Author Topic: James Arthur Ray - Angel Valley Resort DeathSweat in Sedona: 3 dead, 20 injured  (Read 267582 times)

Offline NDN_Outlaw

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #45 on: October 16, 2009, 03:56:06 am »
That lady is out past Pluto. There's more nuts in Sedona than in a jumbo can of Planters Peanuts. How is the poor woman in a coma doing? Will she be alright?

Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #46 on: October 16, 2009, 04:06:08 pm »
CNN: A spokesman for Ray said authorities should be focusing on the investigation rather than talking to reporters. "The Sheriff's Department is trying this case in the media," said Howard Bragman, noting that Thursday's news conference was the sheriff's second this week.
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« Last Edit: March 25, 2010, 03:28:06 am by critter »
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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #47 on: October 16, 2009, 07:40:25 pm »
I posted this in Ecetera so i will post it here:


The Buffalo Post
A news blog about Native people and the world we live in

Arvol Looking Horse on “sweat lodge” deaths: Stop the exploitation   

Posted by: admin   in Culture and Tradition, Lakota

The plea by Lakota spiritual leader Arvol Looking Horse comes in response to the recent deaths at a sweat lodge-type ceremony in Arizona. (See previous post, here.)

The so-called sweat, which claimed two lives, took place during a five-day retreat in Sedona, Ariz., run by white self-help guru James Arthur Ray. Ray’s Spiritual Warrior programs charges people almost $10,000 apiece.

As this piece in Black Hills Today points out, traditional Native sweats are spiritual and the idea of charging for them is anathema. “It appears that once again greed interfered with common sense,” the piece says.

And it quotes Looking Horse, a 19th-generation keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, who says, “I am concerned for the two deaths and illnesses of the many people that participated in a sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona, that brought our sacred rite under fire in the news. I would like to clarify that this lodge and many others, are not our ceremonial way of life … My prayers go out for their families and loved ones for their loss.”

In 2006, Looking Horse received the Juliet Hollister Award for promoting peace and interfaith and secular understanding by the Temple of Understanding, joining past recipients Nelson Mandela, Ravi Shankar and the Dalai Lama.

Looking Horse says that while non-Native people have a right to seek help from First Nations intercessors, he has a plea:

“I would like to ask All Nations upon Grandmother Earth to please respect our sacred ceremonial way of life and stop the exploitation of our Tunka Oyate (Spiritual Grandfathers).”

Gwen Florio


Here is the Link to the original Article:

http://buffalopost.net/?p=3683


Offline Defend the Sacred

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #49 on: October 17, 2009, 01:00:19 am »
This article made me ill :'(

Inside accounts by survivors.

http://www.examiner.com/x-11245-Philadelphia-Speculative-Fiction-Examiner~y2009m10d16-Breaking-news-Inside-accounts-of-James-Ray-sweat-lodge-tragedy-and-retreat

Horrifying. The author also posted the transcript of that conference call between Ray and retreat survivors: http://www.examiner.com/x-11245-Philadelphia-Speculative-Fiction-Examiner~y2009m10d15-Breaking-news-transcript-of-private-call-between-James-Ray-and-sweat-lodge-victims 

It is very clear from the statements in that call that retreat participants and staff of Angel Valley were attempting to mimic NDN ceremonies, not only with the death sweat and fake "vision quest" but with the particular rituals they did afterwards to try to "heal" what had happened.

The "Death Games" they played during the sleep deprivation sound like the mind control "games" that Charles Manson used on his followers: getting them to turn their will and powers of decision over to him, getting them to reframe and redefine what death means, brainwashing them into believing any tragedy that happens to them is their own fault, and he is above fault and godlike.

Hideous. 
« Last Edit: July 18, 2014, 10:59:45 pm by Kathryn »

Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #50 on: October 17, 2009, 05:30:10 pm »
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« Last Edit: March 25, 2010, 03:28:21 am by critter »
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Offline Diana

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #51 on: October 17, 2009, 08:23:58 pm »
Saw this the other morning on the Early Show. Good interview with Harry smith, thou Shawna Bowen did strike me as a typical bliss bunny.


Sweat Lodge Horror Eyewitness
October 16, 2009 5:08 AM

Author Shawna Bowen spoke with Harry Smith about what she saw after two participants in an Az. sweat lodge died.


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5388644n&tag=related;photovideo


Offline Superdog

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #52 on: October 18, 2009, 05:07:04 am »
Sad news about the person fighting for their life in the hospital

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091018/ap_on_re_us/us_sweat_lodge_deaths

Offline educatedindian

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #53 on: October 18, 2009, 04:21:02 pm »
The article has been updated now. A third person died and all three deaths are being treated by the police as homicides.

Some other articles on Ray.

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http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/1514193.html
Sweat lodge deaths cast negative spotlight on guru
By FELICIA FONSECA and BOB CHRISTIE
The Associated Press

SEDONA, Ariz. | James Arthur Ray led a group of more than 50 followers into a cramped, sauna-like sweat lodge in Arizona recently by convincing them that his words would lead them to spiritual and financial wealth.

The mantra has made him a millionaire. People routinely pack Ray’s seminars and follow the motivational guru to weeklong retreats that can cost more than $9,000 per person.

Ray’s self-help empire was thrown into turmoil this month when three of his followers died after collapsing in the makeshift sweat lodge near Sedona and 19 others were hospitalized. A homicide investigation that followed has cast a critical spotlight on Ray’s company.

Critics are citing the sweat lodge deaths as evidence that Ray is a charlatan who is not to be trusted. A relative of one victim accused Ray of recklessly abandoning the safety of participants.

Dedicated followers said they fully trusted Ray to lead them through exercises that greatly improved their lives.

Ray, 51, has become a self-help superstar by packaging his charismatic personality and selling wealth. Those who first attend his free seminars hear a motivational mantra that promises that they can achieve what he calls “Harmonic Wealth” — on a financial, mental, physical spiritual level.

But his technique is not just motivational speaking. It’s a combination of New Age spiritualism, American Indian ritual, astrology and numerology. The sweat lodge experience was intended to be an almost religious awakening for the participants.....

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A very caustic critique.

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http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/oct/18/sweat-test-tragedy-drips-injustice/
Logan Jenkins
Sweat-test tragedy drips with injustice
By Logan Jenkins
2:00 a.m. October 18, 2009
A ton of hot bricks — the Sweat Me a River award — to James Arthur Ray, the Carlsbad-based Elmer Gantry of wealth and happiness.
Listen to the smarmy pitch on his Web site:
“Just like the harmony created by each unique and important instrument in an orchestra causes your emotions to soar (like an eagle rising on an invisible thermal), complete harmony in your life causes your level of happiness, wealth and success to soar.”
Mining the you-can-have-it-all vein of Terry Cole Whittaker, San Diego's high priestess of affluence in the 1970s, Ray evidently rakes in the smackers from the credulous.
Well, that's capitalism. A sucker yearning to embrace his “spiritual warrior” is born every minute. More power to the New Age flimflam artists. If you can make a living peddling enlightenment, more power to you.
What Ray's disciples at a recent retreat were not told, however, was that the sweaty festivities after fasting (saves on meals, one imagines) would coincide with two physical deaths in a Sedona, Ariz., sweat lodge Oct. 8.
Imagine a 415-square-foot room crammed with somewhere between 50 and 60 hot and heavy breathers straining for satori via a communal draining of body fluids.
In this vision of hell that, I suspect, would have terrified Dante, two acolytes died, four were hospitalized and others dangerously dehydrated.
As reported, this wasn't the first time Ray's humid high jinks at the Angel Valley Spiritual Retreat Center caused a health emergency. In 2005, paramedics were called to treat a man who blacked out during one of Ray's sweat tests.
Though you'd think he would have been ashamed to show his handsome face, Ray appeared at a seminar last week where he told the faithful that “I'm as frustrated and confused as others are” by the decidedly un-harmonic convergence.
Maybe so, but this much seems as clear as Sedona crystal:
If Ray is not charged with manslaughter — and thrown in an Arizona prison, the mother of all sweat lodges — his future retreats should be titled:
“Beating the Heat: How to Soar Like an Eagle When the Rubes Are Dropping Like Flies.”

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And a psychologist pointed out in an older interview on CBS that the whole premise of Ray's The Secret is also dangerous and gibberish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWfmkh7eN-4&feature=related

Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #54 on: October 18, 2009, 05:02:47 pm »
.  
« Last Edit: March 25, 2010, 03:28:39 am by critter »
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Offline NDN_Outlaw

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #55 on: October 18, 2009, 07:21:34 pm »
As long as he lives, this man must live with the consequences of his actions.  My old people were humble and loved one another. An old ceremonial man once told me, “I am only learning” and he was eighty –two years old.  They were poor but grateful to the great mystery for all of life and they looked down on no one. I saw this as a child. James Ray is all mind and mouth- no ears and no heart just control and greed. Even now he is trying to control and manipulate but what goes around comes around as NDNZ are fond of saying. His world is collapsing, his financial empire will vanish. A jail cell awaits and his legacy will be black with shame. He will be condemned in this world and the next and he did it entirely to himself. His arrogance killed those people.  When the worst of the dominant culture steals our ways they commit spiritual genocide. Sadly it is all too pervasive. I’m staying close to the traditional people who still love one another.

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #56 on: October 19, 2009, 01:09:44 am »
This is just so sad and sickening on all Levels, and now a third one died? That man is no better than Hitler himself.

Offline educatedindian

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #57 on: October 20, 2009, 03:35:28 am »
It's even worse than we thought. Over at the Indybay site where I reposted my op ed, someone posted in comments how Ray bragged about how many people quit getting cancer treatment after reading his books.

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http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/10/14/18625444.php?show_comments=1#18625612
What about Accidents?
by Newton Fortuin
Saturday Oct 17th, 2009 12:11 AM
....BTW after airing The Secret Oprah received thousands of letters from people who indicated they decided to stop their cancer and other mediation on the advice of The Secret, yet she continued promoting it. That is on this cue in the book:

_________________________________________________________

"You don’t have to *fight* to get rid of disease. Just the *simple* process of letting go of negative thoughts will allow your natural state of health to emerge within you. And your body will heal itself.
"I’ve seen kidneys regenerated. I’ve seen cancer dissolved. I’ve seen eyesight improve and come back.”
_________________________________________________________


How many people actually died because of the false hope conveyed? Indeed she then is also culpable for the many who therefore must have died because of it as she she should have renounced her support of this abomination.

Offline Smart Mule

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #58 on: October 20, 2009, 05:23:05 pm »
This guy is seriously super scary.  The lodge deaths are not the deaths associated with him THIS YEAR.  A woman committed suicide during one of his exercises in July.  

http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,77450,page=1




*edited to correct link

« Last Edit: October 20, 2009, 05:30:24 pm by sky »

Offline Defend the Sacred

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Re: Angel Valley Resort Sweat Lodge in Sedona: 2 dead, 19 injured
« Reply #59 on: October 20, 2009, 08:47:07 pm »
"But Sweatlodges Are Universal"[sic], "But the Celts Had Sweatlodges"[sic], "But Sweats Are Done All Over the World"[sic]

- I have heard these ignorant things said every day since this debacle, especially by those who want to claim James Ray's negligent homicide was not about cultural appropriation. I'll be blogging about this eventually, but for now, here are some links that may be of use next time someone spouts the above nonsense.

We've had some discussion about the Irish and Scottish sweathouses, and the bogus English "reconstruction" of a burnt mound site, on NAFPS before:

Initial comments on the Irish and Scottish taigh an fhallais, teach an allais and fulacht fiadh sites and what we do and don't know about how they were used: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1527.msg9487#msg9487

Thread on "Bronze Age" burnt mound and sweathouse sites in general: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1539.0

My comments in that thread, expanding a bit on what we know of Irish and Scottish sweathouse usage into living memory: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1539.msg9534#msg9534

The main point is: while many cultures have used steam in some way for health purposes, and some of those cultures have also had prayer or ceremony as part of this, beliefs and ceremonies vary widely among cultures. And too many people who are claiming "sweatlodge" is "universal" are not even researching what their ancestors may have done; they are simply trying to excuse their misappropriation of NDN ceremonies. They are lazy and offensive and think people are too stupid to notice that if they call parts of their fake Inipi by terms in another language, no one will notice that their ceremony bears no resemblance to what their ancestors actually did.
« Last Edit: July 18, 2014, 11:01:06 pm by Kathryn »