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Thread: Can meditation be dangerous (demons)?!

  1. #106
    Quote Originally Posted by dwid
    It makes perfect sense. Yeah, medicine still has a long way to go in this area. Sounds like your uncle has developed a good perspective on his situation.
    Well, it worked for a while. He's still completely nutso but he keeps his nutso to himself, and doesn't cause people any problems. The only problem is the last couple of years his marijuana addiction turned into a meth addiction, and his health is really suffering.

    But actually, a few things he was correct about, such as the secret tunnels underneath his town (I found out from the cops that they do exist -- they were built during the time Mexico ran California), and a few other things I won't go into that involve national security.

    So I'm not saying totally discount the paranoid schizophrenics, it's just when their behavior turns to problems that they cross the line.

  2. #107
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    Quote Originally Posted by dwid
    That is not dead which can eternal lie
    And with strange aeons, even death may die


    Awesome. I love H.P. Lovecraft. I have a caricature of him tattooed on my leg.

    Shweeeeet.


    I have the Sigil for Cthulhu from that paperback "Necronomicon" that came out years ago tattooed on my left shoulder.

    I went through a major cthulhu phase for awhile, drawings sculptures and such

    this one for instance



    Scott-

    Perhaps we should start a new thread...


    Concerning your take on benefit/harm, the natural extension of this is that all morality and moral culpability is devoid of true meaning. It can only be defined within a given frame of reference, and this is given to constant change.

    This extends to the idea that there can be no "wrong-doing". Anything which IS, is SUPPOSED to be, and the universe cannot be "wrong".

    This would tend to eliminate any real sense of what is right and wrong, good and evil. everything simply is, and that which is must be considered "good" and "right".

    The existence of a thing is its own proof of correctness.

    we cannot blame a serial killer for he has done no wrong, and in the great scheme of things is almost certainly helping us.






    back to the topic of this thread...

    replace the word demon with the word angel in the original post and see how you react.



    And for the Ergot fungus, it is well known that for thousands of years Shaman have used hallucinagens to enter the "spirit world"

    who is to say that these substances do not allow the user to percieve other realities every bit as real as ours, but normally inaccessible?

    and what about the OBE/NDE phenomena? would you consider these another form of acute psychosis or would you give them more credibility?
    Last edited by Crushing Fist; 05-15-2006 at 04:24 PM.
    Words!


    Just words!


  3. #108
    Quote Originally Posted by Crushing Fist
    And for the Ergot fungus, it is well known that for thousands of years Shaman have used hallucinagens to enter the "spirit world"

    who is to say that these substances do not allow the user to percieve other realities every but as real as ours, but normally inaccessible?

    and what about the OBE/NDE phenomena? would you consider these another form of acute psychosis or would you give them more credibility?
    IMHO hallucinogens do not allow people to perceive other realities. Hallucinogens seem to mess with people's minds, and harm their minds. It seems like experienced while on people are on drugs are figments of people's imaginations.

    What do I base this on? The fact that most of my friends who did hallucinogens such as LCD, shrooms, etc., either hallucinated things that weren't there, or got very paranoid For example, one friend was always hallucinating ants, another hallucinated that he was somehow all powerful (this while he was running around the room messing it up), another friend got very scared and thought everyone was out to get him, etc.

    The fact that a lot of people I met who did these drugs were messed up, sometimes permanently.

    BUT, to be fair, I never took peyote or did the peyote ritual with the Native American Church, so I really don't know a thing about what they do.

  4. #109
    Quote Originally Posted by Crushing Fist
    And for the Ergot fungus, it is well known that for thousands of years Shaman have used hallucinagens to enter the "spirit world"

    who is to say that these substances do not allow the user to percieve other realities every but as real as ours, but normally inaccessible?

    and what about the OBE/NDE phenomena? would you consider these another form of acute psychosis or would you give them more credibility?
    IMHO hallucinogens do not allow people to perceive other realities. Hallucinogens seem to mess with people's minds, and harm their minds. It seems like what is experienced while people are on drugs are figments of people's imaginations.

    What do I base this on? The fact that most of my friends who did hallucinogens such as LCD, shrooms, etc., either hallucinated things that weren't there, or got very paranoid For example, one friend was always hallucinating ants, another hallucinated that he was somehow all powerful (this while he was running around the room messing it up), another friend got very scared and thought everyone was out to get him, etc.

    The fact that a lot of people I met who did these drugs were messed up, sometimes permanently.

    BUT, to be fair, I never took peyote or did the peyote ritual with the Native American Church, so I really don't know a thing about what they do.

  5. #110
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crushing Fist
    And for the Ergot fungus, it is well known that for thousands of years Shaman have used hallucinagens to enter the "spirit world"

    who is to say that these substances do not allow the user to percieve other realities every bit as real as ours, but normally inaccessible?

    and what about the OBE/NDE phenomena? would you consider these another form of acute psychosis or would you give them more credibility?
    Well, Ergot is a different animal in this sense, as I don't know of any cases of it being consumed intentionally, and it is highly toxic. Yes, it has properties similar to LSD, so you get to hallucinate as you are dying or nearly dying.

    As far as hallucinogens, having had a lot of experience in this arena when I was younger, my perspective is that they generate a lot of chaos in the brain as far as neuronal excitation and neurochemical release. The human brain is a pattern seeking machine, so we naturally try to make some sense of this chaos and sometimes end up finding some deep spiritual significance in it all. It is, after all, an experience completely outside the way we normally process information, and maybe through it people sometimes find something that has significance to other people as well. However, for the most part, in my experience, you end up with, at best, sort of stoner philosophy, whose significance fades with the buzz, and people who fly too close to the sun too often end up paying a pretty big price, because, while there may be no permanent structural damage to the brain, the mind can be altered pretty substantially.

    Perhaps with the kind of ritual significance and preparation attached to the act, people are better prepared to integrate the experience into a meaningful worldview. I don't know, I can't speak for how cultures operate who use hallucinogens ritually.

    From my perspective now, while I don't regret any of the stuff I got into in my youth, I don't really feel it moved me along on my path - more likely it was just a pleasant distraction along the way. Career-wise, it's helpful because it's amazing how many of the people who work with psychiatric patients (a population with a high rate of substance abuse) have at best a limited theoretical knowledge of the effects of different substances on the user. A little practical experience can go a long way into having some insight into what people are going through.
    The cinnabun palm is deadly, especially when combined with the tomato kick. - TenTigers

  6. #111

    Thumbs up Thanks for the fun Crushing Fist!!

    Holy Moley!! You skip a day and the world passes you by!

    I just dropped by to say i'll have to bow out of our conversation for now Crushing Fist. Thank you for an interesting conversation, but i have some other matters to attend to for now. Perhaps we may continue on another occasion.

  7. #112
    Quote Originally Posted by bel
    Welcome.
    I know I am new on this forum but PLEASE take my post seriously. I have some unpleasant experiences with deep meditation in kung-fu. I don't want to write on public too much but I wonder if any of you have met with demons during meditation? If you do have similar experiences please contact me or give reasonable answer.

    Lechu
    You never wan't to leave your mind totaly free from thought. If you do a demon can enter.

  8. #113
    Well, dw3041, you can accuse us of not wanting to help, but why would we post that somebody should possibly see a shrink if we didn't want to help?

    Anyway, I agree with you on the modern medicine thing.

    Why?

    Because I've visted the old folks home, and found where the old people wind up. I had no idea.

    I went there to visit a relative, and walked in, and it was like, "Hey, I know you. And you. And you. And you." The librarian, the butcher, the accountant, the lawyer, the teacher, etc. It seemed like all the old people in my town were in there.

    And they were all disabled to a certain extent. The pattern is this. You get some illness, you take some drug, it causes a side effect, so you take another one, that causes a side effect.

    Pretty soon you're really sick and require surgery. The surgery makes it harder for you to get around. You need another surgery.

    Pretty soon you're either in a wheelchair, or you're in a bed with tubes sticking out of you. Sure, they live to be 80+, but it's not fun.

    Not everybody has it this bad, but a lot of people do.

    But at least that's later, not earlier when your uncle is shooting up the neighborhood, yelling about CIA agents that aren't really there.

  9. #114
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    Quote Originally Posted by dw3041
    I haven't ever met anyone who has been helped by pharmaceuticals without severe side effects. Alot of these side effects are long term, something that the pharmaceutical industry doesn't really look at all too often. It's just too easy for them to shirk the blame instead.

    How many reputable independent medical studies can you cite to back up your assertion that the pharmaceutical industry "doesn't look at [long term severe side effects] all too often?" Sure, there are some major examples of litigation involving phen phen and viox, but they are a small minority and the exception. How many lives are saved because of the anti-biotics that are produced. How many cancer patients can go a day without puking their guts up because of medication such as Zofran? How many people live longer because of statins? You are citing anecdotes that can't be easily verified or disproved. People are cured from cancer everyday. To cite the Ramones, I believe in miracles.

    Now, that's not to say that I disagree with all of your post. I don't think western medicine has all the answers. I do think that $$ drives many things in this world too, but to say that drugs are worthless is stupid. All herbal cures are drugs. They can have side effects like drugs do. And yes, some pharm companies own OTC and herbal branches, but its a bit too Oliver Stone to say they do so just to create mistrust. They do so to make money. There's nothing wrong with that if its done responsibly.
    Quote Originally Posted by Oso View Post
    AND, yea, a good bit of it is about whether you can fight with what you know...kinda all of it is about that.

  10. #115
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    Quote Originally Posted by dw3041
    I haven't ever met anyone who has been helped by pharmaceuticals without severe side effects. Alot of these side effects are long term, something that the pharmaceutical industry doesn't really look at all too often. It's just too easy for them to shirk the blame instead.

    Although there are many western doctors that mean well, western medicine is still based on a system that doesn't have your best interest in mind. I don't think that you realise just how corrupt this system is when you get closer to the top. I know of many doctors who have been in legal trouble, even lost their licenses, for using natural remedies to cure people of diseases that western medicine deems incurable. I know people who have cured themselves of cancer naturally using methods that are not legal here in the US.(I wonder why they are not legal...hmmm) I also know someone who makes a product that has cured a number of "incurable" diseases and health problems including AIDS. He was offered money by Merk to stop producing his product but fortunately he turned them down. My girfriend's doctor from ND has had his license revoked and even gotten death threats from other western doctors for using natural means to cure people of cancer. One doctor that I know personally has many friends who have been threatened, imprisoned, killed and even tortured for getting people well. His father met the president of one of the major cancer research programs at the time and when he asked the guy when they would have a cure for cancer, he laughed and said that there would never be one until something more lucrative came along, and this was back in the fifties. The corruption goes back a ways. Before my doctor started to practice natural medicine he had cancer so he went to a doctor that he knew in Mexico to have it cured and he ran into many other western doctors that were also getting cured of cancer; the same doctors that give people chemo therapy and radiation which has awful side effects and in many cases only speeds the growth of cancer. These are doctors that know better, but still harm people to get a pay check. Again, most doctors mean well, but the system itself is still corrupt and should not be supported. And I don't want to hear about people you know who have been saved by western medicine because these people either have or will have negative side effects that could have been avoided (I am talking about the treating of diseases, not stuff like getting stitches). I've heard it all before and will no longer answer to any naysayers to this corruption. I will admit that alot of the natural medicine out there is a load of BS, but I also know that the big medical and pharmaceutical companies run many of the companies that comes up with some of these "natural" cures just for the sake of causing mistrust.

    I have very good reasons for believing the things that I do and I will not put up with being labeled as just someone who likes to argue and doesn't know what they are saying. I have surely done more nonbiased research on the things that I know then you have. So just go ahead and listen to everything that comes out of the mouths of the people that call themselves proffessionals just because they studied under other people who also call themselves proffessionals, and completely deny any possibility of ulterior motives among the elite of these so called proffessionals even though they can easily make millions of dollars off of a few simple lies. The fact is that $ controls everything, and until you admit it, you will never know the truth.

    It's very obvious that too many people on here just want to argue and have no desire or ability to reason and not enough consideration for the original poster of this thread to post anything that is of any help, so I will no longer waste my time posting on, or even reading this thread.
    You may have all the evidence in the world supporting your assertions, but you have offered nothing here to suggest that you have any evidence at all. And you can believe what you want to believe about my unquestioning acceptance of what I'm told or whatever, but I have been studying psychology and psychiatric medicine in one facet or another for over a decade. I have conducted research and have personally known and worked with a good many researchers in the social sciences as well as directly working in inpatient psychiatric care. My knowledge comes from a wide variety of sources, and I don't uncritically accept anything I read or hear. I know enough about statistics and research methodology to be a critical consumer.

    I can see that you mean well, but you've offered nothing but conjecture, often clearly based on a naive view of research and medicine. You allege that research is inherently corrupt because of the influence of corporate interests, as though this is some kind of magic wand that allows you to completely discredit legitimate science without actually spending any time studying it.

    Anyway, we are basically at an impasse. You have your biases and assumptions based on what is at best a loose collection of anecdotal evidence. Until you build something a bit more convincing, you basically have nothing more to say on this topic. Of course, you won't read this, so I guess I'm pretty much talking to myself here.
    Last edited by dwid; 05-17-2006 at 04:42 PM.
    The cinnabun palm is deadly, especially when combined with the tomato kick. - TenTigers

  11. #116
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    ttt42022


    Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images
    CULTURE & CRITICISM
    These Women Say Young Living Essential Oils Has Been Taken Over By Satan. Yes, Really.
    “Am I the only Christian woman who is not surprised one bit that an essential oil company would come out as satanic?”

    Stephanie McNeal
    BuzzFeed News Reporter
    Posted on February 17, 2022, at 11:41 a.m. ET

    In August 2021, influencer Madison Vining made a big announcement on Instagram. After becoming one of the top sellers for the multilevel marketing essential oils company Young Living, she was quitting.

    To her more than 250,000 followers on Instagram and her Young Living team, known as the “Happy Oilers,” the news came as a huge shock. Young Living is one of two of the major essential oils companies in the US, the New Yorker reported in 2017, along with its main rival DoTerra (both claim to be the largest oils company in the world, according to the magazine). Both reportedly reach $1 billion in sales annually and serve millions of customers. Vining, who had worked for Young Living for more than eight years, had reached “Royal Crown Diamond” status; sellers with that status make, on average, $1,645,692 annually or $137,000 a month, according to the company.

    People online began to speculate as to why Vining and her husband, Tyler, would leave so much money on the table to start from scratch. When, a few days later, the Vinings announced that they were joining a new wellness-focused MLM, Modere, which is best known for its collagen supplements, rumors swirled that the couple had gotten a huge payout or some other incentive to leave.

    For months Vining had kept her reasons for leaving Young Living opaque. But recently, she finally began to spill the tea on social media. One of the reasons the Vinings gave for leaving Young Living? Satan and his demons.

    Yes, the prince of darkness. Vining is just one former top Young Living retailer who this month has either insinuated or flat-out said that they left the company after feeling, as devout Christians, that demonic forces were spreading “darkness” among Young Living members.

    One former seller, Melissa Truitt, went as far as labeling the company a “cult” in an Instagram story highlight she posted to her account last week and later deleted. Truitt led the charge on the oily “satanic panic” by posting her series of Instagram stories last week accusing the company of spreading “demonic” propaganda through a New Age self-help book it sent to its members earlier this year. She urged Christians still working for Young Living to flee or risk their souls.

    “This is so much bigger than money, this is so much bigger than day-to-day life, this is eternal significance,” Truitt said in an emotional Instagram story.

    Truitt did not return a request for comment on this story. Vining did not either, and shortly after I reached out, she blocked me on Instagram.

    In response to the claims, Young Living said it “did not publish and does not endorse this book in any way.” In a statement, the company said that the book’s co-author, Marcella Vonn Harting, who is a top seller at the company, sent the book to “her own list without the company’s knowledge or consent.” The company denied providing Vonn Harting with anyone’s contact information. (Vonn Harting did not return a request for comment).

    “We support a culture of inclusion that we extend to our employees, customers, and brand partners world-wide,” the statement read. “We appreciate and celebrate our members and their diversity of background and belief, and are dedicated to ensuring our brand partners follow our policies and procedures and code of ethics.”

    The influencers and former Young Living retailers’ abrupt declarations that the company is satanic are odd to say the least, especially as so many of them, like Vining, have jumped ship to Modere over the past several months, before even receiving the book. Truitt, who had reached the second-highest “Diamond” status, also left Young Living five months ago to join Modere. And other big Young Living sellers slash influencers, like Liz Joy of Pure Joy Home and Monique McLean, abruptly announced they were switching to Modere recently as well.

    In fact, so many prominent top Young Living sellers have been leaving that last August Young Living sued some of them, including the Vinings and McLean and her husband, for breach of contract. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Utah in August 2021, was dismissed that December at the request of both sides. Still, it provides valuable insight into the breakup of the prominent Instagram essential oil sellers and the company. In the complaint, Young Living accused the McLeans and the Vinings of working to cut a deal with Modere to “raid” Young Living’s business. (McLean did not return a request for comment. Modere also did not return a request for comment.)

    “I feel a lot of clarity breaking my silence for things that matter in eternity."
    “The named defendants in this case are former, extremely successful Young Living distributors who have meticulously executed a plan to leave Young Living, join a competing business venture, and take as many Young Living distributors and customers with them as possible,” the lawsuit’s complaint read. Young Living declined to comment on the lawsuit.

    But now, the influencers are saying that money or alleged backdoor schemes had nothing to do with their decision to leave. Vining wrote on Instagram that the book Truitt denounced was the “tip of the iceberg on this issue,” and she feels better after “denouncing this spiritual darkness” to her followers.

    “I feel a lot of clarity breaking my silence for things that matter in eternity,” she wrote.

    The denouncement of Young Living as demonic is especially intriguing because so many of its retailers, Vining included, have spent the past several years blending together the principles of alternative wellness and medicine the company espouses with their evangelical Christian beliefs, and to great success.

    Young Living was founded in 1993 by D. Gary Young, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who successfully blended his own devout faith with a lifelong passion for alternative remedies.

    In a newsletter to Young Living members after her husband’s death in 2018, Gary’s wife, Mary, wrote that her husband’s desire to spread the gospel of essential oils was closely tied to his faith, writing, “God was his foundation.”

    “He founded the essential oil movement against tremendous opposition and slander, but he never stopped in his desire to serve God’s children,” Young wrote. For many years, alternative remedies like essential oils were stereotyped to be the purview of hippie-dippie rich people, but, as Rachel Monroe wrote in the New Yorker in 2017, essential oils have also caught on more broadly among women all over the US.

    “Wellness is often dismissed as frivolity, another way for wealthy white women to spend money and obsess about their bodies,” she wrote. “But you’re just as likely to find essential oils in a small-town drugstore in the Midwest as in an organic market in L.A.”

    Over the past decade or so, many of the devotees who made it big in Young Living shared similarities with Vining. They were young wives and mothers in the heartland who were devoted evangelical Christians, and they also seemed to have a suspicion of mainstream medicine.

    According to Vining, once she stopped buying mainstream medicinal and home products and dove into essential oils, her life changed dramatically. In 2017, she wrote about how her family had decided to start a “wellness journey” three years before after learning about “the dangers lurking in our home that were making us sick.”

    “There are ingredients in everyday things like baby lotion, dish soap, dryer sheets… all linked to cancer, infertility, and disease. We just didn’t know,” she wrote. “We slowly but surely took a trash bag through our home and began to read labels. Into the trash bag went candles, over the counter drugs, shampoo — anything that was setting us or our kiddos up for failure with our health.”

    Vining never specified what ingredients exactly were making her family sick but claimed that once she threw out the products she saw a huge difference. And once she found Young Living and began using oils, Vining claimed, her family no longer needed to rely on “toxic” Western medicine.

    “We use essential oils for everything in our home, from seasonal irritations outdoors, to first aid type of things, to helping regulate hormones and emotions and all that good stuff, and of course restful sleep!” she wrote. “They’ve blessed our family so so much.”

    As the Vinings’ platform grew (in 2017, Vining wrote she had 58,000 people under her in the business), the couple used the proceeds from their essential oil business to spread the gospel of Jesus, effectively combining the two parts of her life.
    continued next post
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  12. #117
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    Continued from previous post

    “Our prayer has always been that we would use our influence to point everything back to The One who made a way (Jesus!)."
    “Our prayer has always been that we would use our influence to point everything back to The One who made a way (Jesus!),” Vining wrote. “We know that this money and this opportunity and this voice have not been given to us because of anything WE have done, and they are not ours.”

    In 2017, Vining and another Young Living seller made a goal to get Young Living oils into a school in Uganda that was founded by an American evangelical Christian missionary. The Vinings and their partners were eventually able to raise enough funds to get oils and diffusers into every dorm room and classroom at the school — in order to give the students “appropriate wellness supplies to prevent icky diseases and unwellness,” Vining wrote. She felt that this plan was a calling from God.

    “It’s about more than oils, you guys,” Vining wrote. “It’s ALWAYS been about so much more than oils. It’s about ‘wellness, purpose, and abundance’ (YL’s slogan) and it’s about using ANY platform we are given, to glorify the King.”

    Vining’s essential oil influence also led to a career on social media, where she became a prominent Young Living influencer. As her prominence within the “oiler community” grew, so did her online presence, and she went from having 56,000 Instagram followers in September 2018 to more than 200,000 when she quit the company in August 2021.

    Many other Young Living sellers also found success on social media, where they were able to share their devout faith and their enviable lifestyles while also recruiting new downlines, or Young Living retailers who report to them. McLean, the former Royal Crown Diamond who was sued by Young Living along with the Vinings last year, grew her platform to more than 29,000 Instagram followers and launched a book and video series called 24 Days of Prayer for Your Business. In the series, McLean led followers virtually on a spiritual devotional aimed at centering their faith in their business ventures, Young Living or otherwise. Truitt, who has more than 43,000 Instagram followers, is also open about her Christian faith, often discussing her religion along with her business ventures and devotion to health, wellness, and fitness.

    It is because these oil peddlers connected their spirituality so closely with their careers that their sudden insistence that the company is now somehow anti-Christian has been so jarring. But according to the oilers, after years of success in Young Living they had begun to feel a darkness creep into the company and that’s what led them to leave.

    Last week, Truitt kicked off the public drama when she posted a series of Instagram stories about issues she had had with Young Living. According to Truitt, after seven good years of selling Young Living and reaching the second-highest Diamond status, she and her husband began to feel like the company was “changing,” and not for the better. Truitt didn’t specify what these changes were, saying they “couldn’t really pinpoint it,” but “we heard things that didn’t really agree with our spirit.” After praying about it, they decided to resign from Young Living at the end of 2021.

    “We knew that the Lord was calling us out of that,” she said.

    Truitt said that, despite having resigned last fall, she received a “demonic” book in the mail earlier this month that she thought was sent from Young Living. She said the company had sent it to all its Diamond-level sellers and claimed that Mary Young, the wife of the late founder, had encouraged the leaders to read the book and pass it along to their downlines. The book, titled My Word Made Flesh, is cowritten by a self-help guru named Robert Tennyson Stevens, who runs a company called Mastery Systems (Stevens did not return a request for comment). Stevens describes himself on his website as a “masterful facilitator of individuals and organizations that choose to transform their lives into healthy, creative, loving and fulfilling experiences.” Stevens wrote the book with Vonn Harting, a Young Living Royal Crown Diamond who moonlights as a motivational speaker, and Young wrote the foreword.

    The spokesperson for Young Living said Young’s choice to contribute to the book was separate from her role at the company.

    “Mary Young’s choice to write a foreword stemmed from her own belief about the use of language to promote positive outcomes and her desire to support a friend,” they said. “She wrote her foreword prior to much of the book even being written based on the authors’ intent to teach people how to use positive language to help bring about change in their lives.”

    I attempted to get a copy of My Word Made Flesh to see what it actually contained, but after placing an order for the $79 book on Mastery Systems’ website, my order was canceled and refunded with no explanation. My Word Made Flesh has now been scrubbed from the website.

    According to Truitt, when she received the book and flipped through it, she was horrified.

    “This book is one of the most darkest and demonic books I’ve ever had in my house,” she said. “I cannot wait to get rid of it but I had to share.”

    In Truitt’s video, she reads from a book that she says is My Word Made Flesh. The “demonic” elements of the book, Truitt claimed, include encouraging people to do basically a “seance with oils” and telling them to repeat “I am the resurrection and the life of my lineage.” In the Bible, Jesus calls himself “the way, the truth and the life,” and says “no one comes to the Father [God] except through me.” To Christians like Truitt, she explained, the book’s phrasing is very offensive as it seems to imply you are supplanting Jesus’s spot.

    “This book is one of the most darkest and demonic books I’ve ever had in my house."
    “There’s nothing more false than that,” she says in her Instagram story. “Then taking Jesus out of it and putting yourself in there.”

    Truitt warned “believers” who were still in Young Living that if they did what the company asked and brought the book into their household, “it will completely ruin you.”

    “Leaders of Young Living, you received this book, and so if you are hiding this book from your teams you are condoning this evil,” she said. “And if you promote it, you need a serious heart check.”

    “This is so much bigger than money, this is so much bigger than day-to-day life, this is eternal significance,” she said. “And you have to stand up and rise up and run from this.”

    Vining soon posted on her Instagram stories in support of Truitt, saying that she was proud of Truitt for sharing “the truth.”

    “Believers be discerning,” she wrote. “The enemy [Satan] prowls like a lion, and he can look (and smell) really good… this isn’t about a book. Though that book alone would have been a deal breaker for me… this is the tip of the iceberg on this issue.” Vining added she was praying for clarity to speak out more about her experience with Young Living but knew she had to denounce this “spiritual darkness.”

    The reaction from Truitt’s community to her denouncement of Young Living was overwhelmingly supportive. Commenters praised her “braveness” and for speaking out against “evil.” One woman wrote she had considered signing up for Young Living but would not after seeing Truitt’s stories. People also slammed Young Living on social media after Truitt spoke out, saying they were blending “oils and the occult.”

    “Am I the only Christian woman who is not surprised one bit that an essential oil company would come out as satanic?” wrote one.

    Other Instagram accounts, like Christian podcast host Blake Guichet from @TheGirlNamedBlake, have been posting about how the company is “anti-Biblical.” Guichet had previously posted “deep dives” into the supposed darkness in Young Living and said she wasn’t surprised to see Truitt’s stories.

    “I knew Young Living was into some dark stuff, and everyone thought I was crazy,” she said.

    Since posting about the book, Truitt has erased all mention of her claims from her account. She continues to post memes about spiritual warfare, uploading a C.S. Lewis quote that reads: “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”

    Both Truitt and Vining are now preaching the benefits of their new company Modere, which you can swipe up on their accounts to buy, or even sell, products from if you choose.

    “God did design our bodies to move,” Truitt wrote on Instagram stories, adding, “I have been using Modere products for a while and it’s just been so different, my body feels so different… the youth is just flowing out of me.”

    Meanwhile, Young Living’s social accounts have so far been silent on the controversy. They continue to post about the benefits of oils, encouraging their 1 million followers to “focus on you by taking some time out to practice mindfulness with your favorite essential oil blend.”

    Their followers filled up their comments section with hearts. ●


    Stephanie McNeal · Feb. 22, 2020

    Stephanie McNeal is senior culture reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
    Contact Stephanie McNeal at stephanie.mcneal@buzzfeed.com.
    Satan is a good topic for thread necromancy, amirite?
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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