A warning to the seeker..

[undergroundpanther]

I originally put this post up in the course in miracles thread. But after I wrote it I added a couple of lines for clarity and I realized it applies to other New Age manipulations out there too..

Within the course in miracles there are dangerous assumptions about the origins of the suffering in life people go through.Helen Schucman is a psychologist. So should KNOW better than to write this stuff as if it is therapy. A real trustworthy well TRAINED psychologist with a sense of ethics and empathy for those she seeks to help should not be rationalizing blaming victims for their suffering and unconscious thought processes.

The course in miracles is built upon the premise we "chose" to think our way to our suffering lives.This on the surface looks innocuous maybe even"empowering". But in practice it is very destructive and dis-empowering.If you take this idea she is saying to it's logical conclusions you will realize she is saying children who are raped they by their own thinking "chose" to leave the bliss of god to experience pedophilia.That battered women"chose" to be battered,Sex Slaves"chose"the obscene abuses they go through.

It's really sick to claim what a person 'believes' deep inside themselves ids why they chose to be sent away from god, into a body just to suffer ,all because they think bad thoughts that make bad realities happen all because they forgot they were god.A book like the course in miracles can be bought by anyone,and when desperate hurting people can be harmed by it's teachings it's really sad. Traumatized people should not read it because of the blaming victims for the painful lives they incarnated into mind games she plays in the'course'.


Helen Schucman claims she "channeled" Jesus as she wrote the Course in Miracles.She is a THERAPIST who should KNOW better than to claim she mysteriously wrote such manipulative books that RE TRAUMATIZE victims..and even worse, She says our own beliefs and unconscious processes are what causes us ALL our suffering in life every accident,cancer,mental illness..bad relationships. She is teaching DENIAL and shame and self doubt about thinking..and for traumatized people this can be very dangerous to their sanity..

Her ideas are not new, or original they are not all that"Christian",definitely not Gnostic. The way she uses concepts of "thought reversal" responsibility, and beliefs can be used to minimize and gloss over and excuse all sorts of atrocities from child abuse to cultural crimes like the Caste system.

After all in her opinion,everyone "chooses" their lives with their 'free will. No mention of coercion,lack of information or other factors that occur in life that mitigate the exercise of free will.. Isn't THAT convenient! For HER!.She isn't conscientious ethically and she is not talking as Jesus at all if she is channeling such evil manipulating information that is so abusive,full of guilt inducing claims of impossible burdens of responsibility claiming such lies like someone would "choose" the misery of breast cancer, that whole concept is ludicrous.

Lets look at a few lines..in the Course in Miracles..

The Course exhorts the student to use the ideas presented even though they "will be hard to believe," while others may be "quite startling"
(Preface ix).

Of course those ideas are startling and hard to believe,because it is WRONG,evil and abusive.The reaction to recoil she is anticipating here is self protective response that is NORMAL to have to such a manipulative idea,because it is manipulation. And she admits it herself..

It unashamedly admits that "it cannot be too strongly emphasized that this course aims at a complete reversal of thought" (Manual 24).


Reversal of thought is another sly twisting of language to disguise the real meaning which is thought control.. Which is a process of thought manipulation or thought stopping aimed at Changing who you ARE, by systematically encouraging a seeker to Erase their own trust in your own thoughts by uncovering the unconscious mechanisms and self protective mechanisms a personality has built up in their life to stabilize their own personality to cope with life's problems and shocks and deal with society and to cope with the unconscious drives that are not all that 'nice',that all of us have,that we carry from the hurts and bad experiences in our lives or to protect us..the shadow and 'other' disowned self,that even trained therapists have to learn to accept as ok,understand it in themselves to be capable of helping others deal with their unconscious inside. You can't just murder a part of who you are you don't like without dire consequences.

A course in Miracles has entire lesson devoted to changing the student from all he or she currently believes. This lesson is entitled "My thoughts do not mean anything" (Workbook, 10)

Notice:
This lesson title is in FIRST PERSON narrative and is a DECLARATIVE statement. This kind of statement is a type of loaded speaking called Neuro linguistic programming.. It is a manipulative use of language,marketers use it, CNN does,Psyops uses it. Helen's use of NLP makes language into TOXIC and imposing presupposition on readers it is NLP.

(The translated chapter title taken out of NLP speak,the underlying unconscious reading of that is :

"You,the reader,your thoughts do not mean anything" And because our thoughts and the inner dialog inside as in"thinking" is one way we orient ourselves in the world and can understand who we are through our conscious self perception. So ,her NLP chapter title is even more insidious...it says.."YOU are nothing because all those thoughts of yours,you have inside that self you made, it means NOTHING too and because you think and do not control everything in those thoughts perfectly as GOD does,you are worthless no matter what you think. The Chapter lesson with this EVIL title than instructs you in HOW to throw your mind away and think no more because your thoughts are wrong and harming you and the source of your pain and separation from God..

This sort of "therapy" is DANGEROUS thing to encourage people to do to their own minds and thoughts,because some thoughts even in the most tortured and confused minds are beautiful and belong to that person alone and are theirs and their alone to use as they want to. The name for this mind murdering is "Menticide".She is encouraging Mentacide. Some*gag* Miracle.

When you desperately try to heal by following some pseudo psychological New Age book telling you to tear up everything nasty perceptive wise in your mind and basically kill it to help alleviate your pain,it can invite a mental breakdown and actually destabilize your personality because the course teaches you to mistrust your own mental processes hunt them down and kill them. Training you to treat your own thoughts as if they are suspects,enemies to your own well being,or even worse every bad event in your life that still hurts you or you are not ready to"forgive" or stop keeps you away from god and make you unloveable..Don't let a course in miracles convince you to silence and fear and murder your own thoughts as if mere thoughts of a body of flesh is so powerful it can keep you isolated from your god. That is a big pile of BULLSHIT.

Anyone who's following a "book" and ends up being frightened and suspicious of their own minds and about who they are..Who are tearing into themselves and questioning all their thought processing,can become unaware of being VERY vulnerable to outside influences and manipulators who offer them ANY stability,acceptance,love or reassurances..Especially love-bombing techniques from charismatic(read sociopaths) Personalities and Gurus.
The sorts of manipulative statements like the ones I excerpted from A course in miracles are all throughout those books.
If you already know anything about Neuro Linguistic programming and manipulation techniques,look at the words, the books are is FULL of it, The obvious cues and statements are NLP,guaranteed to mess your head up.

I think , Helen Schucman who wrote that book is evil, she is dangerous,a criminal, a sadist and a liar, hurting and misleading people .She should have her license to practice therapy revoked by the APA.

Another critic
http://skepdic.com/comments/cimcom.html

And if you can,remember these quotes
if you find yourself deeper into the course in miracles..and breaking down..
________________________________________________________________________
The Nazis, through clever exploitation of their victims' unconscious guilt after poking into the back corners of their minds, were often able to convert courageous resistance fighters into meek collaborators....
...The sudden outbreak of hidden moral flaws and guilt can bring a man to tears and complete breakdown. He regresses to the dependency and submissiveness of the baby.
_______________________________________________________________________
Thought reversal?? Digging out my hidden moral flaws than blaming myself for them all will solve all my worldly problems and reunite me with god.... my response is to anyone saying "thought reversal" will cure me,..is a two fingered Fuck you.

____________________________________________________________________
The denial of human freedom.. ( and I add freedom of thought here too)
and equality lifts the authoritarian man beyond his mortal fellows. His temporary power and omnipotence give him the illusion of eternity. In his totalitarianism he denies death and ephemeral existence and borrows power from the future.(the thief of everyone else's tomorrows) He has to invent and formulate a final Truth and protective dogma to justify his battle against mortality and temporariness. From then on, the new fundamental certainty must be hammered into the minds of adepts and slaves.
_______________________________________________________________________
I know there are many sociopath personalities scamming and abusing people in this world .Hammering in a billion different "truths" in billions of minds,and sadly, destroying some of them. Be wary out there.
Educate yourself about manipulation,sociopaths and mind control . It may very well save your mind when you tread into the unknown mysteries and occult knowledge you might explore on your search for spiritual wisdom..

http://www.ninehundred.net/control/mc-ch4.html

[MissWaverly]

1. I agree with you

I have been also having trouble with this in that it leads to self-defeating behavior, I have
been reading a book on "positive thinking." It says that when we "adopt" the spiritually
correct mindset, our problems will disappear. Say that you have an abusive husband who beats
you and you decide that you are a worthwhile person and don't deserve this, then the problem is
going away-poof. This does not happen and I also have problems with "Karma" rationales for suffering. I think that suffering can happen to anyone, that one of the controls in our society
is that people crave justice-a restoring to order, and a redressing of wrongs. Did we as a people have some Karmic debt to be paid and that is why we have had the last 6 years, no, I
don't believe that this is true, evil happens, we have to be more aware to keep checks and
balances in place to prevent abuse of power.

[Matariki]

3. i think the problem with the idea is that it will work-poof immediately

if you have an abusive husban and you work on your self esteem, it follows that you will take actions to get out of the situation. that's not rocket science.

i've seen people turn their finances around by changing how they think about money. it didn't happen overnight, but it does seem to work.

[MissWaverly]

6. true you can help yourself by changing thought patterns

but it is hard to break free of abusive relationships, I had abusive parents and they were constantly figuring out ways to push my buttons; like eating off my plate at the restuaurant.
There is no way I earned the karma of them as parents.

[DemExpat]

9. I do not think that many New Age thoughts are blaming the victim.

On the surface it may come across as such, but to me it is prodding us to step out of the victim role, to see our part in the picture - if not as "to blame" or as "causing" negative or positive events, then as how to look at it crystal clearly and to deal with it out of a sense of empowerment, not helplessness.

This is how I have used much of this type of thought to help me sort out some very painful messes in my life.

I can see how some 'New Agers' - readers, authors, practitioners - might get caught into the trap of presenting or reading it in a blaming light, but I don't think that this is the intention of this school of thought, philosophy, or whatever you want to call it.

I also do believe that shit happens in our lives, some of it partly as a result of our own actions, non-actions, thoughts, blockages (in feelings, mind, energies, intuitions), some of it, to my awareness, not......but what we DO with it is our choice IMO, from this moment forward.

DemEx

[suziedemocrat]

2. I have had this argument with my brother hundreds of time.

He belongs to a church (Christ Scientist) that believes we make our destiny with positive or negative thoughts. He actually thinks cancer victims cause their cancer through their negative thoughts. This thinking makes my blood boil. I think that total negative thinking is bad of course - but so is total positive thinking where you are in denial about what is going on in the world. It goes against the Tao to be so one sided. He actually thinks the Jews in the holocaust somehow caused their own plight. It makes me too angry to talk to him some times. He is also annoying where if you want to lock your doors he thinks you are bringing bad things into your life by "thinking negative." VERY ANNOYING!!!!

(By the way - he is a 48 year old crack addict now - if there is a connection? And his minister is dying of cancer.)

[Cleita]

4. I have to agree with your brother about cancer victims

increasing the chances the disease will visit them because of their negative views of life. I have been around many cancer victims in my family and was able to make certain observations.

Although, I am sure in my family there is a genetic predisposition to cancer, there seems to be two factors that can trigger it. That is environmental factors like asbestos for instance, but also it seems to have attacked the family members who were the sourest in outlook and most complaining about their lot in life.

These attitudes also seemed to slow down their chances of remission. Now I know there is nothing scientific in what I am saying but I am over 65 and have been to many family funerals over the years and weighed the evidence to support in my mind anyway, what I think.

Now I am almost certain that I too will succumb to cancer when I get older and weaker, but in my case I have outlived most family members in age, who died in their forties and fifties. It's not because of better medical care either, because I hardly ever went to the doctor when I was in those age groups.

I don't dwell on it though because my attitude is, when it comes, it comes but until then I am going to enjoy life as best I can each day.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. This very subject was brought up on the Thom Hartmann repeat this AM!

He was talking to Lewis Mehl-Madrona, the author of Coyote Healing. They were saying how sad it was to make someone believe that they had somehow "chosen" to have cancer or some other disease.

This has a parallel in the philosophy that is prevalent among the Dominionists/Bushites. They feel that if you are rich it is becasue you are blessed and good, and if you are poor it is because you are bad/not blessed. It is a totally inhumane philosophy.

[MissWaverly]

7. I totally agree

Let's stress the positive outcomes we can have rather than blame the victim.

[Chemical Bill]

8. It's simple, but it's not easy.

I understand the difficulty of believing that I choose a disease. I don't ever say that people are always conscious of choosing disease. I do think that we have some unconscious choice in the matter. I believe that is more empowering than thinking that I am a "leaf in the wind" where a disease can take me anytime.

I also think, rather than "blaming the victim", that the situation is more like the choice of the condemned man: he can choose to be in fear and denial, or he can choose to face his life and death head on.

The five phases of death from a terminal disease include going from denial to acceptance. And do you know that once you reach a certain age, IIRC age 35, the odds are you either die from cancer or a heart attack/stroke? You may as well accept it now, to get a jump on the process.

When I was 17, my best friend died of cancer. Do I believe he chose to? Not consciously. But I know that things he did contributed to his death, not the least of which was he made model cars using glue which contained chloroform, a potent carcinogen. You could condemn me for blaming the victim, but I see it as accepting what's past. He doesn't care either way, as he's dead.

I do believe in reincarnation, so I believe that death is not a finality.

I believe in miracles. I know someone who had four different biopsies of a lump in her breast, all of which showed a cancer. She spent the next weekend undergoing intense reiki. The surgery, performed early the following week, removed a lump which was found to be non-cancerous. She took the cancer scare as a warning, and left her job, moving to Florida. My point is that she didn't blame anyone, she did what she had to do with no remorse.

I had another friend who got leukemia in high school, and made a movie about it. She died, so all I can think is that she came here to make that movie, and then moved on. My sister died when her youngest child was in college. I think she knew her work was done as well.

I was abused as a child, and I don't blame myself or my parents. I take responsibility for my own reaction to being abused as a child, which is all I can do now. I was molested, but again, I don't blame myself or the molester (who I didn't know, which makes it easier). I've been mugged, and I don't blame myself or the muggers. But then again, I don't carry a lot of cash, in case it happens again. I have a hernia, which was repaired, but leaves me unable to carry heavy loads. I have to move, and I've never been good at asking for help. I can blame myself for having the hernia and having to move, or I can thank Goddess for this wonderful opportunity to practice asking for help. See the difference?

Bill

[DemExpat]

10. Your views and experiences are more similar to my own, Bill....

we posted at exactly the same time here too...:-)

DemEx

[MissWaverly]

13. what works for me

my friend paid all year to go on a cruise and he and his wife went to the airport to fly to LA,
they got there an hour early but now with the security concerns, they were not permitted to get
on the airline so their chance at their big cruise literally flew away. So they went home and
started doing routine stuff to fill their now empty 2 week vacation. So he goes to play Keno
on a lark and wins $5,000.00, he then calls the travel agent and asks if they can join the boat
in Acapolco instead of LA, and they say, sure. So they get a flight to Acapolco and have a great vacation. Now, this impressed me very much, because my parents practiced all or nothing
thinking. If something went well, fine, but the minute plans fell apart, they gave up, they would have mourned the loss of the vacation for 20 years. This has been a inspiring lesson for me.

:-)

[oxbow]

11. Yea, more down to earth stuff should be required reading..

...for those interested in the course in miracles. I had to learn that the hard way. For instance, I finished reading Anne Lamott's "Plan B: Further thoughts on faith" a few weeks ago.

She practices what she calls "militant self acceptance," and I love the concept. She is just so comfortable with her human-ness, warts and all, and that is definitely what I want more of.

[DemExpat]

12. Oooooh, I have been practicing this for years, oxbow!

Trying, and to a degree, succeeding to be comfortable and loving with myself - warts and all!

:D:D:D

I agree wholeheartedly - perfection is not what any of us should be seeking in ourselves, except to be militantly loving and accepting of ourselves.

DemEx

[oxbow]

15. Yea, it's a wonderful book, and available at the library too!

Several chapters are about her struggling to love George W. Bush because Jesus said to love your enemies. She talks about raising her son, her relationship with her mom and how it's improved since she passed on, lot's of autobiographical stuff. My favorite chapter has to be about the Church of 80% Sincerity, though. All in all, it's one of my favorite books right now!

[MissWaverly]

14. I am going to order that, sounds good