Steve Pavlina announced in a blog post recently that he’s shutting down his forums. In his characteristic manner of talking a lot of fluff while not addressing anything substantive, he doesn’t say precisely why the forums are being closed.
I did a bit of research, and from looking through this and this thread, it seems like this is what basically happened:
1) Some moderators like Angela joined another personal development forum, that forum is (or was) invite only and not open to public.
2) Those moderators then PM’d some selected members of Steve’s forum and invited them to join the other forum. You might consider this to be spam. Personally, I’m not sure. However this is what a highly reputed member (now also banned) of Steve’s forum wrote:
I received an invitation and sent one shortly after PDforyou was founded. The invitations I knew of were supposed to essentially be a personal suggestion for who you’d like over there, not spam, quantity was definitely not the point. I visited it and posted for a while after I heard that some of the members that had stopped participating here had decided to give that a try, but after awhile I stopped participating because I found no interest in much of what was going on. I logged on a few times since to see what was up there.
It honestly didn’t occur to me that would be a problem here, any more than participating in any other forum would, or that inviting specific friends here to any other forum would. The exclusivity didn’t ever quite feel right, which was one of the reasons I left. I’m very sorry you feel hurt by this situation, Steve.
If its true that they only invited ‘friends’, and people they knew, then I don’t think it should be considered spam. If they sent PMs to strangers, then it would definitely be spam. But given that PDForYou.com is invite only, its likely that they only invited some people whom they knew well. Who knows.
3) Steve found about this, and got upset, in a fairly childish way. He decided to ban Angela and possibly some other members of the forum over this.
4) Someone made a thread asking why Angela was banned, all this came up, and presumably Steve took a lot of criticism there.
5) All this combined, with the fact that Steve doesn’t seem to want to moderate the forum, and he’s apparently upset that some people would want to join/promote another forum, has resulted in him shutting down this forum.
That’s what I can gather from looking through the forum posts on this topic. All of this also points to Steve’s very thin skin, and his lack of ability to take any criticism.
The only good thing to come out of this, is that perhaps there will be less of a cult following around him now, and less people might be falling for his quakeries like ‘intention manifestation, subjective reality’, and the ‘psychic readings’ of his ex wife. At least, there might be less of a group mentality and peer pressure to believe such nonsense.
I hope that at PdForYou.com, the traditions of censorship from Steve’s forum don’t continue, and free speech is allowed to freely discuss any topic without fear of being banned if the site owner doesn’t like what someone has to say.
Please share your comments and thoughts on why the forum was closed and whether it was a good or bad thing.
Disclaimer: Because of the rampant censorship at Steve’s forum and deleting of posts he doesn’t like, and the fact that he might decide to take his forum offline or change its URL, the links to the threads might go offline in future.
Steve Pavlina Lies 
Dec 28, 2011 @ 21:52:00
I’m the member who’s post you quoted. I knew Steve didn’t want to deal with the forums for a long time, but he was going to train a new admin to take over–and I had volunteered. He had been putting off showing me the technical stuff and handing over the ropes for a couple months, always with a plausible excuse of course. We had also agreed on a small stipend. Instead, he bans me without a word.
Dec 28, 2011 @ 22:23:44
I also chimed in on that thread. Unfortunately I can’t quote my post anymore as that thread is gone but I think I was the first one to explain exactly what PD4U was intended to be and that it wasn’t direct competition with the PDSP forums.
I found this site while looking for people who’d criticized Pavlina as I’ve taken a new interest in that after all of this. I came across his site a good four or five years ago, possibly before the forums were even up, and at the time I was breaking away from fundamentalist Christianity (as well as other societal notions I’d never questioned). I think you can see why his material appealed to me at the time, though I went through an odd phase where where I stopped caring about what he wrote and spent more and more time focused on the PDSP community at large. That was a great bunch of people for the most part but as for Steve himself my feelings ranged from neutral to kind of creepy but I wrote it off with, “don’t take him literally”, “he’s being extreme on purpose to shake people up”, and so on and so forth.
I was wrong. When he decided to shut the forums down he tossed all the longterm contributors aside like they were nothing and decided to believe the worst without so much as asking what was going on or why they did it. That he would ban someone vying for admin without a word when that alone implies a level of trust is… It’s baffling. That is, when you haven’t looked at his overall profile.
So now I’m planning to actively work toward criticizing his material and exposing the narcissistic undertone behind it and I’ve your articles bookmarked as a resource. Thus far it doesn’t seem like any of it has had much of an impact on his bottom line but if there’s a stronger network of criticism from multiple vantage points we might accomplish something.
It’s like people have said about his subjective reality experiment-he thinks he can just throw people away without consequence. Those of us who can see it shouldn’t let that fly and I’m glad you’re not.
Dec 31, 2011 @ 16:49:56
If the forum closure increases interest in criticism of Steve then something good will have come out of it. So far well-written criticism of Steve’s blog is scarce. This site is one of the best, but it has only a few entries.
Vulnerable people who are trying to improve themselves will be better off if they are warned first.
You run a blog, don’t you, Eric? If you’re who I think you are, you are a good writer, and I look forward to seeing what you have to say.
Dec 31, 2011 @ 23:46:04
Yes indeed I do, and I plan not only on tackling Steve but a number of different gurus. This was the first step toward that: http://discerningspiritualist.com/?p=652
Dec 29, 2011 @ 21:25:43
I was genuinely shocked to discover the forums have been closed. It’s been 4 weeks since my last visit (been away on business) – logged in, and they’re gone. I wish he’d given more notice – but I fully understand his desire to act relatively quickly.
I’ve just read a more complete explanation from Steve, you can read it here: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/12/why-i-shut-down-the-forums/
I find the whole thing interesting from the point of view of human relationships and interactions – particularly in relation to the internet. It seems a little odd to offer what amounts to be a support network and then to withdraw it relatively quickly – but as Steve points out – other PD forums are available.
I don’t understand those who feel so angry with his decision they now feel they want to ‘campaign against him’. I would suggest that everyone should take a chill pill, let the dust settle and lick their wounds, if wounded they feel.
Isn’t PD all about that sort of thing – not allowing our emotions or bruised egos to get the better of us? Steve may be growth orientated, but he’s also a human being – just like you, just like me.
Steve provided a free service which helped other people for many years. Maybe he acted a little in haste (though it seems he’d been toying with the notion of forum closure for a while) – but baying for his blood makes no sense whatsoever and is surely counter productive to meaningful PD.
At a personal level I always found his contributions to the forum very useful, insightful and challenging. In a wider sense – I had quickly recognised that the PD resources offered on his site seemed ultimately more valuable than the forum anyway.
Steve isn’t God, his actions aren’t evil – they are self interested – which is what we all should be!
Ne Cede Malis
Dec 29, 2011 @ 21:39:49
I’ve said elsewhere that I don’t really mind so much that he closed his forum-he owns it, it’s up to him how he handles things-but he was utterly disrespectful toward many people who’d contributed to the community and we can’t let that slide as far as I’m concerned. In fact I think he exploits the tendency of the PD community to look for the best in things and to try and rise above petty conflicts to get away with many things that wouldn’t be tolerated in other contexts.
Plus, as it’s been noted by other posts on this website, Steve hasn’t handled himself in an upright manner in many, many things. I’m not asking for the man to be God-that’s a strawman, though I don’t think you mean it to be-but he should be held accountable.
As for me, I’m not frothing at the mouth for his blood. I was angry, and I could find the energy to get pissed if I wanted to, but for the most part my feelings have tapered off but I still hold a lot of the same perspectives I did when they were at their height. As i see it, acknowledging and channeling emotions is a valid means of personal growth, too, as it’s far better than repression, which is what the “rise above-love everyone” rhetoric often amounts to.
Keep in mind I’m not even saying he’s never provided anything of value, ever. Accountability. That’s the key word. No one should be above it, especially when they position themselves as gurus.
Dec 30, 2011 @ 13:26:41
Hi EricMoore
Your points are all valid. My ‘god’ comment wasn’t aimed at you and your comments – but others I had read elsewhere. Steve’s decision seems to have caused some melt down, as though people really had put himself on a pedestal (an arrangement he may have encouraged and been happy with) – a kind of devoted following. But these are assumptions and there are lots of them flying presently.
I agree with what you say about accountability and yes, it’s better to vent anger than repress it, but preferably in a way that is as constructive as possible – difficult with emotional responses. My personal view is that Steve didn’t have to act the way he did and that he could have handled it differently and better. He did let a lot of people down and it seems he feels he was let down also. Did he act in haste – did his emotions get the better of him – or what is all part of some plan? I would say – who cares, move on.
I’m saying that from the luxury of the point of view of someone who had not invested so much of themselves in the forums – for anyone who did and if the forums had become very important to them – it will be harder.
I’m certain that he was aware there would be a backlash – I see that he is eluding to revealing the reason why he closed the forums at a later date, when the anger has died down. Should we even care about that? Will we see them as genuine reasons – or excuses to justify his decision?
Either way – in the grand scheme of things, does it matter?
Did Steve ‘exploit’ people – maybe. Did others ‘exploit’ Steve – maybe. Was trust betrayed on both sides – maybe. I say maybe, because it’s all a question of perspective. In a wider sense don’t we all exploit (better still, let’s say utilise) one another? Ideally, such relationships are perceived as reciprocal and the benefits equal. Of course, perception and reality (subjective/objective) is a mind field in itself.
I hope that people don’t become too entrenched in their anger or disapproval toward the forum closure, the lines clearly drawn and the battlefield between. To me the backlash underlines the need to be thoughtful about how we invest our time, energy, money and passion. We all need some form of support network – but what happens if people feel that network has been removed – perhaps unreasonably or unfairly?
Time will tell …
Ne Cede Malis
Jan 05, 2012 @ 06:06:02
I am not a regular reader of SP’s blogs, I do go there every now and again and in my opinion I think the guy is extremely self absorbed and he does have a little bit of cult leader thing going on. He is defenitely not someone I would like to have as a permanent fixture in my life.
However, yesterday I read one of his pieces which I should have read years ago. I suspect it would have helped prevented the limbo I found myself in the past four years. The guy gives good advice and after reading this blog and the comments I have decided that that is how I will approach it: I will take from SP what works for me and which I feel is really good advice and leave.
I can see how you decided to set up this blog to blast him, arrogance and self absorbedness is some of my pet hates as well and that eeky cult thing I feel is really freaky but hey, light cannot exist without darkness, right?
Jan 06, 2012 @ 04:55:44
Myself, I don’t see things like self-asorbedness as a problem. I tend to think people who aren’t are pretending not to be and that deep down they are their primary concern. However, it bothers me when someone is a jerk about it, and it’s all the worse when they’re completely lacking any consideration for people who’ve given something to them, or people who are close to them.
Here’s the thing: Steve has had some good ideas. The writing itself has never been of especially high quality but he’s done a good job of presenting out-there concepts in a digestible fashion and indeed, there’s a lot of value in his earlier articles.
That doesn’t excuse callousness. “If there’s light there’s darkness, right?” is a copout; it’s true to the extent that few things can exist without an opposite and the idea of right behavior requires bad to go along with it. It doesn’t make it acceptable for the same individual to exhibit both apologetically, especially when he claims it doesn’t contradict his stated principles when it clearly does.
There’s no reason that sound personal development and spiritual concepts have to be tied to terrible personalities. In fact we’d be far better off if we could eliminate the guru culture and the industry which has grown around it. That may be impossible but it doesn’t make the effort worthless because it will prevent some people from getting sucked into it in the first place.
At this moment in time I wouldn’t consider Steve Pavlina dangerous but there are all the markings for a cult leader and the only thing keeping Steve in check is Steve. That’s a very bad situation, especially for someone with as much knowledge as influence as he has. We shouldn’t wait until someone becomes dangerous to speak out against them, we should start as soon as we notice something is off. That they’ve provided something of value should never be an excuse to slack off on our criticism.
Jan 05, 2012 @ 12:32:55
Haha. I’m glad Steve Pavlina’s closure of his forums is waking more people up to the fact that this guy is a complete narcissistic opportunist. The guy is a complete fucking sham and it only took me reading two or three of his “blog” posts to figure this out.
Oct 01, 2013 @ 13:45:48
Hi Val,
You sound spot on – I read Steve Pavlina’s “meeting in person” page on his website and could not believe what I was reading. I am a Psychologist and there is definitely some majorly dysfunctional thinking going on in that head of his. Scary stuff!!
Mandy
Oct 02, 2013 @ 21:16:42
Huh. Surprised to see new comments here.
It’s been forever since I checked out Steve’s site so this is the first I’ve heard of this. I went there out of curiosity, and most of the meeting in person page isn’t that bad. It’s more curt than it needs to be, but it falls into the “you’re not wrong, but you are an asshole” category. There’s nothing amiss with people defining exactly what they want out of personal connections.
Then I got to the section on women, particularly this passage:
“A woman who’s an ideal match for me will surrender herself completely. She offers no resistance to the exploration of my desires with me. She revels in knowing how irresistible I find her. Whatever I want to experience with her, her primary response is, “Yes, Master.” Even if she doesn’t verbalize it, that’s what she’s feeling inside. She loves knowing that I desire her intensely. She loves it when I hold back from acting on that desire. She loves it when I tease her with delicious anticipation, getting her riled up and making her hold onto that tension for a while. And she loves it when I finally take her and have my way with her. When she feels my desire for her, she surrenders to that experience completely.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Dear lord, he spends most of that half of the page saying essentially “I am not a date rapist” and springs that on us near the end. This shit is gold.
Aside from that the crux of all this seems to be, “I want the privilege of using you and tossing you aside as I please, and if you want more from me you’re being needy.” As a man I wouldn’t want him as a friend because I doubt I could actually count on him. If I were a woman I’d stay as far away from him as possible not because of what he desires but because of how many times he felt the need to reassure us he wasn’t a sexual predator. That screams misdirection; it tells me that’s how he likely sees himself but it takes work to maintain that image, and whether it’s accurate or not he’s not being as honest with himself as he says.
At first i was angry, but over the years this has just gotten flat out entertaining. I can’t wait to see what outrageous shit he says or does next. He’s like a culty Charlie Sheen.
Jan 08, 2012 @ 04:36:37
I made the mistake of getting into Steve Pavlina and even linking to his crap in the past. Some of his stuff sounds like they make sense at first.
Eventually you get caught in the mountains of non-sense that he spills.
I think his blog posts explaining why he disabled the forums show really what sort of an entitled, insane prick the guy is. The people in his forum were his community but he somehow thinks that he is superior to them and they are not allowed to make sites of their own (and if they are, they are the ones with entitlement issues).
Anyway, after everything. I was banned from Steve’s forum for criticizing that fraud that is site build it. I returned eventually under another nickname and deal with some other people that seemed to be in the forum not for Steve but for other topics. Many of them were nice people and I hope that this helps them get rid of Steve from their lives as it shows really who he is.
I hope pdforyou grows into a healthy personal improvement community that gets rid of stevitis.
Aug 01, 2012 @ 12:10:46
Hi Sheldon. I expect that forum will careen along the same flawed route of “personal development” that SP and a whole host of others represent, where members encourage each other in irrrational spiritual beliefs and in the process denounce empiricism, science (it’s amazing how much Tim Berners-Lee’s invention is used for science-bashing), reason, money, poverty, or anything that gets in the way of believing they have the esoteric “secret” (broadcast) magical cure for all ills. I expect a fair bit of advertising, too.
Aug 01, 2012 @ 21:05:14
That is pretty much exactly what happened.
Jan 10, 2012 @ 02:24:24
When I first started reading Steve Pavlina, the information I got from his blog was very useful. But getting addicted or reading everything he writes is simple waste of time. Many suggested PD4U, can you please give me the URL of that site.
Jan 12, 2012 @ 18:26:02
Steve’s own posts on why he closed the forums speak volumes. He was acting only in his own interest and was not concerned about how it would affect anyone else. It was all about himself. Everything he does is about himself. He’s quite the narcissist.
Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything inherently wrong with being out for yourself and only yourself, because I actually think it’s okay. The thing I object to is how he presents himself as this great “lightworker” who is going on a mission to “wake people up” and live consciously and yadda yadda yadda and then he acts like an obnoxious jerk to people and openly states that he doesn’t care.
He has a justification for everything he does, he’s always right, he’s always all about himself, well, okay, but stop with the “lightworker” crap if that’s how you’re going to live and act. Just own up to it: you care about you and you only care about other people when they serve a purpose and aren’t too inconvenient in your life. Fine, Steve, just own it, okay?
I’m not torn up or upset about this, though I did think it was very abrupt and I did feel like he was unnecessarily disrespectful and even somewhat cruel with at least a few people. I just get frustrated with people who claim to be this, when they clearly act like that.
Jan 14, 2012 @ 01:08:16
A lot of people got a lot of information/support/help/fun/companionship from those forums. I, personally can live without it, but I could always see its value.
I can not understand why on earth a number of people also joining another forum could be so threatening to Steve that he had to throw ALL the toys out of the pram, and throw the whole pram down a steep drop….
Ah well…..
Jan 15, 2012 @ 16:41:50
The reason is because it gets people talking about him. Which means people share links to his site, which ultimately builds more traffic and strength in google and search engines, which ultimately means more eyes on his affiliate products and anything else that he chooses to sell.
From a marketing standpoint, Steve has got people PEGGED. So, if you dislike Steve’s message, then the best thing you can do is not talk about it. Because your talking about it and websites like this are just promoting him. Ironic, huh? LOL
Jan 20, 2012 @ 02:00:02
oh yeah.right…That figures. The ony bad publicity is NO publicity…..got it.
Jan 17, 2012 @ 07:47:33
I went to one of his live events, so I’ve spent several hours interacting with him, although I can’t say that I “know” him. But does anybody really know him?
From everything that I can tell, he keeps people at a huge distance. Look at how he handled his Twitter and Facebook accounts. Look at how he’s handled the forum. Look at how he traded in his wife for a “slave” who doesn’t live in the US. Not a guy who wants a two-way discussion or people close to him, in my opinion.
I think he’s a sociopath. That would certainly explain how he treats everybody.
He had a lot of followers, most of whom were 20-somethings who seemed lost. They didn’t know what they wanted out of life, didn’t have jobs, and didn’t seem to have real passion about anything, beyond Steve’s blog posts and silly “growth” exercises that he would assign, such as walking up to people you didn’t know and offering to give them a hug.
And everybody and his brother was a psychic or a raw food coach, but not really…and not anymore. So much for his business advice!
I’m no guru, but it seems to be that real growth is sticking out the tough times and learning from them, not cutting off your family, your wife, your forum, your Twitter followers, your Facebook page, or whatever else, just because you can’t control it. It’s digging deep to find something you’re passionate about, not just saying you’re psychic because Steve said so.
For anybody thinking about attending his seminar, look at other options first. In my opinion, there are better, more professionally run events out there. From everything that I saw, it appeared he just got up on stage and winged it. He’s not a very compelling speaker and he would ramble on, and on, and on, so it was a long three days.
He is a better writer than he is speaker. You’re better off reading his early blog posts, which I think have some really great content.
Jan 20, 2012 @ 02:01:41
Damn shame really. I met a few nice people on that forum.
Jan 23, 2012 @ 23:20:01
Well it looks like Steve Pavlina was having a toys out of the pram moment. Or he’s taken his ball home and isn’t playing anymore.
IMO Steve was/is a total weirdo self help guru. He openly tried (and failed) flirting with female forum members who spurned his advances when trying to hijack threads between fromantic orum members.
As soon as I heard he was closing the forum my immediate thought was “oh I bet this must have something to do with Forum members getting cosy with one another”.
Low and behold the forum usernames/moderators Angela and Sandra pop up.
Feb 03, 2012 @ 20:59:57
my wife listened to this scum bag and now we are separeted because she listened to his shite and the other cult members who beleived in all the crap he was given i hope he rots in hell what he has put my 2 daughters through i saw what my wife posted in his forums and it was a load of crap what he was saying to her and what a liar he is
Feb 03, 2012 @ 21:56:59
Wow, what did he say to your wife??
Feb 05, 2012 @ 20:32:55
It doesn’t serve you people to be calling steve a “sociopath” or cult leader.. that projection into your reality.. just pops it back onto you.. making you the “sociopath” and you the “cult leader”
(reality is a mirror!)
I was banned from steves forums in 2010 and it was due to a “popularity contest” as steves described..
The one thing I really read in steve’s blog besides for he is not being honest with the public (with himself, I’m not sure!) is that rules and moderation don’t work.. there unhelpful as bad as calling people “sociopath and cult leader”.. 😀 and steve and his rules drove him crazy 😛
Really steve’s ego just exploded negatively.. that’s the way I see it.. hopefully for steve he can start to “heal/repair” that now.. that the forums don’t draw his attention..
Feb 14, 2012 @ 05:51:20
You weren’t banned for some sort of “popularity contest”. You were banned because you kept enabling someone in a massive, ongoing, continual pity party. Remember her? The one who lived in perpetual victimhood, gave away all her power, and had an excuse for everything and a reason why no suggestion on the planet could possibly improve her life? Not only did you keep encouraging her, you actually started a NEW THREAD for her to carry on with her “oh, poor me, here are all the reasons why I can’t have anything I want in life and why I’m always the victim”. I don’t know if you know this, but she was banned, too, and she never did learn a damned thing; seems you didn’t, either.
Feb 14, 2012 @ 07:10:08
You know rose.. unless you were a admin you don’t really know why I was banned.. but I do have some clues.. I was given 2 warnings for talking to “angela” and I recorded one of those posts to her.. (before it was deleted)
So if that’s not a popularity contest I don’t know what is? 🙂
I find a subtle irony in steve’s rules basically imploding and taking his whole forum with it.. I guess, I was one of the few to get out early 😀
(the rockchick thing was really unrelated :P)
As I see it.. steve could make a “example of me and rockchick” cause we were not popular.. but as he wrote on his own blog.. people did not like it when “popular” people were banned from “breaking the rules”.. the real truth is steve’s rules were crap.. and I often said that! And buried in the forum archives you can find me saying that many times..
Rose for a person who hung out on a “personal development” forum you are definitely don’t show any “personal development” in your post.. perhaps you need to create a forum.. and do a “steve” too? 😀 lol 😛
—–
Cado did you have any kind of point.. cause I didn’t see it?
Everything you said was filler to me.. no point.. you’re not a person I missed either 😛 (especially if all that blather is indicative of what you have to say) which is ?????????
Feb 14, 2012 @ 07:16:15
That was actually kind of funny coming from you. I guess there’s some truth to what you said after all.
Feb 14, 2012 @ 06:27:16
That perspective is completely removed from reality.
There’s a partial truth in that everything we see is a reflection of a part of ourselves because we can never go beyond our subjective experience. If something is right in front of me I’m still seeing it second hand because my brain has to interpret the data my eyes are sending it and I’d have a very different perspective if I had the eyes of a lizard or a bird. Likewise, I contextualize everything I hear or experience through concepts I’ve constructed within my mind, consciously and unconsciously, and I can only ever expand that list, I can never step beyond them entirely.
So if I called someone a sociopath I would, in essence, be drawing from the parts of myself that could become a sociopath. We have within us the means to be all that we witness, it just takes the right set of conditions to cause the shift. Some things are more or less probable due to individual factors, and healthy brain chemistry prevents most of us from taking on the most abhorrent roles, but the truth is that there’s less to separate us from the worst of humanity than we’d like to think.
Acknowledging that is good, it’s honest. It helps us take control and I think that even with our limited understanding of how our brains work it’s instrumental in fostering the traits we’d like to see in ourselves and our offspring. It also makes it less likely that we’ll become the things we hate. That’s the whole point of conscious growth and it’s one thing that more people would benefit from if the good stuff could be removed from the pseudo-spiritual, guru worshiping bs.
In short, calling someone a sociopath doesn’t make the person saying it into a sociopath. It’s a gross oversimplification at best and an outright lie at worst. (And circumstances generally favor the latter.) That’s exactly the kind of harmful mush which is holding back our collective intelligence and keeps us locked in a cycle of seeking fulfillment through consumerism and willful ignorance. No matter what you believe there is a world out there which remains exactly as it is and mistaking it for something that’s so fluid everything goes topsy turvy the moment you adopt another perspective is so off the wall I don’t know where to begin. I’ve got more than a few impolite things to say, to put it mildly, but I think it’s better I stay somewhat restrained, especially as I know that anger will be construed as something I’m projecting and blah blah blah it’s a problem with me.
That’s the issue I have with those kinds of beliefs. Not only do they render their holders mostly ineffective (unless they’re good at manipulating others) they provide a vocabulary which enables a novice to deflect like a pro. Straw mans, non-sequiters, you name it, new age lingo can provide. It’s on par with Christianity, and worse still it takes some of the few (arguably) respectable traditions like Buddhism and twists it to suit a consumerist culture in lieu of anything substantial. This stuff bugged me to no end on PDSP and I can’t for the life of me figure out why it’s so popular in an era where we have near limitless access to information.
Unfortunately you weren’t banned for any of this. No, this kind of schlock was not only tolerated on PDSP, it was encouraged. You got banned because you talked down to people and violated the rule about treating others with respect. I wasn’t sad to see you go.
Mar 19, 2012 @ 02:47:47
Seriously, all personal development is creepy. I see that now.
I seem to have gotten banned from PDforYou and I haven’t a clue why. Just found one day that despite being inducted as a member, I still couldn’t access the members-only forums. Sent an e-mail about that, no answer (not even in my spam folder). Then saw I couldn’t even access the non-member forums anymore, either! Sent another e-mail, no answer — and this time I couldn’t even log in at all, as if my account’s been deleted.
Like I said, creepy.
I see all this “spirituality” as just a return to the Dark Ages, I really do. In a world of nanotechnology and string theory, we have people preferring to split hairs over fairies, angels (yes, literally, I kid you not), and other supernatural forces.
Between the personal development crowd and the religious fundamentalists I wonder if 2012 isn’t going to see the end of the world after all!
BTW, what’s the story with “Sandra” and “Angela”?? In the closing days of Steve’s forums, the moderator “Brutha” made reference to the fact that Steve probably blew a gasket only because Angela was involved, due to having had a “history” — his word, Brutha’s — with her. That was the most plausible explanation for what happened I’ve ever come across…unfortunately, it was never elaborated on. Sure gurus have their egos, et cetera — but those are just abstractions; what’s concrete is this Angela angle Brutha referred to. Surprised no one else seemed to have mentioned it anywhere on the whole worldwide web.
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:13:35
@Aminka: I have no clue what was going on with PD4U. I know the forum software can be a bit glitchy and I know with the influx of traffic there was a lot of talk about how to handle new members, and some of the forums that were previously available to the public no longer are. I’m sorry you didn’t get a real answer, but if it’s any consolation you’re not missing much. Something went down recently and I said my peace, at the forum and on facebook, and I’ll let it lie at that. I’ve mainly spoken up when asked, and I don’t harbor any ill-will about most of the members there. It’s the owner that was the problem, and though it wasn’t a Pavlina-esque meltdown it’s not a place that I’d consider worthy of investing a lot of energy or time.
As for Steve and Angela, I know a bit about the back and forth there, and I’m using that in some of what I’m piecing together. The first articles about Steve Pavlina should be going live on my site fairly soon, the first ones will be written by a friend of mine and I’ll step in to fill in whatever gaps he leaves and make whatever points I feel are relevant after that. I’ve had plenty on my plate and he was eager to give it a go so I didn’t see an issue with outsourcing part of this.
The difficulty here is that I’m not sure how specific I’d like to get considering that I’m on good terms with Angela and I’m not sure what her wishes are. I need to clear that again. I’ll say this-Steve promised her and someone else something that he never delivered on, and over time her influence outstripped his on his own site. It’s not hyperbole to say that Angela was more popular than Steve by the end of it. Granted, it’s little more than conjecture since popularity isn’t easy to measure, but perceived influence pitted against a raging narcissist running a self-help blog makes a viable formula for explaining what happened.
As for the odds and ends, it’s pretty silly that people wind up in debates over angels. You’ve got nothing solid to base the discussion on, not unless someone is already working off the same set of assumptions you are. There’s rarely any tolerance for questioning either, which makes it just as bad as the religions a lot of them had previously left.
There’s a lot we can’t explain, and there’s something to the “spiritual” experience even if it is someday proven to be a purely neurological phenomenon. Any beliefs are, at best, hypotheses-all knowledge is tentative and it’s the refusal to see that, to impose subjective structures on a reality we barely comprehend, which causes all the problems. I want to explore the states of consciousness which can be triggered with certain meditative practices. However, i don’t want to debate the existence of beings that are more than likely psychological constructs, nor do I want to devote myself to anything or anyone that demands obedience. Without evidence, or at least a bridge to experience, you’ve got the stuff for an interesting conversation but no more than that, and it’s bloody stupid that you’re just expected to take it seriously.
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:29:32
I would love to read some objective analysis on what’s going on with Angela lately..
To me she is a guru faker like steve.. if I can be honest.. one thing that started me towards getting banned by angela.. is first I was a facebook friend of hers.. then one day she “unfriended” me cause she felt I said something negative about her..
When I pointed this out on steve’s own forums.. about whether she was balanced? Well, that was the start to getting me banned 😀
Funny, how I was able to get away with talking to certain people in a way that many thought was insulting (specifically “rei” who is still a facebook friend! 🙂 ) but some realized I was “never” insulting them and the energy balanced.. I could never get Angela to that point.. cause she used her influence and the popularity game or her GURU/steve like worship to knock me out.. and that’s okay that was beneficial for me too 😀 lol
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:35:00
Angela isn’t even in the same ballpark as Steve. I’m a bit iffy about some of the NLP stuff and the emphasis on happiness doesn’t jive with me (because it’s usually about generating fake emotion in place of digging deep and dealing with things) but she has the ability to self-reflect, she doesn’t immediately shut down people who disagree with or doubt her, and she owns her human side. That’s pretty unique considering most of the people vying for our attention.
At least that’s been the case in my interactions with her. I cannot account for her entire forum history or what other people have experienced. Based on what I’ve seen thus far, she’s not someone I’d shut out.
Mar 19, 2012 @ 04:11:51
Put her to the test..
Ask her if she’d “welcome me back to the forums”?? lol
Yah, know she hinted when she got me banned that “there was some sort of lesson in it” she’d share later.. I don’t think she ever did.. but her comment is still up at pavlina 🙂
I’m not here to say she’s a “bad person” I’m simply saying when I last talked with Angela.. the balance was lacking.. I’m not sure that’s changed.. that’s what I know 🙂
I know that people grow and change and it will happen.. but there is a reason I was “unpopular” I was working and looking at myself.. there is a reason Angela is popular.. she was concerned with BEING NICE.. making friends all that (I was not) self-development or look at herself was just a MAYBE
so who under that criteria was really into self-development?
Growth doesn’t always come in self-development in positive things.. sometimes negative things create growth.. has steve’s forum created growth in people even after it closed..?? I think so.. and so much more growing has to be done for some people 😦
Jul 14, 2012 @ 01:35:45
“because it’s usually about generating fake emotion in place of digging deep and dealing with things”
I know what you’re talking about, and a lot of self-help is like that. But no, that’s not what true happiness is about, and it’s not what Angela tries to promote/teach. Definitely not encouraging running away from problems or fake emotions to cover up issues.
Jul 14, 2012 @ 03:59:58
I have changed my stance slightly, though it’s not so much about Angela personally as it is the Landmark Forum style of communication. After having been away from it for many months and not coming across anyone who talked in that style, my perception did a complete 180. There’s something very manipulative about it, and while it certainly can be put to positive use, it’s also incredibly easy to twist. It plays into the same kind of cultish new age narcissism that so many other things support. “It’s you that’s the problem. If you think I am, that’s only because you want to see things that way.”
It subtly makes the other person the bad guy while implying that the person who’s using the language is on the right side and the proper thing to do is agree. It’s almost impossible for someone that’s unfamiliar with it to say anything to the contrary without being regarded as someone that just wants conflict, even if they lay out detailed and level-headed arguments supporting their point. Of course, it goes deeper than language; modern society, at least American society, has a really dysfunctional perspective on conflict and conflict resolution on the whole, so I think the use of this language in this way is more or less a reflection of that. Still, I think an emphasis on positivity or happiness over wholeness-meaning the integration and acceptance of every part of us, including the “ugly” side-inevitably leads to the creation of unhealthy paradigms.
I don’t mind people saying that I’m wrong or that someone else is wrong. That’s honest, even if it’s ultimately incorrect. It doesn’t make for a healthy conversational style in itself, but I think bluntness and honesty that’s balanced with general human decency is essential to leading a healthy life and communicating in a non-dysfunctional way. I don’t think that the Landmark Forum communication style lends itself to that, and I’m finally beginning to understand what irked people about Angelese. I still have some respect for her, but I realize that I’m at a point where I don’t jive with her approach, and it would ultimately cause a lot of unnecessary drama for everyone if I tried to maintain contact with her. I don’t want to say much more because she isn’t here, and this is pretty much the extent of what I said to her (although now that I think on it, I probably could have been a bit more clear, but I don’t think I was misinterpreted) and it’s really all that needs to be covered because I’m not interested in discussing her. I am, however, interested in delving into various communication styles that are common within the self-help community. It’s utterly fascinating now that I’ve seen it from a different angle, and I think there’s a lot to be learned from exploring it.
Jul 14, 2012 @ 01:30:06
Aminka, you were never an approved member. Some people felt uneasy about the idea of you joining, based on some of your posts in the Introduction forum, so your account was never upgraded to a full member status. Then after some time, all non-member accounts were deleted. So, you weren’t banned. You were just never approved.
Sorry if that bothered you. I liked your posts on Steve’s forum.
Jul 25, 2012 @ 21:37:33
Jon,
Perhaps your forum software was “being buggy” with me, but my avatar there did indeed have the “member” designation (I forget the exact wording now). As there had been a few admin stickies about how the forum software being buggy and how full forum visibility and access is forthcoming, I didn’t think much of it and waited…until about two months later I decided to contact Obi Wan — and then my account was deleted.
All that coming on the heels of Steve Pavlina’s own meltdown gave me a creepy sense of déjà vu. And now all my posts — and that of others as well — have simply been deleted? Geez, even Steve at least kept up people’s contributions!
What a slap in the face. I even had a decent likes-to-posts ratio. But I guess all this just underscores what a waste of time the PD cottage industry is!
Jul 26, 2012 @ 00:25:15
Aminka, having the “Member” rank doesn’t make you a member. Those ranks are determined merely by post counts. An admin specifically has to give your user account the permissions to see the full forum, which you never received.
It’s your choice to see it as a slap-in-the-face. The forum was never meant for the public. It was never meant for Steve to send his ex-members to. The forum was mostly just a meeting place for people who already knew each other well. When all of the new members (most of them strangers to us) signed up, we had to decide what to do about it. You don’t need to take it personally, really!
The forum isn’t really even strictly about PD. It’s mostly just the group of us talking about what’s going on in our lives. It’s like a more private version of Facebook.
Jul 27, 2012 @ 15:49:26
Jon,
Thanks for the reply. I mean it. I think you hit the nail on the head, unwittingly, when you wrote “you don’t have to take it personally!”
That right there is the problem. When people go to your site and spend time on it contributing, it’s beyond lame to just shrug and claim, as Steve Pavlina has, that hey, it’s not your site anyway, don’t take it personally….
I understand that PDforYou was only ever a private Facebook, as you say; there’s been numerous admin stickies on that. However, deleting people’s accounts really should have been handled more tactfully. Don’t be thoughtless and then feign incredulity when someone who’s spent a lot of honest effort contributing is upset at being deleted out of the blue.
Jul 27, 2012 @ 18:04:55
Aminka, we never promised your posts would be there forever. We don’t even make that promise for our own posts. One day it will all be deleted.
It seems a bit silly to say we lack tact for not keeping a promise we never made. Also consider that Steve’s forum was meant for the public, whereas ours was meant to be private, so we definitely have less of an “obligation” to the public.
Why do you care anyway? Many forums regularly prune their topics and posts to save on memory and keep the forum software running smoothly. One day, this blog will go away, and our comments here could be gone with them.
Aug 01, 2012 @ 21:57:28
Jon,
“We never promised your posts would be there forever. We don’t even make that promise for our own posts. One day it will all be deleted.” Yes, Steve Pavlina’s m.o.
“It seems a bit silly to say we lack tact for not keeping a promise we never made. Also consider that Steve’s forum was meant for the public, whereas ours was meant to be private, so we definitely have less of an ‘obligation’ to the public.” Your introduction forum was public. And the fact of the matter is that people contributed their time. Hide behind semantics all you want, but the fact is that you have no regard for people’s time.
“Why do you care anyway?” You know why; stop pretending we are so different.
“Many forums regularly prune their topics and posts to save on memory and keep the forum software running smoothly. One day, this blog will go away, and our comments here could be gone with them.” Ah, yes, and one day the universe will contract back into a singularity, too, so why bother, right?
Sep 29, 2012 @ 22:59:37
I take my time to respond and explain to you how the forum operates, and you respond with snide remarks and insults. Wow. Farewell, Aminka.
Oct 03, 2012 @ 16:32:42
All I’ve done is inform you that your rationale is exactly Steve Pavlina’s. If you consider that insulting, then you should have checked your ego at the door.
Jun 16, 2013 @ 06:00:16
what he said makes sense to me since it was a private forum. if you go to someone’s house uninvited and spend a lot of time putting up pictures, is it rude if they take them down? no, it’s not. it doesn’t matter how much time it took you.
Jun 16, 2013 @ 11:25:22
Well, I agree in part. It’s not like we went there uninvited into a private space, like we walked into someone’s home. He set up a forum where he intended to teach people his philosophy, and there was a registration process, which is more like being invited to an educational course, or an open party in your house with a bouncer on the door. However, since the programme was essentially about freedom to do whatever we like, and he wrote obsessively about how he was doing exactly what he liked, one can reasonably argue that it *shouldn’t* have come as a great surprise when he unceremoniously closed it, apparently with little regard for his invited guests/participants. On the other hand, to many of those participants, his guidance and central presence in their lives was like that of a religious priest or guru, and I would argue that he enjoyed and stimulated that position of influence, so it’s also perfectly understandable that his flock would feel pretty abandoned and angry when he upped and left them. Whether that is a necessary lesson the wise one was teaching or the selfishness or cowardice of a fraud or fool depends largely on how highly one regards personal freedom, in contrast with responsibility to others. But at least it’s hard to say that he taught care and sensitivity and selflessness and self sacrifice before abandoning people. At least he wasn’t a complete hypocrite.
Jun 18, 2013 @ 15:42:03
You people are still arguing “legality” whereas I’m arguing “morality.”
The fact is that it was people’s contributions to his forums that made his forums a success. You really don’t think some kind of “karma” is created thereby??
Then y’all really have a lot of “personal development” still to explore.
Jul 14, 2012 @ 01:31:48
Also, I never heard about you sending any email. I’m not sure who you sent it to, but perhaps it was never received. Regardless, now you know!
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:07:42
<<>>
It’s actually not.. but many of the people involved have wobbles/lack in their space..
Without question that involves all of us even me.. but the list doesn’t “not” include Steve Pavlina, Angela or even Sandra
“Cado” I didn’t respond to your post.. cause I don’t feel like getting “into it” on a blog.. if you want to come find me.. this is one of my normal hangs outs now “spiritlibrary.com”
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:14:59
Eh, I’ve said all I care to say to you and about you. I’m not gonna follow you around, I just don’t respond well to inanity when it’s in my direct line of sight.
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:24:03
You are easily trigged cado 🙂
And your entire post above is about invalidation.. if you feel compelled to come understand me “then do so” if you would rather label me off and invalidate me then do so..
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:29:04
See, that is exactly what I’m talking about.
Mar 19, 2012 @ 03:30:04
Yah, got me! 😀 😛 lol
Mar 19, 2012 @ 18:58:54
Hey, Cado, Aminka here (can’t stand how using my Yahoo! account has WordPress’ Gravatar system stepping in all the time), thanks for replying at length.
Where’s your blog, exactly? I think your kind of personal development is what I’d imagined the topic to involve. I’m ultimately agnostic on the supernatural, though naturally skeptical of it; I too wonder that anyone should claim to literally know such matters first-hand, but I’m fascinated by consciousness, especially self-reflective consciousness.
Apr 06, 2012 @ 23:07:05
Are some of you suggesting that Angela and Steve had a romantic affair?
I thought she had a long term partner….
Anyway the forum was crap last couple of years, at the beginning had very seasoned thinkers, it reached a peak and then came the downfall with vulnerable youngsters posting stupidities all day long.
Now Steve has fewer worries, he goes to the point: sharp and clean blog with a ”God Almighty” design and a mystical begging number $21.
Apr 06, 2012 @ 23:22:47
As far as I know, Steve and Angela never had a romantic relationship. She was trying to work for him, though. He gave her and someone else the runaround and got really pissed at both of them when they called him on it.
And Aminka, my blog is located at http://discerningspiritualist.com
Currently I’m allowing a friend of mine to have a stab at the Steve Pavlina thing while I work on other unrelated projects and posts for that site. When he’s done I’m going to deconstruct some of Steve’s most popular posts and I’ll try to focus on stuff which got a lot of readers but didn’t get that much analysis or criticism. The Slaves article would be nothing more than a pot shot since I don’t think I can say more than what has already been said (though I know someone who may have been taken advantage of if Steve’s intentions were really as creepy as the vibe I got from the post) but I can go fairly deep on things like polarity and his emphasis on serving the “higher good”. That’s where his hypocrisy is most evident and it cuts to the core of the righteous narcissism present in the works of so many modern day gurus.
Jul 24, 2012 @ 13:50:18
Oh dear, someone set themselves up as a guru preaching mystical selfishness – like so many others – and when he turns out to be selfish, a million followers are pissed to find they’ve got dumped by the side of his gold-paved road. I notice that the thread about Angela being banned, the first of two links above, has been deleted, BTW.
I took part at PDSP mostly as a critic and sceptic, and was always baffled by how much rubbish people will swallow when someone tells them how to become empowered, rich, attractive, etc. I’m less baffled now that I’ve remembered that the “spritual” genre of literature is virutally uncontrolled, hence there have been vast numbers of books written on everything from angels to zen, stating conjecture as fact and promising all manner of wonders, mainly health, happiness and riches. I found the forum because I was interested in “personal development” and an ex-therapist, but at the forum I found those two words didn’t mean what I understood by the phrase, as I pointed out.
I realised that this was all part of the enormous rip-off industry of selling new-age bullshit, like The Secret, the Law of Bullshit (I mean, Attraction) and other outright scamming lies. Not only is it an industry based on selling, and on selling lies, it is a pyramid scheme selling lies. If you google any of the relevant terms, you find hundreds of people offering a book or a course or a lecture tour, etc., promising how to make money, be happy and know some spiritual secret or other that is the basis of their enormous success (which, of course, may or may not be enormous). When it comes down to it, what that secret knowledge turns out to be is how to set up a website, drive traffic to it, write a book or run courses selling more of the same bullshit to other people.
One of the biggest results of all this spritual consumerist nonsense is that there are a lot of people – towards the bottom of the pyramid – left very confused, feeling guilty that they haven’t made it like their gurus said they should be able to, not able to make their lives super-fantastic by meditating on it or making up their minds, and drawn more and more into trying to make sense of the world through supernatural, subjective means – vague, flawed philosophy. There is a great deal of non-secret, open-source information that has been painstakingly researched, checked, double-checked, double-blind randomized trial checked, by people with PhDs in their expert field – psychology, physics, mathematics, etc., etc., that explain the world and empower people to live in it better, but which is perhaps a bit difficult to understand, and very often misrepresented by charlatans in ways that are (superficially) easy to understand.
The human capacity for self-delusion through various cognitive biases is one of the most important and under-appreciated FACTS. Conversely, the world is almost totally full of people who believe that if a thought pops into their heads, it’s true, or they can discern its truth merely by thinking about it, or meditating, or asking someone who sounds confident and has a lot of money! The scientific method, which most of these people shun and criticise and call names, is the most wonderful gift we have for discerning what is likely to be true from what is likely to be false. It’s what it’s been doing for hundreds of years, leading to the miracles of modern life from medical advances to the Internet.
Unfortunately, the scam artists will misrepresent it at every turn in their mission to take you for a mug and make more money (or, I have to admit, often innocently, having been brainwashed by the Law of Bullshit themselves!). Quantum entanglement shows that evolution happened by Spirit choosing to make progress towards humans and angels, they’ll say, or the double-slit experiment shows that you are a wave as well as a particle, and thus must be able to have anything you desire. It’s all so ridiculously short on reasoning I’m left dumbstruck and sad that a large sector of the human race still pretty much lives in the dark ages, while an enlightened few are beginning to build robots that might possibly tell us they’re conscious beings one day, creating life in a petri-dish, landing rovers on Mars (while the first lot are still thinking its position at birth explains why they felt a certain way yesterday or they’re going to have a bad day tomorrow!) and finding cures for AIDS, malaria and cancer.
None of these miracles are enough, apparently. We want to know the universe’s deepest spiritual secrets. Maybe then we’ll be able to walk on water like Jesus, or fly like Superman.
Jul 24, 2012 @ 17:18:08
“Oh dear, someone set themselves up as a guru preaching mystical selfishness – like so many others – and when he turns out to be selfish, a million followers are pissed to find they’ve got dumped by the side of his gold-paved road. I notice that the thread about Angela being banned, the first of two links above, has been deleted, BTW.”
While that happened some time ago — around the time the forums were formally closed — it’s worth noting that the archives appear to have been edited a bit. It’s very difficult to confirm a lot of it, especially since most of us have to work off of memory as opposed to screen shots and the like, but I know that I’ve had difficulty digging up certain posts, one of which involved a conversation about making a then underage girl into the resident forum slave. i doubt that would reflect well on Steve if it were brought up during his divorce proceedings so it wouldn’t surprise me if part of the real motivation behind the forum shut down was actually to bury certain things he didn’t want unearthed.
The frustrating part is that I can’t confirm any of that. Very few people that were around during the shut down, myself included, were thinking clearly enough to save some of the more important posts or private messages for later, and I know that in the case of many of the people I communicated with, their PM inboxes had been so restricted that I couldn’t have them retrieve anything for me following my own ban.
Regarding the surprise at this turn of events, I think a lot of people have Stockholme’s syndrome when it comes to people like Steve. Anyone who comes from an Abrahamic religion is even more likely to fall into that category than someone who doesn’t, if my personal experiences and observations are anything to go by. Having been raised a fundamentalist Christian myself, Steve’s teachings were downright sane by comparison, and even the cruelest and most narcissistic elements didn’t seem to be anything that was nearly on par with the atrocities of hellfire and brimstone religion. There’s another aspect which you hinted at as well: As outlandish as the law of attraction is, it imbues a certain kind of practical hope that’s easy for people to latch onto. It’s the same mindset that has common people defending the Wall Street bankers despite their many crimes. The system isn’t inherently unfair; everyone can eventually reach those heights if they just try hard enough! At that point it’s not about the guru. It’s about sustaining whatever vain hopes someone has even if it means remaining intentionally delusional.
The latter part of the equation is probably what gives most the new age stuff its teeth. If more people grounded their hope in more holistic and meaty philosophies and methods then no one would give Steve or Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle a second look. It’s because they offer something that makes people feel good, which is easy to understand and makes sense on a very basic level even if it crumples under the slightest bit of scrutiny, that they have any appeal whatsoever. They exploit all the same impulses as religion but they provide even less substance. At least a Buddhist or a Catholic has a rich history or prayers and rituals to draw from. New agers get bastardized versions of various things from various religions that don’t work in the combinations that are presented to the public. Whether he knows it or not, Steve has stripped the clothes off of the would-be emperor, and while it might seem like people were simply naive, this is the kind of experience which is necessary to remove the blinders. I can’t say I would have questioned my upbringing as much as I did if I hadn’t heard that my pastor at the time took his daughter to get an abortion when she was young, and there are a lot of people who won’t turn against the new age stuff until the personalities that intertwine themselves with certain teachings are exposed for being the raging narcissists that they are.
Jul 24, 2012 @ 18:17:37
If the reason for the forum shut down was Steve’s divorce proceedings, it’s unlikely he would have archived the forum. He’d be better off just deleting the whole thing, because he has countless posts of stuff that could potentially be used against him.
Jul 24, 2012 @ 18:45:44
Him keeping the forums archived doesn’t make a lot of sense even that wasn’t part of the reason behind it. It doesn’t seem like there’s a good reason for him to leave it intact at all, and I suspect the real reasons for his actions may never be known to the public.
As i noted before, I can’t confirm anything at this time. I haven’t had the time to dig into the archives and juxtapose what’s there with what I remember. Still, I’d wager that anyone who goes to the archive now will most likely get Steve’s abridged version of the old forums and not a true representation of what was there before it shut down. I have no idea what the logic behind such a move would be, but there’s nothing about the forum shut down — or at least the way he framed it — that’s logical from an outside perspective. It could be that he simply grew tired of the forums, but if there was any possible benefit to controlling the narrative in a way that would only be feasible once it was shut down, he’d do it. It fits his profile too well.
But again, I know it’s conjecture, and I’ve got other Steve-related things to tackle. I’d just love to see someone take the time to explore some of these things in a substantive, fact-based way.
Jul 24, 2012 @ 21:56:13
It is what you “believe” it to be.. see you on the new age wheel when you hit it again.. and I also have to say I too was “disappointed” in the personal development.. but in a way maybe the closing down was “personal development” good luck on your pessimistic view of life! 😛
Jul 25, 2012 @ 07:34:30
@The Master:
“It is what you “believe” it to be.. ”
What is?
Jul 28, 2012 @ 18:13:10
My friend/fellow guru goddite once turned me on to some information.. try reading this.. maybe it will help you understand what I’m saying.. 🙂
http://blog.chron.com/healingnow/2012/04/master-and-commander/
Jul 29, 2012 @ 21:48:54
Yeah, that’s the way it usually happens – a mate turns you on to it. Sorry, fellow guru goddite. 😀 OK, I’ve read that, and it’s as bad as I expected. When you follow the trail of mates turning each other on to some newage bullcrap, they often lead back to the same bunch of names, including Keith Wommack and Bruce Lipton. Small, flawed trials show this and that, blah blah. Placebo … therefore … it’s all in the mind … God … genetics is a lie … reductionist science is faulty … anything they want to sell you. Next thing you know you’re spending a fortune on organic smoothies or paying silly sums to go to a seminar on how to be super-rich.
What you may have interpreted as pessimism is called scepticism – or it may have been my irritation with the credulous who never question what their mate turned them onto. Even placebo is now under doubt (see, for instance http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/23/health/23CND-PLAC.html ), but even if it works, it doesn’t mean Christian “Science” is true – note the appropriation of the term to give religion more credence with the credulous? – or that we make things happen by our thoughts alone. That’s why I asked “What is?” when you said “it is what you believe it to be”. What is? Everything?
It is obviously good to be hopeful and positive in most situations, there may even be an argument for using placebo, but the claims of the alternative health industry are almost entirely without scientific basis. They manipulate the desire for life to be simple and under our direct control, and that is dangerous and dishonest (or sometimes, to be fair, just innocently ignorant).
If it makes you happy, that may be a benefit, but it may not. If you find yourself with a serious illness and decide to think yourself better instead of getting evidence-based treatment, it’s not such a great thing. But anyway, on principle, people shouldn’t lie or promote unsubstantiated claims. Instead of believing what your friend turned you onto, you should research the evidence about it. And I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but your own subjective experience of the results is very poor evidence, because our subjective judgement is very commonly skewed to favour whatever theory we think may be true (confirmation bias). That is why empirical science is so useful, because we takes steps to eliminate self-delusion and other tricks and faults with strict protocols, checks and balances. Science says you’re very very probably wrong. It’s that simple.
Case in point, Hróbjartsson (in the above study) showed that J. Bruce Moseley’s study (of fake knee surgery fame, on which Wommack bases the rest of his even wilder speculation) was methodologically flawed ( http://skepdic.com/placebo.html ). Of course, you won’t believe that – it’s from a skeptical blog! Negative thinking! It might infect you with negative energy!
Jul 25, 2012 @ 21:50:06
What’s pessimistic at all about it?? It was well reasoned, as was Cado’s response.
Jul 28, 2012 @ 18:24:47
People are always “intellectualizing” things to be unhappy.. I catch that in cado’s response.. 😀 lol
Let me say again what I see.. the writings of “lettersquash” are already steeped in their own bias… it would be well-rounded? if you share his beliefs.. steve and others are “new age pyramid schemer’s” if you share that and that the law of attraction is actually the “law of bullshit” then that’s great.. but I’ve experimented with the law of bullshit lol 😀 and I’ve found for myself it has some merit 🙂
I’m not gonna claim there isn’t a scheme for people to make tons of money off of selling “new age” ideas… but at the core as far as I’m aware most of those FEEL GOOD ideas cado thinks stink! 😛
Actually just feel good cause they are “the truth of things”.. I would refer you to a idea taught to me by abraham about listening to your feelings.. abrahams “emotional guidance system” idea/theory has come in real handy for me and my reality.. give it a study if you care too..? this audio excerpt is from their “law of attraction” book/audio..
Jul 29, 2012 @ 22:16:49
That’s creepy. Give people a simple emotional rule to make all their judgements by. Does it feel good? Then I must be right. Get in the lovely van.
Jul 30, 2012 @ 08:51:10
“People are always “intellectualizing” things to be unhappy.. I catch that in cado’s response.. lol”
You say that as if I am unhappy. There’s plenty to inspire wonder and joy in this world that doesn’t hinge on magical thinking. In fact, I’m happier since I left it behind. It reminds me of how I felt when i left Christianity. People always said I couldn’t be happy without Jesus. The truth is that once I dropped the insane expectations I’d created for myself within that paradigm of belief life got much better for me. I could be human without feeling guilty about the fact that I existed. Likewise, I no longer carry guilt because I’m not “positive” in the new age sense. What I sense from you is a high propensity for self-delusion; you can’t prove what you’re saying, and I suspect a lot of what you talk about is either exaggerated or an outright lie. With rare exception, things like the law of attraction are for privileged white people that already had it pretty good to start with. Everybody else needs to accept reality as it is in order to get anywhere.
To be perfectly clear, I’m not firmly against the idea that thoughts influence reality. They clearly alter our subjective landscape. The quality of one’s thoughts can make a huge difference in someone’s moment to moment experience, and the effects can be as far reaching as determining which opportunities an individual is capable of acting on. I’d also say that my own experiments with the so-called law of attraction have yielded results that seem like providence, but I can’t verify that. I can’t say that certain things fell into my lap simply because I fostered the right thoughts and feelings. The results are too unreliable; if I were to ignore that I’d be giving into confirmation bias.
If it is possible for thoughts to reliably and almost magically alter the material world, then it requires a much greater level of discipline than I currently possess. That word — discipline — is something that traditional esoteric teachings delve into, but it’s almost completely absent from the current new age stuff. Not only that, many schools of ancient magic revolved around the transformation of consciousness. Getting things was a secondary function, and that’s if it was mentioned at all. The whole point of the old myths was to create a structure and a common language around the abstract and formless aspects of human existence, and by doing so provide a channel for understanding. You can see the origins of some modern psychological theories within spiritual practices. This is almost completely ignored for the sake of fluff within the material that’s embedded itself within the popular consciousness.
And let me clarify once more before I close out: I haven’t said any of this for your benefit, man-I-refuse-to-call-the-master. I know there’s no discussion to be had with you. I’m doing it because I enjoy talking about subjects like this, and I want to present a perspective that usually isn’t present in such discussions. Most of the time it’s either skepticism or blind belief, and while I fall more in line with the former perspective, I think there’s value in mystical practices when they’re properly understood and applied. That’s also the only way for someone who is inclined toward the spiritual to achieve lasting growth or happiness on that path. Blinding oneself to aspects of reality only works until something shatters the illusion, and when that happens, all the pain that was denied and restrained comes flooding in and risks overwhelming the person in the midst of the experience. I am a cynic to the extent that I think most people don’t want real growth, but I’m an idealist in the sense that I think we can do better, and that more people would do better if the people taking center stage actually gave a damn about substance.
Jul 31, 2012 @ 15:59:33
Go cado.. 🙄 😀 lol 😛
“If it is possible for thoughts to reliably and almost magically alter the material world, then it requires a much greater level of discipline than I currently possess”
Yes, it is a discipline.. 🙂
“I know there’s no discussion to be had with you.”
It is what you believe it to be.. but weirdly.. here you ARE having a discussion with me.. 😛
You really have very similar “my mind is made up” pattern that lettersquash demonstrates.. 😛
Cado, I think you probably like most people really mis-understand me.. to really understand me.. you need only look at my posting history on “stevepavlina.com” in the early days of being on that site.. I had just watched the secret and began looking at the abraham-hicks book “the law of attraction”
As I continued to study and gain knowledge about this thing.. I experimented with and saw working in my reality.. and I only had 1 REAL question.. why does it work? And how does it work?
See I didn’t ask that many skeptical questions.. I was more interested in what the EFFECT could do for me.. (aka what could I create) so here I am 6 years later still in school, still LEARNING how to create my reality.. never gave up, never surrendered.. never went the “lettersquash” way of this is all bullshit and liars…
And honestly, if we’re going to give credit where credit is do.. if this was a race.. I’m the tortoise and most of you are the hares.. 😀 😛 (wait strike that.. and reverse it! 🙂 – willy wonka)
Unlike your last post which I didn’t read to much into and didn’t want to reply.. I have taken it up a notch this time 🙂
Aug 01, 2012 @ 22:06:29
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
I think that’s the Golden Rule of (dare I say) personal development. Everything else is commentary.
Sep 22, 2012 @ 14:17:46
>Some people seemed to think I reacted negatively because I felt hurt or betrayed that these people were sneaking off to another forum. Seriously, I could care less about that.
>Seriously, I could care less about that.
>I could care less
Oh Steve, making Freudian slips again?
Sep 27, 2012 @ 18:01:10
That reminds me: another thing that bothers me about a lot of what I’ve seen in personal development is this “I can’t be bothered by other people” attitude. I don’t think realizing our own potential means not caring about the effects our actions may have on others!
May 22, 2013 @ 16:40:56
He seemed very focused on entitlement issues didnt he.
It was his website and he was perfectly ‘entitled’ to close it- personally I thought he sounded rather condescending and narcissistic also he demeaned the forum members in his very long explanation.
Jun 16, 2013 @ 11:27:07
P.S. Any chance you can do something about the silly text wrap that makes deep replies go vertically down the right hand side of the page a word per line, stevepavlinalies? Cheers.
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