spiritual warrior in sedona arizona

spiritual warrior in sedona arizona corresponding information that I have just been studying.



Think about spending almost $10,000 for a spiritualist retreat in Arizona. Seeking enlightenment, purification and abundance. At least 64 people did that last week in a retreat run by James Arthur Ray in Sedona, Arizona, and two of them died. Nineteen others were hospitalized, one in critical condition. The final Spiritual Warrior ceremony at the Angel Valley Spiritual Center retreat was a "cleansing" in a makeshift sweat lodge. Not like the ones built by Native Americans who used animal skins and tree boughs so that the lodge could breathe. This "lodge" was covered with plastic and blankets, and was only about four feet high at its tallest point, with steaming hot rocks in the center.

On October 8 as many as 64 people at one time sat around inside the haphazard sweat lodge structure in 104 degree temperatures for up to two hours, until they began to sicken, and two died. Healthy people, like Kirby Brown, 38, who grew up in Westtown, N.Y., and lived part of the time in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Like James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee. Both were in Sedona at Ray's Spiritual Warrior retreat on a quest for self improvement, as were the others, including the nineteen survivors who were hospitalized, suffering from dehydration, respiratory failure, kidney failure and burns.

After the deaths, James Arthur Ray, the self help guru often seen on Oprah and Larry King, communicated with his followers on Twitter saying that for "anything new to live something must die," and asking "what in you needs to die?" And "The spiritual warrior has conquered death and has nothing to fear in this life or the next." These tweets, reported by Geraldo Rivera on Fox News on October 11, have since been removed from Twitter. Mr. Ray, who left the state, is facing possible criminal charges but has not been cooperating with the police.

According to Tom Tingle's report in The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press: "The Yavapai County sheriff, Steve Waugh, said at a news conference on Saturday that his detectives were investigating the possibility of criminal negligence in connection with the incident. He said that from 55 to 65 people were gathered inside the lodge on Thursday afternoon for the purification ceremony. Joseph Bruchac, an expert on Native American traditions and author of The Native American Sweat Lodge, said that number far surpassed the 8 to 12 typically present at such a rite. "It means that all these people are fighting for the same oxygen," he said."

A $9,695 charge for the Spiritual Warrior Retreat held at the Angel Valley Retreat Center near Sedona, Arizona was listed on James Arthur Ray's web site. For that princely sum, Ray promised that participants would "experience a new technologically-enhanced form of meditation that creates new neurological pathways."

It is heartbreaking to imagine the yearning and need for fulfillment that would motivate people to pay nearly $10,000 for such an experience, and to willingly and trustingly subject themselves to entering this monstrosity of construction that was a dangerous, suffocating pseudo sweat lodge. (See clip.) These people, who are rumored to have been fasting, may have been too weak to try to leave.

The tenets preached by Mr. Ray on Oprah acknowledge no higher authority than self. Physical sacrifice and arduous "cleansing" are for the purpose of inward discovery of a "higher self." How can an impure self purify its own impurities? By comparison, Christianity does ask believers to lay down their lives, but in a spiritual sense, and turn them over to a loving and powerful God, who then does the purifying of our flawed humanity.

Real spiritual rebirth and transformation sometimes does occur during physical suffering, but it is not of itself physical, cannot be bought and cannot be earned. Instead it requires the laying aside of the notion of self as god, the exact opposite of the purpose of James Arthur Ray's brand of spiritualism. Real conversion has always been free, yet it has always cost everything, including the desire to be one's own deity.

These deluded ones earnestly sought spiritual invincibility. In their quest to find their own divinity, they were open to deception, danger and death. We lift their families in prayer, to the One who is greater than self.

SOURCES:
CNN NEWS
FOX NEWS
The Arizona Republic