Kath, as a former member of Doreen's stable of "practitioners," I am rather hesitant to say anything about what I've heard -- mainly because my username here could reveal my identity to Ms. "Virtue" and I wouldn't want to get hit with a lawsuit!
That said, I feel safe in revealing just a few things that I believe are public knowledge. First is that Doreen is currently married to husband number 4! (I have certainly speculated on what THAT might say about her character!) The second thing is, Doreen claims to adhere to "natural" forms of self-care and healing (e.g., she is a non-leather-wearing vegan), yet in one of her recent books (I believe it's [i:1c81f67cd6]Goddesses and Angels[/i:1c81f67cd6]), she mentions having had a chemical face peel done. I remember feeling rather shocked when I read that -- as did at least one other of my former fellow angel therapy practitioners!
Here's something else I can share... It's a little review of one of Doreen's workshops, which I found on a blog called "Skeptico":
"Hi I just went to Doreen Virtue's seminar in NYC. I want to start off with saying I am very spiritual and have a deep faith in God. I have read many of Virtue's books and really enjoyed them. I have had some really hair, unexplainable occurrences in my life and her books gave me some of understanding to what was going on. However; I did find her seminar to really be fraudulent and it ended up making skin crawl. I was very disappointed. First of all she had 'actors' raising their hands. One of the men stood up and gave us a humungeous speel. One of ATP's handed him a kleenex off cue and then he had force himself to cry. My husband bursted out laughing.
"Second, her husband, (Steve Farmer) really tried to promote all the 'hayhouse' stuff and himself. He attempted several times to upstage Virtue. I do not think their marriage will last another year. (remember you heard it here first) Thirdly, her ATP's walked around with this vacant look in their eyes like most cult members have; they really creeped me out.
"I would love to talk to someone that has done her longer seminars and maybe do some research on them. Everyone deserves to make a buck, but after what I saw and what I have read here. I can see how destructive and frightening these people are. I agree with solitude, I think Ms. Virtue probably does have some kind of gift (like everyone does) but she has misused it and is taking advantage of people to the point where they lose their money and their relationships."
The above quote and other comments can be found here:
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skeptico.blogs.com][/quote]