REWIND: Elana Auerbach - OneTaste (aka the Orgasm Cult)

Episode 19: Lola Blanc & Meagan Elizabeth interview Elana Auerbach, former follower of sexual wellness company OneTaste--elsewhere deemed the Orgasm Cult--in its early years. Elana discusses being the founder's right hand woman as the program developed, and how the sexual practice involving stimulating a woman's genitals evolved into what's now called Orgasmic Meditation. They discuss how Elana came to center her life around the founder, how she was manipulated, and what snapped her out of it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Trust me.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Trust me.

Speaker 3 (00:04):
I'm like a swat person.

Speaker 4 (00:06):
I've never lied to you.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme
belief and the abusive power from two apostates who actually
experienced it. I am Lola.

Speaker 5 (00:22):
Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I can't believe we've never said apostates, Wow, that was
a good one.

Speaker 5 (00:27):
I can believe that we haven't.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
That's where we differ, Matt. Today, our guest is Elana Auerbach,
former follower of the sexual wellness company One Taste, deemed
the orgasm cult by the BBC podcast of the same name,
and that is what it is. One Taste is known
for hosting orgasmic meditation circles with the women all lying
in a circle getting fingered together. It's fascinating, but whatever

(00:52):
you think of the sexual element, it has a history
of being destructive and abusive. So Elana's going to tell
us about how she was there in the very beginning
when it's founder Nicole Daydon. I think I'm saying that right.
Daydon was first developing her sexual program, figuring out her
jargon and perfecting her methods of manipulation.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
We're going to talk about how after her divorce, Ilana
went from exploring her own pleasure with her partner to
centering her entire life around Nicole, working for free and
spending thousands of dollars for training to have an hour
long orgasm that never materialized. That would be really disappointing.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
There is so much sex talk in this episode, y'all,
So if you don't want to hear us talk about pussies,
do not listen to this one. Also, some descriptions that
could be triggering that are related to assaults, so just
be aware of that. In the meantime, Megan, we have
the same cultiest things and we're going to talk about
it together.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Dude, somebody's going to jail for over a thousand.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Years this story. I can't believe I'm just learning about this.
It seems like it's so deep. There's like so much
which information. This man has been in the public eye
in Turkey for so long. I I'm sure we're only
scratching the surface. But Adnan, I think it's pronounced oak charm.
So he was arrested. He is a Muslim televangelist sex

(02:13):
cult leader. Is that a good description.

Speaker 5 (02:15):
Anythink, yes, creationism, Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
He preached creationism. He's like anti Darwin is how you
wrote this like eight hundred page book on how Darwin
is wrong. Meanwhile, he has literally no background in science.
He went to school for interior design. So that's how
you know you can trust him as the authority on science.
I don't really understand the inner workings of Like it
seems like he maybe was linked to a coup in Turkey,

(02:38):
but I don't know if that's real. He says that
he's Islamic, but he rejects the different ways of thinking
about it, and so he's got his own thing going
on that he's sort of perverted. Now, am I describing that? Okay?

Speaker 4 (02:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, I mean I think it's I think it's really fascinating,
and you're describing it perfectly. He's just basically essentially when
you boil it down, as kind of a like pem.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Okay, y'all. So he's what I imagine Trump will be in
like five years. He has his like show that he
does where he talks about religion. But on this show
he's got this like brood of women who all have
a very similar face they all have this like heavily
plastic surgery, bleach blonde, big boobs, scantily clad outfits look

(03:23):
going on, and they're just like chilling in this room
while he's preaching his shit, and it is so fucking weird.
Not that there's anything wrong with having surgery, but I
would suspect, because the crimes he's been sentenced for include
sexual assault, sexual abuse of miners, among other things, I
suspect that he probably has something to do with why
they all look the same.

Speaker 5 (03:44):
Yes, yes, I suspect the same as well.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I think that there's probably gonna be a lot more
information coming out on this.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh my god, this stuff is so interesting and fucked up.

Speaker 6 (03:52):
So.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
One of the women at his trial told the court
he repeatedly sexually abused her in other women. Some of
the women he raped were forced to take contraceptive pills.
One joined when she was seventeen. There were sixty nine
thousand contraception pills found in his home.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Did you see where he says that they were for
their skin? He was like, the contraception pills are for
their skins. Like, oh, thank you, he's just being nice,
you guys.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Oh that's as sweet of him. Yeah, he says, I
am extraordinarily potent.

Speaker 5 (04:22):
Yeah, that is a great quote. He is just the worst,
isn't he.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah, he's the fucking worst, And apparently he's got a
lot of people who buy his shit. He Oh, he
used to be a Holocaust denier. He like wrote a
whole book about that, and now he pretends that never happened.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Now he says that his friend actually wrote that book
and he was like, yeah, you can publish it under
my name, because he.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
Was just like being nice.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
But at the end of the day, of course he's
saying no, I don't really think that.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Once again, so sweet of him, He's so sweet. Yeah.
He also, funnily enough, maybe this is just a thing
that all cult leaders do or abusers, because he refers
to the women in his crew as his kittens, like
Armie Hammer, like probably fifteen thousand other men who have
like a group of women who they abuse. Yeah, so Oakjar,

(05:09):
oak Jar, He's quite a guy. Thankfully, he will be
in prison for over one thousand years. God, he's the worst. Anyway.
I'm sure that if we have any Turkish listeners, you
probably know way more about this guy than we do.
So if you have anything you think would be important
for us to add. Please let us know. I know

(05:29):
nothing about Turkish politics. I have to say I'm very
ignorant in that department. Yeah, so that's Oktar.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
There's a lot of crazy people out there, you know.
Luckily there's a lot of Ilana's too, though.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
She's so cool. Anyway, y'all, I love this episode. I
hope you like it. Here we go, Hello and welcome
Ilana Auerbox. Thank you, whose name I butchered three times.

(06:00):
I'm so happy to talk to you today. One Taste
is something that is just like absolutely fascinating, and some
of these stories are horrific. Can't wait to get into
it with you. So just to give people like a
light overview and tell me if I'm describing this correctly.
One Taste is a San Francisco based sexuality focused wellness
in quotes company that promotes a practice called orgasmic meditation

(06:22):
or om. And OM is a fifteen minute long practice
in which a clothed man lightly fingers in a very
specific way a woman who's naked from the waist down,
without it turning into sex, and without it being a
reciprocal encounter. It's strictly for the connection of the orgasm
for the woman alone, and I saw in the demonstration

(06:44):
video the man is supposed to wear gloves. It's supposed
to be done on the floor, and it used to
be done in group circles, but they've sense abolished the
group practice. Is that correct?

Speaker 4 (06:52):
That is what I understand when I was there.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
It was before Nicole changed the name, which was a
brilliant marketing scheme to call it owming.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Nicole refers to One Tastes founder Nicole Day Doom.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
So she didn't invent this practice. This was a practice.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Called deliberate orgasm, and when I was involved back in
two thousand and four, that's what it was called. So
deliberate orgasm, from what I understand, originated with this guy
sixties seventies named Vic Baranco, Okay, who ran these more
houses all over the Bay area.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Morehouses refers to these sort of communes where everybody has sex.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
And people who were involved some of them. You know,
it was a hedonistic communities. They had very strict rules.
And I was never involved. I knew some people who
were involved. I knew people who considered it a cult
as well, and Nicole knew Vic, and I think was
involved in one of the houses.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
I'm not really sure.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
I got involved in what I called the pleasure community
back in two thousand and two I had left my
former husband. You know, each of us, from my experience,
have a lot of different.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
Aspects of ourselves.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
You could even look at them through the lens of
different archetypes, right that transcend culture, transcend divisions. So I
like to look at this story and my involvement with
Nicole and one Taste through the lens of the Eve
and Lilith archetype. So the good girl and kind of
the bad girl seductors. And so I was the quintessential

(08:35):
good girl, always doing what I was supposed to be doing.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
And that's kind of how I grew up and.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Even into my young adulthood, even into my first marriage.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
So Lilith was like banging on my door.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
After a few years into that marriage, and I, you know,
finally said when this guy had proposed a few years prior,
what I should have said in that moment, you know,
when he proposed in this volcano erupted in my belly,
was like ah and tears come down.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
He's like, well does that mean yes?

Speaker 3 (09:07):
And I, well, I guess I answer, you know, like
this mean you've like, okay, whatever you want, darling.

Speaker 4 (09:16):
So I finally did have.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
The courage to say I have to leave this marriage.
I left the marriage. And I had been like, I'm
going to get a quote for you from Clarissa pinkla Estes,
who wrote that.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Book Women Who Run with the Wolves, which is.

Speaker 7 (09:33):
A fabulous book for everybody, and she's a youngiin psychoanalyst.
It really describes where I was at at the time,
which is this is a quote from her book, Women
Who Run with the Wolves. Overkill through excesses or excessive
behavior like alcohol, drugs, anger, promiscuity, or even body fitness
and junk food is acted out by women who are

(09:55):
famished for a life that has meaning and makes sense
for them.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
And so I fit into that really perfectly.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
And I was thinking, you know, as I read this recently,
that that's true for you know, how particularly women can
be susceptible to getting involved with colts for sure, because
you know, however, we're unculturated.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
Whatever wounding we have in childhood, however we're trying to
make it.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
By disconnecting from our authenticity and going along with you know,
accommodating others can just get along, to go along and get.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
Along, and you know, that whole story so makes me
want to throw off.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
And I have such compassion for you know, many of us,
not all of us, but many of us who have
lived through that or are still living that.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
And so I left this marriage.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
And I had a friend who's still a dear friend
of mine, who was involved in this pleasure community.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
And so she was hosting a course at her house
and I said, sure, I'll come. I mean, I'm single,
now I'm ready. Let's explore.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
And so this man named Erewhon who led the pleasure course.
I called them the pleasure people. And so I went
to the course. It was a day long thing and
it was similar. He also had been trained by VIC.
He had been involved with this another group called the
Welcomed Consensus, which was an offshoot of the Moorhouses. Everyone

(11:26):
was involved there. Then he came to San Francisco started
his own groups. I had a fun time in the group.
A couple months later, I signed up for the advanced course.
I didn't even want to go to it. I ended
up going in his kitchen because he used to host
in his apartment in San Francisco. I met this guy,
and it was kind of like that, Oh my god,

(11:47):
where do I know you from? I recognize you? Turns
out that's Bill, who's my man, who's still my mom
and my partner, the father of my son and all
of that. That's a little spoiler for So I met him.
We were in this course, and of course I just

(12:08):
wanted to take him back to my place, but especially
I did, and so this is where I met Bill,
and he was also interested in just exploring my pleasure.
It was all about, primarily, uh, this practice of deliberate
orgasm where one person and it wasn't only the woman,
but you know where one person is at effect, so

(12:28):
just lying down receiving and the other person is at cause,
so either stroking, stroking the genitals. Okay, so we in
the course we did switch off and I was stroking
Bill and he stroked me, and so we became research partners,
researching orgasm, but primarily my orgasms.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
It was fun.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
We had an open relationship, which meant that we could
date whoever we wanted. So it was super edgy for
me being like serial monogamousts.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
I mean both of us had been serial monogamists.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
You know, my divorce wasn't even final when I had,
you know, med Bill, And so we're involved this fun
and this is a group of super sexy, beautiful, fun,
titillating people that we would join. They'd have game nights
every week and so forth. So we're hanging out with

(13:18):
this group for about a year or so. And the
following summer, so this is the summer of two thousand
and three, I'm hearing about this woman, Nicole, who had
been a former lover of air Ones when they were
in the Welcomed Consensus or something, and so I keep
hearing about her, and I'm hearing about her, and this

(13:38):
one night that it was a games night happened to
be down in Brisbane, which is a sleepy suburb of
San Francisco, just south of San Francisco. So Bill and
I show up and there is this woman on the
couch who it's not that she's so beautiful, and she's
certainly an attractive woman, but it was just her magnetism
in her charisma. And I was at a time in

(14:02):
my life, pretty much my whole life up till then,
where I would my go to was to look outside
myself for approval and for what I should be doing
for interest, for purpose, for guidance, for everything.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Like it was always like out there, it's going to
be out there.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Well then I seen Nicole and even though Airwan is
supposedly the leader of this group, she has got him
wrapped around her finger.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
And I've known.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Air one now for maybe a year and a half,
and I've seen him lead groups and he's a very
strong leader, and yet he's like putty in her hands, right,
And the way she works the room, and I mean
I really put her up on a pedestal, like this
is what an empowered woman looks.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Like, right, And I want to be that, right.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
I yes, I wanted to find who that was in me,
But it's like emulating her, like that's what that means.

Speaker 4 (14:54):
Right.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
So Nicole and Irwan started working together co leading groups.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
In fact, I mean, this is an interesting thing one
of the.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Things that Vic did because I remember watching from the
nineteen seventies or nineteen eighties a demo, and a demo
was a demonstration of a woman in orgasm for one hour.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
WHOA yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah is.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
That it is because you train, you know, it's very
serious training.

Speaker 5 (15:23):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Wow, it's like the marathon version of an orgasm got it.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
Well.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
And really what it is is it's a practice of
continuing to expand and expand and dissolve into sensation so
that you know, often and I speak from my own
experience of you know, when the orgasm it's like you
go over the edge, and you know it's building, building, building, building,
and then you go over that edge and then the

(15:51):
genitals are so sensitive that you don't even it's like,
don't touch me, you go touch my clip. And what
I found as I was exploring orgasm with Bill primarily,
even though I had other do partners, but it was
mostly built is that if you stay with that sensation
and just relax into it and surrender into that sensation,

(16:11):
then it just opens up again and again and again,
and you can keep going over and over and over
and opening.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
Now interesting, that was my practice.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
What Nicole taught was not in what I think the
predecessors from this lineage, if you want to call it,
or this, you know, this way of teaching orgasm was
to not have the women go over the edge. So
if you can imagine you're stroking, you're stroking're strugging, and
you're plateauing them. So that's what the do date is
you bring somebody up, you're kind of taking control of
their nervous system through their genitals and taking them on

(16:46):
a ride. So you know, you can stroke in a
different way, with different firmness, with different to bring them
up higher and then to bring them down, to bring
them up and then plateau and then up and then plateau,
but never to bring them over the edge, which I
thought that was always curious, And then in retrospect, I
recognized that that was a way to control people, certainly

(17:09):
control women, because you're keeping them in this heightened state
of titillation and yet not having that come down of
the going over the edge, right and then coming back
into the body and then building up again.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
I didn't realize that. I thought that it was all
about having the orgasm. You're saying that they never actually
achieved the orgasm in the practice.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Well, so it depends what you call orgasm, Okay, because
Nicole and all these people who taught this were it's
expanding your definition of orgasm. An orgasm being you know,
where you're feeling the most sensation in your body, So
it doesn't necessarily have to include a climaxing going over
the edge or an ejaculation. It simply is the most

(17:55):
sensation you're feeling in your genitals, then you could be
an orgasmic.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Interesting. Interesting, Yeah, But it was a part of the
practice to not take them over the edge or it
was just okay if that was.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
What when I was there, you know, back in two
thousand and four, it was keeping them at.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
The edge but not going that's very interesting.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
And then what I was.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Exploring with myself and with Bill was you know, going
over continuously, you know, like going over and then gushing out,
opening and then building up again and then going over
and then out and then again, and so it just
continues to expand and expand.

Speaker 4 (18:34):
And since I never did the demo, but I will
get to that in.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
The story, I don't know if during the one hour
demonstration of a woman in an orgasm they were going
over or not really. I mean there was definitely a
lot of contractions of the you know, the pussy was
contracting and so forth.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
So back to the demo.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
So it's the fall of two thousand and three and
Airwon and Nicole are going to have a demo with
Air one is the doer and Nicole, you know, being
an orgasm for an hour.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
Bill and I went.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
It was in someone's living room in Brisbane, so they were,
you know, kind of putting themselves on the map sort
of and carrying on the tradition of the people that
they learned from. Then, as I understand the story, Nicole,
because by this point, airone had a thriving business, his
pleasure people business, and Nicole wanted airone to surrender his

(19:28):
business to her, as you know, that's what she wanted,
and that was what was best for Air One because.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
He was attached to his business. So if he could,
if he show that he.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Could surrender it, then that would show that he was
very spiritually evolved.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Oh so enlightened to give your business away.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
Well, as you can imagine, Eyone was like fuck no.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
So there was a big.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Rift, and so Nicole had a few devotees with her
and then Air one big community and we had really
merged until this big blow up and then.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
There was the separation.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Okay, so this is like December something, two thousand and three.
For New Year's Eve, Nicole invites Bill and I down
to Brisbane where they're living to celebrate New Year's with
her and her few devotees.

Speaker 4 (20:20):
Who have gone with her.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Everyone else went with arewon gotcha because they'd been working
with him for a long time and part of his community.
So we go down there and it was, you know,
it was pretty uneventful. I mean, the whole evening was
mostly focused on Nicole.

Speaker 4 (20:36):
And we were sleeping over because it was the wee
hours of the night.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
And I'm walking down the stairs to go to the
bedroom and I see, I see like this energetic shapes
of skulls and crossbonts. Now I am not one to see,
you know, I have friends, I'm now an ordained priestess,
and I have friends who actually see.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Energy and they can see, you know, different beings and
they can see energy that is not one of my
channels of perception.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
And except on this particular night, I could see them
on the walls in the bedroom that we were in,
these skulls crossbones as if I could touch them, and
I mean, the message was clear that there was toxicity
here and this is not for me.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
So the next morning I wake up and I'm like, okay, no, we.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Go upstairs and I'm just like I think I'm done
with this, Like this just feels off, And we go
upstairs to the kitchen. And meanwhile, so there's been this
big split, right, So now Nickole needs to find her
grounding again and start to get more people to follow
her and start a community, you know. And so she

(21:46):
has now come up with that one of the women
in the community, who i'll call Patricia, is going to
have a demo of her own and nick Cole is
going to be her doer.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
So this is going to again Nicole on the map in.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
A different way, because it's always been, as far as I.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
Know, it's a male doer with a female.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
Well, so here's a female doer with a female So
this woman, Patricia's having her demo at the end of February.
And there we are in the kitchen. I'm feeling really awkward.
I'm holding Bill's hand, and Patricia, whose petite woman, comes up,
stands right in front of Bill.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
And says, Bill, I really want you to come to
my demo. Let you come, And Bill was like sure.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Fuck.

Speaker 4 (22:39):
So you know, my head's like, holy shit.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
I can't let him go and have fun without me
and do this whole thing without me, and he's gonna
then go and find someone else, and I gotta stick
with my man and so like in that moment, the
experience was like unhooking from my own knowing of this place.
Is not for me to going along with the guy
right the age old story.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
I mean, it's understandable.

Speaker 5 (23:07):
So Bill is a trader. I'm just kidding.

Speaker 4 (23:13):
And susceptible to the feminine.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Wild sure.

Speaker 5 (23:19):
Be like why are you kicking me?

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Like that would be my boyfriend, Like why are you
kicking me under the table right now, Megan?

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Because we're not knowing Belle.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Okay, well, and Megan, I did not even have the
presence of mine.

Speaker 4 (23:32):
To to do that.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
To be right, You're not right.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
So they're now training for this demo, and Nicole and
Patricia are blogging, you know, about their training sessions. And
at this point in my life, I am kind of lost.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
I'm in my early thirties. I don't really know what
i want.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
I'm looking for passion, I'm looking for community, I'm looking
for purpose. I'm looking for something to devote myself to
for creating energy, you know, to be expressed and so forth.
And so I am becoming obsessed with their blog posting
and feeling jealous and envious of this.

Speaker 4 (24:10):
Seems like they're working towards a goal. I mean, now
it seems so ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
However, at the time it was I was so seduced
into their world and feeling like there's something exciting happening
there and they're actually doing something meaningful, you know, and
just comparing, you know, that whole comparing mind, that whole
comparison thing that's so predominant.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Ever done in my life.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Oh my gosh, I think you know, it's all part
of the patriarchal scheme. So that's why we're healing this.
So we're not comparing anymore.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
No more comparing. Amen.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
So but I'm back at the you know, twenty years ago,
that's where I was at. So I had agreed, I'm
going to the demo. Bill's going to the demo. The
day before the demo, on a Saturday, Nicole's lead a
course because she was continuing to try and lead courses
to make some money and draw people in to become
her followers. So we're back at that house in Brisbane.

(25:10):
It's a Saturday morning. That maybe about ten of us
in this course.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
I don't even know what she called. I think it
was called the Being course.

Speaker 6 (25:17):
Now that I think class.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
So Nicole had this practice that she came to call,
not while I was around, but later on pulling desires.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Okay, I love the jargon already going right, right, Okay, she.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Didn't have hadn't owned the jargon yet at this point, however,
the same practice. So she comes in, she scans the room,
and then she lands on someone.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
And when Nicole is looking at.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
You, you are simultaneously being completely embraced by someone who's
just seeing you for exactly who you are, while also
being as.

Speaker 4 (25:54):
If you're under a microscope, being like picked apart, you know, with.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
When like col tools, you know, really so, so it's
this this cognitive dissonance sort of experience.

Speaker 4 (26:07):
Of like you like it, but then it's really uncomfortable, and.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Oh, but like you feel like you're growing because she's
right as she pointing out things that you need to
do to grow. Is that the idea?

Speaker 4 (26:18):
Absolutely? Absolutely? And you also feel really seen right and
she's seeing these I.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Mean, she's embracing the dark parts of you and also
showing you what you can do to grow.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Like you said, have you seen the movie Sound of
My Voice? No, it's by this filmmaker Britt Marling, who's amazing, but.

Speaker 5 (26:38):
It's she's it's so good. I love that movie.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
She plays a cult leader. And it's just the way
you're describing this sounds exactly like a scene in that movie.
I just wanted to shout that out.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
But go on, okay, I'll have to watch that.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, I'll have you really do.

Speaker 5 (26:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
So she so she locks onto me and she starts,
you know, what do you want? That's how the pulling
desire starts. What do you want?

Speaker 4 (26:58):
And so I start to say, I want to have.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
More fun, I want to have more creativity, I want
to have more community, I want.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
To have more orgasm. Okay, keep going.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
I want to have more passion, I want to have
more purpose, I want to have.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
You know, more sex. Keep keep going, keep going, keep going.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
So finally, you know, after quite a while, I finally
get down to this place of wow. I don't know
if I could say that out loud, And then I did,
and I said I want to have a baby. And
I'm sitting right next to Bill, and I never even
really admitted that to myself, lit alone said that to Bill,
and I was like, holy shit, But it felt so

(27:35):
good to get that primal desire out. And I was
like yes, uh, oh, not so fast, Nicole says, what else?

Speaker 4 (27:44):
I mean? I was at the bottom.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
And so then I start regurgitating some of what I'd
already said. I want to have more sex, I want
to have again, I do want to have a baby.
I want to And then I start to get to
realize what she wants me to say, and I know
what she wants me to say, and finally I capitulate
and I and I say I want.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
To have a demo.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
And then she's like, did you feel it? Did you
feel it? We hit bottom?

Speaker 4 (28:09):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
That was the that was the deepest desire, at the
bottom of her well of desire. And so this was
something that Nicole was masterful at, was of what was
the jargon that she would call it affirming reality or
something like that, basically telling you what was happening.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, that is a that's just such a good manipulator already,
please continue.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
She was you know, we all thought she was a magician,
but really she was a master manipulator. And her tactic
was that Nicole agreed that something was true if it
matched what she wanted to hear.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
So clearly that's what she wanted.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
To hear, right because she wanted to groom me, and
she wanted to get our money and to seduce Bill
and I into her web.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
There. So, if you said something that she didn't like,
she called it a lot.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
And if you had doubt, she knew how to increase
your doubt until what she told you was true became
what you believed.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (29:12):
Yeah, so it is very insidious.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
She knew how to manipulate people into speaking the answers
that she wanted to hear.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
Yeah, she did this all the time to me.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
But so so I agree to be have this demo
with Bill as my doer.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
Bill and I paid Nicole.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Fifteen thousand dollars back in two thousand and four.

Speaker 4 (29:32):
You know, I don't know what that that would be today.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
That's so much a demo cost fifteen thousand dollars at
the time. Wow.

Speaker 5 (29:39):
Back then, why what do you have to do to
prepare for that?

Speaker 3 (29:42):
She's supposed to be training us. She's going to be
training us. It's indefinite. We haven't scheduled the demo because
it could take many months, could take.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
Years, we don't know. But according to Nicole, this is
a very good price.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (29:55):
So okay.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Meanwhile, Nicole has this vision of getting her her flavor
of sexuality out into the world. And she envisions this
community that is you can imagine concentric circles with her
at the center.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
So the people who were most.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Devoted either in their blood, sweat and tears or their
money would have the most access to Nicole. And so
it's about bringing people closer and closer in right. She
used to get a lot of people coming into her
courses from another transformational healing work community.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
However, her and the leader of that.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Community had a falling out, so that dried up that source.
So she had to think of something else, and that's
when she came up with the idea of opening a
storefront south of Market, which became the one Taste Center
in San Francisco. And I had always, you know, ten
years before, I had had this vision of having a
workout aerobics.

Speaker 4 (30:53):
I was really into aerobics back in the day before
Your Times and coffee shop, bookstore and whatever.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
So this center that Nicole was opening was close enough
to that vision I had had maybe a decade before that.
I was like, okay, I'll do this. This sounds like fun.
I was needing something to do, Okay, So we're shifting
towards opening a center, okay, or Nicole is shifting towards
opening a center, which meant I was shifting towards opening.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
A center too. And we'd paid this money.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
A couple months later, this is like in May two
thousand and four, we're going away and this is supposed
to be the opening of my demo. Course, they rent
a house up in Sea Ranch and myself and Bill
and Nicole and a few of her closest devotees come
with us. Now, mind you, all this time, I can

(31:42):
see how Nicole is manipulating other people, and she's really
grooming me, even.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
At this stage, to be her second.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
She used to call me that, you know, like she
to stand in when she's not there.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
And I could see.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
I knew she was manipulating other people. She was teaching
me how to manipulate other people. But I wasn't willing
to see how she was manipulating me.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
So what did you think about that, about the fact
that you could see that happening? What did you How
did you justify it?

Speaker 3 (32:09):
You know, I justified it that you know that they
were kind of dumb right, like that I was better
than them, Like I saw myself as better that they
were willing to act like lapdogs and really kind of
embarrass themselves to serve her and do really whatever she asked.

Speaker 4 (32:32):
I mean, meanwhile, I mean, geez, how dunce could I be? However,
you know, it's just like in the denial, right, you.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Know, all the signs are there, and yet I'm unwilling
to look at it because I'm unwilling to confront it
in that moment. Until we're willing to have the courage
to confront what we have been unwilling to see that's
right there in front of our face, right, And you know,
I thought I was smarter than you know, I was
always smart. So I was like, I'm smarter than them,
and I'm a leader in this community.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
So even so I wasn't the leader.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
Right air one just like no more.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
He had his own group that yeah, they were doing.
We were now like all in with Nicole, both God
and I.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Anyway, here we are out in the Sea Ranch, which
is beautiful place a couple hours north of San Francisco
on the coast. They have a beautiful house. Of course,
we go in and you know, nobody says a word.
Nicole takes the huge master bedroom. Bill and I are
in a small room, you know, and we.

Speaker 4 (33:36):
Don't go outside. It's like two days there.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
The beach is right outside the windows, but we're all
in the living room. And Nicole starts it off by saying, well,
I'm surrendered to all of you because you're here. You
wouldn't be here if I hadn't surrendered to you. So
now it's time for you all to surrender to me.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Whoh oh, my god.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
Right, and so what the hell does that mean?

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Okay, I don't so if she does her thing where
she just goes around and works each of us, and
really she is very skilled at identifying what is your
core wound and so then hooking into that core wound
and making it better as long as you're connected with her,
Like she sees your core wound and she'll make it better.

Speaker 4 (34:20):
But you have to go to her right, you know.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
So it's really just like assuaging the ego, you know,
not healing any core wounding.

Speaker 4 (34:27):
It's keeping the core wound intact. But just come to
me and I'll make everything better.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
So, you know, mine is like feeling like I don't matter,
and so she knew that and she would often ask
me well, what do I think of this one? You know,
this one, Patricia. You know, she relies on you to
not feel abandoned. So Nicholl's like saying, Patricia, you almost
didn't come to this, which taps right into her feeling abandoned.

(34:54):
All of that, and and she does reflect things that
you don't see.

Speaker 4 (34:59):
So at one time point.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
In this, you know, hours long exploration of surrendering to Nicole,
she turns to me and she says, you're rocking. And
I hadn't even noticed that I was rocking, but I was.
I was rocking to soothe myself. And I stopped, and
then I had an interaction with Nicole where I felt
simultaneously completely embraced and also being picked apart under a microscope.

(35:22):
And then when she pulled away and turned her attention
to somebody else, you know, because finally I finally gave
in and I said, Okay, I surrender. I don't really
know what that means, but I surrender. So I was
willing to do that. So but then when she stopped
looking at me, I you know, I could feel that loss.
It was like, you know, I felt like I wanted
to start rocking again, but now I had this awareness

(35:43):
of this rocking.

Speaker 4 (35:44):
Habit I had.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
So now you're craving this like attention from this person
who's become this figure to you. I mean like a
maternal figure or like how would you describe it.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
You know, not so much maternal, just someone who really
gets you.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, who's really gets you and and and makes it
seem like she's really there for you. She really sees you,
she understands you, and she'll be there for you.

Speaker 8 (36:13):
Not in a mothering way, like in a you know,
like I love you, because it wasn't love. It was
really just like a depth of understanding of your psyche.

Speaker 5 (36:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
It feels like a lot of people feel lost, and
she's like, and I can show you the way home.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
Well, all of us, you know, till the wee hours
of the morning, surrendered, except for Bill.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Bill.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
Bill.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Bill was not willing to do it. He was like,
I don't know what it means. I don't know what
that entails.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
I'm not doing it. Go Bill, I'm not doing it.
She was pissed.

Speaker 5 (36:49):
I'm sure pissed.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
That's amazing.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
He's a good one. I'm thank god, thank God for Bill.
I mean, I wouldn't have gone in there likely if
it hadn't been. But I also could have stayed in
had it not been for Bilson. All right, Yeah, so
she's pissed. She's like gone.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
The next morning, even before we woke up, and we're
driving back to San Francisco, and I remember being in
the back of the car and someone else was driving,
and I was thinking, what the fuck was that? That
was supposed to be my opening course for my demo
of me being an orgasm for an hour?

Speaker 4 (37:27):
I did not get stroked once on my clip, Like
what is that about?

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (37:32):
And then I thought, like then I noticed this thought
was like, well, it must have been what I wanted,
and that was something that Nicole said and a lot
of the members of the community. Well, if that's what's happening,
it must be what you want.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
So I started.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
That was the first time that I remembered that I
was starting.

Speaker 4 (37:49):
To mind fuck myself.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, like convincing myself, Well, I guess that's what I wanted.
If that's what happened, why didn't I say we're gonna
where's the table? Why am I not having a due
date here?

Speaker 7 (38:02):
Wow?

Speaker 6 (38:02):
Right?

Speaker 4 (38:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
The specificity with which you're describing this is amazing. I
feel like a few people can articulate these like very
specific things that are happening in their brains and the
manipulations that are happening. So I just really appreciate.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
That I spent a lot of time writing this story,
which was really healing for me and ultimately very very
meaningful in my whole journey with this. So I'm just
working on this for this center that's about to open.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
Nicole found a spot.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
She's got this guy named Rob who's you know, had
made a bunch of money in the dot com world,
and so he was funding the center to open up
the space, furnish the space, and there was going.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
To be a juice bar.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
There was a yoga studio upstairs, and the whole idea
in a little shop to bring people in for juice
or a healthy bite or a yoga class.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
And then you know, bring them into the courses, bring
them to the community and so forth.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
And so meanwhile Bill and I were living in San
Francisco and I had a house that was the mortgage
was really high, and Nicole said, listen, if you're going
to be my second, you have to move down and
live with.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
Us in Brisbane.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
And I thought, well, sure, because I can't afford to
pay my mortgage anymore anyway, because I'm not making any money,
I'm just working for you for free.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
So wow. Now Bill never.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
Left his job, thankfully, but I had a mediation practice
at the time that I then let lie fallow and
just devoted all my time and energy to opening this
center with Nicole. Meanwhile, the center is going to open
at the end of July two thousand and four, and
I'm like the poster girl. I'm on the front of
all the posters and all of the marketing materials. So

(39:41):
my egos loving this shit.

Speaker 6 (39:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
It's like my parents are coming up for this. My
Bill's parents are flying out from the.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
East Coast, I know, I know. It's so weird.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
And all my friends, it's like all my time is
at this center. So I have some friends who have
gotten involved with it. If you want to see me,
you have to come to this center. That's where I
am like most of the time, other than being down.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
In the house in Brisbane just to sleep for a
few hours a night.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
And you're not getting paid at all.

Speaker 4 (40:10):
No, no, wow.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
And really, the group of us are doing whatever it
takes to get the most approval from Nicole.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
You know.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
Meanwhile, I'm learning how to get people to do what
I want them to.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Do, which was mostly whatever's going to get me approval
from Nicole, so to get them.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
Into the course to have a session with her, you
know whatever.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
How did the next day, after your demonstration kind of
failure where Bill didn't surrender, how did you, guys, like
make it good with her again?

Speaker 5 (40:37):
Does she just forget and move on?

Speaker 4 (40:39):
No?

Speaker 3 (40:39):
No, she's fine with me because I surrendered, Right Bill,
there's already some friction, so to say, there's friction, and
he's kind of moving away, and he's kind of stepping back, going, No,
I don't really want to take over the educational arm
of the Insight Institute.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
That's what they called it at the time.

Speaker 5 (40:54):
Okay, you know, I don't really.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
Want to do that.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
Bill, much to his chagrin, was the one who came
up with the name for the center, called One Taste,
which then became the name of the whole organization.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
It is a brilliant.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
She was really into Ken Wilbur, and so there was
a book by that name by Ken Wilbur, and Bill
just thought, Hey, what about this?

Speaker 1 (41:13):
So who's Ken Wilber.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
Ken Wilbert is a He's like a Buddhist theorist, perhaps
like an analyst as well. Nicole was really into Ken Wilburn,
Alan Watts a kind of Alan thinker, like spiritual, more
thinker than practitioner.

Speaker 4 (41:30):
I would say, got it.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
I'm curious as to the practice itself, like how you
looked at it? Was it a spirituality thing or was
it more just like trying to find your confidence as
a sexual being? Like how are you viewing the actual practice?

Speaker 4 (41:47):
The actual practice was not a spiritual thing.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
It was never a spiritual thing, Okay.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Nicole renamed it to market it as a spiritual practice
and as a meditation mindfulness practice. It was about bringing
your whole self to this practice. It was bringing your
attention to your genitals or to your finger or to
your hand, you know, if you're stroking a man's genitals.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
Now, that's what it was, and asking for what.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
You wanted and just surrendering to the sensation in your
body and asking for what you wanted.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
Which is a great practice to be able to ask
for what you want.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
Of course, no spirituality, no heart, no nothing, no okay,
but I did have a spiritual practice and I still do,
and so did Bill. We were both students of Zen,
so I was still having due dates you know with Bill,
and we had a couple training sessions, but not much
you know for my demo. And the practice was really

(42:41):
it feels good. It feels good, and it also energizes
you and gets you high. It really does, and it
becomes like an addiction, like you know, okay, you're feeling something,
you're feeling a difficult emotion, go have a due date.
So it's like go smoke a joint or go have
a glass of wine. You know, it's the same kind
of thing.

Speaker 5 (43:00):
I have a due date just means do the fifteen
minute practice.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
So it wasn't so defined, I say, and I was involved,
so she hadn't yet you know, marketed it to such
a degree of like the structure and but it was
just have a due date where you know someone's stroking
you for a certain amount of time, but not with
a timer.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
And you know that wasn't happening back then.

Speaker 5 (43:23):
Got it on the early days the Stone Age.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Bill actually went away on a week long meditation retreat,
which was such a blessing for both of us, but
basically him going away allowed him to reconnect in with himself.
And that's the power that Nicole had over a person
was you had to be around her, which is why
she wanted to always be up in everybody's business. I

(43:51):
was suggesting when she was overwhelmed at one point that
people not everybody go to her all the time with
their issues, and she.

Speaker 4 (43:58):
Was like, oh, no, no, no, no, I want people
to come to me. That's what I want. Right.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
But Bill had, you know, seven days to reconnect in
and recognize, Wow, how he had disconnected from himself and
also the harm that Nicole was causing, not only to himself,
to our relationship, and also to those people around her.
So he was really able to have that distance and
see what was happening.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
And he came back and did not want to be
involved at all.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
However, I was like one hundred and fifty percent in,
so he didn't want to leave me either.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
So we have this big grand opening.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
You know, I'm running around, I'm in charge of all
these events that are happening at the center, and Bill
is just becoming more and more persona non grata.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
Nicole's ignoring him.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Of course, the organization of the group is very much
about being in or being out, and everybody wants to
be in.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
You know, you want to be in with Nicole, so
to be in with Nicole.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
If someone else is out, then you treat them out too,
you know they're out for you. So people are ignoring
him as he's invisible, like standing in the kitchen of
where we're living, like is.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
Really really detrimental.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
And I could see, you know, the harm happening to him.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
And I can tell you another story, or I could
just go to the end.

Speaker 5 (45:15):
One more story.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Yeah, So was after Bill was really taking a step back.
It was a Saturday night and there was a ton
of the whole place was a mess.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
The kitchen was a mess. Everything was a mess.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
At the center, we had had some big event and
everybody was cleaning up, and there was Nicole sitting like,
you know, the queen, not lifting a finger, And I said,
what you know, are you not going to help?

Speaker 4 (45:39):
Like what come on? Yes, she didn't do anything. And
I flashed back to my zen teacher at the time,
who was like in her seventies, okay, and at the
end of a meditation retreat and she's mopping the floor.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
So she's probably doing the worst most heavy lifting job
of anybody, you know. And so I just juxtaposed those
two images. I was like, Okay, this is fucking off,
you know something. So that was another like crack, you know.
I'd had these like moments of like, this is off.
And so the next morning, Sunday mornings, we had a
meditation at the One Taste Center and I was the timekeeper.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
So I show up that morning and I'm still pissed.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
And the only other people who show up are Nicole
and her boyfriend at the time, and so I'm kind
of I'm being icy, and I'm feeling really powerful, and
I got that Lilith kind of energy like fuck you,
you're not gonna I'm angry, and I felt powerful and strong.
And Nicole then says, well, how about we do a
training session for your demo instead of the meditation this morning,

(46:43):
And I was like no, no, And so she's working
on me, and she's working on me, and finally I
acquiesce and I say okay, And so, you know, we
get out the massage table and I get up on
the table and just me and Nicole was stroking me,
and her guy is right there too, and as she's
stroking me, I feel myself disassociating and disconnecting, and yes,

(47:06):
it feels good, the actual physical sensation. It's kind of
like an abuser, like when I've worked with people who
have been sexually abused as kids, when it's so confusing
because often it feels really good, because it feels good
when somebody touches your genitals, right, But yet it's so
conflictual because you don't want it to feel good when

(47:27):
this person is touching. Now, it's not exactly because I
gave my consent I was an adult. However, it's similar
because of the disassociation that happens, you know often with
you know, sexual abuse survivors.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
It's something that you didn't want to do. It sounds
like she coerced you into doing something.

Speaker 4 (47:45):
Yeah, and I.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
Did agree, And yet you know, I disconnected from that
powerful feeling inner Lilith, that anger, and I was back
into Eve going along, and I was like out of touch,
out of my center and performing. So for me, a
due date with Nicole became getting off how Nicole wanted

(48:08):
me to get off, and then what I found Since
over the years, I've known many people and many people
who stayed in Unfortunately, I had a lot of friends,
and I was a loyal friend, and so people trusted me,
and both Bill and I brought a lot of people
into there, and some people stayed for years. So I
came to find out, you know, more and more. She

(48:30):
got very specific about, you know, this area of the
clit is supposed to feel like this, and this is
supposed to feel like this, and for fifteen minutes, and
all this structure, making it seem that there's a particular
way that you're supposed to feel when the clit is
touched in a particular way right now, So that for
me then becomes a prison. It was more of a

(48:50):
performance and trying to get off the way Nicole wanted
me to get off, as opposed to getting off the
way that is totally natural and innate and authentic for me.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
All right, which is the opposite of what she's presenting
it as exactly for you, which is a way to
ask for what you want. I did notice I watched
some of their like online demonstrations on YouTube and stuff,
and I took note of the fact that she very
specifically says it must be the upper left quadrant of
the clit, and like, why is that just because that's

(49:22):
where she likes it, like yeah, and yeah, the fifteen
minute limit. I'm like, that's not where my pleasure spot
would be. But like, okay, noicle, whatever you say. And
what about women who you know, maybe don't have orgasms
in the same way or don't have orgasms at all.
I mean, it's just seems so like limiting and like
it could very easily turn into why am I doing
this wrong? Why isn't this working for me?

Speaker 4 (49:42):
Exactly exactly?

Speaker 3 (49:44):
And I would say those women who feel like they
don't have orgasms, they're just limiting the definition of the orgasm.

Speaker 4 (49:50):
To like, you know, having a lot of contractions.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Of the cervix, you know, and going over the edge,
as opposed to if you look at it as like
the most sensation I feel in my body is right
now in my pussy, maybe that could be a orgasm,
you know, if that's empowering to you, right, But yes,
I mean the whole upper left hand quadrant thing is
definitely from vic baranco, you know, comes from that, and

(50:14):
sometimes it is the most sensitive part, but not all
the time. You know. It's like, no, that's the whole
point is That's why you're directing somebody to move around.
So meanwhile, Nicole is really grooming me, Like I said,
she wants me to stay. She's grooming me to be
her second. Where Bill I can see, I mean, he's
aging before my eyes. So I feel like I'm being

(50:35):
pulled between the two of them, and so I go
away by myself for just a night.

Speaker 4 (50:40):
I went up to Point Raise, and it didn't take long.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
For me once I was away to just drop in
and reconnect with a little bit of myself more than
I had been for you know, ten months at this point,
nine months.

Speaker 4 (50:53):
And realize that, hey, I want to have it all.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
I mean, living in this communal house is really not
good for Bill.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
So we've got to move out of that house. And
I was still really committed.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
I've put in countless hours and energy into this center.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
I'm committed. I'm gonna.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
I was still like had drunk the kool aid and
was feeling like, okay, I was still in to partner.

Speaker 4 (51:17):
With Nicole on her vision.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
So I'm driving back from being away and I call
up Nicole and I say, Nicole, I know what I want.
I mean you always talk about like how this work
that you do is about women having everything that they
want and I want to have everything.

Speaker 4 (51:33):
So I want to stay.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
With Bill, and we're going to move out of the
house and I'm going to be your partner in one taste,
I mean, I'm going to be at the center all
the time that I'm always there.

Speaker 4 (51:42):
I'm just going to live back in the city.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
The other end of line goes silent, and then I
hear her like Nicole knows best voice. Oh, honey, I
don't know if you're going to make it out of
this one. What are you talking about, Nicole. I mean,
I've made it out. I know what I want. I want,
I want to have it all. Oh honey, I don't
know if you're going to make it out of here.

(52:06):
And then she hangs up the phone. Wow. So that
is the master manipulator, so trying to delude me that
I'm deluded right right.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Wow, it's so abusive.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
So I was in that place for a few days
of like I don't know where I am, and I
felt awful and everything is uh and I'm really murky,
and you know, like in the fog. In the fog,
I can't see anything clearly. Luckily, there was an intro
evening for an upcoming course, and so I was there

(52:41):
sitting on the couch. The couch was a place of
leadership and kind of a hierarchical place. So I was
sitting on the couch for the Nicole that night, well,
she was in a bad mood and I was feeling
really awkward because I was in this fog, not knowing
what was really real. And Nicole announces that she's going
to do a demo of a deliver orgasm, and so

(53:02):
there's electricity in the air of the women in the
community because she's going to call on somebody, and so
she calls Patricia's name, and I remember both feeling relieved
and also a little disappointed. And so I was on
the couch and Patricia drops her pants, climbs up onto.

Speaker 4 (53:21):
The table, and I wanted to get out of.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
The way of the show, if you will, So I
moved to the back of the room thankfully, like something,
you know, had me move to the back. And so
I start watching this and Nicole is like and she's,
you know, making a lot of noise and kind of
like pushing, you know. She told me that during Patricia's
demo back in February, that that was not Patricia's orgasm,

(53:46):
that that was Nicole's orgasm.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
That she was pushing into her she couldn't have years ago.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Oh god, yeah, okay.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
So this is Nicole also doing this whole thing.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
And at that moment, the rose colored glove asses shatter
and the spell like breaks. And I see, like all
of these men, mostly men, there are a few women
who are like gawking and amazed at what they're seeing.

Speaker 4 (54:10):
I mean, what they've happened upon for free. They're they're
you know, coming to this evening seeing this woman get
her pussy stroke.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
And I recognized that if Nicole had called my name,
that would have been me up on the table. And
I just saw it for the first time that how
she was using Patricia and her you know, sacred orgasmic
energy in her body to get.

Speaker 4 (54:36):
These people into a course, right and and and I
was like, holy shit.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
And I think it was really just that recognition that
that I would have just done that in a second,
jumped up, pulled off my pants and spread my legs
and let her use me in that way which she had.

Speaker 5 (54:55):
Before, right right, you know.

Speaker 3 (54:59):
I I told her the next morning that I was leaving,
and you know, and Bill was obviously thrilled to leave,
but it took years for me to really get her.
I considered like vampiric tendrils out of my system and
out of my body, with the help of a really
powerful sister healer, having a few sessions with her.

Speaker 4 (55:21):
This was probably like six months after I left one taste.
She couldn't believe.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
She's like, I've felt this kind of energy before that's
wrapped around you, but never been someone who's still walking
the planet. It's more like people who had been dead
or people who were no longer still in the body.
So thanks to her, many many blessings to my dear
sister friend. And it was in looking at betrayal and
how not only had I been betrayed by Nicole, who

(55:47):
I trusted, but how much more importantly, how I had
betrayed myself first with Bill, going along with Bill to
go to the demo of Patricia, and then going along
with what Nicole wanted.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
Me to a dude to say, I wanted to do
my own demo.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
And it was in the writing. It spent several years writing,
you know, on and off, this story, so I could
just write it out. And it was a few years ago,
and it was winter solstice, and I was in the tub,
and I was going on a journey into the underworld
at the darkest, longest night of the year, and something

(56:23):
just happened. And it was I was finishing up another
draft of my story and my involvement with Nicole in
one Taste, and.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
I was singing, and I just.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Remember, you know, my eyes were closed and I could
feel It's like I called Nicole in and we were
just both like sitting like in the etheric, if you will,
and sitting facing each other, and it was just like
this burst of golden light, and I could feel all
of her pain, and it was no longer like personal,

(56:55):
and it was no longer her doing something to me
or me, you know, betraying myself.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
It was just like this universal.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Kind of human experience of wounding, you know, the wounded another.
And so I just it was just infused with forgiveness
and compassion. And I had spent quite a while steeping
in different archetypal energies and was actually leading priests and
priests trainings for people to connect in with the archetype.

(57:21):
So I'm very familiar with the archetypal energy.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
So as these.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Came in, I was inviting them and welcoming the energy
of compassion forgiveness. It was really kind of an unexpected
spontaneous healing and forgiving.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
That's amazing. I mean, for somebody who has caused harm
to so many people, that's very advanced of you to
get to that place.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
I don't know about.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Advance, but thank you because it wasn't like I had
planned it or I had it was attempting to do that.
And that's not to say that which is why I'm
telling my story to you. Thank you for asking me
to tell this story. Is because I want people to
know that there's real harm here and.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
So don't be like me.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
And if you know, whether it's with Nicole or if
it's with someone where you feel like you're giving your
power over to someone else, you know, in a relationship,
that my story that that may be a window for
you to see that there's another way, that there's a
way to free yourself and to take your power back,
because you know, I would have never been free in
relationship and in serving Nicole.

Speaker 4 (58:29):
Yeah, that was not a dynamic for my you know, liberation. Right.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
It sounds like it was really important for both you
and Bill to have your own separate, spiritual practice that
you could eventually come back to to like reconnect with
yourself and your own needs. I think that's something that's
really important for people to have a practice outside of
the person, Like have something else that you do that

(58:55):
enables you to like get in touch with how you're
feeling and what you need that has nothing to do
with the Nicole in your life, you.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
Know, absolutely absolutely so.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Now Nicole since then, I mean, she's gotten so good
at marketing herself. She's done a TEDx talk. Gwyneth Paltrow
gushed about One Taste on Goop. Chloe Kardashian recommended her
book on her website, like it's become this thing now
they're trying to get more mainstream, and it's so expensive.
The Bloomberg article, there's a big Bloomberg article about it,

(59:26):
said that, I mean there's so much information in that
article about how abusive this group was, and not just Nicole,
another woman as well, but said that it's four thousand
dollars for a weekend retreat, twelve thousand dollars for a
coaching program, sixteen thousand dollars for an intensive and there's
a year long membership that's sixty thousand dollars and one
woman and her husband left having spent one hundred and

(59:48):
fifty thousand dollars on one taste classes. Like people just
totally financially ruining their lives. They talk about how they
just lost their connection with the idea of money, Like
she got them to a place where money was meetingless
to them and debt was meetingless to them. And that's
on top of all of the sexual practices where people
are being directed to have sex with people and coerced

(01:00:09):
into situations they don't want to be in. How for
you watching this thing grow and become this bigger thing
where Nicole has, you know, gained more followers and gotten
more power and got more money, Like, how has that
experience been for you watching that?

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Well, I can't say that I have been watching really closely.
I'd say I was probably ignoring it until I got
to the place where I had at least forgiven.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
Myself, you know, for the self betrayal.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
I had started writing my story back in like two
thousand and five, and so there was some regret that
came up. It's like, oh, if I'd written my story
and I'd gotten my story out there, could that have
averted something because my story it was always with the
intention of as like a warning, like, let my story
be a warning for you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
You know, I'm not interested in destroying the you know, she.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
That's her business. She'll do that herself. You know, it's
all yeah, so, but it's more of a warning. And
it's interesting because when my son was I think less
than a year, there was an article in the New
York Times and this reporter came to our flat that
we used to live in Berkeley and interviewed Bill and
I and we were completely misquoted in the New York

(01:01:24):
Times article about the reason why we left. It was
a mostly positive article about one taste, and we had
to write a letter that was published, you know, the
following week, which of course nobody, nobody reads with the correction.

Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
So you know, Nicole is a master seductress.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
So I could see that with the New York Times
reporter and just on and on. So as she she
got bigger, you know, I think now because of the
Bloomberg article, there was an FBI investigation.

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
I don't know what happened with that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
I know Nicole did leave the country for a while
and supposedly was entail there were some a couple of
lawsuits that were settled, and yet I think that they
were still had made like twelve million dollars or something
like that, you know, as a company, So that's.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
Not like a small thing. And yet you know, it's
it's a cult.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
And I know, and I think I mentioned this to you, Lola,
that there is a documentary in the works. There are people,
you know, in the entertainment industry who have been burned.
Like you said, by the way, I want to put in,
I did get my money back from Nicole.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
That's when they were returning money.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
They want fifty thousand dollars back, which was part of
the healing.

Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
It was like, no, you know, this is what I
paid for. This is not what I got, you know,
money back.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
But they really got much slicker and what I understand,
she learned a lot about what not to do from
Bill and I leaving to just cover her ass more.
Even though you know stories of when there was a
barracks and they were all living in bunk beds and
bunk rooms. There was a like a dormitory that a
bunch of the people involved with One Taste lived in

(01:03:03):
south of Market, and Nicole would wake.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
Up in the morning with her lieutenants. I think she
called them.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
When I was around, she called it her seconds, but
now she was calling, you know, making more militaristic or something.
They would sit on her bed and she would tell
them who she wanted sleeping with who and what beds.

Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:03:18):
Yeah, I mean yeah, it got really super super creepy.
Even worse.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Apparently. I read some statements about how they've changed their practices,
and one woman left and was like, I have to resign.
I realized my behavior was maybe not up to par whatever,
but clearly it's just like putting the sketchy stuff, like
hiding it better, is what it seems like to me.
I also think it's a really interesting lesson in the

(01:03:45):
idea that not only men are occult leaders. We have
this really strong perception because the most famous ones have been.
But she's doing all the same things. I mean, she's
abusing sexual behaviors, she's getting drunk on her power, she's
abusing people financially or at least this is my opinion,
that she's doing those things. Okay, a legedly, yeah, exactly

(01:04:09):
the same way that all these male cult leaders do it.
I mean, anybody can become that kind of figure. And
I think that's important too, because you know, I don't
know women trust women more. Yeah, sometimes exactly exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
Well, you know, as I went through why is this
a cult?

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
Nicole was the unequivocal, charismatic leader who established herself as
the single source of truths full stop. Nicole's followers, including
myself for those ten months, followed her with zeal.

Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
There was no tolerance for questioning.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Nicole's authority or for critical inquiry, and dissent was prohibited.
Followers who left were harshly judged and considered less sand
a strong us versus them mentality that in out was
cultivated and ohming was used and prescribed as a mind
altered practice to suppress.

Speaker 4 (01:05:01):
Doubt and keep members in tow.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Yeah, all followers centered Nicole's desires and we're expected to
devote time, energy, and money to fulfill them. And a
focus on getting new members to join was prevalent. The
message Nicole sold this liberation but an actuality what you
received with bondage.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Yeah, that's an excellent description.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Yeah wow, Yeah, what a story, my god.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
What I also want to tell all those many many
people who hopefully will be listening.

Speaker 4 (01:05:30):
To this once we're out on the other side of
the pandemic.

Speaker 6 (01:05:34):
I imagine there will be a big push to research
and you have a second like a resurrection of one taste,
and so everyone be really aware and wary.

Speaker 4 (01:05:45):
And if you hear about it, your friends are talking.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
About slow down watching her ted talk. The one thing
that struck me is that she did the classic thing,
which is you take something that's like basically true, which
is that orgasm is good for you and being connected
to their people is something that's good for you, and
sort of turning it into the solution for all problems
as opposed to just yes, it's good for you. Nicole

(01:06:10):
is not the answer.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
That's all that cannot be the title of this episode,
Nicole is not the answer.

Speaker 5 (01:06:19):
So are you? Are you a therapist? Now you seem
like a healer.

Speaker 4 (01:06:22):
What are you have a priestess? Yeah, healer, but you know,
not not in the talk therapy.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
Way, but more in the healing using archetypal energies. I
practice cultivating, you know, really having people free themselves.

Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
Yeah, yeah, you know, loving ourselves exactly as we are.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
And is owning or is masturbation or sexuality a big
piece of what you think can heal or is that
just a small it's.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
Not it's not at all a focus, but just enjoying
our body, enjoying the senses, opening the senses, enjoying the
smells that come our way, and certainly having you know,
self love practices and love practices with a partner, if
you know, we're so fortunate to have a partner. But
that's all part of waking up and making love to

(01:07:09):
the morning, you know, to the hunting bird.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
That's outside, to my cup.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
Of tea that I yeah, oh, that's beautiful. I'm so
happy that you got out and aren't able to share
the story so eloquently, and that's just beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
Yeah, thank you, yeah, thank you for sharing with us.
Is there anything you'd like to promote or shout out
or mention?

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
What I'd love to promote is for all of us
to just trust ourselves more, to take the time like
it's worth it, to slow down.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
If something feels off, it is off.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
Our bodies don't lie to us, So take the time,
take your space, find a place that you know that
you can connect more deeply, whether that's in nature, whether
that's in the bathtub, whether wherever that is, in your bed,
that you can really listen to your heart and listen
to your body and listen.

Speaker 4 (01:07:59):
To your soul voice take the guidance from there.

Speaker 5 (01:08:03):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Love that. Ooh wow, well, thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Oh man, she's so cool. I really like her.

Speaker 5 (01:08:13):
I literally want to be her. She is so cool.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Here's the question, Megan. Yes, if you were obviously not
knowing everything that you know, but if you were just
like in Elana's position, or being exposed to a later
version of One Taste, do you think that you would
join One Taste.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
I could see myself getting sucked into One Taste for sure.
It has a lot of Nexium similarities to me, which
are that like pushing yourself past blocks, you know, kind
of self punishing shit that you and I both admit
we could get really sucked into.

Speaker 5 (01:08:44):
Totally.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Yeah, I think I would definitely go to one. I
don't know that I would keep going, but I'm the
kind of person who will go to weird shit just
for the experience, you know. I went to Sanctum, and
I've worked at sex parties, not doing anything sexual, but
still I'm interested in like going to all the things

(01:09:05):
and seeing what's out there if only for the story,
you know. I just I'm all about the story. Man
fucking love.

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
The street, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Yeah, I mean I remember that you were like, we
should go do this, and I was like, oh wow, okay,
so I think you really would have gone.

Speaker 5 (01:09:19):
But they have shut those down for.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
Group Yeah, the groups are no longer happening. So now
maybe I'll make a man do it to me one
time and see what we think. I'm not going to
do that.

Speaker 5 (01:09:29):
Oh okay, I was on board for you to try
it out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Who knows, maybe the upper left quadrant of my clid
is the secret that I never know exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
This is really inspired learning, actually, I mean yeah, I
could see myself going. I wish that wasn't true, but
it probably is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
Well, fortunately now we know. Now we know, we know
not to ever go if they ever bring the group
thing back. So I would love to have another one
taste guest on. I would love to see what the
experience is like for someone more in the later years.
In addition into Ilana's amazing story from the beginning years,
what a group It does seem so next to me
in so many ways. But anyway, that's all I have

(01:10:08):
to say. About that.

Speaker 5 (01:10:09):
Yeah, same, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
I think this week's guest taught us a lot, and
I can't wait for us to learn even more next week.
Until then, remember to follow your gut, watch out for
red flags, and never ever trust me.