New Age Cold Readings
Date: March 01, 2013 08:26AM
Hi,
I am not sure where to post this but I am so greatly distressed. I’ve read threads here about recovery from New Age bs and I sadly admit I am one of them. I am not sure if I should even start a new topic or add to one of those threads but there are so many pages to the others, plus I do have one specific concern.
I don’t even know where to begin. I got into the new age thing in 2007. Over the years I began to believe all of it – the manifestation, meditation, chakras…I won’t list everything, but I basically was (but didn’t know it) looking for a new identity. If I could develop my “psychic abillty” maybe I could become someone – I could be a medium!! How special! How un-ordinary! I could be a psychic, a tarot reader and be really good…I now realize that it was a need to feel special.
Fast forward again to about a year ago when I decided to follow a local medium (very New Age). This is not meant as a personal attack, and I am withholding the identity. I only wish to repeat my experience because I am very upset by it and well, basically I just need somewhere to vent my frustrations.
As I kept listening to his radio shows, he started having more guests on. They (the guest and the medium) would go back and forth praising each other. But I overlooked it all. Energy healers, dream specialists, emotion specialists, past lifers, you name it. I was sucked in to most of it. Then the medium’s shows got more riddled with self-promotion, advertising of all the “specialists” on his website, then he’s into the social media and constantly asking all his listeners, who “loves each and every one of you,” to “make sure to LIKE me on Facebook..” Then the peddling of his workshops and seminars, guests who compliment him on his amazing abilities and then he compliments them back…ugg.OK, it’s a business for him and he is advertising. But I still ignored the red flag in my gut.
But I kept listening. I ignored all of the non-specific general advice he gave and focused on the hits. I will say that I do believe he has definitely honed a gift as a medium. HOWEVER. He has also honed his business acumen, his cold reading skills, his on-air lovey dovey persona, and promotional skills and contacts, and especially his “abundance manifesting skills” because his prices are hefty.
One day, a year ago, I wanted to call in to his show and ask about my spiritual path (probably because the New Age bs was confusing me so much). He did have a few hits on exactly what’s going on with me that were in detail. The rest of the reading was all filler and just general advice about how I’m a healer and I should look for “local classes and workshops” to take (LIKE HIS!) And he suggested different healing avenues like Reiki. Of course he was hoping I would respond to one of them and dummy me, I blurted out that I had already tried Reiki one. He then said “you’re definitely gonna end up being a Reiki master, probably.” ??? Probably? That clued me in that he was feeding off the answer I gave him. He did not pick up that I was very skeptical of Reiki even then and had no interest in Reiki anymore, ha ha!
He told me I have 3 Native American Indian spirit guides, one is a shaman, that I was a shaman healer in a past life and that is my path. The thing is, I did not feel that was right. I took my time in looking up shamanism and eventually I found that New Age Fraud/Plastic Shaman website and that set me straight. Native American Indians would NEVER sell their spirituality nor would they call themselves shamans. The self-proclaimed “shamans” out there advertising workshops and classes to become shamans are complete frauds are at least just New Age opportunists who are stealing from the Native American culture. And this medium (who has a main shaman healer listed on his website and who he promotes) says for me to look into shamanic healing. I am not a Native American Indian. I would never do that. He has no idea what he’s talking about and if I really had a N. A. guide, that guide would NEVER advise him to tell me to pursue shamanic healing. I guess perhaps he made it up? Suggest something to make me feel like I have such a more “special” calling than being an ordinary person not on a spiritual path.
This most recent show I listened to right after I started my New Age detox, literally a week ago. I listened only because I had a feeling I would be much better able to detect the complete scam going on. Well the show proved me so right it’s ridiculous. He raved about how he’s suddenly experiencing shamanic journeys and after years of not saying a thing about it, except for here and there, he’s suddenly telling everyone that we have, in addition to our many guides, angels and deceased ones, we have our “allies, totem animals and ancestors” to call upon. I figured, oh, he must have spent time with the “shamanic healer” he’s been promoting.
Sure enough, the next thing he says is that he just took a trip with the shamanic healer!! And get this: THEN he proceeds to tell us how, while on the trip, he was walking in the woods after a “shamanic journey” and noticed huge footprints of a bear. On an “instinct” he decided to place his feet in those “bear prints” and OMG! They matched! He then said, “I have since come to believe that I have a connection with the bear and that the bear is my totem animal.” Seriously. Oh lord.
Then he goes on about how he’s suddenly seeing “an old woman, looks Native American, indigenous” in his meditations. The whole show was about his new-found ability to shamanically journey. Even his readings to everyone were “I see an old woman around you, she looks wrinkly, indigenous, maybe an ancestor..native American…” OMG. The bs that came out was unbelievable!!
This is basically word for word, I downloaded this onto my phone as a podcast. This caller, a girl, said she was lost in a lot of ways and that talking to her guides wasn’t working. He told her basic stuff about his opinion of guides. Each time she said something or asked a question, he would answer it with a question, to fish for answers! He’d tell her to take meditation classes (of course he offers them). There is LOTS of silence from this girl because she can’t relate to what he’s trying to push on her.
Suddenly! He gets the h*ll away from all he just said, and the silence, and blurts out, “Do you work with kids?” And she says NO, that she’s a full time student, she’s not satisfied, she is lost on a lot of levels.
He counters, “What do you mean? What stands in your way?” He’s fishing. She replies it’s money. She is sounding really down at this point.
He says, “Well, don’t LET it stand in your way.” WHAT? What is she supposed to say to that? He continues, “Money is just energy and everything is energy and that’s why people have money problems is because they don’t go with the flow of the energy. They worry about not having it instead of seeing themselves with it, knowing that you deserve to have it. You gotta tell yourself that nothing is standing in your way, that you deserve it, that you have the ability to reach these goals and dreams. You keep telling yourself NO and you need to tell yourself YES. Change your no’s to yeses.” This poor girl is still silent. He plods on, “It’s important to change your no’s to a yes.” You know, people have serious money problems and a lot of people are totally struggling and this poor dear heart is so upset. He has the nerve to casually dismiss her serious worry and just say, no, don’t let that darn money get in your way, blink up some money, honey! Easy as pie!
She takes a deep breath and asks if he feels her career path that she’s working towards is the right one. He then ASKS HER, “WHAT ARE YOU WORKING TOWARDS?” !!! I listened to this “psychic medium” answer a question with a question and my mouth just dropped. The amount of fishing is unbelievable. She stammers and says she’s looking into Social Work. He affirms it will be beneficial.
He tries to tie in his earlier miss about working with kids by saying he keeps seeing her with kids. Then, because he heard her say “social work,” he adds, “like kids in broken homes and things, so that would make sense to Social Work. That would totally make sense to social work. Ummm, so, yeah, definitely a direction to get you started…” and she is silent the whole time.
My heart broke for her and I could tell she was not relating to anything he said. He throws something else out there to cover for his blunder and to make her feel better and more empowered – he now sees her “somewhere” where she can be “totally your own boss, like you’re the one running the joint. Like you’re in Social Work in town and you’re running the joint, overseeing lots of people. And I’m not talking soon, I’m talking ten (!!!) years out.” She is merely peeping in the background and I am just shocked. Yeah, ten years out, so there’s no way that she will ever remember this horrible, misleading reading in ten years. And saying TEN years is not helping her now. At least it wouldn’t help me.
He tries to save the reading by saying that as long as she does all this with love and in helping people, it will “be rewarding in a very abundant and financial way.” Then she just meekly said, “ …(pause)…ok..” and my heart broke again.
He tries one more futile time to resurrect the reading by giving some important advice – that she apparently had been manifesting whatever she wanted a while ago and has since stopped. A very long pause and now her spirit is so depressed (and probably also because she realized he is completely bs’ing her) and she mumbles “hm” so quietly you can barely hear her. He says she has to get back to doing whatever she was doing a while ago to manifest. Long pause. When she asks if there is anyone looking after her (probably because she has no faith in anything after that reading, lol), he says yes there always is and that she is trying too hard, don’t expect anything too quickly, put the impatience aside. (Just be patient, many years, and hopefully by that time you will forget this horrible cold reading!!!)
You know, I lost sleep over this. I could not stop thinking about those people on that show who were utterly confused. I thought about how his readings changed over the years and became like a crab cake, advertised as a real crab cake, but only to find out that it’s overpriced and has 1/8 real crab and the rest all filler.
I am sorry for the length of this post. This is now an issue that has become very quickly dear to my heart and I wish I could do more to make others aware. But what can you do for people who don’t want to hear it? I wish sooo bad that I could contact that poor girl and just listen to her story, her sadness, give her a hug and a shoulder to cry on. I could give her better advice than that guy. I am so sad that this greed and deception goes on in this materialistic society. I hope I get a better night’s sleep tonight. Thanks for hanging in and reading all this. This forum has helped me greatly already.