Twin Flames Universe (TFU) is a cult run by Jeff and Shaleia Divine. The group’s beliefs are based on New Age spiritualism regarding soulmates.
The group has been called a ‘self help and wellness cult’.
As some background into the founders, Jeff was born Jeffrey Ayan. He grew up in a Catholic family in Lapeer, Michigan.
A friend of Jeff’s, Eric Rogers, recently told Vice that he was obsessed with learning everything possible about Warren Buffett as he grew up.
“He was always about learning and self-betterment,” Eric said, “seeking out role models and coaches and all that.” Jeff wanted to soak up everything he could from Buffett, the guy he called “the smartest investment mind in the world.”
Jeff was on the swim team and he participated in the theatre club while he was at high school.
He graduated from Western Michigan University’s Business School in 2010. He then sold all his belongings and moved to a farm in California.
In 2012, he moved to Hawaii and changed his name on social media to Ender Ayanethos (in reference to Ender’s Game). He also started a blog called EndersAdventures.
Ender’s Game was Jeff’s favorite book in high school.
The 1985 sci-fi novel follows the life of a young boy who is recruited into an elite military school where his tactical genius and ability to lead an army from behind a computer screen is slowly revealed.
There is a still a LinkedIn account under the Ender name:
My Mission is to inspire you to live a conscious, heart-centered lifestyle now. I do it by sharing my life’s unfolding adventure tales with you in a fun to read and informative story style with lovable characters. To keep it interesting, I do crazy stuff, go on adventures, share the world’s secrets, do lifestyle design experiments and consciously explore life, all while keeping you in the know with my blog.
The blog has been taken down but is still on the Wayback Machine:
Aloha, and welcome to the adventure! Feel free to look around and make yourself at home. This website is based on a simple intention; to inspire you to live a conscious, heart-centered lifestyle now. Check out the Mission section to learn more in depth what I mean by that.
Now I’m not a crusty old guru claiming to have the latest cure, just a conscious 24 year old guy having a great time with my life in Hawaii, passionate about doing what feels right in my heart. My mission is to show you how you can do it too!
Through sharing my unfolding story with you, my dream is that you too will be able to shift to living a conscious, heart-centered lifestyle now. The experience of living life this way is wonderful and the benefits to your life and the lives of people around you are countless.
In order to keep my story interesting for you, I’m going to be doing some pretty crazy stuff like lifestyle design experiments, like trying out a raw food diet or Polyphasic sleep, going on adventures around the Big Island of Hawaii and abroad, sharing with you how I consciously deal with everyday life, and having tons of fun along the way.
All the while I’ll keep you in the know here on my website so you can experience what it’s like to live a conscious, heart-centered lifestyle now. If you would prefer to have me tell you when I’ve created new stuff to share, I recommend subscribing to my RSS feed on the left hand column. That way, you’ll know the very instant new content goes live.
I’m so grateful to be sharing this unfolding message with you. I want you to know I love you and that your life is going to turn out to be wonderful for you and everyone around you! Incredible abundance is your birth right, and no matter what you have been told before or think you see right now, incredible well-being and love are winning in our world. Stick around, we’re going to have a great time together.
He also had a section on the blog for donations:
If you feel like my work has made a difference and you’d like to help support my mission to spread ideas like following your heart and living consciously, please make a donation below. I’m really grateful for your support!
Being supported by my readers enables me to keep living my example of a conscious, heart-centered lifestyle and continue sharing the unfolding adventure with you!
To donate safely through PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the button below. The average donation for sites like mine is about $21. Thanks again for your support.
While he was living in Hawaii, he built a shack in Hilo and he rented it out on Airbnb.
In 2012, he met Megan Plante online.
Megan was born and raised in Canada in a Catholic family. She worked as a photography student, reiki practitioner and psychic before she met Jeff. She also worked at a Thai restaurant. She was living in Sedona, Arizona at the time they met online.
According to their self-published origin story, Jeff commented on one of her photos that she was “weirdly sexy.”
Megan wasn’t discouraged by Jeff’s unfiltered comment. One of her first private messages to Jeff, they later claimed, was “You horny?”
Megan offered to do a “psychic card reading” for Jeff. “I was a sucker for psychic card readings, and it was the most accurate reading I had ever received,” he wrote. “She was the clearest psychic I ever talked to.” The two carried on a long-distance relationship for months.
Megan was practising under a spiritual teacher at the time named Altonah Lampe. According to Vice, “Altonah taught Shaleia how to retrieve a spiritual name through the practice of conscious journeying.” Megan has gone by Shaleia ever since.
Altonah also taught Shaleia the mirror exercise, which became a central Twin Flames Universe practice. The exercise involves identifying an “upset,” writing it down, and then changing all the names and pronouns to point to one’s self. “My twin is ignoring me” becomes “I am ignoring me.” Once you see your own role in a situation, the exercise calls for self-love to heal it.
The couple met for the first time in 2014. Jeff joined Shaleia in Arizona at first. The two then moved to Hawaii and started a blog called Awakened Intimacy. They started making YouTube videos together in 2014.
By November 2023, their channel had 18k subscribers and their Facebook group had 14k members.
They started Twin Flames Universe in 2017.
If you’re not familiar with what Twin Flame is, the term was first used by English novelist Marie Corelli in her 1886 novel A Romance of Two Worlds. Related terms, such as “twin rays”, came into use in the early 20th century through Guy and Edna Ballard, founders of “I AM” Activity. A follower of the Ballards, American spiritualist Elizabeth Clare Prophet first popularized the contemporary concept of twin flames in her 1999 book, titled Soul Mates and Twin Flames: The Spiritual Dimension of Love and Relationships. In it, Prophet mixes Hindu, Buddhist, and evangelical Christian beliefs to argue that twin flames are two people with a permanent divine connection required for both to reach enlightenment or salvation.
Since Prophet’s popularization of the term, it has been used on some New Age spiritualism forums, where even more esoteric versions of the concept have developed.
The term has been used to describe two people who are equals and whose purpose is to push the other in their journey of self-discovery. Much like the idea of soulmates, one has no control over who one’s twin flame is, and usually, the twin flame reflects one’s own personality. The infatuation with twin flames has led to some unhealthy and problematic behaviors.
The couple offered the Twin Flame Ascension Course which was a paid online course. Vanity Fair journalist Alice Hines described the classes as “a therapeutic-spiritual reality show”. In 2020, the course cost $4,444 to purchase.
In 2019, the couple founded the Church of Union. The aim of the church was to “unify all religion under one spiritual umbrella”. Within the church, Jeff is the ‘Father Christ’, Shaleia the ‘Mother Christ’, and their daughter is the ‘Princess of all Creation’. Together, they are, ‘the Master Christ: Eternal Ruler of all Creation by God’s Living Hand’. They also run the “Mind Alignment Process”, an online service that claims to treat PTSD.
The couple has also claimed the ability to cure cancer and other medical conditions with a form of spiritual therapy.
TFU teaches that every individual has a “twin flame”, an intense variation of a soulmate, which Jeff and Shaleia will assign, and the member is encouraged to pursue their “twin flame” romantically. The group initially allowed outsiders to be assigned as twin flames, leading to instances of members facing restraining orders and criminal charges for stalking.
Vice interviewed a woman named Lenae Burchell who was a TFU devotee for a time. Lenae joined in 2019. She was 30 at the time. She purchased tickets for a two-day ‘ascension workshop’ which was to be held in Canada on July 27/28, 2019. Marketing materials for the event promised participants would “experience heaven on Earth.” Lenae was excited as it was a rare opportunity for members to meet Jeff and Shaleia.
Lenae has said she spent as much as 30 hours per week on TFU. She worked to keep up with coursework, she built lists of potential new students, and made sales calls—she did all the work for no remuneration or compensation.
Lenae has said that she grew obsessed with attracting her suggested “twin flame”—a married man that she had met at her gym. After repeated spiritual exercises that seemed to encourage fixation, she said she showed up at his work uninvited to prove her “alignment” with love and God. Lenae said that she was told that any rejection by the man was a result of her own failure to do spiritual work.
“I was a crazy person to him. He would tell me things like ‘I don’t want to see you, we’ll never be together,’” Lanae told VICE. “Normal Lanae would be like ‘Yeah, I’m going to respect this person’s boundaries.’”
A week before Lenae was due to attend the course in Toronto, she decided to leave and disconnect TFU, a decision which came after a fight with her family.
Other former students say they were gaslit and manipulated into volunteering hundreds of hours of free labour, exploited for thousands of dollars, discouraged from seeking professional mental healthcare, and cut off from their families. Parents say their kids are pressured to cut off all family contact unless they send money.
A woman named Louise Cole spoke about her daughter’s involvement with TFU. She thought her daughter was taking classes on Chinese medicine, not giving money to TFU.
“I didn’t connect all the dots,” she said. “She’d always been responsible, level-headed, smart with money.” Louise estimates she put as much as $5,000 toward Twin Flames-related travel, classes, and accommodations before her daughter cut off the whole family.
Some students faced arrest and involuntary psychiatric treatment in the wake of their involvement with Twin Flames Universe, ex-members said.
Twin Flames students paid $2,222 for unlimited access to relationship videos, $1,899 for unlimited life purpose videos, and about $200 per session for one-on-one work with a coach. If members sold a lifetime membership worth $2,222, they were eligible for a 10 percent commission—a milestone Lenae never reached during her six months of work.
Another ex-student said she quit her job at a top medical school to do social media, coaching and outreach for the group full-time.
People who resisted undertaking coaching were belittled and shamed in the group.
“Welcome to the real world folks, where scumbags will rape you until you die,” reads one Facebook post signed by “Jeff on Shaleia’s phone” on March 18, 2019, which blames students for not selling enough courses. “Jeff was not being a mean old ass. He was showing you reality. A reality you absolutely refused to see, even when it has been happening to you for weeks while you watch all that you love choke and die.”
A woman named Jessi Hersey came across TFU. She was taught to let go of her old self. She was spending around 10 hours a day consuming TFU content.
TFU coached Jessi to move across the country to be close to her twin flame. She did so in 2018.
In 2020, think peak covid time, lots of loneliness. Jessi was assigned a new gender identity by TFU.
They told Jessi that she was the ‘divine masculine’ half of a relationship that had been chosen by God.
This news from God shocked Jessi, who’d lived 30 years as a comfortably cis woman. “I never had gender dysphoria. I know the signs and symptoms,” she told VICE. . “I’ve literally lived with someone who transitioned.”
At the same time, Jeff was posting on YouTube, driving luxury sports cars and wearing designer clothes. He told his followers that these rewards came because of his relationship with God. He said that if people like Jessi were not reaping rewards, it was because they weren’t doing the spiritual work. They were ‘choosing separation’ from God and the group.
Jessi tried to make money as a coach for TFU, but it actually cost her money. She had to buy the newest courses and products and she had to pay a monthly coach licence fee.
Jessi made a Facebook Live in 2019 where she spoke about how all her funds were on hold.
After that video, Jeff and Shaleia banned her from talking about her financial issues. They said she was ‘choosing poverty consciousness’ and that she was contaminating group meetings by talking about her issues.
“I was lying my butt off,” she recalled, “saying I have a great job where I make great money even though I didn’t.”
Jessi ended up having to declare bankruptcy to get out of the financial hole that TFU had left her in.
In April 2019, a TFU student took their own life. Messages about the situation were viewed by the media.
One member of the Twin Flames “executive board” said the woman declined one-on-one “mind alignment” therapy sessions with Jeff shortly before her suicide. In the chat, group members offered each other support, but decided not to recognize or remember the student in the larger Facebook group.
Another ex-member said she joined Twin Flames in the aftermath of a serious health scare and a breakup with an abusive partner. She told VICE that she was also coached to ignore rejection and escalate contact with her so-called twin flame, even after he filed a restraining order. She says the group encouraged her to violate that court order, resulting in an arrest and ongoing legal issues.
TFU have threatened media agencies such as Vice in the past.
This is an excerpt from a 2023 Vice article:
In the wake of my first story, Twin Flames Universe sent strongly-worded letters to anyone suspected of cooperating with my reporting. They accused them of lying and bullying. “You will write a complete and effective collective retraction and apologize for the lies you told about us,” reads part of one letter.
The letters went on to describe life-ruining consequences if the former students chose not to retract their stories. I wrote a follow-up story about the letters, which threatened imminent lawsuits, police investigations, bankruptcy, jail time, and the publication of “VERY revealing and VERY uncomfortable” information.
In June 2020, Jeff and Shaleia filed lawsuits against seven former members and one parent.
The legal proceedings went on for almost a year, until a judge ruled in March 2021 that the Michigan courts were not the proper jurisdiction for the proceedings.
The judge noted the “apparent bad faith” behind the legal action and declined to transfer to a different court. One parent attempted to get the courts to sanction the Ayans, so they couldn’t file another action, but the judge declined to do so.
This is an interesting post on Reddit about TFU:
Jeff and Shaleia have denied multiple times that they are running a cult. “A cult is a (sic) organization of abuse that systematically takes from and harms its members to enrich its founder,” Jeff told VICE. “We created an organization of love and harmony which heals and enriches everyone in it and everyone who is connected to anyone in it.”
Jeff acknowledged that he and Shaleia have referred to themselves as “The Master Christ, eternal ruler of all Creation by God’s loving hand” online, but countered that they believe everyone else is Christ, too. “To call someone ‘Christ’ is to reference their natural and harmonious relationship with their Divine Creator,” he wrote.
“We have heard of some people contacting police and threatening to pursue legal action, but nothing ever transpired because we are doing nothing even remotely illegal,” Jeff wrote. “We are aware of what is right and wrong and we consciously and diligently ensure that everything we do is legal and moral.”
Jeff and Shaleia do seem to be doing well out of TFU. As we have mentioned before, they drive different luxury vehicles including Corvettes and Porsches.
Jeff said “Shaleia and I have become wealthy from sharing the blessing of our work with the world. This is the American Dream, to come from nothing and make something of yourself.” But he also denied being motivated by money: “What we do has never been driven by money, but by a desire to heal suffering in the world.”
SOURCE LIST
https://people.com/escaping-twin-flames-jeff-shaleia-where-are-they-now-8399887
https://www.instagram.com/jefflovesshaleia/?hl=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Flames_Universe
CLIPS USED IN THE PODCAST