As enlightening as the discussion on Thursday evening was for the hundreds that tuned in to listen to Keely Griffin, Twin Flames Universe (TFU) survivor, perhaps no one had as monumental a day as she did.
Griffin took a drive up to Suttons Bay hours before the event to face her fears. She wanted to drive past the home of TFU founders’ Jeff and Shaleia Ayan, however, she had no idea Jeff would be outside. When Griffin saw him, to her surprise, she waved as he looked back her way in anger.
“I was able to face Jeff in physical and wave and say ‘I’m here and I’m not afraid of you,’” said Griffin, who intentionally chose to wear a red colored dress Thursday.
“He never liked people dressing in powerful colors, and I think red is said to be a powerful color,” she added. “Especially women, he doesn’t want any of the women to outshine him in any way.”
Over 600 people in person and via livestream listened in to hear from Griffin and cult expert/author Dr. Janja Lalich at the City Opera House. Both Griffin and Lalich were featured in the trending Netflix documentary “Escaping Twin Flames,” which first aired in November.
“We wanted to do this event for Leelanau County and for all the people in the area to personally connect with a Twin Flames Universe survivor and a cult expert to better understand what is going on in their backyard,” said Traverse City National Writers Series Executive Director and cofounder Anne Stanton. “My hope is that something good will come out of it.”
In the Netflix series, former followers describe TFU as a controlling cult and recount their personal and disturbing experiences within the “spiritual wellness business.” A Suttons Bay couple, Jeff and Shaleia (Megan Plante), are behind TFU as well as their most recent venture “Church of Union.” The Ayan’s have gone by different names in the last decade, but now call themselves Jeff and Shaleia “Divine.”
Griffin said since leaving TFU in June 2021, she and other family members of loved ones still in the cult have been contacted by investigators from the Michigan Attorney General’s Office and the Internal Revenue Service. Although Griffin could not confirm whether there was a current investigation, she said they’re hoping there is one.
“Really when it comes down to it, they are a cult,” Griffin said. “To see how dangerous it is and how little autonomy people in the cult actually have in order to leave or to make choices… looking at it like that, it’s a much more serious situation.”
TFU claims to help followers find “harmonious union” with soul mates, or “twin flames,” through costly online coaching and classes. While TFU’s says its community is founded on “love and mutual respect,” ex-members in the documentary say otherwise, and go into detail about the Suttons Bay couple’s dangerous and coercive control tactics. Some of the accusations include pressuring members to change their gender identity in order to find their twin flame and to stop communication with their families.
Cult red flags
It took Griffin six months of seeing “red flags,” like TFU members suffering from symptoms of abuse, to realize what she was experiencing. At the time, she said she became very paranoid, depressed, and anxious and was left feeling disoriented until eventually there was just so much that she “couldn’t unsee” and had to leave.
Griffin is still on a long road of recovery and is working on mending relationships not just with her family which she became isolated from while in TFU, but also herself.
“I was cut off and isolated, but there’s also a lot of stigma involved with being in a cult… I think they (family) thought I was doing this because I wanted to do it — which couldn’t be farther from the truth,” Griffin said. “Everything was twisted, they break down your confidence completely, they make you feel like you’re the problem… It’s like the most intimate details, your gender, your sexuality, your core personal identity, your physical body parts, all of that is controlled… It’s such an all encompassing kind of control, but it’s so hard to spot because they (TFU members) are also trained to believe that they are making these choices themselves.”
That kind of control is something cult expert Lalich knows all too well. Lalich was once in a cult herself in the 70s and 80s, and said in her 35 years of research, that TFU falls on the harmful end of the cult spectrum because of their level of control, financial and emotional exploitation of members.
“They’re taking young women who are so vulnerable who never in their life dreamed of being trans or changing their sex and convincing them to do this. It’s the kind of thing once you do, you can’t undo, and it’s just tragic and it’s right here in your backyard,” Lalich said. “This isn’t just some goofy people, there are crimes happening in Suttons Bay and on the internet to these young women and around the world.”
One of the hardest things for people to understand is what it takes to leave these groups once fully indoctrinated, Lalich said, noting that it becomes the whole person’s life and everything they know.
“Your whole life depends on staying in that organization because they’ve also promised you this salvation, whatever that salvation means in that particular group,” Lalich said. “Leaving means not only giving up salvation, but it means giving up the whole world you’ve been living in… so they plant these fears in you which makes it harder to leave.”
Another myth Lalich and Griffin wanted to dispel is the view that cult members are weak or not intelligent. Lalich said some members are people with college degrees, a career, work in business, and have valuable work skills to benefit the group.
“Cults actually target and prey on those that are highly intelligent, highly empathetic, and all around really great people because they need them to run those businesses because cult leaders are really lazy, especially Jeff,” Griffin explained. “They need people to be spokespersons for their organization to recruit other people… All the people in TFU have goals and a drive and they want to help, they want to heal and live a happy life, but they can’t do that inside the cult. I would like them to know it’s possible, but only if they leave his control.”
In 2023, Jeff and Shaleia’s first baby, Grace, was born, and the child’s protection and wellbeing has been another major concern for both Griffin and Lalich based on Jeff’s claims that he is a “messiah or god.”
“If you watch the documentary, you know that he (Jeff) said very clearly, baby Grace is only going to have sex with god, and who is god? Jeff, so it’s a real concern,” Lalich said. “It’s one of the things that I think you as a community here need to think about how to hopefully save that child.”
A TFU spiritual life summit is marked for June 13-16 in Traverse City, but an exact location has yet to be announced. Griffin said the upcoming summit, as well as the 20-30 higher ranking TFU members that have already moved to the area, is very concerning. In terms of Jeff and Shaleia finding a physical location for TFU’s Church of Union, Griffin said she’s unsure if they’ve purchased any land yet besides their Suttons Bay home.
“I think a lot of people are aware that they’re having an event in June, which I think is a big middle finger to this community and to the world after all of this has aired and all of the horrible things that they’ve done is out in public,” Griffin said.
Jeff has also talked about an apocalyptic event since 2020, Griffin said, which has her equally, if not more concerned.
“That’s very concerning to me just given the history of other cults like this when they start talking about those types of things,” she said. “They could foreshadow some kind of violent event or god forbid, a mass suicide, but I think that it is possible.”
Paula Hardy traveled with her husband, Edward, from Arizona to support Griffin at the Traverse City event. Hardy and her mother, Louise, were featured in the same Netflix docuseries, where she shared what it’s been like having her twin sister, Stephanie Zimmermann, join TFU.
Hardy has not been able to get in contact with Stephanie since she joined Twin Flames, but has hopes that her sister will read her message in the future.
“I love her dearly, she always has her family no matter what’s happened in the past, we will always be there for her, which is the truth of unconditional love,” Hardy said. “I also respect and trust her decisions, and I don’t want her to feel disempowered in this situation either, so I don’t want to tell her to leave and I don’t want to tell her what she has to do, she gets enough of that in the group. So instead, I will just send my love to her and let her know that I’m here waiting if and when she ever wants to reach back out.”
