Byron Katie's School For The Work March '09

JGF75, I was not born yesterday.  You claim that
 
"the whole reason I'm here is that I am concerned that Katie's a con-woman and I am looking for the evidence"
 
but spend much of your time and many words attempting to cast doubt on the RR Forum information/sources.
 
That does appear to be your actual reason for being here, and you in your last paragraph admit, "My intent is to motivate you to question RR.COM".
 
I am not buying what you are selling. 
 
L

Katie's claims about The Work curing mental illness are reckless and irresponsible, given her lack of training and absence of studies.

-jgf75

agreed. 'the end of suffering', my caboose.

So Jgf have you read janaki's blog??  An insider account of how ms katie does business..she left out the "stuff that would make her look bad" and still managed to convince me rather easily that this was something to stay far far away from.  If you are looking for an excuse to feel ok about doing the work, you won't find it here or on rr, you claim to be looking for evidence of malfeasance -dude, if you haven't got it yet, you won't get it.  If your income is somehow tied to referring people to bk, then that is a rough position to be in.  Your said motives for posting here are not evident in the content of your posts.  Looking for information?? OK, if you can't come to a conclusion after all you say you've read, then I don't know if you can be believed.  Your are getting mighty tedious.  No offense.

Thanks to lifestream & oneperson for your comments on my posts.

Oneperson, I have been reading your blog with interest ... nice work. 

JGF75, thanks for your clarifications and I can agree to let it stand that you did not suggest that people do not need to be educated about coercive persuasion.

In a subsequent post you said "Many people becoming quite unhinged in Byron Katie's seminars" . . .. I want to understand what determines who gets benefits and who gets damaged."

The problem is, JG that you cannot know in advance who will and who will not get damaged. You cannot know and the individuals involved may not be aware what, if anything could trigger an emotional breakdown. That is specifically the issue with performing unlicensed therapy. There are no 'checks and balances', no accountability to the appropriate authorities, no safeguards for the particpants who do become damaged. Each and every BK participant who attends the seminar 'voluntarily' signs a disclaimer, as has been posted on RR.com, entirely clearing BKI of any responsibility and totally waiving their rights for redress if anything does go wrong. 

Now, if it was an unlicensed surgeon, would you be willing to weed through in advance which people may or may not have a problem on the operating table? How would you know? Which one of your friends would you invite to undergo surgery with an unlicensed surgeon? Then ask them to sign a disclaimer before they hop onto the table, allowing that the surgeon is not responsible if anything goes wrong? What if the surgeon never even asked for a prior medical history, didn't even know what condition he was operating for? He's just going in there to 'rearrange' things a little, no big deal! Would you be okay with that?

JGF75 - It's not enough to say "if even one person gets hurt, it invalidates the whole thing and shows Katie shouldn't be in business." People get unhinged in college, and we don't shut all colleges down.

Yes, people may become unhinged in college due to stress, but again this shows there is a limited understanding of the difference between a coercive and normal context. The situation is not comparable. There is a system of checks and balances in place in college. There are student advisors, counsellors and pastors on hand to assist those who find themselves in difficulty. There is a student body who can be appealed to if there are grievances on the part of the student against teachers or for other situations. No college students sign away their citizen rights upon entrance into college. They always have full rights to redress should something truly unethical or untoward happen.

Most importantly, the college does not hide it's stated goal or intentions from the students. The college is an institute for higher learning. There will be education, there will be papers to write, presentations to give tests to take. That it could be stressful is a given in advance.

JGF75 said - "When participants walk into an intense workshop of any sort, there's a certain degree to which I believe they must be responsible for knowing they can handle it."

I think this issue has been handled ad nauseam. How can you know in advance if you can handle advance techniques of coercive persuasion? They are purposefully created to break down resistance and a lot can depend on a person's emotional state at any given moment. It's not about which person is stronger and more able to 'handle' it. It's more about conditions in your life that might make you temporarily open/suggestible/susceptible to these high-pressure tactics.

Furthermore to the question of "who gets benefits and who gets damaged", the issue has been explored at length on the other forum; the whole format of these LGAT type setting is deliberately designed to destabilize a person's sense of self-identity in order for them to become more and more deeply involved in the belief-system that is being promoted. That's the point of sleep-deprivation, fasting, being out of contact with family or friends, etc. It is the goal to get people off-center, to confuse them ever more deeply, to disconnect them from what they have known so that they can be plugged in to the new belief system. In college they have courses that are complex and difficult to understand but they are not generally intended to re-engineer your whole sense of self and perception of reality. So who really benefits from this in the long term? Making those kind of judgment calls would be skating on very thin ice in my personal opionion. 

If Byron Katie truly wanted to benefit humanity after being 'enlightened' by the cockroach incident, she could have taken a realistic approach. She could have worked to become licensed as a therapist. She could have even had her own methods peer-reviewed and scientifically tested. They could have been removed from the coercive context and refined with safeguards. Perhaps she could have helped a lot of people. She would have even made a nice living out of it, still enjoying the Ojai beachfront home and everything.

It's kind of like when I first left my own cult and decided to make a career in education. I was very idealistic. I had a lot of pre-conceived ideas about how things should be done. I took some ideas from books I'd read and kind of ran with them a little too uncritically. It was only when I went back to school that I was forced to realize that there were others before me who had tried to do the things I was exploring with mixed results. In fact I was largely unaware of an entire foundation of educational theory.

BK thinks that she is enlightened but the chances are, as far as I see it that she's just not that educated about psychology ... about what has been tried, what works and what has failed in the past. She hasn't had much training in philosophy except at the feet of JG Krishnamurti, so she's never really had to do much critical thinking in terms of composing coherent essays and really figuring out what is true or false in in what Krishnamurti said. She's never had professional training in counseling, yet she's happy to sit up there on a stage and offer all kinds of unprofessional counseling advice, entirely abandoning basic ethics of privacy in favor of showmanship.

This person is supposed to be enlightened? This person is supposed to be totally wise and all-knowing? I believe that we can all experience transformative 'enlightenment moments' like Katie, but the most important thing is how we choose to interpret those experiences and apply them in our daily lives in a constructive and appropriate manner.

These Guru types go on about how they don't want or need to be anyone's Guru. They complain about how tiring it is, and how dull it is to be trapped by the common expectations of their followers. Well then, I say shut up and don't be a Guru! Work hard instead. Become a professional person who is subject to the normal checks and balances that anyone else must undergo. Isn't part of supposed 'enlightenment' understanding the joy of being 'normal', of being 'human'? Quit playing God and make a real contribution to society that doesn't involve padding an already inflated pocketbook.

Gurus need to get over themselves and chop some wood and carry some freakin' water like the rest of us.

Thanks Kassie about the blog comment.  I'm very much still getting my "sea-legs" and 'coming out,' so to speak.

I find the dialogue on this thread very beneficial, not just for folks investigating BKI, but also regarding influence techniques, how to discern such, and critical thinking skills (which I confess I am still learning).  

I endeavor to take folks as much as possible at face value, without being naive.  Therefore I want to believe that jgf isn't being deceitful, but rather really is looking as honestly as possible into BKI.  S/he has brought up valid points, imo, looking at both sides of what has been brought forth.  All posters  have brought up excellent responses and insights.

As far as the BKI school, it appears that the school would be quite the trigger for someone endeavroing to overcome mental health challenges, which seems to be (if not on purpose, then by default) who BKI targets.  When a participant has a tumultuous effect/response, such as a possilbe abreaction, who is going to help the individual through that?  It seems to me the $$ spent for the school would be better spent on a good qualified therapist, who gets to know their client personally and can provide one-on-one help specifically designed for a client through the ups and downs of recovery. 

Perhaps there may be a place for the exercise of The Work (not the School for The Work) in personal therapy from a licensed and qualified therapist, but (the more I've thought about it) those second and last questions in the inquiry exercise really cause my mind to get foggy....and to run in another direction.  However, that may just be from my own experiences; the exercise may help someone else.  I find thought records from CBT much more effective for me.

I've been getting some extra traffic at my blog recently, and found out where some of it's coming from. It seems that I've got a virtual stalker: someone calling themselves "AntiCult" on the Rick Ross Forums has been writing against me, causing a few more people to Google or link to my blog. I asked one of my visitors exactly what AntiCult had been attacking me for, and he pointed to this posting, where AntiCult criticizes me for being... a poker player!!

(For anyone who doesn't realize it... I'm a very obscure writer on the net. On my blog and other personal sites, I average maybe 30-50 visitors a day, a tiny little splash, smaller than even specialty sites like guruphiliac. I don't make any money or amass any fame from blogging. I think I amuse a few dozen people, and mutually support a handful of readers in Zen practice. So it's weird, to begin with, that AntiCult takes so much interest in me personally.)

There's a bit of a "boy cried wolf" effect. When AntiCult attacks someone, maybe it's about something important... or maybe it's about playing a card game, smoking a little pot, or dancing too fast to that devilish Rock 'N' Roll music.

It's similar when Jonieg writes in this guruphiliac discussion about "abuse." She writes here (about my original teacher, deceased Zen Master Seung Sahn), "Seung Sahn himself, was involved in the sexual abuse of his female students." What she's referring to was consentual sex between adults. Shouldn't we, by default, consider that to be private? If we're going to stick our nose into such things, shouldn't we offer some REASON why we object, why we even consider it our business? I find it creepy that Jonieg would characterize a consentual relationship between adults as "abuse"... WITHOUT offering the slightest logic or explanation for the accusation.

Sure, lots of people like to read about the sex lives of celebrities, in People magazine etc. Almost everyone recognizes such stories as gossip with no profound importance. If you're going to claim that the sex life of some dead monk is an important matter to us, and that it's abuse... you ought to have some reason behind the claim, and JonieG offers zero in that regard.

So again there's the Boy/Wolf problem. If JonieG accuses someone of abuse, then MAYBE there's some evidence of real wrongdoing. Or maybe it's because of some implicit dogma she's promoting, like equating "sex" with "abuse" in ways that few reasonable people would accept. Maybe her accusations are of some use to people interested in meditation and the big questions of life, but maybe they're an irrelevent distraction from anything related to practical matters.

Stuart

Shouldn´t we, by default, consider sex between spiritual teachers and their disciples as abuse?
If the particulars of the situation do not occur to you there is not much use in explaining them to you.

theyogafiles, i agree.

thought-provoking info re seung sahn having sex with his students:

http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,58393,71677#msg-71677

It's similar when Jonieg writes in this guruphiliac discussion about "abuse." She writes here (about my original teacher, deceased Zen Master Seung Sahn), "Seung Sahn himself, was involved in the sexual abuse of his female students." What she's referring to was consentual sex between adults. Shouldn't we, by default, consider that to be private? If we're going to stick our nose into such things, shouldn't we offer some REASON why we object, why we even consider it our business? I find it creepy that Jonieg would characterize a consentual relationship between adults as "abuse"... WITHOUT offering the slightest logic or explanation for the accusation.

-randomstu

randomstu:

not sure why it is that you're having a problem comprehending my posts. i already told you, quotes such as the one above which you're attributing to me are by another person. see my already published post to you re this:

http://guruphiliac.lefora.com/2009/03/23/byron-katies-school-for-the-work-march-09/page5/#post8547212

interesting, the above quote you reference is by this 'anticult' person you've become preoccupied with. you do seem perturbed over what 'anticult' has been saying re you. where i wonder is your zen equanimity?

to repeat, since it seems you're not getting my communication, i provided a quote which you have twice misattributed to me. i provided the quote so people could assess it and form their own opinions.

btw, your zen teacher said something you might want to consider re your beef with the guy from the rr forum:

the one who praises you is a thief.
the one who critizes you is your true friend.
--seung sahn

http://www.numii.net/word_press/gurus/seung-sahn

Out of this, gimmeshelter has fabricated some paranoia that it's a "conflict of interest" if I say anything about Byron Katie.

-randomstu

RandomStu believes that gimmeshelter has "fabricated some paranoia" re Byron Katie.  Okay...

I've been getting some extra traffic at my blog recently, and found out where some of it's coming from. It seems that I've got a virtual stalker

-randomstu

And now RandomStu believes that he has a "virtual stalker".

LOL

That is just too funny.  Stuart has got to be joking, right?

Heck, maybe someone really IS "fabricating some paranoia"...

RandomStu believes that gimmeshelter has "fabricated some paranoia" re Byron Katie.  Okay...

And now RandomStu believes that he has a "virtual stalker".

LOL
 

That is just too funny.  Stuart has got to be joking, right?

Heck, maybe someone really IS "fabricating some paranoia"...

-kaliflower

I found this post to be quite succinct as well as entertaining.  I'm all about having fun btw, however these are some VERY serious topics as well as some very questionable characters, in my humble opinion.  I truly have only one main question - why is RandomStu here?  Why is RandomStu spending any time at all on debunking any criticism of his preferences.  Why does RandomStu feel it necessary to justify anything? Nobody is telling you what you should be doing Stu, so why don't you just do what you advocate so much and Zen-Away?!  Does Zen involve cruising anti-cult boards?  Is that one of it's western tenets?  I truly know nothing about Zen - zero interest, but no judgment.  My only interest in Zen presently is connected to you Stu.  Again, why are you here?

I'm a rather well adjusted, intelligent, fun-loving, and free-range-rover when it comes to belief systems and others' beliefs.  In other words, my identity is intact regardless of what is happening around me or who I am engaging.   I have no problem with anything anyone chooses to believe.  I do wonder though, again, why would someone like RandomStu be here?  Why do you feel  you need to justify practices and relationships you've been involved in Stu?  Who are you defending?  You or your beliefs?  Your deceased master?  I find it rather distasteful to read that your master was involved sexually with his students while claiming to be a celibate monk - do I know this to be true?  No.  Do I believe it is true?  Yes.  Is it right or wrong?  Again a question of one's beliefs, as well as a classic example of duplicity. 

Personally, my opinion is that it is a horrible practice for anyone to use their influence over another in any manner for their own personal gain to the detriment of "the other" involved.  If even one individual stated that they felt your deceased master's practices were wrong, and they felt harmed by them, then is it not worth taking a deeper look at this?  Perhaps not to you, but it is to me. 

Typically in today's multilayered societies, the rules change depending upon who you speak with, where you are, and what the population generally accepts as true or not, acceptable or not, preferred or not.  In my American culture, it is generally frowned upon to use sex as a way to convince others of prizes to come.  I mean COME ON - you really believe that's what his motivations were?  Really?  How so - I'm truly interested in how power is transmitted by one individual to another through sexual acts for the sole purpose of giving the person a Zen gig of their own.  Why not just give it to them?  Who has the "All powerful Zen-Seed" now Stu?  You?

I'm  not done yet - big surprise eh.  I agree with the hilarity of kaliflower's post regarding paranoia.  Are you on these boards because you are paranoid.  It certainly is a rather obvious red-flag to moi.  What do you have to be paranoid about Stu?  Have you done something "bad"?  Are you afraid of something?  Truly, I'd like to know what is your motivation.  Zen should speak for itself, if in fact it is appealing to anyone, without all this chaos of justifying, debunking, attempting to convince of it's merits based upon the bastardized versions of the original eastern philosophies that are seemingly flung far and wide the more I read.

Now as for BK (yes, you CAN have it your way, LOL!) Didn't Burger King kind of have the "rights" to use those letters first.  Did Byron ask that conglomerate if it was ok to use their letters?  Doubtful.  Also doubtful that Burger King cares about Byron Katie or whatever his/her name really is.  Personally I think the entire Byron Katie mess is just that - a mess, but then that's just my personal opinion.  I have watched several of Byron's videos, and have done the "Work" on my own, but it's just another version of what has been said in so many ways by so many others, what's so special about Byron?

Hmmmm, perhaps it's all the NLP training, and the smoke and mirrors - whadda you think?  Is Byron in charge, or is she a product of the same techniques cleverly being administered to her by her "inner circle"?  I wonder, I really do.  Jeepers, I'd sure love to be a fly on the wall at her place for a day.  What great youtube videos I could make!  And finally, I don't believe in victims, but I do believe that if one feels victimized it's the same as being victimized to that individual.  Is there no compassion in Zen or the Work?  Seemingly not, and that's quite sad to me.

But then I just read a few BK gems, crack up, come over to places like this, crack up some more and ask the questions that come to mind.  Wonder if I'll get any actual answers or just the same ole' washed down, watered down, homogenized version of self-serving and obvious paranoid dissertations and criticisms of others who are simply seeking whatever will bring them peace and comfort.  I think we all should have that if we want it.  It's free and you don't have to belong to any group or cult to find it, just look within - all the answers are there - not outside of oneself.  Of course this is again only one person's opinion, and certainly not meant as a general statement or message reflecting the other members of this board - just me Stu. Helena-Handbasket :)

I find it creepy that Jonieg would characterize a consentual relationship between adults as "abuse"... WITHOUT offering the slightest logic or explanation for the accusation.

-randomstu

When someone dares to point out that a so-called zen master may have abused his position of power by porking several of his female students - THAT'S creepy?? 

The zen guy gets exposed for his multiple porkings and what does he do?  He concocts a story that he was empowering the women so they could run his centers!

Now THAT'S creepy. 

i had a deja vu feeling when stu used the word 'creepy'. looked thru earlier posts & found a little lecture by stu on the word 'creep':

Hi, gimme, thanks for your responses. What if someone asked you, "Do you believe that creeps really exist?" You can't really say that they don't, because most of us know someone who we think is a creep.

But who we call a "creep" is different for each of us. It all swings on our own judgements. We all want different things from the people we meet, and have our individual ideas about how others should act. People who stray too far from the desired behavior are labeled "creeps" (or harsher names). In a forum like this, made up of anonymous strangers, it doesn't convey much to say someone is a "creep." To make it coherent, we'd have to be clear on exactly what our standards and desires are, behind making this judgement.

The exact same person who I call a creep, you may say is wonderful. Neither of us is right or wrong, it's just that we seek different things from others, and thus have different standards with which to judge them.

-randomstu

ergo we can consider it 'not conveying much' that stu thinks my reference to seung sahn's sex-with-students is 'creepy'.

a realization: i prefer to discuss byron katie elsewhere. tata.

I would think you would have understood these exercises you experienced as teaching on how to become fully released from any bond of self. Once completely detached we are truly free. We aren't what we posses. I suffered from a traumatic childhood along with severe mental illness. For the majority of my life these thoughts plagued me. Immediately after reading "loving what Is" I was released from a menagerie of negative bombarding thoughts. Medical experts had tried for years to accomplish what her book did for me in a week. I understand this concept doesn't work for you, but have you ever considered you weren't sick enough. We aren't a cult. We are self healers. Katie gives the keys while it is our job to do the work for ourselves. I hope this site and other sites like this don't discourage someone from seeking what could possibly be the only thing that could have saved their life. Adam

In light of the news on James Arthur Ray's Spiritual Warrior training, I wanted to revisit the posts I'd written here.  I notice both the clarity and the confusion I expressed.  I was still hopeful, at the time of these writings, that I would ultimately gain some meaningful takeaway from The School.  Instead, I've avoided all things Katie, all things New Age, all of anything that relates to such teachings. 

About all that's left is embarrassment at the gullibility that left me open to signing up for The School.  Shame, for feeling so stupid after the fact.  And sorrow, sorrow for the Spiritual Warrior participants and their families...for the long-term damage the survivors will suffer.  For the shame they will feel and the costs that will continue.

I abandoned this particular thread when it garnered too many comments from apologists and too much in-fighting.  I've been told that the infighting is a technique used by "trolls" to halt a discussion.  

To the trolls and the apologists:  what have you to say now?