Two documentaries about Twin Flames Universe. Is the Michigan based group a new cult?
Prime has the documentary "Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe" while Netflix is running "Escaping Twin Flames" which were produced by different investigative reporters but take a similar approach to exposing this new group. Both rely on the testimony of ex members of the group to expose the founders power and control and how things changed when the group wasn't working out as they planned.
Apparently the group has a strong presence on facebook and there is also an entire reddit sub for its adherents.
I watched both of these multi part documentaries and was fascinated by the origin and rise of this group. The founders, Jeff and Megan (who now goes by Shaleia) are preying on the desperation of mostly female followers who are desperately seeking their 'one and only true love', their "twin flame". Using a technique of turning all hurts and pains inward the pair asserts they will help heal people who will practice their 'mirroring' technique.
But it starts to get really strange. Shaleia appears to be the one who started with the 'spiritual' aspect of the enterprise and Jeff appears to be the one with a fervent entrepreneurial bent who has turned it into a money making proposition.
They were living in a run down apartment when they began, but now a few years later, have bought a large home with a lake view in Michigan, with Jeff boasting about his Corvette and Porsche in the driveway. Even stranger, they have people living and working in their house to keep their enterprise running. There are shades of other religious communities with a strong 'messianic' leader that have started this way with Waco being mentioned in the documentary. Jeff even suggests, very strongly, that he may be the Christ.
The adherents pay for private or group facetime sessions with Jeff and Shaleia and are encouraged to take their video courses, which can be anywhere from $100 to $8,888. And those who have taken on the role of being life coaches under them are also encouraged to find more life coaches - it seems to be a combination of multi level marketing, religion and some kind of mass delusional 'teaching' to desperate and gullible people.
Jeff and Shaleia encourage people in their group to cut off relationships with anyone who is not supportive of Twin Flames, a sure sign of a cult, and there are several testimonials from hurting parents who are desperate to be back in touch with their children.
And in probably the strangest twist, when very few people were finding their "twin flame" to be responding, Jeff proclaimed that their twin flame already was part of the group - but since most of the group were women, he insisted that several of the women pair up and that one of them was now a "divine male", to the point of asking some to change their clothes, hair and go by a new male name.
It's all quite fascinating, and I couldn't believe that in an age where information on cults and cult activity is so easy to find, that so many people would be sucked into Twin Flames Universe and not see the control and manipulation going on in their lives.
Both are well worth watching but if you only have time for one, I'd recommend Prime's documentary - seems to be a bit more professionally produced.
Yes, Twin Flames Universe is a cult. Jeff and Shaleia call their teachings religion, call themselves divine, and exert extreme control over their believers. No question.
I only watched the Netflix series (Escaping Twin Flames), not the one on Prime. Cult docs are fascinating to me, so I'll probably catch the Prime one at some point.
Another cult doc that just finished airing is the equally gripping Love Has Won, on HBO. And of course, if you're new to this stuff, arguably the best cult doc is Wild Wild Country. For some reason I haven't gotten around to The Vow yet, about NXIVM.
(If you're just starting your cult fascination voyage, here are some more cults to look into, though I can't think of their best docs right now: The People's Temple (Jonestown), the Branch Davidians (Waco), Heaven's Gate (Hale-Bopp comet), the FLDS Church (Warren Jeffs), and Aum Shinrikyo (Tokyo subway sarin gas attack).)
If anyone has recommendations for cult docs, I'm all ears!
Thanks for sending me down another rabbit hole. Just watched Love Has Won and yes, definitely gripping. Astounding really.
If a 'belief system' is propped up by the constant use of cannabis, psychedelics, silver colloidal, tinctures and alcohol, the chances of things going south is pretty strong, as they did for 'Mom'. She seemed like a nice but broken person, I just don't understand how her followers made the leap from 'nice person' to 'she is God.' I guess if you smoke enough cannabis and you're desperately seeking some kind of meaning, you can convince yourself of just about anything.
It seems that Mom had some moments of clarity before she died, wondering if everything she had promoted was a lie. Would her followers not admit the same thing because they don't believe it's all made up? Or because that would end their grift?
I'm not terribly surprised that the survivors of this cult are still following very similar paths. I lived in Hawaii for a few years, very near some similar spiritual/communal groups, and met a lot of people who were on the same 'journey to enlightenment' - But it was the same thing - colonies of broken people, running away from reality but portraying themselves as enlightened beings. Never met so many self proclaimed "goddesses"
All in all they are pretty chill, non threatening people but with lives that didn't seem to be going anywhere. But they thought the rest of the world just didn't get it, didn't understand them, just like the people in the documentary.
It did seem that it largely attracted the young though. By the time they hit their 40s most had moved on. I guess the search for meaning is universal and if smoking the ganja and meditating on mushrooms and waiting for Robin Williams to tell you what to do next floats one's boat, well, what can you say?
Absolutely dude. My ex-wife went down a similar (though way less severe) new-agey rabbit hole, so here's my take on why some people fall into these crazy, falsifiable belief systems: it makes them feel good. Rationality is hard and the real world can be a tough place to live in. So if someone can't really even understand the disciplines that underpin real reality, or doesn't care to try, and can't seem to get ahead in life, they can start to feel rejected by this thing that experts agree constitutes real life. Whereas, if you go play make-believe with crystals and weed with your friends in the forest, you can convince yourself that that feels good, so it must be right, and everyone else must be wrong.
That Sagan quote about clutching at crystals could not have been more prescient.
At it's most basic that's probably why, but I personally think there is a bit more to it than that. IMO modern society, even with its social safety nets, modern medicine/mental health treatments, etc. has failed a lot of people, who have now fallen through the cracks, and are silently suffering in various ways. Suffering from loneliness, trauma, depression, anxiety, harder to diagnose physical ailments that cause things like chronic pain, stress, and fatigue (which are often dismissed by medical professionals), etc. And since those people haven't yet been able to find solutions to their issues via the established, regulated, science-based institutions, in their desperation to find any way out of their suffering, they unfortunately often fall prey to con artists, cult leaders, influencers, or delusional people that drank their own Kool-Aid, who claim to have all the answers. And that, combined with a sense of community, basic human connections, and the placebo effect being such powerful things, is how we end up with these cults still forming, even in the modern information age where you would think people should know better than to fall for their bullshit.
I'd buy that. If our society were more equitable and functional then people would be more resilient to the bullshit. There will always be delusional people and misanthropes and people who just want more than what reality can offer, but the seduction of feel-good nonsense would be lessened if we took better care of each other.
I looked it up:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."
"The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
I’ve been low key terrified since last night when I watched the Netflix TFU series - I watched the Amazon series today and heartily second the production quality being better - about how to teach my kids to avoid this sort of thing. But, Sagan! Yes! Of course! Sagan!
Thank you!
Is it Shadows or a different one that has the “we used to be superstitious af” portion, something about a garage?
Haha, you're welcome! I couldn't tell you what quote you're thinking of, don't know that one. I just know the (poorly paraphrased) "I fear a future where America has become a service economy and people peer into their crystal balls unable to tell the difference between what is real and what feels good" line from kicking around the internet for a few decades.
I think that might be from his last book - or at least a theme in one of his last books, possibly posthumous - that’s about like…a bunch of different stuff but all I remember from it is that the American Medical Association is basically responsible for abortion restrictions in the US.
More info on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Flames_Universe
Thanks for posting this. I probably wouldn’t have watched either if you hadn’t. Currently watching the one on Netflix. Might watch the Amazon one as well.
It is really fascinating that this sort of thing is still possible, but … minds are interesting. If someone starts talking to me “healing my blocks,” I’m out.
Oh god…
The low key feeder fetish meets spin off business scam.
Then the “I’m Jesus” thing. Don’t worry I’m not full of it, “It’s just a block.”