Quest For Quick Fixes Can Kill
In a fast food world, we have come to expect that everything can be accomplished quickly and effortlessly, and spirituality has not escaped this mindset.
People flock to New Age shops and gurus looking for ways to fix their lives, often willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get someone else to address the clients' own personal problems.
The result can become a cultlike situation, with believers blindly following the "expert" without any critical thinking, whether in expert be a book author or an event host.
Earlier this month, three people died in Arizona during a sweat lodge held by "wealth expert" James Arthur Ray. The very nature of the event offended Native Americans, who put sweat lodges to spiritual pursuits. But now an interview with a survivor paints an even darker picture in which participants were clearly suffering within the lodge yet did nothing because Ray instructed them not to and chided them that it was just an issue of mind over matter.
Unfortunately, it was actually an issue of dehydration and suffocation over survival. People were vomiting and passing out. And yet nearly all of the participants remained within the lodge, and it appears they did it part because of the urging of their leader, even though every ounce of common sense should have been telling them to escape.
Wait a second. I don’t see how you get from “participating in a paid seminar” to “seeking quick fixes.” At all.
James Ray is clearly responsible for these peoples’ deaths/injuries – I don’t know any sane, rational person who’d argue otherwise. Whether that’s legal responsibility or moral, and to what extent he shoulders that responsibility alone, are proper topics for debate.
So is the larger question about charging exorbitant fees for seminars like these.
But this allegation of “seeking quick fixes” just doesn’t jibe with the people I know and know of who’ve gone to seminars like this. (I’m quick to admit, I’ve never gone to one, though I’ve been curious about them, so I cannot speak from personal, direct experiences.)
Mostly, the people I know who’ve engaged in quests of their own that involved seminars such as this one were more than willing to “do the work.” They sought guidance and assistance, not quick fixes.
One more point: as reprehensible as Ray’s exhortations to stay in the lodge were, and as much as he needs to answer for (and I think there’s a LOT he needs to answer for), seeking to help people make money or even “get rich” isn’t one of them. Implying as much simply perpetuates the myth that money is evil. It isn’t.
What people do with it, or for it — that might be. Money itself is neutral, though. And seeking more of it for positive purposes — call me a crazy capitalist, but I see nothing wrong with it.
These people thought they could buy their salvation or what they perceived to be their salvation. they thought that they could buy the keys to success and they followed a corrupt fool who was more than willing to take their money.
This supposed guru should be charged and convicted of second degree murder for each of the fallen but the followers should be convicted of first degree stupidity.
Look at any guide for the use of saunas or spas and it will tell you the correct temperature and give guides to the length of time that can be spent safely. One of the first things it will tell you is that if you begin to feel at all weak or in any way odd it is time to get out.
The Native Americans didn’t just jump into these ceremonies they tempered themselves under the watchful eyes of the elders. But most of all they used some common sense.
Sadly common sense seems to be the first thing that people are willing to give up in their quest for whatever they think could be the answer to their quest for happiness.
“…more than willing to “do the work.” They sought guidance and assistance, not quick fixes.”
I disagree here. Perhaps it isnt a quick process but the setting aside of critical thinking and investing hope in a guru is easier than finding our own answers.
If someone wants to suceed financially, spiritually or however else they can do it themselves. Sadly, it is more palatable and less effort for many people to believe in gurus and totemic magic than it is to believe in orthodox routes to sucess like, say, their own ability and effort.
Even if a guru has you putting in hard work and jumping through hoops it’s a self indulgent transferrance of belief into someone elses ability to help you over your own ability to help yourself.
So, anyone who goes to a church to seek religious counseling is looking for a quick fix?
Anyone who feels depressed and goes to a therapist is seeking a quick fix?
That’s just patently not true. As I said in the first comment, this just does not comport with the people I know who are “into” the self-help movement. “Self help” — not “others helping self!”
These people aren’t shelling over 9k and expecting someone to wave a magic wand. Sorry, but that’s really disrespectful to the dead and injured.