R.I.P. - Wayne Dyer - Self Help Guru

**PTB** · 08-31-2015, 09:33 AM

I never followed the man, but I know Dave Palumbo has been deeply influenced by him, and has frequently shared his insights here on RX.

There was much truth in his messages.
Wayne Dyer, Motivational Guru And Bestselling Author, Dies At 75

“Who we are is the part of us that is infinite, the part of us that never stops.”

Wayne Dyer, the motivational guru and bestselling author of dozens of self-help books, died Saturday night at the age of 75.
His family shared the news with Dyer’s 2.4 million Facebook fans on Sunday. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Dyer, who was known to fans as the “father of motivation,” first gained worldwide fame in 1976 after the publication of his first book “Your Erroneous Zones.” Although he was said to have sold copies “out of the back of his station wagon," the tome became an international bestseller with an estimated 35 million copies sold.
Dyer would later write more than 40 books, almost half of which made The New York Times bestseller list, and appeared on many TV shows, including several PBS specials.
Last year, Mind Body Spirit magazine ranked Dyer as the eighth most spiritually influential person in the world.
Born in Detroit in 1940, Dyer spent part of his childhood in orphanages and foster homes before going on to serve in the U.S. Navy in the late 1950s. He earned a doctorate in educational counseling from Wayne State University and taught at St. John's University in New York until he found success as an author.
Dyer, who counted celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey as some of his fans, espoused the power of positive thinking in his teachings.
“Take the last five minutes of your day,” Dyer told CBS Sunday Morning in 2014, “and put your attention on everything that you would like to attract into your life: ‘I am well. I am healed. I am in perfect health. I am abundant. I am happy.’ Say those things to yourself. Then you'll marinate for eight hours, and you'll awaken and you'll begin to attract the things that are in your subconscious mind.”
Dyer was diagnosed with leukemia in 2009, NBC News reported, and claimed to have treated the disease with “positive thinking, daily exercise and ‘psychic surgery’” performed by a Brazilian medium.
Dyer was also a proponent of the idea that death is but an “illusion.” In 2012, he told Winfrey: “Who we are is the part of us that is infinite, the part of us that never stops.”

Dyer's career was not free from controversy.
PBS ombudsman Michael Getlar wrote in 2006 that viewers had complained about Dyer’s “overtly religious” teachings. Several years later, Getlar said that “it is my sense that … Dyer’s presentations violate PBS’s Editorial Standards and Policies.”
In 2010, author Stephen Mitchell filed suit, alleging Dyer had plagiarized chunks of two of his books. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
Many fans and friends of Dyer’s, including Degeneres, Winfrey and the motivational speaker Tony Robbins, mourned the self-help author’s death on social media.

Dyer, who lived in Maui, was separated from his third wife and had eight children.

**Curt James** · 08-31-2015, 09:44 AM

Here's the USA Today article.

Self-help guru Wayne W. Dyer dies at 75

By Greg Toppo, USATODAY

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, the best-selling self-help guru and author of 30 books, died late Saturday, his family and publisher said. He was 75.

A posting on Dyer's Facebook page said: "Wayne has left his body, passing away through the night. He always said he couldn't wait for this next adventure to begin and had no fear of dying. Our hearts are broken, but we smile to think of how much our scurvy elephant will enjoy the other side."

The posting was signed by his family. Within an hour, it had been shared more than 32,000 times.

Dyer died Saturday night in Maui, Hawaii, Reid Tracy, chief executive of Dyer's publisher, Hay House, told NBC News. The cause of death wasn't immediately reported, but he had been diagnosed with leukemia several years ago.

In an interview posted to the KPBS-TV, San Diego, website in 2012 after his leukemia diagnosis, Dyer said he’d begun looking at the illness as “just the body’s way of responding to, perhaps, psychological traumas, you know, from failed relationships in the past, or whatever it is, and that the body just always knows what it’s doing — and the body is perfect.”

For years, Dyer was a regular guest on Oprah Winfrey's talk show, and Winfrey's OWN network broadcast many interviews with and documentaries by him. The network began tweeting a series of interviews with Dyer beginning Sunday on the account of its spirituality and religion show "Super Soul Sunday," NBC reported.

On Sunday, Winfrey tweeted: "It was always a pleasure to talk to @DrWayneWDyer about life's big questions. He always had big answers. RIP Wayne. You brought the Light."

Deepak Chopra tweeted: "Grieving deeply at sudden passing of my life long friend @DrWayneWDyer. I saw him 2 weeks ago at Chopra Center in good spirits."

Another self-help guru, Tony Robbins, tweeted late Sunday: "Wayne Dyer has passed away today. 4 those of us who loved him it's sad, but he knew death was a transition. We send love 4his next adventure."

Dyer's Facebook page on Sunday still advertised an upcoming two-week seminar, scheduled for October and dubbed "The Holy Land and Beyond: A Spiritual Journey of Self-Discovery."

A native of Detroit, Dyer had been living in Maui.

Dyer was a guidance counselor at a Detroit high school and went on to run a successful private therapy practice, but his motivational and self-help lectures at St. John's University, where he was a professor, attracted students beyond those enrolled, according to a biography on Dyer's Goodreads page. A literary agent persuaded him to package his ideas in book form, resulting in his first book, Your Erroneous Zones, in 1976.

Dyer eventually quit his teaching job and began touring the USA to promote the book, reportedly selling copies "out of the back of his station wagon," according to Michael Korda. The book, Korda said, made the best-seller lists "before book publishers even noticed what was happening."

Dyer may have lived in Hawaii, but he never forgot his Detroit roots. He was a million-dollar donor to the city's Wayne State University, establishing a scholarship fund at the college where he earned three degrees, including a doctorate in counseling. He helped raise more than $100 million for public broadcasting, including the local public broadcasting station, with motivational specials that ran for years.

“As a pioneer in the genre we now refer to as ‘self-help’ programming, he connected deeply with public television audiences that share his mission for personal improvement,” Rich Homberg, president and CEO of Detroit Public Television, said Sunday.

“For millions and millions of people, he was a touchstone of understanding and self-awareness and confidence,” said Homberg. “He always just felt so genuine, and so real, and he went to such lengths to help people understand.”

Homberg said public television stations around the country eagerly anticipated Dyer-staged shows, not only for the fundraising dollars they generated but because viewers so connected with Dyer’s message.

He was born Wayne Walter Dyer in Detroit, and grew up in a series of foster care homes. His father was an alcoholic who left the family when Dyer was 3.
In the 1960s, he taught social studies at Detroit’s Pershing High School, and then was a counselor for two years in the early '70s at Catholic all-girls Mercy High School in Farmington Hills. At Mercy, he also was a driver’s education instructor. Not only did he teach students to drive, but he also taught several of the Mercy nuns, said Cheryl Kreger, the school’s president.

When Kreger called him a few months ago to thank him for a recent donation, Dyer said he’d be happy to be included in a capital fundraising campaign for the school.

“Use my name. Use my picture. Whatever you want to promote Mercy,” Kreger said Dyer told her.

More @ http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/b...uary/71435806/