On a forum such as this, which seeks truth and provides advice to others, it is important to correct misinformation (or [b:8cec5531c8]dis[/b:8cec5531c8]information) so that the assessments offered here are not just gossip or questionable in their motive.
For that reason, maybe I can clear up this thread with some genuine and firsthand experience of Darkness Visible.
I have been a student of Ross Heaven's for some years and attended a Darkness Visible course with him in 2005, so I know him pretty well and, no, I've not been
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brainwashed
into his
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cult
! I can speak absolutely and with real experience of his integrity.
To correct S_Buyers666 first of all:
1. Ross Heaven has not
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lost the plot
or
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got kicked out
of anything. In fact, he is highly respected in modern shamanism, is the author of 12 books, all of them extremely well-received, and this year, at the invitation of the extremely well-respected Society of Shamanic Practitioners, will present a workshop at their first residential conference in Glastonbury. This is the organisation led, in the US, by Sandra Ingerman, Tom Cowan, and other highly regarded figures. You just don't get an invite to present there unless your peers respect your work and your integrity.
2. Ross Heaven has never been a member of
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EagleSwing
(you mean Eagle's Wing, I think).
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EagleSwing
is an organisation run by Leo Rutherford (also a presenter at the same conference and a good friend of Ross'). One of its directors is Howard Charing, with whom Ross did, at one time, run workshops. Howard also contributed some material to Ross' excellent book, Plant Spirit Shamanism. Ross no longer works with Howard due to Howard's difficulties in keeping his anger under control. Perhaps you are confused therefore and meant to suggest that it is Howard who has
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lost the plot
? The shamans of the Amazon would agree with you and there are only a handful now who will work with Howard there, despite the fact that he earns most of his money by running ayahuasca tourism trips to the jungle.
In answer to Jack, why
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shouldn't
any organisation or individual (
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spiritual
- whatever that means - or otherwise) trademark any process it or he has developed? That seems entirely fair to me. It is their work after all.
I have spoken to Ross about his trademarking of Darkness Visible and it is a step he took because another organisation has been running DV workshops illegally [i:8cec5531c8]in his name[/i:8cec5531c8]. The people who run this other organisation are not trained in DV techniques and could potentially have caused a lot of problems for students. Ross therefore trademarked the process to prevent this as a matter of student safety. That other organisation might still be running similar courses by a different name, however, so buyer beware!
The
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sniff of big dollars
you're sniffing, btw, is a workshop cost of just £495 for a week, fully residential in a hotel-style country house, with all food, training, materials, assistants, and 24-hour care included. In the UK, you could barely get a week full-board in a hotel for that, never mind the training.
To S_Byers666 again: Darkness Visible is not
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a cult in the making
! It's a one-week workshop (which I found [b:8cec5531c8]really [/b:8cec5531c8]useful) and, if you read Ross' book of the same name before you make judgements like this, you'll discover that the use of darkness meditation in its purest form has been used by shamans in lots of different cultures for [i:8cec5531c8]centuries[/i:8cec5531c8]! The Kogi indians, for example, keep their shamans in darkness [i:8cec5531c8]for 19 years [/i:8cec5531c8]before they come back to the tribe. Are the Kogi indians also in a
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cult
????
And nor is The Village a
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cult
. In it's plainest form it's a new retreat centre that Ross and some others are setting up. Maybe you should visit and get clearer on your facts? Fyi, as well,
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EagleSwing
(according to you,
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a perfectly respectable and trustworthy organisation running safe courses
) operates from a country house in Sussex where Leo and two women live together in a (non-sexual) community where they practice shamanic rituals together. And yet, that is not defined as a
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cult
in your terms but seems perfectly OK by you. Double standards, or just ignorance of the facts?
Other people here asked for signposts to articles written about Darkness Visible. If you go to [
www.thefourgates.com] you'll find extracts from an article written by Katy Weitz, the Features Editor of the Observer, a national newspaper in the UK, who also took part in a Darkness Visible workshop with Ross, as well as endorsements for Ross' work by Malidoma Some and Sandra Ingerman, both well-respected peers. All of them are positive about Darkness Visible work and all of them, as opposed to the speculators here, have also taken part in Ross' workshops or in darkness work themselves.
I hope this clears things up. I know that you would not wish to be spreading rumours and idle gossip in the place of genuine information.