James Ray: Felon

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

James Ray Sports Guru-do Upon Release

James Arthur Ray will remain a convicted felon. Arizona's Court of Appeals has granted Ray's request of last week to drop his appeal. It appears that he weighed an attempt at clearing the conviction from his record against the very real possibility of being convicted again in any potential retrial and facing more than the paltry sentence he's already served. He's opted not to risk his recently gained freedom from incarceration.

In documents filed with the Arizona Court of Appeals Thursday, Ray, 55, signed an affidavit stating that he wishes to "avoid any possibility of a retrial and a resentencing."

Had he not dropped the appeal, oral arguments would have begun today. He would have also faced a cross-appeal from the State claiming, among other things, that the jury should have been informed of Ray's duty to act when participants were in distress.

Tom Kelly is unhappy with Ray's decision to let the matter drop.

His local attorney during the trial, Tom Kelly, said he was less than pleased with his former client's decision to abort the appeal. He said he met with Ray, who has remained in the Phoenix area pending the end of his parole, earlier this week.

"I was disappointed with his decision and I believe justice requires a resolution of the points raised on appeal," Kelly said.

But since it appears that Kelly's passion for "justice" seems not to include his continued representation of the harmonically destitute Ray, who cares.

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Announcing: The James Arthur Ray Sweat Lodge Trial

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

As you know, James Arthur Ray was released from prison last Friday. In honor of this inauspicious occasion, I'm unveiling The James Arthur Ray Sweat Lodge Trial page. I've been slowly organizing all the material from the Sweat Lodge Trial into a more easily navigable index, with a table of contents and a glossary of terms.

I started this project a little while after James Arthur Ray went to jail. It proved more challenging than I'd expected. It's not the busy work of it. I find that it forces me to relive the trial which, as it turns out, was even more emotionally grueling than I'd remembered. But think of it as a work in progress as I keep chipping away at it.

I welcome feedback and suggestions.

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He's Baaaaack!

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Later today James Arthur Ray, possessor of The Secret, motivational speaker,  and criminally negligent homicider, will ooze out of his prison cell and resume his career as a professional mover and shaker... or maybe he'll just sleep on someone's couch.

All,

I am hesitant to send this e-mail; however I just got off of the the phone with James and time is becoming critical. As I am sure most of you know, James is due to be released on July 12th and as a condition of his parole, must stay in Arizona for 110 days following his release. I have been consistently reaching out to James’ friends in an effort to find him some type of lodging for his short stay in Arizona. Unfortunately, any lodging must be approved by his parole officer prior to his release, and he has been told that renting an apartment, or staying in a hotel will most likely NOT be acceptable to the state of Arizona. That being said… we are desperately looking for some type of spare room in someone’s home, or an empty home that he could use for his short time on parole.

As I am sure all of you assume… this unfortunate situation has left James financially destitute, so we would not be able to pay much for either type of above lodging. The additional caveat would be that if it was an empty home, we would need to also find bare minimums on furniture (bed, couch, etc) that he would have access to.

The alternative to us NOT being able to find him lodging, would be that he would have to stay in a “group home” (or halfway house) with other recently released prisoners. Although we all hope that newly released prisoners come into society with the intentions of leading a reformed life, the reality is that these halfway homes tend to be full of drugs, theft, and violence. James is simply hoping for a place to have solitude, and a location that he can begin to re-acclimate to life as we all know.



Once again… I apologize in sending out this straight to the point e-mail; however, I have simply exhausted my and James’ resources (me being 1200 miles away) and now am counting on the universe to guide someone to the right resource to help us in this desperate situation.

My love and respect to all of you that have already done so much for James. I truly believe each of us has tremendous hearts and want the best for James as his “new life” begins upon his release.

My best to all, and thanks in advance!

Jon C. Ray”

So now James and his brother Jon are counting on the universe to come through in the clinch, after it somehow left them desperate and destitute. And here I thought James Arthur Ray knew The Secret and all about "how the universe works." How did he get into this predicament? Oh, right. He killed three people because he didn't know enough about how life on earth works to not stuff them inside a hellish inferno.

Christine Whelan of USA Today is betting on Ray's getting right back in the saddle. Once a pitchman, always a pitchman She makes the point that he's never really stopped. Causing multiple deaths and serious injuries at his seminars wasn't enough to make him fold up his tent. He had to be told by his good friend Bob "How the Hell Does Electricity Work?" Proctor that it was in really bad taste to keep doing seminars before the bodies were even cold. He even teamed up with another convicted felon, while he was still in prison, to charge people money for advice on how to become a success. 

Let's face it. Common sense and dignity aren't really James Ray's long suit, so it's not so surprising that he'd have his brother go begging like a panhandler to a list of people who paid him tens of thousands of dollars for his stellar advice on how to achieve "harmonic wealth."

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Dethroning the Hierophant

Article first published as Dethroning the Hierophant on Blogcritics.

A few years ago, I observed that the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was hitting a critical point, as a glut of news reports was beginning to directly implicate the Vatican. I suggested then that what was happening in the Catholic Church was an indicator of the dismantling of hierarchical systems more broadly and that in the Motherpeace Tarot, such patriarchal, spiritual authority is represented by the Hierophant.

At its root, the word "hierophant" means bringer to light of sacred things. In the traditional Tarot, the Hierophant represents a priest or Pope, the paternal religious authority.... Representing a hierarchical view of religion, the Hierophant stands on a pedestal, raised up from the earth, above the common person. In the Motherpeace image, he has taken over the robes and skirt of the High Priestess, along with her breasts which symbolize her sacred power, but he has forsaken her "Sophia" or wisdom.... The authority of the Hierophant is based, in large part, on repression of women and the natural instincts that women symbolize.

The The Motherpeace Tarot Playbook explains how to read the card when it comes up in a spread.

The Hierophant represents spiritual authority. He represents ritual and ceremonial magic which manifests as organized religion in this culture. Or he represents the psychic control exercised by mostly male, authority figures in our culture, such as psychiatrists, gurus, doctors and courtroom judges. Since he is also the internalized parent or superego authority, he represents conventional morality.

The text goes on to explain how to read this card when it presents as reversed, or ill-dignified.

The reversal shows a full-scale rebellion. You can no longer tolerate external roles and conventional morality; you have begun to call on your deeper conscience for advice You are able to stop kneeling to the priest or the doctor or the father, choosing instead to take your own advice, heed your own counsel.

I believe that this is the fight that is now full-on. After several years of observing and cataloging the scandals and failures of leadership in the Catholic Church, as well as the public break-down of other patriarchal, spiritual groups -- James Ray International, Warren Jeffs's FLDS, and even the strange, little splinter group of Amish in Bergholz, Ohio -- I see followers in even some very unexpected religious contexts beginning to take their power back. More recently there have been upheavals in organizations as diverse as Scientology and a prominent Zen Buddhist organization.

What I have found particularly moving in these cases is the courage of women who are standing up to religious abusers, often with little to no support, and sometimes, at great personal risk. It is after all, women and children who suffer the most in oppressive, patriarchal systems. It is axiomatic in these institutions, large and small, that women and teen girls are sexually exploited. Only in the Catholic Church -- with it's ostensibly celibate priesthood and apparently overflowing gay closet -- did such abuse of women take a back seat to the abuse of children.

On February 11, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world when he announced his resignation. For all the apologia about this being a reasoned decision by a reasonable man, nothing changes the fact that it stands centuries old tradition on its head. Benedict's seismic action takes place at one of the most tenuous times in the Church's history -- a period pointed to by prophecy that it takes far more seriously than it publicly admits. I think it would be hard to overstate the importance of this turn of events and that it speaks to a greater realignment of world power. The patriarchal authority represented by the iconic, hierophantic position of the pope, God's representative on earth from the time of St. Peter, has been so eroded that it is now a job you can quit.

We'll probably never know everything that factored into Benedict's decision, but it is arguable that he really is just exhausted -- that he is too old and sick to weather the hard rain that has begun to fall on the Church. Over the past eight years, he has presided over a Church in steep decline -- one that has lost the moral authority to hold the respect of even one of the most Catholic countries in the world: Ireland.

In an interconnected world of instant media, a Church that has spent decades and billions of dollars concealing crimes and protecting pedophiles at the expense of children has found itself unable to quell the outrage. Such deference to authority has reached its expiration date. And in that respect, the Catholic Church finds itself in good company, as religions big and small face a new level of scrutiny and an inability to stifle the dissent.

LRH aka., L. Ron Hubbard
Father of the Church of Scientology

The Church of Scientology, for instance, had a good run. They managed for some time to effectively silence their critics and intimidate the press. In the popular imagination, Scientology has long been something of a joke. The bizarre antics of celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Allie, have made it seem glamorous and funny at the same time. Sure, they're kooky, but no one's getting hurt -- except perhaps financially. But there is a very dark side to Scientology -- a grotesque underbelly that only avid Scientology watchers have been aware of for years. Locals in the Clearwater, Florida area tell tales of an obvious cult in their midst, with slave-like conditions and rumors of disappearances. With the burgeoning of the internet, sites like Operation Clambake began to collect documentation of secret beliefs and evidence of abuse and mind control. But many former Scientologists have been too afraid to tell their stories. Threats of litigation, cutting people off from family, surveillance, character assassination, and other intimidation tactics kept the majority of Scientology's critics quiet.

Over the past few years things have begun to open up and Scientology's ruthless message discipline seems to be breaking down. Former members are becoming more emboldened and the Tampa Bay Times started a landmark series on their neighbor across the bay. And now, suddenly, it's open season on the Church of Scientology. They are facing a multipronged media attack. Books by prominent authors have drawn major press coverage and a thinly veiled biopic of L. Ron Hubbard drew the ire of Scientologists.

The open disgruntlement of followers, disenchanted after having turned over huge sums for a dubious real estate scheme, has people seriously questioning whether this is the beginning of the end for an organization claiming a massive expansion. Some of the major funders of Ideal Org building purchases and renovations have become angry enough over a venture that has only seemed to enrich the central organization that they are suing.

A new book, Going Clear, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lawrence Wright has been making the rounds and making waves, but one of the most damning critiques is coming from Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige's own niece. In Beyond Belief, Jenna Miscavige Hill tells her story of what could fairly be described as a childhood of slave labor and teen years spent under cruel oppression.

Scientology seems like an equal opportunity abuser but, as is so typical, women and children are subject to extraordinary control and exploitation -- particularly in their religious order Sea Org. Women sacrifice their reproductive freedom. Marriage within the order is accepted as long as couples agree not to have children. Women who get pregnant are coerced into aborting or put into filthy rehabilitation centers where they are forced into hard, physical labor, and other conditions that are decidedly unsafe for pregnant women.

Children of Sea Org parents, like third-generation Scientologist Miscavige Hill, are also a cheap labor force. She spent her early childhood on "the Ranch," receiving a minimal Scientology-only education and putting in a six day week of hard, physical labor. These small children do mainly construction and landscaping, wielding dangerous equipment and hauling rocks and dirt. She rarely saw her parents and all her phone conversations with them were supervised. At age 7 she signed one of Sea Org's thousand year contracts and took on even more adult responsibilities.

Her parents left first and the then 16 year old Miscavige Hill's connection to these SPs (suppressive persons) made her suspect. She was subject to even more restrictive control. Later, she chose to leave as well, risking her marriage to Dallas Hill, who was threatened with separation from his own very committed Scientologist family. They are now both out of Scientology and have done many things that they could not have done had they remained -- like read anti-Scientology literature and procreate. They have two children, Winnie and Archie.

Miscavage Hill also created exscientologykids.com with Kendra Wiseman and Astra Woodcraft. Woodcraft was also a Sea Org member, married at 15 to a man five years her senior, she spent a harrowing youth of emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and molestation -- something the Church of Scientology covers up so effectively the Catholic Church could only be envious.

At 19 Woodcraft resolved to exit Scientology. She did this by deliberately violating the rules. She got pregnant and refused to abort. Her choice has cut her off from her husband, the father of her child, and her own mother, but left her with a real life and a beautiful daughter. In this interview, she, along with her father and sister, provide a damning portrait of life deep inside the Church of Scientology. She goes into graphic detail on her lack of education, excessive and bizarre responsibilities, and emotional torment. No one could listen to this story and come to the conclusion that the Church of Scientology is anything but a dangerous, mind-control cult.

Warren Jeffs ~ Incarcerated Leader & Prophet of FLDS

Also in disarray is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS. Leader Warren Jeffs is serving out a life sentence in a Texas prison for sexually abusing underage girls -- some of his many "celestial wives." While he maintains a stranglehold on the church community, he is simultaneously destroying it. Excommunications, draconian restrictions like a no sex edict, and ignoring legal moves against his many properties, appear to have resulted in a dwindling footprint. It's hard to say how many are excommunicated, how many may have deserted, and how many are being deliberately relocated to secret locations.

What is certain is that state and local authorities around Jeffs's most developed communities are using a variety of legal maneuvers to effectively put him out of business. Texas, which successfully prosecuted him for sexual abuse, is now moving to seize the sprawling Yearning for Zion ranch on the grounds that it was used as a base for illegal operations. Arizona is pressing forward with attempts to reign in what it insists is a crooked Marshal's Office in the border towns of Colorado City, AZ and Hilldale, UT. Despite one failed legislative attempt to dissolve the force, the State is pressing forward.

In January Arizona's AG Tom Horne introduced Ruby Jessop to the press. This courageous woman has fought long and hard to regain her freedom and her children. Forced into marriage at 14, and relocated numerous times to hide her from her outspoken, apostate sister Flora Jessop, she at long last escaped and won temporary custody of her six children.

Ruby, it is claimed, was forced not only to marry her own step-brother, but to have sex with other men, as well. Flora, who had also been forced into marriage as a child, spoke for Ruby.

Twelve years ago, I got a call from my sister who has 14 years old [stet] and had been placed in an arranged marriage. She had managed to get away and I gave her a promise that I would do everything I could to keep her safe. Then, before I could get to her and get her help, she disappeared and was taken back into the group.

. . .

Ruby is one of thousands that have been trapped and abused and held under the regime of Warren Jeffs and she is just so happy to be out and her children are excited and able to go to a school for the first time. To watch them play with toys and learn to become children has just been amazing.

It is women like Flora and Ruby Jessop, in open rebellion against the sex slavery of Jeffs's FLDS, who are tearing through the fabric of his empire.

In one of the most repressive lifestyles extant in the United States (and Canada), women and girls who've known no other life are finding their voices and telling their horrible stories of rape, abuse, and virtual imprisonment. In 2007 Elissa Wall, who was forced by Jeffs to marry her first cousin when she was 14, testified in a Utah court. Jeffs was convicted as an accomplice to rape. That conviction was later overturned on a technicality. But Wall went on to write a book about her experiences within FLDS. It bears mentioning that she and Jenna Miscavige Hill had the same co-author, Lisa Pulitzer.

While Jeffs was awaiting that trial in Utah, he reportedly contacted William E. Jessop, confessed to incest and pedophilia, and attempted to hand him the reigns of FLDS. He reneged but Jessop has gone on to start his own church -- one which allows for polygamy, or "celestial marriage," but prohibits the institutionalized sex abuse of adolescent girls. So Jeffs has also created a competitor who, at least appears to be rejecting the flesh trade which has long defined the sect.

Jeffs was convicted in Texas due in no small part to the testimony of people he'd molested as children. One was his niece, Jerusha Jeffs, who told the court that he'd molested her when she was just 7 years old. No longer in FLDS, she now counsels others who are trying to break from the sect.

Others who had been molested by Jeffs testified in Texas, including his nephew Brent, who told the court about being raped by Jeffs when he was only 5. There is no overstating the courage it takes to stand up to your abuser like that... and put a stop to him.

Samuel Mullet ~ Incarcerated Bishop of the Bergholz Amish

Bishop Samuel Mullet had his comeuppance in a federal court. He will likely serve most if not all of the remainder of his life in prison. He was convicted for masterminding a series of hate crimes against other Amish. Members of his breakaway sect in Bergholz, Ohio, waged a reign of terror against their Amish critics, attacking them with hair clippers. Cutting the beards of Amish men and the hair of Amish women is an assault on their understanding of the Bible and goes to the core of their Amish identity.

There was plenty of evidence of Mullet's complicity in the attacks, even though he sat safely in his home as they were happening. The hair of the victims and other trophies were presented to him by the attackers. Photos of the attacks were recovered from his property. There were even very damning jailhouse recordings. But federal prosecutors proved their case largely by establishing the degree of mental and emotional control Mullet had over the members of his community.

Jurors learned of draconian punishments for vague infractions. Men were subjected to beatings and forced to sleep in a chicken coop. Women were coerced into sexual relationships with Mullet, a form of "counseling" to "cleanse them of the devil."

His own daughter-in-law testified to Mullet's insistence that she live in his house while her husband was in a mental ward recovering from a nervous breakdown. Mullet blamed her for his son's mental state and insisted that if he could just teach her to have sex properly, she'd be a better wife. When she balked, he informed her that "the other ladies" did as they were told. When she refused to continue with this twisted arrangement, he called her a whore.

Lovina Miller, the wife of Mullet's nephew Eli, may have become pregnant while she was receiving her "sexual counseling." She was found in Mullet's bedroom when the FBI was raiding the property.

Both judge and jury seemed satisfied that the multiple abuses and indignities Mullet heaped upon his followers only served to bend them to his will and bind them to his purposes. One hopes that while he serves his sentence, his remaining followers will awaken from the spell of this most unlikely charismatic leader.

James Arthur Ray ~ Incarcerated... For Now

It is somewhat ironic that another charismatic leader -- who was convicted for causing the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman -- is serving a much shorter sentence than Bishop Mullet did for ordering haircuts. In fact he will probably be getting out presently. The law is a rather clumsy instrument. Still, after sitting through a four month trial -- thanks to the wonders of our electronic age -- I was gratified that he was convicted and sentenced, if inadequately.

In a trial, and ensuing coverage, that I cataloged pretty thoroughly, we learned a great deal about the degree of psychological control Mr. Ray exerted on people who paid him an awful lot of money:

• How he played at being God with the power over life and death
• How he denied them food and water for thirty-six hours in the desert
• How he repeatedly degraded them by controlling their bodily functions and elimination
• How he broke them down through sleep deprivation
• How he leveraged their emotional vulnerabilities
• How he compelled them to drudge up their sexual histories and traumas
• How he sexually and emotionally exploited groupies
• How he intimidated them into cutting off all their hair
• How he made them walk the edge of a cliff blindfolded
• How he publicly shamed them if they tried to leave a dangerously superheated environment
• How he sat calmly in the shade and shrugged as people were dying

Joshu Sasaki ~ Founder of the Mount Baldy Zen Center

In the very different world of Zen Buddhism, another prolific molester has also, at long last been brought to heel. For decades, the inappropriateness of the legendary Joshu Sasaki was an open secret. Women who complained about being groped and sexually coerced were ignored, even shunned.

It took several men in positions of authority to break the silence and force the community to take the problem seriously. They took a lot of abuse, themselves, for doing so. The story broke wide when Adam Tebbe, editor of the online magazine Sweeping Zen, published a piece by Joshu Martin. Martin was taught and ordained by Sasaki and has gone on to run the Victoria Zen Center in Vancouver. Many used his competitor status to dismiss his accusations. But his piece was followed by a painfully detailed article by Giko David Rubin, who had spent years in Sasaki's service as a priest and personal translator.

An independent council of Zen teachers then collected stories and statements from the survivors of Sasaki's abuse. There was a snowballing of media attention, including a feature in the New York Times. A Sasaki Archive was set up to compile the articles and statements and provide a record of the scandal.

At the ripe old age of 105, Sasaki is unlikely to face any real consequences for his years of abuse, other than the damage to his reputation and legacy. In the years that stopping him would have really mattered and protected unaware women from victimization, radio silence was strictly enforced.

As with the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church, the way the organization enabled the abuser in their midst for decades is as horrifying as the abuse itself. The monks who served Sasaki, when confronted by women who'd been violated and degraded, shrugged it off or told them they should just go ahead and show him their breasts... because, eh, why not?

Even those, within his organization, who tried to get him to stop met stiff resistance from the monks and lies and evasions from Sasaki -- something Giko David Rubin learned through painful experience.

Even now, some of the apologia for Sasaki's behavior is stunning. It forms what Michael Sigman terms a "counter-narrative." It really just continues a long kept inner tradition in Rinzai-ji of accepting a certain duality in their leader. Monk Bob Mammoser told the New York Times:

“What’s important and is overlooked is that, besides this aspect, Roshi was a commanding and inspiring figure using Buddhist practice to help thousands find more peace, clarity and happiness in their own lives. It seems to be the kind of thing that, you get the person as a whole, good and bad, just like you marry somebody and you get their strengths and wonderful qualities as well as their weaknesses.”

Sure. If you're gonna make an omelet, ya gotta break a few ova.

It's interesting that Mammoser chooses marriage as a metaphor because this is exactly the kind of thing that  happens in some families of sexual abusers. In many cases, spouses and other family members know the abuse is happening and look the other way because they rely on the abuser's income... or because they are more besotted with the abuser than with their children.

This dependency was something Sasaki exploited whenever he faced serious confrontation from some of his monks. He would simply threaten to take his leadership and his teaching away from them and they would fall in line.

Sazaki was protected by an army of followers who aggressively stifled any hint of uprising. Sandy Stewart, whose wife Susanna was one of many women he knew to have been abused, was actually lured back into Rinzai-ji with promises that the abuse had stopped. When he learned that it had not, he wrote a letter to the board. The result was a deluge of hate mail. Said Stewart, "People … thought I was stupid and crazy. They said, 'Have you no respect?' and said I should be lashed and beaten."

Others tried to protect Sasaki from himself, even going so far as to try to arrange a marriage for him, in the vain hope that he could restrict his attention to a single pair of breasts. The attempt was unsuccessful.

Even the masthead on the Sasaki Archive appears to be apologia for his behavior -- either that or some very strange attempt at irony. The two quotes enshrined there are one generally laudatory one and a statement which appears to be from one of the very small minority of women who welcomed Sasaki's advances. In addition to being not at all representative of the overall content, the quote is virtually unsourced. It's excerpted from a comment by an unnamed woman which was claimed by a Sasaki apologist to have appeared on Eshu Martin's Facebook page. Out of all the pained statements from women who were brave enough to give testimony to Sasaki's abuse, this is the quote that appears at the top of the website cataloging the scandal: "I 'suffered Roshi's abuse' – and it was the closest I ever got to god."

Needless to say, the bulk of the material on the archive and in the council report does not present Sasaki in such glowing terms. Their voices are better summed up by the poem of Chizuko Karen Joy Tasaka, who did not live to see her teacher forced finally to face the music. What follows is an excerpt:

my friend—she was inji sex with roshi she tried to say no  you demanded, demanded, demanded  demon demand the force of a tornado sex with roshi for whose best interest? I told you I don’t like it. I asked you why you do this? You said, “nonattachment, nonattachment, you nonattachment I told you as shoji, “women very angry, very upset” I asked you why you do this. You said: “Be good daughter to roshi, and good wife to G.  [her husband]. Roshi, that is incest So many women trying to shake the shame from their voices of Sex with roshi We came to you with the trust of a student You were our teacher You betrayed us You violated our bodies You rape our souls

Sasaki is a classic Hierophant, as defined in Motherpeace. He presented himself as a gateway to enlightenment. The same could be said of any of these spiritual leaders and many more like them. To their students and followers, they are intermediaries between themselves and the ineffable world of spirit. Whether the goal is heaven, nirvana, or simply a more purposeful life, human beings have, throughout recorded history, felt incapable of achieving those goals on their own. We've relied on gurus, priests, and other teachers, not as wayshowers, but as the way. They held the secrets. They kept them close to the vest. And to attain them, people accepted again and again a devil's bargain.

This is the dark side of patriarchy. Human beings are commodities to exploit financially, sexually, and spiritually. Women and children are less than people -- second class citizens reduced to their bodies. They are devoured in these systems.

Invariably, enough people know about outrageous abuses that the abusers could be stopped... but they aren't. Human beings are sacrificed to maintain a power structure that people believe will set them free. All the while, they are becoming more enmeshed, more ensnared, in the world of illusion -- willingly pulling the wool over their own eyes. But the veil is slipping.

"The kingdom of God is within you." ~ Luke 17:21

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

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Three Years Ago Today...

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

In Memory of James Shore, Kirby Brown, and Liz Neuman

Today I find myself contemplating where I was and what I was doing when I first learned of the sweat lodge tragedy that took the lives of James Shore, Kirby Brown, and, ultimately, Liz Neuman. I was enjoying the long weekend with my husband's family when I read about the shocking deaths in the news. I thought, what a horrible, horrible accident. I was only barely aware of James Arthur Ray and thought his crime to be one of the kind of ignorance so typical of The Secret, with its stripped down versions of complex myths and traditions.

I was wrong. Ray's actions and inactions were so much worse than I could have ever imagined. The James Ray I came to know through watching every broadcast moment of a very long trial was a power thief who exploited the vulnerabilities of wonderful, beautiful people -- those who died and those who courageously testified about what they had experienced under his tutelage. Ray's was a very long trail of wreckage leading up to that stunning tragedy in the Arizona desert.

A year ago, I found myself waiting seemingly endlessly for the sentencing of James Arthur Ray, found guilty by a jury of his peers for causing these three deaths. Then as now my heart goes out to the family and friends of three very bright lights, snuffed out because of James Ray's recklessness. It goes out the family and friends of Colleen Conaway who also came to a tragic end at a James Ray seminar. And it goes out to the many people who were injured physically or emotionally by Ray's myriad abuses. Blessings and peace to you all.

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Goateed Easter Island Head Tony Robbins

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Stephen Colbert's take-down of Tony Robbins and his firewalk fiasco is a must see. Hilarious!!! I do have one small concern: That James Ray will see this -- when he gets out of jail -- and steal some of Colbert's ideas. Can't you just hear Ray telling people that they need to "play full on" as they're rolling in a pit of broken glass? I know I can.

But you know what strikes me? Tony Robbins charges less for seminars than James Ray. And he apparently offers a range of rates based on different levels of access. I also found this which shows a top rate of about half of what James Ray charged for the Spiritual Warrior seminar which was about half as long and killed three people. I'm sure Robbins's income is greater -- many, many more people. James Ray, on the other hand, groomed a substantially smaller following and used a variety of mind manipulation techniques to soak their credit cards for vast sums. You know what else I noticed looking at Robbins's website? He has a clear refund policy... as opposed to a strict no refund policy. If you don't like a Robbins event, you can turn in your materials and get a refund. Compare that to being constantly reminded that you paid a lot of money if you don't want to participate in an activity or you choose to leave. No one got a refund from James Ray. Not even the people he cooked to death.

I say none of this because I think Tony Robbins is a really great guy. And I'd rather roll around in broken glass than go to one of his events. I say it because it puts into such sharp relief what a horrible, awful, dangerous person James Ray is by comparison.

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Tony Robbins's Firewalk Goes Awry

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Oh boy. Here we go again. Tony Robbins, the man James Ray wants so desperately to be, has landed himself in a little hot water of his own. At least 21 people suffered bad burns while attempting one of his firewalks at a seminar in San Jose, California. Most had second and third degree burns. Three went to hospital. The screams of "agony" were described as sounding like people were being "tortured." So, pretty horrible.

To his credit, unlike Ray, Robbins had medical staff on hand in case of emergency. There was also a fire inspector on scene and the proper permitting had been done. And when the medical staff became overwhelmed, the fire inspector was able to call in the fire department for additional support. So no one died. People were treated promptly. No one, to my knowledge, was told it was all "mind over matter," that they were "better than that," or that they were having a "breakthrough," as the blisters formed on their feet. It was treated like the medical emergency that it was. Robbins has been doing these things for thirty years without major incident. So that's all good.

Also, to be fair, Robbins Research International claims that 6,000 people walked the coals Thursday evening. Twenty-one out of 6,000 is practically decimal dust. But I still have to wonder what the point of this little exercise is.

Walking across hot coals on lanes measuring 10 feet long and heated to between 1,200 to 2,000 degrees provides attendees an opportunity to "understand that there is absolutely nothing you can't overcome," according to the motivational speaker's website.

What's the message, then, when you end up in hospital with third degree burns? That you're not so good at overcoming things?



Henry Guasch, who got burned at another event, blames his state of mind.

"Overcoming something like that, it's a breakthrough," he said, adding that he did slow his pace in the middle of the field and got a minor burn.

Guasch and Andrew Brenner, another fire walker, both said that the keys to not getting singed are faith and concentration.

"I did it before, didn't get into the right state and got burned," Brenner said. "I knew I wasn't at my peak state. I didn't take it as serious."

But the success or failure of a firework really comes down to simple physics.

David Willey, a physics instructor at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in Pennsylvania, has published a text and video on the physics of firewalking and stated that it "does not need a particular state of mind."

"Rather, it is the short time of contact and the low thermal capacity and conductivity of the coals that is important," he wrote. He added that ash that builds up on coals can provide further insulation.

Guash slowed down. He got burned. It's really that simple. Robbins could just as easily tell people that wood is a bad conductor and that if they walk quickly, they'll be fine. But I don't think he could charge as much money or call it a personal empowerment exercise if he did.

In most cases, firewalks are safe, and Robbins took the appropriate precautions to deal with the outliers. But he's selling a placebo as if it were a real drug.

San Jose Fire Department Capt. Reggie Williams, who oversaw much of the emergency response, was reported as saying that they do not recommend firewalks.

"We discourage people from walking over hot coals," Williams said.

That's probably sound.

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The James Ray Appeal

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Well, I felt this coming for the past two days. So, I'm not even a little surprised we're here. I guess it's nice that they're filing the appeal before Ray's released from his teeny-tiny sentence. I just have one question. Who is Daniel Collins, Esquire? Where's Luis Li? Where's Tom Kelly? Where's that valley girl... oh, what's her name... Truc Do? I'm guessing it's this Daniel Collins from Phoenix who spends 70% of his billable hours on bankruptcy and other credit related cases. Hmmm...

Writing in the brief, attorney Daniel Collins said, "Ray is entitled to a new trial because the trial court erroneously instructed the jury on omissions, and then compounded that error by defining 'duty' in a manner squarely prohibited by settled Arizona case law."

. . .

Collins argued that, if there was a duty at all, it would have been with James Ray International Inc., which failed to have enough medical personnel at the scene, didn't have a defibrillator, inadequate training, and failed to require medical exams for the participants.

Oh, right: JRI. The company in which every corporate office was held by James Ray. (Those meetings must have been fun: Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich.) Now where's Tom Kelly's giant company chart?



Here's the nuts and bolts:

• A secret meeting was held between the prosecution and medical examiners to convince them that the victims died of heatstroke instead of toxins released inside the steamy sweat lodge;

• A doctor who had no qualifications to determine the cause of death of the victims - he is an osteopath, not a medical doctor - testified, based on research he had done on websites Wikipedia and eMedicine, that toxins could not have been the cause;

• A prosecution witness who, it turned out, would have said the design of the sweat lodge itself was at fault was dropped. The defense was told he had not prepared a report to that effect, when he had;

• The state failed to disclose to the defense its "theory of the crime," a constitutional right, in a timely fashion.

Here's the thing. Osteopaths may not be MDs but they are medical doctors and they are licensed in every state to do what MDs do. In fact, any distinction at all is disappearing.

Osteopathic medicine is a branch of the medical profession in the United States. Osteopathic physicians are licensed to practice medicine and surgery in all 50 states and are recognized in fifty-five other countries, including all Canadian provinces.

. . .

In the 21st century, the training of osteopathic physicians in the United States is very similar to that of their M.D. counterparts.^[2] Osteopathic physicians attend four years of medical school followed by at least three years of residency. They use all conventional methods of diagnosis and treatment. Though still trained in Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM),^[3] the modern derivative of Still's techniques,^[4][5] a minority of osteopathic physicians use it in actual practice.^[6][7]

I don't know. Maybe Truc Do dropped in just long enough to butcher the medical stuff again. And to try to get even with her arch-nemesis, Dr. Dickson after he so thoroughly humiliated her. What a prick that guy is, what with all his knowing stuff. How dare a lowly D.O. be so much smarter than Do?

So funny. Just this morning I was sitting and sweating by the pool, waiting for my daughter to finish her lesson. And I couldn't stop thinking about the time I got stuck in the traffic  jam from hell in Phoenix for five hours and had to pick an extra night of hotel... in Yuma. I was thinking about how that was the home of Dr. Dickson and a whole lot of heatstroke. Synchronicities abound.

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Go Sheila!

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Sheila Polk, who successfully prosecuted James Arthur Ray in a trial I covered in excruciating detail, has won a well deserved, criminal justice award.

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Sullivan Polk will receive the 2012 Arizona State Bar Michael C. Cudahy Criminal Justice Award next week at the state bar convention.

The Cudahy Award honors "that criminal prosecutor who, during his or her career, has worked tirelessly to advance the principles of criminal justice by representing the public's interest with integrity, fairness, tenacity, creativity, brilliance, and above all, professionalism."

. . .

She has been personally involved in a training program called "What You Do Matters: Lessons from the Holocaust," which teaches Yavapai County law enforcement officers how Hitler's rise to power came about through the sometimes-unwitting help of local officials.

That last bit about the Holocaust, I did not know. But it makes sense. Polk proved herself exquisitely capable of exposing both the psychology of influence and the banality of evil when she took down that tinhorn dictator who baked people in an oven masquerading as a sweat lodge.

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The Secret of Scamworld

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." ~ The Princess Bride

Jason Jones does God's work. I became familiar with his brain child, The Salty Droid, when I was searching out information on James Arthur Ray and the horrible sweat lodge deaths that resulted from his hubris. I had found Ray to be one of the least interesting members of The Secret brain trust when I first began to publicly critique it. That Jason, aka Salty, had done his homework on this two bit, genie pimping conman, made his site a go to. And I enjoyed a lot of back and forth with that funny, little robot while I was blogging the sweat lodge trial.

The Salty Droid is brilliantly funny and has given me something of an education on the depths of  flim-flammery that infect a certain segment of this wacky new age arena I call home. Up to that point I had always thought of The Secret crowd and their ilk simply as purveyors of dangerously bad metaphysics. While I thought them excessively pecuniary in their focus, mostly I considered them ignorant. I was wrong. A number of them are grifters and The Secret is really just part of a long con.

The seamy underbelly of internet marketing is not really my beat... until it intersects with spiritual teaching. Then it is very much my concern. One of the things that initially caused me to break my silence on The Secret was the fact that I had clients beating themselves up for things like being sick. The victim blame inherent in that paradigm just makes people who haven't "manifested" the perfect life feel bad about themselves. Worse, it equates any form of adversity with spiritual failing. The part of this problem that I hadn't fully considered back then is that this really sets people up to have their pockets picked. And this is where the relentless "love and light" contingent of the new age meets the dark underworld of internet marketing.



It's a frighteningly good fit if you think about it. What do con artists do? They suss out your aspirations and your vulnerabilities. Then they leverage your vulnerabilities while holding out the promise that they can help you attain your aspirations: love, money, fame, and so on.

What do self-help products like The Secret do? They remind you of all the ways your life is not what you want it to be. That's easily accomplished by holding up an impossible standard of perfection. You may be miserable or you may be fairly content but, come on, we could all stand to improve something in our lives, right? They've done it and so can you!

In advertising it's called "created need." You didn't know you needed a pan that boils hotdogs and steams the buns at the same time until you saw it in an infomercial. And you didn't know that you needed a passive income stream that would make you a millionaire so that you could stop looking for a day job and have total financial independence -- and a yacht -- until you knew such a thing was possible. And you had no idea that you could order up the life you wanted from the giant catalog we call the universe until The Secret told you it was just that simple. But now that you know, you'd be a fool not to have a designer life.

People from all walks of life have heard of The Secret and many take its law of attraction message at face value. It's an idea with a very long lineage and whole lotta truthiness. Far fewer people are aware of the multi-tentacled reach of the internet marketing industry. Fewer still are aware of how the latter is suctioned onto the former.

It's fairly distressing how much of the self-help industry can be found canoodling with Frank Kern and the rest of his "syndicate." For instance, when Bob Proctor's associate Michele Blood isn't busy committing crimes against music, she can be found learning how to run her business "like the mafia" from the man himself.

It takes a giant pair of balls to be Frank Kern.

At about minute 6:00 in the Scamworld video, we meet Glen Ledwell of Mind Movies. Remember Mind Movies? It was one of many products James Ray was pitching to his email list even as he was standing trial in Arizona for the deaths of James Shore, Kirby Brown, and Liz Neuman. Because we all want advice on visualizing the perfect future from someone who's manifested death and destruction on that level... Right? Never mind. It doesn't have to make sense. Because the law of attraction works every time, except when it doesn't, but Mind Movies definitely takes it to a whole 'nother level.

Ray's email was light on the particulars of the product and heavy on the manufactured scarcity of "the launch." And for good measure, the man on trial for sweating people literally to death worked the word "sweat" into the pitch.

But here's the catch...

The team at Mind Movies are only able to offer the incredible Mind Movies 2.1 software at a MASSIVELY discounted price with all the extras to the first few thousand people to take big, bold, fast action.

. . .

So they're sweating it out, because there is a good chance they will sell out today.

From the Scamworld article in The Verge:

The purpose of lead generation is to be able to launch a product. This is what the Internet Marketer is after when they sell you a $20 book. The books and DVDs aren’t products — they’re relationship builders; a bridge to a customer’s credit card. The real “product” will be far more complex, and cost a customer a lot more money.

Unlike mainstream sales, where a product launch is an announcement, in Internet Marketing the product launch is a process. First, information about a new service or product trickles out slowly, among people in the IM community, creating hype and what marketers call social proof — essentially, "proof" that this is a quality product, not through actual evidence, but because the IM community’s echo chamber progressively reinforces the marketers’ claims. The product (again, there’s nothing of value here) is only available for a short period of time, creating a false scarcity that increases its perceived value. Affiliates in the IM community hammer their leads with ads for this "get rich quick" scheme, "magic bullet" business product, or whatever it is, hoping that a small percentage purchases it. The affiliate gets a small cut of the sale; the rest goes to the Internet Marketer selling the product.

Where the Frank Kerns of the world pitch, repackage, and pitch marketing tools, the James Rays of the world pitch, repackage, and pitch self-help tools -- their own and those of their syndicate. They offer up endless recastings of the same, tired law of attraction tools, each one promising to be the thing that finally turns your mind into a pure manifestation machine. And when it doesn't, there are all those seminars, each one promising to be the thing. All they need is your credit card number, because what's a maxed out credit limit compared to a future of total freedom. And if you should happen to die at one of those seminars, that's terribly unfortunate, but all sales are final. Because it's really an "investment" and investing in your future is always wise even when you don't have one.

The objective of internet marketers and the boiler rooms they funnel into is to "find out how much credit is available on the victim's credit card [and] take all of it." They do that by encouraging their marks to talk about their problems and fears and offering them hope for a hefty price. If anything, James Ray was more brazen. Using a range of techniques, he'd break people down -- public humiliation, sleep deprivation, food and water deprivation, intimidation. And the coup de grâce would come as tired, emotionally raw people were pressured to max out their credit cards, sometimes multiple ones, to pay for still more seminars that would fix the many things that were wrong with them. Sometimes they would finalize their transactions even as they sobbed over not being able to afford the expense.

For now, James Ray has been reduced from the gold mine that is Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT) to email pitches for members of his syndicate like the felonious Kevin Trudeau. That's because Ray is still in jail. And, sure, he's promised not to run dangerous events anymore but if the past is any guide, prosecution, and even incarceration, are only temporary inconveniences for these guys. They just keep on scamming.

Well. You gotta stick with what you know, I guess.

Salty has more on his participation in Scamworld and the reaction to it from, well, scamworld.

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Following Orders: The Vatican and Beyond

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Buy From Art.com

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

The trial of Monsignor William Lynn is bringing some fascinating insight into the internal dynamics that have driven the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. I say that because the Philadelphia diocese is by no means an anachronism. If anything it's emblematic of the top-down authority structure that has allowed these wounds to fester in parishes all over the world. I found this tidbit particularly juicy.

Monsignor Michael Picard was punished for complaining when the priest was assigned to his Newtown, Pa., parish in 1996. Picard said he had heard disturbing information about the priest from reliable sources — and acted for the sake of his parish.

The late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, angry that Picard was rejecting his decision on the placements, ordered him to apologize and take a two-week retreat to reflect on his actions.

"Cardinal Bevilacqua noted that he will not tolerate even the appearance of disobedience by any priest," states a memo of a disciplinary meeting read in court Wednesday.

So a priest questions the placement of a suspected pedophile in his parish and the response from higher is to stop being disobedient. And his response was to plead that he was not being disobedient. He even accused Lynn of "falsifying the disobedience charge." He was merely raising a reasonable question. Silly priest. Doesn't he know that questioning the absolute authority of the Church is disobedience?

Monsignor Lynn, for his part, has defended his actions -- and inactions -- by claiming that he was simply following the orders of Cardinal Bevilacqua.

This was not the first time this week that I was brought up short by the very concept of obedience.

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The other evening my husband and I were watching this interview on the Daily Show and were struck by a peculiar irony -- one not addressed at all by Jon Stewart, or anyone else that I'm aware of. I have no quarrel with Zach Wahls but I did find it fascinating that he structured a book on being raised by a lesbian couple around the Boy Scout Law.

A Scout is:

• Trustworthy,
• Loyal,
• Helpful,
• Friendly,
• Courteous,
• Kind,
• Obedient,
• Cheerful,
• Thrifty,
• Brave,
• Clean,
• and Reverent.

Why do I find this odd? Because the Boy Scouts of America strictly prohibits gay people from participating in the organization. So right off the bat, Eagle Scout Wahls has proved himself to be at least a little disobedient to the spirit of the organization. And good for him. No, really. Good for him. But you gotta wonder how the parent organization feels about being thematically tied to a book called My Two Moms.

So how's all that moral prohibition working out for the Boy Scouts? Not so well, really, as discussed here:

Stealing attention from the Catholic Church's problems, allegations recently came to light of similar incidents within the Boy Scouts of America under the patronage of the Church of Latter Day Saints (aka the Mormons). The Catholic and Mormon churches are two of the most vociferous arbiters of morality. Both invested heavily in promoting the passage of Proposition 8 which rescinded the law allowing gay marriage in California. Both are sponsors of Boy Scouts of America and have campaigned against allowing gays and atheists to participate. The Mormons threatened to pull their memberships if the Scouts changed their rules, which would have devastated the bottom line for the organization.

When it comes to sexual abuse in their own midst, these moral authorities have been strangely silent. Mormon Bishop Gordon McKewn withheld the identities of 17 boys, who Scoutmaster Timur Dykes admitted molesting, from police investigators. The "morally straight" Boy Scouts now stand accused of secreting away at least 1000 such "perversion files."

That I would choose tolerance of gays and atheists over tolerance of sex offenders kind of goes without saying but I'm not making the rules for the Boy Scouts of America. The Mormon and Catholic churches are, apparently. And that concept of obedience to insane rules that enable child abuse is overdue for scrutiny.

The concept of obedience, I think, gives rise to abuse in a much broader sense. Right off the bat, when children are taught to obey their elders without question, what are they supposed to do when confronted by an authority figure who insists on sexually abusing them? What a conundrum for the child faced with that horrible reality.

While many of the principles on that list that Wahls has highlighted with his strangely ironical book are lovely, any list like that is a double-edged sword. Such words and phrases can also be used as thought-stopping maxims and as such are bludgeons in the hands of abusers of power. I wrote a great deal about thought-stopping maxims and the psychology of influence when I was covering the James Ray sweat lodge trial. In that horrible for-instance, an adherence to buzzwords instilled by a charismatic leader were a primary factor in preventing people from leaving a human kiln that killed three of them and permanently injured many more. And as discussed, an understanding of the lessons of the Milgram Experiment could prevent so many of these disasters. To review: A staggering number of people proved so obedient to authority that they were willing to kill people rather than question anyone with a lab coat and clipboard.

"Well-behaved women seldom make history." ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Self described Mormon feminist. Yes. They exist.)

My husband and I have committed ourselves to raising a disobedient child. No, really. Not a child who doesn't have responsibilities or keep commitments. Structure and boundaries, yes, but mindless adherence to our authority, never. She has been taught since she was very young that we have good reasons for our rules and have always been willing to hear her questions about those rules, even though we are often at pains to put them in terms a child can understand. We consider the alternative terrifying in its potential to leave her vulnerable. As you might expect, it has repeatedly put her -- and us -- on a collision course with some educators. Fortunately, we have also been lucky to find a number teachers and administrators who, more or less, share our viewpoint.

Schools are in many ways conformity factories and even the most well intended educators are faced with a difficult balancing act. It's a microcosm of the ongoing social struggle to support the individual and the common good at the same time. A recent study found, for instance, that teachers, usually inadvertently, squelch creativity because creative people tend to be disruptive.

From Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom?, a good review paper. What the paper shows is that the characteristics that teachers use to describe their favorite student correlate negatively with the characteristics associated with creativity. In addition, although teachers say that they like creative students, teachers also say creative students are “sincere, responsible, good-natured and reliable.” In other words, the teachers don’t know what creative students are actually like.  (FYI, the research design would have been stronger if the researchers had actually tested the students for creativity.)  As a result, schooling has a negative effect on creativity.

In other words, creativity and obedience are kinda like oil and water. And whenever I hear that word thrown around my hackles go up. Also, when I hear teachers or parents requiring children to call them sir or ma'am. Because it's all about getting children to submit to adults as unquestioned authorities, which sets them up for inconceivably horrible abuses. And it creates whole new generations of adults who don't question authority or the most authoritarian of structures. It fosters the notion that we should shock heart patients until they die because the man in the lab coat says to, or leave people who've stopped breathing in a tented inferno so as not to upset Mr. Ray, or stop whining about the priest who's molesting children because the Vatican tells us to. It's dangerous. Obedience to authority is dangerous.

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Beware of Spiritual Leaders in Orange Jumpsuits

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

You can put religious abusers in prison but you just can't shut them up!!!

Child molester and polygamist Warren Jeffs recently had his phone privileges restored so that he can continue to inspire his flock with "divine revelations." He had previously lost that right amid charges that he flouted rules confining his phone calls to a list of approved family members by being put on speaker phone to address his congregation directly. Despite his incarceration Jeffs seems to be finding ways to call the shots, punishing over a thousand church members by taking away their church-going privileges and even possibly taking away their wives and children.

With or without his phone privileges, Jeffs is getting his message out, having mass mailed a real barn burner to political leaders.

“Let all peoples bow the knee, confessing Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, Jehovah Christ Ahman Holy Lord over all peoples. Amen,” he wrote.

The revelation, dated March 17, promised floods, winds, earthquakes, disease and other destruction if people refused to repent.

Well, that's a pretty safe bet, considering that those are things are always happening somewhere in the world. What really would have been cool is if all those world leaders had dropped to their knees at the appointed time and all disease and natural disasters had stopped. Then I might have been impressed.



Also making crazy, unprovable promises from the inside of a cell is James Arthur Ray. A tip of the hat to Connie Joy who is still receiving email pitches from the incarcerated sweat lodge killer. And it's the same old snake-oil.

Pitchman James Arthur Ray, imprisoned for the deaths of three people at a sweat-lodge ceremony, is selling a 14-CD set by email that he promises "will literally reprogram your mind for success."

I'm certainly no fan of the Think and Grow Rich canon. I don't believe in panaceas. But even if I did, I wouldn't be taking advice on how to think my way to success from someone who law of attracted himself a gruesome death scene and a homicide conviction.

Like Jeffs, Ray is constrained from preaching and pitching directly but, also like Jeffs, he still has minions to do the heavy lifting for him.

Ray could not have sent the email himself because he doesn't have Internet access, Arizona Department of Corrections spokesman Bill Lamoreaux said.

However, there's nothing to prevent him from having associates on the outside send emails on his behalf, Lamoreaux said.

Adding to the dark hilarity of an incarcerated, broke, wealth guru hawking a success program from behind bars is his partner in crime Kevin Trudeau. Yes, that's right. The CD program Ray is selling is Trudeau's "Your Wish is Your Command." Cosmic Connie has some of the latest on Trudeau, who is no stranger to prison walls himself. As per the whirling muse, Trudeau's latest gambit is something called GIN (Global Information Network) events.

Get it? GIN, jinn, djinn, genie... "your wish is" blah, blah, blah. It's more of the "law of attraction is just like a genie" absurdity from The Secret. It's like these people are deliberately trying to drive me batshit. There oughta be a law against such flagrant abuses of metaphor. (It doesn't help that I was recently thumbing through my collection of Matt Taibbi's take-downs of Tom Friedman. See here, here, here, aaaand here.) Anyway, my deconstruction of the genie as symbol of the universe giving you everything you want thing is here.

Here is Trudeau explaining his latest wishes as horses vehicle. I didn't get far before my gorge started to rise and I had to stop. But the unintentional humor is worth a peek.

Only a few minutes into this pretend interview, Trudeau makes a joke about a certain self-help author who wrote a book on how to be rich when he was bankrupt. He made his money by writing about making money. See? it's funny. Those who can do and those who can't teach, I guess. (Unless you're Trudeau. He actually knows what he's talking about because he's made money using these incredible law of attraction techniques.) But a bankrupt guy telling people how to become millionaires... ridiculous. Yet, somehow, Trudeau misses the obvious irony of a couple of convicted felons telling people how to law of attract themselves everything they wish for. And one of them is still behind bars! If Trudeau really wanted to write from experience it would be a tutorial on how to land yourself in a federal penitentiary... and how to be successfully sued by the FTC. It's an impressive resume.

Trudeau's activities have been the subject of both criminal and civil action. He was convicted of larceny and credit card fraud in the early 1990s, and in 1998 he was sued by U.S. Federal Trade Commission for making false or misleading claims in his infomercials promoting his book,'The Weight-Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About. In 2004, he settled that action, by agreeing to pay a $500,000 fine and consenting to a lifetime ban on promoting products other than his books via infomercials. ^[1] On Nov. 29, 2011, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $37.6 million fine levied against him for violating that 2004 settlement. Additionally, the appellate court upheld the requirement that he post a $2 million bond before engaging in future infomercial advertising, ^[2][3]

Now, don't get me wrong. Being in jail doesn't make you a bad person. There are people who are convicted unfairly. (Ahem.) There are prisoners of conscience. And there are certainly people who pay their debt to society and emerge as better people. What marks people like Warren Jeffs, James Ray, and Kevin Trudeau, is that they remain totally unrepentant and continue to see themselves as victims. Everything I do wrong is someone else's fault is indicative of sociopathy. Selling people the keys to success when your own pursuit of same has gotten you locked up, is a little like saying, "Hey, you gonna believe me or your lyin' eyes." It's not teaching. It's pathology.

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