Twin Flames: Twin Documentaries

Craig Shearer - 20 November 2023

And speaking of documentaries, there’s recently been not one, but two short documentary series on streaming platforms about the Twin Flames Universe cult, each with three episodes.

I’ve recently finished watching the one on Netflix: Escaping Twin Flames, which is categorised as a true crime documentary - though I’m not sure that a crime was ever established. There’s another one on Amazon Prime Video: Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe, which I’ve started watching but have yet to finish.

The concept of twin flames is a supposed destined romantic and spiritual connection between two people, or souls. Rather than it just being someone’s “true love”, it is claimed that a twin flame is an intermingling of souls that crosses lifetimes. It was popularised by a controversial American spiritual leader by the name of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. I thought this to be a suspicious sounding name, but she came by it through marriage to husband Mark L Prophet, and together they ran a new age religious organisation originally named The Summit Lighthouse, though renamed to the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) upon Mark’s death in the 1970s. Elizabeth took over the organisation and renamed it, eventually being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and dying in 2009.

Interestingly, Prophet was predicting nuclear holocaust in the 1980s, and encouraged members of her church to build fallout shelters in Montana. Obviously, such prophecies didn’t come to fruition.

Prophet was into new-age spiritual concepts (aka nonsense) and published various books, with the one related to Twin Flames being published in 1999 - titled Soul Mates and Twin Flames: The Spiritual Dimension of Love and Relationships.

Various celebrities over the years have claimed to have found their soulmate, or “twin flame”. I guess it’s a common human experience for many who experience an intense period of a new relationship to feel that they’ve found their soulmate, “love of my life”, or twin flame.

The documentaries, however, focus on the business called Twin Flames Universe (TFU), run by a couple - Jeffrey (Jeff) and Shaleia Divine. Speaking of suspicious names, this one really is one. Jeff was born as Jeffrey Ayan, and eventually changed his name to Jeffrey Divine, after going through a phase where he called himself Ender Ayanethos, which is a reference to the Orson Scott Card series of novels: Ender’s Game. Shaleia started out as Megan Plante, then as Megan Ayan when she married Jeff, then changing her surname to Divine.

Naturally, Jeff and Shaleia claim to be twin flames themselves.

Jeff did a business degree, and certainly put it to good (?) use. The Divines cashed in on the concept of Twin Flames, initially by creating YouTube videos starting in 2014, and then setting up the organisation in 2017, then founding a church in 2019. The organisation produced video training courses which essentially teach people how to find their own true love - their own Twin Flame.

Of course, people can watch the YouTube content for free on the Twin Flames Universe channel, but it would appear that it’s easy to get drawn into paying money for content.

The video training courses are super expensive, amounting to many thousands of US dollars.

So, you can sign up for their “best value” course for USD $4444 (which equates to about NZD $7,500 as I write this).

It’s certainly an expensive proposition, but who can put a price on finding their true love? We’ve certainly seen plenty of other exploits online where people are scammed out of large amounts of money in the pursuit of romance - known as romance scams.

The Netflix documentary I watched focused on the lives of various people who were involved with TFU, being drawn into it at vulnerable points in their life. But these people weren’t just innocent consumers of the content, but rather drawn into becoming “Ascension Coaches”. This is probably the most ingenious part of the business - in leveraging the work of others to make videos and scale things up that way.

Visiting the TFU website, they have a page where you can fill in a form and be connected with a Certified Ascension Coach.

Just a few of the Certified Ascension Coaches!

That image shows just a few, but what most amused me about this is that each of those pictures leads to an independent website that each “coach” has set up for their own work. They’ve all been very creative with selecting domain names. Here’s a sampling:

Presumably, all these people have done a course:

Or even “The Everything Package”:

It’s certainly easy to see how these people got rich off this.

The TFU organisation is most certainly a cult, in my opinion, and it features classic characteristics of cult-like behaviour. Jeff is treated as a revered figure, and in some of the video footage I saw, he characterised himself as the second coming of Jesus. Members of TFU are encouraged to sever ties with family members and friends. And members are pressured into doing things and manipulating others in ways uncharacteristic of their usual personalities.

They started their YouTube channel in 2014, and appeared to act like a typical pair of internet influencers. From that time, they have quite a body of videos, but once they started their business they started running meetings online, where selected subscribers could join, or have one-on-one meetings with Jeff and Sheleia. The excerpts of these meetings show some pretty manipulative behaviour by the Divines.

What these people are doing is offering counselling to people, but they’re completely untrained. This sounds super-dangerous to me!

As the documentary played out, it showed that the training encouraged members to identify the person they thought was their twin flame, and then pursue that person. Essentially they were given licence to stalk people, and eventually restraining orders were being issued - on good grounds.

As the organisation evolved, (and forgive me if this sounds cynical, but it does seem they were making it up as they went along), it was “revealed” that people’s twin flames were actually other members of the TFU organisation. I guess this solved the issue of stalking, but it then raised another issue - that most of the members of the organisation were women.

The documentary then took a very dark turn, where it was revealed that the teachings of Jeff and Sheleia were that every relationship had a divine feminine and divine masculine aspect to it. This meant that there were members of the organisation who weren’t expressing their true gender, and ended up being pressured into transitioning to a different gender. Some of the members of the organisation went as far as to have Top Surgery - most commonly women having mastectomies to have their breasts removed, and their chests masculinised - as well as taking gender transitioning hormone therapy.

The whole thing felt very icky to me - like the worst excesses of America wrapped up into a package, with aspects of prosperity gospel teaching with a good dose of new age self-help mania. The Divine’s wealth was often flaunted, with pictures of lavish houses and lifestyle purchases, all funded by the income from their videos and courses.

The pressuring of people to transition to another gender seemed to be an awful outcome, and it would appear that those who went through it now have regrets. I found that the documentary handled this aspect very well by interviewing actual transgender experts. The expert stated:

“… because we, as trans people, want everyone to have ownership of their own body and be able to present ourselves and find love as who we are. And that’s what Jeff and Shaleia think is a threat to their business model.”

The documentary then followed up with conclusions from recent studies into transgender surgery - finding that less than 1% regretted their transition.

It would seem that thousands of people have been affected by TFU, and in some respects, have had their lives ruined or at least severely disrupted.

Alas, at the end of the documentary, the usual closing text stated that authorities had investigated, but no charges were made.

Jeff and Shaleia Divine appear to be a pair of American hucksters who have struck it rich. One can only hope that eventually their misdeeds will catch up with them and they’ll deservedly spend some time behind bars. It’s a shame that Karma isn’t a real thing!

Regarding the Amazon Prime documentary, as I mentioned at the start, I’ve only begun watching it, but it does seem to focus more on the background to the cult, and how people are drawn into it. It is certainly worth a watch.