James Arthur Ray: Two years after Sedona, still no atonement

I've had a busy month away from this Whirled; among other things, I've been catching up on work after last month's wildfire scare and evacuations. As usual, I have a dozen half-finished blog posts in the hopper. But I did not want to let the day go by without mentioning that today, October 8, 2011, is the second anniversary of James Arthur "Death" Ray's fatal faux-sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona.


At this time last year I published a very long blog post to commemorate this anniversary, framed around my review of Connie Joy's book, Tragedy In Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray's Inner Circle. I recommend that you read Ms. Joy's book if you haven't already done so. Meanwhile, if you're new-ish here and don't understand all the brouhaha about James Ray, at least read the blog post I linked to at the beginning of this paragraph. And then go to Salty Droid's blog and read his numerous posts on Ray.

Today is also Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement. (Actually it began at sundown yesterday evening.) By bringing this up in a post about Death Ray I mean no offense to my Jewish friends. However, as Ray was known to stir a schmear of Jewish spirituality and mysticism into the McSpirituality stew he served up to his followers, it seemed appropriate to point out the bitter irony of the fact that Ray himself has yet to atone for the deaths of Sedona victims James Shore, Kirby Brown, and Liz Neuman -- to say nothing of the death of Colleen Conaway, who died at a James Ray event in San Diego less than three months previously.

I realize "atonement" has several meanings, but one meaning is to own up to one's wrongdoing and try to make up for it. And from what I have seen, Ray has yet to take any responsibility at all. In addition, he has yet to be sentenced for the three counts of negligent homicide for which he was convicted months ago. His defense team keeps throwing up numerous roadblocks and delays, and there is still a chance he may never do any prison time at all. And he still hasn't even been charged in the death of Colleen Conaway.

A few years ago, in one of his numerous ezine articles, Ray wrote a piece attempting to explain why so many Hollywood A-listers are into the Kabbalah. He speculated that at least some followers were motivated by a desire for a more "practical" sort of mysticism. Ray wrote:

I, for one, am tired of so-called "spiritual gurus" who can't pay their bills! (And they certainly can't tell you how to do it either.)

This, of course, was before Ray's own reversal of fortune -- before Sedona blew up in his face, before he was arrested and it was revealed that he was unable to raise the original bond money. Yet it seemed he still wanted to have it both ways: to continue making a living as an expert on creating wealth, while convincing authorities that he just didn't have the money to spring himself from jail. The critical blogosphere was all abuzz with that set of ironies at the time, so there's no need to go into all of it again. I just thought it was worth a reminder.

Now Ray is presumably spending what money he has left on his legal battles, though he still has supporters (go figure) who no doubt are contributing to that effort. Whatever his financial situation may be, it does seem clear that Ray is a person who is unwilling to fully pay the moral "bills" he owes -- to truly atone for the deaths of James Shore, Kirby Brown, Liz Neuman, and Colleen Conaway.

More often than not on this blog, I've taken a basically lighthearted and snarky approach to New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality beliefs and practices. I've dismissed them as silly. But occasionally belief and the need to follow a guru become deadly. Obviously when this happens, the guru/leader responsible for those deaths should be held accountable. Even if no deaths are involved, if people's lives and finances are wrecked by the deceptive actions of New-Wage gurus, those gurus should have to pay.

Some pay by offing themselves, as infomercial huckster Don Lapre did after his recent arrest. I'm certainly not implying that suicide is any type of solution or justice, nor am I implying that I wish Ray would do the same. That's not the case at all. For the sake of those who lost their loved ones at his hands, however, I do wish Ray would display a little bit of conscience and remorse for anything but the fact that he got caught -- and so far he has yet to do so.

Nor, for that matter, have we seen much of a display of conscience from the other scoundrels and scalawags, grifters and greedy gurus in the world's most successful New-Wage infomercial, The Secret. In case you haven't read it, here's an April 2011 post discussing some of the woes not only of James Ray but some of his fellow Secret "stars" as well.

And so it goes. While much of the world is obsessed with the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor, some of us have not forgotten James Ray's less famous, but no less important, victims. And we are watching and keeping up with the developments in this case.

Meanwhile, the time has come once again for me to go out to the porch and take the hummingbird feeders down.* I put it off as long as possible, but the pretty birds (as Abba might have said) have flown.

* The significance of which will be more apparent if you've read last year's Sedona anniversary post.