Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: April 06, 2009 10:00PM
Susan, what you said,
This is just standard, blame the victim stuff.
We need to feel connected as human beings. We are all under stress from time to time. That is the nexus through which any of us at a particular time can be recruited into a set up that does not use full disclosure, robbing us of our ability to make a fully informed decision.
Our need for connection and for community is human and appropriate. But its also something that can be exploited by any person or group that has a strategy and who witholds information from us.
Its not cultic tendencies in ourselves, but a group that is based on withholding information,thats the problem.
My private definition of a cult is that its a group that is about power and money and that is based on the equivalent of a Family Lie.
Its not your fault that a group is choosing to withhold information from you. Its the groups fault.
If you sit and read even the last 12 pages of this current thread, you are going to see
that there is an entire social context that has been contructed that feeds people through a chute, right into BK land.
I was minding my own business in my Alanon group, shared some emotionally sensitive stuff about my life and got weepy.
A BK recruiter was in our group and tried to get me involved with BK (and by extension) Mitchell's material.
This same woman had also pimped BK stuff to another friend of mine in this group who attended a BK reading with her and found many of the subjects were doing fasts. (We have since learned via the Guruphiliac forum posts by Annariadne and others that fasting and stressful food restriction is part of the BK process).
Had I not already been reading stuff on this thread, I might have trustfully followed this lady to one of these events.
And...she hit on me right when I was emotionally vulnerable and weepy. She didnt do it when I was reporting a situation when I had achieved mastery.
These people recruit. They target you as part of a strategy.
This is not cultic tendencies inside of yourself for which you have to take the blame.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2009 10:12PM by corboy.
Quote
My feeling, after a a long period of healing from terrible but insightful experience with a group, is that it's not cults I have to be worried about, but cultlish tendencies within myself.
This is just standard, blame the victim stuff.
We need to feel connected as human beings. We are all under stress from time to time. That is the nexus through which any of us at a particular time can be recruited into a set up that does not use full disclosure, robbing us of our ability to make a fully informed decision.
Our need for connection and for community is human and appropriate. But its also something that can be exploited by any person or group that has a strategy and who witholds information from us.
Its not cultic tendencies in ourselves, but a group that is based on withholding information,thats the problem.
My private definition of a cult is that its a group that is about power and money and that is based on the equivalent of a Family Lie.
Its not your fault that a group is choosing to withhold information from you. Its the groups fault.
If you sit and read even the last 12 pages of this current thread, you are going to see
that there is an entire social context that has been contructed that feeds people through a chute, right into BK land.
I was minding my own business in my Alanon group, shared some emotionally sensitive stuff about my life and got weepy.
A BK recruiter was in our group and tried to get me involved with BK (and by extension) Mitchell's material.
This same woman had also pimped BK stuff to another friend of mine in this group who attended a BK reading with her and found many of the subjects were doing fasts. (We have since learned via the Guruphiliac forum posts by Annariadne and others that fasting and stressful food restriction is part of the BK process).
Had I not already been reading stuff on this thread, I might have trustfully followed this lady to one of these events.
And...she hit on me right when I was emotionally vulnerable and weepy. She didnt do it when I was reporting a situation when I had achieved mastery.
These people recruit. They target you as part of a strategy.
This is not cultic tendencies inside of yourself for which you have to take the blame.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2009 10:12PM by corboy.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: April 06, 2009 10:08PM
For musical inspiration, folks should try and listen to a recording of the 1980s song that has the refrain, 'You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar'
And get the original version. It includes dialogue from both the man and the woman.
The current re-mix has only the man's material repeated over and over again, turning it into an obsessive self involved narcissistic rant.
The woman's half of the story is omitted.
We need to reactivate feminist analysis for real. Its infinitely more empowering than anything BK does.
BK is not about empowering women.
The truth is, Byron Katie is patriarchy in skirts.
She's counterfeit feminism.
She operates using models of marketing and commercialism that , even when staffed by women, is based on a male pattern of conquest that sees women (those who attend the workshops and buy the books and DVDS) as money generating units.
And get the original version. It includes dialogue from both the man and the woman.
The current re-mix has only the man's material repeated over and over again, turning it into an obsessive self involved narcissistic rant.
The woman's half of the story is omitted.
We need to reactivate feminist analysis for real. Its infinitely more empowering than anything BK does.
BK is not about empowering women.
The truth is, Byron Katie is patriarchy in skirts.
She's counterfeit feminism.
She operates using models of marketing and commercialism that , even when staffed by women, is based on a male pattern of conquest that sees women (those who attend the workshops and buy the books and DVDS) as money generating units.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: April 06, 2009 10:22PM
Regarding the need for social connection, former New Age teacher Karla McLaren writes of this:
This is something we ache for, that is not cultic tendency at all...social support.
And I think Karla M is onto something. So many of us lack social support that when someone comes along that seems to offer social support, we are so eager to be soothed and come out of the cold, that we dont think to fact check first.
Now....my beef is, BK's recruiters are using pre-existing social support systems (such as the Alanon meeting I attended and became vulnerable at) and even suborning licensed psychotherapists to push her material.
Repeat, BK 's people are not merely offering social support (debatable--this costs $$$)
****
IMO, the BK recruiters are compromising and contaminating existing and satisfactory social support venues (like the above mentioned Alanon meeting) by turning trusted (and already satisfactory) social venues into points of recruitment (POR) as conduits to recruit for an entity that is very vorcious of time and money and that doesnt carry malpractice insurance.
Pissing in previously clean drinking water.
I am very leery of attending my 12 step meeting because I dread having to set limits on this BK recruiter.
And it is against 12 step tradition to push any other literature or group besides 12 step--meetings are supposed to be hustle free zones.
And if anyone suggests I have a problem and need to turn it around, I will tell you to do something that will require an ER visit and a follow-up consult with a proctologist.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2009 10:44PM by corboy.
Quote
Social support is incredibly important; therefore, the U.S.-based studies that suggest that religious observance has a beneficial effect on health and psychological fitness leave me with a whopping big question:
What would these studies show if there were a way to factor out the social support aspects of churchgoing, such as the companionship, the socialization, the emotional (and often financial) support, the fellowship with people who share beliefs, and the knowledge that one is not alone?
The problem is, you can't factor those things out, because there's nothing similar to the support structure of a church in modern-day America, where people are so busy that they can barely make time to visit their own extended families!
I see an absolute correlation between the lack of social support in modern-day America and the movement toward group religious or spiritual activities. Which is sometimes fine.
But if you're concerned about the concurrent movement toward magical thinking and fundamentalism (and the movement away from critical thinking and science), do something about the social structure in your area.
This is something we ache for, that is not cultic tendency at all...social support.
And I think Karla M is onto something. So many of us lack social support that when someone comes along that seems to offer social support, we are so eager to be soothed and come out of the cold, that we dont think to fact check first.
Now....my beef is, BK's recruiters are using pre-existing social support systems (such as the Alanon meeting I attended and became vulnerable at) and even suborning licensed psychotherapists to push her material.
Repeat, BK 's people are not merely offering social support (debatable--this costs $$$)
****
IMO, the BK recruiters are compromising and contaminating existing and satisfactory social support venues (like the above mentioned Alanon meeting) by turning trusted (and already satisfactory) social venues into points of recruitment (POR) as conduits to recruit for an entity that is very vorcious of time and money and that doesnt carry malpractice insurance.
Pissing in previously clean drinking water.
I am very leery of attending my 12 step meeting because I dread having to set limits on this BK recruiter.
And it is against 12 step tradition to push any other literature or group besides 12 step--meetings are supposed to be hustle free zones.
And if anyone suggests I have a problem and need to turn it around, I will tell you to do something that will require an ER visit and a follow-up consult with a proctologist.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2009 10:44PM by corboy.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
Meadow
()
Date: April 06, 2009 10:45PM
I heard from someone who recently staffed several schools with bk. This is about the gift giving. Apart from wedding bands and stuff, guess what most people these days seem to regard as their most valuable possession? Their laptop of course!! Apparently the BKI offices and staff are now equiped with laptops that came from participants tricked into practicing detachment. I wonder if they erased their hard drives before they turned them in. Can you imagine the kind of personal information BKI is obtaining this way? Perhaps people should start demanding them back.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
helpme2times
()
Date: April 06, 2009 10:46PM
HOLY CRAP!Quote
Meadow
I heard from someone who recently staffed several schools with bk. This is about the gift giving. Apart from wedding bands and stuff, guess what most people these days seem to regard as their most valuable possession? Their laptop of course!! Apparently the BKI offices and staff are now equiped with laptops that came from participants tricked into practicing detachment. I wonder if they erased their hard drives before they turned them in. Can you imagine the kind of personal information BKI is obtaining this way? Perhaps people should start demanding them back.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: April 06, 2009 11:48PM
Years ago, in his 2000 Year Old Man routine, Mel Brooks tells his straight man Karl Reiner, why we have a skull over our brains:
'Do you want some total stranger coming along and stroking your brains? You'd get all scrambled, mess up your checkbook, lose money...'
Mel didnt imagine the implications of hand held computers.
If this is true, that's like cracking your cranium open and handing it over.
Your entire LIFE is in your hard drive.
Shopping preferences, what music people listen to, what people read, sites they visit, (hey thats how to find out where to purchase yet more advertising space for yet more LGAT events) stuff your attendees like to read..
fantasies about someone other than whom the former custodian of the laptop is patnered with or married to, medications one might have ordered online....ouch, ouch)
A computer hard drive can reveal a staggering amount about a person's inner life (hopes, dreams, obsessions, where one's pattern of attention goes--ha! just look at history tabs) -- infinitely more than a PET scan.
What an enterprising entrepreneur could concevably do is:
get acess, temporarily or permanently, to bunch of lap tops owned by persons who attend that persons events.
Do marketing research
Find out the websites and entertainment material favored by the group of people from whom you've wheedled 'gifts' of laptops--and then use that material to:
Put thier advertisements on websites most frequently visited by those to whom the laptops belonged
Weave in material extracted from music and books and even art that shows up most frequently in laptops handed over by seminar subjects.
All one has to do is got hold of someone's laptop.
Open it up and you get to do brain surgery on the laptops former custodian.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2009 11:59PM by corboy.
'Do you want some total stranger coming along and stroking your brains? You'd get all scrambled, mess up your checkbook, lose money...'
Mel didnt imagine the implications of hand held computers.
If this is true, that's like cracking your cranium open and handing it over.
Your entire LIFE is in your hard drive.
Shopping preferences, what music people listen to, what people read, sites they visit, (hey thats how to find out where to purchase yet more advertising space for yet more LGAT events) stuff your attendees like to read..
fantasies about someone other than whom the former custodian of the laptop is patnered with or married to, medications one might have ordered online....ouch, ouch)
A computer hard drive can reveal a staggering amount about a person's inner life (hopes, dreams, obsessions, where one's pattern of attention goes--ha! just look at history tabs) -- infinitely more than a PET scan.
What an enterprising entrepreneur could concevably do is:
get acess, temporarily or permanently, to bunch of lap tops owned by persons who attend that persons events.
Do marketing research
Find out the websites and entertainment material favored by the group of people from whom you've wheedled 'gifts' of laptops--and then use that material to:
Put thier advertisements on websites most frequently visited by those to whom the laptops belonged
Weave in material extracted from music and books and even art that shows up most frequently in laptops handed over by seminar subjects.
All one has to do is got hold of someone's laptop.
Open it up and you get to do brain surgery on the laptops former custodian.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2009 11:59PM by corboy.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
Jay Cruise
()
Date: April 06, 2009 11:49PM
Hi Susan,
You said: "I find Katie's turnaround mechanism to be very effective and like Tolle's work, it's so straight forward, I can't see how I could find anything sinister in it."
What is so effective about it? A few people have made similar statements that Byron Katie's method is useful on the condition that Byron Katie is not involving herself.
I am new to "the Work" so maybe you can help me out and forgive me if I missed the point. We'll forget her stranger philosophies for a minute as that is another topic altogether.
After reading her book I understand that she encourages people to be "petty and judgemental" about their neighbours when filling in the work sheets and, after mocking their answers, she turns the petty judgements around onto the person making them. Straight forward - yes.
Maybe the turnaround is giving people an absolutely false image of themselves though. If I can't know that my judgements are absolutely true why would it be absolutely true when I direct those judgements towards myself? Actually often people laugh when the turnaround comes because the judgement is so illogical when applied to themselves.
Is this breaking down the ego by applying a self-image that might be totally off the wall?
Is the goal to teach people not to be petty and judgemental despite the fact she is encouraging it in the first place?
Even without Katie pressuring people to demean themselves how is this helpful?
Also I might as well throw this in because it's been bugging me. How many times could you do the work before figuring out what the answer is going to be?
You said: "I find Katie's turnaround mechanism to be very effective and like Tolle's work, it's so straight forward, I can't see how I could find anything sinister in it."
What is so effective about it? A few people have made similar statements that Byron Katie's method is useful on the condition that Byron Katie is not involving herself.
I am new to "the Work" so maybe you can help me out and forgive me if I missed the point. We'll forget her stranger philosophies for a minute as that is another topic altogether.
After reading her book I understand that she encourages people to be "petty and judgemental" about their neighbours when filling in the work sheets and, after mocking their answers, she turns the petty judgements around onto the person making them. Straight forward - yes.
Maybe the turnaround is giving people an absolutely false image of themselves though. If I can't know that my judgements are absolutely true why would it be absolutely true when I direct those judgements towards myself? Actually often people laugh when the turnaround comes because the judgement is so illogical when applied to themselves.
Is this breaking down the ego by applying a self-image that might be totally off the wall?
Is the goal to teach people not to be petty and judgemental despite the fact she is encouraging it in the first place?
Even without Katie pressuring people to demean themselves how is this helpful?
Also I might as well throw this in because it's been bugging me. How many times could you do the work before figuring out what the answer is going to be?
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: April 07, 2009 02:23AM
The Anticult wrote:
Close devotees of Andrew Cohen suffered severe abuse from Cohen and his favored enforcers. They too were trained to turn around anger they rightfully felt toward Cohen back upon themselves.
Its a classic 'THe problem isnt the guru. The problem is that you are projecting your stuff upon the guru...blah blah.'
Andre van der Braak spent 11 years as a much abused disciple of Andrew Cohen. He was trained to turn the anger he felt toward Andrew around upon himself.
Early in the relationship he has doubts and is in his first period of disfavor with Andrew Cohen. Andre has a conversation with Harry, another friend from Holland, who is in favor with the guru.
He describes a conversation nine years later, also with Harry, when Andre van der Braak is pretty much out of the community, but Harry is still in the community and is being the current scapegoat, dumped on by Cohen and everyone else:
Note: this dialogue takes place in Amsterdam. Its interesting that yet another American born nondual entrepreneur (Andrew Cohen) has a critical mass of disciples and some real estate in Amsterdam)
But Andre van der Braak may also have reconnected with embodied feelings he previously shunted to one side. Much earlier in Enlightenment Blues, on page 88, he mentions how on Andew Cohens orders, van der Braak went through 100 rebirthing sessions 'with a therapist' at the time when Andrew Cohen was still in Corte Madera, Northern California. van der Braak obeyed, went through the sessions and returned to serve Andrew for many more years of abuse.
***Nowhere does Andre van der Braak ever examine the possiblity that those rebirthing sessions may have done something to split off his mental and embodied anger at the outrageous demands Andrew Cohen made upon him (disrupting a series of relationships his disciple had with women) and Andrew Cohens equally outrageous ingratitude for van der Braaks hard work as an editor and proofreader.
And how did Andrew Cohen single out rebirthing as the treatment of choice for his doubtful disciple? And who was the therapist? Someone chosen by Andrew Cohen? Or was Andre van der Braak allowed to choose his own therapist?
No where does van der Braak ever consider that the rebirthing sessions may have acted as a drug to dissociate him from well directed outrage at this ungrateful bully bully.
For on page 192, van der Braak, who had left Andre but still wondered whether he was right to leave, still hoped he could stay in relationship with Marianne, a woman who unlike him, was still loyal to Andrew Cohen.
This is what happens when an abused disciple emerges from a split, re-owns his or her estranged emotions, and turns them OUT upon the abuser instead of turning them around and inward in self lacerating assault, while the abuser walks away, enriched.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2009 02:43AM by corboy.
Quote
if you are being taken advantage of by BK, and you start to feel healthy anger toward her for tricking and exploiting you, if you buy into her system, you will turn that around back on yourself.
Close devotees of Andrew Cohen suffered severe abuse from Cohen and his favored enforcers. They too were trained to turn around anger they rightfully felt toward Cohen back upon themselves.
Its a classic 'THe problem isnt the guru. The problem is that you are projecting your stuff upon the guru...blah blah.'
Andre van der Braak spent 11 years as a much abused disciple of Andrew Cohen. He was trained to turn the anger he felt toward Andrew around upon himself.
Early in the relationship he has doubts and is in his first period of disfavor with Andrew Cohen. Andre has a conversation with Harry, another friend from Holland, who is in favor with the guru.
Quote
Andre reports 'I am also having some doubts." Its out. I look at Harry, a little tense, on my guard, checking out how he will react. The D-word has been spoken.
Harry nods with understanding.
'Yes, that's normal. We all have that response. You now, the mind can come up with the most horrible thoughts and they can be very persuasive.Only the point is where do you stand? Do you belive that these thoughts are the last word? Or do you recognize these thoughts as the ego that is rebelling? You know what Andrew says: "if you want to be free, indulgence in and preoccupation with doubt can be very dangerous. Be very wary of doubt. Doubt is mechanically produced by the ego, and has nothing to do with discrimination.'
Andre goes on. 'I start to explain why I have doubts but he interrupts me.
Harry: 'I dont have to know what they are about. I'd rather you dont' empty the garbage can of your mind. I only wnat to know wheter you recognize it as garbage.'
This is from the late 1980s. But it reads like an early version, macho form, of the turn around. Substitute 'story' for 'garbage.'
After the conversation, Andre van der Braak writes 'Yet now I feel humiliated, trampled, mistreated but isnt that just the voice of my whining ego, feeling sorry for itself, the voice of the enemy that must be strangled?
'I had been reading transcripts of Andrews dialogues day in and day out for 9 months, several hours a day: The importance of wanting to be free more than anything else, the law of volitionality, taking responsiblity for all our actions no matter how victimized we feel; facing everything and avoiding nothing, no matter how painful. This is still my mission. However much I feel personally humiliated, I still trust Andrew.' (pages 85-87, Enlightenment Blues, Andre van der Braak)
He describes a conversation nine years later, also with Harry, when Andre van der Braak is pretty much out of the community, but Harry is still in the community and is being the current scapegoat, dumped on by Cohen and everyone else:
Note: this dialogue takes place in Amsterdam. Its interesting that yet another American born nondual entrepreneur (Andrew Cohen) has a critical mass of disciples and some real estate in Amsterdam)
Quote
van der Braak writes on pages 193-4 of his memoir Enlightenment Blues: "Harry is still in trouble (with bully guru Andrew--note how they are made to sound like children being slapped around by a brutal school master)...
'Harry is still in trouble and has to clear out of his house (an Andrew Cohen residential house) in the Rozenstraat. On a Thursday night Harry and I carry boxes, mattresses, cupboards. It seems almost like old times. Once everything is in the moving van, we look for a cafe.
'Harry tells me about his travails. Since March when things started to go wrong (he fell from favor with Andrew Cohen), hes been under heavy pressure (from a self appointed monarchical bully).
Andre quotes his friend:
'I will spare you the details, Andre, but a side of my personality came up that was truly ugly, horrible. " Since the fall of 1997, when Sophia had to go into retreat, Harry had been leading the Amsterdam center as well as the one in Cologne, alone. Travelling back and forth between both cities, he tried to keep everything going. That had to go wrong, sometime. I think back to a meeting with Dorothy, in April, when she blamed Harry for all the stagnation in the Amsterdam center.
(How can you work wholeheartedly and recruit for a guru who is abusing the living shit out of you? Corboy)
'Harry tells me more. He was sent to London to do a retreat. Robert came to talk to him everyday and yelled at him because nothing had changed. I think back at how Robert tortured me about Andrew's book. Yes, I know what it must have been like.
'Harry tells me how he looked into the mirror every day and wondered why he did not leave. How he lived through the most horrible doubts about Andrew, the most intense fury.
"So what will happen now?' Andre asks.
"Well" Harry says, "Andrew has been very generous with me. He is giving me another chance. He's told me to go to Australia for a year."
"Australia?" Andre expresses surprise. "But Andrew's center has just been closed there because there was so little interest! What will you do there, in the middle of nowhere?"
Harry: 'I will try to drum up some interest in Andrew's teachings. It's really a great opportunity!"
'The more Harry tries to convince me how great this is, the sadder I feel (Andre reflects) ...
'Harry has gone probably gone through ten times as much misery as me, but he has stayed loyal to Andrew. Harry had ten times as much reason to leave, but he continued to say "yes" where I said "no".
"In his own view, he followed his heart, where I, in all my weakness, started listening to my mind.'
But Andre van der Braak may also have reconnected with embodied feelings he previously shunted to one side. Much earlier in Enlightenment Blues, on page 88, he mentions how on Andew Cohens orders, van der Braak went through 100 rebirthing sessions 'with a therapist' at the time when Andrew Cohen was still in Corte Madera, Northern California. van der Braak obeyed, went through the sessions and returned to serve Andrew for many more years of abuse.
***Nowhere does Andre van der Braak ever examine the possiblity that those rebirthing sessions may have done something to split off his mental and embodied anger at the outrageous demands Andrew Cohen made upon him (disrupting a series of relationships his disciple had with women) and Andrew Cohens equally outrageous ingratitude for van der Braaks hard work as an editor and proofreader.
And how did Andrew Cohen single out rebirthing as the treatment of choice for his doubtful disciple? And who was the therapist? Someone chosen by Andrew Cohen? Or was Andre van der Braak allowed to choose his own therapist?
No where does van der Braak ever consider that the rebirthing sessions may have acted as a drug to dissociate him from well directed outrage at this ungrateful bully bully.
For on page 192, van der Braak, who had left Andre but still wondered whether he was right to leave, still hoped he could stay in relationship with Marianne, a woman who unlike him, was still loyal to Andrew Cohen.
Quote
'Marianne comes home in tears. She has gone to see Andrew, to tell him she wants to come back into the community. Andrew told her that it is better for her not to be in a relationship with me then, becuase I will have a negative influence on her. He has said to her that my letter was understandable from a worldly point of view, but crazy from his perpective.
'I am furious. How does he have the nerve! To ask me for 1500 guilders a month, and simultaneously take away my girlfriend, the third one in a row! He is not getting a penny from me! I am now pissed that I wrote him such a generous letter. How many times do I have to be jerked around by this man until I stop being under his sway?'
This is what happens when an abused disciple emerges from a split, re-owns his or her estranged emotions, and turns them OUT upon the abuser instead of turning them around and inward in self lacerating assault, while the abuser walks away, enriched.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2009 02:43AM by corboy.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
quackdave
()
Date: April 07, 2009 04:05AM
Quote
Susan
So in one way, all this moaning about cults can been seen as a place where people need to place boundaries for themselves and it's important to focus on our own power, so we don't feel taken over this this stuff.
Moaning about cults?! Is THAT what we're doing here? I take exception to that comment. In just a few words, this thread has been belittled more than any other poster has done since it's beginnings.
qd
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2009 04:19AM by quackdave.
Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Posted by:
helpme2times
()
Date: April 07, 2009 04:29AM
Quote
Susan
I have found both of these authors to be extremely helpful but I wouldn't dream of attending their seminars because I've learned after being involved with a group of people once you do that then you then get caught up in a scene, and spiritual growth is ultimately personal. I found that Tolle's work is so close to the quick, in terms of showing us our ego, that he draws a backlash from within. So i found it constructive to exaine what's in a book that can make me so angry. If I'd gone to expensive seminars or got involved (heaven forgbid) with some group working with the material, I'm sure I'd have a lot more to blame than realising the uneasiness came from me. I find Katie's turnaround mechanism to be very effective and like Tolle's work, it's so straight forward, I can't see how I could find anything sinister in it. It's similar to a meditation I once read, all you say is: I treat my best friend like I treat myself ... if I do that for a while I grow uncomfortable and can't blame any weird cult for that.
My feeling, after a a long period of healing from terrible but insightful experience with a group, is that it's not cults I have to be worried about, but cultlish tendencies within myself. If I'm centred then everything is ok and no teachings (or my family:) have the power to freak me out. There is a flow and acceptance in my life which is important because even tho I have no intention to shell out for seminars or join a group, I have friends going thru those phases and I hear all about it whether I like it or not. So in one way, all this moaning about cults can been seen as a place where people need to place boundaries for themselves and it's important to focus on our own power, so we don't feel taken over this this stuff. But this acceptance came after a long period of denial and anger and my experience wasn't as bad as a lot of other people's so I don't mean to be trite. I'm posting to be supportive and constructive, its just that I know I will never make the same mistake again so I feel safe and strong.
As far as huge fees go, the grup I was involved with was of the opinion that they can charge whatever the market will bear. So once when a class was oversubscribed, they simply put their prices up, arguing that whoever really wanted to be there would pay. This approach is very "law of the jungle" and valid from that perspective. Unfornunately the group felt happy to intervene in the workings of the jungle when if came to other people's psyches and all manner of other issues so it was hypocritical from that perspective. They ended up ripping me off totally but hey I have learned from that and I never got too mad about that because I was more focused on recovering from the psychological headaches they gave me and figured I couldd always earn more money. Other groups who charge a lot and hold the philosophy that you will value what you pay for and all that may in fact be valid. But for me I've realised that I'm more relaxed about money so, if I were to pay for teachings, which i won't, I'd definately choose a gruop with a sliding scale etc. The choice is mine.
What a bunch of New Age gobbledygook!
Are we to fall at your feet for descending down to our level and showing us how to be as enlightened as you are?
Nooooo thank you missy!
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