Mind Control in Disguise: Cristina Coello on the Dangers of the Bright Path

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[00:00:29] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson. And I'm Anthony Nippy Ames.

[00:00:57] And this is A Little Bit Culty. Cults are commonplace now. From fandoms to fads, we're examining them all. We look at what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad. Every week, we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real culty stories told directly by the people who lived through them. Because we want you to learn a few things that we've had to learn the hard way. For example, if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty, you might be prime recruitment material. And who knows? You could already be in a cult.

[00:01:28] If you're not aware of your programming, you're probably being programmed. So keep listening to find out. We'll talk about all sorts of topics on the show, but be aware, this podcast might contain stories that could be alarming to some of our listeners. So please check our show notes for more detailed descriptions and take care of yourself. Subscribe to our Patreon for Thursday bonus episodes, Q&A, and all sorts of exclusive content. That's patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Welcome to season seven of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:02:07] Welcome back to A Little Bit Culty, everybody. We promised you some obscure cults this year and we are delivering. Today's cult is one you probably have not heard of, but it will also probably sound familiar. Gurus, meditation, a promised path to enlightenment, a path that's found through, surprise, surprise, expensive courses. We're talking about Bright Path, a.k.a. Ashaya's Ascension, a new agey group that promotes connecting with God through meditation. To them, though, meditation means abandoning your sense of self.

[00:02:37] They believe our thoughts, emotions, and bodies aren't reality because only God is real. They think who we are doesn't matter and that our personal identities must be broken down to find enlightenment or something. What could possibly go wrong, right? The Ashayas also believe that Jesus himself learned these teachings from immortal monks in the Himalayas. Apparently, he tried to pass them on to humanity without success, and now it's the Ashaya's job to enlighten the masses.

[00:03:05] The current guru calls himself Maharishi Krishnanandahaya. I'm going to do this one. Okay, okay. I got this one. The current guru calls himself Maharishi Krishnanandahaya. That's good. Okay. Thank you. I got it. He hasn't made the headlines, but his leadership methods are textbook culty. Our guest today spent years in Krishnanandah's inner circle, almost as long as I spent in Exxium, actually. Her name's Christina Coelho, and she's here to tell you how quiet under-the-radar cults can be just as harmful as the famous ones.

[00:03:33] Vanilla cults, she calls them. I don't mind vanilla, but... You get the idea. Yeah. We'll get into the subtle mind control, the slow loss of identity, and how painful it can be to realize the path you're on doesn't lead to enlightenment. It's a good one, and one we've been meaning to do for a while. So let's welcome Christina to the show.

[00:04:08] Christina, welcome to A Little Bit Culty. Hi. Thank you, Sarah. So good to finally see your face. How long have you been out for? How long have you been free? End of 2021, so three years. Okay. Great. Yeah. That's still fresh. It's still fresh. Yeah. But you're well enough to be speaking out, and that's great. Let's go right back to the beginning. Ashaya's ascension. What can you tell us about it? What do they believe? How did you get involved? What did you sign up for? Tell us about you then.

[00:04:39] Okay. Well, I signed up for this meditation techniques that are supposed to be super effective, because you can also practice them with your eyes open. And the reason why it pulled me in, I actually saw it in a flyer. A lot of people heard it word of mouth, but for me, it was in a flyer. I was in Mexico. I was around 21 years old, and I was living in Monterrey, Mexico. And I went to this center, this Ramtha center I used to attend to, talking about escaping a different cult.

[00:05:07] But I love this whole Ramtha thing. I don't know if you heard about it. Oh, yeah. Wait, wait. You know that Mark Vicente was in Ramtha, right? Well, I just heard it recently. I just heard it in one of his podcasts recently. So I never got too deep into it, but I went to a center, and I would practice, you know, the manifestation and all these things and reading these books. And for some reason, it all made sense to me to be superhuman or whatever.

[00:05:33] And in this center, I saw this poster, and it said, we're the Shia monks, we're modern monks, and we live normal lives. But our mission is to heal humanity through healing ourselves. And for me, that made sense. Like, for me, I was like, that's it. That's what I'm looking for. I want to heal humanity through healing myself. Like, that's wonderful. And so that's how I started. They were on my radar.

[00:05:59] And four years later, I took their meditation course called First Sphere Course, where you meet the monks, and they teach you to meditate, and you start practicing. And tell us a little bit about the practice. Like, what are they teaching you to do? They give you sentences. So it's really based on TM. I think the guy that made the bright path, the original guy, he's passed now. He was a TM student.

[00:06:23] And so a lot of the practice is similar to TM, whereas you get sentences that are like super secret, like a mantra. But they're not. I think in TM, you get a personalized one, and these ones are standard. So the first one is praise universe for my life or praise God for my life and whatever is the force of good for you. And so you have praise, gratitude, love, and compassion. And ultimately, there's like 100 techniques. But you start with four.

[00:06:53] And basically, you close your eyes, and you think this technique, and then you wait to see what happens. And you also do it with your eyes open so you don't have to think during the day. That's the catch. Explain that. Why don't you have to think during the day? What does that mean? Well, it means if you don't think, you're present. Right? Like that's the premise. It's like if you're off in your thoughts, you're not present. You're missing out of the present moment.

[00:07:19] So if you're in the first stages, they explain it differently, as I presume other cults do too. And if you're more in the already joining in, already going deep, already attending the long-term retreats, it's explained in a different way. Right? But so basically, when you learn, it's like you don't have to be overthinking. Every time the mind is kind of, you know, you're running with it with all these horrible scenarios. You just use your ascension attitude, which is what the meditation techniques are called, and you come back to the present moment.

[00:07:48] And so that's in the meditation world, that was the catch, that you can also do it with your eyes open. Hmm. So it was like more of just a daily, like full-time practice. Yes. That's exactly what it becomes. Yeah. So when you joined, you were 29. You'd heard about it, but it took you a few years to actually take a program. I heard about it when I was 21. I learned these techniques, the first sphere. It's called this weekend course when I was 25.

[00:08:15] And I went and did a six-month retreat when I was 29. Okay. So you used that marker as when you joined. Yes. When I kind of became a proper cult member, yes. Right. So between 25 and 29, you were just like using the tools in your life and you weren't immersed in the program. And yeah, exactly. So I went, I moved to Spain back then to study acting and I really loved the practice. It made me feel super, super good.

[00:08:43] You know, it gave me a lot of joy and it was a good like stress management technique. So I really, really, for some reason I was looking for enlightenment and spiritual freedom and everything they portrayed to me was that. You know, every time you spoke to one of them, one of them, they would feel so loving and so happy and so whatever I aspired to be. So when I moved to Barcelona, there was nobody practicing the technique there.

[00:09:10] So I started creating courses and bringing teachers in from England, which was the closest teachers back then to, for other people to learn so I could have a community to meditate with. So I was very involved, but I had my own life and I still had my, my direction, my passions. And it was more like a sidekick, like a, you know, like a side dish. Did you feel like that was helping you with your goals? I did. I, to be honest, I did. I did it.

[00:09:36] I felt it was helping me to be more relaxed and more present. And, and I remember like before a play, you know, I, when I, we was, we were in acting school and you know how, you know, you guys know how everybody gets, everybody's like super stressed and high energy and drama starts kicking in. And everybody would freaking the fuck out and I would just sit in the back and meditate for five minutes and I would feel like I got it under, under control and that I could direct that energy in a way. So, so it did help me a lot.

[00:10:05] That's why I, I used it, you know, and that's why I wanted more people around me to do that. And were you successful in building a community? I was. Yes, I was. Unfortunately, I was. I was really dedicated. I was really committed. And I maybe organized like five courses. There was no teachers in Spain back then. And this is before the, the Bright Path or the Shias moved to Spain. They used to be in Mexico before that. So I was successful.

[00:10:32] And, but that's how I also met some of, one of my dearest friends was, she came to teach a course. We're both out now and we're still very good friends. Great. But that's kind of what kept me going, right? Meeting this, this, these people that were young like me, but they, they lived an alternative life. And they seem to have overcome suffering, which is what ultimately I think I was looking for. I get that.

[00:11:00] And just so our, our listeners can have a picture, when you say they moved from Mexico, was there a center? How many monks are we talking about here? Is there a few dozen, hundreds, thousands? Well, the first center of the modern time of the Bright Path, when it became the Bright Path, I think was in Salmon Arm in, in Canada. And then they moved, they started splitting between Salmon Arm and somewhere in Mexico, near, near Mexico City in a place called Taxco.

[00:11:29] And so, so somebody had a whole hacienda there and they had, they ran retreats there. I was never part of this. It's just what I know. I just went there for a weekend. And then eventually the, the Isshayas moved to Spain. When you say the Isshayas though, like how many people? It depends because the center, in the modern time of the, of the Bright Path, the monks could live in their homes, in their houses. Right?

[00:11:55] So the center is more what attracted the students to come for six months and then they would leave. And so, so teachers around, when I was a teacher. Sorry, are teachers monks? Okay. So all teachers are monks? Sorry. Yes. All teachers are monks. You have to earn being a monk? Well, you teach courses and you make money from those courses and you have to, obviously you have to tithe to the teacher because, you know, whatever. He deserves it apparently.

[00:12:25] So you had to give like. What's the percentage? 10%. 10%. Okay. But a lot of the countries had centers and you had to give some money. It depended on the country, right? But sometimes you had to give some admin fee or not. Just curious, like what would a six month course cost? When I was there, it cost $10,000. Wow. Yeah. Kind of a deal though. Or euros. Compared to NXIVM. Not euros. Oh, 10,000 euros? Well, still. How much?

[00:12:55] I don't know how much it was next to him, but yeah, it was 10,000. Well, the five day was like $2,400 or $2160 with a discount. Close to two grand a month. Yeah. It was like two grand for five days. No, this was less. Yeah. It was a deal. I'm telling you. We should have done this now. Yes, you should have. I could have been a monk. Damn it. You could have been a modern monk. How did they decide monk is the term? Like, it feels like it's taking, I don't know, the word misappropriating monks. It's definitely misappropriating monks.

[00:13:25] Don't you think? Or what do you think now? Well, of course, that's what I think now. You know, like some of us, sometimes, you know, some of us, once we left, we used to still write like ex-monk. But at some point I'm like, were we even monks? Like, I don't think we were. I mean, we were in our hearts, right? We took vows, you know? I took vows. I wore white. We sang pujas every day when you were in the main retreat.

[00:13:50] So I think this teaching, this guy that came up with this teaching was like a mix between TM and Vedic teachings. And also this little book from a woman called Ruby Nelson, I want to think, that it's called The Door to Everything. And she talks about praise, gratitude, and love. It's a like tiny little book. Of course, I found this out once I left, not before, right? So the guy who started it like stole from three main sources, did a little like omelet.

[00:14:20] Yes. A little mixed bag. And so he created this and he wrote this. There was a whole mysticism around it, right? Like you never knew if the guy went to the Himalayas or just kind of cognized and channeled that techniques. And he wrote a lot of fiction books, but a lot of people within the cult thought that these stories were real about other planets, about the Shias where these old monks, where Jesus went and learned.

[00:14:47] And so what we learned was that this, oh God, it sounds like such a nut when I say it out loud. But it's so funny that for me, I ever believed those things, right? Like this was the teaching that Jesus followed. And he kept quiet until the world was ready to receive it. And, and yeah, so apparently there was many, many versions, right? Like one version was this, the dude that lived in, in the Island of Patmos. Is it John?

[00:15:16] The one that wrote Revelations. I don't know. I'm not very like Bible savvy. So, so yeah, that he's the one that kept them quiet and like they were passing them down. Right. So we thought we were this lineage. You talk about the lineage all the time. And that's why when, when you are gone, you can't teach because you've broken your relationship with this lineage. Right. Of enlightened teachers. So you're either very special and part of the lineage, the elite lineage of the secret

[00:15:45] teachings of Jesus, or you're an ex-member and you are broken the lineage, but you're not shunned because we still love you and have lots of grace and love and blah, blah, blah, because that's what we teach, but not really. But we will never speak to you again. Yes. But we still love you. We still love you and we wish you the best, but you've lost the plot. So yeah. Bye. And we'll get to that. We'll get to the leaving later.

[00:16:13] So tell me like a day in the life of Cristina in Spain, when you were building the community, you were committed. Well, when did you go from bringing in teachers to being like taking a vow? How did that happen? Well, so when I decided to join in the six month course, that's when you take on a teacher. That's when you take vows. Obviously, when I went in, I didn't know that you took vows. I didn't know a lot of things.

[00:16:38] And the way they do this is that when you are training as a teacher, they tell you to not break the innocence of the new people. Right. So, so, so considerate. Yes. So you don't want to ruin, you don't want to ruin the end of the movie for the new people. Exactly. You want to let them experience it themselves. Right. Exactly. So you don't want to ruin their innocence. So I arrived there and I didn't really know much. I didn't know you had to take on a teacher. I knew there was a guy. I, you know, I knew him.

[00:17:05] I've met him once and he was really interested in me because I was such a powerhouse in Spain bringing people. So, so he gave me a lot of attention that in that meeting, he called me and he was like, I know you're, I was called a sponsor. So it would be a sponsor if you organize courses for teachers to come and teach. Okay. Just curious, did you get paid? Oh yeah. Okay. So you did that for free. Wow. You did that for free. You brought in people and who was making the money? The teachers.

[00:17:33] The teachers would take the money and it depends what teachers it were. They would have to pay the center, which in some countries they would take up like almost 40% at some point. And then they would tithe the teacher. But I don't know that. Right. I mean, at that point in time. So how big is it? How many centers are there? How is it? Is it international? Is it? It is international. The strongest point when I was in it, we had 600 teachers around the world.

[00:18:03] Strongest was Mexico and the UK. Okay. But I think now they're like 250, which is maybe 300 tops because of the exodus that happened when we left. So a student was somebody that had started their mastery of self course, which is this retreat, but hadn't finished. So when, if you've taken on a teacher, if you may take your first set of vows, then you're considered a student, but you can't teach.

[00:18:31] It's very tiered, like, and it changed every two years. So it's hard to give you a full picture because it was part of the, this never ending moving landscape that once you were a teacher, then you couldn't, then you could teach, then you couldn't. And, you know, and people that would practice the techniques. At some point we had 10,000 people in the database, but honestly, I don't think even

[00:19:00] 60% of them practice. It's just the people that joined the course. Do you think the confusion and the changing of the rules and all that was intentional? I come to believe that it was. I didn't think for many, many years, but at the end I was like, this is intentional. I agree. No, it's, it's always, it's intentional. It's, it's like a mind fuckery, constant mind fuckery. And we haven't mentioned his name yet, but is this from the leader, Krishnananda? Am I saying that right?

[00:19:29] Oh my God, you're very good at this. Oh, yes. I'm my first rodeo. Definitely not. You would have been a great monk, Sarah. Yeah. Yes. That's from the leader, Krishnananda, which I like to refer to as Bill. Oh yeah. Bill. I'm telling you, all of these fucking leaders have these names. That are like Steve, Keith, Bill, Bob. Like, come on. I'm telling you, all our comments on social media are going to be from Keith, Bill, Bob.

[00:19:58] I'm sorry, Keith, Bill, and Bob listeners. They're coming for you. I'm sorry. They're coming for you. I'm sorry. You have a name that is ripe for. It's already blowing up. Cult abuse. Okay. Sorry. So Bill. Not a lot of nippies. A.k.a. Krishnananda. Okay. Yes. Well, Maharishi. Maharishi, sorry. Krishnananda. But aren't there also like many other cults with Maharishis and Krishnanandas? Yeah. Because like all the Indian tradition, right? Right.

[00:20:26] So we all took in Sanskrit names. So my name was changed. My name was Maharani. Maharani. Yeah. People call you Maha? Maharani. Yes. Rani. Yeah. Maha. Maha. Yeah. Or Maharani. Maharani. They'd be like, no, her name is Maharani. And sometimes they would call you Maha, right? So.

[00:20:53] I got in trouble for abbreviating the NXIVM member. I got in trouble for changing goals and values lab to GVL because it was so much easier. Remember? They're like, you don't change the structure of what Keith created. Exactly. You don't. It's a sin. It's a sin. It's a vibrational sin. Okay. So anyway, I'm a Maharishi and it's a great teacher, right? Yeah. It's a teacher of teachers or it's a great teacher, somebody that has helped somebody

[00:21:19] else to send the veil of ignorance or Maya as it's called, which is the illusion. We just did one about the Hare Krishnas. Okay. So that will drop in a week or two, but we'll have already dropped by the time people hear this. So they'll be, they'll be ready for this. They'll be ready for the Maya and the Krishnananda. Aashnas and Rajnas. Yes. Aashnas and Rajnas and Vedas. And so, yeah, we all had Sanskrit names. And so your last name, so to speak, would be Ishaya, right? So my name was Maharani Ishaya.

[00:21:50] And I completely personally changed my identity. All my social media was there. Like that's how I introduced myself. Even some of my family members started calling me Maharani because I was like, that's my vibration, right? Like I want to embody that. Don't be embarrassed. It's okay. No. Thank you. We could all just laugh. We just laugh at our former cult selves. Yeah. I know. One day she'll figure it out.

[00:22:16] Give us like a day in the life of Maharani Shaya when things were good. What was your life like? Okay. So when things were good or great, right? So I did the six month retreat and then I left to, I moved back to Mexico and I lived in Montreal in Mexico for a while. But since I was doing my course, my six month course, I started translating. So we would do live translation in all the meetings and I was very good at my job.

[00:22:42] So they started hiring me to go and do it on the retreats. And because I had a life in Mexico, I couldn't just take off and go for six months. So I would go a month here, a month there, and I would do that. Eventually I met my now husband. He was also a teacher. So we moved to Spain and we had a house there in the, it's a little town in the mountains in Spain. And there was a retreat center there that the Shias rented.

[00:23:08] But some of the teachers, we used to live in our own house, but you would walk to the retreat. So a day for me was get up early. If I was working on the retreat, I'm not an early morning person, make some coffee and walk down and translate a meeting. The meeting would be an hour and a half to two hours. And then I would get back home, hang out with my friends, see people because we always had teachers visiting.

[00:23:35] So that was something that I really, really liked that I had friends from all over the world. There was always fresh people coming in and it was always exciting. So you laugh, you have a great time. Then you go for lunch, then you meditate for an hour and a half or two. And then I would go and do another meeting after dinner. And then you go back to your friends and hang out and laugh. That was, that was a day. That was a good day. That was a good day. That was, that was when it was a good day. When was the first red flag in one of those good days?

[00:24:04] The first, most of the red flags, I, in doing the training, during the programming process, you're taught that everything is your fault, right? It's your resistance. It's your mind making a problem. It's your ego making a problem. And so every time a conflict would come up for me, I would immediately try to do it about me. You know, what am I not seeing? Where am I not free? Right. What does this mean about me that I'm feeling this way? Built in gaslighting.

[00:24:34] Exactly. Exactly. So like self gaslighting is like perfect antidote. They don't even have to do it. They don't have to gaslight you. You just do it for yourself. And so it would be, but for me, the, one of the first things was the amount of hours that we worked and we weren't getting paid for it. And when I would fight for it, it took me a few years to get paid because it was about service. Right. And it was, you're so lucky you get to spend free time there.

[00:25:04] Seva. And so it was about service. Right. And so I would sometimes translate seven hours a day and I, I would snap. And I remember one of the times talking to one of the teachers, like losing and going, this is not right. This is not right. And the fact that I feel so afraid to speak up and to ask for why won, like the first time I went there, I even paid for my own plane ticket, you know? So, so I was paying to go and then work. So basically that's how they rolled.

[00:25:34] And unless you started asking for it, then eventually you would start getting paid. But there was a lot of people that never did. And, and so the red flag for me there was the fact that I was so scared to speak up and that I was told that I wasn't a team player, which was one of the biggest manipulations that I, I went, you know, from the get go, I was like, you're not a team player. You know, you do not team player.

[00:26:02] Nobody would, if you were a general Maharani in war, nobody would want to be with you because you're not a team player. And so eventually I was like, please, please teacher, teach me, teach me how to be a team player. And so I shut up. Does translate that to you're not being obedient enough? Yes. You're asking questions. You're asking questions. You're having issues. You have your own mind. Yeah. I'm sure that you aren't the only one and I'm sure that the morale, I mean, everything

[00:26:30] you're saying is stuff that Sarah and I can relate to because the morale of the people who aren't getting paid for work ends up being really, really low. And that's not a sustainable model. No. I mean. There was a lot of turnover. There was a lot of people that would come for six months and leave. And because I wanted to feel useful, but also I guess I wanted to feel special. Right. I wanted to be on top. I wanted like to be part of the team. So I would do everything they asked me for.

[00:26:57] And I don't think there was a lot of people that stayed and complained. So either they would leave because the conditions weren't good. Right. Or they were like most of the people that worked in these retreats were very obedient, very starstruck, very like, oh, the teacher knows what he's doing all the time. So wanting to be led. And then there's also this level of, and this is not a judgment because I've just projectively in my own experience is like, I want it also to be accepted.

[00:27:24] So like when someone say you're not a team player, you're like, no, no, no, I am a team. You want to prove them wrong. Right. And also be part of the team. Of course, after years of therapy and whatever, like I've come to understand many things and my motivations for doing certain things, but I wanted to belong. And for me in that moment, I was like, this is like my mission. This is my purpose. And I want to make it worthwhile. Yes. And also you'd moved and you'd invested a lot. So there's probably a lot of buy-in. Yes.

[00:27:54] Right. Got to get your money's worth. Yes. Got to get your time. You got to get the payback off what you've put in. Yes. I'm guessing. Tell us about Krishnananda. We're teasing the name, but let's let's. Yeah, Bill. So yeah. Billy. Yeah. What was Bill like? What was his vibe? Billy was, well, when you first met him, but when I first met him, I thought he was a really cool guy. He was really tall. He was like, he was old, older, way older than me. He must be 75 now. Yeah. I listened to the recording you sent.

[00:28:24] He sounded, his voice sounded old. Yes, he is. He's a white dude? He's a white dude somewhere around Philadelphia or somewhere like that. Billy. Billy from Philly. Billy from Philly. Exactly. And what I liked about him personally as a spiritual teacher was that he rode motorcycles. He drank, he smoked. He was like the cool guy. Obviously people didn't know he smoked and drank, right? He had like two different personalities, the inner circle and the outer circle one.

[00:28:54] But I, he was really charming, really smart. So it's one of those people that could, I like now that I know narcissism, I understand much more, right? But in back then it was one of those people you could sit and banter, but also he will always win the argument. Like you don't even know how it happened and you end up like apologizing, you know, even though you came with a problem yourself. So that's how he is. He's got a business background.

[00:29:22] And of course he would tell us these grandiose stories about his background. You know, everything he did was fantastic and magical. And he was like, he worked for President Reagan and he did this and billionaire companies. Now I really don't know how much he like made these stories bigger because I did see throughout my time how a certain story happened. And every time he told it, it became bigger and better and more embellished.

[00:29:50] And he was the hero of the story, even if he didn't participate in the original version. Right. So this is kind of the things that we went, I went, oh my God, that's narcissism. I didn't know. You know, I had no idea. I'll tell you a big red flag for me now is when I see a really robust bio of all these achievements.

[00:30:16] Like, particularly if it's someone younger and like, and even like, there's a documentary I watched when we was in quarantine, ironically, about Bill Gates and everyone around Bill Gates was touting how great he is. And I remember that's how people talked about Keith. Nobody's challenging this narrative and people present these bios and a lot of people just accept them. They accept the persona at face value. And to me, I've stopped doing that. Yeah. I think that's pretty smart because yeah, it was like everybody, same.

[00:30:46] Everybody around him was like, he's so great. He's done so many things, you know, and he would tell you stories about he was in Vietnam and he got shot in the face, but he didn't die. And, you know, and everybody was entertained. He's a great storyteller. He knew how to keep an audience. Yeah. That checks, that tracks with all these guys. Yeah. So he had some charisma, some riz, as the kids say. Yeah, he had some riz.

[00:31:12] Obviously he liked to surround himself with either beautiful people or rich people, because I never knew why some people he would take such care for, you know, and he would invite them to his house and he would give them the time of day. And some people, no matter how much they try, they would get five minutes with him. And obviously when you're, well, no, obviously when you're in these retreats and when you're getting programmed, you learn, we learned that you create the teacher.

[00:31:41] You create the version of the teacher that you need to wake up. So if the teacher is an asshole, you created him and he's showing you something about you that you need to look at. And then if the teacher is great, you created him as well. But then when I look at it, like objectively, I'm like, well, he either like pretty girls, because most of the girls around him were pretty or people with money, pretty much.

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[00:35:58] So he took the people that he wanted to be around, either for financial or sexual. Are we getting to that? Is there a sexual underpinning to all this that we're going to... There is a sexual underpinning to all this that we're going to discuss. But I think he just liked being around. It made him look better. You know what I mean? Like if he was around...

[00:36:21] Even the people he deemed or considered awake or enlightened, because at some point, you know, some people would be considered free. And then everybody would be like, oh my God, this person is free. So they have a different status, right? Even though you're told they don't, but they do. Most of them are pretty or good looking. So I think he was like a narcissist thing, right? Like they want to just be surrounded with... It's bizarre. It's bizarre.

[00:36:51] A bizarre and yet also textbook. I know. Yeah. It's so shocking. It was so shocking to me when I started reading about narcissism and I was like, holy fuck, this is like... I thought we were so special, you know? And same about cults, like when we were watching The Vow or where we were watching Holy Hell and all that. And I'm like, there's nothing about us that is unique. Yeah. You know? That's the craziest thing.

[00:37:19] The only difference is that our cult is more mediocre because nobody knows us. That's the only difference, you know? But other than that, it's the same. Well, but just before the cult recognition, what were some of the other red flags that propelled you to leave? Wearing white. Oh yeah. So like, so the control ramped up. You started wearing white. Did you have to shave your head? No. No, I didn't have to shave my head. You weren't...

[00:37:48] Like the vows are very early on, right? Once you join, you get... You're taking a teacher. You ask... You ask the teacher to be your teacher. And then at some point you take your vows and you go through a three-day silence and fasting. And then you wear white. Most monks start in white because the monks either wear white, red, or black. So it depends on the path you're on. And which is another mindfucker, because everybody wanted black vows and it's supposed to not be special, but also it was. And you wouldn't understand why he would give to some and not to others.

[00:38:18] Like nothing made sense. And everything he was always excused by, I'm not responsible for what I say or do. I'm just channeling, you know... Oh my God. ...the divinity, right? Right. So... So he had a direct line to the divine. Well, he was the embodiment of the divine, but also apparently everybody else that... So if you achieved enlightenment or... Well, you don't achieve it because you don't exist. So every time I say this, there's always a contradiction, right?

[00:38:45] Which is part of why nobody ever gets enlightened and they still think they can and they will. But if you're out of the way, if your ego is not in play, it's God acting through you or the divine acting through you. But because he's permanently in that space, he's always channeling the divine, right? Even when he's riding motorcycles and drinking? Of course. Absolutely. He's always, always. Did anyone push back on that? Some people... I mean, the thing is a lot... And that's what one of the things, right?

[00:39:15] A lot of people didn't know that side of him. A lot of people didn't know he drank as much as he used to. A lot of people didn't know he smoked as much as he used to. We knew because we were in like dinner circle. But a lot of people, of the teachers even out there, they didn't know. They knew he rode motorcycles, but that was just kind of like... He always bragged that up about how cool it is that we're the coolest monks in the world, you know, because we ride motorcycles.

[00:39:44] So I forgot what I was... Where we were going with. Well, I was asking people to push back on. I know in your intake form, you wrote a lot of... You sort of wrote out a lot of the inconsistencies of the spiritual path and how hard it was to stay on it because it was so hypocritical. I almost even want to read it. Tell us some of the other tenets and then the sort of like part that made it like, what does that even mean? Well, I think a lot of the inconsistencies was that, right? Like you gotta be out of the way.

[00:40:14] You gotta let God come to you. You gotta get life come to you. But you gotta be proactive and you gotta go out teaching. And I don't want hippie teachers. I don't want teachers that only teach courses. But if you started doing anything else and if it was mildly like competitive with a meditation technique, then you were off. You were not... That wasn't coming from God. That was coming from your head. So because a lot of teachers naturally were healers, coaches, people that do this kind

[00:40:43] of work, right? Like that's their line. But it was always like they were wrong. And if you couldn't get it, I couldn't explain it to you. You know, like that was his ultimate... Like when you were arguing with him going, why is it wrong that I have a coaching business? Honestly, if you can't understand that, I can't explain it to you. Like this is, you know, basically you're stupid. This is beyond. There was a lot of things with emotions. So I'm not telling you not to feel. I never say you don't have to feel.

[00:41:13] But unless you're experiencing peace, joy, or love, you're really knowing the presence of God. So I was always aiming for not having an emotion. I was always aiming for being in joy or love. But when you were like super sad and you were having a problem, he would say, I never tell you not to feel. Who told you that? Where did you get that from? But at the same time, he would say, I don't care how I feel. None of the big teachers you admire care how they feel.

[00:41:42] So you'd really never knew. And at the same time, the irony is that it was always the word simple. It's like he's make it so simple. Everything is so simple in the teaching. You only need to stay here now. And so I don't know if those were the inconsistencies you're talking about, Sarah, but that's what it was for me. It's like, there's things you got to let go of. You got to let surrender. You know?

[00:42:10] But sometimes if it's there in your mind over and over and over again, it's because you need to speak it up. But sometimes it's really not because of that. It's you're abiding on the thought and you're making something more important than God. Sounds like there's always going to be a problem no matter what. Right. When you go to solve the problem, there's no real consistent measurement of the problem being solved. So there's a lot of arbitrary, I don't want to call it word salad, but yeah, a lot of arbitrary

[00:42:37] standards that you're never meeting and they're always changing. So it creates a chaos. Exactly. That's very common. That's very well described. That's a feature. But nobody saw it, right? We didn't see it. We just thought now we're doing this because he's so present. He's so fluid. And the hook, one of the biggest hooks was like it becomes really into your head that you need a teacher because your mind is so tricky.

[00:43:04] And if you're left to your own devices, your mind is going to convince you to leave and you're going to miss out on the opportunity to wake up in this lifetime. That's a pretty fucking big thing to miss out on. And so from that moment forward, every time you have a thought, you doubt about it. You never trust your thoughts. You can't. And if you have issues, you're meant to go and talk to your other fellow teachers, which are called your clearest mirrors.

[00:43:34] So it's one of the contradictions is that, right? Like on one hand, he was saying everybody else is God. We are no more important or special than your neighbor or your parents that are not involved in this. But at the same time, if you really want clear advice, talk to your clearest mirrors. You know, they're actually not conscious. Love them. So it's like this altruistic narcissism, right? Love them. You're not more special, but you are because you bring hope.

[00:44:02] And everywhere you're standing, people are remembering their divinity just because of your presence. But you'll never get to a point where you can be left to your own devices because you'll forget. Which for me is like, what the fuck? So you'll never actually going to wake up. Because if I wake up from this illusion of the mind, this Maya, and I go do my own thing, I'll forget again.

[00:44:29] So there's always a danger that you're going to fall asleep again. So how did you wake up? Well, fortunately for me, I got kicked out of the cult. I don't know. There's a lot of people that can say that, to be honest. I gotta be honest. I didn't leave. He kicked me out. I think I would have left eventually because there was a point where there was a snowball happening. I don't know if you guys had the same experience where it couldn't be stopped.

[00:44:57] Like no matter what we did, it's like this bigger force came and shit started happening. And there was a whirlwind of a week or two of chaos and it was inevitable. I couldn't stop it. I tried. I did not want to leave. So what happened was, I think COVID came to bless us all with its presence because there was no retreats. He had no audience. There was no courses.

[00:45:25] And one of the actual red flags for me that actually rang as a red flag in the moment was the fact that when lockdowns began, I thought this is our moment. This is when we teach people these techniques. You know, like people are suffering in their homes with their minds going crazy. What the fuck? This is our moment. I was so excited. And he sent the instruction that none of us were allowed to teach. Nobody was allowed to teach a technique.

[00:45:53] And when I confronted him, he said, do you think Jesus, do you think Jesus would have taught his tradition through the internet? We cannot risk it. Go out there. This is too special. I think Jesus would have. I think Jesus would have too. He would have used the internet. He would have said, fuck it. I don't know. I'll do it for free. Absolutely. Absolutely. But he didn't want to risk the teachers teaching online because then, you know, he thinks he's bigger than the internet, right? He thinks everything, he'll control everybody.

[00:46:23] It's harder to control. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. Yes. And so honestly, for me, that was a red flag because I was so disappointed and I thought, what the fuck? People are suffering. And people would call me, right? Like my cousin or whatever saying, hey, my mind's going crazy. Can you help me? And I had to say no. And I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, like if without teaching this technique, I have nothing to help this person experience some peace.

[00:46:52] So I'm a fraud. And I don't even have my own agency to teach these techniques that I trained for, I paid for, and they shouldn't be hidden. Because in that moment, I thought they were so special, right? Like, and nobody was allowed to do any events for money except him. He did. He had his events and all of us had to pay, but we weren't. But that was online? Online. Yeah. Yes.

[00:47:22] And so for me, that was the biggest red flag. So anyway, we were all in different parts of the country. Like I was in Mexico. He was in United States. His roommate would text me every day going, he's a diva. What the hell's going on? He's entitled. He doesn't want to cook. He treats us like shit. And so, and then he, you would see him online and he would be super happy. And like, they're supposed to be fearless, right? These people are supposed to have no fear because there's no past and no future. So what are you afraid of? Right?

[00:47:52] So we eventually all went back to Spain at different stages where we, our houses were. And really we had nothing to do. And then for me, that started highlighting everything because we had no distraction. We had no retreat to run. Nobody was busy. And I started seeing how controlled we were. I started seeing how the people that live with him were so scared of him. Like, I got to go. I got to cook him lunch. Oh my God.

[00:48:19] You know, a 50 year old woman couldn't stay out after 9.30 because her husband who were roommates with him, with Bill, would start calling her going, you know how he gets, you better get home now. And, and, and for me, all these things, I was like, this isn't right. And he started shaming us more. He started shaming everybody around because he had nothing to do. Right? He was all on shaming you like online, like on videos? In person.

[00:48:50] In person because some of us eventually managed to go back to Spain. And so it was a bit further down the road in the pandemic where you could all see each other, which was one of the other things I was so shocked at because we would be outside and he would wear a face mask, a mask and like one of those like. Visors. A visor. And he would, and I'd be like, aren't you supposed to be this like super not scared of anything?

[00:49:19] And regardless of where you stand with everything that happened, you know, he started doing a lot of coercive control for you to take his measurements. So if you didn't want to get vaccinated, like my, that was my choice. He then fired me from the team because he couldn't have people risk somebody else. And so it was this, you can do whatever you want, but if you're not vaccinated, you can't come to see me.

[00:49:46] And so for me, that was the line. Cause I thought this is my body. I don't have to ask you permission or what you think. Cause that's one of the things with the teacher. You ask him if things serve you, you know, does it serve me to marry this guy? Does it serve me to take this job? But I was like, this is my body. You have no agency. So I think that's when I started rebelling again. And I had a lot of anxiety increasing forever.

[00:50:16] I had panic. I couldn't leave my house without having a panic attack. So I started looking for therapy and thank God I found a very good therapist. And I think that helped me massively to start opening my eyes to what was going on. So it was like, like, that's when I started really seeing the red flags. That's when I would go to the meetings cause we would have meetings cause we run all these things that everybody thinks are so important. And then, and it was always changing these teams.

[00:50:46] And, and one time, one time I did this organizational chart cause it was always such a mess. You never knew who to talk to. Oh, org chart. We had an org chart. A what? We call it the org chart, organizational chart. Yeah. Yes. Well, I did one cause I was like, this is a mess. And he was like, oh, of course do it, sweetie. I'm really looking forward to see what you come up with. And when I did this chart, every single person of the teams went through him.

[00:51:14] Everyone, single one of us, he was the center and you all communicated with him. And then he was supposed to tell somebody else. And when I presented that to him, I thought, Hey, it's an easier way of doing it. You don't have to be involved in everything. Cause he was always complaining about how he, like nobody can do anything without him. Of course, later I realized that's how he wanted it. Right. He wanted to have his eyes on the pies, like his fingers on every pie and to freaking triangulate

[00:51:44] everything. So this is all happening at the same time. I'm getting therapy. I'm starting to get better with my anxiety. Like this technique helped me. Like after the first session, I had no panic attacks anymore. And so I knew I was onto something good for my nervous system. But maybe in the third, fourth session, my therapist was inquiring. He was, she was trying to find out if one of my parents was a narcissist because I had all the symptoms of narcissistic abuse.

[00:52:10] It wasn't until later that I realized or realized that the narcissistic abuse was coming from my teacher, not from my parents. Wow. So he kicked me of this cult because, well, first he fired me from my job. He said, you know, you think what you do is so important, but it's not. And I don't want you to do anything else except translation, which is what I hated. I hated translated for the last years. And he knew that. Right. So he's like, I just want you to translate. I said, well, let me think about it.

[00:52:40] But like the way he fired me and he got two of his flying monkeys to tell me horrible things about me and my character. I met, I had a meltdown and I had an emergency therapy session. And through, in this therapy session, I was telling the girl, I was telling the therapist because we were talking about forgiveness. Um, but not the technique is not about forgiving, but it's like what things you would have to forgive him. And I, I told her what had happened in two occasions when he was drunk and how he got like

[00:53:09] handsy with me and he tried to kiss me. And it was like these things that happened years before I'm telling this right for the first time. And my therapist said, this is called sexual harassment. And when I heard that, I, it's like when the mirror broke, you know, that moment. Where everything starts cracking inside and your, your, your whole system just comes down crumbling. And I was like, what the fuck? Like, it's true.

[00:53:39] Like this guy sexually harassed me and I kept it quiet to protect. I wanted to protect my fiance from his relationship with his teacher. I didn't want to taint it. I didn't want to taint anybody else's experience. So only my best friend knew. And one of my friends that she was with me the first time he harassed me and we had to hide. So he would go upstairs to his hotel room.

[00:54:05] And then she confessed to me that he had done the same to her a few times and we decide to confront him. And this is the part of the fucking programming that happens. You guys, it's like, we decide to confront him. Once we decide that our, our tension in our bodies goes. And so we go, oh, it's gone now. We let it go. There's no point of bringing it back up. Sorry. Just to clarify it. Were you confronted him at the time or you confronted him after the therapy session?

[00:54:33] I didn't confront him ever. Oh. When it happened. So a quick timeline, like it happened maybe four years before I left. Right. Once and then three years. So two times he harassed me and I never told anybody. Me and my friend who were there decided to confront him back then, four years ago, four years before. Once we made the decision of telling him, we feel peace.

[00:55:00] And we as monks, we take it as it's gone now. We don't have to pick this up again. Right. We don't want to embarrass him. He might not remember. He's really drunk. So you're protecting your fiance, protecting the image of the organization, protecting yourself from having to actually confront him because you don't need to anymore because you feel fine about it. Exactly. I feel fine and he probably didn't mean it.

[00:55:26] And obviously now I understand that what it would have meant for me to confront him, it means everything I've stand for needs to be evaluated. Right. Everything that I believe about him and about this teaching needs to be evaluated. And I was not ready to do that. Yeah. So you minimize the abuse. I minimize the abuse. I justified it. I let it go. Nobody ever knew except my best friend who's not my best friend anymore because she's still

[00:55:54] in the cult and she stopped talking to me, which, yeah, it's horrible. But, you know, he won that battle. So fast forward, I face it finally, four years later, I face it with my therapist and she makes it, she's the one that kind of gives me the delay. Like, this is not a little thing. This is called sexual harassment. Right. And so as luck has it, my fiance back then, who's now my husband, was walking behind, was walking to the bathroom.

[00:56:22] So he heard his name because I said, I never told Sandy this as his name. Right. So as a good husband, he heard what I had to say. And so he confronted me. So long story short, we talked about it. Me and my husband, we talked about it at length. I apologize. And he sent an email to Bill. He confronted him. He said, I'm hearing this about my wife. This is not the first time I hear this, by the way.

[00:56:49] I've heard it about other people, but this time it's in my, it's in my house. And you did this while she was already my girlfriend. And so basically 24 hours later, he sent me a text message. Bill sent me a text message and he fired me from the bright path saying I was no longer So he'd already fired you from your job and now he's firing you from the whole thing. Yes. So he fired me from my job. That prompted like a crisis in me where I accept he sexually harassed me.

[00:57:18] And then my husband learns about it. He sends him an email. And then his reaction to that email was firing me as a student and a teacher. Like basically you're gone. Which by the way, in the last 10 years I've discussed with him, that was my biggest, deepest fear to be exiled. So he obviously used it. So that's when I got out. So from there, because I know you lived close to him and everyone's in this little community.

[00:57:48] Do you just pack up and leave? What was the exit like? No, we stayed there for a year. It was at the beginning. Wow. Yeah. I'm glad we did. Well, A, that was our house. That was our home. Yeah. B, other of our friends that lived there also left. That was a life we knew, right? This was our best friends. And suddenly overnight we've lost half of our community or more and we didn't know where to go.

[00:58:16] Obviously we traveled, we came to Mexico, we were looking somewhere to live. We were trying to like find a beach place or maybe move to the UK. My husband's from Scotland. So we were like looking around, but we didn't move officially for a whole year. It was, it was eyeopening to stay there and to see the type of humans this teaching creates, which was ultimately my, my biggest red flag. My biggest aha moment was like, I don't want to become that type of person.

[00:58:44] Like if this teaching, how sacred can this teaching be? If it allows somebody like that to be at the top and everybody else that is supposed to be the most dedicated, committed students, they, they lied, they denied, they attacked, they censored people. They, and everything on the name of, of God or silence as we called it, right? We didn't call it really God. We called it silence. So we're not gossiping here. Why are you trying to find out what happened to her?

[00:59:12] And the fact that some of these people knew I wasn't lying and decided to stay, I was like, this teaching doesn't work. Right. It does not create the super humans. It creates obedient people. It creates obedient people. And people that are willing to tell themselves whatever to remain, right? To protect him. When you were there and in that one year, were you still interacting with the current members? Yeah, what was that like?

[00:59:39] Like, or you, they, were they like ignoring you on the street or like, what was the, how did that work? Yeah, they were pretty much, I mean, they would ignore us. I would say we didn't really run into them that much. They don't leave their house. I don't know if they do now, but like none of them actually leave their house. It's a very strange lifestyle. So if I was going for a walk, I wouldn't do it on my own. That was the thing. I was scared. And they're not violent, right? They're more like we don't pay attention to bad things and we just ignore everybody.

[01:00:08] But I was still scared. So I would always walk with my friend or with my husband, but I rarely run into them. So it was really stressful energetically because you're like, you know, they're your neighbors and you know, they're there and you run out of eggs. And now you can't go to their house to ask for them, you know, like, but it was really good for me at least to stay around other people that had left.

[01:00:33] And we could like really defragment and really start picking out all the pieces and analyzing every single aspect of this, because I really did not want to walk away and move on without getting to the root of why I joined in the first place. And how did you get there to the root? Through a lot of therapy, conversations, books, reading about cults.

[01:00:59] And I put everything in, I stopped meditating. I stopped meditating because in my particular perspective, and I've wrestled a lot with this, right? Like if the technique is good, but the guy that created it is rotten, what do you do? Right? And you cannot alligate like, well, you still use electricity and that guy wasn't so good or whatever. But for me, this is about human nature.

[01:01:23] These techniques are about your soul, are about your humanness, your divinity, if you will. Why the fuck would I practice something that was created by people that harmed others? So I stopped everything and I started really looking into, okay, the teaching, is it real or not? You know, the techniques, the groups, cults. I didn't want to just think Billy was the bad guy and everything else was good because

[01:01:53] that's the case, right? That's the case for some people that have left. They think, and, you know, that's their perspective that Billy got rogue and everybody, everything else was holy. But that's not my opinion. Well, let me ask you a question. What do you do with it? What about the good and all that stuff? It's, if it's created by that mind that's maniacal, I think for me, it's all going to

[01:02:19] be somewhat tainted because it has the intent to coerce you. And you need to figure out how the coercion starts. And ultimately what I've concluded is that he just used principles and altruism as a means to ensnare people and then coerce them into his vision for your life. Yes. Yes. Something along those lines. So. Yeah. Something along those lines. Exactly.

[01:02:47] I think there's a lot of half-truths, right? And a lot of principles that are good, like spirituality, it's everywhere, right? Like it's not, it's universal. But I feel because of what you're saying, Nipi, like everything needs to be reviewed and taking super deep, like not just assume it's true because this person that you trusted told you, but because you have to investigate this for yourself.

[01:03:13] And for me personally, I'm just beginning to put my toes in something, some spiritual notions again, because I was like, ugh, you know, don't talk to me about anything spiritual. Don't even mention the word meditation or like even, I don't know, sound healing things because I don't want to know. Well, there can be dark spirituality too, right? Yeah, exactly. Look at like Santeria, right?

[01:03:41] Um, and, and so this particular teaching was really shiny. You know, it was all, everybody's happy. We're happy. We're a happy family. We don't judge. We just praise and laugh all day, but it's so dark because people aren't free. They're, we're absorbed. Our spirit is completely abducted. For more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page turning memoir.

[01:04:11] It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped NXIVM, the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible, and at most bookstores. Highly recommend, of course, because she's my wife. And now a brief message from our little bit culty sponsors. Remember, when you support our sponsors, you support our podcast. Okay, let's just ditch the grocery store drama and talk about something that actually sparks joy. Hungry Root. Seriously, this is my love letter to the food delivery service that has saved my sanity and my fridge from becoming a weird science experiment.

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[01:06:33] Let's get back to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one. In your journey, when did the word cult come into your awareness? I'd say like maybe a week or two after we left. Oh, wow. I mean, of course we've heard, right? Like people would call it, friends would call it, oh, you're a cult. And I'd be like, oh, ha ha. But as I'm sure you've heard before, we always heard the whole,

[01:06:59] when somebody tells you you're in a cult, you said, well, at least I'm in a happy cult. My cult is happy. Which I thought it was so unique to the Shias, but it turns out it wasn't. So of course I heard that before, right? But actually opening my eyes, like, was maybe two weeks after we left. We watched Holy Hell, was the first documentary we watched. And that's when it started going like, oh my God.

[01:07:27] And then not many days after somebody sent one of your episodes to our group, one of your episodes, I think it was the one about TM precisely. And that's when we were like, holy fuck, you know, this is a cult. Like it's a textbook cult. And I started getting and researching what it meant to be in a cult. And everything fits, you know, every single aspect fits. And it's just really subtle.

[01:07:56] So, you know, they don't, they don't control your sexuality, but you're not meant to have sex unless you're in a committed relationship. They don't control your clothes because you can wear whatever you want. But when you're teaching, you have to wear white. You know, there's a nos versus them mentality, but it's really subtle as we discussed, right? It's more like, it's not like, don't talk to anybody else. It's like, you're more conscious than them. So you always, you know, you always talk to your nose. Yes. Yes.

[01:08:26] You always talk to your normal friends with this, like, oh, they're so in their mind. Poor guys, you know? And you feel so good about yourself because you're not. You're enlightened. Oh, fucker here. Yeah, I know. I told you. All right. So I want to hear about the punches you threw. Yeah. And how did you get out 200 teachers? Well, as I said, it was a week of events that happened.

[01:08:53] So the first thing that happened that helped us leave, I think, was the main center where we ran the retreats. He terminated his relationship with them because they didn't want to obey his rules on COVID vaccinations. And so he finished this 10-year relationship in a day, you know? So he's like, okay, I no longer want to work with you guys. Fuck off.

[01:09:17] And then that night he has a meeting with teachers and he's telling everybody how excited he is that this relationship had ended because it was so difficult and how he's so ready to move on. So in the past, I thought he's so present. He doesn't suffer, right? He doesn't like dwell on things. He moves on. Now I know he has no empathy and he's only like, he discards people, right? But that rubbed a lot of teachers the wrong way.

[01:09:47] Going, why are you talking ill about people that served you for so many years, right? So that kind of, this volcano where teachers started calling us and going, what the hell's going on over there? Is he okay? Why is he being weird? So that helped because when, when I got fired, they, I was in so many teams, they had to announce I was gone. And so I kept it quiet for a while, right?

[01:10:13] And then, and then my husband left the next day and then Bill released an audio saying a lot of teachers that were conspiracy theorists were about to leave or were leaving this organization. And he wanted them to go because this day were like a danger for the, for the organization, which was a very clever move because then when they start seeing names dropping, some teachers just assume, oh, they're conspiracy theories. I don't care about them.

[01:10:39] So then what happens is like a lot, some of the main, main teachers left in the same week, which were our best friends. Cause, cause as I said, it was like a communal thing that started bubbling up, right? Where we could not deal with the, with the bullshit anymore. And also the, the old secrets started coming up. Right. Right. Like all this sexual harassment, you know, I would be telling the others that had been there for longer than me going, what the fuck did you guys do when you find out about this?

[01:11:07] That he was like, you know, grabbing women and telling them like names and, and, and they were like, we did nothing. So we started leaving and they started leaving. And so there's a, like a lot of events that happened that led to him learn a release, an audio about the sexual harassment. And it was a very stupid move because he thought I was going to tell everybody. And at that point, I didn't want to tell anybody.

[01:11:34] I wanted to leave, you know, the first thoughts, I just want to leave, live my own life. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just like, want to, you know, be happy. I want to move on. So one day I'm in England because we went there to just kind of get some distance and, and people started calling me going, what the fuck are you listening to this? Are you listening to this? And I said, well, I'm not a teacher anymore. I don't have access to these things. Right. So people start sending me this one hour audio video. He said a video or audio.

[01:12:01] I can't remember where he's trying to like get the first one off me. And, and he's like, there's a student saying I sexually harassed her and he gives his version of the story, which is all lies from beginning to end. Like nothing he says is true. And that's when I'm like, he said really, he's a fucking sociopath. This is reality. He's making up stories.

[01:12:28] And he tried to portray me as I was, she's so, so much suffering. You know, I help, I try to help her through her anxiety and her pain. When in that world, that's, then you're not still, you're not conscious if you've been suffering. Right. What, what he missed to say is that he's bad advice for eight years, never told me it was anxiety. And I kept trying on my own to get rid of this feeling that wasn't getting in the way of me and God. Right.

[01:12:55] And, and that's something maybe you can address because the mental health and what happens in that place and the effects it's got on mental health people. It's, it's one of like the worst aspects. I will, I'll just address it quickly just to say that a lot of people like yourself probably join to, to get healing from those feelings, myself included. And then you learn how to spiritually bypass and just, I've just. And disconnect from yourself. Freeze and disconnect from those feelings.

[01:13:25] Dissociate. Disassociate. And then you think that you're healed, but you're not. Exactly. Because you can move your attention. Right. So I did that for years and many people did that too. And the thing is the first eight years where I was there, he kept saying, you don't need therapy. You don't need therapy. And he would make fun of psychologists and psychiatrists because depression is just looking into the past and anxiety is just looking on the future. And so he only changed his narrative in the last years where younger people were joining

[01:13:53] and were accusing him and the company of not knowing how to deal with mental health. So they erased all the YouTube videos when he talks about not, you don't need therapy. And they, and, and then he always would do this. When did I ever say this? Of course you need therapy. Yeah. It's like, what the fuck did we were there? You know, I like his favorite phrase was, I never said that. Like any other. Number one. That's a narcissist. I never said that. Quality.com. Oh, so funny.

[01:14:22] So anyway, a lot of people like including myself suffer through mental health issues because I was just told it was energy. Right. And I was always like, why am I so intense? Why do I feel things so intensely? Why am I so full of emotion? Why can't I just be like them? And I didn't know that level of intensity was because of anxiety. And the first time I researched on Google, what is anxiety was eight years into having general anxiety. And I didn't know.

[01:14:52] And his advice was always like, lean into God. Just let it go. Just watch this happen. So anyway, in this audio, right, he's talking about how much he tried to help me, but he's not saying that his help was arrogant, ignorant, negligent, and that it led me to agoraphobia for a year, you know? And I'm not the only one, obviously. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:15:17] So from the audio, then more people leave and then you've left. So, okay. So from this audio that he sent, a lot of people started calling me every minute. Like for a week, I had no rest because people wanted to hear my truth, my side of the story, because he thought he was so sleek and clever, but a lot of people got through the bullshit, right? They said, this doesn't sound right. And actually they said like, you wouldn't lie, you know?

[01:15:45] And I happened to know a lot of people because I traveled with him all over translating for him, right? So I knew most teachers. I knew more teachers than many other teachers. Well, his other mistake was not creating some sort of system. Like with NXIVM, most people who stayed didn't reach out to me for my side of the story because as soon as I left, I was considered, you know? It's a numbers game at that point. He's going to retain who he's going to retain and then the people that doubt him are going to go talk to you.

[01:16:15] And I'm sure he knew he was going to have some attrition, probably not as much as he thought. And he's just going to keep moving forward. And then if you guys can somehow get in his way, you can, but he'll keep doing it and he'll either get old and die or it'll blow up in his face. That's pretty much the trajectory of how these things work. There's always people that stay loyal no matter what. But he wasn't smart enough to protect, to do some sort of built-in thing where people

[01:16:43] would feel bad to contact you. But to have 200 people leave, that's great. Yeah, it was great. And it was really not what we were aiming. Like, I wish I had said, I'm going to take people with me, but I was just, I just started trying to defend myself. So after a few days of telling my story to every single person, I thought, fuck this shit. Like, I need to talk and I'm going to, and I also had like, I felt responsible because

[01:17:09] I knew many times where he had lied and I had concealed it. Right? So when you leave, people start confiding in you. How many, how many other teachers were accused of sexual harassment? And he pushed it under the rug. How many other teachers were accused of things? And these teachers were still teaching. Right? And so I thought, so not even me, you'd realize there's an inner circle within the inner circle within the inner circle. And there's always a small circle that you were not privy to certain conversations.

[01:17:36] But many times I heard him lie and I kept quiet. And so I, I wrote an email, a very long email telling my side of the story as much detail as I could. And when I wrote the email, 80 teachers had left already. And after I'd sent the email, I think the total was almost 250, 260 teachers. Wow. And I thought that was, that was great. Yeah. Where is it now? What's the status of everything now?

[01:18:05] I think they're still teaching. I think it's way smaller. They still have maybe 250 teachers. Where's Billy? Well, Billy, uh, one of the moves he did when this whole thing was happening, that's he promoted himself by retiring. So one day, you know, yeah, very smart move. Maybe, maybe he pushed him into retirement. I think so. You know, he, he got, you know, he got an act of contriction and he said, you know, I have to retire now.

[01:18:33] What he did was after one of my friends said an email with the facts of how he was lying. The next day he came out and said, you guys have made a decision. I am retiring. I'm no longer going to take students. And he appointed five or six new teachers that could take students. But he would be the teacher of them. And if you wanted to be a new, a big teacher, as he calls them, you had to be his student, not theirs.

[01:19:03] So in a way he promoted himself. But a lot of teachers were like, oh, he's so humble. He knew it was time to step out. It's, it's ridiculous. I mean. We put another barrier in front of them. Yeah, exactly. And when I'm like these teachers that you appointed as teachers that are teaching others to transcend illusion are people that betrayed me, that lied to my face, that are lying to everybody

[01:19:32] because they know it's true what I said. Because I confided in them and they said, yes, we know he's done that before. And when it actually came public, they denied it. They were like, no, that never happened. For me, that's why I'm doing this. You know what I mean? Because it's like, there's people out there with genuine hearts looking for a spiritual path, looking for doing good in the world. And if they fall into this scam where they think these people are enlightened just because

[01:19:58] they smile a lot and they have no integrity and no spine. So I just hope somebody doesn't join because they hear me out. I hope so too. I hope so too. Well, we're also happy to be, you know. Well, can you Google him? Is there negative stuff online about him that you Google that comes up? Are there things in place that people can be warned?

[01:20:23] There's a lot of information in the cult forum because I know there was a case, a case of suicide a while ago before my time that created a lot of waves. And that's happened, right? Like during my time, there was two or three people that committed suicide. All of them have people that commit suicide around them. And you know how it is, right? Like, oh, they already had problems, which is bullshit. And so in the cult forum, it's what I know.

[01:20:53] Like I always just kind of type in the Bright Path cult because we as teachers were not allowed to Google that because we don't want to give power to the websites, right? It's always like that. You don't really want to research other books of enlightenment because you'll get confused. Do you believe everything you read online? Yeah. Exactly. This is just like people that are angry, you know? They want to take us down. Exactly. Yes. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. I know you've done a lot, but we're getting close.

[01:21:22] We're way past time. So if you can summarize your healing journey in a few sentences. Wow. Yeah. I think the most important thing for me was being willing to be destroyed for a very long time. You know, I saw my need immediately to try to get on another surfboard. I remember when we left, it was like three in the morning and we were in shock, right? Fire or flight, our bodies, me and my husband.

[01:21:50] And I remember it was three in the morning and we held hands and we said, he actually said the word, we got out. And he felt like we were on a boat and the ocean was dark and there was nowhere to go. And I was so fucking scared because I didn't know who I was. I didn't know, I had nothing. And I was willing to remain there.

[01:22:16] Um, and so for me, my healing was about befriending my shadow because that's what we were not allowed for years. Right. It was, this is all toxic positivity. Don't pay attention to what you don't want kind of thing. And for me, it was like, I, I realized how scared I was of my emotions and that's why I had so much anxiety. Right. Cause I was just suppressing so much shit. Cause I will, I always felt my emotions would kill me this way before the cult, right?

[01:22:43] Like my nervous system was dysregulated. And so I was, I started being willing for the emotions to take me where I had to go. And luckily I already was training to do this therapy, this therapy that helped me so much. So that community helped me a lot to have remained objective, to hear feedback that wasn't from just the cult members or ex cult members.

[01:23:11] And honestly, to keep balancing like my nervous system. So, so my healing internally was very much about bringing my nervous system back to baseline, uh, whatever that took and addressing all my trauma from childhood, every single thing that during the cult, I was like, I don't need to look at that because it's passed. And of course there was some times, and as you know, Sarah, like I emailed you a year and a half ago, right.

[01:23:39] When I was like, I'm so scared, but I was, so wasn't, I didn't feel stable yet. And not everybody has this, this, the fortune of having a, like, as you guys know, like a partner that went through the same thing, that is a huge support. And sometimes we had to take turns on the healing, you know, sometimes he had to hold me and sometimes I had to hold him because it would recovering our identity. That's, that's what it was for me. That's what it's been. And it still is like who am I?

[01:24:08] So I know some people that they've called skip therapy. I wouldn't, I know not all therapy is great, but I would find something that works because I don't see how you can like completely uncult yourself or decult yourself if, if you don't do that. And I know you mentioned the word therapy community. How do you make sure that you're joining something safe on the other side? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, yeah, it is right.

[01:24:37] Because at most, we, we know the famous word, nobody joins like a cult, right? You always think you're joining a good community. But, but for me, at least now and the way, I mean, this therapist's community, I'm not required anything. I can join here at masterclass whenever I want. Nobody's after me. I don't have to pay anything. And the, the, the creator of this technique or the teacher of this technique, she never asked anything from me. You know, I got my qualifications.

[01:25:06] I trained. If I want to keep training, I can join an advanced course. If I don't, I'm still allowed to do that therapy because I'm already qualified. There's no coercion. There's no coercion, you know, and it's healthy. I don't ever feel I have to sacrifice my autonomy. I have to not say something that I think for the good of the group. And I think that's a very good marker, right? Like when you start noticing that you're keeping quiet to, you're sacrificing your own well-being

[01:25:35] for the greater good. I think then you're into something culty. Yeah. If you can't question. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Such good advice. Yeah. All the red flags. Yeah. Well, we know so many, so many of our listeners like yourself are ex-members who also want to heal. But it's always interesting to hear someone's case of them come to the conclusions of the red flags that we've kind of accumulated over the years. Every story comes to it case by case and with a different kind of wisdom to it.

[01:26:04] And flavor, which brings us to what you said in your intake sheet. This is a vanilla cult. Like there's no branding. There's no sex harem. Billy cult. Yeah. We caught him lip syncing. What are you going to do? We're going to expose that. Exactly. But yeah, that's why this was so hard. And I think it's still hard for the people that are in it to see and realize you are actually in a cult because nothing too big ever happens. Right? Nobody raped anybody. They just wanted to kiss you.

[01:26:34] Nobody did drugs. They just drink a lot. Nobody, they don't take away all your money, just some of it. So, but the bottom line is your mind's still abducted. Like you're not free. Yes. You know, when I talked to one of my old friends and she's still in, I think, when we were talking about the sexual harassment, she said to my face, I'm sorry it happened to you, but it didn't happen to me. Oh, we've heard that. Yeah.

[01:27:04] And I was like, and then my husband was like, so if you hear he murdered somebody, you'll be like, oh, I'm sorry he murdered him, but he didn't murder me. So I'm good. You know what I mean? And I was like, and that's, that's when for me is the red flags was just after I left. I was like, we're trained to not see any fault in this. Um, and that's a very dangerous place to be, you know, when you don't question your teaching because every question, it comes from your ego.

[01:27:32] Well, yeah, you're not making, you're not calling the shots anymore. Once you've gotten there, you're, you're not calling the shots. And you'll let anything go. And that's what your husband was trying to point out. You can let go of that, but like, are you going to let go of murder? Where's the line? And I remember Nippy even asking people who were, who were willing to talk to us only a handful when we were leaving and Nippy, what did you say? Was it to Mark? And you were like, what's your line? Like, at what point do you say, no, this is not okay for me? Cause right now there's no bar. Like. Yeah.

[01:27:59] Like, how do you know if you play this pattern out and he's branding women, what's next? And when, when do you say this isn't okay? And there will be a next. He will turn the volume up. They always do. And we subsequently learned that the volume had been turned up previously. We were just hearing it at a different level for the first time. Exactly. Except for Billy. He didn't turn the volume up. He retired. He did. He retired. Well, I don't think he retired. I think he put another barrier of filters in between them. Yeah, it's true. It was a faux retirement. To protect him. Yeah. Yeah. He promoted himself.

[01:28:28] Now he's the teacher of teachers of teachers. Yeah. He downsized. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. He also might actually, he used that as a, as a new promotion. Like we are now going boutique. Billy. Billy's boutique. I hope he listens to this. And. We'll send it to him. Billy. You're a fraud. Okay. In my opinion. Allegedly. What are you doing? Cause you're writing a book. Yes.

[01:28:58] I am writing a book. I'm very early stages because I've been really, really slow at this. Um, so I'm, I'm pretty much in the intro and I've, I've started and stopped several times was I'm working on the angle. Right. So sometimes I think, oh, a memoir is better. And then I go, no, I'll just write some fiction, but I want to get the story out. And, and I want to get not, not so much my story because that's the catalyst. Right. But like what I've learned, what I've seen, what I've, what I've observed about cults

[01:29:27] and about narcissism and about vanilla cults. Cause as we know it's full of them, the yoga world and. Cult of one. The cult of one. Yeah. And even like couples. Yeah. Did you hear our episode with Jaret Bouillon called the everyday cult? Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I, I can, Jaret is, I consider her a good friend of mine. She's helped me a lot. We've done some sessions. I met her through a free writing thing and we've connected so well.

[01:29:55] And she's also been helping me and my husband with our podcast. Uh, so I love her book and we have, um, yeah, we have a lot in common. Yeah. That's a great friendship to have because you both dabble in the, in the thing that the other person escaped from. So you can, you know, have safe conversations about, you know, when is this okay? When is it not okay? And so, okay. So the podcast is going to drop when? Soon. Soon. Funny story.

[01:30:25] Funny story. Do you want to tell it? Well, I was, I wasn't sure if it had dropped yet. So I went to search for it and then I found an, and she told me it was called unculted, which is a great title. And I found another podcast hosted by someone named Christina. Christina. That's not yours about a Christian cult that this person escaped from. So you might be renaming it. I have, well, we have to, right? Like we came up with this title in May and we did the website and all the research in June. And we've just been getting on back on our feet.

[01:30:55] We already have recorded an intro and everything. We have a trailer, but then today, just before this interview, Sarah bears the good news that there's no, it's okay. I'm honestly, I'm like, I'm glad we didn't like put it out without knowing. Right. We're very interested in that, in that post cult life, right? Like, well, well, my husband just like sent me this like image. So he came up with a new title. It's called cult detox.

[01:31:25] I like that too. I don't mind that. Yeah. Yeah. Cause there's so many cult podcasts out there and what's going to make this one different. Right. So focusing specifically on. I've got to look at all the other cult podcasts and see where you can find the lane. Well, we did, we have, and we think what's different, but maybe we've not seen them all is precisely cause we want to talk about the more, what deprograms you, you know, how do you get back?

[01:31:54] What, what, like we want to cover a lot about therapy. And about highlighting the things that bind your mind and how to free yourself from that. So, so not so much about, you know, true crime or cult stories or, but more like, like when we interview guys. I want to ask you, yes, exactly. I know I wouldn't put you on the spot. Otherwise we want to ask you, how did you heal? Right. How did you as a couple healed as well? Yeah. So I would, I would focus on that.

[01:32:24] That's my unsolicited advice. It's like, don't even have, like if it's somebody like me, don't even have me tell my story because it's already out there. And you could even do that in an introduction. Like go watch the vow, read Sarah's book. She was da, da, da, da, da. Sarah, welcome to the show. How did you heal? Like, don't even get into the story because you don't have, not going to have time. Yeah. This is my answer. Thank you. My next podcast is called Unsolicited Advice. I love it. I just sit there and nod.

[01:32:52] I would love to be in that too, because I love to give unsolicited advice. That's my husband. Well, this is probably why you were a good teacher slash monk. Exactly. Ex-monk. Well, please reach out to us if you need help. I think we should keep this part of the conversation in. Yeah, sure. Because I think it's, you know, people need to know. A little BTS. A little behind the scenes. A little BTS. And part of healing, at least for us, certainly has been doing the podcast, as I'm sure it will be for you.

[01:33:17] And the best part, I think, is that you get to have conversations and record them and learn from them yourself. Yeah. You know, and then share them with other people. Also, Christina, one of the things too that like when I look at the last 20 years of my life, when I was in, quote, the cult, I had a lot of really interesting conversations with really interesting people. Thousands of them over the course of however many years.

[01:33:43] I'm continuing to do that in this second act, so to speak. Yeah. On a podcast. I love that. Thank you. With interesting people and extracting knowledge, story, and wisdom from them. And I get to actually have a body of work with that. It doesn't go into the ether, I guess, so to speak. Yeah. That's kind of what's the fun part about it. Yeah, that's very valuable because it's part of the things, you know, as I'm sure you guys too, like you miss or I miss is the community aspect of it. Right.

[01:34:12] And not everybody was interesting or fun. Some weirdos. Yeah. Any other cult. So some I was relieved. I never had to see again. But a lot of them I miss and I still miss. And I wish they weren't abducted so I could talk to them. But I miss that. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it will. Yeah. So I miss that. I miss those interactions and that getting like wisdom from all over around the world and learning.

[01:34:40] So that's a good outlook to have on the podcast. Christina, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know it's been many, many conversations over Instagram over the past year and a half. And we really appreciate you supporting us and Patreon and hope that we can support you in your next endeavors. Thank you so much. Do you like what you hear on A Little Bit Culty? Then please do give us a rating, a review, and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

[01:35:09] Or even better, share this episode with someone who you think needs to hear it. Maybe they're in a cult. Maybe they're a little bit susceptible. Just share the love. Thanks. Thanks for coming on the show, Christina. It was so wonderful to finally connect with you. This conversation is a good reminder that culty control isn't always so obvious. You guys would have been friends. And I would have. Absolutely recruited her into NXIVM had I met her. Is it BFFs?

[01:35:39] Is that the term we're looking at here? Yes. She is a bright light. And I would have wanted her on Team Humanity. But she was building her own humanity. Well, it's a reminder. It's a reminder. Everyone, when someone promises a path to enlightenment, keep your boundaries and listen to your gut. Something feels off. Probably is, right? Probably is. Yeah. Yep. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Bye-bye.

[01:36:05] A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production. Executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames in collaboration with Amphibian Media. Our co-creator is Jess Temple-Tardy. Audio engineering by Red Cayman Studios.

[01:36:32] And our writing and research is done by Emma Deal and Kristen Reeder. Our theme song, Cultivated, is by the artists John Bryant and Nigel Aslan.