Well, maybe not a real cult.
Just a teensy cult. A cult that despite being fully online extracts a lot of money from its followers and forces them to use the word “juicy” a lot. A twin flame cult.
That cult was Twin Flames Universe. Although I wasn’t a great follower I bought into the idea of twin flames wholeheartedly and set my sights on manifesting my twin flame. My beliefs about twin flames, shaped by the teachings of Jeff and Shaleia, led me to spend a great deal of money that I would not have otherwise spent and landed me in a relationship that wasn’t healthy.
Introduction to the Twin Flame Cult
The group is [almost] fully online and has members all over the world. Most people are introduced through the Facebook forum. Most people who join are in a vulnerable emotional state because of something happening with a romantic partner whom they believe to be their twin flame. After joining in the Facebook group most people are quickly coached to purchase access to classes on the website. Members tell them that by doing so, and by putting in the work, they are guaranteed to be in a harmonious relationship with their twin flame.
They are also quickly advised to start coaching with a certified ascension coach. Ascension coaches are members of the group who have taken additional classes to learn how to coach other people in doing the mirror exercise. I would learn later that there are certain hoops ascension coaches have to jump through to remain in good standing.
After someone has been a member for a while they are usually persuaded to volunteer for jobs within the community. Most volunteer positions have the same aim: helping to spread the word about the group and get more people to join.
My Experience with the Twin Flame Cult
I joined after discovering the group’s Youtube channel.
I liked the message of the Twin Flames Universe YouTube videos and felt that I could learn something about attracting my twin flame. I spent money to have access to online classes about how to attract and be with my twin flame. In addition to the classes I had access to weekly discussion groups via Facebook or Zoom and I paid additional money for weekly coaching sessions in which I spoke with someone about my problems and they coached me on doing the mirror exercise and applying self-love.
I still believe that everything has a spiritual purpose, and being part of this group also had its purpose. Even what was painful had a purpose.
The good was that I learned to love myself more, and to love myself in every situation. As someone coming out of Catholicism it was very important for me to let go of culpability and condemnation and to give myself mercy. I still treasure certain things that I learned from my coach, and the time I spent with my coach.
It wasn’t all for naught.
The mirror exercise which I mentioned before operates on the principle that everything that we experience in life is ourselves pushed outward. So if someone is being nasty to you this means that you are, in fact, being nasty to yourself inside. If your twin flame is rejecting you, it means you are rejecting yourself.
I joined the group when I believed one person to be my twin flame. This person and I messaged each other every day for years but we never had a relationship with each other. I thought that we were twin flames because we were very similar in some ways. I thought of him in my mind as my twin even before I had heard the term “twin flame”.
I started doing coaching and watching the classes with this person in mind, but later cut off contact with him and did my spiritual practices without a specific person in mind.
Meeting My Supposed Twin Flame
Several months after cutting off contact with the person I originally thought was my twin flame I met another person on Instagram. I already had a trip planned to Peru and this person lived in Peru and was active on Instagram. I considered whether he was my twin flame because he seemed to match everything on my “love list”. We made a plan to travel together for several months in Peru.
Since I was coming at this relationship with the perspective of this man possibly being my twin flame I was willing to do things that I might not have otherwise considered doing. I sent him money so that he would be able to meet me in Lima and paid all of the expenses of our trip. He was Venezuelan and things were just barely opening up after the pandemic so he did not have a stable source of income. Venezuelans living in Peru during the pandemic were prohibited from doing the jobs that they were doing in order to survive in a foreign country: selling things in the street. Peruvians during the pandemic were receiving financial help from the government throughout the lockdown but Venezuelans did not. I looked on his situation with compassion and made allowances because of it.
During the trip I paid for all expenses, but also for every time he wanted to change our plans at the last minute. During the first two weeks while we were in Lima he decided that he needed to return to the town where he was living because he needed to pay rent. He didn’t have the rent money so I would have to pay it. I also had to pay for his transportation to and from Trujillo. He said he would stay there with his cousins until after the new year.
He stayed in Trujillo with his cousins for a couple of weeks until his glasses broke and so he said that he missed me so much he would meet me in Arequipa (where, presumably, I would buy the glasses). I had to pay for his last minute plane ticket to Arequipa AND a new pair of glasses. We spent all of December together in Arequipa, Puno and Cusco. Then he decided that he really did want to see his cousins for the new year and would travel back to Trujillo to see them for a week. I spent more money on more last minute plane tickets and spent a week including New Years Day totally alone. Before he left he convinced me to give him some money so that the cousins could buy a new mini refrigerator. I felt bad about it but I did it anyway.
Throughout this time I was upset for another reason. During our first conversations on Instagram and on video calls we had talked about traveling together and making videos for Youtube together. I thought that meant that we would have a joint project and maybe create a channel together with content about Peru. I spent some money to get him some supplies so that we could work on things together. When we started traveling together, however, he only wanted to film videos of himself and never included me in any of the video clips he took.
He never showed me on his social media despite being very active on the sites and he would never accept my friend request on Facebook. I saw this as extremely shady and questioned him about it, expressing that I felt he was hiding me and our relationship and that he didn’t want other women to see it. Each time we fought about it there was no solution. He expected me to make GIANT concessions for him while he would not make ANY concessions for me. He said I was being jealous and unreasonable.
Despite seeing all of these red flags and being continually upset by them, I thought that these were problems that were reflections of my own need for healing and that I could fix spiritually. They were essentially my fault. I thought that I wasn’t loving myself correctly. I wasn’t being generous with myself. I spent a lot of time trying to fix the relationship by fixing me. Twin Flames Universe teaches that we should not be seeking love outside ourselves.
I thought that my desire for him to meet these basic needs of mine and respect my boundaries was my desire for love outside of myself and therefore wrong.
After our trip I sent him money for things various other times. On the one hand I felt compassion for him but on the other hand I didn’t desire to be financially responsible for him. I held on as long as I could, in a way forcing things to happen in the way I thought a twin flame story should happen.
Our biggest trouble was money. The financial strain made me feel desperate to provide him with a way of providing for himself. I helped him get some supplies that he said he needed in order to make a living. I aided him to visit his family in Venezuela because he said he wouldn’t want to move to another country if he hadn’t seen them first. I helped him move to Mexico. I was only giving him money for things that I thought would further our chances of being together, or for him to travel with me, or in the hopes that if he had the missing piece he would be able to support himself. It was already a problem being financially responsible at all, but I wasn’t compassionate in the way I treated him with money. It was selective. It was generous but also extremely selfish.
This went on until someone messaged me on Instagram with proof that she had been in a relationship with him for several months. It verified what my intuition had been telling me but I had tried to quelch. He tried to convince me that the woman was lying and that she had produced all of the evidence on Photoshop with the sole intent of ruining his life. We broke up but remained in contact for a while. He has never admitted the truth.
I feel ashamed of myself for having believed his lies for so long, and also ashamed for how I treated him as well. In my desperation for our relationship to work I continually brought up these things that upset me and we were pretty constantly in conflict. Instead of just leaving him and breaking it off I unconsciously thought that I could force him to change.
I feel guilty for helping him move to Mexico where he still has not been able to provide for himself and has had an extremely hard time without my financial help.
Spiritual Abuse in the Twin Flame Cult
Over the summer I talked to some journalists about my experience with Twin Flames Universe and said that, overall, it was good. But there were problems. I can see not that I vastly minimized the problems its philosophy caused me. While I believe that the mirror exercise and applying self love did me good, being with the twin flame cult was not great for me financially. I lost what feels like a lot of money through the classes and the weekly coaching sessions, but most of all from believing someone to be my twin flame who manipulated me financially.
I also blame myself. Being an intelligent person I should have known better. I feel ashamed that it carried on so far. I feel ashamed that I saw clearly what was going on but blamed it on myself. I also feel guilty for helping my ex-twin move to Mexico where he has no way to support himself.
My experience traveling around Peru with my ex was incredible but also very difficult for the reasons I described above. The good things that came out of it was that the relationship helped me to achieve some goals that had been posted to my 2020 vision board. My fluency and understanding of Spanish improved immensely through traveling (and arguing) with someone in only Spanish for many months. I also achieved the goal of hiking up Machu Picchu with a romantic partner. My ex also helped and encouraged me to get the tattoo that I wanted. And for a while things felt great, traveling with someone who had the same interest in travel and creating Youtube content that I did.
But the constant ups and downs, I believe, created a trauma bond. It was hard for me to walk away from the relationship because I thought he was my twin flame and that walking away would mean “giving up on myself” the way Jeff and Shaleia describe it. I also thought that any of our problems could be solved by doing spiritual work.
I am still in contact with this person sporadically and still question at times whether this person could be my twin flame. I question whether I could have tried harder, forgiven more. I question whether things would have improved if he could have come to live in the United States. I question whether I “gave up on myself” and for that I will live a life without love.
I also question my relationship with God. How could God have allowed me to trust someone to my detriment when I was continually asking God for guidance all along the way. It is more difficult for me to trust God after all of this. I question my own perceptions, my own desires. I have sometimes felt enveloped in a sense of hopelessness after leaving the group.
At this time I question whether my ex-boyfriend had narcissistic personality disorder. Some of the behaviors he exhibited were traits of NPD. There have been some that have questioned whether the group’s leader, Jeff Divine, is a grandiose narcissist as well. He has claimed to be the “Master Christ” and seems obsessed with being rich, his business thriving and profiting immensely off of free labor.
There are parallels in the way my ex-twin flame treated me and the way that Jeff treats his followers, a constant demand for more free labor and more money from them. As his business and site operates based on primarily volunteer labor he continually shows off his new possessions, his new mansion, his new cars. He also chooses students to work at his house cleaning and cooking as part of the “spiritual boot camp” which they have to pay for the privilege of attending.
Many members who are paid as ascension coaches struggle financially. When I was a member coaches had to pay a lot of money to take ascension coaching classes, pay a fee of $100 a month to remain in good standing, pay to be coached themselves by other ascension coaches and hand over I am not sure what portion of their owning to Twin Flames Universe. Part of the requirement to be an ascension coach was also to go onto Amazon and write 5 star reviews of Jeff and Shaleia’s book. When coaches fail to be able to support themselves off their coaching sessions they are told that they have “money blocks” which they need to clear by doing more spiritual work.
Another former member has told me that ascension coaches meet in private chats where Jeff berates them for not selling more of their services. Members must follow all of Jeff’s demands and commands in order to avoid being verbally abused. The system has changed a bit since I was a member and at this time I am not sure how ascension coaches are paid.
Friendships are strong between members of Twin Flames Universe but not so strong to stop one friend from betraying another if they feel that their friend is disrespecting their “gurus”.
Twin Flame Gender Bending
Although Twin Flames Universe guarantees success with your twin flame there are very few couples within the group that are actually WITH their twin flame. Most are with a completely different person than they thought was their twin flame originally. Some have been coached to change genders and form relationships with their supposed twin flame of the same sex (although both parties previously identified as straight).
I want to say something more about this phenomenon that happens within the group. The members who have changed genders would say that they did so without coercion and with their free will. But usually this happens when another member “channels” that the person is actually a divine masculine rather than divine feminine and the person is advised to experiment to see how it feels to be a divine masculine. To disagree would be to disagree with God.
These divine masculines are coached to dress in masculine ways regardless of their own personal style and the way they dressed before the transition. Eventually they are coached to change their names, cut their hair and transition by taking testosterone.
Members who are “confirmed” to be divine masculine but who don’t take these steps are told that they are “not living in divine truth”. So they do these things with free will KNOWING that if they don’t they will face repercussions within the group. If they do not conform they are usually kicked out of the group.
Other Problems
Shortly before I left the group disagreements broke out around marriage. Jeff and Shaleia announced that members should be asking permission to be married and that they should only seek to be married in the Church of Union. One member who had their wedding planned to take place within the next couple of weeks was asked to cancel the wedding. She refused and was banned from the group. Another member who had recently been married wrote a simpering plea for forgiveness.
Another problem that came up was that Jeff wrote a long post about “unconditional obedience” that higher up members would have to sign. The post detailed the relationship between guru and disciple and that disciples would have to give their guru unconditional obedience.
People who leave the group generally do not speak out about their experiences because they are forced to sign nondisclosure agreements on a regular basis. When I was part of the private group I received these in my email to sign every few weeks. In disagreements with former members it seems that Jeff is very quick to prosecute. Any time someone speaks out against him he sues for defamation, claiming that his “haters” are persecuting him.
Another cult like practice that this group uses is shunning. When someone leaves the group or is kicked out other members are advised to block the person on all forms of social media. They do not call the practice shunning. The reason for the practice is that “the person has made a different choice than us and would not be compassionate for either party to maintain a relationship with them.”
Are Twin Flames Real?
The way I see it now, the idea of twin flames is a dangerous one. It leads people to obsess over a potential romantic partner in ways that are not healthy. Vanity Fair did an article about Twin Flames Universe in which one member was charged with violating a restraining order on her supposed twin flame. This, in my experience, is NOT a normal thing that happens within the group.
What DOES happen is that people watch the actions of their twin flame in order to judge what things they need to “heal” next using the mirror exercise. Twin Flames Universe teaches members to focus on themselves and their own healing but in some ways the self-focus is GUIDED by focus on the actions of that other person and how those actions make them feel.
