Spiritual Social Commentary

I know that some have found Suze's financial information valuable toward understanding and arranging their finances, but other financial experts could have been available during these years to teach this generally available information, though perhaps without the Jerry Springeresque entertainment value some find in watching Suze alternate between cooing "girlfriend" and humiliating people who come to her requesting help -- with her self-proclaimed "Suze smack-down," which apparently gives her license to be rude and disrespectful to many, including Oprah's audience.

From the New York Times article "Suze Orman is Having a Moment," in May, 2009:

With even the most casual encounters, Orman tends to get personal at warp speed. Later, just moments after wrapping up the filming of the CBS spot, she found herself talking with the cameraman, who, still sitting behind the camera, asked her how best to set aside money for his toddler's college fund. Orman quickly determined that he didn't have enough savings in his retirement account to satisfy her. Maybe she was tired; maybe she was just concerned. Either way, she came down hard. “You want to save for college before you've taken care of your own home, retirement, credit card, your eight months in your emergency fund?” she asked, still standing on the set. “You have to put your priorities in line. You're 50? You're no spring chicken. You don't have that many years left, these things are heavy,” she said pointing at the cameras. “You throw your back out, where does the income come from? You're a dime a dozen.”

 

Some may disagree with my assessments about Suze, and that's fine. You're responsible for your choices, and unlike Suze, I don't suggest that I am always right about all things, although I do my best to be honest and sincere. One reason I gave this article the title "The Problem with Suze Orman" is so people who are not interested in this view will be able to avoid the link in their search results. 

I'll admit that the nature of my experiences with Suze do predispose me to see her in a less flattering light. Suze does have some good qualities in terms of being successful, enthusiastic, fun, creative, and uber-ambitious, and she is able to give financial information that I assume is generally correct on an individual level if not in its effect on the overall economy. Suze can also be generous in how she interacts with and gives advice to a lot of people, though often without taking the time and care to properly examine someone's specific circumstances.  Based on watching Suze's ostentatious way of giving when she did during the two years of our close friendship and through her continuing behavior, it appears that she tends to give in ways that will come to light and bring some PR benefits to herself, which I suppose is not all that uncommon. Tossing out life-dictates also gives Suze a chance to indulge in her apparently favorite practice of telling people what to do and acting like a bossy know-it-all must-be-obeyed lifestyle guru.

Although it has been necessary to do the research required to find quotes and graphics for this article, I would have preferred to have long ago forgotten that Suze Orman even exists.  Many years ago, I stopped watching her CNBC and QVC shows, however, she has been unavoidable in the media landscape, regularly showing up on various television shows I may be watching, including now, for God's sake, Kristin Wiig's impressions on Saturday Night Live. Seriously, once I was flipping television channels and Suze Orman was on three different channels at the same time -- that was one of many moments when I had to chuckle at how far the universe was going to push my buttons.

Whenever Suze's face would pop up my television screen, or in my browser, on magazine covers, and even at Office Depot, I would try to heal the deep regret I've felt for helping to bring someone like her into the public eye.  I'd make a sincere effort to think positive thoughts about how maybe she was bringing some benefits to some people's lives.  However, in spite of my efforts, I would see Suze's mean-spirited behavior and irresponsible advice being mixed with perhaps-useful financial information, and over her face and often-bared teeth I would see a flashing sign saying, "Thief, Liar, Rapist!"  

These are not the kind of words that usually pass through my generally cheerful and philosophically peaceful mind, and in this way, the trauma that Suze Orman brought to my life in the early 1990s continued to ring its bell for many subsequent years, and now continues to this day in the form of my feeling of obligation to write and host this article on my otherwise very positive website of free multimedia spiritual resources. To use a term I almost never use, Suze Orman was the closest I've experienced to having a demon swish through my life.  I do remember her being especially interested in occult matters and learning techniques and combinations of words so that, as she used to often brag to me, she could talk anyone into anything -- a claim that was difficult to deny after what had happened to me.

Suze and I met in November 1991, when we were asked to work together to co-produce a video presentation as a volunteer project for our mutual guru's worldwide live event. I was freshly out of a decade of monastic ashram life and already in the midst of a blossoming Hollywood career as a television news editor and occasional producer. Suze had her own financial advice company, but was having financial troubles -- she was at least tens of thousands of dollars in debt, though still splurging in luxuries.

Aside from a crush I was feeling toward a fellow I worked with at Disney at the time, I hadn't had even a glimmer of a relationship with anyone since I was a teenager, around 15 years earlier, when the extent of my relationship experience was a few dates that occasionally ended with a kiss. During my years of monastic life, the closest thing I'd had to a potential romantic moment was being awakened by a knock on the door during the all important short nap after lunch (we were up by 5 am every morning to chant for an hour and a half) to find a fellow who worked with me in the ashram video department standing outside my door, asking me to marry him.  In my sleepy wish to get back to the nap, I quickly explained that I wasn't interested in marriage and wanted to live like a monk, which seemed to more or less take care of the issue.

Now, like a nun just out of the convent, I was out of the ashram and in "the world," where within hours after we met in person, Suze was phoning me at midnight to tell me that she'd "fallen head over heels in love" with me, playing love songs for me over the phone, and completely disregarding my very clear responses explaining that I was not gay or interested in having a relationship with a woman.  But Suze kept pushing, saying that I was the most brilliant woman she'd ever met, and suggesting that we could have a relationship without any sexual elements, which sounded basically like a close friendship to me.  The conversation was ridiculous and bizarre, especially due to my inexperience with such matters.

At this point, I would have likely chosen to end this new association and focus on more harmonious ones, but Suze and I had been asked to work together on this video project, a labor of love for our spiritual community.  It was essential that we stay in a positive and friendly frame of mind during the upcoming weeks of producing, directing, recording, filming, and editing.  Suze didn't have much experience with video  production, but she was able to finagle good deals on renting a helicopter, a yacht, hot air balloons, and other elements.  I wasn't about to let Suze talk me into having a lesbian relationship when I wasn't gay, but was open to creative collaboration and friendship.  Few things were as important to me as being asked to do a wonderful, uplifting creative project like this for our guru's path, and this video would be viewed by tens of thousands of devotees in many countries around the world as part of a satellite-broadcast New Years intensive program. I wasn't about to let the issue with Suze's crush become a problem that could disrupt this project, and stayed friendly in spite of my concerns.

This photo was taken during our filming soon after Suze and I met,
before my innocence was disturbed by this predator.

I could have ended our association after the video we co-produced was completed, but by that time, Suze had broken up with one more heartbroken girlfriend -- an otherwise powerful republican fundraiser who was so devastated by Suze's mean and callous treatment of her that she ended up flying to New York to cry to our mutual spiritual teacher. 

With her girlfriend out of the picture, Suze was just assuming that she and I were a couple of some nonsexual sort, and part of what I've had to explore within myself is why I went along with her wishes, in spite of not being attracted to her in that way. For a time, Suze was enflamed in her crush and loving admiration for me -- even though I wasn't all that physically attractive, she would often say I was the most brilliant woman she knew, and how much she liked my mind, creativity, spiritual energy, wisdom, innocence, and speaking and singing voice. 

But then, as months went by, Suze wanted to control and change a whole lot of aspects of my life to meet her personal whims. She didn't like how I dressed and wanted to change my entire style of clothes to ones I didn't like to wear, such as tight stirrup pants and boots. She also insisted that I cut my hair. At one point, Suze literally asked me to let her know anytime I went anywhere so she would know where I was at all times -- at least I had the minimal sense to ignore this instruction. Unfortunately I didn't have the sense to keep Suze from insisting that I include her dictated words in my personal communications with our mutual guru.

Suze had been trained on how to eat properly by her wealthy "trust fund baby" ex-lover, and would become furious if I dared to use the wrong fork or cut more than one piece of my food off at a time -- and we're talking "Helen Keller spoon scene" furious, ruining many meals.  Suze also made efforts to get me to stop being a vegetarian, which I had been for nearly 20 years.  And nothing could freak Suze out more than seeing a simple strand of hair on the bathroom counter or floor, or horrors of horrors, a wet strand of hair in the shower.  If a strand of hair remained in the shower stall, Suze took it as a personal attack and would scream as though a large spider had crawled out of the drain until I threw the offending strand of hair out -- after which she'd often remain angry throughout the day.

This situation was confusing and absurd, especially for someone who had been on only a few dates in my teenage years before living a focused monastic ashram life from age 20 to 30. But there we were, together as a strange sort of couple, supposedly monogamous, fueled by Suze's intense desires and my lack of assertiveness. 

Suze's just-dumped ex flew to New York and told our guru's assistant about how Suze had mistreated her, which had apparently been a problem with Suze and other devotees on the path. Once we were in whatever version of a relationship we were in, Suze finally told me that our guru had previously asked her to stop hopping from woman to woman within the spiritual community. So what did Suze do with our guru's request that was obviously meant to protect other women on the path from being damaged under Suze's rudders?  Instead of cooling it with women on the path, she latched on to one of the guru's monastic-type disciples who was neither gay nor sexually active, but too innocent and inexperienced to stand up to Suze's pushy desires.  Soon after Suze's ex lodged her complaint with our guru's assistant, Suze was quickly removed from all of her public and programming services at the northern California ashram, where she had previously participated. But Suze didn't know at the time that her ex had told on her, so she didn't know why this banishment was taking place. I also didn't know the source of Suze's banishment, and only found out about her ex's devastation years later when this guru's assistant told me about his conversation with her.

Suze was very upset to find that her friends at the ashram were giving her the cold shoulder -- even her "best friend," a lawyer for the ashram who seemed to always keep close track of who was on the "poo poo list," hinted that she knew the scoop, but refused to tell Suze what she had done to deserve this treatment or from exactly whom the virtual banishment decree had come. 

This twist of events actually solidified my friendship with Suze at a time when I was starting to find her company to be more harmful than beneficial.  I might have otherwise found a way to end the whole silly mess and move on with my life, but it wasn't my nature to abandon someone in their time of distress and need, and Suze was very distressed and extremely needy, so I kept our friendship going to be of help and support to Suze.  I would never have guessed that just a few years later, Suze would create a false rumor campaign that would make sure that I'd be the one who was blackballed from our spiritual community with the help of her gossip-spreading lawyer friend, while she and her money were welcomed back with respect and love.

During the next two years, Suze's "loving friendship" continued to become more controlling, judgmental, and somewhat abusive, even while she praised me often as the most brilliant woman she'd met, which was also out of balance.  In fact, almost everything about Suze was out of balance.  During most of this time, I was helping her in many personal, spiritual, and career-related ways, almost as a counselor-coach-friend all in one, with conversations by telephone or in person that went on for 2 - 3 hours nearly every day, often focused on discussing and healing Suze's childhood, relationship, career and other issues.

During the same time that I was trying to help Suze to heal from some of her life traumas, she was giving me a whole big sack of my own to have to deal with. Some of the events that I chose to leave out of the first edition of my memoir include Suze sexually violating me as an act of aggression while I was sleeping after we'd had our first major argument. Suze knew that I was not gay, sexually active, or even willing to kiss her on the lips -- she knew that this oral sex violation under the covers would basically be my first sexual experience. When I woke up in shock and pushed her away, saying, "I can't believe you did that!"  Suze displayed perfect narcissistic sociopathology by turning the discussion toward feeling sorry for her because she couldn't help herself, rather than addressing -- that night or ever -- the violation that Suze's action had been for me. 

I'd like to make a quick point here, because some people latch onto the sexual violation aspect of my narrative as being the "sound bite" of the story, most likely due to people's own issues and the media's focus on such topics. I considered leaving that part of the story out of this article, however, tabloid nature aside, it really does show the problematic nature of someone who will violate many generally-honored rules to get what she wants -- someone whose dictates have a whole lot of influence over the personal decisions of individuals and families throughout society. 

I've recently joined Twitter and started seeing forwarded tweets that were begging people to become followers of Suze's Twitter page.  I didn't become a follower, but looked in to see what was going on.  I haven't intentionally watched Suze on TV in many years, and perhaps held an ember of hope that maybe I would see a change from the deceptive scoundrel I knew, which has yet to be the case. 

Instead, Suze and her girlfriend/manager were begging their Twitter fans to beg others to become followers of Suze's page to get her numbers up.  Several of Suze's fans were sending thousands of spam tweets begging celebrities to get their followers to follow Suze's Twitter account in what was being touted as a birthday present to her, although after the birthday passed, Suze and her girlfriend continued encouraging these fans to continue their spamming work. During the few days I observed, one Suze-fan named Scott, who said that Suze had promised to send him a hat for his efforts, sent out thousands of fanatical tweets to the point where his account was removed for spamming. It was amazing to see someone who already has so much begging for more, more, more and getting others to beg for more on her behalf, like a bottomless pit of greed. 

Then Suze's deceptive nature came forth again as her followers went from under 15,000 to 77,000 in one week.  At the point where her number of followers hit 77,000, Suze started sending tweets to journalist Howard Kurtz, asking him to broadcast in his upcoming CNN story on Twitter that she had 77,000 Twitter followers and that she was personally answering each one of their personal questions -- giving the false impression that she'd had these large numbers for a long time, and not just for the previous couple days.  Suze then asked her Twitter followers to send messages to Kurtz confirming to him that what she said was true, while answering a bunch of their questions so they would tell Kurtz that she was doing so.  It was shameless manipulation, IMHO, and disappointing to see Suze's continued webs of deception and apparently endless desires.

While looking at this situation, I read at a few conversations and saw this message that Suze had sent during the same week to a 17-year-old on Twitter with whom she was having extended conversations. It reminded me of Suze's attempts to turn me into a lesbian when I was also innocent and naive (I've obscured the girls name and face):

I'm aware that writing an article about the problem with Suze Orman will not necessarily reflect well on me as a spiritual author.  Some people believe that a spiritual teacher should never say anything negative about anybody -- which has not been my experience when dealing with spiritual teachers and gurus who address what needs to be addressed using whatever criticisms are needed.  And, just to clarify, I am not a guru or "spiritual teacher" on a pedestal, but an artist with an intention of bringing light to the world through creative works. My personal preference is to focus on the positive, but not at the disservice of honesty, especially in a situation where I believe honesty is imperative.

I would have assumed, with many of Suze Orman's problems obvious and well-documented in various media, and clearly visible to most people I've met, that journalists and bloggers who are generally trusted to keep the public from being mislead or duped would have already addressed these matters.  Only a few have: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 

Maybe some journalists are afraid of losing something if they were to speak up about the obvious problems with Suze Orman. It doesn't take a genius to see that Suze is a revengeful person, and obviously she has connections in "high places" in the media landscape.  Perhaps some who should have called her out have their financial finger in the Suze pie, or maybe are afraid that Suze and her friends in powerful places will cause them harm.  I am aware of the potential ramifications in speaking up about my experiences and opinions, but don't really feel that I have a choice, even after having already discovered how angry and ruthlessly revengeful Suze can become over even minor criticisms.

Just as the first book I'd helped Suze with was going to print, with my further assistance no longer needed, Suze became upset when I finally spoke up with just a few sentences about her abusive behaviors.  Suze became so irrationally enraged after receiving the short email that she took an actual vow to never speak to me again -- this is the only one of Suze's many promises that she more or less kept. 

But Suze didn't just become angry and take a vow to never speak to me again -- she and her friends in high positions within our mutual spiritual community began a dedicated campaign to spread false rumors stating that I had turned against our guru and path.  Friends of mine were actually phoned and told that the guru would be displeased with them if they continued to associate with me. 

This reputation destruction campaign took place at the same time that my emotionally undigested experiences with Suze had quickly manifested as a long list of physical ailments that required me to quit my jobs as editor for the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and editor and associate producer for X-Men.  For over a year, I was barely able to walk from one room to the other, and at the same time, Suze and her friends were making sure through their false rumors that nobody from our mutual spiritual community even phoned to see how I was doing or if I could have used some help. 

For years, Suze and her friends continued to spread this rumor globally throughout the spiritual community that I had lovingly served. The rumors spread like wildfire through our worldwide spiritual community and resulted in my receiving a great deal of negative treatment from impressionable devotees who thought they were serving the path by mistreating me. I could only assume that this campaign to ruin my reputation stemmed from Suze's wish to make sure I would never have a chance to tell any of our community friends and associates about her behaviors.

Suze's main gossip spreader was a lawyer for our mutual spiritual community and therefore considered a "good source," (Suze has since repaid this lawyer by partnering with her and touting her on QVC and other media as the "country's best trust lawyer," driving much business to her gossip-spreading loyal friend's door). 

Suze's lawyer friend and I spoke about these false rumors during one of our mutual guru's weekend intensive programs, which just happened to take place in the same auditorium where I'd won an Emmy award just a couple years earlier.  I was sitting alone in the upper balcony in the midst of fairly serious health issues, which had gotten to the point that I had to quit my two and a half jobs and was going to doctors for various ailments nearly every day.  I was feeling quite ill and frail, so wanted to sit alone in the upper balcony above the two thousand or so workshop participants. 

During one of the breaks, Suze's lawyer friend came up to the balcony, explaining that she'd just been asked by our guru about the rumors she was spreading and was told to speak with me. In a moment of surprise honesty, this lawyer friend admitted to me that Suze had put her up to spreading the rumors. I'd been hearing about these rumors going around for the previous year or so and was already being treated like a pariah by many community members who had heard them, but until that weekend, I had no idea that the rumors had come from Suze. Even with my awareness of Suze's brutal ways, I was shocked that she would have taken such steps to harm me after I'd given her two years of friendship, care, and loving assistance with her personal, spiritual, and career goals.

Still, even after the lawyer friend apologized to me that day for spreading the rumors, she and Suze, and others who repeated and occasionally added to what they'd heard, continued their rumor campaign. Several years later, a wonderful healer who was planning a trip to Los Angeles and had heard I was ill, told me that she'd asked Suze and her lawyer friend for my phone number so she could offer a healing session.  They very piercingly and seriously told her that they would not give her my number and that she was not to contact me under any circumstances, insinuating that there were sinister reasons they could not tell her for my supposed banishment from the path, which eventually became an adjunct to the rumor -- that I'd been banished from the path, even though I was still being asked to come to the main ashram to offer extensive video scripting, editing and producing services. The healer later told me that she couldn't imagine what horrible thing I might have done to be banished in this way, and I informed her that the horrible thing I did was to help Suze Orman to achieve her success, which she was enjoying even while continuing to spread these rumors and destroy my reputation in our mutual path.

I moved from Los Angeles to San Diego for the purpose of healing, but eventually, along with all the other physical, emotional, and financial challenges, I was no longer able to participate in sharing the blessed practices of our path with my spiritual community at the local meditation center.  Some of the more shallow committee members who had heard Suze's rumor actually told newcomers to the center that they shouldn't talk to me, that I had been banished but was still coming for occasional chanting sessions, and that I should therefore be ignored and treated badly so I would stop coming to the meditation center, which I eventually did. 

Now, I'm not sharing this all so that you'll feel sorry for me. My lessons and destiny are what they are, and my job (IMHO) is to grow from them. I tend to view life as an interactive dance with the divine, a series of lessons, blessings and challenges that my optimistic tendency likes to think is always ultimately leading toward a greater good.  For example, it is likely that my shift from editing and producing television shows and movies in Hollywood to living a simple and peaceful life of creative spiritual service came, to a significant degree, from my experiences with Suze and the resulting conditions, events, and observations.

One lesson was for me from the experiences with Suze was to use greater discernment when choosing where to direct my efforts, skills, and intentions, rather than to automatically give all I've got to help someone’s dream come true.  I learned that some dreams are better left unrealized, after this experience of helping someone to achieve their dreams ended up turning into a nightmare for me and I believe society and the economy in general. My nature has always been geared toward an enjoyment of sharing and giving, and the decade of monastic life had created a general stance to life that said "yes" to whatever was asked of me. So I had to learn the lesson implied in the middle-eastern quote: "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel." 

I also had to explore and contemplate what inside myself allowed me to be dominated and harmed by Suze, and to strengthen my ability to detect and release problematic people from my life before they cause damage, perhaps going somewhat out of balance in this regard.  The effects of my troublesome experiences with Suze and the results of her rumor campaign against me in our mutual spiritual community reminded me of when someone I knew ate too much shrimp during a meal and had an allergic reaction that made her super-sensitive to even small amounts of shrimp in the future.  In a similar way, I became allergic to abusive or disrespectful words or action, along with other qualities I'd seen in Suze, including greed, deceit, and rudeness. I became more reclusive and emotionally and spiritually self-sufficient, or you could also say that I became less tolerant of getting entangled too much with people, while still feeling an overall oneness and soul friendship with most people I'd meet while on errands, offering workshops or concerts, or interacting via the world wide web.

I also had many ongoing contemplations about balancing forgiveness and letting go versus taking responsibility and speaking up about someone I felt was causing damage to the world, regardless of the potential repercussions to my peaceful life that would likely come from speaking up about such things. In 2006, I saw Mike Jones sacrifice his own reputation and well being by telling the whole world that he was a male prostitute (and snitch) because he felt it was his responsibility to reveal what he knew about Reverend Ted Haggard for the greater good, and I have to admit to feeling a bit of self chastisement for not being brave enough to do the same in my situation.

The point of sharing these events and Suze's behavior is to say: Is this the kind of person who should be advising millions on how to treat other people?  Is this someone you would want to emulate in your life?  Would you allow your children to speak to people and brag the way Suze does?  I know that many imperfect people live in this world, and of course we all have flaws, but think about it:  What kind of person harms and tries to destroy the well-being of the very people who lovingly helped her to achieve her greatest dreams?  What kind of person takes what she wants without having the usual boundaries of fairness, integrity, and basic human decency (ie. sexually violating people who aren't gay when they are sleeping). Should such a person be one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, spreading her problematic views and behaviors throughout society?  Should such a person be giving advice on personal and family relationships or how to be a decent human being?  A world full of people who think and act like Suze Orman has behaved -- in my experience and observation -- would be a very cold-hearted world indeed.

After finding out that Suze was behind the false rumor campaign that was destroying my reputation in our mutual spiritual community, I calmly emailed her since she'd taken an actual "vow" to never speak to me again.  I did not ask Suze to make good on all of her broken promises of generous repayment or to go person by person and undo the damage of her rumor rampage.  I asked Suze to please stop spreading these rumors and told her of the extreme damage she was causing in my life, and I asked for an apology, which would have at least brought some healing.  Suze refused to apologize, saying that my few sentences of feedback about her abusive behavior had hurt her, apparently as bad as her raping me, stealing from me, mistreating me, and destroying my reputation in our mutual spiritual community. 

Personally, these events were quite devastating, especially the disappointment of having my spiritual community be manipulated and fooled into mistreating me because of Suze Orman's lies. Even while I remembered the higher vision of spiritual awareness within which whatever comes to a soul in this world is a potential lesson to be learned or blessing to be discovered, the traumatic events took their toll, making me vulnerable to a list of physical ailments, without the strength to heal as I might have with past issues.  Within a year or so after helping Suze to publish her first book, I went from being a healthy, naive, cheerful person with a vibrant career and six-figure income to becoming physically ill to the point of having to quit my jobs, being more or less disabled for many years while gaining a lot of weight, and living under the poverty line, often without funds for even basic living expenses.

At the same time, challenges often come along with a spiritual journey, and having a certain distaste for money is not such a bad thing for a spiritual artist to have, especially in today’s prevelant “Ka-Ching Spirituality” culture, where service is often supplanted by selling.  My creative output continued in spite of various challenges and limitations, and during these years of illness and financial scarcity, I was able to create the extensive Night Lotus website of free multimedia spiritual resources -- with thousands of pages and files of books, music, videos and more that serve hundreds of guests from around the world every day. I also gave away thousands of tapes, CDs, videos, and books, even while going without certain basics for myself.  But as Peace Pilgrim, an elderly woman who walked as a penniless pilgrim of peace for nearly 30 years in the mid-20th century, says in the documentary I scripted and edited (viewable on YouTube), when you're enthusiastic about what you're doing, you don't so much mind the discomforts along the way.

This decade-plus focus on charitable offerings was in a sense my response to the question the universe had posed to me through my experiences with Suze: What do you do when you've helped a harmful person become a major input into society?   Part of my response was to balance the regret I was feeling from having used my energy, skills, time, resources, and contacts to help spark the career of someone I felt was bringing damage and greed to the world by doing whatever I could within my limited circumstances to help bring good wisdom and blessings to the world, and to sow seeds of service and generosity rather than greed and miserliness.

For many years, I've been guided to share the Suze-related experiences and information in this article, but was resistant for obvious reasons, even while knowing that people deserve to have the information needed to make right choices in their lives.  This has been quite a struggle for many years, because I usually find it fairly easy to trust and follow my inner guidance to share things openly.  And now, after more than a decade of this struggle and silence, I can say confidently that even if some readers judge me harshly for sharing my thoughts and experiences, it is the right thing to do. 

When Suze would pop up on whatever show I was watching, I would try not to think negative thoughts, but there they would be, hiding beneath her bright white false teeth.  Even when these judgments came forth, I would do my best to maintain a spiritual and philosophical bigger-picture view of the world as meaningful, purposeful, well-organized, and in an ultimate sense, perfect.  I strove to trust that sometimes even bad examples can eventually bring positive lessons, even as I fretted while watching Suze shame and batter some poor guest who had come to ask for help, or emasculate and humiliate her assistant Jeff, who eventually disappeared from the show in a mysterious way. 

In contrast to my usually strong emotional steadiness, I would actually become physically nauseous when I saw Suze's face, which could pop up in any bookstore, on any television show, or on any magazine cover. For a time, I would feel physically nauseous when I heard Suze's voice, smelled someone wearing the Opium perfume she used to wear, and eventually when I heard the word "money" -- and as any "law of attraction" expert will tell you, feeling nausea when you hear the word "money" is not a good association for financial well-being, thus came my quick descent from a six figure income to living for many years under the poverty line. 

Many people may feel that Suze's financial information has been useful in improving their spending habits and finances -- the problem is that this useful guidance is wrapped in some of Suze's problematic world views and ways of relating to people, what Saint Ignatius of Loyola called "wine mixed with poison."

Of course, it is common sense good advice to be frugal and to only spend within your means.  It is also true that helping someone in the wrong way, at the wrong time, or with the wrong person can increase their feelings of dependence and keep them from achieving the strength to make it on their own. However, Suze turned not helping others into a virtual commandment, advising parents to not help their children with college and to not help friends and family in need.  With the subsequent financial meltdown, many of those who withheld their help from loved ones on Suze's advice have now lost not the same money they could have given to help their loved ones, and have missed important opportunities to be loving and generous people who share their good fortune with others, some of whom would surely help them back during their own times of need. Such a reciprocity of giving and sharing is the very foundation of a mature and decent society. 

Here is one example of a self-proclaimed fan who regrets having trusted Suze's advice without knowing more facts about her personal life, from a comment on Tammy Bruce's blog after Suze stopped hiding her orientation in 2007:

I have been a fan of Suze Orman for many, many years. In fact, I credit her with helping me achieve financial freedom. I never gave her sexual preferences a second thought. She always flirted with the male callers and created a sexual tension between she and her email co-host Jeff, on her CNBC shows. I did however, used to find it odd that whenever a woman called in to discuss her male partner's flagrant credit stories, Suze ALWAYS recommended dumping the guy, divorcing the guy or just plain getting rid of him. Suze never once suggested the two work it out and solve the financial problem together. I also used to find it odd that she would advice women to think of themselves first and forget their children.

For example: forget the college tuition and worry about socking money away for your own retirement. Now, since Suze outed herself, it all makes perfect sense. If I had known this information beforehand, I would have handled her advice a bit differently. I had my own children endure painful and costly student loans all in the sake of my own retirement. Suze doesn't have children so how could she understand a mother's enduring love? Suze has different problems in her partnership than a husband and wife does.

I wish her much luck in the future. I just wish she could have been more honest 10 years ago when I started following her advice. I may not have cast off a relationship so easily.

The woman who shared this story is one of many to whom I sincerely apologize for not being more forthcoming earlier with information you could have used to make better decisions about whose advice to trust regarding your family and relationships. Over the years, seeing Suze put forth bad behavior and advice, my heart would sink, knowing that I'd used my God-given skills and creative power to help bring someone so harmful into public prominence. It is true that many people have found Suze's generally basic financial advice to be useful in structuring their budgets and investments, but at what overall price to society?

For the past decade-plus, Suze has recklessly mixed her problematic opinions and behavior with useful financial information and advice, creating through her intense media exposure and overconfident presentation a shift in the economic structure and focus of our country, and to some degree, world.  Just as our culture was about to get swept into a higher level of generous spiritual holistic mentality in the early 1990's, Suze came along wagging her finger and shouting that wealth is good, greed is good, money is spirituality -- you must have the “Courage to be Rich!” Hold off on enjoying life. Don't take that vacation, don't change your career to something you would love to do if it might disrupt your finances.  Don't tell your husband that you want a divorce, because if you stay with him for one more year, you'll reach ten years of marriage and possibly get an increased portion of his social security payments one day -- oh and during that year, steal away and hide money so when you leave you'll have some savings. I watched Suze give this advice on her CNBC show, and it took my breath away.

I don't claim to be a financial expert at all, but it seems obvious to me that Suze's simplistic advice for the masses, supported by some of the most respected television figures of our day, distorted the natural balance of commerce and placed blocks in the natural economic flows. President Bush tried to boost the economy before the crash with a stimulus check that he asked every taxpayer to go out and spend to help jumpstart the economy.  Along came Suze on all the shows, instructing people not to spend their checks, but to save them (again perhaps good advice for many on an individual level, but when the masses follow it, the stimulus doesn't stimulate and the economy goes down).  Sometimes it is okay to spend money, especially if it is given specifically for you to spend and give back to the economy.

As the economy fell in late 2008 and early 2009, Suze's "rescue remedy" was to ask society, through Oprah's stage and others, to cut their spending in half, specifically asking them to cancel their newspaper subscriptions and to pledge to stop eating in restaurants, two areas of society that were barely hanging on at the time. Of course it is general good advice to curtail extravagant spending when funds are low, however when given as a "pledge" through Oprah's platform and Suze's other media venues, targeting specific business sectors that are already on the brink of failing, this kind of reckless cookie-cutter advice has the potential to ruin many businesses and ultimately run the U.S. economy into the ground, just as I believe Suze's other advice and behaviors have done in recent years. At the same time that Suze was making people pledge to cut their spending in half, cutting even the most minor purchases from their lives, financial experts were warning about the importance of consumer spending in staving off a worse recession or depression for our country and the world.

President Obama addressed the need for spending to continue through this recession in his address on the economy on April 14, 2009: "You see, when this recession began, many families sat around the kitchen table and tried to figure out where they could cut back. So have many businesses. And this is a completely reasonable and understandable reaction. But if everybody -- if everybody, if every family in America, if every business in America cuts back all at once, then no one is spending any money, which means there are no customers, which means there are more layoffs, which means that the economy gets even worse." 

The somewhat fragile balance of social economics depends on the continual flow of giving and receiving, where people save some funds while using the rest to purchase things, enjoy life, and help their children, family, friends, and neighbors, who also help back when the need arises. Of course, adjustments need to take place as one or the other element goes out of balance here and there.  Social overconsumption has certainly become a problem, with our economy depending too much on planned obsolescence, overconsumption, and people buying unnecessary things that they cannot afford.

 

From the New York Times article "Suze Orman is Having a Moment," in May, 2009:

Beloved for these tough-love dressings-down, which Oprah calls “Suze smackdowns,” Orman says she actually never genuinely loses her patience but “acts it up for television.” Her real wrath, she says, is saved for the people in charge who let all those mortgages go through. But if that's true, since the meltdown she has given an Academy-Award-worthy performance of someone truly peeved by the financial recklessness of average Americans. On “Oprah” on Sept. 23, an episode that was shot near the peak of the credit crisis, Orman unleashed her fury on a couple featured on the show who had no health insurance, a home that was worth less than what they owed on it, had endured a layoff and were living off of 29 credit cards.

“I wish I could sit here and feel sorry for you,” Orman told the couple. “I wish I could sit here and have some empathy, truthfully, that the fact that you lost your job, you were under stress, that you don't have health insurance for your children. You are two proud people that kept the lies going by putting your expenses for this home that you say you can afford.”

Orman's syntax was starting to get bollixed up as she worked herself into a frenzy of indignation, letting the couple know it was high time they sold their home: “The fact that you were never late on those credit cards because you were borrowing money from credit cards to pay other credit cards to pay your mortgage. . . . ” She raged on and on. When the wife tried to defend her behavior, Orman dismissed her arguments. “You are talking to Suze Orman here!” she said.

When I spoke to Orman months after the episode was taped, she acknowledged that she lost her cool. “I was freaked,” she said. “You can tell I was freaked. I freaked Oprah out. Because I knew it was possible that by the time we came off that show that the entire United States economy could have collapsed. Our credit had frozen — I wasn't sure we were going to be able to get money out of our A.T.M.'s. Our entire system could have come tumbling down that way. I let her have it, all this angst I was feeling about what was about to happen.”

The wife, whose mouth alternated between a humiliated frown and a we're-on-TV-smile throughout the tongue-lashing, and her husband told the producers afterward that they wanted the segment edited out. (The segment ran.) It was an awkward situation for Orman, she says, “because you better believe the producers of their show care about how their guests are treated.” In the end Orman spent some time on the phone with the wife, explaining why she reacted as she did and giving her more detailed financial counsel. “And it was all O.K.,” Orman says, supremely confident as ever in her ability to help. “She actually got more out of it in the long run.”

 

Click the ad to enlarge and read Suze's advice about how milk is a great investment

In contrast to the negative opinions shared about Suze held by almost everyone I know, Suze also has many fans, including Larry King, Oprah Winfrey, Kathy Griffin, Rosie O'Donnell, Anderson Cooper, and Barbara Walters -- people who I would have thought would show better discernment in who they recommend.  These endorsements don't really change my opinions about Suze, because I've had enough closeup experiences to feel confident in saying at minimum that this woman should not be guiding the world on how to be an honest or decent human being.  My guess is that many of these people who have enthusiastically endorsed Suze probably don't know her on a close personal basis.  For example, having been otherwise in contact with Rosie, I asked about her frequent recommendations and proclamations of love for Suze on her blog.  Rosie admitted that in spite of her lavish endorsements, she hardly  knew Suze personally but that Suze had helped support Rosie's charitable projects, responding in an email with her usual Rosie meter:

"i dont know suze orman
or how much a charade she is
or is not..
she comes to support all my stuff
in vegas
charity"  

As someone who usually calls people on their BS, Kathy Griffin's extreme devotion to Suze has surprised me, as it surprised Kathy's assistant Jessica. I'd previously been in communications with Jessica when she wrote to tell me that one of my books had helped to jumpstart her spiritual quest.  Jessica told me that she didn't appreciate Suze being condescending and rude to her during Kathy's gushing visit with her idol Suze on the "D-List" show. I shared with Jessica some of my back history which helped her to feel better about the situation and confirmed her personal intuition about Suze. 

To Jessica's face and again while speaking to the camera on Kathy's show, Suze called Jessica "Stupid, just stupid" for wanting to lease a car, which was interesting because I remember less than two decades ago when I was helping Suze to begin her career.  Suze was deeply in debt but indulging in fairly extreme spending -- way beyond what she yells at people for doing today.  In spite of being unable to repay one friend's loan of $50,000 according to their agreed upon schedule, Suze was spending money like crazy on fancy restaurants, all kinds of spa treatments, and expensive clothes.  Just two years before Suze became a successful published author, brutally shaming others for spending money they don't have, Suze not only leased a car, but the car she leased was a top of the line BMW, to go with her $10,000 watch, frequent salon visits, fancy restaurants and more.

If Suze was actually teaching about her own path to riches it would probably look more like the prosperity positive attraction theories where spending like you're wealthy can actually bring greater wealth (BTW, it doesn't work for everyone). In response to her so-called "Suze smack-down," Jessica rightly observed, "She seemed more gossipy than smart and people follow her advice blindly. Some of it is great but I also like to think for myself. Kathy even got a little ruffled with me when I said I probably would continue to lease cars. As if it offended her and Suze...such bizarre cult like behavior."  Soon after, Jessica ended her several year association with Kathy -- I don't know how much had to do with this event and Kathy supporting such demeaning behavior from Suze towards Jessica.

Now, I'm not a financial expert who can critique the quality of Suze's specifically financial advice, although based on what I've heard and read, most of it seems to be the same basic set of general facts and common sense info that she more or less repeats over and over again, year after year, and book after book.  But as an observer of spiritual laws of nature, I do know that inspiring a country to not help others, including one's own family and children, as Suze has been doing for many years, is just asking for the kind of society-wide karmic financial disaster we see today, not to mention the effects of Suze's negative behavioral examples of humiliating people and shamelessly bragging to those who have come to her for help that she has more money than any of them -- behavior that any good parent would scold their children for displaying. 

 

From the New York Times article "Suze Orman is Having a Moment," in May, 2009:

Anyone looking for insight into the genesis of Orman's obsession with money, her deeply personal, all-consuming preoccupation with it, need look no farther than the first chapter of “The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom.” Just a few pages in, she tells the story of a fire that destroyed her father's chicken shack when she was about 13. Her father, who was there when the fire started, escaped without harm — only to rush back in, his daughter watching in disbelief, after he realized that every cent the family had was in the cash register. Unable to open the register, he “literally picked back up the scalding metal box and carried it outside,” Orman writes. “When he threw the register on the ground, the skin on his arms and chest came with it. He had escaped the fire safely once, untouched. Then he voluntarily risked his life and was severely injured. The money was that important. That was when I learned that money is obviously more important than life itself.”

Orman goes on to talk about her quest to gain some perspective on that life lesson, and toward the end of the book, in a chapter called “Understanding the Ebb and Flow of the Money Cycle,” she returns to her father's story. Her father experienced a series of business reversals, she writes, but eventually he had two delis up and running successfully, and he stopped worrying: “For the first time ever, there was enough money — more than enough. My dad knew, too, that my mom would be taken care of after he was gone, and he was happy her brother would take over the family business.”

Not long after that, she wrote, “my father died — in his eyes a lucky man.” The point of the story: Sometimes the worst misfortune paves the way for a better opportunity.

Back in March, a few minutes before Orman was about to go live on “Morning Joe,” I mentioned to her that I had been struck by the story of her father's perseverance. Did his entrepreneurialism, I asked, inspire her?

“My father killed himself,” she said by way of an answer. “On Father's Day.”  I was startled by the apparent discrepancy with her more sanguine account of her father's death in “The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom” but let her continue.

That day, she went on, when she was 30, her father insisted on getting out of his wheelchair and walking and walking even though he had a serious heart condition and the doctors had warned him against it. “He wouldn't open the presents. He knew what he was doing,” she said. “He died a defeated man. He didn't know who would take care of me and my mom.”

A few weeks later, I asked Orman about the seeming contradiction in facts, and she passed it off blithely, even likably. “Oh, who knows what I said in the book,” she replied. She added that she probably gave the story a happier ending in print to please her mother.

On the morning she first told me that she believed her father killed himself, I thought I might somehow have been misremembering the story in the book — and wasn't sure what to say. I remarked awkwardly that she had had an unusually intense life. Her response suggested that she managed to find an equally compelling, inspirational narrative from the sadder, presumably true, version of her father's history: “Thank God,” she said. “It's made me the person I am.”