She goes by the name “Tree” and her story unfolds on the Enlighten Me Free site (www.enlightenmefree.com), arguably the first to publicly criticize the Royal School of Enlightenment. It’s apparent that she is a strong, independent-minded, intelligent woman who has gone through some brutally trying times.

She was drawn to Yelm from Tampa, Fla., in 1987, to learn the teachings of Ramtha at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment. 

She’s currently in front of me with her friends David and Ray; David had been an RSE student since 1989, leaving New Zealand to learn Ramtha’s teachings after reading “Love Yourself into Life.”

“Very good material,” Ray muses. Ray, 24, hasn’t attended any classes herself, as she’s just arrived in the South Sound and is finding funds too tight to allow for a $750 Beginner’s Retreat. Her own introduction to Ramtha’s teachings came from a book found in a Tampa thrift shop. It touched her in the magical place she lived as a kid. “I was riding horses, rescuing princesses,” she recalls; it was the imaginative idyll before her dad killed himself.

David came to the South Sound after his best friend committed suicide. “I felt I needed something extreme,” he says. “Extreme” for him was leaving behind his two kids while he lived furtively as an illegal alien hiding from authorities as well as the grey men trying to keep him from enlightenment.

David says his disillusionment with the RSE was “gradual,” until he recalls, “I realized every day I was afraid.”

Tree knows about that fear; an incident at a wine ceremony left her pregnant and suffering from medically diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She describes the situation in the Enlighten Me Free message boards, “I was a paid staff person up until I left last year.” (her employment history, and a brief character summary is offered up later in the post by a former employee who left on favorable terms).

Tree continues, “And for those of you who have any doubt about my story, my preference this lifetime is women. I had never ever slept with a man. I do not hate men, nor do I wave any flags. I just like to live my life.”

Tree’s going on with her life outside the RSE, heading to Oklahoma to get back to what she calls her “pre-cult personality.”

With the help of a connection of David’s, Tree has undergone exit counseling, which was taped for future broadcast on Showtime.

And this evening, as Tree walks her dog and prepares to head back to clear out her home, Ray insists in her belief in the teachings that resonated as she read the book, “when you read a novel, that novel can change your life,” she explains.  “The fact is what happens inside you.”

David warns, “Don’t trust your feelings.”