Penultimate, Agreed. This is my problem with them. For all the talk about finding balance, they seem to be unable to find a balance between critical intellectual analysis and intuitive thinking. The interesting thing is either one without the other produces a useless (at best) reality reference. At worst, the narcissistic ideas that come out of newage are tinged with a kind of passive spiritual fascism.
The New Age handling of emotion is a strange phenomenon..
Anger: A negative emotion. Avoid anything that provokes it.
Fear: Same. Fear triggers all of the seven deadly sins. Get over it.
Sorrow: I don't know where they stand on that. But if you have sorrow due to being victimized, well, seeing as we create our own reality, you somehow asked for it.
How fascist and unloving is that? You see someone suffering the horrors of the damned and even if you could do something to help, you won't, because you shouldn't interfere with their karma?
Happiness and serenity: The only authentic redeeming state to be in.
This is completely emotionally retarded and overly simplistic. The lack of subtlety in this thinking, is beyond belief.
Over the last 3 decades, people's whose energies could have been spent being more political and less "spiritual" have been so busy gazing at their own navals, they've been complicit in the rise of the even more goofy but politically astute Christian hard right. Fear and anger should have been hauled out of the emotional attic, to deal with these fundy f'heads, long ago.
The New Age is self-neutering, apolitical. They have created a political vacuum of the self absorbed. There is an expression--Those who don't do politics will have politics done to them.
Boy Penultimate, can I ever yammer on, huh? Think I've got you beat.
I found your post VERY interesting and am glad we're on the same page on this issue.
I consider myself a very spiritual person. But I think at the moment, it is best manifested in trying to acquire political understanding.
This is a great forum for anyone stuck in the house with the flu. Hopefully in the next couple of days, I'll be over this thing and logging in less frequently!
