Yoga's Terribly, Horribly, Awfully Negative Year

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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All I could think when I read this was "here we go again." Yet another man in a position of spiritual leadership turns out to have been abusing his power by exploiting women and just generally being a dick.

The guru behind a popular style of yoga currently facing allegations of rape and sexual assault inspired fear in his employees and runs his company "like a cult," a lawyer for a former employee told The Huffington Post Monday.

Carla Minnard, a civil rights attorney, says her client was one of the few to stand up to Bikram Choudhury, the man at the center of the Bikram yoga empire. In return, she says, the company threatened to have her client and her 8-year-old daughter deported.

“There’s a great desire to keep Bikram’s conduct in the dark,” Minnard said. “It shows an inability by anyone to restrain an individual who is a dangerous person.”

Minakshi Jaffa-Bodden, Minnard's client, is a former legal advisor at Bikram’s Yoga College of India, a Los Angeles-based yoga school. Jaffa-Bodden is the sole plaintiff named in an explosive but little-reported June 13 lawsuit against Choudhury, which accuses him of rape and sexual assault of employees and students. The suit additionally claims the yogi promoted a work environment inside his school that was rife with misogyny, homophobia, racism, sexual harassment and threats of violence.

Whether all the allegations prove true or not, much of Choudhury's behavior has been well-documented and he appears to be an equal opportunity hater. Gay people caused AIDS and "these blacks just don't get my yoga" are just some of the sentiments ascribed to the guru. The substance of the suit is worse. It alleges that when Minakshi Jaffa-Bodden got wind of his abuses she was threatened with deportation and worse.

The most recent charges come from Minakshi Jaffa-Bodden, Choudhury's former legal advisor. Jaffa-Bodden claims that she became aware of allegations of sexual assault and harassment during a multi-day training conference; when she approached Choudhury about them, she was told that it would be "best" to "not look into it any further." When she attempted to stand up to the yoga guru, his company threatened to have her and her 8-year-old daughter deported. In March 2013, Jaffa-Bodden says that she was forced to resign by Choudhury himself. He apparently made her sign a resignation letter by threatening her physically.

In addition to black people and gays, Choudhury has such a history of slurring entire groups of people that a former student listed and categorized the hate. Objects of his ire included the Chinese, the tattooed, Mormans, dog owners, sluts, and women of every body type and hair style: "Chubbies, too skinny, small-breasted, without make-up, with short hair, with long hair, but worn up."

Sydney Towne said she kept a list of Bikram's behavior when she trained with him full-time from April to June 2012 because "he dislikes so many types of people" that "a list seemed like the only way to keep track of it all." She loved Bikram Yoga, but hated the way Bikram himself "completely takes advantage of people and their desire for wellness."

"I think he preys on people and there's such a cult of personality around him that people don't question his clearly inappropriate behavior," she said. "I completely believe all accusations against him."

Choudhury seems to have something ghastly to say about just about everyone. He is fond of his own penis, though. Quite, quite fond.

Meanwhile, if you want to buy your yoga pants at Lululemon, be prepared for similar judgmentalism and cultishness. Much like Abercrombie & Fitch, Lululemon recently took a publicity hit for its tendency to sideline women over a size 8. Those clothes, if they're stocked at all, can be found in an unsorted heap in the back of the store... under a table.

Far from an accident, the exiling of larger clothing by Lululemon is a central piece of the company's strategy to market its brand as the look of choice for the stylishly fitness-conscious, according to former employees and consumer advocates. They say this treatment of larger clothes and customers reflects the culture that Lululemon represents -- one that falsely suggests skinniness is the paramount feature of health. Lululemon declined to comment.

The judgment and in-group, out-group dynamics reportedly permeate the company culture of Lululemon. Former employee Elizabeth Licorish describes a sorority girl type of hierarchy in which employees scrutinize and evaluate each other constantly and it takes little to be found deeply wanting.

I hoped to exercise my love of running, earn an employee discount, and take free fitness classes. But, soon after enduring Lululemon's intensive training program, I realized I'd been indoctrinated into a bottomless pit of groupthink I'd never be able to survive.

The Lululemon culture consists, on the surface, of catchy manifestos. Lululemon wants you to know it's "elevating the world from mediocrity to greatness" and "creating components for people to live long, healthy and fun lives." But, dig deeper, and you'll learn about Landmark Forum, the ultra-secretive, eerily cultish educational series, which Lululemon employees are "strongly encouraged" to attend. Before you're in line for Landmark, you're bombarded with Brian Tracy motivational CDs and a book club that culminates with Atlas Shrugged. Successful Lululemon employees can recite Brian Tracy better than the Pledge of Allegiance. Mention Chip Wilson, Lululemon's founder and former CEO, and their eyes will light up and quickly glaze over. They'll tell you, quite seriously, that he saved their lives by elevating them to greatness.

All this sort of made walking into work feel like time traveling to Salem. Because, with the Lululemon creed and catechism comes a collective mentality that thrives on scapegoats and leaves you feeling worthless if you subsist on anything but spring water and kale. Once, another employee sneered at me from across the floor and said the soda I happened to be enjoying would "rot me from the inside out." Eventually we were all issued reusable acrylic cups and forbidden to drink anything but H2O. We'd be encouraged to give "feedback," a terrible, calculated misnomer for ruthless criticism that could veer from professional to personal in 60 seconds flat. If a customer dismissed your sales pitch because, let's say, he was in a bad mood, one of your fellow team members would pull you aside and say your conversational style lacked genuine authenticity. She'd insinuate that you lack authenticity. That you aren't equipped enough as a human being to sell yoga pants.

And, unsurprisingly, at the heart of this world of LGATs, motivational speakers, and measuring everyone's spiritual worth by their material success, is a corporate leadership that knows The Secret.

A cult following is the most coveted accessory in retail, and Lululemon's is even more lustworthy than its Velocity Gym Bag. It wasn't built on the work of some Jobs-ian swami, however, but on the sources of Lulu founder and chairman Chip Wilson's own spiritual awakening. Wilson has mixed a heady self-actualizing cocktail from equal parts Landmark Forum (seminars based on the philosophy of Werner Erhard), the books of motivational business guru Brian Tracy, and Oprah-endorsed best seller The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. He is now hard at work formalizing them in a Lululemon "internal constitution."

"It's the first time I've heard of anyone almost directly using the techniques of cults and applying them to their business," says Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands. Drawing on those techniques, and with virtually zero advertising, Lululemon has converted the most popular yoga teachers from Beverly Hills to Boston (and their students) into a devoted -- and self-propagating -- clientele. In a little more than 10 years, Lululemon has grown from a single storefront on the surf side of Vancouver, British Columbia, to a public company with more than 100 outlets and $340 million in annual revenue. "I have not been able to find any company that compares with what they do," says Suzanne Price, a retail analyst with ThinkEquity, who points to Lululemon stores ringing up $1,800 in sales per square foot, compared with only $600 for retailers such as J.Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch.

Wilson claims he didn't start Lululemon merely to sell $90 leggings, but also to help his customers limber up for their journey to self-esteem and empowerment. As he writes in the "Chip's Musings" section of the company Web site, "The law of attraction" -- the central tenet of The Secret, that visualizing goals is the key to attaining them -- "is the fundamental law that Lululemon was built on from its 1998 inception." He goes on to explain the company's meta-mission: "Our vision is 'to elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness,' and we are growing so we can train more people and spread the word of The Secret -- which to us at Lululemon is not so secret."

Lululemon talks a good game about authenticity but it quickly learned that being too authentically yogic was a bad business model. "Yogis" turned out to be "too slow" on the sales floor so they dumped them for runners who also like yoga. This brought them the driven, "type A" personalities needed to create a yoga themed business empire.

Other challenges to Lululemon's "authenticity" branding have included exposed hypocrisy and outright fraud: the use of child labor in China, the manufacture and sale of expensive seaweed bags bragging a litany of seaweed related health benefits that turned out not to contain a whit of seaweed, and a name that reportedly owes to the company founder's delight in mocking the Japanese. 

For all its adherence to The Secret, Lululemon somehow law of attracted a grisly homicide as one sales girl brutally stabbed and bludgeoned another to death, purportedly over a stolen pair of yoga pants. CEO Linda Day made a grand public statement about how convicted murderer Brittany Norwood's actions were "the antithesis of the values of our company." Well, one would think that murder is contrary to the values of most companies. One would even think that it goes without saying which renders it an odd statement indeed. But it also conspicuously avoids addressing how it fits with their like attracts like philosophy. But then, we all know that among law of attraction adherents we're all responsible for everything we attract until it's so horrible that we're somehow not anymore.

None of this bears much resemblance to what I learned when I first started studying yoga. For my teachers, it wasn't about having a perfect, beach body, but about listening to your body's unique wisdom and moving in tune with it. It was about health and spiritual alignment -- not "fitness." I've long been aware that the growing popularity of yoga was a double-edge sword. A beautiful, traditional practice proliferated in the West but it also succumbed to faddishness, vanity, and pecuniary exploitation.

My first teacher was based largely in Kripalu yoga. I also spent time at Kripalu. Amrit Desai created a beautiful, patient yoga style that people of every age, condition, and body type could benefit from. He also turned out to be an inveterate womanizer, manipulator, and hypocrite. Oh well. The more things change...

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Has Judge Hatch Read The Secret?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Robb Gary Evans ~ Former Cop

Stop me if you've heard this one. A drunk cop walks into a bar. There's a cover charge but he flashes his badge instead. He sees some women in the bar. The first one he pinches on the ass. The second is a friend of a friend. He walks up behind her, sticks his hand up her skirt and fondles her private parts. The woman doesn't care for it so she complains. When the bouncers throw him out of the bar he tells them he's a cop and they'll be arrested. Later, a jury of his peers finds him guilty of sexual abuse. It's a class 5 felony, so he's facing up to 2 1/2 years in prison. But the judge thinks he's a pretty swell guy and lets him off with probation. He doesn't have to register as a sex offender, says the judge. Then the judge turns to the victim of the assault and gives her, wait for it... a very stern lecture about how young ladies shouldn't be hanging out in bars. The punchline? That judge is a woman.

Said Judge Jacqueline Hatch:

"If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you," Hatch said.

. . .

"I hope you look at what you've been through and try to take something positive out of it," Hatch said to the victim in court. "You learned a lesson about friendship and you learned a lesson about vulnerability."

Hatch said that the victim was not to blame in the case, but that all women must be vigilant against becoming victims.

"When you blame others, you give up your power to change," Hatch said that her mother used to say.

Oy vey.

There is certainly nothing new about blaming women and girls for getting themselves molested. It would be nice to think that Judge Hatch's shaming of a woman for going to a bar would make her a rare relic of a bygone era. I only wish it were that simple. Subjecting sexual assault victims to judgment and scrutiny no other crime victim ever has to endure never seems to go out of style.

But there are a couple of elements that elevate Judge Hatch's sentencing and remarks above your typical, misogynistic, "she had it coming" miscarriage of justice. One is that there is a level of expectation that a woman would be a tad less mind-meltingly sexist. The other is that her comments smack of that special brand of blame the victim idiocy one expects to hear from devotees of The Secret. I don't think those two things are unrelated.

It is commonly assumed that a woman would be more sympathetic to female victims of sexual assault than a man in a similar position. But people in the business of prosecuting rapists know otherwise. In fact, they will generally attempt to stack juries with men because female jurors are more likely to blame the victim. It seems counter-intuitive.

However, female jurors frequently do not side with the female complainant. Indeed, according to a Newsday article, “The most sympathetic juror a rape victim can hope for… is not a well-dressed, educated working woman, but a stocky, conservative, middle-aged Italian man. The Italian man, the researchers reason, regards women as fragile and in need of defense and will usually side with the accuser” (Tyre, 1991, p. 10). The article also quotes Barbara Eganhauser, a lead sex crimes prosecutor in Westchester County, who believes “women, even young women with contemporary lifestyles and values, often reject another woman’s accusation or rape and sex abuse out of their own fear” (Tyre, 1991, p. 10).

Several other authors also note that female jurors often do not accept as true the testimony of complainants. Attorney Julie Wright (1995) argues that these jurors distrust the complainants because they do not want to believe that something horrible could happen to “good people”. Such women subscribe to the “just world hypothesis,” that bad things do not happen at random, but rather everything in the world occurs for a reason. According to this theory, misfortune strikes only those worthy of hardship (Wright, 1995). Wright cites Elaine Walster’s research study, in which undergraduates were told of increasingly horrible things that happened to another person. The worse the event, the more likely the subject assigned blame to the other person, as it was “reassuring if the person [could] somehow blame the victim, taking the loss out of the realm of the uncontrollable” (Wright, 1995, p. 20). Using this logic, female jurors do not wish to imagine that rape could happen to them, and therefore the more they identify with the complainant, and the more hideous the crime, the more they need to deny the complainant’s claim. Wright notes that “Linda Fairstein, Chief of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, has observed that ‘for many women, the need to shield themselves from their own vulnerability to sexual assault is paramount. If they can insist that the victim engaged in behavior that they would never engage in, such as visiting a bar or going to a man’s apartment, they can convince themselves they are not at risk’” (Wright, 1995, p. 22). Thus, it is so frightening for the female juror to identify with the complainant that she needs to deny the complainant’s testimony, in order for the juror to feel safe in the world.

Furthermore, Gloria Cowan (2000) contends that women often disbelieve other women’s tales of sexual violence out of their own internalized oppression. She writes that many women are hostile to their own sex, and internalize negative female stereotypes. These women are more likely to “blame the victim” in the case of rape or sexual harassment. Cowan’s research study, using questionnaire responses from 155 college women, found a correlation between women’s hostility towards other women and women’s toleration of men mistreating women. While Cowan’s article does not specifically apply to jurors in rape cases, it does provide a persuasive argument as to why females may be disinclined to believe the victim of sexual abuse.

Yes. Women are more likely to blame other women for getting raped, not in spite of the fact that they identify with them, but because they do. It's all part of that reflexive need to create emotional distance from misfortune and convince yourself that you can make yourself immune. It's the same type of "over there" thinking that permeates the new thought movement, as discussed here and here. If you believe that other people are solely responsible for their own misfortune, you can convince yourself that it won't happen to you. This is a) demonstrably false, and b) cruel to victims of adversity.

This "just world" thinking was also evident in the James Ray fiasco. The dead, the injured, and those who were immobilized by physical incapacity and Ray's psychological tyranny were repeatedly blamed by Ray apologists. How could Ray possibly be at fault just for subjecting people to inconceivably high temperatures and berating them if they tried to crawl to the exit? Surely it was their own fault for not leaving. And that molestation victim in Judge Hatch's court? What was she doing leaving her house like that? Women go outside, they just bring rape on themselves. Bad things just don't happen to good people!

One of my favorite examples during the sweat lodge trial was the Ray defender whose words of wisdom were to be found in the strange pile of letters pleading with the court for leniency. I wrote it up here:

The support letters run the gamut. I haven't read them all but what I've read raises considerable concern. One, for instance, contains the following paragraph:

I've had a personal saying that I've shared with both of my children throughout their lifetime and it is exactly as follows:
"If you come home dead, I don't care who's fault it was!"
and what I use as an example to each of them is this: If you are walking down the street and you stop at a intersection, when the light turns green do you walk? NO! You wait, You look around, When it's clear you then walk! Then I remind them how many people see a green light and they start walking (with absolutely no regard for cars or buses). When I am out driving my own car with my children and we are sitting at a light, I'll often point out a stranger and we will make a game of it as we each take a guess ahead of time if a given person will look or walk. Can you guess what happens in most cases? They walk! (without looking). To me personally, it seems like such a common sense thing to do (to look around to make sure it is safe to walk.) I can hardly believe myself that people don't feel the need to do this.

Get it? If some driver runs a red light and hits you, it's your fault, kiddo, because you trusted that they'd be law abiding and pay attention to traffic signals. "Walk on the green, not in between," just isn't gonna cut it. Driving and walking defensively is certainly good advice, in and of itself, but Charlene D of Toronto, Ontario takes it about ten steps further. If her children fail to take responsibility, not only for their own behavior, but for irresponsible, drunk, or otherwise errant drivers, it's their own damn fault if they get hit. And she won't be bothering to seek justice for the vehicular homicide of her own children. So don't expect it.

That a sitting judge said virtually the same thing to a molestation survivor is, well... terrifying.

Does Judge Hatch's new-agey belief in the personal responsibility of crime victims only pertain to women who are sexually assaulted? Or is it more general? Taken at face value, Judge Hatch's statement about how blaming others is giving up personal power -- if we give her the benefit of the doubt that she's not just a sexist dirtbag -- makes her thoroughly unqualified to be a judge. By that logic no one is guilty of any crime, ever. Why bother with a criminal justice system? All crimes are just, in their own way.

Responding to outrage and a petition for her removal, Judge Hatch issued an apology which the crime victim has graciously accepted. Judge Hatch claimed her comments were "poorly communicated." They weren't. She made her opinions quite clear. Women shouldn't be in bars and if they put themselves in harm's way like that, they shouldn't blame their assailants. It was the ideas that sucked, not the wording.

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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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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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Paul Levy on the Collective Shadow

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've referenced Tibetan Buddhist and healer Paul Levy before -- notably in my review of The Secret. Levy's essays are available on his site Awaken in the Dream and in his book The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis. In his newest book Wetiko, Levy continues to explore the projected shadow as a collective phenomenon and the Native American mythical embodiment of it known as wetiko to the Cree. Years ago, I watched a movie called Wendigo, another Algonquian name for the same phenomenon. It's a haunting film that brilliantly captures the sense of doom we experience at those times when life is turned upside down leaving us at the mercy of an unfolding fate that seems to have its own agenda. As Levy explains, we actually animate this darkness run amok from our suppressed shadow. The more in denial of our shadow we are, the more inevitably we will confront it as a seemingly alien entity in our reflective world.

One of the things that struck me in this Red Ice Radio interview is Levy's anecdote about a New Age bookstore that wanted him to appear but not talk about all that shadow stuff. They wanted it to be "positive." It put me in mind of another author who dared to write about the painful side of spiritual growth; Rabbi Yonassan Gershom who wrote about Holocaust reincarnates.  Said Gershom:

Then in 1984 I was invited to speak on Jewish mysticism at the annual Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship (SFF) retreat at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. SFF is an eclectic group of spiritually oriented people who are interested in psychic phenomena, and most believe in reincarnation. Here, I thought, would be a receptive audience for these case histories that I had been gathering. So I suggested "Cases of Holocaust Reincarnation" as my topic.

I was turned down flat. The SFF representative explained that the theme of the retreat would be "I Am the Light," and they wanted to focus on uplifting, positive material because that's what people expected. The Holocaust was just too heavy and depressing, and might upset people, even if I were talking about reincarnation. Couldn't I do something more inspiring, like a Sabbath liturgy?

This relentless focus on the upbeat and cheerful is not just naive. It's dangerous -- something I've written about ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And as Levy has been explaining brilliantly for years, it can unleash terrors beyond our conscious imagining.

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James Ray's Presentencing Hearing: Week 1

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Where were you when you first realized that James Arthur Ray was a colossal fraud? It's not a game I can play because I never thought he was up to much. But God knows I've experienced similar disillusionment so I can relate to the sense of loss, pain, confusion, and catharsis, that I hear echoed in so many of Ray's former students. That dawning realization theme figured heavily into the sweat lodge trial as survivors of Spiritual Warrior 2009 shared their tragic experiences -- many of them still conflicted and confused over how it could have gone so horribly wrong. The presentencing hearing, which heard the prosecution's case for three days this week, brought still more stories of disillusionment and realization.

In the protracted pre-sentence hearing for James Arthur Ray, the state has presented eight witnesses over the past three days in its effort to prove additional aggravating factors that would convince Judge Warren Darrow to sentence the motivational speaker and author to the maximum allowable term of nine years in prison.

Led by Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, the prosecution seeks to show that Ray exhibited a pattern of negligent conduct that led to harm, that the victims in the case placed trust in him to keep them safe, that he lacked qualifications to conduct his events, and that many people were harmed, both physically and emotionally, by his actions and omissions.

As I'd assumed from her appearance on the prosecution's witness list, Kristina Bivins has become disenchanted with Ray. Bivins, who notoriously supported him during media interviews after the sweat lodge deaths, finally reached the breaking point. So what was it that shattered her belief in her teacher? Well. It wasn't her post-sweat lodge hospitalization.

"I couldn't see anything except for shapes and light, and I didn't know where I was," Bivins said. "It felt like my body and mind weren't connected. I couldn't get out of that state and I didn't know what to do."

Nope. Not even such severe injury could break her ties with Ray. In the end, it came down to money.

And even after the deadly debacle in Sedona, Bivins said she still believed in Ray's hybrid teachings, to the point she helped him develop strategies she believed were intended to compensate victims at least to some degree, as well as to help Ray get back on his feet financially. She appeared in print stories and on television on Ray's behalf.

But it was a dispute between Ray and two contract salespeople for Life Results, the firm that arose to allow Ray a chance to make a living by doing personal mentoring sessions, that finally turned her against her former mentor.

Ray, according to Bivins, was not the owner of Life Results, but did control its finances. So when Ray told her he had taken the money from Life Results to pay the mortgage on his Beverly Hills home rather than paying the salespeople their full commission, she saw the light of his true character.

Ray used a company he didn't even own as his personal piggy-bank. Shocker. Well. It came as at least enough of a shock that it caused the scales to fall from Bivins's extremely intense eyes. Upon learning that Ray had drained the company's account, Bivin's shelled out 18K herself to pay one of the contractors and like so many on the very long list of people Ray owes money to, she has not been repaid. Bivins has discovered the ugly truth. James Ray is a fraud who lies about his credentials and puts people in danger. Said Bivins:

"At first, I thought he was going to make things right; then as the summer went on I realized it was just about making money," Bivins said, adding that she now regrets having supported him for so long.

There comes a moment, in dealing with a personality like Ray, when it suddenly dawns that you've been making a lot of assumptions. You've assumed that they're like you. You've projected your own values and emotions onto them. You've rescripted all the inappropriate things they've said and done, telling yourself, Oh he didn't mean it like that. It just came out wrong.

And then the penny drops. The person does something so egregious that your increasingly tested state of denial shatters. And over a period of months, or even years, you recollect all the things that were gnawing at your subconscious all along.

She tearfully told the court that she had long repressed memories of the sweat-lodge ceremony, until she came to rethink her faith in his teachings.

Julia Bunker, a former Dream Team member, also testified to her gradual realization that James Ray's events were not safe. Convinced against her better judgment to snap an arrow against her neck, she began to believe Ray that it was all "mind over matter" and signed on for another Ray event. She embraced more of Ray's cheap martial arts tricks and came to believe that "I get hurt when I do certain physical activities," was just another limiting belief to be defeated by smashing pine boards and the like.

Little did Bunker know that Kurt Reinkin, whose accounting Det. Diskin read into the record on Thursday, had his eyelid punctured when he broke one of those arrows. JRI didn't even have a first aid kit to deal with the blood gushing from his eye.

Bunker engaged in increasingly reckless exercises, including the homeless exercise. As discussed, Colleen Conaway died when she was similarly abandoned in downtown San Diego and left to fend for herself without money, ID, or cell phone. This event began to set off some alarm bells for Bunker, despite having convinced herself that Ray would never have people do things that might actually harm them, if for no other reason than the limits of insurance protection. (Assumptions.) But participants in the homeless exercise weren't even allowed to write anything down and had to rely on nothing but notional breadcrumbs to find their way back to the buses. Bunker was "horrified" to see another participant get into a stranger's car. When she raised these safety concerns, she was told "You're bringing that, projecting that."

Such is the magical thinking of The Secret. It's not the actual, material threats in life that matter. Dangerous things can only hurt you if you think they can. Stay in denial and all will be well.

Bunker's concerns that Ray was not taking responsibility for putting people in danger grew considerably at an event in Hawaii. Numerous people had broken bones against the bricks they were pseudo-Karate chopping. And Ray did nothing. Injured people had to carpool to the hospital because Ray took no responsibility for getting them there. JRI also made it clear that they were not responsible for medical costs.

Ultimately, Bunker realized that suspending all fear might not be the best plan. Fear appears to have served her fairly well at the Spiritual Warrior 2008 when she left the sweat lodge after the second round. She also saw how ill some people who got at that event. In retrospect, she says if she had it to do over, she'd call 911. Perhaps if someone had called an ambulance then, no one would have died in 2009, she speculated.

Former Dream Team member Margaret Clancy also had her revelation amidst a myriad of breaking bones in Hawaii. When she considered how remote the location would be in Sedona, and the fact that Ray was doing nothing about the obvious injuries she was witnessing in Hawaii, she decided to forfeit the thousands of dollars in unrefundable fees for Spiritual Warrior 2008, rather than risk her health and safety.

Clancy described herself as "in shock" over Ray's inaction when people were injured. Ray never responded to an email she sent expressing her concerns over the injuries she'd witnessed. So Clancy was disillusioned when she realized that Ray didn't care at all if he put people at risk of injury. That was her big turning point but there were other red flags. According to Clancy, Ray claimed that he was only a few credits shy of being a psychologist. Wow.

Ray's qualifications, or the lack of them, was a key subject of hearing testimony this week. Ginny Brown, mother of the late Kirby Brown, testified that she had become disturbed at how he "allowed people to delve too deeply into their personal issues in front of a large crowd." Brown is an educator and therapist.

The information Ray prompted people to reveal was of such a sensitive nature that Judge Darrow stopped its reporting in open court and ordered the exhibit sealed this week. Prosecutors attempted to play a recording of Ray's "recapitulation" exercise. In it he called on people to write about their first sexual experience in the present tense, thus causing a number of people to relive their childhood sexual abuse. The highly personal disclosures on the recording brought objections from Truc Do and her objections were upheld. So, by Do's reasoning, the information was too sensitive to hear in open court but perfectly fine for Ray to publicly air at a large event in front of people many of whom were strangers to one another and who had no privacy agreement in place.

Do also objected to Det. Diskin's characterization of Ray's comments as nonchalant and insensitive. That objection was also upheld. But much as Connie Joy reported in her book about her own similar experience at a Ray event, Ray's response to these highly charged revelations was to comment that sex abuse of females is ubiquitous. I can't help thinking that someone who was really "a few credits short" of a psychology degree might have handled the revelation of such profound trauma with a little more sensitivity.

It looks like Det. Diskin's testimony was extremely contentious. It fell to Diskin to read a number of letters from Ray's disillusioned students and to testify to the numerous assertions about Ray's lack of qualifications. I have to admit that I'm almost glad that none of this was broadcast and I never had to hear Truc Do's cross examination of the detective. I don't know if there's anything worse than the sound of Truc Do's voice when she's being relentless.

It looks like Det. Diskin held his own against her repeated assertions that he wasn't doing his job properly or reporting accurate information. For instance, Do accused Diskin of "assuming" that figures quoted from a sales document were "actual income." But Diskin pointed out that it said "actual income" on the document retrieved from Ray's Carlsbad offices. So Diskin deserves at a least a few points for knowing how to read.

Diskin and Do went round and round on the issue of what Ray was or was not qualified to facilitate. A discussion of the trademarked Samurai Game^®, which Ray is not certified to lead, brought a surprising disclosure from Do. In an attempt to explain the complexity of copyright law, Do explained that neither she nor Luis Li really understand it. So the limitations of their legal comprehension were offered as justification of Ray's use of proprietary material without permission. The owners of the game certainly think their copyright has been violated.

I would humbly suggest that the issue is not whether or not Allied Ronin's copyright claim would hold up in court, but the fact that Ray misrepresented his qualifications to people who were paying him a lot of money.

Ray also misrepresented his qualifications as a shaman and as a sweat lodge pourer. While Diskin concedes that there is no law regulating who can run a sweat lodge, numerous Native Americans have expressed their discontent. He explained that representatives of various tribes described a "spiritual calling" to be a water pourer. When Do asserted that there was no certification to lead a sweat lodge, Diskin corrected her by pointing out that each tribe has its own process for appointing pourers.

Once again, it comes down to how Ray represented himself to his students, most of whom believed him to be extensively trained by indigenous shamans. Lest we forget, one of Connie Joy's disillusioning moments was came she learned that Ray's Peruvian shaman was really a tour guide -- something Det. Diskin also pointed out on the stand.

Do underscored the fact that Ray had never claimed to be a licensed therapist. Diskin clarified that the issue was that he wasn't qualified to act as one. But as per Margaret Clancy's testimony, the knowledge and training of a psychologist, if not the certification, is yet another qualification Ray has arrogated to himself.

People paid this man thousands of dollars based, in large part, on his claims of lifelong study with spiritual teachers of various traditions. When those teachers turn out to be tour guides, or even nonexistent, it comes as a blow to the many people who thought he knew what he was doing and that they were safe in his care. A number of those who've been painfully disabused of their trust and faith in Ray were in court this week in person, in letters, or in spirit. And Judge Darrow heard them out.

Darrow heard a lot of the evidence that was precluded during the jury trial. He listened to details of Colleen Conaway's mysterious death and Det. Diskin and Truc Do tussled over whether or not Daniel Pfankuch had experienced heatstroke in 2005. Diskin argued that his body temperature had simply cooled too much by the time he finally got to the hospital to be properly diagnosed. Pfankuch, of course, has never been the same.

Ray's entire defense squadron was stuffed into Judge Darrow's tiny new courtroom in Prescott. They apparently cleared their schedules for the hearing and got their acts together after all the delays and confusion brought about Tom Kelly's unspecified "heart condition." They were full of piss, vinegar, and objections, as usual. They started the festivities with an attempt to strike all the aggravators. Their justification is here. Their motion was denied.

Predictably, they tried to garner pity for Ray and attack the veracity of his detractors. In a particularly disgusting turn of a events, Do attempted to attack the competence of one letter writer because of her spiritual beliefs. She had raised concerns about Ray's abilities to shoot energy at the witnesses, which Do characterized as silly. But Diskin pointed out that all of Ray's followers believe wacky things and that it's legitimate to them.

So once again, Ray's spiritual beliefs are protected but those of witnesses against him aren't. Never mind that it was Ray who was constantly conflating shamanism and sorcery, like his hero in the ways of fraud Carlos Castaneda. That some of his former students have gotten the idea that he is capable of harming people by manipulating energy shouldn't come as a shock. He certainly manipulated them all in enough ways -- sleep deprivation, NLP, stage hypnosis -- that many feel intimidated by his power over them. If Truc Do had any integrity, she'd a) honor the first amendment protected spiritual beliefs of witnesses, and b) consider that it's her own client who is the fountainhead of "silliness" in this context.

What else does the defense have, though, besides attempts to silence or discredit the many people who have been harmed by James Ray? They've got a broken down Harmonic Wealth author who can't afford his legal bills, has lost his many homes, and is living with his parents. All they can do is lean into the pathos. He had to pay millions in settlements, so of course he had no choice but to steal money from a company he didn't own. And his mother has cancer. He has to be there to take care of her. Never mind that he has nowhere else to live. Someone has to be there to tell her that it's all just mind over matter and that she has to play full on against those cancer cells... or something. I can't even begin to imagine what help from Ray in a health crisis looks like. Maybe he just sits around "in shock" like he did when people weren't breathing after that atrocity of a sweat lodge.

In the upcoming week, will come the defense's full case for Ray to receive the lightest possible sentence of probation only. An overview of their reasoning is here. Their witness list is here. And their objection to the presentencing report is here.

The above is taken from press reports and from the excellent live tweeting of Bob Ortega and Camille Kimball who were our eyes and ears in the courtroom this week.

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Herman Cain: Napoleon Hill Fan?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I knew something sounded familiar about this staggering quote from Herman Cain regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself! ... It is not a person's fault if they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed.

I've placed it. Cain's statement sounds a lot like this little gem from Napleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich.

SUCCESS REQUIRES NO APOLOGIES, FAILURE PERMITS NO ALIBIS.

As discussed here, that's an exact quote -- all caps, bad grammar, and all. And I think it's a fairly heartless philosophy. Worse, as I've observed many times, much of "new thought" is basically apologia for the worst excesses of capitalism. It's little wonder that books like The Secret get the full sanction of the corporate media. (It's also, arguably, why James Arthur Ray got the kid gloves treatment throughout the sweat lodge trial.) Poor people have no one to blame but themselves. And having money and success equals legitimacy. Nothing to threaten the power structure there.



I can remember leafing through Hill's perennial favorite -- a book that's been in print since 1937 -- when I was working in a new age bookstore. It never really clicked for me, even when I was enjoying the works of other new thought leaders like Louise Hay and wanted desperately to believe that I could control everything with my thoughts and make all the bad things go away. Paging through a little of it now reminds me as to why Hill never really resonated. He says far too much that makes no sense at all. One needn't look much further than the passage from which I take the above quote to see how badly the book fails the basic logic test.

In planning to acquire your share of the riches, let no one influence you to scorn the dreamer. To win the big stakes in this changed world, you must catch the spirit of the great pioneers of the past, whose dreams have given to civilization all that it has of value, the spirit which serves as the life-blood of our own country, your opportunity and mine, to develop and market our talents.

Let us not forget, Columbus dreamed of an Unknown world, staked his life on the existence of such a world, and discovered it!

Copernicus, the great astronomer, dreamed of a multiplicity of worlds, and revealed them! No one denounced him as "impractical" after he had triumphed. Instead, the world worshipped at his shrine, thus proving once more that "SUCCESS REQUIRES NO APOLOGIES, FAILURE PERMITS NO ALIBIS."

So Hill had kind of a myopic view of history. While it's true that Copernicus's work is legendary and foundational to our current understanding of astronomy, his escape from negative consequences may have owed something to fact that he died of natural causes rather promptly after publishing on his heliocentric model. During his life, he kept a lot of his ideas close to the vest to protect himself from consequences.

About 1532 Copernicus had basically completed his work on the manuscript of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium; but despite urging by his closest friends, he resisted openly publishing his views, not wishing—as he confessed—to risk the scorn "to which he would expose himself on account of the novelty and incomprehensibility of his theses."^[63]

His theories were denounced by some Church officials and debated for some time. His grave was not so much venerated back then as it was lost and his epitaph destroyed during wars in the late 17th or early 18th century. Some of his remains were very recently found and reburied.

Copernicus was reportedly buried in Frombork Cathedral, where archaeologists for over two centuries searched in vain for his remains. Efforts to locate the remains in 1802, 1909, 1939 and 2004 had come to nought. In August 2005, however, a team led by Jerzy Gąssowski, head of an archaeology and anthropology institute in Pułtusk, after scanning beneath the cathedral floor, discovered what they believed to be Copernicus' remains.^[73]

. . .

The grave was in poor condition, and not all the remains of the skeleton were found; missing, among other things, was the lower jaw.^[74] The DNA from the bones found in the grave matched hair samples taken from a book owned by Copernicus which was kept at the library of the University of Uppsala in Sweden.^[75][76]

On 22 May 2010 Copernicus was given a second funeral in a Mass led by Józef Kowalczyk, the former papal nuncio to Poland and newly named Primate of Poland. Copernicus' remains were reburied in the same spot in Frombork Cathedral where part of his skull and other bones had been found. A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory and also a church canon. The tombstone bears a representation of Copernicus' model of the solar system—a golden sun encircled by six of the planets.^[77]

So, I don't know. Maybe Hill was talking about some other "shrine" somewhere.

Copernicus's ideas were far from uncontroversial and continued to be so long after his death. Galileo, who famously embraced the Copernican model, was found guilty of heresy, was forced to recant, and lived out his days under house arrest. Such was his reward for being as bold as Hill recommends.

More to the point, Columbus... Wow... So, as per Hill, Columbus seized the day and the world is all the better for it. In fact, we owe our way of life to Columbus. Some might call that revisionist. Some might call it a grievous insult to the millions of native peoples on two continents whose cultures were destroyed in one bloodbath after another over hundreds of years.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love my country. As you can see, I'm spending the duration of the DC40 celebrating the Goddess Columbia, whose name is ostensibly derived from that of Columbus. But our history is far from clean and is the product of a kind of violent imperialism that we like to think of as consigned to the annals of history. Yes, conquest was the way of the world back then and history is littered with the corpses of people who've been on the wrong side of its relentless march toward "progress." But that Hill blindly accepted the version of history that was written by the winners is about the kindest thing you could say about that sentiment. The idea that the European conquest of the Americas was an unalloyed good is the worst kind of white, imperialistic arrogance.

There are some successes that require far more than simple apologies. Our treatment of Native Americans in this country is our national shame for which we can never make adequate restitution.

It might just be time to reassess a hierarchical, patriarchal model that makes the successes of some dependent on the failures of others. Anyone who divides the world into winners and losers and posits that the winners never have anything to apologize for loses morality points as far as I'm concerned.

As discussed here, new thought tomes like The Secret and Think and Grow Rich effectively blame the victims of the excesses of others. It is the opposite of a balanced, inclusive world view in which we take responsibility, not only for our actions, but for our entire co-creation.

As Christina Pratt explained in an episode of Why Shamanism Now? devoted to The Secret, this completely misses the point. We're not all just creating our own, individual, discrete reality. We are part of a collective reality that we are constantly co-creating. She calls this "the big dream." Says Pratt:

Do not think that you can use this idea that we are dreaming our reality to bludgeon other people who are suffering. In other words, if there is a drought-ridden country somewhere, you can't just go, "Oh well those people dreamt up that drought." Not only is that, um, ignorant, and not remotely compassionate, but you're missing the point, entirely, which is that we are dreaming. We, the entire family of humanity is dreaming life as we know it. And so the drought over there is most likely the manifestation of a dream that is dreaming excess somewhere else. That the dream -- because, we are never not dreaming -- but we have not been trained the responsibility of being a dreamer. We've not been trained to dream well; to dream with maturity for easily, oh, two thousand years or more. And so, consequently, we are dreaming constantly pollution, toxicity, excess, deficiency, and what results then in disease in our human lives into the dream. Because we are not disciplined, we are not even aware, that we, every moment, we are contributing to the dream. And so The Secret says, you know, every moment you're manifesting your life. Well, yes, you are. Every moment you're also manifesting mine and I'm manifesting yours.

So, it comes down to whether we want to continue to extol the individual "dreamers" of Napoleon Hill's unapologetic, imperialist world view or embrace our role in co-creating a "big dream" in which all people can thrive.

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Fighting James Ray with James Ray

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

As I've mentioned previously, the James Ray letter-writing campaign is underway. As James Ray's supporters and family are requesting letters about what a great guy he is and how many people he's "helped," for the mitigation hearing, the prosecutors are also accepting letters about what a creep he is and how many people he's harmed.

In addition to the aforementioned letter from Karen Oritz, pleas have gone out from Ray's family members and even Ray himself. He has enlisted the help of one Tony Alessandra. Details on this can be found on Connie Joy's Facebook page and in this post from the Salty Droid. Here is Alessandra's appeal for support which includes Ray's assault on grammar and decency.

From: On Behalf Of Dr. Tony Alessandra 858-999-2119
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 12:06 PM
Subject: [CSPlink] Re: More on James Arthur Ray

…I just received this email from James Ray. He needs help from all those who really know him. I’ve volunteered to testify as a character witness in Aug.or Sept. prior to sentencing. ALL your letters will help his case.

From: James Ray
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 8:58 PM
To: Tony Alessandra (TA@Alessandra.com )
Subject: help James Ray

Tony I need as many letters of support as possible talking about the good I’ve done and WHY I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE DOING MY WORK and get probation versus prison. Can you help me? How do they know me, what have I done for them or what have they observed me do, what do they know about my character, work ethic, contribution, WHY SHOULD I BE ALLOWED TO GET BACK AND CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY, ETC.
You mentioned that many speakers have made supportive comments to you, can you get them to write letters-the more the better. My lawyers want to give them to the judge to help sway his sentence. Have them send via email to nk@jamesray.com. Attachment with a signature is best but if not possible can be in the body of the email.

Thanks in advance for your help

James Arthur Ray

All caps are always such a nice touch. Stay classy, Mr. Ray!

I also love that Alessandra's three sentences aren't actually written by Alessandra but "on behalf of." He's a busy guy. I get that. He's got a lot of "certified professional" speechifyin' to do. So will he be testifying in person or will he have a proxy for that as well?

And what is a Certified Speaking Professional? I don't really know, but I'm betting it doesn't involve deep study in rhetorical analysis, Burke's pentad, or Aristotle's Poetics, like those of who actually went to school to learn public speaking had to learn. What struck me, though, looking at the police photo Salty posted on his blog is how prominently Ray has displayed his Certified Speaking Professional certificate. It's hanging on his wall of fame right next to his O cover and, um, some wolves. (???)

You know what's not displayed there? Any certificate from Stan Grof or Allied Ronin showing that he's certified in Holotropic Breathwork or the Samurai Game... because he's not. Conspicuous by its absence in the JRI offices is any evidence of his claimed credentials in the multitude of things he facilitated and taught. But he's certified to be a motivational speaker. He's definitely got his Certified Speaking Professional certificate.

But I digress.

James Ray's peeps -- or their personal assistants -- may or may not be sending letters and agreeing to testify to Ray's "CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETY." But Sheila Polk intends to fight fire with fire and is receiving letters from those who have been harmed by James Ray. She has received a number of these letters and could, undoubtedly, use more.

Two people have posted their letters on their blogs and the posts are must reading. One is the personal recounting from a woman whom trial watchers will remember as one of the not shiny, happy people in the 2008 sweat lodge photos. The second is from a woman whose brief contact with Ray sent her into a suicidal shame spiral. It doesn't take Ray long to do lasting damage. He's really good at it.

Mary Latallade attended Spiritual Warrior complete with Ray's heat endurance challenge (aka. sweat lodge) in 2008. Sheila Polk zeroed in on the above image of Mary during the trial as evidence of the fact that all was not well at previous Ray sweat lodges. Ted Mercer testified to her total incoherence. Thankfully, she has recovered from her experience, although she is still trying to put the pieces together regarding what happened to her that day. She has no recollection of much of her experience. And the JRI staff was less than helpful in putting it into context.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to hear from Carry but I accepted her reply knowing that even if she wrote it herself, she was clearly coached to withhold any details about what happened. It would be a futile endeavor to demand answers. If I was at a hospital, I would have gotten lots of information, helpful information about my stay and care. I would have felt reassured that I was well taken care of in a safe and appropriate environment. I knew secrecy (to avoid negative publicity) was a strict JRI policy. I was just hoping to get any information that might fill in the gap of time that had lapsed. Honestly, I wanted my memory back. Instead, I got nothing or what felt equivalent to a door slamming in my face! Anytime you dealt with a JRI employee, for the most part they were courteous with a great big show-all-your-teeth smile on! I had to suck it up. Employees do not budge if they are told to do something a certain way for fear of being called out by James. The same level of professionalism, authority and loyalty was expected when you were chosen to dream team an event so I knew the deal.

I was disturbed, obviously, by much of Mary's post but what really tweaked me were her numerous references to secrecy and a "code of silence." She alluded to this "vow of secrecy" not only in terms of how Ray's students represent his events to the outside world but also to each other. I found this bizarre so I wrote to Mary who was kind enough to indulge my questions and to give me permission to share some of our conversation.

Mary's response to my initial question about how this policy of secrecy was expressed and enforced was more horrifying than I expected. She described for me a situation in which Ray loyalists reported up the chain of command when people had stepped out of line so that participants really didn't know whom to trust. Ray would then use open mic sessions to humiliate people he was mad at for any perceived slight. And she confirmed my suspicion that Ray was repurposing spiritual growth tools in ways that  were completely self-serving. For example "letting people have their own experience" was not simply about respecting healthy boundaries. It was a way to keep people isolated from one another. (As we know from the evidence presented at trial, it was also an excuse to leave unconscious people lying where they fell in the "hellacious" heat of the sweat lodge so that some of them had the opportunity to die without interference, you know, in their growth process.)

Ray discouraged discussion of any of the exercises until people "had time to process their experience." The problem with that is that most of  us process our learning experiences through discourse; particularly if we're having trouble understanding what's occurred. The result of this enforced "code of silence" is that it kept the majority of the communication moving vertically, rather than horizontally. It interfered with the development of interpersonal bonding between participants. Mary told me that she had "made a lot of great acquaintances."

All of this served to keep people dependent on Ray, rather than in a mutually supportive environment. And Ray's game was to keep people endlessly dissatisfied with what personal help they got from him or his staff. Ray, himself, was almost completely unavailable. That way participants would keep chasing him for the elusive rewards promised by the next event and the next and the next.

People who have studied cults will recognize the vertical communication and the spying by "loyal" followers. They will recognize the punishments for disloyalty and sharing secrets with outsiders. Again, I would never characterize JRI as a full-blown cult. But wherever groups coalesce, cultish elements can be seen to some degree. Often, it's completely unintentional. After months of listening to testimony and reading personal accounts by former students, I do not think what Ray was doing was unintentional. I think he set out to manipulate people and make them increasingly dependent,  disempowered, and willing to fork over huge sums of money.

The divide and conquer techniques employed by Ray are a pattern I've also come to recognize as common among sociopaths. Keeping the people in your sphere from communicating with one another keeps them from comparing notes and coming to important realizations -- like the fact that they're dealing with a sociopath. (I learned to recognize this little trick through hard experience. Don't ask.)

What Ray's events lacked in intimacy they more than made up for in instamacy. That is certainly not something that is unique to Ray. It's a common side effect of the intensity of short retreats. I can see parallels going all the way back to diocesan youth conferences I used to attend through my very upright Episcopal Church. And it is certainly something I've observed at many of the spiritual seminars I've attended. I was reminiscing earlier this morning about how much I hate the hugginess of a lot of these events. I wrote a bit about my views on social pressure to hug total strangers here:

Some years ago when I was taking a course with Drunvalo Melchizedek, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with what has been aptly termed the "instamacy" of spiritual gatherings. To put it simply, I'm not a hugger. This puts me distinctly at odds with the cultural climate of a lot of "new age" gatherings. To me, a full body press with another person is a rather intimate expression; one I reserve for people I feel personal affection for. That kind of affection usually develops over time. I feel perfectly comfortable hugging close friends and family, but rarely people I've just met. But, anyone who's ever been to one of these things can tell you, hugging total strangers is the norm. So, it became an issue. Drunvalo's response was to tell me that I would some day realize everyone I met was "absolutely" me. I think he was somewhat taken aback when I told him I already fully understood that, but it didn't change my views on the hugging culture a bit. While it was most certainly true that everyone in that class was "me," so is Charles Manson. I don't want to hug him either.

Imagine my horror when I opened up Connie Joy's Facebook page earlier this evening and learned that Ray not only insisted people hug total strangers but give them butt rubs. His purported reason for doing this? To sooth the muscle tension caused by sitting for so long in his courses. This is not just grossly inappropriate and a total disrespect of personal boundaries. (Don't you love the way Ray wants people not to interfere with each others' "process" and "experience" but does want them to molest each other?) It's also, once again, reckless and dangerous. What about people who've been sexually assaulted in the past who could be retraumatized by having total strangers grab their asses? Are JRI staff members prepared to help people whose PTSD is triggered by an exercise this stupid?

Recklessly opening up psychological wounds is Ray's modus operandi. Nothing is off limits when it comes to Ray getting what he wants. In the case of Jeanne Barkemeijer, what Ray wanted was her money. Well, he wants everybody's money, so that's no shock. But Jeanne wouldn't be talked into spending money she didn't have. After a remarkably naked attempt to get her to part with a monstrous sum, he brutally and publicly humiliated her. Her breathtaking letter and additional commentary are here.

Jeanne went to one of Ray's teaser events to thank him. She had enjoyed his book and his teachings had given her some hope of regaining her health. Her multiple allergies, fibromyalgia, and other health problems had left her walker dependent and on disability. When she approached Ray to thank him and shake his hand, he visibly recoiled. And then he started hard selling her.

When I reached out to shake Mr Ray's hand he looked at me, reached for my husband's hand and then crossed his arms. When I started to thank Mr Ray, I spoke five words ... at which point he interrupted me to ask if we'd signed up for any of his seminars.

When I started telling him we had no money and were unable to attend, he again interrupted me.

James Ray
"I'm going to do you a favor" he said, "Don't ever say that again, [that you don't have money] the universe is listening."

Me
"But I don't have any money right ... (I was going to say right now)"

James Ray ... interrupting again ... now shouting
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO SAY THAT!"

Me
"But it's true."

James Ray ... shouting even more loudly
"Then borrow it!"

Me
"I have no one to borrow from."

James Ray ... speaking in a loud and angry tone
"You mean to say your life is so miserable that you have absolutely no friends who can loan you money?"

Me ... quietly
"No, my friends are struggling to."

James Ray ... shouting
"You'll never be anything but a fat slob and looser if you don't attend my retreat."

Yes. James Ray is an unconscionable prick. And he openly loathes people for being sick, poor, or God forbid, overweight. (The steroid dependent, former body builder's contempt for overweight people is an open secret.)

Ray's hostility toward the sick and economically disadvantaged is something I've noted before. It's even evident in his published work. It's one of the first things that jumped out me when the sweat lodge debacle forced me to take a hard look at this particular member of The Secret brain trust.

I picked through more of his site, and found more facile platitudes. There's this from his Practical Mysticism seminar:

Maybe you, like me, are tired of the so-called "spiritual individual" who is sick and broke all the time, or the "mystic hopeful" who can't carry on an intelligent conversation about real life.

Where, oh where, would motivational speakers be, without the mythical ne'er do well to use as a whipping boy? His disdain for the sick and economically disadvantaged is also highlighted on the home page.

Likewise, there are others who qualify as a creative genius, and they're physically sick all the time. That's not real wealth!

Then there are those who claim to be really "spiritual," and they're always financially broke. That's not wealth either!

Is it any wonder that so many people came away from The Secret feeling like their illness and adversity meant that they had failed somehow?

As I noted here, by James Ray's standard, Stephen Hawking is a cautionary tale.

I am weary of discussing the implications of self-help pundits and their negative messaging around any imperfection. I have railed for years against how emotionally punishing this is for people who don't happen to be perfect. Once again, Ray has raised the implicit hazards of the self-help industry into something radically explicit. I knew The Secret was dangerous. I didn't expect people to die because of it. I was proved wrong by James Ray. I didn't think a "law of attraction" guru would ever openly, publicly, and directly, humiliate a person for being sick and financially disadvantaged. James Ray proved me wrong on that score as well.

Ray has left tremendous wreckage in his wake. He has emotionally, physically, and financially wounded countless people. If you are one of those people, this is your opportunity to set the record straight and aid prosecutors in their attempt to counter the defense's mitigation strategy. I have little doubt that he's harmed more people than he's helped. Please send your letters to Sheila Polk, the District Attorney who successfully -- and brilliantly -- prosecuted Ray for some of his crimes.

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