The book Altar Music was written in 2000, which is after Christin Lore Weber wrote the egobiography for Byron Katie in 1996.

So maybe the book Altar Music already contains messages about Byron Katie, mixed in with the "ex-sister's tale of sexually confused priests and predatory nuns"?

Maybe someone would enjoy reading Altar Music and letting us know?
The review below has some info, but might miss the point? Maybe reality is too hackneyed for the reviewer?
Already there are direct comparisons, like those who are warped by their own brutal histories of abuse, which they have not dealt with.
Also, like a "convent" there is a false public image of peaceful life behind the walls of the convent, when the reality is far uglier, and the secrets and abuses are covered up, and the group is run with manipulation and predatory power-plays.

That is the same subject as this thread, actually.
Many libraries seem to have a copy of Altar Music by Christin Lore Weber.


________________________________
[archive.salon.com]
ALTAR - MUSIC

BY CHRISTIN LORE WEBER

By Mary Elizabeth Williams
March 22, 2000 | Not all the denizens of "Altar Music" are wife beaters, child molesters or predatory priests and nuns. There have to be some characters, after all, to serve as prey. In this debut novel by nonfiction author and ex-nun Christin Lore Weber, three generations of women survive -- just barely -- ...

While nobody in his right mind still believes in the Julie Andrews brand of sunny convent life, the convent depicted in "Altar Music" is so grim it makes Jane Eyre's orphanage look like a Carnival cruise ship. Stripped of the comforts of family and friends, deprived of her music, Elise loses her identity and nearly her mind as well. There's suicide, sexual and physical abuse and the nearly constant suffocation of the most natural human impulses. Being a bride of Christ is no heaven on earth.

Writing with the vehemence of someone convinced she's bringing the truth to light for the first time, Weber displays a baffling naivety. Contemporary literature is brimming with the broken taboos of yesterday. How disappointing, then, that "Altar Music" relies on hackneyed scenarios of sexually confused clergy, tearfully shared secrets and sisterly empowerment. We never see much of Elise beyond her talent and her propensity for being manipulated. And, sadly, she's the novel's best-drawn character; around her is a coterie of simplistic villains warped by misguided Catholicism and their own brutal histories, with a token handful of sympathetic types thrown in.

As tragedies pile up, Weber strains to point out that beauty and love can still prevail, and Elise makes her own peace with the crummy hand God has dealt her. It's perhaps an attempt at a more pliant view of the divine plan, but "Altar Music" is so full of horrors that the notion of divine benevolence falls flat. The Lord may move in mysterious ways, but it's hard to accept him as the hero of a story in which his every maneuver has him resolutely squashing its other characters.
salon.com | March 22, 2000
_____________________________________________



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2009 04:04AM by The Anticult.

Quote
The Anticult
The book Altar Music was written in 2000, which is after Christin Lore Weber wrote the egobiography for Byron Katie in 1996.

So maybe the book Altar Music already contains messages about Byron Katie, mixed in with the "ex-sister's tale of sexually confused priests and predatory nuns"?

Maybe someone would enjoy reading Altar Music and letting us know?

I've just ordered it from Amazon. :-)

There is another Janaki blog update...where there is text where Byron Katie is endorsing Janaki.
[www.theworkingcompany.nl]

That is how they do it.
When you are working for them 24/7 for no pay, then they Love-Bomb you, and call you an angel, tell you that they "love you" and say..."You are The Work in Europe".

Then later, when you are getting tired of working 24/7 for no pay like a New Age sweatshop, then they turn-it-around, and try to tell people you were claiming to be The One.
When in fact this person was TOLD they are The One in Europe, and "You are The Work in Europe".

See how it works?
They tell you that you ARE THE ONE, even though you don't say you are the one.
Then later, they try to criticize you for saying you were The One, when they are the ones who told you that in the first place, to try and get you to work longer hours for them, for no pay.


That is either Turnaround mind-screwing....
Or Byron Katie is projecting her own pathology onto other people.
Its probably both.

They build you up, when they are USING you for their own ends.
And once you are used up, they tear you down, and pull you down.

(note also the word PULL gets used a lot by Byron Katie, which implies FORCE and power, and even makes one think of a leash around the neck.
In reality, the "certified" Byron Katie Facilitators live with a metaphorical BK leash around their neck, and Byron Katie can yank that chain anytime she wants, and pull them down for any or no reason, without any notice at all.
She can even Twitter it from her cellphone anywhere in the world 24/7. One negative Twitter from BK about a Facilitator, and that facilitator is toast. That's power).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2009 04:35AM by The Anticult.

Quote
The Anticult
She can even Twitter it from her cellphone anywhere in the world 24/7. One negative Twitter from BK about a Facilitator, and that facilitator is toast. That's power).

Latest Twitter from Byron Katie:

"We suffer only until we realize that we can’t know anything."

Quote
helpme2times
Latest Twitter from Byron Katie:
"We suffer only until we realize that we can’t know anything."

REPLY:
That is completely false statment. Ignorance is the cause of most suffering.
The statement "we can't know anything" is completely false and is deliberately nonsensical.

Its also one of her silly paradoxes, like the liar paradox. [en.wikipedia.org]

She is making a "statement" that we can't know anything.
How does she "know" that, if we can't know anything?

Why does Byron Katie produce hundreds of hours of content she sells, if we can't know anything?
Why doesn't she shut-up then, if she doesn't know anything?
If she doesn't know anything, fine, then stop talking all the time all over the internet.

Let others who DO know something do the talking.

Obviously, she just wants YOU to not know anything. She knows everything, you know nothing.
That's the plan. She wants YOU to empty your mind, and then let her fill it up with her junky beliefs.

And also, the idea that "we can't know anything" is simply nihilism and nonsense.
Humans can know a lot about how nature works, how the world works, and how group persuasion works.

Many of Byron Katie's statements are at best wrong, and most of them are simply manipulative tactics to mess with people's minds.

Byron Katie statement "We suffer only until we realize that we can’t know anything." is saying IGNORANCE IS BLISS.

Yes, that is true, for the corrupt Leader who wants obedient followers, who are blissed out and ignorant of what is going on around them. Their ignorance is her bliss.

But ignorance is a nightmare and creates the suffering.
The reality is the opposite of the BK statement.
Human suffering needs to be addressed and dealt with using the best knowledge and methods available to the wonderful human mind.
There is no question one is dealing here with a very destructive leader of a new age sect.

Of all people, Marie Antoinette, in the midst of the horrors of the French Revolution reputedly said, 'It is when we suffer that we come to know who we are.'

And Aeschylus said, 'Pathei Mathos'--some translate this as 'From suffering, learning'. I would say, 'By recognizing and then steadily bearing the awareness of adversity, we grow wise.'

(from Aschylus, Agamemnon, referred to in a discussion of the education of Elizabeth Tudor in Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens by Jane Dunn.)

Regarding the report that BK told Janaki 'You're the Work in Europe'--there is a term for that.

It is called flattery. That would inflame one's ego, one's sense of 'I'. It would be like Jesus appointing you one of the Apostles, a saint in the salvation narrative of The Work.

A friend of mine told me a situation she was in with a very messy spiritual direction relationship that went wrong.

She said, with great embarrassment, that the messed up priest who advised her on her prayer life, told her one day, with great portentiousness, that she had the potential to become a saint. Then, after a significant pause, Father X warned that the hazards for such persons would be that much greater, as the Adversary takes more interest in thwarting them, and that the only refuge is God.

My friend said, in disgust, with years of retrospective wisdom: 'I was thrilled by this at the time, but it entrapped me. First, I could not tell anyone else. You cant just tell your pals at the pub that your spiritual director thinks you have the potential to be a saint. You'd be considered mad.

'Next, I dared not think too much about this, for fear of being egotistical and sinful.

'This meant, I dared not think enough about this to wonder whether Father X was the one who was screwed up for even telling me such a thing.

'Finally, this left me more dependent on Father X's guidance and isolated me from others because I felt I should keep it a secret.'

My informant laughed and said, 'I found out I wasnt a saint and that Father X should have been in therapy himself--and was not.'

Laughter aside...suppose your guru tells you that 'you're the only one.'

This singles you out. You cant tell the other folks in the organization. Its a secret thing, a blessing.

It feels thrilling, but....such spiritual flattery takes away far more than it gives you.

Long term, it disempowers you by making you all the more dependent on the person who said, 'You have the potential to be a saint.' Or 'You are The Work in...(location X).

Because that same title can be taken away from you at any time, and you crash.

Also...this isolates you. You cant tell anyone else that your guru told you 'You are The Work in Europe.' Others would feel jealous of you.

So...this flattery isolates you. You're thrilled but you have to keep it secret. You find you're isolated and emotionally stranded. Its a thrill you cant share with anyone else but the guru.

Then...you cant think about it too much for fear of being egotistical and automatically unqualified for the very honor bestowed on you.

So you cant think too much about the honor that's been bestowed on you..for fear thinking about it automatically disqualifies you from it, so your thought process is choked.

You cant help but feel shame ridden about being so egotistical as to be pre-occuppied after the guru has inflamed your ego in the first place--by flattering your ego.

Double Bind, Honey.

So, you're all the more vulnerable when that same guru, the one who whispered 'you're The One' suddenly turns vicious on you and after having inflated your ego in the first place, rips berates YOU for having responded to the guru's words by puffing up!!

See how this works? The problem with spiritualized flattery is that you dare not even think about it, analyze it, or discuss it without being accused of being egotistical.

The lesson is, that a real spiritual teacher NEVER flatters.

Also...just in case someone, whether its a lounge lizard or a guru says 'You're the one'

dare ask yourself, 'How many other people did he or she say this to?'

Many a person has only woken up from an infatuation wrought by a trust bandit, only when the target learned that a seemingly unique pattern of love talk was repeated to a legion of others.

That 'you're the only one' was said, not just to you, but to others.

Many others.


Musings on Grammar

That update is in Chapter 43

[janakisstory.wordpress.com]

Just for fun I read the excerpt and noted that BK used the verb 'pull' four times.

As in pulling that person or pulling a profile.

My association with the word 'pull that' is

1) Pulling a stunt or trick

2) Pulling a tooth as in a tooth that is diseased, a source of pain and infection.

The grammatical structure of this sentence is wild.


Quote:
If there is a facilitator out there, that is saying really negative things about a facilitator, about The Work

Perhaps Anticult can tell us whether part of NLP training requires thorough training in grammar so that an operator can know precisely which portions of a sentence can be modified to convert the structure of that sentence so that that sentence will have a disorienting effect.

It is very difficult to figure out who is the object, grammatically speaking, of all the strange, disorienting, rapidly shifting verbs utilized in those tangled sentences.

We are not sure who the two facilitators are.

The only subject referred to in specific terms is..The Work.

The sentence starts out in a cloud of confusion, with 'If there is... then the sentence ends, seems to bang down hard referring to 'The Work'.

There are two references to 'a facilitator'--'a facilitator' referring negatively to 'a facilitator'.

'Saying really negative things' reads like teenaged girl talk in the high school halls.

And the 'out there'--what is out there? Some threatening world outside of the one BK can control?

Instead using 'a faciliator a second time, say 'another faciliator'

Rewritten the sentence could read,

"If there is a facilitator out there who is saying negative things about another facilitator, and who is also saying negative things about The Work....'

Thus re-written, this would remain an incomplete sentence.

But it would be much less confusing either to hear, or to read.

The grammar is strange. A facilitator is a person, not a non-person. Proper grammar would require writing 'a facilitator out there, who is saying.."

If the facilitator were a hunk of machinery, a non person, then one could correctly say

'a facilitator that is saying'

But maybe in BK's world there are no persons, only machines.

Finally, lets look at the other half of the sentence, 'that is saying really negative things about a facilitator, about The Work'

We are speaking of a facilitator saying something negative about...what?

Is the facilitator something negative about another facilitator?

Or is the facilitator saying something negative about 'The Work'?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2009 10:40AM by corboy.

I used to really be into studying the 'Work' and ironically it/she helped me overcome some of my own issues with authority figures and cults. I used to think she was one of the few 'good ones' out there and gave the benefit of the doubt about the tuition fee for the school.

Reading this board and Janaki's story, what really broke the camel's back for was the woman who wanted to give her wedding ring away. What use would giving that possibly be and who with any conscience would receive it? What kind of massive turmoil would that cause in her marriage instead? They may think the 'world is nothing' but the actions people take do have very real life consequences.

I personally had my own marriage destroyed by a spiritual teacher coming between me and my wife and making major a major life decision without even consulting me, I just couldn't handle the betrayal of trust. When you enter a marriage it is supposed to be 2 people coming together building a life and as a fotress against the world, when one person gives the keys to that fortress away to someone who doesn't even have any real investment in your happiness it is really disempowering and hurtfull. It is hard when your in the middle of the situation to understand if your overreacting or what is objectively morally right.s So it is good to have some objective people like Anticult analyze the situation with comments like 'SICK SICK SICK'.

Yes Bk is more important for her happiness than her husband but the husband probablly would go out at 2am to get her medicine if she was sick and wouldn't charge $1700 an hour to listen to her problems.

Actually as I started to write this it rings a bell about how BK has a story about her husband (Stephen the douche)* gave her a wedding her and asked her with a smile to keep it as long as she could because she has a tendency to just randomly give her possesions away. The anecdote was all very light hearted and endearing but not in retrospect as anticult laid out that this can actually be a suggestion for people to give her their stuff.

I also found it ironic that in BK's comments on janaki she calls her wacky, twice, and really goes on the offensive depicting her in a certain way. She really got out of her enlightened character protrayal of loving everyone unconditionally and loving what is with that one. First I got the impression reading Janaki's blog that she was sticking to the facts and toning down the whole thing, as she said it was originally twice as long. After I had my own ordeal I wrote out my own 7 page letter of facts, embellishing or lying didn't even enter into my mind (although the whole thing was so fantastic I was sure they would be half believed), it would cheapen everything that had happened. Also in the guru-centric tradition Janaki was originally in going against the guru, who God's representitive (hold the keys to the kingdom), is very hard to do even if you are sure they are corrupt, lying about what happened would be out of the question because of the karma would knee cap any chance of herself ever become enlightened.

* I bought a hardcover book about 3 years ago that was supposedly a new translation the Bhagavad Gita by Stephen Mitchell, I have never had the chance to read it and did not know he was Bk's husband at the time. I thought (until recently) it was an ACTUAL translation not a 'poetic interpretation', anyone can sit down with 3 translations and make up there own airy fairy version and sell it. I was surprised when i found out she was married to him and looked at the list of his books on amazon, wow, this guy has translated books in 5 different languages, he must be a genius! (ahhh to trust people and be naive)

'It is very difficult to figure out who is the object, grammatically speaking, of all the strange, disorienting, rapidly shifting verbs utilized in those tangled sentences. '

Intentional, in my opinion. When the object is thus rendered so vague, the confused listener applies the content to himself as there is no other indication of who the content applies to.

'But maybe in BK's world there are no persons, only machines.'

Once they have been thoroughly confused with nonsense such as the above sentence, they are machines waiting to be programmed to do BK's bidding.

Quote
oncebitten
Actually as I started to write this it rings a bell about how BK has a story about her husband (Stephen the douche)* gave her a wedding her and asked her with a smile to keep it as long as she could because she has a tendency to just randomly give her possesions away. The anecdote was all very light hearted and endearing but not in retrospect as anticult laid out that this can actually be a suggestion for people to give her their stuff.

That is exactly what it is. They are both pre-framing their audience with those suggestions, over and over and over, to prime the pump, to hand it all over. They do it dozens of times, even starting in the books, and CD's in the mass market. They plants the SEEDS right from first contact with the customer.

Its obvious that Mitchell doesn't "value" some prank wedding ring he got for BK, so why would he care if she got rid of it?
But how would Stephen Mitchell feel, if his wife "gave away" his copyrights to his books?
How would Mitchell feel if an ex-wife took 5 of his unpublished manuscripts, and "gave them away"?
How funny would he find that?
What about their own previous divorces?
People should ask licensed marriage counsellors how smart it is to give your wedding ring to a New Age multimillionaire guru, behind your spouses back at some ridiculous LGAT seminar.


And different people have different values. Any decent marriage, to destroy your sacred vows by getting rid of your ring, is beyond sick.
But some people also have "open relationships". For example, in on CD mentioned earlier, BK does say something like...if her husband had an affair and IF she was not ok with it...something like that.
[forum.culteducation.com]
So there was a very clear signal there of an "open relationship" and signals about divorce.
How many people reading this would be OK if their husband only had an affair if she could approve of the woman first, and sign-off on it?
So, some people are Swingers, and some people think wedding rings are a joke.

So its just a sick game they are playing with their own people.
Why?
Its not just the money, in terms of the wedding ring. Of course, some people's rings are very valuable, but its far more than that.
When do people get rid of their wedding rings? After a divorce.
And the rings are not just being given to people on the street. The wedding rings are being given to Byron Katie.

Its so blatant, so deliberate, so sick, its hard to believe those on the inside would do it, but it is very believable as they set it up very carefully.
What's it about.
Psychological transference, breaking the closest bond many people have in life, their marriage, and inserting herself in the middle of it. Many LGAT seminars do this, many Guru's do this technique.

If a person got married in a church, giving away your wedding ring without your spouses consent and agreement, is a spiritual divorce, right on the spot.
Its an emotional divorce, right on the spot.

Then what? Then those feelings, attached symbolically to the wedding ring, get transfered to Byron Katie. The person becomes a "Bride of Katie" in that sense.
That may sound extreme, but look at the way many of the single women who are senior in the BK organization write and speak. That is emotionally what is going on.

So the person becomes totally dedicated to and "in love" with Byron Katie, from the wedding ring transference, and the dozens of other things that go on. And then they devote their lives to working for her, promoting her, working at the seminars for no pay, and who knows what else?

And if someone did give their wedding ring recently, one could just try to get it back, possibly with a letter from both spouses and another "expert" in these issues. And if they refuse to give it back, then a letter to the media might get it back.

What do they do with these wedding rings and valuables? Are they locked in a safe, to keep the psychological transference active? The ring could even be shown to the person once a year or so, to keep the transference hot?
Or are the rings just liquidated?
How are those "gifts" processed, in terms of corporate income? If people are told they are going to "charity", then were is the charitable donation tax-receipt for the value of the gift?
Is it a charitable, corporate, or personal gift?

Oh that's right, don't think, the mind is evil, hand over your stuff, thank you and come again.

And messing around with "grammar" is pretty much lesson #1 in advanced conversational hypnotherapy. Its a huge subject.
But the first thing you learn is to shift tenses (past-present), and nouns, verbs, and to scramble it up. Some of it is to confuse the conscious mind, and trigger a transderivational search. They also use
Transformational Grammar, Artfully Vague language patterns, Pivot Grammar [www.nlpconnections.com] and tons of other things.
They also use special "code words" they set-up, which have private meanings that have been previously defined.

One could check the Stever Robbins website, he probably sells products explaining how to mess with "grammar" to deepen the trance-states.

And again, the NLP people didn't think this stuff up. What they did is went and COPIED people who were naturally experts at it, and then tried to codify it, so others could learn it easily.
A large part of it, is a natural talent at persuasion and manipulation.

Also, in the "spiritual traditions" there is a long history of "crazy wisdom" where some guru would say the craziest stuff, and people would think its wise.
Well, they were just doing the same thing intuitively.
First, you confuse the hell out of people and put them in a fog of confusion, then you LEAD them out of the fog of confusion by getting them to FOLLOW you.
So the self-taught persuasion techniques came first, they were only written up quite recently.