Vlogs Archives - Beyond the Temple

April 19, 2026April 19, 2026

Finding Spiritual Autonomy in Nature

For those who’ve experienced spiritual abuse or whose minds don’t fit the mould of dogmatic obedience, the quiet of the forest offers a different kind of refuge. My first instinct when I left Rigpa was to find refuge in the silence of the forest, and many others in the Beyond the Temple community also replaced the shrine room with nature.

These are the opening words of my latest video for the Beyond the Temple channel. Watch the video for the rest, or read the rest of the transcript ( with more added) below.

It was such a relief to simply sit in the forest without having to follow a form, read a text, or navigate the dynamics of a community that was more concerned with their own reputation than their students’ well-being. What I found was that immersing myself in nature didn’t only bring solace, it grounded my recovery from religious trauma and gave me a way to still honour my spiritual nature without the weight of obedience to something external from myself, specifically someone I could no longer trust.

After leaving the religion, I needed to come to something pure, uncomplicated and unburdened by dogma. And I had to take back agency over my own spiritual life. I had to learn to genuinely take refuge in my own true nature.

Bear with me here, while I compare the teachings on refuge to the reality of life in some sanghas. I’m going into this to show why – even within the Buddhist teachings themselves – it’s important for us to learn to trust our own inner wisdom.

Buddhism teaches us that we all have Buddha nature, and that this is our true nature, but we don’t realise our true nature because it’s obscured – by habits, emotions, concepts, and karma. Though Buddhists outwardly take refuge in the Buddha, his teachings, and the community of practitioners, our ultimate refuge is our own Buddha nature.

The Buddha taught this in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, “Dwell with yourself as your own island, with yourself as your own refuge, take no other refuge.”

The refuge practice of the Longchen Nyingtik Ngondro even says that our own wisdom nature is the ultimate refuge when it says we take refuge ‘in the maṇḍala of essence, nature, and compassion’ – meaning in our mind’s empty essence and awareness, the union of which brings compassion.

Added to that, in the actual vajrayana practices, the lama is a symbol for our own wisdom nature. When we invoke the lama, we’re invoking our own wisdom self.

That’s the teaching, however, when it comes to Tibetan Buddhism, the teachings on devotion to the master – who is supposed to inspire your journey inwards – can very easily turn it into an outwardly focused journey of obedience to a teacher. When devotion is touted as the ultimate path, we can end up taking refuge in the outer teacher and not in our own inner wisdom/ Buddha nature/ true nature of mind. There are many words for it, but we don’t find it if we focus on the outer teacher, and the major cult dynamic that enables abuse is unconditional surrender to the personality of the teacher.

External authorities, such as cult leaders, demand conformity over authentic experience. Authentic experience was to some extent devalued in Rigpa. If insights were asked for, your genuine expression of your experience was either completely disregarded or belittled unless you used actual language from the scriptures. That made some of us second guess our genuine insights, so I felt I needed to offload all that baggage and see what was left, find what was real without any dogmatic overlay.

So when we leave a cult of devotion, we need to find our own autonomy again, for both psychological and spiritual health. But finding our way when we’ve been following a path that was all laid out for us isn’t easy. How do we know where to go with our spiritual life, when what we believed in and trusted has all fallen away? And how do we develop trust in ourselves, after having put our trust in a teacher and a community who proved ultimately unworthy of it?

I can’t answer those questions for anyone other than myself, but I found that practicing presence, just sitting quietly and simply being me, in natural spaces, where no one was watching or judging or demanding, was incredibly healing. It reaffirmed the validity of my own experience, and out of the stillness of the forest and the awareness it naturally invokes, I found my way forward.

And out of this came intense gratitude for the natural world, and particularly the forest. The forest teaches without words, without expectations or demands. It teaches by its very presence. All we have to do is visit a forest, as often as we can.

Has nature been a support for your spiritual path, particularly if you’re healing from spiritual abuse? If so, let me know in the comments how that happened for you.

And me, I’ve taken to dancing in the forest, dancing my gratitude and appreciation whilst singing a mantra that calls on the power of great awareness.

November 21, 2021November 21, 2021

Rigpa’s Renewed Apology & the Teaching on the Four Powers of Confession

Rigpa’s renewed apology, published in the middle of October 2021, for ‘mistakes that have been made and harm that has been caused’ is a step in the right direction, but in the video I explain why it still falls short of what is required even in terms of their own teachings. I refer to the four powers of confession that according to Vajrasattva practice – a key practice of the Rigpa sangha – are necessary for healing to occur.

August 27, 2021August 25, 2021

After Tibetan Buddhism, What Remains?

After Tibetan Buddhism, after you’ve left the religion, what happens to your spiritual life?

I was a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for 20 years and left the religion 5 years ago when I discovered that my teacher Sogyal Rinpoche was abusing his close students and those running the organisation not only enabled it but also saw his abuse as a beneficial teaching, not something harmful. In the video below, I reflect on what of value has remained with me and how I view the religion now in light of my knowledge of abusive gurus/lamas, the cult dynamics they often employ, and the teachings that enable abuse.

Joanne Clark’s article about Dzongsar Kyentse Rinpoche and Mathew Remski’s recent article on him inspired this video, so I do mention Dzongsar Kyentse, and if you’re one of his followers, be warned; I don’t hold back on my opinion of him. I’ve never said anything against him before, despite him ridiculing me in one of his teachings in Rigpa centres after the letter revealing Sogyal’s abuses became public.

It’s a long video (40 minutes) because I cover a lot of ground, so I hope you can take time to watch or listen to it.

The answer to the question of what remains from the tradition after Tibetan Buddhism and your perceptions of Tibetan Buddhism and its lamas after you’ve left will be different for different people, so please note that this is only my personal opinion and evaluation of my own experience. I know that some have been left with nothing but trauma after Tibetan Buddhism, and some are still struggling to sift through their experience and find anything worth keeping.

Though I share my understanding of dzogchen practice, please don’t take anything I say as any kind of teaching. My purpose in sharing my perspective is to provide the stimulation for you to reflect on these matters for yourself.

Please like the video and share it as it helps get it to more people.

If you were a Tibetan Buddhist and have left the religion, what has remained for you?

February 8, 2021February 8, 2021

Do you Recognise these Narcissistic Methods of Manipulation?

People with narcissistic personality disorder manipulate those around them to coerce, diminish and take advantage of them.

By spotting how narcissists distort facts, language, feelings and ideas to you can gain distance from them which makes it easier to set healthy boundaries against them.

The notes I used are below the video.

January 25, 2021February 8, 2021

Is Your Guru a Narcissist?

One of the things I learned about in the year after I discovered that Sogyal Rinpoche abused his close students was narcissistic personality disorder. In order to avoid potential abuse, all spiritual seekers should examine the question, is your guru a narcissist? Or was he or she a narcissist?

Narcissists are everywhere, and they are dangerous people who manipulate others for their own gain. They are masters at coercive control and often become abusive. If you know what to look for, you can see the signs of narcissistic personality disorder in people around you. Donald Trump is a good example of someone with narcissistic personality disorder and so was Sogyal Rinpoche.

I think it’s vital that we all know how to spot a narcissist so we can avoid being manipulated by one. They are able to be very charming, loving and alluring when it suits them, so it’s easy to get sucked in.

December 22, 2020January 27, 2021

What Happens When Beliefs Don’t Align With Reality

We see reality though the filter of our thoughts, emotions and beliefs. When beliefs don’t align with reality, they distort perception. This is why, according to the Buddhist teachings, one of the obscurations we need to dissolve if we are to be enlightened – i.e., see reality directly – is the cognitive obscurations, the area of beliefs.

It’s why when we meditate, we train in not labelling or thinking about what we perceive, we simply see, simply hear, simply be without engaging our conceptual mind. But even those who practice this in their meditation find it hard to practice in daily life, especially if they hold tight to beliefs that aren’t in alignment with reality. And sometimes those beliefs are the very beliefs that were designed to point them in the direction of reality.

Look at those in the US who believe that Trump won the election.

October 9, 2020January 27, 2021

Feel Helpless? Good. That Means You’re Feeling!

I recently recorded a video in which I shared what I do when I feel helpless. I shared it because I figure that I’m not the only one feeling helpless, at least occasionally, when we look at the world situation, particularly climate change and the dire predictions for our future. In the video I share how the way I deal with such an emotion takes me from a place where I feel helpless to a place where I realise that I’m not actually as helpless as I think I am. In the video that’s a kind of esoteric place – for want of a better word – but that’s not the end of the story. What I find interesting is how the sense of empowerment gained through working with an emotion in that way can help me find ways to help on the level of action in the physical world.

September 20, 2020January 27, 2021

Art as Meditation & Contemplation

In this video I talk about creativity as a form of meditation, art as meditation, and personal art as a focus for contemplation. I talk about visual art and craft – including flower arranging – but it also applies to the performing arts, of course. And even to creating gardens and home decorating, anything where you can put aside your thoughts and tune into the deep well of creativity inside you, the creative mind that, in my experience, is the same as the ‘meditative’ mind.

I know quite a few in the Beyond the Temple community who find a refuge in creativity and who create art of some form. Some of them do use art as meditation and contemplation. I mention colouring in in the video, but I also know a painter, two photographers, several musicians and many who create beautiful gardens and homes or who simply appreciate looking at something beautiful.

September 9, 2020January 27, 2021

What Shall We Talk About Now

Some of you will have already seen this video, but I’m posting it here so we can talk about it in a more ‘private’ setting, and also so more of you can see it and give me your ideas. As I say in the description for the video:

The Beyond the Temple community is primarily made up of people who have left a Buddhist cult like Rigpa or Shambala. In the past few years, we’ve made friends and deepened existing friendships based on our shared disgust with abusive lamas and the people and organisations that protect and enable them. Now, as we go on with our lives, and don’t want to talk about abuse anymore, we can still foster those relationships based our shared values as we look at the world around us and our shared experiences of creating our own spiritual path free of dogma.

January 16, 2020January 27, 2021

Climate Change: The Challenge of the Decade

I have lots of ideas for posts for this blog that take the idea of ‘beyond the temple’ broader than it has been, but it could take a while for me to get around to writing them. Those who are my friends or followers on social media will know that I’ve been consumed by the bush fire crisis facing my home state, NSW. I even had to evacuate one day. But today we have a little rain, so perhaps we’ll dodge the bullet this time. The nearest fire is about 20 kilometres away, but it hasn’t moved towards us for a week now, so the ever present anxiety has eased.

The expected rain isn’t enough to put out the fires, though, just slow them down, nor is it expected to be enough to fill the dams and break the drought. Ferns and trees are dying. Kangaroos are coming into the garden to get water and vast areas of Australia are burned and/or in severe drought. Wildlife is devastated. I read somewhere that scientists predicted that Australia would be one of the first countries to feel the effects of climate change, and here we are.

So discussions around Tibetan Buddhism all seem rather inconsequential and even indulgent in light of the fact that if we don’t act in the next decade to lower carbon emissions, we truly will be facing the extinction of life as we know it.

We are truly, all of us, facing the great impermanence.