The only current Accessory who was willing to talk on the record has been with Access for only about four months.

After 22 years in Houston, Sara Blumenfeld moved to Austin to be part of the city's "metaphysical, spiritual community." She'd been interested in "personal growth" teachings for years, but recently was seeking something more. She says she heard Heer discussing Access on a radio talk show one day and "I could feel the openness of it, the possibility of it." She quickly became a bars facilitator, and says she's run bars on about 100 people so far and has "witnessed just major changes in people."

Blumenfeld tells the Press, "My understanding of Access is that it's all about following the energy and asking questions, rather than coming to any kind of point of view or fixed answer...They're presenting different ways that you can look at things, other than the way most people have been looking at them. Just so that you open up your brain to the possibility that there's another way to do something or think about something. Because we all get so locked in to certain answers — even...if they're answers that we think are great answers, right — and then we stop looking for any other ­possibilities."

When asked about some of the more puzzling statements, such as that children as young as six "allow" themselves to be molested to spare someone else from being molested, she's at least willing to discuss possible contexts — one being that, as infinite beings, we always have choice. We just may not understand or agree with those choices.

"For instance, my husband had cancer," she says of her late spouse's choice of how to leave the world. "Well, I could judge that as wrong, but that's what he chose and so...the concept of everything-in-our-life-is-a-choice upsets a lot of people."

To make things easier, she offers this analogy: "If I had said that someone ate peas when they didn't want to, to prevent someone else from having to eat peas who didn't want to even more, then you would be okay with that, probably. It's the same kind of a concept, but to such a greater degree that it makes you uncomfortable, and maybe you can't grasp that, and that's okay."

Still, fixed points of view can be difficult for even Douglas to give up.

In a 2004 class, Douglas fessed up to having two of them, but said that he can drop them at any time. One is that if someone raped one of his daughters, that person would pay. The other is, he won't eat at chain restaurants.

"Their food is not to my standards," he said.
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On July 24, Ricky Williams tweeted his gratitude to Access.

"Thank you to Gary [Douglas], @RickysKids raised over 50,000 dollars thanks to the generosity of Gary, Dain and Access ­Consciousness."

He was referring to a component of his nonprofit Ricky Williams Foundation called Ricky's Kids, which "is perfecting a new and alternative place of growth for children in the Austin area." This is achieved through "a free after school program for low income students, who under normal circumstances would not have the financial means for after school care."

According to foundation representative Peggy King, some of the Foundation's donors backed off when Williams retired from the NFL, and Access stepped in with a one-time $50,000 donation.

The Austin Chronicle explored this relationship in a story last August: "Williams says he's become an [A]ccessory of the Access movement, and the mission of his foundation has been transformed into an outlet for delivering the controversial teachings of Access Consciousness to the underprivileged children who attend his camps." According to the article, the Foundation visited two Austin Independent School District schools "over the last year, having approached the school principals directly for permission...AISD says there are no further visits scheduled, as no formal request has been submitted."

It's an important step toward Douglas's goal of reaching even more kids. Currently, kids can attend Access classes for free or at a reduced rate. Douglas believes Access's tools can help kids excel at school; the kids who use Access methods are called "Xmen."

Here's 16-year-old Xman Aaron Caddy's testimonial on the Access Web site: "Just being Access, basically, has helped me a lot. I mean, I don't study very much. The only thing that really helps is manipulating the teacher. That's the main one. If you can do that well, you can get an A in every class. That's what helps more than anything else."