Best-selling author of Harmonic Wealth James Arthur Ray was arrested and arraigned in Prescott, Arizona on manslaughter charges stemming from three fatal deaths in a sweat lodge ceremony he facilitated just outside Sedona, Arizona October 8. 2009. Bail was set at $5 million and, according to his attorney, he was unable to post bond.
It is odd and disturbing how Ray acted at the time of the tragedy. He fled the state immediately according to his attorney, Brad Brian, because the police told him that there was an ongoing investigation and Ray felt it was best, under the circumstances, that he return home to California. Subsequently one of his key ex-staff members, Malinda Martin told CNN’s Gary Tuchman that when she was giving CPR to one of the attendees who was unconscious, James Ray told her to stop. He was convinced, according to this woman, that each person had to go through this “death-like” process in order to heal what was obstructing them.
There have been so many eye-witness accounts of James Arthur Ray’s behavior during and after the deaths of three people. Born on November 22, this Scorpio, true to nature, may be trying to mask the torture he must be feeling to have facilitated a five-day workshop that ended in tragedy. In the revealing and educative books, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman and People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil by Dr. M. Scott Peck, narcissism is the equivalent of falling in love with oneself (word derivation comes from Narcissus: a beautiful youth in Greek mythology who falls in love with his own reflection). It becomes the Achilles heel of a lot of men and women whose reach exceeds their grasp, as Browning wrote–they go from being role models to shape-shifting into the most reprehensible dark and dangerous egocentric. Narcissism glued to dissociative disintegration of the self results in someone who is robotic and not self-realized at all. It is akin to the old Flip Wilson line as Geraldine, “The devil made me do it.”
Make sure the next time you sign up for a workshop that has risk factors, ask if there are those on site who can assist attendees if there are health issues. The pity is that a lot of people in need of basic mental health care opt for some of these extreme measure workshops to their own detriment.
I am Albert Gaulden and I approve of this message.
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