Re: Byron Katie (the Work) and Eckhart Tolle Legit??
Date: February 18, 2008 03:36AM
Golfer,
I am sorry you've fallen for whatever kernels of truth Byron Katie uses to suck people toward her black hole of madness, and now you feel you need to defend her. I feel I need to defend truth. I'm posting here, below, what I posted on another section of this board.
With all due respect, none of your points matter, nor are they logical. I'm not talking about other phonies, frauds, con-men, fake gurus and soul-snake-oil salesman, who certainly exist and perhaps your examples are accurate. Right now, I'm talking about Byron Katie. I don't care how old she is, I have no undue sympathy for her packaged lunacy because she's middle aged.
You say: That's amazing that a person who is insane is a best selling author and seminar speaker. I wonder how she does it if she is so insane?
I admit to being nearly paralyzed right now with the implications of the answer. Let us all stop a moment and ask ourselves these very questions. How is this possible?
Of course I never said that everyone who buys her books are insane. However, after you've read the books, and seen the videos of her "work" with people, if you still swallow her reality whole, then yes, I do doubt your own connection to reality.
Of course there are many kernels of truth in Katie's pronouncements, if not it would be nothing but raving madness. But there is also RAVING MADNESS built right into "The Work" itself. And people continue to flock to her.
I think the purpose of this board, to expose cults and cult mindsets, speaks to the answer quite well. There is simply a shocking appetite in the culture for the kind of solace offered by people who are willing to lie about the nature of reality and proclaim themselves enlightened leaders in some respect. People want to believe the lies to end their suffering. They will believe almost anything it seems. They will believe Byron Katie's insane reversals of reality. They will believe Scientology's space-dramas and Thetans and Xenu. They will drink the Kool Aid.
As for judging you -- yes, I will judge. I will judge with my rational mind, with my God-given faculties for discernment, with my hard-earned intelligence.
Golfer, please, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of human evolution -- seek truth. Honor truth above all else, regardless of whether it brings pain. Value truth.
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After reading about Byron Katie on this board, I was interested to see her in action. Here is a link showing a session with an Israeli woman who tells Katie that she's afraid of war.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwerzf5gIH0
I've never seen anything so insane in my life, outside of a mental institution. I've watched other videos and read parts of her writing, and now I am just stunned, once again, at what people will pay money to believe.
Katie's reasoning is more deranged than anything put forth by Landmark Education, though there are basic parallels. She incorporates Landmark's extreme (to the point of completely irrationality) existential you-create-everything and blame-the-victim philosophy, but then she essentially attempts to turn reality completely on its head with her reversal questions. For example, "My father abused me" becomes "I abused my father." This doesn't even begin to make rational sense, it's like insisting you can wear your hat on your feet and walk just as easily, if not better.
My friends and I have been watching these videos with our jaws on the floor.
In this one, Katie is dealing with an Israeli woman essentially suffering from PTSD, who needs some basic therapy and human support and understanding. She's afraid of war. Of course she's afraid of war. This is perfectly normal and sane, given where she lives. In fact, it's healthy and important. Her fears of war could lead her to take every kind of appropriate action.
But according to the New Age Self-Help snake-oil soul "savers," no one need or should ever be afraid, ever be upset, ever be angry or feel guilt or shame or anything "negative." By promoting this patently ridiculous concept, they create the illusion that people actually could walk around in a state of bliss all the time -- and this they call a state of "grace" -- by simply disconnecting from their egos, their rational selves, and their critical minds.
If they just did back-room lobotomies it would be so much easier -- but they'd sell less books.
Landmark and other LGATs of course trade in this counterfeit psycho-babble, at the expense of people's lost minds and souls, but Byron Katie seems to take it to a new level perhaps because she was, for many years, actually barking mad.
So we have a barking mad woman now telling people to just "reverse" their thinking until they can convince themselves maybe nothing is what they believed, maybe everything is ass-backward, maybe everything is just FINE if they only stop thinking rationally . . . and people are calling her a guru and "the real deal."
She actually tells this poor woman that she shouldn't worry about war, because the FLOWERS ON THE TABLE are not worrying about war.
That's right. The flowers. They're not worried. They have no brain. Be like the flowers.
What a sick, sorry situation we're finding ourselves in today, people. We are devolving. We need to be rational in order to survive. It's our critical minds and rational thinking and respect for pain, fear and danger that allowed us to rise up out of the primordial swamps, harness fire, build cities, create laws, art and our greatest ideas. These New Age lunatics will have us drooling like the mental patients they once were, incapable of correct action because we no longer trust our most important faculties.
What the fuck is going on in this world???
There are consumer protections for objects, for baby car seats and tires and medications -- but what about this faulty New Age psychology, these damaging mind viruses delivered in respectable hard-cover packages and CD sets? We don't feel they can be regulated because people are "free" to believe what they want, but at the least they should come with some kind of warning!
WARNING: The enclosed material may be hazardous to your mental and psychological health!
WARNING: The enclosed material may have been fabricated by a former mental patient or sociopath and has not been tested for accuracy or validity!
WARNING: The enclosed material may be at the very least a waste of your money, and at the worst may confuse you to the point of psychosis!
WARNING: You may fall into deep depression after viewing the enclosed material, realizing you have just financially contributed to the growing New Age Empire of Mass Derangement and you've been taken for a complete fool
Byron Katie was once locked up and she should be again, IMHO.