New Age Deception: Self-Help & Spirituality

Concurrent with the popularity of New Age religion in the '90s was the explosion of the self-help literary genre. My favorite self-help book was Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach. Published in 1995, I consider this book a classic. Walk into any used book store today, and you will likely find a copy on the shelves. This is one of those books that seemed to serendipitously come into my life when I needed it. I can still remember turning around in the Barnes & Noble in Columbus and seeing a sea of these pinkish books on display. It was calling to me.

Simple Abundance contains a series of daily meditations revolving around the tenets of gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty and joy. It's the perfect example of combining the psychology of self-help with a personal, spiritual journey. A book written by a woman specifically for women. Full of practical advice on such matters as finding your personal style and clearing clutter, it is scattered with quotes from famous poets, actresses, writers, spiritual teachers and sages, from Colette to Bette Davis, from E.E. Cummings to Louisa May Alcott. The ultimate goal is to fuse style with Spirit and to unearth your "authentic self."

In Ban Breathnach's book, The authentic self is the Soul made visible. The pearls of wisdom contained in this book hit a chord with women everywhere, as the New York Times best seller list can attest. Her message, that you already have everything you really need, and the encouragement to pare down material possessions and discover true abundance in life through her six principles, was by and large a good and positive message. I recently discovered that poor financial choices (and marrying the wrong man) lead to Sarah losing everything. This woman who had earned millions with her message of simplicity had squandered her fortune and ended up sleeping on her sister's couch.

The problem with a book and plan like Sarah's is that it reflects the trend of the times toward a rejection of traditional religion and the embracing of "spirituality." People in the '90s were fond of saying, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." (And they still are.) Everyone was obsessed with trying to figure out who they authentically were, but this quest was typically set upon without the centrality of Christ and without seeking God's will for your life. "Spirit" was not the Holy Spirit, but was similar to the idea of the "Universe", and you could place an order with the Universe or Spirit and manifest the life you desired. This idea has increasingly become more popular.

There was an innocence in this, and by and far the intentions of these self-help authors and the people who followed their ideas were good. The truth is the truth wherever it is found, and the Catholic Church teaches that Christians can learn from the good in other faiths. Yet after taking the path of Simple Abundance, Sarah herself wasn't satisfied, and so she wrote a sequel, Something More. I agreed with her that there was still something missing that needed to be found, but this 2nd book didn't have the appeal for me that the first one did, and the question of what that "something more" was never got answered. That is, until one day when someone very special invited me to the Catholic Church. But that's later on in the story...

Simple Abundance, in my opinion, isn't expressly New Age. But it contains that quality of sounding Christian but not quite. It's this not quite Christian, "universal spirituality" that has lead to dangerously leading souls astray.

New Age Deception: Conversations with God, Channeling, & Reiki

Conversations with God is a series of books by Neale Donald Walsch, the first of which was published in 1995. I want to pause here and say that New Age religion was not just a fad that exploded in the '90s and then went out of style. It existed before then, and it is alive and well today; it has merely changed its name. Now it is called, among other things, the "New Spirituality" and the "New World View" and has successfully infiltrated the Christian Church. I'm giving you my personal experience, so please bear with me. These dots will all connect.

Conversations with God was marketed as a channeled message. The author claimed that God himself spoke directly through him, and Walsch wrote down everything God had to say. It might sound surprising that anyone would take a book seriously that was advertised as delivering a channeled message from the Almighty, yet the first book stayed on the New York Times best seller list for 137 weeks. The succeeding 8 volumes appeared prominently (stats courtesy of Wikipedia). In other words, millions of copies sold, and Walsch made a lot of money. People really believed this was the voice of God.

I knew one young woman in particular, who had underlined various passages throughout the book. She had read and reread until the pages were worn. She had absorbed these teachings. When I expressed doubt, her response was a cheerful, "We need to work on you!" I don't actually remember who this woman was or how I knew her, but I think she was a friend of a friend, because I remember someone else being at her house. At any rate, I think I got a copy of the book from the library. I never finished it. The one thing that stands out in my mind is the supposed God's comment that he doesn't care who, or how many people, we have sex with.

You might think that would be enough to tip off anyone who had been raised Christian to the fact that this book was a phoney. But if you were, say, a young, unmarried, sexually active person, you might be tempted to believe this nonsense. Maybe sex outside of marriage wasn't a sin after all! What actually made me draw the conclusion that these were not God's words was the writing style. Sometimes God was using the "thees and thous" of the King James version of the Bible, and other times he was speaking in modern English. I decided that the old English was being used to sound authentic, but the author wasn't smart enough to be consistent. Being an English nerd was clearly in my favor that time. Bullet dodged.

That's not to say that these books were not authentic channelings. What do I mean by that? Simply this. When you open the door to the occult, you never know what sort of spirits you are letting in. Spiritual warfare is real. The devil is real, and demons are real. And they can and do speak through people. The great New Age achievement is to make us believe that there is no such thing as evil, no such thing as hell. Certainly no such thing as sin. There is no duality. We are all one, and there is no separation between us and God. Everything is God. This is the message of Conversations with God.

Incidentally, the young woman who hung on every word of this book also introduced me to Reiki. She held her hands closely over my body. My eyes were closed, and suddenly I could feel a strong heat coming from my chest. It didn't hurt; I just felt an intense warmth. Right as I was having this experience, the woman told me that she could feel a lot of heat coming from my heart chakra. Chakras are "energy centers" of the body. Reiki is supposed to heal you by balancing these energies. I was an immediate believer. We had both felt the same thing!

I will cover Reiki more extensively later, but since this experience is linked in my mind with Conversations with God, it makes sense to introduce the topic now. I only very recently learned that Reiki is considered by many to be part of the New Age movement. I couldn't see what could be wrong with it, because this idea of spiritual "energy" had become so entrenched in my mind that I had for years just assumed it to be true. The Reiki practioner channels (there's that word again!) universal energy (the Universe again!) to balance the body's energy centers and promote healing. But where does this power of healing really come from? Ah, dear Watson, that is the question.

New Age Deception: A Witch Hunt Begins

http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?cat=6482

 
I was driving in my car a couple of weeks ago, listening to Catholic Radio, and a woman was talking about the "New Age deception".  My ears pricked, because since early in the fall I had been feeling tempted to practice magic. This is something I once did back in the 1990s. It's a long story. In fact, it's turning out to be much longer than I would have anticipated, and I really don't want to write about this.

But here's the thing I have discovered. New Age spirituality is literally everywhere.  Blatant witchcraft is not even the most dangerous threat, because it is what it claims to be. That's not to minimize the spiritual dangers of casting spells. But the biggest threats are the wolves in sheep's clothing, and they have infiltrated the entire culture, right down to the churches. That's your church and mine. Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical, nondenominational--New Age/New Thought religion is the Old Religion in disguise. Like the song goes, "It's witchcraft."  Worst of all, it's being advertised as Christianity, as the "New Reformation."

This is going to be a long conversation. I'm not looking forward to it. Many of you will not believe me. What I want you to do is just begin by clicking on the link at the top and start reading. Anywhere. You will be fascinated, trust me. It's the EWTN Women of Grace blog, the New Age section. (If the link doesn't work, just google "EWTN Women of Grace blog"). There is an alphabetical index, and you can start with anything that catches your interest. The more you dig, the deeper it goes. Join me on a witch hunt. No pitchfork necessary; just pick up your brooms and clean house! Here is clue #1: