Thanks to Anticults summary, I have a reply to make when anyone tries to get me to try 'The Work':

All one has to do is reply, 'I dont want to support the BK industry.'

Thats what this is.

It is not spiritual. It is not an end to suffering.

Its an industry, or to be yet more precise, a marketing empire, presenting itself as spirituality.

Trade secrets, squabbles over intellectual property.

This is industry, empire building.

And the way to create any empire, whether political or commerical is first, find a story, a narrative, that taps peoples deepest hopes, dreams, fears...and colonize their imaginations.

A legitimation narrative.

The Holy Cockroach is one such legitimation narrative. And its a good one. Who can find the cockroach and get an interview today?

Andrew Cohen used HWL Poonja and the link to Ramana Maharshi as his first legitimation narrative. Later, after the quarrel with Poonja, Cohen had to find other ways to market himself and linked up with Ken Wilber.

Andrew Wheatcroft in his book The Habsburgs:Embodying Empire tells how the Habsburg family crafted a legitimation narrative. The Habsburgs started out as an obscure clan.

One forbear, Stephen, was elected as a compromise candidate to become Holy Roman Emperor. Stephen and his son Albert held the crown of the Holy Roman Empire for a relatively brief period in the late 13th century until Albert, the second emperer was murdered in 1303.

For the next 150 plus years, other noble families, were elected.

But, during that 150 year period, Wheatcroft tells us the Habsburg clan were not idle. They created a legitimation narrative in the form of a family myth. The narrative gave their obscure family a noble pedigree, going back to ancient Rome, linked their family with some of the most potent images used in Roman Catholic devotion, and used the resources of art and heraldry--and some document forgery-- to craft this legitimation narrative.

Most importantly, while in eclipse, the Habsburg clan were able to associate themselves with a legend, currently circulating among the people, that a dead German emperor (Frederick Barbarossa) would be resurrected.

Later this legend had morphed and there was a collective hope that someone day a ruler named Frederick would appear, be elected and heal all the woes of the world.

By the early 1400s a Habsburg claimant was available, named Fredrick..and he was elected. He had also made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, a very dangerous thing to accomplish in those days.

Colonization of imagination.

From that time in the 1400s, until the early 1800s, the Habsburgs kept the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and remained rulers of Austria, Hungary and much of Eastern
Europe until 1918. All during that time, they continued to craft and refine their legitimation narrative, continuing to use heraldry, and the resources of art--visual and musical--and architecture.

Wheatcroft tells how the Habsburgs associated themselves with the Holy Sacrament and took part in the annual Corpus Christi procession in Vienna.

This is classier than associating oneself with the Holy Cockroach. It also meant that for all their power, the Habsburgs admitted something was greater than themselves and that they were accountable to God for thier deeds.

But associating oneself with a Holy Cockroach is so much better. You're not accountable to anyone.

All this...legitimation narratives, empire building, whether commercial, or political is
not what Buddha taught.

(So the story goes, he renounced his position as heir to a kingdom)

Seeking to create a marketing empire, with ones name and face branded and trademarked, is generated by afflictive emotions. of craving domination. Janaki herself noted BK seemed to have trouble with possessiveness, wanting everything to be hers.

A marketing empire is an expression of afflictive emotion, not liberation from it.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2009 09:32PM by corboy.

I might add that the questions have been designed for failure. On the worksheet there are sections for entering grievances about a person. These are formed as opinions on what you dislike about them, how you want them to change, what the person should do, etc. This is purposefully turning a fact into a subjective thought.

"My husband is a criminal" (fact) Is it true? Yes. "My husband is in danger of going to prison if he continues being a criminal" (fact). This becomes "My husband should stop being a criminal (opinion)", "Is it true?" No, it is a belief based on facts. This does not automatically make it untrue.

Can you absolutely know it is true? Subjective thought is relative, so by definition it is not absolutely true. "The Work" is not about analysing truth. It is about denigrating opinions.

"How do you react when you think this thought?" Byron Katie redefines all negative emotion, opinion and thoughts in the Work sessions as stressful. To have a belief regardless of how appropriate it is, is untrue and stressful. To use the age old proverb 'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.'

"Who would you be without this thought?" Does not believing a thought have anything to do with a person's identity? No. But as Anticult says it is attaching this new found non-belief system as an identity. A goal of mind control is to alter your basic self-identity. So each time a person does the work all these ideas are being reinforced.

I'd also like to add that the turnaround is inherently flawed. If my negative opinions about another person are automatically untrue and stressful the same would apply to negative opinions I have about myself i.e. The turnaround is diametrically opposed to the initial four questions.

In my profession, I know a woman who after being involved with the Work for a year (several four day courses, not the nine day seminars) changed from a warm, emotional person into some state close to autism.
It is impossible now to have any meaningful conversation with her. She is only capable of describing facts, this and that happened or was said, without being able to give any interpretation. And I mean no interpretation al all.
The most remarkable thing is, she lost all ability to understand symbolical language, metaphors. She doesn't get the meaning of a two layerd story. She cannot even associate a feeling with a painting she made, she can not imagine anything that is not right there and then. She could before she entered the work.
Everything has to be spelled out literally or is understood that way. Of course this affects her marriage, as she is not able to relate to her husband's feelings unless he spells it out in a way he would do to a preschooler.
I know LGAT techniques affect the rational mind. I don't understand how they affect this parts of imaginative brain though.
Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

A friend of mine who frequently visits Byron Katie’s Institute For The Work Forum brought the following to my attention. A few days ago someone quoted some info from your site regarding the true origin of Byron Katie’s ‘Tao book’. This contribution turned out to be the last entry on the ‘open’ forum. About an hour later the forum was closed “in order to better serve" the visitors.

Rob, you are describing what sounds like a very complex situation, beyond the resources of a message board.

Best and safest thing to do is find professional help for this person. Go to the homepage
at culteducation.com and go to 'getting help' and identify some exit counselors.

Of course, if a person is not functioning, then a good psychologist or psychiatrist would have to assess them, to try and find out what is happening.

But as far as LGAT's, the reports of damage are extreme and pervasive. People experience psychosis, depression, decompensation, mania, psychotic breaks, dissociation, delusion, and suicide. Many people end up in emergency wards and psych-hospitals.
There is a recent report of the mass decompensation happening at a recent Byron Katie School LGAT seminar, and it was being encouraged and rewarded by the leader. [guruphiliac.lefora.com]

This has been reported for many years in LGAT's, and this is why the LGAT's, like Byron Katie, have that massive RELEASE OF LIABILITY that includes severe damage to the client [forum.culteducation.com]
All LGAT's have known about the serious damage to people for decades in the LGAT business.
Even in that other thread, suicide was brought up, without asking about it. People in the LGAT's know about the suicides, its been mentioned in the thread before.
John Wayne Dulaney [forum.culteducation.com]

Just looking at the text below, it does remind one of a few things.
The first, is the detachment.
When people start doing The BK Work for a long period of time, their responses become very robotic and emotionally detached. That was mentioned in the report above. [guruphiliac.lefora.com]
But anyone can see online, the extreme detachment from normal human emotion in the writings of those into the BK work, and even those trying to get OUT of it!
There is a quote in this thread of one person feeling completely detached from their own baby, after the Byron Katie LGAT seminar.
QUOTE: "When I returned home the strange continued. I felt no more connected to my adorable toddler than my china, and nearly passed out when I realized this." [forum.culteducation.com]

What it also reminds one of, exactly, is the Byron Katie persona.
This person attended several LGAT courses, 4 days is still a serious LGAT, as they all connect. One assumes she did the BK Hotline, coaching, worksheets, DVD's, YouTube, CD's, and many other things. Its an all-consuming mass of material, people get hooked, and they go deeper and deeper into it, by design, as explained in this thread.

Byron Katie performs like she is a type of "idiot savant", which is actually on the autism spectrum. (they now call it Savant Syndrome).
It is very clearly a "stage performance" with Byron Katie, partially based on the novel Nog, and the Byron Katie book, Nog's Quest.
Nog's Quest [forum.culteducation.com]
Nog [forum.culteducation.com]

But, she uses detached, depersonalized language like...the body did _____...the body is hungry....the body was raped....(can others help with examples of those detached language patterns?).
She also gets into detached language around the self-concept, other people, etc.

But Byron Katie gets to the point in her books/CD's, where she says she was literally watching a man have a stroke and "die", and felt nothing. (that appears to be a concocted story, by the way...as it changed from an earlier book).
But she presents herself as being totally detached from her family, from everything. (she isn't really, as anyone can see by her lifestyle, facelifts, vanity, ego, etc).

But, if a person REALLY bought into the byron katie system 100%, and had some vulnerabilities, and did hundreds of BK worksheets all day long, and all of the online coaching stuff, its going to have a terrible effect. There are reports online of some doing it, and recording what was happening, and they were getting severe headaches, very irritable, not sleeping, etc.
Doing all of those Turnarounds, is like a meat-grinder for the mind.
And the basic philosophy BK professes is Solipsism, which puts people in mental hospitals, if you really believe it.

If a person detaches from all their thoughts all day, and their Self-concept, and everything else, and put their thoughts through the meat-grinder Turnarounds, there may come a time when the person actually Dissociates, and disconnects from objective reality. (BK encourages this!)
And if they have listened to hundreds of hours of BK recordings, and how she claims to have detached from everything, including her family, and everything else, a person could start to mimic that, until it takes on a life of its own.

If a person applies basic common psychological sense to the BK system, if a vulnerable person did what they were told, in the Questions and Turnarounds, hundreds of times, seminars, audio, video, books, they literally would detach from reality.
The suppressed BK book, Losing The Moon, is about that exact subject, and is discussed in detail in this thread. that book is about losing your identity, and literally losing reality.
When these ideas are taken all the way, a person could get to the point where they literally, not figuratively, could not see the moon in the sky. Its a type of induced psychosis, for those unlucky to have that vulnerability.
Mania can be EASILY induced in LGAT's, it happens to many people at every LGAT. Its not hard to induce a manic episode in people at an LGAT.

So inducing a detached, dissociated state, is actually the GOAL of the Byron Katie system. That is the state of mind, BK claims to be in.
So its not just the LGAT, its the coaching, the worksheets, the constant warping of thought.

If one looks at the definitions of "autism"
"autism ((psychiatry) an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and short attention span and inability to treat others as people)"

If one just looks at the behavioral description of austistic behavior, it sounds exactly what Byron Katie is trying to induce in people.
- abnormal absorption with the self (solipsism, self-turnaround, etc)
- inability to treat others as people (pathological detachment from people)
- communication disorders (filtering all thought the the questions, and BK work)

So obviously, none of that is about inducing autism, as that is biological. But, the human brain is very plastic, and hammering it with hundreds of techniques to induce a detached state, is what Byron Katie does, that's what its all about. It does have many similarities to the descriptions of the autistic state. As had been said all along, its very dangerous, and people are getting hurt.

And they don't care.
they are detached from caring what happens to people, but are not detached from forcing you to sign the RELEASE OF LIABILITY [forum.culteducation.com]

Quote
rob
In my profession, I know a woman who after being involved with the Work for a year (several four day courses, not the nine day seminars) changed from a warm, emotional person into some state close to autism.
It is impossible now to have any meaningful conversation with her. She is only capable of describing facts, this and that happened or was said, without being able to give any interpretation. And I mean no interpretation al all.
The most remarkable thing is, she lost all ability to understand symbolical language, metaphors. She doesn't get the meaning of a two layerd story. She cannot even associate a feeling with a painting she made, she can not imagine anything that is not right there and then. She could before she entered the work.
Everything has to be spelled out literally or is understood that way. Of course this affects her marriage, as she is not able to relate to her husband's feelings unless he spells it out in a way he would do to a preschooler.
I know LGAT techniques affect the rational mind. I don't understand how they affect this parts of imaginative brain though.
Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

Thanks for the info, Cruz.

When this forum began pointing out impossible claims that the Byron Katie website was making, such as "eliminates depression", rather soon after that we noticed they had changed the claim to "alleviates depression". I believe other changes were made as well.

We are definitely being watched.

Quote
Cruz
A friend of mine who frequently visits Byron Katie’s Institute For The Work Forum brought the following to my attention. A few days ago someone quoted some info from your site regarding the true origin of Byron Katie’s ‘Tao book’. This contribution turned out to be the last entry on the ‘open’ forum. About an hour later the forum was closed “in order to better serve" the visitors.

Here a link to the post about [forum.culteducation.com]
Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of Tao-te ching by Greg Johanson, Ronald S. Kurtz
[www.amazon.com]

That sounds like someone hit a nerve, with another "book burning" incident, where the facts of reality have to be disappeared.
They are truly terrified of objective facts and reality.
There are also terrified, people would read the thread.

That post slipped by, but needs a closer look.
Someone could compare the books side by side, and see how exactly they match.


_________________________________________
QUOTE:
[forum.culteducation.com]
More on ‘BK copyright’:
The format of and idea for ‘Tao living in Harmony with the way things are’ is in no way originating from Byron Katie and/or Stephen Mitchell. In 1991, a book by Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz called 'Psychotherapy in the spirit of the Tao-te ching' was published by Bell Tower (it was reprinted by Random House in 1994). It’s a book on the subject of psychotherapy that’s been described as a recommended read for therapists and anyone in therapy who’s interested in spirituality. Stephen Mitchell knows this book by Johanson and Kurtz very well, since his translation of the ‘Tao-te Ching’ is used in it. After the publication of the Johanson/Kurtz book, Mitchell’s translation started selling and the Johanson/Kurtz book thereupon formed the exact outline for his and Byron Katie’s rewrite, published under 'their own title', ‘A Thousand Names for Joy: Tao living in Harmony with the way things are’.
_________________________________


Reference:
[www.amazon.com]
Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of Tao-te ching (Paperback)
by Greg Johanson (Author), Ronald S. Kurtz

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Harmony/Bell Tower (February 15, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0517881306

Ah, huh.

Speaking of impossible claims the moderator on the Work forum ("Muse" aka Marelin Thornton - way of the wizard!) says she can rid you of inner UFOs you may be harboring at unconscious bay. [www.unusualtherapist.com]

I have a sneaking suspicion that she is also the founder of the Creating Camelot Club where you can learn magic and wisdom of Merlin the Magician [www.wizardwonderland.com]

Thornton has made several reviews for Katie's books online and is a huge fan of Byron Katie (not surprising considering she works for her).

She offers this advice on The Work forum to someone whose girlfriend was kidnapped:

"If she surrenders to them killing her (and I know it isn't easy), she will take the energetic edge off the creation. When she feels better (do some tapping -- it is powerful), and is not fearing or resisting, their power dissipates. Right now your fear is firing them up and keeping the creation alive."

[www.theworkofbyronkatieforum.com];

To hell with the BK blog :P

Here is how to do a 'screen save'

*Get what you want on your screen.

*Open a new MS Word document

* Find the 'print screen' button on your keyboard. It usually lives just above your 'insert' button'--upper right hand cluster of buttons up above the up, down arrow buttons.

*Once you have what you want on your screen (as in a tantalizing post), tap
your 'print screen' button.

Go to your open Word document and hit 'Cntrl V' or 'paste'

Voila--you should see a copy of the screen, and its contents task bar and all.

For longer posts, you may need to do a bunch of screen saves.

Enjoy.