Virtually everything being said below is actually directly contradicted by the facts.

- The 9 Day program, is only the first step of the 100 Day program, which is being heavily promoted.
- Katie makes herself into some type of enlightened being, and tries to diffuse it with the false Anti-Guru stuff, like many of her senior professional followers. Its a technique.
- Katie PROGRAMS those people to literally fuse with her identity. Its all in the text.
- modern Thought Reform like BK is about INFLUENCE, and they do the opposite of overt coercion, as anyone can see from these threads.
- cell phones are not an addiction, that is about starting to take your power from you.
- going cold turkey with smoking and caffeine is dangerous and destined to fail, and she knows it, and you know it. You wean yourself from them slowly. Another Thought Reform tactic, thanks for bring it up.
- much evidence abounds about the massive "donations" being given to Byron Katie.
- the 9 Day LGAT costs thousands and makes Byron Katie millions.
- they also try to use the word "cult" as a straw-man. The Byron Katie org is a Love-Bomb Group.

Many people make a lot of money from The Work, and they don't like people messing with their income streams.
Watch out.
Byron Katie is sly like a fox, and a world-class waking-hypnotist, so good you don't even see it.
Her main strategy is to try to make herself appear like some middle-aged lady just talking about questioning your thoughts.
Its a fraud. Its a scam.
Its a complete system of Thought Reform, meant to destablize your entire identity and reality.
Extremely dangerous.

Quote
Daphne
I went to a Byron Katie 9 day program out of curiosity. I am not a follower of her or anyone else, she is not a guru. Yes, there were some there who elevated her, very few, why is that Byron Katie’s fault? She didn’t encourage them. Nobody with her organization led any rounds of applause for her or set her apart in any way.
Most people were looking for a way to challenge their thoughts, which they got. That included challenging their thoughts about Byron Katie and her message. There was no coercion, no requirement to do anything. She suggested people give up their addictions while they were there, cell phones, tobacco, caffeine. There was no requirement to do so. I drank my Starbucks in the meeting everyday. Nobody bugged me.
Everyone was an adult. They came on their own, paid their own way, no one was asked for a donation, of time or money or possessions. There was nothing offered to her, I was at the entire meeting.
If you want to get worked up about something, get worked up about churches telling children they will suffer in hell if they don’t follow some book. That’s child abuse pure and simple. Get worked up about Mormons who want to justify pedophilia via polygamy.
Byron Katie teaches just the opposite of anything cult, it’s about critically examining what you think about.
Everyone who runs a course isn’t trying to start a cult. No one has contacted me since my participation, not a single e-mail asking for anything, no phone calls, nothing.
If she running a cult, she’s not doing a very good job of it.

Quote
The Anticult
People should be highly critical and suspicious of all of these hundreds of Gurus trying to sell you enlightenment and promising to END SUFFERING. You should be highly suspicious of that. (its a scam, of course).

All scams are dependent on our own wants. If we want something, then we can be trapped by whoever promises to sell it to us. It's much much much more effective to look into how our own wants trap us, rather than to try and control the salespeople. As long as there are people who want beer, there will be beer salespeople. As long as there are people who want enlightenment, there will be enlightenment salespeople. The root of the matter is "What do you want?"

Quote
The Anticult
Byron Katie is a dangerous person.

Not to me she isn't! I leave her alone, and she leaves me alone. If you want to get something from Katie (or any other "spiritual" salesperson), then that wanting may be dangerous. Deal with that wanting, and the rest takes care of itself.

"If you want to get worked up about something, get worked up about churches telling children they will suffer in hell if they don’t follow some book. That’s child abuse pure and simple. Get worked up about Mormons who want to justify pedophilia via polygamy."

Err...those of us who have posted here are not 'worked up' about anything. We are sharing information and applying critical thought.

This is the common and very tiresome technique of making it seem that those who have discussions here are pathological or morally lacking in some way.

My suggestion to the person who wrote this is to 'turnit around' and ask whether he or she is 'worked up' ?

I missed the part about the Mormons.
The Mormons have their own special section, last time I checked.

But the founder of the Mormons Joseph Smith and Byron Katie actually have a lot in common.
They both utterly fabricated their "origin myths".
Joseph has the faked "golden tablets" story, etc.

Byron Katie has the faked cockroach story.

It is interesting how Byron Katie seems to have a bit of a connection to some former Siddha Yoga devotees?
Carol Skolnick is one. How many others?

People should be much more careful, and not just jump from one abusive Guru cult thing, to another one, with the "love at first sight" salespitch put forward by Carol Skolnick on her many websites promoting Byron Katie.
The new Guru's grass is no greener than the old one. Its a recipe for abuses.
But sadly, like Siddha Yoga, it can take many many years for the truth to come out, and many lives can be wrecked by then.


AN OPEN LETTER ABOUT SIDDHA YOGA
[members.aol.com]

[www.leavingsiddhayoga.net]

Quote from RandomStu:

"All scams are dependent on our own wants. If we want something, then we can be trapped by whoever promises to sell it to us. It's much much much more effective to look into how our own wants trap us, rather than to try and control the salespeople. As long as there are people who want beer, there will be beer salespeople. As long as there are people who want enlightenment, there will be enlightenment salespeople. The root of the matter is "What do you want?"

Yes, I think that knowing our own wants and how they trap us is probably helpful. Yet it can take quite a long time for a human being to develop, mature and fully figure out his or her own wants. That in itself is an incredibly complex process; plus an individuals 'wants' can shift and change over time, often depending on circumstance.

Especially in a time of personal crisis, a person's individual frame of reference regarding their own desires can be de-stabilized. They may not even realize how deeply their choices and decisions have been affected by traumatic or stressful life-events.

Organizations such as the ones we are discussing are master manipulators of people's desires. They can appear incredibly benevolent, offering new pathways to things such as 'genuine inner peace', 'personal freedom' and 'spiritual growth'.

Who does not 'want' these things, particularly when life becomes difficult?

Knowing our own wants is a good start. But I thought I knew myself very well when I got involved in my group. I have always been a thoughtful, introspective person. I journalled my ass off throughout my life. I tried to ask myself the big questions, and come up with my own answers through independent thought.

But I knew nothing ... NUH-THING about thought reform and mind-control technqiues and the way individuals and groups use those techniques to their own advantage. One day learning about that in school might have saved ten years of my life.

Knowing ourselves might be part of the battle, but I don't think by itself that will win the war.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2008 12:55AM by solea13.

To give an example of how damaging Byron Katie beliefs get...
In a out of print book by Byron Katie called "Losing The Moon"...a number of people have mentioned she gives an example of a Nazi throwing a baby into a flaming pit.
This act of evil, murder, and infanticide, Byron Katie says is God, not just the work of God, but actually is God, as "God" is everything that "is"?

(she is just saying there is no "God", Byron Katie obviously is an atheist, and an Anti-Humanist).

So there is no such thing as evil or even bad. Genocide is not bad, hey, its probably good then?

This is why people like Byron Katie can do anything she feels like to people and not worry about it.
Why should she worry, good is bad, and bad is good.
Lose the Moon...
lose your conscience too while you are at it, then you can do anything you want to people and not care.

RandomStu:

Why don't you address any one of the dozens of lies Byron Katie tells for a living?
Byron Katie claims to ELIMINATE DEPRESSION.
Byron Katie hides her past associations.
Byron Katie hides her techniques.

The Byron Katie company is probably going to try to flood these threads with Katie-babble to just try to confuse the public.

The line "I leave her alone, and she leaves me alone" is a direct copy from what Byron Katie says.

Its shame groups like the Byron Katie group prey on people like they do.
But hey, Byron Katie doesn't care.
Byron Katie doesn't even care about infanticide, so you think she cares? Not a chance.

the average person has no idea of the nightmare they are walking into with Byron Katie

For me, whenever I hear always, never, etc., I become vary wary. I think this is rigid thinking and rigidity is a sign of entrenched beliefs, which to me are not where I think you'll find "truth." I don't believe much in black/white thinking, it's too simplistic, I think there are shades of grey in alot of things. I think rigidityin thinking is what gets people, in the first place, into situations that later they regret.
I do feel, too, that telling a woman who has survived child rape-- that she is abusing herself, has abused the abuser and was involved in this to get the love/attention/approval she was after, that this is a GREAT BIG RED FLAG. It's very obvious and I don't know how anyone could miss it.

No wonder Byron Katie took her book LOSING THE MOON, out of print.
There are still a few scanned ebook excerpts online here and there.

The book is Katie confusion-speak bigtime, and some real culty worship coming from some of her "friends".
She was also selling herself in the "Non-Duality" area at the time, which gives a person an excuse to say anything. Its interesting to see her writings from before she was shaped by the mass marketers and clean-up a bit.

She says...

"As God, I'm watching my image. Its called you...I woke up as the image. Not God. And God."

She just goes on an on like this.
This is all Programmed Confusion language they use in NLP style hypnosis. Most of it is literally just meant to confuse you and throw you off-balance by confusing the conscious mind, so they can get to the unconscious programming.

QUOTE from LOSING THE MOON: (page 29)
__________________________________________________
Friend: You've said that the heart will do whatever it takes. It will rape a child, it will murder 6 million Jews. It'll do whatever it takes. I really just got that, really, literally.

Byron Katie: It is love, and we can tell all the stories we want about how its not, and it is. Its not even misguided. It is what it is, always. [..] even the suicidal things are natural. Everything is natural...every taste, every thing is God. [...] I hear the word "Katie" its the name of God. "I" God.
_____________________________________________________

No wonder Katie has suppressed this book! This is only a tiny bit of it, she goes on and on like this.

So Byron Katie has said that child-rape is "love", and the Holocaust is "not even misguided" and is love and the work of God, and even "is God"?

She also says that "Katie" is the name of "God".

It appears that the book LOSING THE MOON is a smoking gun, and this is why it was suppressed and taken out of print.