BK Workology as applied to social justice and politics.


[soulsurgery.blogspot.com]

I wonder if all the people who do support Marriage Equality and who did make last minute donations to try to counter the deceptive Prop 8 ad campaigns would agree that they had made Prop 8 pass.

What 'made this happen was':

1) Lack of foot on the ground, grass roots community organizing and media outreach through out the State of California, instead of which time and money was wasted on glossy media consultation and on ads that were too timid in presenting same sex couples, up front in a way that would assist undecided voters to see us, face to face. We also underestimated how much money opponents of Marriage Equality would hurl into the battle in the week before November 4th 2008. Our fundraising wasnt coordinated for a last minute and desperate challenge. I will tell you many people, including Corboy did NOT want Prop 8 to 'happen' and we dug deep into our recession battered finances to pay for last minute ads in the days before the election.

2) A lack of discipline by Mayor Newsom who crowed like an adolescent peacock at City Hall, a moment which was used to great effect in ads by Prop 8. Grow up, Gav. We love you for your support, but you need to act like a man, now, not a boy.

3) Marriage Equality in California was up against a vile and occult allience between the ultra wealth and out of state, tax exempt, Churth of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and the Roman Catholic Church and RC organizations such as the Knights of Columbus. These entities made appeals from the pulpit, opened their very deep pockets, and thus interfered with legions of people who were NOT mormon, not roman catholic and who had no interest in forcing either of these entities to celebrate/officiate for same sex marriages within their own churches.

THis was civil, secularm marriage for same sex couples--families--in the State of California.

No one of us made this happen. What happened was our leaders underestimated the malice, intelligence and tenacity of two retrograde, authoritarian organizations, international and deeply interested in foiling marriage equality.
This reminds me exactly of the way tiny children blame themselves for their parents' splitting up...or are only too ready to blame themselves for the misdeeds done to them by a molester/perpetrator.

It is an age appropriate phase of early childhood to experience oneself as center of the world and thus be convinced that you, a tiny child make bad things and good things happen.

This is a stage one must pass through in order to become a mature, fully developed adult.

When persons in adult bodies remain or regress to this early childhood, I-make-everything-happen, state of mind and emotion, and do this while still retaining access to adult earning power or credit cards, that's hazardous.

4) Final note: the LDS orchestrates abuse of its young. A few days ago, walking through my very, very gay neighborhood, I saw two young male LDS missionaries. They were guaranteed to spend the afternoon getting doors slammed in their faces.

No doubt they would go home, assuming homosexual are demonic. But they are probably never going to think further and recognize that whoever assigned them to missionize in San Francisco was setting them up for abuse.

If these two young men had 'turned it around' they'd accuse themselves of making doors slam in thier faces.

They'd not have the resources to do structural contextual analsysis of the power structure that arranged to drop them into a social situation where they would be facing people who would be furious at them as representatives of an entity that, from out of state and with tax exempt dollars, interfered with the family lives of tens of thousands of non mormons.

'Making it happen'--feh.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 06:14AM by corboy.

Dude, wow. Corboy, you really get around!

Is the Carol Skolnick reference above about her blog post?

Soul Surgery: What Kept Me Up Last Night
Proposition 8 banning gay marriage
[soulsurgery.blogspot.com]

That is actually a cogent example of how the Byron Katie thought-system, is one of most absurdist thought-systems on the planet.
From someone who has looked at hundreds of thought-systems, the Byron Katie one, is one of the most unhealthy and inaccurate. It takes people right down the rabbit hole, and you can't get out, using the system.

But the blog post does show how the BK system becomes a totalist thought-reform system, as people feel compelled to apply it to everything, and get predictably ridiculous results.

Why not apply some proper critical thinking methods, instead?
Why not just use your natural horse-sense, and tell it like it is?
Why not use the scientific method, or any of the other methods devised in the social sciences, and philosophy, to learn how to think?

For example, gay marriage got rejected, due to the strong, conservative religious beliefs of many people which motivate them. It will probably take 10-20 years, or maybe a new generation for gay marriage to become legal, as the USA is quite religiously conservative.

But no, instead of just thinking in a natural way, a way that makes sense, people get lured into the Byron Katie thought-reform system, and they can't think clearly anymore.
They come up with the absurdist results, that flirt with the highly destructive solipsism.

Its like in New Thought [skepdic.com] you also end up with absurdities, like not thinking about illness and not even looking at "fat people", as if you do, you will become sick and fat! (that is not an exaggeration of how they think, its in The Secret, for example).

So these distorted, biased, and erroneous thinking systems lead people to distorted, and absurd results.
But in Byron Katie case, its obvious it was carefully planned out, as a MIRROR that creates a CHECKMATE.
You over-blame yourself for everything, which is very unhealthy.

You don't go to either extreme of no-blame, or all-blame. There is appropriate healthy blame/guilt, just like any other emotion.
Its interesting in CBT, they have a Guilt-Pie, where you assign approriate blame/guilt in a situation, everyone involved gets a piece of it. That is called being healthy.

If you steal-lie-hurt, you are SUPPOSED to feel some healthy shame and blame, if you are not a sociopath who feels NO-BLAME. Whereas depressives take too much blame.
How many regular women take TOO MUCH blame? Almost all. Byron Katie is giving them even more, to the point of taking the blame for things they had nothing to do with.
Its simply a tactic to create self-blaming followers, who blame themselves for everything. Guru 101.

and again notice, that the BK system is about the client taking 100% of the blame, and BK takes 0%.
How much blame does Byron Katie take on for any bad results of her behaviors in her seminars? %0.00
[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 08:27AM by The Anticult.

Beware the internet sock puppets...when the fire gets too close to home, and their constructed Stories...
;-)

over on the Guruphiliac forum, jgf75 is making some interesting comments.

jgf75 again wants to continue to create smoke and distraction, by saying that the posters moderate this forum? Are you kidding? People post anything they want, moderation is up to the moderator, not the posters.
Its all about freedom of thought, contary to the CENSORED and CLOSED byron katie open forum, and the censored byron katie books by Stephen Mitchell. The comedy continues.
[Someone should post the censored material from the closed Byron Katie forum on that Guruphiliac site, and see if it lasts.]

jgf75 ...is this the same person who spoke about "suicide" before? Why bring up the suicide comments in relation to a BK seminar?
[forum.culteducation.com]

and guess, what? jgf75 says $5,000 is a good deal for the BK LGAT seminar. FALSE.
Those fees exclude travel, "donations" which can be in the thousands, and not to mention lost wages.
On top of that, people get sold more "coaching" and everything else.
What about taxes?
So $6,000 is the minimum, with "gifts" it could be $10,000 at least, and much much more.
How much is a wedding ring worth, that people hand-over?
How about 8-10 days lost wages? What about the upselling? What about the mental-breakdown costs?

What a joke. These LGAT seminars are an extreme RIP-OFF.
and they are very dangerous and damaging.
Anyone who says an LGAT seminar is not a rip-off, is working for the LGAT seminar in their sales department.

And yes, poor Katie works 12 hrs a day...and deserves to make $8,000 an hr. (100K a day)
Byron Katie needs to make $1-2 million per School for the Work, depending on attendees and "donations".
She also can't afford to pay her "Staff" either...more comedy.

Its just about raking in the cash for the seminar, like all the other LGAT's.
Notice how jgf75 is constantly cross-referencing the prices of the other LGAT's? Who jacked up the BKI seminar prices, right around the time of the BK marriage? Who jacked the prices up, to the same rip-off rates, as the other rip-off LGAT's? interesting.

another falsehood is about the 12 hr days. Its 12 hrs due to the LGAT "brainwashing" system, All LGAT's run for 12-16 hrs to make people overtired, as they are starving with no food or protein or sleep, as then you do insane manic things, like hand over your laptop computer, and wedding rings, and sign up for coaching contracts you can't get out of.

BYRON KATIE = MARY POPPINS
Notice how jgf75 picked up on the Mary Poppins image induction, written by Michael Katz.

Byron Katie, Mary Poppins, P.L Travers, Gurdjieff The Work,
[forum.culteducation.com]
"was it Mary Poppins crossed with a Zen master?"
[forum.culteducation.com]
Very very interesting. No one else has spoken about it yet, other than those who wrote it in the book. Do a search.
Michael Katz and Stephen Mitchell loved their clever little Mary Poppins pre-frame induction. They thought it was brilliant.
Very interesting.

They don't like having their little mind-tricks exposed? Kinda wrecks it? ya think?
Hey jgf75, why don't you ask Michael Katz why he used the detailed and specific Mary Poppins imagery in the intro preframe to the book? Ask Michael Katz, he wrote it.
Ask Katz about his amateurish, clumsy use of language-imagery persuasion, as explained above.
Lets get the full-text, and the text can be analyzed in detail, sentence by sentence. Michael Katz will love that. Thanks for the idea!

Or maybe Michael Katz will explain it? Don't hold your breath, or maybe he already is.

OMG, just read what jgf75 posted about hypnosis!! LOL!
That is classic! jgf75 says he consulted with some hypnotherapists who trained with Carol Erickson? Which ones? Names please.
You mean the ones who work for Byron Katie? hahaha...that is a good one.
Shall we list the hypnotherapists who are Facilitators for Byron Katie? Good idea, thx!

What these hypnotherapists are doing with the Stories within Stories, is exactly as has been expounded here, including their language patterns, and the rest of it.
Why don't you get one of these consulting "hypotherapists" to debate the facts? Really open it up?

And take note, Byron Katie is ABUSING and TWISTING the methods of Ericksonian hypnotherapy Teaching Tales, mixed in with other techniques, as explained in great detail.
They fear the "Teaching Tale" aspect of the Byron Katie method will get out in the public mind, and really mess things up. Those BK Stories ain't gonna work, when people are sitting there analyzing them, and looking at them. Which is why they want to try and DISTRACT from that fact. That could kill it.

My god, the BS the BK folks try to pull, its truly amazing. Its literally like saying during a full moon...THERE IS NO MOON IN THE SKY.

They are afraid.
They know that the facts can kill illusion.

And if Michael Katz and Stephen Mitchell are angry that their amateurish attempts have been unmasked, who's fault is that? Look in the mirror.
Not everyone who learned these advanced tech thinks is ok to use them ruthlessly on soccer moms to extract massive amounts of cash, and literally rip people apart with Soul-Surgery.
Ethical people think that is very disturbed behavior. Even sociopathic, not to mention extreme cowardice.

Notice they won't claim they are using the hypnotherapy techniques to HELP people. They will say they are NOT using anything at all. :-)
Its so outrageous, it makes the Emperors New Clothes look like a joke.
What's a good metaphor...ah..yes...
In hypnotherapy, hypnosis and NLP, there is what is called a...

Negative Hallucination. (search google for it)

Due to a suggestion, its literally not seeing what is in plain-sight.


[www.answers.com]
QUOTE:
"Negative hallucination is the active erasure of a perception; it produces a gap in reality, or a vague impression of unreality.
The term first appeared in "Psychical (or Mental) Treatment" (Freud, 1890), an article relating to hypnosis. Freud wrote that it was possible to suggest to a hypnotized subject that he or she not see a person or thing that would be present to the subject upon awakening; in such cases the object appears to be "thin air" (p. 297). Freud borrowed this notion from Hippolyte Bernheim, with whom he studied to perfect his hypnotic technique."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 10:45AM by The Anticult.

and by the way, the FACT that Byron Katie in her suppressed book A Cry In The Desert, directly copied the CACTUS metaphor used by Milton Erickson has already been proven.

Erickson used the cactus in very specific ways in many of his teaching stories.
Its obvious BK copied him, which is yet another reason they killed that Cry in the Desert book. (the Desert was also Erickson's main metaphor, as that is where he lived, due to his health).

This entire BK system, and BKI Zen illusionists, tricksters, poker-bluffers, internet sock-puppets, should literally make your skin crawl, like being crawled on by a large cockaroach.

[forum.culteducation.com]
ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS links:
....
The end of the book, on page 211:
Byron Katie tells Christin that someone named David is cured of his cancer, and that he is out in the desert collecting and preserving rare cactus, and is the cactus man.
That is the smoking gun.
That is literally taken right from Dr. Milton Erickson's books and stories.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 11:00AM by The Anticult.

an area that has not yet been researched, is Stephen Mitchell. Time to open that up.

After all, right after he joined the BK club, many of the BK prices got jacked-up like crazy, as has been shown.

The wikipedia talk page for Stephen Mitchell is interesting, as it shows him trying to edit his own page with his own self-promotional PR statements, and he was chided by several wikipedians for this.
[en.wikipedia.org]
The Stephen Mitchell Wikipedia page
[forum.culteducation.com]


Stephen Mitchell, Mu Gak Sunim, Seung Sahn, Kwan Um School of Zen, RandomStu Stuart Resnick
[forum.culteducation.com]


Its also time to have the NYT writer Motoko Rich compare these two books.
Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of Tao-te ching by Greg Johanson, Ronald S. Kurtz
A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are (Tao) Byron Katie - Stephen Mitchell
[forum.culteducation.com]
Maybe a local library has both books to compare?

[forum.culteducation.com]
"An interesting bit of information came up, regarding Byron Katie’s no longer Open Forum. As we know, the very last post on the Forum was by Carol Skolnick, on April 6th. It was about BK and Stephen Mitchell having copied their ‘Tao’-book from ‘Grace Unfolding’ by Greg Johanson and Ronald Kurtz".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 11:44AM by The Anticult.

just wanted to clarify, that this research is being done for the purpose of counteracting the abuses that are occurring to actual people. The enormous mound of factual evidence is there for anyone to see.

What is happening, is that there is a small group of people, who are quite skilled at using literally dozens of the most powerful techniques of overt and covert human influence that are available.
And they are using them all at once, on the easiest targets they can find, an audience with no training, and often literally no awareness of the basics of the techniques being used on them so systematically.

On top of that, the same small group of people are attempting to actively conceal what they are doing from the public, in numerous ways, including having a few "friends" create a smokescreen for them. Frankly, these "friends" should be ashamed of their bluffs, falsehoods, and atrocious behaviors in this area. Is it worth it? Contrary to the lies they profess to teach, there is such a thing as being honest.

Its akin to someone who is a professional martial artist or boxer, and they go and masquerade as a civilian in street clothes, make a bet, and then sucker-punch the target, and by then its too late.
Or a group of professional poker players, who work together hustling high-stakes games with newbies.
Its ruthless exploitation.

Its unethical, its unfair, its exploitative to the extreme. Its cruel and dangerous to use these powerful techniques on "soccer moms", and people are getting hurt.
They don't even have the basic decency to outline even the basics of what they are doing, or to target an audience with some experience in this area. That might trim the profits.
Contrary to what some obviously believe, there is more to life than money, power, attention-seeking, and a self-righteous, faux save-the-world grandiose narcissism, that they are the center of the New Age.

What a pathetic, transparent fraud.
It offends ones sensibilites to the core, to see this type of egregious abuse and misuse of these techniques.
Beyond the harm, beyond the dishonesty and falsehoods, the word that comes to the fore is that it is all so profoundly dishonorable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 02:57PM by The Anticult.

Hi swampseer. I dont see myself as getting around.

I posted that item because it is an example of how anyone who takes 'Katieism' (my term) seriously, runs the risk of becoming unfit to function as a citizen in a participatory democracy.

[soulsurgery.blogspot.com]

What drives me nuts are those I term the 'new Brahmins'---they get us to think like peasants and little children, teach us to take total responsibilty for stuff, exactly the way little kids do.

But, coverlty, the New Brahmins use a different mindset than the one they teach to us.

They teach us to ditch our critical thinking,
but, covertly, they retain that critical thinking and look at us appraisingly, like pawnbrokers.

This is age appropriate for tiny kids--tiny kids are supposed to have parents looking after them.

But when someone is in an adult body, can drive a car, has some adult functions and has adult earning power, but if their DOS (operating system) is still in little kid I-am=responsible-for=everything, or if stress causes such a regression, that person becomes VULNERABLE.

THis very real vulnerability is why care givers are accountable to an ethos of care, and why in law they are usually considered fiduciaries--because patients and clients are often regressed, due to the stresses of their condition.

It is the duty of a real healer to preserve what autonomy a client or patient still has and then to assist them to regain or attain as full a degree of autonomy as they are capable of.

In the West, a premium is placed on autonomy. This is a very mixed bag, but the fact is, life is damn dangerous if one is emotionally a tiny kid when in an adult body.

Will close with a vignette:

One of my uncles was kicked out of the house by his wife. They had four very small children, and my uncle's wife decided she was tired of him and gave him the boot.

My uncle was shattered and all he wanted to do was just slink away. He told me that his sister, who was very wise in the ways of little kids, told him this:

'You have to go back and see your kids. They are little. When something bad happens,
little kids think they made it happen. They blame themselves. Then they go crazy trying to fix something they didnt even cause.

'You have to go and tell them that they are good kids and they did not make Mommy and Daddy break up. '

My uncle told me that he knew his sister was right. He said the pain of going back there
and facing his kids and crying with them was unbearable. He had to keep going back and had to keep repeating that message to them, that no, no, no they did not cause
Mom and Dad to separate.

Fact is, my uncle's first wife had a major mental illness. There is No way the children caused that. She ran around with other guys after she kicked my uncle out. My uncle, a devout Catholic refused to date for years--until finally, he met a lady who turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

His first wife was pissed off. Shed had her fun, shed kicked him out, now she was mad at him because he was happy. How crazy is that? The kids could not have caused any of that.

My uncle went on to a terrific second marriage and his children all respect him today.

So much for 'I made Prop 8 pass'.

That would have been as insane as my little cousins believing they had caused my uncle and their mom to split up.

Luckily my aunt was on hand to tell my uncle what to say to the children so as to nip
this pre-BK, 'Katieism' in the bud.

Too many of us are not the beneficiaries of the kind of outreach advice my aunt gave my uncle, and that is why 'I made it happen' is such a commonplace form of false
empowerment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 09:35PM by corboy.

Note: though some Guruphliac correspondants feel 'uncomfortable' to have their stuff quoted here, one new member of Guruphiliac, currently doing battle with J, saw fit to post an excellent analysis, highly user-friendly, provided by Anticult. It merits
reposting, in case any new readers are here.

Quote


What BK seems to have done, is to take a few components, and put them together as a "gimmick", similar to how she warped hypnotherapy to her own ends.

*The Work is not neutral, its directional.

It directs the client further toward BK, in a closed-loop.

It is a checkmate. Its NOT freedom.

Let's look at it.

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?
Turnaround: (the thought is turned around to its opposite, around to oneself)

Question 1 to2 are nothing new or interesting. That is why UG Krishnamurti dismissed it as a gimmick. That is the first question of epistemology in philosophy, which has been asked forever.

The answer, is that nothing is 100% "true". But its the start of the BK mindtrap, as she pushes people away from how epistemology works.

The real questions should be, how ACCURATE is this thought, and to what extent can it be verified? That is epistemology [plato.stanford.edu] and is where science begins, through testing for evidence.

So beliefs/thoughts/ideas can be put on a continuum of accuracy, from just over 0% to under 100%.

Question 3, is just basic self-awareness. If you believe a snake is a stick, you are scared. Again, its nothing original, just basic stuff.

Question 4, this is where it starts getting damaging. Buddhists have trained people to detach and observe thoughts, so there is nothing new here.

*But to try to erase and negate thought, and connect that to the SELF, is when things can get damaging. This is the beginning of the Thinking Errors in the BK Work.

Turnaround: this is where it goes right off the rails, and the real Cognitive Distortions, Thinking Errors, and mind-warping starts.

*Modern therapy has proven that excessive self-blaming creates depression and guilt. Also, Polarized thinking is called Black/White thinking, and is very harmful.

So its very clear how this operates.

She presents the salespitch as a cure to all human suffering, which is a bigger claim that the Buddha, and is obviously false. (the irony is the BK Work does the opposite, and creates more suffering).

Then Questions 1 to 2, are just basic human thought. But for healthy thinking, you don't say, "is it true?", you say..."how accurate is it", and look for objective evidence.

Question 3 and4 push people toward the No-Self No-Mind idea, and this is meant to try and clear the slate, so to speak.

Then the power kicks in on the Turnaround aimed at the self.

As when people assign excessive self-blame, they are going to get guilt-ridden and depressed. That is actually proven in many studies.

And of course, most women tend to self-blame anyway, and this makes it worse.

Then what? Then people need more Aftercare, more coaching, and even the Turnaround House.

There was someone who was telling me once about something called "locus of control". He said, some people believe that things outside themselves are responsible for all things that happen in their life and they don't have much control over anything.( For example: I passed the test because the teacher liked me, or I failed it because the teacher didn't like me.Whether or not I studied had nothing to do with the matter)
Others believe that they are in control of their life, and that they are responsible for everything that happens. ( It ws my fault I lost the job, and the recession had nothing to do with it.)
We are all on a spectrum with this.
This person pointed out that reality and healthy functioning tends to come when we find balance and acknowledge that some things are under our control,and some are not.
Either end of the spectrum, he said, whether learned helplessness, or believing one is completely responsible for everything, can cause problems.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2009 11:30PM by yasmin.