I'm new here, I've been following this thread for the last week and I am just flabbergasted. BK's books and CDs are everywhere, and in New Age bookstores they are displayed very prominently and they seem so harmless. I would never have guessed she was involved in such distructive practices and tactics, she looks like a sweet old auntie or grandma in her photos.

I feel for the people who have been victimized by her, I tried watching her on Youtube and I could barely get past a few seconds of that drivel. How could anyone get away with what she does for so long? And the glowing endorsments from Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsh, and even Erica Jong (!), have these people even read her books?? I hope people have reported her to the links provided for practicing psychotherapy and hypnosis without a license. She needs to be exposed.

Hi Penelope,

Welcome!

I don't know alot about Erica Jung's ideology. It's been decades since I read her but that surprises me, too. The other two are pseudo-gurus in training. If you search on Wayne Dyer, you'll find a thread about him, too.

It is really criminal how BK and her ilk have infiltrated mainstream psychology. I went to a licensed therapist in the aftermath of a real con artist and the first thing she recommended was a BK book. Quite often I'll hear interviews with mainstream therapists recommending or mentioning large group awareness trainings like Landmark Education. As long as they're claiming they're not therapists and not doing therapy, they get away with their scams.

Hope

What's really screwed up about this is that while BK claims she is not a therapist, she includes professional sounding language in her "Code of Ethics."
A friend sent me the latest version of it:
©2010 Byron Katie, Inc. All rights reserved. Rev. 1-10 www.thework.com
The Work® of Byron Katie
Institute for The Work Code of Ethics
Professional Conduct Agreement
1. I agree to conduct myself in a manner that reflects positively upon Byron Katie International as well as the Institute for The Work, and I will not engage in conduct or make statements that may negatively affect another facilitator and/or The Work.
2. I will strive to recognize any of my own personal issues that would impair, conflict, or interfere with my facilitation and/or my client’s best interest. Should the facts and circumstances necessitate, I will promptly seek and welcome assistance from Byron Katie or whomever she designates, through certification@thework.com, to work with me to determine any action to be taken, including whether it is appropriate to suspend or terminate my facilitation relationship(s).
3. When moving The Work in the world, I agree to conduct myself in a manner that will support the efforts of Byron Katie International and the Institute for the Work, its Certified Facilitators, and Certification candidates. I will advertise and promote my Work-related services through open communication, inclusion, kindness, and integrity to attract clients, rather than by competition at other facilitators’ expense.
Professional Conduct With Clients
4. I will not engage in inappropriate behavior with my clients.
5. I will not exploit any aspect of the facilitator-client relationship for my personal or professional gain.
6. I will honor agreements made with my clients.
7. I will ensure that my client understands the nature of The Work—that it is inquiry, not therapy.
8. When asked, I will accurately state my qualifications as a facilitator.
9. I will not make any claims about what my client will receive from The Work or from me as his or her facilitator.
10. I will not give my clients advice.
11. I will respect the client’s right to terminate our facilitator-client relationship at any point during the process. I will be alert to indications that my client is no longer committed to doing The Work or to benefiting from our facilitation relationship.
12. If I believe that another facilitator would better serve the client, I will encourage the client to change facilitators.
Confidentiality/Privacy
13. I agree that what I hear will be held in the strictest confidentiality, and I will respect the confidentiality of my client's information, except as otherwise authorized by my client. I am aware of U.S. federal HIPAA legislation (if I am working in the U.S.A.), which concerns confidentiality of medical information, and I agree to abide by it if it applies. As a facilitator, I am not required by law to report an illegal act, and if I am uncomfortable with this, I will immediately talk to Byron Katie, or a representative whom she designates through certification@thework.com. If I am under obligation by law to report certain issues to authorities or because of other licensure or professional obligations, I will disclose these specific issues to my client before working with him or her.
14. I will not release the name of a client as client or reference, and will not release any other client-identifying information, without first obtaining written permission from my client.
Conflicts of Interest
15. I will avoid conflicts between my interests and the interests of my clients. 16. Whenever any actual conflict of interest or the potential for a conflict of interest arises, I will fully discuss with my client how to deal with it in whatever way best serves my client.
Facilitator Pledge
As a facilitator for The Work of Byron Katie, I agree to honor the above Code of Ethics with my clients and colleagues, and with the public at large.

Print name
Signature Date
Certified Facilitator for The Work® of Byron Katie
***************

#13 is very interesting because HIPAA legislation only pertains to "covered entities" which would not include BKI or Byron Katie. So the disclaimer at the end of the 2nd sentence "if it applies" is significant. Sounds official though, doesn't it?

Quote
Hope
Hi Penelope,

Welcome!

I don't know alot about Erica Jung's ideology. It's been decades since I read her but that surprises me, too. The other two are pseudo-gurus in training. If you search on Wayne Dyer, you'll find a thread about him, too.

It is really criminal how BK and her ilk have infiltrated mainstream psychology. I went to a licensed therapist in the aftermath of a real con artist and the first thing she recommended was a BK book. Quite often I'll hear interviews with mainstream therapists recommending or mentioning large group awareness trainings like Landmark Education. As long as they're claiming they're not therapists and not doing therapy, they get away with their scams.

Hope

Hi Hope,

Eric Jong is a feminist author and poet, I find it hard to believe that someone who advocates empowering women wouldn't see through BK immediately. Ugh, I read the first few pages of one of BK's books and she starts out saying something about if your husband isn't listening to you, you need to see that you are not listening to yourself, and stop trying to 'control' your husband by asking him to listen to you. People have made some great points here about how she seems to be prepping people to become victims and to not fight back or have healthy boundaries, especially when SHE takes advantage of you. It's just so warped.

I can't stand Neale Donald Walsh, I think he's quite a scam artist. He advocates a type of moral nihilism too, not as extreme as BK though. Dyer seems like harmless fluff, I've read a couple of his books and even had one of his a meditation CDs (I've since sold it). BK really goes for complete annihilation of the self, it's frightening. Eckhart Tolle seems to just want to annihilate the ego and the thinking process.

Why is it always about destroying or supressing a side of yourself, or melding your individuality into some amorphous blob called "love" or "God"? These people seemed absolutely terrified of life itself.

A lot of these authors are getting their books put in the "self-help" sections of bookstores now as opposed to new age. There should be some type of regulation in the self-help industry. It's really gotten out of hand.

There are a couple on interesting posts by a username of "Antara" at the Janaki blog.

[janakisstory.wordpress.com]

Now allegedly the username "Antara" might connnect to a therapist at the halfway-house where BK supposedly had her cosmic Roach Motel metamorphosis.
Have any of the BK former-Lifers heard that name before?

But even a supposed BK insider, who says they were there at the time, is saying that at best Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell simplified her cockroach conversion story, for marketing purposes.
As the 4 Questions did not appear literally until many years later.

In not only smacks of deception, its a consciously constructed and fabricated "Story" meant to do the things explained above! Its a Story using the techniques of hypnotherapy meant to literally shape and control perceptions. [forum.culteducation.com]

In her early days, Byron Katie was teaching courses in A Course In Miracles, and doing all of the other courses as have been mentioned in detail in these threads.
The Byron Katie Story, was rewritten many times, as can be seen in the former books written by BK that Stephen Mitchell destroyed, some say he personally shredded some of them with his bare hands!


And in the comments, there is the comment that many BK members are well on their way to spending $100,000 on Byron Katie materials and seminars.
The rock bottom is about $25,000.
But that does not include "donations", and some donate more than they spend on courses, from those persuasion techniques Byron Katie uses. There would be a lot of Byron Katie members that would be in the spending $100,000 club.
The Turnaround House itself is way over $20,000.


Cost of becoming a Certified Facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie:
[forum.culteducation.com]

Byron Katie's formula for creating 'peace' could be easier achieved by a frontal lobotomy. (It probably costs less too.)

I noticed that James Arthur Ray used some of the same techniques as Byron Katie in his seminars/retreats, like the 'homeless' exercise, the 36-hour fasting, taking away IDs and personal items. Is this some kind of scripted formula that has proven to be an effective way of breaking down people, or did James Ray just rip off Byron Katie?

I heard of some group years ago that required members to go out without ID and money to forage for oneself, wish I could remember the name of the group.

Also it is a classic cult tactic to require members to fast, and/or subsist on low-protein or other types of restricted diet.

The name of the game is to break people down. All sorts of techniques can be devised to help bring that about.

I don't know if this has been brought up already (this is a pretty long thread and I haven't gotten through all the posts), but Illusionist Derren Brown is a great resource if you want to understand NLP and hypnosis techniques. He's not very famous in the U.S. but he's done a lot of TV specials in Britain. You can find a lot of his stuff on Youtube, it's very entertaining but educational too. You can see how someone can potentially use these techniques in a manipulative and deceptive way.

Derren Brown demonstrating the NLP swish pattern and complex anchoring:
[www.youtube.com]

He also did a great series on the BBC called Derren Brown: The So-Called Messiah where he shows how easy it is for someone like him to pass himself off as a psychic, a medium, and convince people he has paranormal abilities:
[www.youtube.com]

Its a classic LGAT technique going back decades, to strip people of ID and money, and try survive in the city. Notice its your ID...your IDENTITY...which is the most powerful aspect of the self-concept, which every cult tries to take control of.

There is one technique, where your goal is to try to talk yourself into getting a free hotel room, free meals, and other free stuff, by using your persuasion skills.
Some even set the goal you have to cross the country somehow.

The other method, is to beat down people's self-worth, dress them up as "homeless" and make them beg for food, to destabilize their identities.

They have dozens and hundreds of those techniques, to break people down, in the LGAT seminar.

I feel very confident in stating that NO ONE is making a living solely from facilitating the work of BK. True, there are some people trained as coaches, counselors, or psychotherapists who use the work in their practices, but they do not count since they already had an established clientele. Janaki is probably the biggest success story. She basically took her coaching business and, over the years, created her own unique version of the work and built up a business training others. But now we see what happened with all that.

Sadly, many of the people who go through the so-called certification training - and a whole new batch of them "graduated" last week in Ojai, I heard - believe they have a new career. They have invested over $20K and countless hours of free labor. Time and money they will never see again.

I challenge anyone out there who is making a living with this thing (and I mean above poverty level) to post here and prove me wrong. Until then, I stand by my statement.

[Of course, apologists will say they don't do it for the money - they do it "for their own spiritual growth" or "for making peace on the planet" or some other pile of hogwash. To them I say: remember how Eckhart Tolle found it? BS or not - sitting on a park bench is free.]