Being Vulnerable About My Intensely Negative Experience from Owen Cook

[bobbyhliu]

Hi, this is going to be my first post and I'm going to be really vulnerable and conscious while writing this. It is a story about how Owen Cook has negatively impacted my life and it's also a post seeking some advice or outside voices before I seek therapy about this issue.

First and foremost: I have to give positive credit to Owen and not just talk on the negatives. Growing up, when I was very young, Owen Cook helped me to believe that it was possible to become better at game and dating, and things like that. I was very shy and awkward and seem to be on the spectrum of mild ADHD, borderline mild Aspergers, but not nearly as intense as Owen had or anything.

Owen was immensely helpful and because of him, Julien, and other people giving out advice to go meet people and be myself and improve myself. I became "successful" at dating when I used to be rejected over and over again.

I have to give credit for his positive impacts, especially since he had some level of Asperger's, allegedly; he did do a great job improving himself and starting the whole dating community movement. 

This gave me a lot of trust in Owen and I experienced a better life between the time I was 13 and 21 from him, I even met a girl who I dated in a serious relationship for 3 years. Because of all this good advice, I really trusted him and hung onto every word he said, I remember taking notes on every word and sentence in his Youtube videos on success advice and self development and spirituality and then testing them in real life to see what is true or not.

Here is where it starts to get bad:

Eventually, as many of you on this forum have seen, Owen began to switch to giving out mainly spirituality and self development advice, rather than dating advice. This was when I began to experience negative effects on my life. I started to become very neurotic, anxious, and self-resistant towards normal human experiences like making money and getting fit because of his advice such as how it's bad to "get lost in the physical" and "energetic parasites" and "low vibration vs high vibration". How you "will age faster if you access the energy of death", these buzz words are part of the huge problem it caused me.

Honestly, that kind of verbiage for his theory sounds kind of crazy now, just typing it out. And before you may judge, I am speaking as someone who is aware of ego, meditation, and has had lots of the same spiritual experiences discussed on these forums. I am aware that I am not my body and that I am either consciousness experiencing the body or a soul that is a fragment of God experiencing my life, and even that doesn't begin to express how amazing life is. But I digress.

That being said when he began to give this advice I took it way too seriously and it caused me to get totally emotionally and mentally stuck for a whole year, I thought the solution was to watch more of his videos to really understand what was going on about. It made me get more convinced/deeper into his theory work and made me more and more neurotic and stuck. I am 22 right now FYI.

His new spiritual content completely damaged me psychologically for half of my passions. The things I am passionate about are many things, such as environmentalism, spirituality, inventing products, theory work and research, and music, these are all unaffected by his theorizing. BUT in terms of dating, fitness, making money (which I am not obsessed about but it is unhealthy for me to limit myself when I would treat business and customers with utmost ethics and love kind of like how Leo would) I feel completely neurotic now and stuck in the "materialistic" areas of my life because he always talked about how it is bad to "get lost in the physical" and he basically demonized it, maybe unintentionally, but it had that effect on me. Now there's a split in my life between spiritual and not spiritual rather than just different experiences and levels of love...

I ended up accumulating $3,600 to join his High Status Communication course in order to get his help directly because I was so stuck from this neurotic loop that his content caused me. It took a lot of sacrifice to acquire that money, by the way, as a student who is busy and focused on studies and building skills and enjoying my relatively normal life. I thought I really needed it because I could not handle living that way any longer being stuck like that in a loop of being a fan and follower and getting more stuck the more I followed.

Nevertheless, when I joined the course Owen did talk to me but he didn't speak very much to me, he answered maybe like 4 or 5 of my questions and then after 8 weeks I was removed from the program because that's the time limit. Most of the weeks it was other coaches, like his cameraman and team, or his personal trainer, who by the way are all cool. But those people are not Owen, and he didn't give much time to answer questions for any of the students as he was always in a rush on the coaching calls, he would come to speak about dating for like 30 mins to an hour then log off without time for questions, maybe two students out of ten could ask a question and oftentimes they would just ask how they could make more money in their coaching business or how they could run container events or something which was not relatable to me at all at the time. I did not expect his program to be such little mentoring for a "mentoring" program that costs as much as 4 new iPhones. There was video course content in it too which had some pretty good stuff but a lot of it is stuff you can learn from his videos, there was some useful stuff in there but the advice in there for business and marketing and public speaking are not really applicable to my life right now, maybe the speaking for socializing but I am already alright for that.

Looking back at the old video recordings of Zoom Calls in the course, the original students had much more time to ask questions when the program first started, with calls going on for like 7-8 hours, so maybe back then it was real mentoring. He revealed a lot of interesting things by the way, like how Tony Robbins treated his rich clients unethically (he would swear at them and hang up on them if they wanted to go even a minute over the call time even when they paid him a million dollars per year for his coaching). Also how Owen knew Eckhart Tolle's daughter in law through a friend or connection that was dating her and how Eckhart Tolle loves alcohol and drinks a shit ton behind the scenes and how that caused him to be disillusioned when meeting his heroes. He also talked about how the vast majority of spiritual coaches did not embody the spiritual values like love and compassion and kindness when shit hit the fan when he was working with them, like how they would throw tantrums over parking tickets in LA or use money unethically. 

These kinds of eye-opening scenarios really helped me in some ways but they did not help me to stop being neurotic and completely stuck from his spiritual advice, his advice being overall dogmatic and might not be based so much in reality, much like the dark sides of religions.

I asked Owen, on the coaching, how could I help people with fitness if them improving their bodies might create a bigger ego and how I was afraid of losing people, that I'm helping, and myself "in the physical" or so he calls it. His only response was that fitness is actually a great spiritual practice or something. The other question I asked was how I can stop getting stuck and neurotic from his advice and taking it the wrong way and I recall he said that it sounds like I was overthinking it and I need to relax.

Anyway, there's about no way I can confront Owen more about this issue and ask him for help as he will either be too busy to help answer these questions, for his very serious students, unless they are very rich or in his program, and even if they were serious students, like I was he might not have the time or energy to genuinely help a student a lot for these. 

Conclusions:

One of the signs of a more effective teacher, like Leo, is that they know that students need to ask questions and consuming lots of theory without any way to have Q and A, or warnings which Leo speaks of very clearly in his forums and videos, will cause lots of damage and misinterpretation. Maybe even poor mental health and that's exactly what happened to me.

Before all of this I had an easy time with life and I was much happier. Now I feel stuck and resistant to doing the things I am motivated to and I feel like I have a hard time shaking off the hours and hours of theory I consumed from him. The effect is similar to if someone spent years looking at redpill or blackpill content and becoming psychologically damaged, except I was wise enough to avoid those awful ideologies but I wasn't wise to avoid Owen's ones and the negative effects they have had on my life. 

His demonization of ego, getting lost in dopamine, materialism and physical world experiences, caused me so much stuck-ness. Every-time I save up a lot of money, like over a thousand now or get "too fit" I start to feel anxiety that I might be losing my soul or getting lost in the physical and being "lowered in my vibration" etc. etc. Him saying that I can't want or desire certain things because its "low vibration" etc etc.

 And his response to people that have neurotic loops is that an entity or energetic parasite is running them and causing them to suffer, by the way, that's what he actually says sometimes, especially to people that struggle with neuroticism. And in the grand scheme of things, perhaps something like that does happen to some people, but its hard to get told that and feel gaslit from Owen, this spiritual coach, while he is making millions of dollars, romancing attractive women, and taking care of his fitness, and hanging out more often with high status people because of their status. And I can kind of even understand that some people can get lost and completely run by their ego or lust or desires but he demonizes that so hard, sometimes those people are having a good time and things are ok. He calls that effect of being run by ego being possessed by an "energetic parasite and losing your soul", he has even begun calling it more religious things in his more recent videos. 

It just seems so contrary to me, the way he is living and the advice he is dishing out. If he would've just said something like, live your life however you want but these spiritual concepts might help you and didn't demonize a ton of things then maybe it wouldn't have affected me this way. But in every video he demonizes a ton of things. Leo didn't affect me this way because Leo says that it is up to you and your consciousness and awareness and choice on how you want to live your life and God loves all things and doesn't judge you and that God wants to experience all things, it's a much more free and open kind of theory.

Not to mention he calls people without results "losers" while he calls people that have a ton of results, but get lost in obsession, as "low vibration" so basically to him the only "good" are people who have good results, or the results they want, while being high vibration or something? It's just super hierarchical and problematic sounding to me. 

I just feel so negatively affected and shamed and stuck from Owen's advice, like I went through a religious cult almost. I feel ashamed and betrayed almost by all of this. Especially the part where I can't get help from him unless I have a lot of money to spend. I do forgive Owen and feel that he did not do this intentionally, and I still appreciate the good he has done for me, but I still feel upset and distraught that someone I trusted so much caused me so much damage in my life. Do you guys have any advice? I would just like to hear anything that can help me start to unravel this and let go of my limiting beliefs or at least build new ones. Or even hear something that I need to hear that I don't know. Thank you so much for reading <3 Also, sorry if this sounds like rambling or incoherent I tried to write as clearly as I could but some of these are hard to explain.

Edited October 20, 2022 by bobbyhliu

[integral]

17 minutes ago, bobbyhliu said:

I started to become very neurotic, anxious, and self blocking towards normal human experiences like making money and getting fit because of his advice such as "getting lost in the physical" and "energetic parasites" and "low vibration vs high vibration". 

What does low vibration mean to you? How are you interpreting it?

Edited October 20, 2022 by integral

[bobbyhliu]

@integral

How my mind is interpreting it is a dichotomy between high vibration and low vibration. Low vibration kind of as Owen told me was like "obsessed with the physical", needy, low-brow, negative, scarcity, anger, low consciousness, different negative emotions.

But the "obsessed with the physical thing" caused me to take it too literally like aren't some olympians and sports performers obsessed with the "physical"? Because their whole life and obsession is about a material game that people play for fun, which I have no qualms against, but it led me to get stuck mentally because I like to obsess about things for fun and now I feel like doing that is somehow "low vibration" according to his dogma. Maybe I am taking what Owen says too literally but I was hanging on his every word at the time.

I think that the word "physical" is what I am stuck on, when his spirituality conditioned me to demonize anything material is what's causing me to get stuck. Because he equates a lot of ego, results obsession to "low vibration energy" without being clear about it.

I just want to go back to enjoying my life with the people I love and embodying spirituality in a way that is beneficial to my life experience without the dogma and issues. I know that materialism is not the most fulfilling but its a problem that I can't even do it for fun when I feel so neurotic and shamed and fearful from Owen's advice. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by bobbyhliu

[integral]

It’s about the energy and passion you’re bringing to the table when pursuing a goal or doing an activity. If Fitness make you feel amazing and in love with life and existence and your spreading that to everyone around you lifting them up, then fitness is being done with high vibration. But if fitness makes you feel ugly because you are obsessing with what you look like in the mirror and your influencing people around you to a lower level of negative motivation. then fitness is being done in a low vibration way.

It’s not the activity that matters it’s the mindset from where your are doing from. Everything and anything can be done in the low vibration way or in a high vibration way. Positive motivation versus negative motivation. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by integral

[Ulax]

Hey dude,

I personally appreciate various aspects of the story you have shared here.

Sounds to me it took some courage to post this, and I respect that.

Here is my perspective. 

I think your perspective on Owen's content being the source of various struggles in your life has some aspects that might well be valid. On the other hand, I do think that it is important that you also take responsibility  for what I see to be the following choices of yours. Firstly, to engage with his content, to engage with it to the extent you did, and also to follow it for the length of time you did. I'm not intending to say that you are to blame in any way. Its just that to my mind, I think its important to reflect on how, knowing what you know now, you would have handled the situation differently. Also, it seems to me that you are at points claiming that Owen's teachings negatively effected your life. It seems to me like that puts you in the position of being a victim. However, I think a healthier perspective to take would be that your decision to follow Owen's content seemed to lead to adverse consequences. Again, I'm not intending to blame but instead stress, what I see to be, the importance of taking responsibility, and also seeing yourself as not being powerless.

I also think that most aspects of Owen's content is not particularly high conscious, i.e. not tier 2 (Am intending to use a spiral dynamics term regarding tier 2). I don't think his programmes have much stage yellow to them, so to my mind its not going to meet the consumer where they are at, and understand what they need in their particular circumstance and place in their life. I see his talking about losers and winners as being partial demonstrations of this lack of tier 2 consciousness. I'm not intending to blame him either. However, stage orange folks aren't, to my understanding, very conscious of the effects of their actions, and how systems of cause and effect work.

Also, it seems to me like you are vulnerable to cult-like dynamics. I see an example of this being that you said you 'hung onto every word he said'. I think you will likely come across other people who have the same personalities and resonance as Owen, and the same unconscious dynamics will attract you to them. So, I would recommend looking into working on that apparent vulnerability. I think Leo's cult video series, developing a greater sense of self trust and general inner work will help you with overcoming this apparent vulnerability I see in you.

So, what to do now?

Firstly, if you think that the course creator promised to include certain things in the course, and it didn't fulfil those promises, then I'd recommend writing a complaint email to the customer service. I would recommend being non-abusive in this email, and speak from a first-person experience, i.e. 'It seems you promised X, but didn't provide X in the programme'. I recommend this email, if indeed you think promises were broken, because I think it will help you have more of a sense of self-respect. Whether or not they seem to agree with your complaint, I don't think is that important.

Secondly, I'd journal about how you feel regarding what happened.

Thirdly, I'd journal about what you can learn from these experiences.

Fourthly, I'd read the book, 'When I say no I feel guilty' by Manuel Smith to get, what I see to be, a greater understanding of boundaries, responsibility and assertiveness.

-------------------------

I hope my words are of value to you. I will note all of this is just my personal opinion. It may be that my opinions are mistaken, or that your personal circumstance means that my advice isn't suitable for you.

[StarStruck]

The only thing you can do is take lessons from it. 

Major lesson for you: never worship an idol.

If you hadn’t worshipped him you wouldn’t have paid thousands of dollars for course full with rambling and ego stroking of a bald ginger man going on an ego trip. 

You need to develop common sense. The knowledge that Owen teaches can be pulled from 5 books that he constantly mentions in his videos. 

In my opinion he is not even a good teacher. Most of the time he is all over the place. His only good product is blueprint decoded. 

 

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by StarStruck

[integral]

it’s a common trap when people transition into spirituality  to demonize making money. There’s nothing wrong with making money. We need to make money to survive. We need a foundation to which to pursue our higher passions.

Leo has an entire course on finding your life purpose. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by integral

[Ulax]

9 minutes ago, integral said:

It’s about the energy and passion you’re bringing to the table when pursuing a goal or doing an activity. If Fitness make you feel amazing and in love with life and existence, then fitness is being done with high vibration. But if fitness makes you feel ugly because you are obsessing with what you look like in the mirror then it is being done in a low vibration way.

It’s not the activity that matters it’s the mindset from where your are doing from. Everything and anything can be done in the low vibration way or in a high vibration way. 

@integral To your understanding, is this diagram made based on a theory of David Hawkin's?

[integral]

1 hour ago, bobbyhliu said:

I just want to go back to enjoying my life with the people I love and embodying spirituality in a way that is beneficial to my life experience without the dogma and issues. I know that materialism is not the most fulfilling but its a problem that I can't even do it for fun when I feel so neurotic and shamed and fearful from Owen's advice. 

Owens teachings are to go out there and to tackle life with 100% passion and love and high vibration, to feel good ecstatic joyful about every moment and to spread that like a virus everywhere you go, pure fun. Somehow you’ve taken his teachings and interpreted it as the demonization of the physical world and used it to be in a low vibration state (shame and fear). Literally doing the opposite of what he saying! The physical world is the playground. There’s nothing good or bad about it.

Edited October 20, 2022 by integral

[integral]

2 hours ago, Ulax said:

@integral To your understanding, is this diagram made based on a theory of David Hawkin's?

I dont know lol it might be. 

[universe]

When in doubt always come back to this.

 

Yes, there are things that can be considered "lower consciousness". Activities, thoughts, whatever.

And there will always be stuff to tweak and work on in day to day life.

The best way to go about it is always with Love, acceptance and by letting go.

❤️

[Leo Gura]

11 hours ago, bobbyhliu said:

I feel completely neurotic now and stuck in the "materialistic" areas of my life because he always talked about how it is bad to "get lost in the physical" and he basically demonized it

I think the answer here is simply that you misunderstand Owen.

If I had to criticize Owen, I would criticize him for being too attached to physical, material success. He cannot get himself to stop chasing girls, money, clients, customers, sales, and business success. He's very materialistic for a spiritual guy.

I don't understand how you got the idea from Owen that pursuing material things is bad or demonic. Owen has never taught that. Owen has always encouraged people to be grounded and realistic about handling their materialistic needs, whether that be sex, fitness, money, business, travel, nutrition, etc.

Somewhere in listening to him your mind got twisted up on itself.

Of course a guy like Owen is not going to have much time to answer your questions one-on-one. I'm surprised you got to talk to him one-on-one at all.

Quote

BUT in terms of dating, fitness, making money I feel completely neurotic now and stuck in the "materialistic" areas of my life

Look, man...

The solution here is very simple: Go work hard on dating, fitness, and making money.

These things have a place. Especially during the first 10 years of your development journey. Eventually you will outgrow them, but that's like after 10-20 years of hard work on them.

There is nothing wrong with material pursuits. Go make your money, get your 6-pack, buy yourself a Lambo, and then see how all that makes you feel.

Both Owen and myself pursue material things. How is this not obvious to you? Owen's whole message is how to turn the pursuit of material things into a spiritual journey.

I think you know this deep down, you're just looking for someone to blame for not taking action.

What more on this topic do you need answered? There is not going to be any answer which allows you to skip the part of taking action. What you need now is not more theory, you need action on those material goals. So get to work.

Remember, don't make things to complicated. Write out your material goals and then start working towards them every week.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Leo Gura

[bobbyhliu]

@integral @Ulax @universe @StarStruck @Leo Gura

Hello and thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your responses. I have listened, read, carefully reflected on everything you all have said. Thank you so much for responding, each of your responses had great value and were of great help to me, if not to make me reflect and let go of this issue, move on and get over it. Thank you so much. <3

I appreciate the tough love from Leo and Integral. I appreciate the kindness and compassion and suggestions from you Ulax and Starstruck, especially with that book you recommended Ulax. And I appreciate the bigger picture kind perspective from you Universe. You guys overdelivered on the responses, I did not expect to receive such amazing replies when I posted this. Godspeed. 

Edited October 21, 2022 by bobbyhliu

[Leo Gura]

@bobbyhliu Godspeed in your material pursuits.

[Raze]

Owen doesn’t say not to pursue spiritual pursuits, he just says don’t become fixated on it or expect it to bring inner fulfillment which is correct, both him and Julien are open about how despite how much money they made or women they slept with it didn’t bring long term happiness. 

Owen says he tries to be extreme to make a point, in some videos he rants about about how physical pursuits are addictions and the devil and one must focus on higher spirituality. But in other videos like you mentioned he rants that most spiritual teachers are frauds and just being spiritual isn’t enough, etc.

also that is worrisome about Eckhart Tolle. I already suspected it because there is record of enlightened masters dying of alcoholism because when you are enlightened alcohols pleasure is magnified and they no longer have a sense of time or care about their physical body so they can drink themselves to death. Hopefully he tried AA or something.

Also if you want to ask him directly just go to a free tour and ask him in person or post a comment on his YouTube video right after he uploads, he often replies to the first few comments. 

Edited October 22, 2022 by Raze

[LordFall]

I would just like to say I empathize with self-shame regarding materialistic pursuits. Mine wasn't caused by Owen and I don't necessarily think yours was caused by him either possibly just awakened. This seems to be a strange feature of the human race. Most religious people have this where they think extramarital sex will cause them to literally burn in hell for eternity so I think you're not doing too bad. 

I don't actually understand where this is coming from but it's very deep in our psyche. I have huge self-doubts and overthinking when it comes to my motivations when it comes to things like masturbation, porn and money as well. It causes me to examine my thoughts and actions over and over again which is good because I try to choose the wisest path but it also comes with a lot of self-demonization and anxiety. I literally feel physical sensations as if my body was fighting against "negative energy." 

You're definitely not alone in this. 

[Leo Gura]

35 minutes ago, lxlichael said:

they'd probably just recruit me they'd be like "this guy actually paid the $20,000 I could be friends with him!", like that's literally the most that would come of it really

Dude, don't do that. You are going to waste your money and they will not be your friends. Owen has endless friends already. He is not going to charge his friends $20,000. That's for suckers.

If you were a real RSD insider you would get everything for free.

These overpriced packages and seminars are never going to be worth it unless you just got money to burn.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Leo Gura