Teal Swan on the Cult Allegations, The Deep End, and Why She's Misunderstood

0:00Before we get started, I wanted to let you in on a little secret. What you're about to hear is only part of the conversation. Every week, we keep talking over on Patreon, where you'll find exclusive bonus episodes behind the scenes footage after I show conversations with my guests and personal stories from my life that I don't share anywhere else. If you love misunderstood, Patreon is where you'll get the full experience. Just head on over to patreon.com slash misunderstood with Rachel Yucatel or click the link in the show notes. I'd love to have you join us. She has millions of followers who say she saved their lives and critics who say she's running a cult. This is Teal Swann, one of the most polarizing spiritual figures on the internet. A self-described spiritual leader with no formal training in psychology, she built an empire on YouTube, talking about trauma, depression, and healing, and thousands of vulnerable people followed her to retreats in Costa Rica. But in 2018, an investigation accused her

1:03of targeting people with suicidal thoughts and encouraging them to act on them. She says the controversy comes from a philosophy most people aren't ready to hear. I don't believe that it's helpful for people to deny a suppressant to own the fact that they are feeling suicidal, which is what the majority of society expects suicidal people to do. My issue is I don't support the concept of suicide. Then came 2022 and the docu series The Deep End. Cameras followed Teal and her inner circle for three years and when it aired, the whispers got louder. Is this a cult? If somebody is going to sort of throw that accusatory statement at me, I'd be like, okay, and what does it mean to be a cult leader? If you were to break it down to create control tactics to keep people in and huge consequences for them leaving, no. She says it all started with her own pain. 13 years of what she calls horrific ritual abuse and trafficking as a child. It was really capitalizing on an opportunity to set up a horribly abusive dynamic for the period of 13 years and it was horrific ritual abuse

2:05and trafficking. But even she admits she's structured her company the same way one of history's most notorious cult leaders structured his and the parallel scares her. Set myself up almost exactly this way. I've actually set myself up like he did. There are things that have happened in my company that I never even heard about that I could definitely be liable for. So it's like it's scary. It's hell. So who is Teal Swan, a spiritual healer the world refuses to understand or a cult leader hiding behind enlightenment? We asked her ourselves this week on Misunderstood, our conversation with Teal Swan. Teal, it's so exciting to have you here on Misunderstood. How are you? I am doing fabulous.

3:17How are you? I'm good. Thank you. So I wanted to start by asking you how did you come up with the name Teal Swan? I mean, I know you were born Mary Teal Bosworth, which is something you don't really look like. So it's you have this ethereal name. How did you get it? So it's ironic that my name is was legally when I was born Mary Teal because I didn't even know that I had a first name until I was like 12. My parents owe me a deal. So Teal was always my name. And it's like this weird thing in the 80s that some people did where they just called you by your middle name, right? So that was my name originally. And then I married a punjabi Sikh man whose last name was Swan. So it's real funny because people think that my name is like this made up mystical name, but it's actually a totally universally orchestrated name. You could say, right. Oh, wow. Well, it's beautiful. So you know, in thinking of how to sort of talk to you, I wanted to, instead of me discussing what you do, I really wanted to get an idea from you on how to describe what it is that

4:21you do because there are so many names for what you do, you know, heal or artist, spiritual leader, catalyst, influencer, you can go on and on and on. So it's better to just ask you, how would you describe you and what you do? I would describe myself as a new thought leader. I am here to change humanity's mind specifically in the direction of what alleviates suffering. I see myself as an expert in human suffering, first and foremost. So I want to answer to the things that people are struggling with. And you can do that in a myriad of different ways, whether it's, you know, creating one of these frequency paintings behind here or whether it's releasing a video about some kind of a relationship pattern or whether it's hosting an event. I mean, there's so many different ways to approach the struggles that people are facing. So that's why it's like I'm a jack of all trades. Did you grow up spiritual? That's a kind of hard question to answer because I always had spiritual abilities. And I could never really plug into this physical time-space reality the way that other people can. So I was

5:24born this profoundly spiritual being, but into a family which was not spiritual. My family was comprised of real scientific people, like highly educated scientific environmental people. And if they had a religion, it was the outdoors. Right. And you have always talked about how you were sort of born into this world different than other people. Can you explain in better terms what that would mean? Yeah. So the best way to conceptualize of this is to think about it. Like if you come down to this physical life, most people are able to actually plug into this time-space reality that we call life on Earth. In the same way that if you were to become an avatar in a video game and then forget the you that's sitting on the chair, you are inside that video game. And that is your reality. And the way to understand my dynamic is that I want you to imagine that when a person plugs into this video game, let's say it was called life, their ability to fully plug in is not there. So it's almost like the filters are blown. And so you're seeing an overlay of different

6:26dimensional realities all the time. Nor are you able to forget that you that's sitting on the chair. So a person usually goes throughout their life becoming aware of their non-physical aspect, the part that they might call their soul. And that was something that I never forgotten had to find again. It's like I came in here, but the full knowledge of exactly what I was doing here, what it was, what I was here for, I mean, all these kinds of things. So but it's like a curse, I'll be honest, you know, I mean everybody's sort of sitting here being like, wow, that would be amazing, you know, to be able to see past lives and to be able to talk to entities that are not physically incarnated and to see energy fields and to be able to perceive things before they've even happened. And the real truth of it is that when you're receiving that much information, life is pretty terrible. I had a really hard time and pretty loud I would assume.

7:27Yeah, that's overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. What what was that like though as a kid because you must have been very misunderstood by your family or anyone you tried to verbalize this to to see if they were having the same experience. I mean, what was I like? All children start out assuming that everybody sees and perceives what they see and perceive. And I'm just no exception. So I was kind of, you know, thrusting this world where I thought everybody was experiencing this and just somehow everybody's having an easier time dealing with it than me to, you know, realizing very quickly once I was put into school that this is not the reality that other people are living in. And I got myself in a lot of trouble because of it because it wasn't like I was born in the Eastern world where they have a real good concept of people who are like me, you know, in that type of a culture, I would have been immediately put in with a sage and I would have been, you didn't trained up into a position in some kind of a spiritual capacity, but we don't have those positions

8:27in the Western world. And so it's essentially labeled as mental illness. Right. Or if you're right, I was going to, I was going to ask are you were your parents or people at school calling you names trying to label you in a different way? Oh yeah, but it's like you either get that the scientific people kind of label you as mentally ill and those really religious people they label you, which they did with me as, you know, demonic. So it was a real, yeah, I was not received well. I mean, I scared the crap out of people. Right. And were you scared? Not of the stuff that I was seeing most of the time. It took me a while, you know, to deal with the projections that some of some people when they die, right, they're when they're trying to connect with you, they will show you images of how they die. And so when you're quite young, you have to do with some pretty horrific images. That I remember being a real struggle. Also, it just being real frustrating, then like I can see and talk to spirit guides, but it seems like it increases a bystander trauma because even when you're going through really painful stuff,

9:30a lot of times they're sort of sitting there watching what's happening. Like it's a show. And so you're kind of like, well, come on, throw me a bone and they're not doing it. And so it was more painful than it was a comfort to me when I was younger. Was there one moment that you remember from your childhood where you were like, I'm different. I now understand that I can predict something. Either you predicted somebody dying or I don't know what it was for you, but was there a moment where you were like, okay, I have a power, so to speak. I think a lot of that was around medical intuitive stuff. So when I was younger, I was wanted to go and put my hands on people and do energy healing without ever being taught energy healing. And I think, you know, it was well received, more well received when I was able to tell people that they had certain physical ailments and then they would go to the doctor. It would be confirmed. And so I had that sort of corroboration. And then the reflection I was getting off that was not as bad as say when, you know, when I would talk about

10:35somebody's dead relative wanting to say things to them. Yeah, right. A little bit more about your childhood, you had a very rough start. You've openly talked about suffering abuse at the hands of someone else. And I only bring that up because, you know, because I know you've talked about it before, but I think it's important because you've used that experience to turn it into expertise. And I think a lot of people don't follow that concept a lot. Do you know what I mean? Like, they don't get that about you. And in researching a ton of stuff about you, I really felt that it seems correct me if I'm wrong, that it's been important for you to talk about what you've been through. Number one, because it makes you relatable to people that have gone through it. But because that's where you derive your mastery from. And so I do want you just to touch on it a little bit about what you went through. And then the real question is, how did you personally find the wherewithal to get yourself out of it to say I'm worthy of being someone else or I can

11:36get out of this? That's like a lot. Yeah. Yeah. To super, I don't know like how deep to go because it's real intense. But because of my abilities, I essentially caught the radar of somebody who is in the town that was close to where I grew up, who had a real interest in this kind of non-physical stuff. And he approached my parents as a mentor of sorts. And my parents, of course, it didn't know what to do with me. I was this miserably unhappy, hypersensitive kid. They didn't understand what was going on with me. They've got these doctors saying I'm mentally ill, you know, these other people that are like, whoa, she's got an incredible gift. They just didn't know what to do, right? So when this mentor essentially came in and said, look, she loves horses. She doesn't know what to do with her gifts. Trust her with me, basically, I know what to do. And they said, yes. And the reality was quite different than what he had put forth. It was really capitalizing on an opportunity to set up a horribly abusive dynamic for the period

12:39of 13 years. And it was like horrific, ritual abuse and trafficking. So yeah, my childhood was a living, like a literal living nightmare, like the kind of thing that belongs on CNN, like it's totally not normal in any way. Yeah, so I escaped when I was 19. And when you say escape, did you physically escape or was it something where finally you were able to be old enough that you can make your own decisions and get out? It's kind of both, because men like had me in my childhood, they create so much mental programming that ultimately, they want to be able to have control over you without having to go chase you because you don't really own somebody's psychology if you have to go chase him in a car. That being said, there's definitely a risk of some retrieval like that happening. So it was a little bit of both. I ended up after a really horrific experience with him. And when I was 19 jumping into a car and

13:42driving, just running, like physically running away, like driving to a place where I had met a man only twice before this, but for some reason I trusted him and I broke into his house, actually. That was the beginning of me staying away. So to begin with, it was like there's such huge consequences for running away. I don't know what I just did. Why did I just do that? I should just go back, you know, and then it's like one day's turns to two days, turns to a week, turns to now I'm in real serious trouble. If I go back, turns into a month, turns into like, I think I actually have to go into fighting at this point. Yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by Wavy Talk. I think hair can say a lot about how you're feeling. Some days you want to polish blow out. Other days you want to try something completely different. Wavy Talk makes hair tools that give you room to play with your look from dryers and curlers to straight nerves and styling tools. What I like about their approach is that you don't have to be a professional to make time for your hair. Their tools are designed to make everyday styling feel

14:43easier and more accessible. Whatever look you're going for, to explore Wavy Talk, scan the QR code on your screen or click the link in the description. And at any point, I mean, you know, you hear these stories nowadays of people that are kidnapped by their captors and kind of fall for them or end up trusting them. Was there any bit of that with what you went through when you were younger? This man was my life. He convinced me that he was my real father, in fact. And that basically there's an excuse for why I look different than my parents might look because I look more like he does. And I'm just elaborate stories. But yeah, there's no way to not bond with somebody who's got that much leverage over your life. It's impossible. It's human psychology. That's unanimously what will happen when a person perceives them, so it's to be in a powerless or captive environment, you will bond to the perpetrator. And I presented that. In fact, getting to the place in therapy in my early 20s to realize that maybe

15:46the things that he was doing was not out of love was one of the hardest things to get myself to. I remember just fighting like with this ritual trauma therapist, just fighting, you know, for the things that he's doing or loving because that's of course the excuse they love to give, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think people always wonder, you know, like somebody of recent would be like an Elizabeth smart, wasn't that recent, but you know, people couldn't understand why she was in broad daylight walking around with her captor and when she was finally caught, she wasn't like, it's me, Elizabeth smart, get me out of here, it took her a while. And so therefore, then I think people think that, you know, someone is lying about their experience. And I think in the absence of truth or understanding or just fear being present, people really make up all sorts of scenarios that are just not true. Yeah. Well, I mean, most people don't have a thorough understanding of psychology. Is it applies to situations like that that they don't really want to accept happen in the first place, you know? Right. Right. Okay. So, so how, what point were you at,

16:49where you were like, okay, I can take this experience and help other people. You started out with you too, right? Is that your first place that you went to sort of give some advice? Actually, I first started with one-on-one sessions. That was kind of make me opening the door being like, you know, maybe I'm going to use some of this stuff again instead of turn against it, because you know, it reminds you, all the abuse in my childhood essentially happened because of my ability. So I wanted nothing to do it this at all. So when I turned back in the direction of, okay, maybe I can't run away from myself the rest of my life, I was, it was literally as simple as, I'm going to see people in my house like occasionally on certain days and just kind of tell them what it is that I see. So I think a lot of people have questions though about you doing things like this, like a session or being the one to speak on such topics when you haven't had actual, you know, doctorates on the subject or, you know, you haven't gone to school for it, which again, I can understand that train of thought, but as I listened more to you and watched more of your

17:52stuff, I realized, you know, there are people that go to school for years, decades, and they have no life experience about what they're teaching. So, you know, who's to say who is the better teacher, someone who's been through it lived in, knows exactly what you're feeling going through and knows exactly how they got themselves out, or someone who's been taught in a school and just read books and studied and got, you know, did well on a test. So, you know, so you started what in your early 20s, seeing people and giving them advice or how did that work? We six about, yeah. And it made no difference that people, people weren't asking for credentials back then, I guess. No, I mean, the point at which somebody goes to the alternative route, usually everything has failed them already. Every doctor, every therapist, it's like they're literally in a place where they're like, you know what, at this point, I don't care. What kind of needles I have to have put in my body, what type of alternative realities I have to consider. They're pretty desperate, right?

18:56No, I mean, I did not really run into that. It was just more people who'd sit down and be like, what do you see? And I tell them, and it was shocking to me the amount of information that I had that I take for granted, which is the case when anybody has a serious gift, you know? Is this when somebody's like incredible at organizing, they don't even usually consider it a gift, then they go to somebody's, you know, a house who has a terrible time organizing and that person's like, whoa, it's super power. So I was no exception. And I was telling, like you just sideways comments about the way the universe works, stuff that I took for granted to such an extreme degree and they would be like, whoa, and life changing. The next week it would be a shift like you couldn't get in 20 years of therapy with somebody and I'm like, okay, I am now not okay with the fact that this is where we are. And it's no longer okay for me that the only people who will know this information or people who have X amount of, you know, 100 bucks to go see somebody in person, that's not the reality for a lot of people. So I started to have this real desire to reach a large scale of people

20:00and more than that to be reaching people who really could not afford sessions. Right? That's what do you? Do you remember what your original theme on YouTube was that you started with? I mean, I know that's one thing to be a clairvoyant and talk about things that you can predict or see, but where you starting with, you know, videos on self-help as opposed to, you know, ancestral healing. You know, what was the first kind of message you were sending back then? Honestly, it was tell me what you want to know. I mean, that's why the series, you know, that I started was, was asked teal. It was just literally like you guys, I don't really have, I'm not in touch with what it is that you don't know that you want to know. So just ask me whatever, you know, and so people would submit questions, things like, I wouldn't know what a ghost is. And so I'd be like, all right, what's a ghost, you know? Or they'd be like, how do I manifest better? Okay, manifestation, you know, I was just like, and honestly, my whole career has felt like this. It hasn't felt like, I mean,

21:03obviously, I have an agenda relative to human suffering, but it hasn't really felt like I have this one very serious message and maybe that message of all is, but I have this agenda. It doesn't feel like this, it feels like this game I'm playing with humanity, like a back and forth game where, you know, they hit me a ball and I'm like, oh, and here's the return. And they're like, but, but then they hit a ball back and then I'm like, oh, here's a return. And it still feels that way. And I honestly, I feel like this is something that differentiates me from everyone else in this business because I feel like I'm in such a dynamic relationship with the world, basically, in what I'm doing and what I'm teaching and what I choose to prioritize and what's important on a given day. Yeah. Did you ever think that so many people would be less than I teo? Oh, I thought ton more would actually, it's I'm actually frustrated at my level of growth, which most people would consider to be absolutely astronomical. And I I'm just like, yeah, I thought the receptivity and

22:03desire would be much higher when you compare it to the amount that people are suffering. So let's say that I'm looking at a world full of, you know, millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of people who are suffering in relationships so bad, you know, and I, I thought, you know, to begin with, I'll I'm going to put out information that's going to help them and they're just going to jump on it. And that is not the case. It seems to be that people have to get to a place where they're so willing to lose everything for the sake of truth. And then they're willing to watch the information. So, right. Well, do you think it's because people haven't come across you? Yeah. Do you think it's just because people keep saying in their patterns? You know, why? Because people have, so I resonate at this frequency of what is real and of personal truth, right? And that's a really scary thing. Most people don't live there. And so what you'll notice is that people when they come across my videos, they have a kind of flirtation process that happens, where they see my image and they're like, whoa. But then they're like, and then like, again, I pop up and

23:09and they're like, one day, who knows what it is in their life. They're like, all right, I'm going to go down the rabbit hole. That's interesting. Yeah. Okay, I can see that. But when they do go down the rabbit hole, people have gone one way or the other. Do you find that to the extreme? I think you're someone, and I resonate with this, that people either really love. Oh, yeah. No, I really hate. Yeah. There's nobody in the middle. There is nobody in the middle. The problem is, and that's a really difficult place to live. It's, you feel very misunderstood. Oh, yeah, you should, yeah. Yeah. So I want to go back to one thing too when you were talking about the YouTube and getting started on these people. What was your first time on stage? Because a huge part of what you do is doing these series on stage with people coming up and talking to you, so many people in the audience, the very first time you did that, where you nervous about what might take place. I mean, you're dealing with people. People are completely unstable or radical. You have no idea what you're going to get. Tell me about that first time. You know, this might be a really obnoxious answer about

24:14them. I was on stage before I ever started a YouTube career. That was the first place that I went to, and after writing a book, actually, and I was on stage in front of probably like 25 people in a little violin studio that I rented. I'm telling you, it was the weirdest, it was one of the weirdest experiences because I had never really spoken on stage before. In fact, I came, you know, at a certain time period, I came from modeling. So I like had done run-ways and stuff like that, but I had turned down opportunities to act before because I was like, I can't talk. I'm sorry, I'm just going to shut down. That is not what happened. It was weird. It was like I stepped up on stage and I had been there for thousands of years. I had no issue at all. The oration was like, I felt like I had an intimate relationship with everybody in the room and I stepped off stage afterwards and didn't go well, by the way. There was a woman who stood up in the middle of it because I was talking about how, you know, when things essentially occur in your life,

25:16the only way to gain empowerment really is to sort of see how am I lending to this pattern. Now, when people first get introduced to that idea, they feel like there's a huge element of self-blame regarding the things that are hurting them the most. This woman stood up in the audience and was like, I rate. I mean, swearing at me like, how dare you tell me that I have anything to do with why my husband left me. I wasn't even talking about that, but I had a major chord with her. So it's not like it was a smooth event in that respect, but I stepped off stage and it was like this is bizarre. This feels like I was a bird who spent my life in water and I just flew for the first time and I did not even have to try. Wow. Yeah. How do you come up with your content? You come out with new content all the time and I'm curious if it's from, if it's almost like a teacher that has a syllabus of things that you're getting through or if it's something that strikes a chord with you

26:18because it's something you're dealing with in your own personal life and then you want to talk about it. I'm answering to whatever I come across and obviously this has become very easy now that I travel around the world because when you go and you interact with new people, you become aware of new patterns. So let's say that tomorrow I'm about to get an airplane and go back to my retreat center in Costa Rica where I'm hosting retreat. Let's say that at that retreat, I'm working with somebody who is not really understanding the difference between, say, compromise and workability. That's the moment that I go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I can all of a sudden understand there's a confusion about compromise and that's getting people into trouble. So I'll try to figure out from those people who I'm around what the confusion is and then my episodes will answer to that. It'll be around the subject of compromise, specifically trying to answer to every question or confusion that a person might have. Right. Right. Do you think that what you teach is controversial or do you think that that's just what people say when they don't understand things or when they're scared by it?

27:21I think my character is much more controversial than my content, but I do think there's a couple aspects of my content that are controversial, which really frustrate me. They didn't seem that way. Well, I wanted to get into that a little bit because obviously, as we all know, you know you've been the subject of documentaries, podcasts, things you have signed on to participate in and things you haven't. I'm curious your feelings on them. I'm curious if you watch them. I'm curious if they affect you. Oh, I get destroyed by this. I think that people assume that I'm just this super confident person who's almost narcissistic and completely convinced that I'm right all the time. And it's not actually the case because like I said, I'm in this very dynamic back-and-forth relationship. And so I'm likely to be at three o'clock in the morning sort of tossing and turning over why somebody feels a certain way with me or why they're thinking that or am I really doing something bad or you know, no, it gets to me in the serious way. It's been one of the smartest

28:22parts of my career for sure. Right. And in the absence, I mean, I know for a long time you didn't want to talk about it. And I think I've heard you say a couple times to just ignore it, but in the absence of speaking about something or defending yourself almost, people just create a narrative that fits in what they believe or fits in with jumping on the bandwagon of the haters because that gives them a community to be a part of if they're no longer a part of your community. And I just, you know, I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of just address that once and for all. Yeah, I don't agree with what I said before. I mean, you make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes in their career, right? And when I first came into this, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. It's not like I had a bunch of people who were like, oh, you know, we're a family of famous people. And we know exactly how to deal with this type of backlash from the press or from people. Yeah. So you're just kind of like blundering around in the dark. And there are so many people at the time that they're giving me advice when I wanted to defend myself of like, don't do this. Like turn the other cheek, don't lend it energy. That's a real big thing the spirits feel too. Whatever you focus on,

29:25you get energy to, right? So, you know, I, in the beginning of my career, I just took this real sort of, okay, I'm going to have to turn the other cheek and just keep focusing on what it is that I want to say and want to do. And I think it was the biggest mistake in my career that I ever made. Because if I would have nipped some of this stuff in the bud very early, it wouldn't have multiplied. And I did not, I didn't understand that, you know, the power of the internet, you don't need, you don't need, you know, powerful press sources to essentially create a story anymore. You just need 20 people saying the same thing. Well, that's pretty easy. Right. So, you know, yeah, I definitely wish I had come out earlier and been like, okay, this is what's being said. This is why it's not true. This is what really happened. Yeah, I would have, that would have been a lot smarter. Right. Yeah. At some of the most popular shows right now on streaming networks, on movies, whatever, have to do with documentaries surrounding spiritual cults, I'm going to say, like the vow, the next-sem situation, escaping twin flames, the Sarah Lawrence documentary, I think it was called stolen youth

30:28or something. Are you familiar with these three talking? Yeah, I've heard about them because right now the industry is trying to take down like all kinds of spiritual leaders. There's like a huge aggressive push towards it right now. Right. So with those three, for example, which, you know, one of them's in prison, I don't know, but the other guys, because I didn't watch those, but they were a little too, you know, not my style, but the next-sem thing was a huge deal all over. I mean, do you agree that those were cults or do you think they were just represented wrong by a bunch of haters and brought out? I have never, I actually have not seen enough of them. Okay. So it's like I would not be able to talk to them unless I got involved. I didn't watch them. Like I'm aware of them because I get these messages from people who are like, hey, they're doing it to all these people right now. I'm like, this one and this one and this one. So you hear these words kind of like floating by your psyche. The one that I did watch was wild country. And it is immensely, it was really scary. What was that topic about? It was about O-Show, what happened with O-Show. And, you know, I mean, obviously I'm watching that from the perspective of being in my position.

31:32O-Show is one of those people who I think he was one of the most brilliant man that ever walked this earth. That's the first thing. The second thing is just like, you know, when they're interviewing the people behind closed doors about there's no way that O-Show couldn't have known about any of this stuff. I know I'm kind of like biting my nails going, oh my god, like I've set myself up almost exactly this way. I've actually set myself up like he did where where I put so many other people in charge of like the day-to-day aspects of things and given them so much control because you literally can't just keep content creating and being in this position and micro-manage everything you can't do it. So it's like you turn the keys over and then it's like how what are people going to do with your level of trust? There are things that have happened in my company that I never even heard about that I could definitely be liable for. So it's like it's scary, it's hell to watch those things and be like actually. I could see how he wouldn't know any of that. Right. So, but there's two sides to it. There's the power of let's say the herd mentality and I've heard you talk about Napoleon and how he wasn't really a short man, right? And then to this day it's a complex to have an

32:37Napoleon complex because people created that narrative for him, right? And created this stigma of that. But then there's people like, you know, Nexium and the Vow where I think it's proven that this guy who wasn't powered and it's a spiritual, you know, club of sorts, you know, people that went there for help and he was having sex with them and branding them. I mean, there are people that do take advantage and then you hear of all these other spiritual, you know, regular religious leaders that, you know, tout, you know, marriage and all this stuff and then they're having sex with their pool boy. So, you know, you just, you know, I guess my question is like how do you know who to trust? Right. How do you know what you're talking to? I wish I could answer that question. I mean, I think that we can all safely agree after what happened to me last year that even I can't perfectly judge who to trust and who not to trust. That, I mean, you're basically asking a question that's right in the line of what I'm trying to answer myself. I don't know

33:37that I have a perfect answer for that. Right. And for people that say that you are a cult leader or a guru, what is your response to that? I mean, I always want to understand people's definition of those things because when people throw out terms like that, it's like it means something completely different to this person to this person. So, it's like if somebody's, if somebody is going to sort of throw that accusatory statement at me, I'd be like, okay, and what does it mean to be a cult leader? What does that mean? Because like if you if you broke it into leader of an organization, okay, yes. But if you were to break it down to, you know, create control tactics to keep people in and the huge consequences for them leaving, no. Yeah. Right. I mean, that is very true. I mean, for some people it has such a negative connotation like a David Kresh who ended up killing everybody that believed in him, right? But then there are some people that are, you know, gym goers and they love their yoga instructor. That's their guru, right? And it just helps them find some center and peace in their life. So, you're right. I think the question is about who it's coming from.

34:39Okay, so you have some detractors that have an issue with the way that you show up for them. You mentioned that a little bit earlier when I asked you a question. And I think it's actually very interesting. You're a spiritual leader. You would think you're sitting around in like a cardigan drinking tea. Oh, I say that as you're taking a sip of tea. But like, by a fire, very calm. Yeah. But you, you know, you are hot and you look like you could have been a dominator a couple years ago with your gorgeous hair. Like, what, I mean, you just don't show up for people the way I think that a lot of people expect their spiritual leader to. And I wonder if you think that makes them, I don't have jealous as a word, threatened. What do you think that is? I think it, they, they disqualify me because of it. I mean, people already come into things expecting how a person looks as it's not very much different with the doctor though. I mean, if somebody's going to walk in the room and their doctor looked like a 13-year-old, they would have the same like, no, no, no, no, because they've already got a preconceived notion of who they want to learn from and what that person needs to be like. And it's like a whole list of sheds before

35:43they're going to consider you as valid, right? And yeah, I don't have any of those criteria, nor did I plan to before coming down here. Right. Do you think your sex appeal or being a woman makes it more difficult for you? Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. Like that's kind of the joke that I love telling because people are like, God, she has so much falling probably because she's pretty. And I'm like, you guys don't even understand how much all of those things have been a hindrance. I mean, if I wear anything less than this, it's like, oh, she's using her sexuality to attract following. Like, it feels like you literally can't win. And man, I mean, it helps them. Who gives a shed? How you get your followers? I mean, you know, for me, because of course, like I'm wanting to, I'm wanting people to understand, you know, the value of the content that they teach. And it's very difficult for people to go there when they don't want somebody who has good content to look

36:45like me. Right. Right. So you're saying it takes your credibility away sometimes. Like a whole lot. Okay. So I am going to ask you about this. A lot has been made on your view on suicide and glorifying that, so to speak. I want to give you a chance to clear up any misconceptions about that statement. I'm running a very difficult, you know, a business here and a very, I mean, a difficult position because as a spiritual teacher, one of the things that's most important for me to talk about is death, right? Death is something which we're all going to face in our lifetime, not only because of us dying, but losing things that we love. There's a temporary aspect to the nature of life. I also have a lot of information on death, things like that. It's not going to be helpful for human beings to have such an adversarial relationship with death. For death to me, the ultimate horror, and yet it's something that all of us will deal with is not healthy. People seem to come along with with me on that so far as to understand that if I'm dealing with somebody who say lost a loved one,

37:49and I talk to them about what it is like to die and the greater purpose of death in the context of life, they are like, oh yeah, that's fine. But what people have done is decided that there's all kinds of right ways to die and right times to die and all kinds of wrong ways to die and wrong times to die. That's why we have a different reaction to somebody who's 15 dying, then we do to somebody who is 90. We almost have a blas, they added two to our 9-year-old, we're like, she was just old. Okay, so what I need people to understand first is this incredibly dichotomous relationship we have with death to start with, right? That makes it very, very difficult because I feel like in my career, I'm walking on this tightrope, trying to navigate other people's ideas of rightness or wrongness around death. So this whole thing, like a lot of this whole thing around me and my stance on suicide started back very early in my career when I was sharing

38:54truths about the universe that I don't think people were ready to hear or that they made mean certain things. I'll give you an example. Early on in my career, I made a very bold statement on a stage when I said that every death is a suicide. Why? Because you're non-physical and physical aspect to have to both decide upon death. And if there's a disagreement here, you're going to watch somebody slip into a coma or something like that. I guess it's a subversive idea for people to conceptualize up. And then other things that I've said, oh yeah, when it comes to suicide, I don't believe that it's helpful for people to deny, suppress, and disown the fact that they are feeling suicidal, which is what the majority of society expects suicidal people to do. What they expect them to do is to be like, put it out of your mind. It's just the weak thing to do, you know, just call a friend. And I'm like, actually, these types of sentiments that you're feeling and, you know, the ideation that you're going into is something that has to be consciously

39:56engaged with. You have to actually be dealing with the part of you that really feels like it doesn't want to commit here to understand enough about what pain is happening that a person feels like they can't change, that that is where they are going with their mentality. My issue is, I don't support the concept of suicide. I mean, I may have some views of my own on physician-assisted suicide and things like that because I hate watching people suffering, but I'm never going to be the kind of person who's like celebrating because somebody, you know, shot themselves. It's not what I'm doing. I'm doing the opposite. I'm trying to get people out of the pain they're in that makes them feel like they're so powerless that they want to go do that. But I'm going to certain, this is one of my controversial stances that in order to do that, you have to deeply engage with where somebody is, you know, and what they feel like they're going to be getting out of it and the nuances of why they're considering to commit suicide in the way that they are because there's tons of information even in that. You know, if you've got somebody who wants to do it in a really violent way that's super public, this is a person who doesn't feel seen.

40:59Right. Okay. Well, then that gives you all kinds of information if you're in my position for what type of an unmet need we need to meet quickly. So, you know, it's a first thing to do. It's interesting because I've watched a lot and I've heard a lot and I mentioned to people that I was having you on and the bulk of the questions surrounded this topic. So, I wanted to think for myself like how I would feel. So, it's funny that you say about this medically assisted death. I actually did an episode on it recently because I found it fascinating. My aunt, who lives in California, used to be, she was the head of a obstetrics at UCSF. She would deliver babies and she retired. She was like, I can't go to like, fold in laundry. I mean, I brought, you know, life into this world all, you know, forever. What am I going to do next? And her husband got sick and they were given the medicine for medically assisted suicide. And he lived, he chose not to take it. He's still alive to this day. God bless them. But she now can be hired to sit with you while you take the medicine.

42:03And my did a whole episode trying to understand the position people are at when they choose to die in those circumstances. They've been given six months to live. They've said goodbyes. They know it's not going to get better. It's over. Whereas we're talking about people who are at the point where they are so alone, so miserable, feel the light. There's no way out. Feel shame. Whatever it is for them, right? That they need to feel, feel the need to do this. And something I've heard you talk about which really made sense to me is that, okay, let's instead of giving them, oh, you want to live, you have a child, somebody needs you, the life is so beautiful. It's going to get better. All that bullshit, because in reality, they don't want to hear that. That's not going to help them. It's more like, well, what would happen if you did kill yourself? Who would that affect? How would that change things? Because you want to change that person's view on wanting to make the choice to live, as opposed to being on this fence about whether or not they want to live. And it really made me emotional thinking about that because I don't know that I've ever been in a place that I've been

43:07fully suicidal, but I've had a lot of terrible things that I've gone through in my life that I've questioned why, why did this happen to me? What do I do to get out of it? And I've had to choose to stay put and to take a step forward, you know, and being alone is the worst because no one really understands that pain and you've got to get it through, get through it yourself to make that decision. But anyways, I can understand the controversy around what you said. I can understand why people don't get it, but I do understand how you are trying to bring people to make that decision on their own because they can stop seeing their therapist, they can stop seeing you, they can stop watching their YouTube messages, but they have to live with themselves and put their head on the pillow every night and be making the choice to stay. And I think that you are trying correct me if I'm wrong to guide them to the place where they don't need you, that they are making that decision on their own. Oh yeah, but I mean more than that, I'm trying to guide a person to a position where their needs are met to the degree that they're not in the kind of pain that would make them want

44:11to do something like that. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not like on a person who sits here expecting somebody to make a choice to be part of life, even though it sucks for them so bad they can hardly breathe. My mentality is like why are we just like why are we accepting this? I understand you feel perilous, but like are we perilous? I don't want you to be seeing your suffering alone, you know. Right, but I think it's such an important message that you have shared with people, you've been through it, you know what that feels like. You've been in the position where you want to take your life. You know, I've been in terrible positions too. I think it's part of life to be down in the dumps, to be in a real, you know, I have a tattoo down my back and it says, I have to remember the wording because I can't see it, right? It says, without pain, happiness has no meaning. And I truly believe it's important that you feel, you know, a certain pendulum of pain to be able to feel that pendulum of happiness and you have to like marinate it kind of. You have to feel it or you're not,

45:12or you're you're just going to find excuses and you're always going to go back to that place. So, you know, I've learned the hard way that that's how it has to happen, but because you all, you never want to feel uncomfortable, but that's part of getting through life. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I don't think that people have to get to the depths of suffering that they get to in order to find the joy that they're trying to find human beings or masters of what I call resistance. So this natural game where you would experience the contrast of life, meaning the unwanted disment to give rise to the wanted, but we could play this game kind of like this. Now, real suffering is about the gap between where you are and what you're wanting. Now, if I go, if I go and I desire this, but I go into resistance about going there, then I increase my gap. And then I increase my gap. And then I increase its point where I'm suffering so bad because of this disparity between where I am and what it is that I'm wanting. And that is not a necessary thing. Do I think that they unwanted gives rise to desire and therefore gives rise

46:14to human progression? Yes. Do I feel like you're never going to taste a bit of sandwich than when you're hungry? Yes. But I mean, I'm not talking about that sort of game of depth of feeling positive and negative. I'm talking about suffering. Suffering is not necessary. Yeah. You were talking about death earlier. I just want to go back to that for one second. There are some people that cannot get past the death of a loved one. It like makes them so stuck. Do you have an advice for someone who is stuck within that? Well, it would definitely depend on what it is that is making a person stuck because it's not always the same recipe. But I will tell you that one of the most down at patterns that I noticed when people are struggling with, you know, essentially moving. I don't want to even say moving beyond, because even that creates pain for them. Getting to a place where they can have a happy life with the fact that they have lost something or somebody that they love so much is this incredible loyalty. When we lose something that we love, we tend to demonstrate

47:16our level of loyalty and connection to that thing by virtue of the pain that we're going about it. So we use pain in fact, is our way of staying connected to them. So a real good way to move beyond that is to find a different way of staying connected to whatever it is that you lost. Another thing your haters have questioned is if you should be giving relationship advice because you've had so many marriages. What is your thought on that? You know what's funny is I'm actually going to, I decided to do an entire video on this because I feel like I'm going to do a better job when I break it down to several points. But I mean, I can understand why people have that reaction. Why? Because what people want more than anything is longevity in relationships. So currently the measuring stick for success in a relationship is longevity and longevity only relative to the romantic relationship. So let's say that in my life, you know, I've lived in intentional community for years and let's say that I've got people who I've been living with for 10 years,

48:1918 years. My closest friend that I had all the way from childhood has been 20 plus years. Nobody is going to count those relationships. And that's kind of odd to me because it's another type of relationship. Right? That's number one. One of the things that I think is pretty interesting is that I don't feel like I could derive, you know, particularly accurate advice from somebody who'd been married, let's say in the 1920s in a whole different era for, you know, let's say 28 years to their spouse because the way that current modern life is the way that current relationships are, like there's no, there's no transfer there. Number one, number two, how much are the people who are we we're celebrating for their relationship lasting? How much are they making their relationship last because of dysfunction rather than function? Right. Right. Because of the kids, because they don't have another way out monetarily. Yeah. Also, I feel like people who have a lot of, you know, who's a lot of their relationship has failed. And I do have a lot of relationships that went to hell.

49:24You get a lot of information every time that happens. 100%. Yeah. So why are we not around with the person? Yeah. So like, you know, me, when I'm, if I'm, you know, in a person's seat, I'm not going to create criteria like that. I'm only going to listen to somebody if they fit this criteria of what I feel like I should be watching. So if they've only going to listen to a relationship expert that's been married for 25 years or something. For me, I'm like, I, you know, I want to listen to what everybody thinks because everybody's life experience gives them some kind of knowledge, you know, I'd be just as interested in listening to somebody who's had a, you know, 50 year marriage, honestly, then I would be interested in listening to somebody who's had 13 failed marriages. Because I'm like, you're just going to get a totally different perspective on what makes relationships work, what makes them fail, what you should be doing what you shouldn't be doing. You know, I just, I'm more open to like taking in information, you know, without disqualifying, always disqualifying the source, which is just the weakest. It's just the weakest thing to do, you know? Yeah. It's very interesting you say all

50:26that because my daughter said, I'm, I'm going to be 49 this month. I have been married three times, three, two. And, you know, I'm not dating anybody. You know, and my daughter, who's 11, is always like, Oh, God, mom, you have the worst track record with men. And I finally kind of got to this place in my life where I said to her the other day, that's so not true. I date really interesting people. I try them on. If they're not right for me, at least I've learned something from every single experience I've been in. And, you know, I actually think that's great. I have so many friends, some of them I don't speak to, but at least I can say that I found something from each person on behaviors that I don't want, behave from them, behaviors that I don't want from me, like I've learned so many lessons from that. So the fact that I'm not married is a bummer, because I'd like to find my, you know, the witness to my life and someone to share my life with, but at the same time, I supplement that with, you know, I'm a single mom. She's like my relationship

51:27right now with the friends that I make over time. It doesn't have to be a romantic partner until it's the right person. I'm not going to settle for that. But I also think it's strange when people want to listen to someone like you said who's been married for 40 years. You know, there was just a documentary on Jerry Falwell, Jr., who's been married for whatever it's been. And we all find out that it's marriage is a whole lot, but people are listening to him for his spirituality and his relationship guidance. And, you know, but the wife is having an affair with someone and he's watching in the corner and who knows. I mean, all the power to him, but that's, you know, I don't know who you listen to a relationship advice from, but it can't be somebody that, you know, you can't admire or understand why they've done things. So, you know, I don't trust anyone who hasn't been through it and people that are staying in marriages for 20 years because they're waiting for their children to go to college. I don't agree with that either, you know. So, right now we're in a place where longevity really, we need to consider whether longevity should be the only measuring stick for success in our relationship because we all know, you know, that person or those multiple people,

52:31maybe everyone that we know where the way that they've achieved longevity is some kind of dysfunction. And it's like, as people were afraid to admit this, but the faster that we admit to this, I feel like the better we're going to be because we're going to have a new definition for what a successful relationship looks like. It's not just going to be, did you stay married for, you know, the length of time. Yeah. I'm curious, do you believe in marriage still? I don't know if I ever going to not love marriages and marriage as a concept, but do you think you'll ever get married again? I am very afraid of saying that I'm never going to do something because I guess it's not like every time I say that, the universe is like, oh, yeah. I'm going to say I'm going to a darker place relative to marriage because I can see in myself, I can see, you know, the reasons that I was going for it and going for it so many times is essentially this sensation that you can't get any kind of belonging or security any other way. And, you know, it's something that I'm talking a lot about

53:32now publicly that coupling creates coupling because it's the only way that you can get security, you know, really in a relationship and depend on being prioritized and things like that as if you couple up with somebody, then somebody else is always going to have another priority. So you're your only way of getting it is to couple up yourself. And, you know, I'm really, I'm not liking the fact that this is where humanity is relative to relationships. I'm not liking the fact that we can't somehow offer each other a sense of social security and a sense of belonging without having to, you know, bargain your vagina for it to be totally honest, which is what it feels like. So, you know, me, I'm focusing much more on my life right now on this concept of of restore, restoration of tribe where I'm like, you know, it doesn't, you don't have to couple up with somebody to decide that you're committed to somebody for life. And we can do that with multiple people. It doesn't have to be just one person. And like the sexuality element can be separated from that whole picture. It can be the brief part of it or not. Like, why are we just, it's almost like it's so enmeshed. I don't actually feel like we're in a healthy place because we haven't dissected

54:34these different elements and been like, what are some creative ways we could be doing this differently? The way that marriage was created and those plants kind of sad honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to give you some rapid fire questions. Some of these are serious, some of these are not so serious. This is an important one. For people who feel stuck right now, what is one thing they can do to move forward? So, stuckness is always about the fact that you've got one aspect of you that feels like going in a certain direction is going to get you something positive in another aspect of you. It feels like going in that direction is going to end up with something negative. We could consider that part that I just mentioned the resistance. When you're stuck, you have to face directly your resistance to going in that direction. And then based off of whatever you find the truth to be, it's going to be different based on what situation somebody's stuck in. You start to sort of work with that and we'll that down and question that and create a kind of workability that didn't exist there before. But when you're answering directly to it, obviously,

55:35you're going to take different actions. So, like, let's say that I'll give you an example. Let's say that I'm really stuck in my life because I feel like I want to quit my job. But I'm not doing it because the aspect to me that's in resistance to that desire of mine is like no financial security is actually a very big deal for me. If I face directly the fact that financial security is a big deal for me, that's almost like its own rabbit hole that I can now dive into. And I can start to get creative with it. Are there other ways that I could establish financial security? Is there a way that I can commit to this until a certain level of financial security to make myself safe there? Is there some belief that I have from my childhood around financial security that I can start to work on that childhood experience or childhood trauma so that I don't have such an intense relationship with financial security, you could go all kinds of different roads with it. But it's about resolving and reducing the resistance level you have to go in the direction of whatever is wanted. Is there a secret to living a happy life? Yes. To figure out what your values

56:39are and to live aggressively in alignment with your values. And it's the best if people can, out of a list of values, pick your top five and be able to prioritize your top one even out of those top fives. But the people who are the happiest and most fulfilled in life are the ones who are living a life, meaning their thoughts, words and actions are aligned with what they value. What we value is really about what's most important to us. And that's going to be different based on one person or another person, which is part of why we get in so many arguments for each other, right? Because one person saying, no, this is what you should value. And therefore this is the decision you should make in another person. It's like, well, we should go in another direction. But you know, what happens with people prioritizing their values is this high degree of resiliency, even for being met with adversity. Because if you're in alignment with what really is important to you and you get hit with a title wave, there's this kind of like, all right, that really sucks, but I mean, still this feels right to me. There's a real internal strength that happens with that. And also, you know, when you're in alignment with your values, obviously what's important to us,

57:44often falls in alignment with what causes us enjoyment. So we're in alignment with our own personal definition of joy. What are some of your predictions for 2024 in terms of themes or anything actually tangible you could tell us? Well, this year, the dominant theme for 2024 is destruction lust. It's a really scary one, honestly. That's a scary theme for a year, but I think you're going to get real entertaining and really shaken up. So to explain destruction lust, I think that all of us have experienced maybe like a game when we were a kid, where you're like maybe trying really hard to get it right. And then you get to a point where you're just so sick of it that you're like ready to just knock the whole thing over. That's destruction lust. And so many people on the globe today have that that sensation of destruction lust towards the things that they're trying so hard at. So that destruction lust is likely to get us into a lot of trouble this year,

58:45honestly, which is why it makes me a little bit nervous because there's value in that which we destruct that we aren't acknowledging when we're ready to just lose it all, you know, to be in a different place. Decision making is another thing that's going to be massive this year. It's going to annoy people. I mean, the amount of decisions that are going to be put in front of people, just like like really big ones like all the time, you know, we're getting pinched. All people are just getting like snuckled by the universe into this position of being like, no, you're going to figure out what it is you actually want right now. We're not going to be stuck anymore. Right. Do you have a prediction for the presidential election? God. I would be very, yeah, I mean, when I'm looking at life-fath potentials, there's lots of different life-fath potentials. So it's like I can't really tell you 100% that I know that this person's going to win, but I'm going to tell you that if Trump doesn't win, I'm going to be scratching my head. Why? Because in alignment with where people are right now,

59:50in alignment with this destruction lust thing, especially, people tend to go for the leader that they perceive to be the strongest. And what Trump essentially does is puts forward a persona that is so unwavering and does not question that people perceive that that type of a person is going to create change. And that is what people are desperate for right now. They feel like the system doesn't serve them. And so, you know, no matter whether a person says, let's say that if a person is going to destroy the whole thing, you know, and create a whole new thing, we're going to vote for that. So, yeah, I'm going to, if this November rolls around and it doesn't end up being him, I will be very confused and have to go sort of back to square one in terms of watching human patterns and how that whole thing went down. Right. Okay. Well, we'll revisit that next at the end of the year. How do you keep your excellence in a world filled with so much competition? I mean, now that they're social media and, you know, it's like Denise from New Jersey can get on, you know,

1:00:54TikTok and say she's a guru on spiritual healing or something. So, like, how do you keep, you know, stay on the top? I have to care more about the quality of what I'm delivering to people regardless of what other people are saying or doing and regardless of whether they have the capacity to, you know, do marketing better than I do or put themselves out on social media platforms better than I do. It really creates this, I guess, pressure to remain committed, ironic we were talking about values before and now you bring up excellence, which is my top value. It's like it's put a lot of pressure on me to decide, you know, what is more important to me? Is it, is it viewership, which is better with a 42nd sound bite? Is it amount of money I'm making, you know, and I like I keep settling back on it's, it's the con, I want the content itself to be so good basically that it would be very difficult to beat me in that way.

1:01:56And if somebody does, they better be teaching. It does frustrate me and like I'll tell you, the people who are in my position, what you described is probably our number one frustration. Just the fact that the market is so damn overloaded with everybody that thinks that they know exactly what they're talking about and thinks that they can compete at this level. I will tell you, though, that it has gotten better recently because now quite often when I see people who are essentially trying to become, you know, the next spiritual teacher, my sentiment is be my guest because it is one of the most difficult things ever. Like this particular field is something that makes the professional sports world look like a kindergarten. So, you know, I know, I know how hard it's been for me. Yeah. And there is no effing way. I mean, there is no effing way that other people could do this. No, I've gotten to a point where it's the concept of the last one standing are going to be the

1:03:01ones that are the real ones or the, oh yeah. Yeah. Like, bully. So I'm just like, look, if you run into half of what I have, like I will be praying for you myself, it is not fun out there. So, yeah. You said you live a life much different than most. I know you have to travel with security. Obviously your life is completely different. What's it like to be a single mom living this life? Like for me, my life as a single mom with a daughter is it's all Taylor Swift all the time. And if I swear I have to put the money in a jar to be able to go to the, you know, the next concert when she comes to Miami, even though she's already been to the concert, that's her whole world. So, for you, what is it like to have a 14, yeah, to have a son? It's both magic and hell. I mean, I'm lucky in that he's, my son is really different than a lot of other boys. He's, he's, you know, got like a sensitive soul, but he's very even keeled and

1:04:04he's very connecting. So he doesn't feel like a teenager and he doesn't want to do things with his friends only. He's like very touchy, feely, crudely still. So, you know, a lot of ways I still have a real child on my hands, even though it's 14. So a lot of it looks like what it did when he was younger, where I'm really just trying to prioritize, you know, jumping off podcasts, for example, and being able to really sit down and give him quality time. And that is the hell of that, you know, the magic of that is I get to connect with this totally magic being. The hell of that is just there is, I don't really have words for how difficult it is to be a single mother, much less a mother period doesn't matter whether you're single or not. And have a career. Yeah, it's been torture. Right. Do you see any, you know, spirituality in him that you had as a child, do you see anything in him of you? Yeah, I do. A little bit. He's definitely got more of his dad's mind than me. He's got, his father has like got a very engineer math oriented mind and

1:05:07he definitely got that thankfully. But my son is able to decode human patterns in the way that I can. It's pretty impressive to hear his take on other people because he will, I mean, he shreds them already like a psychologist does, you know. That's amazing. How does someone date Tiel Swan? I take it, you're not on hinge and mumble. No, I love to answer that. I don't even know how to answer that question, my gosh. Usually it's been, you just people that I essentially meet like in life, like either on an airplane or, you know, at one of the events that I am at or, you know, let's say that I attend like some meditation said it's been kind of stuff like that. I'm currently at this place where I'm wondering whether something about that should change, but I don't know how to do that in a safe way because like, let's say I just get on any site, you know, everybody thinks they want to date Tiel Swan, but really I think my pool is like this for men that would actually, you know, want it if they knew the real body of, you know, what it's like to live with me.

1:06:10Well, there's always someone for someone, right? Okay, what kind of music do you listen to? I think people assume that you're walking around and headphones while you're taking your walks listening to like birds or spiritual music, like are you listening to Metallica or Hallenoads or, you know, something that we would find interesting. Yeah, I mean, the thing that most people love, slash hate about me is the fact that I am absolutely obsessed with rap. You are love rap like it's like, oh my god, like who? Like Tupac? Yeah, I have the same birthday as Tupac, that's what I love to blame for the fact that I've got this little obsession that, um, oh wow, like I love future. I love Drake. I love, well, it's my favorite of all as partisan Fontaine. I think he's literally the master who's alive today. Yeah, so like I'm like kind of person who I don't have in this current car, but my previous car used to have a giant subwoofer and I would be like driving around blasting rap and, you know, I do have it. Here's my excuse for this. So besides the fact that that it is an absolute art form, most people miss this

1:07:15because of the content they don't understand how incredibly sophisticated rap is and it's, they're the new poets, honestly. Yeah. Um, I was a skier. I was a professional skier. And for professional skiers, like, that's what you're listening to when you're skiing is rap. So it's like part of that whole culture and it's like in my bones and so I absolutely love it. And yeah, most people would never guess that somebody who is into spiritual stuff would like rap, but I do, it's not like all you write. It's very much like poetry. I mean, I fell in love with Hamilton. I don't know. Have you seen Hamilton the Broadway play? And the music in it is so phenomenal because it tells such a gorgeous story and you get so into it, but it's rap, you know, and it's on, I mean, it's unbelievable. I have no idea how he came up with that, but um, okay, just a few more random ones for people to get to know you. Like, do you do normal things like the rest of us? Do you shop on Amazon? Do you look for deals like what do you do? Tell me what makes you like what makes me like

1:08:18this normal? Okay, so I love eBay. Okay. I love eBay because why? Because you can find stuff that you can't find other places like I don't have an issue with the second hand thing. It's just, you know, I'm the kind of person who let's say that I like a specific type of lagging. I want like six of them. And if nobody sells that lagging anymore, I have to find it somewhere that it's being sold. It's usually always eBay. So I do a lot of fancy because I love the independent artists and stuff like that. What else is normal? I love watching movies. You do. What's your favorite movie? My favorite movie is Dark Crystal. Okay. Um, okay. What else? Do you go on Netflix or anything? Do you have like a show you're bingeing? Do you watch succession? I just don't, I literally don't even have the time. I don't understand how people do have the time. I feel like I'm running around for moment one to the second that it stops. And if like, I have to really, if I want to see something, like really put forth energy to be able to cut out time for it. And usually I'm like combining multiple things. I'll be playing in the background while I'm like making jewelry or painting also.

1:09:22I mean, it's yeah. Yeah. Do you follow pop culture at all? Not really. Not really. So you're not up on, you know, Gypsy Rose getting released from prison. You don't care. And it's not even that it's not really that I don't care. It's just like when you, when somebody like me picks this road to master, it's like that your whole life revolves around that mastery. And so there's a lot of peripheral information that just doesn't get prioritized. No, I understand. But like do things in the news sometimes consume you. Like, remember when the submarine, the submersible went down and was missing for five days. Like, where are you going to? I would often the middle of the night searching like googling what, you know, implosion means. Yeah. Well, that one upset me a lot. But I mean, with things that are happening in the world, a lot of times it is, if it's really upsetting me in some way and I just like, I can tell that I've got some kind of a psychological catch around it. That one bothered me. I could very easily put myself, you know, before they essentially said they all blew up immediately. It was like, yeah,

1:10:25very easily put myself in a position where I could feel exactly what it must be like to be in that position. And that was keeping me awake. So yeah, me too. I was in the same boat as you. No pun intended. So you're not the type of person. Got cat and dog videos on Instagram. So like, I love to joke about this. It irritates me so much that human attention span is so small. And like everybody would rather watch a cat video. But then I'm like, Teal, you watch like eight cat videos today. Because I don't, I mean, Instagram's pretty easy because, you know, I don't need to take a lot of time out of my day. I could be like sitting on the toilet and like, look at an Instagram video. I love cat and dog videos on Instagram. So yeah, I do too. I'll be honest. Those kind of rescue missions with the dogs that I love those. They always, I'm always sobbing. And my daughter will walk in and be like, Mom, you watching another dog video? You gotta stop. So okay. So I was gonna say, so you did not have it on repeat when Taylor Swift got off the stage and jumped into Travis Kelsey's arms and kissed him.

1:11:27No, no. I heard about that happening. Oh, no. Okay, last question like this, on a deserted island, if you were all by yourself and could bring one meal, what would it be? In the, it's just like, are we going a meal that I would eat if I could? Or are we going like Teal's being normal to you and is eating Teal's normal diet? Well, yeah, it's like, no, what, like, what's your favorite food? Like, for me, it's hearts of palms. So random. Like, but what do some of the people don't know about you? I think people assume you eat kale and drink green juices. Oh, if people assumed the way I ate, they would still be about 80 miles short of how incredibly strict I am with my diet. It is insane. Really? Yeah, it's nuts. Like, like, it is beyond so far beyond. Like, there's the only way to get more insane than where I am right now in terms of like the way that I, I, you know, live my life and herbs a lifestyle, including diet is if I grew my own food, that's the only way it plays to go.

1:12:28Wow, why is that? Because I basically, in order to keep myself in enough of an alignment state to take in this type of information, and you'll notice that the more that aware you become, actually, the less tolerant you become to lower frequency things, you get into this place where you're eating, like, most people would eat on the strictest cleanse you could imagine. If that was your everyday diet, it's the only way my body doesn't flip out. Really? Okay. So on this island, what would you be? Okay, so let's play a game where I go more like, look, I'm going to relate more to, you know, everyone else on earth that isn't as ridiculously psychotically disciplined as I am. And I'm going to say, let's do food according to what you really enjoy, because I'm a huge foodie, right? My, the meal that I would have there would be mashed potatoes, fettuccine, alfredo, stuffed peppers, and Pavlova and cotton candy. Wow. Okay, one was the last time

1:13:33you had any of those? Probably 12 years? Oh my goodness. Okay. Okay. You posted recently, the worst distance between two people is misunderstanding. That's basically the concept of my show. What is the most misunderstood thing about you? People think I'm a rule breaker. Like without a doubt, especially since people see me as this very controversial figure, they see me as kind of an upstart who likes to rebel against things and that is not true at all. I hate breaking rules. Oh my gosh. I'm the person who's like, that's not the speed limit. You know, I kind of, so when I decide to step out and go against the grain in any way, it's for a very, very good reason. I find no pleasure in rebellion. Okay. Last question. What is on your bucket list

1:14:37for 2024 or something you're looking forward to or something you want to manifest in your life? Right now it's all about tribe. I mean, in the last few years, I got hit real hard in terms of my personal life, you know, because everything got so heated with the amount of fame and a lot of the pressures that were being put on us that a lot of the people around me decided that there's no way that they could live a life like this and that no matter how much they love me, they couldn't take the pressure. Yeah. So it very much felt like I'm sort of with my personality going to a layer of the stratosphere that other people can't go to and thrive at. And so it felt like a lot of them had to sort of go choose their own lives so that I could go sort of join their life because this was somewhere that they couldn't sort of function and breathe. And I find myself more lonely than I have ever been since my childhood actually right now. So my focus is really all about becoming resource to get on a personal level in terms of really wanting to have a group of people

1:15:42that I can live my life with. And I mean, people who are compatible to this and that's rare. Right. Yeah. I want to live my life with people. It's like you, you said that word used earlier about wanting a witness that's definitely something the resident used to be in a very extreme way. And so I'm wanting to find people who fit with me this year. Okay. I love that. That's probably mine as well. That's what I would love. I think a lot of people are looking for their tribe. And it's not about just wishing it. It's about making it happen and finding the right people. You can trust and that trust you. So I wish you the best of luck with that. Where could people find you and get all the information on Tiel Swan? Well, I'm on every single social media platform. The best way to find me is Tiel Swan.com though because that website is just, it's an amalgamation of all of my work. So it's very easy to navigate that site and figure out where to watch the videos, where to look at the products, where my next events are. It's like everything is just smash in one. Yeah. And you have some upcoming events, correct? Yeah. I'm actually leaving tomorrow back down

1:16:45to my retreat center in Costa Rica because I'm hosting a curveball retreat. After that, I'm going to be in Austin, Texas, I believe. And then after that, I'm going to be doing a Canadian tour. I don't even know the rest of them. But yeah, I've got like a pretty loaded schedule with all kinds of things that are available to the public. Amazing. Well, you guys should check out her website. It has all the dates there and all the different topics she'll be covering. Tiel, thank you so much for joining me. It was such a pleasure talking to you. I really wish you the best. You're the pleasure being understood. If you've enjoyed today's episode, don't let it end here. Our Patreon community has become one of my favorite parts of misunderstood. It's where I can become more personal answer your questions, share what's really happening behind the scenes and continue conversations that simply don't fit into the public podcast. Whether you want bonus episodes, exclusive behind the scenes, access my Palm Beach Life series, monthly giveaways, or even a one-on-one conversation with me. There's a membership tier that's perfect for you. I truly love to welcome

1:17:47you into our insider club. Just visit patreon.com slash misunderstood with Rachel Yucatel or click the link in the show notes.