Some of these things can be very complicated.
There are many New Thought systems like, Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind), christian science, emma curtis hopkins, joel goldsmith, and countless others.

Those are all New Thought, and they are a terrible mental trap.

New Thought (aka Mind Cure or Mind Science) movement [www.skepdic.com]


A good way to start getting out of the mental trap is this book that can be bought at a used bookstore for a few bucks.
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan [www.amazon.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2010 03:47AM by The Anticult.

shimon:

It seems you are only here to undermine threads by causing conflict etc.

Such a person posting on a message board is often called an "Internet troll."

Not sure of the entire story here, but some people can be stuck inside beliefs like the New Thought ideas, and not be able to get out. It can become a Catch-22.

And when the New Thought ideas get combined with advanced persuasion techniques, conversational hypnosis, and advanced sales methods, its a real mess. No wonder they make millions of dollars marketing things like The Secret.

Many of these New Thought people make a fortune, and have done so since the 1850's, and every few years it flares back up. The latest was The Secret.
Wait a couple years and it will be back again.

Quote
rrmoderator
shimon:

It seems you are only here to undermine threads by causing conflict etc.

Such a person posting on a message board is often called an "Internet troll."

TO RRmoderator,

Sir, with all due respect, i am not here to undermine any threads or
cause any conflict. i am on your side, i am one of the good guys,
not the enemy. these cults and cult leaders and charlatans, etc. are
the enemy. all i do is ask and want to know, get out of my brainwashed
head.

i do take offense for being called a troll and would like an apology from
you and from corboy for what he wrote. instead of investigating me, he
should be using his time to investigate the real threats, which are these
cultists.

Another person i was caught up in was Dr Joseph murphy, of the Power of
your subconscious mind fame, he wrote that book. that has set me on
this path for years that i just have not been able to become freeof. I have
wasted thousands of dollars on books and workshops in these areas and
have not achieved any health or wealth or anything they promise. he seemed
like such a good teacher and such a good teaching and i found nothing
negative about him on the web but my life is no better from his teachings.
infact they are worse and i am starting to see i have been duped i think.
it is hard to recover from new thought, once you accept that idea you try
to live your life by that, that you can heal yourself, that you can attract
anything you want to you.

i also was caught up in Christian Science and then later Joel goldsmith, who
was a CS practitioner himself for years. it is a dangerous path i have
chosen but am trying to get out of. anticults posts are penetrating some and
i am starting to see clearer, but i am definitely not on the new thoughts
peoples sides or these cult leaders. i am not trolling or shilling for them. i just
want to be free from these limiting beliefs and propaganda and brainwashing.
please have compassion for someone like me who got caught up in all of
this and is just trying to find there way out.

i am telling you from personal experience, and maybe someone can benefit
from my mistakes that new thought and this the secret stuff is very hard to
get out of ones thinking once it gets in. one needs to be deprogrammed in a
sense. i cannot afford professional help or i would go seek help. but i am doing
the best i can on my own and i really was displeased with corboys and your own
comments to me. but i do not need to post on here and am happy to just read
on my own. this is a good, v ery helpful forum and i thank you for that, i just
think you can be a little nicer and more respectful to certain people, like myself.
thank you sir. Shimon.

shimon:

You sound like a long-term "cult hopper."

Why is it that you cannot seem to sort through your experience to avoid being conned by another cult?

See [www.culteducation.com]

Here are some basic "warning signs" you should apply.

And see [www.culteducation.com]

This section should help you to understand how a cult operates, note the supporting links with research material.

See [www.amazon.com]

This book "Take Back Your Life" might help you to sort things out.

Maybe you should take a break from the board and do some reading.

Joseph Murphy, The Power Of Your Unconscious mind, is New Thought.
He wrote zillions of books, that basically all said, do his New Thought process, and you will be healed and rich, and then gives anonymous anecdotes.
Probably the reason there is not too much criticism of him, is due to timing, as he died 30 years ago. If he were alive, he would have been in The Secret.

Christian Science, Joel Goldsmith, Emmet Fox, and a zillion others, its all basically the same stuff. New Thought.
The Secret, Beckwith, they are all basically New Thought as well, but with lots of added junk.

New Thought says you can directly impact external/physicaly reality with Thought.
There is a lot of information online these days to read up on it.

New Thought (aka Mind Cure or Mind Science) movement [www.skepdic.com]

But people get caught with the Confirmation Bias. [www.skepdic.com]

This book can fix most of it!
The Demon-Haunted World [www.skepdic.com]

Quote
The Anticult
I saw the Oprah show on this, and she supported The Secret 100%, without any questions or doubt at all.

I have loved O magazine for several years, but after finding out (starting with Byron Katie) how much harmful New Age junk she promotes just out of naive over-enthusiasm, I just don't respect her like I used to. Who knows what her magazine might be promoting next? Last month it was BK; this month there was a quote by Eckhart T. I'd rather just skip it.

I understand her mindset, because one of my best friends is the same way. She just takes anything she likes the sound of, from any source, and mashes it all together in her mind into her own 'way of life'. It really confused me when we first started to get to know each other. One minute she'd be talking like she was a Christian; the next she'd be telling me all about the Native American spirit-worshipping ceremony she hosted. Then she spent a few months doing bible studies with JW's out of curiosity. And she lent me "What the Bleep" to watch (which my husband and I thought was totally silly) and sent me a video interview of Will Smith (that I haven't yet watched). She's not really 'taken in' by any one thing, but she just thinks it all sounds great. And she especially gets into the alternative health stuff, which drives me nuts because I think it's almost all a load of bunk. (If you haven't, watch the Bullsh*t TV episode about alternative medicine. It's priceless!! [www.sho.com]) But nevertheless we're great friends! LOL

However, my friend isn't someone whom people all over the world take as an authority on what's 'good.' Nor is she a journalist. Oprah is both, and it angers me that she doesn't take those responsibilities more seriously.

Oprah has mostly Christian beliefs, according to her personal interviews. And I think she just doesn't investigate any of these self-help things deeply enough to realize that they actually go against her beliefs, or how harmful they can be to people who embrace them 100%, because she doesn't embrace any of them 100% herself.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2010 11:53PM by Splash90.

Doesn't it seem like every cult is based on something that's a good idea or a benign belief, and then takes that idea or belief to a ridiculous and ultimately harmful extreme?

Quote
The Anticult
BUT BUT BUT, The Secret goes 100x farther than that, and claims you ATTRACT EVERYTHING in your life. There are posts on the Oprah forum, where some of The Secret fanatics are literally telling people in wheelchairs, that they ATTRACTED the accident that put them there. Some of the wheelchair folks were getting very angry and hurt, understandably. Its nuts.

Again, talk about Mind Control. The idea behind The Secret, New Thought, claims that if you are having any bad experiences in life, you created them through your Consciousness. So to stop them, you have to stop thinking about them completely, and they will vanish.
They say, if you have doubt, you create doubt. So you are not allowed to doubt, and must only try to Believe 100%.
This is a mental Catch-22 mindf*ck of the highest order, as it disallows any critical thinking whatsoever.

I posted the following copied Wikipedia item on the Impact Trainings thread, but it should also be included here. This is the first new information on David Schirmer that I have been able to find in a long time.

Copied material follows:


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (April 2009)

David Schirmer is an Australian whose career has become noteworthy for a number of reasons. In 2006, he became infamous because of his association with the DVD release of The Secret, a documentary about the concept of the Law of Attraction, a fundamental principle of the New Thought movement which had begun in the United States with people like Ralf Waldo Emerson and writer Walace D Wattles. When The Secret became something of a hit internationally, Schirmer, as the only Australian contributor, received considerable attention in the media.However, Schirmer's time in the spot light changed when TV program A Current Affair confronted him with a group of dissatisfied customers from his past, and accused him of being a confidence-trickster. With story titles like The Secret Con and The Secret Scam, the ACA program continued to pursue Schirmer with claims that he owed money to people. The exact nature of the accusations was not made clear on the TV program but there have been determinations in the Victorian Supreme Court finding Schirmer guilty of all charges and sentenced. However he remains a free man. Also a number of blogs also appeared on the internet, claiming to shed further light on Schirmer. Since this controversy, David Schirmer has continued to work in the area of personal training. He has run a number of financial seminars (where all those in attendance sign a legal disclaimer in which they declare that they recognise the seminar is for educational purposes only). These seminars typically involve the concept of The Law of Attraction and related success and achievement theories, as well as Schirmer's basic theories about the stock market. Schirmer's other activities include working with children and his local Christian Church. He remains a controversial figure with a number of Court decisions still to be handed down, but in recent times, with his low profile , public attention and interest has begun to wane.

On 23 June 2010 the Australia Securities and Investment Commission placed a notice on their frontpage website as follows:

"10-130AD ASIC bans Victorian man from providing financial services for life Wednesday 23 June 2010 Former contributor to the popular self-help product The Secret, Mr David Gary Schirmer of Warrandyte, Victoria, has been permanently banned from providing financial services following an ASIC investigation.ASIC found Mr Schirmer had failed to comply with financial services laws in relation to the promotion, operation and delivery of a trading and wealth creation program known as the ‘Platinum Super Traders’ (Platinum program). The Platinum program was operated by Mr Schirmer and Platinum Super Traders Pty Ltd.

ASIC found that between August 2004 and December 2006 Mr Schirmer: provided financial services on behalf of another person who carried on a financial services business while not being authorised to do so engaged in conduct in relation to a financial product or financial service that was misleading or deceptive, or was likely to mislead or deceive failed to act in accordance with representations made by him to participants in the 2005 and 2006 Platinum programs made false statements to participants in the 2005 and 2006 Platinum programs, and engaged in dishonest conduct.

ASIC found that rather than disclosing difficulties he was facing with aspects of the Platinum program, Mr Schirmer chose to deceive Platinum participants and deliberately prepared and provided them with a false document.

ASIC’s action against Mr Schirmer reinforces its commitment to protecting retail investors and financial consumers by removing individuals who don’t possess the honesty and integrity necessary to discharge their duties and obligations as financial services providers."

Ah, don't get me started on Oprah...

Where to begin? I think Splash90 said it beautifully! Over-enthusiasm is right on. She pretends to be all humble dignity but it all sounds so fake, and her audience takes her so seriously. Didn't Rhonda Byrne come out with another book? She'll be promoting that next... just wait...