I’m henna dying my hair this morning. It’s all over my white robe, but I’m hoping I can bleach it and get it back to how it was. I’m getting a Montana state ID and hopefully registering my cars today. I’ve been here long enough, and some of these things are still unregistered (sorry). I’d like to say I have more important things to worry about than what the government requires of me, but I know that’s not true.

International school of temple arts

I’m sitting with a story about ISTA that a friend just told me. They were training to become a spiritual leader in their community through a fairly traditional school. But, right before graduation, the school learned of their involvement with ISTA and decided to withhold their degree. I find this devastating, and I also feel the need to discuss why I think that’s acceptable, for now.

First off, it’s less about my friend. They’re great, and I trust that with time, they’ll get the degree.

It’s everything about ISTA.

I’ve been writing a few jabs here and there at ISTA, but I’m ready to say exactly why I think the organization is harmful (briefly).

For context, I’ve been in ISTA Level 1 twice, once as a participant and once as an assistant. I do not have extensive experience with ISTA beyond these trainings, but the fact that I can see these things in a Level 1, their bread and butter offering, tells me they run deep.

First, both experiences were really impactful for trauma healing, for embodiment, for soul expression, for the joy of sexual expression that you wish you had early in life (before you got all the shame or embarrassment or rejection added on). The shamanic tools they’re using, I think, are world-class and are ones everyone would benefit from.

And I had good experiences. ISTA to me felt like this big experience of genuine joy. I love people. I love groups. I love people getting together and discussing the hardest parts of their lives and then finding connection and belonging from it. I felt like a kid in ISTA. Bubbly and bright and big and fun. I thrive in the environment. Both times, I came in pretty close. I’m cold, I’m shut down, I’m protective. By the end, everyone knows how loud and fun and goofy I am. People reflect on how bright I am. I genuinely leave feeling glowing, and I have lifelong friendships.

But even with that, I’m left with the harm I saw.

The problem is the immaturity

ISTA teaches people to “follow their desires.” That sounds liberating, even holy, in a world where we’re all taught to suppress them. But the problem is: not all desires are wise. Not all impulses are sacred. And ISTA lacks the maturity to discern the difference.

Sexual energy is real and powerful—but it’s also biological. It’s not just kundalini or divine eros. It’s driven by hormones, by survival instincts, by the primal urge to procreate (which men and women equally have). That doesn’t make it bad—it makes it real. But ISTA over-spiritualizes what is often just a bodily impulse. They make every erection and every wet dream into a cosmic event.

And when you frame lust as enlightenment, you create a culture of spiritual bypass. You get communities where facilitators sleep with participants “for their healing.” You get circles where boundaries are blurred in the name of “freedom.” You get adults chasing high-school-level crush dynamics under the banner of tantra.

And you get a reframing of “eros” or “the erotic” as something more spiritual than it is. Respect that “the erotic” wants to create, which means it wants to produce children and get you pregnant. The impulse wants to escalate. That’s powerful. It’s life-force itself, raw, creative, and sacred, but without guidance, it is just that. The most powerful creative force on the planet with no direction. It needs wisdom to channel it, not worship to justify it.

So I hope you can see quickly how it’s an immature stance to tell people to just follow their desires.

The truly sacred thing about sexuality is not that it’s wild, but that it’s binding. It’s how humans create life, families, and bonds that can withstand time. It’s not something to be shared indiscriminately.

ISTA doesn’t teach that containment. It glorifies expansion without responsibility. Desire without discipline. Pleasure without purpose. And while that might feel like liberation, it often leads to fragmentation—the opposite of what healing is supposed to do.

The spiritualized victim-blaming

And because of this, one of the most dangerous byproducts of ISTA’s “follow your desire” philosophy is the way it blurs responsibility and blames victims.

I’ve seen and heard it again and again: when someone is harmed, manipulated, or pressured, the narrative becomes “Well, that was a boundary you needed to learn to hold” or “did you really like what agreements you had if they got broken” (in context to a marriage where the man didn’t uphold his boundaries). It’s said with this tone of spiritual authority, as though violation is just a karmic lesson.

_{See this article, but it’s also behind a pay wall.}

But that’s not healing. It’s gaslighting.

That framing puts all responsibility on the individual and none on the community or the facilitators who hold the teachings. It puts none on the container. I saw a marriage collapse. That’s irresponsible. There was plenty of love, commitment, health, communication, and friendship between that couple. There was an intense week of free sexual desire that had a good man tested. That was a container’s responsibility to uphold a sacred partnership, and they didn’t.

It’s also an immature view of boundaries and trauma. You would never say that to a child who was touched inappropriately: “That was your lesson.” But somehow in these adult “spiritual” spaces, it gets spiritualized as if every wound must be self-inflicted to count as growth.

And I don’t disregard that on some level, that is true. That, it can be, karma finding its resolve. But that’s not how we run organizations. That’s not how we lead as spiritual leaders. That’s not leadership. And so it’s time to move on, because we know better. And maybe it’s just a big group of people who are still organizing around their karma, I don’t know, but it’s outdated, and it’s time to evolve.

It’s time to end the immaturity dressed up as enlightenment.

Real maturity recognizes the difference between a boundary that wasn’t expressed clearly and a boundary that was violated. And real maturity knows and sets parameters for the integrity of those boundaries. It feels like another case of history reenacting itself. Like we didn’t already have hundreds of thousands of years that taught us the need for integrity, containment, respect, and maturity around sexual desires.

Real maturity knows that desire is powerful medicine and, like any medicine, it can heal or harm depending on how it’s handled. A mature container honors that power. It builds in safeguards. It prioritizes truth over intensity, care over catharsis. It creates a structure where the body and the spirit can open safely, without confusing violation for awakening.

(In the best case scenario, you don’t even get to go to these things unless you’re in a committed, sacred, monogamous partnership—the strongest container for desire.)

ISTA could do differently by evolving past the adolescent phase of “anything goes” spirituality. They could require real training in trauma-informed facilitation. They could teach containment alongside freedom. The spiritual discipline of channeling eros toward devotion, creation, and responsibility. They could model reverence for the human heart instead of idolizing sexual energy as the highest form of God.

Because history already taught us what happens when we misuse sexual power: communities collapse, trust erodes, and the sacred gets lost. ISTA still feels like the club that supports the guy who cheats on his wife 30 years into a marriage. The family is destroyed and the partnership broken, but you were “following your truth”. We don’t need to repeat that lesson. Maturity learns from it.

Changing my tone on the erotic

And if you’ve heard me change my tone on erotic energy, you’re right. I have.

If you worship your sexual desires, they’ll eventually become your god — and that god will demand sacrifice.

That’s what I saw inside ISTA: people offering up their marriages, their integrity, their discernment, all on the altar of “authentic expression.” The erotic became the measure of truth, rather than truth being what guided the erotic. And that inversion is what breeds the chaos—the collapse of relationships, the confusion of power, the pain that gets reframed as “awakening.”

We didn’t need to do that. You don’t need to be hit over the head with lessons. Real teachers, who empower sovereignty, don’t need to let everyone walk through the fire. There are a select few who have to to learn lessons (often me), but there are more who just need the download and everything comes together.

Desire is not inherently wise. It’s primal, hormonal, fleeting. Without maturity and containment, it consumes what is sacred instead of serving it.

That’s the irony. ISTA claims to be about liberation, but it often leads to fragmentation. The energy that could have been channeled into devotion, marriage, creativity, or spiritual service gets lost in the constant chase for the next high.

Real freedom isn’t doing whatever you want. It’s being powerful enough to choose restraint. It’s being able to say no when every cell says yes, because you can feel what’s truly holy beneath the surface of your desire.

That’s the maturity ISTA never taught, but the one they’re desperately needing—the one that anchors sexuality in responsibility, reverence, and real, genuine love.

Love,
Val

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