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GTD 'cult'

so a friend of mine sent me this message. I am a big fan of GTD and find it very useful. I'm just puttin' this out there.

[INDENT]
I was excited to sit down to read "Getting Things Done" today. It's a great gift. I was so excited that I even read the acknowledgments, to be complete about the whole thing. At the end of the acknowledgments I noticed that David Allen thanks someone named "J-R" for being his "spiritual coach."

Uh-oh. "J-R" seemed like it might stand for John-Roger -- the controversial cult leader and spiritual guru. And it does.

http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/msia.html

David Allen, his wife, and many of his employees are ministers in the MSIA (Movement of Spritual Inner Awareness), John-Roger's church:

http://www.ndh.org/template.php3?ID=65 http://www.davidco.com/coaches_corner/Ana_Maria_Gonz%E1lez/article14.html (employee quoting John-Roger)

Anti-cult websites accuse GTD of being part of a program to recruit people into MSIA. Their view seems paranoid to me, but you can read it for yourself:

http://forum.rickross.com/viewtopic.php?t=2193 http://forum.rickross.com/viewtopic.php?p=15025&sid=e3195755a2185f9b4710580921d3f527

Now, I'm not saying that Getting Things Done isn't a good book about priorities and organization. David Allen may have very good advice about that stuff. But I am saying don't go to a David Allen seminar, get mixed up with the David Allen Company, or get too involved with the hard-core GTD crowd -- at least not without taking some anti-brainwashing measures. Seriously. This John-Roger character and his followers are not a joke.

I learned about John-Roger a long time ago, as it happens, because in high school I read a self-help book called "Life 101" that he "co-wrote" with Peter McWilliams, the poet and anti-drug-war activist. In 1994, not long after I read "Life 101," McWilliams wrote an expose called "Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You." McWilliams left MSIA in 1994 after 15 years of being brainwashed. It turned out that John-Roger manipulated him into giving him co-authorship in return for keeping McWilliams alive. You see, John-Roger had the power to keep McWilliams alive because -- and this will surprise you -- John-Roger claims to be the incarnation of God on earth.

John-Roger has also made headlines in connection with Arianna Huffington -- who admits to being a close friend and who has been accused (though she's never admitted it) of being an MSIA minister as well.

[/INDENT]

FreeWilly's picture

Yes, sadly it true. David...

Yes, sadly it true. David Allen has been a very close follower and associate of John-Roger for 35 years, and all of the key staff at DavidCo are members of the MSIA church, which is a type of New Age religion, or cult. (MSIA stands for 'Messiah', as well).

For those not familiar with John-Roger, or J-R, here is a webpage which tells a little about him. Its a must read.

[="blue"]The J.R. Controversy
Abstract: John-Roger was a one-time follower of Eckankar. He started his own group in 1968. He is reflective of a new wave of offshoots from Eckankar.
[/]
http://www.caic.org.au/miscult/jrmsia.htm

David Allen does credit J-R as his #1 influence in his book Getting Things Done, and spends enormous amounts of time promoting MSIA.
I also witnessed how all of the John-Roger MSIA related links and posts were deleted from the GTD web-board, which makes one wonder why they don't want people to know about how close David Allen is to John-Roger?

David Allen directed his webmaster delete a thread about him and John-Roger, but the thread is still in the Google cache, for now...
http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:uKMGMuKoTEUJ:davidco.com/forum/printthread.php%3Ft%3D5090+gtd+msia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7

 
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