Spirituality/General: New Age Dilettantes

There are too many people in the New Age who are looking for easy solutions to difficult problems. The alternative community is so inundated with these “bliss ninnies,” as a friend of mine calls them, that they’ve become a caricature in the media, both in the movies and on television shows like ABC’s sitcom Dharma and Greg.

You can see these people in abundance at any New Age gathering, the stereotypical crystal worshipers who think that a small chunk of amethyst will heal years of emotional trauma or that chanting “aum” a couple of times a week will make them fully enlightened beings. They believe that a person can be healed by imagining that they are surrounded by white light. According to them, they only need to go to a shaman to learn their “totem animal” or to a hypnotist to receive a past life regression to make them totally self-realized people. A single class in candle magic makes them bone-fide Wiccans. A week-end native American seminar makes them experts on “Indian ways.” A simple path-working workshop initiates them fully into the ancient mysteries.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of these things. The visualizing of white or clear light around a suffering friend can certainly do no harm and will probably do some good. Identifying with the strengths connected with a totem animal will help you develop those strengths within yourself. Burning candles ritually will help teach you to focus your consciousness.

All these things are good, and should be encouraged. After all, everybody has to start somewhere, and becoming aware of the qualities of crystals or the healing properties of the human voice are as good a gateway to expanded awareness as any other. The trouble is, many people seem to think that learning one little thing takes them to the end of their search for wholeness, and God help the person who tells them otherwise. In the touchy-feelie world of the New Age, rules and regulations are often looked upon with disdain.

The New Age is about developing wholeness in the mind, body and spirit. To accomplish this is a life long endeavor that requires a lot of hard (and often painful) work. The New Age dabblers usually don’t want to hear this. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve already healed themselves completely, and because they are frequently those with the financial or political clout to get things done, they often block the way of the dedicated people who are doing the deeper work. It’s a case of the kindergarten students administering the university.

It’s no wonder that this approach permeates the alternative community, for even in the mainstream people seek easy solutions for difficult problems. When we’re sick, we want the doctor to give us a pill or a shot to make the illness go away. If we suffer from depression, we seek relief through anti-depressants, not bothering to do the work necessary to find the cause of our depression. For our spiritual lives, we attend church irregularly and are sure that we’ve found salvation. Even our politicians tend to take the easy way out, appeasing the mobs with tougher laws rather than finding workable solutions to problems like crime and drunken drivers.

When people turn to alternative approaches, they want the same easy answers that they have been raised to expect, in spite of the fact that they often turn to these options because the old answers aren’t working for them anymore. Almost every alternative healer I know tells stories about people who pay no attention to diet or exercise, who do nothing to maintain good health, but who are very smug about the fact that they take herbs or homeopathic remedies, and who storm away angrily if its suggested that they need to do more. Likewise, most alternative counselors have to pare their regimens down to suit people who seek mental and emotional health from a once a week talk.

“I can’t even get my clients to write down their dreams,” one New Age counselor I know laughs. “Homework is out of the question. It takes too much time.”

Nowhere is this easy-way-out syndrome more evident than in the common New Age approach to spiritual issues. No matter that devout Christians spend a lifetime studying the Bible to understand the principles of their religion, that many Hindu and Buddhist yogis claim to spend several lifetimes in complete devotion to the principles of enlightenment or that shamans dedicate their entire existence to the practice of their craft. In the New Age, many people seem to think that all that is necessary is that you believe in “the white light,” as if that belief alone makes you enlightened.

This insistence on embracing easy answers and half-truths has hurt our community. It has driven many knowledgeable people who settled in our area for the purpose of sharing their wisdom away. One person I know, who taught sacred earth sciences and ritual techniques, was met with little else but animosity from a large segment of the community because he insisted that there was a right and a wrong way of doing things. Regretfully, he’s left the Triad to find a more receptive audience elsewhere. Another person, who conducted workshops on the sacred aspects of the Tarot, quit teaching for five years because she ran into the same difficulties.

“People wanted the Tarot cards to mean anything they wanted them to mean,” she says. “They didn’t want to hear that there’s an underlying system to the deck that represents basic spiritual truths. Sometimes I wondered why they were taking the workshop.”

The path to wholeness is a very difficult trail. To cross this path takes dedication, patience and lots of hard work. There is always much to learn.

Very few of us are doing the work necessary to achieve this end. That’s okay, we’re allowed to dabble. What’s not acceptable is to get in the way of others who are traveling this road and who are trying to help others along the way. Do not belittle a teacher or healer because she or he has the nerve to say that easy answers are not enough.

There are no easy answers.

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