Fund Drive

“It can be terrifying to know your own frailty.” Karen Connelly, The Lizard Cage

When I’m driving around town in my old Honda Civic I listen to KPFK, the leftist station based in Los Angeles that is part of the Pacifica radio network. I like Democracy Now, Thom Hartmann, Background Briefing with Ian Masters, and Margaret Prescod, but like most listeners, I tire very quickly of endless on-air fund drives, the frantic pleas for money to keep the station from death’s doorstep.

The problem is that KPFK is always at death’s doorstep. Various reasons for this penury are advanced, including the difficulty in our corporate media landscape of operating a station solely on listener donations, or because KPFK is managed by an unwieldy board that can’t locate its behind with both hands. Maybe the truth is that lefties can’t manage money. Anyway, it feels as if the current fund drive has been going on for three weeks. I made my tithe a few months ago and have no more to give, and I don’t like being made to feel guilty for not chipping in $150 for a book and a couple of DVD’s. I wish some left-leaning billionaire – if such a person even exists -- would send KPFK a check for a few million so they can knock off these fund drives and get back to programming.

Case in point: I’m in the Honda the other afternoon and this host is vigorously hawking downloads for a breakthrough, consciousness-raising, spiritual-cleansing program guaranteed to change a person’s life. Access Consciousness it’s called. Never heard of it or the host’s guest, a fellow named Dain Heer, who talked as if Access Consciousness had given him the key to the universe. Money woes? No problem. Trouble finding that special someone to share your life with? Easy peesey. Questions about why you are where you are and not someplace better? Access Consciousness will open doors for you that you never dreamed existed. I began to listen more carefully. Like all commercially savvy gurus, Heer talked a lot without divulging much -- about tools and joy and ease and vibrant health and financial freedom. When he mentioned “clearing statements” my inner skeptic stood up and said, “Whoa man, this is starting to sound like Scientology BS.”

I went back to my life, my routines and habitual patterns of being, early to bed, early to rise, a bottle of beer before dinner, and the pages of a book before switching off the light for the night. But what I’d heard on KPFK nagged at me so I did some research. What I learned from Google searches is that the founder of Access Consciousness is a guy named Gary Young, who at the time he conceived his answer to all of life’s doubts and difficulties just happened to live in Santa Barbara. Dain Heer, who to my chagrin also had a Santa Barbara connection, joined the team a bit later and immediately became the young, cool face of the enterprise. Heer’s talks are all over YouTube; the few I watched creeped me out.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Access Consciousness is total nonsense and a cult. What really bugs me is that KPFK is pushing this snake oil on unsuspecting listeners. Any time some smug white guy claims to have the answers to life’s perplexing questions, and offers to share them for a price, you can be assured you are about to be fleeced.