We're wrapping up week 4 of the James Ray sweat lodge trial - a very sad event that occurred just outside of Sedona in October, 2009. Three people died from heat exhaustion at the sweat lodge ceremony that was the final event of James Ray's Spiritual Warrior week-long event.
James Ray is not from Sedona. He held his event at the Angel Valley Ranch just outside of Sedona southbound on highway 89A. It's a private retreat facility that sits beside Oak Creek and is accessible via a two mile dirt road. I'm very familiar with the area because I used to live there.
I moved four times during my first two years in Sedona. When I found the cabin for rent a few miles out of town and right along the creek, I thought I'd found the perfect place to live. The property was an old summer camp with a handful of cabins remaining along the creek. I rented my cabin from the family who owned the property - one of the family members lived on-site to manage it.
It wasn't the first time I'd learned of the property. A year or so earlier, when I first arrived in Sedona, a prominent healer I knew had expressed a keen interest in that property. It was for sale and she had a vision of building a healing center there - complete with crystal pyramids. A friend of mine, who worked closely with the healer for a while, had been among a group she took with her to look at that property. They prayed, performed ceremony, and buried crystals in the ground to anchor in the light to help bring the healer's vision into manifestation.
There were many such dreams in Sedona back then. Large scale healing centers that would be portals between the physical and spiritual realms that would help prepare people for the great shift everyone was expecting. Back then, Sedona was alive with new agey activity. Group meditations, drumming circles, full moon ceremonies, psychic readings, and more. There were so many things going on and so many people who were trying it all. It was an exciting time that gave a new age twist the wild west feel of the southwest. Many were just curious but many more were genuinely interested in not just growing but in waking up.
Pretty soon Sedona and the new age scene began to pop up in the mainstream. It became chic to have had a healing or a psychic reading or to have attended a new age event. There emerged a new tier of business-minded spiritual vendors. The jeep tour companies started to offer vortex tours. Time share salespeople handed out vortex maps to lure visitors to their 'ninety minute' presentation. Every other person you met in town was either a guide, a healer, or a psychic, all ready to take you on a spiritual journey.
There used to be a product here in Sedona you could buy at the souvenir shops called Vortex in a Can. It had a picture of Sedona, a vortex swirl, an alien and other images on the outside. Something inside made a noise when you shook it. I loved it because it poked fun at the 'spirituality for sale' concept that was so blatant in Sedona. Spiritual tourists flock to Sedona for a weekend to buy the condensed version of the new age experience and there has never been a shortage of salespeople to sell it to them.
James Ray was selling his own condensed version of the awakening experience. He put together a program of lectures and activities designed to help participants become all they were capable of becoming - to wake up and acquire harmonic wealth. For busy, accomplished people who never had the inclination or opportunity to go off on their own personal spiritual journey, James Ray offered a version of Enlightenment in a Can.
But there is no short cut to enlightenment. The James Ray trial is showing us that greedy gurus offering expensive short cuts can seriously harm you. All of these witnesses tell heart-breaking stories of having been manipulated into ignoring their own body and mind to try and 'power through' a dangerous sweat lodge that killed three and injured numerous participants.
I've been watching the James Ray trial on CNN Live. The saddest part is hearing the pain and confusion in the voices of the participant witnesses. They have been traumatized by James Ray's workshop. Instead of enlightenment, they now have a series of issues that they have to work through concerning giving their power away to a wannabe guru.
In the trial, they often show pictures of Angel Valley Ranch where the event took place. I always look for the little cabin I rented that long-ago summer right beside the creek but it's not there anymore.
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