The TODAY show is cancelled. Gosh, that was fast, wasn’t it? I had a huge decision to make this morning. It wasn’t easy. But, I chose integrity over fame and selling books.
An hour ago I turned down the opportunity of a lifetime and chose peace instead. I chose having my own back. I chose trusting my own instincts. And I chose love.
The producers wanted me to reveal the true identities of my spiritual teachers and their group of students. I refused. I went through great effort to conceal these details in my memoir. My story is not a story of revenge; it is a story of becoming whole. And in order to do so, I had to forgive.
My entire life I had been searching for peace, for clarity, for light, for love, for the feeling of God. And I found it. Hallelujah and Amen and Holy Friggen Crap, I finally found it. And I will not compromise it to sell books or become a best selling author.
I think the way to wholeness for all of us is to trust our own Inner Guidance, to trust that quiet voice inside that knows the way . . . and if we truly pay attention we will see that that voice always leads us back to love. I cannot heal and move on if I am allowing the media to beat the crap out of my spiritual teachers. My story isn’t about that.
I got myself into the mess of the cult and the mess of my lawsuit in New York because I went against my own intuition and allowed people to talk me into taking tiny steps outside of my comfort zone, tiny steps that made me betray what I knew deep in my heart to be right. I took those tiny steps, one and then two and then three until I had taken so many I was completely lost. I simply will not do that again, even if it means saying no to the opportunity of a lifetime.
The only way to heal our own hearts and this planet is through love and forgiveness. I refuse to rise if I have to take other people down to do so. Even if they are terrible people who brainwashed me and used me and abused me. I have to believe I can still rise, and will rise even higher, on the wings of love and forgiveness. For the very first time in my life I am the master of my own ship and no one else can tell me, ever again, how to steer it.