That is a great point.
Of course Harpo-Oprah would never hire Tolle or Byron Katie, as they are not bondable, and could not sign all the non-disclosure contracts, etc.
They have a concocted past history, and thus are not trustable.
No normal person can get employment talking about living on park benches and cockroach motel conversations. Except multimillionaire hypnotic Gurus. That is truly bizarre when you think about it. Normal people can't get away with that, only multimillionaire Gurus?
Its almost as though people expect their Gurus to play the role.

But Oprah is more than happy to do arms-length financial transactions with these folks, as long as they post all the disclaimers she forces them to post, in case things go wrong for people and they get hurt or scammed. Oprah has completely protected HERSELF from all liabilities.
But you are on your own in the school of hard knocks. Don't go crying to Oprah if you get scammed or hurt, tough shit for you.
Oprah made her real statement below, where Oprah states very clearly she does NOT endorse Byron Katie or The Work.
------(posted on Byron Katie site-----
"Oprah & Friends is a trademark of Harpo, Inc. Neither Oprah & Friends ®, Inc. nor its affiliated companies are responsible for nor do they endorse the advertising or other content contained on this website."

Quote
corboy
A Wee Question:
Oprah promotes Eckhart Tolle. But...promoting someone is different from hiring someone.

But...would Oprah HIRE an administrative assistant with the unverifiable life background that Tolle gives?

Or, for that matter, BK?

You need to read the entire thread, there is a lot of info in there.

First, The Work has never been shown in ANY studies to have any benefits for anyone. There is no proof it works at all.

Facilitators of BK are not trained or monitored in any way.
If you hurt someone by mistake, you can be sued directly. Byron Katie will not protect you, she will cut you loose, she already has, in her disclaimers.
If you do a Turnaround on someone who has suicidal impulses, that self-hate and guilt you are magnifying could trigger a suicide.
Most Byron Katie Facilitators do not realize they are risking losing their homes by being a Facilitator, as if they hurt someone by mistake, or if someone commits suicide or assault under their therapy counselling, they can be sued into oblivion. (Byron Katie didn't tell you that part, of course. But read her disclaimers).

The Work is just a front, for the deeper Byron Katie system.
Its designed as a type of "fish-hook" to lure people in deeper to the Byron Katie system, just like the Scientology Stress Test. They just used that fake test as a way to get their fingers into you.
You should be aware of that, as you are being lured in deeper by your own comments.

How much has it cost you to be a BK Facilitator so far, including travel costs and lost wages?
$20,000? More?
Please add that up for us here.
9 Day School is about $5,000.
Plus a weeks pay lost, hotel, airfare.
Then add up all the books, DVD's, and other trainings you have taken so far.
You must have done the Katie 100 Day program too.
How much in donations so far?
A person could spend $30,000-$100,000 easily, and even much more.

So lets do that first, add up honestly how much its cost you so far to be a Facilitator so far for Byron Katie.

Quote
cultcity
I am a facilitator of TW and thinking about launching a website to offer my service to those who may want to experience TW. I have gotten as far as reading about page 9 of the 77 on this thread.

So far, what I can gleam as the main message from this thread are these two points:

1. People who have a need should seek help from a licensed therapist. BK isn't a licensed therapist.

2. TW can hurt people.

I am not interested in hurting others.

I think it is important to tell you that no one sent me here - I googled something and this thread came up and I found it. I am interested in the viewpoints here. I have no previous hypnotherapy experience, and have a master's degree in clinical psychology (not mail order).

From where I sit today, TW seems to have been helpful to my life.

Please let me know why I should or shouldn't offer facilitation in TW in your opinion?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2008 01:30AM by The Anticult.

Quote
cultcity
I am a facilitator of TW and thinking about launching a website to offer my service to those who may want to experience TW. I have gotten as far as reading about page 9 of the 77 on this thread.

<snip>

Please let me know why I should or shouldn't offer facilitation in TW in your opinion?

Cultcity, I concur with the moderator that you ought to read the entire thread. I would be very surprised if you still had questions as to the dangers of Byron Katie's work after doing so. Unless, as you yourself said in the other thread on Byron Katie, "I may be fully into denial and just not aware of it yet".

Work with us here, please! Thx!

You should read more than 9 pages.
CC-I intend to - I just wanted you to know how far I had gotten into the thread so far... it was a disclosure, not an end point.


Your basis for supporting Katie is your subjective experience?
CC-I am not sure I am offering my support for Katie here. I am asking a specific question to the group.

And on this basis you would promote Katie?
CC - Again, I am not sure I would promote Katie. I plan to offer TW. Does that promote Katie? Yes, if it leads one to Katie, products, sales, 9 day. No, if people can come for a session and are not led to Katie.

What specific information would it take for you to reverse your opinion about Katie?
start CC- I think if I witnessed Rashneesh type excesses that would cause me to reverse my opinion about Katie (Note: I haven't disclosed my opinion of Katie here yet).

If I found out there were off shore accounts, or hidden accounts somewhere containing millions that would not be used to help people, I would reverse my opinion.

If I saw that I were being asked to disassociate in any way from the non-TW people in the world, I would reverse my opinion.

If I were asked to tithe to the organization I would start to feel squeemish. (been there once before, another organization).

If I were asked to live a particular lifestyle, that would give me pause. Here I mean lifestyle prescriptions- celibate, vegetarian, no alcohol (some examples, not a complete list).

If I were humiliated publicly, in front of a workshop crowd, I would reverse my opinion. (been there multiple times before, another organization, I left).

If I had evidence of a narcissistic cluelessly hurtful leader, I'd reverse my opinion.

If I witnessed blatant sexism, I would reverse my opinion.

If I were asked to bury myself (figuratively) to please my husband, I would reverse my opinion.

If I were asked to bury myself intimately to please my husband, I would reverse my opinion.

If I were told that I had to do something, I'd rebel and reverse my opinion. I don't like being told what to do. So, if it were like the Arbonne cult and I had to sell face products (almost), it wouldn't work for me at all. That would cause me to flee.

If I saw that what I offered people as a facilitator created harm, I would reverse my opinion.

If I saw a statement like Tolle's that said (something like) if you get this book you are ready for it, and if you do not you are not ready for it, I would see that as arrogance and reverse my opinion.

Boiling it down - monetary excesses, prescriptions for life, non-acceptance of people outside the group, a "better than" attitude among people in the group, sales requirements, burying my-self for another, seeing harm.

I don't think this is a complete list for me, but it is a start.
end CC

Be very specific in answering this question.

Again, you should probably read more.
CC - Of course, and that is my intention.

Dear Anti-cult
Thanks for the great list for me to respond to:

First, The Work has never been shown in ANY studies to have any benefits for anyone. There is no proof it works at all.
***studies are "in the works." (no pun intended)

Facilitators of BK are not trained or monitored in any way.
***I don't get that. What do you mean not trained?

If you hurt someone by mistake, you can be sued directly. Byron Katie will not protect you, she will cut you loose, she already has, in her disclaimers.
***I believe you.

If you do a Turnaround on someone who has suicidal impulses, that self-hate and guilt you are magnifying could trigger a suicide.
***I hear that. can you give an example? not diverting here - I just don't want to imagine what you might be thinking.

Most Byron Katie Facilitators do not realize they are risking losing their homes by being a Facilitator, as if they hurt someone by mistake, or if someone commits suicide or assault under their therapy counselling, they can be sued into oblivion. (Byron Katie didn't tell you that part, of course. But read her disclaimers).
***Clearly not therapy counselling or therapy or counselling. Something different. And could I be sued? Probably. People want someone to blame.


The Work is just a front, for the deeper Byron Katie system.
***don't have the experience of the deeper BK system. not denying it, just haven't seen it. is it the money making machine I think you may refer to below?

Its designed as a type of "fish-hook" to lure people in deeper to the Byron Katie system, just like the Scientology Stress Test. They just used that fake test as a way to get their fingers into you.
*** I absolutely abhor Scientology, that dumb fish hooky stress test and don't see TW as a fish hook. I saw the dollar values on a website about what Scientology costs. OMG. I can do TW for free. Anyone can. No hooked into system that I have to buy into. But, again, I am just beginning to look. Will you look with me?

You should be aware of that, as you are being lured in deeper by your own comments.
*** Boy, was I hoping I wasn't going to be lured in deeper by my own comments!! I hoped to actually skim to the surface and take a clearer look from up above by dialoguing here. IF I am being lured in deeper do you think I should stop making comments? (smile).

How much has it cost you to be a BK Facilitator so far, including travel costs and lost wages?
$20,000? More?
Please add that up for us here.
9 Day School is about $5,000.
**Here are my guesstimates - didn't find the receipts.
***I went on scholarship years ago.

Plus a weeks pay lost, hotel, airfare.
***$1200 meals and lodging (provided by School)
***Lost wages - 5 days for a FT worker. I am PT and took vacation. Babysitting costs $200
***airfare $350

Then add up all the books, DVD's, and other trainings you have taken so far.
Loving What Is $60
I need your love $60
Thousand names for Joy $60
Quotes $50
DVD/VCR tapes X 20 $600

Weekend intensive gas, meals, lodging $300
intensive fee $225 (applied to School tuition)
Staff School LA flight and staff fee (about $1600)
Staff School Germany flight and staff fee (about $2000)

I am up to about $7K by now. That is over 4 years.


You must have done the Katie 100 Day program too.
*** I think about $4500 for certification including airfare, meals, lodging, and program.

How much in donations so far?
****$11,500K

A person could spend $30,000-$100,000 easily, and even much more.

****That is absolutely the case - for the "repeat workshop" crowd - do you have a name from the LGAT junkies?

So lets do that first, add up honestly how much its cost you so far to be a Facilitator so far for Byron Katie.

***I've tried to be honest. If you come up with anything else, just let me know as far as costs go.....

CC, there is something bothering me deeply here. You say that you wish to offer sessions of the work. Re this you specifically say, "If I saw that what I offered people as a facilitator created harm, I would reverse my opinion."

Why on earth would you take the chance of doing sessions with people when there is a risk that they could be harmed? This seems unconscionable to me. Bryon Katie TARGETS people who suffer from depression and the like. She makes such a big deal, over and over, of her many years of being suicidally depressed. And then a cockroach of all things supposedly triggered her into awakening. (Why then doesn't she introduce cockroaches into her method, since they seem to be a key part of her "cure"?)

Someone engaging in a facilitated session may not disclose suffering from any number of emotional/mental problems to their facilitator. Speaking for myself, I DID disclose such a thing to my facilitator from the very start, and yet my issues, which have been quite something to deal with for trained professionals, were no problemo for my facilitator. He was quite happy to take my money.

If I hadn't found my way to this forum and ceased having sessions, I don't know what might have happened. I could have killed myself.

That's right. Very soon after one particular session, I became SUICIDAL in direct connection to the session. The facilitator had been quite forceful in his implementation of the "turnarounds". It took me some time before I finally got up the nerve to inform the facilitator of the severe distress that came up for me. Sadly, he seemed rather nonchalant about it, said he had "things to think over", something like that. And yet he continues to offer himself forth as a facilitator, is still charging money for it. So he seems undaunted by possibly causing harm to other people... who may, unlike me, NOT say anything ever about their mental/emotional status. Just because they don't say anything or otherwise reveal that they were harmed, doesn't mean that they weren't. Or might be down the line as they continued to utilize the work.

People's lives are at stake here.

How do you propose to keep track of this sort of thing?

I really don't like it, that you wish to continue with your plan to offer sessions in the midst of discovering all manner of criticisms of BK. When I say "I really don't like it," that's putting it nicely.

From "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David D. Burns, MD:

"Because cognitive therapy asserts that only your thoughts create your feelings, you might come to the nihilistic belief that you cannot hurt anybody no matter what you do, and hence you have license to do anything. After all, why not run out on your family, cheat on your wife, and screw your partner financially? If they're upset, it's their problem because it's their thoughts, right?

"Wrong! Here we come again to the importance of the concept of cognitive distortion. To the extent that a person's emotional upset is caused by his distorted thoughts, then you can say he is responsible for his suffering. If you blame yourself for that individual's pain, it is a personalization error. In contrast, if a person's suffering is caused by valid, undistorted thoughts, then the suffering is real and may in fact have an external cause. For example, you might kick me in the stomach, and I could have the thoughts, 'I've been kicked! It hurts! ____ ____ ____!' In this case the responsibility for my pain rests with you, and your perception that you have hurt me is not distorted in any way. Your remorse and my discomfort are real and valid."

Another thing, CC....

In the other thread, you say:

Quote

From Carboy:
What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?

my answer: Not much.

Yet in this thread you contradict your "not much" when you say that you'd like Rajneesh level evidence! That is QUITE a jump from "not much"!

(By the by, $20,000 for a month with Byron Katie and her "turnaround house" strikes me as incredibly excessive. Add that to all the loot she bags in her schools, plus other events and the MANY products for sale. BK just might be more similar to Rajneesh than you'd maybe care to admit!)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2008 08:27AM by helpme2times.

CC says: Staff School LA flight and staff fee (about $1600)
Staff School Germany flight and staff fee (about $2000)

"Staff fee"? We here certainly have heard of BK actually getting her "staff" to PAY HER to be her staff.

Nowhere else have I heard of a staff member having to PAY the person they are working for.

Some interesting points coming out from our new surprise guest CultCity.

- doing The Work worksheets, does lead to the 9 Day programs, that is how it is set up. They suck people deeper and deeper into it. The self-blame created by The Work magnifies depression, that is very clear. Its a bottomless pit. The idea that The Work is free, is false. That has been shown in great detail. Just because Katie says it, does not make it true.

You know that Byron Katie lies a lot? There are at least 50 lies documented in this thread alone, more than that. Saying, "the work is freely given" is propaganda, like Work Makes You Free.

- Rajneesh (The Golden Guru) was a criminal psychopath barred from many countries, one would assume it doesn't have to get to that level before people criticize Byron Katie? That is about 50x too far.

- CONTROLLED STUDIES: how could you know about these alleged "studies"? Where are they? Which university medical center is doing them? (David Wise PhD cannot do them, he is already shilling for The Work). Which peer-reviewed journal are they being published? There are no real studies being done, that is false. Please supply the facts to support the statement. That sounds like something Stephen Mitchell would say...the studies are coming. There are no real studies. (hint: Carol Skolnick, for example, can't conduct the study funded by Stephen Mitchell)

- Byron Katie just last week claimed on her blog that The Work IS THERAPY. Its right there in print. You can't have it both ways. She also claims it ELIMINATES DEPRESSION. They are asking for a visit from the FTC.

- by the way, David Wise PhD, see above in the thread, has called The Work the best cognitive therapy, yet The Work is not listed in any CT books. Is he lying? Why is he making stuff up like that?

- your comment that you want to sell The Work for money, shows you are being lured in deeper into The Work. Next, people need more Sales Training, and on it goes. The Work is NOT static, its like a slide that lure people deeper, I have seen dozens of these systems, and BK is one of the best designed.

- the money stuff is very low-ball. By the way, how can you be a Facilitator, when you have not paid to be "certified" by Byron Katie, that doesn't make sense.

- if that's not a typo, you gave them $11,500 in a "gift". So that is about $20,000 spent so far. Again, that is higher than some, much much lower than others, who drop a fortune.

- charging people to be on "Staff" is probably illegal, I hope people know that. If they looked into it, they would have to change that, and call it something like Katies-Friends, some other doublespeak. People should be careful when a for-profit company CHARGES you to work for them! Hello, that is not even legal, Landmark is having trouble in that area. If this has happened to anyone, and you have woken up from your Katie-Trance...send BKI a registered letter, documenting your time on "Staff" and ask for all of your money back, or you will report them to the labor board through a labor lawyer. It is certainly not legal to charge "staff" to work, they can't use that word. (when they eventually get busted, they'll just change the word to Katies-Friends, or whatever).


Most of us who have been around this type of thing for a long time can see what is going on.
Of course, those deeply involved often do believe in what they are doing, and can even have a counter-strategy of eventually coming out with various data-points which can also be reframed.

The base reality is that at root, Byron Katie worksheets called The Work are really nothing. They amount to - your thoughts are not true, and do a Turnaround. As I explained before, this puts you into a cognitive closed loop, which leads to more BK materials.

Doing a Turnaround creates more Self-Blame, and that has been PROVEN to magnify depression. So depressed people doing The Work, are usually going to get MORE depressed. A suicidal person, can easily go over the edge with a little more Self-Blame being put on them. Those who sell The Work, just hammer people with more Self-Blame, most of them have no clue of what they are doing to people.


Byron Katie is like a very slick, covert, high-end NLP-style-hypnosis practitioner, who is able to hide her technique from most people. But guys like her friend Stever Robbins, and all the other NLP Ericksonian hypnotists see exactly what she is doing. Its actually very common. There are many other people doing similar things, like PSI Seminars and all those other LGAT's, and many other former NLP people who are still kicking around out there.

She is literally reprogramming people's entire sense of "reality" and doing so without people's awareness, and using every LGAT technique in the book on them at once. She is very talented at that.
The icing on the cake is she acts like a clueless Savant, so she can play dumb when needed.
So yes, she is a brilliant tactician with a high level technique.

Is she ethical?
No she is not. There is some very ugly stuff going on there.
For example, the handing over of the wedding rings. Even the most greedy NLPer I ever knew would not use that level of Transference on people, that is way over the line. When they hear about what she is doing, their jaws will hit the floor. (Not Stever Robbins though, he seems to like it).

So to those who read this stuff, beware. There are some very slick operators out there, who want to make you feel that its perfectly normal to hand Katie tens of thousands of dollars. Its not.
Its just the same old LGAT group therapy scam, that has been running for decades, and every year they refine it and make it more effective.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2008 11:59AM by The Anticult.