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Thursday, December 06, 2007

BEWARE OF GAIAM "SPIRITUAL CINEMA"

Note: I am happy to tell you that since posting this article, I made another attempt to reach Spiritual Cinema customer service. I did this time succeed in obtaining a live voice, "Shane," who was polite and is attempting to resolve the problems. This is not to indicate any acquiescence in their "spiritual" issues, only to say that somebody did apologize and does appear to be working to resolve the excessive credit card taking issues!

Constance E. Cumbey

If you are thinking of subscribing to "Spiritual Cinema" as part of your research of New Age infiltration, I advise you to be very careful and guard your credit card information VERY CAREFULLY.

"Spiritual Cinema" is an enterprise of the blasphemously named GAIAM enterprises. That is obviously named after the New Age/pagan concept of the earth itself as a deity worthy of worship, "The Goddess Gaia." They have their Spiritual Cinema Alliance and Spiritual Cinema Network.

The Spiritual Cinema Alliance in turn operates under a New Age funding mechanism with a patriotic sounding name of National Heritage Family. Here's their address and contact information:

6201 Leesburg Pike, Suite 405 » Falls Church, Virginia 22044-2201Tel: 800-986-4483 » Fax: 703-820-5100

Spiritual Cinema is strictly a New Age production house. It focuses on themes of "all is God" and "all is interconnected." The latter is what Alice Bailey stressed in her EXTERNALISATION OF THE HIERARCHY that all must believe to accept their New Age "Christ" and "Masters of Wisdom."

Christian discernment of this has been at an all time low. Christianity Today long since shockingly assured the Christian community that Stephen Simon is safe for Christians and that his Spiritual Cinema is a proper source for good sound spiritual and family viewing. One wonders how much influence Doug Coe, Paul N. Temple, and Fellowship Foundation might have had in this particular editorial slant. Maybe, on the other hand, it was maybe the musings of a young, naive reporter and the failings of senior editors.

Spiritual Cinema has inter alia, circulated productions of The Celestine Prophecies and Neal Donald Walsch's "Conversations with God."

At any rate, their spiritual failings are bad enough. But their financial ones may be even worse.
To keep up with them, I needed a subscription. Under their contract they were to deduct from the credit card requried $25.95 per month after the first free month. I'm a very busy person, as many of of us. I don't always notice, but starting in August, I made the shocking discovery that they were sometimes taking this from my account 4 times per week! My bank worked with me to recover these charges. I have tried repeatedly, sometimes holding for up to an hour to reach them on the phone. All one receives are long hold recordings. Maybe their phones are this busy because they are doing it to all.

I just made the discovery that they are up to it again. They took $25.95 last week and another $25.95 today. I'm hoping it was merely a computer miscomputing error, but given the history that my name is pretty much to the New Agers as Madeline Murray O'Hair's was to Christians, it is reasonable to impute more to it. I hate to have to resort to pseudonyms to obtain documentation; but it is looking increasingly necessary.

Save your money. Save your soul. Do not give Spiritual Cinema your credit card information! Avoid "Spiritual Cinema" -- despite Christianity Today euphemistic claims, its productions are not safe for Christian viewing!

13 comments:

  1. I reached somebody there this morning who promised to look into it. Stay tuned!

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  2. Anonymous1:20 PM

    "The Man from Earth" was on the latest SCC-Gaiam release!

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  3. Anonymous2:09 PM

    You are adveritzing A Course in Miracles Cds at the top of your site. What is going on?

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  4. I went to look for the Course in Miracles advertisement, but up there as I write this is an advertisement for some Presbyterian church. Go figure!

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  5. To Anonymous 2:09

    Unfortunately, I do not control the advertising space here, nor have I received one dime for its use. The blogosphere space here is owned by Google.com and I have no idea how they select it. I rather suspect that their computers are a little less than discerning and can't tell talk against something from talk for something!

    I DEFINITELY DO NOT ENDORSE A COURSE IN MIRACLES!

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  6. anon 2:09 I think those are google ads (I believe that blogspot is owned/operated by google). If they work anything like the gmail account, what happens is that it searches your email and gives you ads based on the content of the email. For example, I have an email that mentions a little girls name, "Anna" so I have an ad for a place called annaslinens and another one about Anna Kournikova buying something on k-swiss.

    Anyway, I don't think Constance has any control over those ads. And since she has a blog entry that mentions that subject, google (or blogspot) is just giving you an ad to buy it.

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  7. You're right, Dawn. I suspect Google software takes a sampling of commonly used phrases or words occurring on a blog site and automatically tailors the ads to suit. Because the software has no real intelligence, it picks up on the New Age topics and assumes it is correct to match the ads to this site.

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  8. Constance,
    I also have a Blogger account and don't have advertising. Somehow an AdSense account was added to your blog. Try going to Dashboard, then Template (or Layout) and click on AdSense. If that doesn't work, you can contact Google and they will most likely tell you how to remove it. It isn't a necessary part of having a blog.

    BTW, are you able to add a feed to your blog? Click on Settings, then Site Feed. Select Short or Long and then 'Save Settings'. That would be great if you could do that! Thanks.

    Susan Bertalotto

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  9. Hi Susan,

    I went in and maybe I am using the older template, but I couldn't find a way to do either. Others have suggested the feeds. I would love to do it, but it wasn't exactly intuitive from this template. Basically, if it isn't broke, don't fix it and as tired as I am at the end of this extremely long day (started early this morning and did an hour long show with Dr. Monteith from 11 p.m. to midnight -- now 1:16 a.m. still in my office, I'd better go before I accidentally delete my entire blogspot to the potential delight of all my enemies.

    Thanks for the advice!

    Constance

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  10. Anonymous12:05 PM

    A lot of modern marketing techniques
    are the result of data mined from The
    Tavistock Institute which gave us the
    National Training Labs ( NTL ) which
    has been brainwashing people for the
    last fifty years in Bethel, Maine.
    The 'gaia i am" promo video that I just
    watched looks like their crowning
    achievement.
    They don't just offer products, they
    offer you a whole lifestyle!
    Feminism, Mysticism, Nature Worship
    _As if any of these Lotus position
    meditators has ever really been
    out in the woods.
    It's actually pretty tough out there.

    Yours truly,
    Ex-logger Paul

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  11. Anonymous12:18 PM

    Constance, I am from The Spiritual Cinema Circle and wanted to discuss your issues with Gaiam and SCC. Please email me at info@spiritualcinemacircle.com so I can make sure that you have resolved all of your issues.

    We certainly are not going to charge you for something you didn't receive. I am a Christian myself, so hopefully I can offer some insight about SCC.

    Dena

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  12. Anonymous1:06 PM

    It's amazing that such archaic thinking still exists in this world. Worshipping the earth as a "deity" is pagan but raping it, dumping toxic chemicals on it to contaminate what itself sustains our life on it is....not pagan. It's Christian to not acknowledge it's sacred role in sustaining life on this Earth. Get a clue. Or go back to the middle ages.

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