Hi,

Talk about cults!! Isn't that someone or a group who "drink the koolaid?" This site seems like a cult of preoccupied in everyone else's business people, although I admit that is a bit of an exaggeration!

I graduated from the School for the Work of Byron Katie. One of the best things I've ever done. Katie is for real, a genuine and ordinary human being, of a very kind nature. I like that. Don't you, when you experience people that way?

I'm just like you. I live my life the best and most open way I can. I'm mostly a nice person, sometimes not. And when I'm not, I'm working on it. Real simple.

Enjoy your site. I'm glad you have a place to express yourselves. It's nice to be heard, isn't it?

Love,

Gee

The Trance that Byron Katie can put people into can last for a number of years, it really is very powerful. She puts you into a deep trance, and programs in what she want,s and that is what you see and believe. She literally reengineers your deepest beliefs.

You even start to robotically mirror and parrot their language patterns.

The Anticult, when you say "trance" you can't mean hypnosis, since that "wears off" rather quickly. I, too, believe that Byron Katie is an abusive figure raking in as much dough as she can before the gravy train dries up, but I, as a skeptic and as I know you are, find it hard to believe a "trance" can last years. It is obvious that Gee is a "true believer" but I doubt he/she/it is in a true hypnotic "trance".

I believe you may mean that Byron Katie is changing the perceptions of the idiots attendees so that they come away with "stinkin' thinkin'" (an old college professor of mine in psychology called the easily mentally swayed [read:gullible] as having their non-skeptical mind changed by a con-artist, that). While not in a "True" hypnotic trance, they are possibly even more damaged by a change in their perceived reality by the false information/love/"wisdom" of their "mentor".

How sad. Why are "Life coaches" even needed? Have you people never heard of friends, pastors, clergy, family and rabbis?

If these scumbags (Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle) are legit, why are they making millions off the idiots people who are the must vulnerable to devious scoundrels?

Hi Sparky, yeah I should be more careful in my terminology.
"Trance" is a technical term in Ericksonian Hypnosis and NLP, which has a very different meaning than the word we use in common speech. (Trance basically means 'inward focussed attention' in that field).

Its better to use the term Hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestions.
But the Suggestions implanted during the waking hypnosis that Byron Katie does, can last for years, as they re-engineer people's Belief Systems. Some of them can be permanent and lifelong, that is her goal.

Its systematic Indocrination.
Or even just Persuasion.
Byron Katie does all types of persuasion on people, and the hypnotic language patterns are just one of many. She uses all the methods of LGAT Social Influence as well. She seems to give them the Full Monty of persuasion methods.


But notice how the comment above is an almost verbatim copy of the language patterns from Byron Katie?
If they can control the language and the meaning of the language patterns, then they can control the mind, or at least strongly influence it.
But for some people it becomes almost total control.

Its all explained in these threads.

Excellent point, The Anticult. Great post. Keep up the good fight as I am not a big follower of the "High Church of Oprah" and her "loon of the week" she is foisting on the uneducated jackasses viewers and selling her brand of new age religion. Thank you and rrmoderator for keeping us aware of the complete liars Byron Kaite's and the Eckhart Tolle's of the world.

One thing I have found about Byron Katie, is that she uses multiple levels of meaning and persuasion.
The YouTube videos have been released by the Byron Katie company, to serve as a way to do mass-persuasion on the viewing public...they are a type of hypnotic video mass-persuasion, and many people watch them over and over, and literally get brainwashed.

When Byron Katie is talking about "war", she is really talking to the Unconscious mind of the people watching the video...about the "war for your mind". Notice Byron Katie's solutions are always about being passive, and to not be afraid and to surrender.
This is a suggestion to your Unconscious to surrender to Byron Katie, and to try to get you to stop resisting her.

For people that give into this type of manipulation, you also just might find yourself on your knees weeping before Byron Katie in a parking lot.

There is a lot more information about this in the thread above.

Quote
Chris Dalin

Quote
The Anticult
Anyone who has studied NLP can instantly see that Byron Katie is doing a lot of NLP and hypnotic techniques, in her own style.

After just watching a few session with Byron Katie I totally agree with you. Her techniques are pure Neuro Linguistic Programming. And Faked compassion.

I watched a heart-breaking session with a woman who was afraid of war.. Byron instructed her hypnotically to blame herself for all the suffering and simply stop being afraid. Do "The Work". It´s just mind-games. She forces them to agree with her on stage. I doubt it will have any at all post-hypnotic effects regarding her fears. And if, god forbid, she would accept Byrons suggestions that "all the suffering is in your head" we will have yet another detached person with lack of empathy walking around in our society, possibly blaming herself for all the worlds suffering. How does that help anyone but the warmongers and Byron Katie?

Being afraid of war is an example of a pretty rational fear I would say. Maybe the fear of war is what has kept this woman alive, and helped others to cope by showing compassion? Who knows? not Byron, thats for sure. There are real ways of dealing with fear, this is not a real way. If she has this sloppy, mind-bending approach to all clients, then I agree, this woman is doing much more harm than good. She seemingly just cant wait to stop hearing the poor womans story so that she can start her "Work"... It is disgusting...

Besides Ericksonian hypnosis, I have a feeling she at least has studied Stephen Brooks in action.

I´ll get back when I have studied more cases, I hope the ones I watched were not typical Byron Katie-sessions... I hope...

Tjena/ Chris

One thing I've noticed is that she manipulates peoples belief-systems without them knowing it (as you´ve mentioned before Anticult).
By using hypnotic launguage, creating artificial doubt. By stating the "Can you absolutley know it´s true?"-question she forces the client to enter a state of self-doubt. In the imagination anything can happen. So she leads the client into denial of their own process of making out what is true and not. (Paranoid Schizophrenics have a problem with this too.) If a client is led to distrust their core sense of truth, how is that person going to be able to judgewhatever new information follows? Or make decisions? She simply destroys peoples intuition. She treats people like they are all fucked up and wrong about everything.

Furthermore, her four questions are designed to make people passive about everything that happens around them and ONLY blame themselves for everything. She says that nothing on the outside can hurt the inside (well, can you absolutley know THAT is true??). That line of thinking rings true only to a person that has been told to not trust their own way of judging truth. It is a WELL KNOWN HYPNOTIC SCRIPT. And she forcefully applies it to EVERYTHING IN THE CLIENTS LIFE. EVERYTHING. I think that is criminal.

She makes a sick example of her manipulation "At Work" when she tells a woman who has lost her son in war to "think about how she is making war in her own mind." Thereby blaming the mother for her sons death (and the mother will also blame herself), and telling her its wrong to feel sad etc. because: "it´s only in your mind". Byron Katie -manipulation At Work.
(It is even worse when she starts manipulating children at her Childrens Workshop: [www.youtube.com])

Tjena/ Chris

BTW. I´m sorry if I am repeating stuff in this thread, as I have read many, but not all posts yet...

I came to this thread to research a little about ET after someone sent me some info on ET - basically pushing his book.

Very informative posts here and another case of a "bogey yogi", as I suspected.

What is up with Oprah?

Is it all about the money or does she really think this dude is some kind of Messiah?

It is such a shame that people are so taken in by these enigmatic personalities in their desperation to find truth and meaning.

Whoever said that the most evil demons to appear in this day and age will come disguised as "gurus" was certainly correct.

Hey

Byron Katie was always one I felt an instinctive repulsion about. While I think there MAY be some use in her idea of switching everything around - if we DO see the world as a sort of reflection of us, it may then be useful to turn it around sometimes; to get out of the mirror.

On the other hand ... this just seems to be what they all do: hold out a bit of good and useful truth as bait, then reel you in. (And, of course, put a lot of blame and stress on you in the process ...)

The deal breaker for me is always the money they charge. If they are so good and pure and interested only in helping - why on Earth charge the obscene prices they do? They've capitalised/privatised 'Love'; and that is, at its root, disgusting. And so cynical and manipulative and cruel.

And there's always the same sort of cover story: I WAS depressed: I WAS suicidal: I WAS on drugs, and then - !!
Oldest before and after advertising trick in the book! Snake oil salesmen at an international fair! Neale Donald Walsch had his nights of despair, and his yellow legal pad. Byron Katie had the cockroach. Marianne Williamson had drug addiction. And so on and so on.

The brainwashing they use is, I feel, very real and very dangerous. There are some real hypnotic tricks in all of them, too - repetition, dissonance, no complicated word/grammar structures, and then, when your defences are low, they come in for the brainwashing. There's the separation from the masses who just don't 'get' the guru; the ego massage because you 'do'; then the guilt because you 'get' it and yet things still aren't changing; and then - the need to follow the leader to expunge it; get to the next 'level', etc etc. And the prices rise exponentially. And - almost worse - there's the idea of 'thought control'. Your every 'bad' thought, apparantly, has a negative effect on you. (Handy, that, if people ever start questioning the gurus.) They get you to be your very own thought police. The priests and nuns of the New Age religion. Instead of 'impure thoughts' it's 'sending out negative vibrations'. God give us strength ...

The books they all have out are just, I think (to state the obvious?) the original hooks. The real prize comes later: attendance at seminars that cost thousands; donations and of course - oh, of course - the way everyone's told to recruit new 'disciples' to the cause. Just when humanity was disentangling itself from the worst of the old mind control religions - whoops, here's the new one!

Whether it's Karma, reincarnation, doing the Work or tithing your income to one of Walsch's many new organisations.
Same old con trick; brand new clothes.

The Conversation with God books are lovely on one level; deeply disturbing on another. In Book Two, 'God' is supposedly advocating: a One World Govt; a totally visible, cashless, society; the compassion and wisdom of George Bush I; the fact that technological aliens have helped us invent things like the mobile phone (gee, thanks).

It helps, perhaps, to see the CwG books, not as Conversations with 'God', but as a manifesto for a Centralised world Govt ('Golly gee' I can hear Walsch saying, 'isn't that most elegant coincidence ...)

But perhaps the most disturbing thing they all do is make you feel that everything bad that happens, whether it's a pain in your toe, or a complete disaster, is all your own fault. PLUS: they're now touting the idea that, if you're obscenely rich, it's not because you're obscenely greedy, oh no. (Nor is it because you've got an exceptionally manipulative and shamelessly relentless hard sell going on.)

No: it's because you're following Universal Laws of Plenty, and being rewarded for it. So, by definition, anyone who is undergoing a really hard time, is undergoing it because they're not 'evolved' enough, to live 'properly' by the Universe. Like the gurus do(!) And, should you dare question this, you're told that, if you grudge them their riches, you're sending out a message that you disapprove of wealth, and thus YOU'LL never accumulate any, 'cos the Universe will KNOW ... '(really: we need another word to describe their tactics. 'Shameless' doesn't always seem strong enough ...)

Talk about stress; talk about a blow to the self-esteem. Of course, there's also the other point of it: that God, the Universe or whatever, loves these people enough to personally intervene in their lives and ultimately make 'em millionaires. Gee - shame 'God' doesn't feel the same way about you. As David Icke said, re secular celebrities: 'Doncha just wish you didn't work down the laundry?'

Anyone who can be rich to the tune of tens of/hundreds of/millions of millions when there are children starving to death is not, in my opinion, any sort of a 'spiritual' leader to follow.

There's a reason the Jesus figure is portrayed as a poor man ...

It all seems part of the new capitalist greed; part of making us all feel discontented; 'less' than, not good enough.
And it's very well orchestrated, and I'd love to know just who's pulling the strings.

The New Age - hah! It's all a bit too 'Animal Farm'. Just the cruelest, trickiest form of crowd control. Destined to make humanity feel bad about itself all over again.

Frankly - although I hold no liking for most of the bible - I think a lot of New Age gurus and their followers could do a lot worse than read the Book of Job. And, of course, some of the New Testament ...

Sorry to rant on a bit. I am, as you can prob. tell, a recovering New Ager. Recovery is harder than you'd think ...

Cheers

Cinammon