Labels and Fear

I have a friend who sent me her spiritual journey story to post on the Web site, and afterward, she said she was surprised at how “vulnerable” she felt having it online. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to send a photo anymore.

This caught my attention; I needed to understand it better. She said she normally feels her spirituality is a “private matter.” And many people say the same thing. But it seems to me too easy a reason to avoid standing up for what you believe. I wanted to know, what is the real underlying reasons we don’t want to declare ourselves in a spiritual way?

When I ask myself the question, why I have avoided saying “I am New Age” in the past, I first decided it was because it helped me avoid responsibility. If I don’t commit to something publicly, I can’t be held accountable for it publicly. I can become as self-absorbed as I please and no one will brand me a hypocrite for not living up to my declared philosophy. To keep our spirituality “private” absolves us of having to actually change.

To keep our spirituality private also helps differentiate ourselves from “them,” the traditionally religious, who loudly proclaim their identity, and harshly judge to the point of condemning to hell those who believe differently. Their use of labels gives them great social power, and because they so often use that power in negative ways, we have decided that power is scary and labeling in and of itself is bad.

I asked my friend, is either of these the reason why you don’t want to say you’re New Age? Or is it fear of ridicule because the New Age has such a bad reputation in pop culture? Or is it fear of censure from the religious right?

And she told me that yes, she feared being attacked by those who are traditionally religious. She comes from a conservative family, and does not wish to invite their judgment and criticism. And this made me so very sad. And upset to realize that even in 21st century America, alleged land of religious tolerance, we non-traditionally “spiritual but not religious” can feel so very untolerated. And feel the need to hide what we believe.

I recalled all the times I have been with Christian people and played along as a Christian myself, talked about the church I went to as a kid. I remember being particularly afraid that the Christian family across the street would not let their kids play with mine if they knew I considered myself “New Age.” After all, they were being taught by their church that New Age is a plot of Satan to take over the world….

My reticence was understandable. But I have come to see that in giving in to fear, we only perpetuate the fear cycle. By hiding who I am and what I believe, I make it easier for Christians to go on misunderstanding the New Age. If I don’t declare myself, I cannot correct their misconceptions and I leave them to continue in their fear of the unknown. If I don’t declare myself, I make it easy for the mainstream to continue to ridicule my beliefs and marginalize them and refuse to take them seriously. This has got to change.

Love and Revolution

Dropped in on alternet, like I do most mornings, and I usually read a story or two, print out some things for later contemplation sometimes, often end up scared at how little impact Obama seems to have had, or irate and angry at the clueless politicians, the greedy corporations, and their converservative defenders...

Then this morning I fun across this beautiful, lovely piece by Grace Boggs:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4686/love_and_revolution/

She talks about how revolution was once an outrage-based enterprise involving uncompromising toughness. But she says a different approach is needed now:

"Normally it would take decades for a people to transform themselves from the hyper-individualist, hyper-materialist damaged human beings that Americans in all walks of life are today, to the loving, caring Americans we need in today’s deepening crises.

But these are not normal times. If we don’t speed up this transformation, the likelihood is that, armed with AK47s, we will soon be at each other’s throats.

That is why linking Love and Revolution is an idea whose time has come.

We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, create for and with each other that up to now we have practiced only in our personal relationships. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main St and Wall Street and on Ivy League campuses."

It got some kudos on the altnernet comments, also some accusations of naivete. It is, after all, a spiritual concept, which means most progressives automatically shy away from it as a solution. We confuse the open-hearted spiritual with the close-minded religious, and throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I do believe this concept could indeed be the only solution: Grassroots love and caring for each other, until the clueless people at the top catch up.

I don't think this is naive. I think all progressive change has been fueled by love. Feet on the ground, yes, but fueled by the energy of love, not anger. And I believe the New Age helps lay the philosophical groundwork for the creation of love between us.

What's in a name?

Lots of treasures in the latest issue of EnlightenNext (July/Aug 2009). My favorite pontificators are all there. Jim Garrison talks about his State of the World Forum on global warming coming up in November, the fierce urgency of the situation. It was an article about him and Paul Ray exactly one year ago that gave me hope that the movement's leaders are becoming more aware of the need for all of us to unite under a collective identity so that we CAN solve problems like global warming. But there is nothing about that in this particular piece. A bit disappointing that.

My favorite piece was about DVD called the Dalai Lama Renaissance. About how the Dalai Lama himself tried to get all the "new paradigm" leaders of the 1990s together to lay the intellectual foundation "for a whole new form of secular spirituality." The gathering degenerated into a battle of egos and run amuck narcissism tragically typically of New Age types. Even the Dalai Lama could not overcome it. This is exactly what I argue in my book, in my Web pages. The New Age movement was undone, made impotent, by the narcissism born of excessive individualism.

And what do you suppose this article calls this gathering? Not New Age. Here is the decription: "The spiritual-but-not-religious, science-meets-spirit, and New Thought movements... plus cultural creatives." Wouldn't it be easier to say New Age?

In a profile on Jean Houston, the magazine calls it "the movement to awaken humanity to its higher individual and collective potential." Wouldn't it be easier to say New Age?

News and philosophy

The news on the environmental front seemed to perk up a bit these past few weeks. A cap and trade bill narrowly passed in the House. Some conservatives actually stood on the floor of the House to say global warming was a "myth. Meanwhile, my own liberal representative voted against the bill because it wasn't strong enough.

It feels as if my children's future is going to be determined by the unpredictable outcome of a school yard scuffle. Our leaders cannot even agree on the meaning of basic terms or what represents the good, so how can they solve the problem? It drives home to me that it only a change in philosophy-- a change in our understanding of the nature of reality and our place in it-- can save the future.

I used to have a knee-jerk reaction to capitalism, evil money-grubbing capitalism was the enemy. But that's not true. From the right mindset, capitalism can be our savior. But we need the right mindset, an accurate mindset, a holistic mindset that takes in the whole, that understands the good and the just. If we want to save the world, we need to promote this perspective, vote from this perspective, legislate from this perspective.

Human evolution should lead more of us to this perspective over time. But it seems to me that especially with global warming, there is a big hill coming up, and we don't have enough speed, and for just a little while, we are going to have to get out and push.

Is It Too Late for the Baby Boom Generation?

In the early days of working on this project – the call for a New Age revival -- I assumed that I would be addressing the demographic group that makes up the “New Age market” -- which is comprised largely of women of a certain age and income level who are interested in spirituality and a holistic lifestyle.

But as I talked to different “spiritual” people of the Baby Boom generation, I discovered that most of them wanted nothing to do with any kind of movement or the creation of a community. Even those who most fit the New Age profile would literally make faces at the mention of the term New Age. They would then reaffirm their commitment to their own path, their own needs. It seemed clear that Baby Boomers have been operating on the individualistic terms of uncommitted “seeker” for so long, and this role has become so well rationalized in their minds, that I would find no receptive audience there.

To be frank, I felt some anger after such conversations, and a big sense of betrayal. After all, I was raised by one of the first Baby Boomers – my mother was born in 1945 and she was an open-hearted, peace-loving flower child. I absorbed the communal values of the young Baby Boomers, and strongly believed in their call to create a better world. And when the most hopeful of them forged the New Age movement in the 1980s, I eagerly hopped on board, and was bereft when it dissolved away to nothing but a consumer category a few decades later.

To find such clear evidence in my conversations that those who once inspired me had not merely been accidentally lost on the way to community, but decisively turned their back on it, was painful. And in that pain, I decided that it was “too late” for the Baby Boom generation. I decided that so many of them had clearly chosen interminable mirror-gazing and self-soothing as their spiritual path that it was useless to talk to them anymore. I began thinking of them as the “dead weight” generation, well-intentioned but completely unable to get out of their own way, and ours.

I also began to understand why Ken Wilber half-jokingly wrote in Boomeritis that “the knowledge quest proceeds funeral by funeral,” and that Baby Boomers “might have to die” before the narcissism that blocks the spiral of development can be breached. And I began to address all my writing to newer generations who -- with futures threatened by the catastrophe of rampant individualism -- would be better able to grasp the need for spirit-based community.

It was Marianne Williamson who changed my mind and changed it big. She spoke in Phoenix in November 2008 about the New Mid-Life and the opportunity those of a certain age now have to “get it right.” I listened with tears streaming down my face as she convinced me it is never too late for any of us, no matter how old we are, to finally get to work on the vital business of saving the world.

In her book, The Age of Miracles, Williamson describes an “epiphany” now pressing in on Baby Boomers “that in many ways we wasted our youth—not in that we lived it frivolously, but in that, in far too many cases, we lived it only for ourselves.” She then goes on to say:

We haven’t lived through what we’ve lived through, bled the way we’ve bled, and been humbled the way we’ve been humbled to have it just be over now. In fact, we owe too much to the world to get off that easily. We were all born carrying a promise – a promise to make the world better – and there’s a yearning to make good on that promise that none of us can suppress forever. There’s a silent question blaring loudly in our hearts: What will I do with the time I have left?”

Even Wilber, the world’s most outspoken critic of the Boomers, says that “profound transformation often occurs in the second half of life.” As they age, the Baby Boom generation increasingly faces their own mortality, “which marvelously concentrates the mind and releases it from things of this world. The finite self becomes more and more transparent, more easily let go of, and a certain spiritual perfume fills the air.”

Our so-called prime adult years, Wilber adds, keep us so preoccupied with the demands of career and family that growth into higher stages is rare. (Looking back at my own life, I can certainly say that’s been true for me.) But once we pass through mid-life, and reach our 50s and 60s, we may suddenly found ourselves “ready to pop,” and feel ourselves becoming “deeply, deeply open” to transformation from Stage Four individualism to the Stage Five integralism that deeply, deeply understands the value of community.

I had read Wilber’s words years ago, but did not much believe them until I heard Williamson give her speech on that warm November night in Phoenix. She said the year 1968 and the assassinations of King and Kennedy was the symbolic point at which the idealistic dream of a new age of harmony began to die, and now, 40 years later, the election of Barack Obama served as the symbolic point at which it is time to resurrect the dream of a better world. On that night, she called specifically to the Baby Boom generation to take their hard won wisdom and “align with the creative pulse of the universe,” and “prepare the ground for a glorious future.” It is time, she said, “to accomplish what we came here to do.” And on that night, 2,000 people jumped to their feet and applauded wildly.

“Each of us has gone through our own private dramas,” she adds in her book, “taken our own individual journeys; now we meet as though at a predestined point, to pool our resources of talent and intelligence, faith and hope. Ultimately, we are individually glorified as we find our place within a collective heartbeat. We have journeyed alone, and now we’ll journey together… It is time for us to become elders and caretakers of this precious planet, not just in name but in passionate practice.”

Amen.

The New Age, circa 2008

I spent a thrilling weekend at the “Celebrate Your Life” conference here in Phoenix, only days after Obama was elected. It took $440 to get me in, and as I pushed my way through walls of people filling up every nook and cranny of the Sheraton, it was obvious the New Age is alive and well. Although, of course, the term “New Age” was nowhere spoken (except at the end) or written in any of the literature I heaped into my tote printed with the words “At One Yoga.”

This conference, which attracted several thousand people, seemed to me a perfect reflection of the many factions of the New Age movement today. There was the integral level of spirituality represented by Marianne Williamson in her stirring keynote (oh it was marvelous!), in which she talked about Obama’s election as an opportunity to get back to the work of creating a better society. And she urged us all to take the next step and work on the healing of the world. (She called us “the higher consciousness community.”) Wayne Dyer’s keynote was also a wonderful meditation on leaving behind the shallow, desire-driven manifestation craze of the “The Secret,” and moving toward the more authentic ‘yielding to the moment’ spirituality expressed by the Tao Te Ching.

I went to workshops with Dr. Joan Borysenko and Dr. Judith Orloff, who marry psychology to spirituality and intuition and gave me solid tools to use in my life. I was transported by Byron Katie and “The Work,” the most simple cognitive therapy in the world -- and I felt myself drop pain and anger over an unexamined belief I’d been carrying around for two years. I walked around the rest of the day feeling so light and free, simply loving what is…

I went to see Dr. Bruce Lipton give a mind-blowing science-oriented talk on the “The Biology of Belief,” and learned that DNA does not control cells, the environment does. I loved the funny, smart Lipton, and how he described his shift from materialism to idealism when he discovered how cells really work. He talked the human body as a communication device for the divine. Dr. Joe Dispenza also held me rapt, echoing a lot of what Lipton said, about how our emotions “wire” thinking habits into our brains, and how we can literally rewire ourselves. I think this is invaluable information and he had me hanging on every word – my mind literally lay there still and quiet to absorb what felt like waves of truth. Then he started talking about how his daughter manifested an “unlimited shopping spree” for herself and I felt a thud of disappointment.

I accidentally found myself in a manifestation workshop – there were so many it was near impossible to avoid – and when I realized it, I wanted to bolt. But I was eventually won over by the lovely author, Alan Cohen, who turned on a little light for me about the ways manifestation efforts can help us get clear about what we really want, and can help us “align” with the universe. Yet I also did a little exercise with the woman sitting next to me who was clearly tortured by the fact that after years of trying to manifest good health for herself, she is still in constant pain. She blames herself for not doing it “right.”

There was a lot of buzz about Gregg Braden and his talk about 2012 and the planetary disasters to come as the earth’s magnetic something or other gets thrown out of whack when it crosses the “equator” of the galaxy. I didn’t go to his workshop, but a number of people were talking about it. This seems to me very much a holdover over the 1980s-style excesses of the New Age movement -- a mixture of one part science and three parts imaginative nonsense -- and it is still attractive to people in certain stages of growth. It is surely no coincidence that one of Braden’s biggest fans, a sweet person I liked very much, told me she was “turned off” by Williamson and her call for us to get to work for the good of the planet. She prefers instead to stockpile food for the coming 2012 disasters which Braden convinced her cannot be avoided. Interestingly, the panel at the end of the conference, which included Borysenko, Cohen, Cheryl Richardson and Neale Donald Walsch, made a point to distance themselves from the idea of 2012 as a significant date. In fact, Borysenko said the important date is now, and that its time for us to make a collective shift to a new state of mind that steers away from disasters.

On the same panel, there was Cheryl Richardson who did not pretend to know what comes after death, and next to her Neale Donald Walsch who claims to have been “given” exact details of what the Afterlife is like. All in all, the conference seemed to me to the perfect expression of the different stages of spiritual growth represented by the New Age today. Those in early stages who need to rely on authority, need to be sure – and those who have grown enough to be comfortable with the unknown, and are ready to let life, and death, unfold as it will. Those in the early stages who want to take control and manifest – and those who have grown enough want to stop “arguing with reality,” as Katie put it, and better learn to accept what is.

It was a glorious weekend for me -- being uplifted and inspired by wonderful people, with wonderful people. I learned so much, and feel energized to keep orienting myself toward spirit, and away from ego. I am grateful, grateful. And more than ever, I love the New Age movement -- or the higher consciousness movement, or whatever we want to call it. I love the bridge it builds for us, a bridge that leads to growth and a better life for us all. Now I just have to figure out how to throw a conference for people who don’t have $440 to get in the door. Waves of truth should not be reserved only for the well-to-do.

Writing stories

I am often amused and bemused to realize I’ve been working on different versions of this same project for close to 20 years -- revising and reworking the narrative for who I am today. This endless task has kept me sane in many ways, allowing me to organize the meaning of my life into eighteen chapters.

It doesn’t seem all that different from my day job, writing scripts for television, narratives “inspired by real events,” fictional versions of the truth, organized into eight acts.

I used to think spiritual effort was supposed to help us “wake up” from the stories we tell ourselves about reality, supposed to help us live here in this moment, free and unfettered by our fictional versions of truth. But it has become clear to me that just like meditation does not stop thoughts, we cannot stop our own story-making. In the act of setting one story aside, another automatically composes itself along the structure of new insights, new emotions.

It has also become clear to me that’s exactly why we are here, why the universe peopled itself. We are here not to wake up but to dream -- dream up stories of meaning, revise and revise with new insights, until we dream up a story that rings true, a story that connects us.

“Restoration,” writes Peter Block, “is the willingness to complete and eliminate the power out of the current story we have of our community and our place in it. This creates an opening to produce a new collective story. A new story based on restorative community, one of possibility, generosity, accountability.”

I so much hope I am doing that.