Who are you and did you have to sell your soul at the crossroads to get the information that you just so prolifically shared?!? 🤯 I am a meditation teacher and Reiki practitioner and I try to be vigilant about not spreading the gospel of the New Age. And it ain’t easy because I truck on the edge of those waters all of the time. But I joined a yoga cult by mistake for a weekend once, so I am aware of the damage that selling “personal sovereignty” can do. I have just never had the vocabulary to back this up until I read your writing.
There is literally no check and balance in the industry that I work in so I’ve taken it upon myself to delve into topics like “spiritualism” and the perversion of yoga, so that I can show up for my clients as straight as possible. Ok, maybe a little too straight as I shared with a class that I was guiding meditation for the other night, that if COVID doesn’t show us how we are all intrinsically interconnected then I don’t know what will. I sit here in the Hudson Valley watching friends and family receive a virus that travelled over hill and dale and continents and crevasses because we all breathe the SAME AIR.
I don’t even know how to thank you for this forum.
Is it really the affect of capitalism that caused this mutated denial of shadow or rather a focus on material gain at a cost of character or integrity? Universally humans have always gone for the lowest hanging fruit over climbing to a taller part of the tree for a perhaps a better piece of fruit. Combine that easy effort high reward approach with marketing strategies that play off of the brains chemistry and you have a sort of an evil scientist level of sorcery triggering mass impulse trends in energy exchange. Couldn’t we create a system where hard work and expertise still translated into individuals being rewarded for that effort? A system that also factored in the long term costs and deviated from quarterly global returns. Hasn’t socialism’s approach already been seen and it’s failures are already present?
Fundamentally currency is just a token for a measurable amount of energy. How do we inspire further innovation without an individual reward?
Jan 18, 2022·edited Jan 18, 2022Liked by Alex Ebert
As a slightly rehabilitated Spiritual Materialist, I never really expected to see New Age practices and beliefs become mainstream when I became a vegetarian and Yoga teacher back in 1980. 'Nor when I ordained as a monk for 4 years in Thailand in the late '80's. But from Mindfulness to all the rest of the feel-good spiritual buffet that comprises the New Age, it's HERE.
The good news is that erudite scholars of culture and consciousness like Alex Ebert now exist to biopsy and diagnose the cultural absurdisms that characterize what is arguably an adolescent phase of mass psycho-spiritual development. A dose of humor, a dash of honesty, all marinated in a broth of unconditional self-acceptance, and voila! A cure! Soon, we'll be all grown up.
And fyi, I actually posted a reply a year ago to that Trump-as-Lightworker gal on Youtube. Thought it seemed familiar...
I managed to watch 10 minutes of 'light worker'. My mind and soul are hurting. Am I projecting my own inner awfulness on that thing or what? So how do I make this crush of rotten shadow into a good thing? Not asking for a friend.
Just for context, I'm a 67 year old latino business owner who left Argentina at age 20 and now lives in Egypt for the last 35 years. I also lived in the US in the 70's and 80"s. It is clear that you have researched the issues deeply and have formed a well educated opinion that I happen to share but I tend to agree with Song Kang-Ho in saying that you could be much more effective and reach a significantly larger audience if you conveyed the information in a simpler way so that anyone can relate to it rather the run for the dictionary. I commend you on your efforts and hope that more and more humans will come to understand that the cult of the self is not the way forward.
I really wanted to hate this, the hyper complex verbal aesthetic you employ is incredibly hostile to the average joe
But I enjoyed it a lot. Mostly the quotes.
The verbiage is too dense to actually read word by word and try to parse for meaning, but when I squint my eyes and skim, I keep stumbling upon interesting tidbits.
Good work. BTW, saw you perform with the white stripes at the Greek theater 15+ years ago when I was about 12 years old and I knew you were a star then, way before the magnetic zeros thing ever happened. You almost upstaged Jack white!!!!
Now dumb this whole essay down and stop being hostile to people that don’t share your taste for masturbatorily complex verbal gymnastics! I know you can do it because I know you are a star and I’ve known it for more than a decade!!! Go Alex!!!!!
Good ideas here, some of the better ways of describing the state of current culture and its exaggerated sense of self. The meeting of minds between the New Age movement and QAnon reminds me of observations made during my college years about the underlying reactionary qualities of the New Age movement and various self-improvement seminars like est. Rather than "creating our reality" we should say that reality is the medium in which we attempt to define it. The confusion of ideas with the things they represent is an old problem with an ancient pedigree. Perhaps I am fortunate to have slogged through Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason long enough to come across his argument, Existence is not a Predicate. Philosophy can indeed find answers good for separating signal from noise, as long as we are patient enough to do the search.
I really do see this as the beginning because once you trade New Ageism for an acceptance that we might owe each other something the ball is hard to stop from rolling! I think people are feeling sort of shorted by recurring personal run ins with a reality ever so marked by the Religion of Self's themes of not owing each other anything. I think this sense of having been shorted is present in dating/partnership norms, linguistic patterns, workplaces, and some other really interesting really cornerstone venues of daily life in the 2020s.
Just want to say this is very validating as someone who has been talking a lot about interdependence/connectivity lately and not feeling very met. (Woe is me tone not intended, I just definitely feel that even if people have encountered the idea they are slow to promote its visibility)
I know that I have yet to figure out clearly suitable answers but I think the neuropsychological humility approach is a good one to take in the dire push to effectively communicate interconnectivity-based ideas.
Alex, thank you for this excellent essay. I find it important to question an offhand aside, because I think it has big cultural implications. I’m curious why you frame identity politics as another problematic symptom of our disembodiment. I feel strongly the opposite. Identity politics, with roots in 70s feminism and social justice activism, is very much about bodies asking for necessary rights and protections in a collective reality. These bodies, due to their identities, are given less of a chance to experience autonomy, sovereignty, etc. Their bodily existence is negatively impacted by power. IDPOL works to bring those experiences to light and change them. I find that the continued lambasting of IDPOL as “the problem” often comes from the same reality-denying New Age thought that you deconstruct so well here. And the result is a dominant culture hostile to hearing the experiences of non-dominant bodies as truth, to taking them seriously, to doing something about it. As Ijeoma Oluo put it, “We don’t magically get to a system that addresses issues facing minority groups by ignoring issues affecting minority groups.”
Hey Alex, this essay took my mind to a few different places. To paraphrase, if collectively verified opinions create these extreme aversions to what one might call common sense making, then where can we put the blame? Speaking not from a moral standpoint but simply cause and effect. It seems as though any time we push too hard towards collectivism, an errant individualist "gene" kicks back in contempt. Also, do you think the collective and interconnected reality are primary building blocks of our society? Or is the subjective reality the building block, and through the delicate care of subjectivity, we create a harmonious collective. I don't know where we should be looking for harmony to strike first, but if I look at my own life, and the hundreds of people I have paid close attention to, it seems as though that level of understanding can only come from an individual first, and then works its way out to the broader world. Just wondering to myself, what do we do?
I am deeply appreciative of this work, and very much in agreement. If you look at the history of "new thought" or "new age" much of it can be traced to theosophy, H. Blavaatskre, (and like (as you mention) gnosticism, freemasonry, sabbateanism before that) and then that leads into occultism, magic, and very, very dark stuff.
My question to you is about the alternative or the solution to the problem of new ageism. I understand that you emphasize *interdependence* rather than independence -- and ecology, harmony etc. Isn't the best realization of this tradition as it has always been? Tradition is eternal.
I think you are right in your diagnosis of the problem, to quote from your above article:
*"The full history of this religion of self can be perfectly tracked from early Gnosticism’s belief in mind over matter, to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”, to the Protestant reformation’s emphasis on an individualistic relationship to God, to the enlightenment’s empirical emphasis on subjectivity, to capitalism’s “mutual self-interest”,"*
The enemy of this way of thinking has always been the Church. So what is keeping you from tradition?
wow , this sums up so much that ive been sitting and hurting in a real deep way with since 2020 began. thank you so much for sharing this! the new age community really helped me out in a big way at the start of my journey (wow hey i can take less shrooms and make cool overtone sounds with people and meditate and get just as high as the bigger dose, this is the jam! thought 2012 I)
but the nastiness ive seen since then has been like gravel in my gut
Who are you and did you have to sell your soul at the crossroads to get the information that you just so prolifically shared?!? 🤯 I am a meditation teacher and Reiki practitioner and I try to be vigilant about not spreading the gospel of the New Age. And it ain’t easy because I truck on the edge of those waters all of the time. But I joined a yoga cult by mistake for a weekend once, so I am aware of the damage that selling “personal sovereignty” can do. I have just never had the vocabulary to back this up until I read your writing.
There is literally no check and balance in the industry that I work in so I’ve taken it upon myself to delve into topics like “spiritualism” and the perversion of yoga, so that I can show up for my clients as straight as possible. Ok, maybe a little too straight as I shared with a class that I was guiding meditation for the other night, that if COVID doesn’t show us how we are all intrinsically interconnected then I don’t know what will. I sit here in the Hudson Valley watching friends and family receive a virus that travelled over hill and dale and continents and crevasses because we all breathe the SAME AIR.
I don’t even know how to thank you for this forum.
Excellent essay, great work.
Is it really the affect of capitalism that caused this mutated denial of shadow or rather a focus on material gain at a cost of character or integrity? Universally humans have always gone for the lowest hanging fruit over climbing to a taller part of the tree for a perhaps a better piece of fruit. Combine that easy effort high reward approach with marketing strategies that play off of the brains chemistry and you have a sort of an evil scientist level of sorcery triggering mass impulse trends in energy exchange. Couldn’t we create a system where hard work and expertise still translated into individuals being rewarded for that effort? A system that also factored in the long term costs and deviated from quarterly global returns. Hasn’t socialism’s approach already been seen and it’s failures are already present?
Fundamentally currency is just a token for a measurable amount of energy. How do we inspire further innovation without an individual reward?
As a slightly rehabilitated Spiritual Materialist, I never really expected to see New Age practices and beliefs become mainstream when I became a vegetarian and Yoga teacher back in 1980. 'Nor when I ordained as a monk for 4 years in Thailand in the late '80's. But from Mindfulness to all the rest of the feel-good spiritual buffet that comprises the New Age, it's HERE.
The good news is that erudite scholars of culture and consciousness like Alex Ebert now exist to biopsy and diagnose the cultural absurdisms that characterize what is arguably an adolescent phase of mass psycho-spiritual development. A dose of humor, a dash of honesty, all marinated in a broth of unconditional self-acceptance, and voila! A cure! Soon, we'll be all grown up.
And fyi, I actually posted a reply a year ago to that Trump-as-Lightworker gal on Youtube. Thought it seemed familiar...
I managed to watch 10 minutes of 'light worker'. My mind and soul are hurting. Am I projecting my own inner awfulness on that thing or what? So how do I make this crush of rotten shadow into a good thing? Not asking for a friend.
Just for context, I'm a 67 year old latino business owner who left Argentina at age 20 and now lives in Egypt for the last 35 years. I also lived in the US in the 70's and 80"s. It is clear that you have researched the issues deeply and have formed a well educated opinion that I happen to share but I tend to agree with Song Kang-Ho in saying that you could be much more effective and reach a significantly larger audience if you conveyed the information in a simpler way so that anyone can relate to it rather the run for the dictionary. I commend you on your efforts and hope that more and more humans will come to understand that the cult of the self is not the way forward.
I really wanted to hate this, the hyper complex verbal aesthetic you employ is incredibly hostile to the average joe
But I enjoyed it a lot. Mostly the quotes.
The verbiage is too dense to actually read word by word and try to parse for meaning, but when I squint my eyes and skim, I keep stumbling upon interesting tidbits.
Good work. BTW, saw you perform with the white stripes at the Greek theater 15+ years ago when I was about 12 years old and I knew you were a star then, way before the magnetic zeros thing ever happened. You almost upstaged Jack white!!!!
Now dumb this whole essay down and stop being hostile to people that don’t share your taste for masturbatorily complex verbal gymnastics! I know you can do it because I know you are a star and I’ve known it for more than a decade!!! Go Alex!!!!!
Good ideas here, some of the better ways of describing the state of current culture and its exaggerated sense of self. The meeting of minds between the New Age movement and QAnon reminds me of observations made during my college years about the underlying reactionary qualities of the New Age movement and various self-improvement seminars like est. Rather than "creating our reality" we should say that reality is the medium in which we attempt to define it. The confusion of ideas with the things they represent is an old problem with an ancient pedigree. Perhaps I am fortunate to have slogged through Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason long enough to come across his argument, Existence is not a Predicate. Philosophy can indeed find answers good for separating signal from noise, as long as we are patient enough to do the search.
I really do see this as the beginning because once you trade New Ageism for an acceptance that we might owe each other something the ball is hard to stop from rolling! I think people are feeling sort of shorted by recurring personal run ins with a reality ever so marked by the Religion of Self's themes of not owing each other anything. I think this sense of having been shorted is present in dating/partnership norms, linguistic patterns, workplaces, and some other really interesting really cornerstone venues of daily life in the 2020s.
Just want to say this is very validating as someone who has been talking a lot about interdependence/connectivity lately and not feeling very met. (Woe is me tone not intended, I just definitely feel that even if people have encountered the idea they are slow to promote its visibility)
I know that I have yet to figure out clearly suitable answers but I think the neuropsychological humility approach is a good one to take in the dire push to effectively communicate interconnectivity-based ideas.
Alex, thank you for this excellent essay. I find it important to question an offhand aside, because I think it has big cultural implications. I’m curious why you frame identity politics as another problematic symptom of our disembodiment. I feel strongly the opposite. Identity politics, with roots in 70s feminism and social justice activism, is very much about bodies asking for necessary rights and protections in a collective reality. These bodies, due to their identities, are given less of a chance to experience autonomy, sovereignty, etc. Their bodily existence is negatively impacted by power. IDPOL works to bring those experiences to light and change them. I find that the continued lambasting of IDPOL as “the problem” often comes from the same reality-denying New Age thought that you deconstruct so well here. And the result is a dominant culture hostile to hearing the experiences of non-dominant bodies as truth, to taking them seriously, to doing something about it. As Ijeoma Oluo put it, “We don’t magically get to a system that addresses issues facing minority groups by ignoring issues affecting minority groups.”
This reminds me of an essay titled, “From Self Actualization to Self Transcendence” by Richard Rohr. Good stuff! Thanks for sharing this.
-Jesse (linktr.ee/humansaredivine)
Hey Alex, this essay took my mind to a few different places. To paraphrase, if collectively verified opinions create these extreme aversions to what one might call common sense making, then where can we put the blame? Speaking not from a moral standpoint but simply cause and effect. It seems as though any time we push too hard towards collectivism, an errant individualist "gene" kicks back in contempt. Also, do you think the collective and interconnected reality are primary building blocks of our society? Or is the subjective reality the building block, and through the delicate care of subjectivity, we create a harmonious collective. I don't know where we should be looking for harmony to strike first, but if I look at my own life, and the hundreds of people I have paid close attention to, it seems as though that level of understanding can only come from an individual first, and then works its way out to the broader world. Just wondering to myself, what do we do?
I am deeply appreciative of this work, and very much in agreement. If you look at the history of "new thought" or "new age" much of it can be traced to theosophy, H. Blavaatskre, (and like (as you mention) gnosticism, freemasonry, sabbateanism before that) and then that leads into occultism, magic, and very, very dark stuff.
My question to you is about the alternative or the solution to the problem of new ageism. I understand that you emphasize *interdependence* rather than independence -- and ecology, harmony etc. Isn't the best realization of this tradition as it has always been? Tradition is eternal.
I think you are right in your diagnosis of the problem, to quote from your above article:
*"The full history of this religion of self can be perfectly tracked from early Gnosticism’s belief in mind over matter, to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”, to the Protestant reformation’s emphasis on an individualistic relationship to God, to the enlightenment’s empirical emphasis on subjectivity, to capitalism’s “mutual self-interest”,"*
The enemy of this way of thinking has always been the Church. So what is keeping you from tradition?
wow , this sums up so much that ive been sitting and hurting in a real deep way with since 2020 began. thank you so much for sharing this! the new age community really helped me out in a big way at the start of my journey (wow hey i can take less shrooms and make cool overtone sounds with people and meditate and get just as high as the bigger dose, this is the jam! thought 2012 I)
but the nastiness ive seen since then has been like gravel in my gut
share videos with tim bergling
I Kant wait till we get some new material from the “Bad Guru,” don’t even get me Satered. I truly appreciate all your Engels.
All the puns I could muster… 🥧
https://seadonkey.substack.com/p/citizens-unite-against-citizens-united?r=tbrrm&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web :) xo