New Age obscures that which it claims to enlighten

I have a deep distrust of the phenomenon called “New Age”. I see it as a large market place where people try to get a quick fix for their existential anxieties, from hucksters mining religious traditions for saleable trinkets that demean their origins.

The main problem with New Age, in my view, is that it is used as an ego-booster rather than reducing the power of the ego, which is necessary if you want to live a "real" life: read this text from Wikipedia and you will see that the ego - more specifically its defense mechanisms - has a vast array of strategies that keeps you living in denial:

"To overcome this the ego employs defense mechanisms. The defense mechanisms are not done so directly or consciously. They lessen the tension by covering up our impulses that are threatening.

Denial, displacement, intellectualisation, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalisation, reaction formation, regression, repression and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified. However, his daughter Anna Freud clarified and identified the concepts of undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealisation, identification, introjection, inversion, somatisation, splitting and substitution. " (link to source)

Paul Heelas, Professor in Religion and Modernity at Lancaster University, has written a book aptly called "New Age Movement. The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity" (1996) . The key words being "the celebration of self"... So you go to this market, look around at all the stalls and pick and choose the bits that suit you, your wallet - and your ego. Some chanting? Crystal healing? Reading books that confirms that you are the centre of the universe? That you are indeed a god?

In my view, true religion or philosophy, involves taking a good look at yourself, and acknowledge even the ugly parts, not trying to gloss them over as the ego will have yo do. And then you search for a method to dissolve the ego - to eventually remove the very reasons for its existence.

This is why I have become a Buddhist, because I find it to be the best way to work with the ego. But I am sure that the other major religions offer similar help: they all have an element of surrendering - which is the last thing the ego wants us to do.

Buddhism has also become a source for "new-age thieving": the increasing popularity of "secular mindfulness" is one example. It is sad to see mindfulness reduced to a servant of the ego... But if it can inspire people to eventually discover true Buddhism, maybe it can bring something good anyway!

(Link to more reading on Wikipedia)

/Kris C