even after having received a death threat should I ever speak out.)
Don’t get me wrong: spiritual surrender can be beautiful in its utter letting-go. But let’s not throw out the baby-with-the-bathwater. In the wrong context…and there are some wrong situations…spiritual surrender can, definitively, be the exact opposite of what a person needs on this most-profound-of-all-journeys.
Trust is the bottom line.
The guru, in whom I had trusted with the entirety of my life, turned out to be the least trustworthy and God, Source, Spirit, whatever term you would choose to use, turned out to be trustworthy in the Absolute sense. It would be the internal downloads from Spirit that would, ultimately, lead me out of the existential hole that the controlling relationship to this guru had created.
Over the course of my twenty-plus years of spiritual practice I found spiritual surrender to be of profound depth and beauty. It was also the predominant path of many at the organization SAT (The Society of Abidance in Truth). That lasted until the time when Nome entered into a relationship with his then student, Judy Gilden, and decided that ‘spiritual inquiry’ would be the dominant path going forward. I continued on with my own practice…a combination of surrender and Dzogchen.
I was no slouch seeker. None of us were. We occasionally joked that we were definitely not at SAT for the pastries.
Much of what we engaged in over the years partook of highly ineffectual and inefficient practices…practices removed in time-and-space and decorated with the elaborate-ness of traditions that were/are long outdated. Judy Gilden, later Nome’s wife, exclaimed during one satsang, “I’ve been here for over a decade…and nothing.”
Yet, at the core of spiritual surrender at SAT was a trust in a higher power. This was the heartbeat of spiritual surrender. We need look no further than the Guru who was sitting in front of us.
I jumped into the teaching at SAT earnestly beginning in late 1989. I let-go of thought (not wise when raising a family) let-go of worry and concern (great when raising a family) and sailed on a cloud of surrender where I received everything needed…even at a distance.
Fast forward to 2011 or so: when I had been up until then merely observing the lies-and-deceptions of Nome and Russell Smith, which I was giving-a-pass to in the name of spiritual ‘evolution’ and ‘freedom’ when non-dual teachers made the agreed-upon decision…across the entire non-dual teaching spectrum (including Nome, Russell Smith, Candace O’Denver, Adyashanti, Gangaji, Jeannie Zandi and many others)…to place the full burden for their lies-and-deceptions on these shoulders…and the shoulders of my family literally ripping my family apart. I was silenced (under a death threat) for a decade+…to ensure those lies would never become public knowledge.
This criminality has been described as a ‘Soul murder’ akin to being ‘buried alive.’
Those are absolutely accurate descriptions of the feeling of what occurred here.
Suddenly surrender became actual poison to this situation in which non-dual teachers foisted the full responsibility for their own actions on these shoulders and made me the sole “fall guy.”
It would take this temperament YEARS to realize that what had been second nature to me – surrender — was slowly betraying my Soul, betraying my family AND betraying the (actual) Truth.
The profound medicine of surrender had now become a profound and deadly poison. At this point, I have spent an equal amount of time healing myself from that particular devoted, bhakta path as I had spent on it!
In a delightful reading with a French-Canadian Tarot reader, one of the messages came through where she politely stated, “You need to upright your Emperor!!”
I had no idea what she was referring to. It would take me many years to rebalance an over-emphasized inner feminine with a long-missing inner masculine.
These teachers ALL knew of my ease with surrender…my proclivity to let people walk ALL OVER ME and to have utterly NO boundaries. I fully bought into the dangerous teaching expounded by non-dual teacher that Byron Katie that “Boundaries are an act of selfishness,” and “Victims are violent people.”
The teachers most directly involved in controlling this life so their deceptions would never become public knowledge used my own inner imbalance when I connected with a local man, seemingly random, to try and trigger an ‘awakening’ through the controlling use of toxic tantra…to try and induce a transcendent reality that some equate with actual ‘awakening.’
⚛️ Carl Jung: Individuation….and the Empath’s Road Back to Their Authentic Self: https://leslieread.substack.com/p/carl-jung-individuation
It was right about the 2nd year of connection with that local man that the no-nonsense teachings of Brene Brown came slamming into my awareness. It was like a slap on the face! WAKE-UP! and stop being a doormat for the utterly unconscious actions of ALL of these non-dual teachers…AND a doormat to this man whose tantric energy I was drunk on especially after close to 2 decades of emotional starvation due to an ‘auric block’ preventing relations, primarily intimate ones for obvious reasons. Brene Brown’s words were like a resounding wake-up call with the message: “You are going “against yourself” for all the wrong reasons!!”
“Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging.” ~Brene Brown
“When somebody intentionally causes harm, that’s a choice they made with full awareness of its cost and they chose it anyway. Boundaries are not cruel; they are not harsh; they are not a form of revenge. They are clarity. They are protection. And, most importantly, they are self-respect in action.” ~Brene Brown
S L O W L Y…I began to ‘upright my Emperor.’ I began to speak-my-truth which is not easy after a literal death threat should I ever do so. And I, slowly, let go of that local man who had been obviously deceiving me the whole time.
This shift was mirrored in many ways, but most significantly in gradually moving my healing writing to the Substack platform…where there was a clean, clear and new energy.
My own website, www.integrityintruth.com had been started when there was significant fawning still present in my words. I included a bazillion flower photos…all my own photography which was also part of the healing process…but were included to, somehow, soften the intense darkness of what I was reporting on: namely actual criminality at the hands of non-dual teachers.
Around June of 2025 my writing began to take a significant turn with the beginning of this post: ⚛️ The Mystery of Past Lives: https://leslieread.substack.com/p/the-mystery-of-past-lives
Not everyone on the spiritual path needs ego-diminishment. Some actually need the exact opposite. That was clearly the case in this life. But it was never as clear as when I realized those teachers were blackmailing me using my own family. It was only when I rebalanced my inner feminine with an upright, clear and forceful inner masculine that I could even begin to write about their use of familial occult manipulation and blackmail. Ultimately, I was being blackmailed into surrender. These non-dual teachers indicated, I would be reunited with my family once I surrendered to THEIR lies and deceptions.
Historically, and with certain spiritual traditions, teachers have always manipulated families of seekers in order to achieve certain spiritual goals.
⚛️ The Unseen Use of Spiritual Power (Siddis) for Control-Over-Others…in Contemporary Non-dual Teachings: https://leslieread.substack.com/p/the-unseen-use-of-spiritual-power
A couple decades ago there was the magical appearance of the ‘lost chapters’ of Jacob Beilhart’s ‘Love Letters From Spirit to You.’ (Some will know Jacob Beilhart as the teacher to Joseph Benner, who was the author of the well-known book: “The Impersonal Life” 1914.)
As soon as I received the book in the mail there was a palpable shock that went thru my entire system as the mailman handed me the package. In that book were the ‘missing chapters’ …4 chapters not previously published.
Beilhart was a late 19th – early 20th century American Sage with ‘spiritual community’ in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I opened to the following… “…when you submit to all that is in your nature regardless as to what it has been in the past, or whether it is called good or evil, and resist not their expression even as you have not resisted the right of other persons and things to express what they would to you; when you abandon yourself entirely to all that I give you and condemn not in any expressions then I shall clear away every vestige of the past. And thus will I renew you in every part.”
The shift was subtle. No more apologizing. No more fawning. A decisive move into a far more authentic voice which, overtime, began an inner alignment where the feminine would work in tandem with the masculine. As I began to incorporate this masculine protection, I gathered enough strength to begin speaking out about the REAL DARKHORSE: that of these teachers using my own family to blackmail me into a surrender!
While quiet, it was enough that a sensitive man-friend back east (who I’ve never met in person) messaged me on FaceBook about this change in tone. My Emperor had FINALLY stood up…and he was defending me. Someone… my own self…finally had my back!
Thank you for following my work. 🌷 If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me at:
~Leslie@integrityintruth.com …and on Substack: https://leslieread.substack.com/publish/posts/published
