Self-help has become a huge industry, with people turning to speaking events, books, workshops, retreats, videos, etc. for a self-healing solution. What we know from Gurbani is that dukh is a part of life that everyone universally experiences. That means that at some point we are all searching for answers and a direction.
I think inherently we all do have a way of knowing, our body and mind has a way of healing and finding its way. While in the womb, we passed the tests needed to overcome maya and thus we were placed into this life knowing the rules of the game and how to win it. It is that we get lost in our ways and then have to find our way to healing again. In the desperate search for help from our dukh we might search for help in many different places. We might search for help in our Gurdwara Sahibs, from other members of the sangat or Gyanis/Granthis. We might look for help from doctors or psychologists/therapists or life coaches. We might look for help in the form of medications, homeopathy, or naturopathy. We might look for healing in physical activities like yoga, self-defense, or dancing. We might search in the form of meditation. We might look for it in trips to different places, in vacations, nature, animals and extreme sports and activities. We can search far and wide, for different types of healers of all traditions and cultures, from Indigenous healers to Shamanic rituals. We can look for famous saints, silence, monks and monasteries. We can look in churches, Gurdwaras, Mosques, and Hindu temples. We can look into modern technologies. Wherever we look, we are looking with the intent for us to heal some kind of internal suffering. We know that common feeling, of wanting relief. For some that gets to the point that they have waited so long they really need relief now, they need some immediate action to change in order to make life bearable. We can be put into this state from a physical, mental or spiritual crisis. These can all potentially be tools or helpers in our healing journey. We can use them to aid us to find our way, but it is important to recognize the dangers of them as well. Rather than placing the focus of attention onto latching onto something as an all-encompassing solution, it is more helpful to trust our gut instincts.
Exploitation in this area is very real. When we are suffering in some kind of dukh, we are very vulnerable to this type of exploitation. For example, our brain chemistry, and the functions of the brain, and hormones get altered from trauma. We might be so desperate from physical pain that we look to unconventional sources for help without applying our usual logic. We might be so disoriented from grief, that we set out on a limb and it doesn’t go well. There are people who want to make financial gain from this area of course, but it can be even worse than a financial loss. A person could lose their life. Naturopathy, chiropractics, and homeopathy are not without significant risks. People think that things labelled natural are better remedies but that isn’t necessarily true. We have heard of stories of people being sexually abused by Granthis. There are similar stories of yogis, and those in positions of power, even physicians. One of the scariest things is that our brain learns to recognize familiarity and patterns, and if we have experienced trauma, we could unknowingly recognize the familiarity of that trauma and therefore someone who is dangerous can easily take advantage of that familiarity and prey on them. This is described well in Dr. Van Der Kolk’s book “When the Body Keeps the Score.”
One of the most stark examples of this was when I was reading about James Arthur Ray. He was one of those self-help motivational speakers, who later was convicted of negligent homicide of three individuals at a “sweat lodge” ceremony he held (not an actual sweat lodge, this was misrepresented) in 2009. I listened to a podcast about the lodge ceremony from Wondery called “Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment”. People paid large amounts of money to attend his events. This exclusive “spiritual warrior” event was one where people attended to have the experience of a lifetime. Some of the participants were dentists and doctors. One participant noted “that high energy kind of environment is just kind of fun you want to be part of it, you want to belong, you don’t want to stand out and be against what’s going on.” In the end, it was a deadly event, with more than 50 people needing medical attention. He failed to accept any sort of responsibility for the deaths and served only 18 months behind bars. Matt Stroud wrote an article for the Verge: “How did so many seemingly intelligent people follow James Arthur Ray into the sweat lodge that day?” Cult intervention specialist Rick Ross stated “…Ray uses ‘large-group awareness training,’ or LGAT, where a single leader trains a large group in a particular worldview. Leaders like Ray, Ross suggests, see themselves as more than trainers. ‘They all have this kind of zealous, almost evangelical view of their philosophy as being an end-all and a cure-all for the participants,’ Ross says. And if something goes wrong, it’s not the leader’s fault.” SEEK Safely was an organization started by the family of one of the victims, Kirby Brown. They state on their website: “We’ve discovered that many other self-help ‘gurus’ are running similar scams to James Ray—they’re unqualified, motivated by money, and have little regard for the safety and well-being of their customers. For providers of personal development, there are no ethical guidelines. There are no laws to ensure emotional or physical safety. No laws to protect from financial loss. No laws to require a risk management plan at physically challenging events. Ironically, if James Ray had a professional license, it would have been revoked after his conviction. But no such licensing exists for gurus in the personal and professional development world. As we learned of the abuses in the industry, we realized that it is only a matter of time before other seekers are harmed financially, emotionally or physically.” SEEK safely identifies how to recognize a “red flag” event such as an individual without any expertise, applies scarcity tactics (limited numbers only), promises of an ultimate solution/special secrets to life, encouraging highly emotional revelations in public, sensory deprivation, use of repetitive “key phrases,” etc. They point out one of the reasons why speakers like him are able to succeed is they draw on the group’s low self-esteem, self-blame feelings: “Speaker frames all past beliefs as the reason for failure which influences the participant to have a negative and poor self-perception, increasing their need to ‘buy into’ whatever the speaker is teaching and selling.”
In our culture we see this exact same thing in the version of Nakli Babas, who then go on to exploit people, like Ram Rahim. It’s a different form of the exact same problem. People are flocking in masses to attend events (pre-covid) where they can see healing. After covid I think we will see another exploitation of the public. Predators sometimes don't "look" particularly dangerous. Serial Killer Ted Bundy was known as "charismatic." They might tell you, look its simple just put up a vision board and get what you want, it just attracts to yourself (James Arthur Ray also happened to be on the popular movie The Secret) when they are predatorily getting what they want. In the process using the opportunity to say that they have everything of success in the world and you are responsible for your own suffering. If we think of truly spiritual people in history, all our famous Sikhs, or people of other religions, none of them would be acting like this. There is a subtlety to the Truth, a humility, it doesn't need to be pushed down people's throats loudly and dramatically because the message is sweet, kind, caressing. In Sikhi, our Guru Ji, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, is our Guru for a reason, and provides us with important knowledge for coming out of dukh. All that knowledge is out there for free, at our fingertips to be absorbed.
I think the point is that it’s easy for this to be any one of us. I’ve had the experience of both listening to my gut, and having successfully avoided situations and people that would have been dangerous to me, and having been burned by not trusting my gut. We somehow are in a culture where we think that healing has to involve breaking down further, like somehow we have to suffer more until we “completely” fall apart to bring it back together and that’s simply not true. James Arthur Ray pushed people to the limits by telling them the signs of heat stroke were normal and then not calling 911 when they died. Healing doesn’t look like that. While it is a hard process, it looks like support, encouragement, love, and not a nauseating feeling in the pit of your stomach. Critical thinking gets us far, considering evidence and having a science background really helps me, but sometimes it comes down to your gut feeling. Our safety and lives are on the line when we search for healing so please do so safely. There's a reason why there's ethical guidelines to how physicians, psychologists and psychiatrists practice. Do your research, ask questions and trust your gut. This is a great document for guidance in this area, even for people seeking help not related to trauma. It has general guidance related to how we deserve to be treated when we seek help- things like confidentiality and boundaries: https://www.sidran.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/A-Recovery-Bill-of-Rights-for-Trauma-Survivors.pdf
Wherever you seek your own healing path in your life, stay safe!
References:
https://wondery.com/shows/guru/ Guru: the Dark Side of Enlightenment by Matt Stroud
https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/4/5038930/the-death-dealer-james-arthur-sweat-lodge-deaths-in-sedona “The Death Dealer 'Secret' guru James Arthur Ray led three people to their deaths... and now he's at it again” by Matt Stroud
https://www.seeksafely.org/consumers/#1471441719858-690475a9-5b74
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