Epstein and Deepak Chopra

"Karma memory and desire are the software of the soul" - Deepak Chopra

Hello friends of democracy,

The Epstein story doesn’t fade. It resurfaces. It returns in court filings, released documents, new reporting, additional DOJ scandals, and old relationships suddenly placed under brighter light. And even when it’s not trending, it remains a kind of moral weather system: pressure building, shifting, moving through the lives of people who once assumed their proximity to wealth and status made them untouchable.

Around the world, powerful men - and women - have stepped down from elite positions, faced investigations, been charged, or watched their reputations disintegrate under the weight of association, complicity, and in some cases, exploitation. Here in America, though, accountability often feels selective. Our systems have a long history of cushioning the famous, the connected, and the strategically useful.

That’s what makes this story so hard to put away. It isn’t only about Epstein. It’s about the architecture that allowed him to operate for so long. It’s an ecosystem of protection, denial, prestige, and institutional failure. And it’s about what happens when that architecture gets exposed, even partially, and people still insist we “move on.”

I don’t claim to know definitively what happened behind closed doors years or decades ago. But after reading through a meaningful portion of what has been released and discussed publicly, I do feel I can recognize certain patterns. I see patterns of access, influence, and the casual entitlement that tends to surround people who believe consequences are for other people.

This post isn’t meant to cover every name, rumor, or headline. I’m narrowing the lens to one figure who has been repeatedly referenced in the public swirl around Epstein: Deepak Chopra, and how the questions around his proximity intersect with someone I loved deeply and learned from: my mentor and dear friend, Debbie Ford.

There have been claims that Chopra’s name appears frequently in Epstein-related materials. Chopra has publicly denied wrongdoing. That may be true. And I want to be careful here as guilt is a legal category. But character and discernment are different categories. There is a separate question that lives outside the courtroom: What did someone know, when did they know it, and what did they do with that knowledge?

Because in the world of spiritual celebrity - the huge guru economy - proximity to power is often treated as proof of enlightenment rather than a test of integrity. And I’ve lived close enough to that world to understand how easily people confuse charisma with wisdom, access with virtue, and followers with accountability.

Debbie Ford, the Shadow, and the Cost of Pedestals

I was never a Deepak devotee. Debbie, however, the shadow queen, worked closely with him for several years. He championed her and opened doors. He gave her opportunities to teach his students, refine her craft, and develop her distinct language for shadow work in a way everyday people could understand. In a very real sense, she learned how to hold a room at scale in those spaces.

Debbie later did something similar for me.

And Debbie was brilliant. She had a rare talent for translating depth psychology, particularly the shadow, into a practical, accessible process. She helped people face the disowned parts of themselves: the rage, the grief, the envy, the shame, the hunger for approval. She made the invisible visible. She named what people were terrified to admit, and then walked them through it.

But Debbie also carried a longing. Part of her wanted to be a different kind of teacher -more love, less darkness; more uplift, less excavation. She mused, at times, she wanted to be Marianne Williamson - less shadow, more light. Yet the shadow was her calling. It was what she did best. She used her dark past of heavy drug abuse, as a pathway to enlightenment and sobriety. I believed in her teachings and I believed in her.

Eventually, Debbie, Deepak, and Marianne, created a film together: The Shadow Effect, featuring a constellation of spiritual luminaries. By the time that film was coming together, I had already left Debbie’s organization. I didn’t leave because I stopped believing in transformation. I left because something in the organization’s culture began to feel out of integrity.

There was a dissonance, subtle at first, then harder to ignore. I feel it was between what was being taught publicly and what was being tolerated privately. The moment that crystallized it for me was when I was asked to coach someone who was involved in an affair with Chopra. I had reason to believe there were others. And I remember thinking: How can people who teach self-responsibility and integrity live so far outside of it?

I want to say this plainly - I’m not writing from a spotless moral perch. I’ve had my own seasons of being out of alignment. I know what it is to rationalize, to compartmentalize, to be human. But perhaps that’s why I could feel the “offness.” When you’ve confronted your own contradictions, (a gift given to me by Debbie) you recognize them, at some point, in the rooms you’re told are holy.

I did coach this person. Thankfully, the situation resolved in a way that didn’t end in catastrophe. But soon after, I left - abruptly, instinctively, like my body knew before my mind could draft a resignation letter. Debbie was furious.

Before Debbie died, we made our peace. I returned to train one last class of coaches. She has been gone for thirteen years this month. And time has a way of sharpening what grief once softened. It’s one thing to mourn a person. It’s another to revisit the structures they helped build and ask: What was helpful and true? What was theater? Was it harm disguised as help?

The Uncomfortable Question: Was I Part of Something I Didn’t Fully See?

Lately, I’ve been wrestling with a fear that feels both quiet and enormous: Did I lead people down a path of “enlightenment” that was darker than I believed? Was it an impossible path? Or simply an imperfect one, taught by imperfect humans?

Do I participate in cancel culture, burning the whole village because the healer had flaws? Or do I separate the message from the messenger? And if I separate them, how much is wisdom and how much is denial dressed up as compassion?

As I revisit Debbie’s methods and the world that surrounded her, I find myself confronting another unsettling possibility: “spiritual bypassing.” Not only in the cliché sense of “love and light” as avoidance, but in the more sophisticated form: using spiritual language as insulation from accountability. Using “consciousness” as a brand while leaving the messy work of repair unfinished. Did I pressure, minimize, or lead my clients prematurely through their very real trauma?

I have a feeling all of these questions will be an ongoing inquiry.

Teachers are human. They are not equipped for the altitude atop the pedestals we place them on. Probably no one is. And we should never put them there. But this isn’t just about pedestals. It’s about power: whose power gets centered, whose power gets protected, and whose pain gets treated as collateral.

If enlightenment concentrates power in one person - a guru, a teacher, a celebrity, a politician - corruption becomes not merely possible but predictable. Because unexamined power doesn’t stay neutral. It seeks insulation. It recruits defenders. It converts criticism into “negativity” and treats skepticism as spiritual failure.

The Silence of the Industry

What haunts me is how many people have known, or suspected, or rationalized, and said nothing. An entire industry has learned to look away. Not because they don’t see, but because seeing would require choices: distancing, naming, losing money, losing access, losing influence.

So where are the major voices? Where are the people who built empires on integrity, truth, empowerment, personal responsibility? Where is the public reckoning from the platforms that made these figures untouchable? I wonder what Debbie would say now.

So far, much of what I hear is…silence.

Crickets.

The Political Thread We Don’t Want to Name

And this is where politics enters, whether we invite it or not. Because politics isn’t only elections and parties. It’s the distribution of consequence. It’s who gets scrutinized, who gets shielded, who gets given endless grace, and who gets dismissed.

Epstein is not simply a gruesome scandal. He is a case study in how power protects itself through money, institutions, prestige, and the cultural habit of granting famous people endless benefit of the doubt. That same habit exists in the spiritual celebrity world. And it exists in politics - the consequence of which could be the loss of our nearly 250 years of democracy. It exists anywhere charisma can be mistaken for virtue and proximity can be mistaken for credibility or innocence.

If we want a healthier culture, spiritually and politically, we may need to stop asking whether our leaders are inspiring or stop voting on our “feelings,” and understand whether they are morally constrained: by truth, by transparent systems, by consequences that apply even when someone is beloved, wealthy, or “useful.”

Because when accountability becomes optional, abuse becomes inevitable. And when a society won’t confront the powerful, it will end up disciplining the powerless instead.

Karma, memory, and desire may be the software of the soul, but consequences are the operating system.

Standing in my truth,

Donna

Dinner Conversation Topic - “Pedestals and humanity”

• Why we elevate public figures (teachers, CEOs, politicians, celebrities, influencers), what we’re really seeking when we do it, and how we can admire someone’s work without outsourcing our discernment.

• Good opener: “Have you ever had a mentor or deeply admired a celebrity or sports figure you later saw more clearly?”