To margarets

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When I've looked back on the bad therapy experience (therapist was doing Gestalt therapy on me without my informed consent - I'd never heard of Gestalt in my life - and of course NLP emerged from Gestalt therapy) I see clearly now that there were little subtle commands, and lots of framing, in many of the things she said. I don't know the technical terms for them but I have dozens of examples of things she said that were just "off". And for a while it did have the effect she intended. So I absolutely believe this stuff works, especially if you have lowered your defenses because of the perceived trustworthiness of the person doing it.

Regarding Gestalt, Fritz Perls taught this at Esalen, right at the time when Gregory Bateson was passing through, along with Bandler and Grinder and others already aware of Milton Erikson's work.

There are over 500 1 Star negative reviews on Amazon.

[www.amazon.com]

Some great one star reviews, I particularly liked this revealing snippet:

'Additionally, the idea that someone was given an advance to write a book about finding herself is... well, pretty disturbing considering the audience who is trying to follow Gilbert's footsteps. Should it not be the other way around? Should she not have had this revealing experience and then shared it with the world? After all, if she was 200k in the hole by the time she finished her trip, she pretty much had to write a book even if she only found disappointment.'

From everything I've read so far about this author's spiritual journey it sounds like she attended the Sarah Jessica Parker/Carrie Bradshaw school of enlightenment!! The reviews on Amazon were highly entertaining. I had a good giggle. Eat,Pray,Shove!! priceless...

Id say, before reading Eat Pay Love, get and read Karma Cola:The Marketing of the Mystic East by Gita Mehta.

The other day, I thought, 'Maybe, just maybe, the dream of there being a Some Place Else, is the one thing that keeps people alive, until perhaps they hang on long enough to find out there actually is no magic place and that, to quote Flip Wilson's Church of What's Happening Now, what you see,right here, right now, is what you get.

The folks in AA talk about 'pulling a geographic' --the very common belief that if one just moves to another city, ones addiction will be solved, just doesnt work.

Its not wrong to go to India. Its not even wrong to go if one actually has the funds and health, and is not messing up pre-exiting relationships in order to go there.

But its another thing for an entire marketing machine to orchestrate a dream machine
and make it seem anyone can do it, while hiding all the strategizing and making it seem this person is Just Like Us when in very many ways, she is a member of an elite, and had a financial safety net beneath her during her time in India.

Gita Mehta's book has some searing descriptions from an embassy physician and from an official from the French Embassy of what happened to many, many non wealthy and obcure persons who thronged to India on the years of the Hippie Trail and who had to be flown home under the supervision of that physician.

And for a yet more horrifying description of what happened to one woman who had dreams, get and read Serpent Rising by Mary Garden.

She wrote how she visited guru after guru, and saw what seemed like disguised harems. She noted that the few female gurus she met didnt have harems but spent much of their time eating--and too much.

Garden learned it the hard way. She had been part of a guru's harem and when she became pregnant by him(he claimed he could not make her pregnant due to his spiritual powers), he went into a hideous rage, blamed her, said the ashram was 'no place for a screaming baby.'

(My reading is the guru himself was a jealous baby, unable to share attention or give adult nurture to a child. Any competation was hated. He was in an adults body, with a
2 year old mindset and the dangerous social skills of charismatic sexual and spiritual con artist--the very worst thing for any of us to trust)

Garden had to get an abortion and she was jeered at as a slut and prostitute while
suffering alone, bleeding and tied to a bed in a clinic.

All that and it took more and yet more time for her to wake up. This guru had recruiters they tried to get her to return, even after she was home in Australia.

And she went home ill, wrecked and with parents who loved her and had spent years
worried sick.

Mary Garden and Gita Mehta's books were not made into movies and were not supported by a PR machine.

One of the reasons I'm wary of openly scoffing in disbelief at some of the bizarre belief systems is because your fleeting thought:
"Maybe, just maybe, the dream of there being a Some Place Else, is the one thing that keeps people alive" is way too close to home for me.
I am quite convinced that, in my case at least, the possibility of there being an accessible and of course kinder and better reality did keep me going in some very fraught times. And I would have avoided anyone who tried to crush my dream of salvation before I was ready to examine it critically myself.

Which is not to say I didn't have and appreciate some subtle nudges toward that critical reappraisal.

I think this is true for a lot of people, we need our dreams whatever they are, as an outlet, as comfort, as compensation and can be quite savage to anyone who prematurely tramples on them. I think that in addiction there is also a recognition that the compulsive behaviour begins as a self-protective measure before it spirals out of control and becomes self-destructive.

We really aren't wholly rational creatures. Life would be a lot simpler, though I suspect, incredibly boring if we were.

@stoic
Dreaming is a free exercise. Dream merchants are highly suspect to me. You put a price tag on spiritual enlightenment and things can go south pretty quick. I spent years recovering from spiritual abuse and the loss of dreams though I never paid a nickel. I was born into it. I can't imagine the turmoil I would have experience if I had paid for the loss of my dreams in cash and not just in spirit. I think I'll adopt that old chestnut from Peggy Lee...If that's all there is my friend...then let's keep dancing..let's break out the booze and have a ball...if that's all there is ;)

@ wandering crow,
I was born into it too and, had I the option--which I didn't--would have gladly paid any amount in cash to keep my spirit intact.

@ Stoic...I can totally relate to your statement.
In such a materialistic world it's hard to find respite for ones soul that isn't mired in divisionary beliefs systems that induce guilt, shame and a myriad of other negative emotions.They all seem to be preaching something that robs rather than feeds the spirit.
For most of my life my mind was so polluted by the messages that I was given I felt doomed no matter what I did. It has taken years to deprogram my mind from automatically falling into old patterns of thought that create anxiety and fear. I have to be vigilant everyday. That angers me on bad days but I've learned to let it go for the most part. My experience has made me exceptionally mistrustful but I am not saying that that's a bad thing per se. Even Jesus said trust no man. I find my own respite in nature. Everything makes sense to me there and I feel a measure of peace. I hope you've found that place to heal.
Regards
wanderingcrow

Respite in nature is about the only thing that is sense to me too, it doesn't have to make sense, it just is sense. And then I go back to my normal world and get grumpy again. I've never understood the concept of 'healing', enduring is closer to what I do understand. :-)