Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum - The Vow: Sarah Edmondson

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Sarah Edmondson (TheVow) joins us this week and shares her entire experience in NXIVM, a cult connected with Smallville co-star Allison Mack and known for manipulating its members emotionally, financially, and sexually. Sarah talks about how the cult’s leaders dismantled the intuition of its followers by erasing their moral compass. She also gets into her ‘waking up’ moment that triggered her departure, her experience with the group’s brainwash, and the shock of realizing some of the misconduct after the fact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Light the path to a brighter future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLOR.com. And ask your family eye care professional for SLR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. You're listening to Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum. Ryan, good day, sir. And a good day to you. I feel off, man. I feel off.

Halloween's around the corner. I'm doing these awesome movie nights. Zooming, of course, with my Zoom friends, my horror friends. So we've been watching a lot of horror movies. We've got a new poster, the Thing poster. Signed by Kurt Russell. I'm a nerd. I know.

And The Evil Dead, my good buddy, Bruce Campbell. Hey, Rosie Pants. stay groovy or try ash Bruce Campbell evil dead you never expect to do anything with your life and then you start all these heroes that you're you're working with them now and you're it's not that you don't feel like you don't belong you just kind of go hey man this is cool I admire this movie admire your work uh Bruce will be back on the podcast too so that and that's a glorious one well I really enjoyed that one yeah I want to say thank you to everybody out there I got a sympathy card. It was from a lot of people. I don't have to name everybody, but I got a nice

card from some patrons of mine. And I really, really appreciate it. I mean, Kristen and Allison and Leah. Yeah. So they wrote me a sympathy card for my sister. And that was really kind of them. And I appreciate you. And also got a mug from a bunch of folks here. Look at this. Look at this nice mug here. Nice mug from my patrons. They're all on there. And we love you, Rosie, and I love you too. So thanks for joining Patreon. Thanks for supporting the podcast. Just a reminder, if you enjoy this one and you're listening,

hopefully I'll subscribe and tell your friends and all that stuff. Announce the top winners, if I didn't do it, from the stage that we do live shows where I play music and we're making an album and my friend dancing. So right now, help me with the band title, right into the show. hello at Inside You podcast or tweet me or Instagram me or whatever but or patronize me but it's uh we're still thinking of a name I think it's Rosenbaum and dancing I'd love to come up with something wittier but uh I don't know top winners from August release a hall from team rogue flask and Leah Stubbs thank you um and top winners from September team rogue flask

but that was a big Raj Raj got a shout out and Kristen Keio and Leo Stubbs uh man so I've been watching The Vow on HBO Max. If anybody's seen, I know Whitney Cummings talks about it a lot, she's obsessed with it, and a lot of people are obsessed with it. But it's about this organization, nexium, that became sort of this cult, and there was sex slaves and branding women and all this crazy shit. Horrific stuff. Horific stuff.

And you didn't know a lot about it. You knew of it, but you didn't watch the documentary. Now, it's close to me in a way because Allison Mack, who was on Smallville, who played to Chloe, who I thought was, you know, amazing on the show and a sweet girl and, you know, we didn't really hang out, but it, she, she was part of this organization. So, you know, back then, and you'll hear me talk to Sarah just in a second, but it was, when I found out about all this stuff, I was sort of ignorant about it. I was like, I don't, I don't believe it.

It's like somebody tells you, you know, your brother did this. Like, eh, it's my brother. I don't think you're, I know my brother. do I um it's it's just it's just kind of the whole thing's a mess and it's a sad story but it's you know there's a lot of bravery to this I think uh the people who somehow were able to get out of this and just say hell with it and be ridiculed and you know it's it's like it's you'll listen to the interview I think you're going to really learn a lot from it and um you know in no way was I ever, you know, am I defending Allison or I just knew her at a certain point in my

life and, you know, I know that she's done a lot of bad things, you know, this is, this is what I'm gathering. And it's hard for me to sort of understand that. And I think I'm getting to understand it more that people do change. I think people are, you know, I don't know, we talk about brainwashing and things like that. But, you know, it's, I don't know. You know, when I first watched the episode, as I say to Sarah, you'll hear it, but I felt like, wait a minute, you know, this is kind of, this is kind of a cool thing. And then you realize, wait a minute, this is completely fucked. But of course, you got to understand that the people going into it didn't think it was fucked. They thought it was going to help them. And it was interesting. And this guy was a

genius and his IQ was off the charts and he had this insight that nobody else had. So I like to give the benefit of the doubt that people. People could always sit there and go, oh my God, you're so weak. How could you do something like that? Oh, my God, those people that you're, I just kind of get annoyed by that because, you know, sorry that we're not as strong as you or people aren't as strong as you. Or maybe they are. I mean, there's some really bright people that got involved in this. And I don't think if, you know, if they knew for a second that it was so bad. what the guy did and what he was capable of doing and he was a master manipulator so this is just a really interesting story and you know not only did sarah come on the podcast but her husband nippy

uh nippy was there and he talked to me for a minute and um get some really interesting stuff and uh i i maybe one day alison will will talk to me about this i don't know i just i think that sometimes you know you think you know people it's like you know when you're in high school Ryan, do you remember people that you were like, bad or good? You're like, that guy's an asshole. Well, you know, 30 years later, you can't go, I hate that guy. I bet he's not that guy. Yeah.

There's a good chance. Or maybe he is. But on the converse of that is maybe you met somebody there that was really sweet and you like them and now you're like, you have nothing in common. They are not that person. I don't know. Is that the case? Yeah, I can think of a couple people.

You want to name them? Yeah. Like, for instance, if you found out all of a sudden, a year later, you didn't hear from me, and then you found out I went to prison for being a mass murder. Just be like, you have nowhere to hide bodies. Yeah, they're all filled with posters here, their whole house. So I really don't have any room for any bodies. But, I mean, I think something tells me you got to know the people you're hanging around with.

You got to. But sometimes you just don't. Sometimes you just don't know the darkest, deepest secrets. I wonder if Jeffrey Dahmer And by the way, this is not an analogy But maybe it is, it's a bad analogy But the people who hung out with Jeffrey Dahmer They might say, oh, it was a little weird

He was a little, but that I think he was like Dissecting like animals and you know People and cutting off their heads and keeping them in the No, his father had no clue Yeah I mean maybe there were signs but you don't look at him Because you're like, oh, there's no way, this is Jeff This is old Jeff with two Fs

He wouldn't do that What I'm trying to say is, I never really knew Allison. I thought she was sweet. She was easy to work with. She was talented. And then you hear this and you're like, wow. But then I think, I didn't really hang out with her a lot. I didn't really know her.

I always knew she needed attention like every other actor, like myself. You know, there were some things, but never in a million years. So it tells me a lot of things. It tells me that people can be manipulated. It depends, you know, your vulnerability. How vulnerable are you? How much do you want somebody to save you, take you in, protect you, give you confidence, make you love yourself, and at what cost? I don't know.

This is, let's get inside of Sarah Edmondson. It's my point of view You're listening to inside of you With Michael Rosenbaum Inside of You Inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum Was not recorded in front of a live studio audience Okay

Okay I also grab some tissue Because I have a feeling there might be tears It's just going to happen Well listen you I just Here's what I would like to say. Okay.

This interview is, look, when I speak to people, it's always whether I like it or not, in layman's terms, because that's how I speak. Okay. And I don't want to talk above people thinking they know everything about this. And this is sort of to educate people about like this story and your story. And so it's not about we start throwing names out and this and that. But I think it's like, you know, people are listening going, I don't know who Sarah Edmondson is. I think it's really important that, you know, your story and who you are and where you come from. So the way I want to present this is just really talk about you for a minute before we get

into, you ever watch like horror movies and you're like, because this is kind of a horror movie in a way, right? It is. Yeah. It's definitely a horror movie. Yeah, because you watch one in the few, you know, if you, you never like the characters in the beginning. You're just like, you just, you watch the, you watch everybody getting killed.

You're like, I don't care about anybody. So you have a really, you know, it's just an interesting story and you're such a likable person. that it's like before we get into some of the stuff that went on it's like i want i want to talk about you for a second and like i mean because you're from vancouver i'm from vancouver i'm here right now where do we meet do we meet i feel like we've met i don't know you know i don't think we i feel like our paths may have crossed when you were here doing small bill right that's that's what i was thinking in like the early 2000s but i remember when you did the movie in Germany with Jamie.

Ah, that's right. Very many years ago. 20 years ago. So, I mean, I knew who you were, but you probably know who I was, but, you know. That's probably, I must have seen a picture or something, but we were probably following each other for years, I guess, on Twitter and didn't even know it. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. I was like, wait a minute.

And then I kind of put it together. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I feel like, I mean, are so many interwoven times or either could have met and, and And, yeah, well, we'll see what transpires. Yes, we will. I mean, so. And also, by the way, it is a horror movie, but I can laugh.

Like, I have to laugh. Oh, please. Don't worry about, like, I'm not that sensitive. Like, you can ask me anything or whatever. Like, yeah, no, no. And I think anybody who knows me knows that I will ask anything, but like it doesn't come out of like, you know, an interrogation. It's more like, I'm just curious.

And like, I feel like, you know, I'm a fly on the wall. and you know and by the way i was going to i was working with alison alison mack who was on smallville with me and uh she was i think doing this while i still on the show obviously so i you know we can get into that but before we get into that because she ended up being one of the i don't know would you say the heads what would you call it the she was definitely one of the key leaders of the nexium of the nexium and then and the dark stuff that was the underbelly that we all discovered which made headlines right which is believe me shocking to me too coming from someone who worked with her and seeing this kind you know you know innocent girl absolutely turn into a woman and then like

whoa wait what we'll get into that so beforehand so you were raised in vancouver and you were like you had a pretty good relationship with your family they were always supportive what was that about. Yeah, I mean, my, I've had a really wonderful, easy kind of vanilla upbringing. My parents are both very politically socially active. They really taught me like in the 80s. My dad would take me on peace rallies and we, you know, my dad's a folk singer as well as a counselor, but he's also a folk singer and, you know, we'd be marching and singing for, you know, the things that we believed in. And that was always a big part of my upbringing, like make a difference and and stand up for what's right.

I didn't realize how much that would be interwoven into my value system until later. But yeah, my parents split up when I was two and a half, which I think kind of, since we're doing the personal stuff, I'll tell you that I think that at a very core level if I'm going to cycle analyze myself, I was always looking for safety and fitting in and I didn't really fit in very much during like elementary school and high school was bullied

a little bit. It's kind of a nerd. And I was like looking for my tribe. My people, I wouldn't have called it tribe because that's sort of a word of now. Right, right. But you're click in a way. A group of people that you can relate to. And I think we all do that, right?

I remember I didn't fit in anywhere in high school. I was the smallest kid in the high school. I get it. And I just wanted to belong to something. And then you go to college and you start to meet a college. couple of people that you're like oh oh they kind of get me or and you figure it out and you start and most people just go on through life and then they find their people right so but it's that quest yeah it's a quest and i think i originally found it in my in high school with the it was a bit of

a theater nerd so it was in like the theater program and that's where i started acting and then i went to a jewish summer camp where i really felt like accepted and um so i kind of joke that maybe that was my first cult because it was a little bit, a little bit, there's a little bit dogma there that was, you know, kind of thrust upon us. And ultimately, I think I rejected a lot of that. But I love the sense of community and that I'm camaraderie and acceptance. And that was, you know, such a nerd. I look back at those pictures when I was 12 and I had like big red glasses. And I like put, I was kind of a hippie too, like the braids in my hair and like Doc Martins and a big yin-yang sweatshirt. and like

it was it was a look for sure but it was the 90s so just tried to do my best yeah but then you started like so you started acting and this and that you know you got some roles it wasn't like you were an unemployed actor who just never worked you actually had some success

you were on you did fringe you did the show that one of my other cast members was in called Edgemont you did Edgemont you did you did a lot of things you were working so ultimately I mean did you feel i mean because you weren't married before right before you made no no i was in a different relationship at the time and with my relationship and my career i just felt like i don't know i think

a lot of people do in their mid 20s it was like 25 26 27 it's like what's is this like is this my purpose you like beer commercials and you know that's what i'm doing now at 48 i'm still i think we're it's a constant you're doing a beer commercial no i'm not doing a beer commercial not that i wouldn't i'm just saying I think I'm oh you were all out there trying to find purpose and you hate to sound so cliche but it's like that's what we as humans we are trying to find our purpose like what are we here for what can I do to feel more fulfilled feel good about myself I think that's all part of humanity and so yeah yeah I think I think those two main things looking for belonging looking for my tribe and looking for like okay what what am I here to do and I really felt like yeah I was a working actor

but I was like there's more and I always like since I was little I think I had a vision of like at one point in my life I'm going to have a certain whether it's celebrity or platform to have a voice and have an impact and at that point I thought it was really ironic for young women because I had such a hard time in high school that I was like if I could just help women with their self-esteem well girls I guess before they became women or I didn't even I didn't know what exactly but I was like I'm going to have a voice and acting with not it. So when I got introduced to ESP, which everyone knows is an axiom, it was like, oh my goodness, maybe this is my tribe. Maybe these are my people. Right. So how did, so how did this happen? How old you're 25, 26, and you just, is it on a bulletin board? Does someone, because I, well, it's Mark. Mark kind of brought you in, right? Mark. Yeah. How did you become friends with Mark who directed a movie, a documentary, which was a big documentary called what the bleep do we know, correct? Yes. And Mark, what the bleep, what the bleep it's called, not what the bleep.

Do we know? Just what the bleep? I'd actually just call it bleep. Just bleep. So how did you meet him and then how did this all happen? So, and I still have to get you a copy of the book because it goes into much more detail about this time of my mind. Scarred.

Scarred is the book. Scarred. Yeah. The book is scarred. And it goes into a lot more detail than the vow, especially about this part of my life, which was I think, you know,

not very long, but it was a real quest. I'd watch with the bleep. I'd read things like the artist's way. Celestine Prophecy. It was in the beginning of my, like, spiritual journey. I've done that. And we watched with the bleep or bleep, and we loved it.

And then my boyfriend at the time was a filmmaker, got us into a film festival where he was, like, you know, as a director. And I said, I'm coming with you because it was called the Spiritual Cinema Circle Festival at Sea. This doesn't exist anymore. It's run by an amazing man named Stephen Simon, who directed What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams. Right. Just this really great guy.

Anyway, it's a long story, but there's, long and short of it is the very first night, they sat me down with the director of what the bleep, like the science seating. And we had a conversation that changed the trajectory of my life. And he told me about nexium. And ultimately, I never Googled it. I never, you know, checked into it.

I just like, well, I like him. I like what the bleep. And he's telling me about this group of people that are working together to shift humanity. Like, this is it. I was looking for my purpose and landed in my lap. This must be my purpose. Right, you just felt like it was just, because he seems like a magnetic person.

Like there's this magnetism to Mark. He seems like just a genuine guy who's trying to do the right thing. Now, obviously he gets, as we know, as we soon will learn, listeners you haven't. And you could watch The Val on HBO, Max, and you could also read Scarred Sarah's book. But he is definitely, he's got that charisma. And you're like, what a talent. He's a filmmaker. He makes something that really makes me think.

I don't need to read. Sometimes when people that are. just very influential or that you like or you just innately trust right away tell you something you kind of just go i don't need to do the research i trust this person right we do that yeah and that's what you did absolutely and it just happened like i went on that cruise specifically asking for like a sign for what is my purpose like what's next in my life i'm going to be around all these spiritual people making movies and like i you know mark and i talked at that cruise like we're going to make movies we're going to make media that shift consciousness like what the bleep

I don't want to do beer commercials anymore. I don't want to do vampire TV shows. No offense to my friends who do vampire TV shows. There's a lot of them and some of them are great. But I want to shift consciousness, you know? And it's really idealistic. I'm aware of that. Like I kind of have to, I judge myself a little bit for that.

But the irony is not lost on me that here we are making the vow. Cut to, and I'll go back to that in the moment. But like the vow is really teaching people how groups like this exist and how they work and how they get people and how they rope them in. And I feel like, I mean, obviously it's not the path I wanted to go on, but we're educating people. You know, we're really teaching people how this happens. Yeah, well, you know. That means a lot to me.

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I wanted to say this because I wanted to be honest about it. When I'm watching the vow, when I watched the first episode, and believe it or not, even though I knew Allison, I didn't really follow up on all this stuff. I knew about it. I was like, wow, I kind of believe it, but I don't believe it. How did that happen? There's got to be some reasons. I don't know.

I just never, we're not really that educated until someone makes a documentary that sort of really dives into it. And then you're willing to take the time to go, holy shit. This is what happened because let me just say this. I watched the first episode of The Val and I was by myself. And I'm not going to lie. I said to myself, I go, I do this. No, I go, I would, I need some more self-esteem. I need more confidence.

I would like to have more of a purpose. And then by the end of episode two, I was like, fuck off. What the fuck? This is, you know, and so now my point is that we're all vulnerable to some extent. And there I was, like, I'm sure if I would have met somebody go, oh, wow, these are great people. This is cool. This is the guy who directed that. And he must be, these are, and they're helping people out.

And they're, I could understand why people get into it. And then, of course, like, obviously, if you take out the. the Keith Reneery, who is, as he calls himself, the vanguard. If you take him out of the equation of all the sex stuff and the bullshit, which we'll get to, the slavery and all that, sex slavery. But if you just got rid of that stuff, I mean, there's a lot of good to it in a way. It's just people become, I think, the Messiah complex. They have this bigger than this power.

I don't know what we can get into that. But when you, your first day on, when you went to a nexium meeting. It was a nexium meeting? Is that what it was? It was a five day, five days like a seminar, workshop. But bookmarked that for one second. Is that going to tell you how, I mean, just how great that is that you had that reaction because up until now, so many people are like, I've never fall for that.

And these people are dumb and blah, blah, blah. And to know that people, and I'm telling you, people are Instagram messaging me, I totally would have joined. In fact, some people have said, listen, where can, I get some of these tools like this sounds great does it exist anywhere else can you help me like I want those things my friends have asked that they've been like you know if you take all the crazy shit out from the beginning before we get there there's some the intention seems like the intent seems like hey these people just want to get better and and and just be better human beings which is a great

idea it just kind of falls apart but it's a great idea in fact nippy my husband I know you know him from the show I heard him cough a few minutes ago hi nippy he's just over there hey nippy good to see or hear you. Hey, man. He just has a little bit of, a little bit of FOMO. Oh, yeah, well, he could, he could join in any time. We'll bring him in down the road if he wants to, whatever. Sometimes when we're doing this, he's like, there's certain things that he likes to riff on

that he's really good at riffing on. So I might bring him in as a special guest. Honestly, Nippy, you feel free to jump in whenever you want. This is just an open platform, you know, honestly. It's just, we're just, I'm trying to, and the listeners is just trying to get to understand how someone could get into this, which I just talked about by watching the first episode. So you did this five-day seminar. And you were, you were blown away?

No, not at first. The first three days, I was very skeptical. It was really cheesy. Like the whole presentation was very, like, early 90s. And I just... Like Nancy Salzman. She's getting up there and she's kind of just like you're going with it. You live on a video that they played.

I'm like, I'm paying over $2,000 to watch the president of the company. speak on a video in this cheesy holiday in and Burnaby. By the way, Burnaby is like, yeah, Burnaby, Burnaby. It's where we, yeah. Suburb, you know, that, I mean, Burnaby is great, but like, not this part of Burnaby. It's about Burnaby. It was very, I was just judgy and, you know, I was very much like my parents are therapists. What are you going to do for me here?

And kind of like, assuring in, like, this is more for my boyfriend than for me kind of, kind of thing. fix him. And actually on day one, I was so turned off by the calling Keith Mangard and the sashes I called Mark Bacente and actually Googled for the first time on day one. And there was stuff about them being a cult, but not nearly the stuff you can find online now. There wasn't any particular, like, what was really bad about it wasn't clear. It was just like they're culty.

I'm like, okay, but what's the bad thing that they're doing? It wasn't there. but I said to Mark, like, this is, what did you get me into? And he's like, do you believe everything you read on the internet? And I was like, no. He's like, well, you know, have your own experience. Wait till day three and see how you, you know, how you do. That was one thing that happened.

But the other thing that's really important for me to educate people on is that they said to me, like right from the beginning, like, okay, we're all here to grow and learn and be the kind of people we want to be. Everyone agree that that might be uncomfortable at times, you know, and everyone's like nodding, yes, yes, of course. When you're, when you hit those areas of discomfort, you're going to have the urge to bolt to leave. And we're just asking, like, if you're really here to, you know, get your money's worth,

stick through those moments and know that there is something for you to look at if you, if you hit one of those things. For example, sashes, we wear these sashes around our neck. That was super cheesy, didn't like it. And then that would mean you have an issue with, like, measurement or like there's a ranking system. So you've an issue with authority, which may or may not be true, you know, or calling Keith Vanguard, why do you have a problem with that?

Like, if you were in the court system, would you call your honor Bob because you don't want to use the term? You know, hey Bob. Right, right, right, right. So, like, every single thing that was weird had an answer. And if you had a problem with it,

it pointed to a thing within yourself. So I kind of learned to go, like, okay, I'm uncomfortable, which means I've got something. Now, this is, like, I trusted Mark, and I trusted the system. Not a lot of people, but maybe one in 30 would come take our training

and they'd be like, Now, especially if they'd grown up in, say, another high control group, like Jehovah's Witness or, you know, an extremely religious background or whatever, they'd be like, I've been there, done that. You said one in 30 would say no, but you're saying the percentage of people that would come in and go to these seminars, once they were there, most of them were in. Most of them were in. But I'd say almost every training we did, there'd maybe be one person on day one that had such an extreme reaction to either the sashes or the vans. guard or something, that they were like, I'm out. And then they were out. And Keith actually said that all of those things were what he called the guardian at

the gates. So somebody had such a reaction to that and meant we didn't want them in there because they were suppressive. Suppressive. Wow. Yes. So like you learn to, like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to voice anything about being uncomfortable with this because it's just going to expose that like maybe I'm

suppressive, right? Right. So that base assumption that if I'm uncomfortable, I'm going to override that is one of the most dangerous things that they did. And I think Keith knew that to systematically dismantle intuition. So your gut, he was getting rid of your gut, so to speak. Yeah. And saying, because here's the thing, your gut, there is truth in the fact that I could have a feeling that might not be right. Like I could meet you and maybe like your eyebrows reminded me of somebody that hurt me like 10 years ago and it triggers me.

that's not based in any kind of reality, right? So that happens. But there's also a truth to say, if my body's saying F out, I should listen to that. Right. So he screwed with that ability to have a moral compass. And you think that was his agenda all along? Yes. To sort of get rid of your gut response and make you go past that so you stay with it.

Yes. To not trust yourself, your own intuition. Yes. To make somebody else the authority. that's that's for lack of a better worth that's that's fucked right but you know maybe at that time it's like you're seeking all these things this these confidence what was it that in that five day seminar was there a moment where you're like I feel like I should do this this is going to help yeah what was that moment there was a couple and mark was right day by day three I was sold

um I had a number of big shifts and I do think is you know even though I believe Keith is a sociopath and a narcissist and all those things is brilliant. And he repackaged a whole bunch of therapeutic models into one five-day. So some cognitive behavioral therapy, neurolinguistic programming, basic Buddhist beliefs about happiness and where happiness comes from, which is, I'm sure you've heard by now, it's an inside job, you know, nothing from the outside world. Money, happy. No, no. Car, no. They're great.

Yeah. So he cobbled these things together. And, you know, if you've done, anyone's done therapy, you know, you usually go like once a week, if that. Right? That's an hour a week. Imagine doing 15 hours, 12 to 15 hours, five days in a row. You're just like working through stuff, working through stuff, working through stuff. And having these huge awareness about, like, you know, my relationship to money, my relationship to acting, my relationship to, my relationship to, like, what my values are.

and this exercise were like you write down all your values and what's most important to you so you can make it. I had a really hard time making decisions before ESP. I'd be like, should I do this or should do that? Should I do this job or that chapter? Do it where this or this? Like I just, I was a nightmare to those around me. So now I had this like decision making tool, which really helped me.

And ESP was it's the name before next to him, right? Yeah. So that's executive success programs. Right. That's what you went to, an executive success program, which ultimately is, nexium, which became nexium. Yeah, nexium wasn't even a word that was on my radar until much later. So nexium was the parent company.

And ESP, executive success program was like a subset of that. That's what the training was that I did. Yeah, I just want to let people know that. Yes. Not ESP, like, do, do, do, that kind of. Exactly, exactly. But I'd say my big, you know, I had a couple big a haas, but my biggest was about my relationship to my self-esteem and why I didn't feel good within

myself as a person. And then on day four and five, you have what's called an EM, which I know the vow explains really well, which is basically you bring the facilitator something that you react to, like something that's a constant trigger. I don't know. Give me an example of something you react to always, like. Like negatively? Yeah. Like probably, you know, when people aren't appreciative, just I think people aren't appreciative. I don't expect, like, when you give someone, someone to say, I don't ever respect anything in return, but just, you know, a thank you or something, just an appreciation.

And so like your blood boils a little bit. I think it's appreciation, but it's something, I think it's personal. It's like, you know, I always feel like I'm a giver. So all I ask is for just love and support and just don't be an asshole to me. And, you know, and so when anybody does it, I'm like, gosh, man, I feel like, I give you everything and you sit on me. I don't know. Go ahead.

What's your trigger? Well, I think ultimately, knowing what I know now, I would leave that one alone because I think that's an indication of what's important to you and it's an emotion that's healthy. But what we worked on initially was like maybe unhealthy, not reality-based emotions. Like the first thing I worked on at my five-day, I know this is really petty, but I'd walk into my apartment and my boyfriend at the time left dishes in the sink, like not, like un-rinsed and not in the dishwasher, like super petty, and I would my blood would boil, and I would just be like, ah, I was Arkansas Square, right?

Yeah. I dropped, like, three F-bombs, yeah. Of course. I have such a potty mouth. I'm really trying to-you-can-f-bomb. I mean, look, you don't want to F-bomb constantly. I have a friend Joe is always throwing F-bomb. I'm like, dude, Joe, I get it.

F-bombs are all right. But, like, every time, it's like people, it starts, but you're not F-bombing, too. I'm trying to reel it back because I owe my son a dollar for every F-bomb, and I've been doing this for three weeks. I own like almost $80. Well, it's really bad. Watch your freaking mouth, Sarah. Watch your mouth. So I have this reaction, dishes in the sink, and I bring this to my facilitator. So what an EM is, is that it takes something of stimulus response, like dishes, anger. And people can relate to like, you know, confrontation, anger or criticism, fear. Like, whatever is a consistent thing in your life that you have a negative reaction to is something

that as a facilitator, we'd look at the memory. This is through a process of question, similar to cognitive behavioral therapy, if you've ever done anything like that, which looks at the memory underneath the initial reaction. So like, for me, as a kid, I had a memory of my parents splitting up at a young age. And for me, dishes, and the facilitator was sort of elicit this, dishes caused the breakup. Like, I remember them fighting and then they broke up. So the dishes is linked to this terrible time of my life and I'm two and a half and my parents split up,

which was very traumatic. So as an adult now I'm like gearing up for the scary thing to happen, but I'm not conscious of it. So what an EM did was it looked at the early childhood belief system underneath whatever was causing the reaction and kind of reframed it in a way like the facilitator would say something like, what if dishes didn't cause your parents to split up? So they'd insert new information that would shift the whole meaning.

so then me as an adult can go and see the dishes and I don't have a freak out. Does that make sense? Yep, it does. So that's what I had. I had one of those and it was profound for me. I know it sounds really painful. Were you really emotional when you get these breakthroughs? Do you feel like you're like you were constantly emotional like they were, it was this, you know, it was cathartic to get all these things out and understand why you're doing different behaviors? Yeah, in the five day I say probably like I cried multiple times, laughed, cried. Oftentimes it'd be like, wow, I can't believe i went through my whole life without understanding that um about myself or about people um and uh-oh baby's away you got it we were losing nip to put the baby back to sleep

oh thanks way to go nip good thing he's here awesome husband um lost my train of thought well you were just saying that you're you cried you laughed within this five-day period just going through all these things about your life and you know the dishes weren't you know you got to take away the dishes in terms of like relating it to like this isn't why your parents broke up and this is sort of yes so I get that so you were in and what was the next step ultimately they're like asking you to do what the next step

well the five as soon as I've done the five day and the facilitator would start weaving this in through the through the curriculum she's like well we don't get into XYZ until the 11 day so the five day was really the beginning of a 16-day training. And I was just doing the beginning. And she even said something like, imagine that you have cancer. And, you know,

going in for surgery, the five days really just prepping your body for the surgery. We haven't extracted the cancer yet. So now I'm like, I got to extract the cancer. I have to keep going. And by the way, it's how much more money to get to grow the cancer here?

About $5,000 for the next 11 days. So you went $2,000 and another $5,000. the $7,000 to get to, but apparently some shit goes down. We were like, wow, that's the best $7,000. You know, it's funny because I went to a place a while back just to get my head straight and it was a lot of money. And my buddy goes, what's the most important asset you have? I go, I don't know, my house maybe. I don't know. I'm this. No, dude, you. So no matter how much money put in yourself, that's the most important. So you were probably thinking this is, they were probably throwing that at you, weren't they? This is your health. This is you. This is you. This is

the most important thing forget everything else that will come yeah i mean they said that to me and then i said it to others for years after that it's like everything else is an effect of who how you are with you you know and i i was i listened to the the interview you did with jennifer love which i thought was great and made me cry by the way many times but she was saying something about the life that she tries to live uh live with you know joy and certain way with her children i was like she could have been doing an ad for ESP right there because that's really what it exists like almost word for word how I want it to be but there's things that get in the way like there's the ideal version of yourself and then there's how you are right and ESP helps you get there this is what this is how

it's pitched like anything like how much would you spend to have this is a no brainer if you believe that it's a no brainer right knowing what we know now it's embarrassing but at the time it was like course I'm going to spend that money it didn't have it put on my credit card what yes so you didn't have the money did you tell your parents about this i did and they were very very skeptical and um you know my my mom took the stance of you know she actually came with me to take originally to take the trainings just to be closer to me and see what i was so passionate about but she she caught on to who keith was like right away how soon right away i mean nobody really knows what we found out like at the end but she could tell that he was a megalomaniac

and that, you know, she was just a concern that, you know, any, any group that says it's the way. And we really did think it was the way and, like, the only way to be joyful and have the life that you want, you know, wanted. We really did. I was so self-righteous about that. But your mom said, you got to get out of this. You can't do this. She didn't do that because she was a therapist.

She knew that groups like this, if she was really forceful with me, that I would push her away. And was, was she right? Yeah, she was right. Yeah. And Nexium did a lot to undermine my relationship with her and to, well, she's a therapist. And so in Nexium, therapy was subpar compared to what we did, right? Therapy was, you know, you could talk and talk and talk. It's not going to get to the root of the issue like an EM would.

Right, right. So I really had a huge disrespect for therapists and any modality that wasn't this, which is, again, part of like my deprogramming is to, reconcile that like just how yeah self-righteous and um and ignorant i was well how did you yeah how did you how did you pay for this i know you said credit cards but it keeps going and so is there a point where you stop paying and you become part of nexium then at that point yeah so there was a point where uh after my first five day they said if you refer three people you get your money back so i did that i referred three people like immediately because i'm always

very passionate about whatever I'm doing. And then I got my money back. And you're an actress. You could sell them. And you know what? I've always been good at sales. Like, I've been good at sales since I was, I mean, I had business cards at age 12. You know, if there was this fundraiser at my school to, like, raise money for a new TV or whatever, I always sold the most granola bars or whatever it was because it's just what I, I don't know, I'm just going to do.

So you did. You got three people immediately. Got three people immediately. I got my money back and then I used that for more training. So basically I got into, there's a bunch of career pass with the next. Exxium and sales is one of them. And I used that to take more trainings. So I just kept taking more and more and more trainings and more and more trainings and more.

And you felt like you were starting to just become more confident, finding out who you were. And do you think now retrospectively you were losing yourself at the same time where you just weren't aware of it? Or do you think you really had like true growth and felt like I'm feeling better than I've ever felt? Like where did it stop? You know what I mean? Yeah, I think it's a great question. No one's asked me that. I feel like it was a bit of both.

It was, I was having true growth because, like I said, Keith was really good at stealing awesome methods from other places. Right. You know, like, and I can tell you now that I'm out of it, looking at other books that exist, where he stole from and how he did that. But anyway, I was having real growth,

but I was losing myself in the mission of the company to the point where I was like, you know, there was a time when I was starting to get more acting and I did a film that got into TIF, and that was really incredible. It was like four years in. And then there was a certain point where I started to feel badly

for choosing acting over ESP. Like, I had to make a choice. Like, what's the most important thing? And I was like, what is this film going to do versus like, I'm, you know, saving humanity. You know, it's like. Yeah. So that's where I lost myself.

Because you felt like you were really truly helping people. And you're like, this is my purpose. This is more important than acting. Now, were they also at this point giving you a salary? Or like you're getting paid? after it took me four years to get to the point where I could get a salary I had to get to the level of what's called proctor so it's an orange sash where you're an official coach and and a lot of people don't even make it there and that's one of the things that um you know eventually woke me up cut you know cut too many years later I realized that um it was well Keith actually told me this it's a chapter in my book it's called the illusion of hope he was really painting this illusion for people trying to get up the stripe path and holding a out this vision, but really it was, I mean, the whole thing was a sham. So a lot of people never earned an income and a lot of people invested a lot of money

trying to like get to this level. And I think because I'm kind of, I mean, I'm a bit competitive, but I'm a go-getter and I'm a doer. Like I don't sit still very easily. Like I, it's hard for me to meditate or just be with myself. I like to just do, do, do, do build, build. And they, I was like a poster child for them because I went from like, basement suite, actress, you know, aspiring actress to, like, a superstar within the company.

I say company loosely, but we thought it was a company back then. Right. Well, but they were honestly paying you, like, good money? At a point, yeah. In the middle, in the middle chunk, like I'd say, three or four years, I was making pretty good money, really good money, actually. Like, what's good money without, I mean, is it in your book? It's in my book, but I mean, it's so weird because people take it out of context and they forget

that I have to pay taxes, you know, and... Well, I'm just like, it's a substantial amount of money that you, like, you work towards a year after year working your ass up and they saw the drive. And like any other company, if you see someone working that hard, you give them bonuses and bonuses. And so you start making, look, you know, I'm assuming it's, yeah.

You know, it was anywhere between, like, I remember when I was in, like, 2011-12 area, like in my middle chunk, it declined after this because some messed up things that happened. I'll tell you about later. but for a couple of years there's anywhere between like five I remember a couple months

I had got like a check for 20,000 and it was huge it was more than ever made in acting and you were broke before this and here you are making good money and then I mean granted a huge amount of that went back like we did the genus training

which is this women's thing that Allison got involved in that training itself was $15,000 like the trainings themselves got more expensive and you had to commit more and Mark and I at this point had opened a center in Vancouver and so we were paying like my rent for that was eight grand a month so it was like yes I was making good money but I felt like I still was like on the hamster wheel right right right yeah because I remember you saying or maybe it was

Bonnie who's also one of the women who was an actress who got involved in this that she like it was never the right time and she's busting your ass and working hard to get to that next level and they're like yeah you're just not ready you're just not or was that you both of us had that I think she articulated it really well and they showed like the lifestyle we were leading it wasn't like I was just sitting back and cashing in checks like we were morning to night working with people coaching people practicing rams going to trainings I worked my ass off and it was always like you know to get to the next level yeah you just haven't worked this you just got to and I believed it I was like oh I want to be better you know and there were many times.

I wanted to quit along the way, but at a certain point, there's the sunken cost fallacy. Like, I had invested so much. I had a five-year lease at our center downtown Vancouver. I'm, like, pointing at it. And who is your boss? Like, I mean, it's obviously Keith is the vanguard, but then you have Nancy who's below him, who do you report to? I mean, I reported a lot to Mark, but he was more of my business partner and friend.

I didn't have a very close relationship to Keith. In fact, like the way that people idolize him or adored him, I had that more with Nancy and with Lauren They were the people that I really like I mean different points I probably checked in with different people Depending on my rank in the company Which obviously changed over 12 years

Right Lauren Lauren Salzman Nancy Salzman sorry yeah she's the daughter of Nancy Salzman right and she was the Nancy was the one That's on the TV in the first time you went there And she's selling this you're like what the hell is this And then ultimately became very close with her Nancy's the president of the company and like the main teacher And, like, I really looked up to her.

I thought she was really skilled. She really helped. She felt like she really cared about people and wanted to help people. And I wanted to be like her. I want to be like her and Lauren. I really aspired to both of them. And why is that? Because they could sit down with somebody in, like, 10 minutes.

It felt like mind ninja, them and whatever they were working on or struggling with so quickly. And I want it, I call it like an EM ninja. I wanted to be able to help people at that level. and they really they were skilled they were skilled at the tech i say tech that's what we called the methodology right um i think they were just good therapists and you met nippy anthony your husband there how long into it before you met him uh i joined 2005 i met him in 2006 a year later and what was it at a function uh it was at the center in albany um mark picked me up him from the airport and said there's this guy in from L.A.

It's really cute. His name's Nippy. I was like, what is that? Well? And I showed up at the center and he was like doing some, he, some schick.

Like his pants pulled up really high. He'd like camel towing his balls. Yeah. We've all done that. You pull your pants up and it's just like, what the hell is this guy doing? Yeah. I don't think I mentioned that in the vow.

He's going to probably kill me that I just said. Yeah, but I like him. He sounds like a normal guy. That's what we did back in. He's a normal guy, but he's not. Nipi's a bit of an enigma. He's like, you know, this quarterback, Ivy League alpha guy, but also like super sensitive underneath and like really wants to be, you know, the best version of himself and has big ideal, like I think both of us were just so idealistic about having an impact on the world. And that's probably the way we connected the most. We were friends for a couple, like three or four years before, no, three years before we ever hooked up. I mean, it's pretty baffling when someone, because it's such a great idea, the thought of, like, I just want to help people. Was that, was it truly altruistic?

Was it truly, I just want to help people get better and make the world a better place? There wasn't any ulterior motives. At this point, you really, this is the mission? Yeah, 100%. And, you know, there's haters out there and people like, oh, well, she was making good money. The money was a bonus for me. Money was like, oh, my God, I'm getting paid to do this. I did it for four years without pay.

Like, it wasn't, it wasn't, I've always been a helper, a giver, a caretaker, like, I'm the, you know, the kind of person that, like, will have the lozenges in my purse and be like, oh, Michael, you got a cough, let me give you this. I got some vitamin C, you want some throw and spray. Like, people who know me will attest to that. Right. To the point where it's kind of annoying. They're like, Sarah, we don't need whatever you got in your purse, which is like huge always, by the way. So you talk about other levels, like there was another level that Allison was going. through. What was that called? Oh, Janess?

Geness. What's Janice? So, Janice was like, so if you look at Naxiam and then here's ESP, Janice was another branch underneath it. And it was a women's group. And it started around 2006. So that's what she would have been in. We had the very first Janice, it's like a woman's, similar to ESP, but looking at issues between men and women and like, the way it was pitched to us is, you know, what is the essence of of a woman and what is that and how can we bring it out more in the world and Keith would say things like the Dalai Lama said it's going to be women who changed the world so it was all about like

you know women women's empowerment which is so ironic because he was that was obviously not his intention but he was he was tapping into a certain trend it was happening in the world where women were starting to speak up and, you know, um, you know, whatever you want to call the new, new wave of feminism or whatever. And he, it's like he, he knew about that marketing, you know, right. And could, and could give that to us in such a way that we thought we were going to get it with this new Janus program. And that's where, um, that's where Allison actually did Janice first. Right. Now Sarah and Claire Bronfman, Sarah, the Seagrams. Uh, sorry. Sorry. Sarah. Sorry, Sara. But they're the Seagram's heirs, right? Worth billions of dollars. And then we find out that this money is how nexium, all this stuff, they were writing the checks for all this, correct?

Yeah, they were, I mean, they were in before I was in. So how they got involved, I don't really know. But what I do know is that Keep was looking for wealth and to have, you know, heiresses like that bankrolling the company. And we've since found out, that he lost a lot of their money on the commodities market. And then also Claire went after people using her money as a weapon in the legal system. I don't know if you saw two days ago what happened. I think I sent you the link, right? Yeah. She went to prison for seven years for what she did for Keith. She was like, are you familiar with the term flying monkey?

Yes, a little bit, but go ahead. Oh, yeah. So like narcissists often don't do a lot of their dirty work. they have other people do it for them like the wicked witch of the West exactly when I say layman's terms this is how I equate I'm like oh the flying monkeys like wicked witch that's why they call him flying monkeys

there you go that's what I thought I just wanted to play one of Keith's top flying monkeys and so she would get anything he wanted ultimately whatever he needed he had her convinced that protecting him legally and going after the people that were trying to attack him

was that was like her job and she felt very you know, like purposeful doing that, which is, you know, I don't know if you know this, but there's still loyalists that exist. There's like, they said there's like 60 or something that are still. I would say probably closer to 30 or 40, but there's like five who are on the front lines that are doing press right now. And CBS just did a piece about them and they're like dancing in front of Keith's prison

trying to shine light on the injustices of the legal system and in the prison system, which I'm sure is a true thing. but that's not why they're doing it. They're trying to, you know, shine light on Keith's victimhood, which, by the way, is one of my main challenges right now. The whole dogma of ESP is that there's no victims. Like something happens in your life. You can look to find out your role in it, which is very, it can be good, right?

Like if you have a problem in your life and you blame everybody else, it's a good thing to go, like, how did I participate in this? How did I cause this? right no victims but suddenly now keith is a victim he's a victim to the FBI he's a victim to the system the justice system and now he's in jail and he's i'm like i'm so frustrated sure i want to shake these people i want to shake them awake but i can't well ultimately you get into this thing for growth and to help the world and to help other women and to help people and you meet these people these characters along the way nippy who becomes your husband who you love and

trust, Mark, who kind of brought you in, you know, and my bonus husband. Your bonus husband, right. And then, of course, Barbara Boucher, which we don't have to really get into now, but she kind of became sort of a mentor to you, right? And people you look up to, everything's going, you're starting to make money, you're doing something that you think is good for humanity. And what was the first thing that you felt? Remember, all of a sudden, after years of not feeling your gut, your gut comes back into play, ironically, and you're feeling something. What was that feeling and what was it exactly that you're like, there's something fucked here? There was a couple of things happening at the same time.

This is way before Doss, even. People started, women who were close to Keith started to get sick from cancer and die. And I thought there was something in the water first. I know there was a lot of industry in that area of Albany. But it also just, like, I hated going to Albany. I hated going to trainings there. I like the people. I like the training of themselves, but I hated the whole.

I felt like that was something in my intuition that I managed to keep away. And also away from Keith, right, to never be too close to him. So that was my first time I got really said, like, don't, and they were pushing me hard to move to Albany. Like, I was never going to get to the next level if I didn't move to Albany. I had to get over my materialism. And that's where the headquarters were. Yes. In Albany.

In fact, Allison Mack's house was in Albany. Yes. She moved to Albany. I don't know when. A couple years after, maybe four or five years after she joined. I don't know. But she was, I mean, she moved there. Nikki moved there.

A bunch of people gave up, excuse me, their acting careers to move there. The other thing, this isn't going to sound really silly, but one of the first things that just pissed me off. couldn't get over was at one of the Vanguard weeks, which is these birthday celebrations they had, which is kind of like summer camp for adults, which was really fun for many years, and then it was really not fun. But as a high rank, excuse me, this is my last year there. We promoted people. And I was a, at this point, I was a green sash. I was one of 12 greens and the whole company, and that was kind of a big deal. And we would present like, okay, this person's ready to get to Proctor, and this person's ready, and this person's ready. And Lawrence,

said that her sister, Michelle, was ready to go to Proctor. Now, Michelle had been a coach, the whole 12 years that I'd been there. Like, she was a coach when I joined, and then I passed her and went way past her. So, like, she'd been the same level the whole time. And all she needed to do to get to her orange was to enroll one person. That's all she needed. And I'd enrolled by this point, like, 100 personally. And all the people that they enrolled in.

You've recruited 100 people. You've recruited at least 100. At least, yeah. And then the people that they'd enrolled, like, in what's called. called my organization. It's like, if you imagine the pyramid. Right, right, the pyramid. People enrolled people and enrolled people.

There was like approximately 2,000 people. That started from you. That came from my, my little family. I called them my family. Right. And here's this other person who just needs one. She's one. She's in one.

So I'm like, get it together. I even tried to help her multiple times because like enrollment was not, every stripe along the way, by the way, required three things. Your emotional growth, like to get through your issues, taking certain classes and being able to teach certain classes and then three was enrollment. So if you couldn't enroll people, you would never go up. And enrollment was super easy for me.

Where I got stuck was the emotional things because they would say, well, you're still whatever. Control. Control was my thing. Still controlling. I'm still controlling. I think that's innate. I don't think that's something that you lose or do. I think that's just a human thing that some people little controlling. I learned to accept that.

I can be controlling. I can be like, what do you do? You just kind of like, all right, I'm aware of that. oh look the picture is a little crooked do i really need to fix it right now i'm ocd let's not have control you don't have to do that you take control of not doing that that's control yes you've chosen not to do that i learned a lot more my engineers going what the fuck are you talking about son are you a control freak no i mean i don't think i'm a control freak but i i certainly i'm set in my ways a little bit yeah and i think that's fine so ultimately what i came to like post next

it was like, I'm fine the way I am. I don't need to like take all these courses and spend a lot of money and needle around in there. Just like except who I am. Right. I like things that's the way. But wait. But so what else? So that was part of the gut thing that you're feeling, okay, that's not right.

You don't like going to Albany. I didn't finish that story. Anyway, Lauren says to me, Michelle finally has her enrollment to get to Proctor. And I said, great, we can enroll in a proctor as a big, you know, promoter to proctor. And she said, well, she doesn't have the application. People had to sign an application to go to a program, getting the app. And she said, it didn't have the app yet, but we're going to promote her anyway. I'm like, what?

The app was the solid thing that needed. I know this sounds so stupid, but to answer your question, I was like, why are we promoting her if she doesn't have the app? After 12 years, she doesn't have the app, then she can't, you can't promote somebody on a verbal. Yeah, yeah, I'm taking a five day. You need the paper to prove it. That was always the thing that was needed for my entire time there.

And Lauren said, well, Keith said we can promote her. I said, Keith said we can promote her? What the fuck? Like, you can't promote somebody unless they have the app. And I got, like, like, I got upset. And I said, well, and they said to me, Sarah, Keith decides who gets promoted. There's a lot of people here getting promoted who aren't ready.

Like, we promoted you to green and you weren't totally ready. And I was like, what? I had my enrollments. Like, but you hadn't worked through X, Y, and Z. But we thought it would be good for the whole company to see. Sarah being promoted to green like so I didn't earn my green sash anyway it was this whole thing where I realized that the stripe system that I invested so much into that I thought meant something meant nothing and that people were getting promoted because Keith wanted them to but there was

there was an ulterior motive there I mean obviously do you think it had something to do with he wanted to sleep with her perhaps no I think they wanted people to they the morale was low in the company and like I think it would have been good and also I think it would have been good for Lauren, if Michelle had grown. It's a complicated thing to explain the strike path and the promotions and all that stuff. But it was the first time that I realized that it was like not based in anything.

But that wasn't even so bad. It was more how everyone pounced on me, all the greens who were my friends. And basically were saying I was suppressive, I was being anti-tribute, anti-Keeth, and I got in trouble for questioning Keith. I'd never questioned Keith before. And I was like, I can't question this.

It doesn't make sense to me. Someone explain it to me other than Keith said. And that was the first, like, this is not right. It could be a little frustrating, especially if you're in a hurry or you're running late to find yourself at a railway crossing, waiting for a train. And if the signals are going and the train's not there yet, you may feel a bit tempted to try and sneak across the tracks. Well, don't ever. You see, to the naked eye, trains appear to be further away and moving slower than they are, and they can't stop quickly. even if the engineer hits the emergency breaks right away,

it can take a train over a mile to stop, a mile. By that time, it's too late and the result is a potentially deadly crash. The point is you can't know how quickly the train will arrive. The train can't stop quickly. Even if it sees you, it ends in disaster. If the signals are on, the train is on its way. And you just need to remember one thing. Stop.

Trains can't. And what is trouble? When you say you're in trouble, What does that mean? Because like if I'm talking about something and I go, yeah, well, my friend Tom's a real ass. Oh, you're in trouble with Tom. It was more like the meeting ended and Lauren sent this guy Alex, who is the head of this center in Mexico, who was my coach. She sent him to come talk to me and to see if I knew what I had done and that I had a breach now with Keith and a breach with Lauren.

And I would have to fill out what's called a breach form to explain what I. had done and how that was bad for me, was bad for the company, it was bad for Keith, and what I was going to do to fix it. And you're thinking, fuck, you got to be thinking, fuck you. Oh, my God. I was this close to saying fuck you, but that would have been another breach

for him. That's like me working at McDonald's my freshman year in high school. It's just like, that's it, you're getting written up. You didn't, we had to mop with an arch, you know, the arch of like the McDonald's M. And then dip. Start to get off course here, but I was like, I'm not doing

that. The student. but you're getting written up. What do you mean? I'm mopping. Maybe I'm not mopping in the arch with the M, but I've written up for that shit and stealing Big Max, but go ahead. No, that's exactly.

Getting in trouble was basically somebody coming and telling you that you've done something bad and you had to fix it. And I just feel like shit about myself. But I also, I don't know, like I've learned since that when you're in a cult, you have your actual personality and then you have your cult personality.

And your cult personality kind of takes over while you're in the call. And this part of CERNs, Sarah was very obedient and I'm very much a good girl and did all the things. But inside, I've been growing increasingly increasingly more like, go fuck yourselves. And just taking the parts of ESP that I liked and doing that in Vancouver. I never was going to move to Albany. I was never going to do, like, I just, that didn't resonate with me.

But I said that I was. I'd be like, yes, I'm coming to Albany. I'm going to look into my visa and like, you know. Right. I was like playing the game, you know? This part of me is getting stronger. Do you think that if you look back now, people who aren't part of this organization

do you think you kind of didn't give them as much attention or didn't care as much and it was more of like this is my group these are my people fuck everyone else and they're beneath me did you feel that I do and I and I'm still cleaning up the effects of that people who were like

I wasn't part of the community anymore and you ignored me and I'm like oh fuck even your parents were you neglecting your parents or do you stay with them I stay pretty close with my parents but I think like you know ESP was always the priority. Like I missed major family events. I missed one of my really closest friends in the world. Her wedding was in L.A. when I had to do a training and I missed it. And I, like, I regret that

so much. In fact, when I got out and she had a baby shower in L.A. like, flew down. I'm like, I'm not missing anything now. I'm here. I'm going to make this up to you. And she's been great. And thank God I never tried to recruit her because our relationship is clean and pure. And that's just what I have to focus on. But there's a lot of people who I'm sure were, like, you know, hurt by that because I was so insular. And it wasn't like, it was very much like outside out of mind. You know, I was working so hard. It was I had my group.

I'm like, if you're not part of this group, you're not with me. You're not part of my team. I'm here and I'm doing this. It's go, go, go. And that's been a huge part of my reconciliation leaving. It's like, you know, who do I need to make amends with on that outside? And that's probably what they were doing there. they would probably try to bring everybody in and this is your life let's just they have something

to do from the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep and within a couple years they'll have nobody else they'll need us it's almost like you then need each other to keep going was there that kind of need like I'm in this I'm did you feel like you know that you hear the word brainwashed and I you always think come on how can someone get brainwashed well you know working with and I haven't really talked about this but like working with Allison and seeing her grow up and uh you know i never really hung out with her maybe a couple cast dinners and you know directed her and she was really sweet and you know she yeah she was always really nice needed attention who doesn't i know i do and you know there was certain things um but you ask yourself

how does someone just completely it's almost like you're leaving your skin somewhere and you're I can't explain it because knowing Allison for those years and just seeing her on set and, you know, I never, you never imagined a million years. That's why I think I neglected sort of to read about it or really, it's like, this can't be. There's got to be something. But you probably saw her change. I did. And when you first met her, because, you know, it is, it's still hard for me to believe. I mean, there was an incident at my house.

years later still I don't know if I was on I don't think I was on Smallville but she and a friend of hers and this guy said hey I'm going to talk to you forever we want to stop by and I hadn't seen her

and they walked in the house and it was almost like I just remember I'm not being I'm not blowing this out of proportion I'm not exaggerating at all I remember because my friend Ethan was here and I remember we just kind of go

and I didn't by the way I didn't even know about this next team or anything at this point I mean I remember on set once she came and she's like hey you should take this class it's really cool and blah blah and I remember I said to Tom sounds like a cult I don't know and we kind of laughed but we never thought oh it's like you know I'm sure it's like people

looking for things we never did it but I never but after that you know we never really heard about it it just that was what she was doing and I never really thought about it so years later I don't know what year this is I have to go back and I could probably figure it out. But I think it was after Smallville, she, you know, she's in the vicinity.

She comes over the house and she walks in. And she walked in. She was a different person. She walked in like she owned my house. Like literally, she owned my home. She walked in with her friends and they walked into the kitchen. I was like, hey, she was like, hey, how are you? And then walked into my kitchen, started bringing out pots and pans and started cooking.

going to go, uh, what are you guys doing? My friend Ethan's like, well, I don't know, what I'm like, we're hungry. We're hungry. We're, we're going to, we're going to, I remember that like it was yesterday. I got to talk to Ethan because then I said, after a while, I just felt uncomfortable. I was like, well, hey, guys, you know, uh, like that's it. Come on. You know, let's, you know, let's, you know, it's. And I kind of asked them like, hey, you know, you might want to leave soon. And that was kind of be nice. The guy turned almost violent. I mean, he was violent. Like he was violent. Like he. I was. I was, like, I. I can't remember who it was, his name.

I don't, because I didn't care. I just was like, who the fuck is this guy? Very angry and like, just, I think he was on something. And he was like, and he just started kind of cursing at me and Ethan. It was like, fuck you. I'm like, you know what, buddy? I don't know what this is about. You just come in.

You start cooking in my house. You guys don't even say that. Why don't you guys just go? Well, I'd actually like you to get the fuck out of my house. That's what I said. And I remember I was waiting for Allison that sort of jump in and say, I'm so sorry. No, no, no, no, he doesn't mean this. There was nothing.

it was just like it was almost like there were zombies that's how i remember i'll never forget it and i'm not saying that the this has anything to do with the next thing has anything to do with it but when they left i looked at it and we were hearts racing and i'm like oh my god i'm disgusted i don't you know and i remember i got a text maybe a few days later oh sorry about the other night or something i don't it's bizarre but i'm just telling you that i i don't know where it came from i don't know what happened maybe it was a bad night but it was years after I had seen her, I hadn't seen her for a long time. So I think what I'm saying is, did you, when you first met her to the time all this

shit went down, what was that transformation? Like, what was that sort of relationship? I mean, I'm going to backtrack for one sec, because you said something about brainwashing. And it's a word that people, you know, either you're of the mind of like, we're all brainwashed. It's just another word is indoctrinated. We're indoctrinated by society, by our parents, to believe. leave certain things, you know, commercials and doctored in us, we, it's, it's not a matter of whether we're brainwashed or not, just how brainwashed are you?

Right. That's one belief, right? Right. I didn't understand how this worked until I left. Quick plug for a book that really helped me understand. It's called Combating Cult Mind Control by Stephen Hassan. And it explains how in a seminar you can be indoctrinated, especially in three days. That's why by day three, they had me.

Their hooks were in me. and it goes step by step and I'm not an expert I can't even begin to try to explain what he explains in this book but if people want to understand better that happens but for somebody like Allison and and keep in mind I was there for some things I wasn't there for other things I can only I'm kind of hypothesizing what happened with her you know and I also don't want to like bring any more hurt on her and her family. I want her to be better. I want her to wake up. And I've heard by the way that she has, which is great. Yeah, that's what I was sort of hoping. I was hoping that, like, because I don't know anything other than I just remember her as a sweet girl. And I hope that I just kept hoping I was

wrong or people were wrong and I just don't know how it happened. So continue, sorry. You know what? What I remember is from that first and us training. And I'd met her casually through our group of friends, um, you know, at a bar, like at a party, super outgoing, great dancer. I remember thinking like her style was really great. Great singer. Great singer, really friendly, very, I liked how she was very touchy, you know, lots of hugs. And I really liked her a lot. And after that first training, I think because she wasn't working the next day, she got on the plane and went back to Albany to meet Keith after two days.

And I don't, some people have said it was like the private jet. I don't know. It's a rumor. It's a private jet. Either way, she got on the plane, went back, met Keith. and that video footage that you see in the vow of them meeting at volleyball. Like, I've never seen that. I didn't even know that footage existed.

When I watched that two weeks ago, I was like, shit. I mean, people don't normally meet Keith until you'd had to take a minimum of 16 day. So the fact that they let, you know, Allison into that world and she felt probably very special to get special access to the vanguard. I think it's all things that many of us that were, you know, were our actors, like wanting to be, feel important, feel special, get attention. I think she got all that. And that was after two days? Yeah, she had, well, it was a three-day training in Vancouver and she flew back and met him.

And I'm sure I was, I don't know about you, but I got, I mean, I felt nauseous. I felt, got chills when I saw that video, like how he was looking at her and what he said to her. her and he was fucking with her mind and like bearing into her soul with his eyes like you could just see the whole history unfold from there um but i didn't see that i didn't i didn't go back i missed all that i've there's so much it's like i wish i'd like the behind the scene that you're seeing in the vow i'm like i wish i'd known this was going on i would have there's no way i would have participated like all that stuff was behind closed doors but wait a minute but mark knew all about that though well he he filmed all that right yeah mark was there filming but the the sexual stuff

was kept from us like he he knew that that keith was mentoring women um and i knew he mentored people but i didn't know what mentored meant you know like that all that stuff came out after we left i was told he was celibate i mean it's ridiculous to even think that i believe that well well didn't he have a wife at one point who died of cancer who no i thought penned Pam was his assistant. So he made it like he didn't have any women. He didn't need sex. He didn't need anything materialistic.

Now, towards the end of my time there, after the indoctrination about that he's sort of implanted about polyamory, I thought, is he with Pam? Maybe he is. It's not of my business. But in my early years, I was like, Keith is a celibate monk. That's how he painted himself.

So seeing that footage, I know. I know. I didn't know that. You didn't know that. So going back and looking at it. all that now now rewinding the vow on hpo now you watched it thinking wow sarah didn't know about it if she would have known about that you probably would have been like i'm on the fuck out right absolutely yeah i mean here's what i know now he mentored women to work through their issues by having a

sexual relationship with them and that included taking this is even before doss these women had vowed to be with him for the rest of their lives and not to be with anyone else and that was kept a secret and they were told to keep it a secret because we wouldn't understand. People were to have too many issues around sex and they just wouldn't get it. Who knew about this then at that point?

Besides Nancy? Nancy knew about it. Lauren knew about it. I mean, it seems like from doing the math or somewhere between 12 and 20 women that he was with, that he was mentoring. And sleeping with, mentoring through sex. Yeah.

And the way it was presented to women was I'm going to help you work your issues and your intimacy issues and I'll be with you but I am with other women and some of the women didn't even know about the other women like Barbara Boucher at first didn't know about the other women that she freaked out

and then had her whole thing about it so some people didn't know and some people knew and that's one of the things I was so pissed off about when I left and why I was so vocal I was like you know if you want to have a polyamorous little farm up in Albany go for it but if you're saying you're doing this other thing and you're not going to put it on your website, it's a fucking lie.

And here I am, like, going out and vouching. And by the way, what you said at the beginning of our conversation, you would have signed up. If I'd met you in 2010, I totally would have signed you up. You would have loved it. You would have loved the five day. You would have been all on board. And you would have gotten great tools from it.

And then to find out that I'm vouching. I'm a salesperson. And like going out in the world and saying, Keith is the most noble, humanitarian, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, a guy. And he's doing this with all those women. was like a massive head fuck for me. Yeah, I can imagine.

I mean, you've changed your whole life, given everything you had. Your whole life is upside down. Everything to someone who you really believe in in innately is a, you know, a good, helpful person as to what you know at the time. But it just feels like, I mean, that's got to be the worst feeling to find out.

I mean, your whole world, I mean, it's just crashing down on it. And like you were wrong knowing that you're like, that's the hardest part and I think like we'll talk about DOS for a second DOS is the wait before we have yeah yeah we joked about back and forth on email about like how I take Ativan on Sunday nights after the vow one of the other reasons I went to ESP was was for anxiety okay I haven't I've had anxiety since probably my parents split up different levels of it I have trouble so do I so do I yes I know right so you you probably

dabbled and mostly I do CBD oil and stuff like that but anyway when this happened I had such a huge PTSD basically like months and months of the worst anxiety I've ever had in my life because my whole world was suddenly you know turned upside down and not only that like to know that I was pushing something pedaling something that was I thought was one thing not only was the opposite it was so bad so bad that was like you know and I still have panic attacks and PTSD reactions when certain things happen or I see things on the vow and I'm like oh my god what what is my life but yes das you wanted to ask about does I mean by the way does Mark who you know it's all his footage he had been shooting us he was hired by Keith to just give sort of a you know backstory and and

sort of film everything uh the history of this whole organization and that if you look back you could look at it now and say oh well that's like look at that I want it's you know look how self indulgent I want it to be filmed I want you to film me all the time and And I'm surprised, like sometimes by filming some of that stuff and watching the looks, I'm like, because Mark does seem like such a great guy that Mark wouldn't be like, this is fucking creepy, dude. Look how he's looking at sounds. I mean, there's definitely some of that. I mean, look, hindsight is 20-20, and I'm sure there's some things he overlooked because he's like, this is the most, you know, because I remember he got emotionally. He talked to Keith.

He thought he was just a genius. He was like one of the smartest people in the world. He was like, this guy has some insight that I'll never have and enlightenment and all these things. And I'm buying it and help me. And wow, this is amazing. that I'm just going to overlook that creepy fucking look you just gave. I'm sure there was a, I'm sure I can't speak for him, but I'm sure he did. I mean, there's a lot of red flags we all overlooked because we just couldn't handle.

Like, when you're so invested at a certain point, like, there are things that I saw that I was like, I remember visiting somebody else's leave her name out of it, hoping that she wakes up. I visited somebody who'd moved there, and I was like, can we get together? and she was like, I can't, I need to be accessible for Keith. I need to be ready for Keith. And I was like, ready for what? She's like, well, we're doing some projects. And you know when you get a hit that people are sleeping together?

You just like get that like, oh, look. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I had that. And then I was like, no, he's like the teacher that's so inappropriate. And also she was in her early 20s and he was like almost 50. So it's like I had the thought. And then I was like, it's impossible.

I also didn't find him attractive. So I was like, she wouldn't do that. And he wouldn't do that because it wasn't right. You know, there's a certain code of ethics as a therapist. You don't sleep with your clients. Right. But you were kind of overlooking things that you might not have overlooked because of just like the situation you're in.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And in a belief, you know, all of us, it makes sense. All of us underestimated their capacity to lie to us. Well, not only that. If like, you know, your best friend in the world, you know him inside out, he's the best. And you're like, you know, this guy would do anything.

I trust him with anything. and then you find out that he just killed someone and you're like, no. There's no fucking way. Dude, that dude? I don't know him. He wouldn't kill someone. I know. Well, do you remember when he had that knife and he was looking on, I want to fucking, ah, but he was kidding. Was he kidding? Holy fuck, maybe he wasn't kidding.

Look, Doss, you didn't, when did you know about Doss? How many years in and when did the first time you heard about Doss? Oh, just a few months before I left. And that was too, Bonnie? Oh, we have an awake baby. We're getting into the very end here. Yeah. yes I found out in January and I left in June so it was really the beginning of the end for

me and my time there oh honey bunny can the baby be in the podcast is that going to be distracting I'll be right there yeah yes yes sorry yes I got so caught up in it but yes I want to just get honestly like there's so much to unpack with this right and by the way one thing I one moment I did want to mention when you asked about my arc with Allison and what did I notice we got married in 2010 and I invited Allison to the wedding and I remember her saying I have got to check with Keith very casually let me check I got I'm going to ask Keith and I was like are you seven is he your daddy I don't understand like I didn't and I even said that like what do you mean you have to check with Keith and she's like well I've been I make really impulsive decisions and I told Keith

I would check with him before I leave town and that that was a red flag for sure I just didn't couldn't make sense of that like okay so Keith's mentoring her she can't you know just want to want to make less impulsive decisions so there are things like that over over time that I clocked but she just got more and more committed she was more committed than I was I mean she was she was living there she gave up her home in in Vancouver she was living where she was did she have her own place in Albany right she had her own place in Albany you're on place but Keith also lived there at in Albany oh no five minutes five minutes oh no no monkey.

Aw. I know. I'm sorry. He's like really, he's really mad at me. Isn't it be mad? Ace. Ace is 18 months and he's

he likes to cuddle after his nap. Anyway, Daddy got him. He's okay. All right. Look, so Doss stands for Dominus obsequious sororium. Yeah.

That's what that is. And so this is something you found out. And again, I mean, how do you get caught up in this? How does this happen? What's the step that this just... It's so complicated and partly because I hate talking about it

and also because the baby's up. Well, look, you can watch the vow. Watch the vow or read the book. Like, there's so many steps that happen of how I got hooked into it and how they manipulate them, particularly Lauren, how she manipulated me and leveraged her trust with me to commit to something that I never would have committed to. But ultimately, it's the thing that everyone's heard about

and in the news, the branding. Right. It's the branding. It's the branding that sort of... Yeah. And I just like, for my own... self-wellness, I have to totally not talk about that because it's just too triggering, but ultimately it's what woke me up, not in the moment, but weeks later when I figured out the symbol was not what they told me and was actually the initials of, we still don't know for sure if it was Allison Mack on purpose, but AM and KR for Keith Reneery. I mean, that set me off, like, you know, the thing I was telling you about earlier where I was

pissed off about the striped path, like that was one thing. When I figured that out, at the same time Mark and I were finally having. conversations about what was going on and why he was leaving and he knew certain things and this point he knew about the sex and I knew about the branding and we talked and shared what we both knew. It's what woke us up.

We're like, you know, we are in a cult. We are in a cult. Right. I guess, you know, when you hear about people sort of like, you know, the manipulation of like, hey, you're going to have to give something in return collateral. You're going to have to take a nude picture of yourself. you're going to have to do this in order to because and I guess in your mind you're thinking well if this is such a secret no one's going to know about it I'm never going to tell anybody

if they have to do something to trust so you kind of buy into that whole thing I guess yeah absolutely I mean also the person inviting me was somebody I would have you know she was our my son's our first son's godmother she was my maid of honor okay we're done okay he's going to join us for the last minute join us look how cute you are you are you're a good bull Boy, you're a handsome little fellow, aren't you? That's right. So let me just ask you. I mean, when you got home and Nippy and he finds about this stuff,

you see it in the documentary, which you guys could watch. But it probably was hell for a bit, right? It was hell, but he, you know, he got it. There was never a, like, you know, how could you have done this? You know, he, you have to understand there are all so many years in ESP. We were, there was so much bad press. and we always thought it's a smear campaign it's a smear campaign Keith is good nobody understands

all of a sudden we understand that we were wrong and you know if you really want to know who Keith is you just Google him and all that time we thought those things were lies and I were like okay we're out and it was kind of a relief you know it was like all these things that we were

struggling with with the company and trying to make it work and it was like you know to make sashes and vanguard is ever going to fly like in a training really like we were trying to change those things because really you're right the tools on the outside and part of the curriculum was great but a lot of that stuff was just such bullshit and it was so hard to make it fly and all of a sudden it was like okay we can just move on now and get back to our place i mean but it's got to be the hardest thing to all of a sudden say this is what this is i got to go tell my parents what this is Nippy's got to tell his parents, just friends, and like, hey, you know, sometimes it's like that sort of that, you know, admitting that you were wrong. But of course, hindsight is 20, you can't, you can't know you can't know you're wrong. You know, you're thinking that this is going to help you and it's got so many, you know, good things about it. And then it turns out to be like we talked about in the beginning a horror movie.

And then you're like, how do we get out? A lot of time. In fact, I'm still running into people going, I'm sorry and you were right. but yeah the first conversations with my family were pretty heartbreaking but they were so so accepting and not no no that's too loud babe i'm gonna get nippy on here wasn't why don't you take over for a few minutes i'll talk to nippie no no it's too loud but come join us nipi why don't you sit here for a minute yeah yeah bring your coffee over here it's a family affair you know yeah no it was really it was i mean i'm as

like I said, I'm still having those conversations, and I'm still, he's coming, apologizing and making amends. But in some ways, it was a relief to go, you know, oh my God, I was wrong. But all these things now made sense that I had never been able to wrap my head around. But the people who remain loyal,

I mean, they've never been able to take a bite out of that shit sandwich, for lack of a better word. You know, they're still walking around going, oh my gosh, no. Nip, are you shaving? What are you doing? What's going on there? Oh, he's doing two shots.

Two shots? Yeah, we have an espresso. Oh, that's not like alcohol. I was like, you're taking two shots from the day, Nip. You quick shots at tequila. Okay, ask me one more question. Will I solve for Nippy? Yeah, I mean, look, I'd have to say if you were one-on-one with Keith Runeari right now in a room, what would you say to him?

Hmm. Well, here come over here, babe. Here you go. Hey, Nipi. doing but good to see you man um my my answer to that probably would have changed over the past couple years i think you know when i was still really angry three years ago i would have said you know torn him a new one and said you know you messed with the wrong person i'm like what are you thinking and how dare you but uh i don't know i'm kind of like in the forgiveness and not in the sense of like

he still needs to go to jail but like just for my own sanity not to hold that anymore right um to let that go and just be like, you know, I hope his, he's got a dark soul. I mean, he did some bad things to people and I just you know, I hope he can, I don't know. Nipi, what about you? I like to know Nipi, I have a feeling he might have a

different interpretation. Nipi, what would you say to Keith Reneer? Well, they have to put you in, well, they have to restrain you. I don't think as much I could say to him that would change him or anything. But I'm dying to find out if he's a real judo champion. real judo champion like you know he says he's a judo champion and that was his i don't kind of want to

kick the tires on that how long do i have with them i haven't right i mean if you had like 10 minutes to go let's see how strong you are yeah let's let's see let's right i mean look you guys for a lot would you see a lot of this before all this stuff went to hell and you found out the horrors of it all did you say you were pretty happy you were in it to win it you kind of felt like this was helping humanity and this is a good thing for the most part. Yeah, that was the delusion. That was the lie. I mean, that's what, you know, that the whole thing in getting out was just reconciling that's what we were never doing.

I mean, we were helping people. Like, there was tangible evidence we were doing that. But the whole thing that you were going to somehow get involved in other hierarchies, other structures and help them, anything that got close to that, always had some, what seemed like arbitrary excuse for not happening. For example, there were many people that tried to get it into certain universities, Harvard Business School, Tuck at Dartmouth,

and there was always something that happened that prevented other people's connections to really getting these good ideas, which I've kind of found are mostly regurgitated and just honed and you can get them anywhere. I mean, I think the cool part about it was just people coming together and helping each other was it's always positive. You don't have to make it your life.

And anything that was going to translate to something bigger, it was just never going to happen because I think he knew on some level, if you get someone in here with standards and practices that have been tried and tested, his modality would be exposed for stolen, fraudulent, and his real intent would be exposed. So he knew that. And he knew that in order to get to maintain his lie, he had to prevent people from coming in and doing that. Right. Sarah, I hear that patting very loudly, but you have to do it.

I'm so sorry. You have to pat the kid. It's fine. I can stop patting. More gently, for God's sakes. I'm just kidding. But Nipi, I mean, you're a good looking guy. You know, you're a quarterback.

Ivy League school. You're a smart guy. I've heard you on the value. You're very articulate. I mean, so some people would say, and it's a good example because it's like, well, this guy. got into it? Why would he get into it? I mean, if he can get into it, certainly a more feeble-minded person can get into it, somebody who's more vulnerable. What was it that you- Dalai Lama got conned? I mean, take all that off of me. The Dalai Lama got conned and he was

supporting, and he wrote a Ford for the guy's book. So I think ultimately what happened is the people around him, if you ever read that book, Sapiens? I haven't read it. Real quick, he just basically talks about one of the things that, Made us go from hunter and gatherers to social beings is that we had a common myth that we all believed in. And it goes to banking systems, governments and all that stuff. United States of America, the myth of America as you come here and you actualize your dreams and all that,

there was a myth everyone was enrolled into. And that Keith was doing good things and wasn't this idea. I mean, I'm watching the vow now and I'm seeing how he's treating people. He was rude to people. I mean, one of the things that's most shocking to me is how disgusting a human being he was to other people. I never saw that. I never saw him behave that way. So the myth was cultivated pretty well if he weren't in his direct orbit.

And Sarah and I were peripheral. And when we came to Albany, took a training or did whatever, you know, went to an event or something like that, the myth seemed intact. Right. And as long as the myth seemed intact. it seemed like we were doing something good. So when we would go out and hear these things about Keith or whatever, come back and ask people, they were lied to. We were flat out lied to people that we trusted,

that were in our lives for 10 years and didn't think they would do that. We underestimated that. You know, the one thing that was baffling to me is sort of like, and again, I'm not there, but like, you know, those nine women on the board. It's nine women in Keith, right? and those nine women left. And you think that right when you hear that, nine women left the whole thing,

that you think everybody was like, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Something's fuck. How did he manipulate that? So some of the nine women, it was really about three. That were high rank. Yeah, they're high rank.

And I think those were the three that he had to discredit because they were going to take some people with him. So it looks like those three took their friends with him. but the three that really got discredited and really Barbouche and Susan Dones the two people that were in the last episode they had been working on making them crazy

to the organization for quite some time because I think Keith, well, Keith was sleeping with one of them so he knew how to do that, right? And what made our exit different from theirs is ours was abrupt. We didn't try to talk about. I wasn't going to have an intellectual debate about the merits of branding someone's body to teach them growth and character.

That wasn't something I was even remotely interested. There wasn't a pause in that. I was out. Right. And I told Sarah, if she had come back with as much as a scrape on her arm, I would have been in there with the same reaction. Like, that's not what we're doing here. So to answer your question about them,

they had been made crazy to the organization. And quite literally, when you do that to someone, what was done to Barbouche, which none of us had any idea, she kind of did go a little bit crazy. She had all her wealth taken. She challenged him and was made crazy. It was gaslit and all those things.

We didn't trust her. Yeah, the emergent property of someone who's been through that kind of trauma, they look a little crazy. So when we went to, and I'm not saying Barbuchet's crazy at all. I'm saying that she had been through the ringer and you were experiencing someone

who had been through the ringer and had some trauma going on, unbeknownst to us. And we were going to Nancy, Lauren, and the people around her, and they were saying that she came in, trying to take over their, you know, so, you know, I think, you know,

if we're guilty, if I'm guilty of something, is I didn't go investigate that responsibly enough, but I also didn't think to investigate it. Right. Did you guys talk to Allison after the branding? Did you ever ask her, hey, is this your signature, your letters, your initials?

They were shunning us at that point. Yeah, I mean, we knew we were the bad guys, but listen, my whole thing is when this happened, I didn't really have a strong impulse to tell my side of the story. I mean, to tell my side of the story, I knew time would tell it. And I knew if there was ever any sort of investigation or whatever it goes on and the cards are all on the table,

they were going to be way closer to who we were saying they were than vice versa. And that they were clearly in the wrong? In the wrong. As for Allison, I didn't, I don't remember. I remember if I had any communication with her. I sent some texts that were like WTF. Like what did you do to my wife sort of thing?

I'm on here and then I sent some to some other people. And then I kind of felt, you know, I knew the wheels of their litigation was they go in motion. I think it's in the vow too. I think pretty much when the New York Times article came out, I knew that they were going to be on the heels. I mean, this is my impression of what goes on behind the scenes. I don't really know.

I'm not close to it. And we got a little bit of a crash course in how litigation, FBI works and all that stuff. But I actually did simple Google searches, you know, and I found out once he got investigating, once they open up an FBI investigation gets opened up, you can go to the website, and there's a fucking flowchart. And it basically goes, if these things hit these things,

like, you know, if you're going to get evidence and your evidence is corroborated, there's a point where, like, if it gets to a certain point, 80% of the time you're screwed. If the FBI is going to take their time. So you knew it was coming to an end. Yeah. Time to go.

And the fact that they don't know if the FBI is knocking on your door, you know what I mean? Most people watch basic cop shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, if the FBI is knocking on your door, something's up. And they doubled down. They thought they were being mobile.

I just like, this is going to be, you know, for me, it was vindication. I got my wife and kid out of there as quickly as possible. When the New York Times did that and then they opened it, I felt like, okay, I think we're safe. Like, I think I say it in the vows, like, there's not much they can do to us. Like, they're done. And like, it's not in our hands anymore. Right. And so they can't attack our character and our process anymore.

They now have to attack the media's process. And the loyalists that are still there are now, attacking the government's process by demanding an affidavit. So it's never refute the points of convicted felon on seven counts and a jury of his peers in under four hours by the best domestic police task force in a human history, right? I mean, maybe the Romans had one back in the day that was pretty good, but we don't know about that, right? And the onus is on you now, and you can go fix.

the FBI's process and the government's process and the legal, you know, it's just, they're never refuting content. Do you think he's going to get life? I think so. I mean, if Claire Bronfman got 81 months and he's trying to have his trial outside of the court when he said nothing in court and he's doing all this stuff to get his loyalist to go do stuff, I think he's insulting the court. He's insulting the judge and the judge sent a message to Claire Bronfman. Why wouldn't he send it to him? And anyone else who has those kinds of ideas. And who else? Who else do you think is going to go to prison? Well, I know that Lauren and Nancy are going to go to prison.

I don't know that they're going to go for as long. I think they're contrite. I think they're still reconciling for what I understand what they've done. And I think, listen, it's hard. Like when reconciling your delusion, eating your humble pie, is a hard thing. You know, and I don't know what they've done. I don't have any intel as to how they've done it. I think they're contrite.

Lauren's testimony put the nail on the coffin for Keith in a lot of ways, I understand. And if they truly are contrite, the judge sees that, I think he's going to give them the minimum and hopes that they do well. I'm not at a point where I'm angry at anyone anymore, but the delineation I have is if you knew me and you knew that I knew what you knew about Keith and you kept that for me that means you lied to keep me loyal to something that wasn't true

and that's my life you fucked with my life and you knew you did and you knew that what I stand for isn't what he stands for and I wouldn't have been on board with it. That just makes me really uncomfortable just that feeling

that that's how you guys were operating and you know I happen to know that Lauren had a sexual relationship with them since 2001 That was the year I did my first training. You know, and in 2003, I left because I didn't think Vanguard, sashes, and Balling was going to catch on. I should listen to that. And so that to me is where, like, I can forgive you and hope for the best, but we're not going to have coffee and talk about.

Hey, this, you know, I'm only going to ask one of these questions from my patrons. I just felt like this one question. This could go for both you. When you go about your, this is from Maisha. When you go about your everyday life, do you still hear the voices of your coach, Lauren, or Keith telling you how to act or how to be, how do you combat them to, or combat? I said combat. You can say combat, can't you?

To maintain your peace of mind as a victim of abuse, you know, she says, I have moments like that that still trigger me. I don't know the question is necessarily that applicable. I guess their teachings and what they taught you, do you still, are there some that are sort of embedding you? I think what I hear them asking is how do you discern the good from the bad and yeah look the good you can get anywhere else I think a lot of the stuff is repackaged in a lot of places the thing that the immediate road I went down when this was over was figuring out the con and I think what happens is when you're exploring your own belief system

they can suggest things to you. And pending on, I think it's case by case, pending on how susceptible you are to suggestion is how indoctrinated you become. There's a book about it called Take Back Your Life. And I think the woman, Yanni Lalach, goes into eight specific things that people fall for. The one that resonated the most with me

was called moral injury, meaning that there were some principles you thought you were upholding. and you found out that the principles were the hook to get you loyal to something. So to put it in maybe context for some people, I think she puts this in context in her book. Think of a soldier who's going over thinking he's fighting for peace. And the next thing you know, he's pulling women and children out of a hut

and he's in a compromising situation where he's doing something in war that isn't congruent with peace. that I think is a lot of things that soldiers reconcile where they're all the time yeah they signed up for something it's not that thing and they recognize the reason they got signed up they got con and the hard part for me was like

okay I can make a mistake I can pivot on the mistake but to think that I led people down that path and I rose through a hierarchy brought in over 150 people you know to something and I know how to go I had to go face them. And also destroy something I had worked really, really hard to build is also difficult.

Yeah. Well, dude, I really appreciate you. I know you weren't intended to get on here. But I love that you did because I really like listening to, you know, on the documentary. And you're just such a supportive husband. And look, look, after Sarah does get branded, I, you know, I mean, as a husband, you're probably like, you can hear it. You're not happy about it, but you're more unhappy with these, these people. I was primal. I had all the...

Oh, yeah. You know, and I just decided, look, I'm not going to handle my problems with violence. I think everyone loses, but it was a close second. Were you honestly thinking about, I got to go there now and I got to handle this guy? I had a moment when we were, we were planning kind of our escape.

We had about four or five days to do it. And I knew that there was volleyball going on. I had never, I went to volleyball. once a year. Like, I just, I just wasn't my thing. And, you know, we didn't live near there. I had to drive 30 minutes to go there. Probably because I didn't want people checking in on me. And I like to watch football on Sunday, smoke a doob and drink a beer. And I don't want someone coming by and bother me. We weren't really supposed to do that. But you thought at that moment, you were going to stop by the volleyball court, didn't you?

So, I get off the phone with Mark. And I'm like, fuck this. And I, and I, you know, You know how when the lights are on in your apartment and it's dark outside? And I look over and I catch myself in my reflection in the mirror. And I look and I'm like, there was the moment where I felt everything come up. If you commit to this. This could be bad news. Bad. And I caught myself.

And ultimately, you know, I don't think I'm that kind of person to handle my problems that way. I think everyone loses. And another thing stopping me too is I was probably going to have to hit a couple people on the way out. probably trying to stop him right i was like i was like i can i'm gonna have to hit him him right you know i was after one guy after you know three or four well i'm glad you didn't do that i had my escape plan i had it all

planned yeah i mean did you ever like talk to sarah obviously she doesn't like talking about it's probably in the book it's not like it's a secret because she's you guys are pretty much open books but like i can't i'm like i'm a i'm a pus i can't even imagine being branding that that has to be the worst pain ever right that's a question for sarah I haven't been branded. Worst pain ever. Worst pain ever with the brand?

Yeah, I mean, she says, so. It's, it was a cute, um, it's up there with childbirth. You know, it's very, very, it's the most sensitive area of your body and there's no anesthetic. And how long does that last? Like, when they put something on you like that. Is it like five seconds?

Well, they drew each line with the cauterizing iron, which is basically slicing open your flush. So like, zzz. Sorry, baby. Yeah. Per line, and then she stopped and, like, read something, some sort of scripture that I don't remember what it was because it was totally disassociated out of my body.

That's just incredible. I mean, my theory is that it was him trying to do what I've learned about since, sorry about the noise. Sorry. It's called trauma bonding. So, like, some of the women that remain are the women that were branded together and they feel really close because they got through this traumatic situation together. so I think that's what he was trying to do like to really help people stay loyal forever

to have that experience that they could well yeah listen uh nippy sarah i mean i'll just say this but i'm i'm so appreciative for you guys being so forthcoming and so open and like because this happens a lot of places and it's unfortunate that it couldn't have been one of those things that was just good like you guys innately thought and it could have been something great and there had to be this dark twist and this horror aspect of it all and i'm just you know i'm truly sorry but I'm also truly grateful that you opened up and you can educate people and your book scarred that just came out. Sarah is like, talk about, she even gets deeper. Trust me. And Nippy, just for you guys to open up about it, it's going to help people out there because a lot of people

are vulnerable and they suffer from anxiety and depression, all these things. And they look for a place to go in some kind of acceptance. And that's not the only reason they go, but, you know, it's a shame that this all happened. And I'm just glad that you're, because some people could just say, I don't want to be involved. I want to be, I'm sure you fought that and thought, I don't want to be a part of this and to just tell the world your secret it probably gets that you know what do you call that you know that that that monster off your back you know that the gorilla off your back that feeling of like you know you got it's got to there's got to be some piece that comes with that it's definitely what we've needed to do to turn this negative into oh honey come here buddy

come here come here beep beep yes it's a beep being the negative into a positive um and since we have been our mantra yeah like okay thank you michael thank you thank you Thanks, Nicky. Thanks so much, man. Nice to meet you. Just to comment on that, there's been a lot of people since being public, reaching out saying I'm in this group. It sounds just like what you're describing in the vow.

How do I get out? How do I expose it? Or I know somebody in a group like this. How do I get out? How do I expose it? These things exist. A lot of them exist. More than people know.

Yeah. And a lot of people are found to these things and don't know how to get out. And hopefully this, bye, bye, babe. I'll see you later. Okay. See you the part. yeah it's just what we got to do now it's like you know even the even the playing field yeah well i commend you i do and it's like you know it was hard it was just like i always people always asked me about

alison i was just like i just always knew her as this great girl i didn't really know her other than she was just a really terrific girl and a great actress and i just liked working with her and it was so sad and you know i just i couldn't believe it and you know i really i believe that you know something happened where she just wasn't herself you know she was gone She was gone. Since that's our common friend, among other few others, but, you know, it makes me really sad what he did to her. And I really hope that she has woken up. And I hope that she's somebody I would see again and have coffee and talk about the time where we were in that cult.

Yeah, I would. And all these women that, you know, suffered and all these people that suffered, it's just, it's tragic. And I'm not saying, you know, you can't say, oh, poor Allison, you have to say poor everybody because there was no winner in this. Everybody around Keith to a degree, even though they did a legal thing. things are victims to him nobody signed up for this none of us signed up for what they ended up doing and including allison and i i just wish her all the best and her family all the best so it's you know it's a tragic awful thing and i appreciate you taking time to shine light on it yeah thank you by the way my podcast is usually an hour an hour into 20 and i just was so into this that

i'm sorry i went over i know it was about an hour and 40 minutes and i'm like good lord i'm but i was so into it so thank you so much for opening up and all my love and keeping time and good luck with the family and everything. Awesome. And the book, Scard. Scarred. Okay. I'm escaping nexian, the cult that found my life.

But I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. Exactly. All right, lady. Definitely keep in touch. You got it. You got it.

I'm working on it. I'm working on it. We can share secrets. We can tell what works and we doesn't work. Yeah. You have darker. Don't join a cult. I'm not going to join a cult.

It's funny that so many years ago I remember going, sounds like a cold. Just kidding. Like, I'm sure it's not. And then go. going, because whoever goes into a cult, no one gets into a cult because they think it's a cult. They get into it because they think it's just great. And that's how it all begins. That's how it works. All right. All my love, go take care of that little crying baby.

It will. Take care. Well, if that wasn't intense, Ryan, I don't know what was. That was a rough one. Yeah, sometimes I don't, I don't even know what to ask anymore. Like I asked, this branding hurt. Ultimately, that's what I just because I kept thinking, oh my gosh, I mean, I could never, and you could tell Sarah didn't want to get into it because it's a very emotional thing and it's a personal thing. And you probably read her book and I'm sure she'll get into it. But it is tragic, man. It's tragic because I think we all look for something or someone, something to have faith in.

And when that lets us down, it's just, it's devastating. It's like, oh, this is good for me. You know, this, I learned meditation. And this is great and this is helping me. And then next thing you know, you find out your instructor is a psychopath or something. I think we just like look for answers and, you know, could you have done? Could this have happened to you, honestly? Honestly, I don't, I couldn't say.

I mean, I've been lucky enough to surround myself with decent people who aren't crazy. Well, you're hanging on me right now. You know what? I would like to think I wouldn't, but, you know, who the fuck knows? Yeah. I'd like to think that there's a possibility that I would have in the beginning if I was like, you know, I'm kind of lost. And I do, I felt lost. I still feel lost at times. I mean, I knew then not to not to do it. But who's to say that if someone that I really respected and kind of like, not idolized, but somebody that I really, for instance, my friend Tom or my friend Ethan, who are great guys, smart. if they got into something like that. And I was like, really? I'm like, dude, I'm sure they could probably talk me into it

because I just trust them. I think they're great guys and they have good hearts and then you're into it and then you're in five sessions, 10 sessions and then you're starting to reprogram your brain and you don't know you're being mind-fought. And you're being programmed to not trust your gut. That was the scariest part.

That's the scariest part. Could you imagine? just the fuck man it is oh anyway thank you to everybody who's listening remember to subscribe and email all your friends and do whatever you can to keep the podcast rocking thanks to westwood one thanks to ryan here

who edits the episodes this guy right here to bryce who busts his ass inside out and does everything to westwood one to all my patrons we just had a live Instagram we haven't done that in a while and it was fun and thanks for the

new members of Patreon, Patreon, to join. And I'm going to name them off now, the top tiers. And a lot of good stuff coming your way. And remember the inside of you online store, wine glasses, shirts, hats, sweatshirts, fuck, mugs, autograph mugs if you want them. All right, here we go. This is the patron. Thanks for listening again, by the way.

If you don't want to listen to this, you can fast forward. But don't, if you really want to hear your name. Nancy D. Mary B. Leah S. Trisha. Sarah V. Little Lisa, U Kiko. U Kiko. Jill E. Brian H. Lauren G. Nico P. Angelina G. Robin S. Jerry W. Emily K. Emily K. Robert B. Robert I. Jason W. Steven J. Kristen K. Amelia L. J. L. J. L. J. L. J. L. J. L. J. L. J. L. J. L. J. L. H. Jennifer S. You know, we're going to play a little game, Ryan. After I'm done with this. I'm not going to say the game yet.

I'm going to tell you after after. Fun. Janelle B. Carey B. Tab of the 272. Not to be confused with. Tab of the 273. Kimberly E. Crystal H. Mike E. Marissa. N.

That's correct. Non-Irello. Ramira. Beth B. Santiago M. Sarah F. Chad W. Leanne. He. Correct. Roshan.

Of course. Ray A. Maya. P. Yeah. Megan. Megan. Oh, uh, F?

Nope, Jay, close. Maddie S, Tiffany I, Kendrick F, Ashley E, Margie M, Thomas T, Math W, Belinda, N, Benjamin, R, Lisa, J, Kevin V, Robert S, James R, Chris H, Snow R, Sean V, Anusha W. Osbjrne, Osbjorn, I believe, H, Ashborn, H, Dave H, Sheila G, and another new member, Jacob H. All right. Now, can you name 10 of these patrons

I just said? All right. There's Maya P. Lisa J. Correct. Kendrick F. Aspiorne. Hamza.

Hamza B. Bob S. Is that one? Yeah. There's Bob B. Bob B. Well, you don't get Bob B. I don't get Bob B then.

Should I give you a Tabb of the 272 Yes You Kiko Yes Oh my God Oh no Oh Ration Rachin

Yes Oh Rage And uh Kevin V No Kevin V is correct Kevin V is correct Look at that

That's a fun game isn't it You guys I can't, I can't, uh, say thank you enough to you guys out there. Um, I say it all the time. And, um, I just love doing this. And I hope you stay with me as long as I'm doing it. I couldn't do it without you. Thanks to all the patrons. Thanks to all the listeners. Please subscribe. Please tell everybody you emailing and making people, uh, subscribe and listen truly helps. Keep doing it. Uh, keep, um, keep fighting the good fight, man. Just keep hanging in there, man, because we're going to get we're, we're, I feel like there's a light. I do. I do. I

feel like there's a light we got the election coming on and and by the way i will say one thing and this isn't directed at anybody i love all of you but i will say if i ever i don't get political but if i ever say things like i wear a mask or i do this these are things that aren't political these are things i i i i i i i whatever you believe is your belief your beliefs i don't i'm not going to judge you don't judge me if i say something that you think well you mean you hope. I don't really talk politics. I just don't do it. But if I see something that I just feel like is ridiculous, I acknowledge it. And if you don't agree with it, well, we move on. We just move on. So I'll just say that. Thank you all for allowing me to be inside of you today and

can't wait to talk to you again. And I do sometimes, in fact, I just message a lot of people on the patron. If you haven't joined Patreon, check it out. Patreon, P.A. a T-R-E-O-N dot com slash inside of you or inside and it's a whole family and there's a lot of great things that you get merch and zooms and just a bunch of shit just check it out all right much love thanks Ryan wants to say goodbye bye hi I'm Joe Sal C hi host of the stacking Benjamin's podcast today we're going to talk about what if you came across $50,000 what would you do put it into a tax advantage retirement account The mortgage. That's what we do.

Make a down payment on a home. Something nice. Buying a vehicle. A separate bucket for this addition that we're adding. $50,000. I'll buy a new podcast. You'll buy new friends. And we're done.

Thanks for playing everybody. We're out of here. Stacky Benjamin's follow and listen on your favorite platform.