NAFPS Selections: Michael North Connection pt. 1

[From the New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans forum, by "Sandy S," January 03, 2015]:

Pt. 1

There were two spinoff groups from the Spezzanos cult midway through the first decade of Century 21 that are worthy of note, Gaia Mind and the Center for Aboriginal Healing and Vision. And both of them have the same person in common-- the Canadian born Michael James North. He is a very unique figure in our investigations.

We get more questions than answers as we look into these two spinoffs.

Gaia Mind appeared to be an attempt, somewhat behind the curve, to exploit the New Age Gaia worship fad that became popular in the 1990s. The earliest website incarnation of this Spezzano and Associates Ltd. Psychology of Vision (SALPOV) spinoff that I can find is from June 2003. It had this introduction:

Quote

    Gaia is a new online program from Psychology of Vision. She is the new home of Light Bytes and an interactive members website.

    Gaia is the goddess of the earth and the feminine voice of spirit

    To learn more about the purpose, background and future of this program:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030618094424/http://www.gaia-mind.com/

Then you go to the next link and find this:

Quote

    Gaia

    Listen to Chuck's Latest Light Byte on the vision of Gaia

    Light Bytes and The Call of Gaia by Chuck Spezzano

    Gaia is a voice, a touch, and an embrace-- a way we can all receive the healing, uplifting power we need in our lives.

    Decades of loving work with thousands of people around the world have been distilled into a new personality, a new living form. Here you can listen, read, respond and discuss, reflect, and tune up your intuition: re-connect with your true purpose in life.

    Gaia is an ever-changing personality that will become more real to all of us as we hear her voice, feel her touch, and experience her embrace. A small subscription fee helps to keep this work emerging fresh each day.

    To discover the different ways you can connect with Gaia: Voice, Touch and Embrace

    Explore More

    Chuck's Original Byte Me ! - Chuck's Vision of the Gaia project

http://web.archive.org/web/20030621200120/http://www.gaia-mind.com/4GMHome.asp

Then the next link gets down to business, where the plate is passed among the flock:

Quote

    I would like to share with you some of the ideas that we have had about the future of all the Light Bytes. Besides continuing to amplify the Light Bytes by including shorter, daily messages, we would like to grow all of its subcategories. We would like to build up this part of the website and make it much more sophisticated and interactive.

    We eventually plan to make a whole games area that will have the 1800 plus cards that I use to map the mind and human experience. These cards can be used in all manner of layouts, from problem solving, information, entertainment, and finding the hidden blocks.

    Besides the use of the cards we'll be building up a database of healing information, principles and techniques so that there can be a self-healing program at beginning, intermediate and more advanced or spiritual levels. The database we build up will eventually be coupled with an artificial intelligence. We will call this healing interactive database 'Gaia' and we hope to make it both visionary and profound in it's scope and effectiveness. We have been investing our vision, time, expertise, money and creativity to build this whole area of the website. We now offer you the opportunity to become a charter member of Gaia with us.

    While the cost is minimal it will allow you, as a charter member, to have the most substantial savings on all future interactive programs that Gaia will provide. We will invest all of this money into building Gaia so we can accelerate the pace of creative production. Charter members will enjoy all the benefits of Gaia without any rise in subscription fees for a good while.

    Our vision is to create Gaia to help people resolve what holds them back, bring about blessed change and increase success and love in the world. We want Gaia to be evolutionary, to teach, to bring about a world based on partnership and relatedness with all of the success and intimacy that this brings.

    So we are converting our Light Bytes into a subscription service. If you would like to join us in this adventure in healing and consciousness, sign up on June 1st. Please hit the button at that time on the side that says Byte Me!. If you don't wish to sign up you still will receive our monthly subscription service and a weekly Light Byte. The first 500 people to sign up will receive a cd of the Light Byte hits of the first 6 months.

    We invite you to join us as a charter member of Gaia building the world through consciousness and love.

    Warmest Aloha
    Chuck

http://web.archive.org/web/20030713114157/http://www.gaia-mind.com/4GMOrigByteMe.asp

Yup, as usual with SALPOV, it's all about the money and promoting the cult. The website includes a front and center link to the Chuck Spezzano/Janie Ticehurst Healing Metaphors Louise Hay ripoff, illustrating what a central part this blame-the-victim work has been in SALPOV theology for over a decade. Also there are links to the many SALPOV retail products and workshops. The 3-card reading was around even back then playing off of a behaviour exhibited by the gullible known as "confirmation bias." Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, as Paul Simon wrote.

The most priceless module on Gaia was the cross-website access to the SALPOV forums. These people really operate in their own snowglobe and I must grudgingly admire the thoroughness of the Spezzano brainwashing skills. I particularly enjoyed the discussions regarding "joining" with political leaders like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Saddam Hussein in order to improve the world. Apparently these efforts failed. From what I can see Cheney is still a mean old bastard who will never apologize for lying to the world and creating a needless war causing untold human suffering. But I am sure the act of "Joining" made the SALPOV cult followers feel much better about themselves.

Turns out this "Joining with World Leaders" earned a webpage all by itself. After viewing this it is difficult to keep a straight face when the Spezzanos attempt to present themselves as professionals in the field of psychology:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030408031944/http://www.psychologyofvision.com/worldleaders.htm

It would appear the Gaia Mind, or Gaia Project ended in December 2006 as a distinct entity, although many of its facets were absorbed into the already existing SALPOV main website.

http://web.archive.org/web/20061202190617/http://www.gaia-mind.com/

SALPOV really has some very defined chapters, and I suppose this 2003-2006 Gaia experiment could be regarded as such. Interesting this Gaia deal ended in 2006, since as we all know the next chapter was an even bigger one which resulted in being of half of the Spezzanos "two greatest inspirations." I am making reference to the 2007-201? SALPOV love affair with Oneness University and Amma and Bhagavan, documented in detail here on NAFPS.

So how did Gaia Mind start? In an introduction to a book he wrote in 2005, Spezzano thanks his team at www.gaia-mind.com: Julian Ticehurst, Michael North, Ian Haugh and Lency Spezzano.

The Akama website offers an intriguing quote from a source long since lost to URL rot:

Quote

    Gaia Mind

        416 Waihee Pl # 47
        Kaneohe, Hawaii
        96744

    We gathered in Kaneohe, Hawaii for three days in a row, upstairs in a sunny converted barn, aided by the commentary of geckos outside, the scent of gardenias, and the distant sound of waves. We talked for several hours each day Chuck and Lency Spezzano, Ian Haugh and Michael North. Anyone who knows Chuck and Lency will laugh at the idea that you could have a purely business meeting with them after 10 minutes, we were down (or up) into fundamental questions of life, purpose and the mystery of time.

http://www.akama.com/company/Gaia_Mind_a34382162120.html

Interestingly, Gaia Mind does not turn up in any official Hawaiian corporations searches. Since it was a .com website and was marketing retail New Age spirituality, it could not be considered a nonprofit either.

The presence of Ticehurst and Haugh makes sense. Both of them were active in SALPOV as trainers and in fact were actual employees of the SALPOV corporation at one time. But the name of the mysterious Michael North raises my interest. Quite awhile back Piff had outlined some of the Spezzano/North connections:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=4179.msg35969;topicseen#msg35969

North, an active and apparently successful hi-tech capitalist, has an impressive résumé on LinkedIn. However, one of his entries says he was an "advisor" for Psychology of Vision UK from 2004-2010, which sits there like a wart on an otherwise honorable roster of accomplishments.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnorth
[Update: The POV UK connection was removed from the LinkedIn resume shortly after this NAFPS post was made public]

North also co-manages the Zhou Enlai Peace Institute, and Charles Lee Spezzano serves on the Board of Directors. Lenora Kay Spezzano serves as a member of the Advisory Board. North's wife, Xiao Fang North (aka Ruby Zhou), is distantly related to Zhou Enlai. She calls Zhou Enlai her great-uncle.

http://www.zhouenlaipeaceinstitute.org/en/contact/participants/

I'm sure such a connection probably doesn't hurt as the Spezzanos want to gain more paying customers from China, although Lenora has demonstrated in her writings that she regards the Chinese as spiritually inferior ("They are keen to get enlightened, but their level of maturity is low.") That good ol' American Manifest Destiny is pretty deeply ingrained, I'd say.

http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2015/10/self-annihilation-process-is-leading.html
[substitute link, Aug. 2, 2017]

Aside from the section where that old war criminal Henry Kissinger is lionized, and Spezzano is erroneously called a "psychologist," and the presence of the Spezzanos at all, Michael and Xiao Fang North's website as an attempt to work with China is a worthy international goal. There is no question Zhou Enlai was one of the most brilliant and progressive leaders in Mao's China. Here is a softball discussion with the Norths conducted by a friendly interviewer, but it remains interesting and illuminating anyway--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK_wbP7m6zE

However, it should go without saying that the Institute's practical big-picture efforts have certainly drawn the interest of national security intelligence communities both in China and the United States, and God only knows who else (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service?). In spite of the misrepresentations and human damage caused by the Spezzanos through SALPOV, I would wager these two grizzled grifters have drawn more government attention in their connection with North than through their nefarious behaviour in their for-profit New Age cult. What an ironic twist of Fate.

The question of who is the user and who being used is a valid query when it comes to the North/Spezzano connection. What exactly is the North interest in SALPOV? How did it start? Is North still active with SALPOV in any way today? And if not, why not? Have there been any financial transactions in this relationship? When the Spezzanos jumped into Oneness University in 2007, did North come along for the ride? Where does Xiao Fang fit in?

When Spezzano was presented with his "Hero of Forgiveness" award in 2012, North was right there. But North's presence in SALPOV has all but vanished from public view since then. Why?

http://chuckandlencyspezzano.blogspot.com/2012/08/accomplishments.html

On the occasion of this award The Hawai'i Free Press wryly noted Spezzano's personal consulting fee:

Quote

    ($1000/hr private coaching sessions for fools not yet parted from their money. If you don’t pay, will he ‘forgive’ your debt?)

http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesDailyNews/tabid/65/ID/7330/July-28-2012-News-Read.aspx

Oh, but this gets murkier, and has stronger implications for regular readers of this forum--