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greg ham
Did Byron Katie have a legitimate spiritual awakening or was her "stroke of insight" simply a business strategy?
30000$ to spend time with her......katie is a con
(...It is actually $ 4985.)
That is the big question. According to her followers, there is no doubt about that. According to those who are starting to have second thoughts about BK and the work, there is still no doubt about that. So the funny thing is, that her awakening seems to be the one thing that everyone is sure of. Even though there is no evidence whatsoever, apart from a Cry in the desert and BK’s own stories.
Some people who have known her for a long time have said that the cockroach story as well as the 4 questions didn’t surface until 8 years after her alleged experience.
Let’s picture it: if the stories about her (mental) illness prior to her experience can be believed, than she was pretty messed up and hadn’t left her bed or her house for several years. So she is admitted to a halfway house. This halfway house used to be called ‘Hope House’. She really liked the man that she talked to on the phone, she felt that it was the first time she could trust someone. At the halfway house, they are doing stuff like the Course in Miracles and they meditate. (This can all be found in a Cry in the desert).
So Miss Katie is in an entirely different environment. She is probably not getting her painkillers the way she did at home, she is talking to people who are into New Age stuff, perhaps she is getting food that is more healthy than at her house, probably not getting any alcohol. So she was bound to experience some kind of relief and/or relaxation.
Judging from her character, she is a very powerful, determent and pushy person. The kind of person that will achieve whatever it is they decided they want to achieve.
She could very well have been reading all kinds of stuff at the halfway house. She could have realized there is money to be made in the New Age business. She could have been reading about ‘walk-ins’. In a Cry in the desert it says that people were telling BK that she was a walk-in. I have no idea what that is, but it seems that the word itself is self-explanatory.
How convenient. A walk-in would suggest an entirely different entity, it also suggests a highly spiritual being from a different realm. (Somewhere in a Cry BK talks about visiting other galaxies and universes and coming back as if she had been to school). BK herself says that she died there in that attic room. So if ‘something’ else walked in, of course that would explain the total amnesia she talks about in her biography. An amnesia to such an extent, that she doesn’t remember that she was married and had children. An amnesia that has never been heard of in other stories about a spiritual awakening. And naturally this only makes her more special than anyone else that preceded her.
Later on in the book she says that she has realized that it was her all along, including the walk-in, and it kind of suggests that she doesn’t believe in such a thing as a walk-in. But she would have to do that, if only to make the story more credible and alluring. The seed about the walk-in has been successfully planted as well as her status as a very high, spiritual being
Someone said that they actually believe that she was a walk-in, but they also believe that the walk-in has walked-out and the real Byron Katie has come back.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2009 08:04PM by Meadow.