Perhaps the most important piece of etiquette is gratitude. It is important to be thankful to the purpose of the sweat, the people joining you in the lodge, and those helping to support the sweat lodge.
The going "gratitude" for James Arthur Ray's "Spiritual Warrior" retreat, which was supposed to "absolutely change your life," and of which this sweat experience was part of, was roughly $9000. I believe that sums up to a gross of well over half a million $$$.
You need to consider the guys expenses before judging him. Although they are paying
$9,000 a piece, you need to consider that the program lasts for several days at a time and they have to feed and lodge these 70 or so people. So Mr. Ray is kept very busy unless he hires help, which doesn’t come cheap. Say 10 people, to help out, at $15/hour, 10 hours a day for 3 days. That’s
$4,500 he needs to pay his employees in salary for the 3 days. Say $5 dollars per meal @ 3 meals per day.. that totals $3,100 (maybe $10/meal thats
$6,200) for the 3 days. The sweat lodge must cost a few hundred dollars a month to maintain. He probably donates a few thousand to local charities every summer.. sponsors a kids baseball team, donations to the local police drive, picks up the tab for a big part of the local town mayors campaign expenses, which can be overwhelming for a small town mayor who has to work a second job to keep things going with 2 kids facing college.
So he grosses
$630,000 for a 3 day weekend and pays out about
$10,000 in expenses. He doesn’t have to work every weekend during the year to make a decent living.
You really cant get too pissed at Mr. Ray because if you really think about it after a few years it must get pretty tiresome sitting in a hot sweaty tent with 70 people (weekend after weekend) trying to find themselves when you have an air conditioned villa in the Bahamas waiting for you on Tuesday night. Who the hell would want to sit in a sweat lodge with these people once the checks cleared?
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