I have a rule, not necessarily an infallible rule, but I count it generally reliable. Folks say “you get what you pay for,” meaning that “you pay more, you get more.” Here’s my rule: in those vague areas of ‘spiritual advice’, self-improvement tips, and re-engineering your own mind, my rule is “you usually get what you don’t pay for.”

Here’s what I mean: if you’re stupid and hungering for answers, you can fist over much or all of your money, even become an unpaid, brainwashed slave, and get nothing but brainwashed slavery for your coin. I am not saying there can never be an exception (Gurdjieff used to say"you hired me to wake you up, why shouldn’t I get paid; and besides, if you can’t get up the money, you won’t be good at the work either”) But he was a special case. 99% of the guys who give you the same line belong in jail. So when somebody offers their secrets for nothing, except the effort you may make to read them and make them your own, I take interest. This tells me that even if they are full of crap, they are deluding themselves as well, and not merely trying to take me for whatever’s in my wallet.

One of the people I’ve run across who offer their secrets gratis is Gary Craig, creator of something called the emotional freedom technique. He has some tapes for sale, but unlike certain ologies I could mention, you could buy his whole catalog for about 300 clams. He’d really like you to, for sure, but you can download the 79 page eft manual  which tells you enough to do the technique, as a PDF for no dollars and nothing cents. I have a copy on my desktop right now. It describes a method of ‘tuning’ your body’s energy which takes about as long as you leave your tea bag steeping in the cup. It looks nutty, but here’s the gist: you tap a number of the same points an acupuncturist would go after, while focusing on whatever problem is bugging you, and do a couple other odd things. If it makes you feel really good, as he claims, then your effort is repaid. if you get nothing from it, you’re not even out the cost of your tea, and Mr. Craig has no claim on your eternal soul. No, he’s not a doctor, but an engineer from Stanford, who says he approaches personal performance coaching as an engineer; he wants to know what works.

Man after my own heart.