Sep 26, 2015

An Open Letter To Gabriel Morris Regarding Teal Swan – UPDATE: Gabriel's Non-Response

Appearing at The Truth About Cameron and Celestial Reflections.

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UPDATE: Gabriel's Non-Response (See Below)


Recently Gabriel "Kundalini" Morris wrote a blog post taking me to task on my public statements about Teal Swan. He also challenged an upcoming release of an interview with Teal's alleged abuser. What follows is my response to his blog post.


Dear Gabriel,

Thank-you for initiating a public dialog regarding our diverging views on Teal Swan. I'd like to address a number of the points you raised in your blog post. I’m not going to address your speculation about what actually transpired between Teal and her alleged abuser and where she stayed and when, because speculation is all that it is. You’ve created a logical house of cards based entirely on Teal’s statements without even seeing what the man she’s accused of all these things has to say. You are welcome to read the interview with Teal's alleged abuser and draw your own conclusions. A number of the other questions you raise, however, I can speak to. I feel much of what you wrote misrepresented and misstated me. For that and other reasons, I feel the need to respond to your blog and let a clear public record stand. I will be addressing your points in no particular order.


You write:

"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."

Well, that’s awfully specific. So, only a person who has spent significant time with Teal and who is also speaking out “forcefully” is to be taken seriously as a critic? You seem to have narrowed the scope in order to deliberately exclude a slew of critics and disenfranchised followers. Many people other than myself have enjoyed condemnation by Teal and even death threats from her followers for critiquing and questioning her public record and behavior. You’re not even considering Fallon, her former live-in boyfriend, whom she publicly humiliated by proclaiming a psychopath and who has since written publicly about his experiences in her “cult.” There was controversy long before I spoke out, and no doubt, it would continue if I went silent tomorrow.

What about her followers? The vast majority of them haven’t spent significant time with her either. Does that make their fondness for her equally meaningless? Gabriel, you've spent spent far less time with her than I have. What does that say about your observations?




You write:

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.... 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.

That she owns and reads books isn't the problem. That she doesn't cite her sources is. Many of her followers think everything she's saying is divine wisdom that she accesses from her "universal perspective," that no one else seems to have access to.


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The similarity of Teal's ideas to that of other writers and teachers is astounding and, other than Byron Katie, if she has cited her sources, I've missed it. I think it’s worth noting that she’s been caught repeatedly parroting sources like Wikipedia and Abraham-Hicks nearly word for word and without ever citing a source. Her work seems like a cherry picked, hybridized, and poorly regurgitated version of other people’s ideas and philosophies. All you need do is read through the comments on LaVaughn's Teal-related blog posts, because many people have flagged numerous instances of things that can be traced to better sources, where her claimed ideas have been articulated with far greater clarity.

Just recently, an observant commenter by the name of Vanco Mycin noticed that Teal's frequency paintings are strikingly similar to artist Tracey Taylor's.




Taylor's art also has a connection to her relationship with extra-terrestrials and, once again, looks like a better, more professional, adult version of Teal's work. Her paintings also contain symbols from many cultures and ancient temples. These had to be pointed out to her, because she didn't know what she was painting. Taylor claims her work is channeled.

Teal's paintings also contain symbols, but their origins are more obvious. For instance her painting called Alchemy contains a symbol that it was noted comes from the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist. It's probably proprietary. Her painting Soul Retrieval contains the Reiki power symbol and the sigil from the Necronomicon.

One of Teal's favorite mantras that she had tattooed on her forearm is, "Follow your Joy." Not only does this concept seem very puerile to me, but I was recently informed that this is also a bastardization of Joseph Campbell’s "follow your bliss," which is a widely abused and misunderstood phrase that many new agers use without awareness of its origin.  Bliss doesn’t mean either joy or happiness. It’s a much deeper concept. In fact, Campbell said later that he wished he’d said, “follow your blisters.”

LaVaughn has also noted a number of instances where Teal's ideas can be traced to other sources in the noncasts, in particular Core Something or Other, Scooby Doo and the Case of TEAL's Missing CitationsThe Power of Beard, and The Bottomless Rabbit Hole.


You write:

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.

That it’s escaped your notice, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Many people other than myself have noticed. It’s actually hard to believe that it’s escaped your notice, given that you left a number of comments on one of the blog posts that was called out specifically for its racism.

I’m referring to the post slamming the entire Asian population because she had an unpleasant experience at a Korean spa. Teal writes:

It is ironic that one would think bathhouses were all about hygiene maintenance, but it has been my observation that Asian bathhouses boast some of the lowest hygiene levels of any public health service…  I have sensitive skin and so it hurt like hell and “softer” doesn’t really mean anything to a washing woman who speaks no English. I’ve decided that the least relaxing thing on earth, is being ordered around by older angry Korean ladies. Asians in general are not gentle with bodies…. The awesome healing properties of the rooms are offset by the dizzy-money making design of the place and the mentality of the Asian body workers in general.

The response from readers was bad enough that she couldn’t just delete a handful of comments and sweep the criticism under the rug, as is so often the case. Here are some of the responses:


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One reader noticed that the casual bigotry in this post was not an anomaly.


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There was enough outcry about this post that she had to offer a public apology.


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Some people noticed that it was a non-apology apology.


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So, after all that, did Teal get it? Did she learn anything at all about the perils of defining people with race-based cliches? Not if this recent comment on her Facebook page is any indication.


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As you can see from the comments posted above, many people are aware of her history of racist and bigoted remarks. But, for all her claims of leading a “public” and “authentic” life, some of the worst episodes have conveniently disappeared. The infamous “racist rant” on one of the earlier Shadow House episodes is one. It may be gone, but it’s not forgotten.



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In the midst of that rant, she also lectured black people about their need to let go of the vibration of slavery. Or as described in a comment on her blog post about this episode, “Slavery – or more precisely, the insistently reinforced ‘faux’ memory of slavery – was mentioned as being one of the excuses employed to incite and perpetuate defensiveness.”

Teal has stated that she was designed by an Arcturian panel to be pretty and white enough to reach people on every continent.

Before I even came down, um, there was an entire panel of beings, Arcturian beings, sixth-dimensional beings, who even chose the way I would look in this life. Would you like to know why? So, I came down here with the intention of reaching people on every single continent, and to do that, human beings, human beings, they like to pay attention to what’s attractive, right? But based on where you are geographically, certain things are attractive and certain things are unattractive. So a really beautiful woman down in Africa might come up here to the US and be considered pretty ugly. But there are certain type of traits, physical traits, which make a person attractive on every single continent, and so, even before I came here, it’s not like my looks are so gorgeous to one demographic over another demographic. It’s that there will not be a person, on the planet, regardless of what country you go to, that will not perceive some level of attractiveness. Thus they’ll pay attention.

Many people found this explanation both vain and bigoted. African women, which is to say, black women, are seen as “pretty ugly” in the US and much of the world, so she had to be white. Consider the message this sends to women and girls of color or who aren’t model pretty. No matter how great their ideas are, they can’t possibly have a global impact because they aren’t pretty or white enough.


You write:

"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."

I have never said that Teal called Hitler a spiritual teacher. Personally, I've heard her reference Hitler enough to have serious concerns about her odd preoccupation with him and his dictatorship. She also has a strange fascination with whiteness. Here she is cooing over the Aryan ideal, or what Hitler called the master race:

I also find Norwegians in general to be a beautiful demographic of people. I realize on and off that I am making people feel uncomfortable by staring at them for long periods of time, but I find the physical look of people here to be mesmerizing. It truly is a land of beautiful people. I’ve never seen a higher concentration of Arian [sic] looking people in my life. I hear that both Sweden and Denmark are the same. Tall people with crystal blue eyes; prominent bone structures and platinum hair are not a rarity to put it mildly… Nothing short of gorgeous.

Note: African women are “pretty ugly” to most “demographics” but Nordic people are a “beautiful” and “mesmerizing” “demographic.” Even so, she might be able to get away with this as simply a statement on aesthetics, if she hadn’t used the word “Aryan” to describe them.

To your point, isn’t she just saying that the world learned powerful lessons because of Hitler’s horrific actions? I don’t think it’s that simple. She’s made other public statements about Hitler that are just bizarre. In a Tea Time With Teal episode, she explained that he wouldn’t have had a “world following of millions of people” if he hadn’t had some great ideas, and that it was just unfortunate that his powerful message was lost in light of all the bad things. So, her grasp of history isn’t so great, either. The details of Teal praising Hitler can be found by reading the comments section after page searching “hitler” here

Here is a transcript of this portion of her dialog with Sarbdeep.

TEAL: So, just because you don't like somebody doesn't mean they don't have some like really super-awesome teaching.

SARBDEEP: Yeah

TEAL: Maybe that one, that person who's absolutely terrible has one teaching. Hitler had a teaching. I'll tell you that!

SARBDEEP: (nodding) Yeah, yeah, true... yeah... I mean what did he teach?

TEAL: Oh my God, from a universal perspective, he taught freedom better than anyone else.

SARBDEEP: How so?

TEAL: He caused people to know what they wanted and what they didn't want.

SARBDEEP: (nodding) yeah... yeah... yeah... I suppose people now, you know, seventy years later are sort of so, uh, careful and aware of what happened to our grandparents' generation...

TEAL: I mean there's a reason that someone would be followed around by, what, millions of people at that point. Like you don't amass a world following of millions of people unless you have something important that people want to hear. So. It's just when that tips into the other, other side, you can sort of let that go and continue with the positive stuff. That's sort of what bugs me about people saying I am Catholic or I am Christian. That's like saying you have to buy into the totality of the message....

So which is it? Did Hitler teach “freedom” by bad example, or did he have a “super-awesome” teaching that was unfairly overshadowed by all the genocide and megalomania? Despite Sarbdeep's attempts to reframe it as the former, I think a careful reading of her statements shows it to be the latter. She's clearly saying that people aren’t considering Hitler’s great teaching. They aren’t focusing on the “positive stuff,” because of the “other side” that was so “terrible.”

Teal also made some very strange, historically inaccurate claims about Hitler in her BATGAP interview, to explain why Hitler's actions were perfectly understandable and to recast him as a sympathetic character. Here is a transcript of the dialog between Teal and Rick Archer from 2:03:56-2:05:32 of the interview:

TEAL: If you understand Hitler’s past-- now see it’s easy to make an enemy of Hitler but many of us feel guilty in our own lives. So you ready to understand the way the universe sees you? The universe can comprehend of the fact that Hitler was born into an incredibly emotionally absent family. I mean, like there was-- you wanna talk about emotional abuse-- that was the reality of his life. Then he goes to war. Not only does he go to war, he gets injured in war to the point that he ends up in a psychiatric ward thinking he’s blind-- for a long period of time. And he looks out at the world and he’s super angry, why? Cuz he feels alone again. He feels betrayed, because he thinks the Jews are not fighting in the war like they should. So he develops, it’s a projection of his relationship with his parents. But that ultimate amount of pain of being betrayed-- gets projected onto the Jewish culture, and that is why he did what he did. It’s those childhood feelings of betrayal. Would we then take this man to another alternative called hell and now punish him for the very same emotional state which he was put in which was painful in his childhood? Hell no, because we can comprehend how he got to that position. So there is more compassion shown for him than there ever was punishment for him. And when we get to the point where we start looking at the world with that same kind of eye-- we will be in a state of love and our entire race will transcend.

RICK ARCHER: And How do you think our criminal justice system will work?

TEAL: It won’t work...

RICK ARCHER: Will there be one?

TEAL: No, there won’t be.

RICK ARCHER: So what will we do with people who are inclined to murder, and rape, and steal, and rob, and so on?

TEAL: We will love them into wellness.

It’s another example of this pity the monster, and no one else, thing that Teal often does. She has not only done this with Hitler, but “The Virgin Killer” Elliot Rodger, pedophiles, Ted Bundy, Jim Jones, and her own alleged abuser. In this instance, Teal just butchers the history. She completely misses that Hitler was very close to his mother, which undercuts her entire thesis. LaVaughn also points out that Teal has almost definitely plagiarized a controversial psychologist on all of this parent-blame for despots thing. For details on this, check out LaVaughn’s “TEAL Works Blue” noncast.

And then there is this disturbing "know your evil" post that Teal randomly posted on Facebook. Teal could express any “breed of evil,” yet her shadow self would choose to be an evil dictator. This evil dictator also appears to be giving a nod to Hitler’s eugenics agenda.


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Her pity the poor tyrants theme might be even admirable, if she had that much compassion for non-tyrants, like say, her critics. This is what she had to say about Jordan LaVigne who attempted to have a dialog with her regarding his concerns about her possibly being operated by dark entities.


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What did Jordan do to deserve such animosity that Hitler, Jim Jones, Ted Bundy, Elliot Rodger, and her alleged abuser did not? He said something that was “anti-teal.”


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Teal actually defines people as “tealers” and “anti-teal.” It raises serious questions about her pity for tyrants, as she fantasizes about controlling human procreation when she’s a despot. Considering her stated intention to buy countries, this is even more concerning.


You write:

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.

In this interview, around 51 minutes in, Teal says:

To us it's all about truth. And we have an addiction to it. We have this absolute addiction – worldwide addiction to the idea that we have to know what is true – which is just ridiculous. Because most of us are killing ourselves with what we think is true. So the question is why do you want truth to begin with? I want truth 'cause I think I will be happier if I have truth. Okay, well what if the truth is this and that makes you feel like crap. Does that really make you feel better? Why are we going about it the long way? Why not just decide that what matters is that you feel good? It's the only reason you want truth anyway – and most of the time when people realize that – life becomes a bit more soft. You know? It becomes a bit more about does this benefit me, not is it true.

That seems pretty clear to me.


You write:

[Teal is] 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?.... Apparently [Teal's alleged abuser] 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.

It was a former mental health professional who made the determination, based on Teal’s public statements and behavior, that she most likely has antisocial personality disorder, which is the clinical term for sociopathy and psychopathy. To be fair, the people publishing "John's" interview tried very hard to get a statement from Teal and/or Blake. They were dodgy, manipulative, and evasive, and ultimately negotiations broke down. “John,” on the other hand, seemed cooperative, credible, and he never wavered or contradicted himself. He’s been prompt in responding over the past three months of correspondence. He’s made no outrageous claims, and has done nothing indicating that he has anything to hide. Teal has leveled all these heinous accusations at him, and yet, 10 years after her filing her police report, the case is still cold. He's not in hiding, nor has he moved. He says the police never even contacted him. There isn’t one thing that points to him being a mentally unstable, psychopathic liar with multiple personalities who abducts and tortures little girls and burns immigrant children in his spare time. Our background investigation on him indicated he has lived out a rather stable life. He graduated from college in the midwest. He enjoyed a successful career as a vet. He’s had no criminal history. He has written books. He has been married to his current wife for 35 years and 15 years to his wife before that. He has two step-sons, and he’s still teaching clinics to other veterinarians now that he’s retired.

Teal on the other hand is very volatile and unstable. She suffers from numerous personality disorders and mental illnesses that DO NOT necessitate trauma to develop. People can in fact be born with the very mental illnesses she suffers from. Teal claims that "John" suffers from multiple personalities, and sociopathy, because he underwent all the same tortures that Teal underwent as a child in order to get that way. Well, if he actually did go through unimaginable tortures and mental programming growing up,  he certainly doesn't have an erratic and dysfunctional past like Teal to show for it.

Meanwhile, Teal hasn’t managed to get an education, hold down a routine, job, or spouse for an extended amount of time the way “John” has. Teal has been married and divorced three times at age 31. So, based on having interacted with both “John” and Teal, it's obvious that Teal is the least stable and least credible one in this equation.

In her book The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout writes:

After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, "How can I tell whom not to trust?" the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.

I can tell you that in all my conversations with Teal’s alleged abuser, he has never appealed to pity once. Granted, three months of email and phone conversations are a limited sampling of his time and life, but it’s what I have to go on. Teal, on the other hand, has refined seeking pity to an art form. It’s constant. She uses her Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) story. She uses her emotional instability. She talks and writes on and on about how much she cries, has seizures, how there are conspiracies against her, how she can’t even plug in an appliance. Any time she needs something or wants something or is challenged in any way, she goes straight for the pity play.

I am hardly the only person who has noticed problems with Teal’s behavior and demeanor. That’s just comical. Many, many, many people have found her disturbing and that includes people who've been to her workshops and met her face to face. All you need do is read the comments on LaVaughn's blog posts about Teal to get some sense of how adversely affected people have been by her. Many people followed her online, were part of Teal Tribe and other groups, but ultimately fled, often following an unseemly outburst from Teal and/or Blake. Others fled simply because the questions, the inconsistencies, the behavior, just became too much to reconcile. Consider that those are just the people who are willing to speak out in a somewhat public forum. I, personally, have spoken to a number of former friends and followers of Teal's, who aren't willing to speak out publicly, some because they're afraid of her and her fanatical followers.

Teal herself has admitted to having strong opposition to her cult-like influence. She’s made a number of references to this on her blog, as in this recent post. Once again she breaks down the world into "Tealers" and "Anti-Tealers," in-group vs out-group, those who support her and those who are out to get her:

However, it turns out that I have opposition here as well. One of the "Anti- Tealers" bought a ticket to the event. I was working with a very sweet young woman who was so polite and timid that the whole audience (including me) fell instantly in love with her. But in the middle of the work I was doing with her, this Anti-Tealer got up out of his seat and came through the audience and past both bodyguards to pull her off of the stage and out the door away from my influence. He then proceeded to try to convince her that I was a cult leader who was controlling the minds of everyone in the crowd (sheep). It shocked the whole crowd, including me. I was dumbfounded and sent some men out after her to ensure that she was safe. Some things, you just can’t prepare for… For a while, I was convinced that people were only capable of distrusting me or opposing me if they have never seen me in person or in action. But slowly, it is becoming obvious that a person can still distrust and oppose me even if they do meet me in person or see me in action. I am not going to be able to convince some people that I am the good guy.

Teal also got some pushback from an audience member at the UN in Vienna?

But there was one man in the audience who did not share the welcoming sentiment. My presence infuriated him and during the discussion, he took the microphone and proceeded to challenge my credibility and expertise and tell me that people who listen to me need "professional help". Not understanding that I prefer to cut to the root of whatever is causing someone to suffer (whether or not it seems to relate directly to the question being posed) he told me that I just manipulate and confuse people to prove my points and refuse to even answer the questions people ask. After he lost control of the microphone, he continued to shake his head at everything I said and demonstratively tell the woman sitting next to him about all his disagreements with me.

In the Czech Republic, a group of people went so far as to burn one of her paintings because they thought it and she were Satanic.

Laced with the bite of irony, the original painting of mine called “integrity” was purchased by a group of people in the Czech Republic and publicly burnt in accordance with what they thought was right.  It was burnt because they think I am satanic and because they also think I am a disguised reptilian.  The burning is a symbolic message that I am not welcome here.  It is an attempt to protect people from me and from what I create.

How many people other than me have to say that they're disturbed by Teal, before you notice?


You write:

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?

You’re making a number of assumptions here. For a start, you’re assuming that her relationship with her parents was and is as she has claimed. I spent time with her and her family and her rendition doesn’t square with my experience. Her parents were very supportive. They are very involved grandparents. I don’t think she was ever as distant from them as she’s claimed. And, even if you take her words at face value, she was the one creating that distance, not them. There is no evidence anywhere that her parents would not try to support her. Funny thing about parents who love their kids. They tend to support and protect them right or wrong.


You write:

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.

You’re confusing an interview with a local author at a very small regional affiliate with a piece of investigative journalism on a major national network. It’s a very poor comparison. You’re also ignoring that neither Teal’s interviewer, nor the anchors on the show took an opinion or vouched for the story. They kept saying it was pretty “hard to believe,” which it is. The interviewer, Chris Oswalt, even said he “had a hard time believing this was true,” and left it to viewers to decide and weigh in on social media.

I was also contacted by the same station about doing an interview, but I declined. They were sniffing around for confirmation of her alleged abuser’s name, which I explained I would not release publicly out of fear for his safety. It seemed to me, that their initial interest was in proving the existence of SRA. Apparently, there is a longstanding history with such claims in Utah and Idaho since the Geraldo fueled "satanic panic" of the 80's. It appeared that they were using Teal’s story to bolster this agenda and give courage to other ritual abuse survivors. I do think it's worth mentioning that the representative who contacted me from the station said that they are keeping a close eye out for the upcoming release of the interviews with "John," and would follow up accordingly.


You write:

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.

The KIVI interview, like so many others, was not a critical interview. Sure, she’s given lots of interviews over the years, but they’ve been with supporters of hers, supporters of the SRA narrative she’s repeating. None of these interviewers, including yourself, has asked probing questions or challenged her claims. When I was in Utah, one of my jobs was scheduling interviews. Potential interviewers were prescreened by Blake, who would ask questions about what they liked about Teal and her teachings. She does not do interviews with anyone who might ask challenging questions. Teal only does softball interviews. There is nothing complicated about recalling details and answering questions on this, because she's repeating the same storyline over and over again.


You write:

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.

While I in no way believe that she has an IQ of 170, as she claims, I do think Teal has a relatively quick intellect, an active imagination, and is able to think on her feet in order to recall things and make rapid fire connections on the spot. This is hardly a "superhuman feat to accomplish." Many improv actors, fiction writers, salesman, and con-artists, have demonstrated this same gift.

There is a very long history of fabricators and fabulists achieving a fair degree of success. And, we only know about the ones who are eventually caught. James Frey made it all the way to the show. He did Oprah, and he deceived her completely. Stephen Glass had smoked multiple fabricated news stories past his editors and readers at The New Republic, before a tech reporter from Forbes got wise and put a stop to him. Belle Gibson created a cottage industry on a complete fabrication. Then you have Laura Stratford, the fabulist behind Satan's Underground. Her story is eerily similar to Teal's. Stratford achieved a fair amount of success and credulity from the public before it was discovered that her Satanic ritual abuse stories were all lies.

I really have to disagree with you as to Teal's “seeming authenticity and thoughtfulness and compassion.” Many people have noted that her affect when she talks about her abuse is disturbing. She never seems reluctant to describe really graphic, gory details. It’s unusual for abuse survivors to keep telling their stories so casually. It’s usually painful and brings up a lot of resistance to reliving the experience through the telling of it. She seems to find it all funny. She giggles and smirks while she’s conveying really disturbing things. She giggles and smirks a lot at oddly inappropriate times. She’s the “giggling guide,” after all. It has been suggested that this is actually what’s called duping delight. It happens when people can’t suppress their glee at getting away with bald-faced bullshitting.

She also giggles and smirks when she talks about people committing suicide. She had the whole audience chuckling over her client's suicide, during one of her workshops.

You know when she doesn’t giggle and smirk? When she’s criticized in any way.


You write:

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’?

So, you’re saying that the simplest explanation goes something like this. Teal was created by an Arcturian panel to be pretty and white enough to reach the entire world, but first had to be subjected to the most horrific of cruelties so that she could get herself out of it for the betterment of humanity. These Arcturians, in their eternal wisdom, positioned her to be so special and gifted that she caught the attention of Mormon Blood Covenant members who also infiltrated a Satanic network. Her handler, whom you’ve decided to call “John,” a psychopath who also had Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities), moved her back and forth between these groups: one where she was tortured and venerated for her gifts, one where she was tortured to be purged of her gifts. She was prostituted out. She was used to lure Mexican immigrant children to their deaths. She was sexually abused and horrifically tortured: chained in a pit in his backyard for hours, sewn into a corpse by his mortician friend, which sounds impossible and probably is. This occurred while she was living in a small cabin with her parents and brother, who mistook the inevitable physical damage for sports injuries. She also attended school. She worked as a model, she claims at her abuser’s behest. She was programmed to return to his home regularly, which her family also didn’t notice, and despite the fact that such Manchurian Candidate type conditioning is the stuff of fiction and has never been demonstrated to be real. All this occurred, despite the fact that the FBI has never been able to turn up any evidence of Satanic conspiracies and that the one investigation she initiated under the direction of a therapist known for creating false memory, rapidly went cold. This, however, is fine with her because she never wanted to see anyone prosecuted for all the rape, torture, and child murder anyway.

That strange, convoluted story, to you, is simple? You have a very strange idea of how Occam’s razor works.


You write:

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.

By your own admission, Teal’s story is “extraordinary,” “weird,” “hard to believe” and “wildly improbable.” You use the word “extraordinary” six times in your post, four of them to describe Teal’s story. Why does her “extraordinary claim” not require the kind of “extraordinary evidence” you’re demanding of me or Teal’s alleged abuser?


You write:

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?

I think you fundamentally misunderstand how our system of justice works. People are innocent until they’re proven guilty, in this country. The burden of proof is on the accuser, in this case, Teal. She has accused a man of horrific crimes. It is incumbent on her to provide the proof. Instead, with no proof and with one 10-year-old cold case undertaken in only one of the jurisdictions, not even the primary jurisdiction, she has been relentlessly trying this man in the court of public opinion. She has all but identified him by name, making him very recognizable to people in his area, and putting his safety at risk. It is not up to "John" to prove his innocence to you or to anybody. It is not my job to prove anything to you either. But, I hope you will consider what I've written here and read what he has to say for himself in the future.

Sincerely,

Cameron Clark

UPDATE: GABRIEL'S NON-RESPONSE


After spending hours, if not days, on his blog post filled with desperate, unsupported, convolutions of logic intended to discredit my public statements about Teal Swan, suddenly Gabriel doesn't think it's worth his time to read my reply. His non-response to my open letter to him can be seen in a screenshot taken from his public Facebook page below.

A commenter on Gabriel's Facebook post where he shared a link to his blog asks Gabriel:




NOTE: I believe this was an important and beneficial discourse to have in a public setting for many reasons. Not only did it present the public with facts granting them the opportunity to make informed decisions when it comes to following Teal, it also really demonstrates the psychology of Teal's followers. Gabriel is a perfect example of how people behave when they are involved in "group think" organizations and cults. The idealization of his guru, the re-scripting, justification, and denial of her egregious behavior is textbook cult behavior. Gabriel's blind defense of Teal and refusal to face the facts, demonstrates the typical "hive mind" mentality.

Notice how he believes "ultimately the truth will reveal itself in one way or another." Meanwhile, he has completely closed himself off  to the facts he's being presented with by me, while saying he doesn't think there will ever be any hard evidence. His contradictory behavior is the epitome of someone who is experiencing cognitive dissonance.




This is a very disturbing reaction that I have seen time and time again with Teal's followers and people heavily involved in cults. I think it's important to highlight and expose the dynamics of what is going on within Teal's organization and other cult-like organizations in general. I think it would be a benefit to us all to move toward a world filled with fewer followers and more rational, independent thinkers.

16 comments:

  1. *I posted the same comment on Cameron's blog. I just want to emphasize this whole debate is extremely important for the sake of people who live, have lived and are going to live with her. But we should be very careful not to make a martyr out of her :/
    When it comes to this story what is most important is that the people who live with her should read up on psychopaths. I have been friends with one for over a decade, and only when the lies got out of hand and people's lives were at stake did I have the guts to walk away.
    It is incredibly difficult to cut a psychopath out of your life and no matter who ir what tells you something's off you're not gonna take that step as long as you hate yourself enough that you succumb to flattery and your life becomes a living hell of listening to their crap, defending them and covering for them whenever they do something insanely stupid because you're afraid they might leave you. Yes, you become dependent on them (or they just manipulate you into feeling that way) and they make you believe they are dependant on YOU. 'You're my only friend. You have to keep this secret for me, you're the only one I trust. Can you please help me get my hands on those pills, I can't sleep and I know you can help me. You are so special, and I have no idea what I'd do without you, you help me so much, I'd be lost without you'. SOunds familiar? Yeah, my psychopath would try to kill herself periodically whenever she did something stupid. Instant pity. Take a look at the person next to you and google the traits of a psychopath and WALK AWAY. If I could do it (it wasn't easy) anyone can

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  2. I think it takes a special kind of cowardly to refuse to even read someone's rebuttal to your argument against them, but here is Gabriel's response to Cameron's post.

    "I did see that she posted it but don't plan to read it or respond. This discussion could go on ad infinitum. But I've said my piece and don't care to continue revisiting the topic over and over again, picking apart the story and one person when I don't think there will ever be any hard evidence to prove decisively who is correct. And I have many other projects to spend my time on. But I do believe ultimately the truth will reveal itself one way or another."

    From here. Screenshot here.

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  3. I knew early on that Gabriel would delete the Facebook thread on his page, announcing his blog post. I knew it because he was getting far too much negative feedback. I don't know what he was expecting, but I suspect it wasn't a lesson in how much opposition teal has and how far it extends beyond Cameron. In anticipation of the inevitable deletion, I started taking screenshots early on. It was a very long thread, ultimately including over a hundred comments and at least double that with replies to those comments. I can't hope to do the thread justice, but I didn't want to let it all go down the memory hole. I've posted some of the more interesting bits to my photobucket. If there's something you remember and don't see there, let me know and I'll dig through it all again to see if I can find it.

    Gabriel didn't just get pushback from those evil anti-teal minions, but from some tealers as well. The gist was that Gabriel was exploiting this drama to boost his own traffic and profile. It's my understanding that he got some of the same kind of feedback on Teal Tribe. To address this kind of criticism, Gabriel explained that he was just carrying teal's water and that he even got mad props from Blake.

    Gabriel's post was open to the public. I have no idea how many of the people who posted were his friends and how many were teal critics who wandered by, but a lot of the comments were the kind that teal would no doubt call "anti-teal" material from her "hate groups." Some choice examples can be found here, here, here, here, here, here,

    Some were a little more ambivalent. See here and here.

    - to be cont -

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  4. - cont -

    I also got a kick out of this diatribe because it breaks down neatly into this little syllogism: teal is operating like many gurus, gurus lie, ergo teal lies. And, who cares? They're sort of adorable when they make shit up.

    Some were directly critical of Gabriel for writing something so obviously biased and factually incorrect.

    I thought it was kind of interesting that in deflecting some of that criticism, Gabriel made a pretty damning statement about tealers. He's not a tealer because he follows his own truth and listens to many other teachers. That would imply that tealers are clueless sheep who have given their power over to teal completely. And, teal sure does love her sheeple, I mean tealers.

    One person raised alarms about teal's living situation and how it could impact her child. Gabriel bristled at the suggestion that anyone dare criticize her right to exercise her prerogative. I guess he's missed teal's many lectures to the world about how children should be raised and how she hopes to completely re-engineer the process of parenting. He also must have missed her excoriation of Elliott Rodger's mother for her use of "transient caregivers." Yeah, the mother who quit her job as a nurse to stay home with her two kids must surely have caused her son to become a mass murderer with her employment of the occasional au pair. Whereas teal's rotating cast of husbands, boyfriends, and live-in tealers who care for the son she can't be alone with lest she has a seizure, couldn't possibly be considered the dreaded "transient caregivers" could they?

    Gabriel has been fairly clear that he would not be cool with teal if it turns out she's a lying liar, and in his post went way out on a limb by claiming he would purge his sites of teal if that turned out to be the case. But since no proof will ever be good enough to convince him, it probably will never come to that.

    As ever, many of teal's fans don't care if she's lying or not.

    - to be cont -

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    Replies
    1. "As ever, many of teal's fans don't care if she's lying or not. "

      OMG, that immediately reminded me of a comment on youtube I saw (another one that you linked to btw) where one of her fans claimed that 'even if Sarbdeep was speaking the truth she'd still love Teal'. So basically when you can even get them this far as to consider the possibility that what her victims say about her is true, as you say, they still wouldn't care! What do you call this: cognitive dissonance?

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    2. Cognitive dissonance is definitely in there. It causes people to rationalize away any discordant information that challenges their chosen path. These people are so brainwashed, some of them. It's really sad.

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  5. - cont -

    As discussed, Gabriel let it be known that he has no intention of reading Cameron's response to his post. For this he received some sharp and well-deserved criticism. He explained that he's had something of a dialogue with Cameron. When pressed to finish what he'd started, he said he was just too busy.

    One of the themes I've noticed after hearing from many tealers and recovering tealers is that they find teal when they're at very low, vulnerable times in their lives. The most strident teal defender in this thread, it would appear, is no exception.

    To my eye, this was a fruitful dialogue, with many divergent views, and a nice back and forth.

    Gabriel, it seems, took a different view. Despite what was mostly a very civil discussion, he did, as anticipated, pull the thread.

    I think this is unfortunate for many reasons. Conflict is an essential part of growth of learning. If you can't deal with contradictory views, you never have the opportunity to challenge your own thinking. This becomes even more critical when you're in a potential cult-type situation, which I think teal's followers are. The increasing levels of group think caused by an unwillingness to hear what critics are saying and labeling them "anti-teal" is downright creepy. I also find it ironic that the followers of a self-proclaimed "shadow worker" are this averse to hearing anything "negative." One of the dangers of that kind of high mindedness and total avoidance of conflict is that you can be blindsided by your own shadow. And, it may play out in attraction to someone who is really frigging dark. Perhaps learning that you're really part of a Galactic Greenpeace makes it all worth it.

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    1. "One of the themes I've noticed after hearing from many tealers and recovering tealers is that they find teal when they're at very low, vulnerable times in their lives. The most strident teal defender in this thread, it would appear, is no exception. "

      Oh yeah, I noticed that too. Her teachings that can help people, I won't dispute that, I feel are like breadcrumbs to people who are starving. They then fall in love with her and it is this adoration on a mass scale that gives her the 'elixir of power' which tastes a lot better than those breadcrumbs I bet. However, nobody is allowed to touch her elixir of course. Tealers are so naive to think that these breadcrumbs are Teal's love for them, but it's really a manipulation tool of her to get them to worship and adore her on a large scale. And tealers have all sorts of excuses to justify their love for her and the obvious power imbalance that defines their relationship with her. They start to feel dependant of her teachings and get hooked in by her charm and lose all critical thinking and as long as they don't get to taste 'the elixir', they'll never know the difference anyways.

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    2. Worse still, the helpful parts of teal's work are all pilfered from better sources. And, she offers them in a very incomplete, reductive, and sometimes really twisted form. Her odd twists can really break people down psychologically and make them increasingly dependent on her. So her help really isn't all that helpful.

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  6. Hello Cameron,

    I just want to say that I am a huge fan of what you're doing in exposing Teal. I've been following you on YouTube and just came across this blog post. I was a friend of Teals for a short time when she was married to my friend Mark back in the day, before she really blew up and before all your drama with her.

    And hi LaVaughn!! :) It's been a while. If you don't recall, I was the commenter on your first series of blog posts regarding Teal, with the info regarding Blake = Jason Freedman. Good times. Good to see that you all are still at it, and I really think your work is starting to get through to those vulnerable people out there that are susceptible to Teal's stuff.

    Over the years that I've been keeping my ears to this saga, I've slowly seen a rising number of critics unafraid to come forward and openly doubt the stories and nonsense. Keep up the good work.

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  7. Here is the interview with Teal's alleged abuser: http://thetruthaboutcameron.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-complete-interview-of-teal-swans.html

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  8. I saw Teal was a fraud when I looked at her. Then her rhetoric is most certainly taken from a myriad of known sources and doctrines on the new age .. just ask Blavatsky. Good job sticking to your guns..this Gabriel guy is only in business with Teal some how and is also a struggling author using 'spirit' as their vehicle to dement logic. So easy to do I guess..but how could one live with themselves???

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  9. Caught one of her first videos back in late 2011 and knew she was a hack. Tried to get her to respond to my criticism, but she had the Blake bro had his guard up. Regardless, she's a waste of space. Look to her chart and handwriting. It tells all. Why people don't rely on the astrology is beyond me. "Shadow work"? If that bitch brat was forced to truly face any shadow she would boo-hoo into the next dimension.

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  10. Because of Gabriel's non-response to your extremely well-thought out response that you put so much sincere effort into, I unsubscribed to his channel. Because that is not okay and it is certainly not exemplary of taking the spiritual path.

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    Replies
    1. It is sad that someone who has been going through his own kundalini awakening for some decade ish can still be so delusional.

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