I'm wondering how other people handle being around friends, relatives and co-workers who are still up to their eyebrows in New Age thinking.

I'm not interested in trying to save or convert anyone. These people believe what they believe and that's their choice. Unfortunately, as with any "born agains," they have been brainwashed and some of them proselytize.

As I wrote in a previous post it's getting increasingly difficult to avoid this mind set as it becomes more accepted by the mainstream.

I don't want my every thought questioned by anyone, especially by someone who has bought into this robotic happy talk. It's very surreal being around people who parrot drivel about the need to let go of the ego (as in not think or feel anything). Someone who recently experienced a death in the family is a big fan of Mr. Trolle. She got over the death very quickly. Again I use the word surreal. It's like the death was no biggie. It's that "I'm above having feelings attitude" that really creeped me out.

I'm now questioning which relationships to let go of.

Good luck--this is a tough one. You may have to risk losing friends.

Just hope whoever pushes this stuff at you isnt a boss or supervisor.


Here are some lines to try out:

"I am already taken care of" -- if someone tries to push a belief system, church, or guru

If someone says "Well that's my experience" the reply one can make is, "Experiences can be misleading."

If someone says, "You cant judge X because you have not experienced X"" one can reply, "You dont have to be in a car crash to know its worth avoiding."

If someone bugs you to go to some sort of quack doctor or 'healer" you can say "I prefer evidence based medicine".

And if they whine that you are judgemental, you can reply "The only way to stop being judgemental is to stop breathing."

Note: If you wan to make yourself less interesting to sidewalk missionaries, and you happen to be wearing a beaded necklace, or bracelet, take it off and handle it in your free hand as though its a rosary.

At the very least, not having a free hand means no one can force literature into your grip--your hands are already full.

I had such a great laugh!

I'm in agreement with most of it, but have to add that I'm "off" beaded bracelet jewelery :) I would think that's more? appealing to sidewalk missionaries; a sign that the person wearing / playing with the bracelet is more likely to already be dabbling in self-hypnosis techniques.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2011 01:50PM by Questions_2.

Thank you Corboy and Questions_2. I appreciate the suggestions and insights you provided. I was going to write more, but my energy is low today.

Here's an article I posted on another thread, but it's relevant for this one, as well.

DIRTY LITTLE 'SECRET'
HOW THE CULT PHENOM IS DIVIDING N.Y.C.

By MAUREEN CALLAHAN

Last Updated: 5:00 AM, August 15, 2007

Posted: 5:00 AM, August 15, 2007

CHARLOTTE Harrigan is a 23-year-old sophisticate who works in the fashion industry, lives in Williamsburg and is a somewhat embarrassed devotee of "The Secret" - the Oprah-endorsed self-help book/DVD combo that preaches the so-called "law of attraction." Though, she adds, it did help her land her dream job. Her sister, too.

"My sister watches 'Oprah' a lot; she's into all that fabulous cult stuff," Harrigan says. "It sounds a little cheesy. We just did it kind of as a joke. We didn't buy into the whole thing. "

Funny. That's not quite how one of her closest friends recalls it.

"Charlotte and her sister took it very seriously," says Nicole Darling, a 27-year-old writer. "They told me they deliberately downplay it because they don't want to sound like crazy people."

As for Darling's take on "The Secret": "It's the stupidest thing I have ever seen.

A crock of s - - -." When friends tell her they are believers, she says her immediate response is, " 'Oh, God. No. Are you serious?' Then I usually make fun of them."

While the book and DVD have become pop-cultural phenomena since Oprah's endorsement in February, it's almost shocking that people outside her core audience - namely young, hyper-literate New Yorkers who pride themselves on their cynicism, taste and intellectual snobbery - would not only read it, but also actively embrace it. The same hipster who smirks at your iPod playlist or thinks the Serra exhibit is totally overrated may just be going home to make inspiration boards, meditate and talk to the Universe (that's with a capital U, by the way).

It's caused more than a few rifts among otherwise tolerant urbanites.

"My roommate is a 27-year-old bartender on the Lower East Side, and she's really into 'The Secret,' " says a graphic designer from Jersey City, who asked not to be named and who found this development alarming. "I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me.' She told me she has two friends who no longer speak to people who've tried to give them the DVD."

So what makes "The Secret" - which traffics in the kind of harmless power-of-positive-thinking jargon that's been packaged and re-packaged since the late 19th century, when the spiritualist movement in America began - so polarizing?

There is, of course, its dubious origins: The book and DVD were written and produced by an out-of-work Australian named Rhonda Byrne, who claims to have stumbled on "The Secret" to life in a 100-year-old book that remains unnamed. She writes that "Jesus was a millionaire" and wants you to be one, proffers the profoundly narcissistic notion that the Universe is a catalog and is just waiting for you to "place your order," and throws around the phrase "quantum physics" without ever explaining just what that is.

She enlisted the help of self-help gurus - two of whom, Esther and Jerry Hicks, later claimed Byrne swindled them out of their share of profits. (Jerry is a former Amway salesman; Esther is a former secretary who claims to channel the dead.)

Hence the alarm when an otherwise young, cynical, well-read New Yorker begins to proselytize.

A 33-year-old writer recently discovered two of her best friends are converts. She learned this, she says, when neither would shut up about it.

"I get the power of positive thinking, but the people who get into it are like cultists," she says. "Finally, I was like, 'I love you, but you are not allowed to bring this up to me ever again.' "

"It's intellectually misguided to put these ideas forth - it's magical thinking," says Andy Wibbels, who ran a "Secret"-debunking contest online.

Wibbels, 32, believes that "The Secret" resonates with young, well-educated urban dwellers partly because this generation came of age during the self-esteem movement: the idea that "just because you're YOU, you can do anything. I think 'The Secret' hooks into that. All that matters is your perception of the world around you - it's very egotistical."

"My friend Tim and I are always getting into these 'Where do we fit into the universe?'-type discussions," says Candice Taylor, a 29-year-old New Yorker who works in vessel scheduling for the Hess Corp.

"The book gets a little scientific - people are made up of molecules, molecules are energy, molecules make up the universe . . . It makes sense when you break it down on that level."

Also, Taylor says, "I think about what I want to be and what I want to do, and it comes. It's crazy. If I'm thinking really hard about someone, they'll call!" And what do her friends think? "They kind of laugh at first," she admits.

"I drew sketches of images that I wanted to think about," says 33-year-old video editor/musician Jeff Martini, who was introduced to "The Secret" by a Brooklyn-based artist friend.

"I wanted to get myself into good shape - I drew a picture of that. I wanted to upgrade where I'm living - I drew a picture of me looking out of a really nice apartment. I drew a check for a lot of money." ("The Secret" encourages pursuing material things avidly.)

He says it has helped. "This is stuff we all already know. It just pumps you up. It's like hiring a cheerleader."

"['The Secret'] is incredibly materialistic and narcissistic, but superstitions and magical thinking are built into our brain," says Michael Shermer, who writes for the Skeptic magazine and Scientific American. "It doesn't matter what your education level or environment is. It takes a fair amount of vigilance to overcome that kind of folk psychology - 'I know someone who tried it, and it worked for them.' That's normal."

"It's as if there's no empirical baseline of data from which to operate," says blogger Wibbels. He adds that while he doesn't have any friends who are followers, he does have one who, he says, "worked on a TV show that heavily featured 'The Secret' " and is shot in Chicago.

Would that be "Oprah"?

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Wibbels says, laughing. "But I said, 'Why did you guys have to do so many shows on "The Secret"? There was no voice of dissent, no historical context.'

"He just said, 'It's a TV show. They're not journalists. It's entertainment.' "

maureen.callahan@nypost.com

from:

[www.nypost.com]

I distanced myself from some of the people in my life because of their weird obsession with David Icke. I don't know how credible The Daily Mail is, but I came across this article on Icke while doing research online.

If even some of this article is true, he sounds like a nut bar. How people like him attract so many followers (and their money) is beyond strange.

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

He once claimed he's the Son of God and the world is run by alien lizards, but the story of David Icke's marriage breakdown is almost as weird

By Natalie Clarke
Last updated at 12:27 AM on 7th January 2012

The audience at the theatre in Times Square, New York, sat in reverential silence as David Icke took the stage and made his great revelation.

Our planet, he declared, is secretly ruled by a race of reptile-like aliens.

These reptiles, malevolent in nature, sometimes ‘shape-shift’ into human form. The Queen, for example, is a reptilian, President Barack Obama another.

Bonkers, yes. But Icke’s show in November, with tickets costing $50 (£32) a head, was a sell-out, as have been most of the other dates on his world tour, which ends in Britain later this year.

One of the reasons Pamela Leigh Richards split up with David Icke, according to her, is that he became suspicious that she is a shape-shifting alien

Wherever he goes, thousands flock to see him. Twenty years after the famous TV interview on Wogan, when the once-respected sports commentator became a national laughing stock for saying he was the Son of God, Icke’s brand of loopiness has proved more resilient and lucrative than anyone could have guessed.

But there is one thing Icke has not yet talked about on his tour — and he does go on rather, sometimes for eight hours at a time — and that is the increasingly bitter divorce battle he is embroiled in with his second wife, Pamela Leigh Richards.

Or that one of the reasons they split up, according to Pamela, is that he became suspicious that she is a shape-shifting alien.

‘He can’t figure me out — he thinks I might be a reptilian,’ says Pamela.

‘Of course, I’m not. David and I had a deep connection, we were meant to be together, but he turned against me. I’ve been through utter bewilderment, pain, sorrow and heartbreak.’

So presumably Pamela thinks her husband is crazy, a fraud or is enjoying a great joke at the expense of gullible conspiracy theorists? Well, actually no.

Pamela — in all other respects an intelligent and articulate woman — also believes sinister forces lurk in dark corners.

So much so, that during the 11 years they spent together, she devotedly accompanied Icke on his travels, spreading the word.

'David and I had a deep connection, we were meant to be together, but he turned against me,' said Pamela
'David and I had a deep connection, we were meant to be together, but he turned against me,' said Pamela

Every marriage is unique, but surely there is none to match the barminess of the union between David Icke and Pamela Leigh Richards.

Pamela, 52, and the mother of a 24-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, met Icke in Jamaica in August 1997. It was six years after the interview on Wogan and Icke was still a national joke in Britain.

Pamela, the daughter of an American fighter pilot, worked in financial services and was attending a conference on the island. Icke was giving one of his talks at the same hotel and Pamela was intrigued enough to attend — and was mesmerised by what she heard.

‘You could have heard a pin drop when David spoke. I came away with the knowledge that the world is not what I thought it was and I learned about its reptilian aspect.

‘I went up to David afterwards to thank him, but at that time I was not romantically attracted to him.’

Three months later, they met on the Caribbean island of Aruba, where Icke was giving another talk at a conference and Pamela was on another business trip.

This encounter was, apparently, even more auspicious. Before his trip, Icke had visited a psychic who told him he was going to meet a lady from America who would ask him out to dinner and with whom he would be joined at the hip. She would be wearing a mauve gown.

Pamela says she was that person (and never mind that the dress she was wearing was yellow).

‘The day before the talk, we passed each other by the pool of the hotel where he was speaking and we were both staying. He stopped and said hello,’ says Pamela.
‘We talked for a while and I could feel a strong connection beginning.

‘Later, when we got together, he told me he stopped because he thought: “Oh My God, this could be The One.”

‘The following day I saw him again and invited him to dinner with a few friends. Afterwards we walked along the pier and sat at the end of the walkway. ‘It was there that being joined at the hip and inseparable became as real as it gets.’

Icke had once predicted that the world would end in 1997, and was no doubt mightily relieved that his prediction did not come true, allowing him to pursue Pamela.

It was not imminent Armageddon but his own unusual domestic arrangements that provided the backdrop to his new romance.

For Icke was still married and living with his first wife, Linda, and their three children at the family home in Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

To make matters trickier, another woman, Deborah Shaw, had moved into the marital home in 1990.

It was reported that David, Linda and Deborah had a menage a trois for a while, but that Linda kicked out Deborah when she became pregnant with a daughter, Rebecca, by Icke.

Yet none of this seemingly troubled his new American girlfriend.

Wherever Mr Icke goes, thousands flock to see him. His brand of loopiness has proved more resilient and lucrative than anyone could have guessed
Wherever Mr Icke goes, thousands flock to see him. His brand of loopiness has proved more resilient and lucrative than anyone could have guessed

‘David told me all about Linda and said that though he still lived at the family home, it was all over between them.’

So for two years, Pamela ‘commuted’ from her home in Phoenix, Arizona, to the Isle of Wight to be with Icke before moving permanently to the island.

You might imagine Icke’s wife might have harboured some, er, ‘negative thought patterns’ towards the attractive new blonde in her husband’s life, but Pamela says that was not the case. At least, not initially.

‘She was very kind to me at the beginning and even helped David and I find a flat.’
When Linda and David finally divorced, it wasn’t long before a new Mrs Icke had filled the vacancy.

On September 20, 2001, nine days after 9/11 — the lizards blew up the Twin Towers, according to Icke — Pamela and Icke were married in a simple ceremony at Newport county court on the Isle of Wight.

The wedding was attended by Icke’s three children from his marriage to Linda — his daughter Kerry and sons Jaymie and Gareth — and the wedding reception was in a local pub.

The pair settled happily enough into married life in Ryde, with Pamela remaining ever supportive of Icke’s increasingly bizarre theories — among them that Princess Diana was assassinated by a New World Order and that the Moon was constructed by aliens.

Yet when Icke wasn’t working on his conspiracy theories, he and Pamela led rather a conventional life, weirdly at odds with his dramatic pronouncements.

Often, they would stay in and watch TV — her husband’s favourite programmes were The Vicar of Dibley and Only Fools And Horses.

Icke’s other great passion, apart from saving mankind, is steam trains, and together the couple visited steam railways across Britain. Oh, and they also went hiking with his first wife, who remained his business manager.

‘The three of us got along very well,’ says Pamela.

‘David has a connection with Linda through his children. He is great company and has a really good sense of humour. I used to tell him he should become a stand-up comedian.’

Things started to go wrong in 2006 when Icke decided to restructure his expanding business ventures.

‘I had set up David’s website and got the whole thing going, but it was agreed I’d transfer my duties to his daughter Kerry,’ says Pamela.

‘We had a meeting with Linda and we agreed how money made from the business would be split.

‘I could tell Linda was getting upset about what was being discussed. The thing was, she had always been responsible for the business side of things and I don’t think she liked the new set-up.’

Mr Icke has rejected the allegations made against him by Pamela
Mr Icke has rejected the allegations made against him by Pamela

Tensions increased, she says, when a psychic whom Icke had consulted for advice began influencing him against Pamela.

‘She was crucial to what has happened. She told David I was out to take his business and separate him from his children. Everyone was against me — I was the target.’

To make matters worse, Pamela says Icke became suspicious that she was showing reptilian tendencies.

‘He’d say accusingly: “Your face has changed, you look different.” ’

Pamela says the fact that her father was a fighter pilot and she had grown up on air bases — Icke suspects the military to be under the control of reptilian forces — will have fuelled her husband’s fears.

Yet despite their deteriorating relationship, Pamela says she was still shocked when she learned, in typically unconventional style, that Icke wanted her out of his life.
‘We were on tour — in Vancouver, I think — when the driver said to me out of the blue: “David wants you to go.” I was so shocked I felt as though I was having heart palpitations. There was no reason for it.

‘When we got to our hotel, my bag was chucked into the car — David had thrown my clothes into the bag.

‘The driver took me to the airport and I flew to Phoenix, where I stayed in the apartment I’d kept on, until David came some days later to get me. It happened several times — David just could not make up his mind.’

With the marriage under increasing strain, Pamela took off to Egypt for six months in 2007.

‘I was being hit by what I would call aggressive and attacking “thought forms,”’ she says.

‘There was fear all around. My heart and energy field was being crushed.’

When she returned to Icke in Ryde, they hoped they could work things out, but the rows became worse.

After a final argument in February 2008, she fled the marital home and moved back to Arizona.

‘Before I left, I was on my knees, crying, so exhausted from it all I couldn’t move. I said: “It’s over, I’ve got to go.”

‘When I walked out of the door I turned round and he was at the window, watching me.

‘He didn’t want me to go. Even then, he thought it could work between us. How could something so powerful end?’

That year, Icke filed for divorce, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’.

For the past three years, he and Pamela have been battling over the financial details of their divorce.

They have spoken only once, in January 2010, after Pamela suffered a fall and sustained a serious brain injury.

She says her lawyer has instructed her not to disclose the size of the settlement she is seeking, but it is likely that Icke is a rich man.

His tour is a success, he has written 18 books, published in 20 countries and sells DVDs of his performances.

‘David is drawing this out, we can’t agree over the finances. He is controlling and angry — he has issues.’

David Icke did not respond to requests for a comment, but in an online blog one of his friends has written about the divorce battle between him and Pamela.

She says Pamela is demanding ‘immense amounts of money’ from her husband and that his first wife, Linda, and his children have been supportive of him.

Pamela, meanwhile, says she just wants to get on with her life.

‘I have learned that no matter how kind you can be to someone, or how loving you are to someone, if they choose to remain holding on to their own emotional stuff, you must love them and leave them.

‘I am unattached emotionally, though I care for him. I have always been an extreme optimist and peace is my desire. I just want the divorce settled so I can move on.’

Last night, Mr Icke rejected the allegations made against him by Pamela and refuted her version of events.

He pointed out that she had not made any allegations until it seemed money had become an issue for her.

Good Enough,

This is quite long, but I read your original thread and would like to offer my perspective as someone who left the new-age movement and can tell you why she got involved in the first place. I will also share some stratigies that might help you. Defensive comebacks on your part will not work, but there are things you can say that might shed some light on their beliefs and may help them think a bit more rationally.

Try to remember how their life was before they got involved in all this stuff. I can tell you from personal experience that before I looked at the first channeling, I was lonely and desperate. I'd just graduated from college, had few (if any) friends all my life due to people trying to change various aspects of my personality (I refused to change), had no job prospects and my degree was in a field where steady employment was nonexistent. Add to all this people's harsh voices and blunt words, the negative state of the world, and the fact that though people claimed it was a virtue to be my own person, I couldn't help noticing I wasn't very popular, and if being an individual and marching to the beat of your own drum was so desirable, I thought everyone would do it. But all I saw around me were people claiming to be individualistic, yet forming tight-knit communities to commiserate with each other about life's problems and challenges, something I wanted no part of.

I wanted friends, a place to belong, companionship, people with gentle voices and kind words. I wanted a harmonious world, where people genuinely, truly, authentically got along. I am the kind of person who is empathetic to a point, but on the whole does not enjoy listening to people's troubles, perhaps because growing up with a physical disability myself, I've had enough problems of my own, and do not want any more.

Then, I don't know how it started (can anyone remember the exact point of when it started?), I got an email in my inbox. Earth is changing, it said. Go to "What's Up on Planet Earth" site and learn more. So I did. It said that someday soon, things would fall into place, we could have anything we ever wanted, we would ascend to a world where relationships would not be for healing each other (which, the site claimed, was where all the problems of relationships originated, because it implied, and sometimes outright stated, that 2 unhealed people would have problems, and healed people wouldn't have any). Since everyone around me was complaining about some aspect of their love/work/home life, I surmised, the time hadn't arrived when humans had healed completely, but soon it would, and I could have companionship, which was the order of the day for new-world relationships. Soon, the site claimed, businesses would not be about making money, but about treating customers right. As I'd been recently discriminated against by a non-profit organization due to having a disability, I was glad when the time would be over.

There was an energy alert every month, and I was hooked. That was in 2004. I started mentally applying those alerts to everything that happened in my daily life and trying to validate my activities (if it was a rough time, the alerts said earth was in an integration period, the astrology was retrograde, etc.) and it kept me going. Then in 2005, earth had supposedly "reached the higher realms" and though nothing in my life had changed, the alerts said "well, being in the higher realms/new world isn't what our egos thought it would be, you had an expectation, you must co-create the new world, do all this inner work, think these thoughts, feel these feelings, don't think these thoughts or feel these emotions. I never claimed to be an expert, I'm just further ahead on the path and I don't know what's going to happen, isn't it exciting? It's coming, it's coming, it's here but you just don't realize it."

Now I can see the contradictions, and the author's statements as anticlimactic, as hindsight is 20/20, but back then I didn't. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I thought. So I read free self-improvement/help/awareness/development internet articles, LOA material and all the Hayhouse authors, little by little, though I did not conciously set out to do so, and I slid further and deeper down the rabbit hole.

Suffice it to say that it's been a long climb out, and here come the solutions for you.

I found that this forum does not generally offer emotional support, especially to those coming out of religious movements, but it does to those emerging from cults. Since what I was in cannot exactly be described as a cult, and I received a hurtful response after I asked for help understanding the bologna detection kit (I was called a potential cult leader in the making when all I did was ask an honest question) because I could not comprehend the language, not having an interest in science beyond watching Nova on TV, so I had to read lots of Rickross threads and do a lot of googling for physical explanations that explained the various phenomena of the new-age movement.

If a friend or family member comes to you and starts singing the praises of the LOA in the context of "you create your own reality, you did this, you did that" you can say:

"There's a term when everything is all about you. It's called narcicism." Ask them to look that term up.

If someone comes up to you and starts talking about the indigo children, ask them what the symptoms are. They'll only be too happy to tell you. Then say:

"I've read about a lot of those symptoms, and there's a name for people who have those. It's called Narcicistic Personality Disorder." Ask them to look up MPD.

If they say there's no good or bad in the world, say: "That's a concept called non-duality." Have them look it up.

If someone suggests you turn off your mind or observe your thoughts, say: "There's a term for people who do that. It's called disassociation." Have them look that up, too.

If someone claims to have used the LOA by goal-setting, vission boards, positive thinking, taking action (some LOA teachers say inspired action must be taken) and things just fall into place for the LOA devotee, you could say:

"It's very nice that you got what you wanted, and I'm glad for you, but what you did was something people have been doing for centuries. It's psychology. You can research the internet and find plenty of articles from therapists on goal-setting and positive thinking. There's no secret. Nothing new. Even if spiritual laws exist, they're not magical. What's the big deal? Successful people have been working to achieve goals for ages. I don't see what all the hype's about."

If they come at you with a series of contradictory statements, or show you articles they've read touting the new-age, read them yourself and point out contradictions in a nice way. For example, if an author claims not to be doing something for money, or that money is not the primary motive, they just want to help/heal the world, ask them why the first thing you see on the website is "here's my book, buy my product."

If they show you a whole bunch of information about LOA and the teachers contradict each other (some say no action must be taken, some say inspired action must be taken. Some say the LOA works, but not in the way people think, then promote their own bring of LOA truth. Some say LOA works but with tons of caveats, limitations and warnings. Some say LOA is limitless.) You could say:

"If this is such a simple law, it would be easy for people to understand so nobody would be misunderstanding it, and it wouldn't have all these caveats, now would it?"

If they say a concept is "simple but not easy" you could say:

"isn't that just samantics? You imply something is easy by calling it simple. The way you're implying it, you make it sound easy, but if it's really so difficult, don't say it's simple. Otherwise, it gives you an out for when things don't go easily for people, and you can't give any "I didn't know what I was talking about" answers for people who get frustrated, because you technically said it wasn't easy in the first place. But which is it going to be? You can't imply something is easy by calling it "simple" in your speech and then not understand why people don't find it easy. If something's hard, say it's hard."

If someone says you're too judgmental, you can say:

"Humans can't not judge. You make judgments every day about who to hang out with, what clothes to wear, and what places to go, don't you? You don't hang out with drug dealers, do you? Why? Because you've judged them as not being people you'd want to associate with." If they say "that's discernment" you say: "judgment, discernment. It's all samantics."

If someone says to embrace or deny your feelings/thoughts, and you can say:

(you're feeling sad): "embrace an unpleasant emotion and be glad you have it? That doesn't sound right to me. I'm not thrilled about being sad. You wouldn't openly embrace a cactus or a porcupine, would you? Why? Because it hurts! Why should I be glad for an emotion that really sucks to feel this way?"

But denying or surpressing your emotions isn't good, either. So which is it, new-agers?

There's no balanced viewpoint in the new-age, I found. Nothing that says, "sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. Earth isn't the greatest place and I don't like it here. Maybe there's an afterlife or a spirit world. Till then, you just do the best you can with what you have."

If they start talking about life lessons, say: "what if I don't want to learn?" If they start talking about karma/reincarnation/dharma, say, "those are concepts found in eastern mysticism."

Tell them a lot of their beliefs are of a movement called new age. Suggest they look up "new age movement" and read what they find. If they talk of alien beliefs or other channeled messages, say: "That comes from theosophy." Have them look up the history of Theosophy.

In time, perhaps they will come to see the new-age movement as just another religion (even though they don't call it that), like any other. Try to get them to see parallels between new-age ascension and the Christian rapture. Keep in mind that both groups are going to say one is right and the other is wrong.

Ask them to look up "new thought" and read its history. Lots of people shun Wikkapedia, but I've found it to be quite helpful and accurate and succinct.

I am sorry this was so long, but I hope it has been helpful.

The very best of luck to you,
Brynhild

Here's a small, easy-to-understand questionaire that I found extremely helpful, as the bologna detection kit does not work for me. I hope your new-age friends and family are assisted by it as well.

[kenstange.com]

Hi Brynhild, thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.

.

I myself am in to new age Spirituality But, I don't try to force it on anyone else. I normally don't discuss my beliefs with people unless they ask!  There are several different forms of New Age  Spirituality! Like the occults stuff which I'm not into at all! Or just generally a new religious movement or any other believe system you may consider to be new age, either way, i don't judge anyone for the way they believe! My advice is if you are friends with someone that you don't like the way they believe don't discuss your beliefs with them. And if they try to discuss what they believe with you tell them you don't want to discuss it or try to change the subject!