IS THE NEW AGE RELEVANT TODAY?
Walk into any home today and you are almost certain to find
something which has been purchased from a New Age outlet.
Crystals are of course everywhere. The Buddha himself may appear
in the home office, looking well-fed and smiling as he does duty
as a paperweight or mantelpiece decoration. Wind chimes may mark
the entrance to a room or may be heard jangling merrily in the
garden. The design of either the house or garden may well have
been inspired by the supposed minimalist principles of Zen
Buddhism. You won't have to sniff too hard to catch the heady
aroma of incense from the mysterious Orient. And if you look
carefully you might even find a crystal ball or two. In one
well-known UK charity shop I have even seen crystal balls
stacked up next to the cash register in much the same way as
supermarkets display shelves of sweets and chewing gum in the
area where you line up to pay for your groceries, cleverly
taking advantage of those last minute impulse buys ("Oh, I'll
just take one of those crystal balls before I leave!).
Never Fear! ***********
Look through the phone directory and you will see hordes of
jobbing alternative practitioners. Aromatherapists, Reiki
experts, Shiatsu (no, it isn't a little dog!) and any number of
other self-certificated experts all clamouring to have a go at
curing your bad back or saving your rocky relationship.
Should you lose your appointment book, never fear! Find out what
the future has in store by consulting someone who will (for a
fee) read your Tarot cards, your palms, tea leaves or probably
with a little persuasion (or an extra fee!) the contents of your
trash can.
Doctors are yesterday's news. Better to call a hypnotherapist,
colour therapist, graphologist or numerologist who can at one
and the same time (for a fee) tell you all about your past, your
future - and whether you even have a future.
Expensive *********
When you wish to relax at the end of a hard day you can play
special relaxation tapes of whales, waves breaking on the shore
or Australian aborigine didgeridoo music. Your home will of
course have been designed down to the smallest detail by a
knowledgeable, highly-trained and very expensive Feng Shui
consultant who probably charges more than your lawyer! Has the
world gone mad???
All of the aforementioned distractions and more fit neatly into
the loose category of New Age. A lot of people are very serious
about New Age interests and contrary to what you may think, I
would be the last to want to trivialise their beliefs. Whatever
works for them is fine by me. Except for one thing. New Age
practices have become so heavily commercialized that the
original spiritual components have pretty well lost their
integrity by now and, in the West at least, are little more than
products and services in a very competitive market.
Ever since Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists (the
forerunners of the modern New Age Movement) signed their
exclusive channeling deal with the so-called Ascended Masters
back in the nineteenth century, religious and spiritual beliefs
have been borrowed haphazardly from any number of world
religions. Beliefs have been ripped out of their natural
environmental and historical context. Ever since, those beliefs
have been blatantly sold to a spiritually vulnerable public that
has a big fat disposable income and could not wait to spend it.
And if you still think New Age isn't over-commercialized,
consider the case of the trance channeler who trademarked her
spirit guide!
Native American ***************
What the New Age movement has managed to do is turn Tarot cards
(which have a history going back hundreds of years) into a
divinatory version of Happy Families. Feng Shui has been turned
into a fashionably expensive way of choosing the wallpaper. And
the highly respected Jewish Kabala has become the latest trendy
esoteric religion. All the difficult bits have of course been
neatly stripped away in order to make it more easily digestible
by the New Age fraternity. Meanwhile, generations of Native
American wisdom has been repackaged and is now sold as "The
Inspirational Thought for the Day". Many Native American tribes
are of course no longer to be found.
The dream has gone. All that is left is the dreamcatcher.
There is nothing particularly wrong with getting in touch with
your own spiritual roots. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with
having a symbiotic connection with the spiritual roots of other
people and cultures.
As far as I am aware, there is no artificial New Age movement in
the poor villages of Africa. But maybe there is no readily
available market for it. Maybe there is no money waiting to
welcome it in. Doubtless there is lots of money to be made
(probably already being made) not from selling to less affluent
countries, but rather in buying artefacts from them (at an
advantageous rate of course) and reselling them at a good profit
to New Age adherents in the West, thereby perpetuating the myth
of the relevance of the New Age movement today.
Mythology *********
It's time to take a bold step. Leave behind the artificial
trappings of the New Age Movement. Find out about the mythology
of your own part of the world. Construct your own beliefs or
belief system that is relevant to here and now. Do not fool
yourself into thinking that you have a valid belief system, when
all you have is either a credo that cost you $5.95 or a Feng
Shui bill that will turn the neighbours green with envy and make
your accountant go white with fear.
If that is all you have, admit it. If it's badges you want why
not say so? If it's beliefs you seek, then look elsewhere.
What we really need to do is to stop worshipping at shop windows
and to get away from the notion that the ring of a cash register
equals divine revelation. And above all we need to learn to
trust ourselves again rather than always feeling a need to
follow other people's paths. Our belief systems ought to evolve
organically and naturally rather than having to be constructed,
like Frankenstein's monster, from the leftover bits and pieces
of everybody else's.