About understanding New Age teachings

Wikipedia defines New Age as follows:

The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as “drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational psychology, holistic health, parapsychology, consciousness research and quantum physics”. The term New Age refers to the coming astrological Age of Aquarius.

The New Age aims to create “a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas” that is inclusive and pluralistic. It holds to “a holistic world view”, emphasising that the Mind, Body and Spirit are interrelated and that there is a form of monism and unity throughout the universe. It attempts to create “a world view that includes both science and spirituality” and embraces a number of forms of mainstream science as well as other forms of science that are considered fringe.

In my words, New Age is a method of learning (teaching oneself) about all aspects of human experience, not philosophy, religion, or dogma. It gives and should not provide any ready-made answers. Unfortunately, the way it looks to me, New Age followers do treat it as a religion; in fact, such a thing as “a New Age follower” should probably not exist. Let me clarify further. There are three types of New Agers;

The New Age Follower

The New Age Follower reads a lot from many sources as long as it has to do with New Age terminology and ideals. They are attempting to piece together a puzzle that consists of multiple, often incomplete puzzles, and get more and more confused the more they read. Will visit psychics for personalized answers. Typically believe anything, starting from fairies and elves and trying to fit all puzzles together, as if any puzzle was just an add-on package to any other box of puzzle pieces.

The New Age Researcher

The Researcher is taking things with more criticism and probably attempts to gain answers of their own; experimenting with Tarot or pendulums and so forth is common. They collect information using many sources and withhold their final judgment until they are satisfied with the amount of information they have gained. They are starting to feel the need to share their findings on blogs.

The New Age Originator

The New Age Channel

The Channel gets all their information from a psychic source and usually types down what they hear almost word-for-word. They attempt to explain their knowledge but do not question a psychic source. (Example: Walsh; Conversations with God). Not all channels are made equal; some receive very good information, like Walsh, but I wouldn’t swallow it all without question (I will explain why later in this post).

The New Age Theorist

The New Age Theorist takes all available sources of information and complies them all into a new set of theories that are often named as a subsection to New Age. They may use anything from psychic sources, science, psychology, their own observation, other religions, world views, other people’s interpretations of psychic events, and so forth. (Examples: Michael Teachings, the Free Spirit theory, etc.)

Having a level of doubt toward ALL sources is important, and applying a level of scientific scrutiny, as much as is possible in spirituality, is essential; if not in practice (testing), then in mindset. However, the New Age Theorist should not consider spirituality a common field of science because it simply doesn’t lend itself to it. A New Age Theorist believes in critical thinking even when it’s a spiritual topic.

They try to question and use scrutiny the same way as science. They understand, however, that laboratory testing of something that needs a natural flow is not even theoretically possible. They do not treat “supernatural” events as something holy but treat them as natural yet unexplained phenomena that they have the right to study.

The teaching depends on the teacher.

I belong to the last category but did take a good long while as a Researcher.

As you learn more about the New Age, you should consider the following: New Age does not have a dogma. Dogma means passages of scripture or beliefs that everyone must agree to and believe to be considered pure of faith. (Opinions such as “Twin Flames are always monogamous because it says so on the Internet” shouldn’t be seen in New Age.)

By its very nature, New Age is open for anyone to learn, study, and teach under the same heading. There is a wide variety of theories and versions of those theories, psychic channels with varied abilities and backgrounds, and researchers in various levels of enlightenment putting their two cents in. You can safely read and study anyone’s writings. Still, you should always question the source you are reading, their motivations, ideas, and psychological profile – what ideas they love too much to doubt them and which ones hold water.

On a side note, I took some Psychology units at Uni. Because I have developed a psychic skill of reading people’s souls, I noticed a shocking thing: The way a psychologist puts together a psychological theory is very much a mirror to their psychological traumas.

Let’s take B.F. Skinner, for example. He is a behavioral psychologist who believes that the only possible scientific method for understanding human behavior is to observe humans as if you were observing a foreign species. (Paraphrasing.) I used to hate this guy when I read this theory alone. After having one good look at his picture, it explained his whole mindset: He had such respect for the human mind that he could not phantom a mere man like him could ever fully, instinctively, understand another person. To him, that would have been disrespectful to assume he had any answers for a person without scientific evidence.

I find his theories grossly misguided, but I respect his attitude that I could read in his eyes. This example should tell you that even the best-meaning people have difficulty remaining completely objective about things; that is a human condition that is impossible to erase. It helps understand a writer’s perspective if you know something about them. (Which is why I use myself as an example in my texts a lot, so you’ll know where I’m coming from without having to research me otherwise.)

How to put together a New Age worldview

The puzzle pieces. Imagine you go to a store and find a full shelf of boxes of puzzles. You buy 5 of them, go home, overturn all of them on your table, mix and start putting them together as ONE puzzle. How is that going to work for you? Not very well, I’d take it. What any logical person would do, is to put together each puzzle separately and only then compare the results.

It would be best to consider each New Age teacher, spiritual philosophy, or religion a box of their own. You should always ask where they got their puzzle pieces from, and if they do not belong to the group of Originators, go to the Originator of that thought. Each of these imaginary puzzles is like pictures taken of the same object, but by different people from different angles at different times of history. To compare them, you must understand what parts describe the same thing but seen differently.

A researcher may well assist you by offering ideas on where to look. Still, you should not consider a researcher a teacher if you have the opportunity to go to the Originator. There are a few of them around, dead and alive. Always attempt to find the original text if you can. Unfortunately, many of these texts require translation from a language we have a very poor grip on.

For example, I would not touch the modern Bible with a six-foot pole if I wanted to gain some true answers to my questions. Still, I would kill for the chance of talking to Jesus Christ himself. (In addition to translation errors, the Bible has gone through various “edits” of different motivations.) Unfortunately, the best I can hope for is a reincarnation of the man – who more than likely wasn’t a god’s son, really.

When you read these Originators, try and keep them in their separate boxes and compare their findings only after you have a sufficient understanding of each of their teachings. Or wipe the slate clean altogether and start a whole fresh puzzle as I did. Just erase everything you’ve ever learned about life and spirituality and devote your life to finding the answers to the questions we are all asking.

(I figured starting over would be the quickest and easiest way to go, to me, but we’re all different. Then again, it’s been ten years since I started, and I’m still foaming in the mouth doing this.)

Question psychic information

The way I like to put it: The fact someone is in the room with you but forgot to bring his body doesn’t make them smarter than you. I swear to you, spirits are simply humans and animals without their physical body here, just now. They have the same beliefs, largely than what they did in life. The only thing that changes instantly is the busy arguing with an atheist. “You were saying what, standing in my wall without your physical brain, now?” It tends to shut up any atheist on their tracks. It is difficult to claim people are just physical mass when you literally left your brain home and are still arguing.

Unfortunately, that argument won’t fly with them in real life, but I’ll just laugh about that by myself.

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