To certain readers of this thread...

Information that may seem to have "disappeared"... it isn't gone.

There are ways and ways to access these things and prove they existed.

Thank you.

HM2X

This has been a public service announcement sponsored by
Survivors Who Are Mentally Interesting (SWAMI)
South Central Chapter

;-)

Byron Katie's latest blogging contains a letter and a response.

[[url=http://www.byronkatie.com/2009/04/letter_when_you_get_it.htm]Letter: When you get it[/url]]

The alleged letter writer mentions the "Loving What Is" book, the audio version of it, "subsequent audios", the "Parlor", even speaks of his son attending an upcoming school.

Talk about advertising!

(If this letter is even real, then I'm relieved the son is not a minor but 23 years old. Whew.)

In her letter, BK pounces on the theme of children doing The Work. Here is her full response to the letter writer:

Dearest Grant,

Thank you for your letter. One of my grandsons says that he is attending the School for The Work this summer in Los Angeles. I would love that he gets what your son received at the School, and that is his own truest mind back, awake and responsible for his own life and best interest. We all adore your son! Let him know that he is cleared to staff a School if he wants to. I love watching even six- and seven-year-olds work with people who are sixty, seventy, twenty and every age in between at the events I get to facilitate as well.

For those of you asking about your children coming to the School during the upcoming summer break, the answer is, of course, "yes." Both my grandsons are fourteen, and I think of the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of the women at the last School (just a few days ago). This young lady wouldn't let anyone—not even her mother—get away, skate away, shift away, shrink away from the authentic self she could see in us. This darling and ruthless fourteen-year-old facilitator used her skills (the most ruthless skills always are our kindness, gentleness, caring, and the most unmoving integrity in the face of the one in denial, the facilitated) to tear open a lot of stuck minds and lives. As I am not traveling out of the country this summer (thank you all for supporting my visit to London and Copenhagen in January) and many of you are wanting your children to come to the School during summer break, and of course I am very happy about that, I will be there as usual, from early morning to late at night, all day, every day, watching awareness shift from the fear-based self into another paradigm, the new one, the kinder one, yours. I hope to see not only my grandson but who knows?—maybe both my grandsons as well as your children and grandchildren at the summer School for The Work in Los Angeles.

loving you,
BK

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

One part of the letter really jumped out at me: "Let him know that he is cleared to staff a School if he wants to",

"Cleared"? That's like $cientology!

I was also struck by the planting of VIOLENT words amidst the usual love-bombing. For example:

"This darling and ruthless fourteen-year-old facilitator..."

"...unmoving integrity in the face of the one in denial, the facilitated) to tear open a lot of stuck minds and lives"
This "umoving integrity" she speaks of can easily end up fostering CALLOUS DISREGARD for people's SUFFERING.

Hey, people's minds have gotta be cleared, BK style. Nothing must get in the way of that!

This stuff is really bad news. Love is NOT "ruthless". Love does NOT "tear open" people's minds and souls.

People's pain and suffering needs to be attended to very CAREFULLY and KINDLY.

Violence and love don't mix.

I hesitate to call Oprah into the mix, but her recent quote re the Rihanna-Chris Brown domestic violence situation fits perfectly here:

"Love doesn't hurt."

And finally, although I'm not a religious person, a quote from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:

"Love is Patient, Love is Kind"

YES.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2009 09:07PM by helpme2times.

Regarding BK-ology and kids

The last thing kids need to be taught is how to turn things around against their parents.

I think it might be inspirational for us to do a Seventies music revival and go listen to

'We Dont Need No Education' by Pink Floyd, from their great album, The Wall.

Truly amazing how coincidence works.

The Work

The Way

and... as a consciousness raising trance breaking intervention

The Wall--by Pink Floyd

May First, 2009

Arise, ye wretched of the earth....

And how do we rise? By feeling our wretchedness, by reconnecting with the life force of anger, then coverting that anger to the next stage of alchemy--curiosity. Then, covert curiosity to a goal. Then by identifying tools for analysis, and forming a community where stories are heard empathically, not dissolved and trivialized away.

By owning our stories, not by dissociating from our own stories by getting lost in some
New Age guru's story, a story that not our own and that cannot lead us to awakening, because it is someone elses story, not from our own juices.

Human beings are story-creatures. We create stories, pass on our stories and to some extent create and re-create ourselves through our stories.

Ah yes... who would we be without our story?

For someone who wants us to be without a story, why is Byron Katie putting out more and more books?

Books = stories.

I've got in my hot little hands a second-hand copy of "A Thousand Names For Joy".

Last year I skimmed through a library copy of the "Joy" book. My recall is that the book had too many parts that were weird and barely comprehensible. So I didn't bother reading it all the way through.

Approximately one year later, I am willing to take another look at this book.

As I glance through the beginning pages, I am reminded of how many STORIES there are in the book.

But WE are to be without our story. Hmmm.

Right away, in the Preface, there is the STORY of Lao Tzu.

Then there is yet another telling of the Byron Katie Cockroach Extravaganza STORY.

(That STORY sure gets milked!)

Then there's the STORY of how the book "A Thousand Names For Joy" came about.

This is all just in the PREFACE.

In Chapter 1, on the third page of it, there's a very dramatic STORY: "A man sticks a pistol into my stomach, pulls the hammer back, and says, 'I'm going to kill you'."

Blah blah blah she lives.

Just from a quick look-see of this book, I can see MANY STORIES.

But YOUR stories aren't okay. Only BK's are. That's the example she is setting.

"Who would YOU be without your story?"... BUT listen over and over to BK's many stories.

Hmmm. I just might take the time to COUNT how many STORIES there are in this book.

I've got a whole weekend ahead of me....

Quote
corboy
The last thing kids need to be taught is how to turn things around against their parents.

I think it might be inspirational for us to do a Seventies music revival and go listen to

'We Dont Need No Education' by Pink Floyd, from their great album, The Wall.

Truly amazing how coincidence works.

The Work

The Way

and... as a consciousness raising trance breaking intervention

The Wall--by Pink Floyd

From "Another Brick in The Wall":

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

[[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_bvT-DGcWw]Pink Floyd - Another Brick in The Wall[/url]]

Quote
helpme2times
Then there is yet another telling of the Byron Katie Cockroach Extravaganza STORY.

(That STORY sure gets milked!)

Oops. I have made an error and now I must correct myself.

It's regarding what I thought was a re-telling of the Cockroach Story in the Preface of "A Thousand Names For Joy".

Maybe I made the error because I am so used to skimming Byron Katie written material, so that I won't feel like I am about to fall into a spell from the hypnotic writing. (That is my definite experience of her writing.)

What happened was, in my skimming of the Preface of the above-mentined book, I saw these words:

"Then, one morning in February 1986, out of nowhere, she experienced a life-changing realization."

I read that and thought, "Uh oh, here's comes The Cockroach again".

I assumed The Cockroach would be mentioned because I've read about the little bugger SO MANY TIMES!

However, I have re-read the Preface and now must report, The Cockroach is not mentioned there.

Still, my intuition told me that the Cockroach Story would likely be somewhere in the book.

I was not wrong.

The Cockroach Story is re-told in at least one place in the book. It's in Chapter 63.

"I fell in love with myself one morning in February of 1986. I had checked myself into a halfway house in Los Angeles after years of suicidal depression. A week or so later, as I lay on the floor of my attic room (I felt too unworthy to sleep in a bed), a cockroach crawled over my foot, and I opened my eyes. For the first time in my life, I was seeing without concepts, without thoughts, or an internal story. All my rage, all the thoughts that had been troubling me, my whole world, the whole world, was gone. There was no me. It was as if something else had woken up..."

I continue to marvel... if Byron Katie wants to keep asking her audience, "Who would you be without your story?", why does SHE keep harping on the Cockroach Story?

That 23 year old cockroach been very good to BK.

And yes, our stories do not matter, but her story does matter and gets told and retold.

Double standard.

Imperialism, whether territorial, or emotional imperialism, is when one persons story is made to replace and displace other people's stories.

Meanwhile, BK should show her gratitude to the Holy Cockroach by wearing a gold pendant shaped like a cockroach surrounded by a diamond halo--that Holy Cockroach has been very nice to her, given her many blessings.

On websites and book jackets and advertisements, BK ought to show pictures of herself with the cockroach crawling on her face, right by the hand placed by her cheek as she tilts her head, smiling.

Ganesh, god of overcoming obstacles, and wealth--Ganesh the elephant headed god, has a rat as his symbol.

If Katie is a modern avatara, goddess of healing, she should have the cockroach crawling up her face,a alongside her hand.

Okay...vermin.

There are many, many kinds of disgusting vermin. Rats. Scabies. Lice. Leeches. Tapeworms. Pin worms. Cockroaches.

Ants...they're annoying, but most of the time people dont freak out.

Mosquitoes are actually important as carriers of disease. But people dont usually panic about mosquitoes, either.

(If you want people to scream at you to shut up, try and tell them you have a dog or cat with worms, or you have them yourself)

Once at a restaurant job, many years ago, we rat problems. There is nothing like having a kitchen rat so brazen that he runs across the shoes of the fry cook while
the guy is at the stove.

Friends told me one rat was so bold it had climbed a pipe into their upstairs bathroom and was actually eating their bar of tea tree soap.

('At least that rat wouldnt have had constipation' I replied)

Lice:

I worked years ago at a homeless shelter. One icky part of my job description was
having to tell lice infested people they'd have to shower and change their clothes if they wanted to visit our drop in center.

What made it worse was that many people refused to believe they had lice even when they quite obviously had lice.

I once had to break this news to a guy who had such an entrenched louse infestation that the little things were the size of silverfish. I could see them crawling in the forest of his hair as we had our little chat.

As for bedbugs:

Last night a man who lived downtown told us the living hell he was going through because he was in a building that had become infested with bedbugs. He was the first one to find out and report the problem, but other rooms were infested, not just his room.

He said he was finding blood spots on his sheets, couldnt sleep, and the worst of it was most people thought it was something funny or that he was making too big a fuss.

For a first hand story read here:

[www.craigslist.org]

But out of all these urban vermin, the one most people have direct experience with are
cockroaches.

For not everyone has direct encounters with scabies, lice, or rats. Or even bedbugs.

But somehow, nearly all of us have had encounters with cockroaches.

Universal freak out factor--especially for middle to upper middle class urban types
raised to be clean freaks.

(in the ghetto or housing projects people dont scream and panic when they see a roach, they stomp its sorry ass)

Few of us have deslt with bedbugs (though do not be complacent, they are getting more common these days.)

Few of us have had rats.

But roaches...its like a universal trigger for disgust, amongst nice, dirt phobic, shame ridden middle to upper middle class types--and especially most girls and women.

(Though not if you're a someone who is a tom boy or butch)



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2009 09:50PM by corboy.

All this talk of Byron Katie and the cockroach and other vermin...
makes me think of her with a new name now... Byron Cootie!

Byron Katie quoted by helpme - "A week or so later, as I lay on the floor of my attic room (I felt too unworthy to sleep in a bed)"

Really? Byron Katie was so clinically depressed that she felt unworthy to sleep in a bed? And that long-seated, deeply felt emotion of self-disgust completely changed in an instant as soon as the cockroach crawled over her foot?

Now she feels comfortable enough with herself to have her own photo placed on an altar in her home. How come there's no middle ground with this lady? There's something manic about these polar opposites of emotion. Maybe some really good therapy would help her find a realistic view of herself as a normal person without the deep shame or high-flying glory? It seems to have helped the Zen Master in the article posted by corboy a couple of pages back.

Quote
solea13
Byron Katie quoted by helpme - "A week or so later, as I lay on the floor of my attic room (I felt too unworthy to sleep in a bed)"

Really? Byron Katie was so clinically depressed that she felt unworthy to sleep in a bed? And that long-seated, deeply felt emotion of self-disgust completely changed in an instant as soon as the cockroach crawled over her foot?

Now she feels comfortable enough with herself to have her own photo placed on an altar in her home. .

This Story of Byron Katie sleeping on the floor, also serves as another written induction to the reader and listener. She verbally paints the picture very clearly. In the imagination of the person who is reading this Story, they also picture BK lying on the floor, and more importantly, for those readers with serious depression, it activates their own feelings of self-loathing, and complete depression, even self-hatred. They see themselves lying on the floor too.
So its an induction to trigger those depressive states in people, and it also serves to target those folks who are in desperate emotional depression and pain. Severe depression is when people literally can't get out of bed, they sometimes can't even physically move.

At the same time, BK is sending out the signals that she is an enlightened being, a walk-in spirit, the "center of the New Age". So she also gives a current (fake) image of BK who is "enlightened", as she repeats constantly, and Stephen Mitchell repeats constantly, and Micheal Katz and every other BKI person repeats constantly, like a TV advertisement.

So in people's minds, those two opposite images get crossed.
The BK from the past, in a severe depression, and those BK followers in a severe depression connect with that image.
Then the BK image from the present, like some type of Mary Poppins hopped-up on pills, who's image is on a altar, being worshipped by the masses, like a saint.

It creates that mental split, where people have self-loathing, and at the same time "worship" Byron Katie. And of course, since the goal of NO SUFFERING put forward by Byron Katie is impossible, the more people try to reach that goal, the more depressed they get.

Its such a cynical manipulation of people's perceptions and emotions, it shows how cynical they are to do it that blatantly.

And the best way to counteract that type of written induction is to identify the BS as you read it...you read cockroach, and you say...BULLSHIT, there was no roach, its just a Story...there was no sleeping on the floor, its a hypnotic Story to make people image themselves depressed, etc.
Its all just fiction Stories, told with embedded suggestions to shape people's perceptions and behaviors.

Who would Byron Katie be without her Stories?
Who would Stephen Mitchell be without his Stories?
Why don't they take their own advice, and stop ramming their fake Stories down everyone's throats?

So to be free of the Byron Katie programming now, simply erase and delete all of the Byron Katie Stories from your mind right now, as they were all just fabricated hypnotherapy Storytelling told to promote the Byron Katie businesses. They are just bad fiction Storytelling narratives, written to sell the Byron Katie products and services, and make money for her corporations.
The Byron Katie stories are just manipulative advertising, like for the ShamWow rag sham.