The Evil Mind

"The lawsuit filed by a survivor of James Ray's 'Spiritual Warrior' program, Sidney Spencer, charges that Ray has an 'evil mind'.

In order for the deaths of the three victims to have meaning, we need to learn something from this tragedy. We need to learn something that will prevent others from falling victim to con-artists like James Ray.

The only thing that protects us from deception is our God-given reason. If the victims had strongly embraced and constantly used their reason they would be alive today. Their reason would make them question claims made by one of the defendants in the lawsuit, Angel Valley Ministries. As just one example, on their site they make this statement while describing their real estate in an attempt to lure customers to their ranch: 'It is about entering a place where powerful earth energies are present and active. It is about connecting with the invisible realms. It is about being at a place where the veil between the dimensions is thinner than in most other places.' If the victims had not abandoned, or at least suppressed, their God-given reason they would have asked for and demanded answers for questions that would require evidence to prove the stated assertions.

James Ray's customers were told that Indian tribes used sweat lodges as a way of generating visions. They should listen to reason and they would have realized that visions, like dreams, are meaningless. As the thoughtful and altruistic Deist and one of America's founding fathers Thomas Paine made clear, dreams are what happens in our minds when we and our reason are asleep and imagination is allowed to run unchecked by our reason. They, and 'visions', are nothing more than that. It is folly to give importance to something that doesn't deserve it.

One powerful example of visions not being worthy of our attention is the vision the Sioux Indian medicine men said they had just prior to the battle/massacre of Wounded Knee. They believed that by doing a Ghost Dance for four or five consecutive nights they would have a vision. The vision they had promised a resurrection of their dead ancestors and an Indian promised land here on earth minus white people. They also believed based on their visions that the Ghost Dance Shirts they wore while doing the Ghost Dance would protect them from being shot by the soldiers. A medicine man even told Sioux warriors that the bullets of the White American soldiers would not hurt them. Like James Ray, he was dead wrong.

It seems that the big three Abrahamic 'revealed' religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all help to set people up to be victims of cults and of con-artists like James Ray. They do this by requiring their followers to give up or to suspend their God-given reason in order to believe what their 'revealed' religion is teaching. For example, in order to believe that Joshua made the sun stand still to give the Hebrews more time to slaughter their neighbors, to believe that Jesus walked on water, or that Mohamed flew up to heaven on the back of a Buraq, we need to let go of our God-given reason. We can't believe these, and many other unreasonable claims made by 'revealed' religions while still using the gift of reason which God gave us. This rejection of our reason sets a precedence which allows us to repeat this harmful and unnatural act. The only way to prevent it is to never give up our God-given reason, not for religions, not for governments and not for celebrities."

-- Bob Johnson, laying it all out there for everybody to see - without mentioning Oprah anywhere but in the title, and (this is rich) by using his "God-given" reason - all of which, as part of my own personal "healing process", I'm now willingly accepting as a tiny bit o' proof all things are possible, for The Examiner.

Doing The Best He Can (With What Little He Has)

Wooooosssh. Somedays it seems impossible to read the papers because A) I can't imagine how ignorant reporters are about NewAgers B) I always know more about this crap than they do and, thus, have to add a lot of context (and subtext) on my own when I read their stories, and C) all of that pisses me off - I just want to be able to read a damn story again, feel like I'm the one being informed, and then go about my life - but nooooooo, I'm stuck reading between the lines and feeling the need to inform them on what they should already know to report. Case in point, the sudden disappearance of San Francisco's Mayor, Gavin Newsom:

"After three days of radio silence following his withdrawal from the governor's race, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom unexpectedly jetted off Tuesday morning to Hawaii to join his wife and baby daughter, who already were vacationing there.

His aloha comes as heads are still spinning over his abrupt withdrawal from the governor's race - although his pullout was less than a shock, with Newsom's poll numbers stagnating and his money drying up.

It was such a stressful time for the mayor that he huddled at City Hall in the final days of his campaign with someone,...described as a 'life coach',...No word if the mystery man accompanied Newsom to the islands. And no word on when Gavin plans to come back to town."

Simple enough, right? Wrong. See, Gavie-baby is a NewAger, and his place in Hana, Hawaii is at a NewAge "power spot", just like Sedona, Arizona, where the James Arthur Ray sweatlodge tragedy occurred. Oprah has a place there, too. Needless to say, I'd put money on it that Newsom's "life coach" is also a NewAger (Is there any other kind?) and is, indeed, in Hawaii as well. This is a "vulnerable time" for Gavin. That's how cults work. He can get away from us - but not from them.

Knowing his situation so well, I'm going to try and have some sympathy for Gavin. He must be tripping pretty hard right about now, because this whole San Francisco cult thing just hasn't been working out like it used to,...that is, providing a steady Democratic voting block for almost nothing in return. He has consistently been signaling his approval for San Francisco's NewAge cultism, for years, and doing it so hard that even cult expert Rick Ross sent him a warning letter. So hard that even the Scientologists showed up to give him a try.

He offered to close the streets so NewAgers could do yoga. He talked up Van Jones, and global warming, and tried instituting draconian environmental laws. He turned City Hall into an organic garden. The NewAge psychic who presided over Newsom's second marriage (which took place not too long after Newsom's obligatory affair with his campaign manager's wife) even said, publicly, that he'd get the Governor's job. How could she be so wrong? How could everything have gone so terribly, terribly wrong?

Surely, reporters don't know. The Law of Attraction, anyone?

Guilty As Sin

Man, this James Arthur Ray story can just get to be too much. ABC News has an interview with an orthodontist, Beverly Bunn, whose roommate died in that Sedona, Arizona sweat lodge.

Bunn is a total NewAger - the very definition of the Mystic Bourgeoisie - even wearing the uniform: short boyish haircut, dangly earrings, several pendents of some sort, a light scarf hung just-so, over something purple from India or someplace "spiritual" and/or ethnic like that. Beverly goes on to describe the other sweatlodge attendees as really driven "rich people". Stupid, gullible, and easily-led rich people, if you ask me.

And let's not forget to close the 7th circle of Hell that is NewAge's presence in the medical field. From Wired Magazine:

"Consider: In certain parts of the US, vaccination rates have dropped so low that occurrences of some children’s diseases are approaching pre-vaccine levels for the first time ever. And the number of people who choose not to vaccinate their children (so-called philosophical exemptions are available in about 20 states, including Pennsylvania, Texas, and much of the West) continues to rise. In states where such opting out is allowed, 2.6 percent of parents did so last year, up from 1 percent in 1991, according to the CDC. In some communities, like California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco, non-vaccination rates are approaching 6 percent (counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth)."

And "California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco," is what? Another NewAge "power spot", filled with "rich people", just like Sedona, Arizona. Stupid, gullible, and easily-led rich people - if you ask me - and they're all hurting other people by acting on their NewAge beliefs. (Wired says "almost 10 percent" of the children in California elementary schools "may already be at risk" because of these loons,...)

And how about the NewAge image of NewAge parents in NewAge power spots refusing medical care to their NewAge kids - which threatens other kids - while their NewAge physicians are leading others to their deaths in NewAge sweatlodges? True story.

That's NewAge.

Speaking of NewAge physicians hanging out in NewAge sweatlodges, let's get back to good ol' Beverly Bunn:

"Bunn, trained in CPR as part of her medical credentials, said she repeatedly tried to perform the life-saving measures on her friend, but was continuously rebuffed by Ray's employees known as the 'Dream Team.'"

So, is anybody going to ask Beverly why her training for those "medical credentials" - which had to include at least a bit of science - didn't prevent her from attending a NewAge retreat in the first place?

Didn't her training to get her "medical credentials" already teach her all this talk of "toxins" and "cleansing" is snake oil - supported by nothing in medicine - or does she go on babbling this incredible nonsense when she's at work?

Has it dawned on her yet that if she had used knowledge, easily-gleaned from her training to earn her "medical credentials", her roommate would be alive today?

Does she get that with the training she received to get her "medical credentials" she had everything necessary to prevent the tragic death of her roommate but, instead, Beverly and her NewAge "beliefs" egged it all on? At $9,000 a pop?

I mean, really, who is Beverly Bunn to be railing against James Arthur Ray when she's as guilty as he is?

NewAge, Michael Jackson, And Murder (Figures)

"Hell hath no fury like a New Age physician scorned.

That's what Sedona healer Reinalda de Souza wants the world to glean from the untimely demise of Michael Jackson. She especially wants the famous and wealthy individuals who beat a path to her door seeking a cure for their mental, spiritual, and physical ailments to get the message.

'I am not a woman to be trifled with,' says the short, charismatic woman, slapping the wooden table in the kitchen of her rambling, cliff-side dwelling for emphasis. 'I haven't traveled thousands of miles and studied on four continents just give my expertise away for free.'

She stops for a moment, her long hair thrown back, her face ablaze in the evening sunlight that's bouncing off the famous red rocks nearby, filling the room with a Martian glow.

'The rich in America,' she scoffs in an odd, foreign accent difficult to place until you know more about her. 'They want everything for free. They'd better learn. The arts I employ to heal them can be used as readily to destroy.'

Suddenly, her face softens and she studies her visitor intently.

'Would you care for some hot tea, dear?'”

-- Joseph Rossi, adding another name - Reinalda de Souza - to the ever-growing list of charlatans (and/or potential NewAge murderers) who surrounded Michael Jackson, in the Phoenix, Arizona New Times.

The article continues:

"De Souza is an expert in all sorts of alternative medicine", who met Jackson while attending "an international seminar on the benefits of reiki healing" and "using her expertise in lithotherapy, the use of stones, crystals, and minerals for their healing properties. Jackson bathed in tubs filled with agate, garnet, and aventurine. He drank potent mixtures of distilled water mixed with emerald dust, and pasteurized goat milk chilled with round stones of lapis lazuli. He grew stronger under De Souza's care, until the doctor asked for the unusual payment Jackson had promised her — the skeleton of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, which Jackson reportedly owned.

'If he'd kept his word to me, he would be alive today,' snorted De Souza, sipping her tea. 'The cretin thought he could backstab me after I'd devoted so much energy to curing him.

'They think someone pumped him full of Demerol,' she spat, her rage building. 'It was a curse I learned long ago in São Paulo [Brazil] that stopped his heart. As soon as your story hits the street, the whole world will know that I — Dr. Reinalda de Souza — killed Jacko!'"

Good stuff. (And doesn't she project the "nice" image NewAgers are always trying to paint of themselves to the public?) Now that she's confessed, I wish the police would do us all a favor and lock that crazy bitch up - throwing away the key.

Oh, and by the way, this evil kook lives in the NewAge "powerspot" of Sedona, Arizona, which cultists think is on a major crossing of "Ley Lines" (don't ask) they look like this:

And, yes, that's also what a diagram of a NewAger's thought process looks like. Now, who's crazy? Me or them? (Answer that fucking question wrong and I'll punch you in the nose,...) The story of this witch woman in Arizona goes:

"She arrived in the late '80s, shortly after excitement was generated in the red-rock town by celebrations of the Harmonic Convergence, a unique planetary alignment welcomed by adherents of New Age beliefs worldwide. Sedona was already a holy city, of sorts, for New Agers and for celebrities. But De Souza felt she was already far ahead of the local 'healers,' who were just picking up on many of the practices she had already mastered, such as channeling, interpreting auras, and the one she was most drawn to, the use of crystals and other stones to heal. She perceived the New Age practitioners of Sedona as hippie versions of country bumpkins.

'Let me give you an example,' she confides. 'I bought this place for a fraction of what it was worth. On my first tour of the property, I sensed a vortex behind the house next to a cement bird pond. The sellers, who claimed to be devotees of harmonic convergence, knew nothing of it. It just shows you how naive people are here. If they'd had any inkling of it, I'd never have been able to afford it. Stupid hippies!'"

Wasn't I just talking about the Harmonic Convergence recently? (Find the tag over on the right of the blog) Whatever. Biff! Bam! Pow! She called the NewAgers of Sedona "hippie versions of country bumpkins"!!! Man, I love that kind of stuff. Nothing gets to them like the rare occurrence of being dissed by their own kind! She better watch her back: Somebody's going to be putting some crazy spells on her now!!!

Read her story - it's really wild and crazy shit that she makes up as she goes along - and, while you do so, consider the fact this crazy loon is being kow-towed to by America's major celebrities. (Including Ronald Reagan, she says.) If you're sane, it should all change your perspective on everything.

Stupid hippies!

Oh, He Was Insane Alright (They All Are)

"FAIRFIELD, Iowa (AP) - A trial is scheduled to begin next month in a nearly 5-year-old case of a Maharishi University student stabbed to death in the school's dining hall.

The family of Levi Butler filed the federal lawsuit, accusing the school of gross negligence in not preventing Butler's death.
Butler was stabbed to death in March 2004 by fellow student Shuvender Sem, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
In the lawsuit, Butler's family notes that Sem had attacked another student earlier in the day but that the matter wasn't reported to police. Instead, Sem was taken to an administrator's apartment, where he stole a knife while the official was meditating and later stabbed Butler.

Trial is set to begin Jan. 12 in Des Moines."

-- The Associated Press

"I Am The Offspring Of The (NewAge) Movement"

"What remains to be seen is whether this will be his presidential modus operandi — sort of a Zen-like indifference,..."

-- Jennifer Rubin, finally noticing something a little bit "off" in the NewAge Left's choice of the NewAge "Lightworker" from Oprah's NewAge "power spot" of Hawaii (though he was clearly attached to her nonsense and deferred to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi cult when he was getting elected as the NewAge Democratic Party's candidate) not the first choice of Pajamas Media.

"The less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes."

-- David Ehrenstein, who wrote the controversial "Barack The Magic Negro" op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times - because no one would've believed it if TMR said it - but, now, even that's also being repeated by Pajamas Media.

Plus, click this post's title to get another dose of political reality,...the Democratic Party's NewAge cult politics, that is:

And finally, I must confess, I never imagined you so-called "skeptical" folks could be so naive,...

TMR NewAge News (For The Indiscriminate Fool)

"The CIA has issued a statement after last week’s catastrophic waterboard incident in Guantanamo that embarrassed the agency and raised questions about security.
 
The events unfolded as a suspected terrorist was being interrogated and the session went on for nearly four hours. According to sources, the suspect 'seemed to enjoy it' and at one point nearly fell asleep.
 
An investigation revealed the water had been inadvertently stored next to a photograph of Valium and aspirin, and had apparently retained that memory. The origin of the photo is unknown, and calls to NewAge World Headquarters in the Sedona suburb of Circle Rock, AZ went unanswered. A spokesperson in the Roswell, NM office declined comment.
 
In a brief statement, the detainee told reporters he felt relaxed, pain-free and 'very clean.'
 
The water has been checked into a rehab program."

-- Joseph Nigro, on a "terrible" situation, only made better by the hilarity of it (with the following video) as The Macho Response.

TMR's Favorite E-Mail Of The Day

I have devised an eight-point program to free society of the NewAge influence;



Evacuate the entire state of New Mexico.



Fence in the state.



Dump all the promoters, believers and followers of any NewAge crap behind the fence.



Remove all rocks so they can’t put them in a circle.



Give them water whose last memory was of being in a polar bears’ bladder.



Occasionally disguise aircraft as UFOs and fly over them at night to give them false hope.



Wait a few years while they screw each other over and only one guy is left.



Shoot that guy.

-- "JRN" - with a brilliant plan - promoted in the comments section of the post called This Could Have All Been Predicted.