From One-Star Reviews to A Thank-You to the Modern Mystery School
I’ve always been fascinated by the one-star Yelp reviews people give National Parks.
Yes, the Grand Canyon is a big hole, and the trees in Yosemite do block the views of the many gray rocks 🤣 but that’s kinda missing the point. People happily pay tens of thousands of dollars to raft and trek the Grand Canyon, while others obsess and train for years for the experience of climbing El Cap or Half Dome.
You can tell that the people writing these reviews are either miserable humans, or just begging for attention.
If you ask enough people, you will always be able to find people who make something amazing sound stupid.
The foundation of disinformation isn’t lies; it is the twisting of just enough truth that the claim has a somewhat credible feel. Once that foundation is built, add a whole lot of sensational claims on the top — often ones that cannot be proven or disproven — and you have yourself a champion recipe for very profitable clickbait.
Vice is a media empire originally built on tabloid style reporting and allegedly a culture of harassing women and grossly underpaying their employees to enrich the founders while funding after hours parties filled with drugs and sex. Depending on where you look for information, and what the date is on the source, they gross somewhere between $1–6 billion each year. They have won awards and mainstream accolades as they’ve grown from a small outlet to an international one, but accusations of harassment and assault have followed them. According to a New York Times article from 2017, their attempts at reform including hiring the same human resources director that Harvey Weinstein employed at Miramax films from 1991–2000. We all know how well that went.
They specialize in twisting information into the equivalent of 1-star reviews and filling the internet with clickbait so that they can profit while undermining others.
This is dramatically different than websites that publish well researched and balanced investigative journalism pieces reflecting a range of perspectives and experiences.
A couple weeks ago, Vice decided to publish a hit-job piece of pseudo “journalism” with a collection of accusations about the Modern Mystery School, its leadership, me, and what I’m proud to call my life’s work.
Apparently, a freelance reporter selling stories to Vice has developed a personal vendetta against us. He has spent at least 18 months trolling dozens (if not hundreds, we don’t really know) of current and former students with the agenda to attempt to publicly destroy the reputation of the school its leadership — particularly Gudni Gudnason and Dave Lanyon.
This reporter has recently published other gems for Vice that include, “Bad News: Tongue Kissing May Transmit Gonorrhoea” and an earlier attempt at harassing a public figure for the *possibility* of having non-traditional spiritual beliefs titled, “Is Michael Gove a Freemason? An Investigation.”
The author’s efforts resulted in a few former students making serious accusations that he has mixed in with a ton of heresay, off-the-record allegations and distortions aimed at making anyone who studies or teaches in the Modern Mystery School look like a brainwashed moron incapable of making choices for themselves.
If you ask enough people, you will always be able to find people who make something sacred sound profane.
➡️ How do I know that the author had an agenda?
I have firsthand info from one person the author interviewed that he asked leading questions like, “how do you feel about Gudni driving a Maserati?” …and then went on to ignore anything positive they had to say about the school and their experiences.
For the record, Gudni does drive a Maserati, and owns a home in a nice area of Tokyo. I sincerely hope that we can have a world where anyone in their 60s who has dedicated their life to helping people can afford to buy the car that they love, feel like royalty driving it, and live in a nice home. For reference, Tony Robbins owns a Rolls Royce, a Range Rover, and five houses.
Further, I found out about the article originally because the author himself, as his own Facebook profile, was trolling my brother, Jordan Bain’s, podcasts about the Modern Mystery School live and posting links to it in the comments as Jordan was broadcasting. If that isn’t baiting drama and clicks, I don’t know what is. And he is most likely doing it because his article has some of the fewest likes and comments of any content posted on the Vice Facebook page recently when I took a quick gander over there.
Finally, one student who was quoted in the article has made a statement showing how the author cherry picked a short statement of hers to give credence to a broader narrative that she does not support.
The article contains troubling accusations of sexual harassment and coercion that, while serious if they are proven to be true, bear zero resemblance to the experiences that I have had across a decade of studying and teaching with the school and participating in literally *thousands* of hours of formal training and classroom time — many of them with the two teachers accused of impropriety.
I take sexual harassment and coercion really seriously and have zero tolerance for it. If I had seen even an inkling of what is alleged, I would not be part of the Modern Mystery School. I’m way smarter than that, more empowered, and have far more lucrative career options should I ever choose to do something other than being a healer.
At Modern Mystery School Boston, Jordan and I have always had a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment, coercion, and grooming and have always been committed to creating a physically, emotionally, and spiritually welcoming environment for all who seek healing and growth.
Fortunately, this is an issue that has only arisen once so far. We had a more experienced student who started giving a lot of attention to whomever the newest younger women were coming to group classes and offer them rides home or to trade massages on class breaks. This is not illegal, but it is sleazy, predatory, and can easily be used for grooming and sexual coercion. We noticed the pattern and took action on it before anyone had reported it to us. The student was quite angry with us and insisted everything he was doing was consensual. We communicated to the student that this was unacceptable and had to stop immediately. When the behavior didn’t stop, the student was barred from attending classes with us ever again. I would do this again in a heartbeat if someone else like this came on our radar.
The remainder of the claims take fragments of truth about the magick and transformation of how this work changes people’s lives and twist them to sound like A+ tabloid fodder instead of the sacred and holy traditions they truly are.
If you want to read it, pleeeease do not give them clicks and profit for this kind of junk. Message me if you’d like to read it in full: disclaimer that it is 70+ printed pages long.
More on this part in a bit…let’s talk a little about why this is my life’s work and how I got here.
When I found the Modern Mystery School in my late 20s, I already had studied many spiritual systems, and checked many of the professional and educational “boxes” that people aspire to experience in order to push my comfort zone, explore possibilities, and have a meaningful and impactful life. Something inside of me had always known that the answers to the increasing problems that we face in the world would require both technology/science and a profound change in the heart and soul of how humans live on earth. I had also always known that my purpose was to be part of catalyzing transformation that would put humanity on a new trajectory towards peace, justice, regenerative living, and harmony between humans and nature.
I found Yoga, Wicca, and shamanism as a teen. I graduated with a Bachelor’s from Wesleyan University where I focused my energy on the political theory of revolution and alternative economic systems and environmental studies/justice. I continued my studies to get a Master’s of Environmental Science from Yale University. I went on long treks in New Zealand and the Himalayas multiple times to find myself. I volunteered on organic farms and spiritual retreat centers. I helped create a sustainability institute in Bangladesh to help address all of the environmental injustices there and the coming onslaught of climate change and food insecurity. I expanded into Zen Buddhism and Shaolin/Daoist practices in college and grew further into Vedic and Kabbalistic studies in my mid 20s. I practiced Ashtanga Yoga daily for a summer in Mysore, India while conducting my Master’s research on industrial systems. I trained for endurance racing and did a half-Ironman. I published two peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals that have each been cited by over 100 other scientific authors (for those of you who count that sort of thing LOL). I successfully bootstrapped my own corporate sustainability consulting business from scratch on a true shoestring and no family help despite upwards of $100,000 in student debt. I was a semi-finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, which is known as “socially responsible design’s highest award”.
Yet despite all these experiences, I knew that there was something more I hadn’t found yet.
I still dealt with deep anxiety and seemingly intractable patterns from family conditioning that, amongst other things, drove a dependent relationship with alcohol that was hard to shake.
I struggled to have meaningful romantic relationships.
I had a strained relationship with my parents and blamed a lot on them.
I constantly overworked to be underpaid by clients.
Most importantly, consulting projects and work that should have been meaningful (and that other people considered dream work) primarily showed me that we were losing the battle to transform how humanity lives on this planet fast enough to outpace the coming waves of climate change, inequality, and conflict.
When I first heard about the Modern Mystery School, I dismissed it for years because it seemed expensive, and it didn’t really make sense to me how it could help with the very practical problems in the world I was trying to address.
I did finally decide to get initiated in 2011. At first, I thought the teachings made a bunch of strange and unprovable claims. I totally get why a skeptical outsider would wonder what on earth we are doing and question what kind of positive impact it possibly could have. Coming from a background of studying science and in the midst of publishing my second peer-reviewed journal article, a lot of what the Modern Mystery School taught didn’t jive with what my rational mind *thought* was real, important, or valid. Most people do not have exposure to spiritual teachings or any reference point for sacred experiences.
Despite this, something inside me told me to still give it a chance. I used what I learned daily, and the power of the initiation I’d received started to shift things within my being.
Within a few weeks, all of the core issues that I hadn’t been able to change through any other system or experience started to move on their own.
Within a few months, I’d substantially transformed many areas of my life. Most importantly, my relationship with my family improved despite managing the difficulty and pain of the end stages of my mother’s terminal bone cancer. I found the courage to cut out toxic work partnerships even though they were tied to income streams. As I let them go, I got new consulting work that paid better and was more impactful and rewarding. The deep-seated anxiety that had kept me lock step with alcohol lifted and I was able to stay sober indefinitely after quitting again in November 2011 (and I still am happily sober today 9.5 years later.)
These changes convinced me that there was something really special happening that no other aspect of my training, education, and studies had been able to touch. My rational mind couldn’t explain it, but enough had changed that I decided to attend Healer’s Academy and learn the Life Activation so I could offer it to others who wanted to experience similar transformation. At that point, I had no desire to ever be in business as a healer, nor did MMS ever suggest that by receiving 5 days of training, I’d know how to run a business as such. I simply wanted to have the tool to help friends and family if they needed it.
In 2012 I was initiated into the path of the Ritual Master, the path of the spiritual warrior, with the supportive guidance of Founder Gudni Gudnason, Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon, and Ipsissimus Hideto Nakagome as my teachers and mentors. My dad and I attended the training together after Founder Gudni invited him to attend for free out of the kindness of his heart and with zero exchange or expectation in return. My dad was 80 at the time, had just lost my mother, and was going through a very difficult emotional and financial period in his life. The training and support he was gifted helped him heal from life-long patterns and shaped the remainder of his life for good.
Being a Ritual Master is one of the most challenging spiritual commitments you can make to yourself: you seek to truly heal all of the darkness and pain within yourself so that you can be a light in the world. It is hard AF. Most people who start this path do not stick with it and most people I know from my studies decided at some point that it was no longer the right thing for them. All that a person needs to do to “leave” the Modern Mystery School is to just not show up. No one judges you, talks $h*t, or shames you. I am still friends with dozens of people I met on this path who decided that it wasn’t the right thing for them anymore.
A year after initiation, I met my husband, and created the first emotionally adult relationship I’ve ever experienced based on mutual respect, love, and caring communication — using the tools for personal mastery and emotional healing I’d learned from MMS. While he is an Initiate and Ritual Master in the school now, he had no interest in it for the first two years of our relationship and only chose to begin to explore it at his own pace it after we got married.
Despite all of these incredible changes in my life, I maintained a very scientific mind and still was highly skeptical. The teachings didn’t always make sense to me. I questioned the concept that this was the Lineage of King Salomon. How could it actually be a 3000 year old intact Lineage — not just something made up more recently? Something that I loved was that my teachers didn’t need me to believe it in order for the Magick of this system to work. Rather than trying to coerce me or brainwash me into agreement with some dogma, they simply asked me questions and told me to go find my own truth and experience if I wanted to reconcile my rational mind with the seeming illogic of magick and metaphysics.
I was also constantly on the lookout for sexual impropriety, and for MMS being a cult, because there is such a history of issues with other spiritual organizations and teachers. My own fears were that around the next corner, next class, or next initiation, I would be asked to do something sexually compromising — that somehow there would be a creepy cult on the other side of whatever my next step was. These are common fears for people, and I know that I’m not alone in this.
By a couple of years into doing this work, my fears started to subside because none of them ever materialized. Women were being taught to step into their power and men were being taught to respect and revere women at a beautiful level that I have never seen anywhere else.
More importantly, contrary to what I’d seen in other spiritual traditions I’d experienced, my mentors inspirationally embodied what they were teaching in their own marriages and professional relationships.
Do I always agree with what they say and do? No. Everything in MMS is considered a teaching that invites you to find your own truth.
Do we debate about things? Yes.
Do I respect them? Absolutely.
Two years after initiation, my life looked really different than when I began. Every core issue that I had struggled with at the beginning was functionally resolved — I still had plenty of new and deeper things to learn, but I was no longer stuck on the same spin cycles that had trapped me for years. Using the tools I learned from MMS, I had created a financial foundation for myself with sustainability consulting (not the healing work I was studying at MMS) and addressed the business structure and inner emotional work needed to consistently earn 6 figures starting in 2014 working 15–20 hours per week. In the world of starting your own business, I was living the dream. I could easily have stayed in this version of my life quite easily and comfortably, but the more my life changed, the more I realized that helping other people do the same was part of my mission and purpose.
In the years that followed, I became a Guide and opened a healing center, completed all of the initiations of the Ritual Master path as well, started studying privately with Founder Gudni, built a life that I adore, and created a lot of success both with my healing work and with my consulting business. The fears and worries that that the school might be a hidden sex cult never materialized and eventually receded from concern entirely. My life now includes traveling and doing inspiring spiritual and energy healing trainings 8–9 weeks out of the year (until Covid hit). Not once have I ever been pressured to take a class or given a hard time if a training didn’t fit into my schedule or finances. I’ve chosen to do all of this work because of the incredible fruits and results that I experience in my life and the transformations I get to support in my clients.
✨ When I spoke with Ipsissimus Dave in 2015 about waiting to train personally with Founder Gudni because I had too many other financial commitments with getting married and buying a house, he never once questioned me and simply said, “I totally understand, hope to see you next time.”
✨ When Divina Rita Van Den Berg asked if I’d be in an upcoming training in 2016 and heard that I’d be heading home instead to spend time with my family, she said, “I think that you’ll find that you wished you had taken it, but you can always take it next time.” She was right, I did find that I wished that I’d taken the training and I will be able to take it the next time it’s offered.
✨ When discussing with Divina Theresa Bullard that I might want to shift full time into doing healing work, she told me “Sounds like you have a good thing with your consulting work, I would really take your time and consider it before making a choice.”
✨ When I needed to pause studying in the School of Mage in 2019 because continuing would have created a financial strain, no one said boo about it.
As an aside, you may be reading this and asking, why do I address my teachers and mentors with these unfamiliar titles? The same reason I would address a Karate teacher as Sensei, a college teacher as Professor, and a sports coach as Coach — it is a mark of respect for the support that they are giving me and their more advanced experience in the subject that I’m paying them to help me with. The intent is respect and reverence.
Nearly 10 years into my work with the Modern Mystery School, I’m living a fundamentally more beautiful, joy filled, and impactful life than I ever could have imagined when I began. I have a loving, dedicated, marriage with an incredible partner and a beautiful home life. From my perspective, offering these tools is the best way to change the course of humanity’s future for good and we are up against a ticking clock.
I’m certified in over 30 powerful healing modalities and use them in a thriving healing practice that gets amazing results with people. I’ve had the privilege of serving hundreds of clients in their healing and growth. I’ve had the opportunity to work with cohorts of women in addiction rehab and actually start to study the incredible transformations clients experience at scale. I’ve done almost every level of training offered and I’m immensely grateful for everything that I’ve experienced.
Now, back to the Vice article.
It makes some really serious accusations about inappropriate sexual behaviors. The structure and circumstances of the allegations are as such that it may never be possible to prove or disprove them. I wasn’t there and therefore cannot speak to the specifics of what happened.
What I can say is that none of these allegations reflect my experiences — that my experiences are pretty much the opposite of what is written and that no one else who I know has experienced anything vaguely resembling this.
I am who I am today because of the trainings, wisdom, and sacred practices of the Modern Mystery School and the support of Founder Gudni and Ipsissimus Dave.
What I said at the beginning of this post is worth repeating: if I had seen even an inkling of what is alleged, I would not be part of the Modern Mystery School. I’m way smarter than that, more empowered, and have far more lucrative career options should I ever choose to do something other than being a healer and a guide.
The article also makes a lot of claims about us charging money for spiritual healing, teaching, and certification (gasp!) and that we pressure and threaten people into taking the classes.
Yes, we are a professional organization that charges money for things. You know who else does that? Every other well-run organization on the planet.
I pay a professional certification fee every year, just like I pay annual dues for membership in other professional organizations that I’m a part of. And just like my husband pays dues to the Yoga Alliance to register his teacher trainings and teaching certifications. Well-run systems cost money. Period.
If I don’t pay the dues or meet continuing educational requirements for a professional organization, quite simply, I’m not considered part of the organization.
If I walk into a grocery store, take what they are offering, and leave without paying, this is called theft. All of this is clear in the normal world. But for some reason people lose their minds and call it a cult when it has to do with spirituality.
When I enrolled at Wesleyan University, I spent 4 years of my life and more than $150,000 in a closed environment without my own transportation or a way to leave easily. I studied subjects that mostly made me unemployable in a normal professional environment, partied and used substances, regularly consumed enough alcohol to not be able to remember the details of events, and got into bed with people I barely knew. I heavily questioned whether I continued, and even took a year off, but I did want the degree and knew that I needed to complete all the requirements in order to do so. My peers, teachers, and family all encouraged me to continue even when it got tough and I wanted to leave. Sounds pretty much like a “cult” to me when I think of it now, but when I graduated, people considered it a good investment in my future.
When I spent another 2 years and another $100,000 going to Yale for my Master’s, people looked up to me and told me I was a role model.
If I’d stayed in academia further and done a PhD, I would have functionally been an indentured servant for somewhere between 5–10 years. Earning below minimum wage for very long hours and, most likely, having a tenured professor represent my work as their own. Starting to sound a bit culty, too, eh?
But when I choose to spend a decade growing and transforming by traveling and taking classes to the tune of far less money than what I ever spent on my higher education, somehow now I’m in a cult because I’m spending actual money instead of student loans, and the organization has real standards and certification requirements? Really? Does that actually make any sense at all? Am I actually secretly stupid and easy to scam?
Anything is possible LOL but if you know me in person, you probably know how unlikely this is.
Even though I walked away from these choices with upwards of $100,000 in student debt, I don’t regret them for a moment because they played pivotal roles in my education and growth as a person.
The difference between a scam and a well-run organization is that a well-run organization will take your money in exchange for something of value and offer you the opportunity to make of it what you will — a scam will just take your money with no intent of giving you something of value in return.
The Modern Mystery School is a very well-run professional organization that will take your money in exchange for classes and healings that can have a profound effect on your life. Or, as a student of mine who used to be skeptical of our prices said last week after finishing Universal Kabbalah for the first time, “I would pay three times this much again in a heartbeat for what I experienced.”
One of my mentors, Christina Lozano, put together a great article about cults a while ago, that I highly recommend you check out if you are trying to discern this for yourself right now.
Lastly, the Vice article accuses us of being giant weirdos.
What we do in the Modern Mystery School is very unfamiliar to most people, but in truth it is unfamiliar because it is deeply sacred — and we’ve strayed so far in our culture these days that we’ve forgotten what that feels like or how important it is to feeling good at the core of our being.
The most important thing is that it works. People get cord cuttings and immediately stop condoning toxic behavior in their relationships. People get a Life Activation and permanently shift painful and stuck patterns. People get initiated and start to heal themselves and understand their purpose from the inside out. People walk this path and really put in the work, and within a few years, they are living beautiful, peaceful, and impactful lives. The teachers and guides in this school are some of the most intelligent, wonderful, caring, and kind people I’ve ever met.
I’ve even had the privilege to bring our healings to women in residential drug addiction recovery and study the impacts. We’ve worked with dozens of women who had an average of ten times in residential treatment. With just four sessions, we’ve seen an average of over 100% improvements in self-reported levels of anxiety and stress.
If you look at your life and what is going on in the world today and you think that science and technology are going to solve everything, you are fighting what the data show, but good on ya.
But if you realize that there is something more, your soul and spirit are waiting for you.
If you want things to be different, you have to do things that are different.
Ultimately, the Vice article is sending a dangerous and threatening message to anyone with a spiritual organization: stay small, and if you do anything spiritual you should be poor and disorganized. If you go outside of this narrative, and actually start impacting a lot of people’s lives, there will be a witch hunt against you calling you a cult and shaming you for charging money at your business. I have studied and practiced spirituality for 25 years and being mocked and threatened for things like spells, rituals, pentagrams, and ceremonies has no place in modern society with freedom of religious and spiritual expression. This is straight BS and is the stuff of authoritarianism, not the liberties of modern society.
If what I do isn’t your jam, that’s totally fine. You do you. But in doing that, let me do me. Our world is tearing itself apart with opinions focused on how other people should behave rather than looking at ourselves. Don’t buy into this.
You are, and will always be, the most powerful tool for transformation available to you. Use this tool well, however you choose to direct it.
Magick isn’t the only thing that we need to deal with all the issues we face, but it is going to be what tips the scales. We already have all the other pieces we need in science, technology, politics, and academics; it is magick that is missing.
Don’t let anyone steal your magick, your spark, and your fire.
And don’t let anyone giving a one-star review to something that is sacred take you down.
