The Teal Swan Controversy: Is Teal Swan a Fraud?

Foreword: A brief explanation of who is Teal Swan. Teal is a spiritual teacher, author and public speaker who travels around the world giving workshops seeking to inspire people to face their fears, find greater self-awareness and personal happiness, follow their dreams, heal their past and relationships, and much more.

Teal claims to have been born with extra-sensory abilities, including seeing into the future, seeing people's past lives, traveling out-of-body, perceiving beings in the spirit realms, reading thoughts, sensing the energy vibration of people and physical objects, and much more. And precisely because of these abilities, while living in rural Utah she was targeted by an extreme Mormon cult who considered her abilities to be from the Devil, because she was a girl. She was abducted by them, in a sense (this will be explained further below) at the age of six.

Over the course of her childhood she was then subjected to Satanic rituals including the worst horrors imaginable, which she has discussed in-depth publicly in her various videos, interviews, workshop forums and with the media including an in-depth interview with Fox News. When she was nineteen, after thirteen years of such abuse, she finally managed to escape the cult. She then began a healing journey over the course of the next decade including professional therapy; before eventually beginning to talk about her story with others and step onto the world stage as a well-known spiritual teacher.

Teal Swan, the Spiritual Catalyst

Note: I would like to make a simple request here to not contact myself, Cameron Clark, Blake Dyer or others who lived in the Teal household, asking about this issue or sharing opinions or advice. However, do feel free to share this article with others if you think it will be helpful in understanding the situation.

There wouldn't be much of a controversy surrounding Teal Swan if it wasn't for Cameron Clark. Cameron is, to the best of my knowledge, the only person who has actually met Teal and spent significant time with her, who is now publicly speaking critically of her. There are other critics certainly, but not people who have spent significant time with her and are now speaking publicly and forcefully about her. Cameron has conducted a number of lengthy interviews in the form of Youtube videos (and perhaps others) speaking in-depth of her time being directly involved with Teal's household in Park City, Utah. This article will predominantly be focused on analyzing Cameron's experience with and claims about Teal, based on Cameron's public interviews (one in particular, posted below). And there's a specific reason why I felt it was necessary to address these charges in-depth now, which will be explained below as well.

After discovering Teal through her Youtube channel (Teal Swan, The Spiritual Catalyst), Cameron at one point went through a major life transition. She quit her job, went to Park City on a whim and happened to find an apartment for rent just a few minutes drive from where Teal was living in a house with a group of about a half dozen other people. She then lived there for six months, directly involved in the Teal household and various activities there (including living in Teal's house for a month at one point).

Unfortunately, as Cameron describes it, she had a difficult experience throughout her time living there, and left with a bad impression of Teal and those surrounding her. A really, really, really, really bad impression. Cameron thinks that Teal is a fraud. And not just a fraud. Cameron actually believes (in her own words) that Teal is a psychopathic maniac with multiple personality disorders, who is lying about almost everything she speaks of. Her spiritual teachings are all based on reading other people's books and scouring the internet. Her entire life's story is false: there was no abusive childhood at the hands of a Satanic Mormon cult. Cameron even thinks that Teal fakes her seizures at convenient times to gain sympathy from people. In Cameron's opinion, everything that Teal does is based on pathologically manipulating people around her and doing whatever she can to increase her fame and stature in the spiritual world.

And now for the real bombshell: Cameron, along with a group she was recently involved with that investigates cults around the world (Ethics and the Modern Guru), claims that they have actually spoken with Teal's alleged primary abuser. They conducted an interview with him which they plan to publish (his identity will not be revealed) that will supposedly provide solid evidence that Teal's claims of abuse couldn't possibly be true.

So this is the main reason why I felt compelled to write this article now. Because apparently, that interview will be publicly released very soon, within days or weeks, in a very thorough document made widely available that will provide evidence from a multitude of different angles, professing to prove that Teal's claims of abuse are false and that none of it happened.

Now before I jump headlong into the facts surrounding this controversy, in the interests of full disclosure I should state that I am not an objective observer of this situation. I have a Youtube channel of my own (Gabriel Kundalini) and I have interviewed Teal three separate times. I have met Teal in person and almost everyone involved in her household at the same time that Cameron was living there. I stopped through Park City in the fall of 2013, which I believe would have been a couple months after Cameron had left. I went out to dinner with Teal, Blake Dyer (who is Teal's assistant and also lives with her, creating her videos and doing a lot of her administrative work) and several others who lived in Teal's house at the time. We went to dinner the first evening I was there. The next day we all went on a hike in the hills above Park City. And then I went back to their house for the evening and saw where Teal records her videos, etc. Here's a photo of myself and Teal on the hike:

Gabriel Morris and Teal Swan

If you feel that based on that involvement I am not in a position to provide an objective, untainted perspective of the situation, that's fine. However I will state that this is exactly what I intend to do, to the best of my ability. This is going to be a very, very critical analysis of the specifics of what is being claimed on both sides, and what actually sounds like it could be possible or plausible, based on the specific facts and statements that are out there in the public sphere at this time; as well as some information I have come to know that has not been revealed publicly yet, but apparently will be soon. (I will not be revealing here the names or exchanges I may have had with those involved, who have not chosen to discuss the issue publicly themselves.) However I will mention that I have had direct communication with Cameron herself, in a series of lengthy, in-depth messages exchanged back-and-forth over the course of several months, in which I seriously considered her claims. This article is basically a direct result of those discussions with Cameron.

And I will also state categorically that if it should be shown beyond a shadow of a doubt by this forthcoming document, or through other information that comes to light in the future, that Cameron's claims are indeed correct: that Teal has fabricated her entire life's story and is lying about everything; then I will remove all of my Youtube interviews with Teal and completely disassociate from her. Of course, I don't want to be involved in helping to support and promote that sort of deception in any way. However, as I will outline below, based on the evidence presented so far, it is very difficult for me to imagine how Teal could have concocted such an elaborate life's story, and gotten away with lying about it for years, to thousands of people in a multitude of different settings. As extraordinary as her story is, I find it even harder to believe that she is lying about it all.

So what I'm going to do here is address some of the claims made by Cameron in one of her recent public interviews, citing specific quotes from the interview and then offering my own perspective and analysis of those claims being made. This is from the Youtube video posted on Cameron's own channel titled: “Teal Swan Expose with Cameron Clark and Helena Phoenix”, which was posted on August 20^th, 2015. I've transcribed some of the most notable things said in their interview, which I will include below. I will respond to some of the quotes directly beneath them, and post others without a response. I will then offer a fuller commentary further below. Here is the video if you care to listen to any of the exchanges for yourself. All quotes (which indicate Cameron Clark speaking, except where otherwise noted) are cited with the exact time they appear in the 2-hour long interview.

Quotes from the interview between Helena Phoenix (interviewer) and Cameron Clark:

—13:45, “I've never met a crazier, more unstable person in my entire life. But I can't say that it's because of abuse. I just find her to be mentally ill from, in my opinion she's just very manipulative, pathologically manipulative. She's a fabulist and a confabulator, and I would call her a mythomaniac. She makes up stories. She's so incongruent with her teachings, it's staggering.”

—14:25, “She Googles everything, none of her material is new material.”

—15:40, Apparently, Teal has claimed that she has other people plug in electrical devices for her, because she has a psychological association based on electroshock treatment from her childhood abuse. However Cameron claims that this is a lie, because she personally has seen Teal plug in lots of different devices on her own including her blow dryer, cell phone, laptop, etc.

Note: I agree that this is curious and that an explanation of the circumstances in which Teal does or doesn't plug in electrical devices would be helpful.

—23:20, “The first time I really snapped out of it was when she tried to convince me to commit suicide.”

Note: This is a complicated story, which Cameron has told in multiple interviews (I've only watched two of Cameron's interviews, both of which featured this story). In short, due to a disagreement between Cameron and Teal, they ended up in a heated discussion in which, according to Cameron, Teal accused Cameron of being “passively suicidal” and told her that she should decide whether she really wanted to live or not. As Cameron describes it, then Teal essentially urged her to consider suicide. It is also worth noting that this was shortly after one of Teal's clients had in fact committed suicide.

I will certainly concede that this is a troubling account and, if true as Cameron describes it, this is concerning. However, we've only heard one side of the story. It would be helpful to hear the other side of the story on this incident between Cameron and Teal.

—32:12, “She claims that she's never read a book before.”

Note: I've never heard Teal state that, so I'm not sure if it's true that she has said that.

—32: 45, Cameron then describes being at Teal's house and points out that Teal has a large bookcase there filled with spiritual books. Cameron says that she was looking through the books and came across one titled “What Color is Your Aura?” Cameron thumbed through it, and was surprised to find Teal's handwriting all through the book, making notes including about family members of hers, commenting on what their auras were and what that meant. Cameron then goes out to portray this as proof that Teal was simply reading other people's spiritual books, and utilizing them and other resources to form her own spiritual teachings.

Note: This is one of many instances in which Cameron cites personal things about Teal and then paints them as examples of how deluded she is; yet which to me seem completely normal. If Teal has in fact stated emphatically that she has never before read a book in her life, then I would agree it would be odd to discover that she was writing in the margins of a book. But I find it very, very hard to imagine that Teal has literally never read a book in her life and would highly doubt that is the case. For one thing, she's written two books, which would be hard to do if you had never read a book. And besides it wouldn't surprise or bother me at all to know that she had read other spiritual books in the course of her spiritual path. In fact, I hope that she has. I think it's a good thing for any spiritual teacher to have knowledge of other spiritual paradigms being explained by others, in order to have a broader perspective on various issues.

So this seems to me to be a strange piece of supposed “evidence” that Teal is simply copying other people's work and then reciting it as her own, with no unique personal insights of her own. Especially if you actually listen to Teal's talks, videos and interviews, etc. sharing her spiritual perspective, which don't come across to me at all as being a matter of regurgitating ideas she read elsewhere and then simply memorized. But I'll get into that more in-depth later.

—33:21, Cameron gives another similar example supposedly showing that Teal is “stealing” her ideas from others, by telling the story of discovering that they had a DVD collection of talks given by Esther Hicks, channeling Abraham. Cameron strongly believes that Teal has modeled her spiritual teachings on those of Abraham Hicks. In the interview at this point, Cameron and Helena seem almost giddy with amusement at how obvious it is that Teal has simply watched a lot of Abraham Hicks videos in order to frame her spiritual discussions.

Note: In the same vein as the books example above, this says absolutely nothing, in my opinion. I think it's safe to say that virtually ALL spiritual teachers (in the modern age anyway) have read the works of others, and that this has undoubtedly influenced their own views to some extent. And that's great, in my opinion. The more perspectives people read, the more information they gather, the better for the most part, even if some of it is bogus information. But overall it's better for the mind to have many different opinions and ways of perceiving the world. And especially if you're going to step into the spotlight as a spiritual teacher and make yourself available to questioning on a wide range of topics, it's probably a good idea to have some familiarity with some of the other popular spiritual teachings out there. Because you will probably be asked about them.

And finally, it should also be noted that Teal doesn't live alone in her house. I'm sure that many of the books, videos, etc. ended up on that big book shelf or elsewhere, because they were bought and read by Blake or any of the other people who have lived with Teal over the years. Frankly, I would find it a bit strange to walk into a spiritual person's house, and not discover a bookshelf with a lot of spiritual books.

—38:22, Cameron claims that Teal was diagnosed by a mental health official (who I don't think actually met her, but diagnosed her from watching her videos), and Cameron then states the following:

“She is completely mentally insane. She has been, among other things, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (which is a combination of schizophrenia and major depression), she has narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder.”

—40:15, Helena Phoenix claims that “Her followers are rabid fanatics who will literally die for her.”

—41:50, “I'm working for the magazine Ethics and the Modern Guru, and they're putting together quite an explosive expose' on her with several articles and interviews that are going to really shine some light on what is going on here.”

—43:55, At this point Cameron cites a claim made by Teal, that illustrates some of the worst of the satanic cult abuse she alleges was perpetrated on her. Teal apparently tells a gruesome story of the man who was her primary abuser (who I'll call John for the sake of this article). Teal claims that John, along with a friend of his who was a mortician, would sew her up inside bodies at the morgue, and then leave her alone for extended periods of time of up to twelve hours. Cameron then goes on to state that she asked a mortician herself, who stated categorically that this is not conceivable possibly. There is simply no way that an 8-year-old girl could somehow fit inside of the body cavity of another human being.

Note: I will absolutely agree that this story doesn't seem to make sense, and that this is something that could be addressed and clarified, even though it's a pretty unpleasant story to have to revisit. I hadn't heard this story myself, but apparently she has told it publicly. I wouldn't be surprised if there was another slightly different explanation of the circumstances of what exactly happened, that might make this story more plausible.

—51:18, This is one of the more disturbing accounts given by Cameron of Teal's supposed manipulation tactics with her fellow household members. It's complicating, so I'm not going to try and explain it all here. But you can watch the video if you like and decide for yourself. In short, Cameron describes events that transpired in another one of the Shadow House episodes in which, as Cameron describes it, Teal made very strange claims of some of the other people, including labeling members as previously being various alien races who had done bad things to the other people who were present there, and then supposedly shaming and guilt-tripping them for their actions in these previous lives.

Note: I don't really know what to make of this without seeing the specific exchanges for myself (which was in fact recorded on video, but may no longer be posted online), and/or hearing the other side of the story. Overall, I've found that Cameron oftentimes distorts a lot of what Teal says and interprets it in a way that doesn't seem to adequately convey what was intended by Teal. I'll give a couple of other examples of this below.

—1:26:40, “She doesn't believe in truth unless it makes you feel good.”

Note: As someone who has seen a lot of Teal's videos, read her blog posts, and interviewed her three times for a total of six hours, I can state unequivocally that this does not represent at all what Teal is teaching. This is an oversimplification in the extreme. I have no idea how someone who has supposedly listened closely to Teal's teachings and even lived with her, including participating in her Shadow House episodes directly (of which I saw a few), could end up boiling down Teal's very complex, multi-layered teachings,much of which is focused on Shadow Work to “she only believes in truth if it makes you feel good.” In many different instances, Cameron makes statements that sound as if she hasn't understand at all what Teal is really saying.

—1:29:20, “She likes Hitler. She makes very racist remarks a lot.”

Note: If Teal is making racist remarks “a lot”, somehow that has completely escaped my notice over the past 2 ½ years of watching her videos, reading her blog posts, interviewing her and meeting her in person.

As for the statement about Hitler, this is something that Cameron has mentioned on several occasions, painting Teal as almost seeming to idolize Hitler, holding him up as a powerful spiritual teacher. As far as I know, having seen her discuss the issue, she's never said at all that she “likes” Hitler. Nor has she called Hitler himself a spiritual teacher. What she has said is that Hitler, the Nazi regime and the horrors they inflicted on the world are one of the most powerful lessons and examples of what humanity doesn't want to experience again. And in that sense it has been a powerful lesson for the world.

That's completely different from her saying she has a fondness for Hitler and supports what he did. This is just the same as the media twisting the words of Russell Brand, for example, to make it sound as if he “supports terrorism”. When what he really said couldn't have been further from the truth, but instead was a complex, nuanced explanation of a subject with a deeper meaning that could easily be misunderstood or taken out of context, but that was absolutely correct and ws in fact a brilliant insight. So this is really what Cameron is doing here, taking Teal's very nuanced, insightful, complex perspective on this issue, and reducing it to a simple, catchy sentence that completely misses the point that was intended, and then paints Teal as supporting and identifying with the greatest villain of modern history.

I am now going to address the bigger picture here of what is being alleged by Cameron and others who have labeled Teal as a fraud. What Cameron is alleging is essentially that Teal is lying on three different, interconnected fronts.

#1 is that Teal is lying about, and has completely fabricated her entire childhood and life story. None of the supposed abuse at the hands of a satanic Mormon cult actually occurred. This has been completely made up by Teal to gain sympathy and advance her story of being a woman who endured hell, healed from it and is now teaching others based on having grown from her own very challenging life's struggles.

#2 is that Teal is lying about her extra-sensory abilities, which she claims she has had since birth. Everything Teal describes in this realm is apparently completely made up. Her ability to see people's energy fields; to see and hear spirits and various energy beings; to remember her own past lives as well as others; to see future possible outcomes for people and for the Earth; her stories of traveling out-of-body during her sleep to different worlds, interacting with spirit beings and even with the souls of humans living on Earth; etc. You can watch her videos and interviews to get a better idea of what she says she has experienced, and experiences daily due to her different perceptions of reality. But according to Cameron it's all an elaborate, fabricated lie.

#3 is that Teal has come to her spiritual insights not through her extra-sensory abilities, her life experiences or her inner connection with God and the spirit worlds; but rather through reading the spiritual lessons, wisdom and life stories of others, by searching around on the internet, memorizing the teachings of others and then mixing them up to create her own seemingly unique spiritual paradigm.

So basically, she is lying through her teeth to people's faces 24/7 and has been doing so for years. Teal's Youtube channel was created on January 25^th, 2011, so that's almost five years ago. Her first book “The Sculptor in the Sky” was published a couple of months later, on March ^8th, 2011. Presumably then, according to the claims being made, it is also completely false and fabricated.

Here's what I have to say to this: I really don't think it is humanly possible for someone to get away with this. What you're talking about is a body of information that is so vast, that if it was a matter of simply remembering details that she had made up in the past and had to consistently recall not based on experience or inner insights but on rote memory, it would require a pretty advanced computer program to keep all of those facts straight. Lying is not such an easy thing. It may be easy to lie about one isolated incident. And certainly there are master liars out there. But to build lie upon lie upon lie gets complicated really, really fast. This is how police questioning works. They may not have a whole lot to go on. But if you start asking enough questions of a person around a particular set of circumstances, then oftentimes it doesn't take long for that person to reveal whether they are telling the truth or lying, because those are such completely different places to operate from when it comes to telling a story.

When it comes down to explaining specific details, the lies have to get ever more complex and have to build on one another such that it would quickly become almost impossible to keep track of them all and be able to continue fabricating new details that actually line up with what was previously stated. It's one thing to lie in the course of writing a book in private, for example, or creating a video. It's another thing completely to lie to people's faces in the course of direct questioning. But I'll address that further a little bit later, after first discussing another aspect of this story.

Switching the focus of this article for a moment, let's take a look at the crux of the matter; which is that Teal claims she was abused by this man John, and others within the cult that abducted her. And apparently, in the interview that will be published in text form sometime soon, then John states unequivocally that the supposed abuse did not occur, that he was not involved in a Satanic cult, and this has all been completely made up by Teal.

So what it comes down to is that we have a “he said, she said” situation. Teal has told her story publicly in a multitude of different settings. And now, apparently, the man she has alluded to countless times as being her abuser, has been identified as being a real person, who has spoken about the matter in an interview conducted by the group Ethics and the Modern Guru.

Now let's take a look at some of the specifics of this situation that are already in the public sphere, based primarily on Teal's testimony. First however, for those who don't know the particulars of the abusive situation that Teal has described, I will explain briefly.

Teal was not abducted by a cult and taken to some secret location where she then spent her entire childhood, from the age of 6 to 19, before she escaped. Instead, it was that she was targeted by a man (John) who was a friend of Teal's parents. According to Teal, John is a psychopath and a pathological liar, but a very slick, charismatic and presentable one. John then apparently convinced Teal's parents he had intentions of being a mentor of sorts for Teal. And so they entrusted him with spending time alone with her, taking her away from their house for hours at a time and even overnight, thinking that he was helping her in some way.

Meanwhile, according to Teal, in their time alone then John was actually taking her to the compound for their cult and to various other places, where they were using her for Satanic rituals, torturing and abusing her, including sexual abuse, and subjecting her to all manner of horrors. John would then return Teal back to her parents sometime later as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. And then he was also programming Teal with mind-control techniques and threatening her with all manner of violent acts to her and her family, if she were to tell anything of what was actually going on to anyone.

Now, if John is stating in his testimony that Teal is lying and that none of these abusive episodes actually occurred between them, then what exactly was their relationship? Because I've corresponded directly with someone who themselves has had direct communication with Teal's alleged abuser, John. And John has apparently confirmed that in fact there was a relationship between him and Teal during her childhood in which John was taking her away from her family home for some period of time. Apparently he claims that these were not “extended” periods of time, whatever that specifically means. That's as much as I know. Apparently much more will be revealed in the forthcoming publication by Ethics and the Modern Guru.

Following are a few questions of my own that come to mind surrounding this odd relationship, that I would hope the interviewers thought to ask John:

#1. What exactly was John's relationship with Teal's parents during Teal's childhood?

#2. Is it true that John spent time alone with Teal as a child, away from his parent's home?

#3. If so, why exactly was he spending time alone with her? Was he getting paid to babysit her? Were Teal's parents asking him to watch her as a favor? Or else was he the one initiating the visits?

#4. Is it true, as Teal claims, that these visits occurred over the course of 13 years, from when Teal was 6 to when she was 19?

#5. If these visits weren't “extended”, then how long were they exactly? Of course they would have varied. But to give a general idea, were they usually around 30 minutes, an hour or two, up to several hours, or more than that? Has John simply denied that they were “extended”, or has he been specific in saying approximately how long he was spending time alone with Teal?

So what's going on with this? If the fundamental facts are true, that over the course of 13 years John was picking Teal up from her home and taking her away alone for some period of time, how does he explain this relationship in a way that makes any sense? What were they doing? Going on picnics, going to the museum? Playing video games at his house? Are we really supposed to believe that this was a completely innocent thing in which an adult man wants to spend all this time with a little girl just for the fun of it? This scenario is very, very suspect.

So as far as what has thus far been confirmed, Teal's story adds up: apparently when she was a young girl then a “family friend”, John, was taking her away from her house and spending time with her alone. For exactly how long these visits lasted and over how many years they took place, has so far not been confirmed by John. But there was a relationship of some kind between John and Teal.

Now, that alone is kind of a strange scenario, is it not? I'll freely admit it's hard to believe that Teal's parents would be allowing her to repeatedly spend time alone in the company of this other man who wasn't even a family member. Teal's parents have in fact spoken on the issue, as they are featured in the upcoming documentary movie about Teals life, “Open Shadow”. But that hasn't been released publicly yet (I've seen the trailer for the movie, which includes a quick glimpse of Teal's parents).

Teal then is being taken away from her home by this guy, with her parents consent, multiple times by all accounts. And presumably dozens or even hundreds of times over the course of 13 years, by Teal's account. So what is this guy's interest in Teal? This scenario has not been described by anyone thus far as being a “babysitting” arrangement, in which for example Teal's parents were paying him to watch her while they were busy at work or whatever. Instead it has been described, by Teal at least, as John being the initiator of the visits, having an express interest in taking Teal away from her home, which her parents were allowing.

It should also be noted here that Teal has publicly written about her rocky relationship with her parents. And so it seems that, if what Teal was describing so publicly in countless different forums simply didn't add up to them as being true, then they would have released something themselves stating that Teal's story didn't make sense and couldn't have happened. Why, especially if they've had disagreements with Teal as she herself has described, would they simply sit back and watch her build worldwide fame and a successful career around life details that in their minds couldn't be true? I think it will be a very revealing and helpfu piece of the puzzle to see what Teal's parents actually have to say about all this if/when the movie is released.

So, are we really supposed to believe that John is just a friendly guy who is trying to help Teal somehow? Where were they going, what were they doing? How does he address this very odd set of circumstances in the interview that has been conducted with him? Child abuse, sexual abuse happens all the time in this world. It doesn't take much of a leap of the imagination to consider that there could have been some sort of abuse taking place in the course of such a strange relationship between a little girl and an adult man who wasn't a family member. So if the first part of this story is true by all accounts—that Teal had a childhood relationship with John in which they were spending time alone—then the second part in which Teal is alleging abuse took place, is more than plausible.

So far then, Teal's story of what took place is well within the realm of possibility. Yes, it's extraordinary, it's weird, it's hard to believe; especially when you factor in the claims of being involved with a Satanic cult. But it is absolutely possible. Yet clearly, someone here is a pathological, diabolical liar. There's no way around it on this one. If John is saying that nothing abusive occurred between the two of them, then their stories couldn't be further from each other and someone is incredibly deceptive. It's either Teal or it's John. And they both know who it is. And yet, there will most likely never be any hard evidence presented that can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who is right. They can both talk and explain things in ways that might sound reasonable. But I don't see how either one can ultimately prove that they are the one who is right and the other is lying.

So let's apply Occam's Razor here to try to determine what appears to be the more likely true story in this case of two divergent accounts of what transpired between these two individuals. Because clearly, someone here is lying. Occam's Razor is a problem-solving principle which says, essentially, that the simplest explanation that is based on fewer assumptions, is more likely to be true. So which explanation here could be considered the “simplest”?

Let's take a look at the two different scenarios. John has apparently told his side of the story in a private interview with someone from the group Ethics and the Modern Guru (a group that is already slanted against Teal and various other spiritual teachers). From what I've heard then we will never see the video of that interview, because the identity of “John” will remain undisclosed. But the transcript of that interview will be released in the document set to be published in the coming days or weeks. So that's the setting in which this man John has had the opportunity to possibly construct a false story to cover for himself.

Meanwhile, Teal has been telling her story in explicit detail to thousands of people around the world over the course of the last five or so years. She didn't just write a book about it, or make videos talking about it on her own terms, which would be something she was in complete control of. Instead, she's been in hundreds of different settings, answering spontaneous questions from people, including with journalists such as in the Fox News interview (conducted by a Fox affiliate in Boise, Idaho). That was an interview conducted at first in private, which went on for several hours, yet which was recorded on video. They then broadcast a short selection of the content of that interview on their TV news program to their Idaho audience.

Obviously they found her story believable enough to release it publicly. This is not something that news organizations do without serious consideration. They fact check as much as they can, they dissect what was said to confirm to the best of their ability that it is more than likely true. They don't want to have to retract a story, because it's later determined they got fooled and it was false testimony. Just ask Dan Rather, who by all accounts got fired from his job as the anchor for the CBS Evening News, because of his support for a story that later turned out to be lacking in certifiable evidence (this was a story during the 2004 presidential election making allegations that George W. Bush had falsified his military service records.) No news organization wants to end up being discredited for broadcasting a false story.

Teal then is having to come up with very specific answers on the spot, with people who are recording the discussion and then will have free will to edit it as they choose. In the interviews that she does with people on Youtube, such as myself, she has a discussion via Skype in which the content is then in the interviewers hands and she doesn't get any chance to mess with it. In the course of my three interviews with Teal, I was never asked for questions beforehand. I wasn't briefed about what I could or could not discuss. It was completely wide open and she had no idea what we would be talking about. I wasn't asked to edit the video in a certain way to make Teal look good or believable. I wasn't asked, pressured or in any way, shape or form expected to conform to a certain format of how the interview would be presented. Neither was I asked by Teal's camp to be able to watch and review the interview, before it was posted publicly. I was simply offered he chance to interview Teal, we arranged a time, had our discussion via Skype. And then I edited the interviews and posted them on Youtube as I chose.

So there's absolutely no room there for error in terms of her getting caught in a lie. Meanwhile she's telling very specific, detailed accounts of what happened to her over the course of her life, answering a ridiculously broad range of questions about anything that anyone might think to ask with basically no restrictions, to thousands of different people around the world in her various interviews and workshops, most of which are then posted publicly for anyone to see, scrutinize and pick apart. And to the best of my knowledge, no one has brought up any glaring inconsistencies to her story. Improbabilities, yes. Her entire story is wildly improbable and extraordinary. But a lot of people have extraordinary stories that are hard to believe, yet which are true.

Somehow then, according to those who accuse her of lying, Teal is completely making all of this stuff up on the spot (and/or recalling an elaborate story she constructed over the past number of years) on all three of these different facets of her life's experience: her childhood, her unique spiritual abilities and her acquired spiritual knowledge. She's been answering thousands of questions without hesitation, managing to keep her story and all the details straight over the course of years of being in the public spotlight.

And yet, none of it is actually true? Can you try to imagine how insanely complicated and convoluted this would be, how many lies on top of lies she would have to remember and keep track of on the spot, how much information she would have to remember by rote in a multitude of settings under the guise of being a spiritual teacher giving spontaneous responses, all while people are watching and recording her every word and body movement and facial expression? And it's all an elaborate, well-orchestrated act? This would be a truly superhuman feat to accomplish, one that seems to challenge the capability of the human mind to even remember, not to mention keep track of in an orderly way such a vast amount of fabricated information. And then, to deliver it all calmly and casually, with seeming authenticity and thoughtfulness and compassion, with no apparent gaps of information or stuttering or freezing up upon trying to recall what lie to tell next...no seeming struggle to continue perpetrating a diabolical, pathological series of lies, day after day, year after year.

So what does Occam's Razor have to say about this situation? Which explanation is simpler? Who has the easier opportunity here to tell a false story to cover for themselves: a person giving detailed interviews, engaging in thousands of hours of discussions with people on an almost daily basis over the course of several years. Or a man who has given one interview in private, to a group of individuals who are in a sense already on his side as critics of Teal? Someone here is lying, clearly. And Occam's Razor says, by a million miles, that the much simpler conclusion to reach is that John has told a false story in his one interview on this issue.

And there's another problem with the story being told by Cameron. According to Cameron, Teal is a pathological liar with multiple personality disorders, who is completely clinically insane and is manipulating everyone around her. If this is the case, why is no one else apparently seeing it? Teal does most certainly have her critics. But from what I've come across, they are basically people who disagree with her spiritual teachings and are suspicious about her story and her personae, yet who haven't actually met and spent time with Teal person.

So how is Teal getting away with all this? Teal is not hidden away in some cult compound, speaking only to her “rabid followers who will die for her”, as Helena Phoenix said, a setting in which she can carefully control her message, her presence, the people around her. Far from it. She's freely accessible to people of all sorts, with no real control over who shows up at her workshops. Anyone who is interested in attending can purchase a ticket and go to one of her workshops, from those who have been following her teachings for years, to those who just heard about her and have no real allegiance, but are curious to check her out in person. She's flying all over the world meeting different people, staying at people's houses, interacting with people one-on-one at workshops in front of crowds that are documented and posted online for anyone to see. And nobody else notices that anything is wrong with her behavior, how she's treating people and how she feels as a person, etc.? And yet the reality according to Cameron is that in fact she's a cold, heartless, calculating, insane, psychopathic maniac? And she's getting away with all of it, because everyone is simply blinded by her charm and beauty?

This story just does not make any sense to me. This is a level of deception that is staggering to imagine any person could be capable of. As I said, I've met Teal and spent time with her in person. And she came across as a warm and present person to me. I actually visited a cult in Sedona, Arizona (one which was exposed by 60 minutes a couple years later), and I picked up on the cult dynamics right away and promptly left. Having met Teal, Blake and several other members of her household, it did not come across to me at all as a cult-like environment. It seemed pretty much like any household of people sharing a house together. Granted, I only had a cursory visit. But a pathologically lying, psychopathic maniac? That is an extreme claim that just doesn't match up with reality in the slightest in my estimation.

And then there's the claim that everything Teal is saying in terms of her spiritual insights is all just a well-orchestrated act, based on her extensive reading and Googling. Again, I find this hard to believe in the extreme. Personally, I don't resonate with Teal's spiritual perspective just because her presentation sounds nice and has a good-looking facade to it. I first came across Teal's videos about 2 ½ years ago. This was not, however, my first introduction to such spiritual concepts. Far from it.

I started meditating in high school when I was 16, which was more than 26 years ago. I started reading all kinds of spiritual books voraciously in the fall of 1992, when I was 20. I started practicing yoga the following year. And I've been on a concerted spiritual path ever since then, reading hundreds of spiritual books including many of the established spiritual classics. I've been to dozens of different spiritual workshops, talks, discussions, gatherings, etc. I've lived on the communities of published spiritual teachers including Swami Kriyananda, Solara and Chris Griscom. I have a B.A. In Religious Studies.

Point being, from the perspective of my own very extensive and concerted spiritual path over the past quarter-century, I wasn't drawn to Teal's teachings because she was a pretty face on Youtube. I find her spiritual insights compelling because I find that they both complement many of the established ancient spiritual traditions, but also take them a step further, and are actually more accurate than a lot of the established religious traditions. A lot more accurate. And I find that what she is offering goes a lot further and deeper and is more multi-layered and insightful than many of the modern gurus, if you will. She hits the nail on the head on every issue, over and over again. In my own personal, subjective opinion, of course.

So I just find it rather preposterous to imagine that everything she is saying is a matter of stealing other people's content and then mixing it all up into a spiritual salad and offering it as her own thing. In my six hours of interview time with her, she certainly doesn't come across in any way as answering questions based on recalling what Abraham or Bashar or whoever else said. Her answers are unique, insightful, thought-provoking to the point that I've had to listen to her words a second or third time in order to understand what she was conveying. And then it made sense. Her teachings are in my best estimation a matter of expressing a worldview she holds within herself and accessing inner sources of knowledge. The notion that she's just making stuff up off the top of her head and recalling what other people have said about these issues strikes me as utterly absurd.

The problem is, any way you look at this situation, we have a fairly unbelievable story here to deal with. Because based on the facts I've been made aware of, the fact is that it's hard to imagine that this fellow John, who has been identified as a real person, one who is apparently willing to openly discuss this situation, is someone who could have done the things that Teal has described. John apparently has been married for 35 years. He's a professional veterinarian who has no criminal record. Apparently he comes across as perfectly normal, sane and believable in his denials of what Teal has claimed. And yet according to Teal then he is the one who is a psychopath and a pathological liar, who is (or at least was) also a closet Satanic cultist who has committed the most egregious acts that can conceivably be inflicted upon another human being.

So, what to believe? What is the truth here? The reality is that other than a confession on the part of one or the other person that they are the one who has created a false story, the truth may never be confirmed either way. The forthcoming document seeking to discredit Teal will apparently be very comprehensive, questioning a lot of elements of her story. What I will be looking for when it comes out is to what extent is the “evidence” actually “absence of evidence” vs. “evidence of absence”. In other words, does it offer conclusive evidence showing that Teal's story couldn't possibly add up to being true? Or does it simply poke holes in her story in terms of the various circumstantial evidence that has so far been presented?

As I said at the beginning, if it's proven that Teal is lying about everything, then of course I don't want to support that. But as they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And doing my best to make sense of the facts and information that is available, the claims being made against Teal are simply far too extreme to entertain as possible without some sort of iron-clad proof.

I've met Teal, spent a number of hours with her and the other members of her household, talked with her, given her a hug and felt her presence. I've seen her videos and read her essays expressing her heart, baring her soul and sharing some of her deepest pains for all to see, so that others might be inspired to have greater courage to be honest with themselves and with others. And my best estimation of the situation is that whatever people think about her spiritual beliefs, her books and videos, her public presence in general, nothing that I myself have seen leads me to believe that the extreme claims being made against her could be true. I do however hope that the truth will make itself known soon, one way or another, so that the controversy can be resolved.