William Henry Wades Through the Deep Woo

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Recently on his radio show Revelations, William Henry discussed some of the challenges of sorting truth from fantasy in the alternative media marketplace with Randy Maugans. The resulting episode, "Hypesters, Lies and Mind Control" could just as easily have been called "William Henry and guest gently take the piss out of David Wilcock." I've been observing this trend in Henry's work for a while. He has been increasingly critical of his colleagues in the broader new age arena. It started with a kind of confusion and has gradually grown into dismay as his questions about the integrity of people in his milieu have grown. I notice it, in part, because I experienced similar disillusionment with teachers and colleagues in the psychic and healing arena I inhabit. There are people in my field with whom I respectfully disagree, which is fine. But I was also startlingly disabused, many years ago, of the notion that my fellow travelers were universally well-intended. I learned to my horror that some of them were self-serving and mercenary. I'm not going to say that Henry has reached the same conclusion but he's been noticeably shocked at the misuse and misrepresentation of his own work and has begun to publicly question the motives of some of his colleagues. In a recently posted interview, Henry talked about someone who had grossly distorted his work regarding the Capital Building. I'm wondering now if he meant Wilcock. He never expressly says it. But if you read between the lines... I don't know. Maybe.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should state that I have simply never been comfortable with David Wilcock. I learned about him some years ago in the context of his claim that he just might be the reincarnation of Edgar Cayce -- something from which he has more recently tried to distance himself. I listened to a lecture of his on YouTube. Much of it was interesting, if not original. It seemed to be based on solid, esoteric research. But when he started showing pictures of Cayce and his circle of friends and comparing those to pictures of himself and his circle of friends, I winced. It's not just the absurdity of using physical resemblance as a marker of reincarnation. It was something else -- the palpable sense that David Wilcock did not believe David Wilcock. In short, my bullshit detector went off. Now that's a purely intuitive response on my part and I'm not claiming to know Wilcock's heart. I don't know him at all. But I've learned the hard way that when the little hairs on the back of my stand up, I ignore that instinctual response at my peril. I would always implore others to listen to their own intuition and never trust my gut response over their own. So if you love Wilcock's work and think he's awesome, I would never try to disabuse you of that on my say-so. And I would never say that his work has no value. Some of it is quite interesting.



That said, Wilcock's antics this past December raised many a pair of eyebrows. His claims of a death threat are touched upon in this discussion. I became aware of the debate over this in one of Clif High's typically cryptic postings. High can be very frustrating to read because he rarely contextualizes these things. You're either dialed into the woo as he is and fully aware of the preamble, or you're not. I'm not. So I did a little googling to find out what he was talking about and was kind of horrified. I'd present my findings if the computer I was on at the time WAS WORKING but it's not. (But enough about me and my daily irritations.) If you're curious, the search criteria would be something like David Wilcock, death threat, Project Camelot. Like much regarding Wilcock, this incident left me with a deduction of "patently absurd" and I walked away with another check in the "things that validate my intuitive distrust of Wilcock" column.

In this very frank discussion, Henry and Maugans say some things that need to be said. Whether you're looking at the main stream media or the woo-woo, alternative media on the internet, you need to question and evaluate everything. That means thinking critically but it also means listening to the still, small voice. What makes it hard is not so much, as Henry implied recently, that we want to believe what we want to believe and don't want to be bothered with troublesome facts. It's that human beings are creatures of narrative. We like to think we seek facts but the truth is that the items that fit our personal narrative, we accept. The ones that don't get sloughed off, sometimes without our even noticing it. It's human nature and it's something we have to stay in check with by constantly subjecting our own beliefs to critical analysis. We all have an inherent tendency to keep validating our own beliefs while disregarding things that call our beliefs into question. We also have to be really careful about giving our power away to people who we think know so much more than we do. If you find yourself accepting every word another person says, something is very wrong. They're all just people.