Healing Related Passages and Musings on the Self-help Industry and Social Networks

Some elements of today's post are a bit different than past posts, as I get into some "musings" that are somewhat more personal in nature.

Healing Related Passages

The following passage is from an article entitled Set Yourself Free posted on the Winged Horse Healing Blog authored by my friend Pam Sourelis, who is both a Reiki Master and a gifted animal communicator.
        
"When you own a disease, you settle; you accept that the situation can never change, you cast yourself in the role of victim. You spend the rest of your life "managing" your illness, being its slave – heck, maybe even its lover. It embeds itself in your personality, and you begin to define yourself in terms of "your" illness, "your" disability, "your" addiction."

I highly recommend you read this entire post by clicking here.

The next two passages are from a book called Potentiate Your DNA by Sol Luckman. I have found this book to be a fascinating work, one that presents a solid case for the position that it’s time for the world to embrace a new paradigm as to how physical healing actually occurs, and which also specifically recommends what that paradigm should be.
 
"In the words of the creators of one of dozens of websites devoted to telling the ugly truth about vaccines, "The most effective marketing strategy on the planet is to convince the consumer that if he doesn't buy the product, he'll die!"

"Many reputable studies have offered convincing evidence based on historical data that in all probability, vaccinations actually trigger a rise in infections and death."

For more information regarding this book, click here.

Musings on the Self-help Industry

As the author of a book related to spirituality, and as person who has read numerous books on that subject as well as personal growth related topics, I have the experience of being both a vendor and consumer of the self-help industry’s wares. As a consumer, I have clearly benefited from content developed by various authors and speakers. As a vendor, however, I can say wholeheartedly that the way business is being conducted in the industry as a whole is not congruent with the idea of being truly committed to helping people to completely heal.

Yes, I know, this is my judgment; nonetheless, I feel compelled to write about this because it's reached the point where the self-help industry is no different than any other business – it needs to keep customers buying in order to sustain itself. 'So, what’s wrong with that?’ one might ask? Call me a purist, if you will, but in my view the goal of the industry shouldn't be to have content providers focus on "growing their email lists" so they can sell more and more content to essentially the same segments of people.

In addition, in many instances the marketing appeals used are fundamentally rooted in fear-based tactics such as "limited time offers" and 25 page-long web pages that react to your choice to exit the page by automatically displaying a pop-up window that warns "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" Honestly, whenever I encounter a page of that nature it completely sours me on that content provider. And yet, according to the Internet marketing experts, this is the most effective way to gather customers and sell one's books and other products. It's my sincere hope that someday soon self-help content consumers will see through this type of manipulative marketing, and refuse to purchase any product that is presented to them with this type of fear-based motivational appeal.

Musings on Social Networks

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have become the hot marketing vehicles for just about everyone trying to sell something. In principle, I really like the idea of folks befriending like-minded people and enjoying the connections while perhaps also collectively doing something good for the world. That was a key reason I joined Facebook years ago. However, as those sites have become more and more marketer-dominant it's my sense that meaningful connections are not as common as perhaps they once were.

I mean really, can someone honestly have 100 "friends," meaning friends with whom they actually have more than just surface relationships? The reality is no human being has enough bandwidth to pay close attention to every wall post posted by 20 Facebook friends on a daily basis, let alone those posted by a hundred of them.  

And as for Twitter, I do have an account on that site just to share the link to my daily "Ponder on This" message, but in my view it reminds me of an 8th grade dance where boys strut their stuff and girls bat their eyelashes, but few, if any, true heart-based connections are made. When I see someone is following "36,000 people" I chuckle, because it's literally and impossible to do that as there's not enough time in a day to read the daily Tweets of 36,000 individuals. I truly hope that over time something more substantive evolves from these networks.


Musings over, best regards to you and bye for now.
 

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