just a few more comments about the book,

I Need You Love - Is That True by Byron Katie and Michael Katz
[forum.culteducation.com]
Also, as mentioned above, purple was Milton Erickson's color trademark, used for various reasons. All of Erickson's main books are purple. The back and spine of this Byron Katie book is also PURPLE, which is Milton Erickson's color, and as mentioned, BK is dressed in purple on the cover. They know exactly what they are doing.

as mentioned, the forward by John Tarrant is almost unspeakable, literally the opposite of Zen.

But even worse, is the Preface by Michael Katz.
Its just 2 pages, probably is on google books, or elsewhere.
Michael Katz preface, is just FULL of manipulative writing techniques, done in a very transparent manner. He constantly uses questions, and "imagine this", to induce the internal images he wants to create in the reader.

He opens with saying about Byron Katie..."was it Mary Poppins crossed with a Zen master?".

Notice how he uses a question, to create and link these 2 images in the mind of the reader, to FUSE those two concepts, in a strange image right off the top, that will STICK in your mind forever.
A Pre-frame.
Can you believe it? Mary Poppins?
Why? This is to trigger childlike feelings in the readers, and to regress them to their School-mate days. Regression, from hypnotherapy.

He then frames his alleged meeting with her as being all about "laughing", again, to create that sensation in people, make them feel at ease.
He then talks about getting the Work into government, education, marriage..etc. That is a Pre-Frame...its about taking over your WHOLE LIFE.

He also says, he has trouble "sticking to the agenda" with BK. Why? Because in the book, she goes off on these hypnotic Story tangents, which are mental programming, that's why. Its not random.

He also says that the work inquiry, points you in the EXACT OPPOSITE of what most self-help books advise. Very telling. As stated, its not about empowerment, but disempowerment.
He then states he doesn't "think" BK has ever read a self-help book. Again, typical with him and John Tarrant. They always put in that qualifier, in case the facts get exposed. So they have it both ways. When the guru goes bad in some scandal, they just move onto the next guru, as they have done before.


He creates an image of the BK work, as a "rocket-boosted bicycle" and suggests you "take a spin on that bicycle".
Get it?
Opens with BK is the innocent Mary Poppins...flying magically through the air...then closes with inducing the image of BK as Mary Poppins on a rocket bicycle.

Michael Katz then closes with 3 literal COMMANDS, not suggestions.

QUOTE: "-take a test spin on that bicycle. Ask yourself Katie's questions. There is really no way to describe what will happen when you do."

Do you see what he does? He gives the commands, (not a suggestion) to TAKE and to ASK. He has moved from questions and suggestions, to direct commands.
Then he future-paces assuming you have already taken the command...WHEN YOU DO.
He doesn't say IF you do, but WHEN you do.
This is also basic Ericksonian language patterning, from the NLP Milton model.
You make the suggestion to the unconscious into a command that the person is GOING to do it. That is a post-hypnotic command, notice he closes with that.

This is so vile, so sleazy. Like someone giving someone a powerful cocktail with 3x the booze, or dosed with a hidden chemical, so they can then take advantage of them.
You can't imagine how upsetting it is to see people do this so self-consciously, to decent regular everyday people. They are not targeting the typcial LGAT crowd of people wanting to get rich quick.

This book is targeted at regular women, who are having pain in their relationships. They have no idea of what is going to happen to them.

Michael Katz says in his last induction sentence..."There is really no way to describe what will happen when you do."
No way to describe what will happen?
Yes there is. Read this fucking thread, to see described what will happen.

And Michael Katz, who knows EXACTLY what is going to happen to these people, setting them up to meet a childhood fantasy Mary Poppins, to regress them to a childlike state of mind, then rip their hearts and minds out.
What slime.
Byron Katie ain't Marry fucking Poppins.






(this book is so manipulative, so dishonest, so sleazy. Its really moved into the culty-zone, in that even the Amazon reviews are all just shills from BK fanatics and those who sell the BK stuff. The earlier BK books had dozens of critical reviews, but by now, all the people buying this stuff are true believers or promote it for profit.)

----reference--------------
I Need Your Love - Is That True? :
How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead (Hardcover)
by Byron Katie (Author), Michael Katz (Author)
Product Details
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Harmony (April 5, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 140005107X



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2009 05:53AM by The Anticult.

Why do these zen stories so often involve someone getting hit by a stick?

You know Gregory Bateson was interested in zen. What is Milton Erickson's connection to zen?

The Evolution of Psychotherapy by Jeffrey K. Zeig:

The ideas of Zen influenced me in the 1950s when I was developing a therapy approach and doing research on the nature of therapy. For ten years, I was a member of Gregory Bateson's research project on communication where we investigated the paradoxes that occur because of the nature of classification systems. In 1953, the year I joined the project, I attended, with my colleague John Weakland, a series of lectures by Alan Watts on "Eastern philosophy and Western Psychology." Watts was the Director of American Academy of Asian Studies at that time. An authority on Zen, he became an informal consultant on our project since we shared the enthusiasm for paradox. Watts became interested in therapy as it related to Zen and later published a book on this topic (Watts, 1961 [Psychotherapy East and West ~JC]). At that time, little was known about Zen, even in California where many philosophies flourished. Watts described himself as a "back-door Zen," since he had not officially trained with a Zen master in Japan. His interests were both personal and intellectual and his fascination with Zen was contagious.

In 1953, the same year we discovered Zen, I took a seminar on hypnosis from Milton Erickson and began to study his therapy. I found the premises of Zen to be just about the only way of explaining Erickson's directive therapy, which at the time was quite deviant in the field. As an apprentice of Erickson, I used ideas from zen to understand his supervision.

[...]

I talked to Erickson about the similarities between his work and the approach to Zen. His response was typical. He gave me case examples. These stories illustrated some of his views on the attempt to live in the present moment. For example, he described a case in which he hypnotized a golfer. The golfer was instructed to live only in the present moment and so focus total attention on one shot at a time. When the man next played golf, he was only aware of each shot. On the 16th hole, he was shooting his best game, but he did not know what his score was or what hole he was on. He was aware only the present moment and not of the context.

[books.google.com.au]

This example sounds a lot like your friend Rob.

Milton's use of riddles to induce trance has been compared zen Koans. He also used physical pain to produce enlightenment. Similar to the zen stick.

[books.google.com.au]

Huh. Ericksonian hypnotherapy is derived from zen isn't it? It's perfectly adaptable for abuse by people like Byron Katie, Michael Katz and Stephen Mitchell.

Quote
rob
There is a zenstory about people talking about detachement, without knowing what they are talking about (I forgot where I found it) :

When the Tesshu, a master of Zen, calligraphy and swordsmanship, was a young man he called on the Zen master Dokuon. Wishing to impress Dokuon he said, “The mind, the Buddha, and all sentient beings after all do not exist. The true nature of phenomenon is emptiness. There is no realisation, no delusion, no sagacity, no mediocrity, nothing to give and nothing to receive.

Dokuon promptly hit him with a bamboo stick. Tesshu became quite furious.

Dokuon said quietly: “If nothing exists, where did this anger come from?”

Just a note about the Ericksonian hypnotherapy.
Its extremely complex stuff, related to so many areas, it takes years of study.
But it intially was used by Erickson to help people in the context of ACTUAL registered proper therapy, as Dr. Milton Erickson was an actual MD, psychiatrist, and the founder of many hynotherapy areas. He was probably a genius, working in very complex ways, and he helped a lot of people. The problem is not with Milton Erickson.

Milton Erickson was legit, and has NOTHING at all to do with these crooked salespeople and manipulators.
The problem is with these people who took his ideas, and perverted them, and use them to manipulate people, usually to extract large amounts of money.
Its a perversion of Ericksonian hypnotherapy, used to deceive, manipulate and exploit.

I Need Your Love - Is That True? (book)

in the acknowledgements, she lists as editors...

John Tarrant
Carol Williams
Stephen (The Whiz) Mitchell


there is a deeper connection with John Tarrant, Michael Katz, Stephen Mitchell, and these various so-called "Zen" groups, which are almost like some type of Zen mafia.
They are also obviously connected with the Kwan Um School of Zen.

What is going on behind the scenes?
Who owns what?
Is there a group of people who control/own the various centers with a backroom partnership?
This is a huge international business.

by the way, take note that no one has editorialized so far on Diane Sikel.

This forum is titled... "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements".

Its a fact, she says she is a professional salesperson.
Its a fact, she heavily promotes a hard sell of the BK Work in her websites, sold for profit.
Its a fact, she is says she is "not licensed as a mental health professional"

It appears she is posting on a Byron Katie forum, that says its "Restricted to Licensed Mental Health Professionals only".
[www.instituteforthework.com]
Licensed Mental Health Professionals
Restricted to Licensed Mental Health Professionals only.

Where on the website, do they post the RELEASE OF LIABILITY [forum.culteducation.com]
Why isn't that posted?

Quote

Its reported that in the BK forum at www.instituteforthework.com that last post in the closed Open Forum, is from Carol Skolnick.
And it another forum, they are making comments about it, some about not being able to do the BK work, and getting drunk instead. Don't know if that is supposed to be a joke or not?

But there is another BK work coach.
Dianne Sikel
She is a Realtor, a Real Estate Investor, a coach. (sound familiar? pro-salesperson)
She does a hard sell of the Work [www.canwegetalong.com]
She tells her version of her life story at her webpage. [www.canwegetalong.com]
She uses the Work on... “How to Get Along with Yourself, Family, and the World..."
And she says on her website she lost custody and visitation to her son recently.

also has another website for coaching and workshops,
Life, Love, & Money [www.life-love-money.com]
[www.forpeacesake.net]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2009 07:41AM by The Anticult.

There's an article just out in the L.A. Times on Stephen Mitchell and his latest publication, "The Second Book of the Tao".

[[url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-stephen-mitchell12-2009apr12,0,1632803.story]The Stillness Within Stephen Mitchell[/url]]

Quote

Asked to elaborate, he [Mitchell] says: "I have no pretensions to scholarship. I just love to play with the Taoist masters. For them, nothing is sacred. The best tribute is contradiction."

Nonetheless, Mitchell has been criticized for his irreverent adaptations and translations, for his New Age style and his way of turning sacred texts into spiritual manuals for everyday living. You can't have it all is the message implicit in these critiques. Or can you? Mitchell might say you could, if you live in harmony with the way things are.

The home Mitchell shares with his wife is luxurious, warm and spacious. In the empty, white studio, a simple table with a thin laptop faces an enormous window; outside, there is a path and a tree that resembles a Zen sculpture. An altar near the doorway holds a photo, not of an Indian guru or historical figure but of Mitchell's wife.

Could any life really be this peaceful? Could this be the epicenter of the New Age?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2009 09:06AM by helpme2times.

Haven't read the article yet,
but just from the low-lites above...these guys are really experts in PR advertising propaganda.

But Stephen Mitchell, what a Zen fraud, another abuser of Zen. He, and his group of other anti-Zenites, a bunch of old white dudes trying to make a buck, who try to pretend that wisdom and knowledge are CONTRADICTION and trickery.
False.
Lies.
Deceit.
That is simply using the Confusion Technique on people, like some type of crooked salesperson.
Its also the method from his guru Seung Sahn from Kwan Um School, to confuse people and put them off-balance, to dominate them.

Its exactly like a sleazy car salesman, who sees the person shopping for a car knows nothing about cars. So he starts throwing around nonsense and complex-sounding technical false details about cars, knowing the person will just nod like they know what they are talking about, playing to their Vanity and Ignorance. This is just to confuse the person, and make them think they are getting something they are not, so they can overcharge the customer, and rip them off.
Meanwhile, if you bring a mechanic, or a professional salesperson with you as a friend, when you buy that car, then the crooked salesperson can't dupe you. They stand there with egg on their face, powerless.

This is EXACTLY what these crooked anti-Zenites, like Stephen Mitchell, and his buddies, are trying to do to people. Spew out a bunch of kooky Zenny sounding contradicting confusion, to pander to the ignorance and vanity of their customers, as that leads to them taking control, and also its the Confusion Technique.
In the technical words of a great psychologist...sheer unadulterated horseshit.


Also, the pic of BK on the altar, that obviously is deliberate, they want that in the media. (otherwise it would not be there)
Why?
Its their method of making BK seem like some divine being. On one hand, they say CONTRADICTING things about it, and then on the other hand they put pics of her on altars, where everyone can see it.
One can assume that more inner circle students are "suggested" on how to set up a little altar at home with a pic of BK on it. This will program their minds everyday that BK is some divine being.
Michael Gottlieb from Royal Way group does the exact same thing. [forum.culteducation.com]

(what extreme Vanity and egoism, to put a picture of yourself on an altar in your house. How many people put photos of themselves on an altar in their house? (face-lift, capped teeth, and all). That's perverse, talk about narcissism and self-idolatry).


Stephen Mitchell knows nothing about real "Zen", other than using it as a mechanism to try and confuse people to attain domimance over them. He obviously learned that from his crooked sex-abuser faux Zen guru Seung Sahn.
This explains the manipulative emails he's sent out to so many confused students of BK who write in. He confuses them more, and screws with their mind even more.
He and his buddies, like Michael Katz, John Tarrant, and these other guys, just use Zen to try to screw with people's minds, and confuse them.

This ain't zen, its anti-zen. Its not even anti-zen, its just being a confidence artist.
Its EXACTLY like a crooked car salesman, trying to overcharge and rip-off customers, by selling them an old lemon, with a cheap paint-job, and no warranty, by baffling them with bullshit and lies.
And if the brakes fail, and you break your neck, tough shit on you.
NO REFUNDS. Read the contract. [forum.culteducation.com]

just wanted to follow up one point about the abuses of the Ericksonian hypnotherapy, as detailed above, by the BK people, like Michael Katz. [forum.culteducation.com]

Its a shame that the name of the great Dr. Milton Erickson has to be dragged into this. Erickson was legit, he was an MD, a psychiatrist, licensed in hypnotherapy, running journals, etc. He charged modest rates, and worked out of his home, due to his physical disabilities, and really helped a lot of people with his unique methods he developed.

What happened, is that after his death, swarms of weasels moved in, and took small aspects of his work, and began to use parts of it to try to persuade and influence people without their conscious awareness. Usually to extract large amounts of cash.
(but also even used in the "Seduction community" by astoundingly sleazy people, date-rapists, guys who try to use these methods on women for sex [www.fastseduction.com] but thats another issue!)
Or is it the same issue? A lot of these people in the BK field are older men, using these techniques on a mainly female audience. Fast Seduction indeed.

So in fact, it should NOT be called Ericksonian hypnotherapy, but some type of twisted abuse of it.

A metaphor, would be a surgeons scalpel.
That can be used by a licensed MD to save lives. (that was Milton Erickson).
In the hand of an unlicensed plastic surgeon who works out of a mall, it can lead to death.
The scalpel in the hands of a crook, can lead to daylight robbery.

So these people have taken a surgeons scalpel, and turned it into a blunt knife, being used to deceive and influence people without their awareness.

Also, BK & Co, use MANY many other techniques as well, from other psychological methods, all of the LGAT techniques, various advanced sales and social influence, group dynamics, etc.

Here's the good news.
It can easily BACKFIRE.

These types of covert influence, only really work, when you TRUST the person who is doing it. This is why they spend so much time trying to build up that trust in advance, using all of their pre-frame techniques.

For example, Michael Katz tried to do this in his Preface of the BK book above. [forum.culteducation.com]
To even the moderately trained eye, you can easily see him using these techniques, like a clumsy, arrogant amateur...
...trying to make you think that Byron Katie is Mary Poppins crossed with a Zen master on a rocket-bicycle to the stars...trying to REGRESS the reader, to plant seeds in their minds, and using the other techniques described.
As soon as you see that...then you know he is trying to manipulate readers who have no training in this area.

So instantly, the TRUST goes down to below ZERO.
So the techniques don't work. They BACKFIRE.
Now anything he says, can't be believed without objective proof from 3rd parties. He's toast.

So instead of just being honest and telling the truth, he's been caught red-handed. Its like if you catch your husband in your bed with a male hooker...uh...so to speak.

And it backfires on Micheal Katz.
Byron Katie isn't Mary Poppins...she is like that other movie, the Wizard of Oz.
Who's that lady in that movie? The one with the army of flying monkeys?
The only difference here, is that the flying monkeys have blogs.
And the entire delusion can be killed with a bucket of cold water.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2009 08:12PM by The Anticult.

Not all Zen stories involve being hit by a stick.

There is one in which two seekers travel to find a Zen teacher. The ask the old man,
'What is Zen?'

The teacher refuses to answer their question, as stated.

Instead, he replies, 'I would rather be torn to pieces than darken the mind of a single student.'

The understanding of this story is that if the teacher had responded to the visitors' question of him by giving them An Answer, that answer would have colonized the visitors minds.

They would have had some verbal print out of what Zen is, and would have walked off,
prattling the teacher's answer by rote.

The teacher wanted them to find out for themselves.

That particular type of Zen story would not the kind favored by entrepreneurs who want to plant a trademarked image of themselves into our minds.

It isnt enough to hear 'a Zen story' repeated.

Use the hermeneutic of suspicion.

Ask, 'Who is telling me this story?'

Next, ask, 'Why is this one variety of Zen story told so very often?'

Ask, 'Why are not story tellers giving us stories are not violent, why are they constantly retelling stories that give us include an unexamined power imbalance, a power imbalances that is taken as given within that story, a power imbalance we as listeners are supposed to accept?'

Why is this subtype of 'Zen story' so commonly selected from a much wider collection of Zen stories that are available.

(there is another one. A monk meets another monk. Both monks talk of thier teachers.
One monk brags of all the magical powers his teacher can do. Then, smugly, he asks the other monk what amazing thing his teacher does.

The monk replies, 'When my teacher is hungry, he eats. When he is tired, he sleeps.'

The person who has no need for magic and no need to tell of wonders is a rare bird indeed.

So...why are stories like this, which are from the Zen tradition, not commonly told as Zen stories, by entrepreneurs, eh? Why is it people with sticks, people pulling each others noses?

Christian ministers are warned to beware of the temptaton of only preaching from their own favorite subsection of Scripture, because that inflicts the ministers own selection bias upon his or her congregation.

We have to ask why some Buddhist stories are so commonly told and why.

For a corrective, there is a book by Stephen Asma, entitled 'The Gods Drink Whiskey'.

Asma lived for a year in Cambodia, teaching Buddhist philosophy at an academy there. The Cambodians were struggling to rebuild their culture after years of vandalism and genocide by the Pol Pot people.

Asmas book is a valuable travel account, because it focuses on Theravedan Buddhism, which most travel accounts rarely do--the latter usually tell us about Zen or Himalayan forms of Buddhism.

Asma's book is going to be very annoying for anyone into Dharma lite. If you want strong stuff, you will enjoy him immensely.

Here, Asma mentions meeting a very well informed Buddhist layman from Sri Lanka named Chaminda.

Quote

'As a Buddhist insider, he was not as uncritically gullible about his own cultural heritage as we "outsider" Western neophytes tend to be.

(Chaminda)reminded me of my Japanese college buddy, Jun, who took me to a Pure Land Buddhist temple in Chicago once when I was a wide-eyed greenhorn. After the ceremony, we met the head monk at tea social hour.

(Asma speaks of himself) '

I was very keen to connect with the whole scene, but for Jun none of this was exotic; he indulged my excitement, but was hoping to get back in time for a softball game. Mostly, Jun went to the temple because his mom kept after him to find a nice Japanese girl to marry.

'I asked the head monk' Asma continues 'at one point how I should understand the Pure land pursuit of heavenly paradise and Amitaba (the deification of Buddha) when the original teachings of the Buddha seemed so different.

(The head monk) grew quiet and reflective. Then he offered, in a soft voice, 'Well, my friend, how does the butterfly understand its movement from one flower to the next?"

This was followed by a long silence, and I nodded my head slowly, taking in the morsel of enigmatic deep wisdom.

'Then my friend Jun rolled his eyes and demanded of the monk, 'What the hell (Asma's italics( does that mean?"

(Asma continues)

Quote

'This for me was one of those Zen moments of clarity. The monk became flustered and attempted more evasion but ultimately found some pretext to move on. I could see that while Jun made things a little awkward, he was fundamentally right to ask for explanation.

'Asking for more explanation is one of the things that Westerners are afraid to do regarding eastern thought and it frequently leads them to fawn over the emperor's new clothes. "

Stephen T. Asma, The Gods Drink Whiskey, page 168

And, in the Cambodian context, Asma describes how one sector of the Buddhist establishment uses the doctrines in a vile manner to evade issues of social injustice, and how there are reform movements within Buddhism that refuse to take that easy way out.

But...the real take home insight here is Asma's reminder that not nearly enough of us dare to ask, 'What the HELL does that mean?'

It may be that that was simply confusion technique. That Japanese monk may never have heard of Erickson, but perhaps during his training, just by watching his superiors he may have learned how to use some traditional but effective confusion techniques
to get out of tight spots.

I remember from my days when I used to be Catholic, I'd tell priests my concerns about abuses perpetrated during the churches ugly past.

Time and again, I heard the reply, 'But that isnt what the church is about.'

I heard that so often that eventually, I began to suspect that this was a cliche answer, a boilerplate, standardized deflection tought in seminary as part of the coping skills tool kit.

I regret I did not have the confidence Jun did. There were some things I could have said to rebut it, but I was not very polite.

So here is a very subversive question to raise, concerning these seemingly profound
Zen stories:

Could some of them be all purpose tools, used to instill confusion?

Suppose a monk or layperson has a tough question.

The Zen senior monk or priest has no easy answer.

Rather than admit this, and instill doubt that Zen is not worth supporting if its people cannot answer tough questions, how about offering a confusing and traditional
zen koan, as a signal to the questioner to shut up.

It should be noted that Jun was not a traditional Japanese man, trained to avoid confusion.

He was an Americanized young man, eager to play softball. It was because he had a dual background...confidence in relation to Japanese rituals and an American ability to
ask the kind of confrontational question that would not be part of traditional Japanese
culture at all.

Ironically Jun rescued Asma from behaving like a submissive peasant and reminded Asma of his own right as a US citizen to ask questions...even in unfamiliar surroundings.

'What does THAT mean?'

Jun was showing us Zen, not to confuse but to clarify.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2009 08:56PM by corboy.

Jay,

by the way, thanks for the quote from Jeffrey K. Zeig above. [forum.culteducation.com]
Very disturbing, and nice job bringing it up.

Ericksonian hypnotherapy, was certainly NOT derived from Zen. It was highly idiosyncratic to Erickson, and never fully explained by him. But if anything, it was about getting people to adjust more to reality, it was therapy. But it was never systematized or written out.

Jeffrey Zeig is also running his own personal agenda in there. Talk about changing past history.
Very disturbing quotes.
To be direct, anyone involved at that level, you can never take what they say at face value.
At that level, they tell "stories within stories".
These have been called Nested Loops, in NLP and hypnosis. [www.nlpconnections.com]

And the "stories" aren't told like a fairy tale, they are told just like common speech.
So there you have Jeffrey Zeig, telling a story, about how he says Erickson (authority) told him a story. He is telling a story, about Erickson, telling a story.
That's a story inside a story inside a story.
That get into heavy shit, folks.

When one gets to the higher level of people who do this, frankly, its very tough, the tapestry of stories becomes so complex.
Thankfully, guys like Michael Katz are quite amateurish, and its easier to learn from the people who are less polished.

But the people up at the highest levels, very tricky.
They go so far as to just do random stuff, as they know the advanced students will try to see the levels in there. So the advanced methods, are quite different from doing it on the general public.

But those quotes from Jeffrey Zeig are creepy as hell. I don't know what the hell he is doing there, that would take some serious research. But that is a huge red ? just from that blurb.

But again Jay, nice job bring up those quotes.
Jeffrey Zeig runs the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, and those quotes above, were very disturbing indeed.
As always, education and knowledge are the key.