It is all about power with BK, isn’t it? Of course it is all about power for a lot of people in many different arena’s of life, but there is something about the way BK exerts her power. It is not open and honest, but very covert and often under the pretext of a greater good, of service to mankind, and dressed with the garb of so-called selflessness and being very loving.

I bet it was all about power for her when she was still doing real estate. Basically she is still doing real estate, accept this time she is not selling houses.

Actually she is still lying on that bed, when she was so sick as described in ‘Cry in the desert’. In the past her children would tiptoe around her so as to not annoy her, and now her staff tiptoes around her for the same reason. She used to be hungry for attention and would demand it by being so sick, and now she figured out how to get it by being so holy. She used to bully her family with her anger and mood swings, and now she bullies her new found ‘family’ with her love bombing. All the same thing, just a different wrapping.

Someone sent me a copy of a teleconference that BK regularly holds with people who are in her certification program.

Some interesting listening.

These are all people who sincerely want to learn how to become facilitators of the work and they have a lot of questions. Katie rarely answers a question directly, and I don’t think it is because she deliberately tries to delude them. I really think that she actually has no clue what she is talking about, and often is just not able to answer their questions, so she starts to ramble in her spiritual mumbo-jumbo, creating a total diversion that seemingly mesmerizes people. It also often sounds like she is on automatic pilot. Or she will make a statement, and then with a laughing voice will say, “and of course it is not true”. I wonder if people notice, or if they are too blinded by their devotion. The love-bombing she does to almost everyone who asks a question is extra-ordinary. For just a few seconds she gives them the feeling they are the most special being on earth and they excel at facilitating or doing the work, praising them in a way you would do to a little child, to encourage it. Sometimes I even got the impression that people were getting a bit overwhelmed by the way she would compliment them.

She often speaks in half sentences, accompanied with innumerable uhh…uhh…uhh’s. Then at times her voice will become infused with emotion and an urgency, like there is this deep yearning behind it, and of course, all she yearns for is peace on earth, no less. At other times she will seemingly become overwhelmed with gratitude towards her audience, and becomes so choked up that she can’t complete what she was going to say.

She clearly distinguishes between the people in her certification program and everyone else who does the work. Branding them as some sort of elite group who are very fortunate, and who will ultimately save a lot of people from suffering. It is as if she has created this peace-army that is about to conquer the world.

Here are some quotes by BK that I found particularly interesting:

Quote

“Thinking doesn’t stop until you understand that it never happened”
“Make a commitment to do the work for 30 minutes every morning, and if it were me, if the house was on fire, I would just move outside, finish doing the work and then put out the fire”
“ What is beautiful about it is , it is so giving and delighted, and a love affair with itself. I hope that this helps honey”.
“Do the work as a saint…”

It may be obvious that she is seeing herself as a saint now. Who knows, her people might be thinking that she is the new Messiah?

Quote

“I love these times together, you are all in my home and I am in your home…”

I am including some quotes from a book called “Half way up the mountain” by Mariana Caplan. I haven’t read the entire book, and am fully aware that it is filled with quotes and opinions of people that I definitely do not endorse and some of them might be using the same tactics as BK. However, some of the stuff Caplan wrote on power, describes these so-called guru’s very well.

Quote

A spiritual teacher who is well seasoned in the theory of nonduality and the workings of the human mind can easily induce an experience of nonduality in his or her students, and furthermore can teach students how to reproduce this experience within themselves”.

And the experience of nonduality might very well be confused with the experience of dissociation.

Quote

“These experiences can make a person extremely confident, because any difficulty that one is faced with, from within or without, can be ‘advaited’ (or worked) by saying that this is all unreal or all the self anyway.
However, this confidence becomes a form of arrogance, a form of self-delusion, when it is used to avoid one’s own difficulties or areas of avoidance in order to obliterate the uncomfortable, dualistic facts of one’s own personal situation. The advaita view can paralyze a person and prevent him or her from sober self-introspection because to consider one’s ‘self’ is to entertain illusion, is to deny one’s own realization, is to embrace the falsity of dualism. In this way, the opportunity to truly be free to face any difficulty or imperfections in one’s own character is destroyed. Any desire to change anything, in this view, is seen to be coming from the ego, from ignorance, because change implies separation and only ego could want change.”

The above precisely describes followers of BK who have embraced the work as their way of life.

Quote

“The dangers of mystical experience and of ego’s tendency toward self-deception become magnified and have ever-increasing implications when one begins to interact with others on the basis of the presumption of enlightenment.”

Of course bk will always very cleverly say that she is not enlightened, because she doesn’t know what enlightenment is… she will say that you are only enlightened in the moment… thus never making the statement : “I am an enlightened being”, yet strongly convincing her followers of the fact that she very obviously is enlightened.

Quote

“Joel Kramer and Diane Alstad, co-authors of the Guru Papers claim:
The corruptions of power occur when maintaining power becomes central and more important than its effect on others. Although this danger is present within any human interaction, it is when power and position are linked that the possibilities of corruption are magnified. Hierarchy and authority are part of the human landscape. Both become authoritarian when their main task becomes maintaining power.”

“Everyone know the taste of power. Those who do not experience it dream of it, and those who do experience it seek out more and more of it. Power is a great high. It is a Band-Aid on the wound of suffering. When one is soaring on the wings of power, one feels he/she has transcended suffering. Power can feel like immortality – the deathless state.
Power easily plummets into the bowels of self-obsession, the ego becoming fat on its own glory.

The fact that everybody is corrupt to some degree isn’t necessarily a problem. The tendency toward corruption seems to be a part of human nature, at the very least a part of contemporary Western human nature. There are degrees of corruption, however, and those who are most corrupt are least likely to be aware of the forces that run them. Kramer and Alstad suggest that “dealing awarely with power involves guarding against its corruptions, instead of denying that one is corruptible”.
This is the nature of corruption. This is the humbling reality that human beings, because they are suffering and confused , will – particularly when pressed into stressful situations or given the opportunity for power or fame – show an overriding tendency toward self-deception and corruption.
Many people assume that charismatic and knowledgeable individuals – particularly those with a spiritual “glow” or a solid grasp of spirituality – are in fact enlightened.”

The folks from the work that are silently following this thread are wondering about Meadow, thinking this person must be someone from the certification program. In an earlier post I commented on BK followers and compared them to birds in a nest. This was picked up and commented on in one of their forums and they actually liked the image of them being little birds in Mummy Katie's nest. I do have some close friends that are actually in the certification program. It is clear that even within the ranks, doubt has started to creep in, since some of them are feeding me information. They are actually afraid to post themselves, even when using an alias.

Quote
The Anticult

[www.theultimatecoach.net]
“Dear Steve,
Thanks from both of us from the bottom of our hearts. You are the king of manifestors.
Love and gratitude,
Stephen (Mitchell)”

QUOTE: "I adore you Steve Hardison!...I love you... ...Thank you Steve, for knowing the way.
xoxoxo kt (Byron Katie)"

Actually BK’s full quote is:
I adore you Steve Hardison!...I love you. Thank you for giving. With all my dearest, bottomless heart, I am grateful that you live.... Thank you Steve, for knowing the way.
xoxoxo
kt (Byron Katie)

I wonder what SM and BK are thanking Steve Hardison for???

'The author says his episode was triggered by reading an early Ken Wilber book'

The author seems to be yet another Steve :-)

I like UG Krishnamurti's comment on what he called his 'calamity'
"If you knew what this was you would not want it"

He didn't think much of Byron Katie either.

Be very careful with that book, Halfway Up the Mountain.

By the time you finish it, you may risk feeling as though your life is going to go down the drain and you're an ego driven self indulgent worm unless you submit yourself to a guru who will pound you into submission.

Now, you wont read that in the book.

But...if you do read the book through, monitor your states of mind and emotion, and do it carefully. You may just find that gradually anxiety about your own worth and distrust of yourself will begin seeking in, and you get a sense your life is gonna be worthless unless you submit to a leader.

It may be like the way fog slowly settles in and blurs one's vision as one drives down the highway. Pay attention to how books affect you. Its tempting to read something in chunks. If so, you may miss the long term drip drip drip as your perspective is shifted off balance--and into a position where you risk buying a bill of goods you might otherwise never have purchased.

Caplan reframes submission as 'conscious discipleship.' Yeah, sure.

The book has lots of quotes from Andrew Cohen, and Lozowick himself, plus others.

. If you do a search on Google listserves for 'Lozowick' and 'Silva' as in Silva mind control, you'll find interesting stuff.

Anticult may be able to tell us about Silva Method.

[www.google.com]

Now, note this citation from a book by Jose Silva himself, pages 153--154--it refers to Lozowick teaching Silva method and states he resigned in 1976 to start his Hohm community.

[books.google.com]

Andrew Harvey has some comments here on Caplan's work on behalf of the guru principle.

[books.google.com]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2009 02:51AM by corboy.

Yes Corboy, I realize that. Like I said, I don't endorse the people who are being quoted in the book. I just liked the bit that I spotted about power and how spiritual teacher abuse power.

To whom it may concern:

Kassy has been banned from this message board.

It is all about power with BK, isn’t it?

Meadow,

I thought your post was remarkable. BK hasn't changed at all really, just changed her tactics.

I'm not a great fan of 'enlightenment' but it is made clear in buddhism and most traditional systems that day to day living is the real challenge and the only place where real change can happen.

I particularly liked this quote from The Guru Papers:

Kramer and Alstad suggest that “dealing awarely with power involves guarding against its corruptions, instead of denying that one is corruptible”.

Just read something on BK's blog that I think is outrageous and criminal. [byronkatie.com]

BK is doing her thing with a woman who is suffering from cancer and is in a lot of pain. Read the suggestion that she BK is making to this lady:

Quote

Katie: Yes. So we’ll work with—we’ll continue to work with what we can work with. And doctors can deal with physical pain. It’s up to you. You could take so much medication to be out of the pain, and you don’t. Why?

Vanessa: Well, I do take things against the pain.

Katie: I hear that.

Vanessa: And the doctor gave me pills against the nausea, and they don’t seem to do the trick.

Katie: You could take so much medication that there’s nothing left of your mind, and where is the pain then?

Vanessa: Yes. Where am I then?

Katie: There’s nothing of the I. No story, no world.

BK is actually telling this woman to take so much medication that there will be nothing left of her mind.

Quote

Katie: True freedom is freedom from the mind. You take the pills, you’re free from the mind. When the body no longer functions, the mind cannot identify as a this. Everyone gets free. Sooner or later. So let’s free ourselves of the mind.

Have you ever taken a lot of morphine or saw someone who took a lot of morphine? It is not a lot of fun. BK is basically telling this woman to put herself into a coma. Can you imagine the nausea and the vomitting that could happen?

And then she posts this on a public weblog as if she is proud of it. Is this allowed?

another point on Twitter.
There is a small cultish sex-group, called One Taste, lead by Nicole Daedone, which has been explored here [forum.culteducation.com]

The moneybags/brainiac behind it, is the leaders boyfriend, named Reese Jones.
He uses Twitter, and look at how he describes it below...
These guys get it.
Byron Katie also gets it.
The cell phone, is the highway right into the brain and synapses, and guess who provides the Thoughts and daily reinforcement?

[twitter.com]
Reese Jones QUOTE:

"Phones as synapses evolving as the nervous system of our planet"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2009 06:21AM by The Anticult.

Quote
Meadow
Have you ever taken a lot of morphine or saw someone who took a lot of morphine? It is not a lot of fun. BK is basically telling this woman to put herself into a coma. Can you imagine the nausea and the vomitting that could happen?

And then she posts this on a public weblog as if she is proud of it. Is this allowed?

That is ghastly. Thanks for the info Meadow.