About two months ago I received the following OSmail:

My awakening to the crazy world of self help and recovery from it’s vice like grip occurred after a quite fantastical and unique experience. One thing I have learned is  that you cannot download anyone else’s ‘system’ or ‘process’ and make it work for you. I think you need to pick through each person’s life experiences for the wool to weave your own tapestry. Certainly with the money, time, energy and hopes invested in other people’s ego creations I could have weaved the Bayeux and then some!!!

What I can say though is that in a bid to understand my abusive childhood and how different I appeared to be from my family I embarked upon a 20 year quest to understand who and what I was. Yes, I fell, hook, line and sinker for the self help and personal development game.

More recently,  over the last 10 years I have stuffed myself silly with Law of Attraction type teachings that mainly block out anything negative or ‘not of the light’ and thus, have given my power away more or less to anyone with a cheering claim or nice smile.  Then, even worse I started creating courses and taught them to other unsuspecting fools. Cringe worthy stuff called how to be happy and living the attitude of gratitude…(spewing into a bucket).

Yes, I was a spiritual prostitute except that I paid to turn tricks. God, put like that it is embarrassing and hysterical in equal measure.

Then, a catastrophe of epic proportions that turned all of the LOA stuff on it’s head, inside out and doing somersaults occurred!!!!

It would fill a book and then some and perhaps one day I will come across someone who wants to take it on. Certainly NBC Dateline wanted to make a 2 hour documentary around events that led from my catastrophe….

Well, your wondering what it was aren’t you. Mmmmmm how to encapsulate the magnitude in a few paragraphs…(deep breath).

Essentially I met a psychopath (probably the physical manifestation of all the repressed and ignored negativity and blocked out critical thinking from the last 10 ‘positive’ years!!!).

I sunk every penny into a series of businesses with him, got into a hellish personal relationship with him that involved every kind of abuse and threats etc, helplessly watched him systematically destroy several other people and then once I had withdrawn from him and the businesses despite what was on the line (everything material I had) – saw him flee the UK leaving a quagmire of 103 serious problems that escalated into near bankruptcy, over 50 threatened court actions, insurance issues, tremendous weight gain and the utter desecration of everything I believed in. I was massively affected – physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually, financially and spiritually.

Essentially ‘I’ ceased to exist. I became a recluse, stayed away from everyone and everything except what I could not possibly avoid, stopped goin out, answering the phone, showering, getting dressed. The only respite from the fireball of pain and stress engulfing EVERY facet of my life was the safety net of suicide. I knew I could kill myself.  I longed for absolute annihilation! I didn’t just think it, I investigated the subject, formed a plan and came seconds away from carrying it out several times – stopped only by my love for my cats and who would care for them?

Without a doubt the worst aspect of all of the above was the belief I had created and attracted it. I spent nearly a year on a wild goose chase torturing myself further by trying to work out why and how a lifetime of positive thoughts and actions had created a monster and a monstrous situation that took 2 years hard time to resolve and was so permanently life changing…

There wasn’t any answers other than the LOA was either horse shit or used wrongly could be disastrous.

I stumbled upon your book which helped as it showed all the guru’s in meltdowns of their own, and I started looking at the shadow stuff that was all around me. For 8 months I delighted in oozing out every shred of anger and negative energy that had long been encased in the basement of my psyche until one day I realised that negative energy was not better or worse than it’s opposite - just different and that both are required for a reasonably happy existence. Duh…

I knew I was in recovery when my critical thinking skills began to creak into action again and I started reading novels (!!!). I have emerged back out into the sunlight but armed with self reliance that life goes up and down and around and around and ‘this too shall pass…’

Having been kicked out of society I feel quite content to potter around doing not very much. I take each moment as it comes. I delight in the joy that flows out of simple things but at the same time when I feel enraged or angry or pissed off I beat up my pouf fee and enjoy that just as much as all the smiling.

I am content to not know who/what is behind everything and to surrender to whatever pulled me through. Forgiveness has and is helping me with all that happened – even the near murderous hatred I feel towards lawyers (laughing). 

Footnote: My former business partner Michael Lane went on to murder a woman in a particularly gruesome way and then tried to run over and kill a transsexual in the dead woman’s car. He is currently in Clark County Detention Centre, Vegas (where else?!) awaiting trial and possible death penalty next year.

Mmmmm not sure any of this would help anyone. Their may be a few ears of corn if you pick through…(raucous giggles).

Hope all in your world is dark and light!!!!

Sarah Demellweek

Thank you for sending me this, it is one of the most unfortunate side effects of believing in new age beliefs, that we want to spread it to others, and rather than helping them are actually spreading a virus. I'm reminded of the recent film Inception, where they say that the most contagious agent is an idea, it acts like a virus, and once it is planted it is very hard to get rid of. We live in an age of many crazy ideas manifested in tea partiers, global warming deniers, conspiracies of many kind and the like. I truly hope that critical thinking survives.

To update you on my brother. He still has not recanted, so to speak, and unfortunately he has withdrawn all the money from his trust fund, around 80,000 dollars, which is supposed to be used for his college education, and now has the resources to live on his own. Eventually i hope he will realize, and this person has, that he is delusional, but its a terrible, terrible waste. At the end of the day however, we can only live by example, and be there for those who realize their mistakes. You are doing important work. Thanks again.

To put it simply, fall for it at your own peril, because, once you’re in it, you’ll convince yourself how wonderful it is, even if your world is falling apart from under you. Even some of the dying victims of James Arthur Ray of “The Secret” (the second biggest contributor) defended him, even though he just idly stood by watched his victims die. The bottom line is that it’s brainwashing, and you take it on at your own psychological and material peril… It’s not a formula for success or getting rich at all, indeed it's the very opposite…