Sweat Lodge fraud

The sweat lodge ordeal was in the news again, this time a survivor told her story. What caught my eye right away was that people paid $9,000 or more for this retreat. Then upon reading further, I found that for this sizable sum, the people fasted for five days, were deprived of sleep and subjected to mind altering breathing exercises, all that before they were herded into a sweat lodge that made many ill and killed two.

A spokesman for the character who ran this perverse party said that many people had “amazing experiences,” which is code for hallucinations. I might suggest any easier way to have these experiences; go pick some magic mushrooms. You can probably pick up a field guide to these for around 20 bucks, saving $8,980. But then again, you wouldn’t get to say you were at a “Spiritual Warrior” event.

What exactly does “spiritual” mean? I hate to even open that can of worms. You could probably ask a hundred people and get 99 different answers, some of them in the twilight zone of outer “new age.” One can claim to see spirits, as in ghosts. People can be in good spirits, have spirited conversations, drink distilled spirits or even believe that there is some nebulous thing within a person that is eternal and not part of the body, as in a soul.

I guess these people were spiritual seekers with money to burn, and to paraphrase P.T. Barnum, there’s a seeker born every minute. So, as much as I would like to see the organizer of the retreat, James Arthur Ray, thrown in prison, I have to put much of the blame on the people who paid for the right to be tired, hungry, disoriented and physically ill. When people are that credulous, how tempting it is to offer them some mystical song and dance and laugh all the way to the bank.

And if anyone still thinks all this “Spiritual Warrior” stuff makes sense, I have an actual recording of a choir of angels that will cause you to transcend your mundane daily lives. Just send me a check.