get very unstable, and that’s what she’s counting on,” she said. “Cult leaders will always get their people to what I call ‘reframe their lives.’ They reinterpret their lives so they see everything from before the cult as messed up, and only by staying with the cult leader will they get straightened out.” (To this day, many members of the “Teal Tribe” say they are only alive today because of her teachings.)

Just recently, on her own home turf, teal was challenged to defend herself against allegations that she is a cult leader. This time the accusation may have come from her soon to be fourth ex-husband. It's not entirely clear, but this blog post pricked up a few ears. He never names teal, but a few of his statements are a little on the nose.

In general, the cult leader will get his followers to talk his or her love language whether it is act of service, words of affirmation, gifts, time together or touch to fill the void of their pathological loneliness. The bigger the void, the bigger the need for external adoration. The same pattern can be observed with stars and their fans, or with any narcissistic leader and their subordinates.

Many people in Teal Tribe assumed it was AleVaillant who attempted to extort exposure of his own foray into spiritual leadership on teal's platform, with threats of exposing her cultishness.




I sincerely hope that was posted by someone on her team in her name, because talking about yourself in the third person that much is a bad sign. But teal did make a personal appearance on Teal Tribe to engage tealers on this issue. She did not seem pleased that at least a few people thought it was perfectly fine to self-promote in Teal Tribe.




In other words, it's fine if Teal Tribe members compete against each other as card readers and crystal venders, but competing against teal as a "spiritual teacher" is not cool, particularly if you disagree with her about anything. I thought it particularly amusing that she would use the example of criticizing Louise Hay's life work. She didn't do that on Hay's own "pages," it's true, but she did take the opportunity of her death to criticize her work, aggrandize herself, and plagiarize an obituary nearly word for word from her then publisher Hay House.






A lengthy comment in that thread made it sound all the more like the only person she could be referring to is husband number four. What other ex is using his association with teal to set himself up as a spiritual teacher? I know Sarbdeep joked about it and wrote a couple of blog posts and articles on spiritual topics, but he never set up a business or tried to promote any of it on her platform. He had no interest in "fame" and has long since removed his blog and tried to move quietly forward with his teal-free life. But Ale Vaillant has set up shop right in Salt Lake City and will be running a workshop very similar to the canceled relationship retreat he was planning to run at Philia, but under his own auspices, in what looks to be their marital home.








If teal's accounting of what happened behind the scenes is accurate, I can only deduce that Ale Vaillant thinks teal is running a cult and that he thinks that's something he can use to extort her for his own benefit, rather than expose for the good of society.

There is a certain irony (oh, there's that word again) in how teal is arguing that she's not a cult leader by positioning herself above all of her followers, with their little businesses that don't compete against hers, and declaring that she can't be disagreed with on her own turf. The only people she trusts to keep her honest in Teal Tribe are her moderators, a small, insular group, who reach a lot of "unanimous" conclusions, which doesn't exactly suggest that there's a lot of free-thinking going on there either.

She closes that comment by suggesting that anyone who thinks she's a cult leader should do more research into cults. But we have now heard from three prominent cult experts, each of whom has expressed grave concerns. As stated previously, Rick Ross thinks she "fits the pattern of a [cult leader]," and that she has become an "object of worship." Steven Hassan found her droning voice and soothing backgrounds could have an hypnotic effect on viewers of her videos. Both were troubled by her claims of spiritual authority and rarified insight. And now Lalich has voiced her concerns and shared that she has heard complaints from former teal followers.

Lalich says she’s been hearing complaints about Teal for quite some time. “Mostly they’re from people who feel they’ve been exploited,” she said. “They want some kind of validation that they were right in feeling that way about their experiences.”

In that thread, as she has many times before, teal referred Teal Tribe to her post "Cult or Movement?" As I said here, it might be a good idea to apply teal's cult checklist of choice (Lalich and Lanagone) to her actual record.


1. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the truth, as law.

In the podcast series, teal said of her followers:

These people are desperate. These people need my approval. These people will do whatever the hell I say.

She swears that her ethics stand between her and abuse of that level of devotion, but how in the heck did they come to be that devoted? Why is she up on a pedestal that high to begin with? How is it in any way normal that a large following of adults need her approval and would do whatever she tells them to? Why would she allow that dynamic to continue?

In her "Answers to the Allegations" video, which I wrote up here, she explains that it's perfectly normal that she's being idolized, just like a pop star. Such "severe idolization" is to be expected, according to her, because they're not "evolved" in their awareness. They've disowned their positive traits and projected them onto her, which she seems to think is fine. Funnily, this sounds a lot like Ale's Vaillant's blog post on cults, where he says:

They have disown [sic] their light and their guru has disowned his shadow. The relationship that they are developing with a narcissistic guru will then reflect their unworthiness and they are therefore a perfect match to their cult leader because of their core belief of being bad. 

2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

For all teal's claims that questions are "encouraged," that doubt is "seen as normal and a healthy part of expansion." and that dissent is not punished, her record says otherwise. For example, when Katherine Rose Breen tried to ask her some questions about her practices with "repressed memory" she found herself banned from Teal Tribe (see also here).

Breen's experience is not atypical. There is a long history of teal's refusal to deal with questions and criticism and many instances of banning and even mass bannings on Teal Tribe. In the podcast series discussed here, Brown interviewed Todd Mooney, who was exiled from Teal Tribe when he had a period of doubt and got angry with teal. And, as noted, teal herself has said that such exile is  inevitable "the minute someone has a falling out with me."

As I wrote here, she has explicitly discouraged "doubt." In her Ask Teal video on how "unhealthy" it is to practice any sort of "skepticism" she said:

The actual vibration of doubt looks nothing like genuine uncertainty, instead it looks like disbelief. To doubt is to consider something unlikely. To consider something unlikely is to act as if you know. It is to pretend you know something that you do not know. It is to bring a sense of certainty to a universe of uncertainty. For this reason, doubt in all actuality, is the flip side of faith. Doubt is only another kind of faith. It is faith in the negative instead of faith in the positive. Like the shadow side of faith, to consider something unlikely (doubt) is to act as if you know. People use doubt to gain a sense of certainty and cognitive closure in the same way that people use faith to gain a sense of certainty and cognitive closure.

3. Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, mind control, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).

In her interview with Vice, Lalich describes teal's therapies, like the death meditation Brown observed at Philia, as creating instability in her followers, which makes them easier to manipulate. This is something I've long been concerned about in my own observations of teal's work. None of it seems to be truly geared toward fostering anyone's personal autonomy. On the contrary, it all seems to make teal the focal point and to have the potential to break people down psychologically.

In this post, I relayed my own experience of using one of the processes available on her site. The post includes comments from someone in Teal Tribe who explained that her videos are causing him to feel less stable, that they're triggering, and like "ripping off a band-aid, pouring salt in the wound, and walking away." It's a fascinating exchange, which highlights the disturbing pattern that unfolds when anyone questions teal's methods, even when they feel personally harmed by them. In sum, teal's pain is more important than yours, even if she's the one who hurt you.

I did this process and found it be entirely teal-focused, that it corralled me in a direction of blaming my family and convincing me that I was really worse off psychologically than I thought. My conclusion was that it was not so much a therapeutic tool as a kind of "push poll into despair."

On another occasion, I listened to one of teal's guided meditations, the one on finding your "spirit animal." I found it to be "over-directed to the point of absurdity." I wrote this up in the noncast "What's the Point of 3?" which can be found in the comments on this page (page search: 2.0). It's not just bad. It's dangerous, both to the listener and to the spirit world. She actually tells people, not only exactly what to visualize, but what they're feeling, and then starts dictating to the spirit animal. There's no room in it for anyone to experience their own process of discovery, let alone take actual guidance from whatever spirit helper they might make contact with.

There are hints at grueling "denunciation sessions" within her "intentional community." As stated, the incident that caused me enough concern to start blogging about teal was how she forced a public confession from her ex-boyfriend Fallon. "Confession" is one of Robert Jay Lifton's eight criteria of "totalism." This played out publicly and was thoroughly degrading.

Another person in teal's inner circle who experienced "denunciation sessions" was Cameron Clark. She shared her experiences of being raked over the coals by teal on more than one occasion, including the all too public Shadow House incident, in this interview.

In this post, in the subsection on "Marriage," I provided further examples of teal's "denunciation sessions," both public and private. What it comes down to is that teal is never wrong. She can see all your "shadows" and she's determined to talk about them. If you don't acknowledge them, she's somehow the one who's being "gaslighted." That may mean browbeating workshop participants into accepting her world view, even if they disagree, and calling people — who've paid her upwards of a grand — derogatory names like "creep," you know, for their own good. Or as her then husband put it:

Because you’re always a work in progress and she sees all your imperfection, and you have to be willing to see them yourself. Because if she sees it and you don’t see it, then there’s a conflict. And she’s not going to let go.

4. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).‪

In her defense, teal writes:

I am an initiator, but I am not a dictator.  I do not dictate what people do unless they ask for my opinion and then it is their choice to implement the suggestion or not.

I know words really aren't teal's friend, but why would she ever dictate what people do if she's not a dictator? And how is it somebody's choice, if she's dictating? Freudian slip? Or just more inscrutable word salad, confusing the reader, leaving them to construe whatever meaning is most comfortable for them. What I take from that statement is that asking her for her opinion is all the pretext she needs to start telling you what to do. Your mileage may vary. Any pile of verbiage this internally contradictory leaves a lot of room for interpretation... and projection.

No one in this group needs my permission for anything and needing permission suggests a lack of self-trust.  I teach people to govern themselves.

And yet, for some inexplicable reason, she has followers who "need [her] approval" and will "do whatever the hell [she says]." (See point 1.)

In that blog post, teal admits that she has "many opinions about the healthiest and best ways to do certain things." She's not forcing them on anybody, though. She'd just like people to "try [them] on" and see how they work out, and they can always drop them later... that is unless they're indelible. While I don't think teal has ever prescribed a style of clothing, she has passionately encouraged followers to get her favorite tattoo, the Seal of Alchemy.




I wrote this up in my noncast "The Bottomless Rabbit Hole" which starts here, in the comments. (page search: bottomless) In the teacast on "Rites of Passage" teal made a strong appeal to tealers to just consider, you know, maybe, probably getting one of these tattoos. But it's definitely, totally up to them.

This is what I'm hoping, you know, now that we're on the subject, this is what I'm hoping is true for, for people in Teal Tribe. So you've noticed, maybe some of you have been watching the Teal Tribe groups that, that it's become a big thing for, for all of us to share this tattoo which I actually have on my arm, the Alchemy tattoo. And we could look at that as a rite of passage, a rite of passage where we are saying okay I'm going to mark my alliance with this particular group. We could also say I'm going to mark my decision to live my life according to the Alchemy principal that mind and thought creates reality, whatever that means for you. I'm hoping that that particular decision rather than being something which binds you forever, because there's no punishment for leaving Teal Tribe, there's no punishment for choosing to leave this group because it needs to be a conscious choice. I'm hoping that that's what that is. It's a rite of passage whereby somebody is owning a truer state for themselves knowing that in the future that might transition and that could just be like every other thing like a stamp on an envelope that seals a portion of your particular life or it could remain an open chapter throughout the course of your life. But, yeah, so any of you who are wanting to get these tattoos which are the Teal Tribe Tattoo I'm now gonna call it. If anyone wants to do that I'm gonna want you to rewatch this video and ask yourself each one of these questions about healthy rites of passage and ask yourself whether that particular decision to get that tattoo is a healthy rite of passage for yourself or not. And that's gonna be a completely individual, individual thing. [All emphases added]

So it's the symbol of Alchemy and that's why it's meaningful, but she's just gonna go ahead and rename it the "Teal Tribe Tattoo." And, gosh, it would be great if tribers would get one.

And they did. And they do. And so it goes.












More images of "Tea Tribe Tattoos" can be found here.


5. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).

I addressed some evidence of this in this post. At some point after I posted that, she stopped using the word "eucharist" to describe herself. But there are still traces of this verbiage. This is a screenshot of one of her early bios, where it states:

From a young age, Teal began professing to have not only chosen to be a part of this physical life, but to have been sent as a “Eucharist” into this physical life by the non physical grouping of energy called "Adonai.""Adonai" is a non physical group whose intention is the imparting of oneness.

Extant versions of this verbiage can still be found on other sites where her work has appeared, like this interview with the Time Monks.

She has also claimed to be a reincarnation of Sai Baba.




And then, of course, there's the whole Arcturian soul fork thing.




In the infamous Nova Zem interview, teal explains that an Artcurian panel designed her to be pretty and white enough to reach a global audience, you know, because black women are "pretty ugly" to a Western audience. She also compares humans to ants and explains that she has three points of perspective to the normal, pedestrian two points of perspective that humans do. She clarifies that she's not a mere channeler like Esther Hicks, she's more like the consciousness entity Abraham that Hicks channels, but in human form. In other words, she's different from the rest of us mere mortals, and that includes other people who do spiritual work.




When teal was first starting out as "the spiritual catalyst," puff pieces like this one promoted by her then husband Mark Scott, popped up here and there around the web. This version is gone, but a currently extant version of the same text, under the title "The Indigo Child to Lead Them All," can be found here. It looks to be similar to the Jason Freedman"articles," which could be found on the same sites with Blake Dyer's picture and phone number. In other words, Anne Whinney is also probably a sock. The following comments are from the deleted version. (I have a pdf of this which is available upon request.) They may be by real people or they may be other socks. Neither possibility is good, but if it's the latter, that teal and her team were seeding these ideas of her being and "avatar" with "disciples," that's a particularly alarming proposition.




6. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. ‪

Her language on this point is fascinating.

I teach oneness.  Us vs. Them thinking is out of alignment with oneness.  But sometimes language restricts us.  In a certain context, generalizations involving the words us and them helps people to comprehend a concept, such as “we have dedicated our life to authenticity and that is not something they will understand at first or thank you for.”  This is not done to encourage polarization.

So just because she divides the world in "us and them"— people who have "dedicated [their] lives" to her brand of "authenticity" and people who don't appreciate it — doesn't mean she's polarizing.

As I have said repeatedly, you are with teal or you are with the terrorists. She calls her followers "tealers" and those who disagree with her "anti-teal,""haters," and even "hate groups." She seems to see opposition to her "mission" and "movement" everywhere. She's gone"up against the mainstream" and it's fought back. She sees herself as a game-changer, a revolutionary, even a messianic figure (she compares herself to Jesus), who is beset by opposition because she's so threatening to the status quo.

In a word, yes, she's very polarizing.


7. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).

Because teal is not part of any larger spiritual/religious organization and is not a licensed psych or medical practitioner, she has no real oversight. She has no license to lose. She did, however, catch the attention of the Utah State Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing. She was cited for practicing mental health therapy without a license and fined. Brown reported in "The Gateway" that she has not paid the fine and it's gone into collection. She does not appear to have changed her practices. If anything, she's escalated them. She continues to certify people in her brand of trauma therapy, the Completion Process. She's ratcheted up criticism of professional psychological institutions and declared her methods superior for dealing with problems as serious as suicidal ideation.

Brown also learned that she'd been using the state seal on her Completion Process certificates and was ordered to cease and desist. On that, she now appears to be in compliance.


8. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities). ‪

Leave say, teal has a certain moral flexibility, with which I have been very uncomfortable for some time. I don't think it could be defined in such conventional terms as means justifying noble ends. It's more that she inverts moral principles and the meanings of words to justify a range of ethically dubious propositions. As I wrote in the noncast"Bottomless Rabbit Hole":

With teal, a lot of things that most people think are good, like humility, are bad, and a lot of things that most people think are bad, like manipulation, are good.

She also has a long history of justifying and rationalizing violent criminals and tyrants: Jim Jones, Elliott "The Virgin Killer" Rodger, Ted Bundy, Hitler... She invariably sees murderers as objects of pity, and puts responsibility on their victims for law of attracting violence.




In her video on "false prophets," she claims that Jim Jones only wanted to help people and that there are no malevolent intentions.

People who fear false prophets distrust themselves but more than that they fear malevolence. For that reason alone, it's important to understand that evil does not exist within this universe. There has not ever been one malevolent intention on the planet Earth. Let me show you why. The person who murders is not evil. The person who murders murdered somebody because they thought that the murdering of someone would make them feel better. So the ultimate desire, the motivation behind that murder was to feel good. Sounds mighty malevolent doesn't it.... Don't believe for a second that Jim Jones thought that he was causing people harm. He thought that he was helping people. He thought that the only way for them to be free was to die.

Not only is this victim-blaming, it justifies mass murder, genocide, thrill-killings, and rape, because they make violent actors "feel better."

That she says things like this with so much confidence, and speaking as an elevated spiritual authority, can have a warping effect on her followers, particularly on those closest to her. This comment was posted to my blog. Even though the comment was public, as the poster has removed it, I am redacting the name and other identifying details. Leave say, this person was part of teal's intentional family, at one time. In this comment, it's clear that he experienced marked personality changes while following teal, including an erosion of ethical constraints, even to the point of willingness to commit murder.




9. The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.

As I wrote in point 3, there are "denunciation sessions" which can become very degrading, and a number of them play out in public. Invariably the punished offenses are perceived slights against teal. In the comment above, from her former insider, he describes how the other members of the community took him to task for "manipulating" teal. As I wrote in my first blog post on teal, her ex-boyfriend Fallon was made to confess to "sociopathy" and did so on what was then the Teal Tribe site (it's gone now), where he opened himself up to public shaming by members. Cameron described similar incidents, where she was ganged up on, and many people have commented on my blog that what ensued on teal's Facebook page after the infamous Shadow House episode was sickening. Followers do teal's bidding, when it comes to attacking and shaming anyone teal is not getting along with.

The one caveat, none of this is subtle. It's remarkably ham-fisted. It creates a chilling effect. Who wants to disagree with teal about anything, when they see how people are treated?


10. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group. ‪

In the screenshot posted at the end of point 8, this former member describes how teal had him convinced that he'd been molested by a family member, despite his not having any memory of it. She also persuaded him to break with his family, and consider her intentional community his new family.

Something similar played out very publicly at a workshop. The incident was included in the final episode of "The Gateway." It was also something that Katherine Rose Breen recounted in this post. This woman was told by teal that she suffered horrible abuse that she just doesn't remember. Things got worse from there.

As I said in point 3 above, I did one of teal's processes on her website. It was literally impossible to come to any conclusion other than that my life is not working and it's my parents' fault. The post includes screenshots of the whole, bizarre exercise.

The messaging from teal is consistently that parents are to blame for everything. That this causes many of her devotees to distances themselves from their families is inevitable. Friendships and even marriages have also been impacted. In episode 4 of "The Gateway," Brown interviews a couple who divorced over the husband's devotion to "divine mother" teal.


11. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

Because this is primarily an internet-based organization, numbers matter. She relies heavily on social media platforms and has racked up a significant following. In "The Gateway," Brown learned some very troubling information about how she uses SEO techniques, not only to build a following, but to target vulnerable people directly. This is similar to the way cults seek out people who are in transitional phases, like their college years. Recruiters will look for people who look lonely or unhappy, whereas teal will use tags like "how do I not kill myself." It's the same idea but with a high tech spin.


12. The group is preoccupied with making money.‪

In her post, teal rightly points out that money is "necessary to live in society on earth at this current time." Verbose, but true.

She spoke to the money question in her "allegations" video, which I addressed here under "Money an Spirituality." To summarize, Teal Eye LLC is a for-profit business. She spun off her nonprofit aspirations into something called Headway, and it's a dubious prospect at best, with no accounting for what funds have been moved in or out.

Her prices are increasing with high ticket events and "Premium" content. There's significant merchandizing of her "art" and other products. And while it's true that joining Teal Tribe doesn't cost anything, many of her followers are unable to afford her increasingly expensive newer offerings. They can't even watch entire "Daily Updates" on her Instagram account, because the complete versions are only available through Premium.

In this interview she talks about her aspirations for the expansion of her company and its role in world change. She explains that the world is FUBAR and that she'll need to create a giant, overwhelming financial force and begin paying off politicians, like any other giant corporation. Ultimately she'd like to buy her own countries and set them up according to her principles. Yes, that's right, she says she wants to buy countries. Where would anyone get the idea that this is a cult?




13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.‪

In her post teal says:

People in this group who want to donate their time, come forward as volunteers and volunteer for as long as they feel called to do so.

Why are people donating their time to a for-profit company? People work for free at her workshops and, as discussed both here and in "The Gateway"podcast, Philia is staffed by unpaid volunteers. As stated above, her non-profit arm doesn't seem to be up to much. Most of what she does is for-profit, so why isn't she paying the people who work for her?


14. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.‪

From her blog post:

No one is encouraged to ONLY socialize with members.  But people do find that they prefer socializing with other members.  This is after all, a tribe that exists as a support and place of belonging for those who have no support and no place to belong or who feel like they want more connection.

This really isn't much of a defense. Even within this statement she's encouraging people to prioritize her "tribe," instilling the idea that it's preferable to socializing with people who aren't her followers.


15. The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.

She writes:

I have no control over whether the most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group or believe there is no other way to be.

As we learned in "The Gateway," teal actively pursues the lonely, desperate, and suicidal as followers, using SEO tools like search tags. In other words, she very definitely has control over what kinds of people she's targeting with these marketing tools and that they are likely to become dependent on her and her "tribe." She told Brown:

What do I say to the fact that I run a cult?...  I have the perfect recipe for a cult. Perfect. Recipe. I have a demographic of people who are miserably isolated, lonely. They need belonging desperately. It's literally the demographic that needs to find somewhere to belong... That is the recipe for a cult... I have the recipe for a cult... These people are desperate. These people need my approval. These people will do whatever the hell I say. [All emphases added]

She goes on to explain, in her post:

I can officially say that there is absolutely no reprisal, consequence or punishment for leaving the group. 

This seems to be one of her favorite talking points and it's come up repeatedly. But as I said here and here, it's not really true. People who leave quietly face no reprisals, but people who state publicly why they've left are subject to all manner of personal attacks. They're "haters" and "anti-teal" now, so she'll complain about them on her blog and in interviews and her flying monkeys will pelt them with nasty comments or worse. But even for people who don't speak out against her, the consequence is losing that sense of "belonging" she talks about so much. The punishment is exile. And what's worse, she knows it, and she leverages it. Another talking point that we've now heard a few times is most pointedly articulated in her OZYinterview.

For somebody who’s never had a sense of belonging, [Teal Tribe] becomes … their new family. Which works until the minute that someone has a falling out with me. … If anyone has an issue with me, turning against me, they stand to lose all these people they’re really close to.

To sum up, teal is targeting desperate, lonely, and suicidal people with calculated SEO tricks. She offers those people a sense of family, tribe, and belonging, as long as they don't disagree or get into any sort of conflict with her. If they do, they are exiled. Those who have the wherewithal to really begin to question her and her methods may find support on "anti-teal" platforms like my blog or the "hate groups" as she calls them on Facebook. Those who find their voice and begin to publicly criticize her will be vilified by her and attacked by her "army." These really seem like consequences to me.

The headlines alone make make my gorge rise:

• Priests used gold crosses to ID kids as abuse targets... 
• Priests Produced Child Pornography on Church Property...
• Church helped priest accused of sex abuse get Disney World gig

Disney World! Who would knowingly help a pedophile get a job at Disney World?!!! The Catholic Church, that's who.

Like people all across the country, and probably much of the world, I have been processing, over the past week, the horrible revelations to come out of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on priestly abuse throughout the state. At least 300 "predator priests" abused at least 1,000 children (their findings acknowledge that the actual number is probably much higher), over a seventy year period. And the Church establishment, as it has done in so many dioceses around the world, conspired to keep it all covered up. They moved offending priests around to different jobs many of which still gave them access to minors, they hid records under lock and key, and they threw the victims under a bus. Same story, different state. Yet somehow this time feels so much worse.

If the Catholic sexual abuse scandal that came to light in 2002 slowly unspooled through news reports, Pennsylvania's grand jury report landed like an atom bomb, dropping its online horrors all at once. With some redactions, the report was readily available for everyone to read and share: the accusations of sexual deviance, shameless lies and deceitful churchmen.

"What we have now is people freely expressing their outrage on Facebook and Twitter," said Greg Kandra, a Catholic deacon in Brooklyn, New York. "The anger is palpable. This is like 2002 on steroids."

The report is unflinching, sparing no detail. The stomach-turning descriptions of horrific and degrading violations are a deliberate choice, on the part of the grand journey.

“As I detail the grand jury’s findings, I will use graphic language from the report that may make some uncomfortable,” [Attorney General Josh] Shapiro said at his news conference. “But these words are the only way to adequately explain the sexual abuse committed by priests upon children. This is not to be salacious. It is to share the truth.”

That language and sheer volume of the alleged abuse it documents is being heralded by advocates for children, even as Shapiro acknowledged that given the ages of the cases, new criminal charges are unlikely. The words compare with what the grand jury insisted was the church’s own “use of euphemisms” to downplay abuse claims — in which church officials would characterize sex assaults as merely “inappropriate contact,” abusive priests as having “boundary issues,” and being removed from service as on “sick leave.”

Altoona attorney Richard Serbin, who has spent a career suing the Catholic Church over abuse, said such “code language” was no surprise to him. He welcomed the report’s graphic details, saying they were necessary.

“We’re talking thousands of children that were sodomized, raped, fondled, subjected to the grossest of sexual acts,” Serbin said. “Only then can the public appreciate the gravity of the offenses against children.”

And while victims and victim advocates are heralding the brutal honesty of the report, some Catholic leaders are even now trying to downplay and spin it.

‘I don’t think this is some massive, massive crisis,” said Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., in a statement that could not possibly be more wrong. Speaking three weeks after revelations about his predecessor’s sexual predation against boys and young priests, Wuerl said he was aware that a harrowing Pennsylvania grand-jury report would soon document the sexual abuse of 1,000 children by Catholic clergy and criticise Wuerl’s own treatment of some abusers.

Wuerl allowed that the news about his predecessor, Theodore McCarrick, was “a terrible disappointment”. He also said that “we need to have something that would also be a mechanism for when a bishop has not been as faithful as he needs to be, even if the charges go back 40, 50 years”. Even amid that march of euphemism and evasion, one phrase should leap out. In the context of discussing a predecessor who had done a lot to destroy a boy’s life — who had raped him for years — Wuerl spoke of a bishop who “has not been as faithful as he needs to be”, a comment that could more aptly be applied to someone who had neglected to say his morning prayers.

Let it not be said, however, that Wuerl is slow to appreciate all dangers. He had what can only be described as a P.R. website ready to go when the report was released. It provoked an immediate outcry and was taken down a few hours after launching.

Or blame it all on the gay.

“It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men,” Cardinal Raymond Burke said in an interview Thursday. “There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this.”

Burke went on to emphasize that he believes there is “a very grave problem of a homosexual culture” both among the clergy and within the Church’s hierarchy that “needs to be purified at the root.” He added, “It is of course a tendency that is disordered.”

. . .

Contrary to Burke’s rhetoric, there is no connection between child sex abuse and homosexuality. Pedophilia is classified as a “paraphilia” — a sexual disorder— and has nothing to do with one’s sexual orientation, which refers to the sex(es) a person might be oriented toward. Men are more likely to experience pedophilic disorder, and they are more likely to have access to young boys than they do young girls. This is particularly true in the Catholic Church, in which women have few leadership opportunities.

And even now the Church is scrambling to protect itself legally, spending millions on lawyers and lobbyists.

If the Catholic Church wasn't a religious institution, would we be handling the situation differently?

"They would have been arrested under the RICO federal laws already and they would have been considered organized crime," Pennsylvania State Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Democrat, told Salon. Rozzi is more than just a proponent of passing new legislation to help victims of childhood sex abuse, whether from employees of the Catholic Church or other organizations; he is also a victim himself, one who was raped by a priest in a rectory shower in Pennsylvania when he was 13 years old.

. . .

Yet, as Rozzi pointed out, the Catholic Church has already started fighting SB 261 and other legislative measures — a move that contradicts the church's frequently stated position of sympathy for the victims and a desire to stop future abuses.

"We already hear from legislators that they're already out there lobbying against what we're trying to do. The ink isn't even dry on the report yet and they're already spending millions on lobbyists working legislators," Rozzi said.

But this really feels different. The Church's apologists are being given no quarter in the public square. They are being called out at every level.

A letter on behalf of Catholic theologians, educators, parishioners, and lay leaders calling on all U.S. Catholic bishops to collectively resign in the wake of the new allegations now has over 1,000 signatures. Chile’s 34 bishops similarly resigned en masse over a sexual abuse scandal in May.

“The catastrophic scale and historical magnitude of the abuse makes clear that this is not a case of ‘a few bad apples,’ but rather a radical systemic injustice manifested at every level of the Church,” the letter states. “Systemic sin cannot be ended through individual goodwill.”

The Vatican was slow to respond, declining to comment when the report was released. Their first statement came a full two days later.

A spokesperson for Pope Francis on Thursday broke the Vatican’s silence on a grand jury report outlining sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests in Pennsylvania, calling the details in the report “criminal and morally reprehensible."

“The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible,” the spokesperson said, according to media reports. “Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith.”

And finally, yesterday, Pope Francis responded directly to the report and the ongoing crisis in the Church.

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26).  These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons.  Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike.  Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient.  Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.  The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.

It's a good letter, but it is late. Not only late by nearly a week, but by years. There is much about Pope Francis that I love. I say as a non-Catholic, with no great fondness for hierarchical religious institutions. He has shown more compassion and grace than his predecessors on many issues, but actual changes have been slow. And in his response on the defining issue of his Church, in the 21st century, has been downright tone-deaf. He has moved much more slowly than many would have hoped for, but he does seem to be catching on to the grave importance of this issue. His call for bishops to resignen masse in Chile was a giant step in the right direction, but it came only after his dismissal of the accusations as "slander" had caused international outrage. This has been his blindspot. This has been the Church's blindspot for decades. And I can't imagine a worse thing to be blind to. Let us hope that the courage of Pennsylvania's victims and the grand jury's willingness to stand behind them is exactly the wake-up call the Church needs.

"The fact that he would do this suggests to me he hasn't learned all that much -- the idea of trying to turn what he did into somehow generating money by the redemption book or whatever.... I think this is just rubbing salt right back in the wounds for all of them and the people who are either financially ruined or mentally damaged by that entire event..." ~ Connie Joy, author of Tragedy in Sedona

It appears that James Arthur Ray has a new book coming out, and I say "appears" because I can find no record of it anywhere but on his website. Yet Ray has already kicked promotion of this book into gear, pitching The Business of Redemption on his local FOX, CBS, and ABC affiliates. As a former book publicist, I find this whole thing very odd. Normally, media appearances would not be scheduled until the pub date, when finished books are in stores and available for purchase. This book doesn't even have a pub date, only vague allusions to "next year."

I looked at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and found no listings or pre-order options for this book. That is something that is generally set up well in advance by publishers. But that's the other piece of information that seems to be missing. There is no mention of a publisher. My back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that this is a self-published book and a poorly coordinated one at that. I am speculating somewhat, but unless I miss my guess, Ray is counting on pre-orders through his website to fund the production of finished books, hence the vague pub date, which is probably contingent on how many orders come in and when.

This leads us to the most disturbing aspect of this venture. Why start promotion of this project in October, the very month that three people died on his watch? Not for the first time, Ray's attachment to this tragedy seems more ghoulish than respectful, let alone repentant. I mean... what did that press release look like?! Did he send it out on October 8th? I would not put it past him.



Not for the first time, Ray is treating the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman like so many lemons from which to make lemonade. But it's not just exploitive. It's creepy, as if he's trying to squeeze some sort of magical power from what he has more than once described as their "sacrifice." He has even promoted himself as heroically rising like a phoenix, from the flames of their funeral pyre.

How did he mark the ninth anniversary of the sweat lodge tragedy? He posted a diatribe on the necessity of "sacrifice."




More strangely still, he's included a two year old photo of himself being interviewed by Alisyn Camerota. This interview did not go terribly well for him. In fact, he was challenged directly by her co-anchor John Berman on his bizarre implication of their "sacrifice."

You're saying they -- they died in the sweat lodge at your retreat and you're saying that was an act of sacrifice for them? That they gave everything they had?

All of this reads like a dog whistle, but for God's sake, what is he whistling and to whom?! Over and over he refers to the lives of people who died on his watch as "sacrifices" for some kind of gain. But who gains? They're dead. They've gained nothing, nor have their families and friends. The implication seems to be that it is he who has something to gain from their deaths, when as a matter of law, he killed them.

I first became concerned about the suggestion that this tragedy was some kind of dark ritual during the sentencing hearing of the sweat lodge trial, when prosecutor Sheila Polk read from one of the letters of support from Ray's followers, which also cryptically alluded to their "sacrifice."

James has integrity and his message has integrity.
I am witnessing the power of his spoken word.
I am witnessing the shadow side of Harmonic Wealth.
The 2009 Spiritual Warrior Retreat is a great lesson.
The LESSON has touched the consciousness of the world.
I respect and honor the sacrifice of Liz, Kirby, and James.
I request compassion for my friend James Ray.

I asked then:

Did she see the deaths of three people as some cosmic sacrifice for "wealth?" If so, is this a wild overstatement of what Ray was teaching or just following his teachings to their natural conclusion? Shudder.

That he would again reference this disturbing idea on the ninth anniversary of their deaths only heightens this concern. But here he is, merchandizing deaths he caused as his own story of triumph over circumstance.

Of the three interviews only Channel 10 did their due diligence by interviewing a vocal critic of Ray's, Connie Joy (seen above).




On CBS he was spinning like a top and using words like "leverage" to cringeworthy effect. It's worth watching, if only for the chilling reveals, like his duping delight (4:06), when he claims to have found "compassion." Or when he wrongly defines "empathy" as "attempting to feel like you feel." Spoken like a man with no capacity for empathy.

Ray turns again and again to half-remembered dictionary definitions of words, in lieu of expressing actual emotion or contrition. In explaining the title of his book, he says, "Well, I am seeking redemption and if you look at the definition of that it's to gain or regain something by paying the price." Note that he does not include the Christian meaning of the word, salvation from sin or evil. For Ray, redemption is a business transaction that neatly avoids atonement, hence the book title.




The most embarrassing was this softball interview with a fawning reporter from FOX, with whom Ray seems all too cozy. The network posted very little of the interview to their website, but it can be heard in full on his Facebook page.

“It was my lodge. It was my event. It was my choice to do a dangerous activity, and so therefore, as a leader -- which the new book “The Business of Redemption” is all about leadership -- as a leader when something goes wrong in your entrepreneurial business or in your large corporation, there’s one person who is in the cross hairs [sic] and one person who is responsible," said Ray.

But Ray has never taken responsibility. He has tried to evade it at every turn, like when he proclaimed and deflected responsibility in the same breath, in the flaccid documentary Enlighten Us.

Ray spent himself into abject poverty on lawyers and legal fees in a long, drawn-out trial, when it would have been cheaper and far less self-destructive to plead out and pay restitution to the families. And even after destroying himself and causing more pain to everyone involved, he attempted to have his conviction set aside. He failed, but here he was, minutes later, refusing to admit to the "homicide" part of the "negligent homicide" charge for which he remains convicted.

These are not the actions of a man who has accepted responsibility. They look more like the actions of a man who thinks he can turn a profit on the bodies of his victims.

I was awake well before sunrise that Friday morning. A limousine was waiting for me in front of my building in Bloomfield, New Jersey, because commuter trains don't run that early. I had no time to brew coffee, so I had to make due with a chilled Pepsi offered by the driver. I am not a morning person, but it was part of my job as a publicist to escort my authors to their New York media appearances. I had booked Russell Baker on Good Morning America. 

I really didn't know what to expect from Mr. Baker, having only chatted with him briefly on the phone a few times. I had read The Good Times, for which I was doing publicity. It was a delightful memoir about his career in journalism. But I had not yet read Growing Up, his first memoir, for which he'd won a Pulitzer. Our department assistant had rustled up a copy for me only the day before.

I had learned a bit of the history, the unexpected success of Growing Up. The book had gone back for a second printing even before the publication date. The original publisher hadn't anticipated huge numbers on this sweet, understated memoir about coming of age in the shadow of the Great Depression and going on to become a New York Times columnist. The Times reviewed it, of course. It was a rave, and the book had started flying off the shelves, deservedly so.

In my youthful ignorance I hadn't really understood why it was so easy to book media for Russell Baker. It began to dawn when I saw how warmly he was welcomed at the GMA studio. They seemed thrilled to talk to Baker again, even for a mass market reprint of his second memoir. I began then to understand just how beloved he was. As the day wore on, I began to understand why.


We had a long break after GMA and before his first radio interview. Mr. Baker suggested we have breakfast at The Plaza, where he was staying on Penguin's dime. There I had the most expensive slice of papaya I'd ever tasted and as much coffee as I could get the waiter to pour.

Baker entertained me by performing dialogue he imagined was happening around the dining room, and other witty speculations about strangers. We talked. We laughed. He peppered me with questions about my life and how I'd ended up in publishing.

At some point, in the course of the day, the realization began to dawn as just what was so delightful about spending time with Russell Baker. He was treating me like a real, fully human person. He never condescended to me, or belittled me as a "publicity girl." (Other authors, whom I shall not name, had done.) He actually listened when I spoke. Without interruption. He asked me questions and listened to my answers with rapt attention and not once did I have the sense that it was because he wanted anything from me, other than pleasant conversation. It felt different than any interaction I could ever remember having with a man of any age.

After his last interview, Baker took me to the New York Times building for a tour. He read me the column he was working on for that week. He introduced me to the few colleagues who had not already fled the city for the weekend. And then it was time for me to do the same. It was a Friday afternoon and it was summer. The publishing world had been effectively closed since noon. So I headed back to New Jersey. I had to take a bus, because the trains wouldn't be running for another few hours. I sat in Port Authority, watching strangers, musing quietly to myself about their lives, and wondering at an inner joy that had overtaken me at some point that morning.

That evening, I started reading Growing Up. It won me completely from the opening passage.

At the age of eighty my mother had her last bad fall, and after that her mind wandered free through time. Some days she went to weddings and funerals that had taken place half a century earlier. On others she presided over family dinners cooked on Sunday afternoons for children who were now gray with age. Through all this she lay in bed but moved across time, traveling among the dead decades with a speed and ease beyond the gift of physical science.

It remains the most beautiful paean to senility I've ever read.

I learned that the dual forces of his father's death and the Great Depression had moved a young Baker to New Jersey, of all places, to live with his mother's relatives. They'd been not far from where I was living in Bloomfield, in neighboring Belleville.

Reading his life story, I began to understand why I had not felt even a hint of sexist condescension from Russell Baker and that it started with his relationship with his mother. She was a fiercely powerful woman. And when he married, it was to another fiercely powerful woman, whom he loved passionately and never seemed to see as anything other than his equal. As I read about Mimi, I began to understand the way Baker's eyes twinkled when he'd spoken of her, over our delightful breakfast at the Plaza. Baker's life was defined by relationships with strong, determined women, whom he both loved and admired. I have recommended Growing Up to many people over the years and those who've read it have thanked me.

I was so sad this morning when I read that Baker had died. He was 93, so it is not exactly unexpected. I teared up all the same. He lived a rich, full life, as attested to by his own beautiful words. Russell Baker, for me, is a warm memory of an enchanting morning. I was graced to spend a few hours with a literary luminary who was beloved, not only for his wit and verbal skill, but because he was such lovely human being.

I'm not really sure why I binged Catholic abuse stories over the holidays. What sort of dark compulsion caused me to immerse myself in The Keepers and Spotlight, both of which had been languishing on my Netflix queue for over a year, I can't say. I hadn't been able to bring myself to watch them, knowing exactly the kind of emotional turmoil would be churned up. But on those cold, December days they called to me, then pulled me in like the undertow of an icy river. It was sickening but necessary viewing. Perhaps it was a need for catharsis at the end of a year that had seen one ugly eruption after another in the priestly abuse saga, events that have seriously tarnished a popular and likable pope. Both the movie and the true crime series are excellent, for what it's worth. The progress of the Catholic Church is not.

I really had hope that Pope Francis would be different than his predecessors. Yet, on this issue, he seems to have even less understanding of the seriousness than Benedict XVI. The past year has been marked by tone-deaf pronouncements, 180° reversals, high profile resignations, and troves of embarrassing documents. It's hard to believe that seventeen years after the Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team exposed the priestly abuse cover-ups and forever changed the world's perceptions of the Catholic Church, new waves of scandal could keep finding the Church so far behind the curve. How have they managed to learn so little from so much? Amazingly 2018 may have eclipsed 2002 as a year of horrible revelation.

A prominent cardinal resigned in disgrace. Grand jurors accused hundreds of Catholic clerics of secretly abusing children. A former Vatican ambassador urged the Pope himself to step down.

It was enough for New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan to call it the Catholic Church's "summer of hell."

The cardinal may have been overly optimistic.

In fact, the church's hellish year began in January, when Pope Francis forcefully defended a Chilean bishop he had promoted. He later had to apologize and accept the bishop's resignation.

But the clergy sex abuse scandal shows no signs of abating, with a federal investigation and probes in 12 states and the District of Columbia in the works.

And let's be clear. Pope Francis didn't just defend the Chilean bishop. He accused sex abuse survivors of "calumny" for accusing Bishop Barros of a classic church cover-up, only to demand the bishop's resignation when those charges proved accurate. As the year wore on, Pope Francis offered a full-throated apology for his failings and took an increasingly aggressive stand against abusive priests, culminating in his December demand that they turn themselves in to the authorities.

Pope Francis is urging predator priests who have raped or molested children to turn themselves in "to human justice, and prepare for divine justice," devoting part of his Christmas message to the abuse scandals that he said have undermined the Catholic Church in 2018.

As cardinals and other church luminaries listened in the Vatican's ornate Clementine Hall on Friday, Francis also compared priests who break their vows to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ.

. . .

While acknowledging that the Vatican has made serious mistakes, Francis told the gathering: "The sins and crimes of consecrated persons are further tainted by infidelity and shame; they disfigure the countenance of the church and undermine her credibility."

The church, Francis said, "will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes."

If only he'd said all that years ago, rather than as a delayed reaction a public relations disaster engulfing the Vatican. But delay seems to be the Church's watchword, when it comes to this crisis.

Faced with a sexual-abuse crisis that has rocked the Catholic Church in multiple continents, the Vatican has opted to delay taking action.

The surprise decision was announced Monday [November 12, 2018] at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, where church leaders were expected to vote on several measures to address sexual abuse by the clergy, including a new code of conduct and creation of a special commission to review complaints against bishops.

Instead, the Vatican asked that they hold off on voting until after a February gathering with bishops from around the world convened by Pope Francis to deal with the growing scandal.

Having deferred action until the February summit, Pope Francis is now managing expectations for what will be accomplished there.

Francis told reporters returning from Panama on Sunday that he wants the Feb. 21-24 meeting to essentially be a catechism class for bishops about sex abuse. He said he wanted to sensitize church leaders around the globe to the pain of victims, instruct them how to investigate cases and develop general protocols for the entire hierarchy to use.

"Let me say that I've sensed somewhat inflated expectations," he said. "We have to deflate the expectations to these three points, because the problem of abuse will continue. It's a human problem."

Francis' lowering of expectations will likely not go over well in the United States, where rank-and-file Catholics are withholding donations and demanding accountability from their bishops after the hierarchy's repeated failures to protect children were exposed again last year.

A "human problem" sounds too much like same old deflection we've been hearing from Church officials for years. Of course sex abuse is a wider problem. But the issue is and always been, not so much the crime, but the cover-up. And even now they refuse to come clean on their culpability for protecting clergy at the expense of children.

Pope Francis himself has been accused of enabling a decades long cover-up of the since removed cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The pontiff later admitted that he was secretly investigating McCarrick, who has been left to live out his days in quiet contemplation. It's the continuing secrecy that baffles and infuriates. What is not secret is that McCarrick preyed on young seminarians for decades and even molested an altar boy in the confessional.




One of the more dramatic moments in Spotlight comes when the team learns from a former priest that they are wildly underestimating the number of abusive priests in Boston. Their pursuant investigation proves that the higher number is, indeed, correct. But the Church, even now, keeps claiming it's just a few "bad apples." A grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania has, once again, proved otherwise. The numbers are staggering, over 300 priests abused over a thousand children, and that's the lowball figure. But the worse news for the Church is that the Pennsylvania revelations have spurred, not only many more states to open investigations, but the first federal investigation. Illinois found that the Church had concealed accusations against 500 priests. In January, more than a thousand abusive priests had been identified around the country. This is undoubtedly just the beginning.

As these numbers climb and more horrifying details emerge, discouraged Catholics are going to need more than eloquent apologies and vague promises. They're going to need more than scolded bishops and endorsements of more prayer. They're going to need to see real action and clear policy. Pope Francis does not appear to have the stomach for it. It may be the end of his papacy. It may be the end of his Church.

The dumpster fire of Vatican scandal continues with the revelation of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests known of and concealed for decades. In this case it's the Church's own nuns who have been abused, enslaved, shamed, and silenced by the Catholic hierarchy. I would give the Vatican credit for displaying their dirty laundry in one of their own publications, but news of this issue has been burbling to the surface for some time now, and drew increasing scrutiny during the "year of hell" that was 2018.  Putting the issue front and center in their own women's magazine looks to me like spin control, an attempt to get ahead of emerging scandal, but perhaps I'm cynical.

The February issue of "Women Church World," distributed alongside the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, says that religious sisters for years have not reported offences against them by priests for fear of retaliation.

Editor Lucetta Scaraffia writes that the issue “reflects on the theme of abuse, that is, perverse use of touch”.

. . .

The article says that reports of priests sexually abusing nuns in Africa were filed to the Vatican in the 1990s. Yet, nothing changed. Now, as part of the #Metoo movement, and as the sexual abuse of minors comes to the fore, women are beginning to publicly denouce [sic] their abuse.

"If the church continues to close its eyes to the scandal — made even worse by the fact that abuse of women brings about procreation and is therefore at the origin of forced abortions and children who aren't recognised by priests — the condition of oppression of women in the church will never change," Scaraffia wrote.

It is hard to imagine a greater hypocrisy than "forced abortions" in Catholic orders.



In the article, Pope Francis is given credit for assigning the blame properly, instead of blaming society, or worse, blaming victims, which at least breaks with Church's long history of doing both.

Last year, after The Associated Press and other media, reported on the scandal, the international association of women's religious orders urged sisters to report abuse to police and their superiors, a significant shattering of the silence that has long kept the problem secret. In the article, editor Lucetta Scaraffia notes that for centuries women in the church have been depicted as "dangerous and temptresses," which has complicated the acceptance within the Catholic hierarchy that they can be victims of unwanted sexual advances by priests.

"But here Pope Francis' analysis about abuse can be of some help: If you point to power, to clericalism, the abuse against religious sisters takes on another aspect and can finally be recognized for what it is: that is an act of power in which touch becomes a violation of one's personal intimacy," she wrote. The article noted that reports written by religious sisters were presented to Vatican officials in the 1990s about the problem of priests sexually abusing nuns in Africa — they were considered "safe"partners at the height of the HIV crisis.

So priests, who took vows of celibacy, practiced "safe sex" by raping equally celibate nuns. Let that sink in.

Days after the explosive revelation in Women Church World, Pope Francis officially broke his public silence on the matter, admitting that nuns have been, not only raped, but kept as sex slaves, and that it has been a known problem for decades.

Speaking to reporters while on a historic tour of the Middle East on Tuesday, the pontiff admitted that the Church had an issue, and the roots lay in society "seeing women as second class".

He said that priests and bishops had abused nuns, but said the Church was aware of the "scandal" and was "working on it", adding that a number of clerics had been suspended.

"It's a path that we've been on," he said.

"Pope Benedict had the courage to dissolve a female congregation which was at a certain level, because this slavery of women had entered it - slavery, even to the point of sexual slavery - on the part of clerics or the founder."

It is a shocking admission, not just of the occurrences, but of the secrecy that has surrounded them. Like so many crimes, the Church has endeavored to handle clerical misconduct quietly, silencing its victims to protect its reputation. But admitting it now is not courage. It's expediency, in the face of fresh scandal erupting all over the world. In India a bishop was arrested last September, for repeatedly raping a nun. Her pleas to the Vatican had gone unanswered.

The nun had made numerous complaints, including to the Vatican, but claimed she had gotten no church response to her allegations at the time. Pope Francis accepted the bishop's request to be relieved of his duties Sept. 20.

The nun had explained in a letter that her abuse had gone on for so long because "I had tremendous fear and shame to bring this out into the open. I feared suppression of the congregation and threats to my family members."

She had said many women and nuns suffer clerical abuse. Silence and inaction on the part of church officials to stem clerical abuse will have a "very adverse effect" on women and result in the church losing its credibility, she said.

Her case and others like it brought a call to action from the global organization of Mothers Superior.

The Catholic Church's global organization of nuns has denounced the "culture of silence and secrecy" surrounding sexual abuse in the church and is urging sisters who have been abused to report the crimes to police and their superiors.

The International Union of Superiors General, which represents more than 500,000 sisters worldwide, vowed to help nuns who have been abused to find the courage to report it, and pledged to help victims heal and seek justice.

. . .

"We condemn those who support the culture of silence and secrecy, often under the guise of 'protection' of an institution's reputation or naming it 'part of one's culture,'" the group said.

"We advocate for transparent civil and criminal reporting of abuse whether within religious congregations, at the parish or diocesan levels, or in any public arena," the statement said.

While it is good and very good that the Vatican is finally opening up about abuses of women who have devoted their lives to the Church and to God, it is, once again, late. And if their disclosure is not backed up with serious action and policy changes, it is meaningless.

On March 29th, Pope Francis took the unprecedented step of making Vatican City officials and diplomats mandated reporters of sexual abuse. Reminder: It is now the year of our Lord 2019.

The edict, called a Motu Proprio and which goes into effect on June 1, comes after an international summit of church leaders convened at the Vatican in February to address the abuse and protection of minors. It is the first set of concrete protocols established by the Holy See in response to the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church to its core.

But the Church was "rocked to its core" in January of 2002, when the Boston Globe ran a groundbreaking expose in its "Spotlight" section. That was when whispers, rumors, and dark humor became full-blown, public scandal. The Church hierarchy had known about the problem at least as early as 1985 when Father Thomas Doyle tried to sound an alarm at the US conference of bishops. His warning was ignored, as those same bishops continued to quietly move pedophile priests from diocese to diocese. For an organization "rocked to its core," it sure is taking its sweet time in taking any meaningful action. And this edict, appropriate as it may be, is not particularly meaningful. It's mostly symbolic, governing only Vatican personnel, and intended as "a model," not a directive, for the wider Church.

The decree and accompanying guidelines have no legal impact on parishes or congregations in other nations. Archbishop Charles Scicluna said in an interview with Vatican News that the edicts "are not intended to be for the rest of the world, they actually contemplate the concrete situation of Vatican City State; a number of minors, who either live there, work there, or visit ... always within its jurisdiction."

The Vatican's editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, acknowledged "very few children" will ultimately be affected but said that while the edict is limited in scope, the pope wants it to serve as a model for the entire church. The new requirements "contain exemplary indications that take into account the most advanced international parameters."

In other decades late actions, powerful clerics in the Church hierarchy are finally being held to account. The infamous Cardinal McCarrick has finally been defrocked and a Chilean archbishop has been forced to resign for covering up abuse. Heads are rolling, even among the Church's powerful. But not enough of them and not fast enough.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati as archbishop of Santiago, the highest-ranking member of the Catholic Church in Chile, who has been caught up in the country’s sex abuse scandal.

. . .

Ezzati, 77, faces multiple charges of cover up, including some relating to the case of Oscar Munoz, a former top aide to the Santiago Archbishopric, who is facing trial on charges he abused and raped at least five children. He denies wrongdoing.

“I leave with my head held high,” Ezzati told reporters in Santiago. “Every accusation has been responded to, and we will have to wait for what justice says: it is not enough for one to be accused of a cover-up; it has to be proven”.

Ezzati's defiance is typical of the self-righteousness we've seen since the earliest revelations of priestly abuse. Just once I'd like to hear one of these guys say: It happened on my watch, so I'm responsible. The buck stops here.

I expect it'll be a cold day in hell.

The apologia for Cardinal George Pell is more nauseating still, because he is not just guilty of administrative cover-ups. Pell is the highest-ranking cleric yet to be convicted of sexual abuse. His story is a near-perfect, microcosmic reflection of the Catholic sex abuse scandal writ large. He ascended to the heights and halls of power in the Vatican, considered the "third most powerful man in the Catholic Church." And his hypocrisy is as outrageous as it emblematic of the institution he serves.

In late October 1996, Cardinal George Pell stood before a panel of reporters in Melbourne, Australia, and apologized. He apologized on behalf of the Australian Catholic Church, who, as it had recently surfaced, was complicit in covering up pervasive and unimaginable child abuse by priests. “I would like to make a sincere, unreserved, and public apology,” Pell said, according to David Marr’s The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell. He had a peculiar manner of speaking — an Australian accent polished by an Oxford education. “First of all to the victims of sexual abuse, but also to the people of the archdiocese for the actions of those Catholic clergy.” He declared himself an advocate in the fight against child abuse, and announced a new compensation scheme for the victims of his religious brothers.

Yet only a few weeks later, Pell cornered two thirteen-year-old choirboys in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and sexually abused them, a jury has found. He forced one boy to perform oral sex while the other flinched away — “crying” and “sobbing” and “whimpering,” as a judge later described. It was a Sunday morning, after mass. The boys had just finished singing hymns. They were on a singing scholarship and came from poorer communities. Pell had just been appointed archbishop.

In the light of day, Pell was a moralizing culture warrior, fighting valiantly against the dangers of women's equality and gay rights. In the shadows, he was a child molester among child molesters, advancing the Church's agenda of covering up the abuse that dare not speak its name.

It was horrifying enough to hear him say, in 2002, that "Abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people." But now we know that he wasn't just minimizing horrific abuse, he was justifying his own evil acts.

That kind of justification continued right up through his sentencing hearing, when his attorney, Robert Richter, announced, without apparent irony, that Pell's assault on two young boys was, "No more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating…"

Let's make one thing very clear. There is no such thing as a "vanilla" rape. But to hear Richter tell it, if there are no whips and chains, molesting a child is just not that big a deal. It would be laughable in its absurdity, if the reality weren't so traumatizing for the victims, but it's also right in keeping with how the Church has been trivializing the soul murder of children for decades.

Pell will likely serve less than four years in prison... for raping children.

Cardinal George Pell has been sentenced to six years in jail after being convicted of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in 1996.

The former Vatican treasurer, 77, was handed a non-parole period of three years and eight months by the judge, who described his offending as “brazen and forceful” and “breathtakingly arrogant” because he believed the victims would never complain.

The sentence means he may spend at least three years and eight months in jail.

Judge Peter Kidd, while openly disdainful of Pell's callousness and cruelty to two thirteen year old boys, also took pity on his age and infirmity, admitting that even with that lenient sentence he may die in prison. He should. He only got to be this bloody old, free from incarceration, because the Catholic Church has been protecting child molesters like him for decades.

Despite Judge Kidd's harsh words for Pell's flagrant abuse of power, the actual sentence is awfully light. He also cited a belief that Pell had "effectively reformed," never re-offended, and had lived an "otherwise blameless life." But that only means he didn't get caught. In truth we have no idea how many children Pell has molested over the years. There have been many other accusations dating all the way back to his youth.

The boy’s name is Phillip Scott; he was twelve years old. Pell was twenty, bright-eyed and fresh faced, and looked more like a footballer than a priest. He was broad-shouldered and over six feet tall, earning him his nickname from the campers: “Big George.” Scott alleged that Pell molested him “on any occasion that it was possible” during the camp — in his tent, on nature walks, while they were swimming. He also alleged that Pell abused another camper, Michael Foley. As typically happens in cases of child abuse, the victim didn’t come forward for decades; he was left to process his trauma, while Pell was welcomed into the church as a priest. His career had begun.

He stepped off lightly with the cover-up of one of the most disturbing sex abuse scandals in Australian history.

After he graduated, Pell returned home to Ballarat, where he lived and practiced in the St. Alipius presbytery. There, he immersed himself in a crisis; the St. Alipius boys’ school had become overrun with child sexual abuse, perpetrated by a ring of Christian brothers and a pedophile priest. They were raping, beating, and abusing the schoolboys. Kids were violated in just about every corner of the school, including the principal’s office. In one fourth grade class, over a third of the boys went on to commit suicide. “It was one hell of an evil place,” says Lyndon Monument, one of Pell’s accusers who went to the school. “Just pedophiles — a network of pedophiles.”

As his career continued, and while he was editing the Ballarat diocese newspaper, he spent his off-hours playing with kids at the local swimming pool and molesting them under the water.

These are not the crimes of which he was convicted. That was a particularly disturbing incident. Pell had caught two 13 year old choirboys stealing wine in the sacristy.

The complainant, who is now aged 35, said he and the other choirboy had separated from the choir procession as it exited the church building. The prosecution’s case hinged on his evidence, as the other victim died in 2014 after a heroin overdose. Neither victim told anyone about the offending at the time.

. . .

Pell manoeuvred his robes to expose his penis. He stepped forward, grabbed the other boy by the back of his head, and forced the boy’s head on to his penis, the complainant told the court.

Pell then did the same thing to the complainant, orally raping him. Once he had finished, he ordered the complainant to remove his pants, before fondling the complainant’s penis and masturbating himself. The complainant said the attack lasted only a few minutes, and the boys left the room afterwards, hung up their choir robes and went home.

In other words, he used sexual assault as a punishment. He got off on degrading naughty boys, who were in his care and at his mercy. People like that don't just stop offending or live "otherwise blameless" lives. And Pell had been showing us who he was all along. "I’ve got a formidable temper which I almost never show. But the discipline that is needed for me not to lapse in that way, I think helps explain my wooden appearance." It's just that no one believed him. (See: Maya Angelou)

If Pell were an aberration in the Catholic hierarchy, we could almost forgive the Church for its blindness, but he was not, and that blindness — nay, complicity — was systematic.

Only in an institution in willful denial, or worse, could a predator like Marcial Maciel Degollado have, not only thrived, but been feted by the pope. Monsters like this turned congregations into hunting grounds, while the Church forgave their "sins" and actively concealed their crimes.

In a remarkable admission, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx said Saturday that documents that could have contained proof of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church were destroyed or never drawn up.

"Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed or not even created," said Marx, the archbishop of Munich and president of the German Bishops' Conference.

"The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution offenses were deliberately not complied with," he added, "but instead canceled and overridden.

"Such standard practices will make it clear that it is not transparency which damages the church, but rather the acts of abuse committed, the lack of transparency, or the ensuing coverup."

And even now, as the Church begins its second"year of hell" in a row, does the pope take the decades late action of making officials mandated reporters. And he doesn't even make it a Church-wide policy, only an example that dioceses around the world can choose to follow or ignore.

What does the pope manage to enforce in all of Catholicdom? The suppression of women. Now that is a policy strictly enforced. And he admits that women are right to grumble about it. It just doesn't matter, because women are never going to be priests in this archaic institution. Nor will nuns be any more protected from sexual assault by priests than the Church's children are. In the wake of the Vatican's magazine Women Church World publishing that expose, the all-female editorial board resigned in protest, as their new-found power slipped away.

"We are throwing in the towel because we feel surrounded by a climate of distrust and progressive de-legitimization," [Lucetta] Scaraffia wrote in the letter to the pontiff. "It seems to us that a vital initiative is reduced to silence and that we return to the antiquated and arid practice of top-down selection, under direct male control, of women deemed trustworthy."

The priorities of the Vatican are clear, and for all Pope Francis's pretty words and sympathy, this will not change. He is but another cog in an organizational machinery that seems hell-bent on self-destruction.

The Church also will not budge on ending the sham of "celibacy." Pope Francis has sliced and diced this one as finely as he could, but has made it clear that the policy isn't going anywhere. In the movie Spotlight, discussed here, they make the point that about half of all clergy are sexually active. Mostly it's among consenting adults, but the lies, secrets, and shame have fostered a perversity that is fueled by a culture of concealment. And for all the Church's enshrined homophobia, there is a very active gay subculture, one Church officials have denied for decades, but, paradoxically, blame for their pedophilia problem. The evidence suggests that the Church's hostility to homosexuality is a case of pure projection.

The picture [Frédéric] Martel draws is jaw-dropping. Many of the Vatican gays — especially the most homophobic — treat their vows of celibacy with an insouciant contempt. Martel argues that many of these cardinals and officials have lively sex lives, operate within a “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture, constantly hit on young men, hire prostitutes, throw chem-sex parties, and even pay for sex with church money. How do we know this? Because, astonishingly, they tell us.

So much of the information in the book comes from sources deep within the Holy See. Named and unnamed, they expose their fellow cardinals and bishops and nuncios as hypocrites, without perhaps realizing that their very targets are doing the same to them. Martel didn’t expect this remarkable candor, or, clearly, what he was about to see: “Whether they are ‘practising’, ‘homophile’, ‘initiates’, ‘unstraights’, ‘wordly’, ‘versatile’, ‘questioning’, or simply ‘in the closet’, the world I am discovering, with its 50 shades of gay, is beyond comprehension.”

When Pope Francis rants like a lunatic about a "gay mafia" in the Church, this is probably what he's talking about. He's also tilting at windmills. No one does hypocrisy quite like the Catholic Church.

Catholic clergy also excel at self-righteous outrage, as SNL's Pete Davidson learned when he compared the Church to R. Kelly. Worse still, the Brooklyn Diocese hid behind the Church's own victims, while it whined about being insulted.

Apparently, the only acceptable bias these days is against the Catholic Church. The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions. The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.

The clergy sex abuse crisis is shameful, and no one should ever get a laugh at the expense of the victims who have suffered irreparably. The Diocese of Brooklyn strives every day to ensure that sexual abuse by clergy never happens again.

Davidson's comparison was exactly on-point. Comparing the Church to Michael Jackson is also more than fair. Kelly, Jackson, the Catholic Church, they're all being stripped of their glamour and losing their fans. And it's about damn time.

James Arthur Ray is declaring himself an expert on the career comeback, which is weird, because he really hasn't made one. Don't tell him that, though. His marketing angle, ever since he was released from prison, has been an evolving narrative about how well he's been able to make killing people work for him. Kirby Brown, Liz Neuman, James Shore, they just had to be "sacrificed" so that he could rise like a phoenix from the ashes of their lives. It "had to happen" so he could "learn and grow." Noticeably absent in this new pitch is any reference to the "full and complete responsibility" he previously claimed to have taken for those deaths. Now it's a nameless bad thing that damaged his career. Every single element of this pitch is a study in self-pity and exploitation. What follows is a trip down that page.




One teensy, little mistake! You cook a few people to death and no one'll let you forget it. It's just so unfair!






Pedestal?! Let that sink in. He actually thinks successful people should be up on pedestals. And he's still begrudging the fall from his.




"Regardless of what they're trying to do your career," the vultures. Yeah, he's the victim.




Who exactly are the "biggest and best" he's supposedly coaching? Does he want us to think Alisyn Camerota is... a client?! That picture was from an interview on CNN. It did not go terribly well for him, either.

"Whether they're accusing you of..." Notice that there is absolutely no notion of personal responsibility in that statement. No one's really guilty of anything... except those awful people who try to make you accountable for your crimes.




In this segment, James Ray seems determined to remind us that he can't write. "Crisis Coaching," which is elsewhere in the page followed by a registered trademark symbol, is, in this passage, reduced to a list item without one. His service is here conflated with business and legal advice, which will "most likely" help you. He's over-inflating his value and lowering expectations, at the same time.

So what do he and the actual professionals he's conflating himself with offer you? "[T]he tools to manage ruthless media with finesse and suave." Does he mean "finesse and savoir faire?" Because "with suave" is not a thing. Note to James Ray: Always check the section on how to use a word in a sentence, when you're raiding the dictionary for fancy words to make yourself look smarter.




Trust me, not them. TRUST ME!!!




Awww... good ol' Truc Do. I wonder how she's doing. Did she ever manage to reverse the body-swap with that middle school girl? Was she able to reclaim her dignity? So many questions.

Far from taking responsibility for the deaths he caused, Ray is now whining about having been "drawn and quartered" over "unfortunate incidents" that happened somehow at a retreat his "company" ran.

Ya mean when you cooked people to death in an "hellacious hot" sweat lodge that you'd been warned repeatedly not to run, lest people get killed?! YOU ARE NOT THE VICTIM!!!!




Yes, book a consultation right now! Admit it. That icy, cold stare is really enticing.




"Leverage!" He really loves that word.




Yeah, so um, how much money do you have, ya know, btw?

P.S. How much available credit do you have access to? Maybe you could call your credit card companies and ask them to up your limit? It's an INVESTMENT. No, really. It is.




Serious question: Why does he want to know the name of your legal team?




In this pitch, Ray claims to have rebuilt his empire. That sounds pretty odd coming from this guy. One thing that documentary made clear is that Ray always lived beyond his means, even at the height of his career. He never had the good sense to put a little away. Now he's trying to claw his way back, producing small events in shabby hotels and makeshift venues.

The biggest press he's gotten in a while is this article in Deadspin and it's not flattering. It's a good good piece, underscoring the deaths he's caused, including that of the rarely discussed Colleen Conaway. I have to offer a couple of corrections, though. The article claims that Ray has "released a book, The Business of Redemption." That is inaccurate, as I explained here. The book, to date, is a nothing but a digital mock-up of what appears to be a self-published vehicle, with an indefinite pub date. Whether there will ever be finished books is anybody's guess.

Now, as to the "comeback" event the article cites:

Ray, 61, has been announced as the keynote speaker for an upcoming tech summit to be held at the regal Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. According to marketing materials for the event, Ray’s talk will focus on “reinvention.” His own summary of “things you might know me for,” and other press releases promoting the appearance, pump up his ties to Oprah, and his having written a New York Times best-seller.

Both of those links bring up 404s. There was, indeed, an event in DC. It just ended, but I was able to pull up the details on the website.




This is the agenda, but I could not find his name listed either there or on the site's list of scheduled speakers. This is all that remains of the James Arthur Ray bio that was once posted on the site.




Yeah, he's the comeback king.

Several weeks ago Andey Fellowes asked, "Is Teal Swan Unravelling?" His concerns are well-founded. Her videos seem to be increasingly petulant, even hostile. And it's not just her critics she's angry with. We're used to that. Increasingly, it's her own followers she's not so subtly complaining about. In the "Ask Teal"video that sounded the alarm for Andey, teal huffed and pouted her way through a litany of grievances about the perils of being a "spiritual teacher" in the "information age."

According to teal, "teacher hopping" is all about the "ego" of those who dare to pick and choose from the YouTube smorgasbord of ideas. (A "spiritual teacher" complaining about sharing that stage is somehow not about ego at all.) Without a trace of irony, she complains about her followers plagiarizing from her, an odd complaint from a woman who's been caught lifting content word for word, from a multitude of sources. But how dare her followers take the ideas she stole and go on to become teachers themselves!

“One does not repay a teacher well by remaining a pupil.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo "Poor is the pupil who does not transcend his master." ~ Leonardo da Vinci

A mere two weeks later comes another "Ask Teal"gripe fest. So what social ill has her so troubled that she must vent her spleen about it for a full half hour?

At this point in history hierarchy is one of those concepts that has been thrown into the waste bin of "bad things". Now, as we all know, if we throw something into the bin of "bad things", we tend to swing the pendulum all the way to the side where we won't acknowledge something, we won't look at it and we don't become conscious in the ways we need to around it. By swinging the pendulum, we also become out of alignment to the opposite extreme.

It is an odd sort of pendulum that needs to be pushed from one side to the other, disappears from sight, and doesn't "align" opposite extremes. Odder still is the notion that the world has dispensed with hierarchical systems. But it doesn't take long to discern that the reason teal is so concerned about the end of hierarchy in the world, is that she's feeling threatened about her own position at the top of one.

I personally get a front-row seat to how deep this wound around hierarchy is with people. Why? Because I cannot attend a workshop and meet people, without somebody offering to give me a healing or without somebody offering to be my friend because of how good they'd be at seeing my shadows where other people don't. Because that simply makes them feel as if they're on equal ground or superior to me. Not a day goes by without someone telling me that they're definitely not a fan, you know, not like a "fan" fan, "but I do respect your work", because they want me to know that I should definitely not consider myself above them. Not a day goes by that I don't get an email or message that says: "You're not my god, I see you as a person just like the rest of us." So as to pull me off my pedestal. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't show up late or leave early in order to send the message that they have higher priorities than me. So I get the message that they do not regard me as a bigger deal than they are. And all of these comments are from people who really do like me.

In other words, if anyone tells her that they see her as an equal, that is an attack, an attempt to belittle her. It's not the first time she's said something like this. As I noted here, she's expressed  some ambivalence about "the sacrifice of the guru image" and revealed that her "ego" was tweaked when followers tried to give her "motherly advice." It seems her ambivalence has given way to certainty that she belongs on a "pedestal," with "fans" who see her as a "bigger deal" than they are, possibly even as their "god."




According to teal, this video may be very "triggering." It's full of "dirty words" like "superiority" and "authority." So after years of posting graphic descriptions of infanticide, necrophilia, rape, and sex trafficking without trigger warnings, this is the video that gets one?! How is a discussion on hierarchy more triggering than stories about being chained in a pit or sewn into a corpse? Who could possibly find this subject triggering? Turns out, it's Blake. Now why would teal's right hand man be triggered by a video, in which she's slapping down anyone who thinks they're her equal?

Is teal pulling rank on the members of her inner circle? She sure is putting her followers in their places. She softens the hard edges of this message by claiming that everyone's place is on their own pedestal, just not in her field of endeavor, where she is numero uno.

Every person has a different pedestal waiting for them. For example, when it comes to the consciousness field, I may be on the top pedestal in that field.

Oh, "may" she. Funny, because I would have placed a lot of other people above her, in that particular "hierarchy." A mere two weeks before, she was complaining that Oprah was the most "spiritually influential" person, other than the pope. Here she's doing her own impression of Oprah: You get a new pedestal, you get a new pedestal, you get a new pedestal...

Since posting this video, teal has been predictably memeing the key phrases and ideas, which has led to a number of inscrutable Instagram posts. Note that two of them use the same photograph, which shows her face prominently in the foreground and the much smaller audience members closest to her in the background facing in the opposite direction. No one is looking at her. They're focused on each other. The visual effect of that snapshot in time is that she is not so much "superior" as out of step and isolated.



This one was my favorite, as one person after another confessed that they had no idea what she was talking about.

“This is so cool. He goes right up to the point of being... like, confusing.” ~ Invisible Boy, Mystery Men

In teal's conception, it's not enough to love doing something and bring your own distinctive style to it, you must be "superior" at it, you must be venerated for it, and it must be on your turf, not hers.




A goodly chunk of this video is devoted the brain pretzeling idea that it is only those who do not accept subordination to their superiors, in their jobs and day to day lives, who are initiating all the "power plays." According to teal, if you're not willing to accept the superior position of your betters, it is you who's "obsessed" with power and your uppity behavior "makes you look like an idiot." (Insert derisive smirk here.)

Pity the poor clod who thinks he can give Laird Hamilton advice on wax for his board, says teal. (Full disclosure: I had no idea who Laird Hamilton was before watching this video, as I have no interest in the world of professional surfing. Good thing I never happened upon him and failed to give him the adulation he is due. I would have made such a fool of myself.)

It is thinly veiled, but the message teal is giving to her followers is clear. If you think you can give her advice or help her to heal, if you dare think that you are her equal in anything to do with spirituality or self-help, "you look like an idiot."

The problem with hierarchy is not inequality or power imbalance, according to teal. In fact, power imbalance is normal, and the pursuit of equality is just silly. The problem is that the people with all the power just aren't showing enough love for their lessers ("things"), you know, like black people. Yes. She really went there.

The thing that you've got to accept is that equality is not a reality in a physically manifested dimension. Anytime that there is separation that occurs, Power is not divided in the same way or equally. It is fragmented. We do not need to spend our life fighting for equality or fighting against hierarchy or against superiority or against authority. Instead we need to focus on three very distinctive things. The first is love. If somebody who is in a position of authority will focus on love, this means they will take all things as a part of them self. This means by definition, They cannot create pain in that other thing, without creating pain in themselves. For example, the whites were in a position of superiority in the world. And it was something that they took of course. However, if whites were able to take blacks as a part of themselves, slavery would never have occurred. So in this circumstance, superiority and authority were not actually the problem. The problem was the lack of capacity on behalf of the white race, to take the black race as a part of itself.

Yes, among the many things that teal has not gotten the memo on, is that there is no such thing as "race" and that the only people who talk about the superiority of the "white race" are white supremacists. That she would reach for this example now, when tensions over racism are at a fever pitch, in this country, shows that she is either entirely tone-deaf or courting controversy and drama deliberately. Again.

In one of the strangest moments, in this video, teal describes the "dangers" of not recognizing superiority, by turning her attention to the animal kingdom. Now, I will admit that I thought I knew where she was going with this. I expected her to point out that in nature, deferring to the leader and moving with the pack (or herd, or school) could make the difference between being safe and getting killed by a predator. I was horribly, horribly wrong.

Imagine that there is a fish that's swimming around in the sea somewhere and he refuses to acknowledge that anyone could possibly be above him in any way. Could not be superior to him in any way, whether it's swimming or whether it's power or size or whatever... So he's in the water with a shark... If this fish is unwilling to accept that it's a fish and the shark is a shark and that implies certain superiority, this fish is going to end up dead. In the human world there are many painful consequences that will come as a result of refusing to see and acknowledged hierarchy.

So here teal describes your "superior," not as a good leader who keeps you safe, but as an apex predator who can kill you. And then she compares that scenario to the dangers of not acknowledging superiority in the "human world." What kind of humans are we talking about? It's a chilling thought, when you consider that this whole video is transparently about the fact that she does not want her "superiority" challenged. So is teal admitting that she's a shark?

A few short weeks ago, she described herself as poison.

If I was a drug, what side effects would I have? The answer is disreality. Um, the closest that I think you can get to this is Datura, which is not a shamanic medicine, which, you know, hardly anybody should be doing at all.

It is not strictly true that Datura (aka. jimsonweed,  devil's weed, hell's bells...) is never used as a visionary plant, but it is known to be extremely dangerous and is used with tremendous caution, skill, and rarity. But consider that of all the psychotropic plants teal could have compared herself to, she picked the one that is best known for its ability to kill you.

She makes one statement, in this video, that is absolutely true. Those of us she calls "haters" don't see ourselves that way at all.

Well, they don't consider themselves a hater, they consider themselves to be saving everyone else for me...

Yes, we see ourselves as sounding an alarm about a dangerous situation. As I've been saying since I first began blogging about teal, way back in 2013, someone had to bell the cat, so I did. And we may be entering a precarious time. She is signaling that she is very frustrated with the current trajectory of her "career" as a "spiritual teacher." Her followers are looking to other teachers, not solely focused on her for guidance. They're not acknowledging that she is superior to them.

When cult leaders, and she is one, start to lose their grip on power, they typically turn on the followers. They blame them for their own failings, because pathologically narcissistic people are incapable of taking personal responsibility for their failings. For instance, Warren Jeffs turned his anger at being incarcerated on the members of his FLDS sect, placing his own jailhouse restrictions on all but a handpicked few loyalists, disallowing sex and making them live on a diet of beans and toast. Jim Jones, whose final act teal has defended as an attempt at "helping people," helped them join him in death, with his infamous distribution of cyanide laced Flavor Aid.

It is particularly concerning when we consider that teal deliberately targeted a "market" of psychologically vulnerable and suicidal people. What happens if her frustration continues to grow and she increasingly turns her ire on them? I shudder to think. So, yes, this "hater" is sounding an alarm, once again.

I don't think I'm exactly breaking news when I say that everything sucks right now. But, according to a number of astrological reports I've seen, our no good, very bad year is about to get worse. And this past weekend -- with the juxtaposition of the solstice and the solar eclipse, followed by more planets going retrograde for a total of six -- is not the greatest kick-off for summer... or the rest of the year.

I'm not an astrologer, so I can't speak with any authority on what this all means. So I'm posting the best such report I've seen thus far. Steve Judd has described this set of astronomical events as an astrological "perfect storm." On the retrogrades alone, he posits that "there's not going to be a lot of clarity and forward thinking." As the week has unfolded in my own little corner of the world, I would have to agree.

Judd says the problems do not stop there. He is describing 2020 as a real "stinker of a year." And, amazingly, it seems like the worst is yet to come. Highlights include major seismic activity around mid-July. In August Mars will be squaring Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, which will likely bring significant conflict. October is also likely to bring global unrest. On the plus side, he doesn't foresee a global extinction event, but he does predict major economic fallout. He does not recommend playing the stock market or making home purchases over the next year and a half. The detailed report is below the fold.





Post Script: It brings me no joy to report the following. I have already shared this privately with a number of clients, as well as family and friends. I should begin by saying that when we first started hearing reports of the novel coronavirus, I did not get concerned immediately. I was, at the time, overwhelmed by what I thought were far graver concerns. I believed the CDC when they assured us that it would not be a major problem in the US. I believed them when they said all we needed to do was wash our hands more. I will freely admit that years of living in a flawed, but functional government has made me complacent. I hadn't grokked that the CDC had been gutted, just like our more high-profile governmental agencies. But as the reports grew more concerning, I sought the comfort of a conversation with the trees. What the trees told me, however, was not comforting or reassuring at all. The trees conveyed a sense of urgency and told me explicitly, "Be afraid." I have NEVER gotten a message like that from nature. I count on these communions to help me center and ground. So I was rattled. What I heard next was more alarming still. "The earth is cleansing herself." We haven't seen the worst of this yet.

I don't check James Ray's social media often, but when I do, I totally spin out on the colossal arrogance, the indulgent self-pity, the insensitivity -- nay, cruelty -- of his posts. That's probably why I don't check it often. But my darling husband keeps sticking these posts under my nose and insisting I register the sheer insanity of them.

Ray's post-prison marketing has long been either tone deaf or deliberately twisted (my money's on the latter), but in recent months, it's taken a turn for the worse. He seems to be having some sort of meltdown. His "motivational" messages have gotten really angry and seem more like an excuse to vent his personal grudges. The weirdest part is that he seems to be really proud of these petulant rants disguised as advice and keeps putting them out across all of his platforms. In a recent set of postings, Ray set out to illustrate the common axiom "only hurt people hurt people," by whining about non-paying clients and how betrayed he was by friends who testified against him in the sweat lodge trial. It can be found on his Instagram and Facebook pages, as well as in this podcast on his site. Note that he keeps moving from the general ("you") to the specific (his personal gripes and grudges).

Has any client made financial promises they don't keep?
Have they ever gotten angry WITH YOU when you ask them to pay and keep the commitment THAT THEY made?
Have they ever thought about the fact that YOU have expenses (both personally and professionally) that you have committed to, based upon THEIR commitment to you?
Probably not.
If you're in business I'm sure you KNOW what I mean.
Here's a good one: Has anyone ever told you they love you and then turned around and stabbed you in the back hard?
Like telling you "You've changed my life and I'll stand with you forever" and then testifying UNDER OATH in trial against you, telling absolute lies, when the state is attempting to send you to prison for 30 years?

I mean... haven't we all been prosecuted for killing people and had our friends testify against us? That's relatable, right? We've ALL been there!








A post (also here) from about a month ago just made me gasp.

Look, NO ONE knows suffering better than me.
You might know suffering as much as me, but there's NO WAY you know it better.

He killed people, but HE's the victim. Families lost their loved ones to the gruesome tragedy he caused, but they can't possibly be as good at suffering as he is. He's exceptional when it comes to suffering. The rest of us can only aspire to his mastery of the art of suffering.

And he goes on.

Don't tell me about your money, your watches, houses and cars.
Don't show me your fake painted on smiley face, your "perfect life," or how you "have it all."

I know he was in The Secret, but now I have wonder if he's seen it.




So what has Ray so angry that he can't keep it out of even his most banal posts? If I had to guess, I'd say that he, like so many people, is taking a financial hit because of the pandemic. Why do I say that? Because he all but says so in this rant against lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and people who don't want to pay him for his coaching. How dare they freeload on his social media?!

As we learned in Enlighten Us, Ray has long been frustrated that he can't make enough money teaching people how to get rich.

The irony is that this video is promoting his seminar package Project Stay Home, but it's mostly a rant against staying home. Not even two minutes in, he declares that new hotspots shutting things down again, because of dramatic spikes in COVID infections, is "lunacy."

Without sounding too harsh, it's pure stupidity. Because we're looking at coronavirus cases rising, but the fact is if you talk to anybody in the know, all of us have been exposed to the coronavirus by now.

He reiterates this idea toward the end of the video, as he urges people not to be "bow down compliant" with mask and social distancing requirements.

Media! Numbers on the rise, numbers on the rise! GOOD! And I'm not being cavalier and I'm not saying we shouldn't take, uh, pay attention to those who are truly ill. What I am saying is that the only way to beat a virus is to develop herd immunity. And the fact is most experts who actually think for themselves are saying we've all been exposed to it already.

So which is it? Are the numbers rising or have we all been exposed to it already? If we follow Ray's logic, it can't be both, because herd immunity would be kicking in and the infection and disease rates would be dropping. Needless to say, Ray doesn't name a single one of these experts. He makes many medical claims and spouts statistics, but the video is entirely citation free.




As it happens, there are many citable experts who say the opposite. Herd immunity is not a thing to be counted on with this virus and not just because the death toll would be astronomical. It appears that some people are being re-infected after recovery. And according to Harvard Medical professor William Haseltine, herd immunity to this virus is a pipe dream, because humans don't develop lasting immunity to coronaviruses.

"I call this virus the 'get it and then your body forgets it.' This is not a standard virus that you're going to get herd immunity. There is no evidence of herd immunity for coronaviruses. It does not exist... Every year, the same four coronaviruses come back to give us colds. ... If you have one of those coronaviruses, it can cause the exact same disease a year later..."

Ray, however, is convinced that this is just a good workout for the immune system. He seems to believe in germ theory, but not that people should protect themselves against infection from said germs. Lack of protection against rogue pathogens, of course, has worked out very well historically: the black death, cholera, ebola, the Spanish Flu... It's not like epidemics and pandemics have ever racked up massive death tolls or anything.

Ray is particularly disdainful of masks and mask requirements. He's very angry that the Nevada governor is mandating masks, but he'll have you know that it can't possibly be mandatory unless there's an "executive order" from the president. He's apparently never heard of states' rights or that governors can give executive orders, too.

He goes on to explain that businesses can require masks just like they can require shirt and shoes. Indeed. But, he insists they have to provide you with a mask, they can't make you go out and buy one. Right. Just like business have to provide you with shirt and shoes, I guess. Many businesses are providing masks, just as restaurants that require jackets have done for decades. But it has nothing to do with any legal requirement. They want your business and it's better than turning you away for not having the required apparel.




Masks are bad because you're breathing in "your own" and not getting enough oxygen, says the man who killed three people by creating a dangerously overheated, carbon dioxide heavy, oxygen deprived death tent. Why anyone would take health and wellness advice from a man who cooked people to death -- after swearing to them that they'd feel like they were gonna die, but wouldn't -- I'm sure I don't know. But wearing masks does not put people at risk for hypercapnia.

According to Ray, "anyone who does their due diligence" knows that masks "make things worse." Breathing your "own toxins" back in is "not healthy." Spewing them into other people's faces, though, is apparently fine. Could there a more perfect example of self-centeredness?

It's "possible" that you could get mold spores from the moisture that came from your own mouth into the mask, he exclaims, and why, oh why is it that the "powers that be" from the WHO and the CDC don't KNOW this? I dunno, maybe because it's bullshit? (Um, you're supposed to wash/replace them.)

There are some precautions to wearing masks, but there's more and more data showing that wearing masks reduces the spread of respiratory diseases. In regions where masks are being worn, both infection and mortality rates are significantly lower. Are they a little uncomfortable? Sure. But definitely preferable to a respirator.




Ray predicts -- he may be wrong, but he doesn't think he is -- that there will be a spike in flu cases in the fall, because of masks, and that they'll call it COVID. So it's not even entirely clear that he thinks COVID is a real thing. COVID is not the flu. I know too many people who've been physically brutalized by it to wish it on my worst enemy. People are having, not just lung damage, but blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, and other organ damage. Some of that damage may well be permanent. Loss of limb definitely is.

Ray says Instagram has removed a number of his posts on this topic, so this video may be gone by the time you read this post. I'm no fan of censorship, but invented statistics (Did you know that 50% of Americans haven't payed their rent in months? Neither did I!) and dangerous medical claims are very troubling, so it's kind of a hard call. IG would be doing Ray a favor, though, by removing it, because he seems to have lost any ability to self-monitor.

Throughout the video he spits out names of viewers like some sort of verbal tic. He praises people who are paying him and scolds people who are not. His harshest criticism is directed toward a Mr. Perrymel... Perrymal... he's not sure which it is. But he is sure that this fellow is not being "serious." What does he mean by serious?

Go to my website, James Ray dot com, and click on store, and join us at Project Stay Home... If you won't make an investment in yourself, then I'm sorry, I can't help you. You have to make an investment and we've made the investment ridiculously small.

Yes, Project Stay Home is just the Ultimate Performance Forum with a name change and a rate reduction to compete with Netflix and HBO (he references both specifically). Nothing says success like an 85% price cut.




Throughout the video, he praises other viewers, also by name, for having ponied up the pennies for this seminar package. It's like a really weird episode of Romper Room, where today's lesson is that paying customers are good and social media freeloaders are bad.




Periodically, he diverges from his many complaints to spout platitudes, stare into the camera, and say, "Are you with me on this?!" So even in the midst of his outrage, the NLP training kicks in like a reflex.

Ray is certainly not alone in his frustration with the current pandemic and the disruption it's brought to our lives and economic prospects. But for Ray, it's only the most recent setback to his dreams of wealth and power. Even at the height of his career, he was living well beyond his means. And maiming and killing people at his events turned out not to be a good business move. Between the legal fees and the business hiatus when he was in prison, he's been reduced to shabby hotel conference rooms and other low key events with a very diminished client base. But one thing that never changes with James Ray is his crass, hard sell tactics. From pitching the next high priced seminar in the midst of a guided meditation, when he was as successful as he'd ever be, to this pathetic attempt at low-rent social media shaming, the avarice is always evident. The other thing that never changes is that he doesn't care who gets hurt, or who gets killed.

The evangelical Christian college Liberty University announced on Monday that it is opening an independent investigation into its recently resigned president Jerry Falwell Jr., heir to its founder, Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell. It's been a long time in coming.

Some may say that all the signs were there for a long time before last week. It’s certainly fair to say that there were questionable comments made, worrying behavior, and inappropriate social media posts, but all the signs were not there until the start of last week. While we still didn’t know the full scope of the matter, we have learned enough about the past to know that we had no choice but to take the leadership of Liberty University in a new direction.

So now we know what it takes to push this bastion of moral rectitude into decisive action. Notably it's none of the issues specifically stated in the university's announcement, "financial, real estate, and legal matters." It wasn't the self-dealing and cronyism that have been raising serious, internal concerns for some time. It wasn't even the "racy" photos that have appeared and disappeared from social media, or been handled by Donald Trump's former fixer, now convicted felon, Michael Cohen. No, what finally pushed the board of directors to act was a salacious sex scandal involving his wife, Becki. One even wonders if sexual indiscretions on his own part would have been enough. Falwell has been exposed, horror of horrors, as a cuckold.

Falwell Jr.'s problems started in earnest a few weeks ago when he bizarrely uploaded, then removed, an eyebrow raising photo of himself with a young woman later identified as his wife's assistant.

Even if this photo was as innocent as he claimed, merely a bit of playfulness with a pregnant employee, Falwell Jr. was giving himself license to engage in behavior strictly proscribed for students at the university he helmed.

According to Liberty student Alexandra Green, the photo shows Falwell to be even more of a hypocrite than people realize.

The photo “should actively anger you on behalf of the students who have faced significant consequences on campus for the *same* actions,” Green wrote in a series of tweets.

“Drinking? Smoking? Possession of cigarettes/alcohol? Against the rules regardless of age,” Green said, referring to Liberty’s rules for students. “Could result in a ‘$300 fine, 30 hours community service, and/or expulsion.’ Real people who could not afford the fines have been fined for this. Real people were kicked out for this.”

Green says that unbuttoning one’s pants could get someone “$150 and/or 15 hours or community service for being in ‘any state of undress with a member or the opposite sex.'”

It was also not the first compromising photo to reach the public, but this was embarrassing enough to the school that they announced a leave of absence for their president. It was the series of revelations about his wife that expedited drastic and decisive action.

Last Monday Falwell Jr. made the bizarre disclosure that his wife had the been the object of a "fatal attraction" threat, following a brief affair some years ago. He claimed the much younger man, Giancarlo Granda, was blackmailing them with threats of exposure. How any of this resembled Fatal Attraction -- the iconic, if terrible, movie about an extramarital fling, with a dangerously obsessional stalker -- was the first problematic question about this announcement. Granda wasn't boiling any bunnies, he didn't want to keep Becki Falwell, he just wanted the money he thought he was owed from a real estate venture.

And then it got stranger. It was Becki who had aggressively pursued the 20 year old pool boy for sex. with her husband as a spectator.

"During my work shift at the Fontainebleau Hotel in March 2012, I was chatting with some girls my age (20 at the time)," Granda told POLITICO. "Becki said, 'Those girls don’t know what they’re doing, you need someone with more experience.'"

After chatting, Granda said, Becki suggested they go to a hotel room.

"And then she goes, 'But one thing.' And I'm like, "Okay.' And she's like, 'My husband likes to watch.' And just then he comes out and he's wearing a Speedo."

Thus began a seven year entanglement with the powerful couple, in which Falwell Jr. enjoyed watching his wife have sex with Granda from a corner of the room or on video cameras. In Granda's telling, if anyone was "fatally attracted," it was the Falwells, who were very unwilling to let their boy toy go unscathed. And, unlike the Falwells, Granda can show receipts.

Granda also shared an audio recording that he says captures a conversation he had with the Falwells in 2018. In it, Becki complained about Granda describing his relationships with other people: “He’s like telling me every time he hooks up with people. Like I don’t have feelings or something.” Jerry then chimed in: “You’re going to make her jealous.” “I’m not trying to do that,” Granda replied.

Earlier texts show a friendly and romantic dynamic between Granda and Becki Falwell. One 2012 text message, which Granda said came from Becki, read in part: “Right now I am just missing you like crazy .... Have you had this effect on all of your lady friends?”

. . .

Granda said that while he entered into the sexual relationship with the Falwells willingly, today he feels the couple preyed upon him. “Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” Granda said.

Granda's description of a predatory Becki Falwell is bolstered by the account of another young man, who described her as "the aggressor." The former Liberty University student, and bandmate of the Falwells' son Trey, spoke under the condition of anonymity to Politico. He reported multiple, escalating advances from the teen guitarist's mother. It started with flirtatious innuendo, but led inexorably to uninvited oral sex, when he was sleeping in the guest room.

“I’m laying in the bed and I hear, like, giggling to the side of me on the floor. And, pardon my French, but I was like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ I look over and it’s Becki,” he said. “Just, you know, in my room. I’m like, ‘You can’t be in here. This can’t happen.’”

He was a 22-year-old student at Liberty. She was the wife of the president of the school. The Falwells were, effectively, the First Family of conservative evangelicalism in America.

After some prodding, he coaxed Falwell into leaving. He slept, woke up and acted like things were normal.

A few nights later, he stayed the night again. Again, Falwell came into the guestroom where the then-student was in bed.

This time, she was more aggressive. The former student remembers that Falwell climbed into bed with him, and quickly took down his pants.

“I was like, ‘uh, what are you doing?” the former student said. Falwell then proceeded to give him oral sex.

The young man was left with feelings of guilt, shame, and depression, over the adulterous relationship he'd been manipulated into.

The picture that emerges of Becki Falwell is more Mrs. Robinson than Dan Gallagher.

This sordid tale, though, includes the added element of a complicit, voyeuristic husband. The Falwells adamantly deny his involvement in her admitted affair, but the recorded conversation (see above) significantly undercuts that denial.

The Falwells, of course, have the right to whatever sex life they want to enjoy, with other consenting adults. The problem is not with their choice of lifestyle, but with their active, political involvement in denying sexual liberty to other Americans. They are the inheritors and stewards of a religio-poltical empire built on a culture war against sexual permissiveness, homosexuality, and the reproductive choice that have allowed women both sexual agency and bodily autonomy.

Jerry Falwell Jr. was also instrumental in moving the religious right from the margins, into the very heart of the Republican Party. Michael Cohen didn't "fix" Falwell's shady activities out of kindness. It was part of a quid pro quo that ensured the Falwell stamp of approval on Trump's candidacy. Thus did a twice divorced adulterer and notorious, unrepentant playboy, become the darling of the Christian Right.

In our new Bizarro World reality, Trump's longtime associate Roger Stone -- who once crippled his career as a GOP operative and self-described "dirty trickster," by advertising openly as a swinger -- is now on the Megachurch circuit.

Stone's newfound religious conviction does not seem to include any disavowal of either his shady  political tactics or his sex club activities. Stone is a recently convicted felon, whose commutation by Trump raises startling ethical, even legal, concerns. But his appeal to the evangelical base is light on atonement and heavy on victimhood.

The irony is that this ludicrous popinjay and disgraced libertine fits right in with the Christian Right of our times.

Falwell Jr. resigned amidst his own public denials that he was resigning, finally declaring that, yes, he had resigned.

Appropriating Martin Luther King Jr.'s final words from his iconic "I Have A Dream" speech, Falwell told NPR that he is stepping down from his role at the university in Lynchburg, Va., saying he is "free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, I am free at last!"

"That's the way, I feel," the 58-year-old added.

There is something uniquely horrifying about hearing privileged white men co-opt the victim status and struggle of marginalized minorities. Martin Luther King's quotation of that old Negro spiritual was aspirational, part of a "dream" of liberty, in some distant future. King wasn't about to float away on a golden parachute of $10.5 million. He was assassinated not long after uttering those words.

More to the point, what exactly is Falwell Jr. so joyously free from? Did he not like his job? Was he really so constrained,  by the very strictures he imposed on others? Perhaps the bonds of moral expectations were more painful than we know and this was his way of declaring his joy that he and his wife will now be able to freely cruise young men in Miami clubs. No doubt they'll run into Roger and Nikki.

Today is the Feast of Mary Magdalene. It's been a very weird day.

I am not Catholic and I do not pay much attention to the Church's calendar. But I was reminded that it's the day the Church commemorates Mary Magdalene – a day elevated to a feast by Pope Francis in 2016 – by a Facebook post floating down my timeline. The exquisite artwork caught my eye.

That I have very strong feelings about depictions of Mary Magdalene is no secret. She has historically been an icon of misogyny, thanks to the way the Catholic Church has represented her down through the centuries. It was only 52 years ago that the Church reversed course and quietly retracted the charge of prostitution leveled at her by Pope Gregory in 591. Much of the Western world, and even much of the Catholic Church, never got that memo. Mary Magdalene is still perceived far and wide as the fallen women, the woman of ill repute, the whore half of the Madonna-Whore complex.

So what made this day of Catholic celebration so weird for my nominally Episcopalian self? Only that I have been awash in news stories today that make it hard for my female body to breathe.

In a brief perusal of the news this morning I learned that female Olympians from Europe are compelled to wear uniforms that reduce them to sex objects and make it harder for them to perform as athletes.

The Norwegian women’s beach handball team wants to wear comfortable clothing while playing the sport instead of being forced to wear bikini bottoms that are uncomfortable and sexualizes them. The handball team said they are done with the degrading attire and called for a change in the rules that mandate they wear bikini bottoms that cover only 10 centimeters on the side. The incident happened when the Norwegian women’s beach handball played the European Championships in beach handball. The team's stance threw a spotlight on the reported sexism as men are allowed to wear shorts to their games. "We are forced to play with panties," Norwegian team captain Katinka Haltvik told NRK, reported Inside the games. "It is so embarrassing."

The regulations are very particular about what women wear, down to the measurements while it's relaxed for men. "Women should wear a bikini where the top should be a tight-fitting sports bra with deep openings at the arms," read the international regulations of beach handball. "The bottom must not be more than ten centimeters on the sides." The Norwegian Beach Handball Association has been fighting to have the rules changed. Even prior to the European Championships in Bulgaria, they had planned to protest against the regulations and play in thigh-length tights, reported Fox News.

I was also reminded, not that I'd exactly forgotten, that the "Karen" construct is more than a little sexist.

Sorry, but no. You can’t control a word, or an idea, once it’s been released into the wild. Epithets linked to women have a habit of becoming sexist insults; we don’t tend to describe men as bossy, ditzy, or nasty. They’re not called mean girls or prima donnas or drama queens, even when they totally are. And so Karen has followed the trajectory of dozens of words before it, becoming a cloak for casual sexism as well as a method of criticizing the perceived faux vulnerability of white women.

Not saying there aren't some awful and racist white women out there who need to be called out, but the term is now hurled at any woman who draws a boundary. Heaven forfend that any white woman should complain when she gets poor service or when some random stranger breathes maskless in her face. Women should take every indignity in stride as stoically as the Angel in the House, lest we be labeled as odious Karens.

In a dark turn that I took in under an hour of news reading, I learned that yet another "incel" was preparing to go on a bloody rampage. Thankfully, his plan to punish women for not sleeping with him was foiled by police.

In his posts, he sometimes expressed admiration for Elliot Rodger, who in May 2014, killed six people and injured 14 others. Some of Rodger's victims were shot outside a University of California, Santa Barbara sorority house.

Genco wrote a manifesto titled "A Hideous Symphony," by "Tres Genco, the socially exiled Incel." In it, he said he would "slaughter" women "out of hatred, jealousy and revenge..." and called death the "great equalizer." Investigators say they discovered another note, allegedly drafted by Genco, that said he hoped to "aim big" for a kill count of 3,000 people.

Prosecutors say that the same day he drafted his manifesto, Genco searched online for fraternities and sororities around Ohio.

As much as I'd like to think this kind of misogyny is limited to the warped unfuckables who inhabit the darkest corners of the "manosphere," their special brand of entitlement to female bodies has been legitimized by pseudo-intellectuals like Jordan Peterson and even echoed in quasi-respectable journals like the The National Review.

When a sample of nearly 1,500 female Ivy League students was asked whether they would date a Trump supporter, only 6 percent said yes (after excluding the small minority of the sample who support him). So finds a survey of 20,000 university students that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) conducted in 2020. While people are free to discriminate however they wish in dating, this attitude bleeds into problematic spheres such as hiring and social toleration.

This reveals the predilection among many young elite Americans for progressive authoritarianism, a belief system that justifies infringing rights to equal treatment or free speech in the name of the emotional “safety” of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexuality groups. In this left-modernist worldview, conservatives’ resistance to racial, gender, and sexual progressivism mark them as moral deviants. As Millennials take power, this generational earthquake is set to shake the foundations of the cultural elite to its core, leading to pervasive discrimination against, and censorship of, conservative views.

That's right. Not throwing a man a shot because you find his world view horrifying is "discrimination" now. Saying "no" to men's advances infringes on their "rights."

Pope Benedict XVI, retired, has penned a plea for forgiveness for things he did not do and does not apologize for. (!!!) Ya just can't make this stuff up. Here are some of the headlines for this bizarre news event:

• Retired pope asks pardon for abuse, but admits no wrongdoing

• Pope Benedict concedes failings in new letter, but no apology for German abuse cases

• Pope Benedict asks for forgiveness but denies wrongdoing over child sex abuse cases

• Benedict XVI apologizes for clerical abuse but admits no personal responsibility

• Ex-Pope Benedict acknowledges 'errors' but no blame in abuse handling, seeks forgiveness

The 94 year old retiree was pulled back into the spotlight last month, when a detailed report on clerical abuse from 1945 to 2019, was presented by a German law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, which was commissioned by the archdiocese. The investigation found that then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was among a number of senior clerics who had seriously mishandled abuse cases. They found that his handling of four cases rose to the level of misconduct.

Pope Benedict has continued to deny any culpability, or even awareness.

"He claims that he didn't know about certain facts, although we believe that this is not so, according to what we know," [lawyer Martin] Pusch said.

. . .

Lawyer Ulrich Wastl presented a copy of the minutes of a meeting of Munich church leaders on January 15, 1980, when a decision was made to take on an abuser the report refers to as "Priest X."

Wastl said he was "surprised" that Benedict denied he was at the meeting, despite the minutes showing that he was. "This is something that is written down," said Wastl, later rejecting Benedict's denial as "hardly credible."

Wait... minutes, you say? Oh... yeah... right. He WAS there.

Former Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged on Monday he had been at a 1980 meeting over a sexual abuse case when archbishop of Munich, saying he mistakenly told German investigators he was not there.

In a statement on Monday, the former pope's personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, said Benedict did attend the meeting but the omission "was the result of an oversight in the editing of the statement" and "not done out of bad faith."

. . .

"He (the former pope) is very sorry for this mistake and asks to be excused," Ganswein said.

His "apology" for letting pedophile priests run amok continues in same vein. It is a full-throated, loquacious, and eloquent non-apology.

I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate. Each individual case of sexual abuse is appalling and irreparable. The victims of sexual abuse have my deepest sympathy and I feel great sorrow for each individual case.

Mistakes were made, in and around and under his general purview. He's very sad that they occurred. He will be judged by God and God alone. But, as his lawyers explain, he, himself, did nothing wrong.

If the buck is gonna stop somewhere, it will not be with him.

One could be forgiven for mistaking this pile of verbiage for an actual apology. It is rich in the liturgical language of the penitent.

In one section he openly wondered if he, as all Catholic do in a prayer known as the Confiteor at Mass, should ask for forgiveness for what they have done and what they have failed to do "by my fault, by my most grievous fault".

He wrote: "It is clear to me that the words 'most grievous' do not apply each day and to every person in the same way. Yet every day they do cause me to question if today too I should speak of a most grievous fault."

But...

Benedict does not answer his own question but says he is consoled that God forgives.

If he does require forgiveness from God, for, say, some sin that shall remain nameless, he's fairly sure that he'll receive it, so that's nice.

It should come as no surprise that victims groups have been left unsatisfied by the former pontiff's hairless shirt-rending.

Speaking to Crux, Irish clerical abuse survivor Marie Collins, a former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, noted that “The report commissioned by the Church found four cases of abusive priests being left in ministry during the tenure of Benedict in Munich.”

“When a finding is made against a leader in the church the immediate response is recourse to lawyers, this case is no different,” she said, arguing that “Legal opinions are used to defend the indefensible and moral responsibility is ignored.”

. . .

[SNAP] criticized Benedict for failing to “do the simple thing and offer full accounting and apology” despite evidence of his mishandling in the Munich report, saying the opportunity the report provided for true accountability “has been squandered.”

. . .

The Eckiger Tisch group representing clerical abuse survivors in Germany said Benedict’s response was yet another example of the Catholic Church’s “permanent relativizing on matters of abuse – wrongdoing and mistakes took place, but no one takes concrete responsibility.”

Benedict, the group said, “can’t bring himself simply to state that he is sorry not to have done more to protect the children entrusted to his church.”

I don't know, maybe this was a real apology before it was vetted by legal. It seems carefully calibrated to sound as apologetic as possible, without risking liability. But then, parsing has always been one of Pope Benedict's greatest skills.

In other news:

Father Andres Arango has resigned as pastor from his Phoenix parish after the horrible revelation that he said "we" instead of "I" in countless baptisms, rendering the salvation of thousands of the faithful "invalid." Many will have to be re-baptized. Those who are not, or cannot, may or may not go to hell.

“Baptism is a requirement for salvation,” the Phoenix diocese said, recounting Christ's institution of the sacrament and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

At the same time, the diocese sought to explain that God’s grace still can work if the sacraments were not validly administered.

“It is important to note that, while God instituted the sacraments for us, He is not bound by them,” the diocese said, reiterating Catholic sacramental theology. “Though they are our surest access to grace, God can grant His grace in ways known only to Him.”

Like the former pope, whose failure of responsibility allowed countless children to be raped, the improperly baptized will have to trust in God's mercy.

At least we can all rest assured that the Catholic Church has its priorities straight, and that scrupulous attention to language remains paramount.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

The Deep End, S1E1, "The Lost Toys"
True Believers, S1E4, "Teal Swan and the Wellness Tribe"

One of the first things I learned about Teal Bosworth Scott Swan — or teal, as I now refer to her— was that she was very, very famous. So famous that I wondered how it could be that I'd never heard of her. She reveled in her "fame" in a way that I'd never seen any "spiritual teacher" do. That was way back in 2013. In the years since, she's parlayed her social media popularity into some book deals and a smattering of regional interviews, but her path to mainstream success has not been a smooth one. As discussed here, it's been a bit rocky for the self-described"celebrity" who wanted to reach people on "every single continent," and was designed pretty and white by an Arcturian panel for that very reason.

She was, in her own words, "completely duped" by Gizmodo and Jennings Brown, who created "The Gateway" podcast. An interview with OZY magazine had been "antagonistic," by daring to ask her standard journalistic questions about the criticism of her. Her foray into mainstream media was starting to look more like a collision.

And then it got worse. She was interviewed by Lebo Diseko of the BBC, whose reportage lead to some of her videos being pulled from her YouTube channel and the abrupt removal of Teal Tribe from Facebook.

Now teal has been thrust into the media spotlight in a way I've never seen before. Over the past month, two documentaries have debuted. On May 2, she was featured in the fourth episode of Vice's True Believers series, "Teal Swan and the Wellness Tribe." And on May 18, the first of four scheduled episodes of The Deep End aired on FreeForm, then on Hulu. (Full disclosure: I had what I think were fruitful discussions with producers and reporters for all of the above.)

The Deep End has generated a lot of buzz, so, for the first time ever, a news search for Teal Swan brings up a lot of articles and mentions. On the downside for teal, a lot of that reporting includes the c-word, cult: 'The Deep End' Trailer Reveals the Cult-Like Influence of Teal Swan, A New Freeform Documentary Looks Into How Possible Cult Leader Teal Swan Took Flight, What is Teal Swan's real name? All about the cult leader ahead of Freeform's The Deep End documentary.

And then there's the other c-word: con artist: Who is Teal Swan, the controversial spiritualist or scammer in “The Deep End”?, Teal Swan, The Controversial Spiritualist Or Con Artist In “The Deep End,” Has A Name.

Any mention in legacy media like the Washington Post should be considered great publicity, but it reads:

The Deep End (Freeform at 10) A four-part docuseries — that will also stream on Hulu — about the wellness/spiritual influencer Teal Swan who has been accused of effectively running a cult.

Worse, some articles have noted her relative obscurity.

When Freeform first announced The Deep End, it chose not to mention that its docuseries would be about Teal Swan. Instead it referred to her as a “controversial female spiritual leader.” In many ways, it’s an omission that makes sense. Though Teal Swan is far from a household name, she has an extraordinary amount of influence over her followers.

The Deep End seeks to answer the question that has haunted many who have stumbled upon Swan’s videos. Is this woman just a popular alternative healer or is she a potentially dangerous cult leader?

The biggest tip-off that this massive boost to her public profile is not flattering is teal's muted response to it. She and her team are not promoting The Deep End, despite their full participation in it. They've mentioned it only obliquely and apparently grudgingly. It all looks to me like damage control, not great damage control, but damage control.

Two days before it aired, she posted on her blog An Explanation For My Non-Response Approach to bad press and "haters." There is much in this post that's nonsensical, but the biggest problem is that it's entirely false. None of us who've been on the receiving end of her ire could call it a non-response. She responded to my first blog post about her by writing one about me and siccing her flying monkeys on me. Beyond the swarms of vitriolic comments and emails, there've been mass reporting attacks on my Facebook page that have gotten my blog blocked repeatedly, and I've seen screenshots of her defamatory, if comical, attacks on me in Messenger threads. I've also seen the kind of venom and vicious defamation she's aimed at others, particularly former friends/followers and exes. She responds. She definitely responds.

Lest we forget, she put out a two hour video called Teal Swan Answers To The Allegations. I broke that down here. Did she forget that she did that? Is she ok?

She also put out a fresh, new welcome message. Even in those brief few minutes, she manages to shoehorn in a complaint about people misunderstanding, fearing, and twisting her meaning. I'm not sure if she's expecting an influx of new potential followers, courtesy of this surge of media, but she sure seems to think they'll need to be inoculated against having a bad impression of her.

The night before the documentary aired, Blake Dyer intimated that there might be some reveals about his departure from Teal Eye, the company he founded with his long-time, mostly platonic companion. Blake announced last September that he was stepping back from his many roles and responsibilities as teal's second banana. From a safe distance, we could all see the outlines of this transition: engagement to fiance #1, teal unhappy over Blake's priorities, break-up, engangement to fiance #2, marriage, departure from teal's world. It seems that some of this drama has played out in front of the film crew, and having seen at least some of that footage in the first installment, leave say, this could get very interesting. Writes Blake:

I can't really explain the power, ferocity and magic that has lead my life to change in such a dramatic way in the past 2 years. In short, everything has changed in that time. My family, friends, career, place of living and relationship.... I won’t lie it has been a messy, painful, trying and often terrible road with moments of beauty and compassion in between. And in a mind bending staggering addition, an award winning documentary crew was there to capture some of those trials, giving me the precious opportunity to look back upon my actions to gain further awareness and reflection.

At some point on Saturday, three days after the first episode aired, teal quietly slipped a video of her response to it on the main page of her website, well below the fold. It's titled simply "Documentary Episode 1 Thoughts." What documentary? You'd have to listen to it to know. But I will save you the trouble. There are things she likes about the first episode of The Deep End and things she does not. She really likes the parts where her fans and supporters show their love and appreciation for her. She dislikes all the parts that made her look like a "very hard, harsh, cold, dismissive, unworkable, domineering, competitive, and angry" woman, with a "superiority complex," because all of that was taken way out of context.

The next day, she posted the video on her YouTube channel. If she's posted it anywhere else, I haven't seen it. It's not on her official Facebook page, and I've been told by people who can see her profile page— because, unlike me, they are not blocked — that it's not to be found there, either. The following image has been at the top of that page for a couple of days now.

She seems to be reacting and, dare I say, responding to media that she does not think is representing her in a way that makes her "look good," which, for some reason, she thinks is their job. It's all sort of veiled and indirect, but she is very much making her displeasure known.

The Deep End, S1E1, "The Lost Toys"

I think The Deep End is a much better title than what teal actually said.

My rule is if you wanna come within 50 miles of me, you better be ready for the deepest end of the pool.

How many ends does this pool have?! I can see where it might have many ends and quite a range of depths, because it covers 50 miles, minimum. So that's one very large, bizarrely shaped pool. I can't quite imagine it... and I don't think I want to.

I think it was very generous of the documentarians to edit her mass of mixed metaphors and weird imagery into such a pithy title.

teal swan always sounds like she's paraphrasing the average of a dozen self-help books from the front table of a 90s-era borders

— Snake🫀✂️ I love ardra (@eroticacid) May 20, 2022

This is a very lush, cinematically beautiful production, so much so that I fear it risks glamorizing teal's world. And a glamour concealing a murky darkness is teal in a nutshell. The style is observational, with no narration, so it gives the viewer that fly on the wall feel. The access she granted them is incredible and surprising, after her previous brushes with mainstream media.

After the podcast came out we spoke to many production companies about adapting it for TV. The Documentary Group was the clear choice. I knew we could trust them to take a trauma-informed approach to an incredibly sensitive story. Everyone at TDG is brilliant and compassionate.

— Jennings Brown (@tjenningsbrown) May 19, 2022

Jennings Brown, in a recently aired podcast interview, A Little Bit Culty, explains that he reached out to teal's team, post-Gateway furor, and asked them if they'd be interested in working with The Documentary Group. Despite their chilly response to him, they said "sure." (He also mentions that they had sought to have him take down the articles he'd done for the podcast series, which he did not do. I expect he got the same toothless legal letter I did, practically begging me to take down my post. I didn't either.) So, yes, her willingness to let in cameras and microphones again, after a request from someone she thinks "duped" her is a little surprising. In the interview they ponder why she may have done that. My theory: She's an exhibitionist who loves to be filmed and photographed and believes wholeheartedly in the force of her own charisma.

Brown admits that he was "manipulated" and "controlled" by her, in their first sit-down interview. I've seen this with other media professionals as well. The reality, for which teal has been totally unprepared, is that professional journalists have editors, other sources, fact checkers, multiple processes in place to prevent any one source or subject from controlling the final edit. The fourth estate is by no means perfect and media professionals can and have been gamed, but these aren't the sycophantic YouTubers teal depended on during her ascent. These are professionals who answer to other professionals.

Teal Swan is a real life version of Kristin Wigg’s “don’t make me sing” skit, except she’s terrifying and def a cult leader.

— Cait Dickey (@CaitDickey) May 20, 2022

"I'm a mirror. What a mirror does is it shows you the reality," says teal to a workshop audience, a few minutes into the episode. The grandiosity of this statement should be a glaring red flag. She has been calling herself a mirror and a "universal reflector" for some time and I believe she took this notion from Human Design. But if she truly believed in oneness and our holographic universe, as she claims to, she would know that everyone and everything is a reflection. We are all mirrors to each other. As my teacher, Cherokee Mystic Virginia Sandlin, always said, "I am not the source of your reality. From my perspective, you are my reflection, and from your perspective, I am your reflection." (I may be paraphrasing this slightly.)

But teal keeps positioning herself as speaking from "source perspective" as if, somehow, others are not. She claims to be"a mirror of the universe within the mirror hologram that is our earth." In a hologram, every cell contains the entire image. Every one of us contains the entire universe, in every particle of our being. This mystical concept is a totally equalizing principle, but in her hands, it somehow becomes self-aggrandizing and further enshrines an alarming power over her followers. 

From that vaunted pedestal she asks a woman, who is seeking to understand her lack of direction and motivation, "Why are you still here on the planet?" All roads lead to suicide, with teal. The woman seems stunned into silence, passively nodding. From there teal presses her to the same sort of binary, get off the fence, choice that she presented Leslie Wangsgaard with, by her own admission. "It's like part of you is trying to find an answer and stay alive and part of you is like 'I'm just gonna take us out.'... Like when we're really facing that decision point, play out both sides... go to the worst of the worst case scenarios and make your mind up. None of us are gonna get out of this thing alive..." It is certainly not the first time she has said something like this, one on one, and to a depressed, suicidal following that she has cultivated. If you want to know why many of us call her "the suicide catalyst," this is one more example.

Teal Swan really fixed her mouth to ask a woman(who clearly sounds suicidal) in front of a bunch of people “so why are you still here?”

— Did you check ya mama’s house? (@fascino_vic) May 19, 2022

Amazingly, teal manages to come off even worse than she does in that scene, as this thing goes along. There's a jawdropping exchange between her and a retreat participant who asks her if she has enough respect for anyone that they could challenge her, as she does with everyone else. "Why? I should have someone above me?" she says, implying that she is above everyone she calls out. "I don't look up to anyone." Someone might exist who has more "awareness" than she does, but she has never met them. Her anger at the suggestion that she should have mentors or even equals who can call her on her shit is staggering, but it's fully in keeping with her escalating arrogance.

Watching the ‘Deep End’ on Hulu, the second Teal Swan said there is no one above her and she’s never met anyone as aware as her I knew this was a cult🥴

— Ciara (@spirituallmilf) May 23, 2022

We also learn that it's Blake who has been doing teal's henna treatments... for 17 years. So one of his many responsibilities has been unlicensed cosmetologist/colorist. Who is doing her hair now that he's gone? And he is gone, as discussed above.

I will have much more to say on the Blake resignation saga, but I will table that until we see how the backstory plays out in the coming episodes. This episode saw him in a heated exchange with teal over bringing Juliana into their intentional community. It is, again, an ugly side of teal playing out before an unflinching camera.

the most disturbing part about the teal swan doc so far, apart from the purposeful retraumatization, is the guy who says “same key everybody” before going into this little light of mine on mandolin

— scrump nugget (@_hylocichla) May 21, 2022

True Believers, S1E4, "Teal Swan and the Wellness Tribe"

Vice's True Believers series runs six episodes, each focused on a different controversial spiritual or health and wellness organization, and teal's is the fourth. It opens with a gut-wrenching interview with the parents of teal follower McKenzie Faye Lazarz who killed herself at 18. They believe that teal’s messaging was pivotal in their daughter’s decision to end her life. As the episode unfolds, they demonstrate, through a montage of teal’s videos and interviews with key figures from teal’s inner circle, how her parents could have reached that conclusion.

I cannot listen to the story of how this teenage girl ended her life without weeping. And I can’t help but think about teal’s reaction when Lebo Diseko of the BBC asked her about the two very young people from Teal Tribe who killed themselves on her watch. “I’m not aware of them,” she shrugs.

As teal’s ex-husband Sarbdeep Swan says in this documentary, “When you tell vulnerable people, who have nothing to live for, that you have all the answers, that suicide is a reset button, then people will kill themselves. She knows this, but she doesn’t care.”

Some of the most affecting moments come from the interview with teal's ex-boyfriend Jared Dobson, aka., Fallon. There's a certain poetry to that, for me. It was teal's disturbing, degrading, and classically culty treatment of Fallon that moved me to put pen to paper and write my very first blog post about teal. Here he opens up about the events that led up to her kicking him out of the house and out of the tribe. "And the last thing she told me is that if I were you, I'd just go kill myself. There's no help for you. There's nothing anyone can do."

I'm reminded of what teal claimed about Leslie Wangsgaard's suicide during her comedic riff on the loss of her client:

So then we have to ask the question do we really want this to work. And what's interesting is that when she asked herself that question the answer was, "No. I'm done." There's nothing that any healer could ever do for that type of vibration, which is totally fine.

It's seems like she gives up on those she deems suicidal very easily. If she can't fix them, no one can.

Besides, they're just hitting the reset button.

Watching this Vice documentary on cults and I just can’t believe the lack of personal accountability so many people have in destroying their own lives!

Teal Swan, has BLOOD on her hands and yet her platform still exist?

These cult leaders are truly deranged.

— BRI LUNA (@YungKundalini) May 20, 2022

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Fake News
Rising Prices and the Shrinking Tribe
Breathtaking Cruelty

When Teal Bosworth Scott Swan got her long-sought break into "mainstream"media coverage, it did not go well. Her quest for fame brought her infamy instead. By the fall of 2019, attention from the BBC had cost her the Teal Tribe group on Facebook and a number of YouTube videos, as both platforms cracked down on her suicide-friendly messaging. It was against this backdrop that teal presented another example of her bizarre understanding of how news media (or what she calls "mediums") operate. In this video, she explains the following to her credulous followers:

[O]nce you get to a certain level of fame, let's say that there's a little under the carpet contract that occurs, though not in writing, it's understood in the business that once you get big enough to be of interest to people, what they will do is they'll write a negative article about you. At which point you are then welcome to spend a large amount of money to pay them to do a positive one. After which they will do a negative one, after which you will pay them again, to do a positive one.

In the real world, most of us know that news coverage and advertising sales (or any other form of payment) are separate functions, and that their separation is crucial to the reputation of any news organization. One need look no further than the unfolding scandal at Fox News, with Rupert Murdoch's confession that Mike Lindell bought his way into guest spots on Fox with ad buys. Murdoch's admission that the decision to let an obviously unhinged pillow magnate on the air "is not red or blue, it is green," is scandalous precisely because news coverage isn't meant to be pay-to-play. Trust in news organizations, and the viability of their business model, is dependent on the expectation that they cannot be bought.

More recently teal's reputation hit its nadir after a high profile docuseries that landed her in the "Deep End" of her own, dark pool. She got more press, when the doco aired, than I've seen her get, in my nearly 10 years of blogging about her, and it was all bad.

The Deep End revealed an organization under financial strain, trying to fight back against critics by proving that it wasn't a cult responsible for stoking suicidality and causing deaths. After the doco, all those problems seem to have gotten much worse. She's been branded with the cult label and concerns about her practices permeate discussions of her in podcasts and other media. She's telegraphing her financial distress by repeatedly doubling the price for Premium membership, which has gone from $12.99 to $79.00 a month in two years. Her latest money-making scheme revolves around a "lifetime" Premium membership and the marketing of it has tealers questioning the integrity of her marketing team, and even of teal herself. Attempts to restrict critical discussion of these and other issues are creating a lot of tension in the tribe. And there are signs that she's stepping up her abusive control over her inner circle.

Fake News

In recent months, teal seems to be hitting back at all that bad press, with a new PR agency and placements in various publications and news segments. Strangely, she is doing this in something approximating the manner she described in that video. She's apparently paying for a lot of this coverage, in a series of ad buys made to look like media coverage. She's getting the kind of softball interviews she expects, but it's no-kidding "fake news."

In January of this year, teal and her team quietly announced the exciting news that she was featured on the E!News website.

Cropped out of her screenshot is a rather important detail, italicized fine print that says, "Ad." Because this "feature" is not so much an article as it is an "advertorial," a paid ad made to look like an article. Advertorials have long been controversial, in the world of print media, because their appearance can be misleading. Not disclosing that little detail in announcing the item to her followers certainly looks like a very deliberate attempt to mislead.

There are other indications that this is not a real article. For a start, it does not come up in a site search of her name. The only articles about teal that come up are two about the docuseries. They can be found here and here. I could find no instance of teal promoting either of those articles, no doubt because they are not terribly flattering. The only other items that appear in the search results are random articles that reference the color teal.

Another tell is that the byline doesn't name a reporter. It's attributed to something called the Feel Good News Agency. Not only are there no other articles on E! by this entity, a google search brings up only one item. This makes them even less successful than the infamous "free lance journalist"Jason Freedman.

In addition to passing off an advertorial on a legitimate entertainment network's site as an actual article, team teal has been scaring up features in a handful of questionable publications. She has appeared in a series of magazines and websites that exist to market wannabes who are willing to pay for puff pieces that look a little like actual media coverage.

Ever hear of Writer's Life? Me neither, and I worked in book publishing. But teal got herself a glossy cover on a magazine that specializes in featuring aspiring writers you've never heard of. How do they come to be featured? They pay for it, as Writer's Digest explains on its Twitter profile: "Our Business Is Promoting Yours!! DM Us For Rates/To Find Out How You Can Be FEATURED In Our NEXT ISSUE!!!"

Similarly, the LA Wire is not a thing. Take it from Angeleno Lord Falconis.

None of this prevented teal from promoting her LA Wire piece as if it was a real article.

I did a little digging into a fashion magazine calling itself "elucid" that, at first blush, looked credible, boasting features with a number of big names, names like Emma Watson.

Elucid published a feature on teal and her largely imaginary modeling "career." Because I very much like Emma Watson, I dug into that issue. But despite her being on the cover, there was no interview with Watson, only quotes from previous interviews. The pictures of her, including the cover, were all from a cache of free Shutterstock images.

So where is this glossy, international fashion magazine produced? This is what it says in the footer.

That would be this.

Glamorous!

Some of teal's press clippings are so obviously fake, even a few of her followers can see through them.

I'm no expert in spotting bot generated faces (although, googling the names and images from that page makes for a fun diversion on a rainy, Saturday afternoon). I do, however, know what this means.

It seems pretty obvious that this is a pay-to-play "fake news" site, but just how fake it is becomes even more apparent when attempting to track down their business address. Their contact information shows them as located in Fort Drum in upstate New York.

Google maps has no record of that address. It's unclear whether even the street exists.

Fort Drum is a closed base and accessing it is no joke. It would be an odd place to run a commercial business from. It would, however, be a great place to claim an address, if you never wanted anyone to locate your offices. It might even fool people who know nothing of military life into thinking it's associated with the military, an idea my Marine husband found hilarious. Stranger still, the phone number they list is in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

It goes on...

New York Weekly is not a thing.

The Los Angeles Tribune hasn't been a thing since 1960.

No, HuffMag is not the Huffington Post. It's another pay-to-play, "fake news" site, trading on the HuffPo name.

Don't feel bad if any of this confused you into thinking it was real press coverage. It was meant to. But teal's recent media coverage is all buyer beware. Dig a bit and see if the venue is part of a marketing/SEO business, google it and see if their "features" are for sale.

Not every bit of coverage teal has boasted about in recent months is fake, only most of it. She recently appeared, for instance, on Today in Nashville, on the NBC affiliate there. That was a real booking on an actual show. Good for her. But it's a strange booking for a few reasons, starting with the fact that Nashville isn't a book market. It's a strange place to promote your books, which is what she did. In my years working as a book publicist, I never once booked Nashville. It just isn't a city you'd include in a book tour. Also, none of the books she was there promoting are new, the most recent one is a year old. She's not doing a book tour and would almost definitely have had to pay for her own travel and lodging, just to appear on a show that might, at most, net her a handful of book sales and few minutes of exposure in a music city. So why Nashville of all places? It does happen to be the location of her new PR agency, ZTPR. (Well, he at least has a virtual office there. There's also no phone number, which is, um, weird for a flack.) Here they are promoting a mention of teal's book on an LA affiliate.

Their Twitter feed promotes their promotion of a range of Z-list celebrities in venues you've never heard of.

The book that has had pride of place in her two recent TV spots is not new. Not only was How to Love Yourself published last spring, it's a Watkins Publishing reprint of her 2015 book Shadows Before Dawn, which was published by Hay House. So I find it kind of interesting that the new book cover bears a not so subtle resemblance to Louise Hay's breakout book You Can Heal Your Life.

Has she ever had an original idea? This is, after all, the woman who had the supreme chutzpah to plagiarize Louise Hay's obituary from her then publisher Hay House, so derivative book cover art shouldn't come as a huge surprise. But what was Watkins thinking?! And where Hay's book covers were warm and vibrant, teal's is a cold, sterile brick wall.

Rising Prices and the Shrinking Tribe

Teal's plagiarism is one of a growing number of topics no one is allowed to discuss in The Tribe.

It seems some tribers have figured out that a lot of her original practices are not, in fact, original: that the "parts work" she developed was developed first by Richard C. Schwartz; that she's appropriated ideas like the monomyth and "follow your joy [bliss]" from Joseph Campbell; that many of her methods were developed in the field of psychology that she disparages. In other words, they've stumbled onto a fact some of us have known for some time, she has no original content and only very rarely cites her sources. That people independently stumble on her serial plagiarism is inevitable, but her team ruthlessly suppresses all criticism of her tealness and inoculates them against "haters" like myself, the way Scientology warns its members to never look at Operation Clambake or any other critical media.

In December The Tribe went so far as to require approval on every single post. The backlash was serious enough that they reversed course.

The damage was done for some group members, though, who created their own Free Tribe, where they could discuss teal's work without being censored. It's a small group, boasting 82 members at the time of this writing. But then, The Tribe's membership has hovered around 2.5k for some time. Teal Tribe boasted over 27k members, when Facebook pulled the plug. That raises another important question. Where did those 20k+ members go? They can't have been too concerned over the loss of her flagship group.

The biggest bone of contention, among her remaining tribe members, seems to be her rapidly increasing prices and aggressive sales methods, some of which appear to include some very persistent salesbots.

Team teal is getting what we call "price resistance." Her followers have been registering their distress at rapidly rising costs, price increases that are substantially greater than the spiking costs of eggs and petrol.

Premium membership started out at $9.99 a month. At some point, I'm not sure when, it went up to $12.99. That sort of increase was consistent with other memberships of the type, so it didn't really ruffle feathers. But then things started to get weird... and tealers noticed.

As recently as April of 2021, it was still $12.99 a month, as seen here.

But in November of that same year, they ran a promotion that showed a pending price jump to $40 per month. And tealers were about as confused and upset as you might expect.

Some quite reasonably assumed it was a marketing tactic known as artificial scarcity, and that the $40 price tag was a scare tactic meant to push $20 membership sales.

Not only was the price increase to $40 a month very real, about a year later, it doubled again.

But don't panic just yet, tealers. As you can see, you can now become a member for life (whatever lifetime means in this context) for just $1997, aka., $2000. Don't have two grand laying around? Has teal got an offer you!

Confused? A lot of tribers are.

The Tribe has been awash in tales of hard sell tactics by what may have been bots, but were definitely not teal or members of her inner circle, that left them feeling used, tricked, and violated, only to have their feelings dismissed by teal's staunch defenders. It's been a contentious debate, that has roiled the comfort and safety of her tribe. So naturally, admin has made teal's marketing tactics another forbidden topic.

But not before a slew of conversations about the smarminess of the tealbots had done some real damage and cost them more members.

I can't decide what I like most from those exchanges, the prodigious use of heart emojis when they try to close the deal or the bot that is suddenly called away for a meeting, when the human starts to get really upset at having her vulnerability so ruthlessly exploited.

In this unlisted video, teal explains her Premium "for life" special offer. In it we learn that because "you" have been specially selected to participate, you can pay her $997, aka., $1000, to be a guinea pig, testing the effectiveness of Premium access on personal growth. Because this is a special, reduced rate offer, you will also be her product, as she can use your story as part of her marketing. And bonus! She will also pit members of this "select" group against each other in a competition over who "grows" the most.

Fun for whom, we ask ourselves. What is the audience for this thunderdome reality show, where the walking wounded square off against each other to see who achieves some capricious standard of emotional wellness best?! Only teal could turn a healing process into a competitive event.

Breathtaking Cruelty

If teal's sales tactics seem deceptive and heartless, and they do, that is nothing compared to the way she treats the people closest to her. The Deep End exposed her behavior toward Blake and Juliana, treatment very much in keeping with her abuses of people like Jared "Fallon" Dobson, Cameron Clark, Diana Hansen Ribera, Morgan le Faye, and many, many others. In a recent Ask Teal video, teal did what she so often does with those videos, air her grievances against members of her inner circle, by creating thinly-veiled, fictional versions of them. She lets them know what they're doing wrong and how they can correct their offending behavior. Her followers know she's telegraphing these conflicts and that they can figure out who she's lambasting just makes them feel like flies on the wall, watching her daily soap opera of a life.

It's not hard to deduce that the main target in the above video (and article) is Graciela and the sheer cruelty of it is hard to stomach. Has she ever sounded more like the quintessential mean girl? She rattles off a litany of lookist judgments with the eye-rolling, exasperated derision of a queen bee just fed up with her hangers-on not doing what she wants, when she so obviously knows best for everybody. For god's sake, she didn't even bother to change the first letter of her name.

Gloria has struggled with weight all her life. She grew up in a family that ate almost exclusively junk food and meat cooked in lard. She struggled with cystic acne. She was prescribed a medication for acne that damaged her liver. Her hair has always been thin. And due to poor eyesight, she always wore coke bottle glasses. Gloria has never been considered a physically attractive woman. And this, has causes her pain all her life. Gloria has been taught by her family and by society that she will only be loved if she is pretty. Because of this, Gloria has struggled all her life to become physically attractive, so that she can be loved… Loved for what she is not.

. . .

For example, with Gloria, we might feel ourselves wanting to offer advice for how she could actually become physically attractive. Or come up with explanations as to why she has failed so far and what would have made her succeed before at becoming physically attractive. Things like “well… If she had just moved to Africa, where in some places, people do think that fat is physically attractive.” Or “she didn’t even do anything to learn about diet… come on. If she really wants to be attractive, she has to change her lifestyle.”

. . .

Instead, she looks at what she is. When she does this, she realizes that she is very stable emotionally. She also realizes that she is a very committed person in relationships. She is reliable and present with others. And she is cozy. She can be a safe space for someone because she is a safe space.

Do you get it Graciela Gloria?! Don't even think about romance. It's not for you. You have a job as teal's comfort animal, and occasional footstool. What more could you possibly want in life?! Don't even think about heading for the door again! Where ya gonna go? Africa? The only place on earth you might be considered fuckable?! (Dear GOD, she's racist!!!) Accept your lot in life. You're the fat friend, the second banana! You should be thrilled that someone as gorgeous and famous as teal is willing to keep you around!

It's not hard to figure out what's going on here. Blake, teal's original "safe space," is gone. He found real love and fled. She's convinced what's left of her inner circle to renounce dating uncommitted tealers and having children. Are some of them balking? Is Graci? Because this reeks of panic. God forbid that Graci figures out that she is, in fact, quite pretty and that not everyone is as lookist or sizist as teal. There's no reason on earth that she couldn't find a nice fella, or gal, and have a life.

I started blogging about teal nearly 10 years ago, because I thought she was a budding cult leader who displayed her shocking cruelty in a very public way. Ten years later, several high profile cult researchers have a pegged her as a cult leader, and she is still displaying her shocking cruelty in a very public way.

In the final analysis, that's what The Deep End showed the world. Are there a few questions about their editing? After watching all of teal's response videos, as well as many other discussions and context, I came away with only one editing choice that concerned me, and it was the way a different woman appeared to be Sabrina after the "waterbreathing" incident. But I will give teal credit for muddying the waters substantially. She always does. The Deep End accomplished exactly what its creators intended. It conveys the experience of being in teal's orbit. If it failed at all — according to people I know who've lived it — it's only that the truth is even more horrible and emotionally scarring than the series could hope to portray.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

In what some are calling the "feel-good story of the year," killer whales — obviously sick of being cheap entertainment for Sea World voyeurs — seem to have declared war on yachts.

The boat in question is an intensely fancy Bali 4.8 catamaran-style sailboat run by the charter management company Catamaran Guru. Boasting six bedrooms and six bathrooms, the boat is nicer than most people’s homes. But orcas don’t care about your supersized interior or onboard ice maker—orcas care about their home, and other orcas.

. . .

An eerie portend of things to come, humanity! I particularly like when the orca returned for the last little bit of rudder and surfaced briefly as if to say “ha ha, who’s got the rudder now!”

Researchers believe a whale nicknamed Gladis was traumatized by an illegal fishing boat and is seeking her revenge by instructing other young orcas in how to attack rudders. The attacks are disabling boats traversing through the Strait of Gibraltar, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic, with Spain on one side and Morocco on the other. While the attacks began in 2020, there have been 20 such attacks in the last month alone.

But the orca vs. man fracas is not an isolated example of a roiling collision of interests. Nature, it seems, is sick of our shit, and she's fighting back.

An amazing video!
This video of the sea otter attacking a surfboard yesterday was shared me and is being posted with the photographers permission. The video must remain in this tweet to be shared. This is a dangerous sea otter, avoid it if at all possible! pic.twitter.com/N7qPMFVRrt

— Native Santa Cruz (@NativeSantaCruz) July 10, 2023

Consider the adorably vicious sea otter who has "joined the ocean's battle against man."

First the orcas came for the yachts and I laughed. Then the depths of the ocean lured in a throng of fate-tempting billionaires and I watched in bemused horror. Now, an otter off the coast of Santa Cruz, California, is stealing surfboards and kayaks and I am forced to ask, “What is the sea trying to tell us?”

. . .

I am no scientist but I believe that the ocean contains the Earth’s soul and the Earth’s soul is sullen and resentful. She (yes, she) is instructing the orcas to sink luxury sailboats on Spain’s coast. She’s commandeered the Titanic to entrance more people to their deaths. But now that she’s on the offense against one of mankind’s more gentle and harmless creatures—surfer dudes—she must be very, very angry. Ocean, this humble blogger hears you! I stand with you (or like, beside you). But I don’t think the surfers are the ones to attack. Stick with the yachts and those weird jet powered hoverboards Mark Zuckerberg likes to ride. The people on those are your real enemies.

Did I mention that it's adorable? SO adorable!

Less cute are the the giant, swarming, jumping carp.

From Arkansas to Minnesota, the unforced error of importing invasive Asian carp species has brought about the "Carp-ocalypse."

Silver and bighead carp escaped into the Mississippi River in the 1970s after they were originally imported from Asia to Arkansas to control algal blooms in fish farms and sewage ponds (and widely touted as a green alternative to common chemical treatments).

In the years since, they have relentlessly expanded their range. Along the way, the fish — voracious, fast growing filter feeders that hoover up the phytoplankton and plankton that is base of the food chain — have devastated native fisheries. In some stretches of the Illinois River, silvers and bigheads account for as much as 90% of the fish biomass.

It’s not just anglers and fish biologists who are disturbed by this development. Silver carp, which can reach weights in excess of 90 pounds, have a strange habit of leaping high out of the water when startled. This has created a new hazard in many lakes and rivers, as schools of leaping carp, triggered by the sound of motors, occasionally collide with and injure people in passing boats.

The unusual behavior has given rise to some novel fishing tactics. To kill silver carp, some people deliberately drive through pods and, when the fish leap from the water, they shoot them with bow and arrow. The made-for-YouTube spectacle serves as a gruesome comedic counterpoint to the dire environmental calamity the fish represent.

They FLY!!! They effing fly! At your FACE!

So why is nature so mad that she seems to have gone on the attack? Why wouldn't she?! Some might call it self-defense against a certain bipedal, invasive species, that rips through ecosystems like a deadly virus.

And so, it seems, nature is retaliating against weird incursions into even her deepest waters, unleashing terrors.

In recent years, we’ve seen an incredible upswing in shark attacks worldwide. This alarming trend has stirred a wave of fear, yet it’s critical to step back, assess the situation and understand the complex factors contributing to this increase. Contrary to popular belief, the primary drivers aren’t rooted in shark behavior but in human activities and environmental changes.

. . .

The most significant factor contributing to the rising number of shark attacks is the surge in human population and coastal development. More people than ever are swimming, surfing, and diving in oceanic habitats, pushing the boundaries between human and shark territories.

. . .

Another compelling factor is the ongoing climate change. Warmer oceans are causing some sharks to change their migration patterns and expand their territories. As a result, sharks are showing up in regions where they were previously rare, leading to unexpected encounters.

Ocean acidification and rising sea temperatures also affect the distribution and abundance of prey, pushing sharks closer to the shorelines in search of food. This displacement leads to an increased probability of sharks crossing paths with humans.

And it's not just terrors emerging from the deep, but ghastly horrors, unnatural aquatic corpses littering the shoreline. The stench of rotting seaweed and dead fish is simply ruining beach holidays, in places like Texas.

Warming water holds less and less oxygen, as Todd Crowl, director of the Institute of Environment at Florida International University, explains, accidentally creating the world's saddest haiku.

"The oxygen went to zero. Everything died," Crowl said. "It was very sad."

A warming ocean may also be to blame for bird die-offs.

Massive die-offs of birds on the coast of Mexico, following similar phenomena in Peru and Chile, are "most probably" due to a warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean, authorities said Friday.

Mexico's agriculture and environment ministries "excluded the presence" of the AH5N1 virus responsible for bird flu and determined that the birds had starved to death.

"The most probable cause of this epidemiological event is the warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean, due to the effects of the El Nino climate phenomenon," they said in a joint statement.

According to the ministries, the warming of the surface of the Pacific is causing fish to dive deeper, preventing birds from hunting them.

And around the globe, "fish are shrinking as the climate warms." You can hardly blame them for being annoyed.

Fish are the most diverse group of vertebrates, ranging from tiny gobies and zebrafish to gigantic tunas and whale sharks. They provide vital sustenance to billions of people worldwide via fisheries and aquaculture, and are critical parts of aquatic ecosystems.

But fish around the world are getting smaller as their habitats get warmer. For example, important commercial fish species in the North Sea have declined in size by around 16% in the 40 years to 2008, while the water temperature increased by 1–2℃. This “shrinking” trend is forecasted to significantly exacerbate the impacts of global warming on marine ecosystems.

. . .

The most popular current theories suggest the cause is due to a mismatch between how much oxygen a fish needs (to sustain its body’s metabolism) and how much it can get (via its gills).

The oceans are warming so much they're changing color, as sparkling blue water gives way to algae-choked green.

Ocean ecosystems are finely balanced and any change in the phytoplankton will send ripples across the food chain. “All changes are causing an imbalance in the natural organization of ecosystems. Such imbalance will only get worse over time if our oceans keep heating,” [Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science] told CNN.

Worse, a lot of the algae clogging waterways is highly toxic, creating apocalyptic hellscapes that inspire only deeper denial.

Living in Florida these days is like being in a real-life version of the movie Don’t Look Up.

. . .

And we can feel it now in coastal temperatures that have elevated water temperatures of the ocean into the hot-tub-range mid-90s, and threaten to turn the treasured offshore coral reefs in the Florida Keys into bleached graveyards.

You’d think these warning signs would be creating some new urgency among state leaders, and a growing resolve to do more to protect us from this steadily approaching peril.

But that’s not what’s happening.

Pride cometh before a fall — and the occasional deadly implosion— as man continues to "modify the world around us," with vainglorious technological adventurism. Titans and Titanics clash, killing a handful here, a thousand and a half there, and then entire habitats.

Man has won some battles and declared mastery over nature with each pyrrhic victory. Nature will win the war and we'll have nothing but our own arrogance to blame.

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