Sphinx Spiritual – Part 1

Hey, it's Sarah. If you're enjoying our show and looking for your next listen, I've got just the thing. It's a brand new podcast from Crime House called Conspiracy Therese, cults and crimes. Each week Vanessa Richardson will uncover the true stories behind the world's most shocking crimes, deadly ideologies and secret plots, from mass suicides and political assassinations to secret government experiments and UFO cults. If you love mystery, madness and diving deep into the world's most unbelievable true stories, you won't want to miss this show. We have a clip here from the first episode about the heaven's gate cult, which is out now. If you like what you hear, don't forget to follow Conspiracy Therese, cults and crimes on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen. A spiritual school in Victoria has been getting a little attention over the last few months, with coverage in the heralds sun and on a current affair. Ian and Pearl Rogers' Finx Spiritual School of Learning teaches that we each have a spiritual guide who we can rely on to help us through life, and the couple sits alongside a council of entities who have lived many lifetimes before this one. Followers are lucky enough to gain access to incredible knowledge through this council, but forum posts dating back to 2012 alleged that Finx Spiritual is a cult. And the organisation goes back for many years. It's only now that former members have started speaking out. Welcome to Let's Talk About Sets, a podcast about cults around the world. I'm your host Sarah Steele. Before we get into the episode, a content warning. This podcast deals with issues that some people may find disturbing, related to emotional abuse and controlling behaviours. This episode also includes references to sexual assault and there's a little course language. Please use your discretion as to whether this will be suitable for you and those around you who may be listening to. Not a great deal is known about the early lives of Ian and Pearl Rogers. Pearls made a name was Markwick and she was originally from the UK. In a Finx Spiritual YouTube video, she speaks about growing up in a religious household in Ireland, attending Sunday school and being fascinated with how Jesus could walk on water. She mentions not having many friends as a young child, being a bit of a loner, but not feeling like she wanted more friends and having a lot of faith in herself. She moved to England at 18 and then to Australia when she was 30. Ian mentions growing up in rural Victoria with a strict religious upbringing and attending a religious boys school for all of his education. He speaks of understanding Jesus best as a healer. On a short lived COVID era podcast called Out of the Box, Ian talks about knowing from the age of two that he was different and didn't care about fitting in. He shares an experience of the Lionel in his modest childhood home speaking to him and moving around and his family thinking he was nuts when he told them about it. So he kept things like this to himself from then on. He says, "That wasn't important to me, being part of the family and probably affected my relationship with my parents and siblings, but nonetheless it wasn't important." He says his parents told him many many times that he was an angry child, but he feels that he was more intolerant and impatient of things not moving forward at the pace he wanted. He speaks of working in country radio at the age of 22 and then going through a divorce at 31, separating from a wife who would have stopped him from pursuing his spirituality as she was in a very different place energetically. He also mentions working as a police officer for a decade from the age of 22 before joining Telecom as an investigator, which is where he met Pearl. Ian and Pearl continued to work together in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the Accident Compensation Commission, ACC, under the Contraversy Ridden Work Care Period, which is the Victorian State Government's Workers' Compensation Body that was superseded by WorkCover under the WorkSafe regulator. Both were senior investigators in the scheme. In a biography from a creative innovation conference held in 2010 at the Melbourne Recital Centre, it mentions that Ian once taught project management and marketing at TAFE, held senior management positions in federal and state governments, and listed a number of other high-level roles implementing fraud protections at the Transport Accident Commission, TAC, a major insurer, and the ACC, and restructuring investigations and prosecutions functions at Vic Roads. It then mentions that Ian headed the Australian Davos connection. This profile doesn't mention any time in the police force, but those I've spoken to, who knew Ian and Pearl through their spiritual teachings, understood that both had once been police officers, and a recent report on a current affair refers to the couple's former police detectives, and Pearl is having been a police officer in the UK. I can't find any external sources to confirm whether Ian or Pearl served as police officers in Australia or the United Kingdom, though this limited piece of work history information does seem to be what they share regularly about themselves. The conference biography mentions that Ian's TAC and ACC roles were undertaken in a politically volatile era and were extremely successful. Financial problems, accusations of alterations to annual reports, inappropriate board pressure groups, and more plagued the ACC, and the media ran some damning reports at the time. One of these, aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 730 Report in July 1990, resulted in the former chief executive Michael Roo, joining with his fraud investigators Ian Rogers and Pearl Markwick to bring a defamation case against the ABC. In a controversial decision at the time, the ACC decided to fund the 1991 defamation action, even though any money obtained from the case above costs would go to the individual plaintiffs. The Labour Party's Minister for Labour, who oversaw the ACC at the time, Neil Pope, wrote to the ACC's board, quote, "I do feel it necessary to request that the board reconsider its position on this matter, particularly with regard to the broader issues involved in the use of public money to support private defamation actions." There was much discussion in the media about taxpayer money being used for this purpose, alongside the ABC spending huge amounts in legal fees at the public expense to defend the case. At the time, the proceedings became the longest running defamation suit in Victorian history, and when costs had reached the $2 million mark, both parties instructed their lawyers to settle. Coverage suggests that it had become untenable to continue to pay public money when the settlement amount was in the realm of a quarter of a million dollars. The ABC ended up paying for some and making an apology, and the transcript of the program isn't available online, so it's difficult to know all the particulars. But what is available in the court documents includes the following alleged imputations made in the 730 report episode. That the Investigations Unit at the ACC, quote, "was run by two people who were racist, vindictive, power-hungry, incompetent and unscrupulous, and who engaged in unlawful acts of racial discrimination against employees of the commission," that it was, quote, "grossily inefficient and a nest of intrigue and ill will," and that it, quote, "had achieved little in return for large expenditure." As the case settled and didn't go to trial, the 50 witnesses that the ABC proposed would form a part of their truth defense whenever examined, and presumably those imputations were retracted as part of the ABC's apology. There are also some interesting comments available in Victorian parliamentary records from September 1991. These include mentions of further actions against Channel 10 and SBS, and questions of the Minister for Labour from the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party Phil Goode, such as, quote, "whether he was aware that there was widespread racism at the Accident Compensation Commission, whether Mr. Ron Sackville was placed under surveillance at the instruction of Mr. Ian Rogers, whether elicit credit checks were made on Mr. Ron Sackville, Mr. John Halfpenny, and 213 other Victorians." And perhaps most jarringly, quote, "whether he was aware that new age, religion, and the use of crystals were prevalent with respect to management decisions made at the Accident Compensation Commission." Ron Sackville, by the way, was the chair of the ACC from 1985 to 1989. In 1990, a former fraud investigator at the ACC was approved to receive his own workers' compensation claim for stress-related benefits. The age reported that the claimant, Gary Mutama, said that his stress was directly linked to a request last year by two of his superiors to undertake surveillance of the ACC's founder and then chairman Ron Sackville. It continued, "In other words, he says his superiors in the investigation branch, Mr. Ian Rogers and Ms. Pearl Markwick, asked him to spy on his boss. As opposition front bencher Mr. Phil Goode has told Parliament, Mr. Mutama, who was a police officer for 12 years before joining the ACC, regarded the task he was requested to perform as an "each". improper and immoral action." The article goes on to detail another employee, James Veal, senior to Gary Mutima, previously declining to do this task when requested by Pearl Markwick. James Veal shared in a letter that Pearl had said some things about Ron Sackville that come with a warning of anti-Semitism. Quote, "She told me he was a member of the Jewish Mafia and had only got to the board through family connections after making a mess of a previous family business venture." Another former senior investigator, Gary Forester, gave evidence at an accident compensation tribunal hearing in 1990 that Ian Rogers had asked him to carry out duties that he considered to be "repugnant, unethical, and immoral" and that the "Jewish conspiracy was raised as a reason he was asked to investigate Mr Sackville." Which he declined to do. In April 1992, Phil Goode asked the member for labor once more whether he will advise the exact cost to the accident compensation commission of representing its former managing director Michael Rue and present senior managers, Pearl and Ian Rogers, in the defamation case against the ABC for the broadcast of an episode on the 730 report. And whether he will advise if an investigation has been carried out into matters raised by the 730 report, such as the use of crystals in managerial decisions by the Rogers, if so, what was the outcome? I couldn't locate any answer to these questions. In media coverage at the time of the defamation case, Pearl is referred to by her former name of Markwick, though it seems that Ian and Pearl got married in 1988 and she goes by his surname of Rogers today. Ella, not her real name, joins Spring Spiritual around 2009 and she told me that the couple have been together for around 40 years. They were both previously married before. Pearl was born in Ireland and left in her late teens early 20s to move to England for a period before immigrating to Australia and Ian was born and raised in Sheppardin and then moved down to Melbourne, which is where the two of them met. Then he had two sons from his first marriage and Pearl was son from her first marriage and then when they got together they had their daughter. Ella also told me that the pair once ran a childcare centre together. Following his time at the ACC and his tint at the Australian Davos connection, I'm also unsure of when Ian and Pearl officially started up Spring Spiritual as an organisation. Ian's LinkedIn profile lists being a director at Spring's as his only job and that entry begins the role in 2008. It also says that he "created with my wife a tool for measuring spirituality in a business organisation and how to change culture from that and that he created another tool to measure the spirituality in an individual which is then used to coach from." Ella thought some of the couple's teachings came from another spiritual organisation. They were both members of the spiritual church in Melbourne and received a lot of training through the spiritual church and my understanding is that training is then what Spring boarded them into studying their own spiritual practice and organisation where they used some of the teachings from there along with teachings they claim to be as a part of their council. More on the council shortly. Ian was a speaker at the Creative Innovation Conference in 2010, which was billed as having more than 30 outstanding speakers, thinkers and leaders each speaking for no more than 20 minutes and whose expertise and knowledge span the fields of creativity, innovation, war and peace, food security, poverty, robots, the brain, leadership, entrepreneurship, technology, education, mental health, communities, the future of workers we know it today and much, much more. A video of Ian uploaded to YouTube in 2019 mentions that Ian's life, passion and current work is as a medium and spiritual teacher, which has been involved in for around 25 years. Ella wasn't quite sure when the Spring spiritual name was first used either. They started in their living room though in Dramana and that would have been back in the late 90s, early 2000s. I don't think it would have had an actual name at that stage. Then they branched out to their clinic rooms in Monnington and it would have been in 2014 and I believe that they opened their school. So there's a Spring spiritual school of learning based in Monnington and that premises been there for over 10 years and that's where they hold their weekly circles, workshops as well as trans nights and that type of thing and training and everything. So Spring spiritual had been around for some time at least, though not the school of learning, before Sophie, also not her real name, came across the organisation. I'm trying to go back in time and I was pregnant with my daughter. So it would have been 2007 that I got involved and I got involved because I was living in a small country town and our neighbour was already involved in Sphinx and we would get together and go for walks and have discussions and they were pretty heady discussions and philosophical ones and they weren't your general sort of banter about the weather. So we got along really well and she said to me, would you like to come along to a group? I think you'd find it fascinating. It's like a meditation group. There's a guy that comes from Monnington and she was kind of blas-ay about it. She's like, oh, this guy that comes from Monnington and he sort of instructs the group and I think you'd just get a lot out of it, you know. This neighbour got together a group of around 16 people from the local community for Ian Rodgers to visit and speak with in a community centre and Sophie described how the session progressed. It was meditation and then all of a sudden it wasn't. It was like he would take you through visualisations and you'd raise your energy up so you'd be breathing quite heavily and trying to relax your body at the same time and he'd be taking you through like a set of instructions to get you to become heightened and then he would leave you to visualise. As Sophie mentioned, she was quite heavily pregnant at the time and after getting a bit out of breath and feeling like she might faint, she took a little time out. She then returned to do a couple more sessions. They were fine. He told me that one of the meditations I was in a past life that I'd experienced. You know, negative experiences in my childhood presently in another meditation that we had. He directed each person after they'd sort of explained their meditation on what that was about and I found that all fascinating. You can have this visualisation all these meditations and it connects to parts of yourself that haven't been discussed or sort of undiscovered territories about yourself and that he would take you through and explain what they're about on a sort of psychological spiritual level. Ian had a woman with him who seemed to be doing all of the administration around the sessions, taking down people's names and making Ian cups of tea. She pulled Sophie aside and said that Ian would like to speak with her. I was like, "Oh, okay. He was just some guy to me that did a great job leading the group and they sat me down and said she did all the speaking and said, Ian would really like you to join us. You've got strong powers and you're really capable of doing this kind of work. Mind you, I didn't know what the work was. I didn't know. I sort of flew by the seat of my pants. "Oh, okay. We'd like you to come along and join more of these groups." Then after that, I got a reading by Ian and that's when it sort of all came together. "Oh, he's a clairvoyant. He works with your past. He works with things that are going on currently and you can see your future." He gave me an hour long reading and in that he said, "You're this highly evolved spirit and you haven't got along with your parents and your relationships." I was married at the time. He's in turmoil. He was pointing out all these things that I had felt and whether or not he was just reading me or whether or not he did have spiritual ability. That's yet to be determined. Sophie's husband also ended up getting a reading and through the neighbour, a monthly circle of a dozen people was formed that Sophie began attending. She took a break for six months after the birth of her daughter but she found that she missed the direction that the group was helping to provide her. Circles involved members sharing advice on how to approach your job from a spiritual lens or how to be more loving and honest in your relationships. Sophie told me a bit more about what initially appealed to her about Sphinx. I was a really big Sincar and a deep Sincar about everything and quite analytical and even in my studies at school and at Melbourne University it was the same thing. I loved the idea that there was something more out there that made human beings powerful and that there was something that we had a purpose for. The appeal to me was that What in was presenting was that there is an actual spiritual world and it operates in a certain way. And so it became clear to me, I've got my answers. I've found the meanings of life that I've been looking for. This is the group for me. And I think I was at the start, loved bond, but you know, through that I was praised a lot. You know, you've got a real good handle on what we're trying to teach and the spiritual world and a clear understanding of what it means to be, you know, human. And I think that's what was appealing is that I found a forum and a place to belong where I could discuss these deeper things. Over time, the casual meetings turned into something much more involved. So if you describe this progression to me. When it started to become really serious was there was sort of, it sounds a little bit floaty like you're sort of going there and touching on aspects of your life and learning how to handle them from a spiritual perspective and how to be more loving, how to be more honest, how to approach people, how to be accountable, how to read between the lines when someone talks to you. Are they manipulating you? If so, what's allowing you to be manipulated? So there was a lot of psychology behind it and psychoanalyzing. And where that then shifted was, I was aware that they started to have workshops overseas. And those workshops were happening in Vietnam and there were conferences. So there was a truth conference. And you could go there for a week and learn more about what spirit says about the truth of the world. So, and then from then I sort of thought, hang on, this isn't just a lazy Sunday where I go and I enjoy learning more about my life and who I am. This is schooling. This is learning and getting accreditations in these workshops. And then it was all about guides. So slowly the programming happened where all of a sudden we had guides. And I'm like, oh, okay, so you've got a spiritual guide you need to listen to that spiritual guide by meditating every day. That spiritual guide will guide you through your life and give you the answers that you need. And then after that it was, well, we have a council of Leonardo da Vinci and all these deceased entities, all these people that help us decide your life and help you understand the spiritual. So I'm like, okay, so now we have guides. Now there are all these workshops I can do. Now there's a council of dead people that help us through our lives and they were like Princess Diana and Sigmund Freud and Hartmogundi. So slowly your sort of slowly your world becomes a little bit more surreal and open to accepting these what seemed like crazy notions. Because you are opening slowly up to these possibilities. Sophia and Ella are both very aware how out there some of the teachings are at Svingt's spiritual. But like so many of the organizations we've looked at over the years this podcast has been running, the more challenging beliefs would be revealed as followers became more invested in the group. So if you continued getting readings from Ian and they continued to convince her that he had access to special knowledge. So all the readings would be aha, he knows me, he is in contact with spirits. He's a powerful entity and his major push was I am, this is himself, an elite entity who has access to higher knowledge from the spiritual world, me and my wife, Pearl. And then Pearl came in. So it sort of happened slowly at that time and then it was ET's. Oh, we're working with ET's. Oh, okay. And every little increment of information that felt a bit too far out there for me, I had to make a choice in my head. Do I continue because I love the work? If I do, I have to accept that pigs can fly. So I either take I am all in or I'm all out and there were moments in time where I'd hear some new sort of belief where I'd pull back and I go, no, I'm in, I'm fully in. These are the people that I belong with. This is a great organisation. They're very loving. Yeah, but it got to a stage where it was so rules based, especially when they introduced their 11 values and making sure you're meditating always with your guide and making sure you're following all these values and you can't wear black. When you come to meditate because black is the opposite of light and it means you've got dark energy and all these rules started to come in. It felt more suffocating like I felt anxious because I went into it sort of a free spirit thinking that I could take in bits that I wanted and leave out bits that I didn't and bits that sat right with me. And then all of a sudden it was more like programming. You have to believe certain things. You have to practice our meditations in a certain way. So it sort of became very rules based over time. Ella sent me Svink's spiritual set of 11 spiritual values that accore to the teachings and practices and they are as follows. One karma confronting the situations in your life arising from pre-existing debt. Two spiritual growth, the application of spiritual values and principles into your daily existence. Three equality, the acceptance that all individuals have equal worth. Four accountability, every action of every person has a reaction for which you are accountable. Five judgment, the expectation of others that they will subscribe to your values. Six sharing energy, the recognition of the connectivity of all people and things. Seven ego, the belief that other people exist to support you. Eight fear, indecisiveness over an anticipated outcome. Nine honesty, the ability to express your truth. Ten choice, the right to make decisions concerning matters fundamental to your growth. And eleven self belief, the belief that you are worthy of giving yourself the opportunity to grow. I found the values of judgment, ego and fear the most confusing. And I emailed Ella to ask if she could clarify how these three worked. She said that she originally found this confusing as well, but that whilst they are stating the negative, they made the opposite, that we shouldn't judge others, that ego exists, but we were taught we need to minimize it. And in regards to fear, it is that fear is a major limiting factor for humans, however you shouldn't let fear hold us back. In a spiritual YouTube video about the values, Ian and Pearl share that ego and judgment are the two values that their students find the most difficult to understand. I wouldn't dare suggest that's because they are poorly formed and communicated or possibly even odd to include as part of a set of values in the first place. They mention that accountability is about not being a victim and not playing the blame game. The judgment is okay if you make a judgment that you should distance yourself from a friend who is no good for your own spiritual growth. And that ego is fine in many respects, but not at the cost of others. Pearl explains fear through an example of someone feeling like they hate their job, but can't leave because they need the money, when instead they should believe in the support of the entities around them who will help them to find a better job. She also shares that it's very, very few people are minority of statistics of people who are meant to be homeless and meant to be living with little in the street. And if they are, that's generally for a calmatic purpose too, end quote. On equality, Ian is careful to explain something about that particular value. Interestingly, what that says is that a recognition that all people have equal worth, the key in that is worth, because equality by itself can be a misnomer, we're not equal because we have different evolution. And I'm not talking about our strata position in society that by itself is false, because that's only there so you can learn certain things or abuse or not abuse your power. But as entities, we're different because we know different things. Otherwise, how could two children from the same family be so different? Because they have a different background before this life. [Music] Ella was in her early 20s when she first came to spring spiritual. I came across it in 2009. I was 22. I had a reading with Ian and then the following year in 2010 went to their Vietnam spiritual conference, which was the second one that they'd run and I think now they're up to 16 or 17 of these. my on new year. and Pearl and she introduced me to the couple and their teachings. She was at a stage in life where she wanted to do some work on herself. To try to fix some patterns she was identifying that hadn't been serving her particularly well. So I was starting out on what I called my spiritual journey. I'd come out a second and healthy relationship and was recognizing the patterns in that relationship and acknowledging myself being the common denominator and wanting to break that cycle. So I was on a deep dive into any sort of personal development I could get my hands on. And at that time it wasn't something I'd been greatly exposed to in my upbringing and by my parents, but my aunt offered and outlet at that time. And she had also been on quite a personal development spiritual journey herself. And I got swept up in that because it was definitely what I was looking for. And it seemed to start to give me some of the answers I was seeking in terms of why we're here and all the big questions that I was starting to really ponder. Some of what appealed to her overlaps with what had appealed to Sophia's well. I'd been brought up with atheist parents but always fascinated by religion or be it didn't feel that religion was an avenue I wanted to personally take. I had a lot of Christian friends and I loved their values and I spent a lot of time exploring religion as well when then spirituality presented itself and what Ian and Pearl were starting to do. To me at that time it felt like a better fit because it wasn't under the label of a religion but was helping me understand both myself but also the bigger picture because there were a lot more things that I had questions to even through our childhood. Ella told me how Ian and Pearl used to talk about their time as police officers in relation to how it impacted their spiritual work as well. They would share stories about interrogations that they used to do and how they are trained in psychoanalysts to get information extracted from people and stuff like that so that forms part of their training which makes them so good at what they do. They would also talk about the court case from 1991 and 1992. Ella says it would come up every 12 to 18 months. In the context of how Ian and Pearl will fight something right until the bitter end if they believe in it ethically. They would mention it being this long-running case but it certainly doesn't seem like anyone was given any real understanding of what it was all about in any detail. It's funny how they use it within the community as a typo of, I don't know when it's the word threat but the way it's spoken about leaves everyone thinking you wouldn't mess with them. Ella broke down some of the core teachings and concepts within Sphinx spiritual for me, a couple of which Sophie has touched on already. The organisation has three main beliefs that were never to take a life, including our own, that we live more than once and that karma is real. So what we do and the choices and actions we take, we will, if they are not good, have to repay them in future lifetimes. Ella gave me a couple of other examples of the teachings around karma that she found quite troubling. They really pushed within the organisation that everything happens for a reason and they use this to justify when bad things happen. And I am a believer still, I think, in that by and large, but I don't like it being used when someone's genuinely suffering or there's something going on. Like that's not helpful in that moment to be told, you really deserve that shit treatment or you deserve to lose your partner to death or you deserve whatever it was because that's everything happens for a reason and that's your karma in this life. And it's like, but hang on, you're allowed to be sad, you're allowed to be outraged, you're allowed to feel whatever comes up in that moment. And it was so D, like it would devalue your experience because it was like, but that's just what it is and you need to suck it up and that's how it's supposed to be. So stop winging about it kind of thing. Back to the core concepts, Ella told me a bit more about the importance of the spiritual values. Underneath all of that, they have their 11 spiritual values, which form the foundation of the organisation and the values that all members are to apply and adhere to in their day-to-day life. And in your weekly circle is when you are held account to applying or not those values. So everything comes back to those core 11 values and then they have their council of 10 that oversee everything. Seven of those members are in spirit form. So I no longer living on earth, the likes of Gandhi, Princess Diana, Christian Hanuman, Crazy Horse, Sigmund Freud, as well as Enempele are on the council and the extraterrestrial Zootor, who's alive and he's meant to be over 300 years old and certainly not from this planet, but spends a lot of his time in his spacecraft above earth trying to help earth. Also on the council, Alianardo Da Vinci, as Sophie mentioned, and so Francis Bacon. A Reddit user suggested so Francis would likely be outraged at his inclusion on the council, considering his crucial contributions to the scientific method. Enempele Rogers and Zootor are the only non-spiritual entities on the council. According to Enrodgers in a Sphinx spiritual YouTube video, "What the council does is plan and put into place and bring the knowledge for the spiritual Renaissance." En says that council members show themselves as they were in their last life, even though each is an entity beyond any lifetime that they have lived. Maybe it's the patriarchal nature of human history that gives eight out of 10 council members he/him pronouns in their most recent or current lifetimes. They bring, says Ian, "A balance of skills and knowledge that allow us to do the work that we have to do." And he says that, quote, "It's a council of equals." Though it's run by Chief Crazy Horse, who is Ian's own guide as well. I'm unsure of Zootor's alien ethnicity, but there appeared to be only two non-white representatives with skills to balance the set. I stumbled on a blog that seems to be kept by Ian, which is called "The Wisdom of Crazy Horse," where he posts little kernels from his guide regularly. They're set up to look almost like poetry, one short line after another, some just a couple of lines, and some longer. I'll interspers some of the wisdom throughout the episode for you, but he's one to start you off. Saturday, 28th, February, 2026, Crazy Horse on recognising a mother. On a special birthday, there is no greater reward and recognition for a mother than her children wanting to spoil her, with a unique time away together, whether mum only has to enjoy. From my guide, Crazy Horse, through Ian Rogers, director, Sphinx Spiritual. I thought there was quite an unusual bit of wisdom for an entity last known as a Lakota war leader in the 1800s to share. Pearl addresses a question you might have about Zootor in a Sphinx Spiritual video about the council that you can find on YouTube. It's a very fair question if people were to say, "Well, if he's going around on Earth and he's stabilising on Earth, where is he? We never see him. How come we don't see him?" There's a simple answer to that. Those of us who can see him, do see him, but he can make himself invisible in his ships and visible at any point in time. He can remove the energy so that it's right in front of your eyes and you can't see him. Pearl's own guide is Christian Hunnamen, whose she says would have been known in the homeopathy community as Samuel, but who prefers the name Christian, spelled with a K, because of the energy of that name. Here's Pearl speaking about Christian Hunnamen in the same video. The question is, is that very little has changed and in fact has become worse? Where is the healing in orthodox medicine today? Of course we know there isn't. It's orthodox medicine today is really not designed to heal. It's designed to deal with symptoms. It's designed to remove parts from the body. It's designed to prescribe drugs to avoid and that's not what Christian Hunnamen brought to the world. [Music] I asked Ella whether she had an impression that it was one or the other that was more of the leader between Ian and Pearl. They purport to be very equal in their relationship. They purport to have a very comatic, deeply loving relationship that is one of their 16 and our 16, which is taught through the organisation, is that when a spirit forms, you form as one of 16 spirits. that come together and that you journey throughout your lifetimes with those other 15 entities and you can't reach enlightenment until all 16 of you have met all your comeatic tests. So you might only meet in any one lifetime two to three of those spirits or entities in person because some might be still in the spirit world or others might be on the other side of the world, but they are really impactful relationships. They might not necessarily be long term relationships. They could be short term relationships, but they can be volatile. They can be, yeah, it's like kind of like a twin flame type analogy where you have a very close affinity to that person or be it, it could be a tumultuous type of relationship. So Ian and Pearl claim that their relationship is one and they are 16 as well as two of their children are in this group of 16, which brings both its benefits and its challenges to their relationship, but because one of their values is equality, they talk very highly of each other and they keep their personal life quite private, which I respect, but there's no one bigger than the other because they also really like to acknowledge that everyone has a preference to one or the other. So to some people, Pearl is, she's their main go to and they feel comfortable with her and for others, Ian is their person of comfort. And so for me personally, Ian was my, the person I resonated more of and I had a lot more fear around Pearl, but from an organisational perspective, that's good because then you can appeal to a wider group of people. So if you told me how the offerings changed during the early period of her involvement with the organisation. Our group started a little bit later than they had had some other groups, there's some aspects of it. So the workshops had already been there. I think the other groups had already been told about guides and that the work was all based on having spiritual guides and they'd already been told about this council of guides that control you or that you should be listening to. The other things such as the 11 spiritual values, they were created later on. So as they sort of grew in terms of the population, then they started to put these values in place and the workshops grew, more workshops on different modalities such as Hunham and Healings, spiritual counselling. So as they started to become more of a school of learning, they put this sort of structure in place and I could see the change, I could see the change. Then we were told that we were going to become mediums. So here I am 2007, thinking that I'd joined a spiritual meditation group that was a free thinking group of people that were loving and trying to be more loving and finding your purpose in life as you go along and then about four years later going, "Oh, I'm going to become a medium." Right, that's where we're actually headed. And now I'm a spiritual counsellor, I'm going towards a mediumship, I'm a Hunham and Healer, you know, and now I'm a concomitant Healer, all which you pay for. So before you know it, you're sort of enticed into it becoming very much who you are in every possible way. There was some pressure on members to bring more people in, Ella told me. It was never termed recruiting, but there is a strong push from Ian and Pearl to share their teachings, to share their YouTube page, to tell our friends about it, to invite new people into transes and we would get into trouble if we weren't. You know, why aren't you sharing everything on your social media? Why aren't you bringing your friend along? And it was constantly questioned and pushed for because they want more. You know, they want more exposure, they want more. Coming to a trans isn't enough to get you invited to a circle, however. Ella explained to me how that process worked at Spring Spiritual. So to be a part of the organisation isn't just a guaranteed thing. You need to be accepted into circle and that decision is dictated by the council, of which Ian and Pearl are apart. So usually it begins with you might have a mediumship reading within or Pearl. You might go to Pearl for some homeopathic advice or some counselling and they might in that session suggest that you would be really good to join a circle. When I began it was purported to be a personal growth circle. So it was an opportunity each week to sit with the same people and to reflect on your life and tell you living it and to continuously better yourself. So other times it might be you know someone in circle and you want to join. But again it's not a guaranteed ticket of entry. You need to be sort of validated by Ian or Pearl and the council as worthy of beginning circle. So currently today there are around 10 circles that run to each night Monday through Thursday. They have a circle in Gipsland as well as a circle in Jolong. And these circles aside from the locational ones are tier depending on your ability and your loyalty to the organisation. So it is widely known that there are more superior circles to others. And it's rare that circle changes occur. People might come in to join. Sometimes people will get moved into another circle and that's either to promote or to moat them. So depending on what they have done will depend on which circle they move to. And why? And again only Ian and Pearl and the council can dictate how people are moved around the circles. But in the circles today they're mediumship circles. Sophie shared with me how mediumship was taught and experienced from her perspective in her circles. Once you join a circle you have a leader and that leader is either Ian or Pearl or their son or their daughter. And this other woman that they obviously revered. So you sit with your leader, you go through what's happened during the week around the circle, you do a guided meditation with the leader, you explain your meditation and they tell you at what point in your spiritual growth you are. And whether or not you're falling behind because of your behaviours or whether or not you're growing because you've meditated enough and you've handled that in a spiritual way. So that's what it is but also during that time you do transmitting ship. So you sit there with your guide and Ian or one of the other leaders will tell you that your guide has come into your body and now you can talk through your guide. So it's no longer you, your voice, your voice changes and you and he gives you a lecture. So he'll say, "You're lecturing on." So my particular guide he'd say, "You're lecturing on sexual abuse." And so I'd sit there with my eyes closed and I'd just get the rush of words coming out like it's my guide speaking on sexual abuse. And he'd go around to each member with a different topic and they'd have to speak through their guide. So there was a few different things he'd sometimes put a note in the middle of the floor like a piece of paper and you'd have to try and guess using your medium guide, what was on the piece of paper and then he'd turn that over. The other thing is you get up and you give messages to each other. So this is the core of what you learn. So you get up with your guide in you and you go over to another member of the group and you say, "Can I give you a message from my guide?" And then you give them a message, it could be about their family life, it could be about their work life, it could be about the colour of clothes they need to start wearing. But it's apparently coming from your clairvoyant guides. You're giving them like a little reading, a little crystal ball inside into their life and everyone gets up and does that. So within these circles that's the training that you're doing, this medium chip training with your guide. Attending Circle regularly was just the start of a dedicated student's involvement in Spring Spiritual. Ella flashed out for me what else was expected of those who wanted to demonstrate their dedication to the teachings. When you begin a circle you need to sign, I think it's about a three page document now, to say that you adhere to the guidelines, things like no alcohol or substance to be consumed before you sit in circle. You need to have an attendance rate of 80% or more throughout the year because they want a level of loyalty and trust that can then form within that circle and other things that you adhere to when it comes to joining. So there's, again, it's not just a decision that anyone can make and is taken lightly. And then as a part of a circle you have an obligation to the community and the organisation in upholding its reputation. There's an expectation that you frequent the trans nights which are held on a Sunday evening at the school. There's now only about six of those a year. They used to be done monthly but they don't do them as frequent anymore as well as do all that you can to attend any conferences and additional training workshops that they run. So each year they would do a conference in Vietnam, except for a couple of years over the COVID period. But the conferences usually have different titles, they have like a different meaning and focus. So each conference has a different focus. They've run conferences in England, researching the crop circles. They've run conferences throughout France and Italy, following the footsteps of Joan of Arc, as well as Michael Angelo and Leonardo Davinci. They've run a conference in Egypt going to the great pyramids of Giza where they believe all of their teachings come from, which is why they're called Sphinx Spiritual, so all of their teachings come from the ancient schools of Egypt, which were built below the pyramids. The European conference elemention, included Leonardo Davinci as a council member, of course, with Michael Angelo said to be a friend of the council, and Joan of Arc because that was supposedly one of Pearl's spirits' previous incarnations. The next conference is back in Vietnam and is called Embrace Change. It runs for five days in late September early October, and appears to be open to the public, though limited to 30 places. No prices are listed on the website, which says that the change conference is actually a repeat, backed by popular demand due to the success of the 2024 theme. The claims to unparalleled access are front and center. Quote Ian and Pearl Rogers, directors of Sphinx Spiritual School of Learning, offer something no other spiritual teachers in the world can provide. Direct connection to higher wisdom through deep trans mediumship. Their exclusive ability to work with the Sphinx Spiritual Council of Entities provides participants access to spiritual knowledge that transcends conventional teaching and knowledge. I'll let Ella continue. And then they also run specialist days, and then they have their training arms, so they've got Hunnamen Healing, which is an energetic form of touch and light healing. They've got Concommonent for Healing, which is an acupressure type of healing. They've got the Spiritual Counseling course, which was called a diploma, but there's no training body actually overseeing and regulating that course, so they've reduced that now to a parchment. But I believe that's about 10,000 a year to attend. And they've got mind alignment that they teach, and then they'll do other conferences over the years on dream interpretation and philosophy and stuff like that as well. And then they have the training days in their pyramid in Gipsland, which is said to have a really high level of energy. So even more of a depth of learning and experience can be heard by those who are lucky enough to attend there. And there's others types of spiritual surgery that they're training people in and lots of other layers of more secretive training that only select members get invited to and are privy to, including the trancing of Jesus, which he and us. You'll have heard Ella refer to Sphinx Spiritual's pyramid. A structure the organization has built in Gipsland. We'll come back to that a little later. But first, the trance knights. That's a phrase that had a very different meaning to me in my late teens and early 20s. So if you told me more about them, she described these as knights where Ian gets an entity coming into his body. So he'll either get one of the council members coming through, Crazy Horse, Christian Hunnamann, Mahatma Gandhi, Princess Diana and he'll speak as though he's speaking through her and he'll do an hour's lecture on a particular topic. Say for example, self-belief or Princess Diana did one on identity. And everyone would be listening silently because he's not allowed to be touched and spoken to or you can't even cough. And then you got to ask questions at the end. So you must do that. I'm going to play you some brief audio of Ian Channing Members of the Council from a video on the Sphinx Spiritual website to give you a real sense of how he presents these council members via his chances. Here's Sigmund Freud. And you run around being stazing or negative and hurtful devices so as to deflect from yourself and such people will strike first. They're like a tiger snake, they won't wait. In some senses this is ego but mostly it is fear. Let us remember there's also a dishonest, a fearful, there's also a fearful dishonest. One equals the answer. Leonardo da Vinci. Advancements scientifically on earth would seem to be vast but they are not. Little is being discovered that is not known or believed. Free. Some branch of a science to learn of the meaning and the beauty and the thrill and the upliftment of scientific discovery. That is what is important. So Francis Bacon. Through the application of your life, that your primary purpose is to increase your capacity to love which means to give. Lady die. All being a member of that family allowed me to do is to gain the position to achieve what I was meant to. Of course I left before my time which wasn't of my choice or my doing but be that as it may. It was always meant to expose that for no good reason within a structure of royalty there is a place for love. Here's Ian's own guide Chief Crazy Horse. What we want is more purity, more simplicity. What we want is people to learn through time, to have the power, to control their own life, to do what is right because they know it's right because it's right not only for them but for the rest of the people. And finally Gandhi. All that I wanted was for the people of my country to be free, to be independent and have the ability to feel better about themselves because what I recognised in my country was that the people did not feel they can feel constrained towards to follow cultures which were not their cultures which were not the cultures in the history of the Indian people. I wonder if it's possible that the composition of the council is in any way influenced by Ian's proficiency with certain accents. Ella gave me some more details about how Ian and Pearl would get answers from the council. For instance in approving whether someone could join circle. Before Ella shares a bit more about the Transing from an audience or student perspective, I'll get back to that pyramid building in Gipsland that she mentioned earlier. I'll let her tell you a bit more about it. The pyramid was a purpose built structure after they spent supposedly a long time researching the ideal property in a location that had a high level of energy to build this pyramid. So they were told the dimensions of the pyramid from Leonardo da Vinci, I believe, with bi-memory. And Pearl's son was part of the still fabricator who created the framework for this building and I do believe they had council approval to build this pyramid that is meant to be connected to the pyramids in Giza energetically. It also goes very deep into the earth and spreads out across the land surrounding for kilometers bringing better energy to the area and beyond. Ian and Pearl will spend a lot of their personal time because it's their pharma, hobby farm type thing. So they spend a lot of their personal time with the family there as well as now running some of the training and workshops within the pyramid. But again, it was mainly a building to help channel and amplify the intensity of energy with the teachings that they're doing to help spread more of that out into the world. I asked Ella if she could tell me more about the transes, how often they occurred and what it felt like to be in the room when they were happening. So there were the public transes that Ian does on a Saturday night at the school and again, they're about half a dozen of those, anyone, any general public person, anyone's allowed to come to get some $50, they're now doing it online as well. Ian would also do trans in his own circles that he took, which are now just on the Monday evening for the elite circle members. So he would do a trans and Pearl does trans as well, but it's in specialty. They also have trans circles where they're training up other members to specialise and they have accredited both their daughter and their son as deep trans mediums. So they are allowed to do even more trans work as well. Then he would do it on conferences. So on a five day conference, which would be the average time they would run a conference Ian might do a trans every day. Sometimes it might be only two or three over the week. And sometimes you were lucky enough he would come into your circle once or twice a year and maybe do a trans as well. Then there were the times in the pyramid when Ian would do trans and they would go home and in there after hours time for port to do trans and record and transcript a lot of the work that they do out in the private arena as well. So Ian would talk about sometimes little losing complete reality over whether he was, it was him or crazy horse speaking or whether he was coming or going because the trance takes a big toll on the body. So a physical toll is that spirit is entering and speaking through him, he would take their days to recover from that and even more so if he trances Jesus, there was a big recovery period. And so even when he would come out of trance, we would be strictly instructed to not make any noise and to be really quiet and to not approach him afterwards because of the impact on the body. So I would say it's probably virtually almost daily but definitely a weekly thing he would do. When you're out of trance, there's something magical and mystifying about it. I know in the early days I would sit there trying to find a fault or a slip up or a reason to debunk what was going on because I've got a science background and very analytical. And over time found it really hard to see anything that would clearly debunk what was going on. So I believed and then the information coming through in trance, we are told is the purest form of information currently available on earth. So then to be privy to that and to be a part of that and to be learning from these entities coming through in particular in was something to be grateful for because how am I the one lucky enough to be exposed to this and but in that the catch was now your accountability is increased because you know this information, you have to be a better person, you have to go spread the word, you have to bring more people into it, you have to do all of the things to help this momentum grow so we can make the world a better place. I'm not a particularly spiritual person but I can't pretend that I have no questions around the experience of being human, of why we have consciousness and why we suffer and why we love, of whether there's any meaning in life other than what we make of it. I consider myself to be an atheist but I also figure that if it turns out I'm wrong the best thing I can do is live a good life, to try to contribute positively to the world and become comfortable that that's what I would be judged on by any unanticipated higher power. I say this because I think for some people who are, like me, not so spiritual, it's tempting to think along the lines of how could anyone believe this stuff and I don't think that's helpful. So many people I speak with think that the problem of cults would be solved if we could just get rid of religion and I have to say that I totally disagree. I maintain that religious freedom is crucial and many cults aren't even religious in the first place. I think we should all be free to follow whatever belief system makes sense to us with the caveat that it shouldn't cause harm to others. I asked Sophie if she could tell me more about the experience of having her guide enter her body and how she reflects on that now. So when I look at it from a scientific neurological side of it, I feel like what they were doing was they were tightening your awareness. So when they would put you through meditation which always began with a meditation, instead of lowering your vibrations like a Buddhist meditation and calming you down, they were raising up all your energy so that your adrenaline was really, really high and you were spinning on the inside and tingling on the outside. And I feel like what they told people that was was a connection to spirit. When really it's just your own energy heightened. And then when you came out of that the dopamine levels were so high or your endorphins were so high, you're feeling all these love so you want that again and you want to transfer that energy. So if you're heightened, I mean even if I walked into a room and I was heightened you could feel it. So we do have a transference of energy in some way. We're not dead in that way. So I reckon a lot of the modalities where you were touching people and you were really heightened and they could feel it was the transference of your adrenaline and your your energy on them. So that's a scientific sort of notion of really there was a lot of hypnotizing in that. Pell Rogers is a hypnotherapist as well. So I feel that that played a huge role in it. But when you're getting your guide entering your body you're still in that state. So it's quite possibly just jargon and information coming out from your own mind and your thinking you've got this entity in your body speaking about a topic. But there's an aspect to it because I do believe that there is something more powerful than just humans on earth. And I do believe that there are spirits. I think there's a possibility that we were making contact and they are making contact with some sort of spiritual entity or energy. But they're abusing it. They're not using it for the greater good. And I was really private about how I would use that. So as a child I was fairly clairvoyant and I would get information shown to me and then it would come true. But I didn't promote that. I was just okay. That's something that I can have a connection to. I didn't use it or abuse it. And I feel like in these spiritual cults there could be an aspect of it that is reaching some sort of spiritual level. But the way in which Sphinx ended up being was there was a lot of money given over to them for this training with spirits. And then it became quite toxic and there wasn't a lot of love being shared and there wasn't a lot of healing going on or spiritual growth for that matter. So my question would be then, well, how elite are they? How high up in the spiritual world are these two people from Mornington? Out of all the billions of people in the world we have the two most elite spiritual entities here in Mornington. And if that was the case we'd all be amazing by now. If they were really training us spiritually we'd all be amazing at it and we'd be healing large crowds of people. Sophie had attended a few sessions at Ian and Pearl's Pyramid Building in Gipsyland. She told me a bit more about her impression of the building and what those sessions involved. They used the Pyramid to meditate in themselves but nobody else is allowed to go in there because it's considered a pure space where the energy is so strong that it's connecting to Egypt and it's connecting to the Pyramids in Egypt and it's also connecting to out of space. So therefore the energy is just amazing in there and according to them and in that space they run a lecture where Ian Rogers channels Jesus Christ. I've been to three of these. And only honorary members are allowed to join. So you get tapped on the shoulder. That one's for free. And you go there and you listen to supposedly Jesus tell you about the world and the state it's in and what we need to do to fix it. During this time as well with the Pyramid they let us know, let the organization know that they were a couple of years before, that they were embarking on a spiritual renaissance and that we were part of a spiritual renaissance. So a rebirth of spirit and that it was our role to start to change the world because the world was going to start collapsing. And that not only was our purpose in life to be more loving as individuals on a spiritual level and have our guides but our bigger purpose was to ensure that the spiritual renaissance took place because the world was collapsing. So we had huge fear around not being part of this spiritual renaissance and not being on purpose for that. And so Jesus is there and explaining to us that he never died on the cross that he was indeed married or with a woman that he was an alien, he was an ET during that time he came down to help the earth and that he was practicing the modalities that we now know, you know the Huniman healing and some of these modalities and more because Sphinx now has more modalities given to them from Jesus. So if he explains Sphinx's theology as a bit of a mishmash, taking parts from ancient Egypt as you'd expect, reincarnation aspects from Hinduism and then this particular take on Christianity and Jesus Christ. He came down to join the world and he knew that he was going to be crucified but it didn't matter because he was an ET and that it's not really just because the Bible told the wrong story. So they don't believe, think spiritual, don't believe in the Bible but they believe that Jesus was this pure being of love, who's gone back up to his planet, you know, and keeps an eye on us and that's why it comes through Ian. In February 2026, a current affair interviewed Ian and Pearl as part of a three month investigation into spring spiritual. Reporter Sam Cookyara asked Ian Rodgers whether he'd ever chance to Jesus. At first Ian was evasive, saying, "If we have or if we haven't, he's absolutely nothing to do with you or anyone else." When Sam reminded him that he had said they were an open book and would answer any questions the journalist had, Ian said absolutely. When the reporter asked the question again, saying it was a yes or no answer, Ian said, "Don't tell me how to answer Sam." Eventually, he admitted that it did happen but seemed to suggest only the one time, saying that it took them three months to prepare and three months to recover from the experience. The ability to transgeez as Christ on top of all of these historical figures is obviously a huge thing for Ian to claim he can do. But for those who trust him and Pearl and who've come to accept their teachings as part of a school that they've bought into with promises of being more loving and living a better life with a higher purpose, it must feel incredibly exciting to have access to such amazing teachings. It's hard to imagine for me how profound that must feel in the moment. Here's Ella again. You feel special. You feel like you're a chosen one. You feel like how lucky am I? I've got the ability to make actual change and make the world a better place by being a more loving, kind, helpful, selfless person. There are a lot of beautiful teachings in that, but then there's the other side. Ella told me how being involved with Spring Spiritual influenced a lot of devotees, day-to-day lives and decisions, including her own. If you were ever at a crossroad questioning everything, you would take that into circle and ask or you would go and request a reading from Ian or counselling from Pearl to help get the right answer that they believe is what you need to do at that time. So lots of things. I heard stories of other members. They didn't know what colour card I buy and they would go and ask what colour card I was going to best serve them. Our names we would ask what name has energy best to serve me achieve what I need to in this lifetime. And I found out that name and then seven years later changed my name officially through Deepol. Even having my daughter, when I met my partner at the time and we felt pregnant, I said to him, we won't be choosing our child's name. I'll be getting that from Ian. And that felt like the right thing to do. I wanted the name for her that was going to best give her the energy she needed to succeed as much as she can in this lifetime. And at that time, I didn't think twice about that. Like I'd always wanted to be a mum and I'd already had names picked out, but I was so far in by that stage that it was just a given. I would not be choosing my child's name. It would be given to me and that would be an honour for her to have her chosen name. Thankfully I love that name, but I know people were given names that they don't like and they really struggled with that. Or, you know, some people were given names for their child and then they didn't use it. And then they would be absolutely taken over the coals for not using the name that they were given because that was the ultimate disrespect. How dare you ask me what name to use and then offend me by not using it. And yeah, so one answer short, a lot of mine and others day-to-day decisions revolved around what in and per all believed was best for us. And we didn't do anything that they didn't approve or agree with. And if we did, there were ramifications and you would spend the next weeks, months, sometimes years trying to make up for that poor choice that you'd made. So if you explained to me how interpreting everything through the lens of your guide had a real impact on people's lives. It was very rare that you would just take things on face value because you were told that in order to grow, you needed to be connected to your guide and needed to be connected to your spirit and spiritual values and to ensure that you were operating through your spirit all the time. And that included accountability. So if I had road rage, for example, which I get on occasion, you know, someone on the road's going 40k now and I've got to get to work and it's an 80k zone and I'm like, God, you know, how dare you hurry up. I'd have to then check myself. Oh my God. My God. Why have I yelled at this poor lady? Oh, okay. Well, when I get home from work, I'll meditate on why I did that. I'm accountable for that. So you're constantly in a state of checking and rechecking how you're behaving, whether or not you're doing the right thing by your spirit. And that includes big things like parenting. So being told that you're an unnatural parent or being told that you're a selfish mother because you're going to work or being told that you don't spend enough time with your children which is fine. You can go to a psychologist and they can look at it and say, yeah, you aren't. But the impact that that's having on your children is on their spirit and you need to now adjust and question your parenting. So your own sense of self belief in the way you conduct yourself and your family and your relationships fades away. And what you're left with is what you believe your guide is constantly telling you to do. And it's safe because I don't have to make a decision. If I've got a guide telling me all the time what color card I buy, what job to have, how to conduct myself with my boss, how to raise my children on a day-to-day basis. I don't have to do any of the thinking for myself. Because this kind of thinking is happening during someone's regular working hours, perhaps, or on a commute away from the group, it might seem like it's an individual's interpretation of what their guide is telling them to do, of how to remain accountable. But all of the ideas around the kinds of things that a guide would expect of an individual were, of course, heavily shaped by the group's teachings. So if you explain this further for me. We're always hungry to learn. We're always going to take in our environment. We're going to take in what's happening to us all the time. We're doing that all the time. But imagine if you've got somebody telling you, "No, that's not the way to be. This is how to be, and this is why all the time." You must follow these 11 spiritual values. You must listen to your guide. And your guide is telling you these things. You've got to be accountable. You can't have any ego. You can't have any fear. You've got to conduct yourself lovingly and honestly every step of the way. And you've got all this jargon, this word-seller that they promote as well, going on in your mind. So your hungry phonology have soaked it up and you're living every day with these new instructions and this new information on how to conduct yourself and what to think. And occasionally it might come to a head because you might have your own sensibility about something, your own thoughts about something like, "I never hated my dad, but they really wanted me to." They really insisted that he was an egotistical man and he didn't love me and he was selfish and spoiled and sure he's got his faults, but they took that to a degree where I had to dislike him and break from him. So there was always this part in my heart and in my natural emotional state and my experiences with my father that I'd had before, Sphinx, that were fighting against what they were telling me. So what I do is sometimes I'd punch myself in the chest to try and stop my old thought pattern about my father and believe what they wanted me to believe. And I'd say to myself, "I'm not good enough, I'm not listening to my spirit. My spirit is trying to protect me from my father. My spirit wants me to grow away from my father." And I'm not listening to my spirit. I'm an ego, I'm a horrible person, I'm selfish for wanting my father. So they teach you ways of self-talk, accountability, honesty, or delusional if you think your father loves you, all these things. So all those circle groups that you would have, you'd get berated and you'd get talked to ensure that your way of thinking was banished and this is the spiritual way of thinking. I want to play a recording of Ian Rogers from that 2010 Creative Innovation Conference that I mentioned towards the start of this episode. When we consider the question of what role creativity and innovation plays in building the culture of an organization, what I would say to you is that you've actually reverse the order. Creativity and innovation can't actually take place unless the culture's right. Most organisations have a hierarchical culture and a culture based around fear and a culture based around manipulation and a lack of equality. Therefore people don't feel free to express themselves anywhere near as much because of a misuse of power by people in all sorts of levels of authority and really those at the highest levels. So what we're saying to you is if we can get the culture of the organisation right and people are able to express themselves freely and not feel they're going to be reproached for that or punished, then creativity and innovation can begin to happen. It can't happen in a repressed organisation. Sophie had some thoughts on whether Ian and Pearl were themselves living these teachings of being accountable and acting with love and honesty at all times. We'll finish the first part of this two-part episode on her words today. Well, because I was there for so long, about 15, 16 years and I was also close to them at certain points as well, like family events and occasions, birthdays and weddings. I saw a different side to them and there was a lot of jealousy amongst their kids that they would also talk about and mention. So in a group that Ian ran our group, he was always talking down about Pearl's son and saying, "How is not this and he's selfish and he's spoiled and he wants money all the time and how they clash." He'd talk about Pearl's son's wife and how she's manipulative and cunning and so there wasn't a lot of love. They talk about their problems. He talked a lot about his problems with his children. There was a lot of berating of people within the group if they weren't following what spirit says or what Ian says. So there wasn't a lot of equality. There wasn't a lot of humility because it was what Ian says or what spirit says is what you should be doing. So I was coercive control in the fact that the finger was never pointed directly at you and you were told, "You must do this." But it was, "If you don't do this, you're going to fall behind. You're not going to grow. You're living in fear. You're delusional. You're selfish." And these were things that were told to us on a regular basis and when you have that told it, "Doesn't feel loving. It doesn't feel like you're supported or that you are loved." And he'd pick on people. So if you go out for dinner, he would make fun of people within the group. So it would Pearl as well. "Did you hear what? How she spoke about that? Oh, she's such a freak and things like that." So in your mind, you put that aside and say, "Well, these are highly evolved spirits. Maybe it's okay to have a joke every now and then it's somebody else's expense." But over time, it just felt cruel to me and I didn't like it. The less I engaged in conversations like that, the sort of more on the outer I was. So did they practice? I don't think they practiced honesty. One example is that I was told in a reading, my first reading that I should have a little Sicily built on my farm, a mini Sicily because that's what my heart would want because I'm half Sicilian and that my husband at the time should build a little Sicily for me. That was given in a reading and that's a recorded. And then over time, when he and wanted to berate me in the last couple of years, he said, "You were demanding of your husband. You were going to force him to build a little Sicily for you." How hard do you think that would have been for him to do? You were bossing him and pushing him into making this little Sicily that you always wanted. Now, that was enough for me to go, "There's not a lot of honesty happening here." And then I said to him, "No, you told me that in a reading, I did not. You have misinterpreted." So whenever you questioned him, you were misinterpreting him. And because it's coming from spirit, he could make up anything to cover up a lie. And this happened a lot. And I could see it happening to a lot of people who would be like, "Huh, hang on a minute." That's not how it went down. And then that question, it's, "You're not listening to your spirit, you're misinterpreting the information. How dumb are you?" So there wasn't a lot of equality. There wasn't a lot of honesty. There was a lot of manipulation. There was a lot of cruelty I found in the end. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Let's Talk About Secrets. A big thanks to Sophie and Ella for sharing their experiences with me. And you'll hear much more from both in part two, where we look at the highly controversial spiritual surgery modality. Sphinx is dating and investment platform endeavors, the way that people's relationships have been impacted within this organization, and why Ella and Sophie both ended up leaving just last year. That's available to Patreon supporters already. Let's talk about Secrets as an independent listener-funded project. Please consider supporting the show via Patreon, as your support is what makes it a viable endeavor. You can access episodes early and add free with your contribution at patreon.com/ltaspod. You can also listen to my audiobook, Do as I say, which is linked in the show notes, or grab some merch. Something you can always do for free is give the podcast a rating on the podcast platform of your choice or share it with a friend. If you know someone who'd like to sponsor the show, send them my way. This episode of Let's Talk About Secrets was written and researched by me, Sarah Steele, with original music by Joe Gould. If you've been personally affected by involvement in a cult, or would like to support those who have been, you can find support with or donate to cult information and family support if you're in Australia via cifs.org.au and you can find resources outside of Australia with the International Coltic Studies Association via icsaome.com. Hope you'll join me for part two. Thank you so much for listening. To catch the rest of this episode and so much more, search for conspiracy theories, cults and crimes wherever you get your podcasts. We'll also drop a link in the show notes.