NAFPS Selections: Banalities and Platitudes

[From the New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans forum, by "Ingeborg," September 11, 2013]:

Quote from: Piff

   Plus these large group trainings are abusive, people are traumatized and weirded out by them, they will tend to blame themselves and think they just need to do more trainings. More workshops and seminars. And that they need to go out and do this to other people.

Quite right. The notion that it is the individual who is to blame is brought forward in their principles. Again, this is something not published in all sections – only the sections „USA“ and „Mainland Europe“ (which is restricted to the German-speaking areas Austria, Switzerland, Germany) publish these principles:

http://www.psychologyofvision.com/about/principles-of-pov/

[Update: Feb. 2, 2021, dead link]

Quote

    1) Whenever there is a problem or conflict, there has to be a better way. Even in the most difficult of situations, there is always a solution that would allow everyone to win. Love, joining, forgiveness, communication, cooperation, and choice will lead us through.
    2) The world is our mirror. Anything we do to others we do to ourselves first. We can only accuse others of something that we believe we ourselves are doing. We make our own reality and write our own stories. Conflicts with others reflect conflicts within ourselves. By resolving our inner issues, we automatically resolve the problems in our world.
    3) Anything that happens to us serves our purpose. When painful events occur, we typically have hidden the awareness of the purpose of the events from ourselves. Through accountability, we gain the power to make another choice, and to change what we do not like in our world.
    4) No one can do anything to us that we are not already doing to ourselves. No one can do anything to us that we are not also, at some level, doing to others.
    5) As we change our beliefs, we change our patterns. Our direction in life comes from our attitude, which is the result of our continuous choices toward the same end.
    6) We are always in the perfect place to learn the lesson we most need to learn in order to heal and grow. Our most painful experiences, once they are healed, become the greatest gifts to ourselves and to others.
    7) We construct either heaven or hell on earth, depending on what we give to our relationships. They are the means to create transformation. To bond with others and heal relationships creates an accelerated path of growth, because healing the distance between ourselves and those around us heals problems.
    8) Leadership lets nothing be more important than answering the calls for help around us. As we recognize that our best interests and the best interests of others are always the same, we move ourselves forward also. To have true success, everyone’s interests must be served. If anyone is the “bad guy,” everyone loses. It is essential to keep communicating until everyone wins.
    9) Problems are opportunities to heal the pain of the past, disguised as the pain of the present. All healing is part of our general purpose; it leads us towards our personal purpose. It is never too late to have a happy childhood. This recognizes that all pain is a misunderstanding. As problems are solved, understanding is brought to past and present circumstances, and our history and our future change for the better.
    10) The key to our fulfillment is to live our purpose. Embracing our destiny is the best gift we can give the world. Our personal destiny and purpose is to help the world in some way unique to us.
    11) All manner of pain and suffering are washed away by love, when empathic “joining” between two or more people occurs. By transcending personal barriers we can become “one” with others, and experience the higher states of consciousness in which pain can no longer exist.
    12) Relationships are the fundamental building blocks of life. Given that relationships are the fundamental building blocks of life, it would also hold that the path of relationships is an evolutionary path. From this it would also hold that every problem is a relationship problem at some root level.
    13) We are on an evolutionary path to realize that we are Spirit, on the way to Oneness. Receiving grace and miracles is the easiest way to move toward that aim.
    14) Whatever our circumstances, however we see things, the answer always lies in healing. It is what we have come for.

Part of these principles are banalities and platitudes (e.g. „There has to be a better way“). Others are devised to put the blame, either for success or for failure, to the individual person.

The principles also put an enormous emphasis on the individual, making it more or less the centre of its universe: e.g. in „the world is our mirror“, „we are always in the perfect place“, „we construct either heaven or hell on earth“. At the same time, some of these principles may easily create double-bind situations: If I am always in the perfect place, then why is my life such a mess, why is this or that happening to me? Correct answer: The only one to blame for any mess happening is – me.

Given the vast concentration on the individual and their ego, this is in sharp contrast to indigenous world views, as far as I know. So the claim of PoV integrating into indigenous belief systems is a sales argument. It is not primarily devised to draw an indigenous clientele, but to appeal to a Euro clientele: in taking these courses, we learn something which is similar to „Indian religion“.

Principles like no 3, „Anything that happens to us serves our purpose“, on the other hand is quite handy in case people do not get rid of problems, and this one serves to reinforce the individual's fault.

No 4, „No one can do anything to us that we are not already doing to ourselves“, again is a platitude, and it is dead wrong. The further explanation takes quite a different turn in claiming „No one can do to us that we are not also … doing to others“. Once more, the fault is with the individual and no one else.

Mixing in the issue of „leadership“ is probably nothing more but dangling the carrot in front of the donkey's nose: If you take these seminars, you will become a leader. The further explanation contends that „our best interests and the best interests of others are always the same“. Nope. It is my best interest to buy a decent used car for little money – while the car dealer's is interested in sending me off with a piece of junk I paid a fortune for. And this is just one example.

Pain and suffering are washed away by love and this stuff about a higher state of consciousness in which pain can no longer exist: Again the effort is with the individual. Do they feel enough love and forgiveness and advance to a higher state, or don't they – for which they will once more be held responsible (book another seminar).

Apart from all this, nothing in the principles reveals any psychological or psychotherapist method. On the other hand, they repeat one of the basic Nuage notions of the individual being responsible for their own advancement, and being the masters of their own fate. If there's anything they don't like, it's their own fault. This either puts an individual under an enormous stress of accepting everything and smiling happily at the same time, or feel like sh!t and book another seminar.

Subjecting survivors of mental, physical, or sexual harassment and violence to these principles is unethical and once more abusive. The principles will only tell them what happened effin served them right, and now forgive and smile, you're in the best of all possible worlds, and this world is of your own making and others only do to you what you bin doing to them yourself. Yecccchhh. Employing such principles on RS survivors is not going to improve their situation, it will rather endanger their health, thus not reducing problems for their communities, but multiplying and reinforcing problems.