Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Good vibrations

My stance as a skeptic sometimes makes me something of a magnet for wackos.  There are the earnest types who are driven nuts by the fact that I scoff at their favorite brand of nonsense (homeopathy, ghosts, and conspiracy theories seem to be favorites).  And then there are the ones who find my blog because Google keyword searches seem to pick up on words like "psychic" and "haunting" and miss important words like "ridiculous" and "bullshit."

As an example of the latter, my blog was linked yesterday by Christie Marie Sheldon, who has a website called "Love or Above."  With some trepidation I will include a link to her site (here), but for those of you who would prefer not to look at it and thereby murder scores of valuable brain cells, I will include a summary of its main points.

The headline says, "Are your vibrations helping or hurting you?"  This is followed up by: "Your personal vibration frequency could be the ONE thing holding you back from abundance,  happiness, and success.  Discover how to raise it, so you can finally start living from the vibration of Love or Above."

Allow me to interject that in the interest of keeping this PG-13 rated, I will consider the obvious joke about "Personal Love Vibrations" to be already made, and we will move on.

Christie's website then goes on to say, "Ever notice how some uncannily lucky people can almost effortlessly attract good things into their lives?"  These people, she claims, are leaders, have opportunities at work, good relationships, and a healthy attitude toward money.  Myself, I just figured that people like this were smart and well-adjusted, but no:  it's because they have a personal energy vibration score, not to mention probably a credit rating, of over 700.

All emotions, Christie explains, vibrate at a particular frequency.  Shame, for example, vibrates at a frequency of 20.  (At this point, I was shouting at the computer screen, "20 what?  Hertz?  Megahertz?  Pounds per square inch?  Fluid ounces?  Fathoms per decade?  Where are the damn units?"  This caused my border collie, Doolin, who has the impression that she is personally responsible for the entire household, to slink around looking highly ashamed herself, and presumably "vibrating at a frequency of 20.")  Apathy vibrates at 50, Desire at 125, Anger at 150.  Then we move on to more positive emotions; Willingness is 310, Acceptance is 350, and so on.  She says, if you vibrate at 1000, you are an "Enlightened Master."  I guess that at that point, you're vibrating as fast as you possibly could.  Any faster and you might just vanish in a flash of Psychic Aura Energy, or something.

She goes on to explain that the vibrational energy of the Earth, at the moment, registers at 207 on her Cosmic Vibration-o-Meter.  This is somewhere between "Courage" and "Neutrality."  So, basically, most people average out at somewhere between "Yes, I can!" and "Meh."  Which seems about right, frankly.  But then she says that we should all be vibrating at 500 or above, because 500 is the frequency of "Vibrations of Love." 

As proof of how personal love vibrations work, she presents two experiments done by people we should automatically believe because they have "Dr." in front of their names.  Dr. William Braud, of the "Mind-Science Foundation" in San Antonio, Texas, found that he could extend the life spans of red blood cells by having the owners of these red blood cells "think positive thoughts about them."  And Dr. Masaru Emoto did an experiment in which he sent a variety of positive or negative emotional thoughts into glasses of water, and then froze the water, and he found that the happy water made pretty, symmetrical crystals, and the unhappy water made disorganized, ugly crystals.  Christie then asks us a poignant question:  since our body is full of red blood cells and water, what kind of damage could we be doing to ourselves with negative thoughts?  The implications are staggering.  I don't know about you, but if I ever froze to death, I would definitely want the water in my body to form attractive-looking crystals.  Think of the humiliation if at my funeral, my friends and family said, "I guess it's just as well he died.  Did you see those butt-ugly ice crystals?  He must have been vibrating at 180 or lower."

She ends, of course, with a sales pitch for her program, the "Love or Above Energetic Breakthrough Kit."  To show how awesome it is, she displays a photograph of herself at an event that I swear I am not making up:  The Awesomeness Fest 2010.  There are further details, including descriptions of a technique called "Space Cleansing," but at that point my remaining brain cells were crying for mercy so I had to stop looking at the website.

I suppose it's an occupational hazard, being a skeptic, that people want to convince you.  After all, the word "skeptic" implies that there's a chance you might be swayed.  This is, in fact, true; but the difficulty, of course, is that what sways a skeptic is empirical evidence, or failing that, at least a logical argument.  When you have neither, all you have is a severe case of Doubt, which vibrates at a frequency of around 110.

6 comments:

  1. Some of the skeptics come at this stuff prima facie to post mortem and everywhere in between with so skewered a view that I wind up being skeptical about the skeptics. Still, great piece here...and that's from someone who sort of buys into some measure of Christie's "stuff". She needs to clean up her act though. Dr. Braud is likely legit but "Dr." (Apparently he has a business degree and a license to fleece but I've found nothing more) Emoto is anything but. First rate fraud (He admits that his sample water crystals were not selected under scientifically even close to so much as even slightly rigorous methodology. Why would he? Might upset his energetically charged water sales that he sells worldwide at 35 bucks for eight ounces. Cherry picked his samples out of hundreds of possibilities and only picked those which matched his pre conceived posits. Pretty good "science", eh?) and Emoto is shameless to boot. Nonetheless, I'd recommend keeping a bit more of an open mind on certain items about which you seem to so scoff. There really is some wheat in that chaff.

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  2. Funny review.

    I find that I am looking to surround myself with positive energy and so I've been exploring a lot of this Law of Attraction stuff online. In this case, however, my mind is screaming buyer beware!

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  3. The review lacks information about the content or knowledge of the author. We learn everything as a child and we do it to gain love and acceptance from those who care for us. Hence Love. We are not born with fear and anger, those are learned emotions. According to growth an developmental averages we learn that around 3 years old. We learn emotions the same way that you learn to speak, you learn to read, you learn urinating in a toilet is acceptable behavior. Often, things happen that cause a negative reaction that becomes a learned emotional experience. A 3 year old can not discern the difference between fantasy and reality so for example, we learn a fear of change from Mom and Dad at 0-10; that could be from something as simple as having to move because of a war, fear of impending doom because of the threat of war, the death of a loved one or we could have a fear because we were in the room while our parents were watching a scary movie that had distorted faces and images. Repeated similar patterns can turn that fear into reactive anger and resentment. Today, material like this makes aware people realize that fear is not real because you are reading this and obviously survived. It is not necessary to remember that fear to protect yourself from movies or moving or trying something new. To a 3 year old a horror movie can cause unrealistic fears just from faces that are not symmetric; cause night terrors and fears of monsters under the bed and later it causes anxiety disorders because it was not resolved. Fear of moving can cause us to have an unrealistic fear of trying something new and different, fear of change. I understand this because I completed the LOA program. I found Christie Marie on YouTube, I went to her site and downloaded the free Heart Center Meditation, I signed up for a free masterclass. During the masterclass they offered the program for 1/2 off. I also have the free toolkit download. I did this years ago and was so moved by her that I sought out her intuitive life coach training program so I could learn to do what she does from her because it totally made sense. If you remove all of the negative emotion from any story all that is left is a story that lacks a reaction. You can re-train yourself love and release fears. I don't even expect anyone to believe in a higher power, but I guarantee you have light on your computer or smart phone reading this.

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  4. Individuals such as Christie are merely hucksters, I mean "Unlimited Abundance" is just a modified version of "the Law of Attraction". They dupe their audience into thinking they have some kind of special knowledge when it's really just common sense dressed up with mystical mumbo jumbo.


    She could have made the same point (more truthfully) that a change in your thinking leads to a change in attitude, and a change in attitude can lead to a change in behavior. But what these shysters won't tell their audience is that it still requires hard work, dedication and perseverance through failure to attain success (more or less, depending on how one views "success" in the first place). You can think positive thoughts 'till you're blue in the face, but nothing will change unless you take ACTION, not just wallow around in day dreams.

    As if our thoughts have any effect on sub-atomic particles lol give me a break

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  5. Individuals such as Christie are merely hucksters, I mean "Unlimited Abundance" is just a modified version of "the Law of Attraction". They dupe their audience into thinking they have some kind of special knowledge when it's really just common sense dressed up with mystical mumbo jumbo.


    She could have made the same point (more truthfully) that a change in your thinking leads to a change in attitude, and a change in attitude can lead to a change in behavior. But what these shysters won't tell their audience is that it still requires hard work, dedication and perseverance through failure to attain success (more or less, depending on how one views "success" in the first place). You can think positive thoughts 'till you're blue in the face, but nothing will change unless you take ACTION, not just wallow around in day dreams.

    As if our thoughts have any effect on sub-atomic particles lol give me a break

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  6. Individuals such as Christie are merely hucksters and do nothing but either sell people common sense dressed up in mystical sounding mumbo-jumbo (as is the case with Christie) or outright bullshit. "Abundance Unlimited" is just a modified version of the "Law of Attraction", yet it's presented as if it's something new lol

    She could've got her point across just the same (and more truthfull) by saying that a change in thinking can lead to a change in attitude and a change in attitude can lead to a change in behavior - and one's behavior is what determines how one lives their life. Pretty straight forward and obvious, but by obfuscating this simple concept in psuedo-science and mystical nonsense she (and other like her) can dupe the audience into thinking they have some sort of special knowledge so they'll buy their crap.

    As for those who claim it changed their life, I guarantee the only effect this shit has had on a person is that of the placebo.

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