Some of the great "spiritual principles" that I have learned about, in my personal indoctrination, have served me well. Not harming others still ranks high in my credo, although I'm suspect of much of the doctrine and dogma which I formerly touted; I still find that I need to censor my speech, my emails, my letters and even my thinking (internal dialog) on a daily basis. I'm glad to hear/see that some people have not seared their conscience to the degree that many others have. I think 'rare bird' may be accurate, sadly.

Glad this thread is here.

qd

One problem I have that I attribute to residual New Age Mumbo is a knee jerk tendency to feel shame and guilt about things that happen to me that are not my fault, like other peoples immoral or unethical actions. After all the years of internalizing "you create your own reality" and "everything that happens is mirroring something inside you" I'm finding the boundaries between myself and others to be blurred.

I do believe in personal responsibility and I do believe that always looking for the teaching inside life events is valuable- but if other people are unethical, unprofessional or attempt to use or abuse me- I want to be able to feel justified in my outrage, not tainted and tentative.

Thanks for your comment, free@last. I know exactly what you mean about the 'knee-jerk' reactions that we built into ourselves, albeit with the help of the purveyors of the newage stuff we fed on for so long. I guess I'm kinda lucky, right now, in that I'm enjoying the shit out of being at the pissed-off stage of my 'recovery'.

qd

Quote
quackdave
Thanks for your comment, free@last. I know exactly what you mean about the 'knee-jerk' reactions that we built into ourselves, albeit with the help of the purveyors of the newage stuff we fed on for so long. I guess I'm kinda lucky, right now, in that I'm enjoying the shit out of being at the pissed-off stage of my 'recovery'.

qd

I'm enjoying being pissed off too! It's a relief to be allowed to feel angry!

Don't know if you know this song called "Rise", by former Sex Pistols' singer John Lydon in the group Public Image Ltd. There's a refrain in it, "Anger is an energy!" I absolutely love it!

there is definitely healthy anger, and unhealthy anger.
Not having any anger, means not having any personal boundaries, which is what every cultish leader tries to do to passify people.
Having hate and rage is also unhealthy, and has been discussed in great detail.
Prisoners Of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence [www.amazon.com]

perhaps a good continuum is this...

passivity-------------assertiveness----------------aggressiveness.

The culty leaders want you to be passive and do what you are told to do, voluntarily, of course.
The far right is about road rage and hate, not healthy.
But like Goldilocks, the middle is just right.

The New Wage culty groups want to make you think that healthy anger, assertiveness, is BAD. So they can mess with you.
Its like a dog, a healthy dog will bite you if you try to make trouble.

But with healthy boudaries, when some culty or LGAT recruiter tries to lure you in, you can tell them very strongly, to please Fuck Right Off, and have a nice day.
An assertive Fuck Off works wonders. Even a Scientology recruiter can't handle that one.
(of course, this is only for the real baddies...No Thanks works for normal people, but not for cults...they keep pushing).


[www.wisdomquotes.com]
Aristotle
Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy.

Thanks for your posts. I've been reading this forum for the past few months and have learned an incredible amount from all of you.


What I'd like to do is dissect some of the New Age beliefs to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak. I think one reason it's hard for me to let go is that there is good mixed in with the bad.

For example: "You create your own reality"

Volition, confidence, goal-setting and clarity on one's direction are powerful ways to create one's reality. They are worth holding on to.

On the other hand, holding a pure positive uncontradicted thought for 13 seconds (the magic formula for Deliberate Creation expounded by Abraham-Hicks) is a questionable bit of mental hocus-pocus.

Any thoughts?

well, its a fact that "the brain creates your internal reality".
That is accounted for in constructivism.

But do "thoughts" act directly on the external world? As Abe-Hicks says?
The only way to find that out is to TEST it, properly, accounting for the Confirmation Bias. [skepdic.com]

There is no real, provable, evidence thoughts act directly on the external world. Quite the contrary.

The Abe-Hicks Deliberate Creation...that is the Golden Goose method. They give a techniques that doesn't work, and is doomed to fail. So people do this, and it doesn't work, and so then they need to buy more DVD's of Abe-Hicks and learn to think more purely!
Its also a first process in Thought-Reform, to start screwing with people's thinking processes.

The Baloney Detection Kit by Carl Sagan is great. [users.tpg.com.au]

but its true it would be good if the public had some decent self-help psychology, stripped of the new age gibberish and scams.
There is Positive Psychology [www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu] and CBT [www.nacbt.org] which can be helpful to some.

the free ebook Psychological Self-Help seemed pretty decent in the past. Is it any good still? Any weird new age group take it over yet?
;-)
[www.psychologicalselfhelp.org]

Anticult:

Dr. Clayton Tucker-Ladd, the author of the book and, I presume, the website seems to have been hard-working and hands-on in his growing up and later. That is to his credit, I would say. I perused the website and found no evidence of Eckhart, Katie or anything New Age. I found an article which refers to a quote by a "sage", but it also seemed benign if not actually helpful. Anyway, thanks for the link. It appears that there's a lot of useful stuff there.

qd

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2009 12:06AM by The Anticult.

I had read most of that free ebook Psychological Self-Help [www.psychologicalselfhelp.org] in a former edition, and it was pretty good. Just straight-up standard current psychological self-direction.
I'll try to give it another read, time permitting.

I do recall there was quite a bit in there about the Behavior aspect, how to modify various behaviors, which is very valuable, especially in contrast to New Age stuff.
But as with anything, critical analysis has to be applied at each step.

It seems to be a self-help book, without wild promises of miracle cures, or instant riches, or ending human suffering..
so it would not sell.
;-)

That is true, by the way. Self-help books that don't make wild overblown promises of instant change with no effort, generally don't sell.
So the book publishers just exploit human weakness, and sell the people what they people think they want.
This is why all these new age self-help books make all those wild claims, as when they do, they sell.

An excellent older book by Dr. Martin Seligman explained how that business works.

What You Can Change and What You Can't:
The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement, Learning to Accept Who You Are
Martin E. Seligman: [www.amazon.com]