Dont Sweat the Hard Stuff

My eye was caught this morning by a story in the Grauniad recounting the death of three people after a new Age sweat lodge in northern Arizona:

According to local police, at 3pm on Thursday 8 October – the final day of the retreat, and following a buffet meal to break their fast – more than 60 people crammed into a space measuring just 415 sq ft. An initial 12 hot rocks were thrown into the fire pit, then doused with water and sandalwood to create steam and a scent of incense. By the time the ceremony was halted two hours later, another 46 hot rocks had reportedly been added to the pyre, turning the enclosure into a human cooking pot. A 911 emergency call reported that two people had no pulse and were not breathing.

The seat lodge was the culmination of a retreat lead by New Age guru James Arthur Ray who appears to have scarpered unharmed to “meditate” after the deaths occurred. The article quotes his comment from his Facebook page in which he explains:

despite considerable criticism, I have chosen to continue with my work. It’s too important not to. One of the lessons I teach is that you have to confront and embrace adversity and learn and grow from it. I promise you I am doing a lot of learning and growing.

Worse still,  the Guardian goes onto say:

One of his staff members, called Barb, was quoted from the same call by Associated Press as saying that those who died “left their bodies during the ceremony and had so much fun they chose not to come back, and that was their choice that they made”.

One reason why this drew my attention is that in my distant youth Ioften enjoyed sweat lodges along the Native American style, with a small bender under canvas and a pit which was fed with heated stones, the same way as the tragic one at the Angel Valley Retreat Center, usually just for fun and accompanied by drumming and plenty of cold baths in a suitable river or pond afterwords.

A few years ago however I attended a sweat lodge at the end of a small festival in West Cork which was to be my first- and last- experience of a more formal, ceremonial initiation, lead by someone who, like Ray, claimed he knew what he was doing.

The difference in this lodge compared to the ones I used to set up myself was that it was exceprionally hot- far in excess to anything I had previously experienced (and the idea was always to get as hot as possible) and there were certain protocols and rituals according to, so we were told, native American tradition. It was to take the form of four “rounds” each one with a different spiritual theme, perhaps one for each of the four elements or something.

At the start of the first round people were invited to invite into the lodge with us whatever “spirit guides” we wanted to accompany our “journey”. One girl asked to be joined by quite a few such guides: ” I call spirit of Dolphin… and Bear… and Redwood… and eagle…” by which time the already cramped and squashed space started to feel very crowded indeed.

As the water was splashed onto the stones and the temperature increased, I could hardly breath and felt very uncomfortable, but not wishing to disturb the gathering i stuck it out until the end of the first round.

I couldnt go back in and in fact have never been in a sweat lodge since. The rest of the group continued and I seem to remember one of the group becoming very distressed at one point; she was congratulated by the “leader” for doing a “good job” in achieving whatever state she reached- not a pleasant one as far as I could tell.

It was only on this occasion that it occurred to me what is probably obvious that the traditional sweat lodge was not a fun evening with your mates but designed to be a cathartic experience in common with many other spiritual and religious rituals from many traditions around the world. The organism is put under such stress that another state of consciousness is reached, with visions of Other Realities perhaps with messages from the beyond for the tribe.

One danger mentioned was that in this and similar cases where people have died in sweat lodges a plastic tarp was used which would have kept the lodge hotter and perhaps less breathable.

The other reason I was interested was because James Arthur Ray appears in the film The Secret which as regular readers may know is one of my pet hates. The Secret has made millions for its makers by cynically exploiting people’s gullibility and willingness to believe that the Universe will provide for them anything they want. For me, this warped and retarded concept is as powerful symbol a symbol of what is wrong with the world as any- a pity then that it is so popular with many in the environmental movement- or at least its New Age wing.

The secret of the Secret’s success is that it based on a partial truth of course- that positive thinking may help and have a real effect on your confidence. In a sense it could be seen as a kind of self-hypnotism. But crossing over from the (limited) abilities we may have of deliberately improving our outlook on things into the classic New Age belief that we create reality with our minds is both dangerous and reactionary.

There are a billion or so hungry people in the world who rarely get a proper meal. I have occasionally been very hungry when there was no food to be had- on camping trips for example- and I am well aware of the power of the mind to conjure up strong visions of food in such circumstances. Id be dreaming of cream buns and seeing pizzas flying at me through the mist.

The whole concept is based on the idea that we all get what we deserve- karma, it is all written in the stars, but the lure of The Secret is that you can break out of this -simply by wishing!

In fairness, Mr Ray’s retreats seem to have been more demanding, but the whole concept of people paying thousands of dollars to undergo such rituals on the guidance of such a person fills me with horror. These are intelligent, well educated people from one of the richest nations on earth.

Even New Agers who have never heard of The Secret dance very close to the ideologies and dangers of this kind of thinking every time they utter the phrase “You create your own reality”. Out the window goes social justice issues, out goes any concept of oppression and discrimination. Its all your fault, if you dont get a better lot that proves you dont really want it.

It all seems to be just an extreme version of the Myth of unending progress and the ideology of personal entitlement that has come to dominate in the modern world- secular individualism dressed up with beads and feathers.

Perhaps we should take a pause on reading of such hubris and accept that what we cant conjure up with wishful thinking or by conning others we might have to earn by the honest sweat of our brow.