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I can see how traditional indigenous healers might get cranky with New Agers borrowing from their heritage.
Especially when people get killed.
I just happened to attend parts of a weekend seminar on the medicine wheel — put on by Northern Cheyenne horseman and leader Phillip Whiteman — in Carbondale right after three people died in a Sedona, Ariz., sweat lodge last fall.
Whiteman's take was that something he had spent a lifetime learning from his elders, in a tradition eons old, was usurped by a modern self-helper who didn't really know what he was doing.
Possibly. Of course, soaking in lodges or rooms heated by stones crosses cultures and can have nothing spiritual about them.
But if you are going to throw in spirituality — New Ager or indigenous practitioner — you had better know what you are doing.
Mix in “wealth” with “spirituality” and I'm seeing the eye of the needle from the Okie preacher's son, James Arthur Ray. He charged nearly $10,000 a head and wound up with three dead in October, usurping a vision quest and setting up an ordeal in his sweat lodge in Sedona.
The things we fall for.
As a journalist I got to dip recently into the teachings of the real deal, by birthright, for free. The paying clients weren't exactly handing over a fortune, either.
Whiteman made no promises of wealth, his or ours. Why would wealth have a thing to do with spirit? One is not necessarily apart from the other. But neither are they together.
Happiness doesn't come from wealth. Study after study shows that. Monks and nuns and such take vows of poverty, and I understand they are happier for it. Material gain has this way of stimulating lust for yet more material gain, like sugar.
But the pastor's son all too obviously hungers for wealth. The charisma, the linkage of riches and spirituality. All that's missing is the snake oil.
The guy stole from indigenous traditions and got a few people killed. It's more complicated than that, I suppose. But it's an easy line to draw, and no less true for the ease of drawing it.
What makes intelligent, educated people leap for an all-too-obvious charlatan like James Arthur Ray?
Whiteman, the Northern Cheyenne elder, horseman and chief, is worth every bit of $10,000 to help you become a better person — and better with horses. But he's not going to make you rich. That's far from the point.
His message comes down to being able to center yourself, no easy thing, especially in these times.
He teaches the “medicine wheel model.” Thinking in a circle rather than the way you and I tend to think, in a straight line, A to B to C.
I was invited weeks later to a sweat lodge ceremony conducted by Whiteman. That is to say, in the Northern Cheyenne tradition. It was no idle lounge in a sauna.
The steps from forming the lodge and building the fire on through the ritual itself are disciplined, precise and serious. There's room for laughter, but there's a sanctity here that demands respect. This is sacred, ancient stuff.
It's also rigorous. Whiteman warned me before I entered that I would handle the ceremony as I approach life. A truism, sure. But also very true.
It's been a hard year or so for many of us. I've had it relatively easy by comparison to friends who have taken ill, lost loved ones or suffered through other tragedies. And the economic downturn has delivered personal pain, too.
I love my work and profession, and have paid my comparatively light price mainly in shouldering a little heavier load than before, and bearing the scythe required for the business to survive these times. And still I have gone on long walks, wondering if I truly was up to the challenge at hand.
That's what I brought into the sweat lodge with me.
And so it was an ordeal. My memory is of four periods of intense heat, blackness, time stopping, and sweet cedar between short bursts of glorious relief between eternal rounds when the lodge entrance flap was opened to an icy night outside. The hot periods grew more intense — looking at each new set of red glowing rocks dropped into the pit with dread — to the third round, hardest of all, wanting ever more desperately flee that inferno. But I held on, and the final round seemed just a little easier.
Whiteman said later, with a bit of a twinkle, that each round was exactly the same in duration and heat. How we experienced the set was unique to each of us. My wife's hardest time came in the second, and then she breezed through rounds three and four.
Through this I could see how James Arthur Ray's foray could get people killed. People trusted this guy, as I trusted Whiteman enough to remain in the lodge.
The point of the sweat is not an ordeal as I experienced it, but to cleanse. I could have dealt with the ceremony and heat in different ways, for sure. Making a trial of it was just one.
The roots of Whiteman's tribe's sweat ceremony predate Christianity. The chief is traditional, as conservative to his people's spiritual ways as the most ardent believer in the word-for-word divinity of the Bible.
New Agers borrowing from ancient indigenous traditions is at least as loopy to him as the Holy Christian Church of Cannibis is to a Southern Baptist.
Only, at least one New Ager with a keen eye for opportunity got some folks killed.
Ray pleaded innocent to manslaughter charges last week. His lawyers called the deaths a terrible accident, but not a crime.
I'm afraid I think his violations run a mite deeper than mere crimes.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of the Vail Daily. He can be reached at drogers@vaildaily.com or 970-748-2920. He welcomes your comments at www.vaildaily.com.
Especially when people get killed.
I just happened to attend parts of a weekend seminar on the medicine wheel — put on by Northern Cheyenne horseman and leader Phillip Whiteman — in Carbondale right after three people died in a Sedona, Ariz., sweat lodge last fall.
Whiteman's take was that something he had spent a lifetime learning from his elders, in a tradition eons old, was usurped by a modern self-helper who didn't really know what he was doing.
Possibly. Of course, soaking in lodges or rooms heated by stones crosses cultures and can have nothing spiritual about them.
But if you are going to throw in spirituality — New Ager or indigenous practitioner — you had better know what you are doing.
Mix in “wealth” with “spirituality” and I'm seeing the eye of the needle from the Okie preacher's son, James Arthur Ray. He charged nearly $10,000 a head and wound up with three dead in October, usurping a vision quest and setting up an ordeal in his sweat lodge in Sedona.
The things we fall for.
As a journalist I got to dip recently into the teachings of the real deal, by birthright, for free. The paying clients weren't exactly handing over a fortune, either.
Whiteman made no promises of wealth, his or ours. Why would wealth have a thing to do with spirit? One is not necessarily apart from the other. But neither are they together.
Happiness doesn't come from wealth. Study after study shows that. Monks and nuns and such take vows of poverty, and I understand they are happier for it. Material gain has this way of stimulating lust for yet more material gain, like sugar.
But the pastor's son all too obviously hungers for wealth. The charisma, the linkage of riches and spirituality. All that's missing is the snake oil.
The guy stole from indigenous traditions and got a few people killed. It's more complicated than that, I suppose. But it's an easy line to draw, and no less true for the ease of drawing it.
What makes intelligent, educated people leap for an all-too-obvious charlatan like James Arthur Ray?
Whiteman, the Northern Cheyenne elder, horseman and chief, is worth every bit of $10,000 to help you become a better person — and better with horses. But he's not going to make you rich. That's far from the point.
His message comes down to being able to center yourself, no easy thing, especially in these times.
He teaches the “medicine wheel model.” Thinking in a circle rather than the way you and I tend to think, in a straight line, A to B to C.
I was invited weeks later to a sweat lodge ceremony conducted by Whiteman. That is to say, in the Northern Cheyenne tradition. It was no idle lounge in a sauna.
The steps from forming the lodge and building the fire on through the ritual itself are disciplined, precise and serious. There's room for laughter, but there's a sanctity here that demands respect. This is sacred, ancient stuff.
It's also rigorous. Whiteman warned me before I entered that I would handle the ceremony as I approach life. A truism, sure. But also very true.
It's been a hard year or so for many of us. I've had it relatively easy by comparison to friends who have taken ill, lost loved ones or suffered through other tragedies. And the economic downturn has delivered personal pain, too.
I love my work and profession, and have paid my comparatively light price mainly in shouldering a little heavier load than before, and bearing the scythe required for the business to survive these times. And still I have gone on long walks, wondering if I truly was up to the challenge at hand.
That's what I brought into the sweat lodge with me.
And so it was an ordeal. My memory is of four periods of intense heat, blackness, time stopping, and sweet cedar between short bursts of glorious relief between eternal rounds when the lodge entrance flap was opened to an icy night outside. The hot periods grew more intense — looking at each new set of red glowing rocks dropped into the pit with dread — to the third round, hardest of all, wanting ever more desperately flee that inferno. But I held on, and the final round seemed just a little easier.
Whiteman said later, with a bit of a twinkle, that each round was exactly the same in duration and heat. How we experienced the set was unique to each of us. My wife's hardest time came in the second, and then she breezed through rounds three and four.
Through this I could see how James Arthur Ray's foray could get people killed. People trusted this guy, as I trusted Whiteman enough to remain in the lodge.
The point of the sweat is not an ordeal as I experienced it, but to cleanse. I could have dealt with the ceremony and heat in different ways, for sure. Making a trial of it was just one.
The roots of Whiteman's tribe's sweat ceremony predate Christianity. The chief is traditional, as conservative to his people's spiritual ways as the most ardent believer in the word-for-word divinity of the Bible.
New Agers borrowing from ancient indigenous traditions is at least as loopy to him as the Holy Christian Church of Cannibis is to a Southern Baptist.
Only, at least one New Ager with a keen eye for opportunity got some folks killed.
Ray pleaded innocent to manslaughter charges last week. His lawyers called the deaths a terrible accident, but not a crime.
I'm afraid I think his violations run a mite deeper than mere crimes.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of the Vail Daily. He can be reached at drogers@vaildaily.com or 970-748-2920. He welcomes your comments at www.vaildaily.com.
