Just Say "No" To Negativity!

James Altucher & Claudia Azula Altucher, The Power of No: Because One Little Word Can Bring Health, Abundance, and Happiness

Around fifteen years ago, I had a pastor who formerly suffered from sexual compulsion. I say “suffered,” because his sermon illustrations frequently drew object lessons from his past—very, very long illustrations, lavish in detail and dripping with heartfelt emotion. He was the JK Rowling of recovering Christian sex addicts. One started to suspect he didn’t so much regret his pre-conversion dependencies, as miss them.

I recalled that pastor, reading this book. The title and back-cover synopsis implied I’d get insights into setting productive boundaries, rejecting others’ opportunistic impositions on my finite strength, and screening toxic relationships and commitments, hopefully without alienating friends or insulting strangers. Instead, I mostly got a painful litany of the Altuchers’ past struggles. These long confessions cross the line between relevant anecdote and just wallowing in it.

The Altuchers built their current stable marriage, achieved late in life, on the ruins of significant prior setbacks. James, a serial entrepreneur, got unbelievably rich unbelievably young, and his profligate lifestyle alienated everyone he loved, including his first wife and children. Claudia, a yoga instructor, sought romance for the wrong reasons, defining herself externally, believing herself personally unworthy unless somebody loved her. They tell their stories at some length.

Their introduction, “Your NO Bill Of Rights,” seemed promising. In eleven simple precepts, followed with one- or two-paragraph explanations, the Altuchers set a tone of declarative therapeutic redemption. It’s difficult to dispute tenets like “You have the right to defend your life,” “You have the right to take your time,” or “You have the right to silence.” Based solely on this introduction, I wholeheartedly agree with the Altuchers’ underlying philosophy.

But turning to Chapter One, I got a sinking feeling. James describes a despondent moment when he considered suicide. His young daughter intruded, though, suffering bad dreams; James got her to sleep by encouraging her to count, not sheep, but things she’s grateful for. Then, in the silence and darkness, he followed his own advice, realized life’s intrinsic worth, and survived. His takeaway lesson? “I said no to killing myself.”

Gulp.

Okay, I’m a Liberal Arts guy, not a psychotherapist. But saying no to suicide sounds like “Don’t Think Of an Elephant,” because you can’t reject something negative without mentally foregrounding it. Saying no to suicide reinforces suicide. Why not say yes to your daughter? Why not say yes to your family, friends, and potential for future redemption? Instead of embracing the struggle, James rejected defeat. That seems counter-productive.

Similarly, Claudia spends a lengthy chapter detailing her romantic struggles before meeting James. She fell in love recklessly and often, seeking somebody to validate her existence, even if he kicked her in the heart. Only after several such relationships ended badly did she recognize herself as a serial love addict and seek counseling. Serious self-assessment, peer support, and relearning how to love herself opened Claudia to real love in James.

So, one month into the relationship, Claudia undertook “a ceremony to express gratitude” with James. One month! She’s making this commitment of healing thirty days in, after admitting she let one suitor string her along for two years! Recognition of legitimate healing takes longer than one month. I tried to keep reading past this point, but everything tasted of ash, because I realized, these authors are deaf to their own counsel.

Books like this, grounded on the authors’ personal life lessons, always lead reviewers into a minefield. If I criticize the book, am I pooh-poohing their lives? I’d like to think not; rather, I’m criticizing the Altuchers’ ability to self-scrutinize. They lack distance from the life lessons they describe, which blinds them to certain implications. I don’t doubt their sincere intentions, but they aren’t exactly taking the long view of themselves.

The Altuchers support their lessons with a broad, inclusive spirituality, a sort of Judeo-Christian, New Thought-ish pantheism. The universe, they say, wants to support, nurture, and defend you. Nearly seventy years ago, George Orwell complained that post-Victorian Christians did well instilling fear of Hell and damnation in proselytes, but turned vague and abstract on topics of salvation and Heaven. The Altuchers find themselves in much the same position.

There’s a book called Boundaries, by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, that accomplishes what this book’s promotional copy promises. Though explicitly Christian, that book is grounded on solid psychology and science. It describes both healthy balance, and the process of achieving it. Though this book isn’t bad, it suffers limitations from the authors’ own situations. They probably should’ve written a memoir.

So Long, and Thanks For All the Fibs

Patricia Cori, The Emissary: A Novel

Today’s vocabulary word is “Mary Sue.” This term originated in Star Trek fan communities, describing authors who insert themselves as protagonists in fan fiction. Over time, the meaning has broadened. Authors needn’t insert themselves into existing franchises to get called Mary Sue (or Marty Stu) these days. Consider Patricia Cori’s new, appallingly self-aggrandizing mess.

Psychic dilettante Jamie Hastings has a moment on a New Zealand beach. Her soul touches a dying whale, and she becomes an emissary for Earth’s suffering biosphere. A lifelong Talent, she now has her mission. So naturally she does what any psychic environmentalist would: accepts a commission from a Texas industrialist to dowse for offshore petroleum in the northern Pacific. Wait, what?

Without even knowing Cori, one suspects Jamie is her authorial avatar because no challenge seriously jeopardizes her. She handles desert isolation, Houston oil money luxury, and life at sea with equal aplomb. She successfully out-argues a seasoned capitalist who’s accustomed to snow-jobbing his corporate board. Plus, everyone she meets compulsively comments on her great physical beauty.

Jamie’s résumé is impressive. She’s dowsed for water in the Australian outback, conducted sweeping scientific research, and helped the LAPD solve nearly sixty murders. (Never mind that no psychic has ever provided criminally actionable evidence in American history.) Everybody from California’s governor to Oprah Winfrey talks up her talents. Everyone holds doors for her. It’s like she can’t fail.

Plus, hell, she’s a psychic. Considering that Patricia Cori has published several books which she claims she psychically transcribed for various Ascended Masters, spotlighting a psychic scientist naturalist industrialist in her novel makes us realize she’s writing an idealized version of herself. This only makes it more frustrating when Cori treats her literary doppelganger gingerly, like a favored friend.

Roger Ebert once wrote, in panning a movie, that we don’t sympathize with characters when things look easy for them; we sympathize when things look hard. That’s really stuck with me. While good characters always have potential to triumph over adversity, they should really face the risk that they could fail. Even when they have right on their side, we’ll only care if they struggle for that final victory.

Patricia Cori disagrees with Ebert there. At no point in nearly 300 pages did I feel her heroine might collapse. She sweeps into every room, charms or outwits or overpowers everyone who might challenge her, and ultimately (spoiler alert) transcends this mortal coil, becoming an Ascended Master while swimming among the whales. In Cori’s mind, Jamie’s apotheosis is a foregone conclusion.

So essentially, Cori creates a situation based on her own principles, inserts herself into the story, then sweeps a clear path to her counterpart’s ultimate vindication. Heroic characters submit to Jamie; villains just get plowed under. Thus this novel isn’t a story with a moral; it’s Cori’s manifesto for her spiritual-environmental-transcendental vision of pseudoscientific hoodoo. We don’t feel anything for her characters, because she’s too busy telling us how we should feel.

We read novels to feel somehow transformed. Despite what your high school English teacher said, good authors don’t write to “mean something.” Themes and symbols usually arise from authors’ subconscious, and we recognize them only retroactively. When authors start with a message, and ramrod the characters and situations into their own morality play, audiences tend to feel manipulated, and resent it.

This goes double when the protagonist is a blatant Mary Sue. Throughout this novel, Jamie sententiously preaches Cori’s metaphysical message, and while others may muster token resistance, they inevitably fold, usually after only one or two pages. Nothing ever threatens Jamie’s presuppositions. Anyone who doesn’t already share Jamie’s (and presumably Cori’s) message coming in will probably finish this preachy, long-winded book feeling confused, disappointed, and ripped off.

If Cori wants to write a treatise, she should do so. Lee Van Ham did so beautifully, if perhaps with less parapsychology and religion-lite wizardry. Novels may have messages they hope we’ll receive, but characters should always take precedence. Authors should take us on journeys, not propound philosophical stances. If a work has one-to-one correlations, like crossword puzzle clues, it shouldn’t be a novel.

In her official biography, Cori claims she’s “often called a ‘real life Indiana Jones’ by fans and readers around the world.” But I get less an Indy Jones vibe from this book, more Deepak Chopra in middle school. Cori remains stuck between genres, and this feels like apprentice-level work. North Atlantic Books, one of America’s top indie publishers, should be better than a book like this.

Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Mansfield, and the Spirits of the Age

Oprah Winfrey richly deserves her reputation as an interviewer. Her natural curiosity and gift of gab combine to elevate even mundane conversations to the realm of intimate revelation. No wonder Oprah’s slightest endorsement can turn innovators into superstars overnight. Unfortunately, as Stephen Mansfield asserts in Where Has Oprah Taken Us?, she has turned this same influence to peddling spiritual silliness that may eventually have dire consequences.

From 1994 until her retirement, TV’s most beloved woman made her show a haven for spiritual seekers and enlightenment merchants of every stripe. Eckhart Tolle and Rhonda Byrne rode Oprah’s grandeur to their own overnight success. Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra, already famous, became cultural powerhouses with Oprah’s help. But she has often accepted grandiose claims with an appalling lack of critical thought.

Mansfield combines biography, sociology, and comparative religion to look into how Oprah became dangerously credulous, and what implications her gurus’ theologies may have. Where it would be easy for such a writer to cast aspersions, Mansfield’s approach is strikingly gentle. He shows Oprah great respect, even fondness. He critiques her discoveries, but with an air more of sadness than anger, and certainly not condemnation.

Raised in an environment where being poor and black made life dangerous, Oprah resolved to improve herself. Blessedly, she had the gifts, courage, and timing to accomplish these goals. But along the road, she lost her once-firm religious footing. When she invited her TV audience along on her journey to rediscover belief, they witnessed her investigate new paths with wide-eyed wonder, but without asking important questions.

Mansfield doesn’t limit himself to Oprah; he sees her as an emblem of her generation. America’s post-war kids inherited a morally hollow nation numbed on triumph. When they sought answers to eternal questions, Christianity unfortunately chose expedience and conformity over truth. This left a disenfranchised generation ripe for exploitation by self-made swamis proselytizing egocentric faiths.

Hinduism in particular appealed to a generation, but not real Hinduism, which relies on principles which seem bizarre, even offensive, to Westerners. Instead, hucksters pitched a sanitized Hinduism diluted with self-help bromides. Key spiritual concepts came to mean the exact opposite of their historical precedent. The spongy product let seekers feel spiritual without having to live for anything larger than themselves.

Christianity and other faith heritages failed to provide a relevant counter-narrative. Who, really, can blame Oprah’s generation for seeking its beliefs among charismatic, reverent eminences? And when TV’s ultimate best friend lent her support to spiritual leaders who ratified her own empowerment principles, crowds flocked to the likes of Gary Zukav and Iyanla Vanzant in hopes of sharing her sacred intimacy.

As Mansfield demonstrates, these gurus’ principles lead to chilling conclusions. If my thoughts create reality, as Rhonda Byrne attests, then I cause any disease, violence, or tragedy I suffer. If I am God, as Marianne Williamson suggests, then I save or condemn myself, but how? No answer is forthcoming. And the less said about Deepak Chopra’s “medicine,” much of which involves drinking or washing with our own urine, the better.

By Mansfield’s reckoning, Oprah does not provide a soapbox for such untenable silliness for malign reasons. She just wants answers, like we all do. But instead of seeking some larger point to which we can anchor our lives, such as Christianity or Islam offer, she places her trust in forms of self-actualization. She’s less interested in knowing God or the gods than in knowing and advancing herself.

This produces an informal, ethically squishy faith—and, worse, an egocentric approach to life’s spiritual risks. Christians love God and their neighbors, while Muslims submit to Allah’s will and Buddhists seek to abolish suffering through enlightenment. Oprah’s spirituality merely feeds selfish appetites. No wonder she keeps seeking novelty through new gurus, even after decades of experience.

According to Mansfield, Oprah is a product of a conflicted time in history, and as such we can’t hold her culpable for society’s current spiritual goofiness. However, her almost unprecedented reach and proven economic might give her influence that evangelists and emperors would envy. And she’s used that influence to push some inexcusable spiritual products on a disturbingly credulous audience.

Mansfield doesn’t oppose Oprah. In places, he even admires her intelligence and ingenuity. But he also urges Oprah, and her audience, to approach spiritual claims more critically. Believing in something isn’t enough. In today’s spiritually risky world, we must also believe to something. That puts the onus on Oprah, and on us, to know not just what we believe, but why.

On a related topic: Believing in Everything, Believing in Nothing

Believing in Everything, Believing in Nothing

“Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it.”
—Isaiah 46:6

Statistics indicate that “Spiritual but not religious” may be America’s fastest growing faith category.  People clearly hunger to experience closeness to something beyond themselves; but our society distrusts convention, tradition, and our shared heritage.  Thus many people cast about for any attempt to make meaning in their lives.  Yet I fear many trust something tragically artificial.

For some, scientific developments forbid them to accept religious dogma.  As the late Richard Feynman pointed out, the essence of scientific thought is doubt; we jettison certainty, and seek to reduce doubt to the smallest possible fragment.  Therefore we can believe nothing without question.  The scientific mind tests everything, even itself.

But this great hypothesis seldom describes real life.  Many people understand science so poorly that skillful hucksters pitching the lingo make us believe the opposite of empirical reason.  David Che, for instance, asks us not only to believe him without question in Total Law of Attraction, he requires us to trust theories disproved over a century ago.  This isn’t just unscientific, it’s dangerous.

The Law of Attraction enjoys faddish popularity based on quasi-scientific theories that “like attracts like.”  Rhonda Byrne, who popularized the idea, claims our ideas draw commensurate consequences through magnetic attraction.  But rudimentary physics says that magnetic poles don’t work that way.  In magnetism, opposites attract, so to gain wealth, I should wail and lament my poverty.

Che pushes this obtuseness even further.  For instance, his hypothesis requires us to believe in the luminiferous aether.  Che says: “Although science will say it’s been proven no such Ether exists, you’ll have to put aside that notion and firmly believe it to be true.”  This naked appeal to ignorance characterizes not only Che’s book, but this avenue of belief.  Che trusts ideas which contradict testable external reality.

Similarly, Banzai Vitale correlates metaphysics with science in The Burning Spirit.  His long, rambling memoir proclaims its author understands higher reality than the rest of us.  He spins yarns, drops bromides, and regales us with travelogues, all of which promulgate a system of belief based on agreeing that everything which enters his head must be transcendent inspiration.

Vitale’s rambling, undifferentiated anecdotes represent complete relaxation of judgment.  He confirms nothing; neither facts nor logic sway his steps.  Every life experience, every journal entry, and every Ecstasy trip merits our time.  In short, Vitale sanctifies himself and his life experiences.  He seeks out spirituality with no foundation, and becomes the very sinner Isaiah decries above.

Whenever spiritual seekers approach a religion or philosophy, they ask: how should I live?  The universe gives me this one life, so how do I live it in a way that makes meaning?  Such diverse seekers as Thomas Merton and Friedrich Nietzsche answer that question in ways that change society.  David Che and Banzai Vitale answer that question by ducking it and aggrandizing themselves.

Perhaps go-go technological people can’t afford to change their lives.  The great religious traditions that bolster society have threatened people, derailed their life plans, and forced them to deny themselves.  From the classics to modern writers like Shane Claiborne and Rabbi Heschel, those who found spirituality couldn’t remain on the same path.  But modern spirituality sanctifies self-service.

Which makes Ryuho Okawa a modern icon.  Having published over 500 books in Japanese, his Happy Science movement (there’s that pesky “science” again) are now making inroads in the West.  The Next Great Awakening, weighing barely 100 pages, introduces several important ideas.  And most of them appear plagiarized from X-Files scripts.

Like the biblical prophets, Okawa claims to have a direct line to God, and thus communicates divine will.  But his story offers little hope or direction.  His story of spirits creating life elsewhere, seeding Earth, and driving our destiny comes whole from countless prior science fiction storylines.  But maybe that’s the point.  Okawa doesn’t have to tell us how to live; his narrative lets us continue unimpeded

Maybe that’s the lesson of the “spiritual but not religious” movement.  Religion requires us to change.  It requires us to live for someone besides ourselves.  Modern, self-infatuated society can’t accept that.  So we find ways to sanctify ourselves, right where we are.

“The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?”
—Jeremiah 5:31