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Gold Dust
In addition, true spiritualist will GIVE THERE WORK of the spirt for free... it will not be a money making business like so many make it.

Well...there is a difference between a quick public reading, in the case of a Spiritualist, or a quick prayer ofered in other cases, and a session. If you set up a session, you're going to get charged for the person's training and expertise. The idea is: My time is valuable, adn if you're going to take an hour of it, I'm going to charge you for it. That sounds harsh, but if you pay a doctor or lawyer or psychologist for time and expertise, then you should treat one of these sessions the same way.

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Gold Dust
I have found so many people in the New Age movements of Channels and Gurus having financial problems. Yet, they will find a way to pay thousands of dollars to their teachers.... and let the needs of their children and self go in the name of God.

That is unfortunate.

Unity and the other New Thought churches do not practice channelling or have gurus or engage in psychic phenomena.

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bozman
UNITY is not a cult [i:087f870091]per se[/i:087f870091]. However, because it has become so far removed from its own guiding priciples, it has become a perfect haven for cultic groups.

In what way do you think it has gotten away from its principles? The Unity ministers, licensed teachers, and members I know are all teaching pretty much what they have always taught.

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3HO, the Sai Baba groups and Endeavor Academy all operate in various Unity churches -- and in the case of Endeavor Academy there are persons who were trained by them in the leadership of the Association of Unity Churches.

Frankly, in all my exposure to the movement, I have never heard of eithe rEndeavor Academy or 3HO.

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There has also been a lot of covering up of abuse, both sexual and spiritual in Unity.

I'm sure some individuals have been involved in inappropriate activities. I know that this is not really tolerated in the movement.

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bozman
In UNITY, unfortunately, those who would advocate the use of some sort of firewall are silenced or marginalized, at every level.

I know of no one who has had such an experience.

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It is taboo to openly criticize ACIM, even in some cases the extreme forms such as Endeavor Academy, or the bogus teachers who glom on to the movement such as James Twyman. Even the fake "gold-filling miracle" preachers are tolerated, because they bring people into the church.

I don't know where your information comes from, or what your eperience is, but I have heard in the New Thought movement both praise and criticism for [i:3d498a0feb]A Course in Miracles[/i:3d498a0feb] and for Twyman. Some like them; some don't. That's OK. You're not required to accept or reject anything they present.

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there are big, big holes in Unity as a spiritual movement, holes that make it very unsafe. And, sad to say, those holes exist in large part because it is so "open", "inclusive" and "accepting".

Would you explain what oyu think the holes are? I find their viewpoint pretty refreshing and very logical.

Here is my main problem with the Unity church and ideologies.
First, its a Catch-22. They believe you have to believe 100% with NO DOUBT to get a Demonstration. This sets you up to get extremely confused.

They also believe that Thought controls external circumstances.
They also believe you can attain the Christ Consciousness, which means you will have the Supernatural Powers of Jesus Christ, healing, even raising from the dead! (Charles Filmore does go that far).

This is all absurd. There is no evidence for this. Its imagination.

Also, in a local Unity church in my city, the minister was sued by several women who he was having sex with at the same time. I knew one of these women. He would have sex with them in the prayer rooms.
He also got in trouble for using church money on his house, etc.
All sorts of articles were written about this.

Did he get kicked out?
Nope. He is still there, as he controls the board.

The ideology of Unity from Filmore, is not accurate.
They make wild claims, without any scientific evidence or proof.
All sorts of cults have moved into Unity, and try to reach more people.

So i give Unity an F.
I would prefer if a person went to a "normal" church that did not tell you that if you BELIEVE strong enough, you can have supernatural powers like "Christ" allegedly had.
That is the bottom line of what they are saying.
Its a big mess of junky beliefs.

Coz

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Cosmophilospher
First, its a Catch-22. They believe you have to believe 100% with NO DOUBT to get a Demonstration.

Not at all. You get the demonstration in proportion to what you ar eready to accept. But if you don't really believe that you'll get a million dollars, you will get a very good demonstartion of not getting it.

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They also believe that Thought controls external circumstances.

As do the other New Thought denominations, such as Religious Science, Divine Science, and others. The principles work. Ideas have consequences,and when you have positive, non-limiting ideas, you vastly improve the consequences.

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They also believe you can attain the Christ Consciousness, which means you will have the Supernatural Powers of Jesus Christ, healing, even raising from the dead! (Charles Filmore does go that far).

Well, first of all, you don't attain Christ Consciousness, you unfold it. It's inherent in all of us. That is fundamental New Thought principle.

And there is nothing supernatural about any of what Jesus did or any of the powers that Unity and New Thought claim for us all. Jesus showed us that we can do it. "The things that I have done, ye also shall do, and greater than these shall ye do." "As a man thinketh, so is he."

If you want to be prosperous, you must start by believing that you are prosperous. As long as you don't believe it, as long s you believe that you cannot be prosperous or that you don't deserve it, that is what you will continue to get.

But you still have to work it. You can pray all you want to win the lottery, but you still have to buy the ticket. No one claims it's going to drop in your lap.

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Also, in a local Unity church in my city, the minister was sued by several women who he was having sex with at the same time. I knew one of these women. He would have sex with them in the prayer rooms.
He also got in trouble for using church money on his house, etc.
All sorts of articles were written about this.

And there is a serious problem with the now-defunct Living Enrichment Center too. This is reprehensible conduct, but it's local and it's not fair to hold the entire movement responsible for it.

Didn't the nice mainstream Catholics recently have a child abuse scnadal? As I recall, virtually none of those priests was defrocked. Yet you hold the reprehensible conduct of one Unity minister as a reason to dislike the movement, but I don't see you posting about the Catholics and their scandal. You're certainly not warning people to stay away from them.

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The ideology of Unity from Filmore, is not accurate.
They make wild claims, without any scientific evidence or proof.

Well, they have worked with the principles and seen them work, as I have. Myrtle Fillmore healed herself; so did many of the other New Thought teachers.

People like you who are demanding external testing aren't going to beleive any result that supports their ideas anyway, and those who are part of the movement don't need to have it proven to them.

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All sorts of cults have moved into Unity, and try to reach more people.

That is your opinion, but if their space is being used by cultic organizations, that does not reflect on Unity itself. It is a church that is dedicated to a set of principles that would not be comfortable for a cult organization.

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Didn't the nice mainstream Catholics recently have a child abuse scnadal? As I recall, virtually none of those priests was defrocked. Yet you hold the reprehensible conduct of one Unity minister as a reason to dislike the movement, but I don't see you posting about the Catholics and their scandal. You're certainly not warning people to stay away from them.

This is a debating tactic used that is not very helpful, most likely has a specific name as a logical fallacy, I'm just not sure which one it is. Perhaps ad hominem. I sense that you are attacking the writer himself.

I myself can certainly choose to dislike a movement, based on my studies, on reports from others, without having to also therefore speak out about all movements/religions/groups. I could write or speak out about the conduct of one group, without having to speak out on all. And I support anyone's right to do the same.

Sarah

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Timmer

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bozman
In UNITY, unfortunately, those who would advocate the use of some sort of firewall are silenced or marginalized, at every level.

I know of no one who has had such an experience.


Well, that does not mean they don't exist, does it?

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It is taboo to openly criticize ACIM, even in some cases the extreme forms such as Endeavor Academy, or the bogus teachers who glom on to the movement such as James Twyman. Even the fake "gold-filling miracle" preachers are tolerated, because they bring people into the church.

I don't know where your information comes from, or what your eperience is, but I have heard in the New Thought movement both praise and criticism for [i:ec7e6a2441]A Course in Miracles[/i:ec7e6a2441] and for Twyman. Some like them; some don't. That's OK. You're not required to accept or reject anything they present.

In theory, that is the case. However, ACIM people often do everything they can to stack the deck in their favor -- including working to get rid of ministers who don't want ACIM taught in the church. They have also gone to great lengths to keep church members ignorant of the many controversies surrounding ACIM, such as the Endeavor Academy cult (and attendant suicides), the copyright battles, etc.

My information comes from 16 years in Unity, in several different communities. I served in several capacaties in those churches, including Sunday guest speaker, class teacher (adults as well as youth) and workshop facilitator.

Beyond that, for many years I had a YahooGroups list called Unity In Crisis, in which such issues were discussed. It is important to realize that the administrators of Unity actively discourage open discussion of these issues. That is why they shut down their own Internet forum six years ago.

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there are big, big holes in Unity as a spiritual movement, holes that make it very unsafe. And, sad to say, those holes exist in large part because it is so "open", "inclusive" and "accepting".

Would you explain what oyu think the holes are? I find their viewpoint pretty refreshing and very logical.

The main hole is that true discernment is not possible when anything and everything is allowed. It is unfair to members of any church group not to warn them that certain "teachers" such as Twyman are hucksters or worse, that certain teachings such as ACIM are nothing more than thought reform through self-guided trance.

Even if they do take note of problems with a particular teacher or path, it is done in a tepid and ineffectual way. An example is the cautionary message sent out a couple of years ago concerning books in Unity bookshops and libraries -- such as Wayne Dyers -- which advocate the accused pedophile guru Sathya Sai Baba. The books were never the real problem. The real problem was, and is, that there are many Unity centers where there are active SSB groups meeting in the church on a regular basis, and that this is often presented as a part of Unity's offerings and not just as a group renting space.

This is irresponsible. Yet it is taboo to openly criticize the actual offerings of any Unity church. That makes you a "bad seed planter", a person exhibiting "disruptive energy", etc. Those are just a couple of the terms that are used to marginalize those who express any form of disagreement with the policies or actions of any minister in Unity. There are many, many more.

For such a "positive" spiritual movement, Unity has a very impressive list of negative labels to be hung by it's ministers on anyone who expresses principled dissent.

- Boz

I have never seen such a bunch of NewThought DoubleSpeak since dealing with a Landmarkian!

So people can achieve/unfold the "Powers of Christ", eh?
Says who?
Its a delusion of Grandiousity, and even as an Atheist i realize it is blasphemy. It narcissism incarnate.
Men are not Gods, they are HUMANS.

The Fillmore's made CLAIMS to sell their religion. No evidence, just claims. Big deal. Talk is cheap.

And the last point about objective evidence is a conscious distortion and even a deliberate lie.
Scientists FOLLOW the objective FACTS.
That's how science works.

These New Thought churches are frozen in time and lies, no testing, no objective facts.
And they teach people they can have the Powers of Christ.
What a joke. What a fraud.

Then they come up with twisted NewSpeak to try and warp reality and shield it from the facts.
This is why it can be so dangerous for certain people.
They can go nuts, as there is not objective reality testing.

CLUE: When you Believe you can become One with Christ, and aquire his alleged Supernatural Miracle Powers, then perhaps its time to seek some mental health counselling from a certified professional. The "Christ Complex" is something they would be familiar with.

PS: I know New Thought is "different" from all those OTHER crazies who think they are Jesus Christ.
;-)

Coz

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Timmer
Not at all. You get the demonstration in proportion to what you ar eready to accept.

Well, first of all, you don't attain Christ Consciousness, you unfold it. It's inherent in all of us. That is fundamental New Thought principle.

And there is nothing supernatural about any of what Jesus did or any of the powers that Unity and New Thought claim for us all. Jesus showed us that we can do it. "The things that I have done, ye also shall do, and greater than these shall ye do." "As a man thinketh, so is he."

Well, they have worked with the principles and seen them work, as I have. Myrtle Fillmore healed herself; so did many of the other New Thought teachers.

People like you who are demanding external testing aren't going to beleive any result that supports their ideas anyway, and those who are part of the movement don't need to have it proven to them.

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SarahL

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Didn't the nice mainstream Catholics recently have a child abuse scnadal? As I recall, virtually none of those priests was defrocked. Yet you hold the reprehensible conduct of one Unity minister as a reason to dislike the movement, but I don't see you posting about the Catholics and their scandal. You're certainly not warning people to stay away from them.

This is a debating tactic used that is not very helpful, most likely has a specific name as a logical fallacy, I'm just not sure which one it is. Perhaps ad hominem. I sense that you are attacking the writer himself.

No, I'm pointing out inconsistency. The writer to whom I was responding lists as one of the "cultic" aspects of Unity the fact that he knew a Unity minister who was having sex with several of the women of the church and appaerntly nothing was done about it.

While this is a bad thing, I'm simply pointing out that if that's your standard, tehn you must apply it conssitently. Since the Catholic Church has had a major sex scandal involving several of its priests and the worst that seems to have happened to many of them is that they were just mvoed from parish to parish, then if this writer's experience with that Unity minister makes it a "cultish aspect of Unity," the priest scandal must therefore be described as "a cultish aspect of Catholicism" simply in the name of consistency.

Since no one would describe it that way, it cannot thus be used to tar Unity with the "cult" label.