Shell Shocked Sweat Lodge Survivor Mourns Abandonment by James Ray
Dr. Beverley Bunn, an orthodontist from Texas is lucky to be alive. She is an avid follower of New Age guru James Ray, and managed to survive the sweat lodge ordeal of her so-called “Spiritual Warrior” training. James Shore, Kirby Brown and Liz Neuman were not so lucky. Here she is on CBS describing the experience and her feelings on the matter. Watch closely as the woman struggles to form sentences and then breaks down, not at the loss of three fellow New Age nutbags, but at how betrayed she feels because her religious leader James Ray fled the scene.
My wife watched this and described Beverley Bunn as a “broken woman.” And her speech affectation, and how she rolled her eyes upward to access verbal memory, reminded her of “Stands with a Fist” from the Dances With Wolves movie- someone who is struggling to form words. Of course Stands with a Fist was a fictional character. I don’t know why Dr. Bunn speaks in a disjointed, chanting fashion.
“No one can leave when the door is closed, no one can leave when the door is closed,” she is heard mumbling with no emotional reaction on her face. She describes people in wretched states, covered in mucous and eyes rolling back in her head as if she is describing how to weave straps of plants material into a basket. She even chants how she “coached” people in pairs- “I went to one person and paired them up, I went to another person and paired them up…”
But when she describes how she felt- she had no concern for the dead and dying. Only the pain of betrayal and loss due to James Ray abandoning her! She reacts as if she was just spurned by a lover.
Clearly this woman has suffered severe trauma. She is psychologically broken and has problems associating with reality. She needs professional counseling, specifically by someone who has experience in deprogramming victims of cults. But whether she is nutty because of her immersion into the James Ray New Age dogma, or acts this way due to her recent trauma, I can’t venture to guess. But it is clear that her concern is the loss of James Ray as a leader.
Finally someone who sees this woman simply wants her fifteen minutes of fame and, YES, she is much more concerned about herself than anyone else. Me, Me, Me, Me….she does need professional help for many reasons.