Inside the asylum

Women are being returned to subjugation. Religious zealots are killing massive numbers of people and in this country, forcing their “beliefs” on others. In increasing numbers, people are no longer thinking for themselves, but instead believe whatever the powerful tell them.
Need more evidence of our slip into a new dark age? Read this story about the latest weed to take hold in this new meadow covered in manure: the Indigo Child.

The Unity Church of Dallas sits on a wooded street not far from downtown, nestled beneath the shade of several large trees. In its 32 years, the brown brick building has been a refuge for those dissatisfied with mainstream religion. Put simply, it is a place where people go for answers they can’t find elsewhere, which is why Jaired Conrad went there on a rainy night in January.

Conrad had come because his son, an elfin 8-year-old with pale skin, had been having problems. The boy, named Dusk, had been doing things that made Conrad worry, things the single father couldn’t explain.

… When they arrived the sanctuary was mostly full, so Conrad sat on the front row with his two boys, Dusk and Day, sitting beside him. The room went dark and the film began.

“Do you know what an indigo child is?” a man onscreen asked a group of firefighters. None of them had a clue. On came the doctors in white lab coats, the Chinese scientists, the clairvoyants, the wild-haired psychics and the bearded New Age gurus. These people were experts on the subject.

“We’re watching humans evolve,” explained one. “Just like we’ve evolved to now we have an opposable thumb, we’re witnessing the human species evolve into a telepathic creature.”

All over the world, these experts explained, a new breed of children is emerging who can read minds, predict the future and bend silverware through sheer brainpower. These kids, called indigo children, are surrounded by a blue aura, hence the name, and believed by some to be reincarnated beings. Disruptive, impatient and easily bored, indigos are commonly diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and then medicated until they stop seeing angels. If they are nurtured correctly, however, they will save the world.

… When the film was over, Conrad lingered in the sanctuary to ask questions. Then he went to find his boys, who had grown bored and left to play in the halls. He found them near the vending machines drinking Coke and talking to a stocky man Conrad didn’t know. The man introduced himself and said he taught meditation at the church. “I work with indigos,” he said, handing Conrad a business card. “Are you an indigo?” he asked Dusk. The boy looked at him shyly and nodded. “I’m an avatar,” Dusk said. “I can recognize the four elements of earth, wind, water and fire. The next avatar won’t come for 100 years.”

May I just point out that if you have to go somewhere to find an “answer you can’t find anywhere else,” then it is probably not an answer. But this is one of the most consistent signs of our failing civilization: if you don’t like the truth, shop around until you hear what you want, then bullheadedly refuse to listen to any reality.
Once again, “religion” — in this case, a lefty, feel-good, mystical metaphysics thing — is turning people into mush-headed idiots grasping for some fantasy that they can escape into. Of course, this is not new, but I’m still horrified that after thousands of years man has not been able to shake off his gullibility when charlatans come calling.

[James] Twyman, 42, is perhaps the most outspoken expert on the indigo phenomenon. It is primarily because of his two movies, a feature film released last year and the documentary Conrad watched at Unity, that the idea has reached the mainstream. To his followers, Twyman is a humble and sincere spiritual messenger. To his detractors, however, he is a con artist with delusions of grandeur.

Twyman lives on a 42-acre sanctuary outside of Ashland with a small group he calls the Beloved Community. The hilly resort includes several cabins, a labyrinth, a house where community workers and volunteers live and a mobile home converted into an office. At Twyman’s right hand is a 72-year-old woman named Sharon Williams, a retired schoolteacher who gave her house away to follow him after reading his first book, Emissary of Light.

That book, published in 1997, put Twyman on the map in the New Age community. It was initially presented as the “true story of an incredible adventure” Twyman had while touring as a musician in war-torn Bosnia in the early ’90s. In the book, Twyman journeys to a secluded mountainous area where he meets a mystical group of 12 disciple-like figures and one master teacher. Known as the Emissaries of Light, the secret society tells Twyman they have existed for thousands of years but are known only to those drawn to them. They have hand-picked Twyman to announce that the world is on the verge of a major awakening.

After the book was published, questions about its origin surfaced, and a New Age organization called New Heaven New Earth decided to take a closer look at Twyman. They concluded that much of the book had been lifted from other sources, including a three-volume set called A Course in Miracles (supposedly written by Jesus Christ through a Jewish psychologist) and the teachings of the Endeavor Academy, a Wisconsin group to which Twyman had once belonged. Within New Age circles, Endeavor was widely considered a cult, led by a former real estate broker and recovered alcoholic named Chuck Anderson who, according to NHNE, “exerted god-like powers over his followers, many of whom have given up everything they own to the community.”

Twyman’s response to the report was that he hadn’t meant every word in his book to be taken literally. He insisted, however, that the 13 emissaries he’d met were real people he encountered in the flesh, but they were no longer on this physical plane. He had embellished certain parts to make the story more exciting, he acknowledged, but the essence of the book was true. He called it allegorical nonfiction.

Today, Twyman stands at the top of a small but growing New Age empire. His two films, Indigo and Indigo Evolution, have grossed more than $1 million. On his Web site, he sells books, movies, CDs, and New Age-inspired clothing and jewelry. He is not as wealthy as some of his counterparts, like best-selling author Neale Donald Walsh, but he has learned how to spin a good story into a healthy business.

At least that’s how his critics see it. Lorie Anderson, who lives near Twyman’s compound, has been closely watching the indigo movement. She says some of the services Twyman has offered on his Web site, such as online courses on telekinetic spoon bending, are scams (on her Web site she links to Hank’s Magic Factory, which sells bending forks for $695). In a self-published article titled “Indigo: The Color of Money,” Anderson paints Twyman as a fraud who is preying upon vulnerable parents overwhelmed by difficult kids. Physically and mentally handicapped children, for example, are often identified as indigos and used by Twyman to make money for the Beloved Community, Anderson says.

A handicapped girl called Grandma Chandra, for example, presents psychic readings at Beloved Community conferences using an alphabet board or mental telepathy for a fee, according to Anderson. A similar service is offered through a handicapped boy from Japan named Koya, Anderson says.

Twyman’s not the only one making money off indigos, Anderson says, and he’s not the only one who may have used misleading tactics to do so. Doreen Virtue, the California-based psychotherapist who wrote The Care and Feeding of Indigos and has known Twyman for 10 years, claims to have a Ph.D., but the school she got it from, California Coast University, was not accredited when she attended and is widely considered a diploma mill, meaning it has no physical campus and offers degrees for a flat fee. Virtue also says she worked at two psychiatric hospitals, one in Tennessee and the other in the Bay Area, but both hospitals have been closed for years, making it difficult to verify her claims.

And, in the tradition of creationists and flim-flam quacks everywhere:

Both Virtue and Twyman have acknowledged that there is no hard science to prove their theory, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, they say. The idea is catching on, Virtue says, because it resonates with people. Some are adults who never fit in but didn’t know why. Others are parents frustrated by an increasingly fast-paced society that seems to have lost its moorings.

The attitude these days: it’s not true, but we want it to be true. Therefore, it is. And how dare you question my faith.
People are freakin’ crazy. That’s why I avoid them as much as possible.