The Gateway, Teal Swan, and the message vs the teacher

[Mandy]

Just now, Jonas Long said:

Is pessist/optimist in fact a duality? 

Names for emotions are dualistic, but the actual feeling they are made up of knows nothing of separation or exclusion.

[Jonas Long]

2 minutes ago, Orb said:

😄😄😄

 

Someone once asked him why he jerked off in public. He replied, " I wish I could make my hunger go away by rubbing my belly"

Just sayin it like it is I guess.  He'd totally get canceled today. 

[Jonas Long]

3 minutes ago, Mandy said:

Names for emotions are dualistic, but the actual feeling they are made up of knows nothing of separation or exclusion.

There ya go

[Jonas Long]

"People is thoughts" 

"Everybody's dead" 

It's a good fucking thing I'm not psychotic, and that no one who ever comes here will be.  Seeing as you aren't trained psychiatrists and all.

[Phil]

@Jonas Long

Do you see how there are the thought labels people and psychotic people… yet awareness is aware of thoughts, perception & sensation?

Do you believe in identity such as that there are psychiatrists? Is that not also awareness aware of thoughts, perception & sensation?

 

I probably missed it, but what exactly is that Teal said or saying which is cultish?

[Jonas Long]

lol

[Adeptus Psychonautica]

On 9/13/2023 at 11:52 PM, Jonas Long said:

There is a very fascinating podcast called the Gateway about Teal Swan.  I knew nothing about her before listening to it, but, there are lots of parallels with her and leo gura, and its a perfect example of the very real dangers in modern day gurus.  How important is the credibility of the person you are hearing the message from? Does it matter, if the message is good?  If we ourselves are sophisticated enough to "take the good and leave the bad", should it be a concern of ours that other people don't have the wherewithal to leave the bad, and sufer incredible consequences for it?  Is it on the person who takes the "wrong message" and comes to a sad end, and on them alone, because they really attracted their own sad end?  Should there be intervention in a case of potentially dangerous actors like these? If you see something, should you say something?  

 

My two cents is that Teal Swan is not in the same ballpark as Leo.

 

After I did my first video on Leo I was inundated with people messaging me saying something like "Do Teal Swan next", so I looked into her and I didn't find anything that raised as many red flags as Leo did. A large part of that is because I tend to to come at things from the "psychedelics" angle, and that is not really a major pillar of Teal Swans content as it is with Leo's, so there is not a lot there for me to comment on other than typical new-age stuff.

 

At the time I looked into her - I thought her message is far from perfect but not egregious, she is clearly working through some stuff - although to her credit she does actually seem to be working through it. She was way too new-age for my tastes (rainbow aliens and blah blah blah), but when she was talking about more grounded spiritual stuff then it seemed fine to me. Some of the content she gets criticized for was related to promoting suicide so I watched videos on that topic that people sent me, and although her language can be a bit spicy, I didn't find anything I thought comes close to promoting suicide. On that particular topic I would say that she could be more careful with how she says things, but it would be a VERY bad faith take to say that she is actively telling people to kill themselves, and I agreed with a lot of what she said.

 

I haven't kept up with her in the years since but I heard there was some drama around her having a live-in, mini-cult house setup, and some manipulative controlling jealousy stuff going on, but it was fairly average human drama at that point so I wasn't interested enough to follow it.

Just like with Leo, I think the main problem with these kinds of  gurus is the cult of personality that emerges around them, which the "leader" themselves is not necessarily in control of.

[Mandy]

9 hours ago, Jonas Long said:

"People is thoughts" 

"Everybody's dead" 

It's a good fucking thing I'm not psychotic, and that no one who ever comes here will be.  Seeing as you aren't trained psychiatrists and all.

Especially when you put the "people is thoughts" with "everybody's dead" together, it seems like a well rounded message. I responded with "everyone's dead" when you said it's fine to quote dead teachers because they can't still form a cult. I'm still not sure how you can look into the history of any major religion and say that though. There are even still people running the Heaven's Gate website. Ideas die hard. 😆

If you would like to be a trained psychiatrist, go do that. If you would like to see one, go do that. I think it's beautiful that we have artists, poets, and that wellbeing and speaking about it and false assumptions that seem to get in the way of it is a right that everyone has to do in their own unique way. You seem to be arguing for the unworthiness of everyone, every chance you get. Why?

 

[Loop]

5 minutes ago, Mandy said:

a right that everyone has to do in their own unique way

 It is the Art & Science of Being Yourself. 🤍

 

[Mandy]

@Adeptus Psychonautica Very much agree from what I've seen than other than some human stuff that isn't very notable, there just isn't anything of true concern there. If there is, I've yet to see it. 

 

@Jonas Long Does it occur to you that it might be much more of a disservice to too freely call out "abuse", and that doing that actually builds a sort of screen that allows for true abuse to go under the radar? 

 

 

[Phil]

@Adeptus Psychonautica

Watched this one yesterday…

That last minute or two I was like yes! That. Is. It! 

Happy for ya brother. 🙏🏼 

[Phil]

11 hours ago, Jonas Long said:

lol

I mean, it’s a 5 - 6 hour miniseries man lol. It’s really clear you take issue with some people. Got it. I’m asking what about the content or their message is so off. Keep in mind I’ve not listened to Teal’s content. I don’t know the first thing about it. 

[Jonas Long]

If anyone wants to listen to the thing, we can talk about it.  

[Adeptus Psychonautica]

1 hour ago, Phil said:

@Adeptus Psychonautica

Watched this one yesterday…

That last minute or two I was like yes! That. Is. It! 

Happy for ya brother. 🙏🏼 

 

Glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for reposting it because it gives me a chance to remind myself of that intention to live life to its fullest. 

[Jonas Long]

After listening to that series, her motivation "seems" to me beyond suspect, to the point it ruins any "message" she might have to offer.  Is that my original point?  Does the message suffer when you find out its source is highly questionable?  Or do people who have received that message in good faith become disillusioned in retrospect after finding the source to be highly questionable?  

 

I doubt this will come across without having listened to the podcast, at least give the first ep a chance, it's very engaging!  And I'd think it might be of interest to people who are into this type of thing.  

[Blessed2]

If I'm not completely lost, the main "thing" Teal "sells" (literally sells, actually), is that people have past trauma and an effective (I assume she would say it's the most effective) way to heal that trauma is to re-live the traumatic experience. She arranges retreats where people who believe they have past traumas which obstruct them to live life to the fullest come to heal it through re-living the experience, by bringing it up back to mind, entering trance states etc.

 

That does not sound like The Message. For me it sounds like a hamster wheel, a trick of the ego. The traumatic experience has already seemed to be happened in the illusory past. What would be the point to "re-experience" it?

[Orb]

Teal gives off heavy stage green vibes, super new agey and kinda elitist. Like we're the special light workers or indigo children, that kinda vibe. Or entering the 4th 5th 6th 8th dimension. 

 

Wait until they find out there is no dimensionality in direct experience...

Edited September 15, 2023 by Orb

[Jonas Long]

It's not about vibes, she literally believes she was in a satanic baby murdering cult as a child, not hearsay, her-say, she says so.  And she is trying to have the supposed leader put in jail or death row, insisting that all this baby murder happened in front of her, which obviously there's is 0 evidence of.  Satanic panic brainwashing.  Hurt people hurt people.  She's a hurt person.  

[Adeptus Psychonautica]

49 minutes ago, Jonas Long said:

If anyone wants to listen to the thing, we can talk about it.  

 

You describe it as fascinating and I enjoy cult stuff in general, so I will give it a whirl and report back.

To answer your original question though in general terms...

6 minutes ago, Jonas Long said:

Does the message suffer when you find out its source is highly questionable?

 

I think the answer is yes, or at least it is for me. If I start seeing what I can identify as dishonest behaviour then I will write that person off as a trusted source and tend to apply higher levels of scepticism and fact-checking to what they say. That has nothing to do with me agreeing/disagreeing with what they say, or even if they are right/wrong, its about if they are being dishonest, and that could come in the form of blatant dishonesty, subconscious dishonesty, or intellectual dishonesty. If someone is dishonest then THEIR message (not THE message) absolutely suffers IMO, and at some point it will be too much work to sort out the wheat from the chaff so the source will be a write-off. It doesn't mean that EVERYTHING they say is garbage, but its probably a good idea to find a better source rather than combing through the turds looking for flecks of gold. 

I think its worth unpacking that agree/disagree part. There are people here on this forum who I absolutely disagree with on many topics, but that doesn't make me write them off as a source because I believe they are being honest, logically consistent, and that they are willing to have a conversation to work stuff out. They might be right or I might be right, or maybe its not even a right/wrong discussion, and on topics I am less familiar with then I will happily defer to their expertise.

Unfortunately there are some folks who are simply a fire hydrant of frothing bullshit...

Bringing it back to Teal Swan, it will be interesting to see if she is questionable because the podcast is telling me she is questionable in pursuit of a juicy narrative, or if I think she is questionable by my values.

[Jonas Long]

@Adeptus Psychonautica I am very interested to see what you think of it.