The sparkly eyes many gurus and 'teachers' the seemingly magical gaze -- this is mere technique. It can be learned.
In an interview, Shayam Dodge, who was trained to be a guru and then renounced the role, told the interview exactly this.
The following is quoted a bit out of order. Shayam told an interviewer at Elephant Journal that after he had renounced being a guru, he was dismayed when he discovered that habits he had learned via early training still elicited
idealizing, charismatic projection from students -- and he noted how he had learned to hold gaze longer than is the social norm.
Corboy note: In many traditions, there are specific techniques used to train
practitioners to hold a gaze for unusually long periods of time.
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"...I could hold another person’s gaze longer than was humanly natural. My students, in the Midwest, described me as “walking love.”
I engaged with my students as if I had some special insight into their innermost being, which I alone had access to. Not only that, but I could somehow divinely intervene in their spiritual development by rapidly processing and pushing past their interior boundaries through the power of my unique personality. I was presenting myself as a kind of potent catalyst for spiritual change and evolution. I was forceful. I was charismatic. I was highly trained.
"I was merely perpetuating the very same dysfunctions of the guru tradition that I had left and was now trying to reform.
"This was an incredibly heavy realization to come to.
"Not only was I continuing to hold my students’ idealizations of “the enlightened spiritual prodigy” but I, as a teacher, had not constructed or learned a healthier alternative teacher-student dynamic.
In essence, I was continuing to psychologically enslave my students in a relationship where they were dependent upon me
..."
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Earlier Byron Katie Books that predate the Cockroach Story
Cry in the Desert (assistance from Christin Lore Weber)
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Losing the Moon
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(Quote)That's part of the REAL reason why Stephen Mitchell suppressed Losing The Moon, as well as the other book A Cry In The Desert, also detailed in this thread.(Unquote
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(Quote)It's the very thing that makes the whole scam so clever. It’s been done before and it’s applied again here.
Questioning Byron Katie or parts of her story such as her self-proclaimed and alleged awakening, with a 'cockroach'-story suddenly making its debut after eight whole years of non-existence, is the one place where people won't go.
Questioning BK would simply make any justification of whatever investment, be it financial or emotional, impossible: the conclusion would be that you’re acting irresponsibly. Or what may be more important, any hope for even getting close to some kind of ‘enlightenment’, personally or by association, would vanish into thin air in one go. Stuff you’d rather not think about. So the preferred motto becomes: “let's question everything but Katie and play ostrich”.(Unquote)
Two, many of these persons advertise by putting photos of themselves everywhere--magazines, websites.
It may produce a jolt to meet a person 'live' after having seen this person's portrait. One may have a brief dizziness, a sense of surprise a little bit like
what happens when stepping from a dark room into sunshine, or as when one steps
off of a jolting surface onto solid ground.
I recall feeling a bit startled when seeing the mayor of our city suddenly arrive on the sidewalk of my neighborhood. I had seen pictures of the man for years, so felt surprised to see him face to face and just a few feet away.
In a "guru theatre" context, one can easily be persuaded that this is proof that the person has special powers. All that is happening is merely a normal
bit of adjustment that happens when one comes face to face with someone one knows only from testimonial or from a photograph or both.
If this encounter is culmination of an expensive investment, such as payment for a workshop, a long trip, the impact will be enhanced.
We are humans and hence, very susceptible to context and social setting -- especially if social influence is being applied without our awareness -- or our
full consent.
One cannot 'take what you like and leave the rest' if you are not given full disclosure about what 'the rest' consists of.