How do we follow a path and do certain activities like prayer meditation etc, in order to get somewhere spiritually without becoming caught up in a perfectionistic attitude? What I mean by this is that we usually do these recommended spiritual practices in order to become something close to perfect, dont we. And if we stop doing the practices or dont do enough of them we then think we are not good enough. Imperfection is not acceptable.

If we started out believing that we are perfectly spiritual and ok as we are, would we do all the practices we are told are the answer?
I am trying to reconcile living a spiritual life which entails doing certain things, with the belief that I am unconditionally ok right now. If I know I am accepted as I am by God/whoever/whatever, and that I really dont have to do anything, this unconditional love wont change, what would I choose to do with my time?
Mostly I did practices out of fear, to get somewhere else or be a better person in order to be accepted.

Are we required to do certain things to be spiritually good enough or to get somewhere spiritual? Im not sure. I dont want to do things out of fear anymore however, that much I do know.

Hi pegasus,

These very questions hit right home, for me. I might offer this, in the way of helpful questions:

a. What is a 'spiritual life'?

b. Where did this idea come from that I need to live a 'spiritual life'?

c. Who told me this stuff and why?

qd

Good questions, quackdave.
I am indeed attempting to answer (a) at the moment.
I would be interested to hear some of your story of what you have been thru, should you feel like putting it out there. Or perhaps you already have, I am still finding my way around this board....
Cheers
Pegasus

Some common phrases in new age that make no sense but that can make you crazy, if you believe in them.

“Nothing is what it seems like”:

If so, the bird is not the bird, the human being is not the human being, the sun is not the sun. You are not you, humanity is not humanity. And if you’re convinced there’s God, there isn’t, and if you’re convinced there is no God, there is.

What is the usefulness of such a belief then? I’ve found none whatsoever.

“You must forget everything that you’ve ever learned”:

Well then, if I truly forgot everything that I’ve ever learned, I wouldn’t be able to read that phrase/advice, since I would have no idea what those alphabets stand for.

There is no inner coherence in that statement, which makes it a very typical new age phrase.

“YCYOR” with its many variations; “you are the sole creator of your reality”, “Law of Attraction”, “you attract what you fear”, “you create what you think”, etc:

These claims aim at one purpose, if you think about them. Are there poisonous snakes in the area where you live? If you see one, you’ve created that experience by thinking; and if someone gets bitten by a poisonous snake then he must have feared that to happen. And so forth. So goodbye freedom of thought.

This claim also means that there is no reality that would be real in any normal sense. It means people don’t have any shared reality, and it also means that everyone is to be blamed for his own experiences, whatever they are.

Did an elderly woman fall down on a slippery sidewalk and brake her leg? It must have been because she thought/feared that to happen and not because the janitor hadn’t put sand on the icy sidewalk. Was somebody robbed while taking out money from the ATM? Well, whatever it was that was causing that to happen it wasn’t the fact that the robber was a heroin addict desperately seeking easy money and an easy victim – no, it must have been the victim’s thoughts and her creation, since she was the one having the experience of being robbed. And by this line of thinking it is supposed that the thinking happens (creating situations and things) either consciously or unconsciously.

So if we are not conscious of our own “creations” (reality), then we must have made that reality unconsciously. Thinking in these lines will probably make you hate your unconscious. It will make you hate your brain and your inability to be totally conscious and to think the right thoughts. It will make you feel stupid.

Did you see the news about the genocide in Rwanda or famine in Darfur? How on earth did you create those, even if you’d never even heard of those places before, and somehow your thoughts just made it happen, because those things came to your reality after reading or watching the news. So ignorance is bliss, then? In the new age they give so many advice to turn of the tv and mass media, not to look at anything that is considered “negative”, to close your eyes from ugly reality. But what if you just happen to see the news anyway?

What this belief creates is
a) massive self-doubt
b) massive self-blame
c) insanity

What purpose does this serve? Certainly it cannot serve your developing consciousness, your learning, your feelings of self-worth, or your mental health. Whose idea is this kind of belief/claim anyway? It is obvious that the new age gurus and believers deliberately disseminate this kind of thinking, but where does it come from. Where are the origins of it?

Probably the next phrase is just another version of the one just mentioned.

“There are no accidents”:

Personally, after reading this from various “spiritual messages” and starting to believe it (because it was affirmed to me personally from high above, or so I thought) made my everyday life, including spirituality, horribly difficult. I began contemplating every minor incident and its meaning or message. I really thought there was a message from Spirit in everything. I later learned that there isn’t. Not everything is meaningful and not every thing is equally meaningful, either.

Also, this belief seems to indicate some kind of predestination doctrine. That in itself can make life meaningless. I mean, what’s the point in living if every single detail in your life comes from somewhere high above and is somehow written beforehand.

These examples were just some of my personal “favourites”. There must be many many more, since new age is kinda loaded with them and there are so many variations from one single thought or belief.

I don’t know, maybe there’s somewhere the original thought that did make sense, but after it was recycled and disseminated by stupid people it just got twisted and more twisted. Maybe. I haven’t found any such “original thoughts” in new age so far, tho´.

And yes, I’ve personally experienced crazyness, a lot of confusion and pure hell on my own because I’ve thought so much of these thoughts or beliefs. I don’t wish that to anyone.

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pegasus
I am trying to reconcile living a spiritual life which entails doing certain things, with the belief that I am unconditionally ok right now. If I know I am accepted as I am by God/whoever/whatever, and that I really dont have to do anything, this unconditional love wont change, what would I choose to do with my time?
Mostly I did practices out of fear, to get somewhere else or be a better person in order to be accepted.

There is a lot of talk in new age about God or the Supreme/Ultimate Being or the Higher Power loving everyone unconditionally. But then in the very next sentence they start giving all sorts of conditions: advice, rules, threats etc. Some contradiction there! Like yeah, God loves you unconditionally, but you must do this and do that so that you can realize that God loves you without any conditions whatsoever.

This new age mumbo jumbo covers about anything and everything. Some people say God loves you unconditionally, but you must drink enormous amounts of water and eat only raw vegetables and fruit in order to ascend, get to be with God, reach enlightenment, or whatever. Others say that in order to do that you must pray with their prayers, repeat their mantras, believe their whatever stuff about practically anything from alien lizards to angels appearing as plastic bags or UFOs appearing as clouds. In other words they say God (who loves you unconditionally) wants you to listen to their words and do what they say, believe what they believe. So give up yourself, give up your own thinking and your quite capable brain, and start listening and OBEYING their thing.

All of the new age or other spiritual gurus seem to be doing exactly the same thing.

What I've learned personally, though, is that that is not what God (or whatever it is that I'm sometimes communicating with) is at all. God doesn't want me to give up thinking - it's quite the opposite. Everything godgiven or naturegiven is supposed to be used, including our thinking, our bodies, our senses, all of our abilities. To be used and not to be restricted, not to be tamed or suppressed, which only create more troubles than solve them.

Don't think! and Empty your head from thoughts! and that sort of advice were probably the worst that I read at some point. Trying to do that caused me nothing but trouble. Luckily I was given the personal higher advice to start using my brain. It probably saved me from total insanity.

What is the truth, then? Does the Higher Being love and accept you unconditionally and work directly with/through you, hearing your every thought and knowing all about you. God is by definition besides omnipotent also omniscient, meaning God knows everything. Well. How can someone who knows everything and loves you unconditionally want and demand you things? That doesn't make any sense, does it. How can someone who loves you unconditionally threaten you with "you'll never get it if you think like that" or whatever their version of not getting to heaven is.

Life turns so much easier and enjoyable when one can just drop that kind of "spiritual" nonsense, if one can stop believing it.

It's hard. I'm still struggling, because there is this doubt in me somewhere: what if they're right and I'm wrong. What if these new age gurus and what not are ultimately right about what they say? This thinking makes my life miserable, I'm more than aware of that. Still, I do wish to know the truth, even if it hurts, even if it's the most horrible thing ever imagined. But so far I don't believe their words, not really. I believe this planet exists, I believe there are some 6 billion people here of which everyone is unique, I believe what I see and what I can learn. And yeah, I also believe in God but at the same time I can be an atheist, in a sense that I don't believe what the religions, priests or believers say.

And that's ok. God certainly doesn't condemn me for my thinking something or my believing that religions stink or my appreciating atheists more than fundamentalists. There is agreement among me and my higher power that reason is a good thing. And that good things are meant to be nourished and cherished, not emptied or destroyed.

I hope my thinking makes more sense than nonsense. Please excuse my mistakes with English, because it's not my mother tongue.

Years ago, in Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man I read a quote from Galileo:

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"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has given us sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

newage survivor wrote:

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There is a lot of talk in new age about God or the Supreme/Ultimate Being or the Higher Power loving everyone unconditionally. But then in the very next sentence they start giving all sorts of conditions: advice, rules, threats etc. Some contradiction there! Like yeah, God loves you unconditionally, but you must do this and do that so that you can realize that God loves you without any conditions whatsoever.

This switch from the initial good news that God loves us unconditionally to later on being told or having it insinuated that all sorts of conditions are required for us to either attain or retain awareness of Gods unconditional love---

That is an example of what is termed 'bait and switch'--things start out one way, and end up differently, aka the rules get changed or the goal posts are moved in the middle of the game.

One reason this happens is that initially when we get the good news of Gods unconditional love (or the group's unconditional love), it is a lot like the early phase of drug or alcohol use--before the shitty side effects and hangovers set it.

Initially you feel fantastic. Later on, when you lose that lovely feeling, you keep remembering how you once felt--and you keep wanting to get that initiatal good feeling back. So that is how you find yourself struggling to meet conditions to get back to the unconditonal love or bliss.

Here is why its a problem:

Regarding the intitial good feelings we get from drugs and alcohol--many times that happens because we are in relatively good health and our first exposure triggers a rush of neurochemicals that engender pleasure. Later, after heavy dose exposure to these same drugs, our bodies are worn out and our nervous system is depleted, or at the very least our livers can metabolize the stuff much more quickly, so the bliss doesnt last as a long.

so we cant resume that initial high because our body chemistry has been depleted. Two..we may have a bunch of new problems in life due to the drug use and we are feeling worse than before. Not better but worse. So we are that much more desperate for the initial high--but the health and vitality that made our initial bliss possible are gone.

And in bad religions or New Age or cults:

* The initial bliss triggered by the group may be brought about by techiques no one has told us about.

1) Love bombing--we get instant intimacy (real intimacy is never instant) because the group has a technique for targeting newbies like us. We dont know it yet, so its all fresh and new. We are getting our pleasure centers fondled and our fantasies met by people who know exactly which parts of our expectations to fondle.

2) Few of us know that bliss, which feels intensely personal, can be produced by IMPERSONAL GENERIC TECHNIQUES--and that these techiques can be mastered by people who dont love us and lack empathy and see us not as unique persons, but as a typical example behaving according to expectation

3) We are not often told the full history of the group--which may be tawdry or unromantic. Eg that someone who claims to have gotten enlightened in India may also have learned tricks of the trade by working as a volunteer at a US large group training, or on the sly, took classes on neurolinguistic programming.

4) We dont know that the inner circle of the group may be working long hours and being badly treated while as newcomers we are getting fondled and stroked and shown only the good side of the group. If we happen to have disposable income or have not yet maxed out our credit cards, or have valuable social contacts, we will definitely be shown only the nicey nicey side.

5) In the New Age scene, we are socialized never to think consciously or objectively about power and social behavior. In fact, daring to mention Rick Ross is the kiss of death.

Regarding the rules getting changed or goal posts budged in the middle of of the New Age game:

And worst of all you are forbidden to step OUTSIDE of the game itself and say, hey, wait a minute.

(In real sports, there are time outs where if a dispute arises, the umpire deliberates. And...the rules of the game are never changed during the time out, nor are the goal posts ever moved. But unlike real sports, in the New Age scene, one can get away with changing the rules or budging the goal posts to ever avoid acknowledging one has lost. And any attempt to step outside the frame and question this is written off as 'hyper intellectualizing' or 'negative thinking' or (in Ken Wilber's scene, 'Tier One or Mean Green Meme or Angry Orange))

Or you get told that in the realm of the absolute, rules dont matter, or that if someone is Enlightened and Crazy Wise, their abusive behavior cannot be evaluated by ordinary standards and is a 'mytery' or 'paradoxical' or 'shaman's way' or some such balderdash.

I call it eating shit and insisting it is sugar.

Balderdash! What a great word.

Funny, I just used that word in an email to a friend regarding the crap that is so often fed to the masses about "Scientific Proof", where no scientific studies have actually been done. When I read it in your post, corboy, I literally laughed out loud. The icing on the cake being the shit/sugar metaphor. It kept me laughing for a while longer.

These days, I'm reveling in the humor and absurdity of the arrogant, all-seeing gurus. (The American Native People would have said they spoke with "forked tongues", with their bait and switch bullcrap) When I first came around these posts, I had only anger to give me the strength to forge ahead, but now there is more than just anger. I'm so glad, too. Gone is the urgency to get somewhere better; I'm already there and having fun.

qd

quackdave, it seems you're in a good place. I love what you say: "Gone is the urgency to get somewhere better; I'm already there and having fun."

The scary thing is that this mumbo jumbo or balderdash is seeping into so many areas of our lives. People we depend upon most when we are our most vulnerable are spouting this stuff -- including therapists and physicians.

Listening to one's intuition, common sense (or BS detector) is vital. So is having a sense of humour.

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blue sky

The scary thing is that this mumbo jumbo or balderdash is seeping into so many areas of our lives. People we depend upon most when we are our most vulnerable are spouting this stuff -- including therapists and physicians.

Listening to one's intuition, common sense (or BS detector) is vital. So is having a sense of humour.

That BS detector is a very necessary tool (or weapon, if you will) in today's society, here in the USA, and probably all over the world. I took some advice from another thread in this forum and purchased {had to; the libraries where I live don't cater to open-minded thought} the book 'The Demon Haunted World', by Carl Sagan. What a great start toward reorienting myself by reading what the New Age and Fundamentalist folks might call heresy! I LOVE to read, but I initially felt a fear of returning to books, due to my self-indoctrination over many years with the newage and cult-type literature. It's a great start for me, and perhaps for anyone looking to break free of the self-hypnosis that many of us unwittingly engaged in, while trying to 'better' ourselves.

The newage stranglehold, with it's tiny world of impossible-to-live-by contradictions (which can drive one mad), is so small that finally getting free of it flings one into a huge place of unlimited possibilities. It can feel very scary, like you're adrift in space without any connections or point of reference. This, I have found, is temporary. And once one starts to get 'their legs', in this truly new world, the hunger for knowledge can continue unabated, but with a brand new (actually not new at all) kind of 'food'. Sagan is anything but an atheist. He is probably more hopeful than any religious person I have ever met. He just isn't buying the pseudo-science or mumbo jumbo, that we are discussing in this forum. Neither am I, anymore.

qd

qd, thank you for suggesting Sagan's book. I know what you about mean about loving to read, but being fearful after reading and being influenced by this nonsense.

It's nice to be amongst people where I'm not feeling alone for saying the emperor is naked. So many people are buying into this stuff; it's everywhere.

Have a great weekend!