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I have a love\/hate relationship with the \u201cnew age\u201d.<\/p>\nI have a love\/hate relationship with the \u201cnew age\u201d.<\/p>\n
I love it because it has affirmed my childhood belief in magic.\u00a0 The more open I become to the vessels of \u201cnew age\u201d\u00a0 (translate very old) wisdom, to the various oracles, healing methods, meditations, esoteric schools and\u00a0 daily synchronicities around me, the more I delight in the reality of magic in my world.<\/p>\n
Yet there is something about it that I hate.\u00a0 Maybe hate is too strong of a word.\u00a0 There is an aspect of this movement that has always repelled me.\u00a0 It has tainted my happiness and irritated my search for truth.<\/p>\n
Until recently I didn’t know what to call it, or how to lament of it to friends.\u00a0\u00a0 I just knew that when I found myself in a stereotypical \u201cnew age\u201d situation, I would retreat with distaste, rolling my eyes and mumbling, even though I myself am a believer.<\/p>\n
Take crystals for example.\u00a0 I have a huge<\/i> collection of beautiful crystals.\u00a0 I know them intimately.\u00a0 They have assisted me in many healings, on both myself and others.\u00a0 Yet when I see someone clutching a clear quartz, or rubbing an amethyst against their forehead, I want to scream!<\/p>\n
Or\u2026I hear a conversation where someone is earnestly sharing:\u00a0 \u201cI just surrounded myself in white light, and do you know, my mother in law was just as nice as she could be\u201d and I want to throw up.\u00a0 Yet I<\/i> surround myself<\/i> in White Light all the time!\u00a0 I know that it works!<\/p>\n
I was a house divided against myself, and I just didn\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n
Then I serendipitously came across the writings of James Hillman and\u00a0 Thomas Moore, books like Blue Fire<\/span> and the Care of the Soul <\/span>series.\u00a0 These authors provided me with a startling new framework to place around my reality and my faith.<\/p>\n They spoke of the difference between spirit and soul.<\/p>\n Spirit and soul.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t pondered the difference in these two words.\u00a0 I considered them pretty much the same thing.\u00a0 Actually, I preferred the word spirit, as the word soul often conjured up uncomfortably dogmatic visions of my childhood religion.\u00a0 Hillman and Moore lament the loss of soulfulness in our society.\u00a0 And in defining soulfulness, I realize it is the missing element which has caused me such irritation in the whole \u201cnew age\u201d movement.\u00a0 Too much spirit and not enough soul.\u00a0 Hillman suggests that<\/p>\n \u00a0\u2026soul is always in the thick of things:\u00a0 in the repressed, in<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the shadow, in the messes of life, in illness, and in the pain<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and confusion of love.\u00a0 Spirituality often seeks to transcend<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 these lowly conditions of the soul.\u00a0 But\u2026 a split of spirituality,<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 with no influence from the soul, readily falls into extremes of<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 literalism and fanaticism.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>Yeah, that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Literalism and fanaticism.\u00a0 That was what was bugging me.\u00a0 Denial of the shadow.\u00a0 Soul acknowledges the sacred in the mundane.\u00a0 It is a much lower frequency, an internal<\/i> frequency.\u00a0 Unlike many on a new age path,\u00a0 I no longer consider it a asset to know how to leave my body.\u00a0\u00a0 I consider it an asset to stay in<\/i>, no matter what happens.\u00a0 It\u2019s harder than it sounds.<\/p>\n I remember very well my introduction to the world of spirit.\u00a0 I voraciously devoured teachings about white light, meditation and crystals.\u00a0 I conversed with angels and guides, learned of energetic healing, telepathic communications, and the power of intention and visualization.\u00a0 I felt as if I had been given a remembering of things long known but forgotten.<\/p>\n But James Hillman warns that:<\/p>\n When spirit is imagined as above human life\u2026 as abstracting<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and distancing, and as pure and uncontaminated, the soul is<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 particularily denigrated.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n Well, that was me.\u00a0 Abstract and distant.\u00a0 Pure and uncontaminated.\u00a0 Ten feet out of my body, bathed in White Light, running red lights and walking into walls.<\/p>\n In retrospect, I believe it was my soul which asked me to put away my spiritual healing practice to pursue a degree in psychology.\u00a0 Not because one is any better or more valid than the other, but because for me, the study of psychology in a university setting, would be a very soulful endeavor.\u00a0 The \u201cmesses of life\u201d at their finest.<\/p>\n College taught me many lessons.\u00a0 Few had to do with school.\u00a0 Yet the biggest and best lesson I didn\u2019t learn at school, but muddled my way through all by myself, was the difference between faith and action.<\/p>\n Spirit is about faith.\u00a0 About prayer and intuition and resting safely in the higher frequencies of the Universe.\u00a0 It does not concern itself with the mundane, it trusts that all will \u201ctrickle down\u201d , As Above, So Below, with emphasis on Above.<\/p>\n Soul is about action. Large and small self-nurturing and self-actualizing acts.\u00a0 Daily availability to the small details. As Below, so Above, with emphasis on Below.\u00a0 Soul embraces the famous words of Ram Dass;\u00a0 \u201cBe Here Now\u201d.\u00a0 Be here when the snow falls, watch it land on the trees.\u00a0 Be here when you take that first sip of a hot chocolate.\u00a0 Be here when your heart is breaking, when your mate holds your hand, when your cat purrs or your child cries.\u00a0 Be present for your dreams.\u00a0 And while visualization is a wonderful tool, so is grounding that visualization in a small, soulful and physical way.\u00a0 Soul very often speaks metaphorically.\u00a0 In images and cravings and longings it will tell you, in a very quiet voice, what it needs.<\/p>\n I was delighted to discover that there was a reason for my angst, that others felt the same attraction\/aversion in face of the stereotypical new age trappings.\u00a0 It is not that there is anything wrong with that picture, it is just an incomplete picture.\u00a0 Now that I have more pieces to my ever-expanding puzzle, I am enjoying the view much more.\u00a0 Yet I wonder how many others have turned away from that stereotype, not realizing it simply needed an infusion of old fashioned soulfulness.\u00a0 I fear that the lack of soulfulness in the spiritual movement is making it less rooted and less respectable.\u00a0 I fear we are losing people in our \u201cairy-fairy\u201d presentation of these truths.<\/p>\n The new age needs a new spin, one that allows for the mundane to be every bit as holy as the profound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a love\/hate relationship with the \u201cnew age\u201d. I love it because it has affirmed my childhood belief in magic.\u00a0 The more open I become to the vessels of \u201cnew age\u201d\u00a0 (translate very old) wisdom, to the various oracles, … Continue reading