I thought I could hold this forever—keep it tucked away until the “right” time.
I believed I had fully integrated it, and that one day I would simply tell the story at an “appropriate” time
The truth is, we are still in the process. The process never ends.
Integration happens in phases.
I’ve been sitting with a deep grief. It has many layers. I am only naming one of them here: the strange sorrow of knowing what it will mean to publish—to forever live with a book that is finished and placed on the table for its final revisions.
There are parts of this story filled with splendor and awe. There are parts that are truly horrific.
With exposure and vulnerability comes strength—but also real weight.
And that weight must be sat with. Integrated.
It’s with a heavy heart that I share this.
Keith Wilson was one of my teachers. His cacao ceremonies opened doors for me—extraordinary ones. None of the healing work I now offer, would have been possible without the teachers who laid a foundation on this path. Keith was one of them.
His intentions were good. Most of his talk was good.
His methods were often deeply questionable. With trauma informed and power aware understanding, I look back with a lot of criticism at much of what I was taught there.
For me, his work brought both illumination and burden.
The clearest example of methods that were unacceptable—and ultimately harmful—happened during my second year working with him in 2014. In one ceremony, I described feeling anger beneath the surface. I sensed it was there, but I couldn’t access it. That’s what I shared when it was my turn “in the hot seat.”
Keith proposed a special exercise. He did not fully explain the mechanics. I don’t claim to remember every detail—what instructions were given, what framing accompanied the tool, what was omitted.
But the structure was this:
I lay down on his porch. About ten people pressed their hands onto my body. He told me to get up—while instructing them to prevent me from doing so, pressing firm against me to keep me from moving.
It continued until I was very provoked. As I became more alarmed, he eventually came over, covered my mouth with his hand, and yelled at me to “GET UP!”
I became flooded with rage, adrenaline—who knows what else—until I forced myself up, pushing people, pushing him off me.
I let out primal screams as my nervous system flooded. Afterward, the energy was frenetic and intense. I was held, breathed with, guided to “let the light in,” to fill the space of whatever had just been released.
That process is representative of the broader pattern. For a very long time, it has been recognized that methods involving both primal screaming and flooding with traumatic memory lead to more harm and worsening of symptoms… not healing. Keith’s methods opposed this often, leading many to continual flooding and sometimes re-traumitization. On occasion, he’d push people into traumatic material without consent.
There was a conflation of intensity with healing. A pushing of people into extreme catharsis, confession, confrontation—interwoven with genuine wisdom, warmth, and inspiration.
And yet, the process itself was destabilizing.
I am not here to outline every detail of Keith’s power dynamics or teaching style. But there was a dominating quality to it—subtle, well-disguised. A kind of soft authoritarianism. I’m going to wait to fully explain things as I experienced and remember and have integrated them in my book.
Until then, I’m willing to have dialogue with anyone who feels upset, offended, or believes I’m doing harm by speaking about this.
It feels very important to share this because the grief from this mixes with my grief for the collective struggle and grief from my own shortcomings.
Some of my most regretful dialogues in the past are moments that I spoke under the spell of some of the narratives I inherited from Keith.
I’m sure I sat in at least 100 ceremonies with Keith. He really taught a mixed bag of teachings from the teachers who helped him, as we all do. Some of these teachings were genuine and liberating. Some were imprisoning and really served the interests of patriarchy and dominator culture in many ways.
Yes, some teachings on healing still live with my daily. For other narratives, I have had to grow into opposing counter-narratives and integrate them to live a truly holistic life.
Many of these distorted teachings were those that defaulted towards simplistic thinking. Keith would often tell us to throw out all the -isms, religions, philosophies, political theories– and adapt his magical worldview.
A lot of the teachings we got from New Age sources were simplified psychology and they were effective to various extents. Yet as we were taught to be cautious about our rational minds, it came with such a tone that actually felt like “discard your rational mind altogether.”
I saw many take a dark and selfish path after spending years receiving these teachings. It’s very counter to how Keith lived somehow. He spent all his time working and supporting others, donating a lot to the indigenous community in Guatemala and helping others awaken their magic and build their lives. There’s no doubt that much of this work was good and important work.
However, there were many psychological hooks in the process to methods and beliefs that are ultimately harmful to both practitioners and to the collective.
I will stand behind this platform without denying the good my teacher and friend also brought into this world. I have a lot of love for him and I still feel his spirit close to me.
In the spirit of service to a common and egalitarian good, I understand the importance of opening this conversation.
The issue in a lot of new age frameworks is the fear and resistance to all expressions of ambiguity. There was an aspect of Keith’s worldview that was dualistic and black and white. Those who live in that worldview interpret all criticism as a total assault on the person in question. Understanding people as complex and built of many parts with their own drives and beliefs is very important in giving a fair and caring assessment of anyone. What must be understood is not merely intentions, but the helpful and harmful consequences of all actions and teachings.
It’s with love for my community I share this. And it’s with grief as well. Grief because the illusion shatters, and I wonder how people will respond. The teacher on the pedestal falls. The pedastilized story of learning from someone impeccable falls. It’s a vulnerable position to be taken seriously and so there has been a lot of delay in saying this.
I could not say it in full during Keith’s life as I saw with others a pattern. Whenever Keith was confronted, he would shut down and mentally play dead. It was a kind of trick to distract and divert attention to some other process as quickly as possible. When one questioned him, there was a defeated stance “I guess we are done here.”
As annoyed and existential about it all as I got with time, I couldn’t bear the burden of my complete truth for a long time because I knew it would be the total end of our connection. And I wanted to at least be friendly with the man who helped me so much till he returned to Spirit. I do get a sense he is OK with me saying all this. After all, he told all of us it was our job to go beyond him.
That can be the issue with teachers. Like with the Kundlini yoga people, Yogi Bhajan said that after so many years after his death they would have to invent a new “Aquarian Sadhana” practice. When the time finally came, the 3HO organization just decided to keep things as they’d always been.
“You’re free now,” says the master to the bird in the cage.
I also want to say one thing about trauma. The moment on the porch where I was pinned down and assaulted, with a degree of consent, was something that I celebrated at a point. I thought it was making me stronger. Later, I would see how it programmed me to seek intensity and it normalized a behavior in alternative healing spaces that’s toxic. It was the “gateway” to increasingly extreme types of catharsis (toxic authoritarian shadow work) that get marketed as healing. That’s a more complex story.
When you really see a pattern and you look back at the moments of trauma that helped develop that pattern, the way those moments feel changes drastically in our memories. It may seem “OK” for a time and eventually you really understood what happened and why it was so grave. It stops being a moment, but instead you see it as the moment you installed a new app on your hardware. The app ran since then and caused all sorts of troubles. It was not an easy one to uninstall, with just a click. It was a virus.
Keith was not shy of using public humiliation as a teaching tactic for people who were vulnerable and confused, and he did it often with males and his “favorites.” He covertly fostered his student’s dependence on him and his space. He downplayed the importance of other healing modalities and paths to champion his simplistic teachings. I’ve had many conversations with those who agree with me over the years.
One point brought up by another is that his whole “empath training” story was essentially a way to help people train themselves to bypass their own empathy for others.
Ending on a good note for now at least, Keith turned me onto Bashar and other teachings that sent me on my path. He made jokes on the porch when I returned after a long time that I was “a prodigal son.” He had that kind of relationship with me and other students. Though the thing is, as clearly was demonstrated on the porch, we don’t heal our relationships with our parents by pretending they are angels.
Thus, we cannot spiritually mature and individuate while going on pretending our spiritual parents were angels. That’s so far from the truth. The positive impact he had does not cancel out blindspots and the harm he caused. True wisdom and compassion does not narrow onto the good details; it sees the full picture and tells the full story.
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