Spiritual Retreat Death, Monday October 12, 2009

"It was supposed to be part of a spiritual retreat" says one of Good Morning America's hosts, "more than sixty people huddled around steaming fire heated rocks, in a peak covered tent hoping to cleanse the body but about two hours into the retreat people started collapsing."

"Nineteen people went to the hospital and two wound up dead," a 40 year old man from Milwaukee and a 38 year old woman from New York that is. Self-help author James Ray, writer of the book The Secret, lead the group. Like everyone else, they paid 10,000 dollars to spend this last part of the week with this religious guru, including their time in the sweat lodge where the target temperature was 120 degrees.

Sweat lodges are a part of Native American tradition practiced for centuries before we even knew about "golden paved" America. Mario Black Wolf, interviewed for this morning's show said if one uses bad materials such as plastics, it obviously causes toxic fumes unfit for puny human lungs.

They reported a medical expert said that if a body's core temperature reaches 104 degrees or over the body will start to break down cells which can lead to organ failure which can happen in as fast as twenty minutes. This man Ray has been conducting such "ceremonies" at the Angel Valley Retreat Center for seven years without any similar incidents, so he says.


Mr. Ray also decided it was not his place to talk to police investigators at the scene...

What sparked the polices' [puny] brains was the Twitter message Ray posted hours before the ceremony, "Still in Spiritual Warrior...for anything new to live, something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?" Oh you know, your whole being I guess.

Doesn't he just look like one of those fake religious assholes? ----------->

After the incident, Ray immediately deleted his holy twitter post with, "My deep heartfelt condolences to family & friends of those who lost their lives". I'd like to just side step for one second and make a comment that this guy has two options from my point of view: he can either write his first post on twitter, have his cleansing ceremony, and rejoice that people died for God or he can be a sane person and admit that his ceremony was dangerous, cruel, and his idea of a money seeking prank. Changing your mind so suddenly when it comes to religion, or politics that is, equals hypocrisy in my book.

So anyway, homicide investigators say it could be a few weeks before they know/decide if criminal charges will be filed which I'm hoping they will, this guy obviously needs a kick of reality right up his ass.

This is the kind of man that makes up his big, puffed up persona and uses it to take money from spiritual seeking people. 10,000 dollars?! Are you kidding me? Well I hope the families at least got refunded, but it doesn't seem the case. On behalf of the woman who died, her cousin and spokesperson, Tom McFeely, said that Ray nor anyone else in the organization has contacted them since the death. I guess there's the epitome of "take the money and run."

McFeely says, "It does surprise us, based on the type of man we thought he was". You think? This guy Ray isn't out there making millions of dollars thinking about the welfare of these people. He's making sure everything physically and economically is working out in his favor.

By the way I would like to point out that thousands of people die because of religious wars, religious ignorance, religious devotion, etc. etc. etc. It is really never ending. But it's not the wars and the crazy priests that set themselves on fire that make me angry, it's people like this man who are charismatic speakers, bringing in people like flies to a bug lamp, probably somewhat lying to their faces, that end up killing innocent people because of their own personal gain. It happens all the time and if people weren't so ignorant to religious conspiracy then they wouldn't fall into the trap that takes their lives.

Moral of the day: Don't spend 10,000 dollars to cleanse your body, you shouldn't have to pay to actually, truly do that for yourself, period.