Colleen Conaway: twelve years since her death at a James Arthur Ray event

Another year has gone by... and we've reached yet another sad anniversary.

On July 25, 2009, 46-year-old Colleen Conaway died during a San Diego event held by New-Wage/McSpirituality guru James Arthur "Death" Ray, of whom Colleen was a devoted follower. She plummeted to her death from an upper-level balcony of a San Diego mall during one of Ray's weekend "wealth creation" seminars, and when Ray and his top people discovered she was missing, and later learned of her death, they kept it under wraps and partied on.

Ray was later convicted of negligent homicide, not for Colleen's death but for the October 2009 deaths of three other people -- Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman -- in a phony and dangerous sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona. He served less than two years in an Arizona state prison, and has been spending the time since he got out of prison trying desperately to make a comeback in Scamworld.

Today marks the 12th anniversary of Colleen's death. If you want more information, start with the post I published in 2019, on the 10th anniversary. I included a number of external links, including to content by bloggers who have told Colleen's story much more comprehensively than I have.

In that 2019 post I wrote about the connection between Ray and the Transformational Leadership Council, or TLC, aka the Trained Liars Cartel, a group of "elite" New-Wage/McSpirituality "thought leaders" who meet semi-annually, in late January and late July, at some desirable resort location. (Well, except for the past two meetings anyway, due most likely to the pandemic: the location for the July 2020 and the January 2021 gathering was listed simply as "Earth," so it was probably a Zoom meeting.) The most recent meeting began July 21 and wraps up today, according to the TLC schedule page, though the location has yet to be revealed on the TLC web site. I'm guessing... um... Earth again.

It was at a 2005 TLC meeting in Aspen, Colorado, Aussie film that producer Rhonda Byrne shot most of her infamous moviemercial, The Secret... and the rest is Scamworld History. At that time, Ray was a TLC member and so he became a "star" of The Secret, which shot him to new heights of fame and infamy, ultimately leading to the deaths of four people and the injuries of many more. I'm wondering if the TLC will have a tribute to Colleen during their wrap-up meeting today... but I'm guessing not.

As for Ray, these days he is (still) branding himself as "One of the World's Foremost Leadership and Redemption Advisors," explaining his qualifications thusly:

Because of his experience in building from humble beginnings and scratch, as well as rebuilding after hitting rock bottom post terrible crises, James has the unique experience and ability to help those at the top, those on the climb, and those who must put their life back together to get up and climb again.

It's too bad that Colleen Conaway -- and Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman -- won't have the opportunity to put their lives back together.

Never forget.

The Secret is still a Scamworld marketing hook, 14 years later

Quick take: Fourteen years after the launch of a cheesy, virally promoted DVD coyly titled The Secret, the craze that was sparked by its release shows no sign of dying down. Multitudes of derivative works, including a number of equally hokey imitation "movies," have been released since then, one of the most recent being Beyond The Secret: The Awakening, which had its "red carpet premiere" in January 2020.

The creator of The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, had no hand in these myriad derivative works; she has been too busy raking in the money from her own ever-expanding franchise. But for those who are looking for the "real thing," blessed by Rhonda herself, there's a new Secret movie just around the corner -- The Secret: Dare to Dream, due for limited theatrical release in April 2020 -- and this one has Rhonda's full blessing, right down to the famous "Secret seal" logo. And for better or for worse (most likely worse), it may very well breathe new life into a phenomenon that never really went away.

Way back in May of 2007, I wrote a short (for me, anyway) blog post, "The Secret" may fade, but stupid is forever. The reference, of course, was to The Secret, the intensely annoying and once-ubiquitous New-Wage/McSpirituality infomercial thinly disguised as a movie, which was truly in its glory days back then. Over the years I've written hundreds of pages and thousands of words about Rhonda Byrne's bloated cash cow, which all levels of hucksters and hustledorks and scammers continue to milk to this day.

Most of my writings re The Secret are on this blog, of course, but The Skeptical Inquirer site also published an essay of mine, "The Wrath of the Secretrons," which highlighted some of the absurdities of The Secret and the wrathful comments (and occasional threats) that I'd received on my blog for my opinions about the "movie."* I'm still getting responses to the "Secretron" piece years later, most of them supportive.

In retrospect the title of my May 2007 blog post may have reflected a bit of over-optimism regarding the shelf life of The Secret, which had popped onto the scene in March 2006 or thereabouts, a few months before this Whirled was created. The Secret may indeed fade, eventually, but we're not there yet. For an example of the continuing viability (or virulence, depending upon your perspective) of the franchise, look no further than one of this blog's top snargets, Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale, Secret "star" and Scamworld luminary. Mr. Fire is always finding new ways to exploit his role in this by-now-classic tribute to greed, narcissism, and the most facile variety of magical thinking.

Of course, he's not alone. But let's start with him.

On January 24, 2020 Joe boasted on Facebook -- or rather, he shared someone else's boast -- about attending the January 23 Hollywood "movie premiere" of something called Beyond The Secret: The Awakening. Joe, being one of the "stars" of the new work, was on the pretend red carpet along with his paramour and "Twin Flame," New-Wage dilettante Lisa Winston, who was first introduced here back in July of last year. Apparently Joe and Lisa are still going strong, ready to conquer the planet as one of Scamworld's newest MystiCouples, though public records indicate that Joe's divorce from Nerissa Oden is not yet final.

The person whose post Joe shared is a guy named Eric Zuley, whose own Facebook cover photo, as I write this, describes him as a "multi-media mogul; digital solutions concierge; speaker, branding and promotions expert; and host, actor, producer, entrepretainer, philanthropist." In the Intro section on the same page, he brags that he is a "TOP 10 SOC. MEDIA INFLUENCER."

If he hadn't lost me at "multi-media mogul" or "entrepretainer" or "philanthropist" on the cover photo, Eric most assuredly would have lost me at "SOC. MEDIA INFLUENCER." I am assuming this is an abbreviation of "social media influencer," which more often than not is code for "self-important attention whore, as useless as a Kardashian but not nearly as rich and famous."

There are several more photo-packed posts on Zuley's Facebook page about the premiere of Beyond The Secret. But Zuley didn't confine his crowing to Facebook, nor would one expect him to, since he is, after all, a "multi-media mogul" and "digital solutions concierge." Here's a link to the coverage on Zuley's EZWay Broadcasting site of the momentous "premiere" of "the most anticipated sequel of all time!"

But if you ask me, and even if you don't, Beyond The Secret: The Awakening is more like the most anticlimactic "sequel" of all time. (And if you really want to get technical, it's not even a sequel, because Rhonda Byrne had nothing to do with it.) But it is anticlimactic nevertheless.

Same song, different verse
To begin with -- and I've written about this numerous times over the years -- the original DVD of The Secret had no sooner been released than the "stars" of the moviemercial, as well as scads of other wannabes, were releasing their own Secret derivatives that claimed to be the "next step after The Secret," or to offer important information that The Secret left out, or to contain "the missing secret," or to reveal the "secret behind The Secret" or any one of dozens and dozens of variations on those themes.

For example, subsequent to the world debut of The Secret, our Mr. Fire offered, among many other info-frauducts, The Key: The Missing Secret for Attracting Anything You Want; and The Missing Secret: How to Use the Law of Attraction to Easily Attract Whatever You Want..Every Time; and The Secret to Attracting Money; and Install and Transcend The Secret; and... oh, I could probably go on for days, as there are "too many to list here," but you get the idea.

And as I mentioned earlier, Joe is far from the only huckster to crapitalize on The Secret. For instance, there were the Three Amigos -- Scientist Bob Proctor (noted quantum physics expert), Jack "Chicken Soup" Canfield, and Reverend Michael Beckwith -- and their $2,000 briefcase scam to promote their MLM, The Science of Getting Rich (inspired in part by the early 20th-century Wallace D. Wattles classic that Rhonda Byrne claimed was a major inspiration for The Secret). (Here's another Whirled post about the briefcase scheme; I wrote several, but this one is notable for the comments following the post.)

The Three Amigos' branding so closely resembled that of The Secret that many people apparently thought their shtick was an "official" offering, but Rhonda and her legal team were reportedly quite unhappy, and issued statements disclaiming any involvement in the scam. A couple of years later the briefcases and their contents were going for a deeply discounted price.

Apropos of the actions Rhonda and team may have taken against interlopers -- and I've written about this previously as well -- I don't blame Rhonda and her lawyers for wanting to protect her copyrights, but (1) It appears that she was a bit ambiguous in the beginning about letting her "stars" know how much leeway they had to use her work, apparently becoming less willing to let them share the glory as The Secret became more successful; and (2) as the The Secret soared to even greater heights of success, she became increasingly copyright-conscious (and greedy), leading to her involvement in several lawsuits against people whose work was instrumental in the unparalleled success of the early marketing. And I'm not talking about the "stars" of her boondoggle: I'm talking about folks who had apparently done work for hire, in good faith, and were understandably unhappy when she stiffed them.

But no amount of ambiguity and jealous copyright protections could prevent the flood of Secret-related content, in print, on audio, and online.

"Well, gee, Cosmic Connie," you might be saying, "all of those works you listed may have been inspired by The Secret, but they weren't specifically advertised as being a sequel to the movie, and many of the products you cited weren't even movies anyway, so that kind of weakens your argument about Beyond The Secret: The Awakening being anti-climactic, doesn't it?"

No, not really, especially if you look at it from the larger perspective that content is content regardless of the format, and that the market has been inundated with Secret derivatives for years and years.

But if you want to get picky, there has also been a flood of Secret-type "movies" that employed much the same format as The Secret: a string of New-Wage/McSpirituality/selfish-help gurus sharing their wisdumb under the umbrella of some vaguely unifying feel-good theme. These "movies" were often marketed using the same type of intriguingly mystical trailers and viral promotional strategies as The Secret, including affiliate programs to encourage people to hustle the products themselves. Early on I dubbed this genre of moviemercials "Hustledork Cinema," and although to my knowledge, not one of them was nearly as successful as The Secret, that clearly didn't stop the imitators from deluging the market.

Granted, the creators of these derivative moviemercials may not have overtly claimed their works to be a sequel to The Secret either. But a few came pretty close to doing so, and almost all of them referenced The Secret in their promos. And by the way, Joe Vitale was in quite a few of these mostly forgettable offerings.

In fact there is even another moviemercial called Beyond The Secret, which featured the aforementioned Bob Proctor and was released way back in 2009. Perhaps that's the reason that the new one also has a subtitle (The Awakening) so there won't be any brand confusion with the 2009 work, which got its share of bad reviews.

But as groundbreaking as it may have been, The Secret wasn't the first New-Wage moviemercial, and no discussion of Hustledork Cinema or New-Wage/McSpirituality moviemercials would be complete without at least a passing nod to the appalling 2004 work, What the Bleep Do We Know? This one had a corny storyline featuring actress Marlee Matlin, and some pretty terrible animations, but it also had a lineup of talking heads -- including a couple of discredited scientists (and at least one scientist who was peeved because his comments were taken out of context in the final product). Woven throughout the "movie" was a thick thread of psuedoscientific quantum-physics claptrap. Worst of all it featured that leading light of the imaginary-friends industry, J.Z. Knight, inventor of a 35,000-year-old being named Ramtha. My pal Skeptico debunked What the Bleep early on; here's a post from April 2005 explaining why this "movie" is crap.

Crap it may have been, but it was wildly popular, and its success must have surely inspired Rhonda when she was desperately searching for a lucrative shtick and a workable format in which to present it. Ultimately The Secret was much more successful than What the Bleep.

It's noteworthy, and I've previously noted it, that much of the derivative material spewed out since the 2006 release of The Secret -- whether in "movie" format or other media -- has been in a sense a disavowal of The Secret, an indictment of its limitations or inadequacies. This disavowal is all in the service of hucksters convincing marks that their own info-frauducts will provide the missing pieces. Joe Vitale has done this dozens and dozens of times over the years to advance his own brand; here's a blog post he wrote 11 years after The Secret came out. And here's Bob Proctor throwing The Secret under the bus back in 2008, in the service of pushing his crap. And so on.

Still, The Secret has always remained the point of reference to which the hucksters have felt compelled to return again and again and again.

Which brings us to 2020 and Beyond The Secret: The Awakening.

So, what's this new "movie" about?
You have probably already guessed the answer to this question, but let's look into it (superficially, which seems fitting) anyway. A January 22, 2020 press release for Beyond The Secret: The Awakening begins:

The premiere of “Beyond the Secret – The Awakening” brings global thought leaders together to dig deeper into the Law of Attraction at Universal Studios on Thursday, January 23rd...

Now, halt right there, press release writer. To define people like Joe Vitale and his colleagues as "thought leaders" is seriously stretching the definitions of both "thought" and "leaders." And to suggest that this work is in any way "deep" would be a clear case of journalistic malpractice if this were an actual news story instead of a hype-y press release.

Beyond The Secret: The Awakening features the expected lineup of the usual suspects. Besides Joe Vitale, there are other "stars" of The Secret such as Bob Proctor; John Asshat Assaraf, who famously went bankrupt a few years after his star turn in The Secret (here's the letter he wrote to his coaching clients); and Marie Diamond, who was involved in some legal battles of her own a few years back, and who probably jumped at the chance to have her "career" revived by appearing in another moviemercial. Also featured is a not-so-young-anymore hustledork, Doug Vermereen, whom I first wrote about in August of 2007 in conjunction with his "star" turn in The Opus, one of those aforementioned Secret imitators.

And there are quite a few others; go to the moviemercial's home page and see the lineup, and then, if you can stomach it, watch the trailer. You'll see, among other things, Mr. Fire with an earnest look on his face, waxing insincerely authentic about a whole new level of "creating your own reality."

In other words, there's not much new here.

Real or unreal?
It has occurred to me that some may object to my characterization of the original DVD of The Secret as not being a "real movie." They may protest that just because it didn't have a theatrical release, and it wasn't marketed as entertainment, this doesn't mean it's not a legit film. After all, with today's technology there are numerous legitimate ways of introducing movies besides through conventional theatrical releases. But my gripe was never with the unconventional distribution; it was with the content.

Then there's the fact that some people have referred to The Secret as a documentary -- and documentaries are real movies and even get Academy ® Awards, don't they? Yes, but documentaries generally provide a factual record or report about serious subjects such as social or political issues, scientific matters, history, biography, and the like. At best, The Secret is a pseudo-documentary pushing pseudo-science, and it would be a pseudo-documentary even if it had been introduced to the world via nationwide theatrical release.

But I prefer my own longstanding description, "New-Wage moviemercial." And in case it isn't obvious, that's because the hucksters who starred in The Secret -- as well as in the string of "motivational" "movies" since then -- have aggressively used the works to market themselves, and in fact many if not most of these "movies" have been thinly disguised lead generators for much more expensive frauducts and flopportunities, including horrendously overpriced "coaching" programs. I would be willing to bet that Beyond the Secret: The Awakening is a case in point.

And now for something completely different (or at least a little bit different, maybe)
If you're really desperate for something approaching an actual sequel to The Secret, there is, as it turns out, yet another Secret movie in the hopper. It's called The Secret: Dare to Dream, and -- hold on to your magickal genie lamp -- this one seems to have the full blessings of the grande dame of The Secret scampire, as it boasts Rhonda Byrne as one of its producers. And it actually features real film celebrities such as ex-Scientologist Katie Holmes, rather than the faux-lebrities of Scamworld; in addition, it is slated for a real theatrical release (albeit a limited one) on April 17, 2020.

In other words, The Secret: Dare to Dream is a real movie, with, apparently, a plot, though more than likely a schlocky one, if the trailer I watched (and will link to in a little while) is any indication.
 
The Secret: Dare to Dream was first announced in 2017, with an expected release date of June 2018, but that was delayed by funding problems. Apparently Rhonda Byrne, who surely must have been a gazillionaire by then with her sprawling Secret franchise, didn't want to put up her own money. But at the time the project was announced, she did express her enthusiasm, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Byrne's book, published in 2006, has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, been translated into 50 different languages and remained on the New York Times' best-seller list for 190 weeks. The book and nonfiction films of the same name suggest that thoughts and visualizations of one’s desires can lead to those things appearing in one’s life.

“I am so excited that the film version of The Secret is finally here," said Byrne. "This movie will not only be a great thrill for The Secret fans across the planet, it’s also certain to ripple out and touch millions more people. The Secret book was life-changing for so many, and this movie continues that legacy within a stunning piece of entertainment."

With that statement, even Rhonda seemed to be acknowledging that the original DVD of The Secret was not a real movie. Let's not get into that argument again, but for those who insist that The Secret was indeed a movie, then it would be technically correct to say that Dare to Dream is a movie based on a book based on a movie.

And while it may indeed end up being shlocky, at least it boasts some impressive acting and directing talent. On the other hand, What the Bleep?!? had some real H-wood movie stars, and a sort-of plot, and a limited theatrical release... and it was just as hokey as The Secret.

Here's the IMDb page for The Secret: Dare to Dream. And here's the Wikipedia page, which erroneously describes the book of The Secret as a novel. Actually, I guess it is fiction, but it wasn't intended to be or marketed as such.

And more importantly, here's the trailer, which, given the presence of the trademarked, copyrighted and jealously guarded "Secret seal" logo, should remove any doubt that this is an "official" Secret release (unlike -- not to belabor a point or anything -- Beyond The Secret: The Awakening).




Alas, Joe Vitale and the other hucksters who were in Rhonda's original, and in dozens of selfish-help/McSpirituality moviemercials since then, don't seem to be listed in the cast of The Secret: Dare to Dream.

But maybe that's okay with them. There's still plenty of life in that old Secret cash cow, and the hucksters are going to continue to milk it in any way they can for as long as they can get away with it. More than likely they'll continue to make and hype derivative "movies," striving to emulate the astounding marketing success of Rhonda's original, and attending cheap imitation "red carpet" events to "premiere" these works -- all in an effort to convince the world and themselves that they're true celebrities.

So I guess at this point you might as well get used to it. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.

Why this still matters, and why I won't just let it go
Maybe you're sick of hearing about The Secret and/or reading about it here. Perhaps you think I should just finally learn to shrug it off and adopt more of a "live and let live" attitude. And even if you're not a fan of The Secret and that whole Law of Attraction mindset that it popularized, you might feel a need to point out to me that there is obviously a continuing market for this stuff, and the content creators and providers are merely filling that market need, and that just because I personally don't like it, that doesn't mean it's bad or even that it lacks legitimacy.

I've heard all of these arguments before, 13 or 14 years ago, but I stand by my criticism. Moreover I think that most of the criticisms leveled against The Secret all those years ago -- not just mine, but hundreds of others as well -- still stand.

In the unlikely event that you're not familiar with objections to The Secret, here are just a few, though by no means all, of the reasons so many of us are not fans:

1. The Secret conflates abstract feel-good principles with real science.
   The so-called "Law of Attraction" is presented as a scientific "truth" that has something to do with quantum physics. No doubt this spurious claim, and some of the self-important talking heads (like Bob Proctor) who attempted to explain it in detail, hooked thousands of folks, but it just ain't so.
2. Despite the lofty claims of spiritual significance, The Secret and most of its derivatives encourage narcissism, selfishness, laziness, and greed -- again, all in the service of validating the spurious "Law of Attraction."
   The Secret placed a great deal of emphasis on magical thinking techniques to acquire material goods.
   Furthermore it encouraged mindlessness, victim-blaming, and selfishness, among several other less than desirable traits.
3. The Secret elevated some very questionable people to the position of "thought leaders" and role models, with sometimes dangerous -- even deadly -- results.
   The most notorious among these was James Arthur Ray, whose reckless behavior at one of his "Spiritual Warrior" events in October of 2009 resulted in the deaths of three of his followers. He had been clawing his way to the top in the aggressive sales/motivational rackets for years before he became the "genie" guy in The Secret. It was The Secret, though, that pushed him onto the A-list, expanding his platform and allowing him to attract many followers who probably would never have heard of him otherwise. But there are several other "stars" of The Secret who are also reprehensible. I covered a few of them in this April 2011 post, which happened to be while Ray's criminal trial was still going on, and before he was convicted of three counts of negligent homicide and sentenced to less than two years in an Arizona state prison. Ray has been out of prison for years now, and has been scrabbling to make a "comeback" since his release.

The countless Secret derivatives, including the latest ones, are simply reinforcing the validity of the original, often in the guise of providing a "deeper" or more "realistic" examination of the principles touted in Rhonda's 2006 work. At the same time, these works are definitely making a few folks in Scamworld even richer, and raising false hopes in many more.

For the most part, though, it's all a big pile of "staggering bullshit," as blogger Mark Manson wrote back in 2015 about the original Secret works. Or if you prefer, horse shit, as Hamilton Nolan put it in a Gawker piece, also in 2015. And yet herds of folks are still eagerly scooping up the turds as if they were the most precious of treasures, vainly believing that there must be a pony in there somewhere.

In other words, nothing has really changed.

And if The Secret: Dare to Dream is even moderately successful, it will almost certainly breathe new life into Rhonda's franchise, and the countless coattail riders will exploit it to their own purposes, to the extent that they can get away with it. You don't have to like it, but you might as well get used to it.

Update, April 30, 2020: In case you're wondering whether or not The Secret: Dare to Dream opened as scheduled on April 17, the opening was delayed, like that of so many other new films, because of the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis. In fact the delay was announced a month before the planned premiere; here's a March 17, 2020 piece from Deadline.

A statement from Roadside Attractions Co-Presidents Howard Cohen and Eric d’Arbeloff read:

In light of our country’s fight to contain the coronavirus, Roadside Attractions is postponing the April 17th theatrical release of The Secret: Dare To Dream. Once clarity for a safe and comfortable moviegoing experience is established, we will announce the date for a full theatrical release. Until then, please take the necessary precautions to keep you, your family and friends healthy and safe.

So I guess Secret fans will have to wait a little while longer for this fresh pile of sh... er... inspiration.

Update, July 29, 2020: Finally we have a release date for The Secret: Dare to Dream. In keeping with the new normal imposed by COVID-19, a theatrical release is out; instead it will be released on Premium Video On Demand (PVOD) on July 31, 2020. For $19.99 that you'll never get back, you can rent it on on-demand platforms such as Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and cable providers.

* Note: Although my essay, "The Wrathof the Secretrons," is dated September 2008 on the Skeptical Inquirer site, I wrote it nearly two years earlier, and SI originally published it in on their site in March of 2007, as this Whirled post indicates. Apparently the date got skewed when they did a site redesign. There were also links to the original 2007 SI page (now defunct) on the Democratic Underground site and on Boing Boing.)

Whirled snippets to take your mind off of the Kevin Trudeau trial (for a while)

Hey, kiddos, remember when this blog was about something besides serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's court cases? Remember when it lived up to its description of being a Whirling, swirling ocean of snark chum, devoted to a wide range of New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality topics and hustledorks? I've said this before, but fear I may have alienated some of my loyal followers when I started obsessing so much over Katie. I need to remedy that, at least in some small way, in order to let my original fan base know I've not forgotten them.

Don't worry. I'm still going to keep you updated on the court doings. Just like I did here.

And here.

I'll have more in the next day or so about the latest court doings, links to the news media stories, and prolly some gratuitous snarks about some of Katie's supporters (though I would be surprised if he didn't have people rooting for him in court, and it actually gives me some satisfaction to acknowledge that to this day he has a far larger and more loyal fan base than some of his loathsome ex-b.f.f.s who are trying desperately to fill his shoes). 

But for now... oh, my, there are so many other topics tugging at my sleeve, just begging for attention, that I cannot ignore them any more. So take a brief break from the court watching (but be sure to check in on GIN Network Truth if you're on Facebook), and have a few snippets.

We don't need another Hero...
Oh, Good Goddess. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the book store, along comes Secret creator Rhonda Byrne with yet another insipid tome. Following 2010's The Power and last year's The Magic, the new book, due out November 19, is called, simply, Hero.

I can't wait to see the names of the twelve living "heroes" Rhonda picked to showcase this time. She did such a stellar job of hero-picking for The Secret. It really doesn't matter what she writes, though. Everything she publishes becomes a bestseller. That is one of the things that makes me worry for the future of the human race.

Hype'oponopono
Speaking of new books... it's been a while since I've visited New-Wage/McSpirituality guru and star of The Secret Joe Vitale, long a favorite snarget on this Whirled. (Actually he's a buddy of Kevin Trudeau too, or was -- as noted here and here and here -- though he has pretty much stayed mum about Kevin's more recent troubles.) Why, a little over six years ago I even sponsored a Hawaiian Week (which turned out to be considerably longer than a week) on this blog. This was in honor of the release of Joe's book, Zero Limits, a tribute to a modernized "proprietary" form of a native Hawaiian conflict resolution practice called Ho'oponopono. Responding to a request from a misguided publicist who'd been hired by Joe's publisher, I read and wrote an actual review of Zero Limits on my blog, in a two-part post published on July 9 and July 10, 2007.

About a year and a half before Zero Limits hit the market, Joe started getting people all excited about Ho'oponopono -- and ultimately about Zero Limits -- by spreading an apocryphal tale of Ho'oponopono-based miracle cures in a Hawaiian hospital for the criminally insane. Here's that story. It was copied and pasted and published and republished and peated and repeated countless times by countless starry-eyed believers, all over the Interwebs. Few people seemed to question whether the story was real or not.

And here is the more credible Whirled version. (Several people wrote to me asking if my story was real. It is as real as you want it to be.)

Now Joe has thrown together a new book to further exploit Ho'oponopono. (Or perhaps Joe'oponopono would be a better word.) The new work is called, At Zero: The Final Secrets to "Zero Limits" -- The Quest for Miracles Through Ho'oponopono (Wiley, October 2013).

So far Joe's new book has one review on Amazon. I would say that it is not a favorable one.

Ho'oponopono is a great tool for forgiveness. This book gets two stars because of the power of ho'oponopono. However, the book is at least 50% padding (unedited interviews, letters, etc), 30% marketing for other programs, and 20% stories of how other people have horribly wronged the author and how he used ho'oponopono to get over it.

It was disappointing to read the author basically recant the unbelievable story of Dr. Ihaleakela Hew Len's miraculous healing at the Hawaiian hospital for the criminally insane. Vitale uses the opportunity to take shots at ABC news and mass media being big downers. But it seems that the entire internet sensation of how and why ho'oponopono gained notoriety was based on admitted (in this book) half-truths.

As with most of Vitale's works, you'll have to endure endless marketing pitches for Miracles Coaching (with the registered trademark EVERYWHERE), awakening courses, and stories about meeting celebrities... and how horribly wronged he has been by friends, attorneys, and anyone else who questioned the validity of ho'oponopono.

I personally believe in the power of the practice. Ho'oponopono is very powerful in letting go of what you believe to be true so that you can experience something else. However, I wish I had passed on this overpriced more-of-the-same from Joe Vitale.

Yep, that pretty much sounds like Joe's formula for cobbling together a book. It didn't used to be that way, back in the day when I knew him, but his more recent efforts have pretty much complied with the formula that the reader described above. I'm amused but not particularly surprised that he would seem to disclaim the story about Dr. Hew Len curing those loonies. Oops, I mean those criminally insane people. And for a such a bastion of positivity, Joe does seem to spend an awful lot of time whining about how many people wronged him. Take it all with a huge amount of salt. Or better yet, just don't take it.

Rumors of my illness, jealousy, and abysmal taste in "men" have been greatly exaggerated

I guess it all does come back around to Katie after all, via his vile little ex-b.f.f., Mocktor Loony Coldwell. Although the Loonmeister has blocked me from seeing any of his rants on Facebook, others can see them and they take screen shots.

For those of you who are new here or just need a recap: A little over a year ago, apparently enraged because I had blogged a few months previously about him (here is the link to my first post about him, in case you haven't already read it), Loony began spreading blatant lies about me, mostly on Abe Husein's main Facebook page. I found his rants more amusing than outrageous, because they were such flagrant falsehoods. Other people were indignant on my behalf and reported him to Facebook. I was rather enjoying how he hung himself, though, and I have screen shots of everything.

Among other lunatic claims, he said his "research team" had learned that I was being paid by Big Pharma and/or the medical profession to discredit natural "healers" such as himself. Now, at least that would have been a somewhat logical lie -- although it is a lie nonetheless -- but, in an apparent attempt to make me seem even less credible, he also said I am a former prostitute who infected the guy who supposedly told him about me with "a bad STD." I've heard credible buzz about why he is so obsessed with prosties but he's definitely barking up the wrong tree with me. He said he had videos about me and would start publishing them soon (this was over a year ago). Later he came out and said I have AIDS. All of these are of course lies. And even his loyal fans (yes, he does have people who are blind or stupid enough to be fans) don't believe those lies.

He had been pretty quiet for a while, and then yesterday, on a thread on Abe's wall, Coldwell said I have cancer, which apparently developed because I am jealous of Loony and his peeps (see screen shot above). Of course as usual he doesn't come out and mention my name (the better to slither out of a potential lawsuit), but most of us snapped to his meaning because of the context. Everything in that rant is of course a lie, though perhaps wishful thinking on Loony's part. It's remarkable how a so-called "compassionate healer" who "really cares about people" can get such apparent glee from the prospect of anyone contracting the very disease he claims to be on a mission to cure.

In that same rant he claimed that I had asked Kevin Trudeau's former marketing guy Peter Wink for a date with him (Coldwell), and that because Loony rebuffed me, this is why I went on a "hate rampage" against him and Peter. Wow... more wishful thinking on Loony's part? Shudder, shudder.

My pal Bernie at GINtruth.com has already blogged about it, complete with screen shot. Heeere's Bernie!

As I 'splained in my comment to Bernie's post, and have mentioned here and on other forums as well, the truth about my correspondence with Peter, regarding Loony, is more mundane. These communications always centered around Peter’s attempts to get me to stop writing critical blog posts about Loony. Peter tried very earnestly, ultimately to no avail, to convince me that Coldwell is a very nice guy who really, really cares about people. At one point Peter wrote an email to me proposing that if I would stop writing blog posts about Coldwell and would take down the ones I had written, then Peter would approach Coldwell and ask him if he MIGHT stop spreading lies that I am an AIDS-infected former prostitute. I do not make deals with the devil, so… no deal.

Besides, even if I were in the dating market -- which I'm not, and haven't been for more years than the former Bernd Klein has even been in the USA -- I have always had a tendency to want to stick to my own species. I'm just funny that way.

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Pardon the Schadenfruede; it comes with the territory

Dear Ones, I must apologize for being away from my Whirled for so long. Not only have I been inundated with work (which is always a good thing), but my head was momentarily turned by Facebook: yes, I finally succumbed to pressure last month and got myself a cage in Zuckerberg's Zoo. Like many people I have mixed feelings about Facebook, for it is many things and not all of them are good. For those wishing to promote their businesses it is without a doubt a leveler of the playing field, providing another way for companies both small and large to connect with their customers. But it also provides yet another means for hustledorks and serial scammers to expand their own platforms.

And while Facebook is perhaps most famously a way for friends and family to "keep in touch," this is not always a good thing. It also offers yet another way for people who supposedly love each other to air their dirty laundry, work out their festering issues, and hurt each other in a very public manner. Being witness to several examples of the latter was one factor that made me hesitant to join Facebook at all.

But in the end, Facebook won.

Though I strongly suspect that Facebook has become part of the New World Marketing Order and is little more than an elaborate ploy to gather all of our mineworthy data into one convenient package (and we are WILLINGLY providing the exploiters with this information, no matter how carefully we've tweaked our "privacy" settings), my addiction to nattering on about myself often trumps caution and common sense. Accordingly I have been dutifully updating my status and participating in discussions that interest me, though I utterly refuse to play those silly Facebook games, and I rarely participate in surveys. Besides being even more time-wasting than blogging or tweeting or holding forth with freely chosen Facebook friends, the FB games are all little more than data-mining traps, and I think you know that I'm not just being paranoid about this.

At any rate, the net result of all of this Facebooking and such is that I have neglected my Whirled for far too long. So far this year, April has indeed been the "cruelest month" for the two or three of you who may have been eagerly awaiting a new blog post. Well, I just can't let this entire calendar month go by in silence (though I realize that for my friends In Other Parts of the World, it is already May and has been for several hours, so double apologies for failing y'all).

Although I have more than a dozen scintillating blog posts in the hopper, I honestly haven't had the brains to finish them. For the time being, you will have to settle for a no-brainer update on some of the "stars" of the planet's most popular New-Wage moviemercial: The Secret. 

As most of you are more than aware, since the release of The Secret, these luminaries have been making a lot of noise about the Law of Attraction and how they have used it to create the life of their dreams. And each one, in his or her own way, has blazed a whole new career path by crowing about how you too can learn to use LOA to create the life of your dreams, if only you will pour your heart, your soul, and the contents of your bank account into the hustledork in question's particular brand. It's all about paying full on... I mean, playing full on. No, I was right the first time.

Although the critical backlash to The Secret has been going on for several years now (and some of us, as I feel compelled to keep repeating, were critics from the very beginning), the franchise still has legions of fans, as do many of the talking heads who starred in it. For every snarky or critical blogger, there are probably dozens if not hundreds of starry-eyed pro-Secret LOA believer-bloggers who are still desperately trying to earn money, or just favorable attention, by kissing up to the Secret stars. 

It took the James Arthur Ray sweat lodge deaths and ensuing arrest and trial to awaken more people to the fact that all that glitters is not gold in Secretville. But many people apparently haven't gotten the memo yet, looking upon the Ray case as a horrid aberration, and seemingly being taken aback when something negative comes out about yet another Secret hero. I was reminded of this again when I participated in a discussion this past week on Facebook. At one point in the discussion, I mentioned the Bob Proctor/Jack Canfield/Michael Beckwith $2,000 Science of Getting Rich (SGR) briefcase scam from a few years ago. Connie Joy, the host of the discussion, used to be a James Ray follower but has since seen the man for what he is, and she is certainly no starry-eyed type. However, she was unfamiliar with the briefcase deal and asked me to 'splain it, so I did.* 

Apparently she had also been unaware of Aussie Secret star David Schirmer's troubles (see below). And evidently some of her other Facebook friends were either similarly unaware of these matters or wanted to believe they were irrelevant. While Ms. Joy herself has been nothing but gracious to me, one participant responded with what has become par for the course in counter-criticism, e.g., we critics are just trying to further our "agenda"; we're trying to sabotage people who are going for their dreams; we're not moving things forward by focusing on negative stuff, and so forth.

I have no doubt that negative information is just going to keep on coming out about the Secret teachers as time goes by, so Secret fans might as well get used to it. They can rag on the critics all they want, they can second-guess our agendas, they can call us haters -- but that's not going to restore the shine to their tarnished heroes. 

For now, here's a summary of some of the more notable accomplishments from those modern-day masters of the art of living who starred in The Secret.

The Death Ray saga continues
James Arthur Ray's criminal trial on three counts of manslaughter is still going on in Yavapai County, Arizona, and is expected to last through June. The defense has tried every trick in the book, including vain requests for a mistrial. When the spirit moves it, CNN/InSession has streaming video of the trial, and several intrepid bloggers and tweeters are on the case, providing updates for the rest of us. I can't keep up with the trial in real time because I don't have cable or satellite TV, and my satellite Internet provider imposes such severe usage caps that I can't watch a lot of video. But I have been availing myself of these rich sources of information and often amusing commentary:

• Salty Droid. His original James Ray trial page, http://saltydroid.info/james-arthur-ray-trial-updates/, is pretty long and cumbersome by now, mainly because there are more than 900 comments on it to date. So Salty has been producing smaller update posts, with the most recent one as of today being here: http://saltydroid.info/james-ray-trial-trials-april-28th/
Other Salty Droid trial update links are currrently in the "Focusing" box on the upper right-hand side of his blog.

Some of the short posts might not make sense to you if you haven't been following the story fairly closely, but I suspect they are serving as trial notes for the time being, and that Salty will flesh them out later. In any case, the comments following his posts are always interesting. This one on the April 28 trial post, from Jean D (29 April 2011 at 2:18 pm), summed up the heart of the case against Ray:

No matter what the defense tries to distract with, this trial is about one thing: What would a reasonable person have done, once he became aware that people were having difficulties during an activity he not only created and promoted,but was directing,and in which he was participating just feet away from the people in distress?
Why did Ray choose not to stop the activity? It had no rules for duration,therefore, it could be ended at any time. But what did Ray do? He chose to keep going.
The structure was not traveling at a high rate of speed. Nor was it flying at a high altitude. It did not require an emergency stop or landing. But what did Ray do? He chose to keep going.

It was not a building in which people were trapped by walls and doors. It would have been very easy to have told participants to lift up the sides and get out, and to remove the tarps so light and oxygen would fill the space, allowing access to the ones in danger. But is that what Ray did? No. He chose to keep going.

James Arthur Ray was a mean,spiteful bully kid who grew up to be a mean, spiteful bully professional con artist. Sociopaths are incapable of resisting their urge to control and hurt others. They lack the moral fiber to put the brakes on their behavior. We can only hope the outcome of the trial will successfully stop this subspecies of human and hold him accountable for ending the lives* of Kirby Brown,James Shore and Liz Neuman.
*remember Colleen Conaway

• LaVaughn's Celestial Reflections blog (http://celestial-reflections.blogspot.com/search/label/Sweat%20Lodge%20Trial): Putting aside the fact that LaVaughn is a self-described "psychic intuitive," I've found her blog posts about the trial to be full of good reporting and excellent insights.

• Connie Joy's Tragedy in Sedona Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/TragedyInSedona): You probably have to be a Facebook member and friend to see this page, but if you're on Facebook and you're interested in this case, it's worth your time to make the connection. Ms. Joy wrote a book, Tragedy in Sedona, about her experiences with James Ray.
• Tom McFeeley's blog (http://tommcfeeley.com/tag/james-arthur-ray): Tom is a cousin of Kirby Brown, one of the three people who died as a result of participating in James Ray's 2009 sweat lodge. Read his blog for insight and observations from someone who really has a personal stake in this matter.

On Friday, several tweeters and bloggers who have been following the Ray trial expressed frustration that the one media source that had been providing live trial coverage, CNN, was apparently far more interested in the royal wedding than in the goings-on at the trial. But I suspect the bloggers weren't too surprised. All across the media landscape, even the most serious journalists could scarcely pull themselves away from gushing, cooing, ahhing, ooohing, and nearly wetting themselves over Kate's dress or the special wedding cake or that "true life fairy tale" long enough to even report on the horrendous fatal tornadoes in the South -- to say nothing of devoting precious air time to a mundane criminal trial.

Thank goodness that the bloggers, as usual, were on the job, because the mainstream journos failed us once again.

Meanwhile, back in Oz... David Schirmer, the "car park" and "cheques in the mail" guy in The Secret, is more well-known on this blog for being the Mini-Madoff of Melbourne. I have been writing about him for four years now. As of today, Schirmer is still banned for life from working in the financial trade in Australia, but that hasn't stopped him from continuing with his selfish-help shtick, using both his Secret stardom and Bible-thumping Christianity to build his tainted brand. The comments on Salty Droid's blog about Schirmer's recent activities are particularly interesting (here's a sample: http://saltydroid.info/shuttering-david-schirmer/#comment-59992).

But you just can't keep a good schemer down, and right now Schirmer is seeking an editor for the hustledork magazine he is trying to revive. (I blogged about this rag three years ago in a post that contains one of my fave Photoshopping efforts.) A friend alerted me to a job posting that The David Schirmer Group of Companies recently placed on Linkedin:

Job Description
We are seeking a full time editor for an international publication.

The magazine started in January 2007 and is focused on providing the latest breakthroughs and stories from The Secret Teachers, quantum physics, spiritual understanding and the personal development industry. The first issue set sales records in news stands for being the highest selling new publication.

The Editor must be a personal development advocate and want to go on a amazing journey of personal growth with some of the most incredible minds of the 21st centery [sic]. The magazine has already featured The Secret Teachers Joe Vitale, Marci Shimoff, Bob Proctor, John De Martini and John Assaraf, personal development greats such as Tony Robbins and Depak [sic] Chopra, and buiness [sic] leaders such as Richard Branson.

Company Description
The company is run by two entreprentuers [sic] and highly sucessful [sic] business people with experience in finance, education and multiple business operations. A considerable sum of funds has already been invested by the business owners plus the company now has large investor backing and will re-launch the magazine locally then shortly afterward internationally.

Personal Qualities
A senior editor, to be successful, needs: an excellent grasp of writing and editing;
the ability to handle multiple tasks and projects simultaneously; the ability to work with colleagues, advertisers and readers diplomatically; an understanding of the publishing process; the ability to meet deadlines; the flexibility to find quick solutions to problems; and an awareness of trends.
The right person will be someone with strong Christian ethics and values who is passionate about personal growth and helping others to grow. If your motto is "When the going gets tough, the tough get going!" then you are the person we want. Thumbsuckers need not apply! This position will change your life in every area ... spiritually, mentally, physically, financially and relationships.

Uh-huh. Go to work for Schirmer, and your life may very well be changed. But it's very probable that you won't like the changes. At all.
It will be interesting to see how (or if) Schirmer manages to pull this new project off, especially since all of his companies are being struck off by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), as one commenter on Salty Droid's blog reminded us recently. That commenter wrote, "If Schirmer is claiming it is a successful international company then he's back to his usual bulls--t conartist lifestyle again."

On the other hand, another commenter points out that anyone can purchase articles online, throw them together, and call it a "magazine." It's all about the marketing, which in Schirmer's case will include an ability to cover up his past misdeeds to any eager and desperate writers who may be jockeying for the new position.
Anyway, as you can imagine, I will not be applying for the editorial job.
 
Scientist Bob is on the job!
I've blogged about Bob Proctor numerous times, focusing on his work and his more inane public utterances, and there are so many of the latter to choose from. There are other matters, too, that I haven't covered in depth, or at all. For example, there have been rumors that the Proctor empire is crumbling, and there is also some private smarmy stuff that I'm (still) not at liberty to blog about. But even if the smarmy stuff never comes to light, we'll always have the SGR Briefcase Scam, and the Boner Repositioning System.
Since the Death Lodge story broke, Scientist Bob has also gained attention for having been a mentor to James Ray. A recent article from the Arizona Republic noted:

Bob Proctor, a personal-development teacher who has been a mentor and friend to Ray, says it's standard practice in the business to cobble together teachings from all over. "If it works, try it," he said. While Ray drew on disciplines from physics to psychology to mold together his own approach, Proctor said that the bulk of Ray's teachings focus on "understanding how your mind functions, on how to improve your quality of life - pretty basic stuff."
As for Ray, "he's a good guy, and he's helped lots of people," he said...

...Whatever the cause of [the sweat lodge participants'] death, Proctor, Ray's mentor, cites the Law of Attraction. "He has attracted this; why I don't know. There's a great lesson in it for him, whether he learns it or not," Proctor said. "Since the trial started, I've talked with him by text message, and he's asking himself some very serious questions."

Well, golly, Death Ray is asking himself some serious questions! This changes everything. I take back every negative word I've ever written about him.** At any rate, whatever happens in the months to come, we can count on Scientist Bob Proctor to say something fairly stupid about it. 

Moral bankruptcy isn't the only problem... John Asshat Assaraf, the Secret star whom some folks used to confuse with James Ray until the latter started killing people, currently calls himself The Spiritual Entrepreneur. He's all about the abundance, don't you know, and he's most famous in Secretville for having moved into the big mansion that he'd pasted on his vision board several years earlier.
But it seems that his famous OneCoach flopportunity, which was supposed to help scads of other folks get as rich and happy as he is, is...well...bankrupt. Look at some of the comments on this blog post: http://www.johnassaraf.com/my-life/check-out-the-onecoach-blog/

Update, 9 May 2011: Oops. That link above? It's a big 404 now. Somebody wiped it away. I have a feeling we haven't seen the end of it, though.)
If the rumors of bankruptcy are true, perhaps the problem is that Assaraf became so focused on that big mansion that he neglected other aspects of his business. And maybe he also got a bit hooked on the accolades from giddy wannabes. If you follow the link in the first sentence of this paragraph you'll see a YouTube video by an awestruck admirer, whose unseen female companion just couldn't stop giggling in the presence of such greatness as Assaraf took the two of them on a tour of his opulent digs. 

An aerial shot of the famous house can be seen on this blog post: http://saltydroid.info/just-like-my-party/
I think it is also worth a reminder here that Assaraf partners with Utah boiler room Prosper Inc. http://www.prospercorp.com/partners/john-assaraf.php
Here’s the blurb from Assaraf’s Prosper page, obviously written in better days:

His newest business venture and passion is OneCoach, a company dedicated to helping small business owners and entrepreneurs grow their businesses so they can live extraordinary lives

Prosper, no doubt taking its copy straight from Assaraf’s own promo material, also describes Assaraf as having a "unique passion for brain research and quantum physics" – overlooking the fact that these two descriptors are anything but unique among New-Wage hustledorks. They’re ALL into (cherry-picked) brain research and (fake) quantum physics. Yawn.
As you may know, Prosper is one of numerous boiler-room businesses that happen to be clustered in the business-friendly state of Utah, and apparently have a cozy relationship with Utah’s dodgy Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff. (Once again, Salty Droid was on this one: http://saltydroid.info/mark-shurtleff-attorney-general-of-mlm)

"It Byrnes! It Byrnes us!"
Secret creator Rhonda Byrne is still in hiding for the most part, as she more or less has been since the backlash against The Secret began a few years ago. The various Secret-related lawsuits may have been a factor in her publicity shyness as well. 

As many of you may know, Rhonda's law firm was the same one chosen by James Ray for the Death Lodge defense. Rhonda even thanked the firm at the beginning of The Power. Salty did a nice little photocomp about it: http://saltydroid.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/James-Ray-Rhonda-Byrne-Munger-Tolles.jpg

Rhonda apparently did not go on tour for her new book, The Power, but that did not stop it from ranking high on Amazon, even today, more than six months after its release. Sometimes Amazon rankings are...well...rank. Here are recent figures for The Power:

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #357 in Books

• #4 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > New Age > New Thought
• #7 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Occult
• #20 in Books > Health, Mind & Body > Self-Help > Personal Transformation

It was on Amazon's review/discussion pages for The Power that I first "met" my new friend Kathryn Price (who recently has been giving Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale a run for his money on his blog). The discussion resulting from Kathryn's September 2010 one-star review of The Power has generated nearly 600 responses so far. 

The Power currently enjoys a four-and-a-half-star average rating, which means that by far the majority are glowing five-star reviews. She may be in hiding, but Rhonda still has a lot of fans and die-hard LOA believers.
But here's a link to the one-star reviews.

Miscellaneous other players... This isn't new news, but it's for the benefit of those who are unaware of some of the other Secret star shenanigans. 

Bill Harris, inventor of the pricey Holosync frauduct and ex-bidness partner of James Ray, threatened to sue a critical blogger, Duff McDuffee. http://saltydroid.info/silencing-of-the-lambs/

Marie Diamond, feng shui expert extraordinaire, was involved in a lawsuit a while back: http://www.amazon.com/Against-Vyncke-Diamond-Happiness-Productions/dp/1442172509

As I said on the aforementioned Facebook discussion, I could go on and on with examples of bad behavior from players in The Secret. To me it seemed obvious from the beginning that The Secret was just a big money grab that glorified greed, materialism, and over-sized egos. But many people still don't want to see it that way. In the end, it seems that rather than hear unpleasant truths about tornadoes and trials, they would rather just embrace the fairy tale. 

* The discussion in question is on Connie Joy's Tragedy in Sedona Facebook page, although you will probably not be able to see it if you are not on FB and a "friend" of Tragedy in Sedona. For the benefit of those who don't know about the SGR $2,000 briefcase scheme, my explanation is at April 26 at 4:58pm. Or, since I have blogged about this several times, just Google "SGR briefcase Whirled Musings." (Blogger's search results suck on these older templates, so Google is a better bet.)
** Yes, that was sarcasm.

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